By LARRY NEUMEISTER
The Associated Press
Friday, February 4, 2011; 4:57 PM
NEW YORK -- The conviction of a doctor who prosecutors said assisted terrorists by offering to treat injured al-Qaida fighters was upheld Friday by a federal appeals court, although one of three judges who decided the case said he believes one charge should have been tossed out.
The panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan issued its 2-to-1 decision affirming Dr. Rafiq Sabir's conviction on a charge of conspiring to attempt to provide material support to a terrorist organization and its unanimous affirmation on a charge that he conspired to provide material support.
Sabir, 56, of Boca Raton, Fla., was sentenced in November 2007 to 25 years in prison after his conviction at a Manhattan trial. The government said he had agreed to treat injured al-Qaida members so they could return to Iraq to fight Americans, though Sabir insisted throughout that he was innocent.
The jury was shown evidence that the Columbia University-trained doctor swore an allegiance to al-Qaida in May 2005 and promised to treat wounded members of the group in Saudi Arabia.
Sabir's lawyers had challenged his conviction on the grounds that the law used to convict him was unconstitutionally vague and too broad, there was insufficient evidence, prosecutors exhibited racial bias in their exclusion of some jurors during jury selection and the judge made incorrect rulings.
In its written opinion, the appeals court said it rejected the arguments and concluded Sabir received a fair trial.
In a dissent, Judge Raymond Dearie said his fellow judges seemed to go too far by allowing Sabir to be convicted on a charge that he tried to provide material support when he only pledged to work under the direction of al-Qaida.
"This conclusion is without precedent and hinges upon what is, in my view, a seriously flawed interpretation of the material support statutes," he wrote.
Dearie said he agreed that Sabir conspired to provide medical support to wounded al-Qaida members in Saudi Arabia in a meeting with a co-conspirator and an undercover FBI agent.
But he said evidence that he actually tried to provide the support was insufficient.
"Regardless of Sabir's inclination, as a matter of law, any step he took toward that end was insubstantial and any support he furnished unquestionably immaterial," Dearie said. "In the end, a man stands guilty, and severely punished, for an offense that he did not commit."
Edward Wilford, a lawyer for Sabir, said he believes Dearie was correct but that the entire conviction should have been overturned for lack of evidence.
"We'll do everything we can to appeal this case and pursue his liberty," he said.
At his sentencing, Sabir blamed a co-defendant - jazz musician and martial arts expert Tarik Shah - for his plight, saying he had duped him into taking an oath with an FBI agent who posed as an al-Qaida recruiter, never explaining that he was pledging loyalty to al-Qaida or its leader, Osama bin Laden.
"I'm an extremely gullible man," he said.
Shah was sentenced to 15 years in prison in a deal with the government. A Brooklyn bookstore owner who pleaded guilty was sentenced to 13 years in prison.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Human Rights Groups Announce Bush Indictment for Convention Against Torture Signatory States
No Immunity for Former Presidents Under Law
Geneva, 7 February 2011 – Today, two torture victims were to have filed criminal complaints, with more than 2,500-pages of supporting material, in Geneva against former U.S. President George W. Bush, who was due to speak at an event there on 12 February. Swiss law requires the presence of the torturer on Swiss soil before a preliminary investigation can be opened. When Bush cancelled his trip to avoid prosecution, the human rights groups who prepared the complaints made it public and announced that the Bush Torture Indictment would be waiting wherever he travels next. The Indictment serves as the basis on which to prepare country-specific, plaintiff-specific indictments, with additional evidence and updated information. According to international law experts at the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), former presidents do not enjoy special immunity under the Convention Against Torture (CAT).
“Waterboarding is torture, and Bush has admitted, without any sign of remorse, that he approved its use,” said Katherine Gallagher, Senior Staff Attorney at CCR and Vice President of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). “The reach of the Convention Against Torture is wide – this case is prepared and will be waiting for him wherever he travels next. Torturers – even if they are former presidents of the United States – must be held to account and prosecuted. Impunity for Bush must end.”
While the U.S. has thus far failed to comply with its obligations under the Convention Against Torture to prosecute and punish those who commit torture, all other signatories, too, are obligated to prosecute or extradite for prosecution anyone present in their territory they have a reasonable basis for believing has committed torture. If the evidence warrants, as the Bush Torture Indictment contends it does, and the U.S. fails to request the extradition of Bush and others to face charges of torture there, CAT signatories must, under law, prosecute them for torture.
In a statement this weekend, the groups who organized the complaints said, “Whatever Bush or his hosts say, we have no doubt he cancelled his trip to avoid our case. The message from civil society is clear – If you’re a torturer, be careful in your travel plans.”
The complaints that had been scheduled to be filed on Monday asked that the General Prosecutor of the Canton of Geneva investigate allegations that men were tortured as part of the Bush administration’s well-documented torture program. Bush proudly recounted in his recently published memoir that when asked in 2002 to if it was permissible to waterboard a detainee – a recognized act of torture – he replied “damn right.”
Monday, 7 February, is the ninth anniversary of the day Bush decided the Geneva Conventions did not apply to ‘enemy combatants.’
According to the Bush Indictment, which was written on behalf of torture victims by CCR and ECCHR, former President Bush bears individual and command responsibility for the acts of his subordinates which he ordered, authorized, condoned or otherwise aided and abetted, as well as for the violations committed by his subordinates which he failed to prevent or punish.
“Bush is a torturer and deserves to be remembered as such,” said Gavin Sullivan, Solicitor and Counterterrorism Program Manager, ECCHR. “He bears ultimate responsibility for authorizing the torture of thousands of individuals at places like Guantánamo and secret CIA ‘black sites’ around the world. As all states are obliged to prosecute such torturers, Bush has good reason to be very worried.”
CCR, ECCHR and FIDH were joined by more than 60 human rights organizations and prominent individuals who signed on to support the call for George W. Bush’s prosecution, including former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Theo van Boven, former UN Special Rapporteur on Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Leandro Despouy, and Nobel Peace Prize recipients Shirin Ebadi and Pérez Esquivel. A number of the human rights organizations which signed on are facing the on-going harms of the “counterterrorism” policies advanced under the Bush administration and then adopted or employed in their own countries.. The complaint included 2500 pages of supporting materials.
Manfred Nowak, former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture (2004-2010), was to submit an expert opinion on the complaints concluding that the conduct to which both plaintiffs were subjected constitutes torture, that Switzerland had an obligation to open a preliminary investigation, and that George W. Bush enjoys no immunity.
The Bush Torture Indictment, the official “letter of denunciation” summarizing the case and other materials are available here: http://ccrjustice.org/ourcases/current-cases/bush-torture-indictment.
The Center for Constitutional Rights, in addition to filing the first cases representing men detained at Guantánamo, has filed universal jurisdiction cases seeking accountability for torture by Bush administration officials in Germany, France and submitted expert opinions and other documentation to ongoing cases in Spain in collaboration with ECCHR. The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change. Visit www.ccrjustice.org. Follow @theCCR.
The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) is an independent, non-profit legal organization that enforces human rights by holding state and non-state actors to account for egregious abuses through innovative strategic litigation. For more information visit www.ecchr.eu
The International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) is a non-governmental federation for 164 human rights organizations. FIDH’s core mandate is to promote respect for all the rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Its priority areas include protecting human rights defenders and fighting impunity. For more information on FIDH, see www.fidh.org.
Geneva, 7 February 2011 – Today, two torture victims were to have filed criminal complaints, with more than 2,500-pages of supporting material, in Geneva against former U.S. President George W. Bush, who was due to speak at an event there on 12 February. Swiss law requires the presence of the torturer on Swiss soil before a preliminary investigation can be opened. When Bush cancelled his trip to avoid prosecution, the human rights groups who prepared the complaints made it public and announced that the Bush Torture Indictment would be waiting wherever he travels next. The Indictment serves as the basis on which to prepare country-specific, plaintiff-specific indictments, with additional evidence and updated information. According to international law experts at the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), former presidents do not enjoy special immunity under the Convention Against Torture (CAT).
“Waterboarding is torture, and Bush has admitted, without any sign of remorse, that he approved its use,” said Katherine Gallagher, Senior Staff Attorney at CCR and Vice President of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). “The reach of the Convention Against Torture is wide – this case is prepared and will be waiting for him wherever he travels next. Torturers – even if they are former presidents of the United States – must be held to account and prosecuted. Impunity for Bush must end.”
While the U.S. has thus far failed to comply with its obligations under the Convention Against Torture to prosecute and punish those who commit torture, all other signatories, too, are obligated to prosecute or extradite for prosecution anyone present in their territory they have a reasonable basis for believing has committed torture. If the evidence warrants, as the Bush Torture Indictment contends it does, and the U.S. fails to request the extradition of Bush and others to face charges of torture there, CAT signatories must, under law, prosecute them for torture.
In a statement this weekend, the groups who organized the complaints said, “Whatever Bush or his hosts say, we have no doubt he cancelled his trip to avoid our case. The message from civil society is clear – If you’re a torturer, be careful in your travel plans.”
The complaints that had been scheduled to be filed on Monday asked that the General Prosecutor of the Canton of Geneva investigate allegations that men were tortured as part of the Bush administration’s well-documented torture program. Bush proudly recounted in his recently published memoir that when asked in 2002 to if it was permissible to waterboard a detainee – a recognized act of torture – he replied “damn right.”
Monday, 7 February, is the ninth anniversary of the day Bush decided the Geneva Conventions did not apply to ‘enemy combatants.’
According to the Bush Indictment, which was written on behalf of torture victims by CCR and ECCHR, former President Bush bears individual and command responsibility for the acts of his subordinates which he ordered, authorized, condoned or otherwise aided and abetted, as well as for the violations committed by his subordinates which he failed to prevent or punish.
“Bush is a torturer and deserves to be remembered as such,” said Gavin Sullivan, Solicitor and Counterterrorism Program Manager, ECCHR. “He bears ultimate responsibility for authorizing the torture of thousands of individuals at places like Guantánamo and secret CIA ‘black sites’ around the world. As all states are obliged to prosecute such torturers, Bush has good reason to be very worried.”
CCR, ECCHR and FIDH were joined by more than 60 human rights organizations and prominent individuals who signed on to support the call for George W. Bush’s prosecution, including former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Theo van Boven, former UN Special Rapporteur on Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Leandro Despouy, and Nobel Peace Prize recipients Shirin Ebadi and Pérez Esquivel. A number of the human rights organizations which signed on are facing the on-going harms of the “counterterrorism” policies advanced under the Bush administration and then adopted or employed in their own countries.. The complaint included 2500 pages of supporting materials.
Manfred Nowak, former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture (2004-2010), was to submit an expert opinion on the complaints concluding that the conduct to which both plaintiffs were subjected constitutes torture, that Switzerland had an obligation to open a preliminary investigation, and that George W. Bush enjoys no immunity.
The Bush Torture Indictment, the official “letter of denunciation” summarizing the case and other materials are available here: http://ccrjustice.org/ourcases/current-cases/bush-torture-indictment.
The Center for Constitutional Rights, in addition to filing the first cases representing men detained at Guantánamo, has filed universal jurisdiction cases seeking accountability for torture by Bush administration officials in Germany, France and submitted expert opinions and other documentation to ongoing cases in Spain in collaboration with ECCHR. The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change. Visit www.ccrjustice.org. Follow @theCCR.
The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) is an independent, non-profit legal organization that enforces human rights by holding state and non-state actors to account for egregious abuses through innovative strategic litigation. For more information visit www.ecchr.eu
The International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) is a non-governmental federation for 164 human rights organizations. FIDH’s core mandate is to promote respect for all the rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Its priority areas include protecting human rights defenders and fighting impunity. For more information on FIDH, see www.fidh.org.
Monday, February 7, 2011
UE: FBI Investigation Hindered 2009 Bank Protest
By Kari Lydersen
Union workers at the Quad City Die Casting plant in central Illinois expected their planned protest outside a Wells Fargo Bank in July 2009 to be calm and civil. They had already talked with local Rock Island police and made it clear they “had no beef,” in UE Midwest director Carl Rosen’s words, with the police or the municipality, but wanted to make a statement about the bank which was cutting the plant’s financing.
So when the day of the protest came, workers and their supporters were surprised to see a heavy and relatively combative police presence. At the time they didn’t know what to make of it, and figured maybe Wells Fargo had pressured the department to come out in force.
The plant was organized by the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), the same union which eight months earlier had carried out the famous Republic Windows occupation. Protesters heard a police officer say the FBI had alerted them that “terrorists” were coming to Rock Island for the action, but union reps didn’t believe it.
“It seemed fantastical that the FBI would be interested in us,” said Rosen. It wasn’t until more than a year later that they understood what had happened.
The union members coming from Chicago in solidarity that day included Joe Iosbaker, who, as it turns out, was the target of an ongoing FBI investigation that became public in September 2010 when agents raided his home and the homes of 13 other labor and anti-war activists in Chicago, Michigan and Minnesota.
As described in a statement adopted by the UE’s general executive board at their national meeting January 27-28, union leaders now believe the FBI had been spying on communications of Iosbaker and other activists, and called the Rock Island police to tip them off about the Chicagoans’ plans to go to the protest.
Iosbaker is an executive board member and chief steward of SEIU Local 73 in Chicago, and an outspoken labor activist in general. He directly participated in the UE’s Republic Windows and Doors occupation.
A number of unions and labor groups have passed resolutions or made statements condemning the FBI investigations as a violation of civil rights and free speech. The UE statement points out how the FBI’s actions not only targeted activists for their anti-war views, but also as a side effect infringed upon the Quad City Die Casting members’ right to peacefully protest regarding their own situation.
“We’re supposed to be living in a democracy, and a democracy means elections, but also the ability of people to speak out about issues they’re concerned about, whether popular or unpopular,” Rosen said. “People need to have a right to address their grievances to the government and the public at large—that’s what our members were doing. They’d conferred in advance with the local police so everything could run smoothly and minimize the resources of the local police.”
He added that the FBI, rather than taxpayers, should have been billed for the overtime or extra staff resources utilized by the Rock Island police that day.
Rosen noted that even “under the wild speculation that any of these folks that they‘re investigating did something improper with someone overseas,” it was unnecessary and inappropriate for the FBI to have called the local police.
“They’re labor activists, one thing you do as a labor activist is practice solidarity,” Rosen said. “Nothing could have indicated these people would in any way pose any danger here.”
Iosbaker and other people targeted by the FBI think the investigation stemmed from their involvement in protests around the 2008 Republican National Convention, and expanded to focus on their solidarity work with Palestine and Colombia. Iosbaker said he doubts the FBI is specifically targeting labor activists, but nonetheless the investigation could affect labor struggles like Quad City Die Casting.
“Right now the main focus of repression is the anti-war movement and international solidarity work," Iosbaker says. This was likely "a bleed-over from an operation they had been doing deep undercover on the anti-war movement,” he added, noting the Quad City Die Casting protest was publicized through the Fight Back! newspaper listserv he helps maintain. “But this stemmed from that. They disrupted a protest action organized by the UE. They harassed and intimidated them.”
As the UE statement notes, their members have a particular interest in addressing civil rights violations and overzealous FBI surveillance, since the union was a target of anti-Communist counterintelligence and covert repression in the McCarthy era.
The UE statement says:
Our own union’s history has taught us that infringement on basic freedoms is a matter of life and death to the workers’ movement. During the “red scare” of the late 1940s and the 1950s, the combined forces of the corporations, the federal government, both major political parties, the media, and opportunistic business unions nearly succeeded in destroying UE and crushing progressive trade unionism.
Because of the persecution that our union suffered and barely survived in that era, we in UE have a continuing obligation to speak out forcefully whenever civil liberties are endangered by political hysteria and repression.
Last September, it was revealed the UE was among about 200 civil rights, women’s rights and labor groups spied upon by Pennsylvania’s Homeland Security office, which reported to local law enforcement on groups they considered terrorist threats. When the operation was exposed it created widespread outrage and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell demanded the program halted.
Rosen and Iosbaker said continued publicity and expressions of support by labor activists and others is important to make sure the FBI doesn’t over-reach and violate civil liberties as part of the “war on terror.”
“The lessons of history are that when people don’t speak up about the civil liberties of others being taken away, more civil liberties get taken away from more and more people,” Rosen said. “The sooner and the louder that more people speak out, the more likely it is these things will stop and we’ll get that element of democracy back.”
The statement from the UE concludes:
From the Industrial Workers of the World’s (IWW) fight for free speech in the 1910s, to the major labor-inspired civil liberties court decisions of the 1930s, the labor movement has often been in the forefront of defending the right to speak and protest. Unionists have understood that without the ability to speak out, union efforts would be crushed.
Union workers at the Quad City Die Casting plant in central Illinois expected their planned protest outside a Wells Fargo Bank in July 2009 to be calm and civil. They had already talked with local Rock Island police and made it clear they “had no beef,” in UE Midwest director Carl Rosen’s words, with the police or the municipality, but wanted to make a statement about the bank which was cutting the plant’s financing.
So when the day of the protest came, workers and their supporters were surprised to see a heavy and relatively combative police presence. At the time they didn’t know what to make of it, and figured maybe Wells Fargo had pressured the department to come out in force.
The plant was organized by the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), the same union which eight months earlier had carried out the famous Republic Windows occupation. Protesters heard a police officer say the FBI had alerted them that “terrorists” were coming to Rock Island for the action, but union reps didn’t believe it.
“It seemed fantastical that the FBI would be interested in us,” said Rosen. It wasn’t until more than a year later that they understood what had happened.
The union members coming from Chicago in solidarity that day included Joe Iosbaker, who, as it turns out, was the target of an ongoing FBI investigation that became public in September 2010 when agents raided his home and the homes of 13 other labor and anti-war activists in Chicago, Michigan and Minnesota.
As described in a statement adopted by the UE’s general executive board at their national meeting January 27-28, union leaders now believe the FBI had been spying on communications of Iosbaker and other activists, and called the Rock Island police to tip them off about the Chicagoans’ plans to go to the protest.
Iosbaker is an executive board member and chief steward of SEIU Local 73 in Chicago, and an outspoken labor activist in general. He directly participated in the UE’s Republic Windows and Doors occupation.
A number of unions and labor groups have passed resolutions or made statements condemning the FBI investigations as a violation of civil rights and free speech. The UE statement points out how the FBI’s actions not only targeted activists for their anti-war views, but also as a side effect infringed upon the Quad City Die Casting members’ right to peacefully protest regarding their own situation.
“We’re supposed to be living in a democracy, and a democracy means elections, but also the ability of people to speak out about issues they’re concerned about, whether popular or unpopular,” Rosen said. “People need to have a right to address their grievances to the government and the public at large—that’s what our members were doing. They’d conferred in advance with the local police so everything could run smoothly and minimize the resources of the local police.”
He added that the FBI, rather than taxpayers, should have been billed for the overtime or extra staff resources utilized by the Rock Island police that day.
Rosen noted that even “under the wild speculation that any of these folks that they‘re investigating did something improper with someone overseas,” it was unnecessary and inappropriate for the FBI to have called the local police.
“They’re labor activists, one thing you do as a labor activist is practice solidarity,” Rosen said. “Nothing could have indicated these people would in any way pose any danger here.”
Iosbaker and other people targeted by the FBI think the investigation stemmed from their involvement in protests around the 2008 Republican National Convention, and expanded to focus on their solidarity work with Palestine and Colombia. Iosbaker said he doubts the FBI is specifically targeting labor activists, but nonetheless the investigation could affect labor struggles like Quad City Die Casting.
“Right now the main focus of repression is the anti-war movement and international solidarity work," Iosbaker says. This was likely "a bleed-over from an operation they had been doing deep undercover on the anti-war movement,” he added, noting the Quad City Die Casting protest was publicized through the Fight Back! newspaper listserv he helps maintain. “But this stemmed from that. They disrupted a protest action organized by the UE. They harassed and intimidated them.”
As the UE statement notes, their members have a particular interest in addressing civil rights violations and overzealous FBI surveillance, since the union was a target of anti-Communist counterintelligence and covert repression in the McCarthy era.
The UE statement says:
Our own union’s history has taught us that infringement on basic freedoms is a matter of life and death to the workers’ movement. During the “red scare” of the late 1940s and the 1950s, the combined forces of the corporations, the federal government, both major political parties, the media, and opportunistic business unions nearly succeeded in destroying UE and crushing progressive trade unionism.
Because of the persecution that our union suffered and barely survived in that era, we in UE have a continuing obligation to speak out forcefully whenever civil liberties are endangered by political hysteria and repression.
Last September, it was revealed the UE was among about 200 civil rights, women’s rights and labor groups spied upon by Pennsylvania’s Homeland Security office, which reported to local law enforcement on groups they considered terrorist threats. When the operation was exposed it created widespread outrage and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell demanded the program halted.
Rosen and Iosbaker said continued publicity and expressions of support by labor activists and others is important to make sure the FBI doesn’t over-reach and violate civil liberties as part of the “war on terror.”
“The lessons of history are that when people don’t speak up about the civil liberties of others being taken away, more civil liberties get taken away from more and more people,” Rosen said. “The sooner and the louder that more people speak out, the more likely it is these things will stop and we’ll get that element of democracy back.”
The statement from the UE concludes:
From the Industrial Workers of the World’s (IWW) fight for free speech in the 1910s, to the major labor-inspired civil liberties court decisions of the 1930s, the labor movement has often been in the forefront of defending the right to speak and protest. Unionists have understood that without the ability to speak out, union efforts would be crushed.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
The Conservative Class War, Continued
by: Eric Alterman | The Nation | Op-Ed
It was a terrible tabloid tale. While New York City was buried under a blizzard, widows and orphans freezing and starving in their apartments, union fat cats swigged brewskis and chuckled to themselves as sanitation workers conspired to stage a slowdown to gain leverage in their contract negotiations. “The selfish Sanitation bosses who sabotaged the blizzard cleanup to fire a salvo at City Hall targeted politically connected and well-heeled neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn to get their twisted message across loud and clear,” screamed Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. From there, the story ricocheted across the media, to Investor’s Business Daily to Fox News (naturally), and even to Saturday Night Live. The Washington Times ran an op-ed that began, “Cross us and people will die.”
Alas, it never happened. The source of all this hysteria was a sketchy story told by Daniel Halloran, a rookie councilman and Tea Party Republican—who is also an adherent of the neo-pagan religion Theodicism. A New York Times investigation weeks later found no evidence to support the allegation, and it turns out that Halloran isn’t so sure about what he thought he heard after all. But the damage is done. (Murdoch properties are not exactly famous for correcting their errors; though, to be fair, if they did, there would hardly be time or space for anything else.)
Can it be mere coincidence that the right-wing media promoted this phony-baloney story at a moment when, as Charles Loveless, legislative director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, points out, conservatives are “readying a massive assault” on the pensions and benefits of these same employees?
Led by Newt Gingrich, conservatives are floating the notion that states should be allowed to declare bankruptcy to escape their pension obligations to firefighters, cops, teachers and, yes, sanitation workers. Gingrich called on House Republicans “to move a bill in the first month or so of their tenure to create a venue for state bankruptcy.” This was followed by a plea in The Weekly Standard by University of Pennsylvania law professor David Skeel titled “Give States a Way to Go Bankrupt.” Skeel later told a reporter that he had “never had anything I’ve written get as much attention as that piece.” He said he had been contacted by lawmakers from all over.
Depending on the audience, this discussion serves multiple purposes. Most obviously it is intended to blame the unions for local fiscal woes and garner support from the public for the coming assault on their pensions. Second, it serves to intimidate the unions and encourage givebacks lest these same officials be forced to go before taxpayers with a plan to cut services, raise taxes or both—making public unions the culprit in any of those options. Third, it weakens the unions’ appeal to new workers, for if they can’t protect the pensions of their workers, what’s the point of joining in the first place? Given that public unions provide the lion’s share of poll workers, envelope stuffers and other volunteers for Democratic campaigns, this is hardly an ancillary benefit, from the right’s perspective. With private union membership now in single digits, public unions remain just about the only institutions with sufficient financial and organizational muscle to make a difference in close elections at the state and local levels or to organize progressive pushback against corporate malfeasance.
The assault on public employee unions is the next phase of a forty-year class war in America by the rich against the rest of us. It is of a piece with the steady dismantling of our progressive taxation system and the explosion of economic inequality. Total income going to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans has risen from about 8 percent in the 1960s to more than 20 percent today. As Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson demonstrate in their recent book, Winner-Take-All Politics, this is the result of deliberate policy choices made by politicians in the service of those who fund their campaigns. Congress has repeatedly cut tax rates on top earners, along with capital gains and estate taxes. And as Robert Lieberman, writing in Foreign Affairs, recalls, during the 1990s the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which regulates accounting practices, attempted to put a stop to the practice of allowing corporate CEOs to compensate themselves with massive stock-option packages, correctly predicting that it would lead to an epidemic of deceptive accounting practices. “But Congress, spurred on by the lobbying efforts of major corporations, stopped the FASB in its tracks.” The result? For the past twenty years we’ve allowed CEOs to enrich themselves at the expense of employees and stockholders “through the mutual back-scratching habits of corporate boards.”
In the meantime, statistics demonstrate the speciousness of the conservative case for states facing budget crises to default on their public pension obligations. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a report recently demonstrating that, in fact, they have “adequate tools and means to meet their obligations.” To the degree that some states appear to be in real trouble, explains a June report by two Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco analysts, this the result of a “profound macroeconomic shock” rather than pension obligations. Yet another recent study—this one from Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research—found that while many state pension funds may be “substantially underfunded,” they account for just 3.8 percent of state and local spending and could be covered with an increase to just 5 percent.
Yet snowjobs like those promoted by Murdoch, Gingrich and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie are painting a bull’s-eye on the back of public unions. “People I don’t even know are calling me horrible names,” Marie Corfield, a New Jersey art teacher who found herself on the other end of Christie’s antiunion rant, told the New York Times. “The mantra is that the problem is the unions, the unions, the unions.”
It was a terrible tabloid tale. While New York City was buried under a blizzard, widows and orphans freezing and starving in their apartments, union fat cats swigged brewskis and chuckled to themselves as sanitation workers conspired to stage a slowdown to gain leverage in their contract negotiations. “The selfish Sanitation bosses who sabotaged the blizzard cleanup to fire a salvo at City Hall targeted politically connected and well-heeled neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn to get their twisted message across loud and clear,” screamed Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. From there, the story ricocheted across the media, to Investor’s Business Daily to Fox News (naturally), and even to Saturday Night Live. The Washington Times ran an op-ed that began, “Cross us and people will die.”
Alas, it never happened. The source of all this hysteria was a sketchy story told by Daniel Halloran, a rookie councilman and Tea Party Republican—who is also an adherent of the neo-pagan religion Theodicism. A New York Times investigation weeks later found no evidence to support the allegation, and it turns out that Halloran isn’t so sure about what he thought he heard after all. But the damage is done. (Murdoch properties are not exactly famous for correcting their errors; though, to be fair, if they did, there would hardly be time or space for anything else.)
Can it be mere coincidence that the right-wing media promoted this phony-baloney story at a moment when, as Charles Loveless, legislative director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, points out, conservatives are “readying a massive assault” on the pensions and benefits of these same employees?
Led by Newt Gingrich, conservatives are floating the notion that states should be allowed to declare bankruptcy to escape their pension obligations to firefighters, cops, teachers and, yes, sanitation workers. Gingrich called on House Republicans “to move a bill in the first month or so of their tenure to create a venue for state bankruptcy.” This was followed by a plea in The Weekly Standard by University of Pennsylvania law professor David Skeel titled “Give States a Way to Go Bankrupt.” Skeel later told a reporter that he had “never had anything I’ve written get as much attention as that piece.” He said he had been contacted by lawmakers from all over.
Depending on the audience, this discussion serves multiple purposes. Most obviously it is intended to blame the unions for local fiscal woes and garner support from the public for the coming assault on their pensions. Second, it serves to intimidate the unions and encourage givebacks lest these same officials be forced to go before taxpayers with a plan to cut services, raise taxes or both—making public unions the culprit in any of those options. Third, it weakens the unions’ appeal to new workers, for if they can’t protect the pensions of their workers, what’s the point of joining in the first place? Given that public unions provide the lion’s share of poll workers, envelope stuffers and other volunteers for Democratic campaigns, this is hardly an ancillary benefit, from the right’s perspective. With private union membership now in single digits, public unions remain just about the only institutions with sufficient financial and organizational muscle to make a difference in close elections at the state and local levels or to organize progressive pushback against corporate malfeasance.
The assault on public employee unions is the next phase of a forty-year class war in America by the rich against the rest of us. It is of a piece with the steady dismantling of our progressive taxation system and the explosion of economic inequality. Total income going to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans has risen from about 8 percent in the 1960s to more than 20 percent today. As Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson demonstrate in their recent book, Winner-Take-All Politics, this is the result of deliberate policy choices made by politicians in the service of those who fund their campaigns. Congress has repeatedly cut tax rates on top earners, along with capital gains and estate taxes. And as Robert Lieberman, writing in Foreign Affairs, recalls, during the 1990s the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which regulates accounting practices, attempted to put a stop to the practice of allowing corporate CEOs to compensate themselves with massive stock-option packages, correctly predicting that it would lead to an epidemic of deceptive accounting practices. “But Congress, spurred on by the lobbying efforts of major corporations, stopped the FASB in its tracks.” The result? For the past twenty years we’ve allowed CEOs to enrich themselves at the expense of employees and stockholders “through the mutual back-scratching habits of corporate boards.”
In the meantime, statistics demonstrate the speciousness of the conservative case for states facing budget crises to default on their public pension obligations. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a report recently demonstrating that, in fact, they have “adequate tools and means to meet their obligations.” To the degree that some states appear to be in real trouble, explains a June report by two Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco analysts, this the result of a “profound macroeconomic shock” rather than pension obligations. Yet another recent study—this one from Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research—found that while many state pension funds may be “substantially underfunded,” they account for just 3.8 percent of state and local spending and could be covered with an increase to just 5 percent.
Yet snowjobs like those promoted by Murdoch, Gingrich and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie are painting a bull’s-eye on the back of public unions. “People I don’t even know are calling me horrible names,” Marie Corfield, a New Jersey art teacher who found herself on the other end of Christie’s antiunion rant, told the New York Times. “The mantra is that the problem is the unions, the unions, the unions.”
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Protest Threats Derail Bush Speech in Switzerland
By JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON — A planned trip by former President George W. Bush to Switzerland this week has been canceled in the face of threatened large-scale protests and calls for an investigation into whether his administration committed human rights abuses in the fight against terrorism.
A spokesman for Mr. Bush said Saturday that the trip was canceled after the United Israel Appeal, an international Jewish charity organizing the Geneva event where he had been scheduled to speak next Saturday, told him on Friday that it was canceling the speech because of security concerns.
“We regret that the speech has been canceled,” said David Sherzer, a spokesman for Mr. Bush. “President Bush was looking forward to speaking about freedom and offering reflections from his time in office.”
The visit to Geneva was to have been Mr. Bush’s first trip to Europe since his memoir, “Decision Points,” was published in November, and the first since he publicly stated in interviews on his book tour that he had personally authorized the use of waterboarding in the questioning of terrorism detainees.
As a result, international human rights groups, including Amnesty International, seized on the scheduled visit to petition the Swiss authorities to open an investigation of Mr. Bush while he was in the country. The groups argued that he had admitted to torture and thus could be prosecuted in Switzerland and other countries that have signed on to the international convention banning torture.
“For a long time at Amnesty International, we have been calling for the Obama administration to investigate human rights abuses at Guantánamo, the C.I.A. black sites, and in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it is clear that’s not happening,” said Widney Brown, Amnesty International’s senior director for international law and policy. “When we heard that he was traveling to Geneva, we wrote to the national authorities in Switzerland and the local prosecutor in Geneva to ask them to investigate Bush for torture.”
Amnesty International sent Swiss authorities documents detailing their case for prosecuting Mr. Bush for torture, based on his admissions and other evidence concerning the waterboarding of two members of Al Qaeda, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah.
Swiss officials told human rights groups recently that they had no plans to try to prosecute Mr. Bush, Ms. Brown said. But the prospect of large demonstrations at the site of Mr. Bush’s speech remained, and the event’s organizers feared that protests could turn violent. Protest organizers were said to have asked demonstrators to carry shoes to the event, recalling how an Iraqi journalist threw a shoe at Mr. Bush in 2008 to protest his visit to Baghdad.
While Mr. Bush does not face any legal sanctions in Switzerland, this is not the first time officials from his administration have faced the threat of legal action in Europe for involvement in possible human rights abuses in the war on terror. Prosecutors and judges in several European countries, notably Spain and Germany, have in the past proved willing to pursue long-shot international legal cases against foreign leaders based on war crimes evidence, and in recent years some of them have turned their attention toward Bush administration officials.
In 2009, for instance, a Spanish court began a criminal investigation of six former administration officials, on grounds that they had violated international law in connection with the military prison at Guantánamo Bay. The Obama administration was apparently so concerned about the investigation that it pressured the Spanish government to make sure the case was derailed, according to State Department cables made public by the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks.
As early as 2005, Donald H. Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense at the time, faced the threat of war crimes prosecution in Germany over human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Eventually, German prosecutors decided not to pursue the case, but only after Mr. Rumsfeld publicly said that he might not attend an international defense conference in Munich because of the legal threat he faced.
WASHINGTON — A planned trip by former President George W. Bush to Switzerland this week has been canceled in the face of threatened large-scale protests and calls for an investigation into whether his administration committed human rights abuses in the fight against terrorism.
A spokesman for Mr. Bush said Saturday that the trip was canceled after the United Israel Appeal, an international Jewish charity organizing the Geneva event where he had been scheduled to speak next Saturday, told him on Friday that it was canceling the speech because of security concerns.
“We regret that the speech has been canceled,” said David Sherzer, a spokesman for Mr. Bush. “President Bush was looking forward to speaking about freedom and offering reflections from his time in office.”
The visit to Geneva was to have been Mr. Bush’s first trip to Europe since his memoir, “Decision Points,” was published in November, and the first since he publicly stated in interviews on his book tour that he had personally authorized the use of waterboarding in the questioning of terrorism detainees.
As a result, international human rights groups, including Amnesty International, seized on the scheduled visit to petition the Swiss authorities to open an investigation of Mr. Bush while he was in the country. The groups argued that he had admitted to torture and thus could be prosecuted in Switzerland and other countries that have signed on to the international convention banning torture.
“For a long time at Amnesty International, we have been calling for the Obama administration to investigate human rights abuses at Guantánamo, the C.I.A. black sites, and in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it is clear that’s not happening,” said Widney Brown, Amnesty International’s senior director for international law and policy. “When we heard that he was traveling to Geneva, we wrote to the national authorities in Switzerland and the local prosecutor in Geneva to ask them to investigate Bush for torture.”
Amnesty International sent Swiss authorities documents detailing their case for prosecuting Mr. Bush for torture, based on his admissions and other evidence concerning the waterboarding of two members of Al Qaeda, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah.
Swiss officials told human rights groups recently that they had no plans to try to prosecute Mr. Bush, Ms. Brown said. But the prospect of large demonstrations at the site of Mr. Bush’s speech remained, and the event’s organizers feared that protests could turn violent. Protest organizers were said to have asked demonstrators to carry shoes to the event, recalling how an Iraqi journalist threw a shoe at Mr. Bush in 2008 to protest his visit to Baghdad.
While Mr. Bush does not face any legal sanctions in Switzerland, this is not the first time officials from his administration have faced the threat of legal action in Europe for involvement in possible human rights abuses in the war on terror. Prosecutors and judges in several European countries, notably Spain and Germany, have in the past proved willing to pursue long-shot international legal cases against foreign leaders based on war crimes evidence, and in recent years some of them have turned their attention toward Bush administration officials.
In 2009, for instance, a Spanish court began a criminal investigation of six former administration officials, on grounds that they had violated international law in connection with the military prison at Guantánamo Bay. The Obama administration was apparently so concerned about the investigation that it pressured the Spanish government to make sure the case was derailed, according to State Department cables made public by the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks.
As early as 2005, Donald H. Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense at the time, faced the threat of war crimes prosecution in Germany over human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Eventually, German prosecutors decided not to pursue the case, but only after Mr. Rumsfeld publicly said that he might not attend an international defense conference in Munich because of the legal threat he faced.
The fear of “Nile fever” in China
By John Chan
5 February 2011
The scenes of mass protests of Egyptian workers and youth in Cairo demanding democratic rights and decent living standards have obviously been a chilling reminder to the Chinese regime of the events two decades ago in Tiananmen Square. Fearful that the revolutionary disease might spread from Egypt, Beijing has ordered its Internet police to filter out the word “Egypt” from microblogging sites to prevent active discussion among China’s millions of Internet users.
The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post declared that the similarity of the current Egyptian unrest and the 1989 events in China was “too obvious to be ignored”. Explaining the sentiment in Chinese ruling circles, political scientist Liu Junning told the newspaper: “It is unbelievable to imagine that autocracies controlled by political strongmen can easily become unstable and be overthrown almost overnight.”
At first sight, China and Egypt appear to be poles apart—geographically, culturally and economically. But as Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman noted, “there are some elements in the Egyptian uprising that might ring a few bells in Beijing: popular fury at corruption, the destabilising effect of rising food prices, youth unemployment, the ability of the Internet to mobilise popular protest, the gap between a ruling elite and the people they are trying to govern.”
Rachman sought to reassure his readers that “it is highly unlikely that the political contagion that has spread from Tunisia to Egypt will leap across continents to Asia.” But what Rachman identifies is precisely the deep social divide, class antagonisms and popular alienation from the political establishment that is characteristic of the situation in country after country around the world—including in China. The prospect of an Egyptian-style uprising in China, with its highly concentrated working class of 400 million, strikes terror in the hearts not only of the Chinese ruling elites but of the world’s financial aristocracy, which depends so heavily on the Chinese cheap labour.
The Wall Street Journal was well aware that China was not “immune” to the contagion of “Nile fever”. It explained what it meant by citing a recent animation video made in China showing the masses, depicted as rabbits, rising up in anger over corruption and killing Communist Party bureaucrats. If inflation continued to worsen, the mouthpiece of Wall Street wrote, “history suggests China’s stability could prove to be a mirage.”
In many ways, the class tensions in China are just as acute as in Egypt. China boasts the world’s second largest group of billionaires—up by 69 to 189 in 2010—after the US, while its per capita GDP is only two-thirds that of Egypt. The gulf between rich and poor has been exacerbated by sharply rising prices for food and other basic necessities. Young people, including university graduates, are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain a job. Like the Egyptian youth, young Chinese workers form the bulk of the country’s 384 million Internet users, providing them with a global outlook and far greater social aspirations than previous generations.
The working class has always been an international class facing the same forms of class oppression. However, the global integration of the processes of production over the past three decades has drawn together workers around the world to an unprecedented extent. In many cases, Chinese and Egyptian workers are exploited by the same global corporations, as well as the similar oppressive regimes that serve the corporate elite. That is why the revolutionary upheavals in Egypt strike a chord among Chinese workers and youth—and terror into the ruling establishment.
The Wall Street Journal’s reference to “Nile fever” is reminiscent of the panicked fear of “Bolshevik infection” that struck the bourgeoisie around the world following the seizure of power by the Russian working class in October 1917 under the Bolshevik leadership of Lenin and Trotsky. Just as workers now are beginning to draw inspiration from Egypt, the Russian revolution met an enthusiastic response among workers around the world, including in China.
The tragic defeat of the 1925-27 Chinese revolution holds great lessons for workers in Egypt and internationally. The Bolsheviks had led the Russian working class to power on the basis of Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution, which insists on the political independence of the proletariat from all sections of the perfidious national bourgeoisie. In China, Stalin subordinated the working class to the bourgeois Kuomintang, claiming it was leading the Chinese revolution. The result was the Kuomintang massacre of workers and peasants.
The events in China in June 1989 contain similar lessons. At the height of the upsurge, as workers joined protesting students in Tiananmen Square and other cities, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping appeared powerless. He feared the army would split, he would be placed under house arrest and the regime would collapse. But the protest movement lacked a revolutionary leadership. Rather than take the political initiative, the leaders of the Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation tailed behind the petty bourgeois “democrats” of the student movement who promoted the fatal illusion that reformers in the Communist Party leadership would make “democratic” concessions. Deng used the breathing space to mobilise troops and tanks from the remote provinces to bloodily crush the protests.
Egyptian youth and workers should draw the necessary conclusions from these terrible defeats of the Chinese working class. The fight for basic democratic rights is intimately bound up with the struggle against capitalism. No faith should be put in the bourgeois opposition parties, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and leaders like Mohamed ElBaradei who, no less than the Mubarak dictatorship, defend the present social order. The working class must rely on its own independent strength and start to build its own organisations, above all a political party that will fight for a workers’ government and socialist policies.
Chinese workers and youth, who took the first steps in the strike wave of last April and May, can draw inspiration from the determination and courage of their counterparts in Egypt. The struggles in China and Egypt for democracy cannot be separated from the fight for international socialism. It is an urgent necessity for workers in Egypt, China and around the world to build sections of International Committee of Fourth International, which alone embodies all the strategic experiences of the working class of the past century. It is the only revolutionary tendency on the planet capable of leading the international working class to take power and establish a social order based on genuine social equality and democracy.
5 February 2011
The scenes of mass protests of Egyptian workers and youth in Cairo demanding democratic rights and decent living standards have obviously been a chilling reminder to the Chinese regime of the events two decades ago in Tiananmen Square. Fearful that the revolutionary disease might spread from Egypt, Beijing has ordered its Internet police to filter out the word “Egypt” from microblogging sites to prevent active discussion among China’s millions of Internet users.
The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post declared that the similarity of the current Egyptian unrest and the 1989 events in China was “too obvious to be ignored”. Explaining the sentiment in Chinese ruling circles, political scientist Liu Junning told the newspaper: “It is unbelievable to imagine that autocracies controlled by political strongmen can easily become unstable and be overthrown almost overnight.”
At first sight, China and Egypt appear to be poles apart—geographically, culturally and economically. But as Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman noted, “there are some elements in the Egyptian uprising that might ring a few bells in Beijing: popular fury at corruption, the destabilising effect of rising food prices, youth unemployment, the ability of the Internet to mobilise popular protest, the gap between a ruling elite and the people they are trying to govern.”
Rachman sought to reassure his readers that “it is highly unlikely that the political contagion that has spread from Tunisia to Egypt will leap across continents to Asia.” But what Rachman identifies is precisely the deep social divide, class antagonisms and popular alienation from the political establishment that is characteristic of the situation in country after country around the world—including in China. The prospect of an Egyptian-style uprising in China, with its highly concentrated working class of 400 million, strikes terror in the hearts not only of the Chinese ruling elites but of the world’s financial aristocracy, which depends so heavily on the Chinese cheap labour.
The Wall Street Journal was well aware that China was not “immune” to the contagion of “Nile fever”. It explained what it meant by citing a recent animation video made in China showing the masses, depicted as rabbits, rising up in anger over corruption and killing Communist Party bureaucrats. If inflation continued to worsen, the mouthpiece of Wall Street wrote, “history suggests China’s stability could prove to be a mirage.”
In many ways, the class tensions in China are just as acute as in Egypt. China boasts the world’s second largest group of billionaires—up by 69 to 189 in 2010—after the US, while its per capita GDP is only two-thirds that of Egypt. The gulf between rich and poor has been exacerbated by sharply rising prices for food and other basic necessities. Young people, including university graduates, are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain a job. Like the Egyptian youth, young Chinese workers form the bulk of the country’s 384 million Internet users, providing them with a global outlook and far greater social aspirations than previous generations.
The working class has always been an international class facing the same forms of class oppression. However, the global integration of the processes of production over the past three decades has drawn together workers around the world to an unprecedented extent. In many cases, Chinese and Egyptian workers are exploited by the same global corporations, as well as the similar oppressive regimes that serve the corporate elite. That is why the revolutionary upheavals in Egypt strike a chord among Chinese workers and youth—and terror into the ruling establishment.
The Wall Street Journal’s reference to “Nile fever” is reminiscent of the panicked fear of “Bolshevik infection” that struck the bourgeoisie around the world following the seizure of power by the Russian working class in October 1917 under the Bolshevik leadership of Lenin and Trotsky. Just as workers now are beginning to draw inspiration from Egypt, the Russian revolution met an enthusiastic response among workers around the world, including in China.
The tragic defeat of the 1925-27 Chinese revolution holds great lessons for workers in Egypt and internationally. The Bolsheviks had led the Russian working class to power on the basis of Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution, which insists on the political independence of the proletariat from all sections of the perfidious national bourgeoisie. In China, Stalin subordinated the working class to the bourgeois Kuomintang, claiming it was leading the Chinese revolution. The result was the Kuomintang massacre of workers and peasants.
The events in China in June 1989 contain similar lessons. At the height of the upsurge, as workers joined protesting students in Tiananmen Square and other cities, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping appeared powerless. He feared the army would split, he would be placed under house arrest and the regime would collapse. But the protest movement lacked a revolutionary leadership. Rather than take the political initiative, the leaders of the Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation tailed behind the petty bourgeois “democrats” of the student movement who promoted the fatal illusion that reformers in the Communist Party leadership would make “democratic” concessions. Deng used the breathing space to mobilise troops and tanks from the remote provinces to bloodily crush the protests.
Egyptian youth and workers should draw the necessary conclusions from these terrible defeats of the Chinese working class. The fight for basic democratic rights is intimately bound up with the struggle against capitalism. No faith should be put in the bourgeois opposition parties, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and leaders like Mohamed ElBaradei who, no less than the Mubarak dictatorship, defend the present social order. The working class must rely on its own independent strength and start to build its own organisations, above all a political party that will fight for a workers’ government and socialist policies.
Chinese workers and youth, who took the first steps in the strike wave of last April and May, can draw inspiration from the determination and courage of their counterparts in Egypt. The struggles in China and Egypt for democracy cannot be separated from the fight for international socialism. It is an urgent necessity for workers in Egypt, China and around the world to build sections of International Committee of Fourth International, which alone embodies all the strategic experiences of the working class of the past century. It is the only revolutionary tendency on the planet capable of leading the international working class to take power and establish a social order based on genuine social equality and democracy.
Friday, February 4, 2011
"The Arab World Is on Fire"
by: Noam Chomsky, Op-Ed
Egyptian protesters march the streets of Cairo during demonstrations against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on January 28, 2011. (Photo: Ed Ou / The New York Times)
“The Arab world is on fire,” al-Jazeera reported on Jan. 27, while throughout the region, Western allies “are quickly losing their influence.”
The shock wave was set in motion by the dramatic uprising in Tunisia that drove out a Western-backed dictator, with reverberations especially in Egypt, where demonstrators overwhelmed a dictator’s brutal police.
Observers compared the events to the toppling of Russian domains in 1989, but there are important differences.
Crucially, no Mikhail Gorbachev exists among the great powers that support the Arab dictators. Rather, Washington and its allies keep to the well-established principle that democracy is acceptable only insofar as it conforms to strategic and economic objectives: fine in enemy territory (up to a point), but not in our backyard, please, unless it is properly tamed.
One 1989 comparison has some validity: Romania, where Washington maintained its support for Nicolae Ceausescu, the most vicious of the East European dictators, until the allegiance became untenable. Then Washington hailed his overthrow while the past was erased.
That is a standard pattern: Ferdinand Marcos, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Chun Doo Hwan, Suharto and many other useful gangsters. It may be under way in the case of Hosni Mubarak, along with routine efforts to try to ensure that a successor regime will not veer far from the approved path.
The current hope appears to be Mubarak loyalist Gen. Omar Suleiman, just named Egypt’s vice president. Suleiman, the longtime head of the intelligence services, is despised by the rebelling public almost as much as the dictator himself.
A common refrain among pundits is that fear of radical Islam requires (reluctant) opposition to democracy on pragmatic grounds. While not without some merit, the formulation is misleading. The general threat has always been independence. In the Arab world, the U.S. and its allies have regularly supported radical Islamists, sometimes to prevent the threat of secular nationalism.
A familiar example is Saudi Arabia, the ideological center of radical Islam (and of Islamic terror). Another in a long list is Zia ul-Haq, the most brutal of Pakistan’s dictators and President Reagan’s favorite, who carried out a program of radical Islamization (with Saudi funding).
“The traditional argument put forward in and out of the Arab world is that there is nothing wrong, everything is under control,” says Marwan Muasher, former Jordanian official and now director of Middle East research for the Carnegie Endowment. “With this line of thinking, entrenched forces argue that opponents and outsiders calling for reform are exaggerating the conditions on the ground.”
Therefore the public can be dismissed. The doctrine traces far back and generalizes worldwide, to U.S. home territory as well. In the event of unrest, tactical shifts may be necessary, but always with an eye to reasserting control.
The vibrant democracy movement in Tunisia was directed against “a police state, with little freedom of expression or association, and serious human rights problems,” ruled by a dictator whose family was hated for their venality. This was the assessment by U.S. Ambassador Robert Godec in a July 2009 cable released by WikiLeaks.
Therefore to some observers the WikiLeaks “documents should create a comforting feeling among the American public that officials aren’t asleep at the switch” – indeed, that the cables are so supportive of U.S. policies that it is almost as if Obama is leaking them himself (or so Jacob Heilbrunn writes in The National Interest.)
“America should give Assange a medal,” says a headline in the Financial Times. Chief foreign-policy analyst Gideon Rachman writes that “America’s foreign policy comes across as principled, intelligent and pragmatic … the public position taken by the U.S. on any given issue is usually the private position as well.”
In this view, WikiLeaks undermines the “conspiracy theorists” who question the noble motives that Washington regularly proclaims.
Independent journalism is important. Click here to get Truthout stories sent to your email.
Godec’s cable supports these judgments – at least if we look no further. If we do, as foreign policy analyst Stephen Zunes reports in Foreign Policy in Focus, we find that, with Godec’s information in hand, Washington provided $12 million in military aid to Tunisia. As it happens, Tunisia was one of only five foreign beneficiaries: Israel (routinely); the two Middle East dictatorships Egypt and Jordan; and Colombia, which has long had the worst human-rights record and the most U.S. military aid in the hemisphere.
Heilbrunn’s Exhibit A is Arab support for U.S. policies targeting Iran, revealed by leaked cables. Rachman too seizes on this example, as did the media generally, hailing these encouraging revelations. The reactions illustrate how profound is the contempt for democracy in the educated culture.
Unmentioned is what the population thinks – easily discovered. According to polls released by the Brookings Institution in August, some Arabs agree with Washington and Western commentators that Iran is a threat: 10 percent. In contrast, they regard the U.S. and Israel as the major threats (77 percent; 88 percent).
Arab opinion is so hostile to Washington’s policies that a majority (57 percent) think regional security would be enhanced if Iran had nuclear weapons. Still, “there is nothing wrong, everything is under control” (as Marwan Muasher describes the prevailing fantasy). The dictators support us. Their subjects can be ignored – unless they break their chains, and then policy must be adjusted.
Other leaks also appear to lend support to the enthusiastic judgments about Washington’s nobility. In July 2009, Hugo Llorens, U.S. ambassador to Honduras, informed Washington of an embassy investigation of “legal and constitutional issues surrounding the June 28 forced removal of President Manuel ‘Mel’ Zelaya.”
The embassy concluded that “there is no doubt that the military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28 in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the Executive Branch.” Very admirable, except that President Obama proceeded to break with almost all of Latin America and Europe by supporting the coup regime and dismissing subsequent atrocities.
Perhaps the most remarkable WikiLeaks revelations have to do with Pakistan, reviewed by foreign policy analyst Fred Branfman in Truthdig.
The cables reveal that the U.S. embassy is well aware that Washington’s war in Afghanistan and Pakistan not only intensifies rampant anti-Americanism but also “risks destabilizing the Pakistani state” and even raises a threat of the ultimate nightmare: that nuclear weapons might fall into the hands of Islamic terrorists.
Again, the revelations “should create a comforting feeling … that officials are not asleep at the switch” (Heilbrunn’s words) – while Washington marches stalwartly toward disaster.
(Noam Chomsky’s most recent book, with co-author Ilan Pappe, is “Gaza in Crisis.” Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.)
Truthout has licensed this article; it may not be reproduced or reprinted by any other source.
Copyright 2010 Noam Chomsky. Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.
Egyptian protesters march the streets of Cairo during demonstrations against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on January 28, 2011. (Photo: Ed Ou / The New York Times)
“The Arab world is on fire,” al-Jazeera reported on Jan. 27, while throughout the region, Western allies “are quickly losing their influence.”
The shock wave was set in motion by the dramatic uprising in Tunisia that drove out a Western-backed dictator, with reverberations especially in Egypt, where demonstrators overwhelmed a dictator’s brutal police.
Observers compared the events to the toppling of Russian domains in 1989, but there are important differences.
Crucially, no Mikhail Gorbachev exists among the great powers that support the Arab dictators. Rather, Washington and its allies keep to the well-established principle that democracy is acceptable only insofar as it conforms to strategic and economic objectives: fine in enemy territory (up to a point), but not in our backyard, please, unless it is properly tamed.
One 1989 comparison has some validity: Romania, where Washington maintained its support for Nicolae Ceausescu, the most vicious of the East European dictators, until the allegiance became untenable. Then Washington hailed his overthrow while the past was erased.
That is a standard pattern: Ferdinand Marcos, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Chun Doo Hwan, Suharto and many other useful gangsters. It may be under way in the case of Hosni Mubarak, along with routine efforts to try to ensure that a successor regime will not veer far from the approved path.
The current hope appears to be Mubarak loyalist Gen. Omar Suleiman, just named Egypt’s vice president. Suleiman, the longtime head of the intelligence services, is despised by the rebelling public almost as much as the dictator himself.
A common refrain among pundits is that fear of radical Islam requires (reluctant) opposition to democracy on pragmatic grounds. While not without some merit, the formulation is misleading. The general threat has always been independence. In the Arab world, the U.S. and its allies have regularly supported radical Islamists, sometimes to prevent the threat of secular nationalism.
A familiar example is Saudi Arabia, the ideological center of radical Islam (and of Islamic terror). Another in a long list is Zia ul-Haq, the most brutal of Pakistan’s dictators and President Reagan’s favorite, who carried out a program of radical Islamization (with Saudi funding).
“The traditional argument put forward in and out of the Arab world is that there is nothing wrong, everything is under control,” says Marwan Muasher, former Jordanian official and now director of Middle East research for the Carnegie Endowment. “With this line of thinking, entrenched forces argue that opponents and outsiders calling for reform are exaggerating the conditions on the ground.”
Therefore the public can be dismissed. The doctrine traces far back and generalizes worldwide, to U.S. home territory as well. In the event of unrest, tactical shifts may be necessary, but always with an eye to reasserting control.
The vibrant democracy movement in Tunisia was directed against “a police state, with little freedom of expression or association, and serious human rights problems,” ruled by a dictator whose family was hated for their venality. This was the assessment by U.S. Ambassador Robert Godec in a July 2009 cable released by WikiLeaks.
Therefore to some observers the WikiLeaks “documents should create a comforting feeling among the American public that officials aren’t asleep at the switch” – indeed, that the cables are so supportive of U.S. policies that it is almost as if Obama is leaking them himself (or so Jacob Heilbrunn writes in The National Interest.)
“America should give Assange a medal,” says a headline in the Financial Times. Chief foreign-policy analyst Gideon Rachman writes that “America’s foreign policy comes across as principled, intelligent and pragmatic … the public position taken by the U.S. on any given issue is usually the private position as well.”
In this view, WikiLeaks undermines the “conspiracy theorists” who question the noble motives that Washington regularly proclaims.
Independent journalism is important. Click here to get Truthout stories sent to your email.
Godec’s cable supports these judgments – at least if we look no further. If we do, as foreign policy analyst Stephen Zunes reports in Foreign Policy in Focus, we find that, with Godec’s information in hand, Washington provided $12 million in military aid to Tunisia. As it happens, Tunisia was one of only five foreign beneficiaries: Israel (routinely); the two Middle East dictatorships Egypt and Jordan; and Colombia, which has long had the worst human-rights record and the most U.S. military aid in the hemisphere.
Heilbrunn’s Exhibit A is Arab support for U.S. policies targeting Iran, revealed by leaked cables. Rachman too seizes on this example, as did the media generally, hailing these encouraging revelations. The reactions illustrate how profound is the contempt for democracy in the educated culture.
Unmentioned is what the population thinks – easily discovered. According to polls released by the Brookings Institution in August, some Arabs agree with Washington and Western commentators that Iran is a threat: 10 percent. In contrast, they regard the U.S. and Israel as the major threats (77 percent; 88 percent).
Arab opinion is so hostile to Washington’s policies that a majority (57 percent) think regional security would be enhanced if Iran had nuclear weapons. Still, “there is nothing wrong, everything is under control” (as Marwan Muasher describes the prevailing fantasy). The dictators support us. Their subjects can be ignored – unless they break their chains, and then policy must be adjusted.
Other leaks also appear to lend support to the enthusiastic judgments about Washington’s nobility. In July 2009, Hugo Llorens, U.S. ambassador to Honduras, informed Washington of an embassy investigation of “legal and constitutional issues surrounding the June 28 forced removal of President Manuel ‘Mel’ Zelaya.”
The embassy concluded that “there is no doubt that the military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28 in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the Executive Branch.” Very admirable, except that President Obama proceeded to break with almost all of Latin America and Europe by supporting the coup regime and dismissing subsequent atrocities.
Perhaps the most remarkable WikiLeaks revelations have to do with Pakistan, reviewed by foreign policy analyst Fred Branfman in Truthdig.
The cables reveal that the U.S. embassy is well aware that Washington’s war in Afghanistan and Pakistan not only intensifies rampant anti-Americanism but also “risks destabilizing the Pakistani state” and even raises a threat of the ultimate nightmare: that nuclear weapons might fall into the hands of Islamic terrorists.
Again, the revelations “should create a comforting feeling … that officials are not asleep at the switch” (Heilbrunn’s words) – while Washington marches stalwartly toward disaster.
(Noam Chomsky’s most recent book, with co-author Ilan Pappe, is “Gaza in Crisis.” Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.)
Truthout has licensed this article; it may not be reproduced or reprinted by any other source.
Copyright 2010 Noam Chomsky. Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.
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