In the right-center we had incumbent President Jimmy Carter, derided as a man of peace, el wimpo.

True his top foreign policy man was an unreconstructed Polish cold war warrior burning to bringing the  Soviet Union to its knees. True, the two  had launched the largest covert operation in the CIA’s history — $3.5 billion – against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

True he was financing Argentinian torturers to impart their skills to the Nicaraguan contras.

True, his out-year military budgets actually outstripped those of his opponent.

On the far right was Ronald Reagan, his candidacy crowning almost a decade’s worth of propaganda for the New Cold War from outfits such as Paul Nitze’s Committee on the Present Danger. Nitze used to go on speaking tours with a rack of missiles. On one side were America’s trim little ICBMs, on the other, their mighty, albeit technically somewhat backward Soviet  counterparts.

The Reaganites derided all treaties as traps, depicting Uncle Sam as, in military terms, down to his underwear, with a peashooter in his holster. Every Pentagon wish received a cordial welcome.

Here we are today. On our center-right , Obama, derided as a man of peace, el wimpo, though his relations with the Pentagon have been intimate, and he himself ductile to their demands.

True, he’s been waging war on… how many fronts? Five, six, with probably more on a covert, semi-privatized basis.  True, he has given the finger to all positive developments in Latin America, presided over a bloody coup in Central America.

True, he has been Israel’s serf, and has thumped the drum against China and Russia.

True, his secretary of state has been a fountain of bellicose bullyswaggering.

And on the far right here’s Romney. The Pentagon auctioneers await the next bid. Up goes Romney’s paddle.

Make your pitch, shout down the Joint Chiefs. Romney reads them extracts from his latest speech, delivered in response to Obama’s in Chicago at the NATO summit.

“Last year, President Obama signed into law a budget scheme that threatens to saddle the U.S. military with nearly $1 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years. President Obama’s own defense secretary, Leon Panetta, has called cuts of this magnitude ‘devastating’ to our national security. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has plainly said that such a reduction means ‘we would not any longer be a global power.’..

“We have a military inventory composed of weapons designed 40 to 50 years ago. The average age of our tanker aircraft is 47 years, of strategic bombers 34 years. Our Air Force, which had 82 fighter squadrons at the end of the Cold War, has been reduced to 39 today. The U.S. Navy, at 285 ships, is at levels not seen since 1916. Should our air, naval and ground forces continue to age and shrink, it will place the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies at risk.

“An alliance not undergirded by military strength and U.S. leadership may soon become an alliance in name only.

“In 2009, the Obama administration stunned two NATO allies — Poland and the Czech Republic — with a surprise withdrawal from an agreement to station missile defense sites on their territories, an agreement they signed in the face of Russian threats. Two of our most valuable partners were treated shabbily, the cause of missile defense was set back, and the Russians achieved a prime security objective without having to make meaningful concessions in return. And President Obama recently promised Russian leaders even more ‘flexibility’ on missile defense if they give him ‘space’ before his ‘last election.’

“At this moment of both opportunities and perils — an Iranian regime with nuclear ambitions, an unpredictable North Korea, a revanchist Russia, a China spending furiously on its own military, to name but a few of the major challenges looming before us — the NATO alliance must retain the capacity to act.”

So the bidding war will go, and who would wager that the Pentagon chiefs won’t deem Romney the safer bet?

Ironically, the Law of the Sea is once again up for ratification by the US, a lonely hold-out, though the Treaty has been part of international law for many years. One of the big guns in the first Reagan campaign was this same law. Starting in the mid 1970s William Safire wrote scores of columns against the law then under negotiation, and was still at it in 1994: A specimen from the late 1970s:

“Seven years ago, in a foreign blunder of the Nixon administration, we agreed to a Law of the Sea Conference… The State Department wanted to show the Third World that we wanted them to get rich at little cost to us. The sop that we were planning to give the Third World’s  Cerberus was a division of the minerals of the ocean bottom. Potato-like lumps called ‘nodules’ litter the ocean bed, containing manganese, copper, cobalt. Plenty of nodules for everybody.  The deal we offered was to take half the natural common and turn it into a Third World cartel, leaving only the other half to the entrepreneurs that Locke called ‘all mankind.’”

Only half! You can imagine the sport Reagan  had with that on the campaign rail.

Now the Obama administration is trying to push ratification through again. Fat chance. They already put the vote off till after the election.

The cold war never went away. Romney howls for “anti”-missile encirclement of Russia from Georgia, Poland and the Czech Republic. Jackson-Vanik, passed in 1974, which denies Russia most favored nation status (given the Chinese some time ago) on human rights grounds is still on the books for Russia and has to be over-ridden on a case-by-case waiver process. As with Law of the Sea the Republican ultra-ultras in the Senate are implacably opposed.

A final note on NATO. There were gale-force gusts of bombast in Chicago about the NATO Alliance’s historic role as freedom’s buckler, starting with the defense of Europe, thus perpetuating nearly 70 years of years of humbug. There was never the slightest chance of the Soviet Union and its auxiliaries in the Warsaw Pact rolling west in the prospective onslaught luridly evoked  by Winston Churchill in a speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in March, 1949. Churchill raised the specter of the “Mongol hordes” that had menaced Europe 700 years before, only heading home when the Great Khan died. “They never returned,” rumbled the old faker, “until now.”

Having borne almost the entire burden of crushing Hitler’s armies on the Eastern front and having suffered appalling casualties in so doing, the Soviet Union was in no condition to invade western Europe. This didn’t impede mad Western scenarios of the sort that threat-inflators routinely issued down the decades until the very moment the Soviet Union collapsed.

Driven by Truman’s 1948 arms scare, NATO lumbered into being in 1949, ratifying dominance of US arms procurement for the alliance, internal custodial sentry duty against any slide to the left by one or other of the European allies, establishment of West Germany as an independent state and US control of the nuclear forces deemed necessary to counter non-existent Soviet conventional superiority.

Year upon year nothing dented the endless flow of “threat assessments” powering new weapons systems, “theater nuclear” and “counterforce” doctrines that kept the arms factories running at full tilt and spawned a vast subculture of think-tanks, expert panels and lobbyshops.

Then, suddenly, it was all over. NATO’s formal purpose evaporated. The Soviet Union collapsed. Without delay NATO burgeoned into exactly what its left detractors had always said its essential function had been from the very start, a US-dominated political and military alliance aimed at encircling Russia and acting as enforcer for larger US imperial strategy. NATO’s onslaughts on the former Yugoslavia duly followed.

NATO doesn’t need a new mission. It needs to disappear into the trashcan of history along with the cold war that engendered it.

Tumbril Time!

A  tumbril (n.)   a dung cart used for carrying manure, now associated with the transport of prisoners to the guillotine during the French Revolution.

Domenic Maltempi requests “stand idly by” be brought to revolutionary justice. It’s true that the phrase is often to be found in speeches that also say “all options are on the table.” (Summarily guillotined a while ago.) Prosecutor Fouquier-Tinville made a fine speech pouring ridicule on the absurdity, nay the counter-revolutionary import of the phrase. So off goes stand idly by to the Place de La Revolution. 

And Jerry Fresia seeks to introduce a whole new theme in this series:

Might it be possible to nominate images, surely a means of communication as powerful as words at times, to be  carried off to the guillotine via the tumbril? If so I nominate the arm raised, closed fist image that adorns endless posters and T-shirts. About 40 years ago, back when I was a bit more virile myself, I too proposed that our new group use as its newsletter image, the in-your-face closed fist; what better way to announce to the world that we were brimming with a resolute no-screwing-around militancy. Now the same image makes me want to puke, if for no other reason than it is the absolute bane of creativity, the dreaded formula. While we are at it, why don’t we toss in the other mindless image of revolutionary zealotry, the face of Che Guevara. Any revolutionary organization worth its salt ought to come up with something both provocative and fresh. Militancy is needed. Che Guevara remains a hero. But please, can we move on when it comes to the images we use to present ourselves to the world?

Tempting, but I think not. We should value the strong images we have  — the fist, Che, Robespierre, and use them imaginatively.  Here, words are our business.

Our Latest Newsletter

Did Mitt Romney dodge the draft with his father’s help? Sure he did, even while he was demonstrating at Stanford  in favor of the war. H. Bruce Franklin, who was teaching at Stanford at the time, lays out the unsavory saga. 

Andrew Cockburn gives CounterPunchers a compelling investigation of the rise of automated warfare and of the Drones, their vast costs and constant failures, President Obama’s obsessive enthusiasm for them. A sample of Andrew’s must –read story:

Despite their “folk hero” status with any Americans, drones have turned out to be costly and delicate instruments. Global Hawk, for example, a high altitude, very long-range reconnaissance drone costing over $200 million a copy, is out of service for repairs at least half the time.  Predators manage 20 hours in the air a month before they, too, must go back to the shop. The Air Force has lost at the very least a fifth of its drones to crashes, usually while landing – always a tricky maneuver when using remote control – or because the signal link with controllers half a world away has been interrupted.

Wei Zhang assesses the social and health costs of China’s incredible GDP growth. A sample::

The list of countries that have been more efficient than China in improving life expectancy is quite long, although none have achieved comparable economic growth. For example, in 1980, life expectancy in some countries (including, but not limited to, Albania, Czech Republic, Germany, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal, Slovenia) was higher than that in China, making it theoretically more difficult to improve; but, by 2008, life expectancy in these countries saw either equivalent or greater progress. There are also countries (such as Libya, Nicaragua, Peru, Tunisia, Vietnam) which had a lower life expectancy than China in 1980, but nonetheless reached equal or even higher life expectancy in 2008. 

Three exclusive, exciting investigations. 

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Alexander Cockburn can be reached at alexandercockburn@asis.com

The unofficial results of the presidential elections show that the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Dr. Muhammad Mursi is headed to a runoff with Mubarak’s last Prime Minister and the anti-revolution candidate, Gen. Ahmad Shafiq. They received 24 and 23 percent of the votes, respectively. Meanwhile the two candidates supported by the revolutionary groups, Dr. Abdelmoneim Abol Fotouh and Hamdein Sabahi received 17 and 20 percent respectively, while former foreign minister Amr Moussa was a distant fifth with less than 11 percent.

So what happened and how can one understand these results?

• The revolutionaries were divided: There is no doubt that the failure of the revolutionary groups to unify their ranks and field a single candidate or a presidential ticket has cost them the chance to come out on top in this round and head for a runoff. Combined, both candidates received 37 percent, which would have guaranteed them victory in the first round had they run as president and vice president. But despite many efforts towards that end, both candidates refused to concede. Abol Fotouh argued that the country’s electorate has been favoring a candidate with an Islamist background, and thus he represented that consensus candidate who could bridge the divide between the Islamists and the secularists. Sabahi, on the other hand, argued that the country did not need another Islamist candidate after the results of the parliamentary elections, in which Islamists took 75 percent of the seats. In the last three weeks, Sabahi’s supporters mounted a ferocious campaign against Abol Fotouh, as they could only gain votes at his expense, since they could not have hoped to earn much support from the constituencies of Mursi (Muslim Brotherhood) or Shafiq (anti-revolutionaries fulool or remnants of the former regime). The tactic worked and observers believe that Sabahi may have doubled his numbers in the past few weeks, taking the lion’s share from Abol Fotouh.

• Low turnout: Despite the intense interest and the high stakes, it appears that most Egyptians are tired and simply did not show up. Some revolutionary groups have actually called for a boycott of the elections, arguing that the elections are meaningless without cleansing the state from the fulool or military control. During the parliamentary elections late last year, more than 27 million Egyptians participated. Although there are 51 million registered voters only an estimated 24 million cast their votes this time or about 47 percent as compared to 62 percent during the parliamentary elections.

• The Muslim Brotherhood went their own way: During the revolution all anti-Mubarak groups were united in their demands in ending the corrupt dictatorship. Although the MB was cautious in joining the revolution at the beginning, its subsequent participation proved crucial to the success of the revolution. But shortly thereafter, the MB broke the consensus of the revolutionary groups and went their own way, relying on their enormous ability to mobilize and organize. The tacit understanding with SCAF during most of last year – by abandoning at crucial times the demands of the revolutionary groups – created a deep mistrust between both parties. When the MB broke its pledge and decided to field a candidate, it relied primarily on its ability to mobilize its supporters. None of the revolutionary groups of Tahrir Square gave it their support. On the ground many of the MB supporters attacked Abol Fotouh, further alienating many Egyptian voters. The net effect was the demoralization of the supporters of the revolution. In the end the MB received this time less than 6 million votes as compared to more than 10 million votes during the parliamentary elections six months ago.

• The military’s candidate and the deep security state:  Many analysts debated whether SCAF had its own candidate in this race. Although it declared that it did not favor a particular candidate, SCAF allowed the resources of the state to be utilized for Shafiq’s benefit. With the support of the state bureaucracy the security apparatus (which was rebuilt using its old elements and kept its connections with local officials who were never dismissed) mobilized their resources for the benefit of their preferred candidate. Many reports have surfaced in the Egyptian media that showed how army recruits, police officers, and state employees were instructed by their superiors to vote for Shafiq or, in the case of active military personnel – who are barred from voting – to have their families vote for him. The government gave all state employees Thursday off so that they could cast their vote for their preferred candidate.

In addition, since December the security and economic situation worsened deliberately by the SCAF-appointed government making ordinary Egyptians feel that the lack of security and continuing economic hardships were the direct consequences of the revolution. Even when they had voted for a new parliament, their conditions became worse not better. This allowed Shafiq to argue that once elected, he could bring security within 24 hours and that his law and order nature would bring economic prosperity.

Moreover, the elections commission, which re-instated Shafiq after he was banned from running by parliament, did not enforce its own laws regarding campaign financing. The elections commission set a ceiling of 10 million pounds from each presidential campaign. But it was clear that Shafiq’s campaign was spending hundreds of millions without any accountability. For instance, it was revealed that the cost of his billboards alone was 22 million pounds. He ran dozens of TV ads at the cost of 200,000 pounds each. The use of enormous amounts of money in politics in Egypt is not new. But this time its was taken to new heights without any accountability.

• The regrouping of the fullol: The machinery of Mubarak’s banned National Democratic Party (NDP) and corrupt businessmen was in full force once Shafiq declared his candidacy. Insiders report that the wife of former party director of organization, billionaire Ahmad Ezz (who supervised the 2010 elections fraud and is currently serving ten years for financial and political corruption with other charges pending) has paid 100 million pounds to local officials in the delta region to support Shafiq. In the heart of the delta where substantial number of poor Egyptian peasants live, local officials and mayors control every aspect of their lives. Many people have reported that these officials were paid millions to turn these peasants and their families to vote for Shafiq. In one telling moment, an Al-Jazeera correspondent asked a peasant why he voted for Shafiq and he replied that “I, along with the whole village were instructed to vote for Shafiq to bring security and prosperity.” He further said that “ I brought my family to vote for him as well.” In the five provinces in the heart of the delta, Shafiq received 2.5 million votes, or about 50 percent of his total support. By contrast, frontrunner Mursi received 1.7 million votes while Sabahi and Abol Fotouh received 1.3 million and 1 million votes, respectively. The fulool hope that by electing Shafiq he will eventually pardon all the corrupt former regime figures currently serving long sentences, including Mubarak and his sons if they are convicted. Others hope to regain the status they lost when the former regime was toppled.

• The role of the Sufis:  Since the rise of the salafis during the parliamentary elections, a deep rift over theological beliefs and religious practices has taken place between the salafis and Sufi groups. There are about 12 million Egyptians who claim to belong to these Sufi traditions, especially in the Nile Delta region. The chiefs of these groups, whose livelihood depends on religious tourism, felt threatened by the rhetoric of the salafis who promised to end their “paganistic” ways. Shafiq exploited this rift and declared that he was also a Sufi and pledged to preserve their traditions. In return the Sufi chiefs declared their allegiance to him.

• The Christian vote: Although many Coptic Christians joined the revolution in toppling Mubarak, many of the Church and lay leaders have raised concerns about the rise of the Islamic groups. For many weeks, their leaders declared that they would support a “civil” candidate hinting that it would be Amr Moussa. However, last week several major figures declared that the overwhelming majority of Copts would vote for Shafiq because “he was the only one capable of stopping the rise of the Islamists” as one Christian leader declared. On Election Day, exit polls and observers confirmed that 70-80 percent of the Christian vote went to Shafiq. After the elections the acting head of the Coptic Church told al-Shrouk newspaper that he was aware of these reports and that he has suspended two senior officials in the Church pending an investigation.

So what’s next?

It is not clear how the eliminated revolutionary leaders will react to the election results. Although there is no evidence of direct frauds or vote rigging, clearly the role of the state’s authoritarian structures in influencing the outcome, as well as to the use of money to corrupt the political will of Egyptians cannot be denied. But no matter how they respond to the allegations, the elections commission will push ahead with next month’s runoff between Mursi and Shafiq. With the exception of the MB supporters, most people who support the revolution dread the day where they will be faced with the choice between the MB candidate and the fulool candidate.

But no matter what, Shafiq should never be allowed to win. In return for the support of Abol Fotouh and Sabahi supporters, the MB should offer a genuine gesture to the candidates and call for the unity of all the supporters of the revolution. But such offers must be more than empty rhetoric and need to contain meaningful acts of inclusiveness and magnanimity including offering them senior positions such as vice president or prime minister. If the MB thinks that it can win the presidency without the support of the revolutionary groups, it would be totally mistaken. Not only will the majority of Moussa’s supporters end up going to Shafiq, but now that the fulool have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations, they will double their efforts and employ more of their old tricks to guarantee a win, with the full backing of the military and state bureaucracy.

Only through regaining the determination of purpose and unity of action of those early days of the unfinished revolution can it remain alive. The MB cannot afford to botch this opportunity yet again. The alternative would likely be another revolution to replace the one that was sadly aborted.

Esam Al-Amin can be contacted at alamin1919@gmail.com

Like every year, this aroused much fury. Tel Aviv University allowed Arab students to hold a meeting, which was attacked by ultra-right Jewish students. Haifa University forbade the meeting altogether. Some years ago the Knesset debated a “Naqba Law” that would have sent commemorators to prison for three years. This was later moderated to the withdrawal of government funds from institutions that mention the Naqba.

The Only Democracy in the Middle East may well be the only democracy in the world that forbids its citizens to remember a historical event. Forgetting is a national duty.

Trouble is, it’s hard to forget the history of the “Palestinian issue”, because it dominates our life. 65 years after the foundation of Israel, half the news in our media concern this one issue, directly or indirectly.

Just now, the South African government has decreed that all products of the West Bank settlements sold there must be clearly marked. This measure, already in force in Europe, was roundly condemned by our Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, as “racist” (looks who’s talking!).  However, it joins a boycott initiated 15 years ago by my Israeli friends and me.

The new government coalition has declared that it will renew negotiations with the Palestinians (everybody knows that this is a hollow promise). A wave of murders and rapes is being attributed to Arabs (and African asylum seekers). All presidential candidates in Egypt promise to take up the fight for the Palestinians. Senior Israeli army officers have disclosed that 3500 Syrian and Iranian missiles, as well as tens of thousands in Hizbollah’s South Lebanon, are ready to be launched against us because of Palestine. And so on, a daily list.

115 years after the foundation of the Zionist movement, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dominates our news.

THE FOUNDING FATHERS of Zionism adopted the slogan “a land without a people for a people without a land” (coined much earlier by a British Christian Zionist). They believed the Promised Land to be empty. They knew, of course, that there were some people in the country, but the Zionists were Europeans, and for Europeans at the end of the 19^th century, the heyday of imperialism and colonialism, colored people – brown, black, yellow, red or whatever – did not count as people.

When Theodor Herzl put forward the idea of a Jewish State, he was not thinking about Palestine but about an area in Argentina. He intended to empty this area of all its native population – but only after they had killed all the snakes and dangerous beasts.

In his book “Der Judenstaat” there is no mention of Arabs – and not by accident.  When Herzl wrote it, he was not yet thinking about this country. The country appears in the book only in a tiny chapter added at the last moment, titled “Palestine or Argentina?”

Therefore Herzl did not speak about evicting the Palestinian population. This would have been impossible anyway, since Herzl was asking the Ottoman sultan for a charter for Palestine. The Sultan was a Caliph, the spiritual head of all the world’s Muslims. Herzl was too cautious to bring this subject up.

This explains the otherwise curious fact: the Zionist movement has never given a clear answer to its most basic question: how to create a Jewish state in a country inhabited by another people. This question has remained unresolved to this very day.

But only seemingly. Hidden somewhere underneath it all, on the fringes of the collective consciousness, Zionism always had an answer. It is so self-evident, that there was no need to think about it. Only few had the courage to express it openly. It is imprinted on the “genetic code” of the Zionist movement, so to speak, and its daughter, the State of Israel.

This code says: a Jewish State in all the Land of Israel. And therefore: total opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state – at any time, anywhere in the country, at all costs.

WHEN A strategist plans a war, he first of all defines its aim. That is the Main Effort. Every other effort must be considered accordingly. If it supports the main effort, it is acceptable. If it hurts the main effort, it must be rejected.

The Main Effort of the Zionist/Israeli movement is to achieve a Jewish State in all of Eretz Israel – the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. In other words: the prevention of an Arab Palestinian state.

When one grasps this, all the events of the last 115 years make sense. All the twists and turns, all the seeming contradictions and deviations, all the curious-looking decisions make perfect sense.

In a bird’s eye view, the Zionist-Israeli policy looks like a river striving towards the sea. When it meets an obstacle, it goes around it. The path deviates to the right and to the left, sometimes even going backwards. But it perseveres with a wondrous determination towards its goal.

The guiding principle was to accept every compromise that gives us what we can get at any stage, but never let the final aim out of our sight.

This policy allows us to compromise about everything, except one: an Arab Palestinian state that would confirm the existence of an Arab Palestinian people.

All Israeli governments have fought this idea with all available means. In this respect there was no difference between David Ben-Gurion, who had a secret agreement with King Abdullah of Jordan to obstruct the setting up of the Palestinian state decreed by the UN General Assembly’s 1947 resolution, and Menachem Begin, who made a separate peace with Anwar Sadat in order to get Egypt out of the Israeli-Palestinian war. Not to mention Golda Meir’s famous dictum: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people”. Thousands of other decisions by successive Israeli governments have followed the same logic.

The only exception may be the Oslo agreement – which also did not mention a Palestinian state. After signing it, Yitzhak Rabin did not rush forwards to create such a state. Instead, he stopped in his tracks as if stunned by his own audacity. He hesitated, dithered, until the inevitable Zionist counter-attack gathered momentum and put an end to his effort – and his life.

THE PRESENT struggle over the settlements is an integral part of this process. The main aim of the settlers is to make a Palestinian state impossible. All Israeli governments have supported them, openly or covertly. They are, of course, illegal under international law, but many of them are also illegal under Israeli law. These are variously called “illegal”, “unlawful”, “unpermitted” and so forth. Israel’s august Supreme Court has ordered the removal of several of them and seen its rulings ignored by the government.

The settlers assert that not a single settlement has been set up without secret government consent. And indeed, all the “unlawful” settlements have been connected at once to the water and electricity grids, special new roads have been built for them and the army has rushed to defend them – indeed the Israel Defense Forces have long ago become the Settlements Defense Forces. Lawyers and shysters galore have been employed to expropriate huge tracts of Palestinian land. One famous woman lawyer discovered a forgotten Ottoman law which says that if you shout from the edge of a village, all the land where the shout cannot be heard belongs to the Sultan. Since the Israeli government is the heir of the Jordanian government, which was the heir of the Sultan, this land belongs to the Israeli government, which turns it over to the settlers. (This is not a joke!)

While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems in abeyance and “nothing happens”, it is really going on with full force in the only battlefield that matters: the settlement enterprise. Everything else is marginal, like the awesome prospect of an Israeli attack on Iran. As I have been saying all along: that will never happen. It is a part of the effort to divert attention from the Two-State Solution, the only peaceful solution there is.

WHERE IS the negation of the Palestinian state leading to?

Logically, it can only lead to an apartheid state in the entire country between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. In the long run, that would be untenable, leading to an Arab-majority “bi-national” state, which would be totally unacceptable to almost all Israeli Jews. So what is left?

The only conceivable solution would be transfer of all the Arabs to the other side of the Jordan. In some ultra-right circles, this is openly talked about. The Jordanian monarch is deadly afraid of it.

Population transfer already happened in 1948. It is still a point of debate whether this was done deliberately. In the first part of the war, it was clearly a military necessity (and practiced by both sides). Later on, it became more deliberate. But the main point is that the refugees were not allowed back when the hostilities were over. On the contrary, some villages were emptied and destroyed even later. Everybody acted under the invisible directive of the Main Effort, a direction so deeply ingrained in the collective consciousness, that it did not need any specific order.

But 1948 is long gone. The world has changed. What was tolerated from post-Holocaust brave little Israel would not be tolerated tomorrow from mighty, arrogant Israel. Today It is a pipe-dream – like similar dreams on the other side that Israel would somehow disappear from the map.

This means that ethnic cleansing, the only alternative to the Two-State solution, is impossible. The Main Effort has run into a dead end.
IT HAS often been said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a clash between an unstoppable force and an immovable object. This will dominate our lives and the lives of generations to come.

Unless we do something that looks almost impossible: to change the Main Effort, the historic direction of our state. Substitute for it a new national aim: peace and coexistence, reconciliation between the State of Israel and the State of Palestine.

URI AVNERY is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch’s book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

When Secretary General Ban began his second term in January, he promised to reshuffle some of his senior staff. Pascoe’s replacement is part of this process.

Of the proposed new appointment Sanbar writes, “Designating someone with varied field experience, though controversial, and from a substantially senior post, may mean that more issues could be referred to the Security Council.” The UN Security Council’s Secretariat is handled by the Department of Political Affairs, which would be able to have some sway on its agenda. The post is central to the UN bureaucracy.

News of Feltman’s resignation from the State Department next week simply confirmed all the rumors. Another rumor suggests that the UN will announce the appointment on Monday, May 28.

Is Jeffrey Feltman the best person to run such an influential office in the UN? Why did Sanbar believe that this appointment is “controversial.”

Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, told me that Feltman is “an accomplished and respected American diplomat.” He has been involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran, Lebanon and Syria, and other hot spots. These bring up “inevitably controversial issues,” Telhami continued. “Feltman would have his share of detractors, including in the Middle East,” he said.

But why would Feltman have these “detractors” and how did he come off on the “controversial issues”?

On one issue Feltman is remarkably consistent. When it comes to the Middle East, Feltman has been outspoken about the threats posed by Iran in the region. Whether in Beirut or Manama, he has publically denounced Iranian “interference” outside its own boundaries. At the same time, Feltman has generously offered US assistance to these same regimes. In other words, US interference is quite acceptable, but Iranian interference is utterly unacceptable. This might be adequate behavior for the diplomat of a country, but it is hardly the temperament for a senior UN official. It raises doubts about Feltman’s ability to be even-handed in his deliberations as a steward of the world’s political dilemmas.

Feltman’s intemperate logic was not of the distant past. It was on display in March 2012 at a Lebanese American Organization’s meeting at the Cannon Office Building in Washington, DC (as Franklin Lamb reported on this site this week). At this meeting, the former US Ambassador to Lebanon, instructed the Lebanese people as to what they must do in their next election, “The Lebanese people must join together to tell Hezbollah and its allies that the Lebanese state will no longer be hijacked for an Iranian-Syrian agenda.” The people must “use the 2013 parliamentary elections to defeat the remnants of the Syrian occupation, the pillar of which is Hezbollah.”

Indeed, interference by speeches is not the limit of Feltman’s ambitions. On May 3, 2012, he was back in Beirut, meeting former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, former Finance Minister Mohamad Chatah, Future Movement leader Nader Hariri and others at Hariri’s residence. In the transcript of their meeting (leaked through Al-Akhbar), an older side of US policy making emerges. US Ambassador to Lebanon Maura Connelly is heard saying that the government is “Hezbollah dominated,” to which Feltman says to the Lebanese politicians in the room, “You can bring down the government if Walid [Jumblatt] is with you in the parliament or if Najib [Mikati, the PM] resigns right?” To Siniora, Feltman says, “Would it help if this government is brought down before the elections,” and then he mentions that he is seeing the Prime Minister Najib Mikati later that evening. “This place is very, very weird,” he notes, “weirder than when I left.” This is not a trivial statement. A glance at Feltman’s cables when he was ambassador to Lebanon reveals a fulsome appetite for the weird. The cables betray an obsession with the social lives of the Lebanese elite, their peccadillos and their foibles.

Feltman’s “non-interference” to prevent Iranian “interference” in Lebanon brings to mind another episode in his recent career. When the people’s protest broke out in Bahrain, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent him there at least four, perhaps six, times. He was there on the eve of the Saudi-led invasion into Manama to smash the protests in March 2011. In a visit to Manama on March 3, 2011, just before the crackdown, Feltman praised the King for his “initiatives” and urged him to “include the full spectrum of Bahraini society, without exception.” In the Shia quarters, and amongst the al-Wefaq party activists, this sounded like Feltman was urging the King to take them seriously. In language similar to what he used in Lebanon, Feltman noted that the US wants a “Bahraini process” and urges others “to refrain, as we are, from interference or trying to impose a non-Bahraini solution from outside Bahrain.” The crucial phrase here is as we are, which implies that the US is not intervening in Bahrain. The fact of the 5^th Fleet stationed in Manama and of the close cooperation between the Saudi monarch, the Bahraini King and Feltman’s bosses was to be ignored. “We are not naïve,” Feltman said, pointing across the waters at Iran. They cannot be permitted to intervene, but the US, a “critical partner” of the Kingdom, and the Gulf Arab monarchs, “will support Bahrain.”

When events heated up in Bahrain, Feltman and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen went on a tour of the emirates’ capitals, declaring their unconditional support. The US stands for “universal human rights,” Feltman told the emirs, but of course since “every country is unique” these rights would emerge in their own way. Mullen was at hand to “reassure, discuss and understand what’s going on.” The key word here is reassure.

A clear-eyed assessment comes from Karim Makdisi, who teaches at the American University of Beirut. Makdisi recalls Feltman’s role as Ambassador in the area, where he made himself an extremely divisive figure. Feltman pushed for UN Resolution 1559 from 2004, to disarm the Lebanese resistance, he supported the Israeli invasion in 2006, and he provided assistance to the March 14 political party against Hezbollah. In other words, Feltman actively took sides in a divided political landscape. Feltman’s appointment “would be a disaster and send exactly the wrong signal for the UN” to the region. Having recognized its weakness, the US knows that it will be the UN that takes the lead in Syria and elsewhere for the foreseeable future. Makdisi believes that in “anticipating a larger role for the UN,” the US wishes Feltman to be well-placed to “ensure that US interests are maintained as much as possible.” Whatever credibility remains with the UN will whittle in the region with this appointment.

It is likely that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon picked Feltman for an unearned reputation. He is known around the Beltway for his work on the Arab Spring. But in the totality of the Arab world Feltman will not be seen as an open-minded professional. He has already thrown his hat into the camp of the Saudis and their satellites (the Gulf Arabs and the Hariri clan of Lebanon). This will limit Feltman’s ability to move an agenda in the region, least of all on the Arab-Israeli conflict where sober diplomacy is necessary from the UN. When I asked several people who watch the UN’s work in the Arab world carefully about this appointment, most offered me three words, “very bad news” (these words are from Noam Chomsky). Not bad news for the Saudis or the US neoconservatives, but certainly bad for the people of the Arab world, whose Spring had them longing not so much for this kind of venal diplomacy but for honesty and good-will.

Vijay Prashad’s new book, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter , is published by AK Press.

Terrorism charges have long been used for political repression because they are premised on the legitimacy of state violence versus the illegitimacy of non-state violence. But the question of legitimacy was in fair measure the reason why anti-NATO protesters were in Chicago. Member states claim the right, through NATO, to commit political violence at will. The protesters, rightly in my view, counter that (1) the reasons given by NATO for committing violence are lies intended to deceive populations into supporting armed aggression and (2) were the real reasons for NATO violence given they would be deemed illegitimate and therefore the violence itself is illegitimate.

Criticism of Black Bloc tends to center around public relations– the fear the media will focus on property damage to the exclusion of the protesters’ broader message. But the dominant media in the U.S. are corporations that have demonstrated that they will promote a broad corporatist agenda at all costs. The Chicago Police Department and the coordinated state “security” apparatus understand this and they are using terrorism charges as propaganda to try to draw a line between protesters and the growing millions of disenfranchised citizens.

The state knows from experience that when it comes to “terrorism” the dominant corporate media will report what the state tells it, most probably with more sensationalism than the state could hope for. So to those worried that Black Bloc generates bad publicity, the government / media line is all bullshit all of the time anyway. And Black Bloc neither causes this nor will “polite” behavior by protesters produce favorable media treatment, particularly if protests begin to become politically effective.

To the issue of property damage, this is a right wing canard. Were the state and media interested in property damage we have Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Here at home we have millions of empty houses and destroyed neighborhoods thanks to specific, actionable crimes committed by specific banks and bankers that the government is protecting. Then there is the world-threatening environmental damage produced by specific corporate actors that are also being protected by the government. So to Black Bloc critics worried about property damage, ending state violence by asking politely that the state stop committing it runs into the paradox that the state is using political violence to crack open the heads of the protesters who are politely asking that the state stop committing political violence.

State violence deemed illegitimate calls into question the very premise of terror charges—if state violence is not in all circumstances legitimate then how can non-state violence to end illegitimate state violence in all circumstances be illegitimate? The states’ public position, articulated by recent presidents, is that protesters have every right to peacefully protest the use of illegitimate violence by the state. But as a purveyor of illegitimate violence, what right does the state retain to claim that legitimacy distinguishes state from non-state violence? The state is either forced into the profoundly undemocratic position that its legitimacy is self-generated, and therefore not a function of the consent of the people, or that its legitimacy does derive from the consent of the people and therefore when that consent is withdrawn, so is the states’ legitimacy.

The issue of consent, or rather its absence, gets to the very heart of the protesters’ criticism of NATO. If the U.S. state, under the guise of NATO, the ‘coalition of the willing,” or any other umbrella group, actively deceives the public to gain support for acts of political violence, then in what sense can consent be said to have been given? And if consent hasn’t been given, in what sense is the state violence legitimate? Finally, if state violence isn’t legitimate, under its own legal premises, neither then are terrorism charges.

So on to Black Bloc: the anarchists’ inclination toward radical democracy has resonance across the social / political movements that have arisen in recent years. So in the most fundamental sense, there is at this level general agreement amongst us. The difference seems to be one of tactics. Was there a playbook, a guide, to successfully creating social and political change, it would also be in the hands of those who oppose change. No one of us knows where collective political action will take us. My suggestion is that inclusion is better than exclusion, particularly when there is at some level a coincidence of interests.

The state and corporate media will make up any lies they deem necessary to shut effective political opposition down. However, the disenfranchisement that leads to political opposition to the plutocrat-state is factually a product of the plutocrats and their servants in government, and not the protesters. This is to say that the forces of effective propaganda are on the side of the state but the facts of political, economic and social disenfranchisement are with the forces of change. And the facts will ultimately determine if change will come, not the turgid nonsense put out by the corporate media. Property will come and go. As long as Black Bloc is on the side of people, they have a place.

Rob Urie is an artist and political economist in New York

But when the bankers themselves commit their own transgressions — not innocent and unavoidable transgressions like not paying back a loan because you lost your job thanks to the bankers’ recession — but actually breaking the law, the government not only forgives them, it virtually becomes an accomplice in their crimes.

Robo-signing, for example, is a crime. It occurred when bank employees signed thousands of documents, claiming they were accurate, without bothering to verify their claim. Yet no one went to jail.

In a recent New York Times article, Jesse Eisinger pointed out that the JPMorgan scandal has raised an array of questions:

 “What did Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chief executive, and Doug Braunstein, the chief financial officer, know, and when did they know it? Were the bank’s first-quarter earnings accurate? Were top JPMorgan officials misleading when they discussed the chief investment office’s investments? … The first question on everyone’s mind should be whether any existing laws were broken.” (May 17, 2012).

However, Eisinger was quick to point out in relation to the last question: “That it hasn’t been asked shows how little true accountability there has been since the financial crisis. No top-tier banker has gone to prison for the many bank failures, the deceptive sales practices or the misrepresentations of the books.”

The laws for the 1 percent are treated by the government as if they were humble requests — nothing to be seriously enforced if the 1 percent decline to accept. The laws for the 99 percent are brutally enforced, not to mention the prevalent police brutality that occurs without any legal justification.

Back in 2011, Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story, in another New York Times article (July 7, 2011), reported federal prosecutors adopted a gentler code for bankers:

“Federal prosecutors officially adopted new guidelines about charging corporations with crimes — a softer approach that, longtime white-collar lawyers and former federal prosecutors say, helps explain the dearth of criminal cases despite a raft of inquiries into the financial crisis. … The guidelines left open a possibility other than guilty or not guilty, giving leniency often if companies investigated and reported their own wrongdoing. In return, the government could enter into agreements to delay or cancel the prosecution if the companies promised to change their behavior.”

More recently, Gretchen Morgenson has reported that a prominent Wall Street analyst and others suspect that “insider trading can and does occur regularly at many Wall Street firms. In their view it has become institutionalized…. Those in the know can get rich before the rest of us know what happened.” (The New York Times, May 20, 2012).

And this failure of the Securities and Exchange Commission (S.E.C.) to prosecute these cases comes on the heels of its spectacular failure to indict Bernard Madoff, even after being presented with overwhelming evidence of his guilt.

Although the financial industry is the recipient of the bulk of the government mercy, perhaps because it is responsible for the bulk of the crimes, the corporate world in general is a lucrative beneficiary. In the wake of the recent Wal-Mart Mexican bribery scandal, The New York Times (April 27, 2012), reported that, even though bribery of foreign officials is a crime, if past practice is any indication, no one will be prosecuted.

The prominent example of past practice mentioned in the article was Tyson Foods. After listing a series of crimes committed by Tyson executives, the article concluded:

“It’s axiomatic that people, not corporations, commit crimes. So what happened to the Tyson executives involved? Not only did the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission take no action against them, but the executives involved weren’t even named.” (The New York Times, April 27, 2012).

Why is the government so intent on pursuing a double standard when it comes to enforcing the law on the 1 percent and on the rest of us? In part this mundane corruption is due to the cozy relation that has been cultivated between the politicians and the corporate world. If a politician or regulator plays the game and pleases the corporations, they can look forward to a financially rewarding career in the private sector after they leave office. Politicians, for example, routinely become lobbyists.

The corruption is also due to this fact: “At least two-thirds of the U.S. senators drafting new financial regulations hold stock in banks or other companies affected by the legislation, such as Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co., disclosure statements show.” (Bloomberg, June 16, 2010).

But the final explanation is that politicians have acquired the automatic habit of prostrating themselves before those with vast sums of money. And this is one more of the many toxic byproducts of the growing inequality in wealth: a sense of community is increasingly destroyed, along with the moral values that hold it together. We are left with two opposing classes that inhabit two opposing worlds, and their clash is inevitable.

Ann Robertson is a Lecturer at San Francisco State University and a member of the California Faculty Association.

Bill Leumer is a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 853 (ret.). Both are writers for Workers Action and may be reached at sanfrancisco@workerscompass.org.

According to Forbes 2011 survey of billionaires, they hit all-time new records for total wealth and numbers  (the total count of billionaires is 1,210), thanks to reverse Robin Hood taxation policies that impoverish government coffers, i.e., Federal Tax Receipts, whilst transferring those dollars, via a doctored tax code, into the pockets of tens of thousands of millionaires and billionaires. The total count of what Forbes refers to as High Net Worth Individuals is 871,000 people worldwide worth over $30 million each, implying total wealth of $26-to>$50 trillion; $26 trillion is nearly twice the size of the U.S. economy.

Wealth creation has increasingly become the key measurement of capitalism’s efficacy ever since Adam Smith’s magnum opus An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) aka: The Wealth of Nations, wherein he expounds upon how rational self-interest and competition lead to economic prosperity for society at large, American industry and government have been guided by these free-market principles. For over 200 years, with bumps & lumps along the way, prosperity reigned, and Adam Smith would be smiling. But, for reasons he describes within his own treatise, Adam Smith would be frowning today because of the sorry state of capitalistic nation-states.

Again and again, Smith warned the general public that a true laissez-faire economy could become a conspiracy of business and industry scheming to influence politics and legislation against the best interests of the consuming public.

Smith, the father of economics and the prophet of capitalism is idolized by capitalists the world over; however, he would not recognize today’s democratic capitalism because his greatest concerns about conspiracies scheming to influence politics, undermining his theory, have come to fruition. As a result, capitalism is a failed institution for society at large. Rather, it has morphed into a quasi-totalitarian plutocratic nation-state that resides within a hollow shell of democracy.

Smith’s economic principles depend upon freedom of markets translating into prosperity for “society at large”. His is a broad view of economic consequences. However, economic results, especially over the past three decades, have increasingly narrowed, funneling riches into fewer hands and penalizing society at large, i.e., the broad middle/working classes, accomplished by the political Right’s adoption of neoliberal principles, and these principles have largely been adopted by both political parties. Therefore, both Democrats and Republicans are at fault for the disastrous state of capitalistic democracy and the subsequent evolution into a quasi-totalitarian state ruled by an elite plutocracy.

How did this happen?

Ever since President Reagan and PM Thatcher, in the 1980s, blessed the policies of: (1) deregulation, particularly financial deregulation, (2) privatization, (3) minimalist government, and (4) diminishment of unions, the world of capitalism has spun out of control and into the hands of neoliberal theory & practice, embracing, and enlarging upon Reagan’s and Thatcher’s policies to the point of “sky-is-the-limit” engineering of legislation and policy in favor of only the rich, protected by an increasingly authoritarian state.

Coincidentally, in the mid 1980s, America’s finance, insurance, real estate (FIRE) sector of the economy overtook manufacturing as the major contributing sector to U.S. Gross Domestic Product. Today, FIRE is twice as large as manufacturing.  The upshot is financial interests, as the predominate sector of the economy and working hand-in-glove with neoliberal themes, mold U.S. legislation in their favor.

Additionally, in the eighties, the most significant tax legislation in generations occurred with the Tax Reform Act of 1986, removing numerous tax loopholes and lowering taxes across the board, a reform that was broadly embraced by America. Since then, over 15,000 changes have legislated a Reverse Robin Hood tax code crowned by George W’s tax cuts, designed like a subprime mortgage, i.e., designed to make people see certain good things and not recognize the fine print where the devil is in the details, worth vast amounts to the wealthy but worth very little to everybody else… these changes in estate taxes, top tax rates, capital gains, and dividends, further enrich the wealthy beyond imagination!

As explained by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson in Winner-Take-All-Politics, Simon & Schuster, 2010, “Step by step and debate by debate, our public officials have rewritten the rules of the economy in ways that favor the few at the expense of the many.”  By gradually making changes over the past 30 years, and supercharged by ‘W’, the rich have been put on wealth-creation testosterones like never before, laying the groundwork for just six members of the Walton family, whose patriarch founded Wal-Mart, to have as much wealth as the bottom 30 percent of the entire U.S. population.

Today, the United States is controlled by a small cadre of super wealthy families, spearheaded by innocuous-sounding tax-free organizations like Americans for Tax Reform, founded in 1985, headed by America’s most powerful conservative voice, Grover Norquist. The entire Republican Party pays homage to Norquist, and he, in turn, takes his marching orders from the wealthy families who operate behind the curtain, the Wizards of Oz of America’s quasi-totalitarian state.

According to Chris Hedges, Truthdig, March 26, 2012, “Totalitarian systems always begin by rewriting the law… The defense of freedom and truth becomes a crime… Citizens are colonized. And it is always done in the name of national security.”

Last year President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which act negates the writ of habeas corpus, the most powerful cornerstone of civil rights since the Magna Carta. Every English-speaking jurist since the 12^th century must have turned over in the grave. Subsequently, May 2012, U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest overruled the domestic military detention provisions of the act, an act that was roundly supported by Democrats and Republicans. This is a clear, and extremely troubling, clarion call for how far off course democracy has strayed.

Praise the likes of Chris Hedges as an offset to our spineless press corps and weak-kneed politicians, who, on a daily basis, supplicate for morsels of Newspeak at the White House Briefing Room.  Unfortunately, America’s only defense against a surge towards complete totalitarian control by the plutocrats, the Democratic Party, has proven helplessly weak, and seemingly, frightened by its own shadow, e.g., the democrats completely blew it even when they had control of the presidency and the Congress.

The very fact that Hitlerian enactments like the National Defense Authorization Act are legislated absent out-and-out sweeping objections by the national news, and pass with strong bipartisan support, is clear evidence the country is numb to the threat of totalitarian impulses. A couple hundred years ago, this inane act would have been cause célèbre for revolution.

Throughout history, access to a proper understanding of the state of affaires, when tainted, has always worked in favor of mass revolutions against the prevailing order. The French Revolution, for example, is indebted to Claude Fauchet’s weekly addresses to crowds of 5,000-8,000 people at the Palais Royal, lecturing on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 1762 work, The Social Contract with follow up discussions about a more equitable distribution of wealth. The American Revolution is likewise indebted to pamphleteers like Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, and Patrick Henry, today’s heroes but yesteryears’ street activists.

However, it is improbable that Adams, Henry, and Paine could operate in the same fashion today as they did 200 years ago. The USA Patriot Act would likely stop them dead in their tracks. This Act is riddled with nebulous provisions that leave the doors wide open for the government to take whatever action it deems necessary, depending upon the subjectivity of the enforcer(s).

More than likely, the three Founding Fathers would be classified as terrorists and thrown in jail. Adams’ “Committees of Correspondence,” which served as a shadow government opposed to the British, disseminated seditious information.  Henry was one of the most outspoken exponents of revolution in defense of historic rights. Paine’s Common Sense pamphlets preached revolution and independence. These men, revered as America’s Founding Fathers, prove the adage: “timing is everything.”

Those Founding Fathers, without a doubt, today would register as rapidly blinking lights within the National Security Agency’s (NSA) Utah Data Center, scheduled to open in 2013, which is a heavily fortified $2 billion project of immense secrecy. Its purpose will be to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications. This is finally the completion of the infamous “total information awareness” program created by George W’s henchmen but blocked by Congress in 2003.

The NSA data center will store and analyze private emails, phone calls, Google searches, parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, etc. Plus, it’s The Big Enchilada of spying; the NSA data center is a code-breaker, able to de-encrypt financial information, stock transactions, business deals, diplomatic secrets, legal documents, and any transmission that is encrypted. This is Big Brother come to life. The old insider NSA saying, “Never Say Anything,” is now more apropos than ever before. Most likely, this will put many of world’s terrorists in unemployment lines, but what about average citizens? How do they protect themselves in a hollowed democracy?

Christopher Hedges (Democracy Now interview May 17, 2012 by Amy Goodman) believes taking to the streets and revolutions are inevitable, but as he says, the Stamp Act took place in 1765, ten years before the American Revolutionary War (1775-83.) In other words, revolutions take a long time to develop; however, that was then. Today, revolutions can happen overnight, witness the Arab Spring… spontaneous combustion is in vogue!

Revolution, or not, there is good news as a result of the 2008-09 worldwide financial meltdown. This scrape with Armageddon has focused the attention of the world on the cozy relationship of Wealth, Wall Street, the Fed, Congress, and the Presidency. Collaterally, it has focused attention on inequities and the rise of plutocracy, including neoliberal policies, e.g. austerity, as practiced by the EU and IMF and World Bank, resulting in hundreds of thousands of people in capitals around the world openly demonstrating and sloganeering against Austerity, Big Banks, Wall Street, and the Wealthy.

Capitalism is at war, being fought in the streets.  The massive demonstrations around the world the past couple of years are not for naught. When tens/hundreds of thousands of citizens take to the streets, as in Madrid, Paris, Athens, Manhattan, Hadramout, Moscow, Montreal, Santiago, and London… over time, things happen! People do not stand in the cold, in the rain, in the harsh elements for the fun of it… out of the blue, untoward things happen very unexpectedly!

Thus, capitalism’s bankrupt failure to provide for its citizens at large is on display for the world to see, and this failure is, in large measure, caused by the misallocation of ‘The Wealth of Nations’, leaving ‘The Poverty of Nations’ in its wake.

Whether the nuts and bolts of effective totalitarian control by plutocrats can effectively deal with a degenerating world that is increasingly split into two distinct camps, the rich and the working poor, remains to be seen. Capitalism is not functioning as an institution of socio-economic order for society at large. No, it is failing on all fronts other than with the highest order, the First Estate.

What a strange paradox: Billionaires/millionaires set new all-time records while their capitalist nation-states suffer record debts amidst austerity measures for the middle and working classes.

Is this the Wealth of Nations?

Robert Hunziker earned an MA in economic history at DePaul University. He lives in Los Angeles.

At his Havana trial, Gross heard Cuban authorities present his trip reports in which he revealed how he supplied a pre-selected group of mostly Jewish Cubans with sophisticated and illegal technology.

Gross smuggled the parts into Cuba “piece by piece, in backpacks and carry-on bags.” These included “laptops, smartphones, hard drives and networking equipment,” wrote Desmond Butler. “The most sensitive item, according to official trip reports, was… a specialized mobile phone chip that experts say is often used by the Pentagon and the CIA to make satellite signals virtually impossible to track.”

With Gross’ sophisticated SIM card the group could also defuse signal tracking. His secrecy was not intended to keep Cuban officials from learning Jewish matzo ball recipes.

The U.S. Agency for International Development funded the operation as part of its “democracy promotion” plan “to provide economic, development and humanitarian assistance around the world in support of U.S. foreign policy goals. Gross, however, identified himself as a member of a Jewish humanitarian group, not a representative of the U.S. government.”

On May 11, 2012, some three months after Butler’s article appeared, State Department Press Briefing officer Victoria Nuland fielded a question.

“Yesterday, Josefina Vidal, a Cuban official …said [on CNN] that they’ve conveyed some kind of offer to the U.S. Government on the release of Alan Gross.  Is there any possibility at all of negotiation on that front?

NULAND: “Go back to an interview Secretary Clinton gave to CNN….  There is no equivalence between …convicted spies — [in the 1990s, Cuban agents infiltrated exile terrorist groups in Miami to stop their terrorism in Cuba. The agents fed their information via Havana to the FBI who after years of using their data arrested them. In 2001, a jury convicted and a judge sentenced them to draconian terms] — in the United States, and… an assistance worker who should never have been locked up in the first place.”

Did she not read Butler’s piece?

“So we are not contemplating any release of the Cuban Five, and we are not contemplating any trade.  The continuing imprisonment of Alan Gross is deplorable, it is wrong, and it’s an affront to human decency.  And the Cuban Government needs to do the right thing.”

QUESTION: “Why is it okay to talk about trading with the Taliban but not with the Cubans for a U.S. person that’s been in jail and is in poor health?”

MS. NULAND: “There’s no equivalency in these situations, and the Cuban Government knows that.  This is a matter of a sitting government [the Taliban governed Afghanistan before US troops invaded in 2001] having locked up an assistance worker on no basis whatsoever. …I mean, our view is he did nothing wrong.”

Ignoring facts in Butler’s AP story. the State Department insists Gross “was distributing laptops and standard computer equipment to help the Jewish community access the Internet.”

In fact, however, as La Alborada reported, Gross was establishing an infrastructure for an encrypted satellite-communications system to spread unrest in Cuba and permit US supervisors to build democracy. “Gross as its expert operator, was only a cover-up based on Gross’ being Jewish and an active supporter, in the US, of B’nai B’rith, presentable as a kind of Jewish Santa Claus for Internet-deprived Cubans of his religion.”

Cuba did not arrest Gross for “trying to help fellow Jews share religious and cultural information; he is in jail for being an agent of a foreign country in a program intended to destabilize …the government of Cuba.”

Why do we have a press if government officials don’t read or refer to it? Even reporters ignore it. Wolf Blitzer either faked ignorance or was uninformed when he interviewed Hilary Clinton and Alan Gross.

But Desmond Butler read Gross’ trip reports as did “USAID officials [who] received regular briefings on his progress, according to DAI spokesman Steven O’Connor.”

Butler shows how, in order “to avoid airport scrutiny, Gross enlisted the help of other American Jews to bring in electronic equipment a piece at a time. He instructed his helpers [Jews on religious trips to Cuba] to pack items, some of them banned in Cuba, in carry-on luggage, not checked bags.”

In her May 11 press briefing Nuland “categorically reject[ed] the charges against him, and the fact that he’s been locked up …with no cause” She also forgot to read, Judy Gross’ — his wife  — statement to a TV reporter. “We know now that he [Alan] did break Cuban law. He did not know that until he got to Cuba and was arrested.

Dear Judy,

Please send a copy of your interview to Secretary of State Clinton, President Obama and their press officers. Then, in front of the White House and State Department, hold up the key “Alan-did-break-Cuban-law” sentence on the off chance someone might notice.

Lots of luck. Saul.

Saul Landau’s WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP screens at NCORE in NYC June 1 at the Marquis Marriott, 1535 Broadway. Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow.

The two sides agreed to meet again in Moscow Jun. 18 and 19, but only after Iran had threatened not to schedule another meeting, because the P5+1 had originally failed to respond properly to its five-point plan.

The prospects for agreement are not likely to improve before that meeting, however, mainly because of an inflexible U.S. diplomatic posture that reflects President Barack Obama’s need to bow to the demands of Israel and the U.S. Congress on Iran policy.

The U.S. hard line in the Baghdad talks and the failure to set the stage for an early agreement with Iran means that Iran will not only increase but accelerate its accumulation of 20-percent enriched uranium, which has been the ostensible reason for wanting to get Iran to the negotiating table quickly.

Iran’s enrichment to 20 percent, which Tehran has justified over the past two years as needed by its Tehran Research Reactor to produce medical isotopes, can be turned into high enriched uranium more quickly than the 3.5 percent enriched uranium for Iran’s nuclear power programme.

But although Iran has let it be known that it is open to making a deal to end its 20 percent enrichment and even to let go of its stockpile if offered the right incentive, the Obama administration has opted not to go for such a deal by refusing to offer any corresponding reduction in sanctions.

The U.S. demand for the closure of the Fordow facility, which is now under surveillance by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was a direct response to pressure from Israel. Prime Minister Benjamen Netanyahu declared that demand one of his “benchmarks” for the talks on Mar. 2.

In discussions with the U.S. in late March, Defence Minister Ehud Barak insisted on the closure of Fordow as one of the Israeli demands, as he revealed Apr. 4. That was a quid pro quo for Israeli acceptance of a focus in the first stage on halting Iran’s uranium enrichment to 20 percent rather than demanding an end to all uranium enrichment, as Reuters reported Apr. 4.

That agreement clearly implied that the Obama administration would do nothing to dismantle any sanctions against Iran unless Iran ended all uranium enrichment.

The administration’s refusal to entertain any removal of sanctions as part of its diplomatic strategy with Iran also recognised the fact that it would have to pay a steep political price merely to request any change in sanctions legislation and would be unlikely to prevail over the deeply entrenched interests of Israel in both houses.

After being lobbied by 12,000 activists attending the conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in March, the House of Representatives passed a resolution demanding a policy of preventing Iran from having a “nuclear weapons capability” by a vote of 401-11.

The U.S. understandings with Israel were sharply at odds with a deal with Iran based on a “step by step” approach which had been proposed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Under that approach, each move by Iran to satisfy Western concerns about its nuclear programme should be rewarded by a relaxation of sanctions.

As Michael Adler revealed in The Daily Beast Mar. 7, however, the Obama administration was unwilling to reduce sanctions gradually as the Russians wanted. Adler’s account implied that it could only come at the end of the process in response to a complete suspension of all uranium enrichment by Iran as a “confidence building measure”.

For Iran, 20 percent enrichment has been largely an exercise in increasing its bargaining leverage with the United States by creating a level of enrichment that the U.S has said is threatening.

Iran has made a series of policy statements since it began that enrichment suggesting that the objective has been to trade those bargaining chips for negotiating concessions that would benefit Iran – mainly moves to reduce sanctions and the recognition of its right to enrich.

The demand that the 20 percent enrichment be ended and that Fordow facility be closed without any easing of economic sanctions would represent a double diplomatic defeat which Iran has strenuously rejected.

“Giving up 20 percent enrichment levels in return for plane spare parts is a joke,” Iranian analyst Hasan Abadini was quoted as saying.

There was some discussion before the Baghdad meeting, initiated by Europeans, of at least offering to suspend a European ban on insuring oil tankers, which threatens some of Iran’s oil trade with Asian countries, in conjunction with a deal, according to the New York Times May 18. But that was evidently rejected by Washington.

The U.S. rejection of the “step by step” approach in favour of a stance that leans heavily toward Israeli preferences leads to apparent contradictions in U.S. policy.

That stance is sharply at odds with the official U.S. stance suggesting ending Iran’s 20 percent enrichment is an urgent requirement. A senior U.S. official was quoted by Associated Press Thursday as saying, “We are urgent about this, because every day we don’t figure this out, they keep going forward with a nuclear program.”

The contradiction was further highlighted by reports that Iran is further increasing its capability for 20 percent enrichment at the Fordow facility. A Reuters story from Vienna Thursday said that Iran may have already put 350 more centrifuges into Fordow since February, on top of the almost 700 already operating there.

Associated Press reported a senior U.S. official in Baghdad explaining that sanctions were likely to increase the pressure on Iran to agree to U.S. terms in the next round of talks. “Maximum pressure is not yet being felt by Iran,” the official was quoted as saying.

But few diplomatic observers believe that Iran’s Supreme Leader, who makes the crucial decisions, could afford to bow to the U.S. demands as presented in Baghdad.

Meanwhile, the U.S. strategy of drawing out the talks to wait for the impact of sanctions to work on the Iranians allows Iran to continue adding “facts on the ground”.

Ironically, U.S. strategists have argued publicly in the past that Iran was using negotiations to “play for time” while it increased its nuclear capabilities.

In another seeming contradiction between U.S. diplomatic posture and its declared interest in ensuring that Iran prove the non-military character of its nuclear programme, U.S. officials dismissed as irrelevant the news that Iran and IAEA Director General Yukia Amano are close to an agreement on the terms of Iranian cooperation in clarifying allegations of past nuclear weapons work.

A “senior U.S. official” said the United States welcomed the signs of progress, but then carefully differentiated the purpose of the P5+1 negotiations and those of the IAEA, according to Al-monitor May 22.

“The IAEA is about accounting for the past and for naming what is,” the official explained. “It is not about what is the nature of Iran’s nuclear program and what will Iran’s nuclear program look like going forward, and will it be peaceful.”

That statement abruptly reversed previous U.S. insistence that Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA represented a central element in a diplomatic settlement of the conflict over Iran’s nuclear programme.

The idea that U.S. negotiations with Iran would not be affected by whatever it did to prove allegations of past nuclear weapons work wrong implies that Washington is firmly committed to its present diplomatic course mainly in order to placate Israel and the U.S. Congress.

GARETH PORTER is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam“, was published in 2006. 

But woe betide anyone who mentions that now. It was decided long ago that no supporters of Gaddafi would be allowed to stand in the upcoming elections, but recent changes have gone even further. Law 37, passed by the new NATO-imposed government last month, has created a new crime of ‘glorifying’ the former government or its leader – subject to a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Would this include a passing comment that things were better under Gaddafi? The law is cleverly vague enough to be open to interpretation. It is a recipe for institutionalised political persecution.

Even more indicative of the contempt for the rule of law amongst the new government – a government, remember, which has yet to receive any semblance of popular mandate, and whose only power base remains the colonial armed forces – is Law 38. This law has now guaranteed immunity from prosecution for anyone who committed crimes aimed at “promoting or protecting the revolution”. Those responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Tawergha – such as Misrata’s self-proclaimed “brigade for the purging of black skins” – can continue their hunting down of that cities’ refugees in the full knowledge that they have the new ‘law’ on their side. Those responsible for the massacres in Sirte and elsewhere have nothing to fear. Those involved in the widespread torture of detainees can continue without repercussions – so long as it is aimed at “protecting the revolution” – i.e. maintaining NATO-TNC dictatorship.

This is the reality of the new Libya: civil war, squandered resources, and societal collapse, where voicing preference for the days when Libya was prosperous and at peace is a crime, but lynching and torture is not only permitted but encouraged.

Nor has the disaster remained a national one. Libya’s destabilisation has already spread to Mali, prompting a coup, and huge numbers of refugees – especially amongst Libya’s large black migrant population – have fled to neighbouring countries in a desperate attempt to escape both aerial destruction and lynch mob rampage, putting further pressure on resources elsewhere. Many Libyan fighters, their work done in Libya, have now been shipped by their imperial masters to Syria to spread their sectarian violence there too.

Most worrying for the African continent, however, is the forward march of AFRICOM – the US military’s African command – in the wake of the aggression against Libya. It is no coincidence that barely a month after the fall of Tripoli – and in the same month Gaddafi was murdered (October 2011) – the US announced it was sending troops to no less than four more African countries – the Central African Republic, Uganda, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. AFRICOM have now announced an unprecedented fourteen major joint military exercises in African countries for 2012. The military re-conquest of Africa is rolling steadily on.

None of this would have been possible whilst Gaddafi was still in power. As founder of the African Union, its biggest donor, and its one-time elected Chairman, he wielded serious influence on the continent. It was partly thanks to him that the US was forced to establish AFRICOM’s HQ in Stuttgart in Germany when it was established in February 2008, rather than in Africa itself; he offered cash and investments to African governments who rejected US requests for bases. Libya under his leadership had an estimated $150 billion of investments in Africa, and the Libyan proposal, backed with £30billion cash, for an African Union Development Bank would have seriously reduced African financial dependence on the West. In short, Gaddafi’s Libya was the single biggest obstacle to AFRICOM penetration of the continent.

Now he has gone, AFRICOM is stepping up its work. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan showed the West that wars in which their own citizens get killed are not popular; AFRICOM is designed to ensure that in the coming colonial wars against Africa, it will be Africans who do the fighting and dying, not Westerners. The forces of the African Union are to become integrated into AFRICOM under a US-led chain of command. Gaddafi would never have stood for it; that is why he had to go.

And if you want a vision of Africa under AFRICOM tutelage, look no further than Libya, NATO’s model of an African state: condemned to decades of violence and trauma, and utterly incapable of either providing for its people, or contributing to regional or continental independence. The new military colonialism in Africa must not be allowed to advance another inch.

DAN GLAZEBROOK writes for the Morning Star newspaper and is one of the co-ordinators for the British branch of the International Union of Parliamentarians for Palestine. He can be contacted at danglazebrook2000@yahoo.co.uk

This is the year the APA puts the finishing touches on DSM-5, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a compendium that determines what treatments insurers will cover, what disorders merit funding as “public health” threats and of course, Pharma marketing and profits. Some question the objectivity of a disorder manual written by those who stand to benefit from an enlarged patient pool and new diseases. Furthering the appearance of self-dealing is the revelation that 57 percent of the DSM-5′s authors have Pharma links.

No kidding. Scheduled presenters at this year’s meeting included former APA president Alan F. Schatzberg, MD and Charles Nemeroff, MD, both investigated by Congress for murky Pharma income. Nemeroff’s  $9.3 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to study depression was suspended, which happens rarely, when the government found out he had simultaneously taken $1.2 million from the antidepressant Paxil manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline, Nemeroff. Oops. But now he is again basking in taxpayer money, recently awarded a $2 million five-year grant from the NIMH to study the “prospective determination of psychobiological risk factors of post-traumatic stress disorder.”  Would should the government hold a grudge?

Schatzberg and Nemeroff are co-editors of the APA-published Textbook of Psychopharmacology whose 2009 edition cites the work of Richard Borison, MD former psychiatry chief at the Augusta Veterans Affairs medical center who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for a $10 million clinical trial fraud.

Also scheduled at the meeting was S. Charles Schulz, MD, who was investigated for financial links to Seroquel maker AstraZeneca which were believed to alter his scientific conclusions.

And, speaking of Seroquel, despite Assistant Secretary of Defense Jonathan Woodson’s recent memo to all military branches about the overprescription of such antipsychotics (which include Risperdal) for PTSD, military figures linked to Seroquel were also scheduled presenters at the APA meeting.

Elspeth Ritchie, MD, who told the Denver Post that Seroquel was “very useful for the treatment of anxiety and combat-related nightmares,” though it was (and is) not approved for such treatment while she was medical director of the army’s Strategic Communications Office in 2008, was a scheduled presenter. Ritchie, who is now chief clinical officer for the District of Columbia’s department of mental health, appeared in an AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly funded webcast for the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Academy in 2008 in which she lauds the use of “sophisticated” psychiatric medicines “on the battlefield.”[i]

Seroquel, which carries heart warnings and is linked to sudden cardiac death, earned AstraZeneca nearly $6 billion in revenue last year, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. “IMS Health, a healthcare information and services company, said that in the 12 months ending in February of this year, 14.1 million Seroquel prescriptions were written, more than any other antipsychotic,” it reports.

Also participating in the military and PTSD content at the APA meeting was Matthew Friedman, MD, Executive Director of the VA’s National Center for PTSD who reported, “I received an honorarium from AstraZeneca in the past year,” in a 2009 government slide show called “Pharmacological Treatments of PTSD and Comorbid Disorder.” Friedman also served as a Pfizer Visiting Professor at the Medical University of South Carolina College of Medicine last year yet is listed in the APA meeting guide as having no “significant relationships to disclose.” APA officials have not responded to several requests for comment.

The elaborate multi drug “cocktails”  prescribed to troops suffering with PTSD are not just dangerous (having never been tested as combinations) they are capable of making troops with traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), signature Iraq/Afghanistan injuries, worse through alterations in brain chemistry and the blood brain barrier.

And APA presenters had another recommendation for quetiapine (Seroquel): a treatment for the nation’s millions of alcoholic and drug addicts, who are next on Pharma’s radar.

Martha Rosenberg’s is an investigative health reporter. Her first book,  Born With A Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health, has just been released by Prometheus books.

Notes. 

Early in Alabama’s 2012 legislative session it appeared that the legislature would correct some of the most egregious aspects of the legislation passed in 2011 to control the state’s unwanted immigrant population.  Among the revisions considered was the one that required schools to verify the citizenship of each student enrolled in school. Another was the one that required officers who stopped anyone to check on the citizenship of the person irrespective of whether or not that person was issued a citation or arrested. Sadly, the law signed by Alabama’s governor earlier this month retains the requirement that schools check on the citizenship of their students.  As a result, on the first day of school teachers will ask all students who are illegal immigrants to raise their hands.  The new law also retained the provision that police could check the citizenship status of anyone they stopped irrespective of whether a citation was issued or an arrest made. So much for Alabama.

Arizona, too, is back in the news but by the skin of its teeth, the news is good.  Arizona’s House Bill 2177 was passed by the Arizona legislature in 2011. Known as the birther bill it required that for a presidential candidate’s name to appear on the Arizona ballot the candidate would have to prove that he or she was a natural born U.S. citizen.  Under the bill each candidate was required to present an affidavit stating his or her age and citizenship, present a long form birth certificate and, for good measure, a statement describing where the candidate has lived for 14 years.  Absent a long form birth certificate, the statutory requirement was permitted to be fulfilled by a candidate presenting an “early baptismal or circumcision certificate.”  It is not clear if instead of a circumcision certificate the candidate, if a male, would have been permitted to simply present the appropriate appendage to the certifying authority that could by visual inspection determine whether or not the procedure had been performed. In all events, it turned out that it doesn’t matter.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, who has been willing to sign lots of whacky legislation, drew the line at this one.  In vetoing the bill she said she couldn’t imagine requiring candidates for the highest office in the land to present “early baptismal or circumcision certificates. . . . This measure creates significant new problems while failing to do anything constructive for Arizona.” Some thought that would put that particular measure to rest.  Some were wrong.

On May 18, 2012, Arizona Secretary of State, Ken Bennett, said that before permitting Barack Obama’s name to appear on the ballot as a presidential candidate, he wants proof of the president’s birthplace.  In a statement released to the press he disclaimed any hint of nuttiness.  He said:  “First, I have been on the record since 2009 that I believe the president was born in Hawaii.  I am not a birther.  At the request of a constituent, I asked the state of Hawaii for a verification in lieu of a certified copy.  We’re merely asking them to officially confirm they have the president’s birth certificate in their possession and are awaiting their response.”  Mr. Bennett may have wanted this because Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced at a new conference on March 1, 2012 that an investigation under his supervision had determined that the birth certificate released by the White House was a “computer generated forgery.”  (Mr. Arpaio has just been indicted by the Justice Department for a variety of alleged criminal activities, but that is no reason to doubt the quality of his investigation into the authenticity of Mr. Obama’s birth certificate). The good news is that Hawaii has now confirmed to Mr. Bennett’s satisfaction that Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii.  That is cause for celebration among almost all who have questioned it up until now.  Among those neither celebrating nor convinced are Republicans in Iowa.

Iowa is best remembered (aside from the fact that it put Rick Santorum in first place in its recent primary) when in 2010 voters threw out three Supreme Court Justices who had joined in a unanimous decision that legalized same sex marriage in Iowa. On May 21, 2012, the chairman of the Iowa GOP platform committee told a waiting world that the committee decided to include a plank in its platform affirming its belief that “candidates for President. . . must show proof of being a ‘natural born citizen’ as required by . . .the Constitution.” As this is written it is not known if the platform committee will reconsider,  given Arizona’s news.  Probably not.  It would spoil a birther’s day to be influenced by facts.

Unlike Franz Kafka, who ordered his writings destroyed, Weston hadn’t been struck by a sudden insecurity about the validity of his art. Quite the opposite. Weston simply didn’t trust anyone else to develop his prints.

“Printing is a very personal thing,” Weston said. “My negatives are a bitch to produce. I wouldn’t want to develop anyone else’s prints and wouldn’t want anyone else developing mine.”

There was another, more personal reason Weston burned his negatives. When his father Edward Weston died, he left his prints to Brett and his negatives to Brett’s younger brother Cole, a landscape photographer with considerably less talent than Brett. In the 1960s, Cole began rapidly pumping out Edward Weston prints and selling them for thousands of dollars apiece. He made a fortune, but Brett considered it an exploitation of his father’s work. He also griped that Cole’s prints didn’t live up to his father’s work.

In fact, Brett Weston did develop another artist’s prints: his father’s. Stricken by Parkinson’s disease in the 1950s, Edward Weston, who along with Edward Steiglitz had laid the theoretical foundations in the US for the acceptance of photography as an art form, was too ill to develop his own prints when an English patron offered to pay for a portfolio of his body of work. Weston selected 800 images and Brett, by then a seasoned and innovative photographer in his own right, developed the prints. The result is widely viewed as one of the century’s master works.

Brett Weston at work.

* * *

Edward Weston is credited with fathering the movement known as Western straight photography: no staging, no contrived lighting, no cropping, no enlargement, no touch ups. Weston began his career as a portrait photographer in Glendale, California, taking photos of starlets, families and bankers. His early creative work was in the lushly romantic “pictorialist” style popular at the turn of the century: soft-focus, sentimental settings, atmospheric lighting.

In 1923, Edward Weston left Glendale and his studio, running off to Mexico with Tina Modotti, the fiery Italian actress, who, under Weston’s tutelage, would become a photographer of the highest order. He abandoned Brett and his mother, Flora Chandler, who would soon divorce Weston.

In Mexico City, Weston’s art underwent a dramatic transformation. His series of nude photographs of Modotti, lounging on a rooftop or on a sand dune, are images of stunning clarity, essays in lines and tones of the human form: sensuous and realistic at the same time.

Meanwhile, back in LA Brett was acting out. He was a rebellious youth and he didn’t handle his father’s split from his mother very well. He became belligerent with his mother, skipped school, and ran with a tough crowd. When Weston returned from his first trip to Mexico in 1924, he said that he found Brett on the verge of a life of delinquency.

This seems to have been something of an exaggeration on Weston’s part. Brett may have been ditching algebra, but he was becoming an accomplished amateur naturalist. He spent much of his time collecting butterflies and meticulously preserving them and recording them by species and location, as he would later catalog his vast collection of prints and negatives. Not exactly Brando in the Wild Ones.

A few months later, Weston took Brett back to Mexico City with him. He enrolled Brett in a sixth grade class in an English language school. He lasted two weeks before quitting. It was the end of Brett Weston’s formal education.

The real learning took place in the Weston house over the course of that year in Mexico City. At the center of the household was Modotti, Weston’s lover and apprentice, his muse and political tutor. Then there was the trio of great Mexican painters who were regular guests at the Weston house: Diego Rivera, Jose Orozco and David Alfero Siquieros. D.H. Lawrence also came and went working on his great novel on life in Mexico, The Plumed Serpent. Over dinner and on outings to the coast and the mountains, intense debates erupted over politics and art, arguments fueled by the prodigious consumption of tequila.

Soon after Brett arrived in Mexico Edward Weston gave his son a Graflex camera, launching his life as a photographer. His first shots were of stems of lilies and an image of the tin roofs of houses that has the disjointed composition of a Cezanne painting. Brett’s first photos were unmistakably modern: crisp, unadorned, devoid of sentimentality. They show the influence of Rivera and Orozco as much as any other photographer.

Later, Weston confessed that painters, especially the Mexican muralists, exerted more of an influence on his work than did other photographers. He expressed little admiration for the photographs of Edward Steichen, Paul Strand and Steiglitz.

Soon the teenager was schooling his father. Brett’s most important early contribution to the advancement of Edward Weston’s work was to convince him to shift from platinum/palladium prints to the silver gelatin prints that marked the best work of both Westons. Brett also introduced his father on the erotic possibilities of vegetables, as seen in the remarkable 1930 photograph by Edward Weston titled “Pepper No. 30.” Brett later boasted of having devoured the subject.

By 1926 the Weston’s were back in Glendale and Brett began working in his father’s studio, learning the rudiments of photography by developing negatives and doing enlargements for Weston’s commercial and portrait work. He also pursued his own photography with an intensity that would never dissipate. He took dozens of photos every week of flowers, shells, cars, buildings, hands and feet, broken windows, the San Bernadino Mountains. His photos received their first public showing at an exhibition at UCLA in 1927, along with a series taken by his father. He was sixteen. Two years later, Brett’s photos were shown at the Film und Foto exhibition, sponsored by the Bauhaus group, in Stuttgart, Germany.

By 1930, the Westons had moved from Glendale to Carmel, where they would be at the center of a community of artists for the remainder of their lives. Edward Weston’s small studio attracted other photographers, such as Imogen Cunningham and Ansel Adams, as well as writers and musicians seeking to have Weston take their portrait: Robinson Jeffers, ee cummings and Stravinsky.

Brett lived frugally for most of his life, eking out a living as a photographer without resorting to portraits, commercial work or magazine commissions. “I didn’t mind whoring,” Weston said. “I just wasn’t very good at it.”

But he still found himself at the center of things. Broke in LA in the 1930s, he ended up house-sitting in a new Hollywood home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (“stunning structure, but it leaked”). He tried his hand at working as a cinematographer on a movie set. The results weren’t satisfying for either the studio or Brett.

A few years later, Jose Clemente Orozco, who Brett had idolized from his days in Mexico City, showed up in southern California and hired Brett to assist the painter in his great Prometheus mural at Pomona College in Claremont.

Weston’s work from this time represents a robust Western expressionism, livelier than Ansel Adams’s austere work and more attuned to the parallel movements modernist movements in painting and sculpture. He photographed a delicate series of faceless nudes dominated by twisting legs and hands, close-ups of tide pools and shells, and an erotic barrel cactus that looks like it is sprouting dozens of spiky breasts.

He received his first solo exhibition in 1932 at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco, which was soon followed by a joint showing with the members of the f/64 Group, including Adams, Cunningham, Willard Van Dyke and Sonia Noskowiak. Brett’s close-up a hand and ear was so admired by Russian director Sergei Eisenstein that he swiped it off the gallery wall.

But Weston didn’t consider himself part of this collective or a photographic movement per se. Indeed, he maintained a lifelong rivalry with Adams, who was one of the first West Coast photographers to make a fortune. Adams poured much of his money into building a palatial house and large darkroom made of redwood in Carmel near Weston’s small, self-made adobe. “You spent more on your darkroom than my father did on his entire house, Ansel, but you’re pictures aren’t nearly as good,” Brett told Adams. “You cut down an entire redwood forest to build your house and they still let you stay on the board of the Sierra Club?”

White Sands by Brett Weston.

Unlike his father who wrote compulsively, Brett was not a theoretician and perhaps that explains the reason he is less known despite being in many ways the superior artist. Edward was loquacious, a gifted self-promoter. Brett was a loner, reticent and uncomfortable speaking about his art.

“My father was driven and so am,” Weston said. “You’re ruthless. You brush off your friends and women. He was much kinder than me. I don’t verbalize well and I don’t socialize much. Too time consuming. And I’m not a good salesman of my work. I love people, but they can be a drain. Some are stimulating; some are leeches. So I seek people on my own terms. Most artists are loners. I guess they have to be.”

In 1935, Brett caught a break. He was hired as the supervisor of the photographic section of the Federal Arts Project. He trained and managed more than 20 photographers. This position, and a short-lived job as a sculptor for the Public Works Art Project, eased him through the depression.

He was drafted into the Army in 1942 and made to endure basic training twice. Later he was sent to the Signal Corps before finally being assigned to a position as an Army photographer, where he had to be retrained. For two years, he was stationed in Long Island under Lt. Arthur Rothstein, formerly the head of the photographic project for the Farm Security Administration, where he supervised the work of Walker Evans and Dorthea Lange. Rothstein assigned Weston to photograph New York City. The images Weston came back with, taken with an 11 x 14 camera loaned to him by the Frick Museum, are original and startling explorations of a cityscape, which seem closer to the paintings of the city by John Marin than the photos of Steichen or Margaret Burke-White.

In “Manhattan Courtyard”, a frail, leafless tree with a knot of thin branches stretches upward toward an unseen light in a canyon of buildings. The image is strikingly similar to a photo he would take 25 years later in the heart of Glen Canyon, where a cottonwood tree stands alone before the sheer wall of the canyon. In “Sutton Place”, Weston captures a dark, winter afternoon at an brick apartment complex encased in vines of ivy. His photo “47th Street” is a study of rooflines and staircases that is as disorienting as any work by M.C. Escher.

But Weston was primarily a photographer of the West and he relished his transfer from New York to El Paso in 1945. On his way down to El Paso from Albuquerque, Brett passed for the first time through Tularosa Basin and the great dunes of White Sands National Monument (and the missile testing range that engulfs it) and promptly went AWOL. He stopped his truck, got a room at local hotel, phoned the Army base to say that he had been felled by the flu and spent the next few days photographing the wind-sculpted dunes, cactus, yucca and the serrated peaks of the nearby Sierra Blanca mountains.

He would return to White Sands many times over the coming decades. Indeed, Weston tended to migrate in his Chevy truck with camper to the same landscapes year after year: Death Valley, White Sands, Oceano Dunes, Baja, southeast Alaska, coastal Oregon, the Owens Valley, the Big Island of Hawai’i and, of course, the tide pools, headlands and beaches of Pt. Lobos and Big Sur just down Highway 1 from his home in Carmel Highlands.

Weston’s photos from the 1950s and 60s, whether of shiny black strands of kelp or a close-up of the cracked ice of the Mendenhall Glacier, had a luminescent quality to them, which he later described as “glowacious.”

* * *

In 1969, Weston traveled to Eugene, Oregon to give a talk at photographic workshop at the university. There he met Art Wright, a grad student in photojournalism, who had long been an admirer of Weston’s art. At the time, Wright was kicking around ideas for his thesis project. On a whim, he asked Weston at a party if he would allow Wright to make a film documenting the photographer at work. Weston, an intensely private man, surprised Wright by enthusiastically agreeing to the project.

“I liked the pure simplicity of Brett’s vision,” says Wright. “There was nothing ostentatious about his life or his work. I was in awe of his photographs.”

At the time, Wright was living on a commune outside of Eugene, paying $30 a month rent and looking for a way to live outside the system, as Weston had done. “One of the things on my mind at the time was how to lead a creative and exciting life and not work for the Man,” says Wright. “Brett Weston lived a frugal life, but without compromise.”

A few days later Wright accompanied Weston to the Oregon Dunes National Seashore near Reedsport. It was a trial run to see if Brett could tolerate working while Wright filmed him with his buzzing 16-mm camera. The two men hit it off and remained friends for the next 20 years.

The sharp black-and-white footage Wright filmed of Weston setting up a shot inside the ruins of an old wigwam burner at an abandoned timber mill site and trudging across the dunes with his Rolloflex became the opening sequence of his extraordinary film, Brett Weston: Photographer.

Wright’s wife, Janet, a librarian and artist, located a grant program run by the National Endowment for the Humanities that was offering $1,500 for projects dealing with “the land.” Wright titled his film project “Brett Weston: Man of the Land” and got the grant. Of course, that paltry sum wasn’t nearly enough to finance the film. Wright had to max out his and Janet’s credit cards to purchase film stock and gas.

A few weeks after the Oregon outing, Wright joined Weston and two of his friends for a trip across California and Nevada. The film follows Weston as he explores some of his favorite photographic haunts: the Alabama Hills, Death Valley, Lake Isabella, a truck graveyard in Goldfield, Nevada, and the Owens Valley under the shadow of the Sierras.

Although this is all familiar terrain, the film captures several serendipitous moments, such as when Weston stops at a road cut and becomes entranced by the shapes and shadows of columnar basalt. “It’s an explosion of geometry,” exudes Weston.

Weston isn’t really a nature photographer. He isn’t interested in Ansel Adams-esque landscapes or in documenting threatened wild places like Eliot Porter. He was obsessed with capturing the intricacies and rhythms of form, light and shadow. Weston is as fascinated by close-ups of the exfoliating bark of a bristlecone pine or the spikes of a Joshua Tree as he is with the visual poetry of peeling paint on the side-panel of a rusted out truck.

“There are a million choices for shot,” Weston tells Wright. “At its simplest, photography is very complex. So I try to keep it simple and focus on things I can master.”

How do you know when you have something, Wright asks.

“I have an orgasm, Art,” Weston chuckles. “You just know it. There’s a flash of inspiration. Like with certain women. You feel marvelous and just take off.”

There were many women in Weston’s life and four wives. Even so, except for the stunning series of underwater nudes, shot in the black tile pool at his home in the Carmel Highlands, his body of work does not offer many images of women. But there many of his images are highly erotic, especially the sinuous lines of the dunes at Oceano or on the Oregon coast, the wet tangles of kelp in tide pool, the flesh of a barrel cactus, the thigh-like humps of sandstone in the Alabama Hills in the California desert.

He tells Wright that he has been photographing Point Lobos for going on forty years but still finds it fresh. “Point Lobos is always changing,” Weston says. “I’ve lived and photographed there nearly all my life, but even in the last few years I’ve done some of my best work there.”

Wright’s film is one of the most detailed and intimate document of a working photographer ever made. He follows Weston from scouting locations, to setting up shots and to the tedious work in his small darkroom in Carmel.

“The dark room was very small,” recalls Wright. “I had my back against the wall as I shot him developing his prints.”

Brett Weston got up each morning before dawn, whether he was in the field or working at home in the dark room. In his last decades he would awaken even earlier. It wasn’t unusual for him to be working in the darkroom by 2am. He would work for four or five hours straight, dipping the print paper into the toxic amidol developing chemical that turned the fingernails on his left hand black.

In Wright’s film, a weary Weston emerges from the dark room after five hours of developing prints. “I come up for air at 9 or 10 in the morning,” he tells Wright. “It’s a great drain on one’s vitality. You have to be disciplined. Without discipline there’s very little art. It’s hard work and sheer brutal, drudgery, like writing literature.”

According to Wright, Weston’s small, spartan house had a lot of bookshelves, but they weren’t stocked with volumes of Proust or Joyce. “He loved Louis Lamour,” Wright joked.

For Weston, the photographic process continued through the developing of the negatives to the trimming, matting and framing of the prints. Wright films the photographer preparing dozens of prints in preparation for the first comprehensive exhibition of his work at the Friends of Photography gallery in Carmel. Here the short film reaches its conclusion with dozens of people, hippies, working stiffs and art snobs, mulling through the exhibition of photos, many of which were taken during the trip with Wright.

“I enjoy the reaction of ordinary people who are not art patrons,” says Weston. “I like some guy or gal with an honest admiration for a photo, a carpenter or bricklayer, instead of some pseudosophisticated museum director from the art world who thinks he knows it all.”

Wright’s film on Weston came out in 1972 under the title, “Brett Weston: Man of the Land.” “It was a silly title, but we had to call it that to fulfill the grant,” Wright says.

But he kept editing the footage for the next year and a half and later released a tighter version called simply “Brett Weston: Photographer.” At the time, photography was just beginning to be viewed as a fine art in the university system. Weston was known and highly regarded inside photography world, but was still largely unknown to the general public. Wright rented out his film to schools and universities for the next 15 years, introducing Weston to a new generation of photographers and artists. Weston and Wright remained close for the next 20 years, until Brett’s death in Kona, Hawaii in 1993.

* * *

Wright wanted to make more documentaries on photographers. His next subject was meant to be W. Eugene Smith, who had just unveiled his remarkable and disturbing photographic study of the mercury poisoning of the fishing village of Minamata, Japan. “Smith was going blind at the time,” Wright recalls. “He struck me as the Beethoven of photography.”

In the end, though, Smith didn’t want to be filmed at the end of his career, when he needed his wife and his assistants to help him compose his shots and develop his prints.

Wright went on to teach photography at Idaho State University in Pocatello and moved back to Oregon in the mid-1980s when his wife Janet got a job as a librarian at Portland State University. Wright went to work as a cameraman at a local TV station. He retired a couple of years ago put himself to work transferring his film on Weston to DVD.

“I’d resisted transferring the film to VHS,” says Wright. “Video is a poor quality format. It would demean the work of a photographer for whom visual clarity was paramount. But the opportunity to digitalize the film seemed worthwhile. It also allowed me to fix the sound quality and add some extra features, including audio interviews with Weston’s friends and colleagues.”

Wright also got permission from the Weston archive to include 800 of Brett’s photos on the DVD. In its current format, Wright’s film is as close as we get to a biographical and critical study of Brett Weston’s career. He is perhaps the most important American artist who is yet to be the subject of a full-length biography. Shot in stark black-and-white, Wright’s film is, in its way, as beautiful to look at as a Weston print. And then there is Weston’s voice, gruff and serious as a rattlesnake on moment and impish and jesting the next.

Weston isn’t a nature photographer, but he is, perhaps, our best photographer of nature. His photographs, with the notable exception of the series on the doomed Glen Canyon, can’t be considered in any way overtly political.

But it’s clear where Weston’s allegiances are. As he drives across the Sierras and up the Owens Valley, he lashed out to Wright about the about the new interstate highways and rash of housing developments in Tahoe and Sacramento. He reveals himself to be a kind of western anarchist, not all that different than Edward Abbey.

“There’s no tremendous change in people,” laments Weston. “But the machines have changed. And that’s the monkeywrench for the whole goddamn mess.”

* * *

After Wright’s film came out, Weston’s career began to take off. In the mid-1970s, art photography became a chic form of investment. The prices for Weston’s prints soared from a couple hundred dollars to over a thousand. He came into money for the first time in his life.

In the 1970s, Art Wright bought one of Weston’s prints of his famous “Ear and Hand” photo for $75. The photo hangs in Wright’s house and on the canceled check to Weston is taped to the back of the frame. Today that same print sells for $30,000.

For a short time, Weston, who had always been a kind of one man band framing his prints and selling them himself, even hired a manager to sell his prints to rich patrons and corporations.

He built a house in on the big island of Hawaii, where he made some of his most astonishing photographs. Much of the money went into cars. His obsession with cars began early on, when he manned the wheel on his father’s expeditions. Edward never learned to drive. But by the 1980s, the old Chevy trucks had been replaced by new Corvettes. Two of them. According to Wilson, Weston’s first Corvette was a stick shift, which he had a hard time handling after a bite by a poisonous spider impaired his right arm. So he bought an identical Corvette with an automatic transmission. He refused to let anyone else drive him around or drive his cars.

In his last years, Brett was slowed by a bad heart. It was hard for him to lug around his camera up the slopes of Manna Keg. So increasingly he devoted himself to printing, churning out thousands of prints from his negatives. In a final editing of his oeuvre, Weston destroyed many of his prints. “An artist must eliminate, I’ve destroyed prints by the thousands,” Weston said.

Then there was the final inferno, a year before he died, when he pitched all of his negatives into the huge fireplace, one of the few on the big island.

When he died, he left 10,000 prints to the Brett Weston Trust. Brett believed that the prints would be sold off gradually for the financial benefit of his sole daughter, Erica.

Instead, an investment banker snatched up the entire lot for a few million dollars. The Weston photographic legacy, which he had fought so hard to preserve on his own terms, is now locked in a vault in the basement of a bank in Oklahoma City.

By incinerating his negatives, Brett Weston assured that the value of each remaining print would skyrocket to the lofty levels that they could only be owned by the rich elites and art snobs that he had despised all his life. Even Weston might have seen the irony in that final development.

The DVD of Brett Weston: Photographer may be purchased from Art Wright’s website.

Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Born Under a Bad Sky and the co-editor with Joshua Frank of Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. Hopeless is now available in Kindle format. He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net.

Another source of vivid imagery is the Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World. Consider this:  ”… we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.”

These two phrases brilliantly describe the predicament of state-fostered corporate capitalism. Capitalism as an historic system is five hundred or more years old, and the state was intimately involved in its formation and its ongoing preservation from the very beginning. But the state has been far more involved, if such a thing is possible, in the model of corporate capitalism that’s prevailed over the past 150 years. The corporate titans that dominate our economic and political life could hardly survive for a year without the continuing intervention of the state in the market to sustain them through subsidies and monopoly protections.

This system is reaching its limits of sustainability. Here are some reasons why:

1) The monopolies on which it depends are increasingly unenforceable. Especially “intellectual property.”

1a) Copyright-based industry has already lost the fight to end file-sharing.

1b) Industrial patents are only enforceable when oligopoly industry, oligopoly retail chains reduce transaction cost of enforcement — unenforceable against neighborhood garage factories using pirated CAD/CAM files.

2) Cheap production tools and soil-efficient horticulture are

2a) increasing competition from self-employment

2b) reducing profitable investment opportunities for surplus capital and destroying direct rate of profit (DROP)

3) State-subsidized production inputs leads to geometrically increasing demand for those inputs, outstripping the state’s ability to supply and driving it into chronic fiscal crisis. For centuries the state has provided large-scale capitalist agribusiness with privileged access to land stolen from the laboring classes. For 150 years, it has subsidized inputs like railroads, airports and highways for long-distance shipping, and irrigation water for factory farming. But as any student of Microecon 101 could tell you, subsidizing something means more and more of it gets consumed. So you get agribusiness that’s inefficient in its use of land and water, and industry that achieves false economies of scale by producing for artificially large market areas. Each year it takes a larger government subsidy to keep this business model profitable.

4) Worsening tendencies toward overaccumulation and stagnation increase the amount of chronic deficit spending necessary for Keynesian aggregate demand management, also worsening the fiscal crisis. The state has built a massive military-industrial complex and created entire other industries at state expense to absorb excess investment capital and overcome the system’s tendency toward surplus production and surplus capital, and sustained larger and larger deficits, just to prevent the collapse that otherwise would have already occurred.

In short, capitalism depends on ever-growing amounts of state intervention in the market for its survival, and the system is hitting the point where the teat runs dry.

The result is a system in which governments and corporations are increasingly hollowed out. And meanwhile, growing up within this corporate capitalist “integument,” things like open source software and culture, open-source industrial design, permaculture and low-overhead garage micromanufacturing eat the corporate-state economy alive. An ever-growing share of labor and production are disappearing into relocalized resilient economies, self-employment, worker cooperatives and the informal and household economy. In the end, they will skeletonize the corporate dinosaurs like a swarm of piranha.

Kevin Carson is a research associate at the Center for a Stateless Society. his written work includes Studies in Mutualist Political Economy, Organization Theory: An Individualist Anarchist Perspective, and The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto, all of which are freely available online.

Ooooh, we’re being spied on! How glamorous! Each of us is a Lady Di now, but without the foreign junkets, castles, yachts and fat bank accounts, and instead of being hounded by paparazzi, we’re acting as our own informants and spies. It has never been so easy to track anyone. Narcissism, never in short supply in a materialist culture, is again being used against us. With our compulsive use of Facebook, Twitter, blogging and the email, plus our cellphone, laptop and credit card, our masters know exactly where we are, who our friends are, as well as what we’re buying and thinking.

Eager to bare all, many of us have even uploaded our natural or surgically puffed endowments, whether sad or cheerful. If even Target can tell if some women are pregnant before they themselves know, perhaps US spy agencies have churned through enough numbers and facts to anticipate if you, yes, you, personally, will have sex within the next 24 hours, and what he, she or it will look like, as far as height, weight, age and hair color, not to mention brands of deodorant and toothpaste, and if your partner flosses regularly, sports patriotic, religious or rebellious tattoos. They will have a video of you having sex even before you had sex.

Nineteen cave-dwelling drunks armed with Dollar Store box cutters have supposedly triggered this suffocating web of surveillance, not to mention an endless war that’s bankrupting the country, but of course many Americans already know who the real terrorists are.

With so much tax money and manpower devoted to peering into your brain, mouth and, literally, pants, the state allows its corporate sponsors to make tons of money, since security is a huge business, but another key aim is intimidation. With an all-seeing eye, Washington has become a browbeating cyclops, here to cow if not bomb everyone into submission.

The totalitarian state must instill fear and paranoia into each citizen, so that he remains isolated and cannot discuss shared problems with his neighbors, much less organize resistance, but the American archetype is already a loner, and often a lone gunman fighting against overwhelming odds, so will the American rebel become a solo terrorist? Rambo vs. State!

Under or unemployed, threatened with foreclosures and hopelessly in debt, many Americans are frustrated and angry, with some even contemplating turning off their babbling TV long enough to join or organize a sustained protest or rebellion, so the state is preempting that by warning that it knows what you’re thinking, and if you step out of line, it can legally arrest, strip search, disappear or even kill you, without anyone knowing.

How’s that for invasion of privacy? Sounds like terrorism. With laws like that, who needs friggin’ laws? But that’s exactly the message. Not only can the state make laws to serve its evil purposes, and apply them retroactively even, it can also disregard its own laws. Though you must obey an increasingly labyrinthine set of laws that dictate all aspects of your life, the American state is beyond all legal or moral jurisdictions.

With a vast surveillance network, you can never escape the reach of the state, and if this state is an empire, with a global reach, then it can zap you even if you’re hiding under a café table in Curriedgoatistan. Yummm! But this is assuming you can even get out. Consistent with the totalitarian transformation of the United States, steps are being implemented to control your travel. Without freedom of mobility, you are effectively arrested or detained, even if the jail is vast. Citizens of Communist dictatorships often compared their countries to enormous prisons, simply because they were not allowed to leave, but had to risk their lives to escape. In those societies, it was difficult to simply move to the next block, because you needed a permit to sleep anywhere, even for a night. Even in a more relaxed Communist country such as present-day Vietnam, the same control apparatus remains. If you got drunk, say, and wanted to crash at a friend’s apartment, he had to register you with the local police before you could do so, because that’s the law, although it’s not always adhered to anymore.

American military might is predicated on air power, above all, so it’s appropriate that this compulsively bombing empire can now ban you, with no due process or appeal, from peacefully entering their drone-abuzz sky. Squeak too loudly and you may be condemned to that dreaded no-fly list, so that you can only leave the country by sneaking across the Rio Grande, like countless Mexicans or Mexican-Americans when chased by US authorities. Heavily guarded, the Canadian border is not an option. The no-fly list contains mostly foreigners, supposedly, but this leaked “fact” is only meant to reassure docile, gullible or xenophobic Americans into believing this totalitarian measure has nothing to do with them. In any case, it’s certainly not about stopping terrorists but you, white bread person, from possibly flying, because if anyone can be proven a terrorist, he needn’t be grounded but simply arrested, then put on trial.

Though our government would have us believe we’re surrounded by thousands if not millions of terrorists, the conviction of over 300 since 9/11 has been routinely corrupted with procedural misconduct, if not prolonged torture, with most of these trials conducted in secret, without adequate legal defense. With so many laws on their books, and so many crooked judges and prosecutors, they can’t even pin suspected terrorists without getting medieval on their detainees’ helpless person. My, what a cute word. It’s so much easier on the ear than waterboarded, strung up, stripped naked, smeared with shit, beaten or raped prisoners. Say, can I detain you for as long as I wish while stripping you of all rights? It’s not a question, foolish voter! It should be our only question.

Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories, five of poems, and a  novel, Love Like Hate. He’s tracking our deteriorating socialscape through his frequently updated photo blog, State of the Union. 

Inside the meetings, the rulers of NATO congratulated themselves on their continued domination of the world and discussed how to extend the alliance’s reach.  In addition, discussions regarding how to maintain a presence in Afghanistan while pretending to withdraw were also held.  Although little has been said regarding some of NATO’s other plans, it seems fair to assume that meetings about China and Iran were also on the agenda.

Like tentacles of an imperialist kraken, the policies of control and domination epitomized by NATO were interjected into the tranquil state of Vermont the past couple of weeks.  The more belligerent of these policies concerns the stationing of the F-35—Washington’s latest testimony to waste and warfare—at the Burlington International Airport Air National Guard Terminal.  This plane, estimated to carry a lifetime price tag of $618 million per plane, is currently in production, with twelve of them currently stationed at Eglin Air Base in Florida.  The plane’s development and construction incorporated the top firms in the weapons industry, including Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman.  It is capable of carrying quite an array of murderous hardware including, but not limited to, the AIM-9X Sidewinder, the Brimstone missile, Mk.20 Rockeye II cluster bombs, Paveway series laser-guided bombs, and the upcoming upgrade to US nuclear weaponry, the B61 nuclear bomb.

The discussions over the basing of some F-35s in Vermont have been going on for a few years.  Until recently, opposition has been muted.  However, as the deadline for a decision by the Pentagon gets closer, the opposition has grown louder.  Opponents’ exception to the planes is primarily based on the incredible noise these jets make and the proximity of the air base to populated areas.  Currently, F-22s fly on the paths that would be used by the F-35s and their noise is already quite disruptive.  As part of the environmental impact process, the military and other officials recently held a public hearing.  The hearing was stacked with members of the military and their families, local business people who would profit from the presence of the F-35s, and various school officials and regular citizens whose homes are in the flight path.  Most speakers were in favor of basing the planes in Burlington.  The only exceptions were some school teachers, administrators and officials and a few citizens. One exception among the school officials was the local Catholic college, who had a representative of the college’s President tell the crowd that the college welcomed the F-35s flying over campus.  As for the politicians of Vermont, every single one in Congress and in the Governor’s Mansion have come out in favor, with Bernie Sanders even going so far as to call the Pentagon’s decision a sign of “national respect and admiration for the Vermont National Guard.”  Then, of course, there was the usual promise of jobs, a standard recitation of government and corporate officials that want to impose their will on a skeptical public.  Still, one local government recently passed a resolution asking the Pentagon not to bring the F-35s to Burlington.

Another tentacle of the Empire’s kraken was unleashed on May 22, 2012.  Vermont was told by the Department of Homeland Security that it can no longer remain outside the so-called Secure Communities (S-COMM) enforcement regime.  This program essentially gives local police the power to enforce federal immigration laws.  In fact, it requires them to.  Although it is presented as a crime fighting tool designed to deport hardcore felons who are in the US illegally, its implementation across the United States has seen a substantial increase in the deportation of undocumented workers whose only “crime” is being undocumented.  Furthermore, communities where local police had previously been instructed to not inquire about immigration status or turn in personal information regarding immigrants have seen a decrease in cooperation with police by immigrant residents.  This is attributed to the fear of police S-COMM’s implementation has intensified.  Although various local and state agencies are on record saying they will not change their enforcement techniques regarding immigrants, this remains to be seen.  Activists are naturally somewhat skeptical.

The same day that S-COMM was imposed on Vermont, a local immigrant rights group Justizia Migrante held a rally and march that began in front of the Burlington, VT Obama campaign headquarters.  The rally began with a short play from group affiliated with Bread & Puppet Theatre.  This presentation was followed by at least three short testimonies from migrant workers currently living and working on some of Vermont’s dairy farms.  Historically, the primary nationality of the migrant worker force in Vermont was Jamaicans who mostly resided in the region during the apple harvest season.  In the past several years, however, more and more migrant workers are from countries south of the US border.  After the rally, people marched across town to the Federal Building.

Meanwhile, north of the border in Quebec a student strike has been going on for over 100 days.  Recently, the legislative body of the province enacted a series of repressive laws designed to criminalize protest and end them.  Only the former has occurred.  The protests are continuing and support for the strikers seems to be growing.  Quebec Prime Minister Charest was scheduled to be in Burlington on May 24^th but canceled his trip due to the unrest.  This was a disappointment, since a protest was planned.  He plans to be back.  So do we.

Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way the Wind Blew: a History of the Weather Underground and Short Order Frame Up. Jacobs’ essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch’s collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His collection of essays and other musings titled Tripping Through the American Night is now available and his new novel is The Co-Conspirator’s Tale. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press.  He can be reached at: ronj1955@gmail.com.

“It wouldn’t kill me to die,” I said.  We began to laugh, triggering uncontrollable hilarity.  Yet, I’d expressed the truth.

A little less than three years after I spoke those words for the first time (Charles died May 25^th, 2008), I’ve said them often, like a mantra, to myself and aloud: “It wouldn’t kill me to die.”

I wonder about all those people who feel like me.  I know I’m not alone, just lonely.  I go to the grocery, smile at shoppers, and talk with the cashier.  “I’m fine, thanks. And you?”  I marvel at my ability to wear a cheerful mask when my skin covers an often-churning caldron of discomfort so harsh, I feel sick.  Again, I know.  I understand that there are many like me, everywhere, measuring out their lives in portions of pain and pretense.

It wouldn’t kill me to die.

I’ve made declarations about choosing life.  Choosing to have a big, wonderful life. Taking courses.  Signing up for this and that.  Running.  Biking. Being grateful.  Going to a movie.  Writing.  Participating in the peace and justice movement.  An attempt at romance. Prosecco evening, Thursdays, on the patio at my neighborhood restaurant at Cross Keys, or as I call it: The Realm of Cross Purposes.

I listen as a garbage disposal grinds noise that enters my solitude, reminding me of another time, years ago, when we lived in Nashville.  I’d hear a rasp of moving parts, the opening of the garage door, and know that within a couple of minutes, Charles would climb the stairs to the hallway near the kitchen.

It wouldn’t kill me to die.

I long for the sound of his snoring—the snoring that woke me or that started before I could get to sleep. I’d awaken him (not always gently) and tell him to turn over.  And I think about his response: “Thank you, honey, I love you.”  Yes, he’d thank me and tell me he loved me. Told me once he liked the deliciousness of drifting, drifting back to sleep.

Sometimes, I lie in bed, unable to sleep, hearing nothing but the ceiling fan.  It wouldn’t kill me to die.

My mother (who died in April of 2011) expressed herself beautifully, especially when she’d write a note of condolence to a grieving family. “May your memories bring comfort” usually closed her heartfelt words to those who’d lost someone.  She never wrote the words again after Chase was killed in Iraq, because she learned that memories are painful. We talked about this when Charles died.  And, again, seven months later when my father died.  For me, memories bring:  It wouldn’t kill me to die.

In the months after Charles’ death, I was on a mission to impart the message of life and death’s great gift–that every second should be cherished.  I thought of wasted time, a little argument about something stupid.  A complaint.  Pouting over the meaningless.  Pouting, period. I’d choose any opportunity to tell a friend, acquaintance, even a stranger about the importance of treasuring time together, making every moment count.  Before I realized that there’s an inability to comprehend death’s void, the loved one’s disappearance, until it personally shatters.

It wouldn’t kill me to die.

On Tuesday, I saw a feel-good movie, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Frequently, Sonny Kapoor, played by the marvelous actor Dev Patel, says: “Everything will be all right in the end.  So, if it’s not all right, it is not, yet, the end.”  Depending on an individual’s emotions, humor, the mind’s context, this quote has different interpretations.

I think it is not, yet, the end.  Because it is not all right.

Missy Beattie lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Email:  missybeat@gmail.com   

It was December when neo-Nazis marched through the streets of Stockholm, parading by the Jewish Community’s headquarters, their protest against a perceived ‘Jewish conspiracy’ too historically familiar.  On 13 May, Swedish media reported that a Riksdag party with neo-Nazi roots, the Sweden Democrats (SD), had increased about 40% in popularity over the last month, 6.6% of Swedes now supporting them. Beyond this, in April the head of the Obama administration’s Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, Hannah Rosenthal, actually came to Sweden, discussing what have been described as the Social Democratic mayor of Malmö’s repeated ‘anti-semitic’ comments…all of these events speaking to disturbing changes.

I’ll add that discrimination here is a fact for many more than Jews, as indeed it was in the Europe of the 1930s.

Further emphasizing the current milieu’s gravity, the trial of a man accused of randomly shooting immigrants in Malmö opened on 14 May.  According to the New York Times, the lead prosecutor also alleged in an interview that the fellow believes it was actually Jews that were responsible for the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Center, further highlighting the nature of the present hate.

When I first came to Sweden, to Falun, it was 1997, and I genuinely found it a place that felt the closest on earth to heaven.  But over the last years, I have seen changes, personally endured events, that earlier I could not even have conceived of.

Sweeping ‘economic reforms’ have reshaped Sweden and much of Europe.  Effectively, there has been a massive redistribution of societal assets, one that has steadily resulted in the disenfranchisement of untold numbers, numbers that had once belonged to Europe’s storied middle class.  But while the pain of this ‘reform and austerity’ is genuine, blame is being too often wrongly placed.

The poison fruit of so-called ‘reform’

Recent headlines illustrate that many have sought scapegoats, blaming minorities and immigrants instead of their political leadership.  Statistics show the far-right’s message of scapegoating and hate has found an increasing audience, and while centrist political figures do condemn the far-right’s rhetoric, I have yet to hear one accept blame for the current upheaval their reforms and austerity brought.

In the first round of French voting, the far-right Front National polled 18%.  In Greece, Golden Dawn — a party that reportedly advocates concentration camps for immigrants — received 7% of the vote, up considerably from the .23% they received in the prior election.

In late April Reuters reported Francois Hollande, France’s newly elected president, describing the roots of his nation’s far-right leanings as “economic despair among ‘a suffering electorate’”.  The fact of ‘austerity’ stricken Greece’s neo-Nazis celebrating a poll rise of about 3000% makes further statement.   Of course, if one ties the development of far-right feelings to economic privation, it would seem there’s ample room to argue that a ‘poison fruit’ has grown from the branches of Europe’s ‘reforms’, and in Sweden ‘the reforms’ have proved particularly noteworthy.

Social democracy a museum-piece

Like much of the West, Sweden has embraced neoliberalism, but done so with extraordinary speed.  Only this March, the US’s conservative Heritage Foundation happily intoned that Sweden has privatized and deregulated itself faster than any other advanced economy on the planet.  And as the right wing US magazine American Spectator gleefully reported in September, “Sweden has been quietly turning social democracy into a museum-piece”.

According to The Local (Sweden’s largest English-language media site) a new Swedish Parliament report found that: “When unemployment, sickness and work-related injury benefits are added up, the maximum level of compensation in 2010 was only half the relative level available in 1975.”  The article also noted one of the reports authors observing that Sweden is in “the process of abandoning the famed ‘Swedish model’”.

For many in Sweden, the changes have not been cause for celebration – they have only been quick and painful.  This once egalitarian country now has “the steepest increase in inequality over 15 years amongst the 34 OECD nations”, Reuters reported in March, adding that the financial gap between Swedes is “rising at four times the pace of the United States”.

For tourists coming to Stockholm, a new bus to take is one which offers the so-called ‘class war safari’, affording visitors a view of the truly ‘New Sweden’, a Sweden increasingly of the rich and the poor.

Tax-reforms substantively aiding the wealthy and business (ie, Sweden ended inheritance taxes in 2005), plus ‘corporate welfare’, have effectively meant devastating cuts to social programs.  But many Swedes mistakenly turn their wrath upon societal minorities instead of the political leadership responsible for present policies, immigrants being a particular target, but obviously not the only one.

While many appear in denial of any significant danger, it’s perhaps worth recalling that in the year prior to 1929’s ‘economic crisis’, Germany’s Nazi Party polled 2.6% of the vote; but, by 1933 Hitler was Chancellor.  Given this, it would seem prudent not to underestimate the potential effects of widespread economic suffering, and in Sweden, the suffering is increasingly substantive.

Disarray in healthcare and social services is obvious here.  Seemingly regular news pieces now appear about ambulances that are called for but never come; medical ‘errors’ are making increasing headlines (a fellow with a broken neck sent home on painkillers); incontinent elderly in care centers have had their used diapers weighed to ensure ‘proper’ use; plus, unemployment compensation, sick pay, and disability benefits are similarly a shadow of their former selves, things such as education and child care taking substantive hits as well.

Glaringly, the pattern is repeated throughout this nation’s once great social service network.  Of course, those political leaders responsible have not volunteered to accept any blame, the age-old evil of scapegoting arising along with Sweden’s far-right, conveniently diverting the electorate’s attention from those leaders who in reality should be enduring the public’s wrath.

Xenophobia, a societal contagion

Following the SD’s 2010 election to Sweden’s parlaiment, I interviewed political scientist Cristian Norocel for The Christian Science Monitor, reporting at the time that: “The SD has ‘managed to fish in very murky waters on both the left and the right. The party does not have just a racist political agenda … it is also a matter of welfare’ says Mr. Norocel.”  That article also notes Norocel added that “the party’s nationalism, its stance on immigration and perspective upon cultural stereotypes, plus its embrace of social programs, parallels many aspects of ‘very early National Socialism (Nazism) in Europe.’”

As a Jew that lost the European side of my family in the Holocaust, I often wondered how a people with the cultured civility of the Germans could have allowed Nazism to rise.  I have recently come to believe the answer lies in an inability to perceive the consequences of events when they occur, the empty reassurances of widespread denial, of victim blaming, significantly aiding in the growth of horror.

It is difficult to convey the venom I’ve heard directed towards those of foreign origins.  As in the 1930s, racism is also a factor, a YouTube video link, “Swedish Racism: The Venus Hottentot Cake Vs. Swedish Culture Minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth”, illustrating the point.

Today, as I write this, this journalist’s own life is actually in jeopardy, ie, over the last 18 months I have suffered three quite serious incidents of vandalism in my apartment.  I’ll add that such crime is unheard of in the area I live.  But, such threats are not the most severe that the new xenophobia presents.

Swedish governmental reports detail substantive discrimination by the country’s authorities and courts against minorities and those of foreign origins.  Of course, once xenophobia and racism become part of a nation’s official structures, decisions based upon them carry the full force of law.

I won’t dwell upon what this can mean for any in Sweden not born here of majority heritage, but in a time where predatory conduct is not unknown, substantive implications are apparent on both the personal and business levels.

Writing on Sweden for Asia Times in August 2011, I wrote the article ‘Living with the far right’, the last paragraph of it noting that if “it seems as though many of the circumstances described are difficult to even imagine, I agree, except perhaps in the context of another era.”

Ritt Goldstein is an American investigative political journalist living in Sweden.  His work has appeared fairly widely, including in America’s Christian Science Monitor, Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald, Spain’s El Mundo, Sweden’s Aftonbladet, Austria’s Wiener Zeitung, Hong Kong’s Asia Times, and a number of other global media outlets.

Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a country ravaged by a war that between 1992 and the beginning of 1996 caused 100.000 deaths (exact figures are unavailable), is certainly looking a lot better but the social situation is dramatic. One statistic says it all: unemployment is at 45%.

This country of 4.5 million inhabitants is divided into two entities between which there exist multiple points of tension: the federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (51 % of the territory, 65 % of the population, capital Sarajevo) and the Republika Srpska (49 % of the territory, 35 % of the population, capital Banja Luka). In the whole country there are 48 % of Bosniacs (called Muslims between 1970 and 2000), 37 % of Serbs (mostly Christian Orthodox) and 14 % of Croats (mostly Catholics) |1|. Among the 10,000 inhabitants of Sarajevo that were killed during the war, 1,600 were children. The siege of Sarajevo lasted from 5th April 1992 until 29th February 1996 |2|.

One of the catalysts of the Yugoslavian implosion at the beginning of the 1990s was the weight of the public debt contracted in consequence of the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s. The leaders of the richer republics (Croatia et Slovenia), in pushing for separation, considered that independence would help them reimburse their part of the Yugoslavian debt ( which later had been shared between the six former republics of the ex-Yugoslavian federation) by shedding, what appeared to them to be the millstone of the less privileged countries (Bosnia, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro). This provoked a series of chain reactions expressing the most objectionable nationalism. Bosnia and Herzegovina, which considering its multiethnic nature is a mini Yugoslavia in itself, was caught up in the maelstrom of a war which multiplied acts of barbarity against the population, the massacre of 8,000 Bosniacs at Srebrenica in July 1995 being the most dramatic example. This massacre that much resembled a genocide was perpetrated by units of the army of the Republika Srpska under the command of general Ratko Mladic and assisted by a Serbian paramilitary unit. United Nations forces on the ground turned a blind eye. This is one of the reasons why the Bosniac population holds the UNO in such discredit.

Return to Sarajevo After 18 years

This is my second visit to this town. The first was in February 1994 at the height of the war. Our delegation left Belgium in two cars (several of us were members of « Socialism without Borders » and of the « International Workers Aid for Bosnia») to go and express our solidarity with the multiethnic Resistance to the war that was ravaging ex-Yugoslavia and especially Bosnia-Herzegovina. On that occasion our small delegation only arrived on the outskirts of what resembled a ghost town. The buildings were damaged and the social life was reduced to very little : no cafes open, two or three shops for absolute essentials and the occasional sound of an exploding shell or a round of machine gun fire. Official reports stated that an average of 329 shells burst each day during the siege.

Eighteen years later I am subject to another brutal shock. Certainly hundreds (even thousands) of the buildings still bear the marks of war, but it is undeniable that the historical town center shows signs of relative prosperity. Hundreds of craftsmen, shops and restaurants offering local specialties create a zone of permanent animation. There is a certain easy going calmness in the atmosphere. Many terrace cafes are well filled. I discover a cultural richness to this town that I could only imagine in 1994.

In Sarajevo, mixing and coexistence of cultures is evident. Today in a one kilometer perimeter we find several superb mosques dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, one of the three biggest synagogues in Europe (a large part of the Jews expelled by the Catholic kings of Spain during the Reconquista of the 15th century found refuge in this great, principally Muslim, town |3|), and Catholic, Orthodox or Evangelical churches. Capital of the most westerly European province of the Ottoman Empire, Sarajevo in the 17th century figured among the biggest cities of Europe with 80,000 inhabitants (comparable to the populations of Genoa, Florence, Brussels or Antwerp; about twice the population of Bordeaux, Barcelona or Cologne).

A country under the supervision of the international institutions

Since the end of the war in 1995 the country has been under the supervision of the international institutions. The agreements signed in Dayton (USA) in December 1995 specifically stated that the director of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Central Bank may not be of Bosnian extraction! The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have installed their representatives in the country alongside the foreign troops supposed to keep guard over the terms of the peace agreements between the two resident communities (in 1995-1996 there were up to 60,000 foreign troops stationed in the country under NATO command. Today there are still some 1300 troops under European command |4|). The population has put up with seventeen years of reinforced neoliberal policies and as previously said, the result is dramatic: in February 2012, according to the official employment agency, 44.2% of the active population were unemployed compared to 35% in 2000 |5|.

With the exception of the distribution of water, electricity and the transport systems, almost all the public sector industries have been privatized and in many cases dismantled and sold by their new owners who have put an end to their activities. Everywhere in Sarajevo there are agencies of the two biggest Italian banks, Intesa San Paolo and Unicredit, along with Austrian and German banks. Also to be considered is the investment of Arabic countries in hotels and finance. The hypertrophy of the financial sector exists alongside a chronically under-invested productive sector.

The IMF at work

While the first « Antifest » was going on in Sarajevo, the arrival of a new IMF mission was announced. They were there to finalize the compensatory conditions of a new loan that would enable the repayment of previous loans and follow up the lethal neoliberal policies. The IMF put the Bosnian authorities under pressure to reduce wages and jobs in the public sector, reduce the benefits to wounded war veterans, lower retirement pensions and make their access more difficult, and cut spending on public health care (which is still free in spite of fifteen years of World Bank and IMF pressures).

Hope reborn at the Antifest

The Antifest event from the 13th to 20th May 2012 was made up of cultural activities (concerts attended by between 100 and 300 people) and political debates. Between 50 and 90 people, young for the most part, took part at each of the eleven debates. Among the topics were « Eco-socialism » « The Greek crisis » « The crisis in the European Union » « Reactions to the European Union crisis |6| » « What kind of feminist activism does Bosnia really need? » « Rosa Luxembourg and Mother Theresa: ideological confusion » « Perspectives for direct democracy in south east Europe » etc. The Antifest was organized by a young political group called “Unified Organization for Socialism and Democracy” (which brings together several groups of activists with different ideological sensibilities). It was supported by the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation and collaborated actively with the subversive festival of Zagreb. The subjects largely covered the principal concerns of a fringe of youth which wants a radical alternative to the capitalistic and patriarchal system. Decidedly, after the remarkable success of the Zagreb |7| subversive festival, new forces for change are at work in this part of the Balkans.

Eric Toussaint, doctor in political sciences (University of Liège and University of Paris 8), president of CADTM Belgium, member of the president’s commission for auditing the debt in Ecuador (CAIC), member of the scientific council of ATTAC France, coauthor of “La Dette ou la Vie”, Aden-CADTM, 2011, contributor to ATTAC’s book “Le piège de la dette publique. Comment s’en sortir”, published by Les liens qui libèrent, Paris, 2011.

Translated by Mike Krolikowski 

Notes.

It almost seemed as if the City of Frankfurt, Hessian Police and, after all, any court up to the Federal Constitutional Court (in German: Bundesverfassungsgericht, BverfG) went paranoid and hysterical all together and at once. What seems quite obviously as escalating scare tactics for justifying the prohibition of the Blockupy days of action against the crisis regime of the European Union, is in its absurdity hard to top. Yet, those massive constrictions of constitutional right had to be explained towards the public somehow. Creative expression of opinions far from predictable well-ordered  marches can be oh so threatening. Far more awkward state paranoia is merely possible. Shame on you, Frankfurt!

Frankfurt Blocks itself

And so Frankfurt got into this self-decreed state of emergency for several days: Complete closure of the financial district. Several tram lines running with restricted service, several subway stations closed. Furthermore, Frankfurt citizens are instructed not to leave any waste containers or bulky waste in free accessible areas at their doorsteps from Thursday till Monday. The Frankfurt University closes two of its campuses: Campus Bockenheim and Campus Westend. Bankers are advised by policy only to wear casual clothes. Many of them are working at home office, some are even said to have taken refuge in Mannheim (which is is about 90 km / 56 miles from Frankfurt).

Photo by Jens Volle. 

Parents are suggested to better keep their children at home and not to take them to kindergarten if it is located in the city centre. More than half of the many ritzy stores are barricaded with chipboard. Finding a simple still accessible ATM might take you ages. Explanatory statements varying between “We cannot completely exclude violent riots during the next days”, “there is a big event in the city centre” and “there is a construction site”, even if there actually isn’t any.

“Hey hey, Our Kettle is Much Nicer”

Already days before the Blockupy events more than 400 activists got a letter by the police declaring Frankfurt City as an exclusion zone for them. At least that did not withstand at court. But before we got on our way from Stuttgart, we heard from police checks along the motorways around the city and apparently randomly spoken police bans. Several buses from Berlin with anticipated activists had to turn around and were forced to drive back just a few kilometres before they reached their destination. Still we reached Frankfurt unmolested Friday morning, after already a few hundred activists got arrested there – at the end of the weekend, it is said to be around 1430 protesters who got into police detention.

Photo by Jens Volle. 

Even so there are many small blockades and spontaneous demonstrations by the remaining protesters. These get regularly and very quickly kettled by police. But just as quickly the protesters might form another kettle around the police themselves and another one inside the police kettle whilst chanting “hey hey, our kettle is much nicer” (http://ea-frankfurt.org/blockupy-pressemitteilungen-und-berichte-zu-den-blockupy-aktionstagen).  Apart from that, police convoys are driving around during the whole day, stopping in long rows from time to time and driving on after realising that there aren’t any protesters to get kettled.

Also, they obviously cannot refrain from some show driving of their water canons. An online Newspaper reports at some time usage of these, but I haven’t read any confirmation about it apart from that. In the students-house at Campus Bockenheim, where during daytime political discussions had taken place, it seems as if the situation could finally escalate when police surrounds almost the whole campus with their cars. But it’s just sabre-rattling: Apart from some identity checks on the street nothing else happens.

30 000 Demonstrators Against European Crisis Flood Frankfurt City 

At the mass rally on Saturday, which generously did not get prohibited, round 30 000 demonstrators get together, after all. Diversely coloured blocs, from autonomous antifa over the network association Attac, up to labour unions and political parties, all of them depicting the broad basis of the resistance against the European crisis politics. Many hundred Stuttgart21 opponents – a useless speculative real estate and railway project, from which only the 1% benefits – are also there. Hard to miss with their yellow signs and flags. Some of them tell me that the unjustified prohibitions just assured them even more to come to Frankfurt on that day.

Photo by Jens Volle. 

For five hours we are marching through the city. Followed by police cars in the parallel streets, police standing at almost every turn of the street we are walking and in front of diverse office tower blocks we are passing, dressed in full gear with grim faces. It is very hot today, especially whilst wearing helmets. Those who got identified by the police as the black bloc are surrounded by a moving police kettle during the whole rally. A police troop runs into the group repeatedly, someone lights firecrackers, but still everyone keeps quite calm. Then later, totally exhausted after this rally marathon, we are lying on the lawn next to the German Bank tower blocks, watching a group of demonstrators dancing and chanting with some Hare-Krishna monks. A nice place here for a protest camp, I think to myself.

Julia Von Staden is a sociologist and journalist, blogger and activist. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In this connection the April 28 international edition of Britain’s conservative magazine, The Economist, wondered “What happens to a two-party political system when one party goes mad?” The article quotes the following from the new book “It’s Even Worse Than It looks,” a product of one author from the establishment Brookings Institute and the other from the conservative American Enterprise Institute:

“The Republican Party has become an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

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

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

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

Romney’s nonsensical economic speech in Iowa May 15 was an epic self-exposure. While promising to cut social spending, increase the war budget and not raise taxes, he declared: “President Obama is an old-school liberal whose first instinct is to see free enterprise as the villain and government as the hero…. America counted on President Obama to rescue the economy, tame the deficit and help create jobs. Instead, he bailed out the public sector, gave billions of dollars to the companies of his friends and added almost as much debt as all the prior presidents combined.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan, adding tens of thousands of troops at a cost of many billions of dollars.

• He committed American forces to a war in Libya, though he had neither approval from Congress nor reason to think events there threatened national security.

• He ordered 250 drone strikes that killed at least 1,400 people in Pakistan.

• He ordered the raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden.

• He ordered the killings of multiple American citizens living abroad.

• He expanded the definition of the War on Terrorism and asserted his worldwide power to indefinitely detain anyone he deems a terrorist.

• He expanded drone attacks into Somalia.

• He ordered a raid on pirates in Somalia.

• He deployed military squads to fight the drug war throughout Latin America.

• He expanded the drone war in Yemen, going so far as to give the CIA permission to kill people even when it doesn’t know their identities so long as they’re suspected of ties to terrorism.

• He’s implied that he’d go to war with Iran rather than permitting them to get nuclear weapons.

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

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

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

Jack A. Smith is editor of the Activist Newsletter and is former editor of the
(U.S.) Guardian Newsweekly. He may be reached at jacdon@earthlink.net or
http://activistnewsletter.blogspot.com/

We protect public land from corporations and government bureaucracies that want to log public lands without following the law. To put it simply, they want to return to the “good old days” before we had any environmental laws and corporations such as the Anaconda Company called all the shots.

As a fifth generation Montanan, I clearly recall the days when Silver Bow Creek ran red with mine waste and the Clark Fork River was a dead, sludge-filled industrial sewer. And it was not that long ago when you had to turn your car lights on in the middle of the day in Butte because the air was so polluted. These were also the days when our forests had little big game and native fish were beginning to vanish because of massive clearcutting.

Today Montana has some of the best hunting and fishing in the world. The state recently celebrated the return of native westslope cutthroat trout to Silver Bow Creek and Milltown Dam no longer holds millions of tons of toxic waste seeping into the groundwater.

Do we really want to go back to these good old days of cut-and-run where there are no environmental laws? Montanans love our national forests, which belong to the American people, not to the career bureaucrats in the Forest Service or the CEOs and stockholders of timber corporations.

Yet, in their ads, the timber corporations clearly laid out their goals for the conditions and laws they want applied to their personal profit-driven extraction of public resources. In their own words, the timber companies want to “scrap the entire Forest Service Administrative Appeals Process,” “exempt from judicial review those timber sales which deal with trees that have been killed or severely damaged by the Mountain Pine Beetle,” and “amend the Equal Access to Justice Act by requiring a cash bond in these types of administrative appeals and lawsuits.”

In plain language, what that means is that these corporations no longer want citizens to have a voice in how our public lands get used or abused. But that ignores both the history and intent of law and policy on public lands management.

Congress placed citizen suit provisions in virtually all federal environmental laws because citizens are often the only group willing to police the government. As the Federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals famously wrote, citizens “stand in the shoes” of regulatory enforcement agencies to enforce the law — and to do so without any prospect of personal benefit. If someone throws a brick through a window, the police would enforce the law. But when the federal government breaks the law, citizens are often the only enforcers.

Unfortunately a disturbing trend has appeared as big environmental groups such as the Montana Wilderness Association and The Wilderness Society increasingly take foundation money to “collaborate” with timber corporations. And much like the Vichy French helped the Nazis occupy France during WWII, these collaborators now have to face the harsh and shameful legacy of what they have done and continue to do.

Behind it all is the very simple truth now revealed by the timber companies’ own damning ads: these corporations want access and the subsidy to extract timber resources from public lands unencumbered by environmental laws. Their profit, our loss, and a return to the bad old days of corporate domination of Montana’s lands and people. But Montanans don’t want to return to those days when corporations like the Anaconda Co. controlled public policy and the rivers ran red with mine waste. We want a sustainable supply of clean water, fish, wildlife and timber.

It’s time to tell these corporations and their collaborative partners that the days of rape and run in Montana are over. Montana is worth fighting for, which is exactly what the Alliance for the Wild Rockies intends to continue to do.

Mike Garrity is executive director Alliance for the Wild Rockies.

Only the previous year, the agency was given the go ahead through the NASA Authorisation Act to advance the cause of space commerce.  The Commercial Orbital Transportation Program (COTS) marked, in the words of Alan Lindenmoyer, manager of the Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office at NASA, ‘a significant NASA activity to implement the commercialisation portion of US space policy’.

One of those to first receive assistance from NASA was the US company SpaceX, an example of how the US hopes to catch up with Japan, Russia and Europe in being able to supply the ISS.  The situation became more acute once the shuttle program was retired in 2011.  Uncle Sam was falling behind.

SpaceX is owned by the modern, mercantile South African Elon Musk, PayPal’s co-founder, a billionaire who fancies himself as something of a modern Vasco da Gama, or, more likely, the brigand-like qualities of a Francis Drake.  The modern comparison has been to the fictional stinking rich character Iron Man, whom he is said to have inspired.  ‘We are really at the dawn of a new era of space exploration, one where there is a much bigger role for commercial space companies.’

That commerce is receiving funding from Washington in what are bound to be examples of space mercantilism.  SpaceX itself has a $1.6 billion contract, Orbital Sciences somewhere in the order of $1.9 billion.  As NASA administrator Charles Bolden explained, NASA’s interests are elsewhere – ‘exploring even deeper into our solar system, with missions to an asteroid and Mars on the horizon’.  The drudgery of transport was best left to the ‘private sector’.

Bolden’s own historical frame of reference is smaller. ‘The Internet was created as a government endeavour but then the introduction of commercial companies really accelerated the growth of the Internet and made it accessible to the mainstream.’  He might well go back to the European courts of the fifteenth century, when aggressive colonial forces were unleased upon much of the world, courtesy of government trading companies.  An empire on earth can well move to one in space.  Indeed, Michael Milstein, writing for Popular Mechanics (Oct 1, 2009), did not shy away from the words ‘solar-system conquest’.

The Dragon space capsule, attached to the SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, is a versatile beast, able to carry both crew members (up to seven) and cargo.  And it will have few rivals.  The reality remains that space travel is a frightfully expensive business. The only individuals who tend to go into extra terrestrial orbit, leaving aside astronauts, are rather wealthy earth gazers with a fetish.  Till a formula is found to bring down costs and build cheaper equipment, space will, thankfully, be a less crowded place.  We might even claim it will be a less imperial place.  NASA is determined to change that.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

All the interview footage is shot with attention to aesthetics and to highlight the individuals’ personalities. The interview subjects are not your standard talking heads. They are situated in environments, colors and compositions that show the emotional and internal landscape of the people being interviewed and their personal relationship to Bob Marley.  The cinematography evokes an emotional landscape which resurrects the spirit of Marley through the hearts of the people talking about him and enhances our perception of Marley the man. Instead of just providing the sort of information about Marley that one can easily find on the internet, the way the people are filmed allows us to see and experience the man through their eyes and adds to the film’s sense that we really are spending 144 minutes with this man even though he is long dead and gone. It’s almost like he’s there in the room with the people talking.

For example, as daughter Cedella is filmed with her body taut like a coiled wire in a stiff backed chair in a dark room, we are able to feel the claustrophobia of her bitterness and emotional baggage, her resentment over her father’s absence from her life, and the lid she has clamped down on her sense of abandonment and pain over the loss of her father. On the other hand, Rita Marley bursts onto the screen in a riot of color and enthusiasm. The sun shines behind her. She is a glowing spirit of light and color, giving us the portrait of a woman whose spirit got her through the best of times and the worst of times. She was wife, backup singer, and Rasta Woman, but also paid witness to Marley’s infidelities with other women. Yet she stood by him because she had complete faith in his art.

Marley had eleven children by seven different women.  All of this is revealed through interviews spliced between archival footage. Certainly Cedella shows one side of this story, but with the legacy of Marley’s music and the change that it affected in the world, it is hard to judge him. “Judge Not” as he says in that first song at age 16. And the film asks us to “judge not” as well.

Bunny Wailer and Jimmy Cliff have no end of stories about Marley. They are situated center frame, speaking as the musicians they are. When they recall their stories about Marley, we feel as if we are with the man himself as they scratch out songs at dawn, kick a soccer ball on a field together, or gather for political discussions at Marley’s house in Jamaica.  Both musicians came from the trenches with Bob, and they have plenty of personal stories to tell about the evolution of Marley and his music. As they tell the stories, we really feel like Marley is with them as they evoke Bob’s spirit by making their tales so personal and full of life.

The documentary gives new insight into both the man and his music. It shows us what an awe-inspiring man Bob Marley was –  a powerfully unique spirit and an exceptionally charismatic and talented person, who was ignited by an unquenchable desire to create music and change the world. He was a man whose drive to create and spread his art and voice through music was so powerful that he pumped it out of himself at full speed for his whole (and much too short) adult life. Even when his entire body was being eaten away with cancer, he got up on stage and poured every inch of his being into his songs and his performances. He was a man whose music not only inspired political change and revolt, but whose legacy has continued to ignite freedom of the human spirit across cultures, races, and countries ever since. A man who sung his way out of the Jamaican ghetto, Marley poured his own personal conflicts and experience of racial and economic inequality into music that became universal cries for freedom and love.

It is pretty damn hard not to like Bob Marley’s music, and after watching this documentary, it’s pretty damn hard not to stand in awe of this man who is one of those rare spirits who lands in the world, lives too short, and gives us so much to make our lives better. I am a firm believer that in this world that that seems to be on a head-on collision with the apocalypse, we have to embrace the good that humans have to offer. Good for me comes in the form of creative expression – music, art, poetry. Bob Marley’s creative voice was a gift that changed so many people’s lives, whether providing respite in the form of some sweet music to dance to or inspiring people to revolt against the forces of racial oppression. There are few musicians who had the spiritual and political aura and the ability to incite change through music that Marley had.

The film talks about how Marley was born mixed race, the son of a white man (Norval Sinclair Marley) who abandoned him at birth and a black Afro-Jamaican (Cedella Booker) who moved Marley to the slums of Kingston, Jamaica when he was a young boy. Trenchtown is the name of the neighborhood where Marley grew up, and it is poor as poor gets. Yet it is also the birthplace, the core, and the very heartbeat of reggae music. Bob started playing music when he was dirt poor in Trenchtown, and he stayed dirt poor for a good long time before he finally became successful. He moved from an unsuccessful solo act to a “band” with the Wailers, creating his own record label with the help of Lee Scratch Perry to fight the stranglehold Trojan Records had on ska and reggae. In classic record industry exploitation of disenfranchised musicians (see American “roots music” for another example), the record executives were making the money while the musicians were making the music and not seeing any of the economic returns. Marley and his group changed that by making their own label, acting on the sentiment of resistance and empowerment that lies at the core of so many of his songs.  Later they would move onto other labels, but early in his career the way Marley produced music was an act of rebellion.

Through Jimmy Cliff and Bunny Wailer, we also learn about the roots of ska music and the evolution of ska to reggae. First they talk about how ska had a different rhythmic structure than doo-wop and soul, with stress on the offbeat. Then they explain how reggae evolved from the change of the sound of the guitar, how it was an accidental change of guitar rhythm (from a tape loop playing over itself), creating a double stroke on the strings – cha-ching, cha-ching – rather than a single. This is the kind of information about the creative process that makes music documentaries like Marley rewarding for artists like myself. Cliff, Wailer, Lee Scratch Perry and Marley’s London record producer Chris Blackwell also deliver quite a bit of information on the evolution of the Reggae sound and Marley’s music. It didn’t just start as the “One Love” sound we hear today. It was an evolution over time, a result of process, sound manipulation, and just plain accidents.

Marley cut his first single “Judge Not” at age 16, and that song contains so many things that Marley would follow through with as his career matured – the plight for equality, the drum and bass rhythm that is the signature backbone of reggae, and an infective spirit to lift our hearts and our voices and embrace life against all odds. That first Marley song was “ska” – the “pre-reggae” music that dominated Kingston before the distinctive reggae sound was accidentally found in the studio one day. The low cost production values combined with Marley’s young bursting enthusiasm make those early songs so urgent and raw, carved out of the streets from which he came.  Early ska music wasn’t highly produced in some slick music studio. Instead it was created from everything from empty metal drums covered with cow skin to an empty box with three taught strings pulled across the surface. The rawness of the streets is evident in the music, but so is the human spirit, a creative will that can make music even amidst the hardest of realities.

In the documentary, record producer Blackwell refers to Marley’s breakthrough album  Exodus  as “the most pasteurized” of Marley’s albums. Indeed, this album represented the turning point in Marley’s music. The songs are layered with sounds that are a result of studio technology. The pure heart of Marley is there, but it has been put through tape loops and effects, the riffs layered on top of each other to make the music more dense yet more clear at the same time.  Having access to high-end equipment that could “layer” the sound gave Marley’s music the signature reggae dub effect. That doesn’t make the sound less good. It’s just more refined. Marley’s spirit and distinct sound are still alive and pulsing in his later (and most successful) albums, but the sound is definitely not the raw, unfiltered pleas that came from his voice in Trenchtown. Still, all of Marley’s music — from his first song to his last album — is amazingly urgent, passionate and transformative. His production values may have changed over time, but his voice, energy and message never did. The trajectory of his career – from his childhood in Trenchtown to his stadium-packing career as a musical Messiah – is fascinating. As a man, an artist, a revolutionary and a visionary songwriter and performer, Marley is a wonder. The film does his legend full service.

In tracing the evolution of Marley’s music, the film shows how troubling it was for Marley not to be able to reach a black audience in the United States. While the music rose from the black ghetto of Jamaica, it was never adopted by the black audience in America. Outside his country, Bob Marley was seen as a rock star, an image that record producers promoted and which aligned Marley with white musicians (not unlike Jimi Hendrix). But Marley’s music was very politically and racially motivated, so this image was one that left him troubled, especially given his own internal conflict about his mixed race. It’s interesting because there are so many black American musical influences in reggae. The songs are clearly driven by roots music, jazz and soul, yet the American black audience did not embrace Marley.

Even today, Marley’s American audience continues to be largely white. His music inspired massive political change in making Zimbabwe an independent country governed by black people and free from white oppression (how sad Marley would have been to see Robert Mugabe’s decline into another dictator abusing his own people), yet in America that spirit of racial equality did not ring for the black audience. Right before Marley was diagnosed with cancer, he was asked to play the opening act at Madison Square Gardens for the Commodores.  He willingly accepted, hoping to reach a broader American audience. Indeed, the black people in the audience embraced Marley’s sound, but the concert footage shows that the audience that followed the Commodores was also largely white. Racial dynamics of soul music in America is something on which whole books can and have been written. It’s interesting to think about where Marley fits on that musical spectrum.

The film also provides a kind of crash course in what it means to be a Rastafarian, including the religion’s roots in the Jamaican black descendants of slaves, its Christian dimension, the religious doctrine of smoking weed because the Bible says to “take in the herb,” growing dreadlocks as a sign of spiritual evolution, and the patriarchal heart of Rastafarian culture (e.g. women wear dresses and no makeup). Marley also explains that in the early days Jamaicans worshipped the Emperor of Ethiopa Haile Selassie who they saw as the second coming of Christ (a.k.a. Jah). Later, Bob Marley would assume that role by becoming a global musical Messiah spreading his message of peace, love and revolution.

You can still find Marley’s image painted on black velvet worldwide, right next to paintings of Jesus at the Last Supper.  Understanding the spiritual significance of the dreadlocks and ultimately the spiritual role that Bob Marley played in the lives of so many oppressed people, it is heartbreakingly tragic to hear how he lost his hair to cancer. First he began to lose his hair with chemo, but then the weight of the dreadlocks themselves was too much for his frail body to bear. The image of his hair coming off is a tragic symbol of his physical decline. It is a powerfully final and devastating symbol of the fragile mortality of this visionary man. Nevertheless, Marley may have lost his hair and his life to cancer, but his spirit lives on today.

The archival footage in the film really is what drives the energy of the documentary and cues us into the absolutely mind-bending energy of Bob Marley. Concert and interview footage with Marley himself and archival photos are expertly spliced together with the present-day interviewers of his survivors. Watching Marley speak and perform, it is clear that he was channeling major energy from some powerful source. The man had an aura that could blow the lid off of any government. He seemed so casual, yet his energy was entirely focused with power and vision. That is why he was the target of assassins who attempted to still his voice with guns, because he was seen both as in league with the Jamaican government but also as a source of revolt and uprising. Though he was trying to spread peace and equality, in his homeland the reception to his message was as mixed as his race.

The footage of his live performances is amazing. The film is a gift just to allow us to see such a delicious glut of material of Marley in action. This man gave all of himself every single time he performed. He never held back. In interviews and concert footage of Marley, one thing is constantly clear. The man had vision and the persistent energy to drive his vision forward. Whether writing songs at the crack of dawn, kicking a soccer ball, running on the beach, pulling chords from a guitar or dancing on stage – Marley was a fireball of creative energy and charismatic drive.

Marley emanated energy like a solar flare, a shining force of power and light. He smoked a joint and went for a run before he wrote songs. He was fiercely athletic and furiously competitive, but like most artists, he mostly competed with himself. In the end, he both won, and he lost. He created a musical legacy that changed the world and the sound of music, but his drive also prevented him from tending to his own physical health (follow-up exams for the melanoma that he had on his toe) and he dropped dead of cancer at age 36.

His death was a sad and terrible thing. One day he was performing with his entire heart and soul. The next he was flying to Germany in a last ditch effort to survive by going to the world’s most renowned holistic healer. When Marley was in Germany, I kept thinking how sad it was, that he should be back in his home in Jamaica for his last weeks alive. However, Marley sings in his songs, he was not going to “give up the fight.” He did fight, but in the end, cancer won the battle, and the world lost a musical legend. But it didn’t lose his music or the spirit it conjures every time one of his songs is played.

Fittingly, then, rather than ending with Marley’s death, the film ends with the sound of Bob Marley’s music playing today and with footage from all over the world of people singing and dancing to his songs. In Japan, Russia, Africa, South America, the Middle East, France, his native home Jamaica, and all around the world, the filmmakers caught people on film living the spirit of Marley. It is clear in this footage, that the message and sound of Marley’s music is just effective today as it was over thirty years ago.

These closing shots are hopeful and life affirming even after Marley’s death. It made me think that Bob Marley really did give us a gift that few people, regardless of age or race, can’t appreciate. I remember one time in the early 1980s when I was playing a Bob Marley record on the turntable. My mother came over to visit and asked what I was playing. I told her Bob Marley, and she said, “I like it.” She stopped in the middle of the room and began to dance. I think I’ll stop everything and dance to a Bob Marley song right now. In these hard times when the world seems to be crashing down in every corner on the globe, where the gap of inequality grows wider every day, it seems like as good a time as any to revive Bob Marley’s voice and to “get up, stand up and don’t give up the fight.” This documentary reminds us of that spirit, and that, my friends, is a good thing.

Kim Nicolini is an artist, poet and cultural critic living in Tucson, Arizona. Her writing has appeared in Bad Subjects, Punk Planet, Souciant, La Furia Umana, and The Berkeley Poetry Review. She recently published her first book, Mapping the Inside Out, in conjunction with a solo gallery show by the same name. She can be reached at knicolini@gmail.com.