Protest « Tikkunista!

3. Israel: Dramatic Changes

May-18-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Two major developments in Israel: Netanyahu ditches the far-right for the centre-right, and manages to survive without an election, and the Palestinian hunger-strikers wins most of what they wanted. We offer two reports on each.

* The Netanyahu-Mofaz Pact Uri Avnery Counterpunch

THE MASTER magician has drawn another rabbit from his top hat. A real and very lively rabbit. He has confounded everybody, including the leaders of all parties, the top political pundits and his own cabinet ministers. He has also shown that in politics, everything can change – literally – overnight.

At 2 a.m. the Knesset was busy putting the finishing touches to a law to dissolve itself – condemning half of its members to political oblivion. At 3 a.m. there was a huge new government coalition. No elections, thank you very much.

An operetta in 5 acts.

Act One: Everything tranquil. Public opinion polls show Binyamin Netanyahu in absolute control. His popularity is approaching 50%; nobody else’s even approaches 20%. The largest party in the Knesset, Kadima, sinks in the polls from 28 seats to 11, with all indications that it will continue to fall. Its new leader, former Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz, gets even less points as candidate for Prime Minister. Netanyahu could sun himself on the roof of his luxury villa and contemplate the future with equanimity. All is well in the best of all Jewish states….

* New Israeli Government Likely Won’t Launch Iran Attack Juan Cole Informed Comment

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu moved from the far right to just the Right on Tuesday by bringing into his government the center-right Kadima Party, led by Shaul Mofaz.

Mofaz has been sharply critical of reported plans by Netanyahu and his defense minister Ehud Barak, to launch a go-it-alone military attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. Mofaz is not opposed to military action against Iran in and of itself, but wants it coordinated with the United States. He last week aligned himself with the views of former Israel domestic intelligence head Yuval Diskin, who strongly opposed a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran and who attacked Netanyahu as erratic. Mofaz said, “Let President Obama handle Iran. We can trust him…”

Having Mofaz in the cabinet makes Netanyahu less dependent on extreme hawks, and makes it highly unlikely that Israel will act on its own against Iran.

* Many Winners, Few Losers In Deal To End Palestinian Prisoners’ Hunger Strike Haaretz Daily Newspaper

The agreement that brought the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike to an end on Monday, alongside a decision to return 100 bodies of Palestinian terrorists buried in Israel, as a gesture to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, were less about possible progress in peace attempts as much as they were about an Israeli effort to preserve the relative silence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Despite the fact that peace negotiations aren’t likely to restart, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Israel are all interested in getting rid of anything that could pose a threat to stability in the region. And so, while the Middle East continues burning (Bahrain, Syria, Lebanon and others), and on a day that was once considered highly likely to draw violent confrontations in the Palestinian territories, the Shin Bet and prisoner’s leadership managed to reach a deal that essentially had many winners and few losers.

The Shin Bet has emphasized their significant “achievement” in the deal: having the Palestinian prisoners sign that they will not return to terrorist activities within the prison walls. One does not need to be a security analyst to understand that despite the deal, at least some of them will repeatedly engage in terrorist activity. Their real achievement lies elsewhere: the fact they could neutralize the ticking bomb of 1,500 hunger-striking prisoners.

* In Support of the “Battle of the Empty Stomachs” Rabbi Brant Rosen

After nearly a full month of fasting, around 2,000 Palestinian political prisoners ended last night their mass hunger strike upon reaching an agreement with the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) to attain certain core demands…This is heartening news to be sure, particularly for the families of the strikers. But on an even deeper level, this deal is a testimony to the astonishing moral/political power of fasting in response to oppression.

Hunger striking is, of course, is an ancient time-honored form of protest. As a Jew, I’m particularly mindful that the Book of Isaiah passionately connects the act of fasting to the pursuit of justice:

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

Indeed, it is critical that we understand that the Palestinians’ “Battle of the Empty Stomachs” as part of this long and honorable tradition of nonviolent resistance. As we have seen from the events of the past several months, it has lasted so long largely because it is a tactic that works.

5. Prisons, and Profits

May-18-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: A reminder: here’s last month’s graphic of the number of people incarcerated in the US. When crime is dropping, why are more people in prison? Because it pays, just as the slave trade paid. And of course, it targets the same people. A tremendous evil and a brutal destruction of what might be achieved: the closing article from the Atlantic has an excellent infographic on the human and financial cost of this system.

* Private Prison Corporations Are Modern Day Slave Traders AlterNet

The nation’s largest private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America, is on a buying spree. With a war chest of $250 million, the corporation, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, earlier this year sent letters to 48 states, offering to buy their prisons outright. To ensure their profitability, the corporation insists that it be guaranteed that the prisons be kept at least 90 percent full. Plus, the corporate jailers demand a 20-year management contract, on top of the profits they expect to extract by spending less money per prisoner.

…The attempted prison grab is also defensive in nature. If private companies can gain both ownership and management of enough prisons, they can set the prices without open-bid competition for prison services, creating a guaranteed cost-plus monopoly like that which exists between the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex. But, for a better analogy, we must go back to the American slave system, a thoroughly capitalist enterprise that reduced human beings to units of labor and sale… Investors are warned that profits would go down if the demand for prisoners declines. That is, if the world’s largest police state shrinks, so does the corporate bottom line. Dangers to profitability include “relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws.” The corporation spells it out: “any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.”

At the Corrections Corporation of America, human freedom is a dirty word.

* Louisiana Is The World’s Prison Capital nola

The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana’s incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran’s, seven times China’s and 10 times Germany’s. The hidden engine behind the state’s well-oiled prison machine is cold, hard cash. A majority of Louisiana inmates are housed in for-profit facilities, which must be supplied with a constant influx of human beings or a $182 million industry will go bankrupt.

Several homegrown private prison companies command a slice of the market. But in a uniquely Louisiana twist, most prison entrepreneurs are rural sheriffs, who hold tremendous sway in remote parishes like Madison, Avoyelles, East Carroll and Concordia. A good portion of Louisiana law enforcement is financed with dollars legally skimmed off the top of prison operations. If the inmate count dips, sheriffs bleed money. Their constituents lose jobs. The prison lobby ensures this does not happen by thwarting nearly every reform that could result in fewer people behind bars.

* One Year of Prison Costs More Than One Year at Princeton Atlantic Magazine

One year at Princeton University: $37,000. One year at a New Jersey state prison: $44,000. Prison and college “are the two most divergent paths one can take in life,” Joseph Staten, an info-graphic researcher with Public Administration, says. Whereas one is a positive experience that increases lifetime earning potential, the other is a near dead end, which is why Staten found it striking that the lion’s share of government funding goes toward incarceration…..

[T]his chart helps illustrate a large discrepancy in this country: America has the highest incarceration rate by population, but is only 6th in the world when it comes to college degrees. Our government’s spending reflects that fact accordingly.

10. Images of Resistance

May-18-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: OK, I hear you ask. Do you mean resistance, as in politics? Or resistance as in wind resistance? Or get out of my way resistance? Or merely physical friction type resistance? Which is it? Well, we have them all! Aren’t you lucky….

* May Day Around the World In Focus – The Atlantic

* Ways of the Wind The Big Picture

* Truck Meets Bus at Hairpin Curve Youtube

* Skating The Big Picture

6. Followups

May-04-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: The bird is puzzled. Why has Followups been moved? The editor chirps up in response: it’s not the most important, so why bury the lead? In future issues Followups will hover somewhere between the political and the rest. This week we follow up on the look at the Canadian people’s swing to the left (as distinct to their government), at hockey players’ swings to the head, and at Noam Chomsky’s observations about the political landscape’s swing to Occupy. Of note is that our hockey commentary is by Adam Gopnik, who delivered the fourth of last year’s Massey lectures as a paean to the nobility of hockey.

* Canada’s Socially Progressive Values Now Stretch From Coast To Coast Den Tandt Montreal Gazette

An extraordinary transformation has occurred, or more precisely appeared above the waterline. It is a change so epochal, so profound, you’d think Canadians would be in the streets, cheering. But then, this is Canada: Celebratory back patting is not our cup of tea.

The big news, which will never make a bold headline, is just this: Across this country, from coast to coast to coast, there is now a nearly unanimous view that the old, divisive, angry debates about matters of individual faith and morals are over. And we’re not going back there. Not any time soon, probably not ever.

Discrimination based on race and gender and sexual orientation are history, too, for the most part. There are still racists, homophobes and gender-haters in Canada, of course. And there are aberrations (Afro-centric schools in Toronto, for example). But the shared expectation of equality under the law for all, is now so firmly embedded as to be foundational. This is something interesting, unique — and new.

We actually, finally may be living in a just society, as various past prime ministers dreamt we one day would. Not only that, but we live in a society in which the shared idea of equal rights spans the political spectrum, and also our country’s vast geography.

Too Pollyannaish by half? It sounds it. But consider the facts on the ground….

* Violence in Hockey Adam Gopnik The New Yorker

What more is there to be said about the plague of violence in hockey this spring? Last Sunday, after watching my suddenly resurgent—should that be insurgent?—Chelsea Blues come back and beat Tottenham to make one more F.A. Cup Final, I turned on the Penguins-Flyers game late, and was not entirely surprised to see that the two teams were brawling. But then, as the Flyer’s Hartnell took a “victory” turn around the ice, a sudden howl went up from the crowd, and the usually suave Doc Emrick said glumly, “The crowd is responding to a Hulk Hogan video they’re showing.” And I thought: it’s come to this? Hockey, which I had spent the past year arguing at length, on Canadian radio, is the most intrinsically beautiful and strategically lithe of all sports, now cynically samples pro wrestling to stir up a crowd? My true blue (or red and white) Canadian wife, who comes from a true hockey playing family—her great uncle is actually in the Hockey Hall of Fame—saw what was happening, shuddered, and walked away.

“The most vicious and, perhaps, disgraceful first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs” was the verdict of Stu Hackel, the former director of broadcasting for the N.H.L., and this is now close to a universal view—if you except Don Cherry and Mike Milbury, who may not actually live in this universe, but rather in some other, remote dimension, where it is forever 1959.

* What Next for Occupy? Noam Chomsky The Guardian

Q: We are interested in learning what your position is on mainstream filtering, the repression of civil liberties, and the role of money and politics as they relate to Occupy and the future of America.

A: Coverage of Occupy has been mixed. At first it was dismissive, making fun of people involved as if they were just silly kids playing games and so on. But coverage changed. In fact, one of the really remarkable and almost spectacular successes of the Occupy movement is that it has simply changed the entire framework of discussion of many issues. There were things that were sort of known, but in the margins, hidden, which are now right up front – such as the imagery of the 99% and 1%; and the dramatic facts of sharply rising inequality over the past roughly 30 years, with wealth being concentrated in actually a small fraction of 1% of the population.

For the majority, real incomes have pretty much stagnated, sometimes declined. Benefits have also declined and work hours have gone up, and so on. It’s not third world misery, but it’s not what it ought to be in a rich society, the richest in the world, in fact, with plenty of wealth around, which people can see, just not in their pockets. All of this has now been brought to the fore. You can say that it’s now almost a standard framework of discussion. Even the terminology is accepted. That’s a big shift.

5. Creative Protests

Apr-13-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: If you’re around Toronto, join a flash mob this Tuesday! An abortion clinic fights back when the landlord’s children start becoming targets. Mary Robinette found that the first line of her new book had been dropped, and protested by running a contest on her blog post in which you identify famous books by their second lines. (Your editor got 90%, and felt very pleased.) The result was her blog has gotten huge publicity, and her “disaster” has sold way more books than a regular release. When life gives you sars, make sarsaparilla.

* Cut Military Spending; Fund Human Needs Flash Mob Plan

At 5 pm, Tuesday April 17, be at the NW corner of Dundas Square in Toronto. (Bring NO PROPS, please!)

a) at the sound of the first whistle, begin PANTOMIMING shooting a machine gun into the air. Continue until:

b) at the sound of the second whistle, break the imaginary gun over your knee, throw it to the ground and begin stomping on it. Continue until:

c) the sound of the third whistle. Stop and walk away.

This performance will be repeated at 5:30 pm at the north food court of Eaton Centre.

(to find the food court, go down escalators inside the Eaton Centre entrance at the NE corner of Dundas and Yonge.)

The performance will be repeated at 6 pm at the NE corner of Bay and Queen Streets (at the old City Hall.)

Any questions? Email Metta Spencer

* A Clinic’s Landlord Turns The Tables On Anti-Abortion Protesters Washington Post

The abortion conflict has become a way of life for Stave. He’s not just a landlord. The clinic was operated by his father, who was a doctor. Then his sister managed it. “I’ve been a member of this fight since Roe v. Wade, since I was 5 years old,” he said. The office was firebombed when he was a kid, and protesters gathered outside the family home as he was growing up. So he’s no stranger to the harassment and bullying of doctors and their families.

…But his tormentors crossed the line last fall when a big group showed up at his daughter’s middle school on the first day of classes and again at back-to-school night. They had signs displaying his name and contact information as well as those gory images of the fetuses….Soon after that, the harassing calls started coming to his home. By the dozens, at all hours. Friends asked him how they could help. He began to take down the names and phone numbers of people who made unwanted calls. And he gave the information to his friends and asked them to call these folks back.

“In a very calm, very respectful voice, they said that the Stave family thanks you for your prayers,” he said. “They cannot terminate the lease, and they do not want to. They support women’s rights.” This started with a dozen or so friends, and then it grew. Soon, more than a thousand volunteers were dialing. If they could find the information, Stave’s supporters would ask during the callbacks how the children in the family were doing and mention their names and the names of their schools. “And then,” Stave said, “we’d tell them that we bless their home on such and such street,” giving the address. The family of a protester who called Stave’s home could get up to 5,000 calls in return.

* What Happened To My Novel’s First Sentence? Mary Robinette Kowal

We talk a lot about how important the first line in a novel is. Everyone knows the famous ones, like “Call me Ishmael.”

Imagine what would happen if the unthinkable occurred. What if the first line were accidentally omitted by the typesetter? Would Moby Dick have been the same if it started, ”Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.” I’ve got a quiz for you to try your hand at identifying ten famous books by their second lines.

It turns out, that in most cases, it’s not always as devastating as one would think. The books are still recognizable and the story is intact. That’s good. That’s very reassuring.

Because that’s what has happened to Glamour in Glass.

When my novel comes out tomorrow, it will be missing the first line. We don’t know how it happened yet, since the last time my editor and I looked at it, the sentence was there. Somehow, that sentence got omitted between here and the printer. The electronic version is being corrected and future editions will have that line, but for now… there are some collector’s editions out there.

2. The Death of Western Freedoms

Apr-07-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Magna Carta (the right to an immediate trial by ones peers) has now been repealed in both the US and UK, and one suspects Canada isn’t far behind. In the US, it came in the form of the NDAA, an act signed into law by Obama, in which (as Wikipedia says) The detention section… includes the power to detain any person “who was part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners...without trial, until the end of the hostilities”. If the closing cartoon in this section seems a bit harsh, you’re probably right. But that doesn’t make it unfair.

* Someone You Love: Coming to a Gulag Near You Chris Hedges NationofChange

The security and surveillance state does not deal in nuance or ambiguity. Its millions of agents, intelligence gatherers, spies, clandestine operatives, analysts and armed paramilitary units live in a binary world of opposites, of good and evil, black and white, opponent and ally. There is nothing between. You are for us or against us. You are a patriot or an enemy of freedom. You either embrace the crusade to physically eradicate evildoers from the face of the Earth or you are an Islamic terrorist, a collaborator or an unwitting tool of terrorists. And now that we have created this monster it will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to free ourselves from it. Our 16 national intelligence agencies and army of private contractors feed on paranoia, rumor, rampant careerism, demonization of critical free speech and often invented narratives. They justify their existence, and their consuming of vast governmental resources, by turning even the banal and the mundane into a potential threat. And by the time they finish, the nation will be a gulag.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), … signed into law by President Barack Obama last Dec. 31, puts into the hands of people with no discernible understanding of legitimate dissent the power to use the military to deny due process to all deemed to be terrorists, or terrorist sympathizers, and hold them indefinitely in military detention. The deliberate obtuseness of the NDAA’s language, which defines “covered persons” as those who “substantially supported” al-Qaida, the Taliban or “associated forces,” makes all Americans, in the eyes of our expanding homeland security apparatus, potential terrorists.

* Justices Approve Strip-Searches for Any Offense New York Times

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that officials may strip-search people arrested for any offense, however minor, before admitting them to jails even if the officials have no reason to suspect the presence of contraband.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, joined by the court’s conservative wing, wrote that courts are in no position to second-guess the judgments of correctional officials who must consider not only the possibility of smuggled weapons and drugs, but also public health and information about gang affiliations.

“Every detainee who will be admitted to the general population may be required to undergo a close visual inspection while undressed,” Justice Kennedy wrote, adding that about 13 million people are admitted each year to the nation’s jails.

* Britain’s Plan To Expand State Surveillance Causes Furor LA Times

The British government is scrambling to fend off accusations of trying to turn the country into a virtual police state with plans to conduct some trials in secret and allow authorities to track the phone calls, emails, text messages and online activity of the entire population.

Civil liberties advocates are aghast over revelations this week that officials are preparing to introduce legislation to expand state surveillance in the interests of national security. Separately, the government of Prime Minister David Cameron is proposing that certain civil court proceedings take place behind closed doors if sensitive matters of intelligence are involved. Together, the moves are being seen by many Britons, including members of Cameron’s own Conservative Party, as another attack on freedom and privacy in a country where security cameras are already ubiquitous and police enjoy strong counter-terrorism powers.

* Obama signing NDAA Act

Mar-02-2012 | Comments (0)

2. On the Continued Existence of Israel

Bird’s Eye: Two Israelis of note worry about whether Israel can continue to exist as a Jewish democratic country, while BDS supporter Norman Finklestein (who’s he?) launches a blistering attack on the BDS movement.

* The Suicide State Uri Avnery Counterpunch

After 1967, another much less funny joke took its place.

It goes like this: many Israelis ask God for their state to be Jewish and democratic, and that it will include the entire country between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. That is too much even for the Almighty. So he asks them to choose between a state that is Jewish and democratic but only in part of the country, or a state in all the country that is Jewish but not democratic, or a state in the entire country that is democratic but not Jewish…..This is the choice facing us today as it did almost 45 years ago. It has only become more sharply defined.

…The current government is determined to prevent any peace that would compel it to give up any part of the occupied territories (22% of pre-1948 Palestine). There is no one around who would compel them to do so.

What remains? A state that is either non-democratic or non-Jewish.

* Come Visit Israel While You Can Bradley Burston Haaretz

I have a nephew who’s never seen Israel. I have young cousins, and friends and children of friends, who have never been here, but who have long wanted to come visit.

I want them to come soon. Before it’s all gone.

The Israel I want them to see is dying by the day.

It’s the Israel I saw when I myself once came to visit. A place which had a calm but breathtaking belief in a better future. A place that still had a shot at just that. It was this Israel that convinced me to stay.

This is this Israel that this government, and this parliament, has decided, once and for all, to finish off, precept by democratic precept. As they see it, the sooner, the quieter, and the more permanently, the better.

My nephew is going to have to hurry.

I want him to see what’s left of a place of quietly extraordinary people who dreamed of decency and peace, who envisioned making a place in the world where both we and our immediate neighbors could live together: no longer hated, no longer hating.

It was a place where there was an overriding belief that democracy was sacred, that minority rights should be respected more and more, rather than less and ultimately not at all.

* Norman Finklestein on BDS Youtube 5 min Transcript below film

I’ve earned my right to speak my mind, and I’m not going to tolerate what I think is silliness, childishness, and a lot of leftist posturing.
…I support the BDS. But I said it will never reach a broad public until and unless they’re explicit in their goal. And their goal has to include the recognition of Israel or it’s a nonstarter. It won’t reach the public because the moment you go out there Israel will start to say “What about us?”, and “They won’t recognize our right” and in fact that’s correct. You can’t answer the Israelis on that because they’re making a statement that’s factually correct.

There’s no Israel. That’s what it’s really about. And you think you’re fooling anybody. You think you’re so clever that people can’t figure that out for themselves? No they understand the arithmetic perfectly well. Are you going to reach a broad public which is going to hear the Israeli side ‘they want to destroy us?’ No you’re not. And frankly you know what? You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t read a broad public because you’re dishonest. And I wouldn’t trust those people if I had to live in this state. I wouldn’t. It’s dishonesty. (good response to NF here)

2. Fighting the Power: Protest World Wide

Feb-24-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Three related stories explore people fighting their rulers. While the Tibetan story (and the accompanying video) is particularly heroic journalism, all three show why the Guardian remains an invaluable source of news.

* Tibetan Acts Of Self-Immolation Rise The Guardian

On the roof of the world, Chinese paramilitaries are trying to snuff out Tibetan resistance to Beijing’s rule with spiked batons, semi-automatic weapons and fire extinguishers. Every 20 metres along the main road of Aba, the remote town on the Tibetan plateau that is at the heart of the current wave of protests, police officers and communist officials wearing red armbands look out for potential protesters. Dozens more paramilitaries sit in ranks outside shops and restaurants in an intimidating show of force. At the nearby Kirti monastery, Chinese officers in fire trucks keep a close eye on pilgrims prostrating themselves, in case their devotion turns to immolation.

Outsiders are not supposed to see this. The Chinese authorities have gone to great lengths to block access to Aba, in north-western Sichuan, which is home to more than half the 23 monks, nuns and lay Buddhists who have set fire to themselves in acts of defiance aimed at the Chinese Communist party in the past two years. The authorities have blocked internet and mobile phone signals. Checkpoints have been set up on surrounding roads to keep outside observers, particularly foreign journalists, away. But after a 10-hour drive through mountain valleys and snow-covered plains, the Guardian was able to get into Aba and witness how the authorities are trying to quell dissent with security, propaganda and “re-education” campaigns. These tactics have had little success.

* Greece Lies Bankrupt, Humiliated And Ablaze The Guardian

Greece got rid of its military dictators in July 1974. But almost four decades later, as the debt-stricken country endures a crisis that some might say is almost as bad as the long dark night of their rule, it is still impossible to protest in the cradle of democracy. When tens of thousands of Greeks tried to demonstrate peacefully in front of the large sandstone parliament building on Sunday night, they were met almost immediately with volleys of teargas. The toxic fumes were the authorities’ answer not only to the popular opposition unleashed by the prospect of yet more austerity but the fear that underpins it. For angst, like uncertainty, is now haunting Greece.

What followed was textbook chaos: a familiar mix of young punks with no relation to ordinary protesters going on the rampage, setting fire to banks, stores and cafes. Scenes of bedlam and mayhem that ensured the event taking place inside the Athens parliament – a ballot on deeply unpopular measures in return for the rescue funds that will keep bankruptcy at bay – was thoroughly drowned out.

* Belarus Dissidents Defy KGB The Guardian

Dania has a new game; he puts his bears in a car and drives them round the flat. When they reach their destination, he tells them: “This is your new prison.” Like his dad. Recently Dania, four, told his mother: “Mummy, maybe we should move to London.” A year ago the Belarus authorities threatened to take the boy into care, but in any case Irina Khalip cannot leave Minsk, where she is under house arrest….The only place Khalip can go is Vitebsk, in the east. Since November her husband, Andrei Sannikov, has been imprisoned there. Sentenced to five years, he was one of the opposition candidates who ran against Alexander Lukashenko in the December 2010 presidential election, the overture to the worst clampdown in 20 years.

Elected with an 80% share of the poll, the president crushed the feeble hopes of liberalisation fed by the European Union. Prosecuted for “massive disturbance of public order”, the main opposition leaders were held responsible for sporadic outbursts of violence on the night of the election’s first round. Almost 30,000 massed in the capital, Minsk, to protest against vote-rigging, but the gathering was brutally dispersed. Defying the regime is a dangerous pursuit….

4. US Decline: As Seen By Chomsky

Feb-17-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Every website I went to this week had reposts of these two major pieces by Chomsky. That’s a slight hyperbole, but Google reports over 1000 reposts already of these two. As always, Noam is scathing, cogent, and specific about the ongoing decline of the American Empire.

* “Losing” the World Noam Chomsky NationofChange

Significant anniversaries are solemnly commemorated — Japan’s attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, for example. Others are ignored, and we can often learn valuable lessons from them about what is likely to lie ahead. Right now, in fact.

At the moment, we are failing to commemorate the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s decision to launch the most destructive and murderous act of aggression of the post-World War II period: the invasion of South Vietnam, later all of Indochina, leaving millions dead and four countries devastated, with casualties still mounting from the long-term effects of drenching South Vietnam with some of the most lethal carcinogens known, undertaken to destroy ground cover and food crops. … The aggression later spread to the North, then to the remote peasant society of northern Laos, and finally to rural Cambodia, which was bombed at the stunning level of all allied air operations in the Pacific region during World War II, including the two atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

When the war ended eight horrendous years later, mainstream opinion was divided between those who described the war as a “noble cause” that could have been won with more dedication, and at the opposite extreme, the critics, to whom it was “a mistake” that proved too costly. By 1977, President Carter aroused little notice when he explained that we owe Vietnam “no debt” because “the destruction was mutual.”

There are important lessons in all this for today, even apart from another reminder that only the weak and defeated are called to account for their crimes. One lesson is that to understand what is happening we should attend not only to critical events of the real world, often dismissed from history, but also to what leaders and elite opinion believe, however tinged with fantasy.

* The Imperial Way Noam Chomsky Truthout

In the years of conscious, self-inflicted decline at home, “losses” continued to mount elsewhere. In the past decade, for the first time in 500 years, South America has taken successful steps to free itself from western domination, another serious loss. The region has moved towards integration, and has begun to address some of the terrible internal problems of societies ruled by mostly Europeanized elites, tiny islands of extreme wealth in a sea of misery. They have also rid themselves of all U.S. military bases and of IMF controls.

A newly formed organization, CELAC, includes all countries of the hemisphere apart from the U.S. and Canada. If it actually functions, that would be another step in American decline, in this case in what has always been regarded as “the backyard.”

Even more serious would be the loss of the MENA countries — Middle East/North Africa — which have been regarded by planners since the 1940s as “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.” Control of MENA energy reserves would yield “substantial control of the world,” in the words of the influential Roosevelt advisor A.A. Berle.

2. Economic Inequality & US Politics

Feb-03-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: If nothing else, one major success of the Occupy movement was to move the issue of income inequality to centre stage. It seems increasing likely that it will form the basis of the Democrats attack on the Republicans in this year’s election. We start with the view from the Guardian on this political shift, offer a 13 question quiz on economic inequality in the US (quiz hint: assume things are really bad), and end by examining Romney’s assertion that the very poor have a safety net. If they do, it’s too tattered to be any use.

* America Has The Opportunity To Usher In Radical New Political Era Michael Cohen The Observer

A year ago, American politics was abuzz with talk of out-of-control government spending and rising budget deficits. A year later, that has been replaced with discussions of inequality, declining middle-class income and even class warfare. David Axelrod, a key adviser to President Obama, has even gone so far as to say that these issues are the “central challenge of our time”. He’s not necessarily wrong, but perhaps just a bit late. Indeed, since the late 1970s, the disparity between rich and poor has exploded. Over the past three decades, the top 1% of families in the US has seen its income jump by a whopping 278%; for the middle 60% of Americans, its increase in income is less than 40%. Today, that top 1% earns 21% of all pre-tax income; 35 years ago, it was around 9%.

…For decades, Republicans have successfully portrayed the bogeyman of big government as the enemy of America’s middle class. The emerging focus on America’s glaring economic disparity – and its direct and deleterious impact on the middle class – suggests that Democrats are willing to use their own bogeyman of Wall Street greed in response. Indeed, it’s quite likely that the election will be a struggle between these two conflicting views. If Democrats are successful in such an endeavour, it has the potential to make 2012 more than just another election, but one that could shift the very narrative of American politics.

* A Social Justice Quiz Counterpunch (13 questions)

Q1. The combined pay of the 299 highest paid CEOs in the US is enough to support how many median salary jobs?

45,000? 83,000? 102,325?

Q2. The median net worth of black households in the US is $2,200. What is the median net worth of white households in the US?

$4,400? $44,000? $97,000?

* Romney: “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” Juan Cole Informed Comment

Romney says, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair , I’ll fix it.”

•Nearly 47 million people were in poverty in the US in 2010, up from 37.3 million in 2007. That was the 4th year in a row in which the number of people in poverty increased. In the 52 years that poverty rates have been being published, this is the largest number ever.

•20.5 million Americans are in “extreme poverty.” That is, their family income is $10,000 or less a year for a family of 4, about half that of the poverty line.

• There were 17.2 million households or about 1 in 7 that were food insecure in the US in 2010, the highest number ever recorded. (“Food insecure” means “at risk of going hungry.”)

3. Economic Inequality & World Politics

Feb-03-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Other countries have faced the problem of huge income inequality. Some have won the battle against it; some are currently engaged; some are taking up arms. We look at five different countries in three different continents, and how they managed the struggle against plutocracy.

* How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the ‘1 Percent’ Common Dreams

While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.

Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment. Unlike the Norwegians, the Swedes didn’t find oil, but that didn’t stop them from building what the latest CIA World Factbook calls “an enviable standard of living.

* Could Ecuador Be The Most Radical And Exciting Place On Earth? Jayati Ghosh The Guardian

Ecuador must be one of the most exciting places on Earth right now, in terms of working towards a new development paradigm. It shows how much can be achieved with political will, even in uncertain economic times. Just 10 years ago, Ecuador was more or less a basket case, a quintessential “banana republic” (it happens to be the world’s largest exporter of bananas), characterised by political instability, inequality, a poorly-performing economy, and the ever-looming impact of the US on its domestic politics.

…A major turning point came with the election of the economist Rafael Correa as president. After taking over in January 2007, his government ushered in a series of changes, based on a new constitution (the country’s 20th, approved in 2008) that was itself mandated by a popular referendum. A hallmark of the changes that have occurred since then is that major policies have first been put through the referendum process. This has given the government the political ability to take on major vested interests and powerful lobbies.

The government is now the most stable in recent times and will soon become the longest serving in Ecuador’s tumultuous history. The president’s approval ratings are well over 70%. All this is due to the reorientation of the government’s approach, made possible by a constitution remarkable for its recognition of human rights and the rights of nature, and its acceptance of plurality and cultural diversity.

*Dilma Rousseff, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, and Brazil’s Growth The New Yorker (abstract of article only)

Until recently, Brazil has been one of the most uneducated, economically imbalanced countries in the world. Now its economy is growing much more rapidly than that of the U.S. Twenty-eight million Brazilians have moved out of severe poverty in the past decade. The country has a balanced budget, low national debt, nearly full employment, and low inflation. It is, chaotically, democratic, and it has a free press. Brazil operates in ways we have been conditioned to think are incompatible with a successful free society. It isn’t just that Brazil is ruled by unapologetic former revolutionaries, many of whom—including the President—were imprisoned for years for being terrorists. The central government is far more powerful and intrusive than it is in the U.S. It is also far more corrupt. Crime is high, schools are weak, roads are bad, and ports barely function. And yet, among the world’s major economic powers, Brazil has achieved a rare trifecta: high growth, political freedom, and falling inequality.

* “Walking with the Comrades,” by Arundhati Roy The Washington Post

For over a decade now, the writer Arundhati Roy has served as India’s most powerful and articulate dissident, tearing that broad consensus to shreds. Through a slew of acerbic and impassioned essays, speeches and books, Roy has attacked both the country’s religious right wing and the barons of big business, and excoriated the Indian state’s political, economic and military policy. At times, Roy’s uncompromising hostility, penchant for tendentious theses and juxtapositions, and appropriation of multiple causes have earned her as much notoriety as respect.

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3. Israel: Dramatic Changes

5. Prisons, and Profits

10. Images of Resistance

6. Followups

5. Creative Protests

2. The Death of Western Freedoms

2. Fighting the Power: Protest World Wide

4. US Decline: As Seen By Chomsky

2. Economic Inequality & US Politics

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