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Tuesday, March 29, 2011

"Spreading the Good News About Atheism": Why We Need Atheist Ad Campaigns

AlterNet.org

BELIEF


The hostility that the atheist ad campaigns generate proves why we need them so badly.

Photo Credit: Eric Ingrum via Flickr
"Are you good without God? Millions are."

"Imagine no religion."

"There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

Atheist ad campaigns are everywhere. Around the U.S. and around the world, atheist organizations have been buying space on billboards, buses, TV and more, with messages ranging from the mild-mannered "Don't believe in God? You are not alone" to the in-your-face "You know it's a myth." The current "Living Without Religion" campaign from the Center for Inquiry, letting the world know that "You don't need God -- to hope, to care, to love, to live" -- is only the latest in a series of advertising blitzes: from American Atheists, the Coalition of Reason, the American Humanist Association, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and many other organizations. Even local student atheist groups have been getting into the act, using buses in their college towns to spread the good news about atheism.

And whenever they do, they are almost guaranteed to garner resistance. Conservative religionists often object vehemently to the very concept of atheist advertising: in many cases trying to get the ad campaigns stopped altogether, and frequently even vandalizing the billboards. (In what has to be the irony of the year, some bus companies have stopped accepting all religious-themed ads, simply so they don't have to accept ads from atheists.) And while moderate and progressive believers have never (to my knowledge) tried to stop these atheist ad campaigns from moving forward, many are still baffled and even offended by the ads. They see them as proselytizing, evangelical... and they don't understand why people who are opposed to religion would be proselytizing and evangelical.

So why do atheists do this?

Why do atheists spend substantial amounts of money and resources to let the world know we exist, and to get our ideas across?

Which Atheists?

The first thing you have to remember is this: Not all atheist ads campaigns are created equal. Different atheist organizations create different ad campaigns, with different goals, and different strategies for achieving those goals. So when you ask, "Why do atheists have to advertise?", the first question you have to answer is, "Which atheists?"

Some atheist ad campaigns, for instance, are purely about visibility. The sole message behind them: "Atheists exist." The folks behind these campaigns know that visibility is key to acceptance of atheists -- just like it's key to acceptance of LGBT people. Simply getting people familiar with atheists, and getting them comfortable with the concept of atheism, goes a long way to countering anti-atheist prejudice and hostility. What's more, the folks behind these campaigns know that plenty of non-believers feel isolated -- cut off from family and friends if they're open about their atheism, hiding in secrecy and silence if they're not -- and they want these people know they aren't alone. It's like the annual Coming Out Day campaign for LGBT people.

Other ad campaigns are about information. They're there to counter myths about atheists. They're not just telling you, "Atheists exist" -- they're telling you, "Atheists exist, and are good, happy people." Misinformation and bigotry against atheists abound, and many atheist ad campaigns -- including the current "Living Without Religion" one from the Center for Inquiry -- are aimed at countering this misinformation. They're aimed at letting the world know that, contrary to popular opinion, atheists have morality, meaning, joy, and hope in our lives... just as much as religious believers. It's like a public service information campaign, letting you know that, contrary to popular opinion, HIV is a treatable illness/Arab Americans are your peaceful hard-working neighbors/the library is open late on Thursdays.

Still other campaigns are trying to gain new members for their atheist groups. They aren't necessarily trying to persuade anyone out of religion... but they know there are non-believers in their communities, people who feel isolated, people who may even think they're the only ones who think they way they do. And they want those folks to know that atheist organizations are available: to provide community, support, education and entertainment, or simply to provide reinforcement for the idea that they aren't crazy or immoral for thinking the way they do. Like a softball team distributing flyers for new players... or AARP advertising for new members, and letting you know about the wonderful programs they have available for people over 50.

And still others are, in fact, actively trying to change people's minds about religion. They're trying to persuade people that atheism is, you know, correct: that there is no God, and people should stop believing... or, at the very least, consider the possibility that their beliefs might be mistaken. Or they're trying to persuade people to respect the separation of church and state, even if they believe in God. Like Pepsi trying to persuade you to buy their products instead of Coke's... or Marriage Equality trying to get you to vote against Prop 8.

Of course, while these ad campaigns do have different goals, many of those goals dovetail and overlap. The "atheist visibility" folks may not be deliberately trying to persuade people out of religion, for instance... but since religion relies on social agreement to perpetuate itself, the mere act of saying "Atheists exist, not everyone believes in God" lays a small but powerful piece of dynamite under its foundations. The "deconversion" folks may be trying to get people to question their faith... but they're also getting atheism on a lot more people's radar. And while the "countering misinformation" campaigns aren't necessarily designed to increase group membership, that's often the effect.

And I would argue that every single one of these goals is valid.

After all -- they're valid for every other human endeavor.

When it comes to every other human idea/affiliation/activity/organization, we think it's perfectly reasonable for people to make themselves visible. To make information available. To let others who might be interested know that a group exists. To persuade others who don't agree to change their minds. When it comes to politics, science, art, medicine, hobbies, philosophy, food, etc., we consider it not only acceptable, but positive and worthwhile, to share our ideas, and to get our points of view into the world, and to make our case when we really think we're right.

Why should atheism be the exception?

If it's okay for Democrats to run ads saying, "Vote Democratic"? If it's okay for the Boston Red Sox to run ads saying, "Go Sox"? If it's okay for the Red Hot Organization to run ads saying, "Safe sex is hot sex"? If it's okay for Greenpeace to run ads saying (seriously) "There's probably no cod, now let's stop overfishing & think of the future"? Then why on Earth is it not okay for the Center for Inquiry to run ads saying, "You don't need God -- to hope, to care, to love, to live"? Or even for American Atheists to run ads saying, "You know it's a myth"?

Why should religion, alone among all other ideas, be entitled to a free ride... free from criticism and questioning and the uncomfortable reminder that not everyone in the world agrees with it?

And in fact, when you look at the ugly responses that atheist ad campaigns typically get, the need for them becomes even more obvious. Religious believers have called the ad campaigns "aggressive," "hateful," "offensive," "a disgrace," "political correctness gone amok," "terrible," "disturbing," and "dangerous." They've said that they "have had their sensibilities assaulted" by the ads, that their beliefs were being "attacked" and "vandalized" by them. They've suggested that someone "accidentally burn" the billboards. They've equated atheist advertisers with Fred Phelps. And these responses are hardly isolated: they're very much in line with general American sentiments about atheists, which view us as the most disliked and distrusted minority in America.

Of course atheists need visibility -- lots of people are bigoted about us. Of course we need to spread information about who we are -- lots of people are ignorant about us. Of course we need to let other atheists know that support networks are available -- lots of people are hateful about us. Of course we need to advocate for separation of church and state -- lots of people want to make it actually illegal for us to advertise. The very hostility that the atheist ad campaigns generate proves why we need them so badly.

Sauce for the Goose?

Now, some people may think I'm being a hypocrite here. Some people think that religious evangelism sucks, whether it's atheists or believers doing the "evangelizing" -- and they think it's hypocritical for atheists to cut slack for the atheist ad campaigns. "Sure, she doesn't like religious proselytizing," these folks are probably saying, "but she thinks it's totally okay for atheists to try to swell their ranks and change people's minds! How is that fair?"

But these people would be mistaken.

Because I don't, in fact, have any objection to religious evangelists trying to change people's minds.

Don't get me wrong. I have serious objections to many of the religious evangelists' methods. I object to their use of fear-mongering as a form of persuasion; to their offering of false hope; to the way they present unsubstantiated opinion as authoritative fact. I object to their arrogant use of personal experience as the keystone of their case, with little or no understanding of the fallibility of the human mind. I object to their dismissal and even contempt of the most fundamental notions of evidence and reason. I object to their use of social pressure and even shunning to enforce complicity and silence dissent within their ranks. I object to their knocking on people's doors at eight in the morning on a Saturday.

But I do not have any objection whatsoever to the basic idea of religious believers trying to persuade people that they're right. None. If they think they're right, then that's exactly what they ought to do. That's how the marketplace of ideas works: people share their ideas, they make the case for their ideas, and (in theory, anyway) in the long run the best idea wins. In fact, if these believers were right, and our eternal afterlives in bliss or torment really were contingent on believing the right religion? Then not trying to persuade others to share the faith would be objectionable. Immoral, even. Callous to the point of being monstrous. I disagree passionately with their case, I disagree with how they typically make that case... but I have not even the slightest objection to the idea of them making it.

And I'm not afraid of them. I think the case for atheism is better than the case for religion... by several orders of magnitude. I think that, when stripped of the fear-mongering and social pressure and unsubstantiated opinion and so on, religion falls apart almost laughably fast. I think that religion is a house of cards built inside a fortress, and when the fortress of excuses and diversions and non-arguments gets breached, the actual case for religion is so flimsy it's almost pathetic. I think atheism is correct; I think the case for atheism is winning, and will continue to win... and I'm not afraid of religious believers making their case.

And the fact that so many believers are afraid of atheists making our case?

That just makes my point for me.

Atheists aren't the ones trying to shut up religious believers. When religious ads go up on buses and billboards and TV, we roll our eyes and go about our business. We don't agree with the advertisers... but we don't try to stop them from advertising. Sure, we're trying to get religious messages out of government -- no Ten Commandments in City Halls, no creationism in public schools, no prayers to start city council meetings, etc. -- but that's a separation of church and state issue. (One that works for religious believers just as much as it does for atheists, I might point out.) When it comes to religious groups hawking their message on their own private property -- or on other people's private property they've rented with their own money -- we may think it's obnoxious or silly, but we totally respect their right to do it.

And the fact that so many believers don't respect atheists' right to hawk our message? It just shows how weak their message is -- and how afraid they are of having it contradicted. As my wife Ingrid points out, "If you've got God on your side, why are you so afraid of a billboard?"

If religionists thought their case for God was strong, they wouldn't be trying to silence atheists.

And the fact that they are trying to silence atheists, all by itself, is Exhibit A for exactly why we need to keep advertising.

Read more of Greta Christina at her blog.

Monday, March 28, 2011

The Meaningless Concept of Ethical War

Dissident Voice: a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and social justice


The Meaningless Concept of Ethical War

The Case against Intervention

French air force planes struck the first blows: using “intelligent” munitions, the planes struck tanks and artillery which threatened the people of Benghazi.

Now, who wouldn’t be heartened to learn that mechanized forces being used against civilians, civilians whose only demand was freedom from tyranny, were destroyed?

One might easily regard intervention, limited strictly to such targets, as both ethical and desirable, but the truth is that intervention is never limited to such targets, and the realities motivating it are loaded with error and, most importantly, with intentions at odds with high-sounding public statements.

The record for intervention is one of greater death and destruction than the threats it is supposed to stop where it is used and of allowing monstrous crimes to go unchallenged where it is avoided. Indeed, it has been avoided always where monstrous crimes are involved, the very situations in which its human costs might be more than offset by what it prevents. Nowhere in the record is there any consistency with regard to principle despite the press releases accompanying every new bombardment.

The glimmer of moral satisfaction we feel at the first instance of an event such as the French jets destroying some of Gaddafi’s armor about to attack a city is badly misplaced, for if ethics or morality is to mean anything, it must absolutely be consistent in application. You cannot meaningfully speak of selective ethics.

At the very time of the events in Libya, we have the same civil unrest and demands for an end to absolute and unaccountable government in Yemen and Bahrain, and they have been met with fairly large-scale abuse and killings by police. Literally scores have been shot dead in the streets. In the case of Bahrain, we have troops from Saudi Arabia – an absolute monarchy much resembling something from the 14th century – entering the country to assist Bahrain’s government in stopping its people seeking freedom.

Now, anyone who knows anything about the Mideast knows that Saudi Arabia would not march a single platoon of soldiers across its border without explicit approval from Washington. It just cannot be otherwise because America keeps an intensely close watch on matters affecting its client-state, Israel, and because Saudi Arabia’s advanced weapons come from America, and also because, following 9/11, most of the perpetrators having been Saudi nationals, Saudi Arabia has had to work long and hard to gain some trust back from Washington.

So where is the moral or ethical balance? Help the tyrant in Bahrain and attack the one in Libya? Why is only Libya a target?

There are many reports, not carried in the mainline press, about Israel supplying the African mercenaries who have been doing most of the bloody work in Libya. They are said to have been supplied by an Israeli military contracting firm connected to Mossad at the kind of high per diem rates which Gaddafi’s oil wealth allows. One of Gaddafi’s sons also made a visit for private talks in Israel in the early days of the rebellion’s repression. Such events, we can be absolutely sure, also do not happen without approval from Washington.

It appears America has both indirectly helped the tyrant while directly, albeit belatedly, fighting him. I don’t see any evidence of ethics in that situation.

Gaddafi certainly has grown into an unpleasant figure, displaying signs of deteriorating mental health while commanding the powers of a fairly rich small state. His early days as a rather dashing and intelligent revolutionary figure – few people recall he was featured in a cover story of the New York Times Magazine decades ago portraying him in rather flattering son-of-the-desert terms, the kind of article about a foreign leader which always has the imprimatur of the CIA – are lost in the reality of a mumbling old tyrant who has proved ready to strike down civilians to maintain his position. Naturally, people feel exhilarated to see him lose some military advantage.

Most humans do appear to be programmed by nature to cheer in situations where there is a clear bad guy and a good guy going after him. That is why blockbuster Hollywood movies and professional wrestling generate billions of dollars in revenue by repeating endlessly the same simple plot with only changes of costume. But world affairs are never so simple.

Just consider Israel’s assault on Gaza a few years ago, a place which is essentially a large, fenced-in refugee camp possessing no serious weapons. Israel killed something like 1,400 people, including hundreds of children, estimated at 400 young souls, and its soldiers committed such barbarities as using children as human shields. One saw pictures on the Internet of blood running like sewer overflow in the streets of Gaza. Yes, hundreds of children killed and with no rebuke from Washington or Paris or London and certainly no threat of having a no-fly zone or other violent measures imposed.

Up to the point of intervention, information from Libya suggests nothing on quite that scale of barbarism had occurred, rather there was the beginning of a conventional civil war with one side having better resources. So why the immense difference in response between the two situations? Why did we see Libyan victims on television, but the worst of what Israel committed could only be found on the Internet? Selectivity is at work always in these matters from the very start.

Not long before the Gaza atrocity, we had yet another invasion of Southern Lebanon by Israel. More than a thousand people were killed in their own land, and here we had the added horror of hundreds of thousands of bomblets from that cruellest of weapons, American cluster bombs, being showered over civilian areas, destined to kill and cripple for years to come. Along the way, Israel showed its contempt for international law by deliberately targeting a group of United Nations’ observers who died bravely doing their duty.

Yet there was no effort to punish or even restrict Israel as we see today imposed on Gaddafi. How can anyone claim that the response in Libya is ethical?

Libya is now being so heavily bombed that some Muslim states which joined the “coalition” are making loud noises about the United Nation’s mandate being exceeded. If you read newspapers from Britain as well as North America, you will know that there is disagreement between the public statements of the British and American governments as to what constitutes legitimate targets.

But when it comes to bombing, America never does anything by halves.

Shortly after the French attack at Benghazi, 124 cruise missiles, mostly American, began destroying targets in Libya. Reports say four B-52s flew from Europe, each with 30 tons of bombs, and three B-2 stealth bombers, carrying a total of 45 two thousand-pound, “bunker-buster” bombs, flew from the United States. And that was just the start.

Despite protestations, American targets certainly included sites associated with Gaddafi himself, his own compound having been destroyed.

And there you have another of many problems with intervention, or, as some like to call it, ethical war: it depends upon the Frankenstein military of the United States because no one else has its destructive capacities, forces which we have seen, again and again, not only kill in great excess but which typically are directed to dark tasks not featured in the propaganda leading up to the effort.

Recall the American “humanitarian” mission in Somalia in the early 1990s, the one that ended with “Blackhawk down.” We were all conditioned by endless pictures of starving Somalis to welcome efforts at their relief, but the American military, instead of serving the roles of distributing relief supplies and guarding those distributing relief supplies – the ostensible purposes of the mission – almost immediately went after what they regarded as “the bad guys.”

They attempted to kill one of the major local warlords with special planes equipped with modern Gatling guns, circling the sky and spraying large-calibre shells in built-up areas, at the rate of thousands per minute, much of that indiscriminate firepower killing innocent people and destroying property in a poor region. Hundreds of Somalis were killed by the American efforts, and some reports put the number at 10,000.

But we will never learn the truth from the American government, which, since its debacle in Vietnam, always suppresses the numbers it kills. It did so in the first Gulf War where tens of thousands of poor Iraqi recruits sitting behind sand walls in the desert were carpet-bombed by B-52s, their bodies later bulldozed into the ground. It did so in Afghanistan, where it regularly has killed civilians for ten years. And it did so in that pure war crime, the invasion of Iraq.

America’s effort to get the “bad guy” in Somalia was an act of complete arrogance and sheer stupidity, clearly reflecting America’s ingrained streak of hell-and-damnation Puritanism and its Captain Ahab obsession with chasing the white whale over whole oceans. All Americans achieved was to make a deadly enemy, as they shortly learned. They ended up, pretty much leaving the country shamefully and forgetting their first purpose in going there, distributing relief to the starving, something Canada’s soldiers and others routinely do without creating such aggression and such violent results.

Recall again President Clinton’s launching a large salvo of missiles in 1998 towards targets in the Afghan mountains and at a Sudanese plant in Khartoum. They were said to be aimed at terrorist targets, but the public was given no detailed information. We do know the plant in Sudan proved to be just what it was claimed by locals, a pharmaceutical plant, Dozens of innocent people were killed and property worth many millions of dollars was destroyed to no purpose, based entirely on incorrect information.

Clinton also launched 23 cruise missiles towards targets in Baghdad in 1993, supposedly in retaliation for an Iraqi-sponsored attempt on former-President George Bush when he visited Kuwait, although the public was given no details of the supposed plot. Even granting there was a plot, if you are entitled to hurl thousands of pounds of high explosives at a distant city owing to a faulty dark operation, what are we to say of the many countries and millions of people who have been victims of America’s many dark operations? What principle is at work here other than might makes right?

Ethical war is an absurd term, just as is the idea of bombing for democracy is. Always and anywhere, as soon as the military engines are started, just as is said for truth, ethics are left behind. War is a playground for adventurers and psychopaths. Just recall those American pilots during the first Gulf War whose cockpit transmissions were broadcast on television while they strafed Iraqi troops retreating from Kuwait City: their chilling words included, “Hey, this’s like shootin’ fish in a barrel!” And readers should remember that that first Gulf War was itself little more than an American dark operation intended to put Hussein into a compromising position and topple him.

Deeply discrediting the whole confused concept of ethical war are not just the many crimes committed in its name but the many greater omissions. Genocide has become one of the most abused and misused terms of our time, someone ignorantly using it every time a group of people is killed anywhere, but we have had several authentic genocides since World War II, and I think we can all agree if ever there could be a case for ethical war, it would be the case of genocide. But it is precisely in the case of genocide that all the powers simply hide, the United States having a completely shameful record.

In the case of Indonesia, following the downfall of President Sukarno in 1967, about half a million people had their throats slashed and their bodies dumped into rivers because they were, or were suspected of being, communists. The entire nation was turned temporarily into an abattoir for humans, and where was the United States, defender of freedom, during the horror? Rather than any effort to stop the terror, it had employees of the State Department on phones around the clock feeding the names of people they’d like to see included in the extermination.

In the case of Cambodia during the late 1970s, the “killing fields” saw about a million people murdered by the mad ideologues of the Khmer Rouge. Where was the United States? Nowhere to be seen or heard, off licking its wounds from its long, pointless war in Vietnam, except when Vietnamese forces finally crossed the border to stop the bloodshed, the United States yelped, “See, we told you so, the ‘domino effect’ is now at work!” And to this day, few Americans take any responsibility for their county’s role in creating the “killing fields.” In its desperate efforts to win in Vietnam, President Nixon’s government launched huge aerial bombardments and incursions by troops into a neutral country, finally so destabilizing it that the Khmer Rouge took power.

In the case of Rwanda in 1994, the world watched something on the order of 800,000 people hacked to pieces, the victims selected merely for their ethnic identity. President Clinton knew every detail from the beginning but made every effort to avert his eyes and prevent the United States from being involved.

So much for the notion of ethical war in the very cases where it could conceivably have made a difference.

The United States’ motives for intervening in Libya are complex and anything but ethical. It was reluctant even to speak out at first. The truth is that stability in the Middle East – stability as defined by the bloody likes of Henry Kissinger – at the complete expense of democratic values or human rights has been bedrock American policy for decades. This policy had the duel objectives of securing the production of oil and making a comfortable climate for Israel.

The United States dithered during recent momentous events in Egypt precisely because Israel benefited from that country’s dictator and was not interested in seeing anything resembling democracy emerge in large Arab states, despite its hypocritical and much-repeated refrain about being the only democracy in the region. Numerous Israeli leaders made the most embarrassingly revealing and shameful statements while the scales were tipping against President Mubarak. But the events proved so unprecedented and so overwhelming and pretty much unstoppable without immense bloodshed that the United States finally came down on the right side, working to restrain Mubarak and to ease the transition in power.

The North African version of Europe in 1848 is very much viewed as a threat by Israel. Imagine all the Palestinians of the occupied West Bank and Gaza, some four million people, plus the non-Jewish people of Israel proper, about a million, stirred by events in North Africa, rising up to demand their rights? Stopping the series of rebellions against unrepresentative governments along the Mediterranean shores must be high on Israel’s list of current foreign policy objectives because it is clear that continued successes encourage new attempts.

Even further, as we have seen, Chancellor Merkel of Germany has rebuked Prime Minister Netanyahu in public for doing nothing for peace, asserting rightly that the changing conditions of the Arab world make it incumbent upon Israel to pursue genuine peace.

There is some hard truth assiduously avoided in Western mainstream press and by Western governments in their public communications: that what anyone outside of Israel would call peace has simply never been an objective of Israel’s government. There is no other way of understanding Israel’s actions over decades than its aiming to acquire virtually all the Palestinian lands without the Palestinians, or, at least, with a reduced number of Palestinians put into utterly subservient arrangements with no political integrity and very limited rights.

But again in Libya, events soon outdistanced United States’ policy. Images of freedom-fighters there being attacked by bloody mercenaries and mechanized forces affected public opinion and allowed of no further dithering, as did the initiatives taken by Britain’s Prime Minister Cameron and France’s President Sarkozy, each for their own political and economic reasons. The truth is that most people are decent, and the general public is always sympathetic with the victims seen in such images, which is precisely why American networks never show images of American troops brutalizing Iraqis or Israelis brutalizing Palestinians.

Gaddafi has long been a disliked third-world leader in the West – independent-minded leaders never are liked by the American government and there is a long list of them who have been overthrown or assassinated regardless of their democratic bona fides – and in a sense the West’s own past extravagant claims about his being a grand sponsor of terror has blown back on it. Added to the fact that he now appears rather mad and to the image of heroic Libyans winning and then losing in their fight for freedom, public opinion has made the course the United States intended difficult if not impossible.

But that does not mean public opinion is right about intervention, a subject not well understood by the average citizen. Even the case of a no-fly zone, something judging from the glib words seems to be considered by many a not very aggressive form of help, is not well understood. A no-fly zone is a complex and highly destructive operation, pushing the operator into something approaching a state of war, and yet having little likelihood of success in turning events on the ground.

Planes first had to fly all over Libya to get the radars turned on. Then attack planes and missiles quickly had to follow-up to destroy the located radars. Airfields and parked planes are also targets. Many people on the ground get killed in the effort, but that’s only the beginning. Twenty-four hour-a-day flyovers must be maintained afterwards to assure radars are not replaced and to attack planes which break the ban, all of which involves more civilian deaths. And from the first day in Libya, the air attacks have gone beyond imposing a no-fly zone, as we saw in the French attack at Benghazi and, at this writing, British attacks on Libyan armor at Ajdabiya.

Anyone who has kept track of American pilots’ efforts in Afghanistan and in Iraq knows that they have killed very large numbers of innocent people, and that even in situations where they have complete air superiority. They still kill innocent Afghans regularly, scores at a time, thousands in total.

The record of no-fly zones is not a happy one. The United States maintained one against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq for a decade after the first Gulf War, a decade of flying over the country and shooting up anything suspicious. There were countless incidents of American planes shooting and bombing people, but the no-fly zone did not prevent Saddam Hussein from achieving his objectives. Unless you are prepared to do to a country what the United States did to Japan during World War II – incinerate whole cities both with conventional or atomic weapons – air power cannot determine the direction of events on the ground with a determined opponent.

Reports at this writing from Libya suggest exactly the same result.

Once the no-fly zone is established, frustration over the opponent’s success on the ground creates a constant temptation to say, “In for a penny, in for a pound,” and to commit more force. You may easily find yourself engaged in yet another war. And everywhere and always in the modern era, the victims of war are mainly not the enemy soldiers or their “bad guy” leaders but the people just trying to live their lives. Just think about the roughly one million people who have perished in Iraq plus the more than two million refugees who fled their country, and consider the fact that one of the Arab world’s most advanced countries is now reduced to a generation without jobs, without dependable electric power and clean water. Saddam Hussein never dreamed of doing that much damage to his people despite his atrocities.

When your objectives going in are confused and uncertain, as are those of the United States, what is the hope for a good outcome? Not great I think. It’s a little like pouring concrete without having constructed a mold. And that is another reason why war for ethical of humanitarian motives has such a poor record: huge investments in death and destruction are made suddenly, upon the occurrence of unanticipated events, and often involving quick turns-around against long-established policy.

Perhaps the worst charge against intervention is that each instance only makes it easier and more acceptable in the future. The long list of minor to major interventions by the United States in the postwar era – most of them with no pretense of international legality or an ethical nature – should serve as a severe warning against going in this direction. From toppling democratic governments in Iran, Guatemala, or Chile to the holocaust in Vietnam with its estimated three million victims and a land left saturated with poisons and landmines, there is virtually no case for intervention that does not make future abuse and horror more likely by those with great power.

It is also well to remember that we have a greatly changed world political environment since the events of 9/11. Today the United States, without hesitation, sends drones into a country with which it is not even at war, Pakistan, and kills hundreds of innocent people. Its so-called “kill-teams” perpetrate horrors in Afghanistan, and recent events suggest they have been at work in Pakistan. It still holds people prisoner with no proper law in the secret locations of its CIA international gulag. The abomination of Guantanamo remains. The honouring of international law and agreements has suffered greatly in favour of doing as you please so long as you have the might.

Even the accepted institution for warranting ethical war, the United Nations, as it exists is a highly inadequate institution to exercise such authority. The United States frequently stands against pretty much the entire world there in opposing perfectly appropriate resolutions and gets its way. And when it wants a resolution approved, member states are subject to behind-the-scenes bribes, cajoling, and threats to produce the votes America wants. No one else has such vast economic, financial, and diplomatic leverage to get what they want there. America has exercised its unique power over the organization many times, from the Korean War to the invasion of Afghanistan. Sometimes, rarely, its demands are so unreasonable that enough of the world’s countries find themselves in a position to resist, as was the case for invading Iraq.

John Chuckman lives in Canada and is former chief economist for a large Canadian oil company. Copyright © by John Chuckman. Read other articles by John, or visit John's website.

This article was posted on Monday, March 28th, 2011 at 8:01am and is filed under Anti-war, Genocide, History, Imperialism, Israel/Palestine, Libya, Military/Militarism.

Michigan Capitol protester: ‘I’m glad I did what I did. I wish that it wasn’t necessary’

Michigan

Photo:Lansing Thirteen, Facebook

Capitol protester: ‘I’m glad I did what I did. I wish that it wasn’t necessary’

Support rally planned for March 30 arraignment
By Eartha Jane Melzer | 03.28.11 | 8:02 am

Stephen Haynes drove to Lansing, spent a freezing cold night on the Capitol steps and got arrested in a sit-in inside the Capitol building to raise awareness about the Michigan law that allows the governor to appoint people to take over towns.

“I’m glad I did what I did,” said Haynes, 28, an international affairs student at Eastern Michigan University. “I wish that it wasn’t necessary.”

Haynes was among thousands who gathered in Lansing on March 16h to express opposition to planned budget cuts and to Michigan’s Emergency Manager bill — a law that allows the governor to appoint people to take over financially troubled local governments and school districts and fire elected officials, cancel contracts and privatize services. The bill gives Emergency Managers power to suspend collective bargaining rights for five years and power to dissolve local units of government and schools or merge them with others. It also gives local officials the power to break contracts under certain circumstances.

Gov. Rick Snyder and Republicans in the legislature claim that the measure is needed to force changes that will promote long-term economic stability, but many disagree.

“It really is an infringement on democracy itself,” Haynes said. “Things like this are so important you have to take a stand — or take a seat — for a cause.”

Haynes said he decided he needed to go to Lansing and protest when he learned about this bill.

When he saw that seniors were planning a rally on the 15th to protest Gov. Snyder’s plan to tax pensions he took to Facebook to try and mobilize younger people to show up in support. But when none of this friends ended up being able to travel to Lansing he made his way there alone.

After spending the day helping seniors with the pension protest he ended up camping out on the Capitol steps.

“I saw somebody was going to sleep on the steps of the capitol,” he said. “Part of it was a message, part of it was he didn’t have anywhere else to go. I didn’t want him to be alone.”

It was about 30 degrees that night with freezing rain and snow.

“Aside from it being horrible because it was cold, it was great,” Haynes said.

Locals donated handwarmers, blankets and an extra shirt, and there was pizza, courtesy of supporters in Madison.

The next morning Haynes and the other campers woke up and joined an estimated 4-5,000 people in a daylong demonstration that featured rousing speeches of solidarity in front of a strongly pro-union crowd.

Haynes said that the Capitol closed at 5:30 and the police locked the building. An hour or so later, after a warning that they would be arrested if they did not leave, five people were arrested in a symbolic act of civil disobedience.

“All we did was sit down,” he said. “We didn’t lay down and play dead.”

When they were placed under arrest, he said, the group of five got up and walked.

“We were taken into another room, in the Capitol building and processed to some extent. We were taken outside and put in a van, taken to Ingham county jail. When we came outside … when they took us out of the Capital building to the van there were hundreds of people cheering.”

Haynes said that the group of protesters was released from Ingham County jail at 2am the next morning.

“We didn’t know who or what was going on, but we had people posting bail. … It appears union members, unions and some of the protesters outside pooled their resources and posted part of our bail.

“The bail was $250, what we had to pay was 75 dollars,” he said, adding, “I’ve never been arrested in any scenario before.”

Haynes and the other four men who linked arms and refused to leave the Capitol now face misdemeanor charges of trespassing on public property, he said.

Even though the demonstration and arrests were not enough to stop the governor from finalizing the bill, Haynes said he feels like the civil disobedience had an impact.

“One way I can tell,” he said. “Pizza showed up more than ever from Madison. … you could tell that Wisconsin was watching. It made national news and state news.”

“I would never take back what I have done, It is just sad that it is necessary to do something like this to make the voices of Michigan be heard.”

Haynes said that opposition to the Emergency Manager bill and the Republican economic agenda is continuing.

“People do show up and people do come here, Hayne said via cell phone as he headed back to the Capitol for another protest, this time focused on cuts to higher education, “but so far it hasn’t been like Wisconsin.”

“People in Michigan have been battered for so long they are so pessimistic about the prospects here.”

“I’ve seen people walking by and they root for us but they don’t join us, they say ‘what difference will it make?’”

“I think,” he said, “the business as usual mentality has just harmed the spirit of Michigan.”

A Facebook page has been founded to support Haynes and 12 others arrested during the demonstrations in Lansing on the 16th.

Supporters are raising money for legal defense and urging people to fill the Lansing District Court when Haynes and other protesters face arraignment on March 30 and April 12.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Veterans Tell Obama White House its War Policy is a Disgrace




March 20, 2011 at 23:58:38

Veterans Tell Obama White House its War Policy is a Disgrace

By John Grant (about the author)

A contingent of 20 right-wing veterans with flags and signs declaring their devotion to "our troops," marched up to the blocked off Pennsylvania Avenue area in front of the White House. One of the men wore a blue shirt with Army Security Agency printed on it.

"I was in the ASA," I said to the man, attempting some kind of cordial dialogue. At nineteen, I had been an Army Security Agency radio direction finder in the mountains west of Pleiku.

The heavy-set man glowered at me and said: "I'm sorry to hear that." It was as if he were somehow the arbiter of who was, and who wasn't, a good American, as if he alone gave a damn about "our troops."

I shot back at him: "So, what the hell does that mean?" He turned away, and I moved on. So much for dialogue.

It was a beautiful, sunny Saturday. By 10 AM a crowd had begun to gather in Lafayette Park across from the White House to hear a host of speakers. By the time Daniel Ellsberg, Ralph Nader and Chris Hedges had spoken, there were 1000 people in the park, many of them veterans. The rally had been called by Veterans For Peace.


Iraq Marine combat veteran Ryan Endicott and a mock drone over the White House by John Grant

A young woman who had served as a nurse in Iraq told the crowd a moving story of water shortages in Iraq and having to live for days in clothes soaked with a wounded soldier's blood. Ryan Endicott, a young Marine combat veteran and Winter Soldier spoke emotionally about refusing to re-deploy to Iraq and participate any more in a war he had concluded was immoral. A Vietnam veteran known as Watermelon Slim faced the Obama White House and chastised its resident (who was in Brazil) for assuming, and in cases like drone attacks, escalating the disastrous Bush war agenda.

It was March 19th, the eighth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and, amazingly, the day the US began its aerial intervention into Libya -- our third or fourth war, depending if you count Pakistan as a separate war from Afghanistan. The New York Times reported that the March 19 Libyan attacks were "on a scale not seen since the Iraq War." It was eerily circular.

By the end of the day, DC park police had arrested 113 people.

As always in this kind of demonstration, the gravity of the issue at hand -- the expenditure of human lives and vast amounts of US resources for wars fought as foreigners in faraway places -- was at times at odds with the beautiful weather and cordial, choreographed nature of the demonstration.

After the crowd marched around the block and sidled up against the White House fence, the park police began systematically putting up metal barriers to designate a pre-ordained part of the public sidewalk as an arrest zone. Next, they began shooing people who didn't want to be arrested across the street back to Lafayette Park. There was some confusion when an officer informed five people by the fence who intending to be arrested that they were in the wrong area, and if they stayed where they were they would face a different, harsher charge from those in the designated arrest zone.

"Hey, thanks for telling us," someone said to the cop.

Members of the media had a special zone off to the right. In my case, since I'm a member of Veterans For Peace and consider myself a working journalist, I had to decide where I would make my final stand. For the record, I chose not to stay in the arrest zone, to pass on the media zone and to remove myself to the people's zone in the park.

Those choosing to remain by the fence and get arrested had further choices. Once they were cuffed with white plastic straps, they could either walk or be politely dragged on their heels to the buses. Then they had to decide to either pay a $100 fine to the city coffers (all that police weekend overtime costs money) or refuse the fine and be prepared to return to Washington DC for hearings and a trial.

Most protesters were unaware of the grave news unfolding a world away -- the beginning of a new war in Libya. They certainly grasped its implications for their future as Americans living in a nation facing a host of neglected domestic problems. And, as came as no surprise to this crowd, elements of the Arab League later expressed shock at the extent and fearsomeness of the US aerial assault. It was a case of Militarism lurching against its civilian leash and dragging the nation into a future of more unanticipated consequences.

Given such a condition of compounding war, two of the Lafayette Park speeches took on added meaning. Ralph Nader and Chris Hedges each addressed different facets of the peace and anti-war movements. In some ways their approaches were at odds; while in others, they seemed two sides of the same coin.

Nader was up first. He was rumpled as usual in a dark overcoat. He recalled the Vietnam War and how it had finally been brought to a close when Congress cut off the money to run the war. He talked about serious political nuts and bolts. What he drove home over and over was that what we all had to do today was get more involved in politics. The military was not going to stop fighting wars until Congress cut off the spigot that funded them.

"We have to dig down deeper into our communities," he said.


I am a 62-year-old American who served in Vietnam as a 19-year-old kid who has been studying US counter-insurgency war ever since. I live outside of Philadelphia, where I am a photographer and a writer -- sometimes a video filmmaker. I have been a (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

He gave a litany of how we need to learn who our congress people really are; what makes them tick; who their relatives and friends are; who they spend time with; who their dentists and mechanics are; and to figure out what it is that can make them change their war-friendly habits -- how to make them see we are corruptly spending ourselves into a long-term disaster. He also said people needed to sniff out who had money friendly to the anti-war movement and, then, to figure out how to use that money to stop the wars -- since money made everything happen.

Hedges, a war correspondent with a Harvard divinity degree, had a less pragmatic, more fire-and-brimstone approach. He saw the nation headed for an apocalypse and the necessity for citizens to wake up before it's too late, to throw themselves into the gears to stop the machine.

"War is a sin," Hedges told the crowd.

Hedges was the next to last speaker before those listening were to decide to get arrested or to avoid the hassle. He ended by talking about the forces of life and death, which he sums up in his great book War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning as the psychological/mythical forces of Eros and Thanatos, respectively the positive, generative life-giving force and the negative, destructive death-wish. The US is now, he argues, locked in a tragic obsession with Thanatos.

"Those who plan to get arrested at the White House this afternoon are expressing a reverent choice for life," he said.

How the two distinct approaches to our national disaster amalgamated in the minds of the many hundreds of listeners in the park is impossible to assess. Certainly, in these numbing times, as Hedges does, there is a major need to define and recognize the moral outrage of our too-quick response to problems with F-16 bombers and lethal drones. But, at the same time, so is there a great need for the slow, hard-slogging, less-sexy politicking that Nader spoke of so urgently.

For his part, Daniel Ellsberg, who 40 years ago leaked the Pentagon Papers, focused on Bradley Manning, the young PFC Ellsberg has taken on as a moral protege. Manning allegedly passed secret material to WikiLeaks which released it to newspapers like The New York Times. He is being held in undignified conditions involving a humiliating stripping regimen at Quantico Marine Brig in Virginia. As discussed here earlier, this kind of procedure amounts to what is called "slow torture," which is used to break down resistance and destroy a person's mind over time.

Following his arrest with the other 112, Ellsberg led a rally in support of Manning the next day outside Quantico. Such public recognition of Manning's plight is intended to protect him from further US military abuse before he is brought to trial. He has been charged with "aiding the enemy."

Material from the cable traffic Manning allegedly leaked now appears on a regular basis as background information in newspapers like The New York Times. Given that The Times is considered the paper of record of the United States of America, the idea that releasing material to such a newspaper amounts to "aiding the enemy" is interesting. It seems to suggest the secrecy-obsessed Pentagon sees a better informed American citizenry as "the enemy."

If that is the real issue behind the Manning case, it's easy to see why the war-addicted Pentagon and US government want to play havoc with young Bradley Manning's mind before he can be brought to trial.

For the original article, go to: http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/524

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Act Now to End the War in Afghanistan



March 16, 2011 at 00:21:27

Act Now to End the War in Afghanistan


By Dennis Kucinich (about the author)




Two weeks ago, nine Afghan children between the ages of nine and fifteen were killed by a NATO strike after being mistaken for insurgents. General Petraeus issued an apology and promised to investigate the killings, but news of their deaths quickly sparked anti-U.S. protests. They were killed in the Pech Valley, an area of Afghanistan once considered vital to U.S. military strategy. But now the U.S. military will soon be withdrawing from the Pech Valley after realizing that our presence was destabilizing the area.

The reality is our presence is destabilizing more than the Pech Valley -- it's propping up a corrupt regime and fueling an insurgency, all while Afghan's see little to no improvement in their lives. And it's destabilizing Americans at home. While vital services and benefits get cut -- such as the Community Development Block Grants and the WIC program which provides low-income expecting mothers and infants with proper nutrition -- we continue to fund an expensive war with no end in sight.

Last Wednesday, joined by members of both parties including Representatives Ron Paul, Walter Jones, Pete Stark, Bob Filner, and Barbara Lee, I announced a new bill to bring an end to the war in Afghanistan by the end of this year. Our legislation invokes the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which, if enacted, would require the President to withdraw U.S. Armed Forces out of Afghanistan by December 31, 2011. This legislation has bi-partisan support and, according to a recent Rasmussen poll, a majority of Americans want us out of Afghanistan by the end of the year. A vote will be held on Thursday. We could end the war this week.

There is simply no rationale for continuing American involvement with no end in sight, rising deaths for civilians and our brave soldiers, declining public sentiment, and serious economic pain at home. Continuing our involvement in Afghanistan is not affordable, it's not just, and it hurts American foreign policy interests. It's time to go.

While Congress pulls unemployment benefits from suffering Ohio families and proposes slashing health care benefits, vital children's programs, and veterans' services all because we're "broke," it continues to fund a war that has cost us more than $455 billion. We are told we should cut funding for assistance to low-income families with one hand, while with the other hand tens of billions of dollars are approved for a war that does nothing to further our national security. The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation estimates that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost the average American family of four almost $13,000 last year.

Our priorities are simply out of sync. Desperately needed unemployment benefits were filibustered last year because the costs to provide them were not offset with spending cuts or revenue increases. But we are not required to offset the costs of war, even when the war is completely funded by borrowed money -- money we have to pay back with interest on the backs of our children and grandchildren.

And we are spending all this money on a war that is a waste of time, blood, and treasure. And the situation is getting worse, not better. 2010 was the deadliest year of the entire campaign. 700 brave soldiers, mostly Americans, were killed. Civilian deaths are on the rise too -- up 15% in 2010. As we approach the one-year anniversary of the commitment of an additional 30,000 troops and over $36 billion to the surge in Afghanistan, it is clear our strategy is not working. And we cannot afford to sustain it any longer.

The American people are being asked to shoulder the costs for wars that undermine our national, moral and economic security and opposition is growing. We must ask ourselves whose nation we are building when we ask people here at home to give up benefits they have earned in order to nation-build abroad.

We must not let this continue. Please call your Congressperson now -- and ask them to support House Concurrent Resolution 28 to end the war in Afghanistan. We're expecting a vote on Thursday, so please act now.

Dennis Kucinich is a congressman from Ohio and a 2008 presidential primary candidate. http://kucinich.us/ The best way to reach congressman Kucinich is through the information on his more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Letter to My Fellow Michiganders



March 15, 2011 at 00:18:00

Letter to My Fellow Michiganders

By Michael Moore (about the author)

Friends and neighbors,

The call has gone out and I'm asking everyone who can to take Wednesday off and head to the State Capitol in Lansing to protest the cruel and downright frightening legislation currently being jammed down our throats.

What is most shocking to many is that the new governor, who ran against the Tea Party and defeated the right wing of his party in the primaries -- and then ran in the general election as "just a nerd from Ann Arbor" who was a moderate, not an ideologue -- has pulled off one of the biggest Jekyll and Hyde ruses I've ever seen in electoral politics.

Governor Snyder, once elected, yanked off his nice-guy mask to reveal that he is in fact a multi-millionaire hell-bent on destroying our state and turning it over to his buddies from Wall Street.

In just eight short weeks he has:

* Gotten the House and Senate to pass bills giving him "Emergency Management" powers such as the ability to appoint a corporation or a CEO who could literally dissolve town governments or school boards, fire the elected officials, nullify any local law and run your local governmental entity. That company then would have the power to immediately declare all collective bargaining contracts null and void.


* Proposed giving business a whopping 86% tax cut while raising everyone's personal taxes by 31%! And much of that tax hike he believes should be shouldered by -- I kid you not -- senior citizens and the poor! He says these two groups have not been "sharing the sacrifice" the rest of us have been burdened with. So his budget proposes a $1.8 billion tax CUT for business and a $1.75 billion tax INCREASE for the rest of us, much of it from the poor, seniors and working people -- even though the top 1% in Michigan ALREADY pay a lower state tax rate than everyone else does!

* Together with the legislature, introduced over 40 anti-labor bills in just the first two months of this session! They have wasted no time and have caught most people off guard. Much of this is being rushed through right now before you have a chance to raise your voice in objection.

These actions are breathtaking when you realize they will drive our already battered state straight into the ground. What we needed right now was an inspiring leader to help us reinvent Michigan and to find creative ways to create new jobs and lift us out of our economic depression. The rest of the country may call what they're experiencing the "Great Recession," but few argue that Michigan is suffering a "one-state Depression."

I know many of you are filled with a great sense of despair and a justifiable loss of hope these days in Michigan. But you must not let things get even worse. You must stand up against these Draconian measures and this outrageous attempt to rip our democratic rights from us by turning our state over to well-paid hacks from Wall Street and corporate America. They see our state as one big fire sale -- and they are licking their chops to get their hands on what is still a state rich in natural resources and industrial infrastructure.

Please show up at noon on Wednesday for our first mega-rally against this insanity. Hundreds of groups are already organizing car pools and buses. You can right now just declare yourself an organizer and get your friends and neighbors committed to being in Lansing. If ever there were a day to call in sick, Wednesday is it (because this IS sick). Students, if ever there were a day to cut class and become a participant in your democracy, Wednesday is it. This event needs to be HUGE -- and I believe it will be if you will simply be there and take a stand.

Much attention has been paid to Wisconsin in recent weeks. Well, they got nothing on what's going on here in Michigan. Rick Snyder is Scott Walker on steroids. There's never been what even the AARP calls "an all-out attack" like this on us. Trust me, you will rue the day you sat home and did nothing while thieves posing as politicians stole your Great Lakes State from you.

Don't let it happen. Be at the capitol by noon on Wednesday for the largest demonstration the state has ever seen.

Go Spartans! Go Wolverines! Go Everyone Else In Between!

Michael Francis Moore (born April 23, 1954) is an American film director, author, and social commentator. He is widely known for his outspoken, critical views on globalization, large corporations, gun violence, the Iraq War, and the George W. Bush (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

Stand With Brad, We Are All Bradley Manning

Dissident Voice: a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and social justice


Manning Must be Tortured to Make an Example of Him and to Intimidate his Supporters

Stand With Brad, We Are All Bradley Manning

(The article below is from a speech given by Kevin Zeese in support of Bradley Manning at Bus Boys and Poets in Washington, DC on March 13, 2011)

His cell is six feet wide and twelve feet in length.

It has a bed, a drinking fountain, and a toilet.

At 5:00 a.m. he is woken up. He will not be allowed to sleep again until 8:00 p.m. If he attempts to sleep at any time from 5 AM to 8 PM, he will be made to sit up or stand by the guards.

He will not be allowed to exercise in his cell, not even pushups – for his own protection, too dangerous, say his jailers. If he tries, guards stop him.

He has no clothes as they were taken away the night before. He is forced to sleep naked with a scratchy smock over him that itches throughout the night. He tried not to use the smock because it was so uncomfortable but was forced to do so.

A voice asks through the door: Are you all right? I need a verbal response. “Yes, I’m all right.” Five minutes later: Are you all right? I need a verbal response. “Yes, I’m all right.” Every five minutes, every day for 7 months he is asked: Are you all right? I need a verbal response.

A voice through the door orders: Get out of your bed for the morning Duty Brig Supervisor inspection.

Still no clothes.

He gets out of the bed, shivering from being naked all night in a cold cell.

He walks toward the front of the cell with his hands in front covering his genitals.

A guard orders: Stand at parade rest.

He puts his hands behind his back, with legs spaced shoulder width apart. He stands at ‘parade rest’ waiting and waiting until the Brig Supervisor arrives. Everyone is called to attention.

Brig supervisor and the other guards walk past the cell. They stop, look as he stands naked. Stare at him. Look at the room. Stare at him some more. Then they move on to the next cell. He stands waiting for the inspection of all the cells to end. When completed a guard orders – go sit on your bed. Sitting naked, waiting, waiting, waiting. Ten minutes later, finally, clothes arrive and he can dress. The shiver from the cold night stays with him.

This is how Bradley Manning’s day begins. The nudity has been required for more than a week with no end in sight, but he has been in solitary in Quantico for 7 months, in total for 10 months.

Charles Dickens, who spent months at a time living with the general populations of prisons and mental hospitals throughout America in the 1800’s, wrote about solitary confinement: “I believe it to be cruel and wrong…I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body.”

It is torture. They are torturing him. We should call it nothing else. Long-term solitary confinement is torture. Research shows previously healthy prisoners have “develop[ed] clinical symptoms usually associated with psychosis or severe affective disorders” including “all types of psychiatric morbidity.” Many have committed suicide.

The spokesperson for the State Department, PJ Crowley, put his career on the line to speak with disfavor against the treatment of Manning. He described Manning’s confinement as “counterproductive and stupid.” Crowley resigned today, and it has been reported in the media that Obama administration did not want the division of Manning known to the public. Our pressure forced the president to call the Pentagon about Manning’s treatment. Our work getting Manning’s message out resulted in PJ Crowley giving up his job as spokesperson for U.S. foreign policy. We are having an impact.

In our Big Brother security state the military says they do it for Manning’s own protection. It’s a lie that does not pass the straight face test. Once again lies become truth as a compliant press writes it down and reports it as fact. The president re-enforces the lie, telling America he has talked to the Pentagon and they have said it is for his own protection. The president says this with a straight face.

Does anyone believe the president anymore? This is the president that told us – America doesn’t torture. This is the president who said that Raymond Davis was a diplomat who deserved diplomatic immunity. In fact, he was a Blackwater mercenary working for the CIA who allegedly killed two Pakistanis. The president’s comments to the press were dutifully reported “he is a diplomat who deserves diplomatic immunity” when the press knew he was working for the CIA. The press had been told to lie to us, not tell us the truth and they did as the government demanded until a foreign newspaper told the truth. The president and the press need to lie to us because the truth is terrifying.

Friends – we are here today because we know – we are all Bradley Manning. That a crime against one of us is a crime against all of us. We need to stand together, to Stand with Brad, because this is much bigger than Bradley Manning.

We are living through a time of revolutionary change. We see it around the world and we see it around the nation. The corporate-government-media does not report the resistance occurring throughout the nation because if Americans knew that their fellow Americans were standing up against corporate-government, real change, shifting power to the people, would be more likely.

And the corporate media is threatened by what Bradley Manning is accused of. They are losing hold of their monopoly on information as WikiLeaks shows the way to the democratization of the media. We are living through the birth of a new media that will shift the power of information control from the few to the many. Information is a commodity that the corporate-government has sought to control because they know information is power. But in this new media age we can all be reporters, writers, commentators. Through email, blogs, websites and social media each of us can share information. We all can become part of the new media.

And through encryption technology those who work inside corrupt governments, including our own, and abusive big businesses can provide media outlets – new and old – anonymously with information that increases transparency of these powers that control our lives. They are scared of Bradley Manning, scared of WikiLeaks, but prosecuting Manning or Assange will not stop this revolution.

If, in 1450, Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, were prosecuted, the revolution of printing would have occurred any way. The information revolution has progressed too far to be stopped. Information will flow, transparency will increase and media will be democratized.

And Bradley Manning is paying a price because the security state is not secure. The people already know too much of the truth and they fear us knowing more. They know control can be lost. The rigged system is falling apart and they are doing all they can to hold power. Bradley Manning must be tortured to force him to testify against Assange. Manning must be made an example of. The revolutionaries must be punished.

The treatment of Bradley Manning is about intimidating all of us. They know, as WikiLeaks says, courage is contagious. By standing together we respond to their intimidation with strength, joy and resolve.

For all these reasons we must Stand with Brad. We are all Bradley Manning.

If what he is accused of is true, Manning has exposed abusive governments throughout the world. The documents published by WikiLeaks worked hand and hand with democracy activists in Tunisia and Egypt, Libya and Saudi Arabia and so many more. The documents have shown the lie of Swedish claims of neutrality. In fact, Sweden’s Minister of Justice participated in the rendition of two innocent men from Sweden to Egypt via the CIA, where that regime tortured them. Sweden later awarded them damages for their torture. The now former Minister of Justice who handed these innocent people to the CIA for torture in Egypt, Thomas Bodstrom, is the law partner of the lawyer representing Assange’s accusers.

And the documents have shown the truth of the largest and most powerful empire in world history – the American Empire. They have confirmed so much that we already suspected or knew is, in fact, true — the U.S. is a rogue superpower that bullies, threatens and blackmails to get its way. That works with dictators and security state regimes – many of whom are now being deposed by their people. That supports coup d’état’s of democratically elected governments then tries to hide it. It shows the most powerful military in world history, a military that has failed to win a major war since World War II, kills civilians wantonly and then covers it up, that arrests people without cause and violates the law by using torture. And it shows a State Department whose diplomats are required by the order of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to illegally spy on other diplomats. No wonder, just before the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables were published, Secretary Clinton said she would never run for office again. The threat of democratized information – the transparency of truth – is occurring at a time when the empire is faltering and behind its bluster, the empire is afraid.

If what Bradley is accused of is true, he was trying to start a debate on the abusive U.S. foreign policy and create a more perfect union. That is in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution that we seek to form a “more perfect union” and Bradley is being tortured for doing what the Constitution demands of us.

The treatment of Bradley Manning shows their fear. They know they have been exposed, that the truth of their crimes is becoming known to all. Even the corporate-government-media cannot hold the truth back in a time when the media is being democratized.

But even though Manning stands for a bigger issue – a revolution of truth – he is an individual human who is suffering at the hands of abusive jailers. We are here today to work together to end his suffering and free Bradley Manning.

This week Brad’s father, Brian, spoke for the first time. He said his son was innocent. He said his son was being abused. He stood by Brad. When I saw him, and saw he was 55 years old – my age, and looked again at Brad, the age of my youngest son, it pierced my heart even deeper. It made Bradley even more human, more fragile, more vulnerable to their abuse.

Many people are coming to Brad’s aid. At the Bradley Manning Support Network, thousands have donated to Bradley’s legal defense and enabled our advocacy for him. People are also donating to the Bradley Manning Advocacy Fund which is making sure Bradley’s side of the story is told. In addition to making donations tonight, bidding on the many items here today, please sign up and stay involved. It is Bradley Manning vs. the U.S. government – a desperate dying empire that wants someone to blame.

Manning is now facing the potential of capital punishment or life in prison, not for selling secrets to U.S. enemies, but for allegedly sharing information about war crimes as well as other criminal and unethical behavior to the media. The double standard of this potential punishment is seen clearly when compared to sentences of other soldiers. Retired Col. Ann Wright highlighted the sad absurdity when she pointed to the sentence given to a U.S. soldier convicted of mutilating Afghan civilians. That soldier received 9 months of work detail at his base, not even in prison. What is the message? The message is murder, mutilation and rape are less serious offenses than allegedly providing documents that show crimes and misdeeds of government officials.

The hypocrisy does not end there. Secretary Clinton has been lecturing the world about the need for freedom of speech, press and association in the Internet age. At her second speech on the subject as she was talking about freedom of speech being essential to democracy, our colleague, Ray McGovern, an intelligence analyst for the CIA for 27 years as well as a military veteran, stood in silence to protest the U.S. wars and the treatment of Bradley Manning. He was brutally arrested, thrown to the floor and then thrown into jail where he was left bleeding. Secretary Clinton kept talking about the importance of freedom of speech as freedom of speech was thrown to the ground before her.

Both Secretary Clinton and President Obama have praised people in foreign governments who have exposed the corruption of their governments, but both have criticized WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning for allegedly doing the same here. The hypocrisy is so evident it is impossible to miss – but the corporate-government-media does not even report it.

As I was thinking about Bradley Manning for this speech, my mind wandered to another injustice. The prosecution of Tim DeChristoher for boldly trying to stop or delay the sale of oil leases in Utah as Bidder 70, bidding on the lands to raise their price. Tim saw the sales as illegal and wanted to raise awareness about aggressive drilling in pristine western areas. Even though a federal judge later blocked many of the leases from being issued, on March 3, 2011 Tim was convicted and now faces up to ten years in jail when he is sentenced on June 23rd. After his conviction, he came outside the courthouse and said:

You’ve shown that your power will not be intimidated by any power that they have, and that’s the most important thing that has happened here this week.

Everything that went on inside that building tried to convince me that I was alone, and that I was weak. Inside that building, they tried to convince me that I was a little finger out there on my own that could easily be broken. All of you out here were the reminder, for all of us, that I wasn’t just a finger all alone in there, but that I was connected to a hand, with many fingers that can unite as one fist, and that fist cannot be broken by the power that they have in there.

That fist is not a symbol of violence. That fist is a symbol that we will not be misled into thinking that we are alone. We will not be lied to and told we are weak. We will not be divided, and we will not back down. That fist is a symbol that we are connected, and that we are powerful. It is a symbol that we hold true to our vision of a healthy and just world and we are building the self-empowering movement to make it happen. All the authorities in there wanted me to think like a finger, but our children are calling to us to think like a fist.

So we must Stand with Brad. Bradley is not a finger. Bradley is part of a hand that connects all of us into a self-empowering movement for peace and justice.

To emphasize the point, a large group of supporters from Peaceful Uprising stood outside, standing in unity, they said “We are all Bidder 70” and as Tim walked through the crowd, hugging each of them, they sang:

I will stand with you – Will you stand with me
We will be the change that we hope to see
In the name of love – in the name of peace
Will you stand, will you stand with me

When injustice raises up its fist
And fights to stop us in our tracks
We will rise and as one resist
No fear nor sorrow can turn us back

I will stand with you – Will you stand with me
We will be the change that we hope to see
In the name of love – in the name of peace
Will you stand, will you stand with me.

Let us show Bradley Manning that he is not alone. That we are standing with him. We are all Bradley Manning. Bid tonight. Donate to his legal and advocacy funds. And join us next week in Quantico as we stand at the Marine Base where he is being illegally tortured.

Stand with Bradley Manning

Thank you all for being here

Information for Quantico, Virginia on March 20th rally is here; and information for the End These Wars, Expose the Lies and Free Bradley Manning civil resistance on March 19th at the White House is here.

Kevin Zeese is executive director of Voters for Peace. Read other articles by Kevin, or visit Kevin's website.

This article was posted on Tuesday, March 15th, 2011 at 8:00am and is filed under Activism, Media, Military/Militarism, Obama, Solidarity, Torture, Wikileaks.

No More Nukes!

Dissident Voice: a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and social justice

No More Nukes!

Recently, Duke Energy and Progress Energy, two of the largest energy corporations in the world, merged and became the largest energy company in the United States. With this action, the power of this corporation more than doubled, perhaps making it the most powerful lobbying influence in legislatures throughout the southeastern US and in the US Congress. Not too many weeks after this merger, the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant No. 1 in Japan exploded on March 12, 2011, causing at least a partial meltdown. Not long after the explosion in Plant No. 1, other nuclear plants in the Fukushima Complex began experiencing emergencies, leading to at least one other partial meltdown a probable breach of at least one caontainment vessel and the release of large amounts of radioactive material as of March 15, 2011.

These seemingly disparate events are more connected than the reader might think. Duke Energy has been trying to convince the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), legislators in North and South Carolina and other agencies that it should build another nuclear power in the region. By becoming the largest energy corporation in the United States, the likelihood of this plant being built increased concomitant to the exponentially greater lobbying power the Duke-Progress energy monolith created for itself. Simultaneously, there are several hundred people actively engaged on a variety of fronts — legal, citizen lobbying, and direct action — opposing the approval of the plant’s construction. Their already uphill battle has become even steeper with the election of a GOP-dominated North Carolina legislature composed of men and women whose allegiances to big business make the previous Democratic legislature look like Naderites. Add to that the ongoing concern about peak oil, energy costs related to foreign fuels and the environmental problems associated with petroleum/coal energy sources and the shameless lobbyists for nuclear power have never had an easier task getting their product online.

That may have changed in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. With the event at that plant, the world was once again graphically reminded of the dangers of nuclear power. The question is, can we the citizens of the planet, successfully mobilize against a corporate effort to impose this expensive, inefficient, dangerous and ultimately deadly form of power generation?

The anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s and 1980s was partially successful in this regard, albeit considerably more so in Europe than in the United States. The varying levels of success can be attributed to a variety of factors. Foremost among them were the nature of the organizing and protests in different countries. For example, in France and West Germany, the movement was quite broad, including farmers, students, environmentalists, and local residents while in the United States, the bulk of the movement consisted of students, environmentalists and antiwar activists.

In Germany, the overall mood of the nation, as exemplified by the early Green movement there, was concerned about the environmental costs to their country, the relationship of nuclear power to nuclear war, and the corporate control of human lives that nuclear power represents.

In France, the movement was similarly broad-based but existed without the support of any political party and was not nearly as successful.

In the United States, the movement was almost completely extra-parliamentary, although various liberal politicians (like Jerry Brown) attempted to ride the movement’s coattails, pretending to be its ally but ultimately allowing the energy industry to construct its plants.

In terms of the protests, themselves, the most militant of them took place in Germany. Perhaps the most famous were the protests at a site near the town of Whyl. On February 18, 1975 local people spontaneously occupied the site and police removed them two days later. Media coverage showing police dragging away farmers and their wives helped to turn nuclear power into a major national issue.

Support came from the nearby university town of Freiburg. Five days later 30,000 people re-occupied the Wyhl site and plans to remove them were abandoned . The plant was never built and the land eventually became a nature reserve. This success, and the success of protests against other German plants, inspired the anti-nuclear movements in the US and elsewhere.

Most protests in the US were organized by loose-knit alliances committed to nonviolence. The police protecting the plants were not equally committed to this principle and at protests in Seabrook, New Hampshire, numbers of protesters were hurt. The overall emphasis on the practice of nonviolence, while laudable, often took precedence over the goal of actually preventing the plant from going online.

Nuclear power is the perfect metaphor for the current phase of monopoly capitalism — neoliberalism. It involves a concentration of power (literal and corporate) to effect its goal and depends on the government to provide military security to protect that power from getting into the “wrong hands.” Furthermore, thanks to laws pushed through by the energy industry, if a disaster should happen because of some kind of nuclear accident, the government limits the corporation’s liability for any damage and loss of life that might occur.

As the “Declaration of Nuclear Resistance” of the New England anti-nuke group, the Clamshell Alliance, wrote in 1977:

“Nuclear power is dangerous to all living creatures and to their natural environment. The nuclear industry is designed to concentrate profits and the control of energy resources in the hands of a powerful few, undermining basic principles of human liberty. A nuclear power plant at Seabrook, New Hampshire, could lock our region into a suicidal path.” 1

This statement, in all its direct simplicity, remains true today.
Despite the claims by such former anti-nuclear activists like Stewart Brand, nuclear power is a dangerous form of energy production. It is also incredibly inefficient if one contrasts the construction and security costs and the problems with waste disposal with the relatively brief life of nuclear power plants and the increase in energy costs to the consumer such plants entail in a profit-driven industry.

Nuclear power is not green energy, no matter what the industry’s spokespeople or the likes of Stewart Brand say. The daily operation of nuclear power plants change the ecology in their immediate vicinity, heating water near the discharge facilities and releasing various waste elements of the process into the air. If an accident occurs, the ecological devastation is incalculable and continues for generations. In addition, a 1000-MWe nuclear power plant produces about 27 tons of spent nuclear fuel (unreprocessed) every year. The problems associated with the spent fuels disposal and storage are costly and dangerous (for centuries).

The environmental and safety reasons barely touched on here are reason enough to oppose nuclear power. So are the costs associated with this form of energy production. It seems likely that other safer alternative forms of power production that don’t involve fossil fuels could be developed and produced for less than the overall costs of nuclear power. Yet, these forms, such as solar and wind, are not given the same emphasis as nuclear energy. Why? Could it be that the energy industry fears the loss of extraordinary profits and centralized control those forms might create? If one does not oppose nuclear energy for health and safety reasons, yet opposes war and the nature of neoliberal capitalism, then the fact that the energy industry’s love affair with nuclear power development is based on corporate efforts to maximize profits and recoup past investments rather than on meeting our real energy needs provides another reason to oppose it. So does the direct relationship between nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons. Where do you think all that depleted uranium (DU) ammunition came from? That’s right, the waste product of nuclear power — the gift that keeps on giving. Pretending that nuclear power is not dangerous, inefficient and ridiculously expensive is no longer viable. The events in Japan once again make that perfectly clear.

In the past several months, the German anti-nuclear movement has again gathered steam. This came in the wake of an announcement by Chancellor Angela Merkel that she was going to ignore a long time agreement that all nuclear plants would be decommissioned by 2022. This agreement was the result of the aforementioned movement of the 1970s and 1980s in Germany against nuclear power and was considered inviolable. Merkel, however, has connections to the nuclear industry and has even gone so far as to suggest removing government subsidies that are paid to Germans that move to green energy sources like solar panels and wind. Several large protests have been held since Merkel began pushing her plan to keep nuclear power plants for at least another fifteen years beyond the 2022 cutoff. Apparently, however, even she can read the writing appearing on the wall in the wake of the Japanese disaster. She backed off her plans on March 12, 2011, saying that the safety concerns are too great with nuclear power. Meanwhile over 40,000 people protested her plan in Stuttgart, Germany.

Despite Merkel’s apparent turnaround, a grassroots moment against nuclear power is needed more than ever in Germany and every other nation. As the mainstream media continues to prove in its coverage of the disaster in Japan, the industry has more than enough spokespeople and experts in its pocket who will do whatever they can to convince you that a meltdown is not that bad and nuclear power is safe. They will tell you this in spite of what you see on the television and know in your own heart. This isn’t because nuclear power is safe. It’s because the energy industry is driven by profits and greed.

  1. Declaration of Nuclear Resistance, Revised version, adopted November, 1977, at the Clamshell Congress []

Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. Jacobs’ essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch’s collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. His most recent book, titled Tripping Through the American Night is published as an ebook. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net. Read other articles by Ron.

This article was posted on Tuesday, March 15th, 2011 at 8:01am and is filed under General.