Alex Jones and Antigovernment “Patriot” Groups

This past week, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released their annual spring report on Hate and Extremist groups in the United States. While “hate groups” have essentially leveled off, white supremacists groups like the neo-Nazis and other anti-Semitic groups like the Nation of Islam, “extremist groups”, antigovernment “Patriot”groups often tied to militias, are on the rise.

According to the SPLC’s spring 2013 Intelligence Report,  “Capping four years of explosive growth sparked by the election of America’s first black president and anger over the economy, the number of conspiracy-minded antigovernment “Patriot” groups reached an all-time high of 1,360 in 2012, while the number of hard-core hate groups remained above 1,000. As President Obama enters his second term with an agenda of gun control and immigration reform, the rage on the right is likely to intensify.”

The SPLC states that core “Patriot” ideology circles around, “Fears of impending gun control or weapons confiscations, either by the government or international agencies… As a result, many antigovernment activists believe that being well armed is a must. The militia movement engages in paramilitary training aimed at protecting citizens from this feared impending government crackdown.”

One conspiracy theory the recent report highlights is known as Agenda 21, “The latest and most dramatic example of that may be the completely baseless claim that Agenda 21 — a United Nations sustainability plan that was signed by President George H.W. Bush but has no mandatory provisions whatsoever — is part of a plan to impose socialism on America and strip away private property rights” (emphasis added).

That claim has been pushed heavily by, among others, the John Birch Society, a conspiracist Patriot organization that was exiled from the conservative movement a half century ago after claiming President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a Communist agent (see story, p. 24).”Last year, the Republican National Committee passed a plank opposing Agenda 21 and describing it as a “destructive and insidious scheme” to impose “socialist/communist redistribution of wealth.” The state of Alabama passed a law barring any policies traceable to Agenda 21 without “due process.”

Although the SPLC’s recent report didn’t name Alex Jones by name, this is where the master conspiracy theorist enters the picture.  RationalWiki.org describes radio host/con-man, “Alex Jones (b. 1974) is a radio personality who never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like. He is one of the very few people to make Glenn Beck look sane and rational in comparison. And that is all you really need to know about him.

His radio program is typified by frequent use of the Imperial March from Star Wars while he rants about the impending roundup and execution of Americans by the New World Order (NWO) in the next week or two. He has been predicting this for well over a decade now. We’re still waiting.”

The same type of people that follow Alex Jones and Infowars today could have been conned into drinking the Kool-Aid by Jim Jones or other cult leaders before the internet.

The SPLC does have a file on Alex Jones, “Alex Jones knows how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

“Every week from his studio in Austin, Texas, he dives into red-faced tirades exposing the forces that threaten to enslave all human life on the planet. The conspiracy always boils down to about the same thing: eugenics operations, the militarization of the police, a cabal of wealthy corporations and the United Nations involved in a fiendish plot to control the world.

Jones has accused the federal government of involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 attacks, said that the Branch Davidian cultists in Texas were purposely murdered by authorities, claimed that FEMA is secretly building concentration camps for liberty-loving citizens, and issued a series of videos with hair-raising, B horror-film titles. A sampling: “911: The Road to Tyranny,” “Police State 3: Total Enslavement,” “The Masters of Terror: Exposed,” “New World Order: Blueprint of Madmen” and “The Obama Deception: The Mask Comes Off.””

Jones is a political charlatan that preaches the apocalypse all the while pawning video manuals on how-to-survive the impending government take-over and FEMA concentration camps.  In many ways, Alex Jones is the mouthpiece for the Patriot movement. Folks like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have nothing on Jones, and he knows it.  Yesterday, on Jones’ primary website, InforWars.com, writer, and Jones’ disciple, Kurt Nimmo proudly compared MSNBC’s host Lawrence O’Donnell’s audience with The Alex Jones Show and he can’t help himself in throwing in a comparison with Limbaugh’s and Becks influence as well.

Nimmo writes, “On an average day, Larry’s show draws a paltry 240,000 viewers while the Alex Jones Show routinely gathers an audience in the millions. “The Alex Jones Show is carried on over 70 AM and FM radio stations across the United States, Shortwave, and XM Radio,” writes Rachel Woodhouse. “Jones draws a bigger audience online than Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck combined,” Alexander Zaitchik writes in Rolling Stone.”

The numbers from the SPLC are staggering, “The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) count of 1,360 Patriot groups in 2012 was up about % from the 1,274 active in 2011. And that was only the latest growth spurt in the Patriot movement, which generally believes that the federal government is conspiring to take Americans’ guns and destroy their liberties as it paves the way for a global “one-world government.” From a mere 149 organizations in 2008, the number of Patriot groups shot up to 512 in 2009, jumped again to 824 in 2010, and then skyrocketed to 1,274 in 2011 before hitting their all-time high last year.”

Jones does not shy away from promoting the bogus Agenda 21 conspiracy.  His website Infowars declares , “The already evident abuses of world government bodies (under various names and sub-organizations) is masked by declarations of respect for the environment, for human rights, and other lofty ideals. In reality, however, there are ruthless control freaks manipulating the terms of our enslavement. Real life measures for carbon tax schemes, energy austerity, food management, species & habitat management, re-wilding (land seizure) takeovers and more have been vehicles for eugenicist-banker led agendas– indeed ambitious components of Agenda 21 that are changing the rules of the game to the eternal detriment of freedom.”

What did the SPLC say of Jones’ rhetoric again?

“Every week from his studio in Austin, Texas, he dives into red-faced tirades exposing the forces that threaten to enslave all human life on the planet. The conspiracy always boils down to about the same thing: eugenics operations, the militarization of the police, a cabal of wealthy corporations and the United Nations involved in a fiendish plot to control the world.”

The SPLC highlights the fact that Timothy McVeigh shared “Patriot” movement beliefs. The SPLC counts “over  100 domestic radical-right plots, conspiracies and racist rampages … since the Oklahoma City bombing left 168 men, women and children dead in 1995.” This comparison

Infowars writes, “It’s obvious the establishment cannot compete and is rapidly losing its once indomitable advantage. In response to this dangerous situation, it has resorted to a last ditch “B” plan – a juiced-up effort to characterize a viable political opposition as violent redneck racist terrorists wending their way toward another Oklahoma City event. For the elite, the only option is to portray Alex Jones as the new Osama bin Laden and the patriot movement as a domestic al-Qaeda.”

Jones claims the liberal media elites are attacking the Patriot movement and Alex Jones because they are losing ratings and the war on ideas.  Like Glenn Beck, Jones fails to realize his radical alternative reality fantasies can incite violent reactions from one or more of his less stable listeners. One recently example of this is the case of Glenn Beck follower Bryon Williams. A couple years back, Williams got caught in a gun battle with police on a Northern California freeway, not far from my house.

According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle the, “5-year-old parolee, described by his mother, Janice Williams, as angry at leftwing politicians.” She said her son had been watching news and was upset by “the way congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items.” Janice Williams went on, “eventually, I think we’re going to be caught up in a revolution.” But she said she had told her son many times that “he didn’t have to be on the front lines.”

Williams was stopped by the California Highway Patrol with a truck full of guns and ammo on his way to shoot-up the liberal philanthropic organization the Tides Foundation and the local office of the ACLU.  According to Williams’ mother, her son was heavily influenced by Glenn Beck on Fox News. Beck had placed the Tides Foundation at the center of his own NWO conspiracy theory.

There should be no doubt, Jones and the so-called “Patriot” movement are playing with fire. One day, and I fear not too far in the near future, antigovernment extremist groups will inspire another Timothy McVeigh nutcase.

There will always be good reason not to trust our government. In fact, a healthy dose of mistrust in the government is good. Stock-piling weapons and preparing for a “Second American Revolution” to overthrow the U.S. government borders on sedition and treason.  In 1791 George Washington used the army to put down an armed insurrection during the anti-tax Whiskey Rebellion and such behavior by the idiot Patriot movement will surly suffer the same fate.

What’s more likely, as the SPLC aptly points out is some deranged lone wolf follower of Alex Jones will take matters in his own hands and we have another Oklahoma City bombing or massacre because they wholeheartedly believe in the apocalyptic world-view Jones is offering for only $19.95 in the two DVD series.

Heckling the Victim: A Common Right-Wing Tactic

(families of Sandy Hook (Reuters)

Yesterday, a friend of mine posted on her Facebook page,

“I am appalled by MSNBC’s reporting morals, for editing the news with the purpose of sensationalizing the polarizing topic of gun control for their own agenda, and misleading people about what really happened during a hearing about gun control in Hartford, Conn. . .
There was no ‘heckling’. A question was asked by Neil Heslin, the father of six year old Jesse Lewis who sadly perished in the tragedy of the Sandy Hook school shooting. There was no response to this open question directed toward the audience during his heartfelt testimony. Complete silence. After this respectful silence, Mr. Heslin stated that ‘not one person can answer that question’. It was then that people with opposing views spoke up with their answers.

No matter which topic a news outlet is reporting about, the whole story should be told. It is tragic that some news agencies feel the need to create news rather than report it. The fact that MSNBC chose this tragedy to showcase their sensationalistic agenda is unconscionable. Shame on MSNBC. I don’t subscribe to television service, but if I did, I sure would not trust anything reported by MSNBC.”

It wasn’t just MSNBC that was being criticized for using the word “heckled” when characterizing the interruption of Mr. Heslin’s congressional testimony. The Huffington Post and several liberal/progressive websites also used the word “heckle” to describe the event.

Media opinion blogger Erik Wemple of the Washington Post agrees with my friend and has spilled a half gallon of ink on his blog explaining why he thinks MSNBC and Piers Morgan of CNN were wrong to label the event heckling. Wemple has called Morgan’s use of the word, “Misleading, at the very best: Heslin, as explained here, actually invited members of the audience at a meeting in Hartford to rebut his testimony.

Here’s the relevant transcript:

Heslin: “I don’t know how many people have young children or children. But just try putting yourself in the place that I’m in or these other parents that are here. Having a child that you lost. It’s not a good feeling; not a good feeling to look at your child laying in a casket or looking at your child with a bullet wound to the forehead. I ask if there’s anybody in this room that can give me one reason or challenge this question: Why anybody in this room needs to have an, one of these assault-style weapons or military weapons or high-capacity clips…..Not one person can answer that question.”

Crowd/Alleged Hecklers: “Second Amendment shall not be infringed”

Public official: “Please no comments while Mr. Heslin is speaking. Or we’ll clear the room. Mr. Heslin, please continue.”

Wemple goes on to point out, “MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell votes in favor of the “heckling” interpretation. He said on last night’s show, “Heckling’s when you say something stupid from the audience. And when a speaker rhetorically or directly asks an audience why you need 30-round magazines and assault weapons, and you yell a response which is basically ‘I think the Second Amendment says I can have them,’ you have not answered the question about why you need them.’

Clever thing that O’Donnell has done here — redefine the term “heckling” to apply narrowly to what happened in that hearing room. In doing so, he bypasses a more common definition, one that doesn’t help his case quite as much.” The more common definition Wemple provides by Merriam-Webster states, “Heckle: to harass and try to disconcert with questions, challenges, or gibes”

Wemple goes on to point out the audience showed great restraint throughout the majority of the testimony and therefore the disruptive comments were not intended to heckle Mr. Heslin. However, the crowd (two or more in the audience) was disconcerting and challenged Mr Heslin. Let’s also keep in mind comments were not permitted from the peanut gallery. Wemple’s argument that the audience showed great restraint prior to the outburst doesn’t hold a lot of weight given the fact that they were required to and had they not they would have been thrown out .

Whether it was fair to call the inappropriate outbursts heckling or not is really more about a media personalities working to improve their ratings, sell papers, or get clicks on their articles than any real scandal or breach in media ethics. It’s simply a game of semantics played out by media elites in order to create news out of a non-news grammatically technical sidebar. Much to do about nothing.

Victim heckling, the most sickening of all heckling, has been all too common amongst the right-wing. Certainly both the political left and right are guilty of heckling. In fact, some organizations, like the liberal anti-war group Code Pink, make heckling their trademark. It is one thing to heckle a politician or authority figure. However, it is entirely a different thing to heckle a victim. Unfortunately, this type of victim heckling has become all too common a tactic coming from the right-wing.

While many may take issue with whether Mr. Heslin was actually heckled while giving testimony, there is no doubt that many of the family members of those that lost their loved ones at Sandy Hook Elementary have been heckled and harassed by a vicious group of right-wing zealots.

One of the many articles on the conspiracy theories circulated by the right-wing that has resulted with the harassment of the Sandy Hook families can be found in a recent article by Salon. One egregious examples of this harassment would be the attacks on the Parker family. The parents of 6-year-old Emilie Parker, who died of multiple gunshot wounds, have received dozens of threatening phone calls and letters from the Christian right-wing accusing them of faking their own child’s death. Here is how Salon explains the Emily Parker conspiracy attacks:

“The girl in question is Emilie Parker, a 6-year-old who was shot multiple times and killed at Sandy Hook. But for conspiracy theorists, the tears her family shed at her funeral, the moving eulogy from Utah’s governor, and the entire shooting spree are fake. Welcome to the world where Sandy Hook didn’t really happen.

There are dozens of websites, blog posts and YouTube videos extolling the Emilie Parker hoax theory. If you Google her name, the very first result is a post mocking her father for crying at a press conference after the shooting…”

Because victim heckling has become such a common tactic for the right-wing, it should come as no surprise that liberal leaning media elites were quick to use the word heckling in the inappropriate interruption of Mr. Heslin’s testimony.

As I’ve pointed out, this victim heckling is now part of the right-wing’s playbook. Remember when the Affordable Health Care Act was being proposed and Teabaggers verbally attacked the uninsured, terminally ill, and disabled? If you don’t, here is a video that might help jog your memory. All over the country the right-wing heckled victims. It’s becoming a common practice. For more examples of right-wing victim heckling and harassment check out this article I published in back April of 2010.

In response to the criticism, MSNBC has reviewed the use of the word heckle in their programs and determined, “Our team reviewed the unedited clip and determined that it was heckling. The distinction was made because the shouts did not directly address the question being posed and were disruptive.

I agree. But whether my friend and I or for that matter the media wordsmith intelligentsia agree or not on the definition of heckling really means squat. What matters is how we treat one another. Whether we learn to listen and respect opposing opinions or we descend into believing it is right to attack the victims of ill fortune to promote an agenda remains to be seen. The real story here is not whether MSBNC breached journalistic ethics by choosing to use the word heckle to describe the event. The real story that should come out of this is if it ever right to attack the victims of hardship just because you disagree with their perspective or personal ideology.

Palestinian Statehood: Misuse of Anti-Semitism

Originally published at the Daily Censored for Project Censored

Before I can explore the issue of Palestinian statehood, it is now almost obligatory for human rights activists to discuss what Israeli scholar Norman G. Finkelstein calls the “misuse of anti-Semitism.” This article is the first of no less than three quick articles that explores the question of the Palestinians recent bid for the recognition of statehood. As the title implies, the first article addresses the issue of anti-Semitism. This is important because, as you will see, some believe all criticism of Israeli policy is essentially anti-Semitic.

In essence, this article serves as a Preface to the following articles. The reason it is necessary is because the following articles are critical of Israel, U.S.,  and the U.N.  This quick series of articles will serve no nation. Rather, this series relies on history, the Geneva Convention, and analysis of non-partisan, non-governmental human rights organizations. In addition, this series of articles relies on the works of many Jewish scholars that go against the grain of the main-stream narrative.

Norman G. Finkelstein, the son of holocaust survivors, has made it his life’s work to document the history of Israel, dispel Israeli nationalist myths, and expose the tactics used by the pro-Israeli lobby. His book, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, is perhaps his magnums opus on the subject.

In the book, Finkelstein documents how Jewish American right-winged thinkers began to redefine the meaning of the word anti-Semitic. In particular, Finkelstein points to a book published by Nathan and Ruth Ann Perlmutter titled The Real Anti-Semitism (1982). In a nutshell, Finkelstein explains, “Classical anti-Semitism of the type that targeted Jews simply for being Jewish, according to the Perlmutters, no long posed a potent danger in the United States…A new type of anti-Semitism, however, had replaced it. This ‘real’ anti-Semitism was defined by the Perlumetters as any challenge inimical to Jewish interests…Practically, this meant pinning the epithet ‘anti-Semitic’ on domestic challenges to Jewish class privilege and political power as well as on global challenges to Israeli hegemony.”

Finkelstein goes on, “American Jewish elites were, in effect and in plain sight, cynically appropriating ‘anti-Semitism’ –a historical phenomenon replete with suffering and martyrdom, on the one hand, and hatred and genocide, on the other- as an ideological weapon to defend and facilitate ethnic aggrandizement. ‘Unchallenged and unchecked’ real anti-Semitism, the Perlmutters warned, ‘can lose once again classical anti-Semitism.’ In fact the reverse comes closer to the truth: it is the mislabeling of legitimate challenges to Jewish privilege and powers as anti-Semitism that breeds irrational resentment of Jews.”

The Perlmutters misappropriation of the word anti-Semitism has gone so far the right it’s now off the cliff and floating around in the sphere of right-wing dementia. One glaring flaw in the Perlmutters’ ideology is that not all Jews agree with what the Perlmutters’ definition of “Jewish interests”. In order overcome this problem, the Jewish elites created another new term for Jews, like Finkelstein, that challenged the Perlmutters ‘real anti-Semitism’ thesis. They began to label Jews that disagreed with their new definition of anti-Semitism as “self-hating Jews.” Of course Finkelstein, the guy that helped bring this cynical strategy to light, has long been attacked by the pro-Israeli extremists as one of those “self-hating Jews.”

Finkelstein points out that this tactic of calling anyone critical of Israel’s policies an anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew was designed to “stifle” anyone that dares to challenge Israel’s actions. Finkelstein essentially concludes, that the right-wing, pro-Israel lobby’s ‘real anti-Semitism’ strategy has been damaging to Judaism and akin to spitting on the ashes of holocaust victims. Finkelstein argues anti-Semitism is a word that needs to be persevered, not perverted.

American writer Alice Walker wrote about the effects this shameful appropriation of the word anti-Semitism in her book, Overcoming Speechlessness. In the book, Walker, coming off visits to Rwanda and Congo, goes on a tour of Gaza, in support of a few non-profit women’s rights organizations. On the bus ride from Israel to Gaza, Walker begins interviewing the passengers on the bus. Walker writes, “It was moving to hear the stories of why the Jews on our Gaza-bound bus were going to Palestine. Many of them simply said they couldn’t bear the injustice, or the hypocrisy. Having spoken out against racism, terrorism, apartheid elsewhere, how could they be silent about Palestine and Israel? Someone said her friends claimed everyone who spoke out against Israeli treatment of Palestinians was a self-hating Jew (if Jewish) or anti-Semitic (though Palestinians are Semites, too). She said it never seemed to dawn on the persons making the anti-Semitic charge that it is Israel’s behavior people are objecting to and not its religion.”

It is sad that human rights activists have to go into great detail about the history of the use and misuse of the word anti-Semitic. However, thanks to right leaning thinkers like the Perlmutters, anyone that criticizes Israeli policies are now subject to attack.

This series of articles will explore the Palestinian petition for statehood and consider the Quartet options, the U.S., Israel, and Palestinian positions, the history of the conflict, and ideological influences. I will continue to favor and therefore be bias toward the position that respects the Geneva Convention and other international laws, along with internationally recognized human rights organizations. I reject the Perlmutters’ obscene appropriation of the word anti-Semitism. As Finkelstein points out, the abuse the word anti-Semite, only adds further insult to the true victims.

Book Review: Overcoming Speechlessness by Alice Walker

Seven Stories Press

Alice Walker’s recent book Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters the horror in Rwanda, Eastern Congo, and Palestine/Israel weaves a collection of horrific tales with the lifelong activist’s wisdom and words of hope. This thin 75 page book (or booklet) is published by Seven Stories Press in 2010.

Walker (no relation to me) starts the reader off with an account of her 2007 visit to Rwanda and Eastern Congo. Working for the non-profit organization Women for Women International, Walker went to the war torn area to provide aid to the survivors, write their stories, offer some hope, and pay her “respects to the hundreds of thousands of infants, toddlers, teenagers, adolescents, young engaged couples, married people, women and men, grandmothers and grandfathers brothers and sisters, of every facial shape and body size, who had been hacked into sometimes quite small pieces by armed strangers, or by neighbors, or by acquaintances and “friends” they know.”

Walker recalls several accounts of meeting women survivors who openly shared horrible accounts of rape and mutilations. This little book provides some graphic details and is not for the faint of heart. Walker explains, while in her twenties in college, she had written a thesis paper on the “Belgian” Congo. She goes on to provide a brief history of the colonization of the Congo and recounts the tale where King Leopold of Belgian had instituted a policy of cutting off the hands of the enslaved Africans who were unable to fulfill their rubber quotas.

Walker goes on to recount a meeting with a young women who had been made a sex slave during the recent conflict in Congo and had been become limp because she was “forced to carry loads that bent her double.” The poor women had been virtually struck blind, and yet she was still able to smile and openly share her tragic personal story. Walker asks, “How can she smile?”  Walker then explains the realization she gained from meeting her new “Congolese sister.”  Walker writes, “She understood the importance of speech, speech about the unspeakable, and is a source of my ability to share the following story, a story that had propelled me into a period of speechlessness.” This statement becomes a recurring theme in the book.

The other recurring theme seems to come from her Buddhist belief in oneness. Walker recounts another Rwandan woman’s horrific story of rape and murder and the hope that her daughter was still alive and can be reunited with her mother. Walker writes, “My understanding that Generose’s lost daughter belongs to all of us. It is up to all of us to find her; it is up to us to do our best to make her whole again. There is only one daughter, one father, one mother, one son, one aunt, or uncle…that one right in front of you.”

After flying back to the United States, Walker gets an email asking if she would like to go to Gaza with the women’s anti-war group CODEPINK. Walker recalls a time back in 2003 when she found herself side by side with members of CODEPINK as they were arrested in front of the White House while protesting the start of the war against Iraq.

Just days later, Israel began its twenty-two-day bombardment of Gaza.  Walker writes, “Houses, hospitals, factories, police stations, parliament buildings, ministries, apartment buildings, schools went up in dust. The sight of one family, in which five young daughters had been killed, was seared into my consciousness. The mother, wounded and unconscious, was alive. Who would tell her?” After consulting with her partner, they conclude, “The sooner we reach the people of Gaza, the sooner they’ll know not all Americans are uncaring, deaf and blind, or fooled by the media.”

The remainder of the book Walker guides her readers as she journeys to Gaza for the first time. During the trip, Walker flashes-back to moments in her life, especially during her twenties and thirties, as a civil rights volunteer and writer. Walker recalls the dark times growing up in the Jim Crow south. While arranging her passport to Gaza, a U.S. embassy official questions Walker as to why the Palestinians couldn’t be more like the civil rights movement in America.  Walker responses with what are clearly the most controversial statements made in the book. Therefore, I will provide an extended excerpt in order to provide the full context. Walker responds:

“She- a white woman with a Southern accent – mentioned the success of “our” civil rights movement and asked why the Palestinians couldn’t be more like us. It was a remarkable comment from a perspective of unimaginable safety and privilege; I was moved to tell her of the effort it took, even for someone so inherently nonviolent as me, to contain myself during the seven years in Mississippi when it often appeared there were only a handful of white Mississippians who could talk to a person of color without delivering injury or insult. If we had not been able to change our situation through nonviolent suffering, we would have most certainly, like the African National Congress (ANC), like the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), like Hamas, turned to violence. I told her how dishonest it seemed to me that people claim not to understand the desperate, last-ditch resistance involved in suicide bombing, blaming the oppressed for using their bodies where the Israeli army uses armored tanks.

I remembered aloud, we being Southerners, my own anger at the humiliations, bombings, assassinations that made weeping an endless activity for black people for centuries, and how when we would finally get to a courtroom that was supposed to offer justice, the judge would likely blame us for the crime done against us and call us chimpanzees for making a fuss.”

While waiting for her passport Walker looks at a series of illustrated postcards. The first card depicts a few scattered Jewish villages in the Palestine from 1946, prior to the U.N partition. The next, a few years later, after the U.N. had partition the area depicts about half owned by Israel, and after 1967 the Israeli portion of territory had doubled its land mass again. Walker notices that on the back of one of the cards, “were words from former Israeli president Ariel Sharon, known as the ’Butcher of Sabra and Shatilla’ (refugee camps in Lebanon where he led a massacre of the people), where he talked about making a pastrami sandwich of the Palestinian people, riddling their lands with Jewish settlements until no one would be able to imagine a whole Palestine. Or would know Palestine ever existed.”

Walker then goes on to compare how in the U.S., during the Trail of Tears, the Cherokee were forcefully removed from their homes. Walker writes, “Just as the Israelis have wanted and have taken by force, Palestinian land. Like Americans they have attempted to hide their avarice and cruelty behind a mountain of myths: that no one lived in Palestine, that the Palestinians are savages, that there’s no such thing as a Palestinian (Golda Meir’s offering), that the Israelis are David and the Palestinians Goliath. Which is ridiculous.”

As Walker boards the bus to Gaza she comments, “I had not been on a bus with so many Jews since traveling by Greyhound to the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. John Lewis, and other spoke so passionately of black Americans’ determination to be free.”

Walker goes to ask some of the Jewish passengers why they had decided to make the journey. Walker writes, “It was moving to hear the stories of why the Jews on our Gaza-bound bus were going to Palestine. Many of them simply said they couldn’t bear the injustice, or the hypocrisy. Having spoken out against racism, terrorism, apartheid elsewhere, how could they be silent about Palestine and Israel? Someone said her friends claimed everyone who spoke out against Israeli treatment of Palestinians was a self-hating Jew (if Jewish) or anti-Semitic (though Palestinians are Semites, too). She said it never seemed to dawn on the persons making the anti-Semitic charge that it is Israel’s behavior people are objecting to and not its religion.”

Once again Walker flashes back to the civil rights movement and recounts the story of the “three civil rights workers” as they have become to be known.  One of the civil rights workers was a young black man, named James Chaney, and the other two were white Jewish men, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, from the North. In 1967, while driving down the back roads of Mississippi, their car was firebombed and the three were beaten, shot and buried under a bridge. For months the young men’s bodies were missing and every week the black churches throughout the country prayed for the three young men.  Walker explains that because of their sacrifice, the white Jewish men and their families had become part of the black community’s family. Walker explains Schwerner’s widow still to this day attends gatherings held civil rights activists.

Walker compares Goodman and Schwerner’s story to Rachel Corrie’s story.  Rachel was a young Jewish activist that attempted to stop Israeli tanks from demolishing Palestinian homes. While wearing a bright orange vest and screaming through a blow horn, Rachel stood in front of an approaching tank. Evidence has shown the tank driver clearly know the Solidarity activist was present. However, he moved forward anyway and crushed Rachel to death. Walker notes, in Palestine, Rachel’s Jewish parents are treated with the same reverence the black community holds for the Jewish civil rights workers.

As Walker arrives in Gaza she first notices that under close inspection many of the buildings standing are actually in ruins. “I realized I had never understood the true meaning of “rubble.”  Such and such was “reduced to rubble” is a phrase we hear. It is different seeing what demolished buildings actually look like.”  Walker goes on to ask, “Where are the World Parents of All Children? The World Caretakers of All the Sick?”

In bouncing back and forth between her expressed love for her Jewish brothers and sisters and  her love for her new Palestinian brothers and sisters, Walker makes it clear she is not focused simply on the plight of one group over the other. However, Walker has spent a great deal of her life’s activism on the plight of women.  Certainly, one can’t fault her for that.

One of the main purposes Walker’s trip to Gaza was to visit a Palestinian center for women, on International Women’s Day in 2009.  Walker spends a good deal of the remaining chapters on the book on her conversations with Palestinian women and their tragic stories. Many of the women had lost family members or their entire families to the ceaseless bombardments and siege. One of the most heart wrenching story comes when Walker finds herself embracing a young Palestinian woman who was holding a photo of her six year old daughter wearing a white tutu and dancing. During a recent bombardment the poor child was hit throughout her body and bleed to death in her mother’s arms.  This is a very powerful scene in the book.

While Walker’s concerns are clearly focused on humanity, she shows no real affection for Islam as a religion.  In fact, she spends more time praising Christianity, Buddhism, and Judaism than she does on Islam. What she does say about Islam is fairly critical. Walker spends a good chapter in the book on the headscarf. Walker writes, “I have learned of the prophet Mohammed’s demand that his own wives be veiled, to protect them from the gaze of visitors and strangers, and of course the ongoing discussions regarding hijab wearing in England and France have been much in the news. There is also the brutal insistence in some Muslim countries that women cover themselves to demonstrate submission to religious, and male, authority. However, I am curious to know what grassroots Arab women thing about the scarf.”

I don’t want to give away the entire book, but some of the women’s responses might surprise Western readers.  Walker’s little book is filled with many powerful little stories like the few I have highlighted in this review. Never does the reader get the impression that Walker feels a sense of self-importance, a person of self realized grandeur on a grand mission to save the world. Rather, one can only conclude Walker’s only mission is to tell the stories of the people who are suffering throughout the world.  Walker seems to want to offer a little bit of hope to each person she meets. She encourages nonviolence, but she is not perplexed by why an oppressed people might retaliate with violence. She knows why, she has lived the experience of being an oppressed person.

Recently, Walker participated in the Freedom Flotilla Two campaign to Gaza. There were several writers that criticized Walker for her participation. Most notably, distinguished writer and Zionist activist Howard Jacobson.  In an opinion piece  Jacobson wrote for CNN:

“But beyond associating her decision with Gandhi, Martin Luther King and very nearly, when she talks about the preciousness of children, Jesus Christ, she fails to give a single convincing reason for it (flotilla).”

You may want to argue that had Gaza been treated differently it would have responded differently, but if the aim of the flotilla is to ensure that one child will not be set above another it is hard to see how challenging the blockade will achieve it. All an Israeli parent will see is a highly charged emotionalism disguising an action that, by its very partiality, chooses the Palestinian child over the Israeli.

The Israeli response is thus already an act of unprovoked murder, no matter that the flotilla is by its very essence a provocation.”

Another young white writer foolishly went so far as to suggest Walker had delusions of being a Christ figure and quipped, “Actually I’m surprised she needed a ship at all. Surely the waters would part before this modern Grandma Moses as the Red Sea parted before, well, Moses!” This shameful writer is essentially suggesting Walker believes she is a “Grandma Moses” and in some way the leader of the flotilla or a  mass of people and therefore better than the rest. The writer calls Walker “sanctimonious.”  Of course, anyone that knows a bit of the history of the Jim Crow South would know this type of suggestion was also commonly made about civil rights workers by the racist white Southerners. This is essentially known by most people of color in America as the “uppity black” argument.  Walker would call this most foolish statement by, an otherwise talented (intentionally unnamed to protect the ignorant) writer, as a “doofus” moment.

In one of Walker’s civil rights movement flashbacks, Walker does speak of how the gay civil rights strategist, Bayard Rustin, introduced the Gandhian nonviolence approach to MLK Jr.’s Christian tradition which created the spiritual essence of America’s civil rights movement. However, nowhere in Walker’s writings do you see her claim to be the heir apparent to Gandhi or MLK Jr. Rather, you see Walker consider herself more like a foot-soldier with a microphone. It is obvious to anyone that reads her book Overcoming Speechlessness that Walker is far too concerned with telling the stories of the people she meets, than she is of telling her own personal story.

Finally, as to Jacobson’s point about the flotilla being provocative. Hell yes it was provocative! That was the whole point. Just like the Freedom Riders bus rides into the deep South were provocative. If you don’t know about the Freedom Riders check out this  PBS Video. Essentially, during the Jim Crow era which Walker was raised in, blacks had to sit in the back of the bus throughout the South.  However, in 1960 the U.S. Supreme Court began  overthrowing the separate but equal laws. To test the South’s adherence to the law, black and white civil rights activists started sitting next to each other on interstate buses traveling in the South.

In Anniston and Birmingham Alabama  as the riders exited the bus, white mobs, supported by the Birmingham police department,  attacked the passengers on the buses with baseball bats, iron pipes and bicycles chains. Of course, the whole purpose of the Freedom Riders was provocative. It was meant to provoke an awareness to the injustice. The fact that the Freedom Riders mission was to be provocative, didn’t give the Alabama police and white mobs permission to brutalize the activists. In fact, most people of good conscious were repulsed by the vicious beatings of the Freedom Riders.

That is the whole purpose of nonviolent civil disobedience. Being a former employee of Greenpeace, this is something I’m no stranger to myself.  There is a wonderful Christian tradition, strongly supported by the Quakers, known as “bearing witness.” Walker’s book Overcoming Speechlessness is in the tradition of this great Christian value. Overcoming Speechlessness is a must read for all writers and activist who wish to provide a voice for others and, in their own small way, some good for the planet.

Below you will find three videos by Nina Simon.  Songs written before, during, and after blacks were finally given equal rights in America. Nina Simon’s songs express musically the landscaped in which Alice Walker was raised in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkcuNX4vrS8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Uy8cyVWU2A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUcXI2BIUOQ&feature=related

Republicans, Ayn Rand, and Satanism?

“Ayn Rand, more than anyone else, did a fantastic job of explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of individualism. And this to me is what matters most.”  Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan.

 

(Now that Mitt Romney has officially selected Wisconsin U.S. Representative Paul Ryan as his running-mate, I thought I might be a good idea to republish an article I originally wrote for Project Censored in June, 2011.  For Ryan’s friends, family, and staff, Ayn Rand is required  reading).

In the interest of full disclosure, I consider myself spiritually agnostic. That said, can I get a Hallelujah! Some Christians are finally getting hip to the fact that Republicans have been worshiping at the altar of Ayn Rand, and unwittingly the Church of Satan. I kid you not. Well, at least the part about Ayn Rand. As for the Satanism bit, there is only one degree of separation between Rand’s philosophy and Satanism, but more on this later.

Personally, I enjoyed reading Rand’s books. Perhaps twenty years ago, I  read her novels Atlas Shrugged, and The Fountainhead, as well as her non-fiction book Virtue of Selfishness. Rand is most known for her novels. However, Rand’s philosophy of “Objectivism” is what attracted both me and many extreme Right-wingers in America. Coming from a conservative Christian family, I have followed the writings and influences of Right-wing extremism my entire life. In the 1970’s, for summer vacation, our family went to Ocean Grove, New Jersey for a James Dobson, Focus on the Family, “Dare to Discipline” seminar.

Anyway, I rejected Dobson and Rand’s philosophies. Deep down inside, I was convinced altruism was inherently moral, valuable, and virtuous. However, I agree with some of what Rand espoused. For example, like Rand, Aristotle, and our Founding Fathers,  I believe reason and logic should play a determining role in one’s life. I also agree with Rand avoidance of superstitions. However, I strongly disagree with her conclusions on individualism and collectivism. Rand seems to suggest individualism and collectivism is always working against each other and can never work hand in hand. I find Rand’s worldview to be a dark and disturbing portrait in black and white.

For Rand, a child of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, capitalism and socialism were diametrically opposing ideas that could never be balanced. Rand believed Liaise-Faire capitalism represented the highest form of morality. She believed it was only logical that individuals sought after their own selfish needs first and foremost. She claimed those that pursued a morality of selfishness were most able to rise to the top and conquer the world. By the virtue of their selfish ambitions, individuals could acquire great material wealth, power, and individual freedoms. Therefore, Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism is essentially the virtue of selfish individualism.

Since the McCarthy area, Rand’s Objectivism has been a leading philosophy for both Right-wing extremist and radical libertarians. Although, it should be pointed out, many notable mainstream conservatives became early fans of Rand’s. In fact, Alan Greenspan once was a member of Rand’s New York “Collective”. Some biographies have described Rand’s “Collective” as somewhat like a “cult”.

For those that are not interested in reading Rand’s books, check out this three part interview of Ayn Rand, conducted in 1959 by Mike Wallace. Here are the links to Part I, Part II, and Part III. The entire interview is fascinating, but I’ll quote one question and answer from the interview:

Wallace: “How does your philosophy translate into politics? One of the most principle achievements of this country in the past twenty years and practically, I think most people agree, is the gradual growth of social protective legislation based on the principle that we are our bothers keeper. How do you feel about the political trends of the United States, Western world?”

Ayn Rand: “The way everybody feels, except more consciously. I feel that it is terrible. That you see destruction and that you are moving toward disaster, until and unless all those welfare state conceptions have been reversed and rejected. It is precisely these trends that are bringing the world toward disaster. Because, we are now moving toward complete collectivism, or socialism. A system in which everyone is enslaved to everybody and we are moving that way only because of our altruistic morality.”

Rand goes on to state that she is in favor of complete separation of economy and state, like the separation of church and state. Rand further states that she believes the government does not have the right to regulate the affairs of it citizens, nor demand they pay taxes. She suggests taxes  should be voluntary.

I rejected Rand’s Objectivism because I believe people putting themselves first does not always promote economic efficiency, nor does it represent the best of America or the human spirit. I believe, as our Founding Fathers believed, it is the government’s role to make laws and raise taxes to promote and protect the general welfare of the people. In fact, after the American Revolution, the first order of business by the first U.S. Congress was to levy tariffs (import taxes) and to tax wealthy businesses –  via the Whiskey Tax. Benjamin Franklyn famously said, “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” Guided by the policies of Alexander Hamilton and the leadership of George Washington, the Founding Fathers took the money raised by the tariffs and taxes and used the funds to help pay off America’s war debt, build bridges, roads and schools. This, of course, is an example of early American collectivism, which Rand and the Right-wing have openly scorned.

As I mentioned before, Christian groups are beginning to get hip on the whole Republican selfish Objectivism ideology. A recent campaign, by the American Values Network (AVN), a coalition of Christian organizations, has blasted Representative Paul Ryan and the Republican Party’s budget plans, which they are calling the “Rand Plan”. At this AVN website, a video ad shows Senator Rand Paul, along with other Republican leaders like Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, praising Ayn Rand’s philosophy. Representative Paul Ryan is seen in the video clip stating, “Ayn Rand, more than anyone else, did a fantastic job of explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of individualism. And this to me is what matters most.”

According to AVN, Paul Ryan requires all his staff, including interns, to read Atlas Shrugged. Republican’s devotion to Rand’s selfish morality has become the final straw for many Christians. AVN is now speaking out against the Right-wings selfish lead morality. Here are the opening two paragraphs from the AVN webpage:

“GOP leaders and conservative pundits have brought upon themselves a crisis of values. Many who for years have been the loudest voices invoking the language of faith and moral values are now praising the atheist philosopher Ayn Rand whose teachings stand in direct contradiction to the Bible. Rand advocates a law of selfishness over love and commands her followers to think only of themselves, not others. She said her followers had to choose between Jesus and her teachings.

GOP leaders want to argue that they are defending Christian principles. But, at the same time, Rep. Paul Ryan (author of the GOP budget) is posting facebook videos praising Rand’s morality and saying hers is the “kind of thinking that is sorely needed right now.” Simply put, Paul Ryan can’t have it both ways, and neither can Christians. As conservative evangelical icon Chuck Colson recently stated, Christians can not support Rand’s philosophy and Christ’s teachings. The choice is simple: Ayn Rand or Jesus Christ. We must choose one and forsake the other.”

As a religiously agnostic person, I don’t really care about Rand’s atheism. However, as with the Christian groups, I believe Rand’s selfish driven, utopian vision morality of capitalism and individualism to be, in fact, immoral. One of the many Bible texts the Christians are quoting to counter the GOP’s worshiping at the altar of selfishness is Luke 27 – 30:

“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.  If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them.  Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.”

Many Christians are claiming the GOP’s budget plans are inspired by Rand and antithetical to Jesus Christ. In case the Christians missed it, I would like to provide a bit of further proof for the claim Rand’s philosophy is diametrically opposite of Jesus’ message. Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan, melded Ayn Rand’s philosophy into the Satanic Bible. Here are direct quotes from the Church of Satan website from the official biography of LaVey and the ideology behind his book the Satanic Bible:

“Unlike the founders of other religions, who claimed exalted “inspiration” delivered through some supernatural entity, LaVey readily acknowledged that he used his own faculties to synthesize Satanism, based on his understanding of the human animal and insights gained from earlier philosophers who advocated materialism and individualism…

By the end of 1969, LaVey had taken monographs he had written to explain the philosophy and ritual practices of the Church of Satan and melded them with all of his philosophical influences from Ayn Rand, Nietzsche, Mencken, and London along with the base wisdom of the carnival folk.”

Rand’s philosophy of materialism and individualism plays a key role in the ideology of Satanism. Not that I really give any credit to Satanism. In fact, I give as much weight to Satanism as I do Objectivism.  The whole Satanism thing is mostly for entertainment sake. After all, LaVey was actually a talented entertainer before developing the modern philosophy of Satanism. Like LaVey,  Rand started out as an entertainer before developing her own philosophy. Perhaps Rand was secretly entertained by the fact that people were following her philosophy? The fact that modern Satanism was influenced by Ayn Rand’s philosophy is a  sideshow, but something I find entertaining and  something my Christians friends might find curious, scary, or just outright disturbing.

You don’t have to be a Christian to believe in much of what Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “Love your enemy.” These are hard words to follow, yet deep down many people know the truth in these words. Not only that, recent studies has confirmed altruism has been show to have positive health effects. Therefore it is logical to support the Bible when it declares in Act 25:30, “I have shown you all things, how that so laboring you ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive”.

While I agree with Ayn Rand that one must be lead by logic and reason, I find people are seldom logical and reasonable. Our Founding Fathers also valued logic and reason.  Yet, as practical men, they knew our budding nation needed  to collectively pull together. We needed to become a network of communities (a republic) bound by a greater purpose and sharing in its common dreams and fortunes.  The collective dreams and purpose of our Founding Fathers were laid out in the Declaration of Independence,  the U.S. Constitution and other early national documents. While on the surface our national documents may seem to some  logical and reasonable, they are actually wide open for interpretation and at times anything but logical and reasonable.

Our Founding Fathers were able to balance the collective interests of our nation with the interests of the individual. They heavily regulated capitalism and laid the pathway to collectivism and  socialism. In spite of what the Right-wing ideologues would like people to believe, (Satanists proudly proclaim to be devout liars) Hamilton and Washington, used the collective wealth of the nation to create schools, pay off debts and provide for the general welfare of our new nation.

The GOP has turned bridge building and other acts of  national collectivism from our Founding Fathers into acts of evil. The Right-wing holds materialism, individualism, capitalism, and selfishness as the highest forms of morality. Seven days a week, Satanists and GOP “Christians” are preaching the “virtues” of materialism, individualism, selfishness,  and Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism.  Paul Ryan’s budget plans are designed to deregulate  industries, systematically strip away the middle-class safety-net, grow the national debt, and further concentrate America’s wealth into the hands of a few, very powerfully, selfish driven people. Just as Ayn Rand envisioned.

Republican Fascism

Are the Republicans and the far Right leaning toward fascism? That sounds like a radical question, and certainly not all Republicans are fascists, but let’s consider past and current historical events.

We need to start with a little history. Benito Mussolini is recognized as the father of fascism. When asked how he would describe his movement Mussolini responded, “Fascism should more appropriately be called “Corporatism” because it is a merger of state and corporate power”. Political scientists have long described fascism as a blend of state and corporate power propped up by authoritarian nationalism. Given Mussolini’s other comments on authoritarianism and nationalism, it is doubtful he would have objected to this characterization.

Without a doubt, Adolf Hitler was inspired by and replicated in his own early rise many aspects of the fascist movement.

Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting the Republican Party has a master plan in which they are plotting to build gas chambers to kill all the Muslims, socialists, and gays. However, Republicans have been behaving much like the Fascists and Nazis movements during their early rise to power. Essentially, I am suggesting the Republicans and far Right-wing are taking the first few pages out of the Fascist Party playbook.

Consider for example the famous poem by German theologian Martin Niemoller. Niemoller was a survivor of the Nazi concentration camp Dachau. After the war, Niemoller spoke frequently of Germany collective responsibility for Nazi atrocities. As a pastor, he persuasively preached about the need for German Protestant Church’s “Confession of Guilt.” Niemoller wrote several books over the course of his life. However, his untitled poem is by far his most memorable writing:

“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me–
and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

In another version of the poem, Niemoller added schools and the press to the list of people the Nazis went after before going after the questioning theologians, like Niemoller, that finally spoke out against all the killing. It is no coincidence that the Nazi Party took the same course Benito Mussolini took the Fascist Party to power. At first, Hitler nearly idolized Mussolini and went about replicated him.

Mussolini was the son of a school teacher and devout socialist. As a young adult, he first followed in his father’s footsteps and even became an editor to a socialist newspaper. However, after Mussolini enlisted as a junior officer in the Italian Army, during the World War I, Mussolini came home to build a political party that embraced the rich industrialists and eventually brutalized the very same socialists he once knew as friends and allies.

Once again, I’m not saying that the Republicans are like the Nazi’s or the Fascists in their grand plan toward a “final solution”. However, what I am arguing is that they are embracing some of the same ideological beliefs and tactics that two of the most dangerous political movements the world has ever seen. What I am saying is the Republicans, Tea Party, and other elements of the far Right are creeping toward fascism. What I am also saying is that American’s need to seriously look back history in order to avoid repeating it.

Fox News, radical Right-wing radio, and extremist’s blogs have been purposefully misleading their sheepeople. They are have been propagandizing the flock to believe liberals and liberalism is related to fascism. A recent revisionist history book titled “Liberal Fascism” became a best seller amongst Right-wing ideologues. All the while Fox News stars and talk radio hosts like Laura Ingraham and Glenn Beck, along with a host of Tea Party speakers, have been sinisterly misquoting Niemoller’s profound poem with absurd quotes like, “First they came for the rich, and I did not speak out because I was not rich, Then they confiscated the property owners, Then they took away our right to bear arms, but I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t armed.”

I don’t know what is more perverse, the fact that the extremist Right-wingers are flipping history and Niemoller’s poem on its head, or the fact that the very folks misquoting history are all rich, property owners stockpiling guns?

Clearly demonstrated, and contrary to what the crazy Right-wing has been saying, Fascism is simply another word for “corporatism.” It is the empowerment of militant, rich property owners over minority groups like Socialists, unionists, teachers, and press. It is a movement that demonizes liberals and religious minorities, while propping up ardent militant nationalism.

So I ask you, does this sound anything like what we are seeing in America today? To repeat myself, I’m not saying Republicans are plotting out sites for mass graves. However, Republicans and the far Right-wing in America have been involved in an onslaught of verbal and violent attacks on socialists, unions, and minorities. The radicals on the Right have attempted to paint our school teachers and the press as simple pawns of “Chairman” Obama.

All the while, the malicious Republicans have been cozying up to Adolf Coors and the Koch brother billionaires. In return for political power and personal wealth, the Right-wing showers favors on their benefactors by providing them with massive tax cuts, corporate welfare, and revisionist history telling. All the while, the Right has been recently engaged in an overt attack on the middle class, school teachers, trade unionist, and are now holding hearings in Congress on Muslims. It should come as no surprise, since Barack Obama became president, the nation is experienced a dramatic uptick in hate groups like the Aryan Nation and other Christian White supremacy movements, including the Ku Klux Klan.

Imagine an America where the Commander and Chief manufactures a crises, declares a state of emergency, and then replaces all the democratically elected officials with corporate shills that support his own personal ambitions. That is how soft-core fascism works. That is also what has now been permitted to happen in Michigan, thanks to the corporate shill Repugs. Are the Republicans and the far Right-wing leaning toward fascism? There is certainly reason to believe this might be true. Nonetheless, only history will tell us if the Republicans will ultimately abandon democracy for the absolute power a fascist/corporatocracy.

Harvard Law Reviews WikiLeaks Censorship

Harvard Law Professor Yochai Benkler is about to release a comprehensive study on the U.S. government and media’s role in censoring WikiLeaks. The forthcoming report, to appear in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, is titled “A Free Irresponsible Press: WikiLeaks and the Battle over the Soul of the Networked Fourth Estate.” In the report, Benkler dissects the mechanisms that have censored WikiLeaks.

A working draft of the report has been made available online. The draft exposes how the U.S. government, mainstream media, and the emerging corporatocracy have been working together to infringe on the First Amendment Rights of the “networked fourth estate” sites, like WikiLeaks. Essentially, the government has been tripping over its feet to find ways to stop Wikileaks from expressing speech which Benkler argues is clearly protected by the U.S. Constitution and solidly supported by Supreme Court precedent.

In the 66 page document, Benkler suggests the U.S. government has attempted to falsely frame the WikiLeaks revelations in a way to discredit WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. The false framing begins with what Benkler calls the “hurt America” argument. The report points to a string of statements made by Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senator Joe Libermann, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. For example, the report quotes Biden’s claim that WikiLeaks is “more like high tech terrorist than the Pentagon Papers.” In addition, Clinton’s comment, “Let’s be clear: This disclosure is not just an attack on America’s foreign policy interests. It is an attack on the international community – the alliances and partnerships, the conversations and negotiations, that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity.”

Immediately after top U.S. officials falsely framed WikiLeaks as a terrorist organization engaged in an attack on America, the main stream media picked up on the false framing and ran with it. Benkler shows commentator after commentator, on all the main stream media outlets, began echoing the “WikiLeaks hurts America” theme. On top of the White House’s calls, Senator Lieberman, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, suggested the possible criminality of WikiLeaks actions, “I call on any other company or organization that is hosting WikiLeaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them. WikiLeaks’ illegal, outrageous, and reckless acts have compromised our national security and put lives at risk around the world. No responsible company – whether American or foreign – should assist WikiLeaks in its efforts to disseminate these stolen materials.”

The problem with all this is that what WikiLeaks has done was nothing different than what The New York Times and The Washington Post has done. And besides that, the U.S. government’s own reviews have found that WikiLeaks has actually done little to nothing to compromise our national security. As Department of Defense Robert Gates has repeatedly said under oath, “Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest.” Gates followed up in a separate hearing saying, “The review to date has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods compromised by this disclosure.”

Benkler explains, “The political attack on WikiLeaks as an organization and on Julian Assange as its public face was launched almost immediately upon release of the cables. Their defining feature was to frame the event not as journalism, irresponsible or otherwise, but as a dangerous, anarchic attack on the model of the super-empowered networks of terrorism out to attack the U.S.”

With false statements coming from the State Department, key Senators, and the White House, major credit cards, Pay Pal, and host of other sites like Amazon cut off ties with WikiLeaks. Benkler points out that legally, the U.S. government did not have the right to shut down WikiLeaks. However, by a series of “extra-legal” means, the government was able to temporarily shut down the site and its revenue stream. Essentially, all the major corporate controls of the Internet, have now blocked WikiLeaks, as a result of a relentless government propaganda campaign to censor the organization.

Benkler makes clear, that WikiLeaks has done nothing different than dozens of other mainstream media sources throughout our nation’s history. Benkler illustrates that WikiLeaks has published the very same material The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegle has published.

Yesterday, the U.S. Army charged the alleged “source” of the leaked government documents, Private Bradley Manning, with 22 additional charges including “aiding the enemy.” Constitutional law scholar and best-selling author, Glenn Greenwald has been following the media and government’s attempt to censor WikiLeaks from the beginning. Writing in the online magazine Salon, Greenwald has published numerous articles documenting the attacks on whistle-blowers and journalists involved in exposing government corruption. Greenwald has documented the Obama administration’s escalating assault on protected speech.

In his most recent article, Greenwald explains the new charges and asks the very important question, who is the enemy Manning is charged with aiding? According to Greenwald, under Article 104(b) “a person is guilty if he “gives intelligence to or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly” If found guilty of aiding the enemy, the court could sentence Manning to death.

Greenwald goes on to ask who is the alleged enemy? He points out that whether the government labels WikiLeaks or Al Qaeda as the enemy, the prosecution’s theory turns acts of whistle-blowing into a “hanging-offense”.  In addition, Greenwald argues that if Manning aided the enemy, than so did The New York Times and The Guardian.  To further support his argument, Greenwald quotes a Professor Heller:

“If Manning has aided the enemy, so has any media organization that published the information he allegedly stole. Nothing in Article 104 requires proof that the defendant illegally acquired the information that aided the enemy. As a result, if the mere act of ensuring that harmful information is published on the internet qualifies either as indirectly “giving intelligence to the enemy” (if the military can prove an enemy actually accessed the information) or as indirectly “communicating with the enemy” (because any reasonable person knows that enemies can access information on the internet), there is no relevant factual difference between Manning and a media organization that published the relevant information.”

Greenwald and Heller note that while newspapers and Wikileaks can’t be charged under the UCMJ, “there is still something profoundly disturbing about the prospect of convicting Manning and sentencing him to life imprisonment [GG: or the death penalty] for doing exactly what media organizations did, as well.”

Greenwald concludes by stating, “It’s true that members of the military have legal duties that others do not have — including the duty not to leak classified information — but this incredibly expansive interpretation of what it means to “aid the enemy” dangerously encompasses all sorts of legitimate press and speech activities, especially when combined with the Obama administration’s escalating war on whistle-blowing and the journalists who expose government secrets. This is yet another step in infecting the law with doctrines of Endless War and its accompanying mentality.”

Greenwald, Heller, and Benkler put their fingers on a deeply disturbing development in America. While attacks on whistle-blowers and journalist that expose corruptions is nothing new, the intensity and veracity of the Obama Administration’s propaganda campaign and assault on WikiLeaks, along with the inhuman treatment of Private Manning, should sound off serious warning bells to proponents of the First Amendment.  Let us not forget, amongst other things, the WikiLeaks documents have shown a widespread American cover-up of torture in Iraq. Manning first attempted, to no avail, to use the chain of command to expose and bring to an end crimes against humanity. Since commanding officers did little to nothing about the criminality going on around them, under both the UCMJ and international law, Manning had a legal obligation to disobey orders. According to Greenwald, this issue was settled during the Nuremberg trials.

Whether we want to admit it or not, our government’s attempt to crack down on whistle-blowers and protected, free-speech is dangerous. This is a series and complicated issue. Most people would rather simply go on believing our leaders when the make public statements about our national security. However, just because Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton said it is so, doesn’t automatically make it so. Remember, the legendary journalist I.F. Stone once famously said, “All Governments Lie.” Why should the Obama Administration be any different?



Love Poems: A Legacy of Longing

Plato once said, “At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.” Or, as is more commonly stated, “Poetry is the language of love.” Therefore, anyone that wants to seriously write poetry will inevitably attempt to write a love poem. A novice poet might simply be tempted to compare his/her love to a rose, or some other fragrant yet thorny object. However, the more practiced poet will look to the archaic themes of longing and vulnerability to express the deep cornucopia of experiences one feels when in “love”.

Take for example the modern surrealist poet Pablo Neruda. In the poem numbered “V II”, in his book Cien Snetos de Amor, (100 Love Sonnets), Neruda delves into what seasonally might be considered the autumn of love.

Fall:

Come with me, I said, and no one knew where,
or how my pain throbbed
no carnations or barcaroles for me
only a wound that love had opened.

I said it again: Come with me, as if I were dying
and no one saw the moon that bled in my mouth
or the blood that rose into the silence
O Love, now we can forget the star that has such thorns!

That is why, when I heard your voice repeat
Come with me, it was as if you had let loose
the grief, the love, the fury of a cork-trapped wine

that geyser flooding from deep in its vault
in my mouth I felt the taste of fire again
of blood and carnations, of rock and scald.

What we see in this poem is that love has been silenced. For some reason, love is left calling out, “Come with me.” The poet yarns to hear his lover’s voice one more time. And    when he finally hears her voice repeat the line, “Come with me,” the poet rejoices. It is like the “fury of a cork-trapped wine/ that geyser flooding from deep in its vault.” The poet is elated to hear once again his long lost lover’s voice.

Many of Neruda’s love poem reflects the ancient themes of longing and vulnerability. Looking over my own collection of love poems, I soon discovered this same theme had crept into my work. During the drawn out years of my divorce, I found myself writing literally hundreds of poems. I wrote many distraught and desperate love poems. Eventually, I put the poems into a box and moved on with my life. After a few years, I finally pulled the poems out and re-examined them. What I found in the poems is that during the winter years of love, the themes of longing and vulnerability became the dominant themes in my poems. Here is one example:

Winter:

Open Window

Approach me in my sleep. Come to me in dreams.
Blow in as a breeze through the open window.
Stir-up the curtains and rattle the glass panes.
My body lies on death’s bed, clinging to a pillow.

Waiting for love to float in like an apparition,
to rescue me from this desperate affliction,
to dose me out of this drear hallucination,
to whisper into my ear. To speak of the years

long ago when love was real. When warm tears
were streams of joy. Sing softly as I am fragile
and yearn for the tenderness of the past.
Breathe into my lips so that I might last

one more play in your deep song of affection.
One more day with your illusive presence.
Approach me in my sleep, come to me in dreams.
Blow in as a breeze through my open window.

Looking back at this poem, I sense a bit of desperation. I can feel the desire for a day gone by. As if a ghost would come in and relive a time when love was tactile and tender. In this poem, love is on its death bed. At this point, the poet is simply clinging not only to a pillow, but an illusion.

Once again, the themes of longing and death are apparent in modern love poems. Yet, these themes are not a recent development. Themes of the impermanence of love and the resulting affect of longing and vulnerability can be traced back to some of human civilizations earliest examples of love poems. Take for example the delightful ancient Egyptian love poems written during the Ramesside period (ca. 1300-1100B.C.) This poem reflects love in Springtime. In this poem, the poet’s youthful bashfulness is in conflict with her longings and vulnerabilities:

Spring:

I was simply off to see Nefrus my friend
Just to sit and chat at her place (about men),
When there, hot on his horses, comes Mehy.
(oh god, I said to myself, it’s Mehy!)

Right over the crest of the road
wheeling along with the boys.
Oh Mother Hathor, what shall I do?
Don’t let him see me!

Where can I hide?
Make me a small creeping thing
to slip by his eye (sharp as Horus’)
unseen.

Oh, look at you, feet (this road is a river)
You walk me right out of my depth!
Someone, silly heart, is exceedingly ignorant here -
aren’t you a little too easy near Mehy?

If he sees that I see him, I know
he will know how my heart flutters (Oh, Mehy!)
I know I will blurt out,
“Please take me!” (I mustn’t!)

No, all he would do is brag out my name,
just one of the many…(I know)…
Mehy would make me just one of the girls
for all of the boys in the palace. (Oh, Mehy.)

In this poem, the young poet’s longing and vulnerabilities are exposed by her nervous excitement in meeting a young man of her fancy. Her “heart flutters (Oh, Mehy!)” Yet, she is worried if her love is revealed she would end up, “just one of the many.” What is amazing is how the emotions of young lovers have not changed much in over 3,000 years.

Finally, consider the love poetry of the ancient Greek poet Sappho of Lesbos (born ca. 630 B.C.). In her time, her lyrical musings were considered coming from the gods. She would later be called the “tenth Muse”.  In this poem, the poet finds herself in the summer of love. She is sitting proudly next to her lover. Yet, by simply being near him, she reveals, “underneath my breast all the heart is shaken.” In spite of the fact that she is joined to her lover, the poet is overwhelmed in love’s insecurities:

Summer:

Like the very gods in my sight is he who
sits where he can look in your eyes, who listens
close to you, to hear the soft voice, its sweetness
murmur in love and

laugher, all for him. But it breaks my spirit;
underneath my breast all the heart is shaken.
Let me only glance where you are, the voice dies,
I can say nothing,

but my lips are stricken to silence, under-
neath my skin the tenuous flame suffuses;
nothing shows in front of my eyes, my ears are
muted in thunder.

And the seat breaks running upon my, fever
shakes my body, paler I turn than grass is;
I can feel that I have been changed, I feel that
death has come near me.

Sappho of Lesbos declares that even when your lover is close enough to look you in your eyes and listen to your soft, sweet murmurs of love, you are still vulnerability and in a state of longing.

What all of these poems reveal is just how fragile love is. Human beings fall in love for a variety of reasons which this essay was not meant to explore. However, by simply looking at the legacy of love poems, themes of longing and vulnerable are repeatedly revealed. Perhaps human beings fall in love strictly out of pure lustful physical attraction.  Certainly there are some lusty ancient Egyptian love poems to counter argue the thesis of this essay. However, for every hot and lustful poem of antiquity there is an equal amount of poems that deal in the essential emotion of longing which also brings people together.

While it is convenient to believe people fall in love simply out of lustful compulsion, by considering the love poems throughout history, we find a far more complicated story. If “poetry is the language of love,” then poets reveal love to be deeply personal, soul searching quest to overcome one’s longings and vulnerabilities.

Works Cited:

Egyptian Love Poems. Lawall, Sarah., General Editor. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. W.W. Norton & Company. New York. 2002. 39.

Neruda, Pablo. 100 Love Sonnets, Cien Sonetos de Amor. Translated by Stephen Tapscott. University of Texas Press. Austin, Texas. 1986. 19.

Sappho of Lesbos. Lawall, Sarah., General Editor. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. W.W. Norton & Company. New York. 2002. 532.

Obama’s 13526 Mistake, ROTC Censorship

Some might recall the story, reported in early December, on the Columbia University memo to foreign affairs students interested in working for the State Department. The memo instructed students to avoid writing or talking about information derived from the WikiLeaks releases. At the time, the government shrugged off the memo and articles as merely a leak by an unnamed source. However, yesterday, Dr. Stephan Zunes, a professor of politics and coordinator of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco, in an article in the Mercury News, reignited the controversy of the government attempt to censor WikiLeaks material, and more broadly academic freedom, within the ranks of the U.S. Army ROTC program.

According to Dr. Zunes, a “Dec. 8 memo from Col. Charles M. Evans, commanding officer of the 8th Brigade, U.S. Army Cadet Command, “using the classified information found on WikiLeaks for research papers, presentations, etc. is prohibited.” A follow-up memo from the cadet commander at the University of San Francisco advised against even talking about it, precluding ROTC students from taking part in classroom discussions regarding WikiLeaks material.”

Remember the Columbia University memo to their students read:

“We received a call today from a SIPA alumnus who is working at the State Department. He asked us to pass along the following information to anyone who will be applying for jobs in the federal government, since all would require a background investigation and in some instances a security clearance.

The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. He recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.

Regards,
Office of Career Services”

This morning I called Steve Arel at the U.S. Army Cadet Command office of public affairs and asked him about Professor Zunes’ article and ROTC policy regarding the WikiLeaks material. He told me ROTC students are under the same set of orders as regular military personal. Arel paraphrased parts of Executive-Order 13526 as the bases for prohibiting ROTC cadets from talking about WikiLeaks information.  Specifically, Arel points out “Classified information shall not be declassified automatically as a result of any unauthorized disclosure of identical or similar information.”

This means, under penalty of law, ROTC students shall not openly talk about the still “classified” information that is openly in the news.  As a result, Zunes states:

“Those of us teaching courses in such fields as constitutional law, U.S. foreign policy, Middle Eastern politics and media studies are considering using WikiLeaks material in the coming semester. This means that if any of us were to give such an assignment, ROTC students would be forced to choose between not completing it or putting their careers in jeopardy.”

After reading Zunes’ article, Steve Arel called me back and told me it was “Just one professor’s opinion.” I asked Arel, is there anything in Zunes’ piece that he disagreed with? He would not comment. I then asked Arel, “Would Journalist and political scientist students chances of getting into the ROTC or having a military career be hampered if their teachers assigned them work related to the WikiLeaks material? Arel told me that he would have to get back to me later today. I’m still waiting for a response.

Nonetheless, Dr. Zunes article states: “The University of San Francisco administration appears to be taking this threat against academic freedom seriously and has asked for clarifications from ROTC commanders and others in the federal government. Thus far, however, nothing has been forthcoming.

There are plenty of thoughtful and diverse opinions at the University of San Francisco and elsewhere regarding the legality, ethics and wisdom of releasing classified material via WikiLeaks. Since the material is now in the public domain, however, the U.S. military has no right to dictate how it might be used in the classroom. Indeed, this kind of interference has no place in a democracy.”

After talking with Arel, I went to the White House website and read Executive-Order 13526. Certainly, I’m not a lawyer, however, section 1.7. Classification Prohibitions and Limitations states:

“(a)  In no case shall information be classified, continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified in order to: (1)  conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error; (2)  prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency;(3)  restrain competition; or (4)  prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security.”

WikiLeaks is known is a whistleblower website. Most experts from both sides of the debate agree WikiLeaks documents release has primarily caused little to no harm to the U.S. government, other than high level embarrassment. Zunes points out that the information is now widely public thanks to the U.S. Army making its information available to a private in the U.S. Army. And now, everyone in the world has access to and is free to comment on this high level embarrassing news, except those students who aspire to work for and serve the U.S. government.

As a student writer, I had to ask the U.S. Army Cadet Command if reading and writing about the highly publicized WikiLeaks documents jeopardized a student’s chance to work for the government, and specifically enlist in the ROTC. I’m still waiting for a response. However, I can’t imagine the Army saying any more to me than they already have. After all, only President Obama, the Commander and Chief, can write executive orders. And only Obama can correct the gaping Executive-Order 13526 mistake.

Republican Rhetoric Takes Lives

Republican Rhetoric Takes Lives

Yesterday, after hearing about the tragic shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Federal Judge John Roll, and others, including the death of a 9 year old girl Christian Taylor Green (born on 9/11), I wrote a brief comment on one of my favorite citizen journalism websites, which later turned into an interesting discussion similar to what we might see play out in the next few days:

“HurricaneDean: Congresswoman’s shooter appears to be another domestic rightwing terrorist and friend of Fox News. Another anit-gov nativist. Shooter sounds a bit like Glenn Beck.

HurricaneDean: Sarah Palin had Gabrielle Giffords on her “hit list.” Palin wrote of unseating Giffords, “If the vote failed, don’t retreat — RELOAD.”

TheTAZZone: Palin’s an idiot…but…we can’t really pin it on her, this is kinda like blaming gangsta rap for some kid doin’ a drive-by…or blame a movie for creating serial killers…yes, it was a stupid thing

TheTAZZone: to say, but we kinda expect that from Palin.

HurricaneDean: TAZZ, Not exactly. Music and movies are entertainment. Hate filled vitriol from politicians is not.

HurricaneDean: The guy that attempted to shoot up the Tides and ACLU said he listened to Glenn Beck and believed a revolution was coming and he wanted to be a part of it.

HurricaneDean: Even though Beck has called himself a clown, people take his lies, smears, and vitriol seriously. When public figures order hits it is different from when a video game orders it.

TheTAZZone: Yes and no. Perhaps there’s a slight difference but all them require the one and same ingredient …a person who can’t differentiate between reality and fantasy…a sane person would not have seen…

TheTAZZone: that as a call to action…or you’d have a lot more than one person flying off the handle.

HurricaneDean: History tells us, political leaders can drum up violence with words. Music, not so much

HurricaneDean: Political violence is on a rise. I have two articles that have published findings on this matter.

TheTAZZone: Why did, out of 10′s of thousands of insane and 100′s of thousands of marginally intelligent did ‘ only ‘ one ‘ person react? Because even most morons and crazy people knew it was a bad joke. ….

TheTAZZone: could differentiate.

HurricaneDean: Reports show violent rightwing extremist groups rising, as is the violent rhetoric of rightwing talk show and politicians.

HurricaneDean: Yes, it is the crazies that will go off the edge. But they don’t need any help from political leaders.

TheTAZZone: Agreed…it was a stupid thing to say because they should know that someone will likely go off the edge.

HurricaneDean: We don’t need anymore Timothy McVieghs. (Another rightwing anti-gov. nativist)

HurricaneDean: When political extremism rises, so does the body count. Left or right, this is simply history. Look at the anarchist in Greece. Same story, just opposite side of the spectrum.”

However, I was not along in my quick analysis looking toward Republican leaders for partial blame. Tucson, Arizona Sheriff Clarence Dupnik also came out in opposition of the Republican and rightwing political rhetoric:

“When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.

“It’s not unusual for all public officials to get threats constantly, myself included. And that’s the sad thing of what’s going on in America. Pretty soon, we’re not going to be able to find reasonable, decent people who are willing to subject themselves to serve in public office.”

He later added:

DUPNIK: Let me just say one thing, because people tend to poo-poo this business about all the vitriol that we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that. That may be free speech. But it’s not without consequences.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/08/gabrielle-giffords-shot-c_n_806211.html#79_wow

Since I started this piece by quoting myself, I guess it is only fitting to end it doing the same. Here is a small excerpt from an article I published in March, 2010 titled, Tea Party Terrorists:

“A Harris Poll published March, 22, 2010 demonstrates the influence extremist ideology has had on Republicans. When asked about Obama’s intentions, 51 % believed, “He wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one world government,” 45 % believe, “He was not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president,” 61% says he, “Wants to take away Americans’ right to own guns,” 39 % believes he “Is doing many of the things that Hitler did,” and 41% answered true to the statement that Obama, “Wants to use an economic collapse or terrorist attack as an excuse to take dictatorial powers.” [5]

At one time, this type of thinking was considered rightwing extremist fringe ideology. Today, the conspiracy theories of the crazies are trickling into the main stream rightwing media. We see slogans and rhetoric splattered across the front pages of our papers that could have been written by George Eaton or Timothy McVeigh. And that is where all of this vitriol and crazy conspiracy theories ultimately can lead to, another Oklahoma City bombing. That is why all of us need to talk to our fellow Americans and listen to them without using bullhorns, racial slurs and brinks throw their windows. We need to end allowing crazy conspiracy theories to substitute honest debate on policy differences.”

Republican rhetoric takes lives. Now is the time for all Americans to just say no. No more lies, smears, and vitriol. No more fear mongering. And especially, no more threats and images that provoke violence. However, I feel the only way this ultimately will change is when the few remaining morally sound Republicans finally stand up to the extremist elements that have hijacked their party. That is of course, if there really are any remaining morally sound Republicans left in America. I’m increasingly less convinced of that possibility.

Update: According to FireLakeDog.com: Law enforcement officials have also released the names of the others killed in the shooting:  Dorwan Stoddard, 76, whose wife Mavanell was shot in the legs but is expected to recover; Dorothy Murray, 76 and Phyllis Schenk, 79. The names of Judge John Roll and Rep. Giffords’ Community Outreach Director, Gabe Zimmerman, had previously been released.