http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/world/middleeast/palestinians-may-exhume-arafat-after-report-of-poisoning.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120705
July 4, 2012
Palestinians May Exhume Arafat After Report of Poisoning
By ISABEL KERSHNER
JERUSALEM — A potentially explosive re-examination of the circumstances behind the death of Yasir Arafat, the symbol of the Palestinian national struggle, has galvanized Palestinian suspicions that he was poisoned and led the Palestinian Authority to agree in principle on Wednesday to an exhumation of his remains, possibly within days.
Mr. Arafat’s widow, Suha, called for the exhumation a day earlier in an interview with Al Jazeera, the Arabic television channel based in Qatar, after it reported that Mr. Arafat might have been poisoned with polonium, a radioactive element associated with K.G.B.-style assassination intrigues.
Saeb Erekat, a close aide to the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, said by telephone that once the religious authorities and Mr. Arafat’s relatives had given the go-ahead, an exhumation could take place “in the coming days.”
Then, Mr. Erekat said, the Palestinians would seek an international inquiry into Mr. Arafat’s death similar to the investigation by the United Nations-backed tribunal into the assassination of Rafik Hariri, a former Lebanese prime minister.
Mr. Erekat said a thorough investigation of all aspects of Mr. Arafat’s death in November 2004 was called for because “it was not so long ago.”
“Our memories are still alive,” he said.
The death of Mr. Arafat, at the age of 75, remains enveloped in mystery and contention. The report in Al Jazeera caused an uproar in the Palestinian territories, rekindling unresolved questions about the death and theories that he had been killed by agents of Israel or by Palestinian rivals.
Mr. Arafat became ill in October 2004 and was flown by helicopter out of the Muqata, his headquarters in Ramallah, in the West Bank, where he had been confined under an Israeli Army siege and virtual house arrest for more than two years. He was transferred to a French military hospital, where he died about two weeks later of unannounced causes.
Though the hospital records were never made public, fueling speculation and rumors about the cause of death, they were obtained by The New York Times in 2005. The records showed that he had died of a stroke that resulted from a bleeding disorder caused by an underlying infection. The infection was never identified. The hospital found no traces of poisons.
Two Palestinian investigative committees have so far failed to produce any conclusive findings. At a fractious convention of Mr. Abbas’s Fatah Party in 2009, the first such gathering in 20 years, one point of consensus was the notion that Israel was responsible for the death of Mr. Arafat, the founder of Fatah. Delegates blamed Israel for having kept the leader under siege, and Fatah officials said they would continue to investigate the circumstances of his death, and the suspicions that Israel had poisoned him.
Israel has always denied any involvement in Mr. Arafat’s death.
“Ultimately all the documents surrounding Arafat’s death are in Palestinian hands,” a senior Israeli official said Wednesday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk publicly about the issue. “Instead of spreading conspiracy theories, the Palestinians could just make the documents public.”
Al Jazeera English wanted to investigate the cause of Mr. Arafat’s death about 18 months ago, but the project was delayed because of the turmoil that broke out in the Arab world, according to Walid al-Omary, Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Ramallah. But over the past nine months the news channel carried out what it called an in-depth investigation with the help of Mr. Arafat’s widow.
Mrs. Arafat gave the broadcaster a copy of Mr. Arafat’s medical records as well as personal effects, including clothing he had worn close to his death, his toothbrush and his trademark black-and-white checkered kaffiyeh. Al Jazeera said it took the items to the best laboratories in Europe for forensic testing.
At the University of Lausanne’s Institute of Radiation Physics in Switzerland, doctors found what they said were unusually high levels of polonium 210 in certain items.
Polonium became widely known after Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former K.G.B. agent who became a critic of the Russian government, died in London in 2006 after he drank tea contaminated with the substance.
“I can confirm to you that we measured an unexplained, elevated amount of unsupported polonium 210 in the belongings of Mr. Arafat that contained stains of biological fluids,” Dr. Francois Bochud, the director of the institute, told Al Jazeera.
Scientists at the institute said that further testing of Mr. Arafat’s remains would be necessary before determining whether he had been poisoned.
Mr. Arafat’s body was returned to Ramallah and was buried in a chaotic funeral in the courtyard of the Muqata. His remains now lie in a stately mausoleum, guarded by troops and visited by dignitaries and members of the public who go there to lay wreaths.
The legacy left by Mr. Arafat is as confounding as he was in life. Revered by many as the revolutionary founding father of Palestinian nationalism, he was also reviled, particularly by many Israelis, who considered him a terrorist. He was among three recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 for his role in accepting the Oslo accords, a blueprint for peace with Israel, but nearly 20 years later his promises of a Palestinian state remain unfulfilled. Corruption was also rampant under his leadership.
“We have moved from at least having the impression under Yasir Arafat that our national aspirations could be fulfilled to survival mode,” said Zakaria al-Qaq, a political scientist at Al Quds University in East Jerusalem. Nowadays, Mr. Qaq said, Palestinians are concerned about whether or not their salaries will come in, referring to a worsening financial crisis that has caused the Palestinian Authority to delay payment of June salaries to its employees.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Protest NSA/Interdependence Day picnic/NATO 3 Indictment Shows Increased Terrorism Charges
The Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore will make its annual trek to the National Security Agency on Wed., July 4. This annual Interdependence Day protest will take place from 10 to 11 AM. Then at 6 PM there will be a potluck picnic at Max’s house. For rides to the NSA or to RSVP for the protest and/or picnic, contact Max at 410-366-1637 or mobuszewski at verizon.net. The NSA 14, arrested on October 9, 2011, are scheduled for trial on October 25, 2012.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/9917-nato-3-indictment-shows-increased-terrorism-charges
NATO 3 Indictment Shows Increased Terrorism Charges
Thursday, 21 June 2012 14:38 By Yana Kunichoff, Truthout
Report
(Photo: Ryan Williams / Flickr)
The case of the missing indictment for the three NATO protesters charged with terrorism has been solved by the group's lawyers, who discovered the documents at the Cook County Court clerk's office and released them Wednesday.
Lawyers of the NATO 3 were initially denied access to the charges, which include material support for terrorism, possession of an incendiary device, conspiracy to commit terrorism, solicitation to commit arson, attempted arson and two counts of unlawful use of a weapon. The newly released documents show each activist with 11 felony charges each, more than was originally assumed.
"The fact that the indictment charges the defendants with 11 serious felonies, including 'terrorism' and two separate 'conspiracy' charges for the alleged possession of 4 makeshift incendiary devices shows that the State is intent on continuing its strategy to sensationalize this case," said attorney Michael Deutsch with the People's Law Office and the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), in a press release. "The prosecutor controls the grand jury and is able to obtain a rubber-stamped indictment for any charges it desires."
The case against Brent Betterly, Jared Chase and Brian Jacob Church, who are in jail on a $1.5 million bond each, was marred by a lack of information from its inception. Deutsch was denied a copy of the indictment - in response, prosecutors said they were not legally obligated to provide it before the arraignment hearing.
In response to Deutsch being denied a copy of the indictment, Judge Adam Bourgeois Jr. said at a hearing last week: "It seems a little strange, but that's the way it is."
In addition, prosecutors have not shared evidence regarding alleged materials to make firebombs found in the raided apartment, according to defense attorneys of the detained activists.
The State's Attorney's office did not respond to requests for comment.
Church, Chase and Betterly, who were arrested in May during an undercover operation and were said to have been planning an arson attack on Obama's campaign headquarters, could spend years in jail while the case makes its way through the courts.
"The common thread running through the NATO 3 case and other similar contemporary cases is politically motivated infiltration," said NLG spokesperson Kris Hermes. "Given that no Molotov cocktails or other incendiary devices have been used at any political demonstration in the U.S. in recent memory, questions of whether law enforcement is in fact provoking or manufacturing criminal activity remain unanswered and extremely relevant."
The three NATO defendants were arrested along with eight others only days before the NATO summit in May during a raid on the home of two Occupy Chicago activists. They were then held for up to 68 hours before receiving their charges; of the eleven arrested at the house, five continue to be held and the rest were released.
Among those arrested during the home raid were two undercover police officers - "Mo" and "Gloves" - both of whom, it was subsequently revealed, had been infiltrating Occupy Chicago for months prior to the protests.
The case of the NATO 3 is the first time the state's attorney's office has prosecuted under the Illinois terrorism statute, say defense lawyers, but the pattern of entrapment isn't new to Occupy.
Hermes cites the case of the Cleveland 5, Occupy activists with federal terrorism and explosive charges who commentators say were led on by active infiltration.
Hermes says that the short-term goal of the city "which was to discredit the NATO demonstrators and perhaps diminish the number of people on the streets protesting" was achieved by the arrest of the NATO 3.
But, he continued, "Unfortunately now these three men are paying the price ... and remain the unfortunate consequence of the city's desire to create hysteria around so-called terrorism charges."
Occupy groups around the country are calling for an international day in solidarity with the detained NATO protesters for July 2, the day of the arraignment. Hermes said the three will plead "not guilty."
"There are real questions whether these crimes are being manufactured," said Hermes, "and whether they would happen at all if they didn't involve state actors."
Copyright, Truthout.
Yana Kunichoff is an assistant editor at Truthout.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
http://truth-out.org/news/item/9917-nato-3-indictment-shows-increased-terrorism-charges
NATO 3 Indictment Shows Increased Terrorism Charges
Thursday, 21 June 2012 14:38 By Yana Kunichoff, Truthout
Report
(Photo: Ryan Williams / Flickr)
The case of the missing indictment for the three NATO protesters charged with terrorism has been solved by the group's lawyers, who discovered the documents at the Cook County Court clerk's office and released them Wednesday.
Lawyers of the NATO 3 were initially denied access to the charges, which include material support for terrorism, possession of an incendiary device, conspiracy to commit terrorism, solicitation to commit arson, attempted arson and two counts of unlawful use of a weapon. The newly released documents show each activist with 11 felony charges each, more than was originally assumed.
"The fact that the indictment charges the defendants with 11 serious felonies, including 'terrorism' and two separate 'conspiracy' charges for the alleged possession of 4 makeshift incendiary devices shows that the State is intent on continuing its strategy to sensationalize this case," said attorney Michael Deutsch with the People's Law Office and the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), in a press release. "The prosecutor controls the grand jury and is able to obtain a rubber-stamped indictment for any charges it desires."
The case against Brent Betterly, Jared Chase and Brian Jacob Church, who are in jail on a $1.5 million bond each, was marred by a lack of information from its inception. Deutsch was denied a copy of the indictment - in response, prosecutors said they were not legally obligated to provide it before the arraignment hearing.
In response to Deutsch being denied a copy of the indictment, Judge Adam Bourgeois Jr. said at a hearing last week: "It seems a little strange, but that's the way it is."
In addition, prosecutors have not shared evidence regarding alleged materials to make firebombs found in the raided apartment, according to defense attorneys of the detained activists.
The State's Attorney's office did not respond to requests for comment.
Church, Chase and Betterly, who were arrested in May during an undercover operation and were said to have been planning an arson attack on Obama's campaign headquarters, could spend years in jail while the case makes its way through the courts.
"The common thread running through the NATO 3 case and other similar contemporary cases is politically motivated infiltration," said NLG spokesperson Kris Hermes. "Given that no Molotov cocktails or other incendiary devices have been used at any political demonstration in the U.S. in recent memory, questions of whether law enforcement is in fact provoking or manufacturing criminal activity remain unanswered and extremely relevant."
The three NATO defendants were arrested along with eight others only days before the NATO summit in May during a raid on the home of two Occupy Chicago activists. They were then held for up to 68 hours before receiving their charges; of the eleven arrested at the house, five continue to be held and the rest were released.
Among those arrested during the home raid were two undercover police officers - "Mo" and "Gloves" - both of whom, it was subsequently revealed, had been infiltrating Occupy Chicago for months prior to the protests.
The case of the NATO 3 is the first time the state's attorney's office has prosecuted under the Illinois terrorism statute, say defense lawyers, but the pattern of entrapment isn't new to Occupy.
Hermes cites the case of the Cleveland 5, Occupy activists with federal terrorism and explosive charges who commentators say were led on by active infiltration.
Hermes says that the short-term goal of the city "which was to discredit the NATO demonstrators and perhaps diminish the number of people on the streets protesting" was achieved by the arrest of the NATO 3.
But, he continued, "Unfortunately now these three men are paying the price ... and remain the unfortunate consequence of the city's desire to create hysteria around so-called terrorism charges."
Occupy groups around the country are calling for an international day in solidarity with the detained NATO protesters for July 2, the day of the arraignment. Hermes said the three will plead "not guilty."
"There are real questions whether these crimes are being manufactured," said Hermes, "and whether they would happen at all if they didn't involve state actors."
Copyright, Truthout.
Yana Kunichoff is an assistant editor at Truthout.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Susan Crane has been ordered to appear in the U.S. District Court for
Leonard Eiger subversivepeacemaking@gmail.com
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Greetings Friends of Disarm Now Plowshares,
Susan Crane has been ordered to appear in the U.S. District Court for
the Western District of Washington on July 23, 2012.
Susan is charged with violating various conditions of supervision
following her discharge from FCI Dublin this past April. Her sentence
included one year of supervised release. Her probation officer was
not particularly pleased with Susan's noncooperation, and is asking
Judge Benjamin Settle to revoke the term of supervision. Translation
- more JAIL TIME.
Susan plans to appear, as ordered, on July 23rd at the Tacoma Union
Station Courthouse to stand before Judge Settle.
We are planning to support Susan that day with our presence at the
Courthouse, both outside and inside. Susan invites anyone who is in
the Tacoma area to join us.
We will gather at Jean's House, Tacoma Catholic Worker and will leave
at 11:45 AM to walk down to the courthouse (roughly 10 to 15 minute
walk downhill). We will vigil in front of the courthouse from 12:00
PM to 1:00 PM in support of Susan, Disarm Now Plowshares and nuclear
abolition. We will then proceed into the courthouse to prepare for
Susan's 1:30 hearing.
You can join us at the Catholic Worker or the courthouse. There is
free parking at and around the Catholic Worker. There is limited
metered on-street parking near the courthouse, and paid parking in the
courthouse lot. The area is also well served by public
transportation.
We will have signs and banners available. Just bring your nonviolent
spirit. Click here for map, directions and parking information for
the courthouse. The Tacoma Catholic Worker is located at 1417 South G
Street. Jean's House is on the East side of the alley, and has a
beautiful mural of cranes on the North side (truly a sight to behold).
Please note that you will need government issued photo identification
to enter the courthouse, and must pass through a security screening
checkpoint (similar to airport security). No knives or other sharp
thingys. And no photography once past the inner security screening
checkpoint.
Can't make it on the 23rd? If you would like to send a brief message
of solidarity for Susan and Disarm Now Plowshares, drop me an email
with your message. We will read the messages to those assembled on
the 23rd.
On another note - I know many of you are wondering what happened to
the elusive Steve Kelly. Well, he did walk out of the SeaTac Federal
Detention Center as scheduled on June 21st. Since then he has kept a
very low profile. I did see him briefly, and found him to be in
excellent health and spirits. Months of solitary seems to have
strengthened him! No forwarding address for the time being.
On yet another note - Fr. Bill Bichsel recently received the Greater
Tacoma Peace Prize. As part of this honor, Bix will be travelling to
Oslo, Norway to participate in the festivities surrounding the Nobel
Peace Prize in December. He plans to build connections with
individuals and organizations engaged in our common work to abolish
nuclear weapons. Yeah Bix!
Peace,
Leonard Eiger
subversivepeacemaking@gmail.com
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Greetings Friends of Disarm Now Plowshares,
Susan Crane has been ordered to appear in the U.S. District Court for
the Western District of Washington on July 23, 2012.
Susan is charged with violating various conditions of supervision
following her discharge from FCI Dublin this past April. Her sentence
included one year of supervised release. Her probation officer was
not particularly pleased with Susan's noncooperation, and is asking
Judge Benjamin Settle to revoke the term of supervision. Translation
- more JAIL TIME.
Susan plans to appear, as ordered, on July 23rd at the Tacoma Union
Station Courthouse to stand before Judge Settle.
We are planning to support Susan that day with our presence at the
Courthouse, both outside and inside. Susan invites anyone who is in
the Tacoma area to join us.
We will gather at Jean's House, Tacoma Catholic Worker and will leave
at 11:45 AM to walk down to the courthouse (roughly 10 to 15 minute
walk downhill). We will vigil in front of the courthouse from 12:00
PM to 1:00 PM in support of Susan, Disarm Now Plowshares and nuclear
abolition. We will then proceed into the courthouse to prepare for
Susan's 1:30 hearing.
You can join us at the Catholic Worker or the courthouse. There is
free parking at and around the Catholic Worker. There is limited
metered on-street parking near the courthouse, and paid parking in the
courthouse lot. The area is also well served by public
transportation.
We will have signs and banners available. Just bring your nonviolent
spirit. Click here for map, directions and parking information for
the courthouse. The Tacoma Catholic Worker is located at 1417 South G
Street. Jean's House is on the East side of the alley, and has a
beautiful mural of cranes on the North side (truly a sight to behold).
Please note that you will need government issued photo identification
to enter the courthouse, and must pass through a security screening
checkpoint (similar to airport security). No knives or other sharp
thingys. And no photography once past the inner security screening
checkpoint.
Can't make it on the 23rd? If you would like to send a brief message
of solidarity for Susan and Disarm Now Plowshares, drop me an email
with your message. We will read the messages to those assembled on
the 23rd.
On another note - I know many of you are wondering what happened to
the elusive Steve Kelly. Well, he did walk out of the SeaTac Federal
Detention Center as scheduled on June 21st. Since then he has kept a
very low profile. I did see him briefly, and found him to be in
excellent health and spirits. Months of solitary seems to have
strengthened him! No forwarding address for the time being.
On yet another note - Fr. Bill Bichsel recently received the Greater
Tacoma Peace Prize. As part of this honor, Bix will be travelling to
Oslo, Norway to participate in the festivities surrounding the Nobel
Peace Prize in December. He plans to build connections with
individuals and organizations engaged in our common work to abolish
nuclear weapons. Yeah Bix!
Peace,
Leonard Eiger
subversivepeacemaking@gmail.com
Monday, July 2, 2012
Mitt Romney and the New Gilded Age
Mitt Romney and the New Gilded Age
By Robert Reich
The election of 2012 raises two perplexing questions. The first is how the GOP could put up someone for president who so brazenly epitomizes the excesses of casino capitalism that have nearly destroyed the economy and overwhelmed our democracy. The second is why the Democrats have failed to point this out.
The White House has criticized Mitt Romney for his years at the helm of Bain Capital, pointing to a deal that led to the bankruptcy of GS Technologies, a Bain investment in Kansas City that went belly up in 2001 at the cost of 750 jobs. But the White House hasn’t connected Romney’s Bain to the larger scourge of casino capitalism. Not surprisingly, its criticism has quickly degenerated into a “he said, she said” feud over what proportion of the companies that Bain bought and loaded up with debt subsequently went broke (it’s about 20 percent), and how many people lost their jobs relative to how many jobs were added because of Bain’s financial maneuvers (that depends on when you start and stop the clock). And it has invited a Republican countercharge that the administration gambled away taxpayer money on its own bad bet, the Solyndra solar panel company.
But the real issue here isn’t Bain’s betting record. It’s that Romney’s Bain is part of the same system as Jamie Dimon’s JPMorgan Chase, Jon Corzine’s MF Global and Lloyd Blankfein’s Goldman Sachs—a system that has turned much of the economy into a betting parlor that nearly imploded in 2008, destroying millions of jobs and devastating household incomes. The winners in this system are top Wall Street executives and traders, private-equity managers and hedge-fund moguls,
and the losers are most of the rest of us. The system is largely responsible for the greatest concentration of the nation’s income and wealth at the very top since the Gilded Age of the nineteenth century, with the richest 400 Americans owning as much as the bottom 150 million put together. And these multimillionaires and billionaires are now actively buying the 2012 election—and with it, American democracy.
The biggest players in this system have, like Romney, made their profits placing big bets with other people’s money. If the bets go well, the players make out like bandits. If they go badly, the burden lands on average workers and taxpayers. The 750 peo-
ple at GS Technologies who lost their jobs thanks to a bad deal engineered by Romney’s Bain were a small foreshadowing of the 15 million who lost jobs after the cumulative dealmaking
of the entire financial sector pushed the whole economy off a cliff. And relative to the cost to taxpayers of bailing out Wall Street, Solyndra is a rounding error.
Connect the dots of casino capitalism, and you get Mitt Romney. The fortunes raked in by financial dealmakers depend on special goodies baked into the tax code such as “carried interest,” which allows Romney and other partners in private-equity firms (as well as in many venture-capital and hedge funds) to treat their incomes as capital gains taxed at a maximum of
15 percent. This is how Romney managed to pay an average of 14 percent on more than $42 million of combined income in 2010 and 2011. But the carried-interest loophole makes no economic sense. Conservatives try to justify the tax code’s generous preference for capital gains as a reward to risk-takers—but Romney and other private-equity partners risk little, if any, of their personal wealth. They mostly bet with other investors’ money, including the pension savings of average working people.
Another goodie allows private-equity partners to sock away almost any amount of their earnings into a tax-deferred IRA, while the rest of us are limited to a few thousand dollars a year. The partners can merely low-ball the value of whatever portion of their investment partnership they put away—even valuing it at zero—because the tax code considers a partnership interest to have value only in the future. This explains how Romney’s IRA is worth as much as $101 million. The tax code further subsidizes private equity and much of the rest of the financial sector by making interest on debt tax-deductible, while taxing profits and dividends. This creates huge incentives for financiers to find ways of substituting debt for equity and is a major reason America’s biggest banks have leveraged America to the hilt. It’s also why Romney’s Bain and other private-equity partnerships have done the same to the companies they buy.
These maneuvers shift all the economic risk to debtors, who sometimes can’t repay what they owe. That’s rarely a problem for the financiers who engineer the deals; they’re sufficiently diversified to withstand some losses, or they’ve already taken their profits and moved on. But piles of debt play havoc with the lives of real people in the real economy when the companies they work for can’t meet their payments, or the banks they rely on stop lending money, or the contractors they depend on go broke—often with the result that they can’t meet their own debt payments and lose their homes, cars and savings.
It took more than a decade for America to recover from the Great Crash of 1929 after the financial sector had gorged itself on debt, and it’s taking years to recover from the more limited but still terrible crash of 2008. The same kinds of convulsions have occurred on a smaller scale at a host of companies since the go-go years of the 1980s, when private-equity firms like Bain began doing leveraged buyouts—taking over a target company, loading it up with debt, using the tax deduction that comes with the debt to boost the target company’s profits, cutting payrolls and then reselling the company at a higher price.
Sometimes these maneuvers work, sometimes they end in disaster; but they always generate giant rewards for the dealmakers while shifting the risk to workers and taxpayers. In 1988 drugstore chain Revco went under when it couldn’t meet its debt payments on a $1.6 billion leveraged buyout engineered by Salomon Brothers. In 1989 the private-equity firm of Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts completed the notorious and ultimately disastrous buyout of RJR Nabisco for $31 billion, much of it in high-yield (“junk”) bonds. In 1993 Bain Capital became a majority shareholder in GS Technologies and loaded it with debt. In 2001 it went down when it couldn’t meet payments on that debt load. But even as these firms sank, Bain and the other dealmakers continued to collect lucrative fees—transaction fees, advisory fees, management fees—sucking the companies dry until the bitter end. According to a review by the New York Times of firms that went bankrupt on Romney’s watch, Bain structured the deals so that its executives would always win, even if employees, creditors and Bain’s own investors lost out. That’s been Big Finance’s MO.
By the time Romney co-founded Bain Capital in 1984, financial wheeling and dealing was the most lucrative part of the economy, sucking into its Gordon Gekko–like maw the brightest and most ambitious MBAs, who wanted nothing more than to make huge amounts of money as quickly as possible. Between the mid-1980s and 2007, financial-sector earnings made up two-thirds of all the growth in incomes. At the same time, wages for most Americans stagnated as employers, under mounting pressure from Wall Street and private-equity firms like Bain, slashed payrolls and shipped jobs overseas.
The 2008 crash only briefly interrupted the bonanza. Last year, according to a recent Bloomberg Markets analysis, America’s top fifty financial CEOs got a 20.4 percent pay hike, even as the wages of most Americans continued to drop. Topping the Bloomberg list were two of the same private-equity barons who did the RJR Nabisco deal a quarter-century ago—Henry Kravis and George Roberts, who took home $30 million each. According to the 2011 tax records he released, Romney was not far behind.
We’ve entered a new Gilded Age, of which Mitt Romney is the perfect reflection. The original Gilded Age was a time of buoyant rich men with flashy white teeth, raging wealth and a measured disdain for anyone lacking those attributes, which was just about everyone else. Romney looks and acts the part perfectly, offhandedly challenging a GOP primary opponent to a $10,000 bet and referring to his wife’s several Cadillacs. Four years ago he paid $12 million for his fourth home, a 3,000-square-foot villa in La Jolla, California, with vaulted ceilings, five bathrooms, a pool, a Jacuzzi and unobstructed views of the Pacific. Romney has filed plans to tear it down and replace it with a home four times bigger.
We’ve had wealthy presidents before, but they have been traitors to their class—Teddy Roosevelt storming against the “malefactors of great wealth” and busting up the trusts, Franklin Roosevelt railing against the “economic royalists” and raising their taxes, John F. Kennedy appealing to the conscience of the nation to conquer poverty. Romney is the opposite: he wants to do everything he can to make the superwealthy even wealthier and the poor even poorer, and he justifies it all with a thinly veiled social Darwinism.
Not incidentally, social Darwinism was also the reigning philosophy of the original Gilded Age, propounded in America more than a century ago by William Graham Sumner, a professor of political and social science at Yale, who twisted Charles Darwin’s insights into a theory to justify the brazen inequality of that era: survival of the fittest. Romney uses the same logic when he accuses President Obama of creating an “entitlement society” simply because millions of desperate Americans have been forced to accept food stamps and unemployment insurance, or when he opines that government should not help distressed homeowners but instead let the market “hit the bottom,” or enthuses over a House Republican budget that would cut $3.3 trillion from low-income programs over the next decade. It’s survival of the fittest all over again. Sumner, too, warned against handouts to people he termed “negligent, shiftless, inefficient, silly, and imprudent.”
When Romney simultaneously proposes to cut the taxes of households earning over $1 million by an average of $295,874 a year (according to an analysis of his proposals by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center) because the rich are, allegedly, “job creators,” he mimics Sumner’s view that “millionaires are a product of natural selection, acting on the whole body of men to pick out those who can meet the requirement of certain work to be done.” In truth, the whole of Republican trickle-down economics is nothing but repotted social Darwinism.
The Gilded Age was also the last time America came close to becoming a plutocracy—a system of government of, by and for the wealthy. It was an era when the lackeys of the very rich literally put sacks of money on the desks of pliant legislators, senators bore the nicknames of the giant companies whose interests they served (“the senator from Standard Oil”), and the kings of finance decided how the American economy would function.
The potential of great wealth in the hands of a relative few to undermine democratic institutions was a continuing concern in the nineteenth century as railroad, oil and financial magnates accumulated power. “Wealth, like suffrage, must be considerably distributed, to support a democratick republic,” wrote Virginia Congressman John Taylor as early as 1814, “and hence, whatever draws a considerable proportion of either into a few hands, will destroy it. As power follows wealth, the majority must have wealth or lose power.” Decades later, progressives like Louis Brandeis saw the choice starkly: “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
The reforms of the Progressive Era at the turn of the twentieth century saved American democracy from the robber barons, but the political power of great wealth has now resurfaced with a vengeance. And here again, Romney is the poster boy. Congress has so far failed to close the absurd carried-interest tax loophole, for example, because of generous donations by Bain Capital and other private-equity partners to both parties.
In the 2012 election, Romney wants everything Wall Street has to offer, and Wall Street seems quite happy to give it to him. Not only is he promising lower taxes in return for its money; he also vows that, if elected, he’ll repeal what’s left of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, Washington’s frail attempt to prevent the Street from repeating its 2008 pump-
and-dump. Unlike previous elections, in which the Street hedged its bets by donating to both parties, it’s now putting most of its money behind Romney. And courtesy of a Supreme Court majority that seems intent on magnifying the political power of today’s robber barons, that’s a lot of dough. As of May, thirty-one billionaires had contributed between $50,000 and
$2 million each to Romney’s super-PAC, and in June another—appropriately enough, a casino magnate—gave $10 million, with a promise of $90 million more. Among those who have contributed at least $1 million are former associates from Romney’s days at Bain Capital and prominent hedge-fund managers.
To be sure, Romney is no worse than any other casino capitalist of this new Gilded Age. All have been making big bets—collecting large sums when they pay off and imposing the risks and costs on the rest of us when they don’t. Many have justified their growing wealth, along with the growing impoverishment of much of the rest of the nation, with beliefs strikingly similar to social Darwinism. And a significant number have transformed their winnings into the clout needed to protect the unrestrained betting and tax preferences that have fueled their fortunes, and to lower their tax rates even further. Wall Street has already all but eviscerated the Dodd-Frank Act, and it has even turned the so-called Volcker Rule—a watered-down version of the old Glass-Steagall Act, which established a firewall between commercial and investment banking—into a Swiss cheese of
loopholes and exemptions.
But Romney is the only casino capitalist who is running for president, at the very time in our nation’s history when these views and practices are a clear and present danger to the well-being of the rest of us—just as they were more than a century ago. Romney says he’s a job-creating businessman, but in truth he’s just another financial dealmaker in the age of the financial deal, a fat cat in an era of excessively corpulent felines, a plutocrat in this new epoch of plutocrats. That the GOP has made him its standard-bearer at this point in American history is astonishing.
So why don’t Democrats connect these dots? It’s not as if Americans harbor great admiration for financial dealmakers. According to the newly released twenty-fifth annual Pew Research Center poll on core values, nearly three-quarters of Americans believe “Wall Street only cares about making money for itself.” That’s not surprising, given that many are still bearing the scars of 2008. Nor are they pleased with the concentration of income and wealth at the top. Polls show a majority of Americans want taxes raised on the very rich, and a majority are opposed to the bailouts, subsidies and special tax breaks with which the wealthy have padded their nests.
Part of the answer, surely, is that elected Democrats are still almost as beholden to the wealthy for campaign funds as the Republicans, and don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them. Wall Street can give most of its largesse to Romney this year and still have enough left over to tame many influential Democrats (look at the outcry from some of them when the White House took on Bain Capital).
But I suspect a deeper reason for their reticence is that if they connect the dots and reveal Romney for what he is—the epitome of what’s fundamentally wrong with our economy—they’ll be admitting how serious our economic problems really are. They would have to acknowledge that the economic catastrophe that continues to cause us so much suffering is, at its root, a product of the gross inequality of income, wealth and political power in America’s new Gilded Age, as well as the perverse incentives of casino capitalism.
Yet this admission would require that they propose ways of reversing these trends—proposals large and bold enough to do the job. Time will tell whether today’s Democratic Party and this White House have the courage and imagination to do it. If they do not, that in itself poses almost as great a challenge to the future of the nation as does Mitt Romney and all he represents.
This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/mitt-romney-and-new-gilded-age-1341149556. All rights are reserved.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
By Robert Reich
The election of 2012 raises two perplexing questions. The first is how the GOP could put up someone for president who so brazenly epitomizes the excesses of casino capitalism that have nearly destroyed the economy and overwhelmed our democracy. The second is why the Democrats have failed to point this out.
The White House has criticized Mitt Romney for his years at the helm of Bain Capital, pointing to a deal that led to the bankruptcy of GS Technologies, a Bain investment in Kansas City that went belly up in 2001 at the cost of 750 jobs. But the White House hasn’t connected Romney’s Bain to the larger scourge of casino capitalism. Not surprisingly, its criticism has quickly degenerated into a “he said, she said” feud over what proportion of the companies that Bain bought and loaded up with debt subsequently went broke (it’s about 20 percent), and how many people lost their jobs relative to how many jobs were added because of Bain’s financial maneuvers (that depends on when you start and stop the clock). And it has invited a Republican countercharge that the administration gambled away taxpayer money on its own bad bet, the Solyndra solar panel company.
But the real issue here isn’t Bain’s betting record. It’s that Romney’s Bain is part of the same system as Jamie Dimon’s JPMorgan Chase, Jon Corzine’s MF Global and Lloyd Blankfein’s Goldman Sachs—a system that has turned much of the economy into a betting parlor that nearly imploded in 2008, destroying millions of jobs and devastating household incomes. The winners in this system are top Wall Street executives and traders, private-equity managers and hedge-fund moguls,
and the losers are most of the rest of us. The system is largely responsible for the greatest concentration of the nation’s income and wealth at the very top since the Gilded Age of the nineteenth century, with the richest 400 Americans owning as much as the bottom 150 million put together. And these multimillionaires and billionaires are now actively buying the 2012 election—and with it, American democracy.
The biggest players in this system have, like Romney, made their profits placing big bets with other people’s money. If the bets go well, the players make out like bandits. If they go badly, the burden lands on average workers and taxpayers. The 750 peo-
ple at GS Technologies who lost their jobs thanks to a bad deal engineered by Romney’s Bain were a small foreshadowing of the 15 million who lost jobs after the cumulative dealmaking
of the entire financial sector pushed the whole economy off a cliff. And relative to the cost to taxpayers of bailing out Wall Street, Solyndra is a rounding error.
Connect the dots of casino capitalism, and you get Mitt Romney. The fortunes raked in by financial dealmakers depend on special goodies baked into the tax code such as “carried interest,” which allows Romney and other partners in private-equity firms (as well as in many venture-capital and hedge funds) to treat their incomes as capital gains taxed at a maximum of
15 percent. This is how Romney managed to pay an average of 14 percent on more than $42 million of combined income in 2010 and 2011. But the carried-interest loophole makes no economic sense. Conservatives try to justify the tax code’s generous preference for capital gains as a reward to risk-takers—but Romney and other private-equity partners risk little, if any, of their personal wealth. They mostly bet with other investors’ money, including the pension savings of average working people.
Another goodie allows private-equity partners to sock away almost any amount of their earnings into a tax-deferred IRA, while the rest of us are limited to a few thousand dollars a year. The partners can merely low-ball the value of whatever portion of their investment partnership they put away—even valuing it at zero—because the tax code considers a partnership interest to have value only in the future. This explains how Romney’s IRA is worth as much as $101 million. The tax code further subsidizes private equity and much of the rest of the financial sector by making interest on debt tax-deductible, while taxing profits and dividends. This creates huge incentives for financiers to find ways of substituting debt for equity and is a major reason America’s biggest banks have leveraged America to the hilt. It’s also why Romney’s Bain and other private-equity partnerships have done the same to the companies they buy.
These maneuvers shift all the economic risk to debtors, who sometimes can’t repay what they owe. That’s rarely a problem for the financiers who engineer the deals; they’re sufficiently diversified to withstand some losses, or they’ve already taken their profits and moved on. But piles of debt play havoc with the lives of real people in the real economy when the companies they work for can’t meet their payments, or the banks they rely on stop lending money, or the contractors they depend on go broke—often with the result that they can’t meet their own debt payments and lose their homes, cars and savings.
It took more than a decade for America to recover from the Great Crash of 1929 after the financial sector had gorged itself on debt, and it’s taking years to recover from the more limited but still terrible crash of 2008. The same kinds of convulsions have occurred on a smaller scale at a host of companies since the go-go years of the 1980s, when private-equity firms like Bain began doing leveraged buyouts—taking over a target company, loading it up with debt, using the tax deduction that comes with the debt to boost the target company’s profits, cutting payrolls and then reselling the company at a higher price.
Sometimes these maneuvers work, sometimes they end in disaster; but they always generate giant rewards for the dealmakers while shifting the risk to workers and taxpayers. In 1988 drugstore chain Revco went under when it couldn’t meet its debt payments on a $1.6 billion leveraged buyout engineered by Salomon Brothers. In 1989 the private-equity firm of Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts completed the notorious and ultimately disastrous buyout of RJR Nabisco for $31 billion, much of it in high-yield (“junk”) bonds. In 1993 Bain Capital became a majority shareholder in GS Technologies and loaded it with debt. In 2001 it went down when it couldn’t meet payments on that debt load. But even as these firms sank, Bain and the other dealmakers continued to collect lucrative fees—transaction fees, advisory fees, management fees—sucking the companies dry until the bitter end. According to a review by the New York Times of firms that went bankrupt on Romney’s watch, Bain structured the deals so that its executives would always win, even if employees, creditors and Bain’s own investors lost out. That’s been Big Finance’s MO.
By the time Romney co-founded Bain Capital in 1984, financial wheeling and dealing was the most lucrative part of the economy, sucking into its Gordon Gekko–like maw the brightest and most ambitious MBAs, who wanted nothing more than to make huge amounts of money as quickly as possible. Between the mid-1980s and 2007, financial-sector earnings made up two-thirds of all the growth in incomes. At the same time, wages for most Americans stagnated as employers, under mounting pressure from Wall Street and private-equity firms like Bain, slashed payrolls and shipped jobs overseas.
The 2008 crash only briefly interrupted the bonanza. Last year, according to a recent Bloomberg Markets analysis, America’s top fifty financial CEOs got a 20.4 percent pay hike, even as the wages of most Americans continued to drop. Topping the Bloomberg list were two of the same private-equity barons who did the RJR Nabisco deal a quarter-century ago—Henry Kravis and George Roberts, who took home $30 million each. According to the 2011 tax records he released, Romney was not far behind.
We’ve entered a new Gilded Age, of which Mitt Romney is the perfect reflection. The original Gilded Age was a time of buoyant rich men with flashy white teeth, raging wealth and a measured disdain for anyone lacking those attributes, which was just about everyone else. Romney looks and acts the part perfectly, offhandedly challenging a GOP primary opponent to a $10,000 bet and referring to his wife’s several Cadillacs. Four years ago he paid $12 million for his fourth home, a 3,000-square-foot villa in La Jolla, California, with vaulted ceilings, five bathrooms, a pool, a Jacuzzi and unobstructed views of the Pacific. Romney has filed plans to tear it down and replace it with a home four times bigger.
We’ve had wealthy presidents before, but they have been traitors to their class—Teddy Roosevelt storming against the “malefactors of great wealth” and busting up the trusts, Franklin Roosevelt railing against the “economic royalists” and raising their taxes, John F. Kennedy appealing to the conscience of the nation to conquer poverty. Romney is the opposite: he wants to do everything he can to make the superwealthy even wealthier and the poor even poorer, and he justifies it all with a thinly veiled social Darwinism.
Not incidentally, social Darwinism was also the reigning philosophy of the original Gilded Age, propounded in America more than a century ago by William Graham Sumner, a professor of political and social science at Yale, who twisted Charles Darwin’s insights into a theory to justify the brazen inequality of that era: survival of the fittest. Romney uses the same logic when he accuses President Obama of creating an “entitlement society” simply because millions of desperate Americans have been forced to accept food stamps and unemployment insurance, or when he opines that government should not help distressed homeowners but instead let the market “hit the bottom,” or enthuses over a House Republican budget that would cut $3.3 trillion from low-income programs over the next decade. It’s survival of the fittest all over again. Sumner, too, warned against handouts to people he termed “negligent, shiftless, inefficient, silly, and imprudent.”
When Romney simultaneously proposes to cut the taxes of households earning over $1 million by an average of $295,874 a year (according to an analysis of his proposals by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center) because the rich are, allegedly, “job creators,” he mimics Sumner’s view that “millionaires are a product of natural selection, acting on the whole body of men to pick out those who can meet the requirement of certain work to be done.” In truth, the whole of Republican trickle-down economics is nothing but repotted social Darwinism.
The Gilded Age was also the last time America came close to becoming a plutocracy—a system of government of, by and for the wealthy. It was an era when the lackeys of the very rich literally put sacks of money on the desks of pliant legislators, senators bore the nicknames of the giant companies whose interests they served (“the senator from Standard Oil”), and the kings of finance decided how the American economy would function.
The potential of great wealth in the hands of a relative few to undermine democratic institutions was a continuing concern in the nineteenth century as railroad, oil and financial magnates accumulated power. “Wealth, like suffrage, must be considerably distributed, to support a democratick republic,” wrote Virginia Congressman John Taylor as early as 1814, “and hence, whatever draws a considerable proportion of either into a few hands, will destroy it. As power follows wealth, the majority must have wealth or lose power.” Decades later, progressives like Louis Brandeis saw the choice starkly: “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
The reforms of the Progressive Era at the turn of the twentieth century saved American democracy from the robber barons, but the political power of great wealth has now resurfaced with a vengeance. And here again, Romney is the poster boy. Congress has so far failed to close the absurd carried-interest tax loophole, for example, because of generous donations by Bain Capital and other private-equity partners to both parties.
In the 2012 election, Romney wants everything Wall Street has to offer, and Wall Street seems quite happy to give it to him. Not only is he promising lower taxes in return for its money; he also vows that, if elected, he’ll repeal what’s left of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, Washington’s frail attempt to prevent the Street from repeating its 2008 pump-
and-dump. Unlike previous elections, in which the Street hedged its bets by donating to both parties, it’s now putting most of its money behind Romney. And courtesy of a Supreme Court majority that seems intent on magnifying the political power of today’s robber barons, that’s a lot of dough. As of May, thirty-one billionaires had contributed between $50,000 and
$2 million each to Romney’s super-PAC, and in June another—appropriately enough, a casino magnate—gave $10 million, with a promise of $90 million more. Among those who have contributed at least $1 million are former associates from Romney’s days at Bain Capital and prominent hedge-fund managers.
To be sure, Romney is no worse than any other casino capitalist of this new Gilded Age. All have been making big bets—collecting large sums when they pay off and imposing the risks and costs on the rest of us when they don’t. Many have justified their growing wealth, along with the growing impoverishment of much of the rest of the nation, with beliefs strikingly similar to social Darwinism. And a significant number have transformed their winnings into the clout needed to protect the unrestrained betting and tax preferences that have fueled their fortunes, and to lower their tax rates even further. Wall Street has already all but eviscerated the Dodd-Frank Act, and it has even turned the so-called Volcker Rule—a watered-down version of the old Glass-Steagall Act, which established a firewall between commercial and investment banking—into a Swiss cheese of
loopholes and exemptions.
But Romney is the only casino capitalist who is running for president, at the very time in our nation’s history when these views and practices are a clear and present danger to the well-being of the rest of us—just as they were more than a century ago. Romney says he’s a job-creating businessman, but in truth he’s just another financial dealmaker in the age of the financial deal, a fat cat in an era of excessively corpulent felines, a plutocrat in this new epoch of plutocrats. That the GOP has made him its standard-bearer at this point in American history is astonishing.
So why don’t Democrats connect these dots? It’s not as if Americans harbor great admiration for financial dealmakers. According to the newly released twenty-fifth annual Pew Research Center poll on core values, nearly three-quarters of Americans believe “Wall Street only cares about making money for itself.” That’s not surprising, given that many are still bearing the scars of 2008. Nor are they pleased with the concentration of income and wealth at the top. Polls show a majority of Americans want taxes raised on the very rich, and a majority are opposed to the bailouts, subsidies and special tax breaks with which the wealthy have padded their nests.
Part of the answer, surely, is that elected Democrats are still almost as beholden to the wealthy for campaign funds as the Republicans, and don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them. Wall Street can give most of its largesse to Romney this year and still have enough left over to tame many influential Democrats (look at the outcry from some of them when the White House took on Bain Capital).
But I suspect a deeper reason for their reticence is that if they connect the dots and reveal Romney for what he is—the epitome of what’s fundamentally wrong with our economy—they’ll be admitting how serious our economic problems really are. They would have to acknowledge that the economic catastrophe that continues to cause us so much suffering is, at its root, a product of the gross inequality of income, wealth and political power in America’s new Gilded Age, as well as the perverse incentives of casino capitalism.
Yet this admission would require that they propose ways of reversing these trends—proposals large and bold enough to do the job. Time will tell whether today’s Democratic Party and this White House have the courage and imagination to do it. If they do not, that in itself poses almost as great a challenge to the future of the nation as does Mitt Romney and all he represents.
This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/mitt-romney-and-new-gilded-age-1341149556. All rights are reserved.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
An Iranian Storyteller’s Personal Revolution
An Iranian Storyteller’s Personal Revolution
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/books/the-colonel-by-the-iranian-writer-mahmoud-dowlatabadi.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120702
July 1, 2012
By LARRY ROHTER
After being arrested in 1974 by the Savak, the shah’s secret police, the Iranian writer Mahmoud Dowlatabadi asked his interrogators just what crime he had committed. “None,” he recalled them responding, “but everyone we arrest seems to have copies of your novels, so that makes you provocative to revolutionaries.”
Since then Iran has, of course, experienced an Islamic revolution and three decades of theocratic rule, and Mr. Dowlatabadi, now 71, has gone on to write numerous other books, including “The Colonel,” which has just been published in the United States. But one thing remains unchanged: Those in power in Iran continue to regard him and his work as subversive.
“As a writer I embarked on a path of creating epic narratives of my country, which necessarily contain a lot of history which has not been written,” Mr. Dowlatabadi said, weighing his words carefully in an interview during a visit to New York this spring for the PEN World Voices Festival of international literature. “But in doing that I have been required to have lots of patience, perseverance and very few expectations from life.”
“The Colonel,” a novel about the 1979 revolution and its violent aftermath, is a case in point. The five children of the title character, an officer in the shah’s army, have all taken different political paths and paid a heavy price. The story unfolds on one rainy night as the colonel is trying to retrieve and bury the body of his youngest daughter, who has been tortured to death for handing out leaflets criticizing the new regime.
“It’s about time everyone even remotely interested in Iran read this novel,” The Independent of London said in a review when “The Colonel” was published in Britain last fall, describing it as a powerful portrayal of “a society ravaged by a warped morality.”
The novel was written in the early 1980s, around the time of the events it describes, when prominent intellectuals were being executed, and Mr. Dowlatabadi was called in for questioning. “I hid it in a drawer when I finished,” said Mr. Dowlatabadi (pronounced dow-LOT-a-body), fearing it would lead to his being blacklisted, which would have interfered with other projects he had in mind, including what became a much-praised three-volume work called “Bygone Days of the Elderly.”
“I did not want even to have this on their radar,” he said, referring to “The Colonel.” “Either they would take me to prison or prevent me from working. They would have their ways. After I wrote this, but when they still didn’t know I had written it, they gave me a warning that I shouldn’t teach at the university anymore, that I should just sit at home and keep quiet. That was fine with me because I could start to write the other book, the three volumes.”
As a result “The Colonel,” though available in English and German, does not yet exist in an authorized Persian-language version. Mr. Dowlatabadi said he finally submitted the manuscript three years ago to censors at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, which must approve all books before publication in Iran, but received no response until Iranian readers heard about the book and began clamoring for access to it.
“Finally the vice chairman of books in the ministry read it,” Mr. Dowlatabadi said, “and under pressure responded: ‘Yes, it’s a good book. But it’s a different account of the revolution.’ He said, ‘This is not our understanding of how the revolution occurred.’ So I said, ‘But it is my understanding of what occurred.’ In the meantime they didn’t say yes, and they didn’t say no. So it’s still stuck.”
Among Iranians Mr. Dowlatabadi is probably best known for “Kelidar,” a 10-book, 3,000-page saga about a nomadic Kurdish family. The authoritative Encyclopaedia Iranica has praised “Kelidar” for its “heroic, lyrical and sensual language” and attributed its “immense popularity” to Mr. Dowlatabadi’s detailed portrayal of political and social upheaval, his trademark as a novelist.
“Mahmoud has always had a commitment to social issues, but couldn’t accept the simplistic moralistic framework predominant in socialist realism,” said Kamran Rastegar, a professor of Middle Eastern languages and cultures at Tufts University who has translated some of Mr. Dowlatabadi’s work. “Instead he tried to examine the complexities and moral ambiguities of the experience of the poor and forgotten, mixing the brutality of that world with the lyricism of the Persian language.”
Despite Mr. Dowlatabadi’s renown at home “The Colonel” is only the second of his novels to appear in the United States. The first, “Missing Soluch,” conceived during the nearly three years he spent in prison under the shah and then written in a feverish 70-day burst after his release in 1976, was published in 2007. Like the bulk of his work before “The Colonel,” it is about country life — in this case a poor peasant woman in an isolated village who struggles to hold her family together after her husband mysteriously disappears.
That rural realm is one that Mr. Dowlatabadi, who has a steely gaze, a smoker’s cough and a prominent white mustache, knows intimately. He was born into a family of farmers in Khorasan, an arid northeastern province bordering Afghanistan, and as a youngster worked in the fields alongside his father, also chopping wood and hauling melons to market.
Even then he was an avid reader, curious about the outside world. “I would read on the roof of the house with a lamp,” he recalled. “I read ‘War and Peace’ that way.” At 14, with his father’s encouragement, he left for his province’s capital and ultimately for Tehran, working as a shoemaker, barber, bicycle repairman, street barker, cotton picker and cinema ticket taker before falling in with a theater troupe and becoming an actor.
Asked if he took menial jobs to gather material for the books he hoped to write, he said, “No, I was trying to earn a living.” In the end it was the theater work, along with some incursions into journalism, that pushed him into writing novels and screenplays. That experience also brought him to the attention of the secret police, since the troupe’s repertory included works by Brecht and Arthur Miller.
“He has an incredible memory of folklore, which might come from his days as an actor or might come from his origins, as somebody who didn’t have a formal education, who learned things by memorizing the local poetry and hearing the local stories,” said Nahid Mozaffari, who is an editor of “Strange Times, My Dear: The PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature” and has taught at New York University. “That’s an unusual trajectory for a writer in Iran, where most writers are middle-class urban educated people. He’s really different.”
To have “The Colonel” published in Persian, Mr. Dowlatabadi could theoretically turn to one of the émigré presses that flourish in Europe and California, or even, if he were so disposed, authorize a kind of samizdat edition for circulation in Iran. But he said he did not want to do that, preferring to adhere to legal channels, frustrating though that may be.
“My philosophy, my way of working, is not by confrontation,” he said. “I want to keep writing and keep being an Iranian novelist in Iran, so therefore I do not have confrontations.”
Yes, he continued, “I have written things that if you read them they create questions in your head,” but he added: “I did not do it confrontationally, against the state. In fact it’s a good thing for the regime — past, present and future — to have the experience of writers who work within the system. This has to be an established norm or practice in our country: that people who have different opinions can rationally disagree. It shouldn’t be that I want to kill you, I want to confront you or I want to leave.”
© 2011 The New York Times Company
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/books/the-colonel-by-the-iranian-writer-mahmoud-dowlatabadi.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120702
July 1, 2012
By LARRY ROHTER
After being arrested in 1974 by the Savak, the shah’s secret police, the Iranian writer Mahmoud Dowlatabadi asked his interrogators just what crime he had committed. “None,” he recalled them responding, “but everyone we arrest seems to have copies of your novels, so that makes you provocative to revolutionaries.”
Since then Iran has, of course, experienced an Islamic revolution and three decades of theocratic rule, and Mr. Dowlatabadi, now 71, has gone on to write numerous other books, including “The Colonel,” which has just been published in the United States. But one thing remains unchanged: Those in power in Iran continue to regard him and his work as subversive.
“As a writer I embarked on a path of creating epic narratives of my country, which necessarily contain a lot of history which has not been written,” Mr. Dowlatabadi said, weighing his words carefully in an interview during a visit to New York this spring for the PEN World Voices Festival of international literature. “But in doing that I have been required to have lots of patience, perseverance and very few expectations from life.”
“The Colonel,” a novel about the 1979 revolution and its violent aftermath, is a case in point. The five children of the title character, an officer in the shah’s army, have all taken different political paths and paid a heavy price. The story unfolds on one rainy night as the colonel is trying to retrieve and bury the body of his youngest daughter, who has been tortured to death for handing out leaflets criticizing the new regime.
“It’s about time everyone even remotely interested in Iran read this novel,” The Independent of London said in a review when “The Colonel” was published in Britain last fall, describing it as a powerful portrayal of “a society ravaged by a warped morality.”
The novel was written in the early 1980s, around the time of the events it describes, when prominent intellectuals were being executed, and Mr. Dowlatabadi was called in for questioning. “I hid it in a drawer when I finished,” said Mr. Dowlatabadi (pronounced dow-LOT-a-body), fearing it would lead to his being blacklisted, which would have interfered with other projects he had in mind, including what became a much-praised three-volume work called “Bygone Days of the Elderly.”
“I did not want even to have this on their radar,” he said, referring to “The Colonel.” “Either they would take me to prison or prevent me from working. They would have their ways. After I wrote this, but when they still didn’t know I had written it, they gave me a warning that I shouldn’t teach at the university anymore, that I should just sit at home and keep quiet. That was fine with me because I could start to write the other book, the three volumes.”
As a result “The Colonel,” though available in English and German, does not yet exist in an authorized Persian-language version. Mr. Dowlatabadi said he finally submitted the manuscript three years ago to censors at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, which must approve all books before publication in Iran, but received no response until Iranian readers heard about the book and began clamoring for access to it.
“Finally the vice chairman of books in the ministry read it,” Mr. Dowlatabadi said, “and under pressure responded: ‘Yes, it’s a good book. But it’s a different account of the revolution.’ He said, ‘This is not our understanding of how the revolution occurred.’ So I said, ‘But it is my understanding of what occurred.’ In the meantime they didn’t say yes, and they didn’t say no. So it’s still stuck.”
Among Iranians Mr. Dowlatabadi is probably best known for “Kelidar,” a 10-book, 3,000-page saga about a nomadic Kurdish family. The authoritative Encyclopaedia Iranica has praised “Kelidar” for its “heroic, lyrical and sensual language” and attributed its “immense popularity” to Mr. Dowlatabadi’s detailed portrayal of political and social upheaval, his trademark as a novelist.
“Mahmoud has always had a commitment to social issues, but couldn’t accept the simplistic moralistic framework predominant in socialist realism,” said Kamran Rastegar, a professor of Middle Eastern languages and cultures at Tufts University who has translated some of Mr. Dowlatabadi’s work. “Instead he tried to examine the complexities and moral ambiguities of the experience of the poor and forgotten, mixing the brutality of that world with the lyricism of the Persian language.”
Despite Mr. Dowlatabadi’s renown at home “The Colonel” is only the second of his novels to appear in the United States. The first, “Missing Soluch,” conceived during the nearly three years he spent in prison under the shah and then written in a feverish 70-day burst after his release in 1976, was published in 2007. Like the bulk of his work before “The Colonel,” it is about country life — in this case a poor peasant woman in an isolated village who struggles to hold her family together after her husband mysteriously disappears.
That rural realm is one that Mr. Dowlatabadi, who has a steely gaze, a smoker’s cough and a prominent white mustache, knows intimately. He was born into a family of farmers in Khorasan, an arid northeastern province bordering Afghanistan, and as a youngster worked in the fields alongside his father, also chopping wood and hauling melons to market.
Even then he was an avid reader, curious about the outside world. “I would read on the roof of the house with a lamp,” he recalled. “I read ‘War and Peace’ that way.” At 14, with his father’s encouragement, he left for his province’s capital and ultimately for Tehran, working as a shoemaker, barber, bicycle repairman, street barker, cotton picker and cinema ticket taker before falling in with a theater troupe and becoming an actor.
Asked if he took menial jobs to gather material for the books he hoped to write, he said, “No, I was trying to earn a living.” In the end it was the theater work, along with some incursions into journalism, that pushed him into writing novels and screenplays. That experience also brought him to the attention of the secret police, since the troupe’s repertory included works by Brecht and Arthur Miller.
“He has an incredible memory of folklore, which might come from his days as an actor or might come from his origins, as somebody who didn’t have a formal education, who learned things by memorizing the local poetry and hearing the local stories,” said Nahid Mozaffari, who is an editor of “Strange Times, My Dear: The PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature” and has taught at New York University. “That’s an unusual trajectory for a writer in Iran, where most writers are middle-class urban educated people. He’s really different.”
To have “The Colonel” published in Persian, Mr. Dowlatabadi could theoretically turn to one of the émigré presses that flourish in Europe and California, or even, if he were so disposed, authorize a kind of samizdat edition for circulation in Iran. But he said he did not want to do that, preferring to adhere to legal channels, frustrating though that may be.
“My philosophy, my way of working, is not by confrontation,” he said. “I want to keep writing and keep being an Iranian novelist in Iran, so therefore I do not have confrontations.”
Yes, he continued, “I have written things that if you read them they create questions in your head,” but he added: “I did not do it confrontationally, against the state. In fact it’s a good thing for the regime — past, present and future — to have the experience of writers who work within the system. This has to be an established norm or practice in our country: that people who have different opinions can rationally disagree. It shouldn’t be that I want to kill you, I want to confront you or I want to leave.”
© 2011 The New York Times Company
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
How the Supreme Court's 'Knox v. SEIU' Decision Could Dismantle Union Security Around the Country
How the Supreme Court's 'Knox v. SEIU' Decision Could Dismantle Union Security Around the Country
By Mariya Strauss, AlterNet
Posted on June 24, 2012, Printed on July 2, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/story/156003/how_the_supreme_court%27s_%27knox_v._seiu%27_decision_could_dismantle_union_security_around_the_country
The Supreme Court struck at the rights of workers with the blade of the First Amendment on June 21, when it made a decision that will restrict unions’ ability to spend on elections, and could open the way for passage and court approval of a national, union-weakening, so-called "right to work" law.
The curious case of Knox v. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1000—in which the high court decided to throw "judicial restraint" to the wind and go beyond the questions posed in the appeals court to rule against the union—portends nothing good for workers. Knox restricts how unions can get money for political uses from public sector workers in a unionized shop who refuse to join the union (Garrett Epps over at the American Prospect has a great description of the particulars in the case.)
Even as unions in the private sector have seen their memberships dwindle to around 6 percent of the workforce, public sector unions (in places where they are still recognized) have remained relatively strong because they have been allowed to collect some money—albeit less than the full union-dues amount—from workers who do not want to belong to the union. The public sector union contract has to cover all the workers in the agency, not just card-carrying members-- and all the workers benefit from the resultant pay raises, health benefits, pensions and other goodies. So non-members are expected to contribute something to the direct cost of negotiations. (Workers who don’t support the union shouldn’t get to enjoy the better pay and working conditions that their union colleagues fought for, but employers haven’t historically been willing to pay people less for NOT being union members. They much prefer to bribe, cajole and threaten workers to reject the union.).
Public sector unions have been major political players, too (see: Scott Walker’s targeting of Wisconsin’s public employee unions).This is partly because fundraising for politics has been relatively simple: with everyone’s full knowledge and ample notice given (called “Hudson notices”), a percentage of both members’ and non-members’ funds could go toward political work. Anyone could opt out of this political fund, and their money would be reimbursed.
The Knox decision brings this practice to a screeching halt.
Essentially, the court held two things: one, that SEIU violated those existing rules in 2005 when it forced state workers who aren't union members to pay, without the usual opt-out chance, for a one-time special political fund; and two, that even giving the money back and letting workers opt out of the political fund was still a violation of the workers' First Amendment rights. The five conservative justices, led by Justice Samuel Alito, and two concurring liberals, further held that, from now on, non-members have to specifically tell the union to take money out of their paychecks for political purposes; that is, they have to opt in.
In a statement released the day of the decision, Sacramento, CA-based SEIU Local 1000 spokesperson Jim Herron Zamora said, “Unfortunately this decision continues the attack on the right of public sector workers to act collectively to impact their workplace on important issues.” Placed alongside the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling that granted corporations unlimited election fundraising superpowers as part of "free speech," the Knox ruling makes plain whose First Amendment rights the conservative justices favor in electoral politics. The AFL-CIO Thursday released a statement to this effect: “We are disturbed but not surprised,” it said, “that the conservative majority places special burdens on public sector unions in their efforts to represent working people’s economic interests through the legislative process that the Court does not apply to corporations when they spend shareholder money on politics.”
(Imagine if, as John Nichols at the Nation noted, “the Court had on Thursday ordered corporations, corporate groupings and corporate political action committees to get pre-approval from all shareholders before spending money on political or lobbying initiatives.” Of course they wouldn't—but unions are now expected to.)
Even more ominously for workers, though, Alito complained that, in his view, the entire system of “agency shop”— in which all workers at a government agency must pay something even if they don’t choose to join the union— approaches violating workers’ First Amendment rights. “The justification for permitting a union to collect fees from nonmembers—to prevent them from free-riding on the union’s efforts—is an anomaly,” Alito wrote. He added that requiring nonmembers to opt out of a pre-set payment “represents a remarkable boon for unions, creating a risk that the fees nonmembers pay will be used to further political and ideological ends with which they do not agree.”
Unions representing public workers have long argued that when workers at an agency don’t have to join or pay anything, the union’s bargaining power sustains significant damage. This weakening of unions can be seen in states like South Carolina and Alabama, where big, anti-union businesses have managed to lobby successfully for divide-and-conquer–so-called “right to work”—laws that force unions to allow workers in a given workplace to opt out of joining or paying representation costs. The resulting damage to private-sector unions has been well documented: less than 6 percent of the private-sector workforce is now unionized, down from about 33 percent in the late 1940s, when the first so-called “right to work” laws were passed in over a dozen states in the South and West.
It all started with workers using their voting and organizing power at the height of the Great Depression. Under the Wagner Act of 1935, when you got a job in a union shop anywhere, you joined the union. This “union shop” arrangement still prevails in many places. Similarly, when workers in a shop organized into a union, everyone had to join so that the union could act as the collective bargaining agent for all the workers in that workplace. Employers were bound by law to respect the union’s role as negotiator on the workers’ behalf. Workers enjoyed about twelve years of heavy union organizing, exercising their right to strike, and having a powerful voice on the job through collective bargaining.
Employers got scared; then they got organized. They convinced Congress to pass the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which, in addition to limiting the right to strike, permitted states to pass so-called “right to work” laws, now present in 23 states. These laws allow workers in a unionized place to decide not to join the union or pay anything toward the cost of their representation. This arrangement is known as the “open shop.”
Under these laws, though, the union must still represent even the non-members, and the non-members still benefit from everything the union has managed to win. This drop in the portion of workers who pay something weakens the union’s bargaining position and depletes it of needed funds for things like setting up strike funds, working elections, negotiating new contracts, and providing assistance to workers in trouble. And allowing non-members to get the union's services for free makes it harder to convince anyone to sign up to voluntarily pay; why buy the cow, as the cliché goes, when you get the milk for free?
The “agency shop” arrangement, like that used in the union featured in Knox, has served as a kind of compromise between union shop and “open shop” arrangements, because it allows the union to charge non-members something to cover the costs of negotiating their contract and handling grievances. Bolstered by President Reagan’s 1981 breaking of the air traffic controllers’ strike, the business community has used these laws to further erode workers’ ability to resist employers’ abuses.
By using the First Amendment to call even the “agency shop” arrangement into question, the Supreme Court appears to be encouraging “right to work” advocates to push their agenda of forcing all workplaces to adopt “open shop” arrangements onto the national stage. (States that already operate under “right to work” have lower wages and of course, weaker unions.)
Having tasted blood in the private sector, anti-union front groups like National Right to Work are moving in for the kill by coming after public sector union members. It would seem from the Knox decision that the Supreme Court is open to new laws that would break apart public sector unions.
But SEIU, which represents 1.9 million public- and private-sector workers in the US, won’t be altering its ambitious election strategy one iota as a result of the Knox decision, according to a source at the national union headquarters. That strategy? “By Election Day, the SEIU field campaign intends to connect with voters by making 13 million phone calls, knocking on more than 3 million doors and holding more than 1 million conversations across the country, with the majority of the work focused in Colorado, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin,” the union said in a statement released June 19. In addition to these get-out-the-vote efforts, SEIU said it plans to purchase TV, radio and print ads—only now that the Knox decision is out, it will have to use only funds from its own members and from non-members who specifically opt-in to an elections fund.
Whatever the success of SEIU’s efforts, it remains to be seen whether workers will allow themselves to be cut out of politics altogether by Supreme Court Justices who think the First Amendment should apply only to corporations. Maybe, as in 1935, the time is ripe for workers to make their own answers: to insist on striking a new deal with the employers—public and private— who would rather see them knuckle under and gratefully continue punching the clock for the same old poverty wages.
Mariya Strauss is a writer who lives in Baltimore.
© 2012 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/156003/
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
By Mariya Strauss, AlterNet
Posted on June 24, 2012, Printed on July 2, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/story/156003/how_the_supreme_court%27s_%27knox_v._seiu%27_decision_could_dismantle_union_security_around_the_country
The Supreme Court struck at the rights of workers with the blade of the First Amendment on June 21, when it made a decision that will restrict unions’ ability to spend on elections, and could open the way for passage and court approval of a national, union-weakening, so-called "right to work" law.
The curious case of Knox v. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1000—in which the high court decided to throw "judicial restraint" to the wind and go beyond the questions posed in the appeals court to rule against the union—portends nothing good for workers. Knox restricts how unions can get money for political uses from public sector workers in a unionized shop who refuse to join the union (Garrett Epps over at the American Prospect has a great description of the particulars in the case.)
Even as unions in the private sector have seen their memberships dwindle to around 6 percent of the workforce, public sector unions (in places where they are still recognized) have remained relatively strong because they have been allowed to collect some money—albeit less than the full union-dues amount—from workers who do not want to belong to the union. The public sector union contract has to cover all the workers in the agency, not just card-carrying members-- and all the workers benefit from the resultant pay raises, health benefits, pensions and other goodies. So non-members are expected to contribute something to the direct cost of negotiations. (Workers who don’t support the union shouldn’t get to enjoy the better pay and working conditions that their union colleagues fought for, but employers haven’t historically been willing to pay people less for NOT being union members. They much prefer to bribe, cajole and threaten workers to reject the union.).
Public sector unions have been major political players, too (see: Scott Walker’s targeting of Wisconsin’s public employee unions).This is partly because fundraising for politics has been relatively simple: with everyone’s full knowledge and ample notice given (called “Hudson notices”), a percentage of both members’ and non-members’ funds could go toward political work. Anyone could opt out of this political fund, and their money would be reimbursed.
The Knox decision brings this practice to a screeching halt.
Essentially, the court held two things: one, that SEIU violated those existing rules in 2005 when it forced state workers who aren't union members to pay, without the usual opt-out chance, for a one-time special political fund; and two, that even giving the money back and letting workers opt out of the political fund was still a violation of the workers' First Amendment rights. The five conservative justices, led by Justice Samuel Alito, and two concurring liberals, further held that, from now on, non-members have to specifically tell the union to take money out of their paychecks for political purposes; that is, they have to opt in.
In a statement released the day of the decision, Sacramento, CA-based SEIU Local 1000 spokesperson Jim Herron Zamora said, “Unfortunately this decision continues the attack on the right of public sector workers to act collectively to impact their workplace on important issues.” Placed alongside the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling that granted corporations unlimited election fundraising superpowers as part of "free speech," the Knox ruling makes plain whose First Amendment rights the conservative justices favor in electoral politics. The AFL-CIO Thursday released a statement to this effect: “We are disturbed but not surprised,” it said, “that the conservative majority places special burdens on public sector unions in their efforts to represent working people’s economic interests through the legislative process that the Court does not apply to corporations when they spend shareholder money on politics.”
(Imagine if, as John Nichols at the Nation noted, “the Court had on Thursday ordered corporations, corporate groupings and corporate political action committees to get pre-approval from all shareholders before spending money on political or lobbying initiatives.” Of course they wouldn't—but unions are now expected to.)
Even more ominously for workers, though, Alito complained that, in his view, the entire system of “agency shop”— in which all workers at a government agency must pay something even if they don’t choose to join the union— approaches violating workers’ First Amendment rights. “The justification for permitting a union to collect fees from nonmembers—to prevent them from free-riding on the union’s efforts—is an anomaly,” Alito wrote. He added that requiring nonmembers to opt out of a pre-set payment “represents a remarkable boon for unions, creating a risk that the fees nonmembers pay will be used to further political and ideological ends with which they do not agree.”
Unions representing public workers have long argued that when workers at an agency don’t have to join or pay anything, the union’s bargaining power sustains significant damage. This weakening of unions can be seen in states like South Carolina and Alabama, where big, anti-union businesses have managed to lobby successfully for divide-and-conquer–so-called “right to work”—laws that force unions to allow workers in a given workplace to opt out of joining or paying representation costs. The resulting damage to private-sector unions has been well documented: less than 6 percent of the private-sector workforce is now unionized, down from about 33 percent in the late 1940s, when the first so-called “right to work” laws were passed in over a dozen states in the South and West.
It all started with workers using their voting and organizing power at the height of the Great Depression. Under the Wagner Act of 1935, when you got a job in a union shop anywhere, you joined the union. This “union shop” arrangement still prevails in many places. Similarly, when workers in a shop organized into a union, everyone had to join so that the union could act as the collective bargaining agent for all the workers in that workplace. Employers were bound by law to respect the union’s role as negotiator on the workers’ behalf. Workers enjoyed about twelve years of heavy union organizing, exercising their right to strike, and having a powerful voice on the job through collective bargaining.
Employers got scared; then they got organized. They convinced Congress to pass the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which, in addition to limiting the right to strike, permitted states to pass so-called “right to work” laws, now present in 23 states. These laws allow workers in a unionized place to decide not to join the union or pay anything toward the cost of their representation. This arrangement is known as the “open shop.”
Under these laws, though, the union must still represent even the non-members, and the non-members still benefit from everything the union has managed to win. This drop in the portion of workers who pay something weakens the union’s bargaining position and depletes it of needed funds for things like setting up strike funds, working elections, negotiating new contracts, and providing assistance to workers in trouble. And allowing non-members to get the union's services for free makes it harder to convince anyone to sign up to voluntarily pay; why buy the cow, as the cliché goes, when you get the milk for free?
The “agency shop” arrangement, like that used in the union featured in Knox, has served as a kind of compromise between union shop and “open shop” arrangements, because it allows the union to charge non-members something to cover the costs of negotiating their contract and handling grievances. Bolstered by President Reagan’s 1981 breaking of the air traffic controllers’ strike, the business community has used these laws to further erode workers’ ability to resist employers’ abuses.
By using the First Amendment to call even the “agency shop” arrangement into question, the Supreme Court appears to be encouraging “right to work” advocates to push their agenda of forcing all workplaces to adopt “open shop” arrangements onto the national stage. (States that already operate under “right to work” have lower wages and of course, weaker unions.)
Having tasted blood in the private sector, anti-union front groups like National Right to Work are moving in for the kill by coming after public sector union members. It would seem from the Knox decision that the Supreme Court is open to new laws that would break apart public sector unions.
But SEIU, which represents 1.9 million public- and private-sector workers in the US, won’t be altering its ambitious election strategy one iota as a result of the Knox decision, according to a source at the national union headquarters. That strategy? “By Election Day, the SEIU field campaign intends to connect with voters by making 13 million phone calls, knocking on more than 3 million doors and holding more than 1 million conversations across the country, with the majority of the work focused in Colorado, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin,” the union said in a statement released June 19. In addition to these get-out-the-vote efforts, SEIU said it plans to purchase TV, radio and print ads—only now that the Knox decision is out, it will have to use only funds from its own members and from non-members who specifically opt-in to an elections fund.
Whatever the success of SEIU’s efforts, it remains to be seen whether workers will allow themselves to be cut out of politics altogether by Supreme Court Justices who think the First Amendment should apply only to corporations. Maybe, as in 1935, the time is ripe for workers to make their own answers: to insist on striking a new deal with the employers—public and private— who would rather see them knuckle under and gratefully continue punching the clock for the same old poverty wages.
Mariya Strauss is a writer who lives in Baltimore.
© 2012 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/156003/
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Gene Sharp: A dictator's worst nightmare - CNN.com
http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/23/world/gene-sharp-revolutionary/index.html
Gene Sharp: A dictator's worst nightmare - CNN.com
By Mairi Mackay, CNN
updated 6:34 AM EDT, Mon June 25, 2012
CNN.com
At 84, American political scientist Gene Sharp has seen his lifelong work on nonviolent resistance echo around the world. Gene Sharp, who wrote "From Dictatorship to Democracy," says no regime can survive without the support of its people. Political Scientist Gene Sharp wrote a manual on how to overthrow dictatorships, "From Dictatorship to Democracy."
London (CNN) -- It's a dark January evening, and in an anonymous townhouse near Paddington station, a man is talking about how to stage a revolution.
A young Iranian asks a question: "The youth in Iran are very disillusioned by the brutality of the violence used against them ... It has stopped all the street protest," she says. "What would you say to them? How can they get themselves organized again?"
The man thinks for a moment. He's an unlikely looking radical -- slightly stooped with white hair, his bent frame engulfed by the low chair he's sitting in.
When he opens his mouth to speak, all eyes in the room are fastened on him.
"You don't march down the street towards soldiers with machine guns. ... That's not a wise thing to do.
"But there are other things that are much more extreme. ... You could have everybody stay at home.
"Total silence of the city," he says lowering his voice to a whisper, punctuating the words with his bent hands, as if he's wiping out the noise himself.
"Everybody at home." The man's eyes scan the room. "Silence," he whispers again.
"You think the regime will notice?"
He looks around the room, nodding almost imperceptibly. On the wall behind his head hangs a huge print of the Hiroshima atomic bomb mushrooming into the sky.
This is political scientist Gene Sharp, and explosive ideas are his specialty.
Political Scientist Gene Sharp wrote a manual on how to overthrow dictatorships
Ruaridh Arrow
He's been called the father of nonviolent struggle. He could be also described as a revolutionary's best friend. Or perhaps, more accurately, as a dictatorship's worst nightmare.
Now 84, the American academic has dedicated most of his life to the study of the bold, some might say reckless, idea that nonviolence -- rather than violence -- is the most effective way of overthrowing corrupt, repressive regimes.
Photos: Egypt's long road to presidency
On this winter night, he's talking at The Frontline Club, London's journalism hub, and it's standing room only.
Those without seats have crowded in at the back of the room under a huge photograph of a girl offering a flower to a line of riot police. She could have been inspired by Sharp's writings.
His practical manual on how to overthrow dictatorships, "From Dictatorship to Democracy," has spread like a virus since he wrote it 20 years ago and has been translated by activists into more than 30 languages.
He has also listed "198 Methods of Nonviolent Action" -- powerful, sometimes surprising, ways to tear power from the hands of regimes. Examples of their use by demonstrators and revolutionaries pop up over and over again.
In Ukraine, during the 2004 Orange Revolution that propelled opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to electoral triumph, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators turned Kiev's Independence Square into a sea of orange flags -- the color of Yuschenko's campaign.
No. 18 on Sharp's list: Displays of flags and symbolic colors.
In Serbia, activists fighting then-President Slobodan Milosevic in the 2000 presidential elections printed "Gotov Je!" "He's Finished!" on stickers, T-shirts and posters to help the population understand he was not invincible.
No. 7 on Sharp's list: Slogans, caricatures and symbols.
In Cairo during last year's Egyptian revolution, protesters lived in a tent city in Tahrir Square, where they produced art, made music and sung anti-Hosni Mubarak songs. Many Egyptians would gather there for Friday prayers followed by mass political rallies.
Nos. 20, 37 and 47 on Sharp's list: Prayer and worship. Singing. Assembling to protest.
His ideas of revolution are based on an elegantly simple premise: No regime, not even the most brutally authoritarian, can survive without the support of its people. So, Sharp proposes, take it away.
Nonviolent action, he says, can eat away at a regime's pillars of power like termites in a tree. Eventually, the whole thing collapses.
For a half century, Sharp has refined the theory of nonviolent conflict and crafted the tools of his trade. His methods have liberated millions from tyranny -- and that makes regimes from Myanmar to Iran quake in their boots.
In 2009, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. During the Arab Spring uprisings, his methods were cited repeatedly.
The applause comes after "decades of hardships," he says. His methods have been dismissed and misinterpreted -- he's even been accused of working for the CIA.
But he's kept on with "the work," sometimes near penniless. He runs his organization, the Albert Einstein Institution, out of his home in East Boston because he cannot afford office space.
He'll give almost anyone a half hour of his time, even a high school kid doing a project. And the pilgrims come.
They come from all over the world because they want to change their situation. They come to hear the extraordinary ideas that Sharp has stubbornly built over a lifetime: ideas that have started revolutions.
The first rebellion
When Sharp graduated college in 1951, he moved to New York and worked odd jobs to put food on the table. He spent his spare time holed up in the New York City Library working on a book about the Indian political leader Mahatma Gandhi, who he still loosely describes as his hero.
He was also dodging the draft.
The U.S. was fighting the Korean War, and Sharp was refusing to cooperate with the military draft board. He wouldn't report for physical examinations or carry a draft card.
"I had chosen a particular kind of conscientious objection, I guess the most obnoxious kind that existed -- civil disobedience."
It amounted to draft evasion, a criminal offense punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
His father, a Protestant minister, and mother were distraught. He was an outstanding student. Why was he throwing away his future?
"They put all kinds of strong, strong pressures on me," he remembers. But he continued. "It was just something I had to do and be done with it."
At first, Sharp applied for conscientious objector status but was refused. Then he changed his mind: "I realized I shouldn't have done it in the first place, I shouldn't have applied for it."
And when the board finally did give it to him, he wouldn't accept it.
By 1953, things weren't looking good for Sharp. He had been arrested by the FBI and locked up in a federal detention center, awaiting trial. But during this tough time, he had an unlikely and important ally: Albert Einstein.
Sharp was just 25, but already he displayed the intellectual chutzpah that would come to characterize his later work. He wrote to the physicist, asking him to pen the foreword to his book and telling him about his court case.
A notable pacifist in later life, Einstein shared Sharp's admiration for Gandhi. He agreed to write the foreword.
"I earnestly admire you for your moral strength and can only hope, although I really do not know, that I would have acted as you did, had I found myself in your situation," Einstein wrote in a letter dated April 2, 1953.
Einstein also wrote the foreword to Sharp's book, describing it as "the art of a born historian" and adding: "How is it possible that a young man was able to create such mature piece of work?"
Sharp used Einstein's name in a speech he made at his trial. In the end, he was sentenced to two years in prison.
His mother, Eve, who had traveled from Ohio for his sentencing also wrote to Einstein. And he wrote her back. Her son, he told her, was "irresistible in his noble sincerity." The letter was, Sharp says, "a big help" to his parents.
In the end, Sharp served nine months and 10 days.
"You count the days in those places," he says now, adding that if he hadn't followed his conscience, it would have been tragic for him.
"I would not have had the self-respect and internal integrity to go on and do in the future what might lie ahead."
Eureka moment
After his release from prison, Sharp concentrated on his work once again.
After a short spell in London as an editor at the pacifist journal Peace News, he moved to Norway where he joined the Institute for Social Research in Oslo.
"It was the first time I had financial support to do my own research and my own thinking and my own writing," says Sharp.
He had been invited by philosopher Arne Næss, who shared Sharp's interest in Gandhi and who, much later, would gain prominence as the father of environmentalism.
For a while, things looked promising. Næss persuaded the institute to fund a major research program into nonviolent conflict.
But almost before it got off the ground, it was bypassed in favor of a new and more fashionable area of study: peace research.
To this day, Sharp has refused to allow his work to be absorbed into the grander narrative of Peace Studies, losing out on immeasurable funding.
"I still think a lot of the peace researchers are quite naïve and romantic under the guise of science," he says.
Amazingly, Sharp was kept on at the institute to do his own research for a couple of years. It was there that he laid the foundations of his work, tapping out page after page on his little portable typewriter.
But in Norway, Sharp also began to see the flaw in his work: He didn't understand political power.
Bashar al-Assad: President defined by violence
"That's a great advantage -- to know what you don't know," he says now. "'You have a chance of learning -- if you want to and you're not arrogant."
So he returned to England to pursue a degree in political science at The University of Oxford. He studied under Alan Bullock, the first biographer of Adolf Hitler, reading everything from Machiavelli to Auguste Comte and David Hume; analyses of totalitarianism; histories of dictatorships.
And as he put the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together, Sharp started revising his work and asking critical questions.
What gives a government -- even a repressive regime -- the power to rule? The answer, he realized, was people's belief in its power. Even dictatorships require the cooperation and obedience of the people they rule to stay in charge.
So, he reasoned, if you can identify the sources of a government's power -- people working in civil service, police and judges, even the army -- then you know what a dictatorship depends on for its existence.
Once he'd worked that out, Sharp went back to his theories of nonviolent struggle: "What is the nature of this technique?" he asked himself. "What are its methods ... different kinds of strikes, protests, boycotts, hunger strikes ... How does it work? It may fail. If it fails, why? If it succeeds, why?"
Suddenly, he got it. If a dictatorship depends on the cooperation of people and institutions, then all you have to do is shrink that support.
That's when the light went on in Sharp's head. That is exactly what nonviolent struggle does. By its very nature, nonviolent struggle destroys governments, even brutal dictatorships, politically.
It is a weapon as potent as a bomb or a gun -- maybe more so.
"That was the eureka moment," says Sharp. He remembers sitting in his little room in Oxford, shocked and, he says, relieved.
"This was not just a theory. This was actually something that had been applied in many different historical cases."
That moment would evolve into Sharp's first big text, "The Politics of Non-Violence," which was published in 1973. It was immediately hailed a classic and is still considered the definitive study of nonviolent struggle.
The viral pamphlet
Sharp's best-known work, "From Dictatorship to Democracy," is a how-to manual for overthrowing dictatorships.
It started life in Myanmar as incendiary advice printed on a few sheets of paper and surreptitiously exchanged by activists living under a military dictatorship. Those found in possession of the booklet were sentenced to seven years in prison.
From Myanmar, it was taken to Indonesia, then to Serbia. After that, Sharp says, he lost track of the book. But it took on a life of its own, spreading from activist to activist and eventually, some say, inspiring the uprisings known as the Arab Spring.
Ahmed Maher, a leading organizer of the April 6 Youth Movement that played a key role in last year's Egyptian revolution, told The New York Times that the group read about nonviolent conflict.
He said some members of the group traveled to Serbia to exchange ideas with members of The Centre for Applied Non Violent Actions and Strategies . The Belgrade-based institution was formed in 2004 by former members of Otpor!, the youth group that helped overthrow Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 using Sharp's methods.
Political Scientist Gene Sharp wrote a manual on how to overthrow dictatorships
Ruaridh Arrow
Journalist and filmmaker Ruaridh Arrow, who made a documentary about Sharp's work called "How to Start a Revolution," was in Egypt during last year's revolution. He says a young activist told him Sharp's work had been widely distributed in Arabic, but he refused to talk about it on camera for fear that knowledge of the U.S. influence would destabilize the movement.
Sharp has written about 30 books and has a 900-page guide to self-liberation available for free download on his website. He says military people often have taken his work more seriously than pacifists.
"They could understand the clashing of forces and the use of strategy and tactics."
One such convert was Robert Helvey, a retired U.S. Army colonel who met Sharp at Harvard University in 1987.
Sharp was director of the Program for Nonviolent Sanctions at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard, and Helvey, a decorated Vietnam veteran, was a senior fellow there.
Helvey's experiences in the Vietnam War had convinced him that there had to be an alternative to killing people. After hearing Sharp speak, he was hooked. Myanmar, Helvey decided, was the perfect place to bring Sharp's theories.
Helvey had been a U.S. military attache in Rangoon (the former capital of Myanmar, now called Yangon) and had become sympathetic to groups opposing the regime. After leaving the army, he started doing consultancy work for the Karen National Union, conducting a series of courses on nonviolent struggle for the leadership of the democratic opposition.
The Burmese were amazed by Sharp's theories. They couldn't believe they had been fighting and killing for 20 years when there was an alternative.
The late U Tin Maung Win, a prominent exiled Burmese democrat, asked Sharp to write something for them.
"I couldn't write about Burma honestly because I didn't know Burma well," Sharp says, "and you should at least have the humility not to write about something you don't know anything about.
"So I had to write generically -- if there was a movement that wanted to bring a dictatorship to an end, how could they do it."
And so, "From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation" was born.
Today, the book has been translated into Amharic, Farsi, French, German, Serbian, Tibetan, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Arabic and dozens of other languages.
"Clearly the news is getting around that nonviolent struggle exists," says Sharp. "And clearly it comes almost as a revelation to people that they are not helpless."
Despite the Arab Spring pushing his work into the spotlight in 2011 like never before, Sharp remains skeptical about his actual, measurable influence.
"Even today, I'm credited with some major influence in Egypt, for example," he says. "I haven't seen hard data that would prove that."
Einstein's legacy
Today, Sharp spends much of his time running the Albert Einstein Institution -- the organization he founded in 1983 to spread his ideas and secure some much-needed funding, something he's struggled with his whole career.
"(Nonviolent struggle) was not credited with being realistic or with being powerful," he says.
It's a shoestring operation with outsize influence that he runs alongside Executive Director Jamila Raqib. She's his right hand; a subtle organizing influence, watchdog and second brain when Sharp's memory occasionally fails him.
She also supervises the people who come from all over the world to visit Sharp, allowing her to see his influence on those struggling against tyranny or living under a dictatorship.
They come from India, Syria, Russia, Sri Lanka -- from all over. They leave, says Raqib, "with stars in their eyes."
"There's something happening," she adds. "Oftentimes people would say, you know, 'This can't work for us, my situation is unique, my situation is worse, the repression is particularly harsh.'
"And what he does during those conversations ... they leave with the understanding that, you know ... a seed has been planted; a new possibility is there."
Sharp sees himself as a kind of mentor.
"I always refuse to tell them what to do. I'm trying to get them to realize that they understand maybe more than they thought they did.
"There's one phrase that's been quoted -- 'Dictatorships are never as strong as they think they are, and people are never as weak as they think they are.' "
Earlier this year, he released "Sharp's Dictionary of Power and Struggle: Language of Civil Resistance in Conflicts." He says the major unsolved problems of our time -- genocide, dictatorship, war -- require us to rethink the very language we use to define them.
His dictionary contains some 900 terms. It reconceives many words we take for granted -- such as power or defense. "The defense force -- sometimes they attack," Sharp says.
The institute also supervises translations of Sharp's work into other languages -- a task made more complicated by the precisely defined concepts.
They rely on activists for translating, rather than professional translators, because they understand the nature of the work the words describe.
For Sharp, the language is crucial: "If our language doesn't have clear meanings and accurate meanings, you can't think clearly.
"If you can't think clearly, you have no ability to evaluate or influence what happens. So the distortions of our language help make us helpless."
Sharp has no plans to settle into a comfortable retirement, not now, when things are finally taking off.
He admits that he "gets tired sometimes." But there's so much to do.
"The last few weeks I've been waking up in the middle of the night and finding some ideas ... or a solution to a problem I've been trying to solve for a week or two or three."
At the Frontline Club, the questions from the audience keep coming. Sharp's answers, more than anything, underscore his modesty and lack of pretention.
What about government defectors who want to join freedom groups, asks another Iranian. When should you allow them in and when should you reject them?
"An outsider like me can't tell you what to do," he says, "and if I did, you shouldn't believe me. Trust yourselves.
"You've got to be smart. This takes time and energy ... know your situation in depth."
For those who are serious, Sharp has a condensed version of what he says are the required readings of his work, a guide to self-liberation, available free on the Albert Einstein Institution website.
"It's only 900 pages in English," he deadpans, raising a chuckle.
"And if you're not interested in reading 900 pages, you're not interested in getting rid of the dictator," he retorts, whip smart. "Quite seriously."
At the end, people crowd forward to speak to him, kneeling at his chair as if he were royalty, asking him to sign copies of his books.
Later, as he's helped into his flecked black coat and handed his walking stick, he grins and says how much he enjoyed the evening: "The questions were good and hard."
© 2012 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Gene Sharp: A dictator's worst nightmare - CNN.com
By Mairi Mackay, CNN
updated 6:34 AM EDT, Mon June 25, 2012
CNN.com
At 84, American political scientist Gene Sharp has seen his lifelong work on nonviolent resistance echo around the world. Gene Sharp, who wrote "From Dictatorship to Democracy," says no regime can survive without the support of its people. Political Scientist Gene Sharp wrote a manual on how to overthrow dictatorships, "From Dictatorship to Democracy."
London (CNN) -- It's a dark January evening, and in an anonymous townhouse near Paddington station, a man is talking about how to stage a revolution.
A young Iranian asks a question: "The youth in Iran are very disillusioned by the brutality of the violence used against them ... It has stopped all the street protest," she says. "What would you say to them? How can they get themselves organized again?"
The man thinks for a moment. He's an unlikely looking radical -- slightly stooped with white hair, his bent frame engulfed by the low chair he's sitting in.
When he opens his mouth to speak, all eyes in the room are fastened on him.
"You don't march down the street towards soldiers with machine guns. ... That's not a wise thing to do.
"But there are other things that are much more extreme. ... You could have everybody stay at home.
"Total silence of the city," he says lowering his voice to a whisper, punctuating the words with his bent hands, as if he's wiping out the noise himself.
"Everybody at home." The man's eyes scan the room. "Silence," he whispers again.
"You think the regime will notice?"
He looks around the room, nodding almost imperceptibly. On the wall behind his head hangs a huge print of the Hiroshima atomic bomb mushrooming into the sky.
This is political scientist Gene Sharp, and explosive ideas are his specialty.
Political Scientist Gene Sharp wrote a manual on how to overthrow dictatorships
Ruaridh Arrow
He's been called the father of nonviolent struggle. He could be also described as a revolutionary's best friend. Or perhaps, more accurately, as a dictatorship's worst nightmare.
Now 84, the American academic has dedicated most of his life to the study of the bold, some might say reckless, idea that nonviolence -- rather than violence -- is the most effective way of overthrowing corrupt, repressive regimes.
Photos: Egypt's long road to presidency
On this winter night, he's talking at The Frontline Club, London's journalism hub, and it's standing room only.
Those without seats have crowded in at the back of the room under a huge photograph of a girl offering a flower to a line of riot police. She could have been inspired by Sharp's writings.
His practical manual on how to overthrow dictatorships, "From Dictatorship to Democracy," has spread like a virus since he wrote it 20 years ago and has been translated by activists into more than 30 languages.
He has also listed "198 Methods of Nonviolent Action" -- powerful, sometimes surprising, ways to tear power from the hands of regimes. Examples of their use by demonstrators and revolutionaries pop up over and over again.
In Ukraine, during the 2004 Orange Revolution that propelled opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to electoral triumph, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators turned Kiev's Independence Square into a sea of orange flags -- the color of Yuschenko's campaign.
No. 18 on Sharp's list: Displays of flags and symbolic colors.
In Serbia, activists fighting then-President Slobodan Milosevic in the 2000 presidential elections printed "Gotov Je!" "He's Finished!" on stickers, T-shirts and posters to help the population understand he was not invincible.
No. 7 on Sharp's list: Slogans, caricatures and symbols.
In Cairo during last year's Egyptian revolution, protesters lived in a tent city in Tahrir Square, where they produced art, made music and sung anti-Hosni Mubarak songs. Many Egyptians would gather there for Friday prayers followed by mass political rallies.
Nos. 20, 37 and 47 on Sharp's list: Prayer and worship. Singing. Assembling to protest.
His ideas of revolution are based on an elegantly simple premise: No regime, not even the most brutally authoritarian, can survive without the support of its people. So, Sharp proposes, take it away.
Nonviolent action, he says, can eat away at a regime's pillars of power like termites in a tree. Eventually, the whole thing collapses.
For a half century, Sharp has refined the theory of nonviolent conflict and crafted the tools of his trade. His methods have liberated millions from tyranny -- and that makes regimes from Myanmar to Iran quake in their boots.
In 2009, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. During the Arab Spring uprisings, his methods were cited repeatedly.
The applause comes after "decades of hardships," he says. His methods have been dismissed and misinterpreted -- he's even been accused of working for the CIA.
But he's kept on with "the work," sometimes near penniless. He runs his organization, the Albert Einstein Institution, out of his home in East Boston because he cannot afford office space.
He'll give almost anyone a half hour of his time, even a high school kid doing a project. And the pilgrims come.
They come from all over the world because they want to change their situation. They come to hear the extraordinary ideas that Sharp has stubbornly built over a lifetime: ideas that have started revolutions.
The first rebellion
When Sharp graduated college in 1951, he moved to New York and worked odd jobs to put food on the table. He spent his spare time holed up in the New York City Library working on a book about the Indian political leader Mahatma Gandhi, who he still loosely describes as his hero.
He was also dodging the draft.
The U.S. was fighting the Korean War, and Sharp was refusing to cooperate with the military draft board. He wouldn't report for physical examinations or carry a draft card.
"I had chosen a particular kind of conscientious objection, I guess the most obnoxious kind that existed -- civil disobedience."
It amounted to draft evasion, a criminal offense punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
His father, a Protestant minister, and mother were distraught. He was an outstanding student. Why was he throwing away his future?
"They put all kinds of strong, strong pressures on me," he remembers. But he continued. "It was just something I had to do and be done with it."
At first, Sharp applied for conscientious objector status but was refused. Then he changed his mind: "I realized I shouldn't have done it in the first place, I shouldn't have applied for it."
And when the board finally did give it to him, he wouldn't accept it.
By 1953, things weren't looking good for Sharp. He had been arrested by the FBI and locked up in a federal detention center, awaiting trial. But during this tough time, he had an unlikely and important ally: Albert Einstein.
Sharp was just 25, but already he displayed the intellectual chutzpah that would come to characterize his later work. He wrote to the physicist, asking him to pen the foreword to his book and telling him about his court case.
A notable pacifist in later life, Einstein shared Sharp's admiration for Gandhi. He agreed to write the foreword.
"I earnestly admire you for your moral strength and can only hope, although I really do not know, that I would have acted as you did, had I found myself in your situation," Einstein wrote in a letter dated April 2, 1953.
Einstein also wrote the foreword to Sharp's book, describing it as "the art of a born historian" and adding: "How is it possible that a young man was able to create such mature piece of work?"
Sharp used Einstein's name in a speech he made at his trial. In the end, he was sentenced to two years in prison.
His mother, Eve, who had traveled from Ohio for his sentencing also wrote to Einstein. And he wrote her back. Her son, he told her, was "irresistible in his noble sincerity." The letter was, Sharp says, "a big help" to his parents.
In the end, Sharp served nine months and 10 days.
"You count the days in those places," he says now, adding that if he hadn't followed his conscience, it would have been tragic for him.
"I would not have had the self-respect and internal integrity to go on and do in the future what might lie ahead."
Eureka moment
After his release from prison, Sharp concentrated on his work once again.
After a short spell in London as an editor at the pacifist journal Peace News, he moved to Norway where he joined the Institute for Social Research in Oslo.
"It was the first time I had financial support to do my own research and my own thinking and my own writing," says Sharp.
He had been invited by philosopher Arne Næss, who shared Sharp's interest in Gandhi and who, much later, would gain prominence as the father of environmentalism.
For a while, things looked promising. Næss persuaded the institute to fund a major research program into nonviolent conflict.
But almost before it got off the ground, it was bypassed in favor of a new and more fashionable area of study: peace research.
To this day, Sharp has refused to allow his work to be absorbed into the grander narrative of Peace Studies, losing out on immeasurable funding.
"I still think a lot of the peace researchers are quite naïve and romantic under the guise of science," he says.
Amazingly, Sharp was kept on at the institute to do his own research for a couple of years. It was there that he laid the foundations of his work, tapping out page after page on his little portable typewriter.
But in Norway, Sharp also began to see the flaw in his work: He didn't understand political power.
Bashar al-Assad: President defined by violence
"That's a great advantage -- to know what you don't know," he says now. "'You have a chance of learning -- if you want to and you're not arrogant."
So he returned to England to pursue a degree in political science at The University of Oxford. He studied under Alan Bullock, the first biographer of Adolf Hitler, reading everything from Machiavelli to Auguste Comte and David Hume; analyses of totalitarianism; histories of dictatorships.
And as he put the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together, Sharp started revising his work and asking critical questions.
What gives a government -- even a repressive regime -- the power to rule? The answer, he realized, was people's belief in its power. Even dictatorships require the cooperation and obedience of the people they rule to stay in charge.
So, he reasoned, if you can identify the sources of a government's power -- people working in civil service, police and judges, even the army -- then you know what a dictatorship depends on for its existence.
Once he'd worked that out, Sharp went back to his theories of nonviolent struggle: "What is the nature of this technique?" he asked himself. "What are its methods ... different kinds of strikes, protests, boycotts, hunger strikes ... How does it work? It may fail. If it fails, why? If it succeeds, why?"
Suddenly, he got it. If a dictatorship depends on the cooperation of people and institutions, then all you have to do is shrink that support.
That's when the light went on in Sharp's head. That is exactly what nonviolent struggle does. By its very nature, nonviolent struggle destroys governments, even brutal dictatorships, politically.
It is a weapon as potent as a bomb or a gun -- maybe more so.
"That was the eureka moment," says Sharp. He remembers sitting in his little room in Oxford, shocked and, he says, relieved.
"This was not just a theory. This was actually something that had been applied in many different historical cases."
That moment would evolve into Sharp's first big text, "The Politics of Non-Violence," which was published in 1973. It was immediately hailed a classic and is still considered the definitive study of nonviolent struggle.
The viral pamphlet
Sharp's best-known work, "From Dictatorship to Democracy," is a how-to manual for overthrowing dictatorships.
It started life in Myanmar as incendiary advice printed on a few sheets of paper and surreptitiously exchanged by activists living under a military dictatorship. Those found in possession of the booklet were sentenced to seven years in prison.
From Myanmar, it was taken to Indonesia, then to Serbia. After that, Sharp says, he lost track of the book. But it took on a life of its own, spreading from activist to activist and eventually, some say, inspiring the uprisings known as the Arab Spring.
Ahmed Maher, a leading organizer of the April 6 Youth Movement that played a key role in last year's Egyptian revolution, told The New York Times that the group read about nonviolent conflict.
He said some members of the group traveled to Serbia to exchange ideas with members of The Centre for Applied Non Violent Actions and Strategies . The Belgrade-based institution was formed in 2004 by former members of Otpor!, the youth group that helped overthrow Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 using Sharp's methods.
Political Scientist Gene Sharp wrote a manual on how to overthrow dictatorships
Ruaridh Arrow
Journalist and filmmaker Ruaridh Arrow, who made a documentary about Sharp's work called "How to Start a Revolution," was in Egypt during last year's revolution. He says a young activist told him Sharp's work had been widely distributed in Arabic, but he refused to talk about it on camera for fear that knowledge of the U.S. influence would destabilize the movement.
Sharp has written about 30 books and has a 900-page guide to self-liberation available for free download on his website. He says military people often have taken his work more seriously than pacifists.
"They could understand the clashing of forces and the use of strategy and tactics."
One such convert was Robert Helvey, a retired U.S. Army colonel who met Sharp at Harvard University in 1987.
Sharp was director of the Program for Nonviolent Sanctions at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard, and Helvey, a decorated Vietnam veteran, was a senior fellow there.
Helvey's experiences in the Vietnam War had convinced him that there had to be an alternative to killing people. After hearing Sharp speak, he was hooked. Myanmar, Helvey decided, was the perfect place to bring Sharp's theories.
Helvey had been a U.S. military attache in Rangoon (the former capital of Myanmar, now called Yangon) and had become sympathetic to groups opposing the regime. After leaving the army, he started doing consultancy work for the Karen National Union, conducting a series of courses on nonviolent struggle for the leadership of the democratic opposition.
The Burmese were amazed by Sharp's theories. They couldn't believe they had been fighting and killing for 20 years when there was an alternative.
The late U Tin Maung Win, a prominent exiled Burmese democrat, asked Sharp to write something for them.
"I couldn't write about Burma honestly because I didn't know Burma well," Sharp says, "and you should at least have the humility not to write about something you don't know anything about.
"So I had to write generically -- if there was a movement that wanted to bring a dictatorship to an end, how could they do it."
And so, "From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation" was born.
Today, the book has been translated into Amharic, Farsi, French, German, Serbian, Tibetan, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Arabic and dozens of other languages.
"Clearly the news is getting around that nonviolent struggle exists," says Sharp. "And clearly it comes almost as a revelation to people that they are not helpless."
Despite the Arab Spring pushing his work into the spotlight in 2011 like never before, Sharp remains skeptical about his actual, measurable influence.
"Even today, I'm credited with some major influence in Egypt, for example," he says. "I haven't seen hard data that would prove that."
Einstein's legacy
Today, Sharp spends much of his time running the Albert Einstein Institution -- the organization he founded in 1983 to spread his ideas and secure some much-needed funding, something he's struggled with his whole career.
"(Nonviolent struggle) was not credited with being realistic or with being powerful," he says.
It's a shoestring operation with outsize influence that he runs alongside Executive Director Jamila Raqib. She's his right hand; a subtle organizing influence, watchdog and second brain when Sharp's memory occasionally fails him.
She also supervises the people who come from all over the world to visit Sharp, allowing her to see his influence on those struggling against tyranny or living under a dictatorship.
They come from India, Syria, Russia, Sri Lanka -- from all over. They leave, says Raqib, "with stars in their eyes."
"There's something happening," she adds. "Oftentimes people would say, you know, 'This can't work for us, my situation is unique, my situation is worse, the repression is particularly harsh.'
"And what he does during those conversations ... they leave with the understanding that, you know ... a seed has been planted; a new possibility is there."
Sharp sees himself as a kind of mentor.
"I always refuse to tell them what to do. I'm trying to get them to realize that they understand maybe more than they thought they did.
"There's one phrase that's been quoted -- 'Dictatorships are never as strong as they think they are, and people are never as weak as they think they are.' "
Earlier this year, he released "Sharp's Dictionary of Power and Struggle: Language of Civil Resistance in Conflicts." He says the major unsolved problems of our time -- genocide, dictatorship, war -- require us to rethink the very language we use to define them.
His dictionary contains some 900 terms. It reconceives many words we take for granted -- such as power or defense. "The defense force -- sometimes they attack," Sharp says.
The institute also supervises translations of Sharp's work into other languages -- a task made more complicated by the precisely defined concepts.
They rely on activists for translating, rather than professional translators, because they understand the nature of the work the words describe.
For Sharp, the language is crucial: "If our language doesn't have clear meanings and accurate meanings, you can't think clearly.
"If you can't think clearly, you have no ability to evaluate or influence what happens. So the distortions of our language help make us helpless."
Sharp has no plans to settle into a comfortable retirement, not now, when things are finally taking off.
He admits that he "gets tired sometimes." But there's so much to do.
"The last few weeks I've been waking up in the middle of the night and finding some ideas ... or a solution to a problem I've been trying to solve for a week or two or three."
At the Frontline Club, the questions from the audience keep coming. Sharp's answers, more than anything, underscore his modesty and lack of pretention.
What about government defectors who want to join freedom groups, asks another Iranian. When should you allow them in and when should you reject them?
"An outsider like me can't tell you what to do," he says, "and if I did, you shouldn't believe me. Trust yourselves.
"You've got to be smart. This takes time and energy ... know your situation in depth."
For those who are serious, Sharp has a condensed version of what he says are the required readings of his work, a guide to self-liberation, available free on the Albert Einstein Institution website.
"It's only 900 pages in English," he deadpans, raising a chuckle.
"And if you're not interested in reading 900 pages, you're not interested in getting rid of the dictator," he retorts, whip smart. "Quite seriously."
At the end, people crowd forward to speak to him, kneeling at his chair as if he were royalty, asking him to sign copies of his books.
Later, as he's helped into his flecked black coat and handed his walking stick, he grins and says how much he enjoyed the evening: "The questions were good and hard."
© 2012 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Baltimore Activist Alert - Part 2
34] Starving for Justice – July 2
35] KnowDrones in Philly – July 2 - 4
36] Marc Steiner on WEAA – July 2 – 5
37] Protest the death penalty – July 2
38] Mark Lane at Politics and Prose – July 2
39] Film THE INTERRUPTERS – July 2
40] Mass Arrests -- July 2
41] Nuns on the Bus – July 2
42] Pledge/Fund Our Communities meeting – July 2
43] War Is Not the Answer – July 3
44] Voter Registration Training – July 3
45] Protest NSA, then enjoy potluck picnic – July 4
46] Philadelphia Peace Vigil -- July 4
47] Party first, then go to trial – July 4 & 5
48] Green Currency Meeting – July 4
49] Chestnut Hill peace vigil – July 4
50] Summer Lecture Series – July 4
-----
34] – The Annual Starving For Justice Fast & Vigil continues at the Supreme Court until Mon., July 2 at 1 PM. The four-day Fast & Vigil takes place on the sidewalk in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, considered by many to be the heart of the legalized killing machines in this country. Visit www.abolition.org or email annefeczko@gmail.com. .
35] – The Brandywine Peace Community is bringing the KnowDrones Tour (www.knowdrones.com) back to Philadelphia, starting Mon., July 2 through Wed., July 4. On July 2, 10 AM to 6 PM, and July 3, 10 AM to 1 PM, the Drone Tour will be at Independence Visitors Center, 6th & Market Sts., Phila. The display will be in front of the Phila. Federal Courthouse Building, 601 Market St., on July 3, from 1 PM until the start of the Philly POPS concert beginning at 8:30 PM, and on July 4, from 10 AM to 6 PM. Call 610-544-1818 or go to www.brandywinepeace.com.
Join the July 4/Independence Day Peace Demonstration at the Phila. Federal Courthouse Building, 601 Market Street, at 1 PM. Toll the Bell of Peace, Send the Word Forth: End the Drone Wars...Stop Drone Spying... Then do a Drone Death Walk-around Phila. Historic District. At 2 PM in front of Federal Building, listen to speakers and music. Then a “die-in" will take place to dramatize the reality and impact of drone war around the world, and drone spying across the USA on our civil liberties.
36] – The Marc Steiner Show airs Monday through Thursday from 5 to 7 PM on WEAA 88.9 FM, The Voice of the Community, or online at www.weaa.org. The call-in number is 410-319-8888, and comments can also be sent by email to steinershow@gmail.com. All shows are also available as podcasts at www.steinershow.org.
37] – There is usually a vigil to abolish the death penalty every Monday from 5 to 6 PM, outside the prison complex and across the street from Maryland’s Super Max Prison, at the corner of Madison Ave. and Fallsway in Baltimore. Maryland’s death row was moved out of Baltimore, but it was decided to continue the vigil. The next one is scheduled for Mon., July 2. Call 410-366-1637.
38] – Be at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW, WDC 20008, for a talk with author Mark Lane about his book "Citizen Lane: Defending Our Rights in the Courts, the Capitol, and the Streets" on Mon., July 2 at 6 PM. Lawyer, activist, and former member of the New York State Legislature, Lane has remarkable stories to tell, from his friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt to his days as a Freedom Rider. Committed to effecting social change, Lane also served as counsel for the Wounded Knee defendants and ran as the vice presidential candidate on Dick Gregory’s ticket. His inspiring memoir offers ample evidence that one individual can make a difference. Go to http://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/mark-lane-citizen-lane.
39] – Catch an Open Media Film Screening: THE INTERRUPTERS on Mon., July 2 at 7 PM at Occupy Peace House, 1233 12th St. NW. There a free documentary screening every other Monday, followed by an informal debate, lead by a special guest speaker, on the issues raised by the film. Open Media is a new social / educational event for DC activists, presented by The DC Learning Collective, DC Mic Check and Occupy Peace House. The documentary tells the story of three “violence interrupters” who return to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once engaged in themselves. This 2011 documentary examines how grassroots activism can transform communities. The guest speaker will be Kalfani Ture, anti-violence activist, researcher and former resident of Barry Farm, Anacostia. Visit https://www.facebook.com/events/458816227462195/?ref=ts.
40] – On Mon., July 2 at 7 PM @ Red Emma's, 800 St. Paul St., hear about Less Wall More Street!: From Mass Arrests of OWS to Mass Incarceration. The recent upsurge in activism in the U.S., specifically the Occupy movement, has prompted a change of consciousness in many people. But with this dissent, activists (many young, white, and middle class) are facing retaliation for the first time as a result of their decision to challenge capital and state power. This comes in a context of an age of mass incarceration in the country with over 2.5 million people in prison and over 5 million others on parole or probation, the majority being African American, Latino and poor. The talk will be presented by two OWS activists traveling around the country to build awareness and solidarity around these issues. Email info@redemmas.org or call 410-230-0450.
41] – On Mon., July 2 at 7 PM at Trinity Washington Univ., 125 Michigan Ave. NE, listen the Nuns On the Bus and their message: Nuns drive for faith, family, and fairness. Join the final stop on the two week bus tour. Catholic Sisters undertook the mission to stand with people in need and to be witnesses for economic justice. We cannot stand by silently while the U.S. Congress considers further enriching the wealthiest Americans at the expense of struggling, impoverished families. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) agrees that the federal budget put forth by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and approved in the U.S. House of Representatives on a party-line vote is wrong for our nation. Go to nunsonthebus.com.
42] – The Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore usually meets on Mondays at 7:30 PM, and the meetings now take place at Max’s residence. The next meeting takes place on July 2. Call 410-366-1637 or email mobuszewski at verizon.net for directions.
The proposed agenda will include reports on arranging a meeting with Dutch Ruppersberger, a letter to Obama about drones, the annual Hiroshima-Nagasaki commemoration, the need for poets to read on August 9 and a July 4 demo at the NSA. Let Max know of any additional agenda items.
43] – There is a vigil to say "War Is Not the Answer" each Tuesday since September 11, 2001 at 4806 York Road. Join this ongoing vigil. The next vigil is July 3 from 5:30 to 6:30 PM. Call Max at 410-366-1637.
44] – Attend a Voter Registration Certification Training on Tues., July 3 at 7 PM at the Gay & Lesbian Community Center of Baltimore, 2nd Floor, 241 West Chase St. After being trained and certified, you can fill out a voter registration application for another person--instead of encouraging them to do it themselves and never really knowing if they followed through. It's an important part of the marriage-equality campaign to make sure that people who support the cause are registered to vote before Oct. 15. Training will be on the second floor of the GLCCB. Contact Mark at markpatro@gmail.com.
45] – The Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore will make its annual trek to the National Security Agency on Wed., July 4. This annual interdependence Day protest will take place from 10 to 11 AM. Later in the afternoon, there will be a picnic. For rides or directions to the potluck picnic, contact Max at 410-366-1637 or mobuszewski at verizon.net.
46] – Each Wednesday from 4:30 - 5:30 PM, the House of Grace Catholic Worker holds a weekly vigil for peace in Iraq outside the Phila. Federal Building, 6th & Market Sts. The next vigil is July 4. Call 215-426-0364.
47] – There is an Appalachia July 4th Party on Wed., July 4 at 6:30 PM at Magnum House, 707 Ingraham St. NW. On June 6 over 20 Appalachian activists stood their ground on Capitol Hill and demanded that Congress must do something to stop Mountain Top Removal. This resulted in their arrests, and they are scheduled for trial on July 5. Bring food and drink. Go to http://www.facebook.com/events/.
48] – The Baltimore Green Currency Association meets every Wednesday at 7 PM at Breathe Books, 810 W 36th St. # A, Baltimore, MD 21211-2554. Call 410-235-7323.
49] – Each Wednesday, the Northwest Greens hold a peace vigil from 7 to 8 PM outside the Borders Book Store, Germantown Ave. at Bethlehem Pike in Chestnut Hill, PA. The next vigil is July 4. Call 215-843-4256 or email nwgreens@yahoo.com.
50] – A Summer Lecture Series will be given by St. John's College faculty and guest lecturers, and topics will vary from Machiavelli, Einstein, and Socrates. It goes through Aug. 1 on Wednesdays at 7:30 PM at St. John's College, 60 College Ave. Call 410-263-2371 or go to http://www.sjca.edu.
To be continued.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
35] KnowDrones in Philly – July 2 - 4
36] Marc Steiner on WEAA – July 2 – 5
37] Protest the death penalty – July 2
38] Mark Lane at Politics and Prose – July 2
39] Film THE INTERRUPTERS – July 2
40] Mass Arrests -- July 2
41] Nuns on the Bus – July 2
42] Pledge/Fund Our Communities meeting – July 2
43] War Is Not the Answer – July 3
44] Voter Registration Training – July 3
45] Protest NSA, then enjoy potluck picnic – July 4
46] Philadelphia Peace Vigil -- July 4
47] Party first, then go to trial – July 4 & 5
48] Green Currency Meeting – July 4
49] Chestnut Hill peace vigil – July 4
50] Summer Lecture Series – July 4
-----
34] – The Annual Starving For Justice Fast & Vigil continues at the Supreme Court until Mon., July 2 at 1 PM. The four-day Fast & Vigil takes place on the sidewalk in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, considered by many to be the heart of the legalized killing machines in this country. Visit www.abolition.org or email annefeczko@gmail.com. .
35] – The Brandywine Peace Community is bringing the KnowDrones Tour (www.knowdrones.com) back to Philadelphia, starting Mon., July 2 through Wed., July 4. On July 2, 10 AM to 6 PM, and July 3, 10 AM to 1 PM, the Drone Tour will be at Independence Visitors Center, 6th & Market Sts., Phila. The display will be in front of the Phila. Federal Courthouse Building, 601 Market St., on July 3, from 1 PM until the start of the Philly POPS concert beginning at 8:30 PM, and on July 4, from 10 AM to 6 PM. Call 610-544-1818 or go to www.brandywinepeace.com.
Join the July 4/Independence Day Peace Demonstration at the Phila. Federal Courthouse Building, 601 Market Street, at 1 PM. Toll the Bell of Peace, Send the Word Forth: End the Drone Wars...Stop Drone Spying... Then do a Drone Death Walk-around Phila. Historic District. At 2 PM in front of Federal Building, listen to speakers and music. Then a “die-in" will take place to dramatize the reality and impact of drone war around the world, and drone spying across the USA on our civil liberties.
36] – The Marc Steiner Show airs Monday through Thursday from 5 to 7 PM on WEAA 88.9 FM, The Voice of the Community, or online at www.weaa.org. The call-in number is 410-319-8888, and comments can also be sent by email to steinershow@gmail.com. All shows are also available as podcasts at www.steinershow.org.
37] – There is usually a vigil to abolish the death penalty every Monday from 5 to 6 PM, outside the prison complex and across the street from Maryland’s Super Max Prison, at the corner of Madison Ave. and Fallsway in Baltimore. Maryland’s death row was moved out of Baltimore, but it was decided to continue the vigil. The next one is scheduled for Mon., July 2. Call 410-366-1637.
38] – Be at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW, WDC 20008, for a talk with author Mark Lane about his book "Citizen Lane: Defending Our Rights in the Courts, the Capitol, and the Streets" on Mon., July 2 at 6 PM. Lawyer, activist, and former member of the New York State Legislature, Lane has remarkable stories to tell, from his friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt to his days as a Freedom Rider. Committed to effecting social change, Lane also served as counsel for the Wounded Knee defendants and ran as the vice presidential candidate on Dick Gregory’s ticket. His inspiring memoir offers ample evidence that one individual can make a difference. Go to http://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/mark-lane-citizen-lane.
39] – Catch an Open Media Film Screening: THE INTERRUPTERS on Mon., July 2 at 7 PM at Occupy Peace House, 1233 12th St. NW. There a free documentary screening every other Monday, followed by an informal debate, lead by a special guest speaker, on the issues raised by the film. Open Media is a new social / educational event for DC activists, presented by The DC Learning Collective, DC Mic Check and Occupy Peace House. The documentary tells the story of three “violence interrupters” who return to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once engaged in themselves. This 2011 documentary examines how grassroots activism can transform communities. The guest speaker will be Kalfani Ture, anti-violence activist, researcher and former resident of Barry Farm, Anacostia. Visit https://www.facebook.com/events/458816227462195/?ref=ts.
40] – On Mon., July 2 at 7 PM @ Red Emma's, 800 St. Paul St., hear about Less Wall More Street!: From Mass Arrests of OWS to Mass Incarceration. The recent upsurge in activism in the U.S., specifically the Occupy movement, has prompted a change of consciousness in many people. But with this dissent, activists (many young, white, and middle class) are facing retaliation for the first time as a result of their decision to challenge capital and state power. This comes in a context of an age of mass incarceration in the country with over 2.5 million people in prison and over 5 million others on parole or probation, the majority being African American, Latino and poor. The talk will be presented by two OWS activists traveling around the country to build awareness and solidarity around these issues. Email info@redemmas.org or call 410-230-0450.
41] – On Mon., July 2 at 7 PM at Trinity Washington Univ., 125 Michigan Ave. NE, listen the Nuns On the Bus and their message: Nuns drive for faith, family, and fairness. Join the final stop on the two week bus tour. Catholic Sisters undertook the mission to stand with people in need and to be witnesses for economic justice. We cannot stand by silently while the U.S. Congress considers further enriching the wealthiest Americans at the expense of struggling, impoverished families. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) agrees that the federal budget put forth by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and approved in the U.S. House of Representatives on a party-line vote is wrong for our nation. Go to nunsonthebus.com.
42] – The Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore usually meets on Mondays at 7:30 PM, and the meetings now take place at Max’s residence. The next meeting takes place on July 2. Call 410-366-1637 or email mobuszewski at verizon.net for directions.
The proposed agenda will include reports on arranging a meeting with Dutch Ruppersberger, a letter to Obama about drones, the annual Hiroshima-Nagasaki commemoration, the need for poets to read on August 9 and a July 4 demo at the NSA. Let Max know of any additional agenda items.
43] – There is a vigil to say "War Is Not the Answer" each Tuesday since September 11, 2001 at 4806 York Road. Join this ongoing vigil. The next vigil is July 3 from 5:30 to 6:30 PM. Call Max at 410-366-1637.
44] – Attend a Voter Registration Certification Training on Tues., July 3 at 7 PM at the Gay & Lesbian Community Center of Baltimore, 2nd Floor, 241 West Chase St. After being trained and certified, you can fill out a voter registration application for another person--instead of encouraging them to do it themselves and never really knowing if they followed through. It's an important part of the marriage-equality campaign to make sure that people who support the cause are registered to vote before Oct. 15. Training will be on the second floor of the GLCCB. Contact Mark at markpatro@gmail.com.
45] – The Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore will make its annual trek to the National Security Agency on Wed., July 4. This annual interdependence Day protest will take place from 10 to 11 AM. Later in the afternoon, there will be a picnic. For rides or directions to the potluck picnic, contact Max at 410-366-1637 or mobuszewski at verizon.net.
46] – Each Wednesday from 4:30 - 5:30 PM, the House of Grace Catholic Worker holds a weekly vigil for peace in Iraq outside the Phila. Federal Building, 6th & Market Sts. The next vigil is July 4. Call 215-426-0364.
47] – There is an Appalachia July 4th Party on Wed., July 4 at 6:30 PM at Magnum House, 707 Ingraham St. NW. On June 6 over 20 Appalachian activists stood their ground on Capitol Hill and demanded that Congress must do something to stop Mountain Top Removal. This resulted in their arrests, and they are scheduled for trial on July 5. Bring food and drink. Go to http://www.facebook.com/events/.
48] – The Baltimore Green Currency Association meets every Wednesday at 7 PM at Breathe Books, 810 W 36th St. # A, Baltimore, MD 21211-2554. Call 410-235-7323.
49] – Each Wednesday, the Northwest Greens hold a peace vigil from 7 to 8 PM outside the Borders Book Store, Germantown Ave. at Bethlehem Pike in Chestnut Hill, PA. The next vigil is July 4. Call 215-843-4256 or email nwgreens@yahoo.com.
50] – A Summer Lecture Series will be given by St. John's College faculty and guest lecturers, and topics will vary from Machiavelli, Einstein, and Socrates. It goes through Aug. 1 on Wednesdays at 7:30 PM at St. John's College, 60 College Ave. Call 410-263-2371 or go to http://www.sjca.edu.
To be continued.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Former Inmate Speaks Out, Sues for Being Shackled While in Labor
Former Inmate Speaks Out, Sues for Being Shackled While in Labor
By Lauren Kelley, AlterNet
Posted on June 30, 2012, Printed on July 1, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/1002664/former_inmate_speaks_out%2C_sues_for_being_shackled_while_in_labor
Valerie Nabors, a former inmate of the Florence McClure Women's Correctional Center, is suing the Nevada Department of Corrections over allegations that she was shackled while in labor, in violation of state law and against the advice of medical professionals. KTNV reports:
She told Action News officers shackled her legs as she went to the hospital to give birth, even though medical personnel strongly discouraged it.
"She [an ambulance EMT] explained to him, you can't do this because I still have to check her and he just said 'oh well' and proceeded to put the leg shackles on and went back into the facility," explained Nabors.
Her attorney Staci Pratt, with the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said, "When you shackle a woman at her ankles, making it difficult for medical personnel to check her, you're sending a message that our primary obligation in society is not taking care of women, but to punish them needlessly and I think it's cruel and sadistic."
Nabors said, even at the hospital, officers continued to push for the shackles.
But wait, there's more:
She said when she returned to the correctional facility after giving birth, workers took away everything the hospital gave her, including her prescribed breast pump, which is a whole other portion of the lawsuit.
Given that shackling inmates while in labor is banned in Nevada (as it should be everywhere!), it seems that this is a pretty clear-cut violation of Nabors' legal rights, not to mention her fundamental human rights.
As inhuman as the practice sounds, shackling inmates who are in labor is a longstanding practice in many American prisons -- a practice that rights groups have worked hard to overturn, with some (though not enough) successes in recent years.
Nabors may have violated the law when she stole $250 worth of casino chips, landing her in prison. But what on earth did she do to deserve being tied down while on the verge of giving birth?
© 2012 All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews//
By Lauren Kelley, AlterNet
Posted on June 30, 2012, Printed on July 1, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/1002664/former_inmate_speaks_out%2C_sues_for_being_shackled_while_in_labor
Valerie Nabors, a former inmate of the Florence McClure Women's Correctional Center, is suing the Nevada Department of Corrections over allegations that she was shackled while in labor, in violation of state law and against the advice of medical professionals. KTNV reports:
She told Action News officers shackled her legs as she went to the hospital to give birth, even though medical personnel strongly discouraged it.
"She [an ambulance EMT] explained to him, you can't do this because I still have to check her and he just said 'oh well' and proceeded to put the leg shackles on and went back into the facility," explained Nabors.
Her attorney Staci Pratt, with the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said, "When you shackle a woman at her ankles, making it difficult for medical personnel to check her, you're sending a message that our primary obligation in society is not taking care of women, but to punish them needlessly and I think it's cruel and sadistic."
Nabors said, even at the hospital, officers continued to push for the shackles.
But wait, there's more:
She said when she returned to the correctional facility after giving birth, workers took away everything the hospital gave her, including her prescribed breast pump, which is a whole other portion of the lawsuit.
Given that shackling inmates while in labor is banned in Nevada (as it should be everywhere!), it seems that this is a pretty clear-cut violation of Nabors' legal rights, not to mention her fundamental human rights.
As inhuman as the practice sounds, shackling inmates who are in labor is a longstanding practice in many American prisons -- a practice that rights groups have worked hard to overturn, with some (though not enough) successes in recent years.
Nabors may have violated the law when she stole $250 worth of casino chips, landing her in prison. But what on earth did she do to deserve being tied down while on the verge of giving birth?
© 2012 All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews//
A New Standard for Oxymoronic Newspeak
A New Standard for Oxymoronic Newspeak
By David Sirota
If there was an ongoing contest in the art of self-contradicting newspeak, a quote from a U.S. military official during the Vietnam War would be the reigning victor for most of the modern era. In describing the decision to ignore the prospect of civilian casualties and vaporize a Vietnamese village, that unnamed official famously told Peter Arnett of the Associated Press that "it became necessary to destroy the town to save it."
Epitomizing the futility, immorality and nihilism of that era-defining war, the line has achieved true aphorism status — employed to describe any political endeavor that is, well...futile, immoral and nihilistic.
But now, ever so suddenly, the Vietnam quote has been dethroned by an even more oxymoronic line — one that perfectly summarizes the zeitgeist of the post-9/11 era. As Wired's Spencer Ackerman reports, "Surveillance experts at the National Security Agency won't tell two powerful United States Senators how many Americans have had their communications picked up by the agency (because) it would violate your privacy to say so."
In a letter to senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall, the agency wrote: "(A) review of the sort suggested would itself violate the privacy of U.S. persons."
While the line's bureaucratic lingo doesn't roll of the tongue like its Vietnam-era predecessor, it does equal it for sheer audacity. Yes, those actively violating Americans' privacy claim they can't tell Congress about their activities because doing so might violate Americans' privacy.
Of course, what sets this particular oxymoron apart from others — what makes it the new champion of oxymoronic newspeak — is its special mix of incoherence and non-sequitur. This isn't merely a self-contradictory statement — it's one that ignores the question at hand. As Wyden told Wired: "All that Senator Udall and I are asking for is a ballpark estimate of how many Americans have been monitored under this law" — not any specific names of those being spied on.
By definition, providing a "ballpark" figure can't violate any individuals' privacy.
So why would the NSA nonetheless refuse to provide one? Most likely because such an estimate would be a number so big as to become a political problem for the national security establishment.
According to the nonpartisan Electronic Frontier Foundation, "The U.S. government, with assistance from major telecommunications carriers including AT&T, has engaged in a massive program of illegal dragnet surveillance of domestic communications and communications records of millions of ordinary Americans since at least 2001." That's right, millions — and that's merely what happened with one of many programs over the last decade. Moving forward, Wired notes that the NSA is building the "Utah Data Center" — "a project of immense secrecy" designed "to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world's communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks."
In the last few years, polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans are uncomfortable with such pervasive snooping. Considering that, it's fair to assume that if the government officially acknowledged an even bigger domestic spying regime than we already know about, we might finally reach a tipping point — one in which public outrage forces a wholesale reevaluation of the NSA's entire mission.
Thus, in the name of self-preservation and self-interest, NSA officials shamelessly offer up the most epically inane oxymoron since Vietnam. They calculate that with a mindless left-versus-right political media more interested in meticulously analyzing the meaningless gaffes of presidential candidates, few news outlets are interested in letting America know about the most serious affronts to civil liberties.
Unfortunately, that calculation is probably accurate.
This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/new-standard-oxymoronic-newspeak-1341148290. All rights are reserved.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
By David Sirota
If there was an ongoing contest in the art of self-contradicting newspeak, a quote from a U.S. military official during the Vietnam War would be the reigning victor for most of the modern era. In describing the decision to ignore the prospect of civilian casualties and vaporize a Vietnamese village, that unnamed official famously told Peter Arnett of the Associated Press that "it became necessary to destroy the town to save it."
Epitomizing the futility, immorality and nihilism of that era-defining war, the line has achieved true aphorism status — employed to describe any political endeavor that is, well...futile, immoral and nihilistic.
But now, ever so suddenly, the Vietnam quote has been dethroned by an even more oxymoronic line — one that perfectly summarizes the zeitgeist of the post-9/11 era. As Wired's Spencer Ackerman reports, "Surveillance experts at the National Security Agency won't tell two powerful United States Senators how many Americans have had their communications picked up by the agency (because) it would violate your privacy to say so."
In a letter to senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall, the agency wrote: "(A) review of the sort suggested would itself violate the privacy of U.S. persons."
While the line's bureaucratic lingo doesn't roll of the tongue like its Vietnam-era predecessor, it does equal it for sheer audacity. Yes, those actively violating Americans' privacy claim they can't tell Congress about their activities because doing so might violate Americans' privacy.
Of course, what sets this particular oxymoron apart from others — what makes it the new champion of oxymoronic newspeak — is its special mix of incoherence and non-sequitur. This isn't merely a self-contradictory statement — it's one that ignores the question at hand. As Wyden told Wired: "All that Senator Udall and I are asking for is a ballpark estimate of how many Americans have been monitored under this law" — not any specific names of those being spied on.
By definition, providing a "ballpark" figure can't violate any individuals' privacy.
So why would the NSA nonetheless refuse to provide one? Most likely because such an estimate would be a number so big as to become a political problem for the national security establishment.
According to the nonpartisan Electronic Frontier Foundation, "The U.S. government, with assistance from major telecommunications carriers including AT&T, has engaged in a massive program of illegal dragnet surveillance of domestic communications and communications records of millions of ordinary Americans since at least 2001." That's right, millions — and that's merely what happened with one of many programs over the last decade. Moving forward, Wired notes that the NSA is building the "Utah Data Center" — "a project of immense secrecy" designed "to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world's communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks."
In the last few years, polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans are uncomfortable with such pervasive snooping. Considering that, it's fair to assume that if the government officially acknowledged an even bigger domestic spying regime than we already know about, we might finally reach a tipping point — one in which public outrage forces a wholesale reevaluation of the NSA's entire mission.
Thus, in the name of self-preservation and self-interest, NSA officials shamelessly offer up the most epically inane oxymoron since Vietnam. They calculate that with a mindless left-versus-right political media more interested in meticulously analyzing the meaningless gaffes of presidential candidates, few news outlets are interested in letting America know about the most serious affronts to civil liberties.
Unfortunately, that calculation is probably accurate.
This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/new-standard-oxymoronic-newspeak-1341148290. All rights are reserved.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
In Tokyo, Thousands Protest the Restarting of a Nuclear Power Plant
In Tokyo, Thousands Protest the Restarting of a Nuclear Power Plant
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/world/asia/thousands-in-tokyo-protest-the-restarting-of-a-nuclear-plant.html?_r=1
June 29, 2012
By MARTIN FACKLER
TOKYO — Shouting antinuclear slogans and beating drums, tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in front of the Japanese prime minister’s residence on Friday in the largest display yet of public anger at the government’s decision to restart a nuclear power plant.
The crowd, including women with small children and men in suits coming from work, chanted “No more Fukushimas!” as it filled the broad boulevards near the residence and the national Parliament building, which were cordoned off by the police.
Estimates of the crowd’s size varied widely, with organizers claiming 150,000 participants, while the police put the number at 17,000. Local news media estimated the crowd at between 20,000 and 45,000, which they described as the largest protest in central Tokyo since the 1960s.
Protests of any size are rare in Japan, which has long been politically apathetic. However, there has been growing discontent among many Japanese who feel that Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda ignored public concerns about safety this month when he ordered the restarting of the Ohi power station in western Japan.
Ohi was the first plant to go back online since last year’s accident in Fukushima led to the idling of all of Japan’s 50 operational nuclear reactors, which supplied a third of the nation’s electricity. Three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant melted down after a huge earthquake and tsunami knocked out crucial cooling systems.
Mr. Noda said he ordered the restarting of two of Ohi’s reactors to avoid power shortages that could cause blackouts during the sweltering summer and cripple industry. However, political analysts have warned of a public backlash after opinion polls showed that two-thirds of Japanese opposed the restart, with many saying that the government had failed to convince them that the plant had been made safe.
On Friday, many of the protesters complained that Mr. Noda was trying to take Japan back to its political business-as-usual of powerful bureaucrats and industry executives making decisions behind closed doors. Some described their outrage over the restart decision as a moment of political awakening, saying they were taking to the streets for the first time.
“Japanese have not spoken out against the national government,” said Yoko Kajiyama, a 29-year-old homemaker who carried her 1-year-old son. “Now, we have to speak out, or the government will endanger us all.”
“To restart the nuclear plant without ensuring its safety is crazy,” said Naomi Yamazaki, 37, another homemaker and first-time demonstrator. “I know we need these plants for power and jobs, but I don’t trust the authorities now to protect us.”
Organizers said such mistrust had led to a quick growth in the size of the protests, which have been held every week since late March. The protests began with a few hundred participants, but rose into the thousands after Mr. Noda’s restart decision, said one organizer, Misao Redwolf, a illustrator based here in Tokyo.
Tetsunari Iida, director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies, an energy policy group based in Tokyo, said the protests reflected wider discontent toward the government, which many say failed to protect public health after the accident, and then rushed to get the country’s reactors back online.
“There is anger and a loss of confidence in the government,” Mr. Iida said. “This is an irreversible change, and I expect this type of movement to continue.”
For his part, the prime minister seemed unfazed by the protests. “They’re making lots of noise,” Mr. Noda remarked to reporters as he left his office for his private quarters.
While noisy, the protesters on Friday demonstrated Japan’s penchant for being well organized and fastidiously polite. In many places, they kept passages clear for pedestrians and stood in neat lines along sidewalks. When the protest ended at 8 p.m., organizers quickly dispersed participants using megaphones, with hardly a scrap of garbage left behind.
Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting.
© 2011 The New York Times Company
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/world/asia/thousands-in-tokyo-protest-the-restarting-of-a-nuclear-plant.html?_r=1
June 29, 2012
By MARTIN FACKLER
TOKYO — Shouting antinuclear slogans and beating drums, tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in front of the Japanese prime minister’s residence on Friday in the largest display yet of public anger at the government’s decision to restart a nuclear power plant.
The crowd, including women with small children and men in suits coming from work, chanted “No more Fukushimas!” as it filled the broad boulevards near the residence and the national Parliament building, which were cordoned off by the police.
Estimates of the crowd’s size varied widely, with organizers claiming 150,000 participants, while the police put the number at 17,000. Local news media estimated the crowd at between 20,000 and 45,000, which they described as the largest protest in central Tokyo since the 1960s.
Protests of any size are rare in Japan, which has long been politically apathetic. However, there has been growing discontent among many Japanese who feel that Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda ignored public concerns about safety this month when he ordered the restarting of the Ohi power station in western Japan.
Ohi was the first plant to go back online since last year’s accident in Fukushima led to the idling of all of Japan’s 50 operational nuclear reactors, which supplied a third of the nation’s electricity. Three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant melted down after a huge earthquake and tsunami knocked out crucial cooling systems.
Mr. Noda said he ordered the restarting of two of Ohi’s reactors to avoid power shortages that could cause blackouts during the sweltering summer and cripple industry. However, political analysts have warned of a public backlash after opinion polls showed that two-thirds of Japanese opposed the restart, with many saying that the government had failed to convince them that the plant had been made safe.
On Friday, many of the protesters complained that Mr. Noda was trying to take Japan back to its political business-as-usual of powerful bureaucrats and industry executives making decisions behind closed doors. Some described their outrage over the restart decision as a moment of political awakening, saying they were taking to the streets for the first time.
“Japanese have not spoken out against the national government,” said Yoko Kajiyama, a 29-year-old homemaker who carried her 1-year-old son. “Now, we have to speak out, or the government will endanger us all.”
“To restart the nuclear plant without ensuring its safety is crazy,” said Naomi Yamazaki, 37, another homemaker and first-time demonstrator. “I know we need these plants for power and jobs, but I don’t trust the authorities now to protect us.”
Organizers said such mistrust had led to a quick growth in the size of the protests, which have been held every week since late March. The protests began with a few hundred participants, but rose into the thousands after Mr. Noda’s restart decision, said one organizer, Misao Redwolf, a illustrator based here in Tokyo.
Tetsunari Iida, director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies, an energy policy group based in Tokyo, said the protests reflected wider discontent toward the government, which many say failed to protect public health after the accident, and then rushed to get the country’s reactors back online.
“There is anger and a loss of confidence in the government,” Mr. Iida said. “This is an irreversible change, and I expect this type of movement to continue.”
For his part, the prime minister seemed unfazed by the protests. “They’re making lots of noise,” Mr. Noda remarked to reporters as he left his office for his private quarters.
While noisy, the protesters on Friday demonstrated Japan’s penchant for being well organized and fastidiously polite. In many places, they kept passages clear for pedestrians and stood in neat lines along sidewalks. When the protest ended at 8 p.m., organizers quickly dispersed participants using megaphones, with hardly a scrap of garbage left behind.
Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting.
© 2011 The New York Times Company
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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