The Killing Train

The Oracle

I caught a tiny bit of Kerry's speech yesterday, Obama's speech before that, and I am prepared to venture some predictions.

First, I believe that the Democrats will win in November.

Why? Not because I believe that the US is a democracy, or that the people's will will prevail, or that the election is a matter of citizens' choice. The opposite is true. I believe that this election is like a year-long job interviewing/application process. It's reality TV, like that show where Donald Trump selected a manager by progressively firing elite youths. Like that show, the employer is the elite. The candidates are Kerry and Bush. And the criteria are very simple: who is going to be the better imperial manager. Who is going to better fulfill the desires of the elite at this particular time.

I believe that elites have asked themselves this question, and answered it, and decided that it will be Kerry. I also believe that Kerry has gone out of his way to prove himself a worthy candidate for this elite. The dems have accomplished this principally, as other bloggers have duly noted, by cleansing their program and rhetoric of peace, anti-imperial sentiment, or concern for the victims of US foreign policy. They will treat the people we send to kill our poor and helpless victims better; they will send more people to kill poor and helpless victims so they are safer when they do it; they will try to involve more countries in this killing (this latter isn't going to work, and will help pave the way for the next Republican presidency). That's their platform, and that is a winning formula. The media won't destroy Kerry the way it destroyed Dean, and it will help Bush et al. gently out of office and start preparing them for a return immediately the election is over, just in case Kerry gets any funny ideas (and it's pretty clear that Kerry has proven that he doesn't have any funny ideas).

So, that's my prediction. Kerry will win. But I have more predictions.

This just in -- anti-poverty organization is broke again!

The importance of a resource base for trying to organize is hard to overstate. Much of the reason so much of the 'left' (such as it is) is based on or around campuses is resources: who else has the time, the space (I mean literally, the rooms), the opportunities.

Well, there are other bases. The churches, for example. Much of the Central America solidarity movement in the 1980s was organized through churches. I guess much of the very early civil rights movement in the US was organized around churches.

Of course, liberal non-governmental organizations and political organizations have tremendous resources and can provide these on occasion for real movement work. The anti-globalization movement of the 1990s and the WSFs are related to this resource base.

Still another base, and perhaps the most potentially powerful, is still the unions. Even the small percentage of the workforce that is unionized provides tremendous resources to major national organizations with major infrastructures, whose principal political activity seems to be supporting parties who have more contempt for working people even than the union bureaucracy does.

Every once in a while one of these bases provides enough resources to start something that takes on a life and a momentum of its own. That is what happened with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty some 15 years ago now. Begun with a tiny bit of union funding to organize some anti-poverty actions, OCAP took on a life of its own -- and indeed became very critical of the limited resistance being offered by these unions that have such potential power (see this interview for some of that critique). But while OCAP definitely has a life of its own, including a movement base and an absolutely crucial function, the resource base has been drained away from it, and OCAP has been forced, as radical groups seem frequently to be forced, to rely on the most tenuous resource base -- small donations from activists and sympathetic people. Below is their latest appeal for help with sustainable funding...

March against the Wall begins...

There's a major march against Israel's Apartheid Wall has begun today. The repression has already begun, with Israel wounding 17 people at one of the first demonstrations.

Not content with just repressing the march, Israel also assassinated a Palestinian in Tulkarem. Israel has been active in Tulkarem recently: for example, they leveled a home there yesterday, declaring curfew. Israel also killed six people in Tulkarem earlier this week, something reported in Ha'aretz and analyzed by some ISM activists below. Take a look, and note the contrast between the eyewitness testimony of the activists who describe a flat-out assassination to the flat, military-sourced clinical description of a 'gunbattle' given in the mainstream media. Remember that every time you hear about armed Palestinians killed in gunbattles.

No criminals escape, even 30 years later -- right?

This is pretty amazing. The Canadian Newspaper, the Globe and Mail reports that the RCMP arrested a man who has been living in Toronto for decades for a shooting of a police officer in Chicago 30 years ago. Douglas Freeman, the police say, is really Joseph Coleman Pannell, a Black Panther who shot police officer Terrence Knox in Chicago in 1969. Knox was shot in the arm and went on to a long career in law enforcement at the end of which he retired.

Here's a quote from Mr. Knox, who is very relieved that Pannell has been caught:

Although the case is more than 35 years old, Mr. Knox said it has never left him. "He's been in my mind every day," he said. "Whoever's been shot never forgets it."

Mr. Knox is inaccurate, of course. Fred Hampton, a Black Panther, was shot in Chicago. Quite a lot of times, in Chicago, as he lay in his bed. Shot by police, in fact. 30 years ago. Hampton didn't express any recollections of being shot, since the COINTELPRO agents who asssassinated him made sure he was dead. The people responsible for Hampton's assassination, and the many, many murders of not only activists but ordinary members of the Black community in the decades since, haven't been brought to justice.

But members of organizations that they victimized continue to be hunted down, even outside of the United States.

Still more on Sudan

I don't use it too often, though perhaps I should -- Al Jazeera reported today that the Arab League asked the international community to give Sudan time.

To put it mildly, this is rather underwhelming. So is the Sudanese government's own line, that the US is 'using' the crisis in Darfur.

That the US is using it, and will use it, cynically and with no regard for the victims, is not in doubt (on July 22 the US Congress agreed that what was going on in Sudan was 'genocide' -- something they never managed to do for Rwanda 10 years before; and let's not forget al-Shifa, the pharmaceutical plant Clinton blew up in 1998). But the question is about the thing that is being used, not the US's use of it, and the thing that is being used is very real and very horrific, according to the reports that are coming out, and despite the Arab League's exhortations, it seems to me that time is the very thing that is not on the side of the victims of this assault.

A Tale Of True Spin

CACI International, the mercenary firm accused of conspiring with fellow "subcontractor" Titan to actively engage in torture, abuse and other prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is the subject of yet another torture-related lawsuit. This brings the tally to two civil lawsuits and at least five (probably ineffectual) government investigations.

CACI is, needless to say, pulling out all the proverbial punches (why stop at literal punches) to defend itself against the "opportunistic" lawyers at the Iraqi Torture Victim Group. Check out the firm's press release, to get an understanding of what true corporate spin is.

Sudan, Darfur

Mandisi Majavu makes an argument for sanctions against Sudan for its program of murderous ethnic cleansing in Darfur. Mandisi has been following the situation there in his blog. Meanwhile, The Passion of the Present blog is reproducing mainstream journals' arguments for intervention. It quotes, for example, a Washington Post Editorial that says the following:

Vile regime and sex tourists, follow-up

A friend just sent me this article from the Los Angeles Times with a bit more detail on the source and context of Bush's hypocritical filth on Cuba (I apologize for using euphemisms in the description). It's been a few days since I've seen any technical difficulties so I'm going to try to get back to normal blogging. Since the LA Times requires registration, I'm reproducing the article below.

The vile regime and its sex tourists

Another one a few days old now -- technical difficulties, of course. But maybe you heard the latest round of Bush slanders and lies to justify violence? Nope, I'm not talking about the garbage about Iran's 'link' to 9/11 (in which Iran is 'linked' because the hijackers traveled through Iran... didn't they all travel through the US too?) No, this one is about Castro, who apparently, and this is right out of Bush's mouth, promotes 'sex tourism'.

This is an interesting one and a prime example of imperial morality. You see, when wealthy US men want to go to the third world and exploit vulnerable women and children, that's called 'Castro promoting sex tourism', and is used to justify more of the same. The same is true when Americans of means like to snort cocaine in a process that devastates Colombia's polity and economy and despoils its ecology, empowers US proxies to conduct US foreign policy in the most brutal ways, and empowers US elites to lock down the most vulnerable segments of the US population -- that's 'called Colombian guerrillas promoting narco-terrorism'.

For the consistency files

Anne Petter, a Jewish-American ISM activist, was allowed to enter Israel after a month in detention. Jamie Spector, a Jewish American ISM activist, was not -- and was deported instead.

Back with three cases

There appear to be some glitches (I still get the odd 'Action Canceled' and 'This Page Cannot Be Displayed' when trying to do things) and some casualties (notably all the thoughtful comments and discussions we've had below these blog posts -- how are commentors ever supposed to trust again?) but it appears that we are back in the blogosphere. With a moment to comment on three different Israel/Palestine related cases.

The first is only peripherally related to Palestine, or rather, its relationship to Palestine is ambiguous and the full extent is unknown. It is of a resolution to the Daniel Freeman-Maloy case. Readers might recall this student who was expelled from his campus for 'unauthorized use of a sound amplification device'. Rather flimsy, no? Well the courts thought so, and essentially struck down the University's ruling. The University is not sorry, according to their spokesperson Nancy White. Though I can't help but suspect that White's comment was an attempt at satire: "We think we've made our point, and people are now very well aware that the university is quite serious about following the code of conduct." Since the University has violated its own procedures and has shown to be anything but serious about following any kind of rational procedures, no other interpretation than the comical one can follow.

Now that we've had our laughs, though, there are more serious matters.

Technical difficulties...

This blog is experiencing technical difficulties. Were it not, I would have definitely pointed out Forrest Hylton's post on the Bolivian referendum, in which he argues that the result of that referendum is neither as bad for the movements nor as good for the government as it looks. I would also probably have pointed out Vijay Prashad's review of Bob Jensen's review of F9/11. I linked to Jensen's review because his criticisms were right -- but Vijay's views about the film are much closer to my own.

Another thing I would be doing if the blogs were not in technical difficulty is following the story in Gaza and the trouble in the Occupied Territories, with parts of the Palestinian Authority as well as other political groups revolting against the PA. I would have pointed out other things too -- like the UN resolution on the Wall, which Israel is of course going to ignore; the scaled-up violence in Nablus, with brutal killings right in front of internationals and cameras, assassinations in Jenin and Gaza...

And a lot of other things besides. But, since the blog is experiencing technical difficulties, I'll hold off and hope things get better soon.

Required reading on Israel/Palestine

From two days ago, a piece by Greg Philo containing excerpts and summary from a book of the same name, Bad News from Israel, is just a must-read. The degree to which people are deliberately propagandized in the West on this issue is amazing, and this is the first book that systematically studies the process. Chomsky's Fateful Triangle tears the arguments apart, and is equally indispensable, but the work of Philo et al. has a different program and does it very well. Read the essay, get the book.

What else in West Asia? It seems another Palestinian Prime Minister has bitten the dust, or wants to, anyway. It's hard to know what a Palestinian PM can really do, hard not to understand why successive ones keep resigning. The only mystery is that they can still find people to take the job. Someone at IMEMC has taken the trouble to do a body count in one town in Gaza over the past two weeks: 13 dead, 82 wounded. I have a picture from the same town of the aftermath of Israel's war against oranges in the region. There was also another assassination of a high-profile Palestinian leader in Jenin.

A Pillar Of Corporate Life

One can never accuse Riggs Bank of lacking a global perspective. Indeed, the American financial institution’s expansive scope of malfeasance makes it an international player on the corrupt corporate scene. With dubious deals in Saudi Arabia, Chile and Equatorial Guinea, Riggs’ underhanded schemes span three continents – what an equal opportunity brigand. Where to begin?

A recent Senate inquiry into the bank’s dealings in Chile alleges that Riggs helped U.S. dictatorial darling Augusto Pinochet hide millions of dollars in the Washington, DC-based bank’s coffers between 1994 and 2002. The millions of dollars were apparently transferred from his London account into Riggs’ at the same time Pinochet’s henchmen were claiming the dictator didn’t have enough money to pay for legal fees and fines. Mind you, throughout the years Riggs serviced Pinochet, he was under a world-wide court order to keep his assets frozen and was being (finally) investigated for the countless human rights abuses he inflicted on the Chilean population. Riggs, of course, didn’t have a problem with that - his millions fattened their balance sheet. The Senate panel concluded that Riggs “appeared to take active steps to hide the Pinochet relationship from bank examiners." Now that shows a bank’s commitment to its clients, no?

Coups are good for sweatshops

Here's a good one that came via the Dominion. Apparently Gildan Activewear, one of the world's leading T-shirt manufacturers, is closing its high-cost Honduras operation and moving the production to -- Haiti! Why? The Honduran workers have been trying to unionize. After Gildan's entry in Haiti and Nicaragua, Honduras became high-cost! Lucky for Haiti, its new police force (suspiciously like the old police force) and international occupation forces somehow seem to help it stay a low-cost place to make shirts.

You can read a little more about our friends at Gildan in this article by Stephen Kerr about Canada's role in the Haitian coup.

The dictator-in-the-making meets the democrat

I can't imagine two people who hate what one another stand for more completely than Hugo Chavez and Alvaro Uribe. And yet, here they are, meeting, signing accords in principle, and even joking about life and death matters.

The idea is, as I blogged yesterday, for Venezuela to export its gas through Colombia, which is sort of the portal between the Americas. And apparently, not only were the discussions positive, but Uribe was trying to out-Bolivarian Chavez, saying: "Any work we can think of doing today was already been done by the Liberator (Bolivar)... today, 200 years later, we are trying to make these things happen, so that history doesn't pass us by." He apparently said it was time to leave rhetoric behind and said Chavez was "talking and doing, taking advantage of his vigor and dynamism."

(And I am still wondering why Uribe didn't wait a month to see how the recall vote went...)

But wait -- it gets even better!

Uribe visits Chavez!

So in spite of all the strange border incidents of the past year and a half, Colombian paramilitary raids into Venezuela, attempted deployment of Colombian tanks against Venezuela, displacements of Colombians to Venezuela due to paramilitary massacres, all the while Colombia accusing Venezuela of aggression, it seems that Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe Velez is in Venezuela right now for meetings with Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Frias. On the agenda: a 205km, $98 million natural gas pipeline project that will cross both countries and make it possible for countries to export gas through Central America.

Again, for all the trouble on the border, it's important to remember that these two countries are very closely linked, as are the fates of their peoples, politically, geographically, culturally, historically. They do $2.5 billion USD of business per year. There are some 2 million Colombians in Venezuela.

If there is any news of what was discussed at the meeting tomorrow, I'll report it here.

Strategy session

I've been wondering about a lot of different things lately.

I have thought of myself as an opponent of nation-states and national 'sovereignty', for example. I believed that nationalism (or what Basil Davidson called 'nation-statism' in his useful book 'The Black Man's Burden') was usually exclusive (in North America, for example, it is often a kind of settler ideology that excludes both exploited immigrants, displaced indigenous people, and african-americans) and often destructive. I thought of national 'sovereignty' as an excuse used by elites to do terrible things to their populations. I made some of these arguments in an interview with Mike Albert.

But recently, I've been thinking about the relationship between nationalism and imperialism, and it seems to me that in this world national sovereignty is one of the only possible political defenses against imperialism that has some power. You can attack Colombia's Uribe or Israel's Sharon for their vicious mobilization of nationalism for murderous purposes. But you can't forget that Venezuela's 'proceso', or Bolivia's movements, are about developing a country for the benefit of the people of that country -- a nationalist idea, that ends up being an anti-imperialist idea. And indeed, it seems to me that the strongest grounds for opposing the US occupation of Iraq (or the coup in Haiti) is the nationalist idea of "Iraq for the Iraqis." Tricky there, too, because there are losers in these national projects -- certainly Saddam's version of nationalism was a horrific one for those excluded from his notion of the national identity.

Lives that matter...

Making the blog rounds (well, in this case the blob rounds), I came across various posts of David Peterson's on Israel's Wall and the World Court ruling. This one is a good example. As is David's wont, he provides the full article with his blob. But the quote he pulled out, from our old friend Netanyahu, is quite telling:

"Because the court's decision makes a mockery of Israel's right to defend itself, the government of Israel will ignore it. Israel will never sacrifice Jewish life on the debased altar of ''international justice.''

I added the emphasis on 'Jewish life'. I thought it quite telling. Kind of reminds me of Howard Dean saying that 400 PEOPLE had been killed in the Iraq War, when thousands of Iraqis had already been killed.

Unfortunately for Palestinians, Israel is willing to sacrifice Palestinian life on the debased altar of 'security'. For example, the life of Mahmoud Khalafallah, a 75 year old man who was crushed in his house by an Israeli bulldozer. Unfortunately for Jewish activists against the occupation, Israel is willing to sacrifice even their 'right' to enter Israel to prevent protest against the wall, as Jamie Spector learned when she tried to join the ISM there.

Of Latin American Referenda

Referendum fever is on in Venezuela, with 1.4 million people having registered to vote in the referendum, setting new records for voter registration in a place where records of participation have been repeatedly broken in recent years. There are now 14 million Venezuelans who are able to vote on August 15 -- earlier this year, there were 12.5 million, according to the Electoral Council's figures. Remember that Chavez was re-elected with 3.7 million votes in 2000. As I understand it, the opposition needs to either beat that number or beat the number of 'No' voters in the recall vote, whichever is higher. The population of the country is 24 million (according to this El Tiempo article I'm quoting from -- I thought it was 22 million).

Venezuela has formally asked the US to stop helping the coup plotters and the 'opposition'.

But Venezuelans aren't the only people going to a major referendum soon. There's also Bolivia.

Iraq news

The Phillippines is thinking of withdrawing its token troops involved in the US occupation of Iraq, due to the kidnapping and threat against a Filipino national there. If you take a look at the article, there is a breakdown of the troops in Iraq by country. I knew that the 'coalition' was a sham, but I was surprised that the numbers of troops from countries other than the US was so low. While the Filipino withdrawal is good for Filipinos and Iraqis, Australians are stepping in to fill the breach. The Australian elections, coming up, it seems aren't going to give Australians a chance to punish their regime for its warmongering. If you can stomach the unsophisticated propaganda, you can read about how the Iraqi insurgents have been attacking Abu Ghraib prison.

As usual, much of the above via News Insider.

Sudan blogs and info

The Sudan continues to be a painful horror. In the comments section of this blog, Richard Hindes suggested two good sources. Darfur Info is good. So is the 'Passion of the Present' blog. Following that one will take you to a resource with daily updates, a set of introductory materials (including a useful HRW report), and, notably, yet another blog. This one, by Ingrid Jones, has an interesting piece on oil interests that are in the background of this massacre/displacement.

If you asked me to speculate (someone did recently) I suspect that the massacres in Darfur are linked to the peace accord between the Sudanese regime and the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) led by John Garang. The SPLA was the big and powerful rebel group in the country. Its signing a peace accord with the government and agreeing to a power-sharing formula could have freed the regime to unleash its militias against Darfur. It could be a matter of rewarding the militias for their service against the SPLA.

I will look into this further, and report on what I find. Anyone who has done more research and wants to comment is welcome.

Radical advice column?

Someone wrote me today asking for some advice about what to study in school, what to do in life, etc. This is a rare occurrence, but it isn't so rare that I haven't thought about it. I know I looked around for guidance a lot when I was younger (hell, I would happily accept some now too!). People usually ask things like -- I have an opportunity to study, what should I study? I have an opportunity to travel, what should I do with it? How can I learn more about how to change the world? Of course, the answers to all of these questions depends a great deal on the talents, interests, skills, and circumstances of the person asking. But even that answer alone is a bit of guidance that would have been useful for me when I was wondering what to do...

In terms of reading, I found Peter Kropotkin's 'Appeal to the Young' to be a very nice essay. More recently, George Monbiot wrote a nice piece, aimed also at privileged youth who have opportunities most can't dream of (as Kropotkin's is aimed) and as such are in a position to ask for advice. My own little pep talk for young people (actually young social democrats who I was trying to radicalize) is here. For people heading into professional schools or work, I can't recommend Jeff Schmidt's Disciplined Minds enough. If you want to know how your professional training will warp your mind and turn you into a privileged caste without empathy for working people or the public good, read this book. Better, Schmidt provides advice and ideas on how to resist the indoctrination.

That might have turned out to be more of a reading list than an advice column. Reading advice columns (I won't tell you which ones) is a guilty pleasure of mine, I have to admit. A genuine radical advice column would actually be fun... though I suppose if radicals have a problem it's that they are keener to give advice than to ask it... that would seem to be a blog post for another day, though.

For today, I'll quote you George Monbiot's last line from the essay linked above: "You know you have only one life. You know it is a precious, extraordinary, unrepeatable thing: the product of billions of years of serendipity and evolution. So why waste it by handing it over to the living dead?"

The World Court ruling

The world court ruling against Israel's apartheid wall is, as Samer Elatrash describes, a good ruling. By now, people have pointed out that the World Court's moral suasion didn't count for much when it ruled against the US for its terrorist war against Nicaragua in the 1980s.

You will know that something has changed in the world when a bombing that kills an Israeli soldier, as one did today, isn't presented as 'proof' that the wall needs to exist, as opposed to, say, proof that the wall doesn't provide security (whereas a political solution that didn't involve murdering and starving Palestinians might). When Israel killed 4 people in Gaza yesterday with a missile attack the media, when it presented it at all, presented it as 'reprisal' or 'attacks on militants'. Today's bombing in Israel, however, was uncaused, or just 'proof' that Israel needs to ignore the World Court ruling. There are very few parts of the world that 'matter', after all -- the media opinion-makers, the US elite, some parts of the public -- and they are all willing to help Israel ignore the world, so long as there aren't political forces capable of enforcing the world's, or in this case the world court's, opinion.