Passings ~ Nelson Mandela (1918~2013)

1964: Eight men, among them Nelson Mandela, with their fists raised in defiance through the barred windows of the prison car, leave the Palace of Justice in Pretoria, having been sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiracy, sabotage and treason. Photograph: AFP/Getty Image

Nelson Mandela has died. An obituary is here at The Guardian. It is perhaps more appropriate to recall his own words - The New York Times offers a digest of of his own letters and speeches here. Advice: don't stop with the inspiring but sanitized blurbs excerpted by The Times, click through to the texts themselves.

Obama's One-sided Condemnation of Using Chemical Weapons

"Of course, even as we focused on our shared prosperity — and although the primary task of the G-20 is to focus on our joint efforts to boost the global economy — we did also discuss a grave threat to our shared security: And that’s the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons. And what I’ve been emphasizing and will continue to stress is that the Assad regime’s brazen use of chemical weapons isn’t just a Syrian tragedy, it’s a threat to global peace and security.

Syria’s escalating use of chemical weapons threatens its neighbors, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel. It threatens to further destabilize the Middle East. It increases the risk that these weapons will fall into the hands of terrorist groups. But more broadly, it threatens to unravel the international norm against chemical weapons embraced by 189 nations,, and those nations represent 98 percent of the world’s people.

Failing to respond to this breach of this international norm would send a signal to rogue nations, authoritarian regimes and terrorist organizations, that they can develop and use weapons of mass destruction and not pay a consequence. And that’s not the world that we want to live in. This is why nations around the world have condemned Syria for this attack, and called for action. I’ve been encouraged by discussions with my fellow leaders this week. There is a growing recognition that the world cannot stand idly by. Here in St. Petersburg leaders from Europe, Asia and the Middle East have come together to say that the international norm of the use against chemical weapons must be upheld, and that the Assad regime used these weapons on its own people, and that, as a consequence, there needs to be a strong response."

This is a sanctimonious and hypocritical statement on the Syrian use of chemical weapons taken from Obama's statement at the post-G20 Summit news conference yesterday. Now, I am not defending the Syrian use of chemical weapons. Far from it. The Asad regime is despicable. And much of the opposition at best is barely less so. The problem is that Obama's condemnation ought to start at home. He ought to be pursuing the officials, military and civilian, responsible for the use of chemical weapons by American forces in Iraq. To the best of my knowledge the mainstream American media have not as much as mentioned this matter. You can find reports here and here and here.

Rosa Parks

There were, according to the news reports, warm feelings all around at the unveiling of a memorial statue for Rosa Parks at the U.S. Capitol.  My sense is that - as is so often the case -  the politicos and journalists all are honoring a sanitized version of whomever they are anointing as hero. In this case, it is important to recall something of the actual Rosa Parks and the radical politics she espoused over many, many years.

Picturing the Prison-Industrial Complex

I simply could not resist piling on here. This screen shot from a project by Josh Begley (via the inimitable Pete Brook) is a google-esque condensation of "the geography of incarceration" in the United States. Aerial shots of the nearly 5,000 branches of our prison-industrial complex.

LA County's Finest

Well, issue a couple of guys uniforms and guns to go along with their Associate's Degrees in Criminal Justice and here is what you get ~ authoritarian overreaction to law-abiding photographers. This would be a joke if the uniforms didn't have guns to go along with their ignorance of the law and enlightened social views about 'retards'.

Torture and War, Yesterday and Today and Tomorrow - Brought to You By Barack Obama

Glenn Greenwald reports here that, as though nothing important were really happening, the Obama administration has put the BushCo torturers and their legacy of shameful, pointless brutality behind us. Let's just look to the future, folks. No need to worry about those pesky war criminals. And, elsewhere, Eric Posner points out that the Obama administration approaches the matter of executive branch prerogatives in the conduct of foreign military adventures on precisely the same model as the BushCo minions who justified the torture regime. Or, should I say our torture regime?

Against Perp Walks - Period

I started to write this post a while back and got distracted. It seems the point, if somewhat less current, is nonetheless still worth making.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn is taken out of a police station in New York
on May 15, 2011. Photograph © Jewel Samad/AFP/GETTY IMAGES.

I have no particular sympathy for Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He has been accused of sexual assault and indicted on the charges. I trust that he will get a fair trial. The woman involved, of course, deserves a trial that is fair too, in the sense that it takes place without accusing her and without her word being lost in the glare of celebrity and privilege. I wish I were confident that she will get what she is due. It turns out that the sort of aggressive behavior of which Strauss-Kahn is accused is relatively common. That is no excuse either. The outcome of the trial will no doubt send a loud signal to other hotel staff and their employers. The stakes beyond this particular case, in other words, are high.

At The Nation, The New Republic, The Economist various commentators took up the outrage that French politicians and intellectuals have expressed at photographs of Strauss-Kahn on his "perp walk." The complaints are presented as being about how misguided it is to treat a respected member of the elite class as a common criminal. My complaint is that there really is no reason to treat any criminal - common or otherwise - in so humiliating, prejudicial a manner.

What is the use of such photos? They clearly set the agenda - the accused is treated as though he or she is dangerous and guilty in ways that clearly subvert any presumption of innocence. And they depict the police, as symbols of social order, reinforcing their claim to authority, regardless of whether or not it amounts to anything more than arbitrary assertion.

According to news reports such images are legally proscribed in France. If it is necessary, to prevent attempts at escape and to insure the safety of police officers, that prisoners be kept handcuffed and shackled, the policy clearly ought to apply to all regardless of status or wealth. But if such a policy is necessary, there is little reason to allow photographers - paparazzi, really - access to the prisoner. Habeas corpus requires that prisoners be granted access to family and legal counsel, not to the news media. So, beyond subverting the basic presumption of innocence and inflating the, too often mis-ascribed and mis-used, authority of the police what exactly is the point of this practice?

Which is Worse - Photographs of Murder or Murder?

(L. to R.) Spc. Jeremy Morlock, Spc. Andrew Holmes,
Spc. Michael Wagnon, Spc. Adam Winfield.

What's wrong with this story from The New York Times? The topic is a set of photographs that putatively confirm that the fine fellows pictured above engaged in all sorts of bad behavior while wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army. Of course, these men have not been convicted of anything. But the story in The Times suggests that the evidence against them is damning. Let the trial proceed as it should.

The first problem with the story is that the news reports do not show the photographs in question. My understanding is that the Army and a U.S. Court have issued orders to suppress publication. I have not found them anywhere on line. Your tax dollars at work. What ever happened to the idea of a free press?

The second problem is that the U.S. Army is continuing an official practice we've repeatedly witnessed when Americans do heinous things. They are apologizing, quite fervently, for the images and the distress they cause instead of the actions that the images depict. Pretty poor aim there soldier.
__________
P.S.: My thanks to Stanley Wolukau-Wanambra for this link to the report in Der Spiegel which published some of the images.

Beck's Campaign Against Francis Fox Piven (3)

"I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income." - Martin Luther King, Jr. Where Do We Go From Here? (1967).

"It is our purpose to advance a strategy which affords the basis for a convergence of civil rights organizations, militant anti-poverty groups and the poor. If this strategy were implemented, a political crisis would result that could lead to legislation for a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty." - Francis Fox Piven and Richard Cloward The Nation (1966).

In The Guardian today there is yet another story on Glenn Beck's ongoing campaign against Francis Fox Piven. I found it funny that Piven arranged to meet the correspondent from the paper at a NYC restaurant called "Havana Central."

One thing that strikes me about Beck is his ignorance about history. You can find a link to the 1966 essay by Piven (and her husband, the late Richard Cloward) that so exercises Beck here at The Nation. That is where I lifted the statement above - from the first paragraph of the essay. My point today is just to say that Piven and Cloward were advocating a strategy to implement a policy that, as I noted here a year ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. also endorsed. And since Beck has announced his aim to reinvigorate Dr. King's message, how is it that he objects to Piven and Cloward? What better way to end poverty does Beck envision than the one King came to embrace? Beck instead ought to be embracing Piven as an ally in that cause. Maybe that is why he has afforded her all the publicity that trails in the wake of his diatribes.
__________
P.S.: You might find this portrait of Piven and this more recent Op-Ed from The Los Angeles Times - both by Barabara Ehrenreich - interesting.

Nobel politics and Liu Xiaobo

Liu Xiaobo. Photograph: Liu Xia.

I have posted here several time about Liu Xiaobo, currently imprisoned by the Chinese regime for his political activities. Today he has won the Nobel Peace Prize. You can find reports here and here. I think this is a very worthy choice.

There has been a relatively high visibility campaign on Liu's behalf over the past year. Most notably, a group of prominent political figures circulated this statement, with another group following with this letter, publicly urging the Nobel committee to award the prize to Liu. The campaign has itself reportedly prompted an extremely negative response from the Chinese government. And it generated conflict among Chinese dissidents, with some endorsing the candidacy with others opposing it. With all due respect, I think the opponents are shortsighted. What is at issue here is not Liu's personality - whether he is flawless, a saint rather than a political actor - but the extension of democratic principles in the face not just of authoritarian politics but of market forces as well. On this point I recommend this essay by Chinese novelist Ma Jian. And disagreement is just what those principles countenance. In a sense the Nobel committee has created some political space. To the extent that the Chinese people are able to get the news it, of course, offers them encouragement. But the prize can and should be seen not just as holding the Chinese government to account but also, and importantly, as placing pressure on "our" democratic governments to endorse their own principles by speaking out on the prize. It will be interesting to see if any intrepid Western leaders take advantage of the opportunity the committee has afforded them! Any leader who speaks out would not just potentially jeopardize relations with an important trading partner, but open whomever speaks out to scrutiny of their own political practices. I am not holding my breath. Are you?

I'm With the Rapist ...

At the Cannes film festival photocall for Palme d'Or contender
Des Hommes et Des Dieux (Of Gods and Men), French director
Xavier Beauvois holds a T-shirt to show his support for Roman
Polanski, who has been under house arrest in Switzerland since
last December. Photograph © Sean Gallup/Getty Images.

I came across this photograph at The Guardian; let's say it falls into the category of the truly astonishing. Roman Polanski had sex with a 13 year old girl, confessed to the crime, and then ran away to avoid serving his sentence. What cause, precisely, is it with which Mr. Beauvais (and his friends) is demonstrating solidarity? Is it the cause of men who rape children? Or is it the cause of justice being applied differentially according to one's financial wherewithal? Just wondering. Perhaps Mr. Beauvais should consider switching to this tee-shirt:

__________
P.S.: And, of course, there are fresh allegations about Polanski's predilections for young girls. While he is innocent until proven guilty, I am sure he will want to have a full airing of the latest charges in court, no?

A Terrorist by Any Other Name

There is a story today in The New York Times that raises important issues about American political discourse. It is a story about law enforcement officials planning for "the next angry man" - not the next terrorist, please! Of course, there is the 'background' - relevant or otherwise:

" The Army doctor who opened fire at Fort Hood. The man who flew a plane into the Internal Revenue Service offices in Austin. The professor who killed three colleagues in Alabama because she had been denied tenure. "

Then of John Bedell, the man who tried to shoot his way into the Pentagon recently,the story goes on:

"Here was our next active shooter, mentally disturbed and with an anger that had metastasized into a justification to attack the Government, often the catch-all phrase for the oppressor, the deceiver, the denier of dreams. In this view, it seems, the Government is made of paper, concrete and whispers."

What is wrong here? Well, in the first instance, the female academic in Alabama was perhaps disturbed, but she did not (to the best of my knowledge) compose an anti-government screed before shooting her colleagues. She was pissed at having been denied tenure. She may have been deranged, but there is no evidence that her grievance was anything other than personal. On the other hand, the other three - all men - fall into a lineage of domestic terrorists who decide that there is some reason to turn their imagined grievances into political violence. They may be mentally unhinged, but they are not just unhinged. They are unhinged men who do a typically right-wing and typically destructive and self-destructive thing. A while ago I noted this post and this one, by Glen Greenwald at Salon.com; there is a more recent follow-up here. Greenwald poses the pertinent questions 'Why do our government and law enforcement officials and our press not call things by their proper names? Why do they refuse to call violent, anti-government extremists what they are - namely terrorists? More basically, given that they all flaunt the 't-word', what exactly are they talking about? I guess the folks at The Times have not asked themselves that yet.

Dangerous Clichés at The Times

Situation getting out of control in Chile’s second largest city. Photo credit.

In a reflection on media coverage of the earthquake in Haiti, Rebecca Solnit remarks:

"Soon after almost every disaster the crimes begin: ruthless, selfish, indifferent to human suffering, and generating far more suffering. The perpetrators go unpunished and live to commit further crimes against humanity. They care less for human life than for property. They act without regard for consequences.

I’m talking, of course, about those members of the mass media whose misrepresentation of what goes on in disaster often abets and justifies a second wave of disaster. I’m talking about the treatment of sufferers as criminals, both on the ground and in the news, and the endorsement of a shift of resources from rescue to property patrol."

Yesterday, as if to punctuate her observation, The New York Times ran this Op-Ed by Donald McNeil, one of the paper's staff writers. The essays apparently was prompted by reports of widespread looting following the even more recent earthquake in Chile:

"Nonetheless, a pattern that now is a cliché of disaster journalism broke out there as well: Early reports of people raiding markets for food and diapers were quickly followed by pictures of people carrying TVs and dishwashers off into a city with no electricity. Intact stores were broken into. A department store in Concepción was set ablaze. In a few places, roving bands robbed anyone they could. Residents who formed self-defense posses were quoted saying that the “human earthquake” was worse than the geological one.

[. . .]

By midweek, with thousands of troops deployed, the pictures began shifting: young men spread-eagled on the ground with gun muzzles pressed behind their ears.

All in all, it sounded a lot like Haiti. Or like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Or like Dayton, Ohio, after the 1913 flood. Or like Rome in 410.

It is hard to name a single disruption in the social order, natural or man-made, that has not triggered looting somewhere. [. . .] Though looting starts spontaneously, how quickly it stops appears to depend on how rapid and severe a response it meets. That, in brief, is the argument for using force decisively."

That what McNeil reports is "a cliché of disaster journalism" seems lost on he and the editorial page crew at The Times. Does he question the cliché? Or, does he presume that journalists and their enabling editors and publishers, who nicely conform to the stereotype that Solnit identifies, are getting the story "right"? Professional courtesy, I suppose.

As a start toward thinking rather than regurgitating clichés, McNeil might have read this report from his own paper which suggests that in "New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina" what he calls "the argument for using force decisively" appears, simply put, to have been little more than a rationale for murder and cover-up. The alleged perpetrators are not "looters" but the officers from NOLA police department. Moreover, as these reports [1] [2] from The Nation suggest, the police were hardly the only ones who may have acted murderously. By peddling clichés, The Times is directly perpetuating the distorted ideas that elites use to rationalize violence and panic.

Their Criminals, and Ours

"China has no 'dissidents' . . . There is only the difference
between criminals and those who are not criminals."
~ Ma Zhaoxu, Spokesman Chinese foreign Ministry

This is a remark, reported here at The Guardian, by a Chinese government official commenting on the imprisonment of Liu Xiaobo. It might seem comical to hear regime mouthpieces, with a straight face, parsing words in hopes of rationalizing their oppressive actions. But, as I have noted here repeatedly, it makes a difference. It makes a difference to individuals like Liu Xiaobo. It has consequences for the debasement of language and thereby of politics. And it does not, of course, happen only in those despicable far away authoritarian places like China. After all, just this week David Margolis, an official at the U.S. Justice Department, engaged in the very same practice. He announced that when John Yoo and Jay Bybee flouted - systematically and knowingly - domestic and international law in their quest to rationalize the torture of people being held in U.S. custody under suspicion of partaking in terrorist activity they simply exercised 'poor judgment' instead of professional misconduct. The distinction Margolis draws basically is between being morally obtuse and being legally culpable. The news reports are here and here. We don't have war criminals in the United States, we just have eager, if slightly flawed, public servants operating under circumstances of extreme stress.*

Just to be clear about the political consequences of all this - Margolis not only lets the Bush minions off the hook here, he gives cover to the 'let's ignore the past and hope for the future' strategy that Obama is pursuing on this matter. And, not to be overlooked, he allows countries like China to continue thumbing their noses at sanctimonious rhetoric from Americans.
___________
* But of course, as subsequent news reports make clear, we have dramatically incomplete record for making that assessment because large numbers of official emails to and from Mr. Yoo during the relevant time period mysteriously are missing and unrecoverable.

P.S.: And if you want to see that this language game is being played not just in the halls of justice but in the mainstream media, see this post and this follow-up by Glen Greenwald at Salon.com . . . We don't have Terrorists in the U.S., we just have deranged 'tax protesters.' (Meaning, presumably, that we cannot torture the latter if they are captured?) Just ask the folks at Newsweek. Pretty remarkable!

Martin Luther King, Jr. ~ Not Only Freedom, But Justice, Equality and Solidarity Too! (again)

Martin Luther King, Jr., Under Arrest, Montgomery, Alabama, 1958.
Photograph © Charles Moore.

This post amounts to this year's installment of has become an annual offering - an attempt to de-mythologize and de-sanitize Martin Luther King, Jr.. The point is that we ought to at least try to celebrate the actual past. What follows is a passage from the final chapter of his final book - Where Do We Go From Here? (1967) in which he advocates a guaranteed basic income.

"In the treatment of poverty nationally, one fact stands out: there are twice as many white poor as Negro poor in the United States. Therefore I will not dwell on the experiences of poverty that derive from racial discrimination, but will discuss the poverty that affects white and Negro alike.

Up to recently we have proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils:lack of education restricting job opportunities;poor housing which stultified home life and suppressed initiative;fragile family relationships which distorted personality development.

The logic of this approach suggested that each of these causes be attacked one by one. Hence a housing program to transform living conditions, improved educational facilities to furnish tools for better job opportunities, and family counseling to create better personal adjustments were designed. In combination these measures were intended to remove the causes of poverty.

While none of these remedies in itself is unsound, all have a fatal disadvantage. The programs have never proceeded on a coordinated basis or at a similar rate of development. . . . At no time has a total, coordinated and fully adequate program been conceived. As a consequence, fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor. In addition to the absence of coordination and sufficiency, the programs of the past all have another common failing — they are indirect. Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving something else. I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.

Earlier in this century this proposal would have been greeted with ridicule and denunciation as destructive of initiative and responsibility. At that time economic status was considered the measure of the individual's abilities and talents. In the simplistic thinking of that day the absence of worldly goods indicated a want of industrious habits and moral fiber. We have come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations in the market operation of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will. The poor are less often dismissed from our conscience today by being branded as inferior and incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands it does not eliminate all poverty.

[...]

The problem indicates that our emphasis must be two-fold. We must create full employment or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed in this position, we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available.

[...]

This proposal is not a "civil rights" program, in the sense that that term is currently used. The program would benefit all the poor, including the two-thirds of them who are white. I hope that both Negro and white will act in coalition to effect this change, because their combined strength will be necessary to overcome the fierce opposition we must realistically anticipate."

There are a few salient features of this passage. The first is that King, unfortunately, was way too sanguine about our having ceased blaming the poor for their own plight. The second is that he had moved beyond a "civil rights" agenda to endorse economic justice and solidarity across races. The third is that there are plenty of good reasons to take the proposal for guaranteed income or even a civic minimum seriously.* There hardly get a public hearing hear in the U.S. - after all that would be socialism!

And Moore's photograph is an additional reminder, if one were needed, of how King actually was treated during his lifetime - even well before he began to publicly endorse radical political-economic policies.
__________
* For a start see ~ Phillipe van Parijs. Real Freedom for All, Oxford University Press, 1997; Stuart White. The Civic Minimum. Oxford University Press, 2003; Bruce Ackerman, et. al. eds. Redesigning Redistribution, Verso, 2005; Phillipe van Parijs, et. al. What's Wrong With a Free Lunch?, Beacon Press, 2005; Bruce Ackerman & Anne Alsott. The Stakeholder Society, Yale University Press, 2006.

Local Event ~ Eric Etheridge Breach of Peace

I have posted a couple of times [1] [2] on the work of Eric Etheridge - a 're-photographic' project called Breach of Peace* in which he matches his current portraits of men and women who were civil rights activists here in the U.S. during the 1960s with mug shots taken of them during their activist youth. I find the project incredibly imaginative and quite powerful. Well, Eric's work is now on exhibit at ArtRage in Syracuse. While that is not exactly local, it is here in Western, New York. You can find the announcement here; the exhibition is up through 27 February and Eric will be at the gallery on the 21st for a talk about the project. I plan to make it over. You should too.
__________
* Eric Etheridge. 2008. Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders. New York: Atlas & Company.

Our Crminals ~ Reverend Carl Kabat

Today The New York Times is running this story about yet another American Criminal. If I were religious, I'd thank god for Carl Kabat; since I'm not, I'll simply thank the good Reverend Kabat for his perseverance.

Conyers Proposes Truth Commission

What I'd really like to see is BushCo facing war crimes tribunals. That is very, very, very unlikely to happen - at least here in the United States. However, a "National Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties" of the sort John Conyers has proposed - one not stacked with D.C. insiders - would be a useful institution too. Read the report here at TPM. This will require that the Democrats get some gumption. They need to recognize that the crimes Bush, Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Gonzalez, Powell and their various enablers and minions have had and will continue to have grave negative consequences for the country. Just 'turning the page' on our criminals is not an option. (Thanks Joerg!)

Parsing Crminals and Criminals

You will no doubt recall how in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the mainstream media pretty much went berserk, publishing photographs and crafting captions that portray blacks as craven criminals engaged in looting businesses in New Orleans. As critics pointed out at the time [1] [2] [3] the very same media were considerably more charitable when nearly identical images of whites surfaced. While blacks were "looting," the whites apparently kept merely "finding" good and useful items lying about. Alleged assaults on property predictably outraged the nuts at Fox News while over at MSNBC there was much angst about whether it is "ethical" to steal "necessities" during a disaster like Katrina. The outrage and angst had distinctive racial overtones.

I am sure the news networks will vigorously pursue the newly surfacing stories about how, also right after Katrina, white vigilantes shooting and possibly killing African-Americans who happened to, say, be walking through public parks in New Orleans. I recommend this essay by Rebecca Solnit at Tomdispatch and this report by A.C. Thompson at The Nation.

Our Criminals ~ It 's "Official"

Well, what has for a long time been common knowledge, is now official knowledge too. High ranking members of the Bush administration endorsed committing war crimes as systematic policy. You can read the story in The New York Times and link directly to the 'bi-partisan' Levin-McCain committee report here. It will be interesting to see how the Obama-ites evade acting on this piece of bi-partisan consensus.