SF Gray Panthers

CounterPunch, April 21, 2008

30 Years Ago Haiti Grew All the Rice It Needed. What Happened?
The U.S. Role in Haiti’s Food Riots

By BILL QUIGLEY

Riots in Haiti over explosive rises in food costs have claimed the  lives of six people.  There have also been food riots world-wide in Burkina  Faso, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivorie, Egypt, Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco,  Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

The Economist, which calls the current crisis the silent tsunami, reports that  last year wheat prices rose 77% and rice 16%, but since January rice prices have  risen 141%. The reasons include rising fuel costs, weather problems, increased  demand in China and India, as well as the push to create biofuels from cereal  crops.

Hermite Joseph, a mother working in the markets of Port au Prince,  told journalist Nick Whalen that her two kids are “like toothpicks” they’ re not getting enough nourishment.  Before, if you had a dollar twenty-five  cents, you could buy vegetables, some rice, 10 cents of charcoal and a little  cooking oil. Right now, a little can of rice alone costs 65 cents, and is not good rice at all.  Oil is 25 cents.  Charcoal  is 25 cents.  With a dollar twenty-five, you can’t even make a plate of rice  for one child.”

The St. Claire’s Church Food program, in the Tiplas Kazo  neighborhood of Port au Prince, serves 1000 free meals a day, almost all to  hungry children — five times a week in partnership with the What If  Foundation.  Children from Cite Soleil have been known to walk the five miles to  the church for a meal. The cost of rice, beans, vegetables, a little meat,  spices, cooking oil, propane for the stoves, have gone up dramatically. Because  of the rise in the cost of food, the portions are now smaller.  But hunger is on  the rise and more and more children come for the free meal.  Hungry adults used  to be allowed to eat the leftovers once all the children were fed, but now there  are few leftovers.

The New York Times lectured Haiti on April 18 that “Haiti, its  agriculture industry in shambles, needs to better feed itself.”  Unfortunately, the article did not talk at all about one of  the main causes of the shortages — the fact that the U.S. and other  international financial bodies destroyed Haitian rice farmers to create a major  market for the heavily subsidized rice from U.S. farmers.  This is not the only  cause of hunger in Haiti and other poor countries, but it is a major force.

Thirty years ago, Haiti raised nearly all the rice it needed.  What happened?

In 1986, after the expulsion of Haitian dictator Jean Claude “Baby Doc”  Duvalier the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loaned Haiti $24.6 million in  desperately needed funds (Baby Doc had raided the treasury on the way out).   But, in order to get the IMF loan, Haiti was required to reduce tariff  protections for their Haitian rice and other agricultural products and some  industries to open up the country’s markets to competition from outside  countries.  The U.S. has by far the largest voice in decisions of the IMF.

Doctor Paul Farmer was in Haiti then and saw what happened.  “Within less than  two years, it became impossible for Haitian farmers to compete with what they  called ‘Miami rice.’  The whole local rice market in Haiti fell apart as  cheap, U.S. subsidized rice, some of it in the form of ‘food aid,’ flooded  the market. There was violence, ‘rice wars,’ and lives were lost.”

“American rice invaded the country,” recalled Charles Suffrard,  a leading rice grower in Haiti in an interview with the Washington Post in 2000.   By 1987 and 1988, there was so much rice coming into the country that many  stopped working the land.

Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste, a Haitian priest who has been the pastor at  St. Claire and an outspoken human rights advocate, agrees.  “In the 1980s,  imported rice poured into Haiti, below the cost of what our farmers could  produce it.  Farmers lost their businesses.  People from the countryside started  losing their jobs and moving to the cities.  After a few years of cheap imported rice, local production went way down.”

Still the international business community was not satisfied.  In  1994, as a condition for U.S. assistance in returning to Haiti to resume his  elected Presidency, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced by the U.S., the IMF, and  the World Bank to open up the markets in Haiti even more.

But, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, what reason could  the U.S. have in destroying the rice market of this tiny country?

Haiti is definitely poor.  The U.S. Agency for International Development reports  the annual per capita income is less than $400.   The United Nations reports  life expectancy in Haiti is 59, while in the US it is 78.  Over 78% of Haitians  live on less than $2 a day, more than half live on less than $1 a day.

Yet Haiti has become one of the very top importers of rice from the  U.S.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture 2008 numbers show Haiti is the third  largest importer of US rice - at over 240,000 metric tons of rice.  (One metric ton is 2200 pounds).

Rice is a heavily subsidized business in the U.S.  Rice subsidies in  the U.S. totaled $11 billion from 1995 to 2006.  One producer alone, Riceland  Foods Inc of Stuttgart Arkansas, received over $500 million dollars in rice  subsidies between 1995 and 2006.

The Cato Institute recently reported that rice is one of the most  heavily supported commodities in the U.S. — with three different subsidies  together averaging over $1 billion a year since 1998 and projected to average  over $700 million a year through 2015. The result?  “Tens of millions of rice  farmers in poor countries find it hard to lift their families out of poverty  because of the lower, more volatile prices caused by the interventionist  policies of other countries.”

In addition to three different subsidies for rice farmers in the  U.S., there are also direct tariff barriers of 3 to 24 percent, reports Daniel  Griswold of the Cato Institute — the exact same type of protections, though much higher, that the U.S. and the IMF  required Haiti to eliminate in the 1980s and 1990s.

U.S. protection for rice farmers goes even further. A 2006 story in  the Washington Post found that the federal government has paid at least $1.3  billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do  no farming at all; including $490,000 to a Houston surgeon who owned land near  Houston that once grew rice.

And it is not only the Haitian rice farmers who have been hurt.

Paul Farmer saw it happen to the sugar growers as well.  “Haiti, once the  world’s largest exporter of sugar and other tropical produce to Europe, began  importing even sugar– from U.S. controlled sugar production in the Dominican  Republic and Florida.  It was terrible to see Haitian farmers put out of work.   All this sped up the downward spiral that led to this month’s food riots.”

After the riots and protests, President Rene Preval of Haiti agreed  to reduce the price of rice, which was selling for $51 for a 110 pound bag, to $43  dollars for the next month.   No one thinks a one month fix will do anything but  delay the severe hunger pains a few weeks.

Haiti is far from alone in this crisis.  The Economist reports a  billion people worldwide live on $1 a day.  The US-backed Voice of America  reports about 850 million people were suffering from hunger worldwide before the  latest round of price increases.

Thirty three countries are at risk of social upheaval because of  rising food prices, World Bank President Robert Zoellick told the Wall Street  Journal.  When countries have many people who spend half to three-quarters of  their daily income on food, “there is no margin of survival.”

In the U.S., people are feeling the world-wide problems at the gas  pump and in the grocery.  Middle class people may cut back on extra trips or on  high price cuts of meat.  The number of people on food stamps in the US is at an  all-time high. But in poor countries, where malnutrition and hunger were widespread before  the rise in prices, there is nothing to cut back on except eating.  That leads  to hunger riots.

In the short term, the world community is sending bags of rice to  Haiti.  Venezuela sent 350 tons of food.  The US just pledged $200 million extra  for worldwide hunger relief.  The UN is committed to distributing more food.

What can be done in the medium term?  The US provides much of the  world’s food aid, but does it in such a way that only half of the dollars  spent actually reach hungry people.   US law requires that food aid be purchased  from US farmers, processed and bagged in the US and shipped on US vessels –  which cost 50% of the money allocated.  A simple change in US law to allow some  local purchase of commodities would feed many more people and support local farm  markets.

In the long run, what is to be done? The President of Brazil, Luiz  Inacio Lula da Silva, who visited Haiti last week, said “Rich countries need to reduce farms subsidies and trade barriers  to allow poor countries to generate income with food exports.  Either the world  solves the unfair trade system, or every time there’s unrest like in Haiti, we  adopt emergency measures and send a little bit of food to temporarily ease  hunger.”

Citizens of the USA know very little about the role of their  government in helping create the hunger problems in Haiti or other countries.   But there is much that individuals can do.  People can donate to help feed  individual hungry people and participate with advocacy organizations like Bread  for the World or Oxfam to help change the U.S. and global rules which favor the  rich countries.  This advocacy can help countries have a better chance to feed  themselves.

Meanwhile, Merisma Jean-Claudel, a young high school graduate in  Port-au-Prince told journalist Wadner Pierre “…people can’t buy food.  Gasoline prices are going up. It is very hard for us over here. The cost of living is the biggest worry for us, no peace in stomach  means no peace in the mind.¦I wonder if others will be able to survive the days  ahead because things are very, very hard.”

“On the ground, people are very hungry,” reported Fr.  Jean-Juste.  “Our country must immediately open emergency canteens to feed the  hungry until we can get them jobs.  For the long run, we need to invest in  irrigation, transportation, and other assistance for our farmers and workers.”

In Port au Prince, some rice arrived in the last few days.  A school  in Fr. Jean-Juste’s parish received several bags of rice.  They had raw rice  for 1000 children, but the principal still had to come to Father Jean-Juste  asking for help.  There was no money for charcoal, or oil.

Jervais Rodman, an unemployed carpenter with three children, stood  in a long line Saturday in Port au Prince to get UN donated rice and beans.   When Rodman got the small bags, he told Ben Fox of the Associated Press, “The beans might last four days.  The rice will be gone as soon  as I get home.”

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola  University New Orleans. His essay on the Echo 9 nuclear launch site protests is featured in Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance from the Heartland, published by AK Press. He can be reached at quigley77@gmail.com People  interested in donating to feed children in Haiti should go to  http://www.whatiffoundation.org/

People who want to help change U.S. policy on  agriculture to help combat world-wide hunger should go to:

http://www.oxfamamerica.org/ or http://www.bread.org/

If you talk by phone with reporter who reported NSA wiretaps, you can get dragged into Federal Grand Jury:

NY Times, April 12, 2008

Leak Inquiry Said to Focus on Calls With Times

By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON — Former government officials have recently been called before a federal grand jury and confronted with phone records documenting calls with a reporter who covers intelligence issues at The New York Times, according to people with detailed knowledge of the investigation.

A former official who was called before the grand jury in Alexandria, Va., said that he was shown extensive phone records that documented the date and duration of conversations with James Risen, a Times reporter in Washington, and that prosecutors were trying to identify Mr. Risen’s sources. Mr. Risen is fighting a grand jury subpoena for testimony about his sources for a 2006 book on the Central Intelligence Agency.

Justice Department officials have confirmed that prosecutors are trying to identify Mr. Risen’s sources for the book, “State of War,” and for articles he wrote for The Times about the nation’s spy agencies, to determine if his sources violated laws on the sharing of classified information.

But spokesmen for the department would not comment on details of the grand jury investigation, which is being conducted out of the federal courthouse in Alexandria.

The grand jury witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to draw new attention to himself, and others with knowledge of the investigation say it is unclear whose phone records were obtained by the Justice Department — if they were records of calls made from Mr. Risen’s phones or from the phones of officials who may have talked to him. The Times has not been subpoenaed for Mr. Risen’s office phone records, although there are other ways that the department could obtain them, possibly by a subpoena to phone companies without any notice to the newspaper. Department guidelines give prosecutors the ability to subpoena a reporter’s phone records if they obtain approval from the attorney general’s office.

Mr. Risen shared the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for articles that exposed the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, and the Justice Department’s effort to identify the sources of those articles and of his book is one of several federal leak investigations singling out reporters and their sources.

In 2005, Judith Miller, then a reporter for The Times, was jailed for nearly three months after she initially refused to identify news sources in an investigation of leaks that identified a covert C.I.A. operative.

A freelance reporter in California, Josh Wolf, was freed from a federal prison last April after 226 days; he was imprisoned after refusing to testify before a grand jury and turn over tapes that he had made of an anarchist rally that turned violent in San Francisco.

The Justice Department is trying to block efforts in Congress to create a federal law to shield reporters from identifying their sources; a shield law exists in many states. The department has argued that a federal shield law would restrict its ability to identify government officials and others who leak classified information to reporters that might damage national security.

Joel Kurtzberg, a lawyer in New York who is representing Mr. Risen on behalf of both The Times and his book publisher, The Free Press, said he had no comment on the investigation.

Lucy A. Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, suggested that the investigation was one of several “really egregious” efforts by the Bush administration to limit press freedoms by intimidating reporters and their sources.

Ms. Dalglish said in an interview that as a result of Mr. Risen’s case and others, the committee was recommending that reporters stop using their home and office phones to communicate with sources on sensitive topics. “Do your reporting the old fashioned way — meet your sources on a park bench,” she said.

In January, Mr. Risen received a subpoena that, his lawyers said, appeared intended to force him to reveal his sources for a specific chapter in “State of War” that described efforts by the C.I.A. to infiltrate Iran’s nuclear program. None of the material from that chapter appeared in The Times. The book also expanded on Mr. Risen’s reporting on the domestic eavesdropping program.

Black men’s shorter life span may be attributable in part to the stresses of their position in society

I like the statement “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re NOT out to get you!” It has become my “motto”.

My family is both black and white, so I feel like I’ve got a stake in this. My grandchildren will be referred to as black. Cabs might pass them by, and security guards might follow them in stores.

The corporations have used the psychology of keeping us leaping at each other’s throats for so long (hundreds of years, with the clergy and the ‘company store’ cashing in on it), that I think we hardly know whose thoughts they are which keep floating to the surface of our minds. The media constantly reinforces this sense of separation.

In my life, I have lost several beautiful friends to AIDS, they were white homosexual men, and I still miss their dear friendship.

The AIDS virus IS decimating Africa, the “black continent”, as well as generations and communities everywhere.

But meanwhile, it is the “black-on-black” violence (which includes most of the military conflict south of the equator), which is the leading cause of death for younger men. Millions have died in Africa in the last five years, and there have been hundreds of pointless deaths in our own inner cities.

Then there is the peril of “racial profiling” from sheriffs and cops nationwide, with the laws themselves stacked like “crack” versus “coke”, with a black man’s penalties receiving the greater degree of punishment, and in capital cases, the greater likelihood of being executed.

I feel the need to speak up in behalf of young black males about the brutality of the system toward them. The occasional athlete, singer or comedian does not reflect the fate of most American blacks, especially if born poor. As young black men, they are prey for dope dealers, quick money schemes, murder, whatever…they aren’t seen as a meaningful factor in society or politics besides the “cost” of subduing them. I always notice the presence of extra cops in black frequented areas and I feel disgusted.

A bunch of young black inmates have recently “committed suicide” in Pennsylvania penitentiaries, the state that “houses” Mumia Abu Jamal. Earlier this year, some dumb cop in Oakland drove up on some black kids, grabbed one kid by the dreadlocks, tried to beat him, and shot him in the back when he ran away. And Sean Bell of Jamaica Queens, New York just wanted to have his “Stag Party” before his next-day’s wedding, when undercover cops murdered him and injured his friends.

In my opinion, violence feeds fear and creates more violence. I think we need to remove our trust and the investment of our precious consciousness from the error that the use of force or the threat of force equals safety. I even feel that some well-intended “ideas” of more cops (and more weapons) on the scene will somehow make us safe.

If you call the cops when a relative is freaking out they might come around and tazer him, put a choke hold on him, or actually shoot him (especially if he’s black, in which case even a comb, wallet or cell phone can be mistaken for a weapon).

This article is very helpful, not just because we all want to live longer. The issue of an older man’s health being the result of what his younger years contributed to it, is a very valuable insight.

Poor whites suffer from premature death and serious impairment for many of the same reasons as blacks. The low cost of poor quality processed food sold in these communities, and the availability of booze and cigarettes, plus other cheap escapes from the drudgery of low-wage work or spells of unemployment, are all factors. The commercial grid which delivers every destructive “vice” as a guilty pleasure, contributes to the death-trip which wears down the body as it makes the spirit bitter.

As jobs dry up with our ruined economy, the media tells us to blame immigrants, not the bosses who spent up all our money. I can only imagine things will get worse when our poor, battered veterans return from war.

My thought is that we all are victims of what is pushing the statistic down for black males: the system is generally toxic, but for that particular group, it has become deadly. By valuing one another we can begin to heal this situation; I certainly would have appreciated having such great souls as Dr. Martin Luther King and Mumia Abu Jamal in our midst a little longer.

So I think it will take a growing awareness of how to stay well, and the guidance of some genuine public health experts, to assist our healthy survival. We need the powers that be to prioritize every one of us before the demands of the drug industry, the weapons makers, the insurance parasites, or the corporate food industry.

The victims of the system as it is, are proof it is dangerously imbalanced, and not friendly to healthy aging. Our task is to create the healthy environment we all deserve, to include black men in the right to enjoy it, and not to demonize them for embodying its present failings.

Excerpts from Michael Parenti: Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth

January 2007

The complete essay

Religions have had a close relationship not only with violence but with economic exploitation. Indeed, it is often the economic exploitation that necessitates the violence. Such was the case with the Tibetan theocracy. Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over Tibet, most of the arable land was still organized into manorial estates worked by serfs. These estates were owned by two social groups: the rich secular landlords and the rich theocratic lamas. Even a writer sympathetic to the old order allows that “a great deal of real estate belonged to the monasteries, and most of them amassed great riches.” Much of the wealth was accumulated “through active participation in trade, commerce, and money lending.” (1)

Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries rested in the hands of small numbers of high-ranking lamas. Most ordinary monks lived modestly and had no direct access to great wealth. The Dalai Lama himself “lived richly in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace.” (2)

Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, a member of the Dalai Lama’s lay Cabinet, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. (3) Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some Western admirers as “a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma.” (4) In fact. it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served mainly as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order, protect their property, and hunt down runaway serfs.

Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their peasant families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they were bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeated rape, beginning at age nine. (5) The monastic estates also conscripted children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.

In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. (6) The majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care, They were under a lifetime bond to work the lord’s land–or the monastery’s land–without pay, to repair the lord’s houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand. (7) Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them out to work in a distant location. (

As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no responsibility for the serf’s maintenance and no direct interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize nor strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The overlords had the best of both worlds.

One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: “Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished”; they “were just slaves without rights.” (9) Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a “liberation.” He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord’s men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed. (10)

The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious festivals and for public dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery. (11)

The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.

The Tibetan serfs were something more than superstitious victims, blind to their own oppression. As we have seen, some ran away; others openly resisted, sometimes suffering dire consequences. In feudal Tibet, torture and mutilation–including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation–were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, and runaway or resistant serfs. Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: “When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion.” (12) Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then “left to God” in the freezing night to die. “The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking,” concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet. (13)

In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, breaking off hands, and hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling. The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master’s cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who was raped and then had her nose sliced away. (14)

Earlier visitors to Tibet commented on the theocratic despotism. In 1895, an Englishman, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the populace was under the “intolerable tyranny of monks” and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama’s rule as “an engine of oppression.” At about that time, another English traveler, Captain W.F.T. O’Connor, observed that “the great landowners and the priests… exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal,” while the people are “oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and priest-craft.” Tibetan rulers “invented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition” among the common people. In 1937, another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, “The Lamaist monk does not spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them. . . . The beggar beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to increase their influence and wealth.” (14) As much as we might wish otherwise, feudal theocratic Tibet was a far cry from the romanticized Shangri La so enthusiastically nurtured by Buddhism’s western proselytes.

……

Finally, let it be said that if Tibet’s future is to be positioned somewhere within China’s emerging free-market paradise, then this does not bode well for the Tibetans. China boasts a dazzling 8 percent economic growth rate and is emerging as one of the world’s greatest industrial powers. But with economic growth has come an ever deepening gulf between rich and poor. Most Chinese live close to the poverty level or well under it, while a small group of newly brooded capitalists profit hugely in collusion with shady officials. Regional bureaucrats milk the country dry, extorting graft from the populace and looting local treasuries. Land grabbing in cities and countryside by avaricious developers and corrupt officials at the expense of the populace are almost everyday occurrences. Tens of thousands of grassroot protests and disturbances have erupted across the country, usually to be met with unforgiving police force. Corruption is so prevalent, reaching into so many places, that even the normally complacent national leadership was forced to take notice and began moving against it in late 2006.

Workers in China who try to organize labor unions in the corporate dominated “business zones” risk losing their jobs or getting beaten and imprisoned. Millions of business zone workers toil twelve-hour days at subsistence wages. With the health care system now being privatized, free or affordable medical treatment is no longer available for millions. Men have tramped into the cities in search of work, leaving an increasingly impoverished countryside populated by women, children, and the elderly. The suicide rate has increased dramatically, especially among women. (15)

Notes:

1. · Pradyumna P. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet: The Impact of Chinese Communist Ideology on the Landscape (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1976), 64.
2. · See Gary Wilson’s report in Worker’s World, 6 February 1997.
3. · Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 62 and 174.
4. · As skeptically noted by Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, 9.
5. · Melvyn Goldstein, William Siebenschuh, and Tashì-Tsering, The Struggle for Modern Tibet: The Autobiography of Tashì-Tsering (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1997).
6. · Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 110.
7. · Melvyn C. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet 1913-1951 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 5 and passim.
8. · Anna Louise Strong, Tibetan Interviews (Peking: New World Press, 1959), 15, 19-21, 24.
9. · Quoted in Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 25.
10. · Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 31.
11. · Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 175-176; and Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 25-26.
12. · Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 113.
13. · A. Tom Grunfeld, The Making of Modern Tibet rev. ed. (Armonk, N.Y. and London: 1996), 9 and 7-33 for a general discussion of feudal Tibet; see also Felix Greene, A Curtain of Ignorance (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961), 241-249; Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet, 3-5; and Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, passim.
14. · Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 91-96
15. See the PBS documentary, China from the Inside, January 2007, KQED.PBS.org/kqed/chinanside..

Posted on Peace No War  www.peacenowar.net , March 18, 2008

Lee Siu Hin: What’s Going On In Tibet?

For the past few days, several friends of mine have been asking ‘What’s happening in Tibet, and why is it happening?’

As a Chinese American with fairly good knowledge of Tibetan culture, religion and history and having known some Tibetans living in both the U.S. and China, I have a sense of urgent responsibility to tell everyone about what happened in Tibet. This is a very emotional issue; however, many are mixing emotional arguments with facts.

I can be reasonably certain that the riot that took place last week in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa wasn’t a simple black and white argument. What happened in Tibet last week was part of a carefully planned ‘Tibetan Independence Movement’, with deep historical roots backed and financed by Western powers, most notably the United States and United Kingdom.

I also can responsibly state that, based on the local and western media reports, including interviews by foreigners, as well as TV footage and photos, there’s clearly one group of people attacking other people, burning shops and buildings. There’s no proof or confirmed evidence-except for the unverified rumors–that the Chinese military had killed innocent Tibetans and monks.

Historically, the British wanted to annex Tibet when it colonized India 100 years ago. The 1904 invasion by Colonel Younghusband killed thousands of Tibetans and forced the Dalai Lama to flee to mainland China. I encourage you to visit any local library and check any pre-1949 (the year Communists took power and created the People’s Republic of China, or PRC) U.S. publications, or Atlas of China and Tibet, and you’ll see Tibet was recognized as part of China. Not until the PRC was created and subsequently entered into a cold war proxy anti-communist fight with the U.K. and U.S., did they suddenly claim Tibet is not a part of China.

If you’re open minded, I encourage you to gather and learn information from the relatively comprehensive sources available: simply perform a Google search, and type “Dalai Lama CIA”. You will find thousands of entries from running this search. According to Michael Parenti and his article “Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth”, while he supports the struggle for Tibetan independence, he also notes that:

“….Throughout the 1960s the Tibetan exile community secretly pocketed $1.7 million a year from the CIA, according to documents released by the State Department in 1998. Once this fact was publicized, the Dalai Lama’s organization itself issued a statement admitting that it had received millions of dollars from the CIA during the 1960s to send armed squads of exiles into Tibet to undermine the Maoist revolution. The Dalai Lama’s annual share was $186,000, making him a paid agent of the CIA. Indian intelligence also financed him and other Tibetan exiles. He has refused to say whether he or his brothers worked with the CIA…. Today, mostly through the National Endowment for Democracy and other conduits that are more respectable-sounding than the CIA, the US Congress continues to allocate an annual $2 million to Tibetans in India, with additional millions for ‘democracy activities’ within the Tibetan exile community. The Dalai Lama also gets money from financier George Soros, who now runs the CIA-created Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and other institutes.”

If we agree the sole mission of the CIA is to destabilize and even to overthrow other countries the U.S. doesn’t support, why would there be a difference in this case?

One of the main problems with the American Left’s romantic notion of a “Free Tibet” (to return to the pre-1951 Chinese “occupied” Tibet), is that “…Most solidarity and environmental groups supporting the Tibetan people’s cause have not questioned the Dalai Lama’s role in Tibetan history or addressed what it would mean for the Tibetan people if the Dalai Lama and his coterie returned to power…’, as Norm Dixon from the Green Left Weekly writes:

“Romantic notions about the “peaceful” and “harmonious” nature of Tibetan Buddhist monastic life should be tested against reality… The Tibetan “government” in Lhasa was composed of lamas selected for their religious piety. At the head of this theocracy was the Dalai Lama. The concepts of democracy, human rights or universal education were unknown. The Dalai Lama and the majority of the elite agreed to give away Tibet’s de facto independence in 1950 once they were assured that Beijing’s exploitative system would be maintained. Nine years later, only when they felt their privileges were threatened, did they revolt. Suddenly the words “democracy” and “human rights” entered the vocabulary of the government-in-exile, operating out of Dharamsala in India ever since.” Dixon explains.

Another problem I see from this latest saga in Tibet is the one-sided Western government accusations and media coverage. How many of you have read news reports from China? You might just dismissed them as ‘communist China’s propaganda’ But I also want to remind you, isn’t it the Western media, like the New York Times, CNN, and Fox News that have lied about the First Gulf War, the Second Gulf War about WMD, and the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan?

Still, I cannot avoid differences of opinion with my activist friends, so I would ask them to consider the serious question of demanding independence for Tibet while imposing sanctions against China. Applying this same logic, could one also support:

- The return of ancestral lands stolen by the White colonists from Native Americans (that means most of the U.S.) for the past 300 years, who are now asking for independence from the U.S.A.?

- The demands of Mexican American activists to return the South Western U.S. to Mexico (From California to Texas) as a result of the illegal 1846-48 US-Mexico War?

- To appeal to the international community for economic sanction and international embargo against U.S. because our illegal war and mass killings at Iraq & Afghanistan, with supporting U.N. resolution to send troops to U.S. to disarm the military and arrest top U.S. officials for International War Crime Tribunal?

If you’re answer is: “That’s crazy, it’s not gonna to happen!” then you should ask yourself: “What’s wrong with this?”

Lee Siu Hin is a long time peace, labor, immigrant rights and human rights activists. A long time Pacifica Radio KPFK Los Angeles, CA and WBAI New York, NY producer. Founder and national coordinator of National Immigrant Solidarity Network (http://www.ImmigrantSolidarity.org), ActionLA Coalition (http://www.ActionLA.org) and Peace NO War Network (http://www.PeaceNOWar.net)

==================================================================

Posted on Asia Times Online  www.atimes.com

Tibet, the ‘great game’ and the CIA

By Richard M Bennett

Given the historical context of the unrest in Tibet, there is reason to believe Beijing was caught on the hop with the recent demonstrations for the simple reason that their planning took place outside of Tibet and that the direction of the protesters is similarly in the hands of anti-Chinese organizers safely out of reach in Nepal and northern India.

Similarly, the funding and overall control of the unrest has also been linked to Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, and by inference to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) because of his close cooperation with US intelligence for over 50 years.

Indeed, with the CIA’s deep involvement with the Free Tibet Movement and its funding of the suspiciously well-informed Radio Free Asia, it would seem somewhat unlikely that any revolt could have been planned or occurred without the prior knowledge, and even perhaps the agreement, of the National Clandestine Service (formerly known as the Directorate of Operations) at CIA headquarters in Langley.

Respected columnist and former senior Indian Intelligence officer, B Raman, commented on March 21 that “on the basis of available evidence, it was possible to assess with a reasonable measure of conviction” that the initial uprising in Lhasa on March 14 “had been pre-planned and well orchestrated”.

Could there be a factual basis to the suggestion that the main beneficiaries to the death and destruction sweeping Tibet are in Washington? History would suggest that this is a distinct possibility.

The CIA conducted a large scale covert action campaign against the communist Chinese in Tibet starting in 1956. This led to a disastrous bloody uprising in 1959, leaving tens of thousands of Tibetans dead, while the Dalai Lama and about 100,000 followers were forced to flee across the treacherous Himalayan passes to India and Nepal.

The CIA established a secret military training camp for the Dalai Lama’s resistance fighters at Camp Hale near Leadville, Colorado, in the US. The Tibetan guerrillas were trained and equipped by the CIA for guerrilla warfare and sabotage operations against the communist Chinese.

The US-trained guerrillas regularly carried out raids into Tibet, on occasions led by CIA-contract mercenaries and supported by CIA planes. The initial training program ended in December 1961, though the camp in Colorado appears to have remained open until at least 1966.

The CIA Tibetan Task Force created by Roger E McCarthy, alongside the Tibetan guerrilla army, continued the operation codenamed ST CIRCUS to harass the Chinese occupation forces for another 15 years until 1974, when officially sanctioned involvement ceased.

McCarthy, who also served as head of the Tibet Task Force at the height of its activities from 1959 until 1961, later went on to run similar operations in Vietnam and Laos.

By the mid-1960s, the CIA had switched its strategy from parachuting guerrilla fighters and intelligence agents into Tibet to establishing the Chusi Gangdruk, a guerrilla army of some 2,000 ethnic Khamba fighters at bases such as Mustang in Nepal.

This base was only closed down in 1974 by the Nepalese government after being put under tremendous pressure by Beijing.

After the Indo-China War of 1962, the CIA developed a close relationship with the Indian intelligence services in both training and supplying agents in Tibet.

Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison in their book The CIA’s Secret War in Tibet disclose that the CIA and the Indian intelligence services cooperated in the training and equipping of Tibetan agents and special forces troops and in forming joint aerial and intelligence units such as the Aviation Research Center and Special Center.

This collaboration continued well into the 1970s and some of the programs that it sponsored, especially the special forces unit of Tibetan refugees which would become an important part of the Indian Special Frontier Force, continue into the present.

Only the deterioration in relations with India which coincided with improvements in those with Beijing brought most of the joint CIA-Indian operations to an end.

Though Washington had been scaling back support for the Tibetan guerrillas since 1968, it is thought that the end of official US backing for the resistance only came during meetings between president Richard Nixon and the Chinese communist leadership in Beijing in February 1972.

Victor Marchetti, a former CIA officer has described the outrage many field agents felt when Washington finally pulled the plug, adding that a number even “[turned] for solace to the Tibetan prayers which they had learned during their years with the Dalai Lama”.

The former CIA Tibetan Task Force chief from 1958 to 1965, John Kenneth Knaus, has been quoted as saying, “This was not some CIA black-bag operation.” He added, “The initiative was coming from … the entire US government.”

In his book Orphans of the Cold War, Knaus writes of the obligation Americans feel toward the cause of Tibetan independence from China. Significantly, he adds that its realization “would validate the more worthy motives of we who tried to help them achieve this goal over 40 years ago. It would also alleviate the guilt some of us feel over our participation in these efforts, which cost others their lives, but which were the prime adventure of our own.”

Despite the lack of official support it is still widely rumored that the CIA were involved, if only by proxy, in another failed revolt in October 1987, the unrest that followed and the consequent Chinese repression continuing till May 1993.

The timing for another serious attempt to destabilize Chinese rule in Tibet would appear to be right for the CIA and Langley will undoubtedly keep all its options open.

China is faced with significant problems, with the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province; the activities of the Falun Gong among many other dissident groups and of course growing concern over the security of the Summer Olympic Games in August.

China is viewed by Washington as a major threat, both economic and military, not just in Asia, but in Africa and Latin America as well.

The CIA also views China as being “unhelpful” in the “war on terror”, with little or no cooperation being offered and nothing positive being done to stop the flow of arms and men from Muslim areas of western China to support Islamic extremist movements in Afghanistan and Central Asian states.

To many in Washington, this may seem the ideal opportunity to knock the Beijing government off balance as Tibet is still seen as China’s potential weak spot.

The CIA will undoubtedly ensure that its fingerprints are not discovered all over this growing revolt. Cut-outs and proxies will be used among the Tibetan exiles in Nepal and India’s northern border areas.

Indeed, the CIA can expect a significant level of support from a number of security organizations in both India and Nepal and will have no trouble in providing the resistance movement with advice, money and above all, publicity.

However, not until the unrest shows any genuine signs of becoming an open revolt by the great mass of ethnic Tibetans against the Han Chinese and Hui Muslims will any weapons be allowed to appear.

Large quantities of former Eastern bloc small arms and explosives have been reportedly smuggled into Tibet over the past 30 years, but these are likely to remain safely hidden until the right opportunity presents itself.

The weapons have been acquired on the world markets or from stocks captured by US or Israeli forces. They have been sanitized and are deniable, untraceable back to the CIA.

Weapons of this nature also have the advantage of being interchangeable with those used by the Chinese armed forces and of course use the same ammunition, easing the problem of resupply during any future conflict.

Though official support for the Tibetan resistance ended 30 years ago, the CIA has kept open its lines of communications and still funds much of the Tibetan Freedom movement.

So is the CIA once again playing the “great game” in Tibet?

It certainly has the capability, with a significant intelligence and paramilitary presence in the region. Major bases exist in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and several Central Asian states.

It cannot be doubted that it has an interest in undermining China, as well as the more obvious target of Iran.

So the probable answer is yes, and indeed it would be rather surprising if the CIA was not taking more than just a passing interest in Tibet. That is after all what it is paid to do.

Since September 11, 2001, there has been a sea-change in US Intelligence attitudes, requirements and capabilities. Old operational plans have been dusted off and updated. Previous assets re-activated. Tibet and the perceived weakness of China’s position there will probably have been fully reassessed.

For Washington and the CIA, this may seem a heaven-sent opportunity to create a significant lever against Beijing, with little risk to American interests; simply a win-win situation.

The Chinese government would be on the receiving end of worldwide condemnation for its continuing repression and violation of human rights and it will be young Tibetans dying on the streets of Lhasa rather than yet more uniformed American kids.

The consequences of any open revolt against Beijing, however, are that once again the fear of arrest, torture and even execution will pervade every corner of both Tibet and those neighboring provinces where large Tibetan populations exist, such as Gansu, Qinghai and Sichuan.

And the Tibetan Freedom movement still has little likelihood of achieving any significant improvement in central Chinese policy in the long run and no chance whatever of removing its control of Lhasa and their homeland.

Once again it would appear that the Tibetan people will find themselves trapped between an oppressive Beijing and a manipulative Washington.

Beijing sends in the heavies

The fear that the United States, Britain and other Western states may try to portray Tibet as another Kosovo may be part of the reason why the Chinese authorities reacted as if faced with a genuine mass revolt rather than their official portrayal of a short-lived outbreak of unrest by malcontents supporting the Dalai Lama.

Indeed, so seriously did Beijing view the situation that a special security coordination unit, the 110 Command Center, has been established in Lhasa with the primary objective of suppressing the disturbances and restoring full central government control.

The center appears to be under the direct control of Zhang Qingli, first secretary of the Tibet Party and a President Hu Jintao loyalist. Zhang is also the former Xinjiang deputy party secretary with considerable experience in counter-terrorism operations in that region.

Others holding important positions in Lhasa are Zhang Xinfeng, vice minister of the Central Public Security Ministry and Zhen Yi, deputy commander of the People’s Armed Police Headquarters in Beijing.

The seriousness with which Beijing is treating the present unrest is further illustrated by the deployment of a large number of important army units from the Chengdu Military Region, including brigades from the 149th Mechanized Infantry Division, which acts as the region’s rapid reaction force.

According to a United Press International report, elite ground force units of the People’s Liberation Army were involved in Lhasa, and the new T-90 armored personnel carrier and T-92 wheeled armored vehicles were deployed. According to the report, China has denied the participation of the army in the crackdown, saying it was carried out by units of the armed police. “Such equipment as mentioned above has never been deployed by China’s armed police, however.”

Air support is provided by the 2nd Army Aviation Regiment, based at Fenghuangshan, Chengdu, in Sichuan province. It operates a mix of helicopters and STOL transports from a frontline base near Lhasa. Combat air support could be quickly made available from fighter ground attack squadrons based within the Chengdu region.

The Xizang Military District forms the Tibet garrison, which has two mountain infantry units; the 52nd Brigade based at Linzhi and the 53rd Brigade at Yaoxian Shannxi. These are supported by the 8th Motorized Infantry Division and an artillery brigade at Shawan, Xinjiang.

Tibet is also no longer quite as remote or difficult to resupply for the Chinese army. The construction of the first railway between 2001 and 2007 has significantly eased the problems of the movement of large numbers of troops and equipment from Qinghai onto the rugged Tibetan plateau.

Other precautions against a resumption of the long-term Tibetan revolts of previous years has led to a considerable degree of self-sufficiency in logistics and vehicle repair by the Tibetan garrison and an increasing number of small airfields have been built to allow rapid-reaction units to gain access to even the most remote areas.

The Chinese Security Ministry and intelligence services had been thought to have a suffocating presence in the province and indeed the ability to detect any serious protest movement and suppress resistanc

Richard M Bennett, intelligence and security consultant, AFI Research.

(Copyright 2008 Richard M Bennett

CounterPunch, April 1, 2008

“Be Realistic, Imagine the Impossible!”

New Deal Nostalgia

By ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ

I was born in 1938, and, of course, I don’t remember anything about the New Deal era. However, I witnessed its results in my own family and community and heard countless stories from my father, which I recounted in a historical memoir, Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie. My father was one of nine children in an Oklahoma farming family that lost their land in the early 1920s. My father quit school when he was 15 and worked on cattle ranches and farms as a migrant laborer. He married at eighteen an even more impoverished teenager, herself part Indian, and began sharecropping and renting farms in central Oklahoma where I grew up. At the time the New Deal got rolling, my father and mother were in their mid-twenties, with two toddlers, living in a cave, barely surviving in the depths of the depression and the catastrophic drought that created the Dust Bowl. My father had to go to work for the WPA doing road construction, “digging ditches,” as he put it. He considered it slave labor, because the private companies given contracts for the construction didn’t have to pay the workers, rather the government paid a pittance and made it appear to be a gift.

By 1880, a little over fifty percent of the U.S. population was farming, but the proportion declined to seventeen percent in 1940 and then to about two percent today. The decline to 17 percent in 1940 was largely due to New Deal policies to industrialize agriculture. What happened to those who would have become farmers? Were they no longer needed? Growing food remained and will remain a necessity, but large corporations took over the land and displaced individual farmers. Patriotism — in the form of allegiance to a distant government, with its flag and other symbols, with its wars in distant lands — has filled the black hole left by the loss of land and a way of life they loved. New Deal policies were themselves designed to end subsistence farming. Farmers could have survived with government assistance, but the New Deal allowed banks to foreclose and destroyed surplus food production to maintain high prices, while people were starving. The government could have bought and distributed the food they destroyed (”dumped in the ocean,” my father used to say). Then the Dust Bowl refugees were put to work picking cotton and fruit for agribusiness in California, the Northwest, and Arizona, driving out the Mexican farm workers, until the United States entered World War II, and the Dust Bowl refugees went to work in the war industry. All those angry ex-farmers and wannabe farmers making bombs and fighter planes, whole new generations following in that nasty work, a good many other of them serving in the military, now a business, not a civic duty. They get to drop the bombs and man the guns on the tanks that the others manufacture. Subsistence farmers, small farmers, like peace — not war that takes away their young sons, and now daughters. Getting rid of them, reducing them to a tiny minority, has made military recruitment and passive acceptance of war much easier than during World War I, when farmers rose up in rebellion, as did workers, against a “war for big business,” which all modern wars are.

As we search for historical models, it is important that we be fearless in what we draw from them. I think it is essential in assessing the New Deal to acknowledge that when the New Deal was over, as Howard Zinn, notes, “capitalism remained intact. The rich still controlled the nation’s wealth, as well as its laws, courts, police, newspapers, churches, colleges. Enough help had been given to enough people to make Roosevelt a hero to millions, but the same system that had brought depression and crisis–the system of waste, of inequality, of concern for profit over human need–remained.” (People’s History of the United States, 394)

Indeed, the New Deal did not even work in rescuing capitalism, which was Roosevelt’s stated goal; it took the total militarization of the U.S. economy to accomplish that. However, even before entering the war, nearly every New Deal economic recovery and development program enriched already existing corporations, such as Bechtel and Brown and Root, as well as creating new ones. The ground was set for rapid militarization through contracts with these new corporate giants and massive employment through the military draft and wartime production. The military-industrial complex is the essential result of New Deal policies.

It seems to me that nostalgia for the New Deal era during the past decade is perhaps the principal barrier to the formation of a true left opposition in the United States. Take a look at the April 7, 2008, issue of The Nation as a recent example. My father, whose own father had been a member of the Socialist Party and also active in the Industrial Workers of the World during the first 2 decades of the 20th century, hated Roosevelt, who he called an “Eastern aristocrat,” and hated the New Deal policies, saying that Roosevelt was about saving the bankers and the big wheat farmers, not the poor. It was quite a surprise to me when I moved to the Bay Area in 1960, fired up to find masses of political radicals, and enrolled at San Francisco State to find that the activist students, from the Hallinan brothers to Willie Brown to the Freedom Riders all revered Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. Soon, though, New Deal nostalgia faded as the movements that came out of the powerful mass civil rights revolution allowed us to think more objectively and internationally about United States history and its continuing actions, and to take responsibility in understanding that white supremacy, genocide, and imperialism were inherent to the founding and development of the United States.

But, with the fierce counter-revolution that began in the Reagan era and continues today, once again New Deal nostalgia has arisen. I think it’s a result of lowered expectations, an acceptance of defeat.

Even many Latin American intellectuals and liberal politicians pine for the good old days of soft imperialism. Yet, the Rooseveltian Good Neighbor policy was a continuance of imperialism, much like Great Britain’s successful ventures in indirect colonialism/imperialism. In fact, successful imperialism operates without colonies and occupations. Roosevelt’s policy substituted support for local dictators and oligarchies for direct U.S. military intervention in restraining and repressing unrest. There may have been less tension between the United States and its indirect colonies (ruled by dictators and oligarchies) during the Roosevelt era, but the impoverishment and repression of the majority of people continued to grow, while the rulers got richer. “Empire as a Way of Life,” as historian William Appleman Williams dubbed US society, remained intact, as super-patriotism replaced the workers’ culture of mutual assistance and resistance. Rarely, is US imperialism even discussed in reference to the New Deal, yet it is a major, if not THE major reality of the present.

I think it is important that we study US history and understand the origins of the state that has become the most powerful in human history and is the main problem for humanity today. Accepting that fact of US history is central to our conceptualization of organizing, understanding who we are, where we have come from, and what we want. When we envisage the New Deal as our model for social change, we are accepting the permanence of capitalism and assuming it can be reformed, and we are separating the state from capitalism, rather than acknowledging that the US state is a plutocracy.

I think it’s important, in the words of the 1960s French Situationists, that we “be realistic and imagine the impossible.”

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is a longtime activist, university professor, and writer. In addition to numerous scholarly books and articles she has published two historical memoirs, Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie (Verso, 1997), and Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960­1975 (City Lights, 2002). She is a contributor to Red State Rebels, edited by Josh Frank and Jeffrey St. Clair. She can be reached at: rdunbaro@pacbell.net

Ms Dunbar-Ortiz also gave this speech in San Francisco at “New Deal to Real Deal,” a celebration the 75th anniversary of the signing of the New Deal, which Gray Panthers members attended.

Left Business Observer, March 2008

Would you like change with that?

Super Tuesday II, as Fox dubbed it, took some steam out of the Obama bandwagon, but he’s still the likely Democratic nominee, and therefore the likely president-to-be. Which is remarkable, really-a nonparticipant can only stand slackjawed in awe of Obamamania. Previously rational people whom LBO admires, like Barbara Ehrenreich and Christopher Hayes, have fallen in love with the Senator’s brand of change we can believe in, a slogan that has to be one of the emptiest since Sandburg’s “The people, yes!,” that the New Party used in New York in the early 1990s. Obama has become the Tokio Hotel of politics.

On what is this mania based? Obama is inspiring the young, lifting the alienated off their couches, and catalyzing a new movement for…change, presumably one we can believe in. The content of this change is hard to specify. Some serious leftists we know and love point to Obama’s roots as a community organizer in Chicago, though many people in a position to know say he didn’t rock many boats in those days. He was embraced by foundation liberals, however, who greased his way into the Harvard Law School via a lakefront condo.

All of which doesn’t make Obama uniquely bad: he’s just another mainstream Democrat with a sleazy real estate guy in his past. Though he’s being touted as an early opponent of the Iraq war, he told the Chicago Tribune in 2004: “There’s not that much difference between my position and George Bush’s position….” He voted to renew the PATRIOT Act, campaigned for happy warrior Joe Lieberman against Ned Lamont in 2006, and wants to increase the size of the U.S. military. He supports Israel’s continuing torture of the Palestinians penned into the Gaza Strip. A Congressional Quarterly study found his Senate voting record was virtually indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton’s; the only major difference in their votes is a surprising one: a move to limit class actions suits against corporations, which Clinton voted against, and Obama for. Obama’s vote was against the preferences of a Dem financial base, trial lawyers, but pleasing to the Fortune 500 and Wall Street.

In this binary world, when you criticize Obama, people immediately include you’re a Hillary Clinton fan. Uh, no. Her politics are bellicose and neoliberal. Her “experience” consists largely of having watched her husband be president for eight years, though it’s likely they were sleeping in separate bedrooms for much of the time. A plague on all their houses.

Agendas

Some more thoughtful victims of Obama Disease point to detailed position papers on the candidate’s website. These must always be taken with a grain of salt, especially during primary season. Candidate Bill Clinton promised to “invest in people” and ended up being the president of “a bunch of fucking bond traders,” as Hillary’s husband memorably put it. LBJ campaigned as the peace candidate in 1964, and ended up killing a million Indochinese.

Obamians also point to his rejection of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC); they put him on their list of rising stars, and he asked to be removed. Encouraging-except for the fact that his chief economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, the fellow who told the Canadians not to take the anti-NAFTA rhetoric seriously, is the DLC’s chief economist. Goolsbee has written gushingly about Milton Friedman and denounced the idea of a moratorium on mortgage foreclosures. That hire is more significant than asking to be struck from a list.

Big capital would have no problem with an Obama presidency. Top hedge fund honcho Paul Tudor Jones threw a fundraiser for him at his Greenwich house last spring, “The whole of Greenwich is backing Obama,” one source said of the posh headquarters of the hedge fund industry. They like him because they’re socially liberal, up to a point, and probably eager for a little less war, and think he’s the man to do their work. They’re also confident he wouldn’t undertake any renovations to the distribution of wealth. You could say the same about Clinton-but you know those hedge fund guys. They like a contrary bet. A share of Obama stock on the Iowa Electronic Market was 30 on May 19, 2007, the day of Jones’s Obama bash; it peaked at 86 on March 1, a gain of 187% (in a year where triple digits are rare). It’s since settled back into the low 70s, which is still quite a gain.

The phantasmic

LBO would be the last to argue that politics is all about rationality. Fantasy matters. But fantasy can have some relationship to policy. Take the example of Ronald Reagan, a man for whom Obama professed some admiration for having rolled back the “excesses of the 1960s and 1970s” and bringing back “a sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.” Reagan promised to make America “stand tall again” and “to get government off the backs of the people.” Certainly these phrases didn’t appeal to the rational faculties of the electorate, but they did correspond with a military buildup, a greater willingness to go to war, and an economic agenda of deregulation and reverence for private wealth. And Reagan had real political forces behind him-first, his cabal of right-wing Southern California businessmen, later supplemented by the corporate and financial establishment, and operating with a playbook written by movement conservatives and the Heritage Foundation.

What does Obama have? A lot of slogans that connect with nothing in the real world; in fact, their very emptiness may be the source of their appeal, because it allows people to project whatever they want to onto him, without getting bogged down in specifics, as Reagan liked to say. (Under attack from Clinton and McCain, he did get specific in his long Wisconsin victory speech. This brought attacks from Karl Rove and others, placing him on the “far left”; it’s not likely we’ll see much more of this irresponsible stuff from Obama as November approaches.) And despite the grand claims of enthusiasts, he doesn’t really have a movement behind him-he’s got a fan club. How does a fan club hold a candidate accountable? It’s not like he’ll take the phone calls of all those 27-year-olds who gave him $100 on the web as quickly as he’d answer a summons from Paul Tudor Jones.

Obama’s appeal is a strange thing. Though he’s added to it as his political momentum builds, his original base consisted of blacks and upper-status whites. The black support is out of racial pride, but the initial white support was driven by his post-partisan, post-racial appeal. Well-off whites love to hear a black man say that racism has largely receded as a toxic force, though it’s really hard to figure out what the hell he’s talking about in a world where black households earn about 60% as much as whites, and where black men are incarcerated at more than six times the rate of white men. And what of this post-partisan business? Politics is about conflicts over resources and priorities, and over the state’s power to coerce; how ever could comity prevail in a world where interests and preferences diverge so widely?

As Adolph Reed told LBO, an Obama presidency could give us the worst of all possible of worlds: one in which race is completely repackaged as a discourse of celebration and, to the extent that that had already become the only metaphor through which American politics could accommodate critical discussion of inequality, the language of ‘disparity,’ it will no longer be possible for critiques of inequality to be heard as an appropriate topic for political discussion. Obama already when he talks “black” (e.g., with his “Cousin Pookie” riffs, which are the exact equivalent of Shelby Steele’s rantings about underclass, shiftless “Sam”) opts for the Bookerite/Cosbyite metaphor of victim-blaming in the phony first-person plural, and he has always played the Immigrant Success Story Up From Slavery Ain’t America Great and Don’t I Show It angle.

And, moreover, what many of his white supporters like about him is that he doesn’t have the ‘chip on the shoulder’ that so many indigenous blacks do. Add all this to his commitment to appealing to the right and to the investor class, and the upshot is that inequality could lose whatever vestigial connotations it has as a species of injustice and be fully consolidated as the marker, on the bottom end that is, of those losers who failed to do what the market requires of them or a sign of their essential inferiority.

Turn to cheer

Enough critique; the dialectic demands something constructive to induce some forward motion. There’s no doubt that Obamalust does embody some phantasmic longing for a better world-more peaceful, egalitarian, and humane. He’ll deliver little of that-but there’s evidence of some admirable popular desires behind the crush. And they will inevitably be disappointed.

As this newsletter has argued for years, there’s great political potential in popular disillusionment with Democrats. The phenomenon was first diagnosed by Garry Wills in Nixon Agonistes. As Wills explained it, throughout the 1950s, left-liberals intellectuals thought that the national malaise was the fault of Eisenhower, and a Democrat would cure it. Well, they got JFK and everything still pretty much sucked, which is what gave rise to the rebellions of the 1960s (and all that excess that Obama wants to junk any remnant of). You could argue that the movements of the 1990s that culminated in Seattle were a minor rerun of this. The sense of malaise and alienation is probably stronger now than it was 50 years ago, and includes a lot more of the working class, whom Stanley Greenberg’s focus groups find to be really pissed off about the cost of living and the way the rich are lording it over the rest of us.

Never did the possibility of disappointment offer so much hope. That’s not what the candidate means by that word, but history can be a great ironist.

The study below actually underestimates the deadly effects of inequality, since it compares richer and poor counties, which tends to even out the greater wealth gaps that often occur within counties. Within Alameda County, for instance, researchers found a twenty year difference in life expectancy between the poverty-stricken south Berkeley flatlands and the rich Berkeley hills. (SF Chron, 1-3-2000)

For the next four Thursdays, starting March 27, at 10 PM, KQED, channel 9, PBS San Francisco, will broadcast “Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?” The US spends twice as much per person on health care as other industrialized countries, yet has worse health and healthcare outcomes. Is social and economic inequality itself making us sick, and therefore responsible, in part, for our bad health? Is the market system literally toxic? See the program’s website.

New York Times, March 23, 2008

Gap in Life Expectancy Widens for the Nation

By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON — New government research has found “large and growing” disparities in life expectancy for richer and poorer Americans, paralleling the growth of income inequality in the last two decades.

Life expectancy for the nation as a whole has increased, the researchers said, but affluent people have experienced greater gains, and this, in turn, has caused a widening gap.

One of the researchers, Gopal K. Singh, a demographer at the Department of Health and Human Services, said “the growing inequalities in life expectancy” mirrored trends in infant mortality and in death from heart disease and certain cancers.

The gaps have been increasing despite efforts by the federal government to reduce them. One of the top goals of “Healthy People 2010,” an official statement of national health objectives issued in 2000, is to “eliminate health disparities among different segments of the population,” including higher- and lower-income groups and people of different racial and ethnic background.

Dr. Singh said last week that federal officials had found “widening socioeconomic inequalities in life expectancy” at birth and at every age level.

He and another researcher, Mohammad Siahpush, a professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, developed an index to measure social and economic conditions in every county, using census data on education, income, poverty, housing and other factors. Counties were then classified into 10 groups of equal population size.

In 1980-82, Dr. Singh said, people in the most affluent group could expect to live 2.8 years longer than people in the most deprived group (75.8 versus 73 years). By 1998-2000, the difference in life expectancy had increased to 4.5 years (79.2 versus 74.7 years), and it continues to grow, he said.

After 20 years, the lowest socioeconomic group lagged further behind the most affluent, Dr. Singh said, noting that “life expectancy was higher for the most affluent in 1980 than for the most deprived group in 2000.”

“If you look at the extremes in 2000,” Dr. Singh said, “men in the most deprived counties had 10 years’ shorter life expectancy than women in the most affluent counties (71.5 years versus 81.3 years).” The difference between poor black men and affluent white women was more than 14 years (66.9 years vs. 81.1 years).

The Democratic candidates for president, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, have championed legislation to reduce such disparities, as have some Republicans, like Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi.

Peter R. Orszag, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said: “We have heard a lot about growing income inequality. There has been much less attention paid to growing inequality in life expectancy, which is really quite dramatic.”

Life expectancy is the average number of years of life remaining for people who have attained a given age.

While researchers do not agree on an explanation for the widening gap, they have suggested many reasons, including these:

¶Doctors can detect and treat many forms of cancer and heart disease because of advances in medical science and technology. People who are affluent and better educated are more likely to take advantage of these discoveries.

¶Smoking has declined more rapidly among people with greater education and income.

¶Lower-income people are more likely to live in unsafe neighborhoods, to engage in risky or unhealthy behavior and to eat unhealthy food.

¶Lower-income people are less likely to have health insurance, so they are less likely to receive checkups, screenings, diagnostic tests, prescription drugs and other types of care.

Even among people who have insurance, many studies have documented racial disparities.

In a recent report, the Department of Veterans Affairs found that black patients “tend to receive less aggressive medical care than whites” at its hospitals and clinics, in part because doctors provide them with less information and see them as “less appropriate candidates” for some types of surgery.

Some health economists contend that the disparities between rich and poor inevitably widen as doctors make gains in treating the major causes of death.

Nancy Krieger, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, rejected that idea. Professor Krieger investigated changes in the rate of premature mortality (dying before the age of 65) and infant death from 1960 to 2002. She found that inequities shrank from 1966 to 1980, but then widened.

“The recent trend of growing disparities in health status is not inevitable,” she said. “From 1966 to 1980, socioeconomic disparities declined in tandem with a decline in mortality rates.”

The creation of Medicaid and Medicare, community health centers, the “war on poverty” and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 all probably contributed to the earlier narrowing of health disparities, Professor Krieger said.

Robert E. Moffit, director of the Center for Health Policy Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said one reason for the growing disparities might be “a very significant gap in health literacy” — what people know about diet, exercise and healthy lifestyles. Middle-class and upper-income people have greater access to the huge amounts of health information on the Internet, Mr. Moffit said.

Thomas P. Miller, a health economist at the American Enterprise Institute, agreed.

“People with more education tend to have a longer time horizon,” Mr. Miller said. “They are more likely to look at the long-term consequences of their health behavior. They are more assertive in seeking out treatments and more likely to adhere to treatment advice from physicians.”

A recent study by Ellen R. Meara, a health economist at Harvard Medical School, found that in the 1980s and 1990s, “virtually all gains in life expectancy occurred among highly educated groups.”

Trends in smoking explain a large part of the widening gap, she said in an article this month in the journal Health Affairs.

Under federal law, officials must publish an annual report tracking health disparities. In the fifth annual report, issued this month, the Bush administration said, “Over all, disparities in quality and access for minority groups and poor populations have not been reduced” since the first report, in 2003.

The rate of new AIDS cases is still 10 times as high among blacks as among whites, it said, and the proportion of black children hospitalized for asthma is almost four times the rate for white children.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last month that heart attack survivors with higher levels of education and income were much more likely to receive cardiac rehabilitation care, which lowers the risk of future heart problems. Likewise, it said, the odds of receiving tests for colon cancer increase with a person’s education and income.

Al-Jazeera, December 10, 2007

Two Schools in Nablus, A Film

Filmmakers: Tom Evans and George Azar

Teachers working for months without pay, a chronic overcrowding in the classrooms, and students at risk each day from imprisonment and perhaps worse - welcome to the typical education experience in a Palestinian school.

Witness presents a series of three films taking a close look at the extraordinary difficulties and challenges that two ordinary Palestinian schools face. While poverty is widespread throughout the West Bank and Gaza, Nablus is one of the worst-hit areas because of the decreasing range of employers and the limited number of opportunities.

Hobbled by the Palestinians’ diminishing purchasing power and by Israeli security closures that have isolated Nablus and its merchants from the rest of the West Bank, hundreds of employees have been fired this year alone. According to the Mayor of Nablus, about 70 per cent of the city’s residents live below the poverty line, but the Palestinian Authority and local government have virtually no funds to give the poor. Astonishingly, despite these poverty levels, almost 90 per cent of children in Nablus go on to university.

But the education system is cracking under the weight of the crisis. More than a million Palestinian students face daily risks ranging from Israeli roadblocks to imprisonment and even death. Witness goes into the classrooms and corridors of two schools to gauge the situation.

Mahmoud Awemleh and Najla Yousif, maths and science secondary school teachers, do their best to teach and inspire their pupils, while trying themselves to survive the challenges of life in Nablus.

Osaid writes his end-of-year exams which he missed while in an Israeli prison. The schools’ teachers anxiously await pay day, wondering if their salaries will come through this month or not. Meanwhile tragic pandemonium breaks out when Israeli soldiers launch a nearby raid to root out militants. This series provides a rare glimpse into the daily lives of those trying to educate, and be educated, under occupation.

Part One: Nablus: Learning on the Frontline

Part Two: Nablus: Learning Under Siege

Part Three: Nablus: Learning to Die

Watch Part One of this episode of Witness on Youtube

Watch Part Two of this episode of Witness on Youtube

Watch Part Three of this episode of Witness on Youtube

Watch Part Four of this episode of Witness on Youtube

Progressive Magazine, March 2008

Election Madness

By Howard Zinn

There’s a man in Florida who has been writing to me for years (ten pages, handwritten) though I’ve never met him. He tells me the kinds of jobs he has held—security guard, repairman, etc. He has worked all kinds of shifts, night and day, to barely keep his family going. His letters to me have always been angry, railing against our capitalist system for its failure to assure “life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness” for working people.

Just today, a letter came. To my relief it was not handwritten because he is now using e-mail: “Well, I’m writing to you today because there is a wretched situation in this country that I cannot abide and must say something about. I am so enraged about this mortgage crisis. That the majority of Americans must live their lives in perpetual debt, and so many are sinking beneath the load, has me so steamed. Damn, that makes me so mad, I can’t tell you. . . . I did a security guard job today that involved watching over a house that had been foreclosed on and was up for auction. They held an open house, and I was there to watch over the place during this event. There were three of the guards doing the same thing in three other homes in this same community. I was sitting there during the quiet moments and wondering about who those people were who had been evicted and where they were now.”

On the same day I received this letter, there was a front-page story in the Boston Globe, with the headline “Thousands in Mass. Foreclosed on in ‘07.”

The subhead was “7,563 homes were seized, nearly 3 times the ‘06 rate.”

A few nights before, CBS television reported that 750,000 people with disabilities have been waiting for years for their Social Security benefits because the system is underfunded and there are not enough personnel to handle all the requests, even desperate ones.

Stories like these may be reported in the media, but they are gone in a flash. What’s not gone, what occupies the press day after day, impossible to ignore, is the election frenzy.

This seizes the country every four years because we have all been brought up to believe that voting is crucial in determining our destiny, that the most important act a citizen can engage in is to go to the polls and choose one of the two mediocrities who have already been chosen for us. It is a multiple choice test so narrow, so specious, that no self-respecting teacher would give it to students.

And sad to say, the Presidential contest has mesmerized liberals and radicals alike. We are all vulnerable.

Is it possible to get together with friends these days and avoid the subject of the Presidential elections?

The very people who should know better, having criticized the hold of the media on the national mind, find themselves transfixed by the press, glued to the television set, as the candidates preen and smile and bring forth a shower of clichés with a solemnity appropriate for epic poetry.

Even in the so-called left periodicals, we must admit there is an exorbitant amount of attention given to minutely examining the major candidates. An occasional bone is thrown to the minor candidates, though everyone knows our marvelous democratic political system won’t allow them in.

No, I’m not taking some ultra-left position that elections are totally insignificant, and that we should refuse to vote to preserve our moral purity. Yes, there are candidates who are somewhat better than others, and at certain times of national crisis (the Thirties, for instance, or right now) where even a slight difference between the two parties may be a matter of life and death.

I’m talking about a sense of proportion that gets lost in the election madness. Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes—the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth.

But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice.

Let’s remember that even when there is a “better” candidate (yes, better Roosevelt than Hoover, better anyone than George Bush), that difference will not mean anything unless the power of the people asserts itself in ways that the occupant of the White House will find it dangerous to ignore.

The unprecedented policies of the New Deal—Social Security, unemployment insurance, job creation, minimum wage, subsidized housing—were not simply the result of FDR’s progressivism. The Roosevelt Administration, coming into office, faced a nation in turmoil. The last year of the Hoover Administration had experienced the rebellion of the Bonus Army—thousands of veterans of the First World War descending on Washington to demand help from Congress as their families were going hungry. There were disturbances of the unemployed in Detroit, Chicago, Boston, New York, Seattle.

In 1934, early in the Roosevelt Presidency, strikes broke out all over the country, including a general strike in Minneapolis, a general strike in San Francisco, hundreds of thousands on strike in the textile mills of the South. Unemployed councils formed all over the country. Desperate people were taking action on their own, defying the police to put back the furniture of evicted tenants, and creating self-help organizations with hundreds of thousands of members.

Without a national crisis—economic destitution and rebellion—it is not likely the Roosevelt Administration would have instituted the bold reforms that it did.

Today, we can be sure that the Democratic Party, unless it faces a popular upsurge, will not move off center. The two leading Presidential candidates have made it clear that if elected, they will not bring an immediate end to the Iraq War, or institute a system of free health care for all.

They offer no radical change from the status quo.

They do not propose what the present desperation of people cries out for: a government guarantee of jobs to everyone who needs one, a minimum income for every household, housing relief to everyone who faces eviction or foreclosure.

They do not suggest the deep cuts in the military budget or the radical changes in the tax system that would free billions, even trillions, for social programs to transform the way we live.

None of this should surprise us. The Democratic Party has broken with its historic conservatism, its pandering to the rich, its predilection for war, only when it has encountered rebellion from below, as in the Thirties and the Sixties. We should not expect that a victory at the ballot box in November will even begin to budge the nation from its twin fundamental illnesses: capitalist greed and militarism.

So we need to free ourselves from the election madness engulfing the entire society, including the left.

Yes, two minutes. Before that, and after that, we should be taking direct action against the obstacles to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

For instance, the mortgage foreclosures that are driving millions from their homes—they should remind us of a similar situation after the Revolutionary War, when small farmers, many of them war veterans (like so many of our homeless today), could not afford to pay their taxes and were threatened with the loss of the land, their homes. They gathered by the thousands around courthouses and refused to allow the auctions to take place.

The evictions today of people who cannot pay their rents should remind us of what people did in the Thirties when they organized and put the belongings of the evicted families back in their apartments, in defiance of the authorities.

Historically, government, whether in the hands of Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, has failed its responsibilities, until forced to by direct action: sit-ins and Freedom Rides for the rights of black people, strikes and boycotts for the rights of workers, mutinies and desertions of soldiers in order to stop a war.
Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.

Howard Zinn is the author of “A People’s History of the United States,” “Voices of a People’s History” (with Anthony Arnove), and most recently, “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.”