How the Magna Carta Became a Minor Carta, Part 2

By Noam Chomsky, Tom Dispatch

25 July 12

Read Part I: Noam Chomsky | The Shredding of Our Fundamental Rights

 

he post-civil war 14th amendment granted the rights of persons to former slaves, though mostly in theory. At the same time, it created a new category of persons with rights: corporations. In fact, almost all the cases brought to the courts under the 14th amendment had to do with corporate rights, and by a century ago, they had determined that these collectivist legal fictions, established and sustained by state power, had the full rights of persons of flesh and blood; in fact, far greater rights, thanks to their scale, immortality, and protections of limited liability. Their rights by now far transcend those of mere humans. Under the "free trade agreements", the Pacific Rim can, for example, sue El Salvador for seeking to protect the environment; individuals cannot do the same. General Motors can claim national rights in Mexico. There is no need to dwell on what would happen if a Mexican demanded national rights in the United States.

Domestically, recent supreme court rulings greatly enhance the already enormous political power of corporations and the super-rich, striking further blows against the tottering relics of functioning political democracy.

Meanwhile Magna Carta is under more direct assault. Recall the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, which barred "imprisonment beyond the seas", and certainly the far more vicious procedure of imprisonment abroad for the purpose of torture – what is now more politely called "rendition", as when Tony Blair rendered Libyan dissident Abdel Hakim Belhaj, now a leader of the rebellion, to the mercies of Colonel Gaddafi; or when US authorities deported Canadian citizen Maher Arar to his native Syria, for imprisonment and torture, only later conceding that there was never any case against him. And many others, often through Shannon airport, leading to courageous protests in Ireland.

The concept of due process has been extended under the Barack Obama administration's international assassination campaign in a way that renders this core element of the Charter of Liberties (and the Constitution) null and void. The Justice Department explained that the constitutional guarantee of due process, tracing to Magna Carta, is now satisfied by internal deliberations in the executive branch alone. The constitutional lawyer in the White House agreed. King John might have nodded with satisfaction.

The issue arose after the presidentially ordered assassination-by-drone of Anwar al-Awlaki, accused of inciting jihad in speech, writing, and unspecified actions. A headline in the New York Times captured the general elite reaction when he was murdered in a drone attack, along with the usual collateral damage. It read: "The west celebrates a cleric's death." Some eyebrows were lifted, however, because he was an American citizen, which raised questions about due process – considered irrelevant when non-citizens are murdered at the whim of the chief executive. And irrelevant for citizens, too, under Obama administration due-process legal innovations.

Presumption of innocence has also been given a new and useful interpretation. As the New York Times reported: "Mr Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent." So post-assassination determination of innocence maintains the sacred principle of presumption of innocence.

It would be ungracious to recall the Geneva conventions, the foundation of modern humanitarian law: they bar "the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognised as indispensable by civilised peoples".

The most famous recent case of executive assassination was Osama bin Laden, murdered after he was apprehended by 79 Navy seals, defenceless, accompanied only by his wife, his body reportedly dumped at sea without autopsy. Whatever one thinks of him, he was a suspect and nothing more than that. Even the FBI agreed.

Celebration in this case was overwhelming, but there were a few questions raised about the bland rejection of the principle of presumption of innocence, particularly when trial was hardly impossible. These were met with harsh condemnations. The most interesting was by a respected left-liberal political commentator, Matthew Yglesias, who explained that "one of the main functions of the international institutional order is precisely to legitimate the use of deadly military force by western powers", so it is "amazingly naïve" to suggest that the US should obey international law or other conditions that we righteously demand of the weak.

Only tactical objections can be raised to aggression, assassination, cyberwar, or other actions that the Holy State undertakes in the service of mankind. If the traditional victims see matters somewhat differently, that merely reveals their moral and intellectual backwardness. And the occasional western critic who fails to comprehend these fundamental truths can be dismissed as "silly", Yglesias explains – incidentally, referring specifically to me, and I cheerfully confess my guilt.

Executive Terrorist Lists

Perhaps the most striking assault on the foundations of traditional liberties is a little-known case brought to the supreme court by the Obama administration, Holder v Humanitarian Law Project. The project was condemned for providing "material assistance" to guerrilla organisation PKK, which has fought for Kurdish rights in Turkey for many years and is listed as a terrorist group by the state executive. The "material assistance" was legal advice. The wording of the ruling would appear to apply quite broadly, for example, to discussions and research inquiry, even advice to the PKK to keep to nonviolent means. Again, there was a marginal fringe of criticism, but even those accepted the legitimacy of the state terrorist list – arbitrary decisions by the executive, with no recourse.

The record of the terrorist list is of some interest. For example, in 1988 the Reagan administration declared Nelson Mandela's African National Congress to be one of the world's "more notorious terrorist groups", so that Reagan could continue his support for the apartheid regime and its murderous depredations in South Africa and in neighbouring countries, as part of his "war on terror". Twenty years later Mandela was finally removed from the terrorist list, and can now travel to the US without a special waiver.

Another interesting case is Saddam Hussein, removed from the terrorist list in 1982 so that the Reagan administration could provide him with support for his invasion of Iran. The support continued well after the war ended. In 1989, President Bush even invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to the US for advanced training in weapons production – more information that must be kept from the eyes of the "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders."

One of the ugliest examples of the use of the terrorist list has to do with the tortured people of Somalia. Immediately after 11 September, the US closed down the Somali charitable network Al-Barakaat on grounds that it was financing terror. This achievement was hailed one of the great successes of the "war on terror". In contrast, Washington's withdrawal of its charges as without merit a year later aroused little notice.

Al-Barakaat was responsible for about half the $500m in remittances to Somalia, "more than it earns from any other economic sector and 10 times the amount of foreign aid [Somalia] receives" a UN review determined. The charity also ran major businesses in Somalia, all destroyed. The leading academic scholar of Bush's "financial war on terror", Ibrahim Warde, concludes that apart from devastating the economy, this frivolous attack on a very fragile society "may have played a role in the rise ... of Islamic fundamentalists" – another familiar consequence of the "war on terror".

The very idea that the state should have the authority to make such judgments is a serious offense against the Charter of Liberties, as is the fact that it is considered uncontentious. If the charter's fall from grace continues on the path of the past few years, the future of rights and liberties looks dim.

Who Will Have the Last Laugh?

A few final words on the fate of the Charter of the Forest. Its goal was to protect the source of sustenance for the population, the commons, from external power – in the early days, royalty; over the years, enclosures and other forms of privatisation by predatory corporations and the state authorities who co-operate with them, have only accelerated and are properly rewarded. The damage is very broad.

If we listen to voices from the south today we can learn that "the conversion of public goods into private property through the privatisation of our otherwise commonly held natural environment is one way neoliberal institutions remove the fragile threads that hold African nations together. Politics today has been reduced to a lucrative venture where one looks out mainly for returns on investment rather than on what one can contribute to rebuild highly degraded environments, communities, and a nation. This is one of the benefits that structural adjustment programmes inflicted on the continent – the enthronement of corruption." I'm quoting Nigerian poet and activist Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International, in his searing expose of the ravaging of Africa's wealth, To Cook a Continent, the latest phase of the western torture of Africa.

Torture that has always been planned at the highest level, it should be recognised. At the end of the second world war, the US held a position of unprecedented global power. Not surprisingly, careful and sophisticated plans were developed about how to organise the world. Each region was assigned its "function" by state department planners, headed by the distinguished diplomat George Kennan. He determined that the US had no special interest in Africa, so it should be handed over to Europe to "exploit" – his word – for its reconstruction. In the light of history, one might have imagined a different relation between Europe and Africa, but there is no indication that that was ever considered.

More recently, the US has recognised that it, too, must join the game of exploiting Africa, along with new entries like China, which is busily at work compiling one of the worst records in destruction of the environment and oppression of the hapless victims.

It should be unnecessary to dwell on the extreme dangers posed by one central element of the predatory obsessions that are producing calamities all over the world: the reliance on fossil fuels, which courts global disaster, perhaps in the not-too-distant future. Details may be debated, but there is little serious doubt that the problems are serious, if not awesome, and that the longer we delay in addressing them, the more awful will be the legacy left to generations to come. There are some efforts to face reality, but they are far too minimal. The recent Rio+20 Conference opened with meagre aspirations and derisory outcomes.

Meanwhile, power concentrations are charging in the opposite direction, led by the richest and most powerful country in world history. Congressional Republicans are dismantling the limited environmental protections initiated by Richard Nixon, who would be something of a dangerous radical in today's political scene. The major business lobbies openly announce their propaganda campaigns to convince the public that there is no need for undue concern – with some effect, as polls show.

The media co-operates by not even reporting the increasingly dire forecasts of international agencies and even the US Department of Energy. The standard presentation is a debate between alarmists and sceptics: on one side virtually all qualified scientists, on the other a few holdouts. Not part of the debate are a very large number of experts, including the climate change programme at Massachusetts Institute of Technology among others, who criticise the scientific consensus because it is too conservative and cautious, arguing that the truth when it comes to climate change is far more dire. Not surprisingly, the public is confused.

In his State of the Union speech in January, Obama hailed the bright prospects of a century of energy self-sufficiency, thanks to new technologies that permit extraction of hydrocarbons from Canadian tar sands, shale and other previously inaccessible sources. Others agree. The Financial Times forecasts a century of energy independence for the US The report does mention the destructive local impact of the new methods. Unasked in these optimistic forecasts is the question, what kind of a world will survive the rapacious onslaught?

In the lead in confronting the crisis throughout the world are indigenous communities, those who have always upheld the Charter of the Forests. The strongest stand has been taken by the one country they govern, Bolivia, the poorest country in South America and for centuries a victim of western destruction of the rich resources of one of the most advanced of the developed societies in the hemisphere, pre-Columbus.

After the ignominious collapse of the Copenhagen global climate change summit in 2009, Bolivia organised a People's Summit with 35,000 participants from 140 countries – not just representatives of governments, but also civil society and activists. It produced a People's Agreement, which called for very sharp reduction in emissions, and a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth. That is a key demand of indigenous communities all over the world. It is ridiculed by sophisticated westerners, but unless we can acquire some of their sensibility, they are likely to have the last laugh – a laugh of grim despair.

Rebuilding the Dream Through the
Democratic Party?

By Ted Glick, Reader Supported News

24 July 12

Reader Supported News | Perspective

A Review of Van Jones' "Rebuild the Dream"

 

"No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins - and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins."

- Jesus of Nazareth, from the English Standard Version Bible, Mark 2:21-22

've never been a Democrat, even though my parents were liberal Democrats, and even though I've supported some running for office who were definitely progressive. Going from a boy to a man in the 1960s, it seemed like a no-brainer to me. How could I support a party that had racist segregation supporters in its leadership like James Eastland, John Stennis and Strom Thurmond, and a president elected in 1964, Lyndon Johnson, who campaigned opposing the sending of any more US troops to Vietnam, but after his election, did just the opposite, dramatically and maddeningly escalating that imperialist war?

Of course, there's always been a liberal/progressive wing of the Democratic Party that has given support to progressive movements struggling for peace, equality and human rights.

Van Jones' latest book, "Rebuild the Dream," analyzes the Democratic Party, the Obama phenomenon, the Occupy movement and the overall progressive movement and puts forward a strategic perspective on how we can change the country given where we are in 2012. It is a book well worth reading. Though I have a number of criticisms of it, Van has done the movement a service by putting his brilliant intellect to work to put forward a set of ideas about how to build what, in his prior book, "The Green Collar Economy," he called a "broad, populist alliance - one that includes every class under the sun and every color in the rainbow."

Building a "broad, populist alliance" I completely agree, is an absolutely essential strategic task, and constructive debate over how best to build it, and the actual work of doing so, is very much needed now.

In "Rebuild the Dream," Jones calls for the building of an independent movement outside of the Democratic Party, but there's a real question about how "independent" he sees this movement, particularly when it comes to electoral activity. In a couple of key sentences, he says, for example: "The challenge will be to see whether some part of the 99% can capture a beachhead within an established party - without being captured itself. If it can succeed, the 99% movement will have the standing and the power to force the US political system to be more responsive to the needs of everyday Americans." (p. 173)

Elsewhere he calls for a movement that is "fundamentally independent of any party, politician or personality," and he IS critical in many ways of both parties. For example, in the introduction he writes "our grandparents crafted laws and policies to protect the country from corporate abuses and Wall Street's excesses. Unfortunately, both major political parties were seduced into allowing the elites to strip those protections from our law books." (p. 7) But despite these positive and accurate perspectives, the overall strategic approach of "Rebuild the Dream" when it comes to the electoral process is that this independent movement should primarily work within the Democratic Party.

Jones puts this perspective forward even though he is critical of the Obama administration of which he was a part for six months. One of the things which he does in this book is to analyze where the Obama movement of 2008 came from, what Obama and that movement did right, and wrong, after he was elected president, and what lessons can be drawn from those experiences.

There are two significant ideological perspectives that Van puts forward that are troubling:

His pretty explicit pro-capitalist orientation. Among other passages, on page 189 he writes, "We need to advance toward a better capitalism." An appendix by Eva Patterson says of Jones in reference to his book, "The Green Collar Economy", "Van's book is a veritable song of praise to capitalism, especially the socially responsible and eco-friendly kind." (p. 252)

Without question, within a broad, progressive alliance "the socially responsible and eco-friendly" businesses must be a part of it. But I question if that alliance itself should declare itself pro-capitalist. It seems to me that what is needed is an alliance built around a program on the issues. Debate should take place about what are the best ways to address the range of system-produced crises - climate, health, unemployment, housing, education, cultural violence, inequality, etc. - without the alliance having an explicitly pro-capitalist, pro-socialist, pro-libertarian, pro-anarchist or any other historically-based ideology.

Indeed, the organization Rebuild the Dream, which Van helps to lead, produced something like this with its "Contract for the American Dream." It's a 10-point program that had lots of input - the participation of 131,203 people according to Jones. It can be strengthened and expanded, but it is without question a solid progressive platform without an explicit pro-capitalist, socialist or other ideological orientation that I'm able to detect.

His call for a 99% movement which "defines itself as the 99% for the 100%." I found this to be both troubling and unclear. Does Van really believe that the 1/10 of the 1%, which really dominates the US government and much of the world's economy, are potential allies in a struggle for a truly just world? He does write that "many of the 1% are on our side." Really? I am all for welcoming anyone from anywhere, no matter their race, gender, class, political ideology or personal history, if they begin to see the error of their ways and, through their actions, come over to the side of the people. But it is an illusory view that the vast majority of the corporate ruling class is anything but the numerically tiny but powerful "them" in "them vs. us."

This strategic view clouds and confuses how we do our work. Our work should be focused among the constituencies who are hurting under this system - many of which Van delineates in the book - and those of all classes who are genuinely concerned about injustice and the state of the planet. And honestly, that's really not "the 99%." It's more like maybe "the 70%," though over time we can win more and more of that other 30% who, because of their rightist ideology or upper-class privileges, are on the other side.

I continue to believe that what the independent progressive movement needs is an explicit "third force" strategy, not a takeover of the Democratic Party strategy, or a strategy to establish a beachhead within it.

A "third force" strategy was first articulated that I know of by Rev. Jesse Jackson in 1984 during his first presidential campaign. He tied it to the building of the Rainbow Coalition as a coalition bringing together African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asians, farmers, workers, feminists, lesbians and gays, peace activists, environmentalists and others disenfranchised or disturbed by the system. It also openly welcomed those who were committed to building a third party, although as Rev. Jackson became more politically powerful during his 1988 Presidential campaign, those who supported that objective began to be marginalized. Then, in 1989, the incredible potential of this popular alliance was essentially destroyed when organizational changes were forced through from the top that took away the Rainbow Coalition's dynamic and movement-building character.

The tragic ending of this promising movement doesn't negate the soundness of the third force strategy, or the continuing need for it.

A third force would, almost certainly, mainly support progressive Democrats at first as far as its electoral tactics, but it would also welcome the involvement of Greens and others who support or run as independents for office. Decisions as to who to support and how would be made democratically. Perhaps more importantly, a third force would be supportive of the kinds of electoral reforms that would open up our corporate- and two-party dominated, undemocratic electoral system and make it possible for many more voices and viewpoints to be heard. Such reforms must include public - not corporate - financing of elections, instant runoff voting, proportional representation, reasonable - not restrictive - ballot access laws, free media time for all candidates who show a base of support, etc.

But a third force must do much more than support or run candidates for office, and in this respect Jones' book has some good things to say. He writes about the importance of the "Heart Space" and the "Outside Game." The Occupy Wall Street movement is a good example of both, which Van is positive about: "Occupy Wall Street has inundated the Heart Space with visceral hurt and authentic anger. They leveraged massive creative talent in service to their message, and used social networks for distribution. In all of this, they've played a strong Outside Game as well. Their action was edgy - it provoked police response and demanded a response by the broader establishment." (p. 133)

Jones also talks positively about civil disobedience. Referring to the Take Back the Land network, he writes: "Police have come to execute the eviction [of the owners of a foreclosed home] and are faced with crowds of people willing to be arrested, and in many instances, the police have just left. Then the banks have waited for things to quiet down before they make a second run at it." (p. 207)

He also mentions the civil disobedience campaign at the White House in the summer of 2011 against the tar sands Keystone XL pipeline where 1,253 people were arrested over a two-week period. However, it is literally a one-sentence mention.

This is my final main criticism of "Rebuild the Dream:" its very limited focus on the climate crisis. Jones himself seems to be aware of this when he writes, over three-quarters of the way through the book on page 184, that, "In this book, we have barely touched upon the environmental crisis. But since I wrote my last book, 'The Green Collar Economy,' things have gotten mostly worse - in many cases much worse ... Catastrophic climate change, driven by human activity, is still the biggest threat to human societies, not to mention innumerable other species." He then writes several pages about this "biggest threat."

Unfortunately, in this section he does not repeat the ideas from an important paragraph in "The Green Collar Economy," about the need for a "World War II level of mobilization" on global warming. This is what he wrote in 2008, echoing similar calls from Al Gore, James Hansen, Bill McKibben, Lester Brown and others: "Reversing global warming will require a World War II level of mobilization. It is the work of tens of millions, not hundreds or thousands. Such a shift will require massive support at the social, cultural, and political levels." (p. 58)

I have to honestly wonder if this omission, especially given his stated understanding that this greatest-ever threat to human civilization has gotten worse, is related to Van's Democratic Party orientation. The sad truth is that the Democratic Party, particularly Barack Obama, has moved backward over the last few years as far as how he and his party are addressing, or not addressing, the climate crisis.

We should learn from the words of Jesus, one of the greatest organizers in human history. Let's find ways to keep our "wine," our independent progressive movement, in new bottles. Let's appreciate and build upon all of the various media, cultural, alternative economic, political, direct action, training and other groups that, collectively, are much more powerful than the sum of the parts.

Let's be clear that though there are many Democrats who are part of this broad independent progressive network, some of whom have been elected or are running for office, the Democratic Party is not part of our movement network. Let's come together as progressive Democrats, as Greens, as other independents, as revolutionaries, as reformers, as grassroots progressive Republicans, into a new third force that can truly transform our society before it is too late.

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Ted Glick has been an organizer and activist since 1968. He has prioritized work on the climate crisis since 2004. Past writings and other information can be found at http://tedglick.com, and he can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jtglick.

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.