MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
September 7, 2010
MEDIA ALERT: BEYOND HIROSHIMA - THE NON-REPORTING OF FALLUJAH'S CANCER CATASTROPHE
Compassion is sometimes a central theme of media reporting. On August 25, journalists across the UK described how a British woman, Mary Bale, had been filmed dropping a cat into a wheelie bin. The cat was later released unharmed. The Guardian reported and commented on the story on August 24 and 25. Matt Seaton wrote:
“OK, there are lots of acts of random cruelty involving humans on humans every day, but this was somebody's pet, for Pete's sake. Who would do such a thing?” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/24/coventry-cat-wheelie-bin)
On August 26, the Guardian followed up with a report describing how animal protection charities were considering whether to prosecute Bale. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/26/rspca-woman-cat-wheelie-bin)
On August 27, Alexander Chancellor devoted a section of his Guardian column to the story. On August 28, Michele Hansen also wrote an article focusing on the cat and on cruelty to animals more generally. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/28/cat-litter-pets-protected-and-persecuted)
On August 29, almost a week after the Guardian had first reported the incident, Euan Ferguson commented:
“The same Facebook, the same Britain, that ‘named and shamed’ Mary Bale is the one that had over 30,000 followers for Raoul Moat RIP, who was a killer. Do we love animals more than people?” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/29/mary-bale-cat-fluffy-animal)
Good question. According to our LexisNexis search (September 7), two articles appeared on the cat story in the Independent and two in the Independent on Sunday. The Daily Telegraph mentioned it in three articles; the Times in seven. The Observer had one article, the Mirror and Sunday Mirror had a total of ten articles. More than 170 articles have so far mentioned Mary Bale in the UK press.
Fallujah - Genetic Stress Beginning 2004
One month earlier, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, a leading medical journal, published a study, ‘Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009,’ by Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi. As Noam Chomsky has commented, the study’s findings are “vastly more significant” than the Wikileaks Afghan ‘War Diary’ leaks (http://www.zcommunications.org/wikileaks-and-coverage-in-press-by-noam-chomsky). After all, the cancer crisis reported in the study is impacting thousands of people in one of Iraq's largest cities and is so severe that local doctors are advising women not to have children.
In the Independent, Patrick Cockburn wrote:
“Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.” (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault-on-fallujah-worse-than-hiroshima-2034065.html)
The survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah showed a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. It found a 10-fold increase in female breast cancer and significant increases in lymphoma and brain tumours in adults. Researchers found a 38-fold increase in leukaemia. By contrast, Hiroshima survivors showed a 17-fold increase in leukaemia. According to the study, the types of cancer are “similar to that in the Hiroshima survivors who were exposed to ionising radiation from the bomb and uranium in the fallout”. (Ibid.)
Infant mortality was found to be 80 per 1,000 births compared to 19 in Egypt, 17 in Jordan and 9.7 in Kuwait.
The study’s authors commented:
“These results support the many reports of congenital illness and birth defects in Fallujah and suggest that there is evidence of genetic stress which appeared around 2004, one year before the effects began to show.” (http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/7/2828/pdf)
Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one of the authors of the survey, said it was difficult to identify the exact cause of the cancers and birth defects. But, he said, “to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the [US] attacks happened”. (Cockburn, op.cit.)
US troops launched a major attack on Fallujah in March 2004 and then joined with British forces to storm the city in a much bigger offensive, Operation Phantom Fury, in November of the same year. On November 30, 2004, the UN's Integrated Regional Information Network reported the aftermath:
“Approximately 70 percent of the houses and shops were destroyed in the city and those still standing are riddled with bullets.” (‘Fallujah still needs more supplies despite aid arrival,’ www.irinnews.org, November 30, 2004)
In January 2005, an Iraqi doctor, Ali Fadhil, reported of the city:
“It was completely devastated, destruction everywhere. It looked like a city of ghosts. Falluja used to be a modern city; now there was nothing. We spent the day going through the rubble that had been the centre of the city; I didn’t see a single building that was functioning.” (Fadhil, ‘City of ghosts,’ The Guardian, January 11, 2005)
On March 3, 2005, Aljazeera reported:
“Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli, an official at Iraq’s health ministry, said that the U.S. military used internationally banned weapons during its deadly offensive in the city of Fallujah.” The official reported evidence that US forces had “used... substances, including mustard gas, nerve gas, and other burning chemicals in their attacks in the war-torn city.” (‘US used banned weapons in Fallujah - Health ministry,' March 3, 2005, http://www.aljazeera.com)
American documentary film-maker Mark Manning told of “American forces deploying - in violation of international treaties - napalm, chemical weapons, phosphorous bombs, and ‘bunker-busting’ shells laced with depleted uranium. Use of any of these against civilians is a violation of international law.” (Nick Welsh, ‘Diving into Fallujah,’ Santa Barbara Independent, March 17, 2005, http://www.independent.com/cover/Cover956.htm)
Despite this and copious other evidence, the BBC’s director of news, Helen Boaden, told Media Lens in March 2005 that her reporter in Fallujah, Paul Wood, had seen “no evidence of the use of such weapons”. Wood added, with considerable naivety:
“The character of the fighting that I saw was bloody, old-fashioned clearing of houses and buildings street by street, block by block, the kind of fighting which is done with little more than an M16 and a handful of grenades. It doesn't make sense to use mustard gas, nerve agents, other chemical agents or nuclear devices -- to quote the Al Jazeera story -- in such a small space also occupied by your own forces.” (Boaden, email to Media Lens, March 7, 2005)
See our previous alerts for details: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/05/050418_doubt_cast_on_bbc.php
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/05/050517_bbc_silent_on_fallujah.php
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/05/050524_bbc_still_ignoring_evidence.php
While the recent survey was unable to identify the weapons used by US forces, the extent of genetic damage suffered by residents in Fallujah suggests the use of uranium in some form. Dr Busby said: “My guess is that they used a new weapon against buildings to break through walls and kill those inside.” (Cockburn, op. cit.)
The authors concluded:
“This study was intended to investigate the accuracy of the various reports which have been emerging from Fallujah regarding perceived increases in birth defects, infant deaths and cancer in the population and to examine samples from the area for the presence of mutagenic substances that may explain any results. We conclude that the results confirm the reported increases in cancer and infant mortality which are alarmingly high. The remarkable reduction in the sex ratio in the cohort born one year after the fighting in 2004 identifies that year as the time of the environmental contamination.” (http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/7/2828/pdf)
Media Performance
Whereas the story of the maltreated cat received heavy coverage for almost one week across the UK media, we (and activist friends in the United States) can find exactly one mention of the Fallujah cancer and infant mortality study in the entire UK and US national press - Patrick Cockburn’s article in the Independent. The story has simply been ignored by every other US-UK national newspaper.
The study +has+ been reported elsewhere. Cockburn’s piece was reprinted in The Hamilton Spectator in Ontario, Canada on July 24 and in the July 25 Sunday Tribune in Ireland. The July 27 Frontier Post in Pakistan ran an excellent piece on the US military’s use of depleted uranium in several theatres of war, including Fallujah. So did the July 30 Irish News. The August 3 edition of New Nation in Bangladesh also covered the issue. It is much more difficult for us to assess TV and radio performance. To its credit, the BBC did give the story some attention: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-10721562
The destruction of Fallujah is only one small item on an almost unbelievable list of horrors heaped by the United States and Britain on Iraq - crimes that are rarely considered individually and almost never as a whole. Readers might like to consider how often they can recall the mainstream media summing up the recent history of Iraq in the way that US dissident writer Bill Blum did last week:
"... no American should be allowed to forget that the nation of Iraq, the society of Iraq, have been destroyed, ruined, a failed state. The Americans, beginning 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, killed wantonly, tortured ... the people of that unhappy land have lost everything — their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives ...
“More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile ... The air, soil, water, blood and genes drenched with depleted uranium ... the most awful birth defects ... unexploded cluster bombs lie in wait for children to pick them up ... an army of young Islamic men went to Iraq to fight the American invaders; they left the country more militant, hardened by war, to spread across the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia ... a river of blood runs alongside the Euphrates and Tigris ... through a country that may never be put back together again." (http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer85.html)
Mainstream journalists see things differently. The BBC’s correspondent Paul Wood reported from Iraq in June 2005:
“After everything that’s happened in Fallujah, the Americans aren’t going to find an +unambiguous+ welcome. But Fallujah +is+ more peaceful than it’s been in a long time. Its people like that.” (Wood, BBC 1, 18:00 News, June 22, 2005)
SUGGESTED ACTION
The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.
Ask the following newspapers why they have not covered this credible evidence of a US-caused humanitarian catastrophe in Fallujah:
Write to Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian
Email: alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk
John Mulholland, editor of The Observer
Email: john.mulholland@observer.co.uk
Tony Gallagher, editor of the Daily Telegraph
Email: tony.gallagher@telegraph.co.uk
The Times letters page
Email: letters@thetimes.co.uk
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http://www.medialens.org/alerts/10/100907_beyond_hiroshima_the.php
The second Media Lens book, 'NEWSPEAK in the 21st Century' by David Edwards and David Cromwell, was published in 2009 by Pluto Press. John Pilger writes of the book:
"Not since Orwell and Chomsky has perceived reality been so skilfully revealed in the cause of truth."
http://www.medialens.org/bookshop/newspeak.php
dinsdag 7 september 2010
maandag 6 september 2010
Israel as a Rogue State 95
| Israeli FM doubts peace possibility | ||
Lieberman quoted as saying deal with Palestinians unattainable in a year or 'during the next generation'. Last Modified: 06 Sep 2010 08:23 GMT | ||
Avigdor Lieberman's reported comments come days after the first round of US-sponsored direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians commenced in Washington, with a declared goal of reaching an accord within one year. "I do not believe that a comprehensive agreement with the Palestinians is possible within a year, nor even during the next generation," Lieberman is quoted as telling members of his ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party at a function in advance of Wednesday's Jewish new year. "Since the Oslo accords 17 years ago, important politicians have made multiple pledges and statements that nothing ever came of. "We have not examined in depth the reasons why we have paid such a high price for each accord with the Palestinians which has had no results." The talks between Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmud Abbas, the Palestinian president, will face their first major hurdle later this month when an Israeli settlement moratorium expires. Palestinians' demand The Palestinians have insisted that if Israel does not renew the partial freeze on settlement construction in the occupied West Bank when it expires on September 26, the peace process will come to an end. Netanyahu is under pressure from hard-right groups who dominate his ruling coalition to resume the construction, and has said settlements should be discussed alongside other core disputes that have hampered past attempts at peace, including the final status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees. Lieberman, in separate remarks broadcast by the private Channel 2 television, said "Abu Mazen (Abbas) will not sign a comprehensive agreement. That is why we should look for a long-term interim accord and concentrate on Israel's security". "The signing of a peace agreement does not mean the end of the conflict and of mutual demands as well as the recognition of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people." http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/09/20109654947618925.html |
The Neoliberal Religion 10
As Robert Kuttner notes in The American Prospect: "For more than three
decades, the wages of American workers have been close to flat while
economic insecurity has risen massively. Although the productivity of the
U.S. economy has doubled in a generation, most of those gains have not been
captured by workers. And in the decade that began in 2001,
inflation-adjusted wages have fallen for all but the most affluent 3
percent of the population.
---------
Our Long National Nightmare Isn't Over, It's Just Beginning
by David Michael Green Published on Sunday, September 5, 2010
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/05-0
In the 1930s, the only thing we had to fear was fear, itself. Today, the
main thing we have to fear is us, ourselves.
Looking out over the horizon, I'm starting to wonder just how many
shades of dark there are on the pallette. Lately, I get the feeling that
we're about to find out. I wish I could say that this society did our best
to fight our demons, but that the odds were simply insurmountable. You
know. Like we were just sitting there by ourselves on our remote little
Pacific island, a thousand years before telephones and radar when - bang -
the tsunami hit, no fault of our own. And we bravely struggled heroically,
doing our mightiest to save as many lives as we could.
I mean, if you've got to crash and burn, better to go down with a little
dignity and honor, eh?
But, no, not for me, apparently. I'm an American. I live in a country -
nay, an empire! - that insists on destroying itself. I'm part of the
generation of decline. My people are the fools who perfected the fine art
of committing suicide by stupidity.
It's an astonishing act, and one of wide participation.
The nightmare of the right in America edges increasingly close to dragging
the country past the point of no return, over the cliff of violent
implosion. At this point, there is already little that is missing save the
jackboots and broken glass.
The Republican Party was once a moderately conservative, pro-business
outfit, until it was highjacked by the oligarchy and turned into a full-on
predatory machine, hiding behind the facade of hate mobilizing issues like
bogus overseas threats abroad and uppity brown people and demanding women
at home. Basically, any way that middle class white males could be
distracted from their sinking economic status - through the diversion of a
sense of superiority over others, or the supposed threat to that superior
status - was employed to cover for a party whose true agenda was to quietly
produce the greatest transfer of wealth in all of human history.
Having succeeded dramatically, they are back at it again. It is now
transparent, for anyone who cares to look, that the ugly tea party movement
in America is an invention of the Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch, Dick Armey
and their sick ilk, once again mobilizing a boatload of fools who are
angry, but too stupid to know quite why. This explains their endless
rhetoric about the evils of the federal government, and their simultaneous
desire to keep their Social Security and Medicare benies. It also explains
their unmatched idiocy in serving as tools for their own destruction. If
they succeed, they fail. If they get their champions elected, they lose
their government-provided (Shhhh!) goodies. Brilliant.
In any case, the takeover of the GOP by Serious Money is now well into its
second stage. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it is.
Seriously, what is the next step after this one fails to provide any
long-term solutions to what ails America, as most assuredly will be the
case? For a decade or three now, regressives in America have been showing
that they are capable of anything. Which more or less answers that
question, doesn't it? If you're willing to savage military icons like John
McCain, Max Cleland and John Kerry in order to win elections - and
especially after you get away with it every time - you're willing to do
anything. If you're willing to mock the 9/11 widows as scheming
opportunists, you're willing to do anything. If you're willing to don a
tuxedo and joke about missing WMD at a press banquet in Washington, just as
you're telling the American military's adversaries in Iraq to "bring it
on", you're willing to do anything.
Looking at the rhetoric the right throws in the direction of our president
these days, questioning his very nationality (oh, did I mention that he's
black?), it's easy to see that they‘ve gone completely over the line.
But what's really out of control is what lies underneath this insanity
generated for the consumption of an ignorant hoi polloi. And what that is
- what you see when you move the slime-infested rock away - is an
unfathomably monstrous greed. Watching these folks in action, you could
easily get the impression that they had been impoverished their whole
lives. That they had been denied everything, right down to food and water.
That they had been deprived through poverty especially of their dignity.
You know, like the real poor people of this world, the forty or fifty
percent of the Earth's population that survives on less than two dollars
per day. Those folks.
Instead, we are talking about people who are already fantastically rich.
And who, despite this, are absolutely hell-bent on getting richer, even if
that means depriving hundreds of millions of people in the American middle
class of their middle classness, and in many cases, ultimately of their
lives. How do we explain people like this? Are they not essentially
sociopathic? Are they not made of essentially the same stuff as those who
can kill without guilt or remorse? Especially when you consider that even
the greediest among us reach a limit beyond which one can effectively make
use of the next dollar and the one beyond that, so that pushing others into
poverty is no longer even for purposes of your own benefit, but instead for
some kind of sick sport? Aren't these the characters whose essential
sickness preachers and philosophers and shrinks have been trying to sort
out for millennia?
Whatever the explanation for such illness, the effects of their efforts are
certainly plain to see. We're talking here about a class of Americans who
have been essentially offended by the diminishment of inequality produced
in America during the middle part of the twentieth century, due to the
national policies ranging from the New Deal to the Great Society,
Republican administrations included. America's socio-economic structure
changed dramatically during that time, and almost entirely for the better.
A huge middle class that had never existed before came into being.
Anti-poverty programs took the worst sting out of living conditions for the
poor. And America became the greatest economic dynamo since the Roman
Empire. Meanwhile, by the way, the rich remained very, very rich.
But that was not enough. So they have made a concerted effort over the
last generation or so to revert the country back to the bad old days of
Herbert Hoover and Calvin Coolidge. Think about that for a second. What
sort of elevated sickness, what sort parental deprivation in childhood,
what sort of total absence of conscience and consciousness is required to
produce a group of people with that mentality?
I wish I knew. But I do know that their plan worked. As Robert Kuttner
notes in The American Prospect: "For more than three decades, the wages of
American workers have been close to flat while economic insecurity has
risen massively. Although the productivity of the U.S. economy has doubled
in a generation, most of those gains have not been captured by workers.
And in the decade that began in 2001, inflation-adjusted wages have fallen
for all but the most affluent 3 percent of the population.
"This pattern of deepening inequality was well entrenched before the
financial collapse - which only made things worse. In 2006, economists at
Goldman Sachs, sounding almost Marxian, reported that ‘the most important
contributor to higher profit margins over the past five years has been a
decline in labor's share of national income.' By 2006, wages as a
percentage of gross domestic product were already at their lowest share -
45 percent - since government began keeping statistics in 1947. In the
past three years, the decline in worker earnings has only intensified, as
worker bargaining power has been undermined by very high unemployment. As
the economy has stumbled toward a feeble recovery, corporate profits and
executive bonuses have rebounded smartly, but salaries and wages have not.
"In the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, wages and productivity moved upward in
lockstep. Beginning in the 1970s, as government regulation of labor
conditions faltered, trade with nations that exploited their own workers
increased, and corporations declared open war on unions, the lines
diverged. Productivity kept increasing, while median wages were nearly
flat."
This is the successful agenda of the right in America, though it has been
cleverly masked by the politics of resentment. This has been the real
‘class warfare' in the United States these last decades - not, as
pouncing regressives instantly scream out in an effort to silence truth,
the very occasional and even more feeble attempts by the odd Democratic
politician who slips up and mentions what has actually happened. And, as
Warren Buffett is honest enough to point out, the war is over and his side
won. As Robert Reich noted in a recent New York Times op-ed, the richest
one percent of Americans have gone from taking in nine percent of the total
national income right before the Reagan era began, to nearly one-fourth of
it today. As Reich also reminds us, the last time this happened was in
1928. I would rush to say, "Hey, remember how that one turned out?", but
it's pretty unnecessary to crack the history books for that reference,
since we're now living it. As just about the stupidest society that ever
was, we've decided to get together to explore the fun and exciting
question, "What would happen if America had a devastating economic downturn
once again, boys and girls?!?!"
There is one big difference between today and the 1930s, however. Once
there was a political party in America - the one that did the New Deal and
the Great Society - that stood up a bit for the middle class and the poor.
But Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have led the Democrats down a different
path. Now the party stands for a slightly weaker version of the GOP's
plutocracy protection service. And, seemingly, for getting its face
bitch-slapped bright red at every possible juncture. Both aspects of the
New Democrats are a puzzle, but particularly the latter. What sort of
psychology of the self-loathing explains how a Clinton or an Obama can be
so passive, even when getting handed their heads by the most scurrilous of
creeps on the political landscape, pieces of (allegedly) human garbage who
could be destroyed with the slightest show of self-defense, let alone a wee
assertion of political courage?
The current White House is such a failure that I am sometimes left
scratching my head in understanding why that is the case. The puzzle
becomes especially acute if one considers how transparently intelligent
Barack Obama is, and how strategically clever they were in running their
presidential campaign. It's true, of course, that there are different
kinds of smart. Jimmy Carter understood nuclear physics, but not the
presidency. George W. Bush understood the presidency, but was otherwise as
intellectually vacuous as a mud pie. Still, Obama has shown serious
evidence that he has keen political smarts. Until he became president,
that is.
One obvious explanation for this puzzle is that the guy, like Clinton
before him, is just another flavor of corporate tool. Ya got yer
Republican Wall Street marionettes, see, and ya got yer Democratic Wall
Street marionettes... That much is clear, but it still doesn't explain why
this White House has been as inept as it has. Another claim that some
people make is that he just wants one term, and will take the money and
prestige and run. The problem with that theory is that he already had the
money. And, quite arguably, he could have done better financially by
simply writing a third book than by sitting in the Oval Office earning a
mere half mil per year. What is absolutely clear, unless there is some
radical and nearly unimaginable change of course, is that he will leave the
presidency as one of history's great losers, which again suggests to me
that he would have been better off just sitting it out. Not to mention all
the stress and ever-present death threats he could avoid by just hanging on
the sidelines.
Whatever the explanation, the effect could not be clearer. Obama came into
his presidency with more wind in his sails than perhaps anyone since
Johnson in 1964, and this for a black man with an Islamic name, no less.
He then blew it, utterly and completely. The indications of this are
everywhere, starting with all the subsequent by-elections which he has
turned into ‘bye' elections for candidates from his party. Meanwhile,
there are Democrats running for Congress today who are literally running TV
ads dissing Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. And even those who are not
mostly don't want the president showing up in their districts before this
election.
Now the latest polls are showing Republicans with a ten percent lead in
generic congressional ballots. This is the biggest they've ever had in the
68 year history of polling. Meanwhile, half of Republican voters are
enthusiastic about voting this November, while only one-fourth of Democrats
are. On top of everything else, Republicans are doing this well despite
offering nothing in terms of a plan for solving the problems that are
upsetting voters. They will cut taxes on the rich. That's it. The
entirety of the rest of what they stand for is simply "NO!!!" to all things
Demon Obama.
Now, think about this for a second, and bear in mind that when it comes to
the GOP we are talking about a political party that the very same polls
show voters still hating. How astonishingly inept do you have to be to
turn the world upside down on its axis and hand not only resurrection but
in fact control of Congress to such thugs, and hugely despised ones at
that? What kind of a full-blown multiple-car crash of a politician do you
have to be to make the party of Bush, Cheney, Boehner and McConnell seem
preferable to the public, by a wide margin?
Wait. Don't answer yet. It gets worse from there. In 2003, the ratio of
Democratic to Republican identifying/leaning voters was about 50 to 40
among young voters, known as the Millennial generation. By 2008, via a
combination of the effects of both George W. Bush and (candidate) Barack
Obama, that ratio had moved an astonishing distance to provide a whopping
gap of 62 to 30. Now, less than two years into the rule of Mr. We Are The
Ones We've Been Waiting For, it is back to 54 to 40. These are incredible
swings in identities that are usually far more stable. And they are
incredibly important, because there is good evidence to suggest that voters
who select a given party over a series of elections in the early part of
their lives wind up keeping that party ID for life. In other words,
Democrats had an opportunity here to lock in with an entire generation of
voters a hugely disproportionate preference to continue voting for them.
Imagine the difference this would have made in elections for the next
seventy(!) years, especially over time as these Millennials replaced older,
more conservative, voters in the electorate, and as they themselves came to
turn out in larger proportion each election cycle, as every generation does
when it ages. Democrats could have come close to locking up control of
American government for the coming half-century, just as they essentially
did after 1932. Instead, the party's leaders have alienated this
generation so much that they have returned the identification numbers to
the period when George Bush and his party were highly popular. That's a
real achievement, folks.
Dan Pfeiffer, Obama's communications director, recently averred that "The
public is rightly frustrated and angry with the economy". So far so good,
Dan. Very perceptive for a guy in the Obama White House. You should have
stopped there, though. Instead, Dan went on to say that, "There is no
small tactical shift we could have made at any point that would have solved
that problem". You know, I don't really know who Dan Pfeiffer is, but I
would say that anyone making this claim should be removed from office, and
fast. Indeed, right now I would say that anyone who has the title of
Obama's communications director should probably just be taken out back and
shot, on account of gross incompetence and lethal negligence. I'm sorry,
but these fools are so clueless. This could have turned out so
differently, and, moreover, that was obvious in January of 2009 to anyone
who had paid attention to American politics for the last thirty years.
This White House was not praiseworthy for seeking to be bipartisan.
Rather, it was embarrassing for not even knowing who its enemies were.
The worst, though, is what is to come. Obama and the Democrats will get
slaughtered in November. This will happen not so much because of the
socialist crimes they are alleged by the right to have committed - which
are of course utter nonsense - but simply because of what they have not
done, which is to solve the country's problems. Yet, because of the
socialist, big-spending, freedom-crushing narrative that regressives have
successfully fomented and that the administration (including - Hello! -
paging COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR DAN PFEIFFER!!) has been completely inept
about countering, and because the other post-election option of actually
getting it right would appear to be (and would be vociferously made to
appear to be, by Republicans) an act of spiteful spitting in the public's
eye, the administration will have no option after the election but to tack
yet further to the right in the ensuing two years.
That will be disastrous for Obama, for Democrats and for the country. (I
could care less about the first two, who deserve it, and frankly I'm
leaning that same way for number three on the list as well.) Like Clinton
before him, Obama will try to placate voters and Republican monsters with
their sponsoring oligarchy by moving to the right. Of course, there is
absolutely nothing there except tax cuts for the wealthy (he is already
proposing tax cuts for the bottom 98 percent). The Republicans have no
other solutions for the economy (or anything else, for that matter), though
these dam-busting boondoggles for the fiscally obese are, of course, no
solution either. And, like Clinton before him, Obama will be relentlessly
hounded by congressional investigations into every manner of bogus scandal
that the fevered minds of the closeted perverts on the right can dream up
to keep the administration reeling.
Unlike Clinton, however, there will be one big difference. I often said,
back in the day, that the only thing that kept the American public from
immolating Wild Bill, and the only thing that kept the Senate from
convicting him in his impeachment trial, was that the economy was jumping
at the time and Americans were therefore fat, dumb and happy. Today,
however, they're merely fat and dumb, and even the fat part isn't a good
thing in this case. The public could not possibly be more surly - apart
that is, from how surly they'll be in a year or two. Obama has been as
idiotic a president as could be created if you sat down with the intention
of making one, and they will be happy to watch him get savaged him when
they have a chance. By bringing timidity and compromise with criminals to
bear against multiple severe crises, and by refusing to fight for anything,
he has launched a vicious cycle that is sucking him inexorably down, and us
with him: He fails to solve the problems, the public gets angry and
frustrated, his party loses elections, the right accuses him of everything
from being a socialist to a fascist, he says nothing in response, the
public gets angrier and more frustrated, his party loses more elections,
they are then even more unable to govern than before, the public is about
to explode in anger and frustration, he moves to the right and thereby
offers even less of a solution to these crises than the non-solutions
already on display, and ... so on. And so on, again. Rinse and repeat.
Obama and the rest of the cowardly and corrupt members of his party have
guaranteed their own destruction, that's for sure, but that is likely the
least unkind thing that history will say about them. If we think about
where this all goes next, it becomes clear what these shallow punks are
trading away for their pathetic self-interest and unwillingness to fight
against treasonous criminals. Democrats will be smashed in the next two
elections, and the right will gain full control of the government and full
responsibility for the state of the country. At that point, Republicans
will have to put up or shut up. Since they will have no remotely viable
way to solve the problems people face - since, indeed, their real mission
is to make those problems worse, because that is necessary to further
enrich their sponsors - they will reach for ever greater means of
distraction to keep the public's attention elsewhere. All I can say is,
"Watch out, third world countries everywhere".
We know what these people are capable of, though Cheneyism has only hinted
at how bad it could ultimately get.
History will record - if there are historians left to record it - that this
was a moment of monsters, cowards and indolents: those being the right,
the supposed left, and the public, respectively.
It's the worst of all worlds, and the combination is likely to be
catastrophic.
Given the magnitude of the crises we face and the ability of those who
would govern us - and those who would be governed by them - to do anything
whatsoever in pursuit of their own, narrow, short-term interest, it could
well be far worse than catastrophic.
It could be entirely lethal.
---------
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra
University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to
his articles (mailto:dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time
constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be
found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.
The Neoliberal Religion 9
10 Practical Steps That You Can Take To Insulate Yourself (At Least
Somewhat) From The Coming Economic Collapse
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/10-practical-steps-that-you-can-take-to-insulate-yourself-at-least-somewhat-from-the-coming-economic-collapse
Most Americans are still operating under the delusion that this "recession"
will end and that the "good times" will return soon, but a growing minority
of Americans are starting to realize that things are fundamentally changing
and that they better start preparing for what is ahead. These "preppers"
come from all over the political spectrum and from every age group. More
than at any other time in modern history, the American people lack faith in
the U.S. economic system. In dozens of previous columns, I have detailed
the horrific economic problems that we are now facing in excruciating
detail. Many readers have started to complain that all I do is "scare"
people and that I don't provide any practical solutions. Well, not
everyone can move to Montana and start a llama farm, but hopefully this
article will give people some practical steps that they can take to
insulate themselves (at least to an extent) from the coming economic
collapse.
But before I get into what people need to do, let's take a minute to
understand just how bad things are getting out there. The economic numbers
in the headlines go up and down and it can all be very confusing to most
Americans.
However, there are two long-term trends that are very clear and that anyone
can understand....
#1) The United States is getting poorer and is bleeding jobs every single
month.
#2) The United States is getting into more debt every single month.
When you mention the trade deficit, most Americans roll their eyes and stop
listening. But that is a huge mistake, because the trade deficit is
absolutely central to our problems.
Every single month, Americans buy far, far more from the rest of the world
than they buy from us. Every single month tens of billions of dollars more
goes out of the country than comes into it.
That means that every single month the United States is getting poorer.
The excess goods and services that we buy from the rest of the world get
"consumed" and the rest of the world ends up with more money than when they
started.
Each year, hundreds of billions of dollars leave the United States and
don't return. The transfer of wealth that this represents is astounding.
But not only are we bleeding wealth, we are also bleeding jobs every single
month.
The millions of jobs that the U.S. economy is losing to China, India and
dozens of third world nations are not going to come back. Middle class
Americans have been placed in direct competition for jobs with workers on
the other side of the world who are more than happy to work for little more
than slave labor wages. Until this changes the U.S. economy is going to
continue to hemorrhage jobs.
The U.S. government has helped to mask much of this economic bleeding by
unprecedented amounts of government spending and debt, but now the U.S.
national debt exceeds 13 trillion dollars and is getting worse every single
month. Not only that, but state and local governments all over America are
getting into ridiculous amounts of debt.
So, what we have got is a country that gets poorer every single month and
loses jobs to other countries every single month and that has accumulated
the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world which also gets
worse every single month.
Needless to say, this cannot last indefinitely. Eventually the whole thing
is just going to collapse like a house of cards.
So what can we each individually do to somewhat insulate ourselves from the
economic problems that are coming?....
1 - Get Out Of Debt: The old saying, "the borrower is the servant of the
lender", is so incredibly true. The key to insulating yourself from an
economic meltdown is to become as independent as possible, and as long as
you are in debt, you simply are not independent. You don't want a horde of
creditors chasing after you when things really start to get bad out there.
2 - Find New Sources Of Income: In 2010, there simply is not such a thing
as job security. If you are dependent on a job ("just over broke") for
100% of your income, you are in a very bad position. There are thousands
of different ways to make extra money. What you don't want to do is to
have all of your eggs in one basket. One day when the economy melts down
and you are out of a job are you going to be destitute or are you going to
be okay?
3 - Reduce Your Expenses: Many Americans have left the rat race and have
found ways to live on half or even on a quarter of what they were making
previously. It is possible - if you are willing to reduce your expenses.
In the future times are going to be tougher, so learn to start living with
less today.
4 - Learn To Grow Your Own Food: Today the vast majority of Americans are
completely dependent on being able to run down to the supermarket or to the
local Wal-Mart to buy food. But what happens when the U.S. dollar declines
dramatically in value and it costs ten bucks to buy a loaf of bread? If
you learn to grow your own food (even if is just a small garden) you will
be insulating yourself against rising food prices.
5 - Make Sure You Have A Reliable Water Supply: Water shortages are popping
up all over the globe. Water is quickly becoming one of the "hottest"
commodities out there. Even in the United States, water shortages have
been making headline news recently. As we move into the future, it will be
imperative for you and your family to have a reliable source of water.
Some Americans have learned to collect rainwater and many others are using
advanced technology such as atmospheric water generators to provide water
for their families. But whatever you do, make sure that you are not caught
without a decent source of water in the years ahead.
6 - Buy Land: This is a tough one, because prices are still quite high.
However, as we have written previously, home prices are going to be
declining over the coming months, and eventually there are going to be some
really great deals out there. The truth is that you don't want to wait too
long either, because once Helicopter Ben Bernanke's inflationary policies
totally tank the value of the U.S. dollar, the price of everything
(including land) is going to go sky high. If you are able to buy land when
prices are low, that is going to insulate you a great deal from the rising
housing costs that will occur when the U.S dollar does totally go into the
tank.
7 - Get Off The Grid: An increasing number of Americans are going "off the
grid". Essentially what that means is that they are attempting to operate
independently of the utility companies. In particular, going "off the
grid" will enable you to insulate yourself from the rapidly rising energy
prices that we are going to see in the future. If you are able to produce
energy for your own home, you won't be freaking out like your neighbors are
when electricity prices triple someday.
8 - Store Non-Perishable Supplies: Non-perishable supplies are one
investment that is sure to go up in value. Not that you would resell them.
You store up non-perishable supplies because you are going to need them
someday. So why not stock up on the things that you are going to need now
before they double or triple in price in the future? Your money is not
ever going to stretch any farther than it does right now.
9 - Develop Stronger Relationships: Americans have become very insular
creatures. We act like we don't need anyone or anything. But the truth is
that as the economy melts down we are going to need each other. It is
those that are developing strong relationships with family and friends
right now that will be able to depend on them when times get hard.
10 - Get Educated And Stay Flexible: When times are stable, it is not that
important to be informed because things pretty much stay the same.
However, when things are rapidly changing it is imperative to get educated
and to stay informed so that you will know what to do. The times ahead are
going to require us all to be very flexible, and it is those who are
willing to adapt that will do the best when things get tough.
Somewhat) From The Coming Economic Collapse
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/10-practical-steps-that-you-can-take-to-insulate-yourself-at-least-somewhat-from-the-coming-economic-collapse
Most Americans are still operating under the delusion that this "recession"
will end and that the "good times" will return soon, but a growing minority
of Americans are starting to realize that things are fundamentally changing
and that they better start preparing for what is ahead. These "preppers"
come from all over the political spectrum and from every age group. More
than at any other time in modern history, the American people lack faith in
the U.S. economic system. In dozens of previous columns, I have detailed
the horrific economic problems that we are now facing in excruciating
detail. Many readers have started to complain that all I do is "scare"
people and that I don't provide any practical solutions. Well, not
everyone can move to Montana and start a llama farm, but hopefully this
article will give people some practical steps that they can take to
insulate themselves (at least to an extent) from the coming economic
collapse.
But before I get into what people need to do, let's take a minute to
understand just how bad things are getting out there. The economic numbers
in the headlines go up and down and it can all be very confusing to most
Americans.
However, there are two long-term trends that are very clear and that anyone
can understand....
#1) The United States is getting poorer and is bleeding jobs every single
month.
#2) The United States is getting into more debt every single month.
When you mention the trade deficit, most Americans roll their eyes and stop
listening. But that is a huge mistake, because the trade deficit is
absolutely central to our problems.
Every single month, Americans buy far, far more from the rest of the world
than they buy from us. Every single month tens of billions of dollars more
goes out of the country than comes into it.
That means that every single month the United States is getting poorer.
The excess goods and services that we buy from the rest of the world get
"consumed" and the rest of the world ends up with more money than when they
started.
Each year, hundreds of billions of dollars leave the United States and
don't return. The transfer of wealth that this represents is astounding.
But not only are we bleeding wealth, we are also bleeding jobs every single
month.
The millions of jobs that the U.S. economy is losing to China, India and
dozens of third world nations are not going to come back. Middle class
Americans have been placed in direct competition for jobs with workers on
the other side of the world who are more than happy to work for little more
than slave labor wages. Until this changes the U.S. economy is going to
continue to hemorrhage jobs.
The U.S. government has helped to mask much of this economic bleeding by
unprecedented amounts of government spending and debt, but now the U.S.
national debt exceeds 13 trillion dollars and is getting worse every single
month. Not only that, but state and local governments all over America are
getting into ridiculous amounts of debt.
So, what we have got is a country that gets poorer every single month and
loses jobs to other countries every single month and that has accumulated
the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world which also gets
worse every single month.
Needless to say, this cannot last indefinitely. Eventually the whole thing
is just going to collapse like a house of cards.
So what can we each individually do to somewhat insulate ourselves from the
economic problems that are coming?....
1 - Get Out Of Debt: The old saying, "the borrower is the servant of the
lender", is so incredibly true. The key to insulating yourself from an
economic meltdown is to become as independent as possible, and as long as
you are in debt, you simply are not independent. You don't want a horde of
creditors chasing after you when things really start to get bad out there.
2 - Find New Sources Of Income: In 2010, there simply is not such a thing
as job security. If you are dependent on a job ("just over broke") for
100% of your income, you are in a very bad position. There are thousands
of different ways to make extra money. What you don't want to do is to
have all of your eggs in one basket. One day when the economy melts down
and you are out of a job are you going to be destitute or are you going to
be okay?
3 - Reduce Your Expenses: Many Americans have left the rat race and have
found ways to live on half or even on a quarter of what they were making
previously. It is possible - if you are willing to reduce your expenses.
In the future times are going to be tougher, so learn to start living with
less today.
4 - Learn To Grow Your Own Food: Today the vast majority of Americans are
completely dependent on being able to run down to the supermarket or to the
local Wal-Mart to buy food. But what happens when the U.S. dollar declines
dramatically in value and it costs ten bucks to buy a loaf of bread? If
you learn to grow your own food (even if is just a small garden) you will
be insulating yourself against rising food prices.
5 - Make Sure You Have A Reliable Water Supply: Water shortages are popping
up all over the globe. Water is quickly becoming one of the "hottest"
commodities out there. Even in the United States, water shortages have
been making headline news recently. As we move into the future, it will be
imperative for you and your family to have a reliable source of water.
Some Americans have learned to collect rainwater and many others are using
advanced technology such as atmospheric water generators to provide water
for their families. But whatever you do, make sure that you are not caught
without a decent source of water in the years ahead.
6 - Buy Land: This is a tough one, because prices are still quite high.
However, as we have written previously, home prices are going to be
declining over the coming months, and eventually there are going to be some
really great deals out there. The truth is that you don't want to wait too
long either, because once Helicopter Ben Bernanke's inflationary policies
totally tank the value of the U.S. dollar, the price of everything
(including land) is going to go sky high. If you are able to buy land when
prices are low, that is going to insulate you a great deal from the rising
housing costs that will occur when the U.S dollar does totally go into the
tank.
7 - Get Off The Grid: An increasing number of Americans are going "off the
grid". Essentially what that means is that they are attempting to operate
independently of the utility companies. In particular, going "off the
grid" will enable you to insulate yourself from the rapidly rising energy
prices that we are going to see in the future. If you are able to produce
energy for your own home, you won't be freaking out like your neighbors are
when electricity prices triple someday.
8 - Store Non-Perishable Supplies: Non-perishable supplies are one
investment that is sure to go up in value. Not that you would resell them.
You store up non-perishable supplies because you are going to need them
someday. So why not stock up on the things that you are going to need now
before they double or triple in price in the future? Your money is not
ever going to stretch any farther than it does right now.
9 - Develop Stronger Relationships: Americans have become very insular
creatures. We act like we don't need anyone or anything. But the truth is
that as the economy melts down we are going to need each other. It is
those that are developing strong relationships with family and friends
right now that will be able to depend on them when times get hard.
10 - Get Educated And Stay Flexible: When times are stable, it is not that
important to be informed because things pretty much stay the same.
However, when things are rapidly changing it is imperative to get educated
and to stay informed so that you will know what to do. The times ahead are
going to require us all to be very flexible, and it is those who are
willing to adapt that will do the best when things get tough.
zondag 5 september 2010
Het Neoliberale Geloof 529
Life vs. Productivity: "What Would You Live and Die to Protect?"
Sunday 05 September 2010
by: Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
People in Louisiana expressing their feelings about the BP oil disaster. (Photo: Erika Blumenfeld © 2010)
"It is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself, when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks." -Malcolm X
If someone broke into your house, pinned down your loved ones and began pouring poison down their throats, would you stop that person?
What if someone poured crude oil all over your crops and livestock? Wouldn't you try to stop them from doing it?
Oyster beds soaked in BP oil. (Photo: Erika Blumenfeld © 2010)
Oil filled inland lagoon on Timbalier Island, Louisiana. (Photo: Erika Blumenfeld © 2010)
Pointed questions like these come from a man named Derrick Jensen. They provide a lens through which to view the havoc that corporate capitalism is wreaking on our planet. They are meant to jolt us into the awareness that we are watching life on earth annihilated. They are also meant to challenge us into thinking about what form our resistance to this should take.
"I think what we need to do is to stop deluding ourselves into believing that those in power will do what they have not done and they've shown no inclination to do, which is to support life over production," says Jensen, an author and environmental activist who lives in Northern California.
Lewis Mumford, a US historian and philosopher of science and technology, has written, "The chief premise common to both technology and science is the notion that there are no desirable limits to the increase of knowledge, of material goods, of environmental control; that quantitative productivity is an end in itself and that every means should be used to further expansion."
But how can unlimited growth and productivity be possible on a planet with finite resources?
Simple answer: It cannot.
Yet, we are all being pushed, at breakneck speed, toward a future that promises catastrophic global climate change, depleted natural resources, environmental degradation and human chaos and suffering on an apocalyptic scale.
One hundred and twenty species of life are erased from the planet each day.
Ninety percent of all the pelagic fish in the oceans are gone.
The Arctic ice cap is vanishing before our eyes as global temperatures continue to rise.
Here are some recent headlines from this summer:
- Greenland Ice Sheet loses 100 square miles, biggest loss since 1962 (Aug. 2010)
- Russia's drought-driven halt to wheat exports panics world grain markets (Aug. 2010)
- Pakistan's worst flood in recorded history claims some 1,100 lives (July, 2010)
- International study confirms accelerating warming trend (July, 2010)
- Rapid decline in phytoplankton population stuns scientists (July, 2010)
- Flash floods seen increasing as Milwaukee gets eight inches in two hours (July, 2010)
- Senate climate bill collapses (July, 2010)
- Coral reef deaths soar in record ocean heat (July, 2010)
- First half of 2010 was hottest such period on record (July, 2010)
- Carbon lobby launches "CO2 is Green" campaign (July, 2010)
- Massive Greenland glacier retreats one mile in one night (July, 2010)
- Military declares climate change "a catalyst for conflict" (June, 2010)
- Malaria soars with small rainforest reductions (June, 2010)
- Oceans have stored more heat than they released since 1993 (May, 2010)
- Climate change is causing "irreversible" destruction of ocean life systems (June, 2010)
- Himalayan glacier melt puts 60 million people at risk of food shortages (June, 2010)
- Warming pushes many small mammal species to the brink (June, 2010)
This is happening not because any of us want it, but because those in power, answerable only to their corporate sponsors, are playing out their mantra of "every means should be used to further expansion."
Expansion of growth. Expansion of profits. Expansion of power.
Mumford has said a change in this mindset of perpetual expansion would likely only happen with "an all-out fatal shock treatment, close to catastrophe, to break the hold of civilized man's chronic psychosis."
We have already had many of these "fatal shock treatments:" the Exxon Valdez spill, the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, Chernobyl, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Agent Orange, Love Canal, Three Mile Island, the Seveso Italian dioxin crisis, the Baia Mare cyanide spill. These are just a few. It's a long list.
And, now, we can add the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
View of "The Source." (Area of Gulf of Mexico directly above the Macondo Well after the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon Rig.) (Photo: Erika Blumenfeld © 2010)
BP's oilrig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded in April and, for 36 hours, its flames released immeasurable amounts of toxins into the atmosphere before it sunk into the depths. We now know that the vast majority of the oil that gushed from the well was intentionally submerged by BP via heavy use of dispersants at the wellhead, so most of the oil is floating around in giant undersea plumes, one of which is ten miles long, three miles wide and 300 feet thick. They are like oil bergs - what we see on top of the water is a mere fraction of what lies beneath. This was not an oil leak. This was a volcano of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.
If independent estimates of the amount of oil released into the Gulf are correct, as many as one Exxon Valdez load of oil (250,000 barrels worth) was being released into the Gulf of Mexico every two and a half days. That means 8,700,000 barrels of oil, or 34 Exxon Valdez's worth, were released into the Gulf of Mexico.
Conversely, what actions have been taken to bring BP to account? Will the CEO likely spend time in jail? Government officials and institutions that have colluded with BP - how about them being brought to justice?
When the Exxon Valdez struck a reef in Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1989, the incident was considered to be among the most devastating human-caused environmental disasters in history.
When the Exxon Valdez struck a reef in Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1989, the incident was considered to be among the most devastating human-caused environmental disasters in history.
Even after the surface oil is cleaned up in the Gulf of Mexico, scientific studies already show (as they have shown in Prince William Sound) that oil can remain trapped in the seabed for decades, continuing to contaminate and kill fish, shrimp, crabs and bird life. To this date, a maximum of only 14 percent of the oil spilled in that disaster has been recovered. As you read this, BP is scaling down the response efforts to the Gulf disaster.
Meanwhile, as the so-called free market that allows unchecked corporate powers like BP to pollute and destroy our ecosystems with impunity continues, the oil spreads across the Gulf and another oil platform has exploded in the Gulf, this time 80 miles south of Louisiana.
Jensen believes that expecting those in power to do what is right for human beings, much less the planet, "is delusional." "Their function in a democracy is to give us the illusion of power, but the truth is that they do what they want," Jensen explains. "Why is it that cops are always called in to break strikes but not help the strikers? When the function of the state is to support the privatization of profits and the externalization of costs, what kind of state is this?"
Jensen, a prolific writer and author of several books, including "A Language Older Than Words" and "Endgame," summarizes the situation we face like this: "The point is that when a gold mining corporation spreads cyanide all over the mine and this hits our groundwater and wells and destroys ground waters in Montana, they are not called a terrorist, they are called a capitalist."
The same can be said for BP. Exxon. Monsanto. Bayer. Dow. Lockheed Martin. It's a long list.
"If it was space aliens coming down and systematically changing the planet, would we appeal to them through lawsuits, take off our clothes and make peace symbols, petitions?" Jensen asks. "I was once being interviewed by a dogmatic pacifist and he felt that I wanted all activists to act like assassins. That's not true. What I want is for all activists to act like they are serious about their resistance and that might include assassinations."
Jensen believes that we are at a point in history where the very planet upon which we live and our lives are at stake. If the perpetual growth, corporate-capitalist-industrial machine is allowed to continue, we will die. Thus, it must be stopped by any means necessary.
To illustrate what might be possible by taking a militant approach, Jensen points to Johann Georg Elser, the man who attempted to assassinate Adolph Hitler in 1939.
"Everyone agrees that if Hitler was killed in 1939, the war doesn't happen," Jensen explains, "The point is that I want people to think like members of a resistance. The first thing that means is to start thinking away from being part of a capitalist industrial system and away from this government that we all acknowledge serves corporations better than us and toward the land where we live."
Many are concerned that the approach Jensen advocates will generate extreme government crackdowns on activists working on topics across the political spectrum - that the use of violence to promote change is a bankrupt strategy and one that is doomed to failure.
"I am not the violence guy," is Jensen's response, "I'm really the everything guy. Only two percent of the IRA ever picked up weapons. 98 percent were doing support work. We need a wide range of tactics, which can include fighting back and attacking the infrastructure. I don't know what is so radical or incendiary about believing that living oceans are more important than a social structure. The culture as a whole suffers from insanity, one form of which is that this social structure is more important than the living planet. I don't believe you can suffer the delusion that you can systematically dismantle a planet and live on it. It's very simple to me. Life is more important than capitalism."
* * *
Many activists have argued that nonviolence is the only path that will lead to positive, lasting change in society. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk, teacher, author, poet and activist, is a man Martin Luther King Jr. called "an apostle of peace and nonviolence." In Saigon during the early 1960s, he organized students to rebuild bombed villages, resettle families and create agricultural coops. His work, then as now, is based on the Buddhist principles of nonviolence and compassionate action.
Voices like Hanh's tell us that violence begets violence, a theory backed by thousands of years of historical evidence.
Some, like influential German Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt, argue that the use of violence, while at times effective in destroying power, "Is utterly incapable of creating it." Arendt's work dealt with the nature of power that she explored via investigations of politics, authority and totalitarianism.
Arendt believed that true freedom was synonymous with collective political action among equals.
Organized nonviolent power, on a massive scale, like that by the movement behind Gandhi in India, could possibly avoid these draconian measures while destabilizing the corporate centers of power.
* * *
Jensen does not advocate the use of violence as a means toward taking control of, or even overthrowing, the US government. Instead, he encourages small groups of people to do what their government has failed to do. For example, he asks, "What would happen if police started enforcing cancer free zones, or rape free zones, or toxics free zones?" He goes on to answer his rhetorical question, "We could start putting together forces that say, "You will not toxify this land and we will stop you. If people came into our homes and started to pour poison down our throats, we would stop them."
In Oakland, California, in the 1960s, police brutality against African-Americans was rampant. But when the Black Panthers decided to arm themselves, load into cars and trail the police, beatings of African-Americans decreased dramatically.
A modern-day example is The Pink Sari Gang, a group of women in India who wear pink saris and train in the martial arts. "If they see a man abusing a woman, they beat the crap out of him," Jensen says, "If they see the police abusing the poor, they step in. This dramatically reduces domestic violence."
Jensen is not the first person to suggest the use of violence against those in power. Malcolm X also took on the establishment in the 1960s by indicting white America in the harshest of terms for its crimes against blacks, and he remains one of the most influential African-Americans in history.
"We declare our right on this earth ... to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary," is perhaps his most famous quote. While he was clear about only using violence in self-defense, Malcolm X was also clear on the issue of nonviolence: "It is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself, when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks," he said.
* * *
Could these tactics succeed in the United States today?
Assassinations, sabotage and other violent acts geared toward stopping the corporate capitalist system might remove some corporate CEOs and temporarily slow ecological destruction, but the CEOs would immediately be replaced and the violence and sabotage would most certainly be used to justify draconian measures applied to the general public, thus, making further resistance more challenging.
The US government response to armed resistance in the 1960s and 1970s resulted in National Guardsmen killing unarmed anti-war protesters on college campuses and the FBI assassination of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in Chicago. Government spying and surveillance of resistance leaders was rampant, as was exposed by the COINTELPRO files being made public.
Arendt was critical of the tactics of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers for advocating violence, along with being critical of other groups in the 1960s in the US who did the same, like the Weathermen who carried out dozens of bombings of government targets in response to the war in Vietnam. Arendt wrote, "In a head-on clash between violence [military] and [collective nonviolent resistance] power, the outcome is hardly in doubt."
Yet, her critique of the failure of governments' use of violence to quell nonviolent movements is equally harsh: "Nowhere is the self-defeating factor in the victory of violence over [collective nonviolent] power more evident than in the use of terror to maintain domination, about whose weird successes and eventual failures we know perhaps more than any generation before us."
Arendt could easily count the failing US empire project among her "eventual failures" in this analysis. Indeed, one can argue that the US empire project, which is essentially run by a corporate, capitalist, hegemonic ideology, is being crushed under its own weight. This is evidenced by the ongoing global financial crisis and the escalating human-made climate change.
Hailing the religions of infinite growth and perpetual profit within the confines of a finite plane is truly an example of the proverbial snake eating its own tail. So, why not leave it to eat itself, then rebuild and reconfigure ourselves to live closer to the land after the juggernaut collapses?
* * *
We do not have the luxury of that kind of time. Scientists now tell us that the Arctic ice cap will likely be ice free in the summer within ten years. When this happens, rather than reflecting sunlight, that area then turns into a heat absorbing sink that dramatically increases the rate of climate change and overall planetary warming.
Iceberg calved from the Antarctic Ice Shelf. (Photo: Erika Blumenfeld © 2010)
By late 2009, two different studies showed seven years straight of a loss of Antarctic ice at a rate of 190 gigatonnes per year and the rate was increasing with time.
Some political scientists and currently serving US senators and Congresspersons now argue that our system of so-called representative government is so broken and corrupted that it is beyond its capability of righting itself.
Thirty years ago, people in the United States used to make fun of the Soviet Union and the Politburo because the body of the latter was approximately 97 percent populated by communist members. Thus, the legitimacy of the Politburo was erased.
"What percentage of the members of the Senate and House of Representatives are capitalist party members [politicians who subscribe to the so-called free market system]?" Jensen asks. "Suddenly it's not so funny, is it? I ask people all over the country, 'Do you believe we live in a democracy?' And almost nobody ever says yes. I ask, 'Does the government take better care of corporations or human beings?' Of the thousands of people I ask this to at talks, nobody says human beings and this is not even to speak of salmon."
Jensen says every morning when he wakes up, he asks himself if he should write or blow up a dam. "You and I can write all we want, but that doesn't help the salmon," he tells me, "What they need is for dams to be removed and logging stopped."
His incisive pragmatism disregards any concern for upsetting people, groups or adherence to what is politically correct. He is spurred forward in his work because the urgency of the situation demands it. Jensen believes that all forms of resistance, nonviolent, violent and everything in between, are important and useful. But he does not hesitate to point out where he feels some methods do not go far enough.
Someone Jensen singles out as an example of how current tactics of resistance are not enough is Bill McKibben. In 1988, McKibben, a well-known author, environmentalist and activist wrote "The End of Nature," the first book for a common audience about global warming. He is the co-founder of 350.org, an international climate campaign to bring awareness to the fact that the planet faces both human and natural disaster if atmospheric concentrations of CO2 remain above 350 parts per million (ppm). Right now, we are at 390 ppm and climbing.
Last December, just prior to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen that had enacted no useful legislation to curb carbon emissions, McKibben penned an article for Mother Jones magazine. In it, he wrote, "The latest numbers from the computer jockeys at Climate Interactive - a collaboration of Sustainability Institute, Sloan School of Management at MIT and Ventana Systems, is that if all the national plans now on the table were adopted the planet in 2100 would have an atmosphere with 770 parts per million CO2."
"Bill McKibben has done a wonderful job of publicizing the threat from global warming," Jensen says, "He's been doing it for a long time, with incredible stamina and work and I have incredible respect for that."
But Jensen insists that the tactics of McKibben's group 350.org do not go far enough.
"So the question I have, not only for Bill, but for everyone is, what is your threshold? Give me one at which you'll stop believing in and petitioning those in power and will begin direct attacks on the oil infrastructure. Is it 440ppm? 450? 570? When the planet turns into Venus? What is your threshold? We need stop them before they kill the planet."
Applying tactics like those used by the Black Panthers, the Weathermen or Malcolm X would most likely lead to government security crackdowns that far surpass those used in the 1960s.
It is also a given that business-as-usual activism is not getting the job done. That the goal of opening "free markets" is written into the US National Security Strategy means that the march toward "freedom" really means a freedom for corporate interests to gobble up resources, pillage and pollute our common land base (and oceans, seas, Gulfs) and continue to exploit the underprivileged labor base in the US and abroad.
* * *
In April 2004, I watched local Iraqis in Fallujah, armed with Kalashnikov machine guns and rocket propelled grenade launchers, repel the most powerful military machine on the globe when US occupation forces attempted to invade their city. In 2006, during the Israeli attack of Lebanon, I saw Hezbollah, using little more than what the Iraqis used in Fallujah, repel an invasion by the Israeli military - a military defeat Israeli smart weapons, sophisticated US-made fighter jets and drones could do nothing to prevent.
In April 2004, I watched local Iraqis in Fallujah, armed with Kalashnikov machine guns and rocket propelled grenade launchers, repel the most powerful military machine on the globe when US occupation forces attempted to invade their city. In 2006, during the Israeli attack of Lebanon, I saw Hezbollah, using little more than what the Iraqis used in Fallujah, repel an invasion by the Israeli military - a military defeat Israeli smart weapons, sophisticated US-made fighter jets and drones could do nothing to prevent.
"History provides many examples of successful resistance, as do current events," writes Jensen, who maintains a regular column for Orion magazine called "Upping the Stakes." In the March/April issue he wrote, "The Irish nationalists, the abolitionists, the suffragettes - I could fill the rest of this column with examples. Recently, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has, through attacks on oil pipelines and the kidnapping of oil workers, disabled as much as 40 percent of the oil industry's output from Nigeria and some oil companies have even considered pulling out of the region. If those of us who are the primary beneficiaries of this global system of exploitation had 1 percent of their courage and commitment to the land and community, we could be equally effective if not more so. We have vastly more resources at our disposal and the best we can come up with is, what, compost piles? The world is being killed and many environmentalists still think that riding bikes is some sort of answer?"
Jensen told me that MEND was, for a long time, nonviolent, but after one of their leaders was killed, they moved toward using sabotage, then finally to violent resistance.
Jensen adds in his column, "MEND has said to the oil industry: 'It must be clear that the Nigerian government cannot protect your workers or assets. Leave our land while you can or die in it.' There is more courage, integrity, intelligence and pragmatism in that statement from MEND than in any statement I have ever read by any American environmentalist, including myself. We need to accept the fact that making this type of statement (and being prepared to act on it) might be necessary to preserve a living planet. Some people may be willing to give up on life on this planet without resisting. I'm not one of them."
Jensen urges people to "think for themselves," as he feels this is the most important first step toward true freedom.
"I want them to decolonize their hearts and minds," he explains. "That means to recognize that this culture is not the only way to live. This is one culture. To recognize that technological progress is not progress. It is escalation. It improves the ability of those in power to make matter and energy jump through hoops on command. If sea turtles were developing all kinds of technology that was killing the planet, we would not call it progress."
For all of us who are or want to be actively involved in work that might shape a better future for the planet, it is imperative we know what we love and care about most. Given the vast number of issues (climate change, militarism, corporate capitalism etc.) that need our immediate attention, coupled with the severity of crisis many of them encompass, it is easy to be overwhelmed.
"What would you live and die to protect?" Jensen suggests we ask ourselves. "Fight by any means, whether that be by a lawsuit or a gun? Is it your family, survivors of domestic violence, salmon, the Rio Grande River? What is it you love enough that you would fight to defend?"
Apathy and learned helplessness are now endemic in the US. The massive anti-war demonstrations on February 15, 2003, that preceded the Iraq war were ignored by the Bush administration. That administration went on to shred the US Constitution, openly advocate torture and enrich war-profiteering companies like Halliburton, Dyncorp and Bechtel in Iraq. People felt as though nothing could be done.
When tens of millions of US citizens voted in Barack Obama as president, they hoped real change for the better was upon them. Many of those people now feel betrayed by his broken promises. Guantanamo Bay, that he promised to close, remains open. The US occupation of Iraq, that he promised to end, continues with no real end in sight. Rather than acting as the peace president many hoped he would be, President Obama has tripled the number of soldiers in Afghanistan since he took office. It's a long list. Millions of US citizens now feel they are at a loss.
"Do you believe that our culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living?" asks Jensen.
"For the last several years I've taken to asking people this question, at talks and rallies, in libraries, on buses, in airplanes, at the grocery store, the hardware store. Everywhere. The answers range from emphatic 'No's' to laughter. No one answers in the affirmative. One fellow at one talk did raise his hand and when everyone looked at him, he dropped his hand, then said, sheepishly, 'Oh, voluntary? No, of course not.'
"For the last several years I've taken to asking people this question, at talks and rallies, in libraries, on buses, in airplanes, at the grocery store, the hardware store. Everywhere. The answers range from emphatic 'No's' to laughter. No one answers in the affirmative. One fellow at one talk did raise his hand and when everyone looked at him, he dropped his hand, then said, sheepishly, 'Oh, voluntary? No, of course not.'
"My next question: how will this understanding - that this culture will not voluntarily stop destroying the natural world, eliminating indigenous cultures, exploiting the poor and killing those who resist - shift our strategy and tactics? The answer? Nobody knows, because we never talk about it: we're too busy pretending the culture will undergo a magical transformation."
Jensen asserts what millions around the world can corroborate - systematic abuse of the poor and helpless leaves lasting scars on entire generations. He compares this culture to an abusive family, where violence is a constant threat and the victims feel helpless and dependent on the abuser. He writes, "Civilization and the civilized continue to create a world of wounds."
"From birth on - and probably from conception, but I'm not sure how I'd make the case - we are individually and collectively acculturated to hate life, hate the natural world, hate the wild, hate wild animals, hate women, hate our bodies, hate and fear our emotions, hate ourselves. If we did not hate the world, we could not allow it to be destroyed before our eyes. If we did not hate ourselves, we could not allow our homes - and our bodies - to be poisoned."
* * *
"I say, do something," Jensen urges. "The big dividing line is not between those who advocate resistance through any means necessary and those who don't. It's not even between grassroots and mainstream. The big divide is between those who do something and those who don't."
Business-as-usual activism and politics will guarantee catastrophic climate change, more environmental disasters like what we are witnessing in the Gulf of Mexico and continued corporate depravity. Wherever people stand in the debate on the use of violence versus nonviolence, Jensen's sense of urgency at this moment in history is unarguable.
So, where do you stand?
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