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ISIS Is Beheading American Journalists to Lure US Into Another Ground War |
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Thursday, 04 September 2014 09:37 |
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Goodman writes: "The recent murders of James Foley and Steven J. Sotloff by ISIS militants, brazenly brandishing knives and videotaping these executions are not only horrifying, but also infuriating for millions of Americans."
Is ISIS trying to draw U.S. troops back to Iraq? (photo: Guardian UK)
ALSO SEE: Obama Promises to "Degrade and Destroy" Islamic State
ISIS Is Beheading American Journalists to Lure US Into Another Ground War
By H. A. Goodman, The Huffington Post
04 September 14
 he recent murders of James Foley and Steven J. Sotloff by ISIS militants, brazenly brandishing knives and videotaping these executions are not only horrifying, but also infuriating for millions of Americans. The moment I saw a terrorist standing confidently over James Foley, ready to end the man's life, I wanted retribution and immediately wished for the destruction of ISIS. Similar to the feelings aroused by 9/11, the killing of Americans by terrorists evokes a great deal of anger within me and many other citizens throughout the country. After 4,804 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq and 2,340 U.S. soldiers died in Afghanistan, one million U.S. soldiers wounded in both wars, and a potential cost of up to $6 trillion, the last thing Americans need to see is videos of fanatics executing civilians in Iraq.
However, unlike over a decade ago, before the roadside bombs and everything else our soldiers had to endure in Iraq, my hatred for ISIS is now tempered by certain costly and hard-learned lessons. Two counterinsurgency wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan have caused immense hardship upon our Armed Forces, a suicide epidemic, a VA crisis, and countless number of night terrors, PTSD cases, and many other repercussions from fighting too long in foreign lands. While we have a population of over 310 million citizens, 2.5 million Americans protected the third most populous nation in the world. The least we owe these brave men and women is a strategy that doesn't end in further involvement within a known quagmire.
I've never served in the military, but I have the good sense to know that our soldiers deserve better than to relive the nightmares of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, Iraq is crumbling, but further involvement by America won't ensure its survival; only the Iraqi's themselves can ensure the viability of their state. To believe that we must reenter a war we just ended is similar to the gambler in Vegas who maxes out his ATM in order to play one more losing hand at poker.
The nature of war in Iraq today, and for most of the past decade, is the reality of irregular warfare where winning the battle entails occupying territory and dealing with ambushes, roadside bombs, snipers, and every other tactic aimed at weakening a great power. Our soldiers don't deserve another ground war in Iraq and we should never again wage a counterinsurgency war anywhere in the world. ISIS wants this suicidal showdown, they want to lure the U.S. into a ground war, and they need the legitimacy acquired by Al-Qaeda and Bin-Laden when both lured our country into two colossal mistakes in the Middle East.
Our society, sadly, is seemingly quick to forget the lessons learned only several years ago. Why? Because never-ending media images of militants with black beards and uniforms doing donuts in tanks and vehicles, relishing their victories and slaughtering groups of unarmed men, have garnered exactly the type of attention desired by ISIS. In order to defeat ISIS, we'll have to wage war on our terms; not the terms of a terrorist group who's raison detre, like Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and every other terror organization, is to weaken a far greaterer power though asymmetric warfare. There are a number of reasons why ISIS desperately wants the U.S. to send tens of thousands of ground troops back to Iraq and this article highlights why we shouldn't fall into their trap.
1. The U.S. should leave the ground war to Shia, Kurdish and other Iraqi forces. According to a Salon.com article in 2006, the Battle of Fallujah is an example of why Iraqis, not U.S troops, must vanquish ISIS:
During the battle for Fallujah, the military spent weeks warning civilians to leave the city -- and then gave Marines clear, deadly rules of engagement. "Our ROEs were kill anything that moves," said Crossan, who fought alongside Kaufman during the battle. "We went for 10 days of straight-on fighting. Most of it was at close quarters."
In places like Fallujah in 2004 and Haditha last year, American armed forces in Iraq face ambiguous situations that confound the rules of engagement and blur the distinction between ordinary Iraqis and the insurgents.
At Fallujah, Kaufman described how Marines had to make excruciating, split-second decisions about how to handle Iraqi civilians who would not leave their homes. "We would kick in doors and there would be a 90-year-old man standing there," Kaufman recounted. "He is saying, 'This is my house. I'm not leaving my house.'" In that frenzied situation, Kaufman realized that he could have shot the old man. But as he put it, "I just couldn't do it. You get to a point where you get tired of the killing."
Fallujah is just one of countless examples of how ISIS could lure American soldiers into deadly ambushes, sniper fire, and especially the morally ambiguous reality of differentiating between civilian and enemy. Providing Kurdish, Shia, and the Sunni forces that view ISIS as enemies with armament and aid will protect our ground troops from further Fallujah's, and further guerrilla warfare aimed at weakening our country.
2. The U.S. must remember what makes ISIS dangerous, as well as their advantages on the battlefield. ISIS can use tribal allegiances and fears against American soldiers, as well as create an atmosphere of further chaos, even after losing every military battle.
David Galula, the French Army Lieutenant Colonel who penned one of the quintessential works on war titled, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, explains the difference between conventional and counterinsurgency wars:
"All wars are cruel, the revolutionary war perhaps most of all because every citizen, whatever his wish, is or will be directly and actively involved in it by the insurgent who needs him and cannot afford to let him remain neutral. The cruelty of the revolutionary war is not a mass, anonymous cruelty but a highly personalized, individual one."
If ISIS lures America into another ground war, our soldiers will be faced with civilian allies during the day who fire at them at night, just like in previous Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. Why? The answer lies in Galula's assessment of the war ISIS wants; a personalized conflict where civilians can be intimidated, factions can be exploited, and U.S. troops are caught in the middle of competing allegiances. We've already experienced this scenario only several years ago and to forget these lessons would be madness.
3. A ground war with the U.S. will boost terrorist recruitment from around the world, even if ISIS loses initial military battles. John Horgan, a psychologist at UMass-Lowell who specializes in terrorism, has explained how ISIS recruits:
People who join these groups are trying to find a path, to answer a call to something, which would basically mean that they're doing something meaningful with their lives. That is a common denominator across the board.
... in the eyes of potential recruits, this is fantasy made reality. It's everything that a would-be jihadist could have hoped for.
... Al Hayat, ISIS's media department, are nothing if not effective amateur psychologists. They're also adept marketers. These are great "Jihadi infomercials" -- they're presenting a limited-time offer, and encouraging potential recruits to act now.
The idea that ISIS could be defeated by U.S. ground troops ignores the fact that Al-Qaeda simply morphed into ISIS, once Al-Qaeda was defeated. Recruiting for any terror group relies on the perception that it is on the same playing field as great powers, and once the great power obliges, recruits from around the world will be attracted to the prospect of fighting and dying against America. It's happened before and it will happen again if we ignore the lessons of Iraq. Let's not forget also that we are still fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Airstrikes and funding the enemies of ISIS should be the primary ways the U.S. battles this terrorist organization. President Obama is indeed engaging in "mission creep" and the American people see ISIS everyday on television, so the possibility that citizens will simply sit back and watch our soldiers engage in another Iraq War is quite possible. If we fall into the trap set by ISIS, our country will have proven that its attention span is not only short, but also captivated by terrorist propaganda and lured into costly wars by terrorist strategies.
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F-35: Zombie Fighter-Bomber of American "Defense" Fantasies? |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=20877"><span class="small">William Boardman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Wednesday, 03 September 2014 14:50 |
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Boardman writes: "Officially, the U.S. government is 'still hopeful' that its nuclear-capable F-35, already the world's most expensive war machine, might someday work as promised more than a decade ago."
The U.S. Marine Corps version of Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. (photo: Reuters)
F-35: Zombie Fighter-Bomber of American "Defense" Fantasies?
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
03 September 13
Air Force future flying high in expense after burning up on the ground
 fficially, the U.S. government is “still hopeful” that its nuclear-capable F-35, already the world’s most expensive war machine, might someday work as promised more than a decade ago.
That was the best face Under Secretary of Defense Frank Kendall would put on the beleaguered, overdue, and over-budget “fifth generation” Joint Strike Fighter just three weeks after a test version of the F-35 burst into flames on a Florida runway. Kendall’s hope that the F-35 would make a July appearance at the Farnsborough air show in Britain went up in smoke shortly after, and the $400 billion plane’s performance since then has not encouraged much greater hope. As Kendall said in early September, "I am getting, over time, more confident that we've got our arms around that problem and are solving it."
To fulfill its full military-industrial hope, the stealth warplane will need to find reliable engines, develop software that works, win at least two more lawsuits, and find more willing buyers.
As of late August the only company that builds engines for the F-35 was in its fourth month of suspended production and delivery of those engines. The engine-maker, Pratt & Whitney (a United Technologies Corp. subsidiary), suspended production in May because it suspects its supply of Titanium is substandard. Titanium is essential to the engine. The Titanium supplier disputes Pratt & Whitney’s claim, but Pratt & Whitney has so far refused to share its test data with the supplier. The cost of developing the engine is about $68 billion so far, out of the total, continuing development cost of $400 billion.
Reportedly, Pratt & Whitney has “determined that the metal in 147 F-35 engines already delivered didn’t pose a flight-safety risk,” according to a company spokesperson. There are currently about 104 F-35s authorized to fly under limited conditions for the Air Force, Navy, and Marines within the United States.
It was a Pratt & Whitney engine that caught fire and blew parts through the fuselage of an F-35 getting ready to take off from Eglin AFB on June 23. Early reports suggested that the fire started due to “excessive rubbing” of fan blades in the after-burning turbofan at the rear of the plane. More than two months after the plane burned on the ground, the Pentagon still had no official explanation of why.
Stop the F-35 Coalition takes the Air Force to federal court
Stop the F-35 Coalition and several individual plaintiffs filed their lawsuit against the Air Force in U.S. District Court in Burlington, Vermont, on June 30 (as amended two weeks later). The 38-page amended complaint details plaintiffs’ assertion that the federal government violated federal law in making its decision in December 2013 to base 18 admittedly noisy F-35 fighter-bombers in the middle of Vermont’s most populated region. In particular, plaintiffs assert, the Air Force violated the National Environmental Protection Act of 1969 (NEPA) and the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) by failing to follow the requirements of those laws in evaluating the impact of F-35 operation on its surroundings. The Air Force has acknowledged that the F-35, operating at a sound level of 65 decibels or more, will by definition create a much larger area “unsuitable for residential use” in largely residential towns.
The Stop the F-35 Coalition complaint, prepared by Atty. James Dumont, comprises eight counts (Civil Action No. 5:14-cv-132) of violations of the law by the Air Force:
- Failure to Adequately Address Mitigation under NEPA;
- Failure to Address Conflict with State and Local Law under NEPA;
- Failure to Address Socioeconomic Impacts under NEPA;
- Failure to Identify and Evaluate Harm to Historic Properties under NEPA;
- Failure to Consider the Current Management Practice of Discontinuing the Vintage of F-16 Jets Located at BIA [Burlington International Airport] as the No-Action Alternative or a Reasonable Alternative under NEPA;
- Failure to Consider the Low-Probability Catastrophe Impacts of Exposure of the Public to Extraordinarily Toxic Particles and Fumes of Burning Carbon Fiber and Stealth Coatings under NEPA;
- Adoption of the Mitigation Report Without Notice to the Public as Required by NEPA;
- Violation of NHPA.
Each count is supported by assertions of fact and law subject to examination by the court. For each count, plaintiffs ask the court to issue a favorable declaratory judgment, injunctions to enforce the judgment, and an order that the Air Force pay plaintiffs costs.
The Air Force filed its 21-page answer to the complaint on August 28. The document flatly denies (“The allegations are denied”) most of the facts and arguments offered by plaintiffs. The Air Force asks the court to dismiss the complaint in its entirety and order plaintiffs to pay the government’s costs.
The basic issue: do the powerful get to run roughshod over anyone?
The fundamental issue in Burlington is and always has been whether supporters of the F-35 in particular and war spending in general have the right to impose their militarism on others without regard to law, fairness, or human decency. This is a national issue that the militarists have been winning since 1945 under the code words “national security.”
In Vermont the problem is structural and, effectively, colonial. The City of Burlington owns the Burlington International Airport, but the airport is not located in the city and has little impact on the city, other than revenue. The airport is located mostly in the separate towns of South Burlington and Winooski, which have no authority over the facility. The commercial airport, which is also the base of the Vermont Air National Guard, is effectively an occupying power in its host communities.
These communities bear the brunt of noise, traffic, and other difficulties created by the airport, but they receive a negligible share of the benefits. These communities are poorer and smaller than the City of Burlington and have mostly knelt in fealty to their more powerful neighbors. When the South Burlington city council raised objections to the F-35 plans a few years ago, outside money flowed into the next election and re-established a more compliant quisling government.
The Air Force comes in on the side of the richer, more powerful forces in Vermont, including the entire political leadership, most of whom are Democrats. The governor even went on a joyride to Florida to say how wonderful he thinks the F-35 is. But he and the congressional delegation don’t listen to the people most affected, and won’t even meet with them.
The residential area around the airport has been under duress for years. The federal government has bought and destroyed a portion of the homes “unsuitable for residential use” but has provided no new housing. The Air Force environmental impact study acknowledges that its plans for the F-35 will make more homes unsuitable for residential use – 997 homes with 18 F-35s, 1,441 homes with 24 F-35s.
The Air Force admits essential elements of community destruction
Given the gross power imbalance in the fight over basing 18 or 24 F-35s in Vermont, the Air Force’s admissions in the federal lawsuit are all the more illuminating.
- The Air Force admits that “the [18 F-35s basing] decision is estimated to result in approximately 2,000 additional people being affected by noise in excess of 65 dB,” the decibel standard for rendering an area “unsuitable for residential use.”
- The Air Force admits that it is “now implementing a mitigation and that the mitigation plan was not made available for public comment” as required by federal law.
- The Air Force admits that “studies exist suggesting that high levels of aircraft noise are associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease and childhood cognitive impairment and that continuous exposure to high noise levels well in excess of 65 dB will damage human hearing.”
- The Air Force admits that the 24 F-35s basing alternative “would cause an additional 672 acres to experience 65 db DNL noise. Within this area, an additional 3,117 individuals and an additional 1,444 households would experience 65 db DNL [day-night average sound level] noise as compared to existing F-16 noise.”
- The Air Force admits that it ignored financial impact on the City of Winooski or on a variety of homeowners, as required by law. The Air Force admits that an “appraiser found an average loss of value of $33,534 per home in those areas of South Burlington already affected by 65 db DNL of military aircraft noise” and does not dispute the finding.
- The Air Force admits that, while it identified two historic districts that would experience excess noise, “It did not identify the individual properties within these districts or determine the number of those individual properties. The Air Force admits that it reported falsely “that the State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO) had verbally concurred in the Defendant’s conclusion of no adverse impact on historic properties” when that had not occurred. The Air Force admits that, in fact, in a May 2012 letter, that officer had identified significant potential for harm to historic properties from F-35 activity and raised questions that the Air Force did not answer, as required by law.
- The Air Force admits that NEPA requires an assessment of a “no action” plan and that “The alternative consisting of no military jets at BIA was not discussed and its impacts were not disclosed in detail comparable to that of the proposed action,” as required by law.
This case is now in the discovery phase. Typically, NEPA cases do not go to trial, but are decided based on the record compiled by the regulating agency, in this case the Air Force. The federal court will decide whether or not the record shows that the Air Force adequately followed the law.
In a similar case, pitting jet noise against residential peace and quiet, citizens of Valparaiso, Florida, sued the Air Force in 2009. The case settled before coming to trial, with the Air Force promising to take some mitigating actions.
When should U.S. stop spending on a useless airplane?
Calls for scrapping the F-35 have come and gone over the years, but the political and economic inertia of the multi-billion dollar behemoth has kept it going despite the number and variety of ways in which this weapons system continues to fail to meet any of its military expectations. Failure still makes a profit.
The financial newsletter The Motley Fool took a look at the F-35 fire and its missed air shows and wrote, with likely Freudian error where “acquisition” was intended:
… this latest development is just part of a series of problems plaguing the F-35, which now has a revised price of $398.6 billion just for accusation and development. Accordingly, this leads to the question: Is it time to kill the F-35?
... failure to appear at both [British airshows] could cost Lockheed F-35 sales, as several countries are "weighing orders" for the F-35 and a grounding isn't exactly the best sales pitch…. recurring engine problems could be cause for investor concern – no matter how advanced it is, a warplane isn't much good without a working engine.
The Motley Fool stops short of further accusation and fails to give a clear answer to the question of killing the program. But it gives no strong reason to continue the program, either, other than warmed over hope for improvement. Initially the U.S. planned to buy 2,457 F-35s, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). Now that number is reported at 1,800, with another 400 in foreign sales.
The market’s increasing doubts could put the F-35 in a tailspin
Australia has signed up to buy the F-35, starting with 60 for more than $12.4 billion (almost $210 million per jet), once they’re operational. This commitment is thought to be solid for now, with future purchases much less certain.
Canada originally signed up to buy 65 of the F-35s, but now Canadian politics have put the deal on hold. Canada is actively considering buying something other than the F-35.
Great Britain is committed to buy “at least 48” of the planes, in which it also has a major manufacturing stake supporting thousands of jobs. But Italy and the Netherlands have already cut back on their original orders. Denmark’s commitment is uncertain. As the Washington Post summed it up in mid-August:
From the beginning of the program, Defense Department officials signed up eight international partners, including Canada. Since then, they’ve crossed the globe looking for additional foreign government customers with some success. Japan and Israel have agreed to buy some of the planes, while South Korea appears likely to make the F-35 its next fighter jet as well. But as Canada shows, not everyone is sold on what has become the most expensive weapons system in U.S. history…. Some fear that if nations such as Canada balk, there could be questions about the long-term affordability of the program.
Currently, Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon officials peg the “fly-away” cost of one F-35 at $110 million. That price does not all costs, including more than ten years of research and development, among others. The same officials say the price could be down to $80 million per plane by 2020.
The F-35 remains unfinished, even though it has been in production for years. There is no reliable completion date. The GAO has expressed doubts that the cost will come down as hoped. The GAO also has reservations that the F-35 will be able to perform as well as originally predicted.
U.S. Naval Institute News has reported that even the vaunted “stealth” of the F-35 may not be as good as its hype. Developments with Russian and Chinese lower-frequency radar are reportedly making stealth fighters easier to see and target. As USNI News put it: “U.S. fighters – like the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lighting II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) – are protected by stealth technology optimized for higher frequency targeting radars but not for lower frequency radars…. Without such capability, the Navy’s carrier fleet will fade into irrelevance….”
Greater optimism comes from the International Business Times, which reported as virtual fact that:
By the time the Lockheed Martin F-35 is fully combat-ready in 2018, it will be well on its way to 50 percent of the global jet fighter market. That success, unprecedented in the history of military aviation, could push U.S. and European current-generation fighters – which do not have the stealth capabilities of the F-35 – out of production for good….
And just how good is the F-35 anyway?
There’s no objective measure of the performance of a plane that is still in development and remains semi-grounded. There is lots of anecdotal evidence from pilots with a vested interest in the F-35’s success who can’t say enough good things about it. There’s also anecdotal chatter on military-oriented websites, like this:
NavySubNuke • 2 months ago
actually what is scarier is talking to an actual test pilot - the one (I admit one is a poor sample size but it is all I've got) I talked to is begging to go back to hornets after flying this. He said something along the lines of low capability boondoggle….
Diogenes • 2 months ago
Persistent whispers of brittle turbine blades that shatter and get sucked into engine still swirling around ... USMC testing in AZ had such a problem it is said ...
ninjacat • 2 months ago
What do you know about this plane that you are calling it a failed project? so lets see cut the plane, lay of thousands of people, use to money to fund welfare while national security goes further down the tube havent you learned anything from the ongoing border crisis ? or are you to dense to even comprehend how all of this work?...
tylersocal • 2 months ago
Welcome to aircraft development. If this was easy, every country would have their own version of an F35.
acmavm • 6 days ago
And maybe theirs wouldn’t burst into flame.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Politicians Show Their Gratitude Where It Count$ |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=14990"><span class="small">Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company</span></a>
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Wednesday, 03 September 2014 14:47 |
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Excerpt: "There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart, a poet wrote, and as this year's summer winds toward its end and elections approach, gratitude is indeed what our politicians have flowing from that space where their hearts should be."
US Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, center. (photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Politicians Show Their Gratitude Where It Count$
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company
03 September 13
here shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart, a poet wrote, and as this year’s summer winds toward its end and elections approach, gratitude is indeed what our politicians have flowing from that space where their hearts should be.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is grateful to his friend Rick Anderson, the CEO of Delta Airlines. In late July, a week after McConnell treated him to breakfast in the Senate Dining Room, checks for McConnell’s super PAC came winging their way from Anderson and his wife, as well as Delta’s political action committee.
“This is the kind of rare access that most of us will never experience.” That’s Sheila Krumholz, executive director the Center for Responsive Politics, the campaign finance watchdog. She was talking to National Journal about Delta’s boss dining in first class with McConnell: “Who makes a good enough breakfast companion for a sitting senator in a highly competitive reelection campaign to take time out of their busy day? It never hurts if the person can follow up with a donation, and all the better if it can be a sizable one.”
McConnell’s even more grateful to the Brothers Koch, and so are some other conservative Senate candidates — Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Joni Ernst of Iowa and Colorado’s Cory Gardner. All of them gave command performances at the Kochs’ secret annual retreat and strategy conference in June. Billionaires, millionaires and the officeholders and seekers who love the cash the superrich can offer gathered to celebrate the privileged.
By now you’ve heard about the surreptitiously recorded audiotape of remarks about campaign finance reform that McConnell made at that cozy confab. Thank goodness the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision leveled the playing field for corporate speech, he said: “The worst day of my political life was when President George W. Bush signed McCain-Feingold into law.”
As Lauren Windsor at The Nation noted, “To put that in perspective, Mitch McConnell’s thirty-five-year career in the Senate saw the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed thousands of Americans, the 2008 housing meltdown that threatened the entire economy and Barack Obama’s election, to cite a conservative bête noire. But it was McCain-Feingold, the bill that banned soft money and unlimited donations to party committees, that constitutes the worst day of his political life.”
Yikes. But lest you think the largesse and gratitude are only piling up on the GOP side of the ledger, note that in July, Democratic fundraising committees raised more money than Republicans, this in the face of fears about dire results for Democrats come November. And whilst resort vacationing amongst the grandees on Martha’s Vineyard in August, President Obama had time amidst a world of crises to hang out and show his gratitude at an intimate birthday party for 150 nearest and dearest that Washington’s premier rainmaker and fixer Vernon Jordan threw for his wife, Ann, at the Farm Neck Golf Club.
Jordan, who like the Quakers of Philadelphia came to do good and did well — very well — has had a distinguished career in Washington as a civil rights leader and friend to presidents. But the man who worked his way through college as chauffeur to an Atlanta banker and former mayor has become rich selling his influence in DC: Jordan is senior counsel at the powerful law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, which recently became the most lucrative lobbying operation in America, earning $8.6 million in the second quarter of 2014 and for the first time nosing out its closest K Street competitor, Squire Patton Boggs. (They did this by poaching many of Squire Patton Boggs’ health care industry clients.)
Akin Gump handles Beltway business for everyone from Amazon and AT&T to UPS and the US Chamber of Commerce (ah, that champion of the people!), along the way making generous campaign contributions – hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth — to candidates of both parties.
Sadly, when it comes to lobbying and the lucrative lifestyle it affords, Barack Obama and his White House have devolved from an alleged zero-tolerance policy to acquiescence, an attitude of freewheeling laissez-faire that’s already lining the pockets of administration and campaign alumni and to hell with principle.
Campaigning in 2008, Obama proclaimed, “Make no mistake about what we’re up against. We’re up against the belief that it’s all right for lobbyists to dominate our government, that they are just part of the system in Washington. But we know that the undue influence of lobbyists is part of the problem, and this election is our chance to say that we are not going to let them stand in our way anymore.”
When he took office the following year, an executive order was signed banning registered lobbyists from the administration. But then exceptions were made, and exceptions and exceptions. Just a couple of weeks ago, Politico calculated that “the Obama administration has hired about 70 previously registered corporate, trade association and for-hire lobbyists. And many of these former lobbyists work at the highest levels of government.” What’s more, Mark Felsenthal at Reuters recently reported that, “President Barack Obama is loosening restrictions on lobbyists who want to serve on federal advisory boards.” There are more than a thousand such committees, room for plenty of mischief.
Now the revolving door has started spinning in the other direction, as the Obama campaign and administration insiders hear the siren call of green (and we don’t mean the environment). The website Buzzfeed pointed to Obama adviser and campaign manager David Plouffe’s deal with Uber, the on-demand car service doing its best to please yuppies while breaking the taxi unions. Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and 2012 campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt are being paid to run a PR campaign against the teachers unions and Obama campaign manager Jim Messina is working for the re-election of Britain’s anti-union Prime Minster David Cameron and his Conservative Party. Talk about betraying your base!
“The key staff from Obama for America are translating their political success into personal economic success,” Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen told Buzzfeed. “If anything this points to the need for the rest of us to build a movement that gets big money out of politics so the change we voted for in 2008 can become real.”
But how do we get that change when the candidate who promised it embraces the status quo of the well-heeled elite? After all, there were the Obamas and Bill and Hillary Clinton at Vernon Jordan’s party on the Vineyard, cheek to cheek with the CEOs of Xerox and American Express. Chances are there were no working people at that shindig to present an opposing viewpoint (except for the hired help serving the pasta and surf and turf). But there were both wings of the Democratic Party: the corporate-center right-Wall Street-lobby wing (the Clintons and Jordan) and the putatively progressive wing (the president) hobnobbing in splendid surroundings with corporate poobahs as police battled residents in Ferguson, Missouri, refugees were being bombed in Iraq, fatal disease plagued West Africa and drought in America dried up 63 trillion gallons of water.
As the world burns, our political class whoops it up with the plutocracy, whether in Martha’s Vineyard or at the Kochs’ posh retreat in southern California. They raise their champagne toasts, quietly reinforce their networks and connections, and then return to the “mainland” and the pretense of once again attending to the people’s business, all the while servicing the accounts that pay the campaign bills and nourish all those inside deals — tax breaks, subsidies, contracts — that many would call corruption but Chief Justice Roberts says are merely gratitude.
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"I Am Not Afraid to Die": Why America Will Never Be the Same Post-Ferguson |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=26467"><span class="small">Brittney Cooper, Salon</span></a>
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Wednesday, 03 September 2014 14:45 |
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Cooper writes: "Having spent time in Ferguson this weekend, marching, standing in community over the site where Mike Brown's body lay unceremoniously uncovered for four hours, and organizing with activists in the basement of a local church, I am clearer now that this is a movement."
Police in riot gear detain a demonstrator in Ferguson, Missouri, August 19, 2014. (photo: Reuters/Joshua Lott)
"I Am Not Afraid to Die": Why America Will Never Be the Same Post-Ferguson
By Brittney Cooper, Salon
03 September 13
Michael Brown's death has created a new reality. Here's what happens when a generation feels it has nothing to lose
 Last Thursday, I boarded a bus with about 40 people for an 18-hour bus ride to Ferguson, Missouri, as part of what we termed the Black Lives Matter Rides. Twenty hours later, we joined riders from all over the country who descended on St. Louis and Ferguson to show solidarity with local activists and residents still fighting for justice in the police killing of 18-year-old unarmed teenager Michael Brown.
As we made preparations over about a two-week period to go — raising thousands of dollars, securing accommodations and working with local activists to determine a plan of action that would be most useful to the people who live in Ferguson — a conversation emerged about whether the uprising in Ferguson constitutes a moment or a movement.
Before leaving, I could only offer educated conjecture. Movements take a long time to build and are generally an accumulation of critical moments. The Greensboro sit-ins of 1960 were part of a longer trajectory of college students practicing the “stool-sitting” technique begun in the early 1940s by college students at Howard University and other historically black colleges. The 1963 March on Washington was the culmination of a 22-year March on Washington Movement that began in 1941 when A. Philip Randolph threatened to march on Washington as a tactic to force Harry Truman to desegregate federal employment agencies.
Movements rarely appear to be movements in the midst of them. We have the benefit of hindsight now as we look at the core years of the Civil Rights Movement from 1954 to 1968. But I am sure that in some key moments, particularly the period from 1955 to 1961, the time between the Montgomery Bus Boycotts and the Freedom Rides, it might not have always seemed clear what the “movement” was. Surely people felt the tides changing, but they could not foresee the trajectory.
We should, I think, not miss the moment trying to theorize the movement. We have to leave certain conversations to history.
Yet, having spent time in Ferguson this weekend, marching, standing in community over the site where Mike Brown’s body lay unceremoniously uncovered for four hours, and organizing with activists in the basement of a local church, I am clearer now that this is a movement.
Seven years ago, as a graduate student at Emory University, I participated with undergraduates there in organizing a response to the Jena Six incidents in Jena, Louisiana. We traveled overnight to Jena to march with a community outraged over the treatment of six black high school students, one of whom was charged with attempted murder, over a racially charged high school brawl. Even then, the over-policing of black teen boys drew us to the cause.
What I remember most, in addition to my frustration with the disorganization of the protests, was an overwhelming feeling that Jena was a missed opportunity. Thousands of young, pumped-up, inspired folks gathered there, and there were no organizing sessions, workshops or dialogues with people in the community. We rode in, marched and rode out.
Ferguson is an altogether different story. There are multiple grounds of leadership, multiple organizations working on the ground to register people to vote, advocate for changes in legislation, and create teams of people to monitor the police. There is also a vocal contingent of young women and men unafraid to agitate, unafraid to take to the streets in peaceful, but passionate protest.
But beyond all of that, there is something else – a refrain that we heard throughout the weekend. On Saturday morning before we marched, Tef Poe, a local rapper and activist, addressed our group at the St. John’s Church where we gathered. He said to us, “I am not afraid to die” in order to bring about change in Ferguson. Later at a local cookout sponsored by one of the local coalitions, some young brothers from a new local group called “Lost Voices” repeated the same thing. Along with a group of young women, they have been sleeping out on the streets, as a kind of vigil until justice is obtained for Mike Brown. And they, too, told us that they are “unafraid to die.” Over the weekend, they awoke to a noose hanging at the place they were sleeping.
These young men, and the young women activists who have joined them faithfully on the front lines, are unafraid to die for the simple right to live unharassed in their own communities. They remain unmoved by tanks, tear gas and nooses.
As we piled back onto the buses, throughout the weekend, that is the refrain – “we are unafraid to die” — that stuck with many of us, that let us know something is different.
But it is different for different reasons than I might have imagined. What does it mean to be “unafraid to die” in order to bring about change? As those words echoed in my mind, on the bus ride home, I was reminded of Notorious B.I.G., the slain rapper whose debut album “Ready to Die” turns 20 years old this month.
Some of the Ferguson riders are 20 years old. They were birthed in the crucible of the Tupac-Biggie moment, the height of 20th century black nihilism. The same year that Biggie dropped “Ready to Die,” Cornel West published the classic “Race Matters.” In the first chapter, “Nihilism in Black America,” he argued, “the major enemy of black survival in America has been and is neither oppression nor exploitation but rather the nihilistic threat — that is loss of hope and absence of meaning. … The self-fulfilling prophecy of the nihilistic threat is that without hope there can be no future, that without meaning there can be no struggle.”
Mike Brown’s death has brought new meaning to local black struggle. His death has come to mean something more, something greater than his life might have been taken to mean, as a poor young black man from a working-class suburb. His death, and officer Darren Wilson’s callous disregard for his life, has made the precariousness of black life visible for a whole new generation of black youth. The precariousness has been made visible and it has been deemed unacceptable – by both the old and the young. One of the riders, a 10-year-old girl from Los Angeles, told us in a church service on Sunday morning, “I am here because I am worried about my life. I’m only 10 years old. I should not have to be worried.”
Mike’s death, his blood seeping out and onto the pavement, has created the fertile soil of movement. It has remixed the nihilism of the sagging pants generation with a new message. These generational sons and daughters of Tupac and Biggie still have little to no “fucks to give” as the colloquial saying goes. They might not be “ready to die” but they are “unafraid to die.” They aren’t knocking on death’s door but they will not retreat when it knocks on theirs. For them, having nothing to lose is more clearly iterated in the words some of us recited as we held hands around Mike Brown’s street memorial: “We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
To this new generation of voices, I became the elder sister sitting in the back of the bus, being consulted about what it “was like when Rodney King happened.” I was only 10 years old when Rodney King “happened” but everyone in movement work knows that the young movers trust no one over 30. One of our riders, a 17-year-old high school senior named Nia, let me know in no uncertain terms that “young people have always led the revolutions.”
As someone not quite ready to be too old and not nearly seasoned enough to claim the status of elder, I am reminded that MLK was 34, the age I’m soon to be, the age of Michael Brown’s mother, when he gave the “I Have a Dream” speech. Still, a real test of our movements will be whether we will be able to hold intergenerational space for all the wisdom and all the limitations that all of us bring to the table.
We went to Ferguson with a simple message: Black Lives Matter. All black lives. And we are prepared to have our nation hear that message with all the fullness, complexity and responsibility that it entails. In the words of Trayvon Martin’s mom to Michael Brown’s mom: “If they don’t hear us, we will make them feel us.” We will make them hear us, see us and feel us. Or we will die trying.
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senior U.S. diplomat told me recently that if Russia were to occupy all of Ukraine and even neighboring Belarus that there would be zero impact on U.S. national interests. The diplomat wasn’t advocating that, of course, but was noting the curious reality that Official Washington’s current war hysteria over Ukraine doesn’t connect to genuine security concerns.
