Lindorff to young America

Return from joblessness, homelessness, inertia to Protest

Edited excerpt by Carolyn Bennett

Expecting the White House to act on the crisis of long-term joblessness and diminished expectations for young workers is foolish, journalist and author Dave Lindorff says in a late May article at “This can’t be happening” and Common Dreams.

Half-truths and lies

Unemployment among Egypt’s young men and women soars at 30 percent; Tunisia’s exceeds 40 percent and Washington says conditions like that threaten rising democracies.

Unemployment among U.S. young people also stands at underreported and alarming levels: official numbers overall at 20 percent but among young African-Americans, the unemployment rate is 44 percent; among young Latinos, 30 percent.  Moreover, in that the government’s official numbers exclude part-time workers who want full-time work and job seekers who have given up looking for work,  the Labor Department’s official rate of 9 percent unemployment for all Americans has to be false.

Eliminating from the youth unemployment numbers an adjustment for people working part-time who want full-time work and keeping the adjustment for those who have dropped out of the labor force because there are no jobs leaves actual unemployment for U.S. young people (30 percent overall, 45 percent for young Latinos, 66 percent for black youth) at levels found in Egypt.

Why then is Washington concerned with providing economic support to boost jobs in Tunisia and Egypt to ‘support democracy’ while “throwing in the towel” on job creation in the United States? Government’s statements defy belief by reasonable people.  

Africa’s present meets America’s past

Traditional U.S. groups (the labor movement, civil rights and political groups on the left) that used to organize “frustrated and angry young people” and bring them onto the streets in demonstrations have been effectively “neutered.” These groups have entered campaign mode and are focusing on elections, recalls, and the 2012 presidential contest — instead of on organizing unemployed and frustrated young people for their future.

“Expecting the White House to act on the crisis of long-term joblessness of and diminished expectations for young people is foolish,” Lindorff says.

In Egypt and Tunisia, young people took to the streets and stood down police and soldiers, ultimately bringing down their governments. However, although young Americans see national policies, state policies and corporate lobbying focused on cutting taxes and boosting corporate profits, and robbing them of their futures — they are mostly like their parents: quiescent, inert, inactive.

To a great extent, they react to frustrations of joblessness and underemployment with self-destructive or anti-social excess: with drugs and alcohol, gang activity, crime.

A better way forward

If people banded together and took over city squares, demanding government action — though they would face tear gas- and baton-armed police as Tunisians and Egyptians did — they would capture the attention of and obtain help from governments local and state and from the White House and houses of the U.S.  Congress.

“Young people,” Dave Lindorff concludes, “have the stamina and courage” to act positively, constructively, progressively in their own behalf and for the future.

Sources and notes

Dave Lindorff’s article was first published Saturday May 28, 2011, at This Can't Be Happening,  “Jarring Disconnect: If Joblessness and Hopelessness Undermine Democracy in the Middle East, What About Here at Home?” Copyright © 2011 This Can’t Be Happening

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/28-2

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist and author of Marketplace Medicine: The Rise of the For-Profit Hospital Chains and The Case for Impeachment. His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

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U.S. Footprints AfPak/Iraq ─ WAR

Re-reported, compiled, edited by Carolyn Bennett

Casualty sites reporting
March 6, 2010 (accurate totals unknown)

• Anti-war dot com March 19, 2003 ─ [Since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 151] Wounded 31,693-100,000; U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000; Suicides 18 a day http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
• Iraq Body Count figures: 95,568-104,266, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,380 U.S., 4,698 Coalition; AFGHANISTAN: 1,014 U.S., 1,698 Coalition http://icasualties.org/oif/
• Just Foreign Policy: [not current] 1,366,350 http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq

Bloodletting News from U.S. Middle East/Central/South Asia WAR

March 5, 2010
AFGHANISTAN
Today's war in Afghanistan has its My Lai, Dave Lindorff writes this week in news analysis for Truthout. As U.S. warplanes bomb wedding parties or homes ‘suspected’ of housing terrorists that turn out to house nothing but civilians, the war in Afghanistan has My Lai massacres almost weekly.

However, these My Lai massacres are conveniently labeled accidents. They get filed away and forgotten as the inevitable ‘collateral damage’ of war. There was recently an unmistakable massacre involving fewer than a dozen innocent people but bearing the same stench as My Lai. This was an execution-style slaying of eight handcuffed students aged 11-18 and a 12-year-old neighboring shepherd boy who had been visiting the others in Kunar Province on December 26.…

Under the Geneva Conventions, it is a war crime to execute a captive. Yet, in Kunar on December 26, U.S.-led forces, or perhaps U.S. soldiers or contract mercenaries, cold-bloodedly executed eight handcuffed prisoners. It is a war crime to kill children under the age of 15 yet in this incident a boy of 11 and a boy of 12 were handcuffed as captured combatants and executed. Two others of the dead were 12 and a third was 15.…

“There is still time for real heroes to stand up in the midst of this imperial adventure that may now appropriately be called Obama’s War in Afghanistan.” … Plenty of reporters in Afghanistan and in Washington could investigate this story. Failing this, “they certainly should not be able ─ with a straight face ─ to call themselves journalists.”

Al Jazeera reports March 4, 2010 ─ Five people have died (four Pakistani nationals, one Afghan) in Afghanistan after armed men opened fire at a group of Pakistani construction workers on their way to work. The incident occurred Thursday morning in the Panjwayi district in Kandahar province.

March 4, 2010
IRAQ
“Twenty million eligible voters are invited to participate in this weekend’s parliamentary election in Iraq,” Raed Jarrar writes this week in Truthout. “The election, scheduled for Sunday March 7, will take place amid a wave of increased violence and political tension in Iraq. However, even with the possibility of a total political meltdown or even a military coup, the United States should not delay or cancel its plans to withdraw from Iraq. …

“Iraq’s problems are far more complicated than these threats to the electoral process. Even if this election proves to be inclusive, fair and transparent, there are other threats to a peaceful transition of power to the upcoming democratically elected government. The Iraqi armed forces continue to be infiltrated by militias and controlled by the current ruling parties. After the disbanding of the Iraqi Army in 2003 by Paul Bremer, the U.S. ruler of Iraq at the time, Bremer issued Order 91 to integrate nine militias totaling about 100,000 men or more into the Iraqi armed forces. It sounded like a good idea at first. However, the ruling parties kept control over their armed men even after they became members of Iraq’s new Army, national police and national guards.…

“The situation in Iraq is horrible. It will most likely deteriorate further this year but that should not be used as an excuse to delay or cancel the U.S. withdrawal from the country.

“Prolonging the occupation will not fix what the occupation has broken, and extending the U.S. military intervention will not help protect Iraq from other interventions.…

“Going back to a condition-based withdrawal plan would not only further diminish U.S. credibility worldwide, but it would also lead to more deterioration and destruction in Iraq. Linking the U.S. withdrawal to conditions on the ground creates an equation by which further deterioration in Iraq will automatically lead to prolonging the U.S. military presence. Some groups, like the Iraqi ruling parties, want the U.S. occupation to continue because they have been benefiting from it; some regional players, including the Iranian government, do not want an independent and strong Iraq to re-emerge. Other groups, including al-Qaeda, would gladly see the U.S. stuck in the current quagmire and would love to see the U.S. continue to lose blood, treasure and reputation in Iraq. Linking the withdrawal to conditions on the ground would be an open invitation to those who want to ensure an endless war.”

Al Jazeera reports March 6, 2010 ─ At least three people have died and more than 50 injured in the holy city of Najaf after a car bomb exploded a day before Iraq’s parliamentary elections.… At least 45 people - some of them members of the security forces who were voting early - have died in the past few days.… After the last national election in 2005, it took Iraq’s feuding political parties about five months to agree on a prime minister and approve a cabinet.

March 5, 2010
PAKISTAN
At least twelve people have died and 30 injured in northwest Pakistan as a suicide bomber attacked a convoy of Shia Muslims guarded by security forces. The victims were passing through a petrol station in the town of Hangu on Friday when the lone attacker on foot set off the bomb… Since the late 1980s, more than 4,000 people have died in sectarian violence between the country’s Sunni majority and Shiite minority.

Sources
Afghanistan's My Lai Massacre (Dave Lindorff, t r u t h o u t News Analysis), March 5, 2010,
http://www.truthout.org/where-are-this-wars-heroes-military-and-journalistic57406
“Laborers killed in Afghan attack,” March 4, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/03/201034123644310919.html
“A Military Coup in Iraq?” (Raed Jarrar, t r u t h o u t Report), March 4, 2010, http://www.truthout.org/a-military-coup-iraq57374
“Blast hits Iraq in electioin run up,” March 6, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/20103673112451955.html
Shias targeted in Pakistan blast, February 5, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/03/201035122623607878.html