Obliged to weep… drown drums of war—Ann Jones

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett

“‘We are obliged to weep.

Sometimes we are obliged to hit our heads 

against the wall

Sometimes we just fall down.’”

Ann Jones is quoting a Congolese nurse reacting to stories from women raped during a decade of war.

She calls herself an outraged civil rights-women’s rights-peace activist. Ann Jones appeared today on Pacifica’s Democracy Now program. Her latest book documents “A Global Crescendo.” Released this month, the book title is War Is Not Over When It’s Over:  Women and the Unseen Consequences of Conflict. This is some of what she had to say on the program and on her website.

The architects of disastrous U.S. ventures seek unequivocal and terminal ‘victory.’ In their quest, they rely on bombing tonnage to erase enemies, military and civilian, and enable marines to raise a final flag.

U.S. leaders measure success in minimal American military casualties and fail to count civilian casualties among the ‘enemy’ or among American civilian contractors now doing so much of the work and reaping many profits of waging the country’s wars. They do not count the lost life of communities or social institutions. They do not record the moment in which a culture implodes. They do not acknowledge that when ‘peace’ comes, the war against women continues.

These limited terms of assessment, official American reports of the consequences of war, serve only to misinform and mislead. They obscure the true nature and conduct of contemporary warfare, what it does to people and societies.

Afghanistan

The civilian population in Afghanistan is suffering perhaps even more now than they did in the [George W.] Bush years. More and more Afghans outside the capital are saying conditions are worse for them now. In Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital — now a fortified city — is an island of relative security and many within the city argue for the presence of American troops to protect them; but outside the city, you get a very different story.

Violence against women continues, often worsening — even when conflict officially ends.

“Murderous aggression is not turned off overnight; when men stop attacking one another, women continue to be convenient targets. Opposing factions of men sit down to negotiate a peace settlement without ever letting up on rape, abduction, mutilation, and murder of women and girls. Whenever soldiers rape during war, rape becomes a habit taken up by civilian men and carried seamlessly from wartime into the troubled ‘post-conflict’ time, beyond the label ‘peace.’

“Wherever normal structures of law enforcement and justice have been disabled by war, soldiers and civilian men alike prey upon women and children with impunity.”

Global Crescendo

Jones led “A Global Crescendo” project in five countries: Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Thailand (where she worked with minority refugees from Burma).

“Working with the International Rescue Committee, [she and her colleagues] gave digital cameras to women and asked them to photograph the blessings and the problems in their lives.” Global Crescendo was “a project to encourage women to begin to articulate their own situation, to speak up in their own villages and communities on behalf of their own interests.”

The women who took part in ‘A Global Crescendo,’ having no stake in America’s or their own country’s wars, “help to set the record straight,” Jones says. “They care about their families, their children’s education, their spouse’s intermittent kindness, their income, their relationship to their gods, perhaps the acquisition of a new pair of sandals.” They addressed problems of getting safe water, getting safe access to their fields to work, getting education for their children, getting healthcare, getting places for community members to meet.

Jones says she listened with a head full of memories of what she had already learned about war in Afghanistan. She “saw that the practice and consequences of modern warfare are nothing like those planned and reported by American leaders.”

The women gave “a blueprint for peace.” Global Crescendo lends support to what the United Nations has been saying for the past decade — that durable peace anywhere in the world in the aftermath of conflict is impossible without women’s involvement “every step of the way.”

The hope, Jones says, is that “A Global Crescendo” will “drown out the drums of war.”



Sources and notes


Pakistan’s neighbor, Afghanistan’s capital
Kabul (Persian Kābol), the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Set along the Kābul River, in a triangular valley between the two steep Asmai and Sherdawaza mountain ranges, the capital city is the nation’s cultural and economic center. Roads connect Kabul with most other areas of Afghanistan, with Uzbekistan to the north, and Pakistan to the east [Britannica note].


Ann Jones
Writer, photographer, teacher, world traveler, chronicler, native of Wisconsin (U.S.), Ann Jones says she has “always been an outraged activist for civil rights, women’s rights, and peace.” She has spent most of her life traveling domestically and internationally, “working as a writer, reporter, photographer, and humanitarian, speaking up for people—especially women—who have trouble making their voices heard.” After 9/11, Jones went to Afghanistan to work as a humanitarian volunteer off and on for four years. She documented cases of women detained in prison, lobbied for women’s rights, taught Afghan high school English teachers; then wrote about the experiences in Kabul in Winter (2006).


Her latest book released this month is War Is Not Over When It’s Over: Women and the Unseen Consequences of Conflict. The book records what women in conflict and post-conflict zones — from the Congo to Burma to Iraq — have to say about war and peace in the home and in the country [http://www.annjonesonline.com/Bio.html].


Ann Jones: War Is Not Over When It’s Over: Women and the Unseen Consequences of Conflict
http://www.global-sisterhood-network.org/content/view/2484/59/

Today on Democracy Now: “Ann Jones on ‘War Is Not Over When It’s Over: Women and the Unseen Consequences of Conflict,’” September 30, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/30/ann_jones_on_war_is_not


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Bennett's books available at New York independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]

JOBS, JUSTICE, PEACE — DC 10/2

Conditions answered in protest

Saturday October 2, 2010, hundreds of thousands of working people will rally in Washington.
Labor, civil rights and anti-war groups are the organizers.

ANSWER Coalition joins the ‘Stand Up-Fight Back’ contingent calling for –

Full rights for Immigrants!

All U.S. Troops OUT of

Afghanistan, Iraq NOW!

Money for Jobs, Education –

Not War, Occupation!

 Morning Feeder Marches Saturday October 2:

10 o’clock west side of the Capitol — Immigrant rights

10:30, 14th Street and Constitution Avenue NW— Anti-war

11 o’clock, Freedom Plaza, 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Youth and students

Noon Main rally at Lincoln Memorial

A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition

http://www.answercoalition.org/

info@internationalanswer.org

National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948

Boston: 857-334-5084

New York City: 212-694-8720

Los Angeles: 213-251-1025

San Francisco: 415-821-6545

Chicago: 773-463-0311

http://www.answercoalition.org/national/news/oct-2-demo.html

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Bennett's books available at New York independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]

No restraints—USA/FBI Homeland raids

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett
President Barack Obama continues war-on-civil-liberties precedent

Former FBI special agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley (Minnesota) appeared today on Pacifica’s Democracy Now program. This is some of what she had to say.

The Obama administration two years after the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation of a privacy and civil liberties oversight board has appointed no one to the board's five seats. This is an incredible failure, Rowley said, “in light of what’s gone on — even including the revelations of torture and warrantless monitoring.”

This past Friday in Chicago and Minneapolis U.S. FBI agents raided eight homes and offices of antiwar activists.

The wake of September 11, 2001, brought a sea change, Coleen Rowley said. While this is not the first time you’ve seen "this Orwellian turn of the war on terror onto domestic peace groups and social justice groups… this is shocking and alarming [to have] humanitarian advocacy now being treated as somehow material support to terrorists."

In 2008, "we found out through a Freedom of Information request that there’s 300 pages of—I think it was four or five, six agents trailing a group of students in Iowa City to parks, libraries, bars, restaurants. They even went through their trash.

"This is another reason why peace groups, and certainly law professors, have to be very concerned now about this misinterpretation that says advocacy for human-rights … We have a famous Minnesotan, Greg Mortenson, who wrote Three Cups of Tea; he obviously sets up schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. People like him and Jimmy Carter are even at peril, given this wide discretion now to say that anyone who works in a foreign country — even for peace or humanitarian, anti-torture purposes — could somehow run afoul of the USA PATRIOT Act."

Right after 9/11, the Attorney General said FBI agents could go into mosques and places like that to monitor. That was the beginning. "No longer was there a need to show even factual justification. The presumption is entirely reversed. The FBI needed only to say they were not targeting a group based solely on their exercise of First Amendment rights." The presumption was turned on its head.

"It is incredibly important to get the word to the officials who are in charge of using their discretion that they should use their discretion to look for real terrorists instead of to go after peace groups."



Sources and notes


“FBI Raids Homes of Antiwar and Pro-Palestinian Activists in Chicago and Minneapolis,” September 27, 2010, Democracy now lead in:


“Antiwar activists are gearing up for protests outside FBI offices in cities across the country today and Tuesday after the FBI raided eight homes and offices of antiwar activists in Chicago and Minneapolis Friday. The FBI’s search warrants indicate agents were looking for connections between local antiwar activists and groups in Colombia and the Middle East.”


Guests on this segment of the Democracy Now program were Coleen Rowley and activists targeted by the FBI raids. Jess Sundin is a longtime antiwar activist in Minneapolis and a member of the Anti-War Committee. Her home and offices were raided early Friday morning. Joe Iosbaker is an employee of the University of Illinois in Chicago and a steward for SEIU Local 73 (he had helped coordinate buses from Chicago to protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention). His Chicago home was raided on Friday.


Coleen Rowley is a former FBI special agent and whistleblower based in Minnesota, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/27/fbi_raids_homes_of_anti_war


The Church Committee of the 1970s exposed CIA spying at home. Restrictive guidelines and regulations followed those hearings.

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Bennett's books available at New York independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]

Remembering Pakistan flood sufferers in War Theater

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett

The Islāmic Republic of Pakistan in South Asia is bounded to the west by Iran, to the north by Afghanistan, to the northeast by China, to the east and southeast by India, and to the south by the Arabian Sea.

September 21, 2010
UN reports more people displaced by floods

Seven weeks from one of the worst natural disasters in recent history, floods continue to force thousands more people from their homes in southern Pakistan. Survivors are still stranded in submerged villages.

An official of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Hyderabad in the southern province of Sindh said this week, “The flood waters are rising and every day we are seeing 20,000 to 30,000 people newly displaced.… The waters around Lake Manchar are overflowing in five directions to where flood victims who fled other locations are now living.”

Camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and makeshift settlements are overcrowded. Services are inadequate. Of the estimated 20 million people affected by floods, more than 7.3 million are in Sindh. In Sindh almost 1.1 million homes are estimated to have been destroyed. Close to 1.5 million people are sheltered in camps.


September 24, 2010
UN outlines combined strategy…

The emergency caused by the floods in Pakistan is far from over. The situation is worsening for the most vulnerable people.

Unsafe water, inadequate sanitation, food shortages and a lack of access to health services pose serious risks. The likelihood of disease outbreaks and deaths due to malnutrition are of grave concern. Many of those affected by the floods come from the areas where the disease burden, malnutrition rates and health risks were already very high. A combination of illness, food insecurity [hunger. starvation] and destruction of crops is now compounding the situation, making people more vulnerable —  especially children.


September 9, 2010
Pakistan floods affect 500,000 pregnant women — CBC News

About 500,000 women affected by the floods in Pakistan are pregnant and require medical help, according to United Nations Population Fund estimates.

UN figures estimate 320 women die for every 100,000 live births — even in normal times maternal mortality is high in Pakistan. For flood victims, malnourishment, diarrhea, dysentery and malaria are rising health dangers.

United Nations mobile teams have attended 1,500 births, treated 300 women who suffered miscarriages and referred nearly 200 mothers to hospitals for delivery by caesarean section.

CBC correspondent Tom Parry reported, “Sabia Pahore delivered her seventh child in the back of a UN van. She and her family were forced from their home by flooding in the Jacobabad district in southern Pakistan. Her baby’s new home will be a thatched roof hut on a dry dusty field where she will spend her first days with dozens of other children all from the same extended family.

Midwife Farzana Sarki has delivered 20 babies in the past two weeks. She told CBC News, “We are trying our best [but] It is very difficult. … Conditions are not hygienic and sometimes it is very hard for the mothers.”

More than 1,700 people died and almost 21 million people were affected by the floods in Pakistan. These floods began about six weeks ago in Pakistan’s northwest and did not begin to recede until late last month.


CBC Dispatches program September 23, 2010
“View from a disaster” lead

“It didn't get much attention worldwide but a man died this week after setting himself on fire outside the house of Pakistan’s prime minister. Turns out, [the man] had lost his house in the floods that have affected more than 20 million others since July.”

Water recedes. Stories of damage and despair emerge.


Sources and notes

South Asia

The Islāmic Republic of Pakistan (Urdu Islām-ī Jamhūrīya-e Pākistān) sits in South Asia bounded to the west by Iran, to the north by Afghanistan, to the northeast by China, to the east and southeast by India, and to the south by the Arabian Sea. Pakistan's capital is Islāmābād


Pakistan was brought into being at the time of the Partition of British India in 1947 in order to create a separate homeland for India's Muslims in response to the demands of Islāmic nationalists, demands that were articulated by the All India Muslim League under the leadership of Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Since 1947 the territory of Jammu and Kashmir, along the western Himalayas, has been disputed between Pakistan and India, with each holding sectors. The two countries [India and Pakistan] have gone to war over the territory three times: in 1948–49, 1965, and 1971 [Britannica].


“More people being displaced by floods in Pakistan, UN reports,” September 21, 2010,
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=36021&Cr=pakistan&Cr1=


“The United Nations outlines combined strategy to ensure the survival of millions of flood affected people in Pakistan,” ISLAMABAD, 24 September 24, 2010, http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/EGUA-89LT2K?OpenDocument&RSS20&RSS20=FS


“Pakistan floods affect 500,000 pregnant women,” September 9, 2010, CBC News, http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/09/09/pakistan-pregnant-women.html


“Correspondent speaks with shock and awe about covering the disastrous floods ravaging Pakistan — CBC correspondent Tom Parry just returned from two weeks in the disaster zone, which he describes simply, as vast. With some reflections on what he’s seen, he joined Dispatches with Rick MacInnes-Rae from his home base in London,” September 23, 2010, http://www.cbc.ca/dispatches/2010season/2010/09/23/september-23-26-2010-from-pakistan---moscow---johannesburg---india---damascus/
http://www.cbc.ca/dispatches/



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Bennett's books available at New York independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]

Journalists “prisoners of language of Power” — Fisk

Excerpting, editing by Carolyn Bennett

Veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk spoke two nights ago in Berkeley and earlier this year at the annual Al Jazeera forum on the issue of “Journalism and ‘the words of power’.” This some of what he had to say.

Power and the media are not just about cozy relationships between journalists and political leaders, between editors and presidents. They are not just about the parasitic-osmotic relationship between supposedly honorable reporters and the nexus of power that runs between White House and state department and Pentagon, between Downing Street and the foreign office and the ministry of defense.

In the western context, the relationship between power and the media is about words — and the use of words. Semantics.

It is about the employment of phrases and clauses and their origins. It is about the misuse of history and about our ignorance of history.

We journalists today have become prisoners of the language of power.


No press independence, no “peace”

… United States and British — and Israeli and Palestinian — leaderships for two decades now have used the words, ‘peace process’ to define the hopeless, inadequate, dishonorable agreement that allowed the U.S. and Israel to dominate whatever slivers of land would be given to an occupied people.

… There is no battle between power and the media. Through language, we have become them.

Maybe one problem is that we no longer think for ourselves because we no longer read books. The Arabs still read books — I’m not talking here about Arab illiteracy rates — but I’m not sure that we in the West still read books. I often dictate messages over the phone and find I have to spend ten minutes to repeat to someone’s secretary a mere hundred words. They don’t know how to spell.


‘Competing narratives’ [lie]

… Analysis features tell us that what we have to deal with in the Middle East are ‘competing narratives’. How very cozy.

There is no justice, no injustice — just a couple of people who tell different history stories. ‘Competing narratives’ now regularly pop up in the British press. The phrase is a species — or sub-species — of the false language of anthropology. It deletes the possibility that one group of people — in the Middle East, for example — are occupied, while another group of people are doing the occupying.

Again, no justice, no injustice, no oppression or oppressing, just some friendly ‘competing narratives’, a football match, if you like, a level playing field because the two sides are — are they not — ‘in competition’. It is two sides in a football match and two sides have to be given equal time in every story.

… An ‘occupation’ can become a ‘dispute’. … A ‘wall’ becomes a ‘fence’ or a ‘security barrier’. … Israeli colonization of Arab land contrary to all international law becomes ‘settlements’ or ‘outposts’ or ‘Jewish neighborhoods’.


“Foreign fighters” [lie]

… The use of the language of power— of its beacon-words and its beacon-phrases — goes on among us. How many times have I heard western reporters talking about ‘foreign fighters’ in Afghanistan?

They are referring, of course, to the various Arab groups supposedly helping the Taliban. We heard the same story from Iraq. Saudis, Jordanians, Palestinian, Chechen fighters, of course. The generals called them ‘foreign fighters’. Then immediately we western reporters did the same — calling them ‘foreign fighters’ meant they were an invading force. But not once — ever — have I heard a mainstream western television station refer to the fact that there are at least 150,000 ‘foreign fighters’ in Afghanistan; and that most of them are in American or other NATO uniforms!


India omission [lie]

… The pernicious phrase Af-Pak’ — as racist as it is politically dishonest — is now used by reporters when it originally was a creation of the U.S. state department, on the day that Richard Holbrooke was appointed special U.S. representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The phrase avoided the use of the word ‘India’ — whose influence in Afghanistan and presence in Afghanistan is a vital part of the story.


Parallel censor [lie]

… Today, as foreigners try to take food and fuel by sea to the hungry Palestinians of Gaza, we journalists should be reminding our viewers and listeners of a long-ago day when America and Britain went to the aid of a surrounded people, bringing food and fuel — our own servicemen dying as they did so — to help a starving population. That population had been surrounded by a fence erected by a brutal Army intent on starving the people into submission. The army was Russian. The city was Berlin. The people had been our enemies only three years earlier. Yet we flew the Berlin airlift to save them.

We love historical parallels but look at Gaza today. Which western journalist has even mentioned 1948 Berlin in the context of Gaza?


Surrender — Journalists prisoners of language of power

… The most dangerous side of our new semantic war, our use of the words of power — though it is not a war since we [journalists] have largely surrendered — is that it isolates us from our viewers and readers. They are not stupid. They understand words, in many cases … better than we do — History, too.

They know that we are drowning our vocabulary with the language of generals and presidents; from the so-called elites and from the arrogance of Brookings Institute experts; or those of the Rand Corporation; or what I call the ‘TINK THANKS’. We have become part of this language.


Sources and notes

“Danger words” Robert Fisk lists in his piece:
Power players
Activism
Non-state actors
Key players
Geostrategic players
Narratives
External players
Peace process
Meaningful solutions
Af-Pak
Change agents

“Journalism and ‘the words of power’ — The relationship between power and the media is about semantics, says Robert Fisk” — [FOCUS: OPINION], from an address given by Robert Fisk, UK Independent newspaper’s Middle East correspondent, to the fifth Al Jazeera annual forum, May 23, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/05/201052574726865274.html


Also Fisk addresses some of the same themes and expands to the language of “terror” in a Berkeley, California, speech September 22, 2010: Flashpoints September 23, 2010, lead in: “Robert Fisk’s speech from last night in Berkeley: ‘Lies, Misreporting and Catastrophe in the Middle East’, http://www.flashpoints.net/

Middle East correspondent of The Independent Robert Fisk is the author of Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War (London: André Deutsch, 1990). He holds numerous awards for journalism including several Amnesty International UK Press Awards and British International Journalist of the Year awards. Other books by Fisk include The Point of No Return: The Strike Which Broke the British in Ulster (Andre Deutsch, 1975); In Time of War: Ireland, Ulster and the Price of Neutrality, 1939-45 (Andre Deutsch, 1983); and The Great War for Civilization: the Conquest of the Middle East (4th Estate, 2005), http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/robertfisk
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Bennett's books available at New York independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]

“Development” liberates, “Growth” depletes “life”

From Manfred Max-Neef, excerpts with editing by Carolyn Bennett

Regression, BREAKDOWN — more critical indicators and how to reverse into a path forward

Airing today on the Pacifica program Democracy Now was an interview in Bonn, Germany, with the acclaimed Chilean economist, Manfred Max-Neef, a Right Livelihood laureate. His books include Outside Looking in: Experiences in Barefoot Economics. This is an excerpt from Manfred Max-Neef’s responses in that interview.

The principles that should be of an economics “are based in five postulates and one fundamental value principle—

• The economy is to serve the people, not the people to serve the economy
• Development is about people, not about objects
• Growth is not the same as development, development does not necessarily require growth
• No economy is possible in the absence of ecosystem services
• The economy is a subsystem of a larger finite system, the biosphere; hence, permanent growth is impossible

The fundamental value to sustain a new economy should be that no economic interest — under any circumstance — [should] be above the reverence of life.”

On Amy Goodman’s further prompting in follow up, Manfred Max-Neef lays out his notions concerning life, development and growth —

“Nothing can be more important than life.

“Life — not human beings: For me, the center is the miracle of life in all its manifestations. If there is an economic interest, you forget about life — not only of other living beings, but even of human beings.…”

“Growth is a quantitative accumulation.
“Development is the liberation of creative possibilities.

“Every living system in nature grows up to a certain point and stops growing. You are not growing anymore— nor he/she, or me; but we continue developing ourselves.…

“Development has no limits. Growth has limits. That is a very big thing — that economists and politicians do not understand. They are obsessed with the fetish of economic growth.

“…[I]n every society, there is a period in which economic growth, conventionally understood or no, brings about an improvement of the quality of life — but only up to a point, the threshold point, beyond which, if there is more growth, quality of life begins to decline. That is the situation in which we are now.”

The United States of America “is the most dramatic example that you can find. …

“‘The United States [is] an Underdeveloping Nation’, which is a new category. We have developed, underdeveloped and developing. Now you have underdeveloping. [The United States] is an example in which the one percent of the Americans are doing better and better and better and the 99 percent is going down — in all sorts of manifestations.

“People [are] living in their cars, now, and sleeping in their cars parked in front of the house that used to be their house—thousands of people.

“Millions of people have lost everything. However, the speculators who brought about the whole mess are fantastically well off.”


Source and notes
“Chilean Economist Manfred Max-Neef: U.S. is becoming an ‘Under-developing Nation’, September 22, 2010,
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/22/chilean_economist_manfred_max_neef_us

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Bennett's books available at New York independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]

Entrenched BREAKDOWN Reagan-Clinton present continuing

Re-reporting, excerpt, editing by Carolyn Bennett

The baffling complexity of new market structures at the heart of the banking meltdown were neither baffling nor unknown by members of one after another administration leading up to breaking news of “the crisis,” Robert Scheer writes in his latest book The Great American Stickup. “Informed and prescient observers had seen through the gimmicks.”

Inside the halls of power, the potential for damage was known to those who cared to know, Scheer writes, but when these regulators attempted to sound the alarm, they were ignored, or worse. Rewards in both financial remuneration and advanced careers were such that those in a position to profit went along with great enthusiasm.

“Of the leaders responsible, five names come prominently to mind: Alan Greenspan, the longtime head of the Federal Reserve; Robert Rubin, who served as Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration; Lawrence Summers, who succeeded him in that capacity; and the two top Republicans in Congress back in the 1990s dealing with finance: Phil Gramm and James Leach.

“Arrayed most prominently against [Greenspan, Rubin, Summers, Gramm and Co] — far, far down the Washington power ladder — were two female regulators, Brooksley Born [chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1996 to 1999] and Sheila Bair [Bush I and II appointee retained as FDIC chair by Obama].” However, “facing a juggernaut — combined power of the Wall Street lobbyists allied with popular President Bill Clinton, who staked his legacy on reassuring the titans of finance a Democrat could serve their interests better than any Republican could — the regulators never had a chance.” They were summarily crushed.

“Clinton’s role was decisive in turning Ronald Reagan’s obsession with an unfettered free market into law.” A fading actor recast as a great propagandist for the unregulated market, his patented rallying cry ‘get government off our backs,’ Reagan was far more successful at deregulating smokestack industries than the financial markets. It took “a new breed of ‘triangulating’ technocrat-Democrats really to dismantle the carefully built net designed after the last Great Depression …

“Clinton betrayed the wisdom of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms that capitalism needed to be saved from its own excess in order to survive, that the free market would remain free only if it was properly regulated in the public interest.

“The great and terrible irony of capitalism is that if left unfettered, it inexorably engineers its own demise, through either revolution or economic collapse. The guardians of capitalism’s survival are thus not the self-proclaimed free-marketers who … want to chop away at all government restraints on corporate actions, but rather liberals — at least those in the mode of FDR — who seek to harness its awesome power while keeping its workings palatable to a civilized and progressive society.

“Government regulation of the market economy arose during the New Deal out of a desire to save capitalism rather than destroy it.

“Whether it was child labor in dark coalmines, the exploitation of racially segregated human beings to pick cotton or the unfathomable devastation of the Great Depression, the brutal creativity of the pure profit motive has always posed a stark challenge to our belief that we are moral creatures.

“The modern bureaucratic governments of the developed world were built, unconsciously, as a bulwark, something big enough to occasionally stand up to the power of uncontrolled market forces…”

On Summers’ announced end-year departure from the Obama administration, Scheer wrote in yesterday’s column: “The announced departure of Lawrence Summers as the president’s top economic adviser is welcome news. Harvard’s loss in taking back its $586,996-a-year professor and ‘president emeritus’ — who is also paid millions by Wall Street on the side — is the nation’s gain.

“Maybe now [President] Barack Obama, who hopefully will also push out Summers’ protégé, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, will begin to provide an authentic populist alternative to those tea party Republicans who totally absolve Wall Street of responsibility for the economic collapse. …

“Early signs are not fully reassuring.”

Sources and notes

Excerpt from Robert Scheer’s book The Great American Stickup, Chapter 1 “It Was the Economy, Stupid,” Posted on September 16, 2010, htttp://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/the_great_american_stickup_is_bush_really_20100916/?
Truthdig: drilling beneath the headlines, http://www.truthdig.com/

Robert Scheer is editor in chief of Truthdig, credited with a thirty-year reputation in journalism, his writing focused on social and political affairs.

“So long, Summers”  (Robert Scheer), September 21, 2010, http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/so_long_summers_20100921/


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Bennett's books available at New York independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany NY]

“Will people die? Nobody you know, just “foreigners”

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett
Novelist and former British intelligence officer John Le Carré appeared today on Pacifica’s Democracy Now program from England. He talked about war in the Middle East (S/Central Asia) and foreign heads of state who led it then and continue leading it now.

Question Le Carré said he would have raised had he raised it to George W. Bush’s then-co-commander, now protested big-selling author, Tony Blair, leading into the U.S.-led war on Iraq

Consequences of War

“Have you ever seen what happens when a grenade goes off in a school? Do you really know what you’re doing when you order shock and awe? Are you prepared to kneel beside a dying soldier and tell him why he went to Iraq, or why he went to any war?”

Europe, U.S. views of War

“…If anything has happened to Europe since 1945 that defines Europe, it is collectively Europeans do not believe in war anymore — until it comes as an absolute last resort…. The United States still sees war as a necessary part of its existence.”

U.S. President Barack Obama and War

“I think all decent people wept with pleasure when he was elected. That faith in him will die only slowly. There is a lot of evidence that he has done a lot of things that are amazingly good. … [H]e has advanced on the health front. [H]is opening speeches … for example, from Cairo to the Muslim community… [T]hose early statements of intent were magnificent. The sadness now is that we see them in practice being diminished.

“I certainly haven’t given up hope so I would ask him whether he still hopes.”


Le Carré wrote in a pre-Iraq invasion essay (2003)

“… God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle Eastern policy and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is —

(a) Anti-Semitic

(b) Anti-American

(c) With the enemy

(d) A terrorist”

“God also has pretty scary connections. In America, where all men are equal in His sight, if not in one another’s, the Bush family numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the CIA, the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas.…

“To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush won’t tell us is the truth about why we’re going to war. What is at stake is not an ‘Axis of Evil’ but oil, money and people’s lives. Saddam’s misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world.…

“What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of U.S. growth. What is at stake is America’s need to demonstrate its military power to all of us to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad….
.”

Will we win, Daddy?
Of course, child; it will all be over while you’re still in bed.

Why?
Because otherwise Mr. Bush’s voters will get terribly impatient and may decide not to vote for him.

But will people be killed, Daddy?
Nobody you know, darling; just foreign people.

Can I watch it on television?
Only if Mr. Bush says you can.

Afterwards, will everything be normal again — nobody will do anything horrid any more?
Hush child and go to sleep

How many (est.) in two-theater U.S.-led

WAR DEAD?

Casualty sites reporting

September 16, 2010 (accurate totals unknown)

• Anti-war dot com Casualties in Iraq since March 19, 2003

[U.S. war dead since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 193]

Wounded 31,951-100,000

U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000

Suicides [estimated] 18 a day

Latest update on this site September 19, 2010

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

• Iraq Body Count figures

97,994 – 106,954

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,421 U.S., 4,739 Coalition

AFGHANISTAN: 1,282 U.S., 2,086 Coalition

http://icasualties.org/oif/

S/Central Asia
Kashmir/India conflict — September 20

Three people died in India-administered Kashmir as violence continued with a police shooting at a group of protesters in a funeral procession. Police said some demonstrators were trying to set fire to the house of a pro-Indian politician. Protesters denied the claim. The deaths on Saturday bring the number of people killed in recent anti-government clashes to more than 100.

Pakistan foreign occupied, flood fallout
Political discord over Pakistan aid — September 20

The Pakistani government has been accused of ‘favoritism’ in relief efforts, six weeks after heavy rains caused devastating floods.

Pakistani Karachi-UK-Karachi, Pakistan
Targeted killings — September 20

A founding member of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (or MQM party), Imran Farooq, was found dead Thursday in the north of the London. He had sustained multiple stab wounds and head injuries. The next day as news of the killing reached Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, gas stations, schools and markets closed and public transport halted. Hundreds of targeted killings have occurred this year in Karachi.

Afghanistan in foreigners’ War votes
Violence and corruption September 19

Eleven civilians died when bombs exploded and rockets attacked during Afghanistan’s election. Observers also reported “fake voter cards and ballot stuffing.”

Middle East-Iraq
Baghdad bombings September 19

Twenty-nine people died Sunday in two near-simultaneous car bomb explosions in Baghdad, Iraq’s capital. One hundred people suffered wounds in the two explosions.

Sources and notes
“Legendary British Author John le Carré on Why He Won’t Be Reading Tony Blair’s Iraq War-Defending Memoir,” [David Cornwell writes under the name John le Carré], September 20, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/20/legendary_british_author_john_le_carr


“The United States of America Has Gone Mad” (John le Carré, The Times/UK, January 15, 2003), http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/America/US_Gone_Mad_leCarre.html


John le Carré: “The United States of America Has Gone Mad,”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/20/john_le_carr_the_united_states


http://english.aljazeera.net/video/asia/2010/09/20109197016442716.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/video/asia/2010/09/2010919103515596138.html http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/09/20109176850972836.html
Inside Story aired from Sunday, September 19, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/insidestory/2010/09/201092011590734806.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/09/201091982110761498.html
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Bennett's books available at New York independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Present Tense books and gifts: presenttensebooks.com [Batavia, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]

U.S.-Afghanistan—dug in, dated, decent man’s folly

Re-reporting, editing, comment by  Carolyn Bennett

Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result. With politicians and public affairs, international affairs, foreign policy, politicians repeat the same ole policy and expect the citizenry to think they are getting something new, different, even progressive, or to just make-believe. Insanity becomes at least two-dimensional.

University of California history professor Mark LeVine writes in an opinion piece this week that U.S. president Barack Obama “was elected to do hard things, and given the urgency of the escalating recession and the souring of public opinion regarding both Iraq and Afghanistan, he could have taken control of the national discourse surrounding the ‘Really Existing War on Terror’. [He could have] begun a process of steering the country … towards some measure of fiscal and moral sanity.”

The president’s run for the U.S. presidency had reached national prominence on the strength of his pledge to end the war in Iraq — “which should logically have meant a major reduction in the military budget — but his defense spending from the start outstripped that of his predecessor.

Can one consider annual defense spending “upwards of a trillion dollars — enough money to cure most of economic and social woes of the United States (indeed, much of the world’s woes) — anything less than insane?”


Policy out of step with global realities

In its Annual Review of World Affairs report, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies put the issue more broadly global. The Obama government’s counter-insurgency (COIN) strategy for Afghanistan was a grand strategy that is “too ambitious, too removed from the core security goals that need to be met, and too sapping of diplomatic and military energies needed both in the region and elsewhere.”

The report maintains, “For Western states to be pinned down militarily and psychologically in Afghanistan will not be in the service of their wider political and security interests. …

“The challenge of Afghanistan must be viewed and addressed in proportion to other threats to international security and other requirements for foreign-policy investment. With economic, financial and diplomatic activity moving at such a pace and with such varied outcomes internationally, military operations in general have to be all the more carefully considered. … Heavy, large, military deployment, the [long duration] will be seen as an attitude for other times, other centuries.”


Decent man’s “folly”

LeVine continued his opinion piece. By all accounts, “President Obama is a decent man who … does not enjoy leading his country in wartime. His political future and legacy depend in large part on successfully navigating the United States away from a war economy, towards rebuilding it along more innovative and sustainable lines. Yet he is deepening the War in Afghanistan even though he and his senior advisors and commanders must know that doing so is a disastrous folly.”

They must understand that deepening the war “will likely produce precisely the outcome their policies were supposed to avoid: greater hatred and violence against the United States in the heart of Central Asia; and from there, across the Muslim world.”

Sources and notes
“Obama edges to the dark side — As consensus grows regarding the futility of US national security policy, concerns arise over Barack Obama’s strategy” (Opinion: Mark LeVine at Al Jazeera) September 16, 2010 [“views expressed in the article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy], http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2010/09/2010916104022372281.html
Author Mark LeVine is professor of history at University of California, Irvine.


“Strategic Survey 2010: The Annual Review of World Affairs” [Director-General, Chief Executive Dr John Chipman, The International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, Press Statement], September 7, 2010, http://www.iiss.org/publications/strategic-survey/about-strategic-survey/


The Strategic Survey, a tool for interpreting worldwide strategic developments, is the London-headquartered International Institute for Strategic Studies’ annual review of world affairs. The Survey has provided for government policy makers, journalists, business leaders and academics an essential one-volume analysis of the year’s key events in international relations since 1966.


Based in London and registered as a limited company in UK law and a charity with offices in the United States, Singapore and Bahrain, the “International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) (founded in 1958) is the world’s leading authority on political-military conflict.” Nuclear deterrence and arms control was the focus of much of the Institute’s early work. http://www.iiss.org/about-us/
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Bennett's books available at New York independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Present Tense books and gifts: presenttensebooks.com [Batavia, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]

U.S. Gov't denies and defends —

Detention, rendition, torture, secrecy —
No cease and desist order, no apology for  breach of law, abuse of human rights past or present
Editing with comment by Carolyn Bennett of an American Civil Liberties Union account of fallout, continuing abuses connected with the United States’ protracted global war on terror and related cover-ups

Mohamedou Ould Salahi spent months in total-isolation detainment at Guantánamo. While there, he was —

Kept in a freezing cold cell
Shackled to the floor Shackled to the floor
Sexually abused by female interrogators
Deprived of food
Made to drink salt water
Forced to stand for hours at a time in a room with strobe lights and heavy metal music
Threatened with harm to his family
Forbidden from praying
Beaten and subjected to ‘frequent flyer’ tactics — awakened every few hours and moved to a new cell.

A 2009 Senate Armed Services Committee report that investigated allegations of detainee abuse at Guantánamo confirmed and documented the abuse of Mohamedou Ould Salahi.

Mohamedou Ould Salahi had been “captured far from any battlefield. [He] never took part in any hostilities or attack against the United States. [He] has been in U.S. custody for nine years.”

Mohamedou Ould Salahi had been arrested initially in 2001 in Mauritania on suspicion of ties to al Qaeda. The U.S. government then rendered Salahi to Jordan where, for eight months, he suffered detention, interrogation, and abuse. From Jordan, the U.S. officials rendered him to Bagram, Afghanistan; then to Guantánamo, where he has languished since August 2002.

So tainted by torture were Mr. Salahi’s self-incriminating statements that one military attorney gave up, saying the statements “could not ethically be used against Salahi.” Marine Corps Lt. Col. Stuart Couch told his supervisors that he [Couch] was ‘morally opposed’ to Salahi’s treatment and for that reason he would not participate in the prosecution before military commissions.

ACLU cooperating attorney, Jonathan Hafetz, says, “Mr. Salahi’s treatment presents a case study of all that is wrong with Guantánamo [and that] upholding the order directing Salahi’s release would demonstrate the vital role of the courts in remedying these wrongs and restoring the rule of law.”

We must burn neither liberty nor law

in the searing rhetoric of “security.”

We cannot allow government to yell terrorism as fire
spreading through a madding crowd,

instilling fear;

shoring up its campaign of global lawlessness.

“Like the Bush administration,” the ACLU notes in its call for a return to the rule of law, “the Obama administration has claimed the authority to hold terrorism suspects in indefinite military detention — even suspects captured far away from any battlefield who have never taken up arms against the United States.

“The so-called ‘war on terror’ is no traditional war. It has no geographic or temporal limitations. How will it end? How would we know if it did? Where is it taking place? So far, individuals have been captured in more than 50 countries and the list is sure to grow.

“This system is illegal and un-American.

“We must uphold the Constitution and the rule of law. That means treating suspected terrorists as suspected criminals, not warriors; charging them and prosecuting them in ordinary federal courts. We cannot let our government use the threat of terrorism to justify a system in which individuals picked up anywhere in the world [U.S. included] can be held indefinitely by the military without charge or trial”  [http://www.aclu.org/theworldisnotabattlefield/].

Sources and notes
The American Civil Liberties Union and attorneys are urging higher courts to uphold Guantánamo prisoner Mohamedou Ould Salahi’s successful challenge to his unlawful detention. The U.S. government is appealing the ruling.
“Lawyers For Guantánamo Prisoner in Court To Defend Successful Challenge To Detention — Appeals Court Should Uphold Ruling That Salahi Be Released, says ACLU, ”September 17, 2010, http://www.aclu.org/national-security/lawyers-guantanamo-prisoner-court-defend-successful-challenge-detention
In addition to Theresa Duncan and Jonathan Hafetz of the law firm Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Ives & Duncan P.A., other attorneys on the case are Melissa Goodman and Jonathan Manes of the ACLU National Security Project, Nancy Hollander of Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Ives & Duncan P.A., and Linda Moreno of Linda Moreno P.A.

See also ACLU’s “Justice Denied — what happens when the rule of law is broken and true justice is denied?”


ACLU video series ‘JUSTICE DENIED — Voices from Guantánamo’ — features former detainees U.S. officials held in Afghanistan and Guantánamo for years without charge or trial, without any meaningful opportunity to challenge their detention.


“In the American system of justice, suspects are tried and prosecuted based on the constitutional principle of due process. People are presumed innocent (they are supposed to be) until proved guilty. Not swept up, tortured and indefinitely detained.”


The men whose stories are told in the video series ‘JUSTICE DENIED were captured, abused, held and released — without explanation or apology [http://www.aclu.org/indefinitedetention/video.html].
___________________________________________________________

Bennett's books available at New York independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Present Tense books and gifts: presenttensebooks.com [Batavia, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]

The “CITIZEN’s” American values—Football first

Careless Grandeur
Civic duty — 'Whenever' or Never 

Editing and excerpting by Carolyn Bennett from Andrew J. Bacevich’s The Limits of Power: the End of American Exceptionalism.

Conscription means children of the political elite and well-to-do will once again bear their fair share. Conscription continues to make a nice rant in letters to editors and Americans feign disdain for mercenaries; but many of them “harbor an even greater dislike for the prospect of sending their loved ones to fight in some godforsaken country on the other side of the world.” On this one, Congress is onboard, making impossible the enactment of legislation restoring the draft. Andrea Bacevich is ending The Limits of Power with “The Military Crisis.”

“Support the troops” sloganeers

“Far from producing a stampede of eager recruits keen to don a uniform,”  Bacevich writes, “the events of 9/11 reaffirmed a widespread popular preference for hiring someone else’s kid to chase terrorists, spread democracy, and ensure access to the world’s energy reserves. In the midst of a global war of ostensibly earthshaking importance, Americans demonstrated a greater affinity for their hometown sports heroes than for the soldiers defending the distant precincts of the American imperium. …”

Soldier/society disconnect, chasm

“… A reliance on professional soldiers eviscerates [guts, removes vital parts of] the concept of civic duty, relieving [the citizen] of any obligation to contribute to the nation’s defense. Ending the draft during the waning days of the Vietnam War did nothing to heal the divisions created by that conflict; instead, it ratified the separation of army from society. Like mowing lawns and bussing tables, fighting and perhaps dying to sustain the American way of life became something that Americans pay others to do.”

“… Seldom in American history have questions of fairness or equity played a decisive role in shaping public policy. The present moment does not qualify as one of those occasions; if it were, we would not tolerate the gaping disparities between rich and poor in our society. Relying on a small number of volunteers to bear the burden of waging an open-ended global war might make Americans uneasy, but uneasiness will not suffice to produce change. To salve the nation’s conscience, the government might augment our hard-pressed troops with pricey contractor-mercenaries, but it won’t actually trouble citizens to do anything.

“Indeed, the privatization of war — evident in the prominence achieved by armies-for-rent such as the notorious Blackwater—suggests a tacit willingness to transform military service from a civic function into an economic enterprise, with money rather than patriotism the motive.

“Americans may not like mercenaries, but many of them harbor an even greater dislike for the prospect of sending their loved ones to fight in some godforsaken country on the other side of the world.”

Army/society repair

A way to repair the relationship between army and society “is to junk the All-Volunteer Force altogether.” Revive, perhaps, “the tradition of the citizen-soldier.”

“… For those moved by moral considerations, a draft promises to ensure a more equitable distribution of sacrifice in wartime. No longer, will —

Rural Americans

People of color

Recent immigrants

Members of the working class

Fill the ranks of the armed forces in disproportionate numbers.

“With conscription, the children of the political elite and well-to-do will once again bear their fair share of the load. Those reaping the benefits of the American way of life will contribute to its defense, helping to garrison the more distant precincts of empire. Perhaps editorial staffs of the Weekly Standard, National Review, and the New Republic might have the opportunity to serve” … given their magazines’ propensity to argue on behalf of military intervention.

“America doesn’t need a bigger army. It needs a smaller, more modest, foreign policy… Modesty implies giving up on the illusions of grandeur to which the end of the Cold War and then 9/11 gave rise. It means reining in imperial presidents who expect the army to make good on those illusions. When it comes to supporting the troops — here lies the essence of a citizen’s obligation.”


Source
Andrew J. Bacevich is Boston University professor of history and international relations.
The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (Bacevich, Andrew J), New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008, pages 131, 138, 155, 138-139, 139-140, 169
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Bennett's books available at New York independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Present Tense books and gifts: presenttensebooks.com [Batavia, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]

Peace, policy progress in alternatives

Disastrous U.S. foreign and domestic policies and priorities await powerful progressive, global alternatives.
Re-reporting, editing, comment by Carolyn Bennett

In Bonn, Germany, for the thirtieth anniversary of the Right Livelihood Awards, Pacifica program Democracy Now today interviewed peace and conflict studies founder Johan Galtung. Galtung observed a disgraceful dissembling — start to midterm.

“Practically speaking,” he said, [U.S. President Barack Obama has gone back on] everything he promised [or appeared to promise] —

Guantánamo is still there.
Rendition is still there.
There is the saying that says ‘no torture should take place’  —
I ‘haven't seen the mechanism ensuring that’s the case.’ 
Withdrawal from Iraq retains 50,000 forces
Stepping up, war escalates in Afghanistan. …
[W]hatever withdraws from Iraq goes to Afghanistan.


A ‘nuclear-free’ world promise gets rid of old-fashioned weapons with the Russians, then argues for $180 billion to modernize the nuclear material: $100 billion for the weapons carriers, $80 billion for new warheads.

The Right Livelihood Foundation from which Democracy Now was broadcasting its 30-year anniversary this week awards an alternative to the Nobel Prize. The prize gives moral weight and financial support to those combating environmental damage, underdevelopment or human rights violations worldwide.

In contrast to Nobel’s favoring of the West, the Right Livelihood is awarded to people from Asia or Africa about 40 percent of the time. Many of the recipients of the Right Livelihood Award are completely unknown on the international stage until they receive the award. Unusual among award winners is Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathei who won the Right Livelihood Award in 1984 and the Nobel Prize in 2004. Maathei’s case though unique to the 30-year history of the Right Livelihood Award is a testament to the weight carried by the prize.

The Right Livelihood Award’s 137 winners so far have been spread over 58 countries. Not only do these award winners more frequently than Nobel hail from developing countries; they are also younger on average and more likely to be female.


Fruits of entrenched, disastrous foreign and domestic policies and priorities

How many (est.) in two-theater

U.S.-led

WAR DEAD?

Casualty sites reporting

September 16, 2010 (accurate totals unknown)

• Anti-war dot com Casualties in Iraq since March 19, 2003

[U.S. war dead since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 191]

Wounded 31,934-100,000

U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000

Suicides [estimated] 18 a day

Latest update on this site September 16, 2010

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

• Iraq Body Count figures

97,994 – 106,954

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,419 U.S., 4,737 Coalition

AFGHANISTAN: 1,278 U.S., 2,073 Coalition

http://icasualties.org/oif/

September 12 Pakistan — “Deaths in Pakistan ‘drone’ attack”
Four people [“fighters”] died in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt near the Afghan border when a “suspected U.S. drone” attacked. The frequency of civilian deaths is highly disputed but statistics compiled by Pakistani authorities reveal, “more than 90 per cent of the more than 700 people killed in attacks targeting the tribal areas in 2009 were civilians.”

September 16 West Bank — “‘Our situation worsens every day’” Nora Barrows-Friedman reports Palestinians in the West Bank’s Dheisheh refugee camp “have little faith in [three-way peace] talks”

—“Jewish settlements deadlock remains”
— “Hamas has got to be involved before peace can be concluded”

“No indication of progress after second day of direct Netanyahu-Abbas talks” says U.S. peace envoy. Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter among others has said “any future permanent Israeli-Palestinian agreement has to include Hamas”

September 15— “Israeli jets hit Gaza tunnels”
“Israeli missile kills one Palestinian after rocket and mortar fire from Gaza”

One Palestinian died and two others suffered wounds [medics’ estimates] “after Israeli fighter jets bombed three smuggling tunnels running between the Gaza Strip and Egypt … The violence follows clashes between Israel and Hamas, which began on September 1. Hamas won elections in Gaza in 2006 and then seized full control of the enclave the following year.” Hamas controls Gaza but is not a participant in the three-way Israeli-Palestinian-U.S. ‘peace’ talks.


U.S. homeland — providing for its common defense, promoting its general welfare

September 16 — “U.S. poverty rate ‘hits 15-year high’”

The rise in U.S. poverty is the highest since 1994. One in seven people of the United States live in “economic hardship.”

The U.S. Census Bureau report released today shows that “one in seven Americans lived in poverty last year, while the overall poverty rate climbed to 14.3 percent (43.6 million people) from 13.2 percent (39.8 million people).

The government began its reports of poverty estimates in 1959 and this latest report’s findings show —cold comfort — that the poverty rate in 2009 was “8.1 percentage points lower than the poverty rate in 1959.”

Taken together, this amounts to deep regression, a demonstration of entrenched, disastrous foreign and domestic policies and priorities out of Washington awaiting powerful progressive, global alternatives.

Sources and notes
“Johan Galtung on the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mideast Peace Talks, and Why Obama Is Losing His Base,” September 16, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/16/johan_galtung_on_the_wars_in


“‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ gains moral traction,” September 16, 2010,
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6003399,00.html


A Norwegian mathematician and sociologist and a principal founder of the discipline of peace and conflict studies, Johan Galtung (born in Oslo, October 24, 1930) is Professor of Peace Studies, founder of TRANSCEND, A Peace and Development Network; founder of TRANSCEND Peace University, TRANSCEND Media Service, TRANSCEND University Press, TRANSCEND Peace Service, TRANSCEND Research Institute.


Since its founding in 1993, most of TRANSCEND’s work “has been on conflict mediation and violence conciliation, using Diagnosis-Prognosis-Therapy, on often very difficult and complex conflicts.” Peace journalism, peace education and peace business have played important roles in this process.


TRANSCEND is organized in a dozen regions around the world: Northern Europe, German-speaking Europe, Eastern Europe, CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States), Europa Latina, Africa, the Arab World, the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, (North-)East Asia, North America, Latin America. Each region has a convener. The Board of Conveners is TRANSCEND’s highest authority [http://www.transcend.org/].


There are traditionally four traditional but unsatisfactory ways of handling conflicts between two parties. Johan Galtung tries to break with four unsatisfactory [A wins, B loses-B wins A loses-solution postponed because neither A nor B feels ready to end the conflict-confused compromise results in which neither A nor B is happy] ways of handling a conflict by finding a ‘fifth way.’ In the fifth way “both A and B feel that they win. The method insists on maintaining respect for basic human survival, physical well-being, liberty, and identity needs. Galtung views his role as that of helping the parties clarify their objectives and working to come up with solutions that meet the objectives of all parties. He has employed the ‘Transcend’ Method while serving as a negotiator in a number of international conflicts [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Galtung].


http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/09/201091233614720302.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2010/09/2010914122645134498.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/09/201091520229665176.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/09/20109151393302881.html http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/09/2010916182855740657.html

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Bennett's books available at New York independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Present Tense books and gifts: presenttensebooks.com [Batavia, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]