The Farmer's Market Paradigm

Bill McKibben sees Farmers’ Markets as the wave of the future. In his new book, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, he lays out a vision of a world that is at once radically different and comfortingly familiar. He sees local communities as the antidote to modern industrial society. Not that everything about our society is bad, but we have gone about as far down the road to growth as we are going to get.

He points out that when you are struggling just to get by, more is better. People who don’t have these things will work hard to get enough food, clean water, and education. However, when you already have enough to get along comfortably, more stuff doesn’t really do much for you. On the other hand, as we have accumulated bigger houses and private cars and televisions, we have lost contact with the people around us. We are rich in things but poor in community. In fact, America is the center of what McKibben calls hyper-individualism. The American Dream is to make it by your own efforts. Our mythology is awash in rags to riches stories of people who have pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps. On the other hand, unlike other industrialized countries, many of us, with insurance or not, struggle to get decent healthcare, just to take one example.

Its not that he is against individualism, its just that he thinks that the ways that economists measure progress miss the point. GNP keeps going up but not everything that goes into that measurement is good for us and not everything that is good for us is measured.

When neighbors get together for a harvest feast from their community garden, it doesn’t contribute much to the GNP because they are not spending money. It may contribute a lot to their quality of life, though, as they enjoy the benefits of friendship and good health from working in the garden and eating healthy food together.

GNP doesn’t distinguish between useful growth and growth in pollution and wastefulness. A cancer patient contributes a lot to the economy as expensive medical treatments eat away their savings and the cancer eats away their life. We don’t have a commonly accepted measure for health and happiness, although some people are working on it.

People need both enough wealth to be comfortable and enough community to be happy. If the balance tips too much one way or the other we feel the effects of the imbalance. Not to romanticize poverty, those who are both poor and alone are the worst off. Nor is this book about America alone. He travels to China, India and Europe to see how these scenarios play out there.

At the same time, the Cult of More is leading us down the road to ecological disaster, oil will run out and global warming is a reality that will force us into new paths whether we like it or not. If the undeveloped world were to follow our lead, and they are doing exactly that, with China leading the way, the collapse will come all the sooner.

This is where Farmers’ Markets come in. We can’t afford to continue to waste precious fossil fuels trucking our food thousands of miles. Luckily, we don’t need too. Local food supplies have fed humanity throughout most of our history. We can do it again. The local food movement is centered in Farmer’s Markets everywhere. People are discovering that not only can they support their local economy and get delicious healthy food but they are finding the process ever so much more enjoyable. People are ten times as likely to talk to their neighbors at a Farmers’ Market than at the supermarket. And the money they spend will stay in the area to contribute to the local economy.

People are coming to realize that there are more important things than getting the lowest price. The best price may be the one that supports the local economy. Furthermore, modern small scale organic farming turns out to be more productive per acre than agri-business. Agri-business achieves its economies of scale by getting rid of the farmers, making money for distant owners in the process. If you are serious about feeding hungry people, teach them to farm their own land. Or make community gardens. Wherever we are, we can find land, and even small plots can grow food that can help make us more independent in our own communities and can strengthen the human connections that make our communities strong at the same time.

In my own community, on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula, The Farmers’ Market has teamed up with the local Food Co-op, the Land Trust and the State University Extension to encourage local organic farming. The university teaches classes on farming and entrepreneurship. The land trust protects farmland with conservation easements. And the farmers’ market and the co-op provide a market for the produce. The co-op prominently labels local products and highlights the farmers who grow the food.

Of course there is more to life than food. Deep Economy also talks about renewable power, community radio and lots more. Get on down to your local independent bookstore for a copy. Or do like I did and get it from the library. And when you are done, pass it on.

Democrats – Use your Power

Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership say that impeachment is “off the table”. They say that it would distract them from passing all this great new legislation. Despite almost a year in the majority, they have not gotten much done. They blame Bush for vetoes and Republican Senators for filibustering. Guess what? The Republicans are still in charge of the agenda.

Everybody talks about this mysterious 60 votes needed to pass anything in the Senate “for procedural reasons”. What they mean is that the Democrats allow the Republicans to obstruct any bill they want without a fight. The significance of the 60 votes is that they need that many to force an end to debate.

The filibuster is a proud Senate tradition that allows a determined minority to continue debating an issue endlessly to prevent it from coming to a vote. Jimmy Stewart played a Senator in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” who uses a filibuster to break the power of the political bosses. But he paid a price for it. In order to keep his filibuster going, he had to keep talking day and night. It was tough work.

Democrats don’t explain why they didn’t use the filibuster when they were in the minority and they don’t explain why they give in so easily to filibusters now. After all, they could force the Republicans to actually debate around the clock until they give up in exhaustion. Even if they do win some, this strategy would put Republicans on the defensive and show them up for the obstructionists they are. That doesn’t go over well at the polls. At the very least it would make them pay a price for their behavior. The Republicans didn’t hesitate when the balance of power tipped the other way.

As it is the Bush Administration is bragging about how they are still moving their agenda, while Democrats in Congress get the blame for doing nothing. The press is still buying his spin ( See this AP Story: 2007 is ending on a high note for the president.)

“…What began as a troubling year for Bush, facing a new, energetic Democratic Congress, ended in triumph for the president as frustrated Democrats nursed their losses. Democrats failed in their No. 1 objective to stop the war in Iraq and bowed to Bush and his veto threats on tax policies, energy legislation, children's health insurance and general spending.”

Triumph? You have got to be kidding. Bush is still in disgrace with the voters. Just look at the polls. But the AP is right up there peddling his line. Just take a look at the next paragraph in the same story to see their source for this so called triumph.

“After months of bitter fights, Bush said the year was ending on a high note.”

You have to watch out when the Administration, echoed by Republicans and right wing pundits, spins this hard. The press amplifies the spin so much that it can make you dizzy.

To hear them talk we are winning the (expletive deleted) war in Iraq. We are even starting to bring the troops home, they say. No matter that troop levels are going down a little for now because they were pushed up to a level that the military simply can’t sustain for long. The “surge” was always explained as a temporary increase. Well, its getting to be time for the levels to go back to where they were before the surge. Personally, I’ll be surprised if they get all the way back to the pre-surge level but in any case, nobody is talking about getting out. Don’t worry, we’ll be there for years.

The infamous Move-On “Petraeus Betray Us” ad may have been an easy target for the pro-war crowd but if anybody got past the headline, it did talk about how the Petraeus Report on the war seriously misrepresented the situation. It is this misrepresentation that the Republicans are depending on when they say how great things are in Iraq.

The Republican spin machine has been crowing that the polls show even less support for Congress than for the President. However, what they don’t tell us is that the reason people are mad at Congress is that Congress is not standing up to the President strongly enough. Democratic support has eroded among anti-war voters as it has become clear that Congress is not going to do anything to end the war. And if Congressional Democrats get low marks, Republicans poll even lower.

The Democrats are suffering politically because they are refusing to confront the issues that the voters care about most, the war and impeachment. People don’t just disapprove of the President’s policies, they are hopping mad. With a large majority against the war, Americans just don’t understand why nobody in power will do anything to end it. After all, that is the mandate the voters gave Democrats with their 2006 victory. And they are furious that the Constitution is being shredded in front of their eyes with Congress just sitting there, or even worse, collaborating.

Pelosi’s strategy of ignoring the elephant in the room isn’t working. The Republicans with their mini-filibusters and Bush with his veto have so demoralized the Democrats that they just give in on issue after issue with a whimper.

I truly fear for the Democrats in next year’s election. With Bush dragging down the Republicans it should be a slam dunk. But the Democrats seem to be on the verge of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Left wing voters may just stay home in disgust and the middle of the roaders may decide that at least the Republicans stand for something.

With that prospect, Speaker Pelosi, why not try standing up to Bush for a change? Impeachment hearings could go a long way towards mobilizing the country and putting the President on the defensive.

Give it a try.

Impeach ‘em Both!

It does no good to impeach Bush; that just leaves us with Dick Cheney as President (scary thought!). And it does no good to impeach Cheney; that still leaves Bush. Our only hope is to impeach them both together.

I recently participated in a Port Townsend TV show about impeachment. If you’re on cable in Port Townsend look for it on Channel 97. The show is called Future Tense, hosted by Pat Perreault. The beginning of this article is what I said on the show.

According to the Constitution Congress can impeach the “President, Vice President and other Civil officers” (including judges) for “Treason, Bribery and High Crimes and Misdemeanors”.

It is designed to be a mechanism for Congress to restrain the power of the President and remove them from office if they abuse that power. They wanted to distinguish our President from a king, who was not restrained by anything.

Impeachment is the equivalent of an indictment and requires a majority vote in the House of Representatives. Then the Senate holds a trial with conviction requiring a 2/3 majority.

Andrew Johnson was the first President to be impeached, in 1868. At that point he had less than a year left in his term. When Congress passed a law restraining his power, he defied it, and within 8 days was impeached by the House of Representatives. 2 ½ months later the trial was over, with the Senate 1 vote short of the 2/3 needed for conviction.

The only other President to actually be impeached was Bill Clinton, for the Monica Lewinski affair. He was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice. Although he was impeached in the House, there were not nearly enough votes in the Senate to convict him. However the impeachment did weaken his presidency.

President Nixon wasn’t actually impeached because he resigned after the House Judiciary Committee sent Articles of Impeachment to the House floor. However his case is closest to the situation we have today.
He was charged with Obstruction of Justice, Abuse of Power and Contempt of Congress. Sound familiar?

When I first started carrying an impeachment petition on my college campus, nobody thought that there was a chance that Nixon would be impeached, let alone convicted. But the further the process went, the more information came out about what he had done, and the more he resisted Congress, the more public opinion, and more importantly, Congressional opinion turned against him. He finally resigned after Senate Republicans told him that he was sure to be impeached and convicted.

The charges against Nixon included making false statements to investigators, withholding evidence, abuse of power, using federal agencies, to harass and spy on anti-war activists and others on his “enemies list”. (This surveillance led to the passage of the FISA law that Bush violated with his warrantless wiretapping program.)

Nixon was charged with Contempt of Congress for refusing to provide information requested during the impeachment hearings and refusing to comply with Congressional subpoenas.

He also corrupted the political process with a forerunner of Karl Rove’s tactics in what came to be known as “dirty tricks”. Among other things, he instituted a smear campaign against Edmund Muskie, who he thought would be the strongest Democratic Candidate for President in 1972, and ended up knocking him out of the race.

Additional charges related to the “secret war” in Cambodia were discussed in the Judiciary Committee but did not end up being included in the Articles of Impeachment.

And that brings us to George W Bush and Dick Cheney.

The Kucinich impeachment resolution in the House Judiciary Committee only applies to Cheney. As I explained above, that just won’t work. Cheney doesn’t really have power based on being Vice President. The duties of the VP are almost non-existent…breaking the occasional tie vote in the Senate and waiting for the President to die, or get impeached, in which case he becomes President. No, his crimes are in devising policies that break the law and violate the Constitution. He could go right on doing that from behind the scenes even if he did get impeached. Nothing would change.

However, there is nothing to stop the Judiciary Committee from adding Bush to the Impeachment Articles once their hearings show how both of them worked together. They head up the conspiracy that has been systematically shredding the Constitution. Bush has the power of the Presidency and Cheney has been the leader in defining their policies from the war in Iraq to secret surveillance to torturing prisoners to torturing the language to avoid calling it torture. They are an effective team, I’ll give you that.

The Kucinich resolution accuses them of lying about the reasons to go to war in Iraq and the reasons they want to go to war in Iran but that only scratches the surface. Both Nixon and Clinton were accused of lying to cover up their misdeeds in their Articles of Impeachment. Bush and Cheney’s lies, on the other hand, are responsible for a war that has killed and injured thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. They have also endangered our own security and done serious damage to the US military. Of course, Congress went along, when they should have known better, but that does not lessen the guilt of the President and VP.

The war itself is a violation on international laws against wars of aggression, targeting of civilians, torture and the mistreatment of prisoners.

They also violated specific US laws against domestic surveillance and against torture. As I mentioned above, the FISA law was passed to prevent exactly the kind of warrantless wiretapping that Bush ordered. He violated that law and used secrecy as a cover to prevent Congress and the American people from finding out about it. US law also prohibits torture. Bush and Cheney ordered prisoners to be tortured and then denied that that’s what they were doing. As if saying that it wasn’t torture made it any less tortuous.

They violated the Constitution in more ways than I can count. By calling prisoners “enemy combatants” and hiding them in secret prisons on US military bases outside of the US and in third countries, they pretend that they are not regular prisoners and not prisoners of war. They seek to dehumanize them and deny them any rights at all. The Constitution does not make these distinctions. It does not guarantee rights contingent on the whim of the President. It does guarantee Due Process of Law, Habeas Corpus and prohibits Cruel and Unusual Punishment, Period.

They assert powers for the President that don’t exist in the Constitution, or are granted to other branches of government. Signing statements openly declare that portions of laws will not be obeyed. Remember, that is what got Andrew Johnson impeached. Nixon was accused of Contempt of Congress. Bush and Cheney are certainly guilty of that. You would think that Congress would be upset about this, and about their refusal to provide information to Congress. Harriet Miers and other in the administration ignored Congressional subpoenas regarding the US Attorney firings. The Justice Department then declared that they would not enforce Contempt of Congress actions.

Of course, there is the corruption involved in giving huge no bid contracts to their cronies at Halliburton, Bechtel, oil companies and other close associates of the President and Vice President. Worse, there has been little oversight of these contracts. Billions of dollars have been misspent or have simply disappeared. Billions more went missing when they shipped planeloads of cash to Iraq and handed out bundles without any apparent accounting of where it went. How much of that went to buy weapons to use against American troops? Of course the weapons they are buying with that money could be those American weapons given to the Iraqi government that have also disappeared.

Failure to impeach can have serious consequences. Bush and Cheney are establishing all sorts of precedents for giving the President expanded power. If this power grab is left unchallenged, then future Presidents, Democratic and Republican, will be all too happy to hold on to that power. If Congress won’t challenge it now, there is no chance that they ever will.

This is how we lose our freedom, not with a bang but a whimper.

Dick Cheney’s Bookshelf: 1984

George Orwell wrote 1984 as a cautionary tale about the dangers of totalitarianism. Dick Cheney seems to think it is a How To manual.

Last year I wrote about Karl Rove’s bookshelf, how he might have used Machiavelli to advantage in managing the political landscape. I also wrote about how the administration might have learned something from Machiavelli when they were contemplating invading Iraq.

Cheney violated most of Machiavelli’s rules, and has not done well, if his objective was a stable and friendly Iraq. It is not clear to me that that is his objective, especially since he warned of the dangers of occupation way back in 1994. If his purpose was the enrichment of his friends at Haliburton and the Oil Companies, he is succeeding very well. Perhaps that is why he is always so upbeat about it all. But I digress.

Dick may have found 1984 more appealing. In any case, he has been working at remaking our society along the principles that Orwell set out. In fact, Cheney may be concerned because the project is, at this point, 23 years behind schedule and far from finished.

First of all, you may be wondering why I am picking on Dick Cheney. After all, he is just the Vice President. Isn’t George Bush the one with power? Well, Bush may have the power in theory but all the evidence is that it is Cheney that drives the ideological buggy in this administration. After all, Cheney has long been a leader of the Neo-Cons. He took a major part in writing The Project for a New American Century that laid the foundation for Bush Administration policies. The evidence is that Cheney and the Neo-Cons picked Bush as their front man and put him in power. Besides, I just can’t see Bush sitting up nights studying Orwell for clues on how to take over the world. That’s more up Cheney’s line. But, as I said, I digress.

Big Brother is Watching You

The most striking feature of the society portrayed in 1984 is the unrelenting surveillance by the government. People understand that their every move and utterance may be monitored. This is no secret. Telescreens are everywhere and it is impossible to escape the posters that proclaim “Big Brother is Watching You”. People have learned to accept it, even to take comfort that the government will protect them from, well, terrorists, if you will.

Cheney has taken that to heart with the warrantless wiretapping and datamining program that has finally succeeded in being able to monitor every phone conversation and every email with far more efficiency than Orwell ever imagined, thanks to modern computer technology (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24spy.html). Furthermore, there are persistent rumors that the government has the technology to listen in on phones (landlines and cellphones), even when they are turned off. It is true if you believe Fox News. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDwy5DCzD8A). If such wiretapping is done with a secret warrant it is perfectly legal, but Cheney does not seem to believe that a warrant is necessary in terrorism cases.

Endless War

Orwell understood that there is nothing like war to increase support for the government. And the best kind of war is far away, so you can show it on TV in a heroic sort of way and you don’t have to suffer the consequences of war at home. Any dissent can be branded as unpatriotic, even treasonous. This administration jumped to tell people to “Watch what you say”. “Support the Troops” comes to mean “Support the War” and “Support the Government”. The enemy is portrayed as pure evil, therefore the government must be pure good and above any criticism.

And if war is good, then a war without end is ideal. Cheney knows this and has not been shy to talk about “The Long War” against terrorism. Today the war is in Iraq and Afghanistan but it could just as well be anywhere. That is why Cheney keeps tensions high with Iran, North Korea, and Syria. He is ready to spring into action against any foe. In 1984 and today, there is no danger of peace breaking out.

There has to be an enemy to channel anger and cement support for the government that is going to protect us from that enemy. In 1984, the evil enemy was represented by Emmanuel Goldstein (no relation) and anonymous hordes of enemy soldiers. Today Cheney started with Osama Bin Laden, moved on to Saddam Hussein and now seems to have settled on anonymous hordes of terrorists. The arbitrary nature of these enemies is highlighted by the question in 1984 of whether Goldstein was a real person or was simply invented by the government in order to have an enemy to hate, which is never resolved. I don’t doubt that Bin Laden exists but it is possible that he hasn’t been captured because it is better to have him at large, and more threatening, in order to maintain a state of fear in our own population.

Indefinite Detention

The Thought Police could show up at any moment to haul you away and hold you incommunicado for as long as they like, in 1984. If Dick Cheney thinks you are a terrorist, he can do the same to you. Guantanamo is the poster child for these prisons but there are secret prisons around the world that operate under the same principle. Furthermore, the CIA has been known to kidnap people, in a process known as rendition, and fly them to prison and torture in other countries. If they make a mistake, they won’t admit it. Innocent people will toe the line better if they are afraid of arbitrary arrests.

Torture

In 1984, torture is employed to break down the prisoner’s individuality and will to resist. Techniques are primarily psychological, including sensory deprivation, and prey on the prisoner’s fears to make them betray their humanity. The primary purpose is to take away any possibility of hope.

Dick Cheney has adopted this model and implemented it wholesale. The main difference is that he has to deny that it is torture. This semantic difference shows that the public is not yet sufficiently indoctrinated. However, the confirmation of Michael Mukasey as Attorney General, despite his refusal to admit that torture is torture, shows that we are making "progress" in this area.

Doublespeak

The ability to say one thing and mean the exact opposite. The No Child Left Behind Act systematically leaves poor children behind by withholding funds from schools that are failing through lack of funds. The Blue Skies initiative rewrites regulations to allow more air pollution. The PATRIOT Act eviscerates the Constitution. Need I go on?

We are at war with Eurasia … We have always been at war with Eastasia

Of course, this administration is an expert at rewriting history to meet the needs of the moment. Bush puts these changes across really well. The prime example is the justification for war in Iraq. They went seamlessly from WMDs to establishing democracy to fighting terrorists. It doesn’t matter that there were no WMDs, there is no democracy there and Al Queda wasn’t there at all until we opened up a space for them. Just like in 1984 the media doesn’t seem to notice the changes and reports the latest justification with a straight face. Unfortunately for Cheney, he doesn’t yet have anybody in the Ministry of Truth who can send inconvenient history down the memory hole to oblivion.

The Proles

The proles were the underclass, who exist below the notice of the government. But they do serve a purpose. It is necessary to have a lower class to do the unpaid work of society. Somebody has to do the unskilled, low paying jobs that keep things going. However, since these jobs don’t require much intellectual capacity, the government consciously kept this class uneducated, so they won’t realize how they are being exploited. As Orwell put it, “Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”

Poor people are similarly ignored today. Additionally in today’s world, people are reluctant to rebel because they are afraid of falling out of the middle class into the lower class. Cheney doesn’t want the government involved in helping out the poor. He would prefer to let them fend for themselves. Hurricane Katrina demonstrated this with a vengeance. FEMA no longer saw its purpose as helping disaster victims, especially if they were poor. Poor communities were damaged by the hurricane but wiped out by a government that placed obstacles in the way of rebuilding because they clearly hoped that those poor people would just go away.

The Neo-Cons believe that rich people deserve to be rich and poor people deserve to be poor. That is why their policies overwhelmingly favor the rich and hurt the poor. The hope is that people will come to believe that the way things are is the only way they could be. That is why Cheney cries about “class warfare” every time somebody criticizes his pro-rich people policies. “Class Warfare” is actually a throwback to Cold War era red-baiting and seems somewhat out of date today. He is just trying to shut down any opposition with a scary sounding label. He doesn’t actually oppose class warfare; he just wants his side (the rich) to win.

I could go on but you get the idea. It is actually kind of spooky how closely the Administration is mirroring techniques outlined in Orwell’s masterpiece.

Hmm… maybe Cheney really does think it is a How To Book.

Port Militarization Resistance: Stopping the War by Stopping the Shipments

Washington State’s quiet little capitol city of Olympia has become the center of a new movement to oppose the war by taking real, not symbolic action against it. The Port Militarization Resistance (PMR) movement is explicitly non-violent but anything but passive.

For the last 10 days, protestors have tried to stop the passage of military equipment through the Port of Olympia. They have succeeded in stopping the shipments for over 12 hours twice. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVASp4CGh94). They realize that actions like this in Olympia alone will not end the war, but they hope to inspire others across the country to take similar actions. The cost to Olympia both to its image and to its pocketbook may prevent that port from being used again by the military. And because PMR has also protested at other ports, it does make it more difficult for the US government to prosecute this illegal and immoral war.

The demonstrators have persisted despite vicious police attacks. Police have repeatedly attacked nonviolent demonstrators with clubs and pepper spray. Many people report police spraying pepper spray directly into people’s eyes at short range. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgi5ESpueX8&feature=related). I don’t know what the police motivation it, but it seems to be to discourage people from exercising their first amendment rights by inflicting gratuitous pain. It is now not just a story about the war in Iraq but also about the loss of democratic rights here at home.

In these videos, protestors talk about the police brutality at a meeting organized by City Council Member TJ Johnson.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTKHrNGPRiI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqbTSy2YPRA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvyeIbLAybI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U_wHJns7p8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhcKXUchvVo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s70olUeM6YQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VczOR1yhC7w


The PMR movement has grown out of efforts of a community coalition composed of students from The Evergreen State College and other community activists opposed to the use of The Port of Olympia, at the southern end of Puget Sound, to fight an immoral war that violates international law. In their own words, “Locally, since the military shipments through Olympia's port began in 2004, the community has fully employed a broad spectrum of democracy's tools - including letter-writing and petitioning public officials in open forums - to oppose the occupation of Iraq and the Port of Olympia profiting from it in any way. In large numbers, we have asked the Port Commissioners to withdraw support for the war and stop shipments to Iraq. Yet, just as the war, the killing, and corporate war-profiteering continue, so do the military shipments through Olympia .” (http://www.olywip.org/site/page/article/2006/06/02.html)

As their statement of purpose says, “Port Militarization Resistance is organized to end our community’s complicity in the illegal occupation of Iraq by stopping the U.S. Military’s use of the Port of Olympia.“

In the spring of 2006, the Army decided to use the Port of Olympia to ship equipment to support the deployment of a Stryker Brigade to Iraq from Fort Lewis. When the shipment occurred in May 2006, it was met with demonstrations continuing for days as the Stryker vehicles and other equipment were driven through Olympia and loaded onto the ship. 37 people were arrested but after a year of efforts to convict them, the case against them was shown to be so weak that the remaining charges were dismissed in June 2007. See the Olympia paper, Works in Progress for all the details (http://www.olywip.org/site/page/article/2007/07/01.html).

In a related action, in September 2006, 400 people marched peacefully on Indian Island, near Port Townsend, WA, the major West Coast base shipping munitions to Iraq. 37 were arrested there in a peaceful act of civil disobedience. These charges were also dismissed after the defendants spent months in court. This action was partly inspired by the PMR actions in Olympia but it was organized by different people. What it had in common was to focus on the fact that our communities are directly linked to the war by the shipments of war equipment, munitions and supplies.

In March 2007, the Army had another Stryker Brigade ready to ship out of Fort Lewis. Perhaps in an effort to avoid another round of demonstrations, they chose to use the Port of Tacoma this time. If that was indeed their intention, it didn’t work. This time the Olympia activists joined Tacoma activists and others from throughout Western Washington in another round of demonstrations. For over a week, the protests continued on a daily basis. The Army brought in the shipment in the middle of the night and Tacoma brought in a huge contingent of riot police, outnumbering the demonstrators and at times resorting to what appeared to be random violence and arrests. They used teargas and rubber bullets repeatedly against the spirited but non-violent crowds. You Tube videos of the police violence actually helped bring out more protesters. In this video, police tear gassed nonviolent demonstrators without warning (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfhUaUuG1sM). At one point police even started arresting people just for carrying a backpack or water bottles. The only reason for this that I can think of is that some people had started to bring water and vinegar to wash out the eyes of people who had been gassed.

By now the story wasn’t just about protesting the war, it was about riot cops running riot. Now I know that this is nothing new. At the Port Townsend Film Festival, I got a chance to see the new movie “Chicago 10”, which shows graphically the police attacks on anti-war demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic Convention. (It is scheduled for theatrical release in 2008.) And need I mention the police overreaction to the WTO protests in Seattle? Seattle was sued by mistreated demonstrators and it is costing them plenty. Olympia and Tacoma protestors certainly have grounds for similar suits.

Some people have critized PMRs tactics. Activist Phan Nguyen replies, “I have never stopped a war. I don’t know how it is done… If someone has a better idea, don’t just tell us what to do. Show us how it’s done. ” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3hsDZHg71g).

Have Taser, will torture....

I have been thinking about Tasers and the way they are being misused. Now somebody has taken the words out of my mouth. Check out this artilcle.

Have Taser, will torture - and call it a 'safe alternative'

by Pierre Tristam | Sep 25 2007 - 9:40am |

It's a morbid game. I Google "Taser," click on the tab that brings up the latest news articles featuring the word, and scroll through the insanity. It never fails. Every search produces case after case of sadism posing as policing.

Here's Friday's crop. In California, cops Tasered a 15-year-old autistic child who left his treatment center and was supposedly going to hurt himself by running into traffic (after walking 15 miles without a hitch). "If that were your son, would you want him Tasered or hit by a car?" a sheriff's spokesman said. If that were my son, I'd want you to stop traffic. Isn't that what cops can do with one hand raised and the other behind their back? Also in California on Friday, a cop Tasered a high school student to break up a fight.

In Warren, Ohio, an officer Tasered a woman because she was being unruly in his cruiser after an arrest. She slipped out of the cruiser to escape the shocks. He Tasered her again until he knocked her unconscious. She was in handcuffs the whole time. In Ocala, four officers are being investigated for Tasering a man who refused to drop his Quran. And, of course, nine days ago at the University of Florida, Andrew Meyer, a 21-year-old student who got long-winded with his questions to Sen. John Kerry during a public forum, was shoved away from the mike by campus police, pushed to the ground, pinned there by six officers (every cop wants a piece of the action) and Tasered. Then he was told he was inciting a riot. If ever there was a case of cops inciting a riot, and deserving one, this was it. Still, they call this a "safe alternative."

But the stun gun, the single most savage addition to police arsenals since the back-alley interrogation, has done the opposite of its intended purpose. Rather than lowering the level of violence necessary to subdue dangerous individuals, the stun-gun has lowered the threshold of excusable police violence by making the use of brutal force seem protective. Briefly shocking someone, the story goes, is better than shooting him. But before that choice between two brutalities, there was a choice between brutality and reason -- between Rambo with a shield and good policing. A cop who'd never dream of unholstering a firearm against a lout or a big-mouthed student isn't hesitating to unholster the stun gun and use it repeatedly under the guise of restoring control.

What a convenient perversion of reality: A 5-second torture session, often repeated many times, often unnecessary, overwhelmingly directed at nonviolent individuals, is called "improving safety." For whom? Earlier this year the Houston Chronicle analyzed the Houston Police Department's use of Tasers since they were introduced two years ago to that same crock fanfare -- "to reduce deadly police shootings." Since then, the paper found, "officers have shot, wounded and killed as many people as before the widespread use of the stun guns." Houston officers used their Tasers more than 1,000 times in the past two years, "but in 95 percent of those cases they were not used to defuse situations in which suspects wielded weapons and deadly force clearly would have been justified."

Tasers, in other words, are instruments of punishment, not safety. They're enabling cops to be executioners rather than law enforcers, not just metaphorically. (By CBS News' count, 70 people have died after being Tasered, including 10 in August. An Amnesty International report had tallied up 70 deaths between 2001 and 2004 alone.)

I was reading a story the other day about Nalini Ghuman, the Welsh music professor who, after teaching 10 years at a university in California, was suddenly barred from re-entering the country 13 months ago and offered a choice: jail or a plane back to Britain. She went back. What struck me about her time in an isolation cell at San Francisco airport is her immediate transformation into an assumed criminal. When this 34-year-old academic was groped, body-searched and interrogated, she was "warned that if she moved," as The New York Times described it, "she would be considered to be attacking her armed female searcher."

How familiar the warning. It's what police agencies down to their school contingents call protocol. The moment a cop appears on the scene and metes out orders, not following them can mean an immediate charge of resisting or battery if you so much as graze the cop's ego. Judging from public comments responding to incidents like the one at the University of Florida, that's what people want from their cops -- uncompromising control. In a cop's presence, your job is to conform, submit, accept that you're guilty until proven otherwise. It's not brutality. It's protocol.
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Fact Sheet on USS Ohio

The USS Ohio was originally commissioned in 1981, as the first of the Ohio class nuclear submarines, carrying the Trident nuclear missile system. Both the missiles and the submarines are commonly known as Tridents.

When the Ohio was deployed in 1982 to the then new Trident base in Bangor, Washington, on the Hood Canal, it was greeted by protests. Among other actions, a flotilla of boats met the Ohio at Port Townsend as it entered Admiralty Inlet on its way in to Bangor. The Bangor base has been the subject of anti-nuclear protests for 30 years, from the construction of the base to the present. For the past several years demonstrators have nonviolently attempted to block the main gate three times each year: on the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Martin Luther King’s birthday and on Mother’s Day. The Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action (www.gzcenter.org) has more information.

The Ohio and three other Trident submarines were scheduled to be retired in 2002. However, they were converted from the SSBN (Submersible Ship Ballistic missile Nuclear powered) configuration into SSGN (Submersible Ship Guided missile Nuclear powered). The Ohio has been on active duty as a SSGN since 2006. As a nuclear powered submarine it is capable of continuous operations for unlimited periods.

The Trident SSGNs, including the Ohio are capable of carrying 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_missile). The Tomahawks have a range of 1500 miles and are capable of carrying either nuclear or conventional warheads, although the Navy says that they are not currently deploying the nuclear warheads. The submarines are also able to launch a mini-sub and Navy SEALS commando squads through a modified launch tube. These capabilities make the Trident SSGN submarines ideal vehicles for launching a surprise attack or secret commando raids. They can lie hidden just offshore of whatever country they choose to target and launch their attacks without warning. If the Administration wanted to launch a surprise nuclear attack, they might well choose to use a submarine launched cruise missile that could fly under the radar from an undetected source and hit their target without warning. Such an attack would be extremely dangerous because it could provoke a response either against the US or against another country mistakenly suspected of launching the attack. Futhermore, since it is impossible to tell if a cruise missile is armed with a nuclear or conventional warhead while it is in flight there are endless possibilities for a conventional missile to be mistaken for a nuclear one.
Submarines are used for this kind of mission, because, unlike other kinds of forces, they are largely invisible. Covert missions are used to carry out policies without the knowledge or consent of the American people.
(http://dangoldstein.blogspot.com/2006_02_01_archive.html)

From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_submarine):
The Ohio class submarines were specifically designed for extended deterrence patrols. Each submarine is complemented by two crews, Blue and Gold, with each crew operating on a 100-day interval. To decrease the time in port for crew turnover and replenishment, three large logistics hatches are fitted to provide large diameter resupply and repair openings. These hatches allow sailors to rapidly transfer supply pallets, equipment replacement modules and machinery components, significantly reducing the time required for replenishment and maintenance. The class design allows the vessel to operate for 15+ years between overhauls. The ships are purported to be as stealthy at 20 knots (their cruising speed) as previous subs were at a dead crawl of 6 knots, although exact information remains classified.

The Ohio has just returned from Hawaii, where they practiced a “forward crew swap” in which they complete the transfer from one crew to the other without returning to their home base in Bangor. This is the first forward crew swap in 20 years. The plan is to make these crew swaps in Guam, so the Ohio can remain at sea longer, only returning to Bangor about once a year.

According to the Navy: (http://www.news.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=27392)
While the gold crew is in Hawaii for this crew swap, they will be going through a qualification process, testing the crew’s and the submarines ability to conduct different types of special operations forces (SOF) operations.

The cruise missiles will be loaded at Naval Magazine Indian Island, near Port Townsend.
Indian Island is the largest munitions depot on the West Coast, supplying weapons for Iraq and operations in the Pacific Ocean.

Recent protests at Indian Island include a weekly vigil outside the gates and a demonstration on September 23, 2006, when 500 people marched on the base and 37 were arrested. Their charges were reduced from a misdemeanor Disorderly Conduct, carrying a maximum penalty of 6 months in jail, to an infraction Pedestrian on Roadway, carrying a penalty of $76. The case has not yet been decided with a hearing scheduled May 29 in Jefferson County District Court on a motion to dismiss the charges.


For more information: Liz Rivera Goldstein 360-379-9094 liz@teenpeace.org

The Protest That Never Shows Up?

I confess, I am baffled by Danny Westneat’s Sunday column in the Seattle Times, “The Protest That Never Shows Up”. The column claims that the antiwar movement has petered out. This is based on dwindling attendance at the Green Lake vigil, which continued every week for over 4 years. However, he cites, and then ignores several signs of a very active and successful peace movement.

As he says, nearly 70% of the American people now oppose this war. This opposition is generally credited with the Democratic victory in November, based on opinion polls asking voters the reasons behind their votes. Congress is now in the middle of a vigorous debate, not on whether to oppose the Bush policy, but how best to oppose it. And, as Mr. Westneat mentions, there will be a massive protest in Washington, DC next weekend.

If this isn’t a peace movement, what is? Maybe he needs more evidence. Westneat’s article is on the front of the Local News section. On page B2, opposite the obituaries, there is an article about the Citizen’s Hearing on the Legality of the Iraq War, attended by hundreds of people in Tacoma this weekend. Two days of testimony laid out the legal case against the war. Lt. Ehren Watada won’t be able to present the reasons he believes the war is illegal, and thus the order he disobeyed to deploy to Iraq was unlawful, at his Court Martial. Lt. Watada is far from the only military resister, although the consequences for actions such as his in the military can be severe. He faces 6 years in prison for his stand. It is notable that a majority of the military now believe that the troops should come home.

Part of the reason for Westneat’s attitude may be the lack of coverage of antiwar activity. He quotes one person saying, “the press wouldn’t report it even if its the biggest protest in the history of the world.” That is one reason more people are looking to alternative sources for news. Past demonstrations have received very little coverage. What coverage there has been in the mainstream media, including the Seattle Times, tends to bury the coverage, dismiss them as marginal and understate the numbers of people involved.

The Times didn’t mention it, so far as I can tell, but there will also be a march in Seattle, and lots of other communities on January 27. And in DC, they will follow up with constituent visits to every Congressional office to continue the lobbying against the war. The Voters Pledge for Peace committed voters to vote only for antiwar candidates. The Declaration of Peace campaign lobbied Congress to end the war leading up to civil disobedience in September in communities across the country. Here in Western Washington, Bellingham activists were arrested in Representative Rick Larsen’s office. This was part of the pressure that caused Larsen to change his position. He now advocates, “unconditional partial withdrawal of U.S. military from Iraq.” Near Port Townsend, 500 people marched on the Indian Island Naval Base, which ships many of the munitions used in Iraq, and 37 were arrested. They hope to put the war on trial at their trial. On Saturday, at Town Hall in Seattle international law expert, John Burroughs spoke in support of defendants charged with civil disobedience at the Bangor Trident nuclear submarine base. Those demonstrations by the Ground Zero Center have continued on a regular basis since the base construction began 30 years ago.

Organizations such as United for Peace and Justice, Code Pink, Move On, Democracy for America, Working Assets, and many others are mounting sophisticated E-mail campaigns against the war. That is another part of the reason Congress is now considering taking action. As Mr. Westneat says, “On paper, this war’s a mistake and the troops should start coming home.” They should. Unfortunately, those in power have yet to be convinced. The President is obstinate and even Democrats in Congress are still reluctant to take real action. The antiwar movement is now working hard to convince them that we need to bring the troops home, now.

Taking Nuremberg Seriously

The Nuremberg Principles say that you can’t defend yourself from war crimes charges by saying that you were just following orders. Each individual has to make sure that they are not committing war crimes, or they can be held accountable, as the Nazi’s were after WWII and as Slobodan Milosevic and others have been in recent years.

The first four Principles lay this out very clearly:

Principle I
Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment.
Principle II
The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.
Principle III
The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.
Principle IV
The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.

All of this is taught to US soldiers as part of their basic training and is incorporated into military law. Recently some soldiers are taking this seriously. Confronted by a war that certainly appears to violate prohibitions against ill treatment of prisoners, unnecessary killing of civilians and wanton destruction of cities or towns, they are starting to refuse to fight. Lt. Ehren Watada, who refused orders to Iraq, in a speech to the Veterans for Peace Convention in Seattle said, “to stop an illegal and unjust war, the soldiers can choose to stop fighting it.” He goes on to say, “The oath we take swears allegiance not to one man but to a document of principles and laws designed to protect the people. Enlisting in the military does not relinquish one's right to seek the truth - neither does it excuse one from rational thought nor the ability to distinguish between right and wrong. "I was only following orders" is never an excuse.”

Kevin Benderman, now serving time in the Fort Lewis brig because his Conscientious Objector claim was refused, wrote ”As I went through the process which led to my decision to refuse deployment to Iraq for the second time, I was torn between thoughts of abandoning the soldiers that I serve with, or following my conscience, which tells me: war is the ultimate in destruction and waste of humanity.”

The military makes provision for soldiers who, like Kevin Benderman, come to the belief that all war is wrong. They can apply for CO status and, if it is approved receive discharges. However, it is a difficult process and, as Sgt. Benderman can attest, the application may be turned down. If that happens, there are few options for someone whose conscience says not to fight. Sgt. Benderman was sentenced to 15 months in prison for his refusal.

Other soldiers, including Lt. Watada, come to the conclusion that the war in Iraq is wrong, even though they cannot in good conscience say that they oppose all wars. For them, the military has no recourse. Soldiers can’t pick and choose which orders to obey. Discipline demands that they be ready to go where they are sent. Lt. Watada, having concluded that the war in Iraq is illegal, expressed his willingness to fight in Afghanistan or anywhere else he was needed. The Army could have chosen a less confrontational course and posted him where he was willing to go, but perhaps they feared having to negotiate with each soldier. They know that, given a choice, there are plenty of GIs who would prefer to stay away from Iraq. They don’t want to make that choice easy.

Thousands have simply walked away. Over 200 are estimated to be in Canada, remembering that during the Vietnam war, thousands of war resisters were given refuge in Canada. Today the situation is not so clear cut. The first applications for refugee status were denied by the current Conservative government, but the appeals process is ongoing, so it is unclear what, ultimately, will be the result. The Canadian War Resisters Support Campaign hopes that ultimately resisters will be allowed to stay.

One of the things that helped end the Vietnam War was a large antiwar movement within the military. The new film, “Sir, No Sir” documents that movement and hopes to encourage antiwar GIs today to take action.

Of course, it is not just up to the soldiers. All Americans are being called to take more vigorous action against the war. For them too, the Nuremberg Principles require action against it. Antinuclear protesters from the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action at the Bangor, WA Trident submarine base carried copies of the Principles as justification for blocking the entrance to the base.

Voters For Peace ask all voters to take the following pledge: "I will not vote for or support any candidate for Congress or President who does not make a speedy end to the war in Iraq, and preventing any future war of aggression, a public position in his or her campaign." And voters are taking this seriously, as Joe Leiberman can attest.

By signing The Declaration of Peace citizens commit themselves to take action to end the war. Some will lobby Congress, some will march and some will commit themselves to nonviolent civil disobedience if Congress does not act by September 21, 2006 to set a timetable for withdrawing the troops. After that date people will take action in their communities and in Washington DC to increase the pressure on Congress to end the war. We have already seen pro-war Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Washington’s Maria Cantwell, who are up for reelection, starting to modify their rhetoric in response to an electoral base that is increasingly critical of the war. If citizens follow up on their frustration with visible actions against the war and a determination to make the war their top issue in the voting booth, then politicians may respond. If not they may find themselves out of office.

Lt. Watada ended his speech with these words, “Many have said this about the World Trade Towers, "Never Again." I agree. Never again will we allow those who threaten our way of life to reign free - be they terrorists or elected officials. The time to fight back is now - the time to stand up and be counted is today.”

Karl Rove’s Bookcase: Machiavelli and Iraq

Last week I talked about how Karl Rove might find Machiavelli useful in his job of winning elections. However, on reading The Prince, I was struck by his foreign policy advice, which this Administration might do well to heed. While Rove would have to stretch a little to apply these lessons to domestic political races, Machiavelli writes at length about how to conquer and occupy other countries. Since the Bush Administration is heavily into the conquering business; Afghanistan, Iraq ... and since it isn’t going very well, perhaps they could use some advice.

I have to stress here that Machiavelli takes a very self-centered approach to the whole subject. He is not concerned with the morality of what he is doing, or how the people being conquered suffer. He doesn’t even discuss why one might want to engage in a conquest of another country. His only concern is how to do it effectively. For this the Bush Administration ought to love him, because they have their agenda and all they want to do is put it into effect. The plan was to take over Iraq, and if a lot of people suffer and die in the process, it doesn’t matter because the overall goal is “worthy”. However, they don’t even seem to understand the process well enough to do it well.

In The Prince, Machiavelli talks about the different ways to rule a country that has been conquered. The worst is to maintain an army of occupation, “But in maintaining armed men there in place of colonies one spends much more, having to consume on the garrison all the income from the state so that the acquisition turns into a loss, and many more are exasperated, because the whole state is injured; through the shifting of the garrison up and down all become acquainted with hardship, and all become hostile, and they are enemies who, whilst beaten on their own ground are yet able to do hurt. For every reason, therefore, such guards are as useless as a colony is useful.” He goes on to say that discontented subjects will flock to the banner of a leader who professes to free them from the occupying state.

All of this, of course, has direct relevance to Iraq. The military campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s Baath regime was easy, given the overwhelming superiority of forces. Much of the Iraqi army simply melted away into the population, rather than confront the American tanks head on. However the US then proceeded to try to rule Iraq with an army of occupation. This is where they ran into trouble for two reasons. One, the quality of life had been degraded for most people there. This started with the bombing campaign of the first war that targeted the civilian infrastructure of power plants, sewage treatment and water purification plants and continued with a decade of sanctions that crippled the country economically. The invasion of 2003 once again put many of these same plants out of commission, leaving most people with very limited access to clean water and electricity, even compared to the sanctions period. Economic opportunities are also extremely limited due to the continued fighting. As Machiavelli had predicted, the growing number of people who were discontented with the state of affairs have come to blame the occupying forces for their troubles. They have thus tended to rally around those who are willing to stand up to the Americans. This fuels the resistance in a spiral of violence, response and revenge that has only gotten worse as it becomes clear that there is no end in sight.

Machiavelli supposes two kinds of state which you might want to conquer. One has a strong central ruler, who controls the whole of the state apparatus. This kind of state can be difficult to conquer because it is united, well organized and strong. However, once you do succeed, it is easy to take over the top post in government and control the rest, more or less as the previous ruler had. The daily life for most people doesn’t change, so they have little reason to resist. In the other case, there are many power centers that are independent of the central authority. It is easy to manipulate these conflicts to pit one against the other, thus dividing and conquering. However, the occupation is much more difficult because these same rivalries tend to make some support you and some oppose you, so whatever you do there is bound to be opposition.

Iraq was more the first type under the Baath Party. The sheer superiority of forces guaranteed a quick victory but the US made a fatal error. Rather than preserving the government as it was, simply supplying a new ruler more compliant to American wishes, they destroyed the whole government apparatus, creating a power vacuum that came to be filled by Iraqi nationalist resistance fighters, Islamic fundamentalists and Kurdish nationalists. The Kurds are willing to go along with the Americans as long as their goal of greater Kurdish autonomy is realized. The Americans accept this, even though it requires finessing Turkey’s opposition to Kurdish nationalism, which they have been brutally fighting, with US support, for years in Turkey. The other power centers have not been dealt with as successfully. The inability of the US to supply normal governmental services turns people to the resistance, in one form or another, as an alternative.

Machiavelli’s conclusion is that in this situation the occupying power will be driven out sooner or later. Furthermore, their position at home is weakened by the strain of the continuing war. Their popularity is down and the upcoming elections will likely weaken, if not break, the Republicans’ hold on all three branches of government. For this reason, Karl Rove might wish that he had lent Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney his copy of The Prince before they got themselves into such a mess.

PS

Most Democrats have been gleefully engaging in this kind of analysis that criticizes the Administration for mishandling the war, and God knows they have, while staying away from the more basic question of why we are there in the first place. At one extreme is Joe Leiberman, who went so far in supporting the whole enterprise that he lost his primary and abandoned the Democratic Party. But others, such as New York’s Hillary Clinton and Washington’s Maria Cantwell, who are both up for re-election, are trying to have it both ways. They are fast to criticize the administration, with Clinton, seeing the handwriting on the wall after Leiberman’s loss, calling for Rumsfeld to resign, but slow to question the legitimacy of the war or present any meaningful alternative to the President’s “stay the course” policy. A professed desire to bring the troops home at some unspecified time in the future after the Iraqi government has control of the situation is not a policy. It is a pipe dream. Anti-war voters (and a majority now oppose the war) are losing patience with these fence straddlers. It remains to be seen how this will all play out in November. Whatever happens here, the prognosis is bleak and getting bleaker in Iraq.

Karl Rove’s Bookcase: Machiavelli

Rumor has it that Karl Rove keeps a copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince on his office bookshelf. I have been wondering what Mr. Rove might get out of the work of a 16th Century Italian political observer. Now it is true that Machiavelli is mostly loved and hated by those who have never actually read any of his writings and it is possible that Rove cultivates this story as a way of building a myth of himself as a ruthless and masterful political operative. On the other hand, Machiavelli’s observations often ring true in a way that could well resonate with a strategist who values winning above all.

The Prince is above all about power. It is dedicated to Lorenzo Medici, the grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent, in the hopes of gaining favor with the Prince. He outlines a strategy for success that deliberately flies in the face of conventional wisdom. Rather Machiavelli draws on examples from his contemporary society and history to elaborate on a politics of practicality. It is really very simple. A Prince has power. A Prince wants to hold onto power by whatever means he can. In 15th and 16th C Italy Machiavelli paints a picture of a number of rulers jockeying for position, conquering their neighbors, making alliances, being overthrown. The question is how to thrive in this atmosphere.

For Karl Rove, the first question is how that political landscape relates to contemporary America. Rove isn’t concerned with conquering other states with military power, as Machiavelli was. His Prince is the Candidate and the power he seeks to maintain is the political office. His Candidate enlarges his power by running for higher office, rather than actually conquering his neighbors. As an aside it must be noted that this administration does engage in conquering and occupying foreign lands but not generally in accordance with Machiavelli’s advice and not under the direction of Karl Rove, except as it relates to the American political landscape. In fact, it is possible that Cheney and Rumsfeld might have avoided some of the pitfalls they stumbled into in Iraq through study of The Prince.

The first point that would appeal to Karl Rove is that you have to rely on your own strength. Although it is tempting to find an ally that will supply the troops needed for a campaign, that will ultimately put you at your ally’s mercy. If you have your own power base, you need not fear that your troops will turn against you. Rove has had great success in cultivating the religious right as a strong base that can be counted on to turn out and fight for him when needed. He has, consequently been able to defeat opponents with a less committed base.

Machiavelli didn’t think that virtue was its own reward. He did think that it was well for rulers to be thought virtuous but if there was a conflict between virtue and success, “He need not make himself uneasy at incurring a reproach for those vices without which the state can only be saved with difficulty, for if everything is considered carefully, it will be found that something which looks like virtue, if followed, would be his ruin; whilst something else, which looks like vice, yet followed brings him security and prosperity.” As an example, he cites Hannibal, whose success in maintaining order in his heterogeneous army is attributed to “his inhuman cruelty, which, with his boundless valor, made him revered and terrible in the sight of his soldiers, but without that cruelty, his other virtues were not sufficient to produce this effect.”

Karl Rove’s campaign strategy often seeks victory by undermining the reputation of his opponent, often through the use of half truths or surrogates as we saw in the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry. Although voters say that they are turned off by these negative attacks, they can be effective, especially if the attacks appear to come from a third party and not the campaign itself. This preserves the appearance of virtue in the candidate while allowing the attacks to damage the opponent, Rove’s specialty. As Machiavelli says, “ It is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them.”

In all things, Machiavelli holds that it is possible to be overcome by a less virtuous and more ruthless opponent. The appearance of weakness that comes of an unwillingness to violate common decency can lead to a breakdown of order that in the end leads to more suffering that could have been avoided by a little judicious betrayal, lies or viciousness that would have avoided large scale lawlessness. It is easy to see Karl Rove, and indeed the whole administration taking heart from this lesson.

Perhaps the final lesson is that when Machiavelli presented his ideas to Medici, he was spurned. He had to satisfy himself with the role of analyst, rather than be the king maker he aspired to. He might have done a better job selling his services by following his own advice and not being quite so direct. It may have been his blunt amoral approach that turned off his potential benefactor. Rove may have been wise to start with Bush at the beginning of his career, when he didn’t have to explain his philosophy in so many words. He could simply use these techniques successfully to push a compliant candidate up the political ladder, rising with him to the top.

Gaza, Beirut and Fallujah

First read Robert Fisk’s report from Beirut. Then you can read my article below.

The Israeli attack on Lebanon and Gaza, is out of proportion to the kidnapping that precipitated it by orders of magnitude. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced from their homes and live in fear of death under the most primitive conditions due to the systematic destruction of the civilian infrastructure.

This is punishment of innocent people, while leaving the guilty largely unharmed. In fact, volunteers will now flock to fight the Israeli invaders, both in Lebanon and against civilians in Israel. This invasion is a disaster for Israel, which is in much more danger now than before. The worst case scenario involves a war that encompasses the whole of the Middle East and Pakistani nuclear weapons. The best case, years of attacks and reprisals that will kill, wound, displace and terrorize innocent people both inside and outside of Israel. As usual it will be innocent people who happen to be born Palestinian who will bear the brunt of the suffering.

In addition, since the US supplies Israel with its weapons, and billions of dollars in aid, many now blame the United States, as well as Israel for the suffering that is being inflicted. In fact, attacks in Iraq are sharply up, according to Friday's newspaper.

Because of the aid we give them, the US is perhaps the only country that can hope to persuade Israel to change its course. The immediate need is for a ceasefire. In the long term, the only solution is a withdrawal of Israeli settlements so that there can be a Palestinian State with secure borders, internal communication and freedom of movement. In return there needs to be a recognition of Israel and a willingness to live in peace.

However, Israel has it backwards when they demand that all Palestinians make all the concessions before even talking about what Israel can do. Likewise the Administration has it backwards when it declares that they will stay in Iraq until there is peace. We have seen that road leads nowhere. Ending the occupations goes a long way towards establishing the conditions needed for peace to flourish.

President Bush has urged a two state solution for Israel and Palestine, we need to follow up on that declaration with real action to achieve it.

We need to pressure Israel to stop the invasion.

We can call on Hezbollah to agree to a ceasefire but we have no influence with them and the destruction is overwhelmingly caused by Israel.

We need to end the occupation of Iraq. The longer we stay there, the worse it gets for everybody.

Of course, it is unlikely that the current Administration in Washington, DC will do anything. In fact, they have speeded up delivery of weapons to Israel. They seem to have adopted Israel’s foreign policy as their own, despite its utter lack of success. Most people in the Middle East see a clear link between the US occupation of Iraq and the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

There are differences, of course. There is some truth to Israel’s claims that it is acting in self-defense, while US policy in Iraq is wholly driven by lies. And there is no powerful constituency in the United States that seeks to push Iraqis out of their own country and settle Americans there instead, as the Israeli settler movement does in the West Bank.

Still, the tactics are remarkably the same. All men “of military age” are treated as enemies. Women and children are hardly to be trusted either. Heavily armed troops kick down doors and search people’s homes at will. Houses are destroyed. Checkpoints control the movement of people as they go about their business. The economy is destroyed. Unemployment is very high. and when things get bad, whole cities are attacked, be it Fallujah, Gaza or Beirut, for the actions of a few, who usually manage to slip away.

At best, the occupying armies appear to be blind to the existence of civilians as they go about their business of attempting to bomb out a resistance that grows in strength with every martyr. At worst, it is a systematic punishment of a whole people for voting for Hamas, or being unable to do anything about Hezbollah’s occasional attacks, or for wanting the US troops to go home. It is immoral because it punishes the wrong people and it won’t work, if the objective is peace. Almost 40 years of occupation in Palestine shows that.

Suzanne Swift - Sexual Abuse in the Military

Yesterday was Suzanne Swift’s 22nd birthday. She is the soldier who refused to go back to Iraq with her unit and was arrested last month at her home in Eugene, Oregon. That’s three Fort Lewis, Washington soldiers who have refused to go, for three different reasons. Kevin Benderman came to believe that all war is wrong and filed for Conscientious Objector status, which was denied. He is now serving time in the Fort Lewis brig. Lt. Ehren Watada, who refused to go because the Iraq war violates international law and the Geneva Conventions both in its inception and in the way it is being prosecuted, is awaiting court martial.

Suzanne Swift is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and could not bring herself to go back to Iraq with the same unit where she had been sexually harassed and a victim of what they call “command rape”. That is where your commanding officer coerces you into having sex.

The relationship between a ordinary soldier and her Sergeant is inherently unequal. Any boss-subordinate relationship is unequal, which is why most companies have policies against dating in that situation. If a romance develops, then one of the parties involved has to quit, or at least transfer to another department. There is just too much temptation for abuse of the situation. A boss can easily give special favors, promotions, or overlook poor work if their judgment is clouded by romance. On the other hand, an unscrupulous boss can promise favorable treatment in exchange for sex and has considerable power to punish a subordinate who refuses, or when the romance goes bad. People have been fired for refusing to put out. Even if there are no special favors or punishments there is often a perception that there is. That perception hurts morale and can be coercive in itself. That is why companies have policies against sexual harassment and set up a mechanism outside of the regular hierarchy for reporting and investigating abuses.

In the military, and especially in a combat zone, the same problems exist, only to an extreme level. The military isn’t just a job, its your whole life. Your commander has tremendous power to reward or punish you. In a combat zone, it can mean endangering your life by getting the worst assignments. Spc. Swift refused two sergeants who propositioned her but was coerced into sex with a third. She said, “They treat you like a dog if you refuse and it’s worse if you agree.”

The military has a policy against harassment, but it is not always enforced. Swift did report the harassment but nothing happened, except that things got worse for her, as she was singled out for humiliating treatment and continued demands for sex.

The Pentagon's Joint Task Force on Sexual Abuse in 2004 found widespread abuse in the military, which is not a surprise to women who have served. Estimates are that as many as 2/3 of women, and almost 1/3 of the men in the service are victims of sexual harassment, much of which goes unreported because the military response is often to further harass the victim, rather than punish the perpetrator. As Colleen Mussolino, co-founder of Women Veterans of America (WVA), an advocacy group for women veterans, was quoted as saying about her experience after being raped in "Female Soldiers Treated Lower Than Dirt", by Rose Aguilar, "I was taken by the criminal investigation team and treated like a prisoner of war for six weeks with threats. I finally signed a paper promising that I wouldn't prosecute.” Some female soldiers in Iraq were so worried about being assaulted going to the latrines at night that they wouldn't drink water late in the day and subsequently died of dehydration, according to Col. Janis Karpinski. Perpetrators usually face no consequences, or are simply transferred to another base.

Swift’s mother, Sara Rich, who is leading the fight to protect her daughter, is calling for implementation of the Task Force’s recommendations, an investigation of Swift’s abuse, prosecution of the guilty parties and an honorable discharge. Since this case has received publicity, the Army has started an investigation. It remains to be seen how far it will go but Rich hopes that continued public support for her daughter will force the Army to treat this seriously. It was with this in mind that she celebrated Suzanne’s birthday with a rally, support banners on I-5 and a press conference at the entrance to Fort Lewis.

This isn’t really an anti-war issue and I don’t know what Suzanne Swift thinks, although Sara Rich is against the war and a member of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) and most, if not all, the supporters who turned up at Fort Lewis were anti-war. People who believe that the war is necessary should be outraged at this abuse of soldiers who are risking their lives on our behalf. It undermines the effectiveness of the war effort. In a situation where everything depends on the mutual trust and unit cohesion necessary to be successful in their mission, this kind of abuse of authority can be deadly. It undermines respect for authority and drives away potential recruits.

The War Resisters League(WRL) in a pamphlet entitled “Battered by the Military” states, “Violence against women is not only an accepted part of military culture but an integral component in the training that desensitizes soldiers to violence and killing.” They go on to say, “If you think the military is an option, before enlisting ... Ask yourself whether you want to be part of a system that causes physical, emotional and psychological trauma to both women and men.”

Here is another article that goes a little deeper

Why Soldiers Rape
Culture of misogyny, illegal occupation, fuel sexual violence in military

Additional resources:

GI Rights Hotline 1-800-394-9544

The Miles Foundation is a private, non-profit organization providing comprehensive services to victims of violence associated with the military

STAMP Survivors Take Action Against Abuse by Military Personnel 1-866-879-2568

Think Locally, Act Globally

One of the themes of the World Peace Forum (WPF), held in Vancouver, British Columbia last month, which I had the pleasure to attend, was the importance to cities of taking action for World Peace. Cities must respond to the needs of their citizens. One of those primary needs is the need to live in peace.

Vancouver was one of 62 cities designated as Peace Messenger Cities by the UN General Assembly in 1986 for its efforts to spread a Culture of Peace within its boundaries. It was in that spirit that the city organized the WPF. They made a special effort to include representatives from other Peace Messenger Cities and Mayors for Peace.

It is easy to see why the Mayor of Hiroshima is the President of Mayors for Peace, or why Mayor Winstanley Johnson of Freetown, Sierra Leone sees peace as a prerequisite for running a city, as he copes with the aftermath of civil war. Both of those cities have experienced the disruption, devastation and suffering to their people caused by war. The UN makes this case in CITIES - THEIR RESPONSIBILITY TO A CULTURE OF PEACE.

Many city officials believe that they are supposed to pay attention to local problems and ignore everything that happens outside the city limits. In practice, however, you have to work with other cities, counties and governmental agencies to solve regional problems. Most cities wouldn’t hesitate to lobby for laws and regulations on the state level that affect the city. They will even go to the National government for funds for an important local project.

At a time when local governments are having a hard time finding money for maintaining their infrastructure and providing services for their citizens, military spending can be seen as a huge diversion of funds.

Worldwide, military spending reaches $1 trillion a year, about half of it by the United States. President Eisenhower said, that every dollar spent on the military "signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." In more concrete terms the National Priorities Project documents the cost of war to local communities and shows other choices that could be made. For instance, taxpayers in California will pay $40.6 billion for the war in Iraq. For that same amount they could have had 631,955 Elementary School Teachers or built 4,421 new Elementary Schools, or provided healthcare to 16,850,732 people.

At the WPF we heard Jennifer Hostermann, Mayor of Pleasanton, California talk about how her city is affected by its location near the Lawrence Livermore Lab, which is a major research center for nuclear weapons. She realizes that in a nuclear war, her city would be right next door to one of the first targets of incoming warheads. In that she is not alone. Many of us in the United States are close to a military base that is sure to be targeted in the event of a war. Of course, cities will also be targets and the effects of nuclear war will be global so all of us are at risk. It is easy to forget, but Russian and American missiles are still ready for launch, despite the end of the Cold War almost 2 decades ago. She also feels a responsibility for the people who live in her city. That responsibility doesn’t end when the potholes are filled but extends to representing their interests at a state, national and global level.

Many cities, recognizing the detrimental effects to their residents of the war in Iraq have passed resolutions in opposition. Some feel that since they took an oath to uphold the Constitution, they are bound to oppose an unconsitutional war. Likewise, cities in the US, Britain and elsewhere have declared themselves Nuclear Free Zones. These declarations added momentum to the antinuclear movement that in the 1980s led to a significant slowing of the arms race. In an extension of this movement, national governments in the South Pacific, Latin America and Africa have declared Nuclear Free Zones that have had a real effect in limiting the spread of nuclear weapons.

With the big powers becoming more belligerent, a new arms race is on. It is time for people to act in their cities and communities, where the government is still accessible to ordinary people, to demand an end to the squandering of lives and money on war.

War Crimes in Gaza

Outrage can only go so far. These days it seems that everybody is outraged over something. The result is a kind of a moral numbness. A weariness that makes it hard to look at the dark side of humanity that seems so much in evidence today. People are especially unwilling to confront issues concerning war. Something about war arouses primitive instincts that call us to lay aside normal standards of decent and moral behavior as we rally to the defense of our group. The military harnesses these feelings to turn ordinary decent men and women into killers. That is what war is all about. The question is where to draw the line.

International law now attempts to distinguish behaviors that are acceptable and unacceptable in warfare. This is not an easy task because war in any form is opposed to peacetime morality. At best, warfare involves the deliberate murder of opposing soldiers. There is a recognition that civilians will inevitably be victims as they are caught in the crossfire, driven from their homes, witness traumatic events and be unable to live normal lives. However, we now condemn deliberate targeting of civilians. The principle is that hostilities should be confined to armies fighting each other.

In World War II the Nazis clearly overstepped these bounds in a number of ways. The genocide against Jews, Gypsies and others was the worst abuse. The death camps could only exist by denying the humanity of these people. We respond by saying “Never Again shall we allow this to happen to anybody.”

The Nazis were also condemned for their brutal occupation of the countries they conquered. They held the entire community responsible for any attack on their troops. They would respond by holding government officials and other prominent people hostage. Sometimes they would be executed in response to attacks by the resistance. In other cases, the whole community would be punished by withholding necessities of life.

After the war, the Nuremberg trials and the Geneva Conventions outlawed these practices as war crimes. They declared that deliberate targeting of civilians would not be tolerated and that reprisals should be proportionate to the “offense” and should be confined to the guilty parties and not innocent people.

Last week’s attacks in Gaza and indeed Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in general appears to violate these principles. At the same time it can be said that Palestinian terrorists violate these principles when they bomb Israeli civilians. It would be a mistake, however, to equally condemn both sides. The degree of violence and power is clearly unequal. Israel has occupied the West Bank and Gaza since 1967. The establishment of settlements there violate the principle that military occupation should be temporary and that civilians should not be displaced. It is the settlements that make a political solution impossible. In order to maintain the settlements, Palestinian territory has to be fractured into a myriad of little enclaves that have no economic or political cohesion.

In response to the kidnapping of one soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, Israel launched an attack on Gaza that clearly holds not only the Hamas led government but the entire population responsible. They bombed the power plant that provides power to most of Gaza, leaving people without electricity and water, which depends on pumps. They have also prevented food and other supplies from getting into Gaza, bombed government offices and taken much of the Palestinian Cabinet prisoner. Israel says that all this is to exert “pressure” on those holding Cpl. Shalit to release him.

It is hard to see this attack as anything other than collective punishment on the entire civilian population and the holding of government officials as hostages, which are exactly the type of war crimes that the Nuremberg Trials and the Geneva Conventions condemned when they were practiced by the Nazis. Of course, Shalit was kidnapped in response to Israeli attacks which were responses to attacks by Palestinian groups.... It seems ironic that the Israeli government seems to be more outraged by the one action that had a military, rather than a civilian target and thus did not violate the “rules of war”.

The current crisis represents an escalation in their tactics but is not essentially different than the policy they have been pursuing in the Palestinian territories in general. Free travel between different parts of the West Bank is not allowed. Periodic blockades and numerous check points give the military complete control over whether people can go to work or school. and whether food an other necessities of life are available. People’s homes are demolished if the military thinks that somebody there, or a relative of somebody there is a “terrorist”. There is no way to challenge such a decision.

The US is quick to condemn Hamas for their refusal to recognize Israel but slow to condemn Israel, who we support with $3 billion in aid a year, for their part in perpetuating the violence and preventing a solution. It will do no good for Hamas to change their stance if the reality of life for Palestinians does not improve. What does the Israeli government think is going to happen if they continue to pursue this course? Palestinians who see no prospect of a settlement they can live with turned to Hamas in the last election. Desperation leads to desperate measures. I can only see a continuation of the cycle of violence in which the unequal power will lead to unequal suffering but suffering nonetheless on both sides. It will be impossible to prevent terrorists from attacking and Israel will never be able to live in peace. Likewise anti-American feeling will continue to increase because of our support for these brutal Israeli policies, with tragic consequences.

The only solution is for Israel to adhere to the Geneva Conventions and move towards an end to the occupation. Palestinians will have no reason to seek peace unless they see a prospect for a return to normal life and self determination. Israel must commit to a policy of peace, justice and self-determination and the US must adopt a policy of “tough love” to get them on track and keep them on track.

Close Guantanamo?

When three prisoners at Guantanamo Bay committed suicide last week it focused attention once again on this top secret prison. The US military has identified the three men as Ali Abdullah Ahmed of Yemen, and Saudis Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi al-Utaybi and Yassar Talal al-Zahrani. Since 2002 the United States has used Guantanamo to hold prisoners in the “war on terror” because it exists in a kind of a legal limbo that, according to the Administration, puts it outside of any legal oversight.

The US established the Guantanamo Bay base during the Spanish American war over 100 years ago. That war “liberated” Cuba from Spanish colonial rule, while firmly establishing an American presence, including extended periods of American military occupation and the establishment of a dictatorship friendly to American business interests. The original lease for the Guantanamo base was signed in 1903 under terms established by the Platt Amendment, which set the terms for ending the US military occupation. In 1934, the lease was rewritten with the provision that it could not be changed or canceled without the agreement of both the US and Cuban governments, or until the US abandoned the base. In other words, the US can maintain a base in Cuba, even against the wishes of the Cuban government and since the revolution in 1959, this has been the situation. Cuba contests the legality of the lease, refuses to cash the checks the US dutifully sends it, and demands that the US leave but recognizes that they don’t have the ability to force the question.

The Bush Administration finds this situation very convenient. They claim that because Guantanamo is outside the US, that US laws and the Constitution do not apply there and since Cuba does not recognize the American presence, they have no oversight either. This is quite different than US military bases elsewhere in the world, which are subject to agreements with the host countries that have to be periodically renewed. This gives them some leverage. Furthermore, the Administration claims that the Geneva Conventions and the international laws of war do not apply because the prisoners aren’t technically soldiers in an established army. Rather they are relegated to the status of “enemy combatants” who have neither the rights accorded to Prisoners of War, or to civilians. Logically this position doesn’t make much sense. Either we are fighting a war, or we aren’t. If we are fighting a war, then our enemies must be recognized as fighting a war as well, and should be treated as enemy soldiers under international and military law, and as POWs when they are captured. If we aren’t, then prisoners should be brought to trial under the criminal justice system.

The “Enemy Combatant” label is a convenient fiction that is maintained to allow the government carte blanche in their treatment of these prisoners. They want to be able to hold people indefinitely with no standards of treatment and no accountability to anybody. Guantanamo is actually the most public of these prisons. Others exist in Afghanistan and Iraq, including Bagram Airbase and Abu Graihb. Add to those the CIA prisons reported to have been established in secret locations around the world. Apparently the Eastern European locations were closed after their cover was blown. And in a process known as rendition, prisoners are secretly transported to other countries, apparently so they can be tortured without any restrictions that might appl under American custody.

Although they don’t like the word, torture is central to what goes on in all of these secret prisons. Interrogation techniques employ a sophisticated combination of physical and psychological techniques to break them down. The military claims that it is necessary to obtain information. The classic argument is that torture would be justified in order to prevent an imminent terrorist attack. I assume that if that ever happened it would have been trumpeted as a major victory. In fact, studies have shown that torture is remarkably ineffective. Prisoners will either resist despite extreme pain or break down and say anything they think the torturer wants to hear, neither of which is useful. Psychological methods, such as isolation, sensory deprivation and humiliation aimed at breaking down personal identity and resistance have been developed by the CIA and are being put to widespread use now.

The continuing resistance of prisoners at Guantanamo calls these techniques into question, even on the grounds of effectiveness, to say nothing of morality or the effects on world opinion of America or the treatment of Americans who are held as prisoners or hostages.

The suicides are a matter of great concern to the military, not out of concern for the prisoners, but because of the effect on public opinion. Amazingly the military considers itself the victim here. This is made clear by the statement of Navy Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris, commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, who said, "I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetric warfare aimed at us here at Guantanamo, We have men here who are committed jihadists. They are dangerous men and they will do anything they can to advance their cause." (From the Department of Defense defenselink website story Three Guantanamo Bay Detainees Die of Apparent Suicide.)

There is plenty in the conditions of their confinement that could lead to suicide as the only way out. They are at the complete mercy of their captors with no prospect of ever being released, looking forward to the rest of their lives spent under conditions of physical and psychological abuse. Their only avenue of protest has been hunger strikes, which have been combatted by tying the prisoners down and forcing feeding tubes down their throat. It may also be true that the suicides are a last ditch attempt to sacrifice a hopeless existence on the chance that it will attract enough attention to improve conditions for their fellow prisoners.

The new film, “The Road to Guantanamo” documents these conditions, while telling the story of three British Muslims captured in Afghanistan and held for two years at Guantanamo before being released with no formal accusations or charges ever being leveled.

Clearly the veil of secrecy is ever so slowly being pulled aside, leading to pressure to close the prison. At the same time, the publicity and court decisions giving a little bit of access to lawyers and requiring some legal process for prisoners are a hindrance to the policy of total isolation that the Administration thinks is necessary both for successful interrogations and to minimize political criticism. It might actually serve their purposes better to close Guantanamo and use other secret prisons, even more removed from public view instead.