RIGHTS-US/IRAQ:
David Phinney*
WASHINGTON, Apr 5 (IPS) - A year ago, Donald Vance learned what its like to be falsely accused by the U.S. military of aiding terrorists. He was held without charge for more than three months in a high-security prison in Iraq, and interrogated daily after sleepless nights without legal counsel or even a phone call to his family.
On Wednesday, the former private security contractor was honoured for his ordeal in Washington and for speaking out against the incident. At a luncheon at the National Press Club, Vance received the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling, an award named in memory of Army helicopter gunner Ron Ridenhour who struggled to bring the horrific mass murders at My Lai to the attention of Congress and the Pentagon during the Vietnam War.
Vance was joined by former president Jimmy Carter, who won a lifetime achievement award, and journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran of The Washington Post who was recognised for his recent book, "Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone".
As hundreds at the luncheon finished their lobster salad, Vance, a two-time George W. Bush voter and Navy veteran, recounted the events of his imprisonment and the grief of his fiancé and family. They did not know if he was alive or dead, he said. They were already making inquiries to the U.S. State Department on how to ship his body home.
He then drew a wider circle around his ordeal to include the countless others who have been held falsely without charge and denied normal legal constitutional protections under law. "My name used to be 200343," Vance said recalling his prisoner ID. "If they can do this to a former Navy man and an American, what is happening to people in facilities all over the world run by the American government?"
Vance's nightmare began last year on Apr. 15 when he and co-worker Nathan Ertel barricaded themselves in a Baghdad office after their employer, an Iraqi private security firm, took away their ID tags. They feared for their lives because they suspected the company was involved in selling unauthorised guns on the black market and other nefarious activity. A U.S. military squad freed them from the red zone in Baghdad after a friend at the U.S. embassy advised him to call for help.
Once they reached the U.S.-controlled Green Zone, government officials took them inside the embassy, listened to their individual accounts and then sent them to a trailer outside for sleep. Two or three hours later, before the crack of dawn, U.S. military personnel woke them. This time, however, Vance and Ertel, Shield Security's contract manager, were under arrest. Soldiers bound their wrists with zip ties and covered their eyes with goggles blacked out with duct tape.
The two were then escorted to a humvee and driven first to possibly Camp Prosperity and then to Camp Cropper, a high-security prison near the Baghdad airport where Saddam Hussein was once kept. Vance says he was denied the usual body armour and helmet while traveling through the perilous Baghdad streets outside the safety of the Green Zone or a U.S. military installation.
It was not the way the tall 29-year-old with an easy charm and keen mind had expected to be treated. Vance claims that during the months leading up to his arrest, he worked as an unpaid informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Sometimes twice a day, he would share information with an agent in Chicago about the Iraqi-owned Shield Group Security, whose principals and managers appeared to be involved in weapons deals and violence against Iraqi civilians. One company employee regularly bartered alcohol with U.S. military personnel in exchange for ammunition they delivered, Vance said.
"He called it the bullets for beer programme," Vance claimed while relating the incident during an interview this week at a cigar bar just walking distance from the White House.
But his interrogators at Camp Cropper weren't impressed. Instead, his jailers insisted that Vance and Ertel had been detained and imprisoned because the two worked for Shield Group Security where large caches of weapons have been found -- weapons that may have been intended for possible distribution to insurgents and terrorist groups, Vance said.
In a lawsuit now pending against former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and "other unidentified agents," Vance and Ertel accuse their U.S. government captors of subjecting them to psychological torture day and night. Lights were kept on in their cell around the clock. They endured solitary confinement. They had only thin plastic mattresses on concrete for sleeping. Meals were of powdered milk and bread or rice and chicken, but interrupted by selective deprivation of food and water. Ceaseless heavy metal and country music screamed in their ears for hours on end, their legal complaint alleges.
They lived through "conditions of confinement and interrogation tantamount to torture", says the lawsuit filed in northern Illinois U.S. District Court. "Their interrogators utilised the types of physically and mentally coercive tactics that are supposedly reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants."
Rumsfeld is singled out as the key defendant because he played a critical role in establishing a policy of "unlawful detention and torment" that Vance, Ertel and countless others in the "war on terror" have endured, the lawsuit asserts, noting that the former defence secretary and other high-level military commanders acting at his direction developed and authorised a policy that allows government officials unilateral discretion to designate possible enemies of the United States.
Because the incident and allegations are now in litigation, the Pentagon has no comment, spokesman Army Lieut. Col. Mark Ballesteros said. He referred all inquires to the U.S. Justice Department, which also had no comment for similar reasons.
But darker allegations are included in the complaint over false imprisonment. Because he worked with the FBI, Vance contends, U.S. government officials in Iraq decided to retaliate against him and Ertel. He believes these officials conspired to jail the two not because they worked for a security company suspected of selling weapons to insurgents, but because they were sharing information with law enforcement agents outside the control of U.S. officials in Baghdad.
"In other words," claims the lawsuit, "United States officials in Iraq were concerned and wanted to find out about what intelligence agents in the United States knew about their territory and their operations. The unconstitutional policies that Rumsfeld and other unidentified agents had implemented for 'enemies' provided ample cover to detain plaintiffs and interrogate them toward that end."
It may take some time to sort out the allegations as the legal process grinds forward, but, in the meantime, Vance is raising new questions about his detention. He still wonders why his jailers didn't just call the FBI and have him cleared. They had access to his computer and cell phone to determine if his claims were true.
"When I told them to do that, they just got angry and told me to stop answering questions I wasn't being asked," Vance said. "I think they were butting heads with the State Department. I just snitched on the wrong people. I took the bull by the horns and got the horn."
And why weren't managers with the Shield Group held and interrogated?
Interrogators were certainly interested in these other individuals, according to the lawsuit. They wanted to know about the company's structure, its political contacts, and its owners -- most of whom are related to a long-established Iraqi family who fled Iraq during the years the country was ruled by Saddam Hussein, Vance said.
More startling even now is that the company has reformed. At the time they left, Shield Security held U.S.-funded contracts with the Iraqi government, Iraqi companies, NGOs and U.S. contractors. As far as Vance knows, the company still does -- but under a different name: National Shield Security.
"I built their web site," he said. "And they are still being awarded millions of dollars in contracts."
*David Phinney is a journalist and broadcaster based in Washington, DC, whose work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, New York Times and on ABC and PBS. He can be contacted at: phinneydavid@yahoo.com.
Showing posts with label civil rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label civil rights. Show all posts
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Monday, March 19, 2007
American's jailing in Ethiopia raises questions about U.S. role
Posted on Fri, Mar. 16, 2007
EXCLUSIVE
By Jonathan S. Landay and Shashank Bengali
McClatchy Newspapers
NAIROBI, Kenya _ A U.S. citizen who was caught fleeing the recent fighting in Somalia was questioned about links to al Qaida by the FBI in Kenya, then secretly sent back to the war-ravaged country, where he was turned over to Ethiopian forces.
Amir Mohamed Meshal, 24, is now imprisoned in Ethiopia, where the State Department's 2006 human rights report says "conditions in prisons and pre-trial detention centers remain very poor" and "there were numerous credible reports that security officials often beat or mistreated detainees."
The fact that Meshal has landed in an Ethiopian prison without any semblance of due process raises new questions about what role the rule of law plays in the Bush administration's war on terrorism. Other suspected terrorists or "enemy combatants" have been exposed to extreme interrogation methods, secretly sent to countries that practice torture, held for extended periods without charges or lawyers, or put under surveillance without court warrants.
An American official who met Meshal in Kenya but wasn't authorized to discuss his case publicly told McClatchy Newspapers that the U.S. Embassy asked Kenya to release Meshal so he could return to the United States. There are no outstanding charges against Meshal, and U.S. law enforcement officials weren't planning to take him into custody, the official said.
“The Kenyan authorities decided otherwise. It’s not something we have control over,” the official said. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the U.S. has protested Meshal's deportation.
Human rights groups in Kenya and the United States, however, disputed the contention that the U.S. was powerless to win Meshal’s release from Kenyan custody before he was deported.
“Anyone who tells you that the United States doesn’t have the clout to convince the Kenyans to return an American citizen is either misinformed or lying,” said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch, in New York.
Kenya and Ethiopia are key allies in the Bush administration's battle against Islamic extremism in Africa, and President Bush has requested a total of more than $1 billion in aid for the two countries in fiscal 2008, making them among the largest recipients of U.S. aid in Africa.
A spokesman for the Kenyan government didn't have any immediate comment.
Meshal's treatment contrasts sharply with that of four British citizens who were caught fleeing the fighting, and of Daniel Joseph Maldonado, another U.S. citizen who fled Somalia and was arrested for entering Kenya illegally.
The four Britons were turned over to British officials, sent home and freed after they were questioned. U.S. authorities obtained custody of Maldonado and his two children from Kenya, flew them back to the United States and charged him in Texas with undergoing military and bomb-making training with al Qaida in Somalia.
The difference, said two other U.S. officials who are familiar with the case but also weren't authorized to discuss it publicly, is that Maldonado quickly confessed to his involvement with al Qaida and Meshal didn't. So while Maldonado could be brought home and imprisoned until his trial, one of the officials said, there wasn't sufficient evidence to charge Meshal and keep him in jail in the United States.
Meshal's saga appears to have begun began late last year, when Ethiopia sent troops into Somalia to help crush the Islamic Courts Council, an alliance of militias that the Bush administration alleges is an al Qaida front. The administration backed the Ethiopian operation with training, intelligence, special forces, and aerial surveillance, and worked closely with Kenya, Ethiopia and the interim Somali government to capture suspected al Qaida members and other potential terrorists.
Meshal and Maldonado were among some 40 foreigners who fled the southern Somali city of Kismayo around Jan. 3, according to an account that one of the foreigners, a British national named Mohammed Ezzouek, gave to human rights groups in London.
They traveled by boat to the village of Ras Kamboni near the Kenyan border, but fled when it appeared that the village would come under attack, Ezzouek said. They walked for several days through forests and swamps, but when a battle erupted nearby, the group scattered and lost track of Meshal.
Meshal resurfaced around Jan. 24, when Kenyan authorities arrested him in the border village of Kiunga. He was taken to the capital, Nairobi, where he was booked on an immigration violation, according to U.S. officials in Kenya.
While Meshal was jailed in Kenya, he told other detainees and Muslim human rights activists who visited the group that FBI agents had threatened to send him back to Somalia if he didn’t admit he was an al Qaida member. Meshal said he was an American citizen from New Jersey, that he’d recently been in Dubai, and that he'd gone to Somalia to practice Islam under the Courts regime, which had imposed Islamic law on much of the country.
Meshal told the human rights activists that FBI agents drove him to a hotel in a U.S. Embassy car for an interview on Feb. 5. He said the agents told him to confess to being a member of al Qaida or they'd send him to Mogadishu, the Somali capital, according to Omar Mohammed of the Nairobi-based Muslim Human Rights Forum, who spoke regularly with Meshal in prison.
“He was informed that he was in a lawless country and had no right to legal representation,” Mohammed said. “He was being treated as a terrorist.”
Mohammed said that Meshal had told him that the FBI agents had showed him photos of several people and told him they'd been taken at terrorist training camps in Somalia. Meshal said that when he denied knowing the people, the agents threatened him with torture and said they’d come back the next day, according to Mohammed.
When they returned, however, the agents were friendly and didn’t repeat the torture threat, Meshal told Mohammed. That was the last Meshal reported being visited by the FBI.
Richard Kolko, an FBI spokesman in Washington, confirmed that FBI agents interviewed Meshal in Nairobi. But he said they never threatened him and said the bureau had informed his parents in Tinton Falls, N.J., of his whereabouts.
Other U.S. officials said that Meshal's allegations of threats and torture mirror the guidance in an Islamic extremist training manual that surfaced in England, and they said the agents who questioned him suspected that he'd received training in how to resist interrogation and what to tell human rights activists.
Meshal's father, Mohamed Meshal, declined to discuss the matter.
On Feb. 10, Kenyan authorities chartered an aircraft from Bluebird Aviation Co. to transport Meshal and at least 12 other prisoners to Baidoa, the headquarters of the interim Somali government.
Ezzouek and three other British citizens _ Reza Afsharzadagen, Hamza Chentouf and Shahajan Janjua _ also were on the Feb. 10 flight to Baidoa. Ezzouek told rights activists in London that when the plane landed in Baidoa, all the prisoners were led into an underground cell at a Somali military base.
“It was pitch black,” Ezzouek said. “There were water bottles down there to pee into. The floor was dusty and dirty. There were rats and cockroaches.”
After two or three days, Meshal and most of the other prisoners were taken out of the cell, leaving only the four British citizens, Ezzouek said. The next day, British diplomats arrived on a large military aircraft and transported the four prisoners via Nairobi to London, where they were questioned and later released.
Two U.S. officials in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Meshal was turned over to Ethiopian forces in Somalia and is being held in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. FBI agents began visiting him regularly last week, one of the officials said.
"We have only recently learned that Mr. Meshal is now in detention in Addis Ababa and will be seeking consular access to him," said State Department spokesman Casey.
The Ethiopian Embassy in Washington didn't respond to a request for comment.
(Bengali reported from Nairobi, Landay from Washington.)
EXCLUSIVE
By Jonathan S. Landay and Shashank Bengali
McClatchy Newspapers
NAIROBI, Kenya _ A U.S. citizen who was caught fleeing the recent fighting in Somalia was questioned about links to al Qaida by the FBI in Kenya, then secretly sent back to the war-ravaged country, where he was turned over to Ethiopian forces.
Amir Mohamed Meshal, 24, is now imprisoned in Ethiopia, where the State Department's 2006 human rights report says "conditions in prisons and pre-trial detention centers remain very poor" and "there were numerous credible reports that security officials often beat or mistreated detainees."
The fact that Meshal has landed in an Ethiopian prison without any semblance of due process raises new questions about what role the rule of law plays in the Bush administration's war on terrorism. Other suspected terrorists or "enemy combatants" have been exposed to extreme interrogation methods, secretly sent to countries that practice torture, held for extended periods without charges or lawyers, or put under surveillance without court warrants.
An American official who met Meshal in Kenya but wasn't authorized to discuss his case publicly told McClatchy Newspapers that the U.S. Embassy asked Kenya to release Meshal so he could return to the United States. There are no outstanding charges against Meshal, and U.S. law enforcement officials weren't planning to take him into custody, the official said.
“The Kenyan authorities decided otherwise. It’s not something we have control over,” the official said. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the U.S. has protested Meshal's deportation.
Human rights groups in Kenya and the United States, however, disputed the contention that the U.S. was powerless to win Meshal’s release from Kenyan custody before he was deported.
“Anyone who tells you that the United States doesn’t have the clout to convince the Kenyans to return an American citizen is either misinformed or lying,” said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch, in New York.
Kenya and Ethiopia are key allies in the Bush administration's battle against Islamic extremism in Africa, and President Bush has requested a total of more than $1 billion in aid for the two countries in fiscal 2008, making them among the largest recipients of U.S. aid in Africa.
A spokesman for the Kenyan government didn't have any immediate comment.
Meshal's treatment contrasts sharply with that of four British citizens who were caught fleeing the fighting, and of Daniel Joseph Maldonado, another U.S. citizen who fled Somalia and was arrested for entering Kenya illegally.
The four Britons were turned over to British officials, sent home and freed after they were questioned. U.S. authorities obtained custody of Maldonado and his two children from Kenya, flew them back to the United States and charged him in Texas with undergoing military and bomb-making training with al Qaida in Somalia.
The difference, said two other U.S. officials who are familiar with the case but also weren't authorized to discuss it publicly, is that Maldonado quickly confessed to his involvement with al Qaida and Meshal didn't. So while Maldonado could be brought home and imprisoned until his trial, one of the officials said, there wasn't sufficient evidence to charge Meshal and keep him in jail in the United States.
Meshal's saga appears to have begun began late last year, when Ethiopia sent troops into Somalia to help crush the Islamic Courts Council, an alliance of militias that the Bush administration alleges is an al Qaida front. The administration backed the Ethiopian operation with training, intelligence, special forces, and aerial surveillance, and worked closely with Kenya, Ethiopia and the interim Somali government to capture suspected al Qaida members and other potential terrorists.
Meshal and Maldonado were among some 40 foreigners who fled the southern Somali city of Kismayo around Jan. 3, according to an account that one of the foreigners, a British national named Mohammed Ezzouek, gave to human rights groups in London.
They traveled by boat to the village of Ras Kamboni near the Kenyan border, but fled when it appeared that the village would come under attack, Ezzouek said. They walked for several days through forests and swamps, but when a battle erupted nearby, the group scattered and lost track of Meshal.
Meshal resurfaced around Jan. 24, when Kenyan authorities arrested him in the border village of Kiunga. He was taken to the capital, Nairobi, where he was booked on an immigration violation, according to U.S. officials in Kenya.
While Meshal was jailed in Kenya, he told other detainees and Muslim human rights activists who visited the group that FBI agents had threatened to send him back to Somalia if he didn’t admit he was an al Qaida member. Meshal said he was an American citizen from New Jersey, that he’d recently been in Dubai, and that he'd gone to Somalia to practice Islam under the Courts regime, which had imposed Islamic law on much of the country.
Meshal told the human rights activists that FBI agents drove him to a hotel in a U.S. Embassy car for an interview on Feb. 5. He said the agents told him to confess to being a member of al Qaida or they'd send him to Mogadishu, the Somali capital, according to Omar Mohammed of the Nairobi-based Muslim Human Rights Forum, who spoke regularly with Meshal in prison.
“He was informed that he was in a lawless country and had no right to legal representation,” Mohammed said. “He was being treated as a terrorist.”
Mohammed said that Meshal had told him that the FBI agents had showed him photos of several people and told him they'd been taken at terrorist training camps in Somalia. Meshal said that when he denied knowing the people, the agents threatened him with torture and said they’d come back the next day, according to Mohammed.
When they returned, however, the agents were friendly and didn’t repeat the torture threat, Meshal told Mohammed. That was the last Meshal reported being visited by the FBI.
Richard Kolko, an FBI spokesman in Washington, confirmed that FBI agents interviewed Meshal in Nairobi. But he said they never threatened him and said the bureau had informed his parents in Tinton Falls, N.J., of his whereabouts.
Other U.S. officials said that Meshal's allegations of threats and torture mirror the guidance in an Islamic extremist training manual that surfaced in England, and they said the agents who questioned him suspected that he'd received training in how to resist interrogation and what to tell human rights activists.
Meshal's father, Mohamed Meshal, declined to discuss the matter.
On Feb. 10, Kenyan authorities chartered an aircraft from Bluebird Aviation Co. to transport Meshal and at least 12 other prisoners to Baidoa, the headquarters of the interim Somali government.
Ezzouek and three other British citizens _ Reza Afsharzadagen, Hamza Chentouf and Shahajan Janjua _ also were on the Feb. 10 flight to Baidoa. Ezzouek told rights activists in London that when the plane landed in Baidoa, all the prisoners were led into an underground cell at a Somali military base.
“It was pitch black,” Ezzouek said. “There were water bottles down there to pee into. The floor was dusty and dirty. There were rats and cockroaches.”
After two or three days, Meshal and most of the other prisoners were taken out of the cell, leaving only the four British citizens, Ezzouek said. The next day, British diplomats arrived on a large military aircraft and transported the four prisoners via Nairobi to London, where they were questioned and later released.
Two U.S. officials in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Meshal was turned over to Ethiopian forces in Somalia and is being held in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. FBI agents began visiting him regularly last week, one of the officials said.
"We have only recently learned that Mr. Meshal is now in detention in Addis Ababa and will be seeking consular access to him," said State Department spokesman Casey.
The Ethiopian Embassy in Washington didn't respond to a request for comment.
(Bengali reported from Nairobi, Landay from Washington.)
Friday, March 16, 2007
Israeli PM's office threatens legal Arab dissent
PMO to Balad: We will thwart anti-Israel activity even if legal
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent
The Prime Minister's Office has sent a letter to the editor of the publication of the predominantly Arab party Balad saying it would combat the activity of any group or individual seeking to harm Israel's "Jewish or democratic character," even if that activity was legal.
"The Shin Bet security service will thwart the activity of any group or individual seeking to harm the Jewish and democratic character of the State of Israel, even if such activity is sanctioned by the law," read the letter, sent by the Prime Minister's Office on behalf of the Shin Bet to editor Ala Hlehel.
The letter, published Friday, also said that the Shin Bet would fulfill this task with the "force of the principle of a democracy that defends itself."
Hlehel petitioned the PMO last week following media released information of a closed-door meeting between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and head of the Shin Bet, Yuval Diskin, in which the latter reportedly described Israel's Arab population as a "strategic threat" to the prime minister.
The two reportedly discussed four documents drafted by groups representing Israel's Arab population which call for a change in Israel's character: "The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel," by the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, the Musawa oganization's "Ten Point Document," the "Democratic Constitution," by the Adala Center, and the yet unpublised "Haifa Treaty."
When Hlehel accused the Prime Minister's Office of "attempting to shut mouths," the Shin Bet responded by saying that there was nothing wrong with the formulation of the documents "unless they reflect or encourage subversive activity," and that the Shin Bet's activity includes foiling such activity on the part of various groups "even if their activity utilizes democratic tools."
Hlehel told Haaretz on Friday that the Shin Bet's response violates the law that regulates its activity, constitutes a blatant breach of its authority, and proves that the "era of military rule imposed upon Arab citizens never ended."
"The Shin Bet is supposed to defense the security of the country, not prevent democratic discussions over the nature of the state... this is very grave and affects all citizens of the state, not just the Arabs," he added.
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent
The Prime Minister's Office has sent a letter to the editor of the publication of the predominantly Arab party Balad saying it would combat the activity of any group or individual seeking to harm Israel's "Jewish or democratic character," even if that activity was legal.
"The Shin Bet security service will thwart the activity of any group or individual seeking to harm the Jewish and democratic character of the State of Israel, even if such activity is sanctioned by the law," read the letter, sent by the Prime Minister's Office on behalf of the Shin Bet to editor Ala Hlehel.
The letter, published Friday, also said that the Shin Bet would fulfill this task with the "force of the principle of a democracy that defends itself."
Hlehel petitioned the PMO last week following media released information of a closed-door meeting between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and head of the Shin Bet, Yuval Diskin, in which the latter reportedly described Israel's Arab population as a "strategic threat" to the prime minister.
The two reportedly discussed four documents drafted by groups representing Israel's Arab population which call for a change in Israel's character: "The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel," by the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, the Musawa oganization's "Ten Point Document," the "Democratic Constitution," by the Adala Center, and the yet unpublised "Haifa Treaty."
When Hlehel accused the Prime Minister's Office of "attempting to shut mouths," the Shin Bet responded by saying that there was nothing wrong with the formulation of the documents "unless they reflect or encourage subversive activity," and that the Shin Bet's activity includes foiling such activity on the part of various groups "even if their activity utilizes democratic tools."
Hlehel told Haaretz on Friday that the Shin Bet's response violates the law that regulates its activity, constitutes a blatant breach of its authority, and proves that the "era of military rule imposed upon Arab citizens never ended."
"The Shin Bet is supposed to defense the security of the country, not prevent democratic discussions over the nature of the state... this is very grave and affects all citizens of the state, not just the Arabs," he added.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
NY Times Editorial: Powerful parties have more rights than regular people
Shielding the Powerful
The Supreme Court’s decision yesterday overturning a nearly $80 million punitive damage award against Philip Morris is a win for corporate wrongdoers. It stretches the Constitution’s guarantee of due process in a way that will make it easier for companies that act reprehensibly to sidestep serious punishments.
It also provides unsettling new evidence that the court is more concerned about — and more willing to protect — the powerful than the powerless.
An Oregon jury awarded Mayola Williams, the widow of a cigarette smoker, about $821,000 in compensatory damages and $79.5 million in punitive damages. Ms. Williams argued that Philip Morris had spent 40 years denying the connection between smoking and cancer, even though it knew cigarettes were deadly. The Oregon Supreme Court upheld the punitive damages award, saying that Philip Morris’s actions had been “extraordinarily reprehensible.” By keeping Oregonians smoking longer than they otherwise would have, the court said, the company’s actions would, “naturally and inevitably, lead to significant injury or death.”
By a 5-to-4 vote that did not follow the usual ideological lines, the court ruled that the award was improper because it punished Philip Morris for harm done to people who were not part of the lawsuit. There is nothing unusual, or wrong, about courts considering the broader impact of a wrongdoer’s misdeeds. As Justice John Paul Stevens noted in dissent, “A murderer who kills his victim by throwing a bomb that injures dozens of bystanders should be punished more severely than one who harms no one other than his intended victim.” The fact that Philip Morris hurt so many other smokers along with Jesse Williams is surely relevant to its punishment.
The court in recent years has become increasingly activist when it comes to defending the rights of corporations by striking down punitive damage awards. And yesterday’s ruling continues that trend. It expands the notion of due process. And it overturns the decisions of a jury and a state supreme court.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
How America Marginalizes Millions
RALL 2/13/07
NEW YORK--In the Soviet Union, political dissidents vanished with chilling efficiency. While the gulags starved and worked "enemies of the state" to death, bureaucrats purged their names from government records, newspaper archives, and school transcripts. Their personal possessions were sold or destroyed. It was as if these "unpersons" had never existed.
In the United States, the government doesn't "disappear" individuals it doesn't like (unless they're of Middle Eastern descent). That job falls to the media. The other difference is that the targets aren't individuals, but entire categories of people: African-Americans, Muslims, Asians, and those with political views to the left and right of the two major parties. The lords of print and broadcast media marginalize these groups to the extent that they have no place in the national conversation. They're born, they have children and they die--but they may as well not exist.
They are America's unpersons--and there are tens of millions of them.
The media's current swooning over Barack Obama's 2008 presidential bid serves as an unintentional reminder that the white majority, which controls top positions in journalism and politics in disproportionate numbers, remains prejudiced against blacks more than four decades after the zenith of the civil rights movement.
But Senator Obama is black! Well, yes and no. His biracial heritage differs from the vast majority of American blacks, who are descended from slaves. If you're one of the tens of millions of African-Americans whose personal and family histories are scarred by centuries of segregation and systematic racism, you may admire Obama's personality and politics. But you don't see yourself in him--not exactly.
Rather than call him biracial (Kenyan-American? African-American-with-an-asterisk*?), however, media reports ask: "Are Americans ready for a black president?" One can't help recall 1995, when General Colin Powell thought about seeking the Republican presidential nomination. Powell too is an African-American* (his parents were born in Jamaica), yet the white-run media repeatedly describes him as black or African-American. Are whites ready to elect a black* president? Maybe. A black one? None have come close.
Decoy politics--slapping a label that doesn't really fit on a person or thing--is the media's principal method of group marginalization. White media executives can brag that they're so liberal and open-minded that they're promoting the presidential candidacy of a black* guy! Yeah, Obama is "black"--but in a relatively arcane way. You're a jerk if you notice and worse if you say so.
Speaking of liberals, the 21 percent of Americans who call themselves liberals suffer from a near total lack of representation in government.
True, the Democratic Party, which controls both houses of Congress, has become a synonym for "liberal" or "leftist" in the media's lexicon. But that doesn't make it so. Only one Congresswoman, Barbara Lee of California, voted against going to war against Afghanistan after 9/11.
Even Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-described socialist, went along with the Republocratic mob. Sanders serves as yet another hollow symbol of the system's supposed openness to unorthodox politics. Sanders plays a socialist on TV, but he also voted for a Bush-backed resolution supporting the troops as they invaded Iraq. He has neither joined the Socialist Party nor promoted socialist views.
A true socialist, even one from Vermont, wouldn't have made it to the Senate.
Millions of left-of-center Americans oppose both the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, favor socialized healthcare and oppose NAFTA and other "free trade" agreements. But they don't have a single vote in Congress. Meanwhile both right-wing pundits and mainstream journalists continue the classic red-herring gambit of dubbing center-right figures such as Hillary Clinton and Al Gore "liberal."
A number of big-name commentators are overtly or tacitly marketed as progressives, liberals or even lefties: Alan Colmes of Fox News, Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, Al Franken and his colleagues on Air America Radio (inevitably "Air America Radio, a liberal network" in press accounts). Like their counterparts in Congress, they're leftie in name only. None opposed the Afghan war, none favor an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, and none can honestly be called left of center.
If Spin and CBS and mainstream moviemakers and the National Education Association are "far left," where are Mother Jones, Pacifica Radio, Robert Greenwald and MoveOn? Logically these entities must be somewhere beyond even the "far left," well into "loony fringe" territory--i.e., those not even worth thinking about, much less mentioning. And so they aren't.
Several other segments of the population are routinely squelched from our national debate. When's the last time a libertarian (200,000 registered voters) was invited to speak on a political talk show? Asian-Americans have concerns and opinions on a variety of subjects. Can you, based on what you see on TV, even guess what they are? For a nation that prides itself on being the world's melting pot, our public life is remarkably homogenous.
No group suffers from marginalization-by-mislabeling more than Muslims. Only extremist Islamists and token figures like Somali-born author Hirsi Ali, a self-described atheist who cashed in her rejection of Islam to be embraced as a media darling, get airtime. To the right, "Muslim" = Osama bin Laden. For what passes as the left, it's fringe individuals like Ali. Meanwhile the millions of Muslims who keep their faith and live their lives without blowing up buildings watch a ludicrous debate that has no resemblance to reality, doomed to live as American unpersons.
(Ted Rall is the author of "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next foreign policy challenge.)
NEW YORK--In the Soviet Union, political dissidents vanished with chilling efficiency. While the gulags starved and worked "enemies of the state" to death, bureaucrats purged their names from government records, newspaper archives, and school transcripts. Their personal possessions were sold or destroyed. It was as if these "unpersons" had never existed.
In the United States, the government doesn't "disappear" individuals it doesn't like (unless they're of Middle Eastern descent). That job falls to the media. The other difference is that the targets aren't individuals, but entire categories of people: African-Americans, Muslims, Asians, and those with political views to the left and right of the two major parties. The lords of print and broadcast media marginalize these groups to the extent that they have no place in the national conversation. They're born, they have children and they die--but they may as well not exist.
They are America's unpersons--and there are tens of millions of them.
The media's current swooning over Barack Obama's 2008 presidential bid serves as an unintentional reminder that the white majority, which controls top positions in journalism and politics in disproportionate numbers, remains prejudiced against blacks more than four decades after the zenith of the civil rights movement.
But Senator Obama is black! Well, yes and no. His biracial heritage differs from the vast majority of American blacks, who are descended from slaves. If you're one of the tens of millions of African-Americans whose personal and family histories are scarred by centuries of segregation and systematic racism, you may admire Obama's personality and politics. But you don't see yourself in him--not exactly.
Rather than call him biracial (Kenyan-American? African-American-with-an-asterisk*?), however, media reports ask: "Are Americans ready for a black president?" One can't help recall 1995, when General Colin Powell thought about seeking the Republican presidential nomination. Powell too is an African-American* (his parents were born in Jamaica), yet the white-run media repeatedly describes him as black or African-American. Are whites ready to elect a black* president? Maybe. A black one? None have come close.
Decoy politics--slapping a label that doesn't really fit on a person or thing--is the media's principal method of group marginalization. White media executives can brag that they're so liberal and open-minded that they're promoting the presidential candidacy of a black* guy! Yeah, Obama is "black"--but in a relatively arcane way. You're a jerk if you notice and worse if you say so.
Speaking of liberals, the 21 percent of Americans who call themselves liberals suffer from a near total lack of representation in government.
True, the Democratic Party, which controls both houses of Congress, has become a synonym for "liberal" or "leftist" in the media's lexicon. But that doesn't make it so. Only one Congresswoman, Barbara Lee of California, voted against going to war against Afghanistan after 9/11.
Even Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-described socialist, went along with the Republocratic mob. Sanders serves as yet another hollow symbol of the system's supposed openness to unorthodox politics. Sanders plays a socialist on TV, but he also voted for a Bush-backed resolution supporting the troops as they invaded Iraq. He has neither joined the Socialist Party nor promoted socialist views.
A true socialist, even one from Vermont, wouldn't have made it to the Senate.
Millions of left-of-center Americans oppose both the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, favor socialized healthcare and oppose NAFTA and other "free trade" agreements. But they don't have a single vote in Congress. Meanwhile both right-wing pundits and mainstream journalists continue the classic red-herring gambit of dubbing center-right figures such as Hillary Clinton and Al Gore "liberal."
A number of big-name commentators are overtly or tacitly marketed as progressives, liberals or even lefties: Alan Colmes of Fox News, Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, Al Franken and his colleagues on Air America Radio (inevitably "Air America Radio, a liberal network" in press accounts). Like their counterparts in Congress, they're leftie in name only. None opposed the Afghan war, none favor an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, and none can honestly be called left of center.
If Spin and CBS and mainstream moviemakers and the National Education Association are "far left," where are Mother Jones, Pacifica Radio, Robert Greenwald and MoveOn? Logically these entities must be somewhere beyond even the "far left," well into "loony fringe" territory--i.e., those not even worth thinking about, much less mentioning. And so they aren't.
Several other segments of the population are routinely squelched from our national debate. When's the last time a libertarian (200,000 registered voters) was invited to speak on a political talk show? Asian-Americans have concerns and opinions on a variety of subjects. Can you, based on what you see on TV, even guess what they are? For a nation that prides itself on being the world's melting pot, our public life is remarkably homogenous.
No group suffers from marginalization-by-mislabeling more than Muslims. Only extremist Islamists and token figures like Somali-born author Hirsi Ali, a self-described atheist who cashed in her rejection of Islam to be embraced as a media darling, get airtime. To the right, "Muslim" = Osama bin Laden. For what passes as the left, it's fringe individuals like Ali. Meanwhile the millions of Muslims who keep their faith and live their lives without blowing up buildings watch a ludicrous debate that has no resemblance to reality, doomed to live as American unpersons.
(Ted Rall is the author of "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next foreign policy challenge.)
Monday, February 5, 2007
Civil rights-era killers escape justice
Updated 2/4/2007 10:42 PM ET
JACKSON, Miss. — Despite high-profile convictions in the past two decades, most killers from the civil rights era will go unpunished.
Many of the murder cases from 1954 to 1968, the years that bracket the height of the civil rights movement, were not investigated or given cursory attention, leaving authorities little to work with today. Now the window of time is closing. Death is claiming potential defendants and witnesses.
"In nearly all these cases, there was no investigation at the time, and without an investigation, I don't think you have any ability to prosecute these crimes," said Don Cochran, professor at Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Ala., who, in 2002, helped successfully prosecute Bobby Cherry, then 71, for the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four girls.
James Seale's arrest Jan. 24 on kidnapping and conspiracy charges in connection with the May 2, 1964, abduction and killings of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore — two of the 40 martyrs listed on the National Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala. — is certain to be one of the last because suspects are dying, former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones of Birmingham said. Seale, 71, suffers from cancer.
Jones led the prosecution team that convicted Thomas Blanton, then 62, in 2001 in the Birmingham church bombing case and that won the Cherry conviction.
Since 1989, authorities in seven states have re-examined 29 killings from the civil rights era and made 28 arrests that led to 22 convictions. The latest was the 2005 conviction of Edgar Ray Killen, then 80, for orchestrating the 1964 slayings of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney.
Back then, fear was in the air
Just how many people died during that period is uncertain. Next to the National Civil Rights Memorial is the Civil Rights Memorial Center, where 86 additional names appear on a wall dedicated to the "forgotten others."
Johnnie Mae Chappell, a mother of 10, is one of those honored on the wall. She was killed March 23, 1964. She had bought ice cream earlier for her children and was looking for her missing billfold along a road in Jacksonville, Fla., when she was shot from a car with four white men. Her admitted shooter went to prison for three years; charges were dropped against three other suspects.
The plaque on the wall also says: "The names of all those who lost their lives to racial violence during the civil rights movement will never be known. The media often paid little attention to the death of black people. Many murders were never fully investigated."
Retired FBI agent Jim Ingram said he and other agents investigating racial violence in Mississippi in the 1960s often ran into hostile neighbors, frightened witnesses, reluctant prosecutors and all-white juries, many of whom refused to convict in these crimes.
Working for the New Orleans' Times-Picayune, veteran reporter Bill Minor was one of the journalists in Mississippi willing to shed light on these crimes.
"The bias permeated the entire journalistic apparatus back then," he said. "It was not only unpopular, it was unsafe to pursue civil rights stories."
Minor said he traveled to Poplarville, Miss., in 1959 to investigate the lynching of Mack Charles Parker, who was dragged from his jail cell and killed by a white mob.
In town, Minor spotted friends he knew. "They wouldn't come across the street for fear of being seen with me," he said.
The FBI investigated the killing, determined who the mob members were and turned the case over to state authorities, who refused to prosecute.
Minor eventually learned the names of those supposedly involved. The last of those suspects died a few years ago, he said.
Little is known about most of the "forgotten others" listed on the wall of the Civil Rights Memorial Center, said Penny Weaver of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which built the center.
Ellie Dahmer said these forgotten killings still should be investigated and prosecuted, if possible. "If they can find out who did it, I don't care how old they are, I think they should go to prison," she said. "Just think about the poor people that didn't get a chance to get old."
Dahmer watched her husband, Vernon, die in a hospital in 1966 after defending his family from an attack by Klansmen. It wasn't until 1998 that Sam Bowers went to prison for ordering the killing. On Nov. 5, 2006, Bowers died behind bars at 82.
Not too late to 'right these wrongs'
U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., believes there is bipartisan support in Congress for the Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act that would create a cold cases unit within the Justice Department to track down evidence in the unpunished killings.
By creating such a unit to punish these pre-1970 crimes, he said, "we are saying that historical context is no excuse for brutality in America, and we are reclaiming our integrity as a nation by doing what we can to right these wrongs today."
The 2005 investigation of the 1967 slaying of Wharlest Jackson shows how hard success is becoming. After Jackson was promoted into a "whites-only" job in Natchez, Miss., a bomb with a timer placed underneath his truck exploded, killing him. Last year, FBI agents concluded all of those involved in the bombing are dead.
After nearly three decades of waiting, Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of NAACP leader Medgar Evers, saw her late husband's killer convicted in 1994 and sentenced to life in prison. Byron De La Beckwith died in 2001 at 80.
"The issue goes beyond the murderers being brought to justice," she said. "These 'forgotten others' should never be forgotten. They and so many like them were the unsung heroes of the movement. Without them, there would have been no movement."
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Life on the Plantation: Bill Moyers
Transcript
Jan 12, 2007
By Bill Moyers
Delivered to the Media Reform Conference, Memphis, TN
It has long been said (ostensibly by Benjamin Franklin, but we can’t be sure) that “democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.”
My fellow lambs:
It’s good to be in Memphis and find you well-armed with passion for democracy, readiness for action, and courage for the next round in the fight for a free and independent press.
I salute the conviction that brought you here. I cherish the spirit that fills this hall and the camaraderie we share today. All too often the greatest obstacle to reform is the reform movement itself. Factions rise, fences are built, jealousies mount – and the cause all believe in is lost in the shattered fragments of what was once a clear and compelling vision.
Reformers, in fact, too often remind me of Baptists. I speak as a Baptist. I know Baptists.
One of my favorite stories is of the fellow who was about to jump off a bridge when another fellow runs up to him, crying: “Stop. Stop. Stop. Don’t do it.”
The man on the bridge looks down and asks, “Why not?”
“Well, there’s much to live for.”
“Like what?”
“Well, your faith. Are you religious?”
“Yes.”
“Me, too. Christian or Buddhist?”
“Christian.”
“Me, too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?”
“Protestant.”
“Me, too. Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist?”
“Baptist.”
“Me, too. Are you original Baptist Church of God or Reformed Baptist Church of God?”
“Reformed Baptist Church of God.”
“Me, too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God Reformation of 1820, or Reformed Baptist Church of God Reformation of 1912?”
“1912.”
Whereupon the second fellow turned red in the face, shouted, “Die, you heretic scum,” and pushed him off the bridge.”
That sounds like reformers, doesn’t it?
By avoiding contentious factionalism, you have created a strong movement. I will confess to you that I was skeptical when Bob McChesney and John Nichols first raised the issue of media consolidation a few years ago. I was sympathetic but skeptical. The challenge of actually doing something about this issue – beyond simply bemoaning its impact on democracy – was daunting. How could we hope to come up with an effective response to an inexorable force?
It seemed inexorable because over the previous two decades a series of mega-media mergers had swept the country, each deal even bigger than the last. The lobby representing the broadcast, cable, and newspaper industry is extremely powerful, with an iron grip on lawmakers and regulators alike. Both parties bowed to their will when the Republican Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. That monstrous assault on democracy, with malignant consequences for journalism, was nothing but a welfare giveaway to the largest, richest and most powerful media conglomerates in the world – Goliaths whose handful of owners controlled, commodified and monetized everyone, and everything, in sight.
Call it the plantation mentality in its modern incarnation. Here in Memphis they know all about that mentality. Even in 1968 the Civil Rights movement was still battling the “plantation mentality” based on race, gender, and power that permeated Southern culture long before and even after the groundbreaking legislation of the mid-1960s. When Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Memphis to join the strike of garbage workers in 1968, the cry from every striker’s heart – “I am a man” – voiced the long suppressed outrage of a people whose rights were still being trampled by an ownership class that had arranged the world for its own benefit. The plantation mentality was a phenomenon deeply insulated in the American experience early on, and it permeated and corrupted our course as a nation. The journalist of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine, had envisioned this new republic as “a community of occupations,” prospering “by the aid which each receives from the other, and from the whole.” But that vision was repeatedly betrayed, so that less than a century after Thomas Paine’s death, Theodore Roosevelt, bolting a Republican party whose bosses had stolen the nomination from him, declared:
It is not to be wondered at that our opponents have been very bitter, for the lineup in this crisis is one that cuts deep to the foundations of government. Our democracy is now put to a vital test, for the conflict is between human rights on the one side and on the other special privilege asserted as a property right. The parting of the ways has come.
Today, a hundred years after Teddy Roosevelt’s death, those words ring just as true. America is socially divided and politically benighted. Inequality and poverty grow steadily along with risk and debt. Many working families cannot make ends meet with two people working, let alone if one stays home to care for children or aging parents. Young people without privilege and wealth struggle to get a footing. Seniors enjoy less and less security for a lifetime’s work. We are racially segregated in every meaningful sense except the letter of the law. And survivors of segregation and immigration toil for pennies on the dollar compared to those they serve.
None of this is accidental. Nobel laureate economist Robert Solow – not someone known for extreme political statements – characterizes what is happening as nothing less than elite plunder: “The redistribution of wealth in favor of the wealthy and of power in favor of the powerful.” Indeed, nearly all of the wealth America created over the past 25 years has been captured by the top 20% of households, and most of the gains went to the wealthiest. The top 1% of households captured more than 50% of all gains in financial wealth. These households hold more than twice the share their predecessors held on the eve of the American Revolution. Of the early American democratic creeds, the anti-Federalist warning that government naturally works to “fortify the conspiracies of the rich” proved especially prophetic. So it is this that we confront today. America’s choice between two fundamentally different economic visions. As Norton Garfinkle writes in his new book The American Dream vs. The Gospel of Wealth, the historic vision of the American Dream is that continuing economic growth and political stability can be achieved by supporting income growth and the economic security of middle-class families without restricting the ability of successful businessmen to gain wealth. The counter belief is that providing maximum financial rewards to the most successful is the way to maintain high economic growth. The choice cannot be avoided: What kind of economy do we seek, and what kind of nation do we wish to be? Do we want to be a country in which the “rich get richer and the poor get poorer?” Or do we want to be a country committed to an economy that provides for the common good, offers upward mobility, supports a middle-class standard of living, and provides generous opportunity for all? In Garfinkle’s words, “When the richest nation in the world has to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars to pay its bill, when its middle-class citizens sit on a mountain of debt to maintain their living standards, when the nation’s economy has difficulty producing secure jobs or enough jobs of any kind, something is amiss.”
You bet something is amiss. And it goes to the core of why we are here in Memphis for this conference. We are talking about a force– media– that cuts deep to the foundation of democracy. When Teddy Roosevelt dissected the “real masters of the reactionary forces” in his time, he concluded that they “directly or indirectly control the majority of the great daily newspapers that are against us.” Those newspapers – the dominant media of the day– “choked” (his word) the channels of information ordinary people needed to understand what was being done to them.
And today? Two basic pillars of American society – shared economic prosperity and a public sector capable of serving the common good – are crumbling. The third basic pillar of American democracy – an independent press– is under sustained attack, and the channels of information are choked.
A few huge corporations now dominate the media landscape in America. Almost all the networks carried by most cable systems are owned by one of the major media conglomerates. Two thirds of today’s newspaper markets are monopolies. As ownership gets more and more concentrated, fewer and fewer independent sources of information have survived in the marketplace. And those few significant alternatives that do survive, such as PBS and NPR, are under growing financial and political pressure to reduce critical news content and shift their focus in a “mainstream” direction, which means being more attentive to the establishment than to the bleak realities of powerlessness that shape the lives of ordinary people.
What does today’s media system mean for the notion of the “informed public” cherished by democratic theory? Quite literally, it means that virtually everything the average person sees or hears outside of her own personal communications is determined by the interests of private, unaccountable executives and investors whose primary goal is increasing profits and raising the company’s share price. More insidiously, this small group of elites determines what ordinary people do not see or hear. In-depth news coverage of anything, let alone of the problems people face day-to-day, is as scarce as sex, violence, and voyeurism are pervasive. Successful business model or not, by democratic standards, this is censorship of knowledge by monopolization of the means of information. In its current form – which Barry Diller happily describes as oligopoly– media growth has one clear consequence: there is more information and easier access to it, but it’s more narrow in content and perspective, so that what we see from the couch is overwhelmingly a view from the top.
The pioneering communications scholar Murray Edelman wrote that “Opinions about public policy do not spring immaculately or automatically into people’s minds; they are always placed there by the interpretations of those who can most consistently get their claims and manufactured cues publicized widely.” For years the media marketplace for “opinions about public policy” has been dominated by a highly-disciplined, thoroughly-networked ideological “noise machine,” to use David Brock’s term. Permeated with slogans concocted by big corporations, their lobbyists and their think-tank subsidiaries, public discourse has effectively changed how American values are perceived. Day after day, the ideals of fairness and liberty and mutual responsibility have been stripped of their essential dignity and meaning in people’s lives. Day after day, the egalitarian creed of our Declaration of Independence is trampled underfoot by hired experts and sloganeers who speak of the “death tax,” the “ownership society,” the “culture of life,” the “liberal assault” on God and family, “compassionate conservation,” “weak on terrorism,” the “end of history,” the “clash of civilizations,” “no child left behind.” They have even managed to turn the escalation of a failed war into a “surge” – as if it were a current of electricity charging through a wire instead of blood spurting from a soldier’s ruptured veins. We have all the Orwellian filigree of a public sphere in which language conceals reality and the pursuit of personal gain and partisan power is wrapped in rhetoric that turns truth to lies and lies to truth.
So it is, that “limited government” has little to do with the constitution or local autonomy any more; now it means corporate domination and the shifting of risk from government and business to struggling families and workers. “Family values” now means imposing a sectarian definition on everyone else. “Religious freedom” now means majoritarianism and public benefits for organized religion without any public burdens. And “patriotism” now means blind support for failed leaders. It’s what happens when an interlocking media system filters, through commercial values or ideology, the information and moral viewpoints that people consume in their daily lives.
By no stretch of the imagination can we say the dominant institutions of today’s media are guardians of democracy. Despite the profusion of new information “platforms” on cable, on the Internet, on radio, blogs, podcasts, YouTube and MySpace, among others, the resources for solid original journalistic work, both investigative and interpretive, are contracting rather than expanding. I’m old fashioned in this, a hangover from my days as a cub reporter and later a publisher. I agree with Michael Schudson, one of our leading scholars of communication, who writes in the current Columbia Journalism Review that “while all media matter, some matter more than others, and for the sake of democracy, print still counts most, especially print that devotes resources to gathering news. Network TV matters, cable TV matters, but when it comes to original investigation and reporting, newspapers are overwhelmingly the most important media.” But newspapers are purposely dumbing down, driven down – says Schudson– by “Wall Street, whose collective devotion to an informed citizenry is nil, seems determined to eviscerate newspapers.” Meanwhile, despite some initial promise following the shock of 9/11, television has returned to its tabloid ways, chasing celebrity and murders – preferably both at the same time– while wallowing in triviality, banality and a self-referential view.
Worrying about the loss of real news is not a romantic cliché of journalism. It has been verified by history: from the days of royal absolutism to the present, the control of information and knowledge had been the first line of defense for failed regimes facing democratic unrest.
The suppression of parliamentary dissent during Charles I’s “eleven years tyranny” in England (1629-1640) rested largely on government censorship operating through strict licensing laws for the publication of books. The Federalists’ infamous Sedition Act of 1798 likewise sought to quell Republican insurgency by making it a crime to publish “false, scandalous, and malicious writing” about the government or its officials.
In those days, our governing bodies tried to squelch journalistic freedom with the blunt instruments of the law – padlocks for the presses and jail cells for outspoken editors and writers. Over time, with spectacular wartime exceptions, the courts and the constitution have struck those weapons out of their hands. But now they’ve found new methods, in the name of “national security” and even broader claims of “executive privilege.” The number of documents stamped “Top Secret,” “Secret” or “Confidential” has accelerated dramatically since 2001, including many formerly accessible documents which are now reclassified as secret. Vice-President Cheney’s office refuses to disclose what, in fact, it is classifying: even their secrecy is being kept a secret.
Beyond what is officially labeled “Secret” or “Privileged” information, there hovers on the plantation a culture of selective official news implementation, working through favored media insiders, to advance political agendas by leak and innuendo and spin, by outright propaganda mechanisms such as the misnamed “Public Information” offices that churn out blizzards of factually selective releases on a daily basis, and even by directly paying pundits and journalists to write on subjects of “mutual interest.” They needn’t have wasted the money. As we saw in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the plantation mentality that governs Washington turned the press corps into sitting ducks for the war party for government and neo-conservative propaganda and manipulation. There were notable exceptions – Knight Ridder’s bureau, for example – but on the whole all high-ranking officials had to do was say it, and the press repeated it, until it became gospel. The height of myopia came with the admission by a prominent beltway anchor that his responsibility is to provide officials a forum to be heard. Not surprisingly, the watchdog group FAIR found that during the three weeks leading up to the invasion, only three percent of U.S. sources on the evening news of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX, and PBS expressed skeptical opinions of the impending war. Not surprisingly, two years after 9/11, almost seventy percent of the public still thought it likely that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the terrorist attacks of that day. An Indiana school teacher told the Washington Post, “From what we’ve heard from the media, it seems like what they feel is that Saddam and the whole Al Qaeda thing are connected.” Much to the advantage of the Bush administration, a large majority of the public shared this erroneous view during the buildup to the war– a propaganda feat that Saddam himself would have envied. It is absolutely stunning –frightening– how the major media organizations were willing, even solicitous hand puppets of a state propaganda campaign, cheered on by the partisan ideological press to go to war.
There are many other ways the plantation mentality keeps Americans from reality. Take the staggering growth of money-in-politics. Compared to the magnitude of the problem, what the average person knows about how money determines policy is negligible. In fact, in the abstract, the polls tell us, most people generally assume that money controls our political system. But people will rarely act on something they understand only in the abstract. It took a constant stream of images – water hoses, dogs and churches ablaze– for the public at large to finally understand what was happening to Black people in the South. It took repeated scenes of destruction in Vietnam before the majority of Americans saw how we were destroying the country to save it. And it took repeated crime-scene images to maintain public support for many policing and sentencing policies. Likewise, people have to see how money-in-politics actually works, and concretely grasp the consequences for their pocket books and their lives, before they will act. Media organizations supply a lot of news and commentary, but almost nothing that would reveal who really wags the system, and how. When I watch one of those faux debates on a Washington public affairs show, with one politician saying this is a bad bill, and the other politician saying this is a good bill, I yearn to see the smiling, nodding beltway anchor suddenly interrupt and insist: “Good bill or bad bill, this is a bought bill. Whose financial interest are you serving here?”
Then there are the social costs of “free trade.” For over a decade, free trade has hovered over the political system like a biblical commandment, striking down anything–trade unions, the environment, indigenous rights, even the constitutional standing of our own laws passed by our elected representatives– that gets in the way of unbridled greed. The broader negative consequence of this agenda– increasingly well-documented by scholars– gets virtually no attention in the dominant media. Instead of reality, we get optimistic multicultural scenarios of coordinated global growth, and instead of substantive debate, we get a stark, formulaic choice between free trade to help the world and gloomy sounding “protectionism” that will set everyone back.
The degree to which this has become a purely ideological debate, devoid of any factual basis that can help people weigh net gains and losses, is reflected in Thomas Friedman’s astonishing claim, stated not long ago in a television interview, that he endorsed the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) without even reading it – that is, simply because it stood for “free trade.” We have reached the stage when the pooh-bahs of punditry only have to declare the world is flat for everyone to agree it is, without even going to the edge to look for themselves.
I think what’s happened is not indifference or laziness or incompetence but the fact that most journalists on the plantation have so internalized conventional wisdom that they simply accept that the system is working as it should. I’m working on a documentary about the role of the press in the run-up to the war, and over and again reporters have told me it just never occurred to them that high officials would manipulate intelligence in order to go to war.
Hello?
Similarly, the question of whether our political and economic system is truly just or not is off the table for investigation and discussion by most journalists. Alternative ideas, alternative critiques, alternative visions rarely get a hearing, and uncomfortable realities are obscured, such as growing inequality, the re-segregation of our public schools, the devastating onward march of environmental deregulation– all examples of what happens when independent sources of knowledge and analysis are so few and far between on the plantation.
So if we need to know what is happening, and big media won’t tell us; if we need to know why it matters, and big media won’t tell us; if we need to know what to do about it, and big media won’t tell us – it’s clear what we have to do: we have to tell the story ourselves.
And this is what the plantation owners fear most of all. Over all those decades here in the South when they used human beings as chattel and quoted scripture to justify it (property rights over human rights was God’s way), they secretly lived in fear that one day instead of saying, “Yes, Massa,” those gaunt, weary sweat-soaked field hands bending low over the cotton under the burning sun would suddenly stand up straight, look around at their stooped and sweltering kin, and announce: “This can’t be the product of intelligent design. The bossman’s been lying to me. Something is wrong with this system.” This is the moment freedom begins – the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it’s time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself. When the garbage workers struck here in 1968, and the walls of these buildings echoed with the cry “I am a man,” they were writing their own story. Martin Luther King, Jr. came here to help them tell it, only to die on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. The bullet killed him, but it couldn’t kill the story. You can’t kill the story once the people start writing it.
So I’m back now where I started – and with you – will travel where the movement is headed. The greatest challenge to the plantation mentality of the media giants is the innovation and expression made possible by the digital revolution. I may still prefer the newspaper for its investigative journalism and in-depth analysis but we now have in our hands the means to tell a different story than big media tells. Our story. The other story of America that says free speech is not just corporate speech, that news is not just chattel in the field, living the bossman’s story. This is the real gift of the digital revolution. The Internet, cell phones and digital cameras that can transmit images over the Internet, make possible a nation of story tellers…every citizen a Tom Paine. Let the man in the big house on Pennsylvania Avenue think that over. And the woman of the House on Capitol Hill. And the media moguls in their chalets at Sun Valley, gathered to review the plantation’s assets and multiply them; nail it to the door– they no longer own the copyright to America’s story– it’s not a top-down story anymore. Other folks are going to write the story from the ground up and the truth will be out, that the media plantation, like the cotton plantation of old, is not divinely sanctioned, and it’s not the product of natural forces; the media system we have been living under was created behind closed doors, where the power brokers meet to divvy up the spoils.
Bob McChesney has eloquently reminded us through the years how each medium –radio, television, and cable– was hailed as a technology that would give us greater diversity of voices, serious news, local programs and lots of public service for the community. In each the advertisers took over. Despite what I teasingly told you in St. Louis the last time we were together, the star that shined so brightly in the firmament the year I was born –1934– did not, I regret to say, appear above that little house in Hugo, Oklahoma. It appeared over Washington when Congress enacted the Communications Act of 1934. One hundred times in that cornerstone or our communication policy you will read the phrase “public interest, convenience and necessity.” Educators, union officials, religious leaders, parents were galvanized by the promise of radio as “a classroom for the air,” serving the life of the country and the life of the mind. Then the media lobby cut a deal with the government to make certain nothing would threaten the already vested-interests of powerful radio networks and the advertising industry. Soon the public largely forgot about radio’s promise as we accepted the entertainment produced and controlled by Jell-o, Maxwell House, and Camel cigarettes. What happened to radio, happened to television and then to cable, and if we are not diligent, it will happen to the Internet.
Powerful forces are at work now – determined to create our media future for the benefit of the plantation: investors, advertisers, owners, and the parasites that depend on their indulgence, including much of the governing class. Old media acquire new media, and vice versa. Rupert Murdoch, forever savvy about the next key outlet that will attract eyeballs, purchased MySpace, spending nearly $600 million so he could (in the words of how Wall Street views new media) “monetize” those eyeballs. Google became a partner in Time Warner, investing one billion in its AOL online service, and now Google has bought YouTube so it would have a better vehicle for delivering interactive ads for Madison Avenue. Viacom, Microsoft, large ad agencies, and others, have been buying key media properties – many of them the leading online sites. The result will be a thoroughly commercialized environment – a media plantation for the 21st century dominated by the same corporate and ideological forces that have produced the system we have today.
So what do we do? Well, you’ve shown us what we have to do. Twice now you’ve shown us what we can do. Four years ago when FCC Chairman Michael Powell and his ideological side-kicks decided that it was OK if a single corporation owned a community’s major newspaper, three of its TV stations, eight radio stations, its cable TV system, and its major broadband Internet provider, you said, “Enough’s enough.” Free Press, Common Cause, Consumers Union, Media Access Project, the National Association for Hispanic Journalists, and others, working closely with Commissioners Adelstein and Copps– two of the most public-spirited men ever to serve on the FCC – and began organizing public hearings across the country. People spoke up about how poorly the media was serving their communities. You flooded Congress with petitions. You never let up, and when the Court said Powell had to back off, the decision cited the importance of involving the public in these media decisions. Incidentally, Powell not only backed off, he backed out. He left the commission to become “senior advisor” at a “private investment firm specializing in equity investments in media companies around the world.” That firm, by the way, made a bid to take over both the Tribune and Clear Channel, two mega-media companies that just a short time ago were under the corporate friendly purview of…you guessed it…Michael Powell. That whishing sound you hear is Washington’s perpetually revolving door, through which they come to serve the public and through which they leave to join the plantations.
You made a difference. You showed the public cares about media and democracy. You turned a little publicized vote on a seemingly arcane regulation into a big political fight and public debate. Now, it’s true as Commissioner Copps has reminded us, since that battle three years ago, there have been more than 3,300 TV and radio stations that have had their assignment and transfer grants approved. “So that even under the old rules, consolidation grows, localism suffers and diversity dwindles.” It’s also true, too, that even as we speak Michael Powell’s successor, Kevin Martin, put there by President Bush, is ready to take up where Powell left off and give the green light to more conglomeration. Get ready to fight. Inside the beltway plantation the media thought this largest telecommunications merger in our history was on a fast track for approval.
But then you did it again more recently – you lit a fire under people to put Washington on notice that it had to guarantee the Internet’s First Amendment protection in the $85 billion merger of AT&T and Bell South. Because of you, the so-called “Internet neutrality” – I much prefer to call it the “equal access” provision of the Internet – became a public issue that once again reminded the powers-that-be that people want the media to foster democracy. This is crucial because in a few years virtually all media will be delivered by high speed broadband, and without equality of access, the net could become just like cable television, where the provider decides what you see and what you pay. After all, the Bush department of justice had blessed the deal last October without a single condition or statement of concern. But they hadn’t reckoned with Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, and hadn’t reckoned with this movement. FreePress and SavetheInternet.com orchestrated 800 organizations, a million and a half petitions, countless local events, legions of homemade videos, smart collaboration with allies in industry, and a topshelf communications campaign. Who would have imagined that sitting together in the same democratic broadband pew would be the Christian Coalition, Gun Owners of America, Common Cause, and MoveOn.org? Who would have imagined that these would link arms with some of the most powerful “new media” companies to fight for the Internet’s First Amendment ground? We owe a tip of the hat, of course, to Republican Commissioner Robert McDowell. Despite what must have been a great deal of pressure from his side, he did the honorable thing and rescued himself from the proceedings because of a conflict of interest. So AT&T had to cry “uncle” to Copps and Adelstein with a “voluntary commitment” to honor equal access for at least two years. The agreement marks the first time that the Federal government has imposed true neutrality –oops equality– requirements on an Internet access provider since the debate erupted almost two years ago. I believe you changed the terms of the debate. It is no longer about whether equality of access will govern the future of the Internet; it’s about when and how. It also signals a change from defense to offence for the backers of an open Net. Arguably the biggest, most effective online organizing campaign ever conducted on a media issue can now turn to passing good laws rather than always having to fight to block bad ones. Senator Byron Dorgan, a Democrat, and Senator Olympia Snowe, a Republican, introduced the Internet Freedom Preservation Act in January of 2007, to require fair and equitable access to all content. And over in the House, those champions of the public interest – Ed Markey and Maurice Hinchley– will be leading the fight.
But a caveat here. Those other folks don’t give up so easily. Remember, this agreement is only for two years, and they’ll be back with all the lobbyists money can hire. Furthermore, consider what AT&T got in the bargain. For giving up on neutrality, it got the green light from government to dominate over 67 million phone lines in 22 states, almost 12 million broadband users, and total control over Cingular wireless, the country’s largest mobile phone company with 58 million cell phone users. It’s as if China swallowed India.
I bring this up for a reason. Big media is ravenous. It never gets enough, it always wants more. And it will stop at nothing to get it. These are imperial conglomerates. Last week on his Web site mediachannel.org, Danny Schecter, recalled how some years ago he marched with a band of media activists to the headquarters of all the big media companies concentrated in the Times Square area. Their formidable buildings, fronted with logos and limos and guarded by rent-a-cops, projected their power and prestige. Danny and his cohorts chanted and held up signs calling for honest news and an end to exploitative programming. They called for diversity and access for more perspectives. “It felt good,” Danny said, but “seemed like a fool’s errand. We were ignored, patronized, and marginalized. We couldn’t shake their edifices or influence their holy ‘business models’; we seemed to many like that lonely and forlorn nut in a New Yorker cartoon carrying an ‘end of the world is near’ placard.”
Well, yes, that’s exactly how they want us to feel – as if media and democracy is a fool’s errand. To his credit, Danny didn’t buy it. He’s never given up. Neither have some of the earlier pioneers in this movement – Andy Schwartzman, Don Hazen, Jeff Chester. Let me confess that I came very close to not making this speech today, in favor of just getting up here and reading from this book – Digital Destiny, by my friend and co-conspirator, Jeff Chester. Take my word for it: Make this your bible. As Don Hazen writes in his review on Alternet this week, it’s a terrific book – “A respectful, loving, fresh, intimate comprehensive history of the struggles for a ‘democratic media’ – the lost fights, the opportunities missed, and the small victories that have kept the corporate media system from having complete carte blanche over the communications channel.”
It’s also a terrifying book, because Jeff describes how “we are being shadowed online by a slew of software digital gumshoes working for Madison Avenue. Our movements in cyberspace are closely tracked and analyzed. And interactive advertising infiltrates our unconsciousness to promote the ‘brandwashing of America.’” Jeff asks the hard questions: do we really want television sets that monitor what we watch? Or an Internet that knows what sites we visit and reports back to advertising companies? Do we really want a media system designed mainly for advertisers?
But this is also a hopeful book. After scaring the bejeepers out of us, as one reviewer wrote, Jeff offers a “policy agenda for the broadcast era.” Here’s a man who practices what the Italian philosopher Gramsci called “the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will.” He sees the world as it is, without rose-colored glasses, and tries to change it despite what he knows. So you’ll find here the core of this movement’s mission. Media reform, yes. But as the Project in Excellence concluded in its State of the Media Report for 2006, “At many old-media companies, though not all, the decades-long battle at the top between idealists and accountants is now over. The idealists have lost.” The commercial networks are lost, too – lost to silliness, farce, cowardice, and ideology. Not much hope there. Can’t raise the dead.
Policy reform, yes. “But,” says Jeff, “we will likely see more consolidation of ownership, with newspapers, TV stations, and major online properties in fewer hands.” So we have to find other ways to ensure the public has access to diverse, independent, and credible sources of information. That means going to the market to find support for stronger independent media; Michael Moore and others have proved progressivism doesn’t have to equal penury. It means helping protect news gathering from predatory forces. It means fighting for more participatory media, hospitable to a full range of expression. It means building on Lawrence Lessig’s notion of the creative common and Brewster Kahle’s Internet archives with its philosophy of universal access to all knowledge.” It means bringing broadband service to those many millions of Americans too poor to participate in the digital revolution. It means ownership for women and people of color. It means reclaiming public broadcasting and restoring it to its original feisty, robust, fearless mission as an alternative to the dominant media, offering journalism you can’t ignore – public affairs of which you’re a part, and a wide range of civic and cultural discourse that leaves no one out; you can have an impact here. We need to remind people that the Federal commitment to public broadcasting in this country is about $1.50 per capita compared to $28-$85 per capita in other democracies.
But there’s something else you can do. In moments of reverie, I imagine all of you returning home to organize a campaign to persuade your local public television station to start airing Amy Goodman’s broadcast of Democracy NOW! I can’t think of a single act more likely to remind people of what public broadcasting should be – or that this media reform movement really means business. We’ve got to get alternative content out there to people or this country’s going to die of too many lies. And the opening run down of news on Amy’s daily show is like nothing else on television, corporate or public. It’s as if you opened the window and a fresh breeze rolls over you from the ocean. Amy doesn’t practice trickle-down journalism. She goes where the silence is, she breaks the sound barrier. She doesn’t buy the Washington protocol that says the truth lies somewhere on the spectrum of opinion between the Democrats and Republicans– on Democracy NOW the truth lies where the facts are hidden, and Amy digs for them. And she believes the media should be a sanctuary for dissent…the Underground Railroad tunneling beneath the plantation. So go home and think about it. After all you are the public in public broadcasting; you can get the bossman in the big house at the local station to listen.
Meanwhile, be vigilant about what happens in Congress. Track it day by day and post what you learn far and wide. Because the decisions made in this session of Congress will affect the future of all media – corporate and non commercial – and if we lose the future now, we’ll never get it back.
So you have your work cut out for you. I’m glad you’re all younger than me, and up to it. I’m glad so many funders are here, because while an army may move on its stomach, this movement requires hard, cold cash to compete with big media in getting the attention of Congress and the public.
I’ll try to do my part. Last time we were together, I said to you that I should put detractors on notice. They just might compel me out of the rocking chair and back into the anchor chair. Well, in April I will be back with a new weekly series called Bill Moyers Journal. I hope to complement the fine work of colleagues like David Brancaccio of NOW and David Fanning of Frontline, who also go for the truth behind the news.
But I don’t want to tease you – I’m not coming back because of my detractors. I wouldn’t torture them that way (I’ll leave that to Dick Cheney.) I’m coming back because I believe television can still signify. And I don’t want you to feel so alone.
I’ll keep an eye on your work. You are to America what the abolition movement was, and the suffragette movement, and the Civil Rights movement – you touch the soul of democracy.
It’s not assured you’ll succeed in this fight. The armies of the Lord are up against mighty hosts. But as the spiritual leader Sojourner Thomas Merton wrote to an activist grown weary and discouraged while protesting the Vietnam War…”Do not depend on the hope of results…concentrate on the value…and the truth of the work itself.”
And in case you do get lonely, I’ll leave you with this:
As my plane was circling Memphis the other day I looked out across those vast miles of fertile soil that once were plantations watered by the Mississippi River and the sweat from the brow of countless men and women who had been forced to live someone else’s story. I thought about how in time they rose up, one here, then two, then many, forging a great movement that awakened America’s conscience and brought us close to the elusive but beautiful promise of the Declaration on Independence. As we made our last approach to land, the words of a Marge Piercy poem began to form in my head, and I remembered all over again why we were coming here:
What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can’t walk, can’t remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can’t stop them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.
But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.
Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organization. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.
It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.
From The Moon Is Always Female, by Marge Piercy
Part 1- 32:20
Bill Moyers' address to the National Conference on Media Reform, Jan 12, 2007.
Part 2- 30:57
Jan 12, 2007
By Bill Moyers
Delivered to the Media Reform Conference, Memphis, TN
It has long been said (ostensibly by Benjamin Franklin, but we can’t be sure) that “democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.”
My fellow lambs:
It’s good to be in Memphis and find you well-armed with passion for democracy, readiness for action, and courage for the next round in the fight for a free and independent press.
I salute the conviction that brought you here. I cherish the spirit that fills this hall and the camaraderie we share today. All too often the greatest obstacle to reform is the reform movement itself. Factions rise, fences are built, jealousies mount – and the cause all believe in is lost in the shattered fragments of what was once a clear and compelling vision.
Reformers, in fact, too often remind me of Baptists. I speak as a Baptist. I know Baptists.
One of my favorite stories is of the fellow who was about to jump off a bridge when another fellow runs up to him, crying: “Stop. Stop. Stop. Don’t do it.”
The man on the bridge looks down and asks, “Why not?”
“Well, there’s much to live for.”
“Like what?”
“Well, your faith. Are you religious?”
“Yes.”
“Me, too. Christian or Buddhist?”
“Christian.”
“Me, too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?”
“Protestant.”
“Me, too. Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist?”
“Baptist.”
“Me, too. Are you original Baptist Church of God or Reformed Baptist Church of God?”
“Reformed Baptist Church of God.”
“Me, too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God Reformation of 1820, or Reformed Baptist Church of God Reformation of 1912?”
“1912.”
Whereupon the second fellow turned red in the face, shouted, “Die, you heretic scum,” and pushed him off the bridge.”
That sounds like reformers, doesn’t it?
By avoiding contentious factionalism, you have created a strong movement. I will confess to you that I was skeptical when Bob McChesney and John Nichols first raised the issue of media consolidation a few years ago. I was sympathetic but skeptical. The challenge of actually doing something about this issue – beyond simply bemoaning its impact on democracy – was daunting. How could we hope to come up with an effective response to an inexorable force?
It seemed inexorable because over the previous two decades a series of mega-media mergers had swept the country, each deal even bigger than the last. The lobby representing the broadcast, cable, and newspaper industry is extremely powerful, with an iron grip on lawmakers and regulators alike. Both parties bowed to their will when the Republican Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. That monstrous assault on democracy, with malignant consequences for journalism, was nothing but a welfare giveaway to the largest, richest and most powerful media conglomerates in the world – Goliaths whose handful of owners controlled, commodified and monetized everyone, and everything, in sight.
Call it the plantation mentality in its modern incarnation. Here in Memphis they know all about that mentality. Even in 1968 the Civil Rights movement was still battling the “plantation mentality” based on race, gender, and power that permeated Southern culture long before and even after the groundbreaking legislation of the mid-1960s. When Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Memphis to join the strike of garbage workers in 1968, the cry from every striker’s heart – “I am a man” – voiced the long suppressed outrage of a people whose rights were still being trampled by an ownership class that had arranged the world for its own benefit. The plantation mentality was a phenomenon deeply insulated in the American experience early on, and it permeated and corrupted our course as a nation. The journalist of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine, had envisioned this new republic as “a community of occupations,” prospering “by the aid which each receives from the other, and from the whole.” But that vision was repeatedly betrayed, so that less than a century after Thomas Paine’s death, Theodore Roosevelt, bolting a Republican party whose bosses had stolen the nomination from him, declared:
It is not to be wondered at that our opponents have been very bitter, for the lineup in this crisis is one that cuts deep to the foundations of government. Our democracy is now put to a vital test, for the conflict is between human rights on the one side and on the other special privilege asserted as a property right. The parting of the ways has come.
Today, a hundred years after Teddy Roosevelt’s death, those words ring just as true. America is socially divided and politically benighted. Inequality and poverty grow steadily along with risk and debt. Many working families cannot make ends meet with two people working, let alone if one stays home to care for children or aging parents. Young people without privilege and wealth struggle to get a footing. Seniors enjoy less and less security for a lifetime’s work. We are racially segregated in every meaningful sense except the letter of the law. And survivors of segregation and immigration toil for pennies on the dollar compared to those they serve.
None of this is accidental. Nobel laureate economist Robert Solow – not someone known for extreme political statements – characterizes what is happening as nothing less than elite plunder: “The redistribution of wealth in favor of the wealthy and of power in favor of the powerful.” Indeed, nearly all of the wealth America created over the past 25 years has been captured by the top 20% of households, and most of the gains went to the wealthiest. The top 1% of households captured more than 50% of all gains in financial wealth. These households hold more than twice the share their predecessors held on the eve of the American Revolution. Of the early American democratic creeds, the anti-Federalist warning that government naturally works to “fortify the conspiracies of the rich” proved especially prophetic. So it is this that we confront today. America’s choice between two fundamentally different economic visions. As Norton Garfinkle writes in his new book The American Dream vs. The Gospel of Wealth, the historic vision of the American Dream is that continuing economic growth and political stability can be achieved by supporting income growth and the economic security of middle-class families without restricting the ability of successful businessmen to gain wealth. The counter belief is that providing maximum financial rewards to the most successful is the way to maintain high economic growth. The choice cannot be avoided: What kind of economy do we seek, and what kind of nation do we wish to be? Do we want to be a country in which the “rich get richer and the poor get poorer?” Or do we want to be a country committed to an economy that provides for the common good, offers upward mobility, supports a middle-class standard of living, and provides generous opportunity for all? In Garfinkle’s words, “When the richest nation in the world has to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars to pay its bill, when its middle-class citizens sit on a mountain of debt to maintain their living standards, when the nation’s economy has difficulty producing secure jobs or enough jobs of any kind, something is amiss.”
You bet something is amiss. And it goes to the core of why we are here in Memphis for this conference. We are talking about a force– media– that cuts deep to the foundation of democracy. When Teddy Roosevelt dissected the “real masters of the reactionary forces” in his time, he concluded that they “directly or indirectly control the majority of the great daily newspapers that are against us.” Those newspapers – the dominant media of the day– “choked” (his word) the channels of information ordinary people needed to understand what was being done to them.
And today? Two basic pillars of American society – shared economic prosperity and a public sector capable of serving the common good – are crumbling. The third basic pillar of American democracy – an independent press– is under sustained attack, and the channels of information are choked.
A few huge corporations now dominate the media landscape in America. Almost all the networks carried by most cable systems are owned by one of the major media conglomerates. Two thirds of today’s newspaper markets are monopolies. As ownership gets more and more concentrated, fewer and fewer independent sources of information have survived in the marketplace. And those few significant alternatives that do survive, such as PBS and NPR, are under growing financial and political pressure to reduce critical news content and shift their focus in a “mainstream” direction, which means being more attentive to the establishment than to the bleak realities of powerlessness that shape the lives of ordinary people.
What does today’s media system mean for the notion of the “informed public” cherished by democratic theory? Quite literally, it means that virtually everything the average person sees or hears outside of her own personal communications is determined by the interests of private, unaccountable executives and investors whose primary goal is increasing profits and raising the company’s share price. More insidiously, this small group of elites determines what ordinary people do not see or hear. In-depth news coverage of anything, let alone of the problems people face day-to-day, is as scarce as sex, violence, and voyeurism are pervasive. Successful business model or not, by democratic standards, this is censorship of knowledge by monopolization of the means of information. In its current form – which Barry Diller happily describes as oligopoly– media growth has one clear consequence: there is more information and easier access to it, but it’s more narrow in content and perspective, so that what we see from the couch is overwhelmingly a view from the top.
The pioneering communications scholar Murray Edelman wrote that “Opinions about public policy do not spring immaculately or automatically into people’s minds; they are always placed there by the interpretations of those who can most consistently get their claims and manufactured cues publicized widely.” For years the media marketplace for “opinions about public policy” has been dominated by a highly-disciplined, thoroughly-networked ideological “noise machine,” to use David Brock’s term. Permeated with slogans concocted by big corporations, their lobbyists and their think-tank subsidiaries, public discourse has effectively changed how American values are perceived. Day after day, the ideals of fairness and liberty and mutual responsibility have been stripped of their essential dignity and meaning in people’s lives. Day after day, the egalitarian creed of our Declaration of Independence is trampled underfoot by hired experts and sloganeers who speak of the “death tax,” the “ownership society,” the “culture of life,” the “liberal assault” on God and family, “compassionate conservation,” “weak on terrorism,” the “end of history,” the “clash of civilizations,” “no child left behind.” They have even managed to turn the escalation of a failed war into a “surge” – as if it were a current of electricity charging through a wire instead of blood spurting from a soldier’s ruptured veins. We have all the Orwellian filigree of a public sphere in which language conceals reality and the pursuit of personal gain and partisan power is wrapped in rhetoric that turns truth to lies and lies to truth.
So it is, that “limited government” has little to do with the constitution or local autonomy any more; now it means corporate domination and the shifting of risk from government and business to struggling families and workers. “Family values” now means imposing a sectarian definition on everyone else. “Religious freedom” now means majoritarianism and public benefits for organized religion without any public burdens. And “patriotism” now means blind support for failed leaders. It’s what happens when an interlocking media system filters, through commercial values or ideology, the information and moral viewpoints that people consume in their daily lives.
By no stretch of the imagination can we say the dominant institutions of today’s media are guardians of democracy. Despite the profusion of new information “platforms” on cable, on the Internet, on radio, blogs, podcasts, YouTube and MySpace, among others, the resources for solid original journalistic work, both investigative and interpretive, are contracting rather than expanding. I’m old fashioned in this, a hangover from my days as a cub reporter and later a publisher. I agree with Michael Schudson, one of our leading scholars of communication, who writes in the current Columbia Journalism Review that “while all media matter, some matter more than others, and for the sake of democracy, print still counts most, especially print that devotes resources to gathering news. Network TV matters, cable TV matters, but when it comes to original investigation and reporting, newspapers are overwhelmingly the most important media.” But newspapers are purposely dumbing down, driven down – says Schudson– by “Wall Street, whose collective devotion to an informed citizenry is nil, seems determined to eviscerate newspapers.” Meanwhile, despite some initial promise following the shock of 9/11, television has returned to its tabloid ways, chasing celebrity and murders – preferably both at the same time– while wallowing in triviality, banality and a self-referential view.
Worrying about the loss of real news is not a romantic cliché of journalism. It has been verified by history: from the days of royal absolutism to the present, the control of information and knowledge had been the first line of defense for failed regimes facing democratic unrest.
The suppression of parliamentary dissent during Charles I’s “eleven years tyranny” in England (1629-1640) rested largely on government censorship operating through strict licensing laws for the publication of books. The Federalists’ infamous Sedition Act of 1798 likewise sought to quell Republican insurgency by making it a crime to publish “false, scandalous, and malicious writing” about the government or its officials.
In those days, our governing bodies tried to squelch journalistic freedom with the blunt instruments of the law – padlocks for the presses and jail cells for outspoken editors and writers. Over time, with spectacular wartime exceptions, the courts and the constitution have struck those weapons out of their hands. But now they’ve found new methods, in the name of “national security” and even broader claims of “executive privilege.” The number of documents stamped “Top Secret,” “Secret” or “Confidential” has accelerated dramatically since 2001, including many formerly accessible documents which are now reclassified as secret. Vice-President Cheney’s office refuses to disclose what, in fact, it is classifying: even their secrecy is being kept a secret.
Beyond what is officially labeled “Secret” or “Privileged” information, there hovers on the plantation a culture of selective official news implementation, working through favored media insiders, to advance political agendas by leak and innuendo and spin, by outright propaganda mechanisms such as the misnamed “Public Information” offices that churn out blizzards of factually selective releases on a daily basis, and even by directly paying pundits and journalists to write on subjects of “mutual interest.” They needn’t have wasted the money. As we saw in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the plantation mentality that governs Washington turned the press corps into sitting ducks for the war party for government and neo-conservative propaganda and manipulation. There were notable exceptions – Knight Ridder’s bureau, for example – but on the whole all high-ranking officials had to do was say it, and the press repeated it, until it became gospel. The height of myopia came with the admission by a prominent beltway anchor that his responsibility is to provide officials a forum to be heard. Not surprisingly, the watchdog group FAIR found that during the three weeks leading up to the invasion, only three percent of U.S. sources on the evening news of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX, and PBS expressed skeptical opinions of the impending war. Not surprisingly, two years after 9/11, almost seventy percent of the public still thought it likely that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the terrorist attacks of that day. An Indiana school teacher told the Washington Post, “From what we’ve heard from the media, it seems like what they feel is that Saddam and the whole Al Qaeda thing are connected.” Much to the advantage of the Bush administration, a large majority of the public shared this erroneous view during the buildup to the war– a propaganda feat that Saddam himself would have envied. It is absolutely stunning –frightening– how the major media organizations were willing, even solicitous hand puppets of a state propaganda campaign, cheered on by the partisan ideological press to go to war.
There are many other ways the plantation mentality keeps Americans from reality. Take the staggering growth of money-in-politics. Compared to the magnitude of the problem, what the average person knows about how money determines policy is negligible. In fact, in the abstract, the polls tell us, most people generally assume that money controls our political system. But people will rarely act on something they understand only in the abstract. It took a constant stream of images – water hoses, dogs and churches ablaze– for the public at large to finally understand what was happening to Black people in the South. It took repeated scenes of destruction in Vietnam before the majority of Americans saw how we were destroying the country to save it. And it took repeated crime-scene images to maintain public support for many policing and sentencing policies. Likewise, people have to see how money-in-politics actually works, and concretely grasp the consequences for their pocket books and their lives, before they will act. Media organizations supply a lot of news and commentary, but almost nothing that would reveal who really wags the system, and how. When I watch one of those faux debates on a Washington public affairs show, with one politician saying this is a bad bill, and the other politician saying this is a good bill, I yearn to see the smiling, nodding beltway anchor suddenly interrupt and insist: “Good bill or bad bill, this is a bought bill. Whose financial interest are you serving here?”
Then there are the social costs of “free trade.” For over a decade, free trade has hovered over the political system like a biblical commandment, striking down anything–trade unions, the environment, indigenous rights, even the constitutional standing of our own laws passed by our elected representatives– that gets in the way of unbridled greed. The broader negative consequence of this agenda– increasingly well-documented by scholars– gets virtually no attention in the dominant media. Instead of reality, we get optimistic multicultural scenarios of coordinated global growth, and instead of substantive debate, we get a stark, formulaic choice between free trade to help the world and gloomy sounding “protectionism” that will set everyone back.
The degree to which this has become a purely ideological debate, devoid of any factual basis that can help people weigh net gains and losses, is reflected in Thomas Friedman’s astonishing claim, stated not long ago in a television interview, that he endorsed the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) without even reading it – that is, simply because it stood for “free trade.” We have reached the stage when the pooh-bahs of punditry only have to declare the world is flat for everyone to agree it is, without even going to the edge to look for themselves.
I think what’s happened is not indifference or laziness or incompetence but the fact that most journalists on the plantation have so internalized conventional wisdom that they simply accept that the system is working as it should. I’m working on a documentary about the role of the press in the run-up to the war, and over and again reporters have told me it just never occurred to them that high officials would manipulate intelligence in order to go to war.
Hello?
Similarly, the question of whether our political and economic system is truly just or not is off the table for investigation and discussion by most journalists. Alternative ideas, alternative critiques, alternative visions rarely get a hearing, and uncomfortable realities are obscured, such as growing inequality, the re-segregation of our public schools, the devastating onward march of environmental deregulation– all examples of what happens when independent sources of knowledge and analysis are so few and far between on the plantation.
So if we need to know what is happening, and big media won’t tell us; if we need to know why it matters, and big media won’t tell us; if we need to know what to do about it, and big media won’t tell us – it’s clear what we have to do: we have to tell the story ourselves.
And this is what the plantation owners fear most of all. Over all those decades here in the South when they used human beings as chattel and quoted scripture to justify it (property rights over human rights was God’s way), they secretly lived in fear that one day instead of saying, “Yes, Massa,” those gaunt, weary sweat-soaked field hands bending low over the cotton under the burning sun would suddenly stand up straight, look around at their stooped and sweltering kin, and announce: “This can’t be the product of intelligent design. The bossman’s been lying to me. Something is wrong with this system.” This is the moment freedom begins – the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it’s time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself. When the garbage workers struck here in 1968, and the walls of these buildings echoed with the cry “I am a man,” they were writing their own story. Martin Luther King, Jr. came here to help them tell it, only to die on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. The bullet killed him, but it couldn’t kill the story. You can’t kill the story once the people start writing it.
So I’m back now where I started – and with you – will travel where the movement is headed. The greatest challenge to the plantation mentality of the media giants is the innovation and expression made possible by the digital revolution. I may still prefer the newspaper for its investigative journalism and in-depth analysis but we now have in our hands the means to tell a different story than big media tells. Our story. The other story of America that says free speech is not just corporate speech, that news is not just chattel in the field, living the bossman’s story. This is the real gift of the digital revolution. The Internet, cell phones and digital cameras that can transmit images over the Internet, make possible a nation of story tellers…every citizen a Tom Paine. Let the man in the big house on Pennsylvania Avenue think that over. And the woman of the House on Capitol Hill. And the media moguls in their chalets at Sun Valley, gathered to review the plantation’s assets and multiply them; nail it to the door– they no longer own the copyright to America’s story– it’s not a top-down story anymore. Other folks are going to write the story from the ground up and the truth will be out, that the media plantation, like the cotton plantation of old, is not divinely sanctioned, and it’s not the product of natural forces; the media system we have been living under was created behind closed doors, where the power brokers meet to divvy up the spoils.
Bob McChesney has eloquently reminded us through the years how each medium –radio, television, and cable– was hailed as a technology that would give us greater diversity of voices, serious news, local programs and lots of public service for the community. In each the advertisers took over. Despite what I teasingly told you in St. Louis the last time we were together, the star that shined so brightly in the firmament the year I was born –1934– did not, I regret to say, appear above that little house in Hugo, Oklahoma. It appeared over Washington when Congress enacted the Communications Act of 1934. One hundred times in that cornerstone or our communication policy you will read the phrase “public interest, convenience and necessity.” Educators, union officials, religious leaders, parents were galvanized by the promise of radio as “a classroom for the air,” serving the life of the country and the life of the mind. Then the media lobby cut a deal with the government to make certain nothing would threaten the already vested-interests of powerful radio networks and the advertising industry. Soon the public largely forgot about radio’s promise as we accepted the entertainment produced and controlled by Jell-o, Maxwell House, and Camel cigarettes. What happened to radio, happened to television and then to cable, and if we are not diligent, it will happen to the Internet.
Powerful forces are at work now – determined to create our media future for the benefit of the plantation: investors, advertisers, owners, and the parasites that depend on their indulgence, including much of the governing class. Old media acquire new media, and vice versa. Rupert Murdoch, forever savvy about the next key outlet that will attract eyeballs, purchased MySpace, spending nearly $600 million so he could (in the words of how Wall Street views new media) “monetize” those eyeballs. Google became a partner in Time Warner, investing one billion in its AOL online service, and now Google has bought YouTube so it would have a better vehicle for delivering interactive ads for Madison Avenue. Viacom, Microsoft, large ad agencies, and others, have been buying key media properties – many of them the leading online sites. The result will be a thoroughly commercialized environment – a media plantation for the 21st century dominated by the same corporate and ideological forces that have produced the system we have today.
So what do we do? Well, you’ve shown us what we have to do. Twice now you’ve shown us what we can do. Four years ago when FCC Chairman Michael Powell and his ideological side-kicks decided that it was OK if a single corporation owned a community’s major newspaper, three of its TV stations, eight radio stations, its cable TV system, and its major broadband Internet provider, you said, “Enough’s enough.” Free Press, Common Cause, Consumers Union, Media Access Project, the National Association for Hispanic Journalists, and others, working closely with Commissioners Adelstein and Copps– two of the most public-spirited men ever to serve on the FCC – and began organizing public hearings across the country. People spoke up about how poorly the media was serving their communities. You flooded Congress with petitions. You never let up, and when the Court said Powell had to back off, the decision cited the importance of involving the public in these media decisions. Incidentally, Powell not only backed off, he backed out. He left the commission to become “senior advisor” at a “private investment firm specializing in equity investments in media companies around the world.” That firm, by the way, made a bid to take over both the Tribune and Clear Channel, two mega-media companies that just a short time ago were under the corporate friendly purview of…you guessed it…Michael Powell. That whishing sound you hear is Washington’s perpetually revolving door, through which they come to serve the public and through which they leave to join the plantations.
You made a difference. You showed the public cares about media and democracy. You turned a little publicized vote on a seemingly arcane regulation into a big political fight and public debate. Now, it’s true as Commissioner Copps has reminded us, since that battle three years ago, there have been more than 3,300 TV and radio stations that have had their assignment and transfer grants approved. “So that even under the old rules, consolidation grows, localism suffers and diversity dwindles.” It’s also true, too, that even as we speak Michael Powell’s successor, Kevin Martin, put there by President Bush, is ready to take up where Powell left off and give the green light to more conglomeration. Get ready to fight. Inside the beltway plantation the media thought this largest telecommunications merger in our history was on a fast track for approval.
But then you did it again more recently – you lit a fire under people to put Washington on notice that it had to guarantee the Internet’s First Amendment protection in the $85 billion merger of AT&T and Bell South. Because of you, the so-called “Internet neutrality” – I much prefer to call it the “equal access” provision of the Internet – became a public issue that once again reminded the powers-that-be that people want the media to foster democracy. This is crucial because in a few years virtually all media will be delivered by high speed broadband, and without equality of access, the net could become just like cable television, where the provider decides what you see and what you pay. After all, the Bush department of justice had blessed the deal last October without a single condition or statement of concern. But they hadn’t reckoned with Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, and hadn’t reckoned with this movement. FreePress and SavetheInternet.com orchestrated 800 organizations, a million and a half petitions, countless local events, legions of homemade videos, smart collaboration with allies in industry, and a topshelf communications campaign. Who would have imagined that sitting together in the same democratic broadband pew would be the Christian Coalition, Gun Owners of America, Common Cause, and MoveOn.org? Who would have imagined that these would link arms with some of the most powerful “new media” companies to fight for the Internet’s First Amendment ground? We owe a tip of the hat, of course, to Republican Commissioner Robert McDowell. Despite what must have been a great deal of pressure from his side, he did the honorable thing and rescued himself from the proceedings because of a conflict of interest. So AT&T had to cry “uncle” to Copps and Adelstein with a “voluntary commitment” to honor equal access for at least two years. The agreement marks the first time that the Federal government has imposed true neutrality –oops equality– requirements on an Internet access provider since the debate erupted almost two years ago. I believe you changed the terms of the debate. It is no longer about whether equality of access will govern the future of the Internet; it’s about when and how. It also signals a change from defense to offence for the backers of an open Net. Arguably the biggest, most effective online organizing campaign ever conducted on a media issue can now turn to passing good laws rather than always having to fight to block bad ones. Senator Byron Dorgan, a Democrat, and Senator Olympia Snowe, a Republican, introduced the Internet Freedom Preservation Act in January of 2007, to require fair and equitable access to all content. And over in the House, those champions of the public interest – Ed Markey and Maurice Hinchley– will be leading the fight.
But a caveat here. Those other folks don’t give up so easily. Remember, this agreement is only for two years, and they’ll be back with all the lobbyists money can hire. Furthermore, consider what AT&T got in the bargain. For giving up on neutrality, it got the green light from government to dominate over 67 million phone lines in 22 states, almost 12 million broadband users, and total control over Cingular wireless, the country’s largest mobile phone company with 58 million cell phone users. It’s as if China swallowed India.
I bring this up for a reason. Big media is ravenous. It never gets enough, it always wants more. And it will stop at nothing to get it. These are imperial conglomerates. Last week on his Web site mediachannel.org, Danny Schecter, recalled how some years ago he marched with a band of media activists to the headquarters of all the big media companies concentrated in the Times Square area. Their formidable buildings, fronted with logos and limos and guarded by rent-a-cops, projected their power and prestige. Danny and his cohorts chanted and held up signs calling for honest news and an end to exploitative programming. They called for diversity and access for more perspectives. “It felt good,” Danny said, but “seemed like a fool’s errand. We were ignored, patronized, and marginalized. We couldn’t shake their edifices or influence their holy ‘business models’; we seemed to many like that lonely and forlorn nut in a New Yorker cartoon carrying an ‘end of the world is near’ placard.”
Well, yes, that’s exactly how they want us to feel – as if media and democracy is a fool’s errand. To his credit, Danny didn’t buy it. He’s never given up. Neither have some of the earlier pioneers in this movement – Andy Schwartzman, Don Hazen, Jeff Chester. Let me confess that I came very close to not making this speech today, in favor of just getting up here and reading from this book – Digital Destiny, by my friend and co-conspirator, Jeff Chester. Take my word for it: Make this your bible. As Don Hazen writes in his review on Alternet this week, it’s a terrific book – “A respectful, loving, fresh, intimate comprehensive history of the struggles for a ‘democratic media’ – the lost fights, the opportunities missed, and the small victories that have kept the corporate media system from having complete carte blanche over the communications channel.”
It’s also a terrifying book, because Jeff describes how “we are being shadowed online by a slew of software digital gumshoes working for Madison Avenue. Our movements in cyberspace are closely tracked and analyzed. And interactive advertising infiltrates our unconsciousness to promote the ‘brandwashing of America.’” Jeff asks the hard questions: do we really want television sets that monitor what we watch? Or an Internet that knows what sites we visit and reports back to advertising companies? Do we really want a media system designed mainly for advertisers?
But this is also a hopeful book. After scaring the bejeepers out of us, as one reviewer wrote, Jeff offers a “policy agenda for the broadcast era.” Here’s a man who practices what the Italian philosopher Gramsci called “the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will.” He sees the world as it is, without rose-colored glasses, and tries to change it despite what he knows. So you’ll find here the core of this movement’s mission. Media reform, yes. But as the Project in Excellence concluded in its State of the Media Report for 2006, “At many old-media companies, though not all, the decades-long battle at the top between idealists and accountants is now over. The idealists have lost.” The commercial networks are lost, too – lost to silliness, farce, cowardice, and ideology. Not much hope there. Can’t raise the dead.
Policy reform, yes. “But,” says Jeff, “we will likely see more consolidation of ownership, with newspapers, TV stations, and major online properties in fewer hands.” So we have to find other ways to ensure the public has access to diverse, independent, and credible sources of information. That means going to the market to find support for stronger independent media; Michael Moore and others have proved progressivism doesn’t have to equal penury. It means helping protect news gathering from predatory forces. It means fighting for more participatory media, hospitable to a full range of expression. It means building on Lawrence Lessig’s notion of the creative common and Brewster Kahle’s Internet archives with its philosophy of universal access to all knowledge.” It means bringing broadband service to those many millions of Americans too poor to participate in the digital revolution. It means ownership for women and people of color. It means reclaiming public broadcasting and restoring it to its original feisty, robust, fearless mission as an alternative to the dominant media, offering journalism you can’t ignore – public affairs of which you’re a part, and a wide range of civic and cultural discourse that leaves no one out; you can have an impact here. We need to remind people that the Federal commitment to public broadcasting in this country is about $1.50 per capita compared to $28-$85 per capita in other democracies.
But there’s something else you can do. In moments of reverie, I imagine all of you returning home to organize a campaign to persuade your local public television station to start airing Amy Goodman’s broadcast of Democracy NOW! I can’t think of a single act more likely to remind people of what public broadcasting should be – or that this media reform movement really means business. We’ve got to get alternative content out there to people or this country’s going to die of too many lies. And the opening run down of news on Amy’s daily show is like nothing else on television, corporate or public. It’s as if you opened the window and a fresh breeze rolls over you from the ocean. Amy doesn’t practice trickle-down journalism. She goes where the silence is, she breaks the sound barrier. She doesn’t buy the Washington protocol that says the truth lies somewhere on the spectrum of opinion between the Democrats and Republicans– on Democracy NOW the truth lies where the facts are hidden, and Amy digs for them. And she believes the media should be a sanctuary for dissent…the Underground Railroad tunneling beneath the plantation. So go home and think about it. After all you are the public in public broadcasting; you can get the bossman in the big house at the local station to listen.
Meanwhile, be vigilant about what happens in Congress. Track it day by day and post what you learn far and wide. Because the decisions made in this session of Congress will affect the future of all media – corporate and non commercial – and if we lose the future now, we’ll never get it back.
So you have your work cut out for you. I’m glad you’re all younger than me, and up to it. I’m glad so many funders are here, because while an army may move on its stomach, this movement requires hard, cold cash to compete with big media in getting the attention of Congress and the public.
I’ll try to do my part. Last time we were together, I said to you that I should put detractors on notice. They just might compel me out of the rocking chair and back into the anchor chair. Well, in April I will be back with a new weekly series called Bill Moyers Journal. I hope to complement the fine work of colleagues like David Brancaccio of NOW and David Fanning of Frontline, who also go for the truth behind the news.
But I don’t want to tease you – I’m not coming back because of my detractors. I wouldn’t torture them that way (I’ll leave that to Dick Cheney.) I’m coming back because I believe television can still signify. And I don’t want you to feel so alone.
I’ll keep an eye on your work. You are to America what the abolition movement was, and the suffragette movement, and the Civil Rights movement – you touch the soul of democracy.
It’s not assured you’ll succeed in this fight. The armies of the Lord are up against mighty hosts. But as the spiritual leader Sojourner Thomas Merton wrote to an activist grown weary and discouraged while protesting the Vietnam War…”Do not depend on the hope of results…concentrate on the value…and the truth of the work itself.”
And in case you do get lonely, I’ll leave you with this:
As my plane was circling Memphis the other day I looked out across those vast miles of fertile soil that once were plantations watered by the Mississippi River and the sweat from the brow of countless men and women who had been forced to live someone else’s story. I thought about how in time they rose up, one here, then two, then many, forging a great movement that awakened America’s conscience and brought us close to the elusive but beautiful promise of the Declaration on Independence. As we made our last approach to land, the words of a Marge Piercy poem began to form in my head, and I remembered all over again why we were coming here:
What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can’t walk, can’t remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can’t stop them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.
But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.
Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organization. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.
It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.
From The Moon Is Always Female, by Marge Piercy
Part 1- 32:20
Bill Moyers' address to the National Conference on Media Reform, Jan 12, 2007.
Part 2- 30:57
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Army Wants 'Full Access' to Guard, Reserves
Army, Marine Corps To Ask for More Troops
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 13, 2006; A01
The Army and Marine Corps are planning to ask incoming Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Congress to approve permanent increases in personnel, as senior officials in both services assert that the nation's global military strategy has outstripped their resources.
In addition, the Army will press hard for "full access" to the 346,000-strong Army National Guard and the 196,000-strong Army Reserves by asking Gates to take the politically sensitive step of easing the Pentagon restrictions on the frequency and duration of involuntary call-ups for reservists, according to two senior Army officials.
The push for more ground troops comes as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have sharply decreased the readiness of Army and Marine Corps units rotating back to the United States, compromising the ability of U.S. ground forces to respond to other potential conflicts around the world.
"The Army has configured itself to sustain the effort in Iraq and, to a lesser degree, in Afghanistan. Beyond that, you've got some problems," said one of the senior Army officials. "Right now, the strategy exceeds the capability of the Army and Marines." This official and others interviewed for this report spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the matter.
The Army, which has 507,000 active-duty soldiers, wants Congress to fund a permanent "end strength," or manpower, of at least 512,000 soldiers, the Army officials said. The Army wants the additional soldiers to be paid for not through wartime supplemental spending bills but in the defense budget, which now covers only 482,000 soldiers.
The Marine Corps, with 180,000 active-duty Marines, seeks to grow by several thousand, including the likely addition of three new infantry battalions. "We need to be bigger. The question is how big do we need to be and how do we get there," a senior Marine Corps official said.
At least two-thirds of Army units in the United States today are rated as not ready to deploy -- lacking in manpower, training and, most critically, equipment -- according to senior U.S. officials and the Iraq Study Group report. The two ground services estimate that they will need $18 billion a year to repair, replace and upgrade destroyed and worn-out equipment.
If another crisis were to erupt requiring a large number of U.S. ground troops, the Army's plan would be to freeze its forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and divert to the new conflict the U.S.-based combat brigade that is first in line to deploy.
Beyond that, however, the Army would have to cobble together war-depleted units to form complete ones to dispatch to the new conflict -- at the risk of lost time, unit cohesion and preparedness, senior Army officials said. Moreover, the number of Army and Marine combat units available for an emergency would be limited to about half that of four years ago, experts said, unless the difficult decision to pull forces out of Iraq were made.
"We are concerned about gross readiness . . . and ending equipment and personnel shortfalls," said a senior Marine Corps official. The official added that Marine readiness has dropped and that the Corps is unable to fulfill many planned missions for the fight against terrorism.
Senior Pentagon officials stress that the U.S. military has ample air and naval power that could respond immediately to possible contingencies in North Korea, Iran or the Taiwan Strait.
"If you had to go fight another war someplace that somebody sprung upon us, you would keep the people who are currently employed doing what they're doing, and you would use the vast part of the U.S. armed forces that is at home station, to include the enormous strength of our Air Force and our Navy, against the new threat," Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a briefing last month.
But if the conflict were to require a significant number of ground troops -- as in some scenarios such as the disintegration of Pakistan -- Army and Marine Corps officials made clear that they would have to scramble to provide them. "Is it the way we'd want to do it? No. Would it be ugly as hell? Yes," said one of the senior Army officials. "But," he added, "we could get it done."
According to Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East, the Army and Marine Corps today cannot sustain even a modest increase of 20,000 troops in Iraq. U.S. commanders for Afghanistan have asked for more troops but have not received them, noted the Iraq Study Group report, which called it "critical" for the United States to provide more military support for Afghanistan.
"We are facing more operational risk than we have for many, many years," said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed Services Committee. He called it "shocking and scandalous" that two-thirds of Army units are rated "non-deployable." He said the country has not faced such a readiness crisis since the aftermath of the Vietnam War.
The U.S. military has more than 140,000 troops in Iraq and 20,000 in Afghanistan, including 17 of the Army's 36 available active-duty combat brigades. When Army and Marine Corps combat units return from the war zone, they immediately lose large numbers of experienced troops and leaders who either leave the force, go to school or other assignments, or switch to different units.
The depletion of returning units is so severe that the Marines refer to this phase as the "post-deployment death spiral." Army officials describe it as a process of breaking apart units and rebuilding them "just in time" to deploy again.
Training time for active-duty Army and Marine combat units is only half what it should be because they are spending about the same amount of time in war zones as at home -- in contrast to the desired ratio of spending twice as much time at home as on deployment. And the training tends to focus on counterinsurgency skills for Iraq and Afghanistan, causing an erosion in conventional land-warfare capabilities, which could be required for North Korea or Iran, officials say.
If a conflict with North Korea or Iran were to break out and demand a medium to large ground force, the Army would be forced to respond with whatever it had available.
The U.S. military today could cobble together two or three divisions in an emergency -- compared with as many as six in 2001 -- not enough to carry out major operations such as overthrowing the Iranian government. "That's the kind of extreme scenario that could cripple us," said Michael E. O'Hanlon, a military expert at the Brookings Institution.
Unable to count on a significant troop withdrawal from Iraq, the Army seeks to ease the manpower strain by accelerating plans to have 70 active-duty and National Guard combat brigades available for rotations by 2011. Next year, for example, the Army intends to bring two brigades on a training mission back into rotation. It is investing $36 billion in Guard equipment in anticipation of heavier use of the Guard.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
A rare voice: An interview with author Ilan Pappe
Christopher Brown, The Electronic Intifada, 11 December 2006
A tenuous ceasefire is holding in the Gaza Strip after almost five months of a heavy dose of "Operation Summer Rain" by the Israeli military.
The showers of missiles, aerial bombardment, military incursions into populated areas over the course of the five month 'rain' storm have left dead more than 457 people, a quarter of them children, and well over 1,000 injured.
Since the summer rains began, many in the Israeli peace camp have remained silent about the ongoing crisis in Gaza and the West Bank. However, one voice remains constant in Israeli circles and continues to speak out despite opposition to the contrary. Professor Ilan Pappe is a professor of history at Haifa University. He has written numerous articles on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has openly and continuously called for academic as well as cultural boycotts of Israel.
These pronouncements have made Professor Pappe a scion in the eyes of the Israeli government and public, but he continues to move forward in the hope of reconciliation and justice for Palestinians. His latest contribution is the new book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
EI contributor Christopher Brown recently spoke over the phone with Professor Pappe about the current situation in Israel/Palestine.
Christopher Brown: Ehud Olmert recently appointed Avigdor Lieberman as deputy prime minister -- a man who some consider a "fascist" in light of his views towards Arabs, and Palestinians in particular. Yet, the world press has barely said anything about his rants; for instance, that all Arabs should be expelled from the territories, and Arab Knesset members be executed for having any contact with the Hamas led government. Meanwhile, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, has his every word recorded for all to hear, regarding the Holocaust being a hoax, the destruction of Israel and the like. Your response?
Ilan Pappe: I think you've put your finger on two very important issues. The first one is the ideology that Avigdor Lieberman subscribes to that is an ethnic cleansing ideology. Someone who believes that the only way to solving the problems in Israel/Palestine is by expelling the Palestinians from Israel and any territory Israel covets.
I think the problem with Avigdor Lieberman is not his own views but the fact that he reflects what most Israeli Jews think, and definitely what most of his colleagues in the Olmert government think but don't dare to say, or don't think is desirable to say for tactical reasons. But I do think that we should be worried about Lieberman, not as an extreme fascist but rather as a person who represents the mood of Israel in 2006.
The second point is the double standard, the hypocrisy that you pointed to where you compared rightly the utterances of Ahmadinejad being repeated and how similar, and worse generalizations and attitudes by Israelis are not heard at all. And I think the reason has to do with the very peculiar standing that Israel has among the western world. [However] not in the eyes of civil society ... [To] most people that live today in the west, [Israel] is a country that violates human rights, civil rights, and both its ideology and polices are not acceptable. But the governments are still very supportive of the state because the world is lead by an American president and a group of people who have a certain point of view, almost a religious point of view, in which such ideas like that of Lieberman fit well.
There's not that much difference between Israeli policy and U.S. policy in Iraq. And I think as long as America is the super-power in the world and Israel is its closest ally, we will continue to see this double standard in the attitudes of governments and in the mainstream media.
CB: Sixty-one Irish academics wrote a public letter in September, calling for a moratorium on EU aid to Israeli universities until Israel abides by international law and basic human rights norms. In addition, a Canadian teachers' union has also called for academic boycotts. Is this an effective way to pressure the Israeli government to address the occupation in a way that brings about justice for the Palestinians?
IP: It is an effective way if it's not only an academic boycott. An academic boycott is only one component in what one cold call a cultural boycott of Israel, because it will be very hard in this globalized world we live in to bring about economic sanctions, which would have been the most effective in forcing a change in Israeli policy.
The second best, and more feasible, [way] is to send a message to Israel from the societies at large that its policies are unacceptable, that as long as it continues to do what it does it cannot be accepted ... It cannot be in the community of civilized nations.
I think there is both a symbolic and a very political significance to a coordinated reaction by societies in the west for a message, a clear message, that is conveyed in the way of a boycott of divestment or any other symbolic act which says that there is a price tag attached to the policies that you pursue and as long as you pursue these policies, you are not welcomed here. Not as individuals -- you are not welcomed here if you represent a certain ideology, a certain state, and especially if you appear as an official representative of this state. We are not inventing the wheel, of course. The cultural boycott was a very crucial component in the action against Apartheid in South Africa. It was very effective and useful according to people who lived there.
The most important thing to remember about such actions is that they are nonviolent. One has to show that the Palestinians, and the Palestinians have to discover it themselves, that there are nonviolent possibilities in pursuing the struggle against Israeli occupation. Because if they are nonviolent, who could blame the Palestinians for using every desperate means at their disposal to try and stop one of the cruelest and most oppressive occupations in modern times?
CB: What of those [like the Israeli lobby groups] who would say that proposing a cultural and academic boycott is furthering anti-semitism? How do you respond to that?
IP: Three points are important in this connection. The first one should highlight the fact that many progressive and liberal Jews both in the United States and in Europe are involved in the cultural boycott action. In fact, in the name of their Jewish identity, heritage, their understanding of Jewish values, they stood alongside those demonstrators against the violations of human rights in the southern United States, in South America, in South Africa, and in Southeast Asia -- they see no difference when it comes to Israel-Palestine. In fact, in this case, even though it's a Jewish state that violates human rights, it does not change their position. Whoever is the violator, they should stand against them.
The second [point] is, the Israelis are over-using the anti-semitic accusation against anyone who criticizes them. Not only [against] those who call for a boycott, even the mildest criticism of Israel is depicted here as an act of anti-semitism. I think with a good educational network, one could disseminate the views that this is an Israeli tactic that has very little to do with real or actualized upsurges of anti-semitic feelings, which definitely still prevail in some parts of the world. Maybe one or two known anti-semites have joined the wagon, but that doesn't prove anything. The fact is that Israel wants to be immune from any criticism. And the shield it uses is always anti-semitism.
Thirdly, and most important, one should differentiate between Zionism and Judaism. By now we can see after 60 years the implementations of the Zionist ideology on the ground from the Palestinian point of view.
This ideology may have done some good things for Jews around the world, but it is definitely something that does not allow the Palestinians to live in peace or even to live at all on their homeland, and this is Zionism. It has some connection to Judaism, but its not about Judaism. It's about a certain colonial ideology that still, in the 21st century, is ascribed to by a state which is an unfinished project. The State of Israel has not been built properly. As you know, we don't even have final borders.
I think it's very important to educate people that this is not a Jewish question that we are dealing with; we are dealing with a certain relic of the colonial period that is still allowed to continue in a post-colonial situation. And as long as it continues as it does, [it] complicates the relationship between the Western world and the Arab world and the Muslim world.
CB: On November 7th the Democratic Party won elections that will allow them to control the Congress of the United States. The Democrats have been critical of the Bush administration's policies regarding the handling of the Iraq war. But the party has reiterated that the relationship between the U.S. and Israel would not change. Is this policy the best course of action for both countries, much less the Palestinians?
IP: Well, the results of the mid-term elections are good news from many aspects for the American public. But I don't think [the elections] bring any good news to this part of the world. In other words, I don't think that the shift in the balance of power in both houses would change American policy towards Palestine. It may change, and it should change of course, American policy in Iraq. But I think the Democratic Party is as committed to protecting Israel at the expense of the Palestinians as was the Republican administration. I don't think that in the foreseeable future we are going to see any fundamental change in American policy towards Israel.
You ask whether it should. Of course it should. It should because if [the Democratic Party] is loyal to the new perspective it brings to American politics -- the idea that Americans should have some inhibitions in international behavior, that the use of force in Iraq was wrong, and that there is a problem with the American image and standing in the world -- if indeed this is the message of the Democrats to American politics, then I think they should pay attention to fact that the Americans' standing and position in the world is not only affected not by the invasion of Iraq, but also the unconditional support that America gives to Israel at the expense of the Palestinians.
I think that they should realize that only in a change in the attitude towards Israel and a much more honest brokerage of the conflict can really bring constructive change in the relationship between the United States and the Arab world; the Muslim world is, after all, one quarter of the world's population.
CB: Peace Now [an Israeli Peace organization], has found that approximately 40 percent of the settlements, including long-standing communities, are built on private Palestinian land and not on state-owned land. Peace Now was given this information from a source inside the Civil Administration who wanted to expose the wide-scale violations of private Palestinian property rights by the government and the settlers. Do you believe that there are more in the government who disagree with the treatment of the Palestinians and are willing to speak out?
IP: Maybe there are more but I believe that this is not enough. This kind of criticism by Peace Now about the piece of information that they leaked to us is very important. But don't forget for one moment any square inch that has been taken by Israel is an illegal occupation, not only the 40 percent that was private land.
It may be a starker violation but the whole Israeli presence there is a violation of human rights and civil rights. What is needed is much more than this kind of criticism. The problem in Israel is [that] between Peace Now [and Avigdor] Lieberman, contrary to what people are saying, there isn't that much of an ideological distance. It's a tactical question of how best to ensure a Jewish state with a vast demographic majority is not exclusive.
Lieberman says, let's take any territory we need and achieve that goal by downsizing the number of Arabs living there. Peace Now says, no, let's take less land and downsize the land rather than the population and then we can have the coveted exclusive supremacist state. Both positions are morally and politically wrong and unacceptable because at the end of the day you have 20 percent to 30 percent of [Israel's population comprised of] Palestinians, even in the smallest state that Peace Now covets and Peace Now is not willing to see them as equal citizens.
And people, even in Peace Now, would put the idea of a Jewish state above any other failure, democratic or liberal. So I think that even if I would have found in the government or the administration people who want a cleaner mode of occupation, a more legitimized occupation, I would of course welcome it. But I'm warning [that] we've been there before. These people have even been in government and they didn't make any change because the reason for the ongoing conflict between Israel/Palestine is not because Israel occupies parts of the West Bank and Gaza and is not willing to give them back. The reason we have the conflict is the Zionist ideology. This is where it starts and this is where it ends. As long as the vast majority of Jews in Israel subscribes this ideology in its present interpretation, I'm afraid we will not see peace and reconciliation coming to this land.
CB: Finally, Ilan Pappe, what can people who hope for the security of both the Israelis and Palestinians do?
IP: Well I think everybody has his or her role to play, especially people who care; either those that belong to Israel-Palestine or care about Israel/Palestine. I think the Palestinians have their role of resistance; the progressive forces inside Israel continue to try and educate and change the point of view of their compatriots.
But society outside has to play the same role that the anti-Apartheid movement played in the West during the heyday of Apartheid. We need a strong lobby inside the western world -- especially in the United States, but also in Europe. That [lobby] would send a very clear message to Israel that these polices and ideologies are not acceptable, especially if you want to be part of the democratic world, and we need you to change your policy, the ideological nature of the state, and have a much more democratic society on the ground.
Israel needs a wake-up call. Israelis don't know that this is what the world thinks about them and I think that civil societies around the world can be the alarm clock for them, and they should be the alarm clock.
Christopher Brown is an independent grassroots journalist living in San Francisco, CA. He has a blog on Palestine at www.cbgonzo.blogspot.com.
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BY TOPIC: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions
BY TOPIC: Palestinians in Israel
BY TOPIC: Bookstore
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| Ilan Pappe |
The showers of missiles, aerial bombardment, military incursions into populated areas over the course of the five month 'rain' storm have left dead more than 457 people, a quarter of them children, and well over 1,000 injured.
Since the summer rains began, many in the Israeli peace camp have remained silent about the ongoing crisis in Gaza and the West Bank. However, one voice remains constant in Israeli circles and continues to speak out despite opposition to the contrary. Professor Ilan Pappe is a professor of history at Haifa University. He has written numerous articles on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has openly and continuously called for academic as well as cultural boycotts of Israel.
These pronouncements have made Professor Pappe a scion in the eyes of the Israeli government and public, but he continues to move forward in the hope of reconciliation and justice for Palestinians. His latest contribution is the new book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
EI contributor Christopher Brown recently spoke over the phone with Professor Pappe about the current situation in Israel/Palestine.
Christopher Brown: Ehud Olmert recently appointed Avigdor Lieberman as deputy prime minister -- a man who some consider a "fascist" in light of his views towards Arabs, and Palestinians in particular. Yet, the world press has barely said anything about his rants; for instance, that all Arabs should be expelled from the territories, and Arab Knesset members be executed for having any contact with the Hamas led government. Meanwhile, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, has his every word recorded for all to hear, regarding the Holocaust being a hoax, the destruction of Israel and the like. Your response?
Ilan Pappe: I think you've put your finger on two very important issues. The first one is the ideology that Avigdor Lieberman subscribes to that is an ethnic cleansing ideology. Someone who believes that the only way to solving the problems in Israel/Palestine is by expelling the Palestinians from Israel and any territory Israel covets.
I think the problem with Avigdor Lieberman is not his own views but the fact that he reflects what most Israeli Jews think, and definitely what most of his colleagues in the Olmert government think but don't dare to say, or don't think is desirable to say for tactical reasons. But I do think that we should be worried about Lieberman, not as an extreme fascist but rather as a person who represents the mood of Israel in 2006.
The second point is the double standard, the hypocrisy that you pointed to where you compared rightly the utterances of Ahmadinejad being repeated and how similar, and worse generalizations and attitudes by Israelis are not heard at all. And I think the reason has to do with the very peculiar standing that Israel has among the western world. [However] not in the eyes of civil society ... [To] most people that live today in the west, [Israel] is a country that violates human rights, civil rights, and both its ideology and polices are not acceptable. But the governments are still very supportive of the state because the world is lead by an American president and a group of people who have a certain point of view, almost a religious point of view, in which such ideas like that of Lieberman fit well.
There's not that much difference between Israeli policy and U.S. policy in Iraq. And I think as long as America is the super-power in the world and Israel is its closest ally, we will continue to see this double standard in the attitudes of governments and in the mainstream media.
CB: Sixty-one Irish academics wrote a public letter in September, calling for a moratorium on EU aid to Israeli universities until Israel abides by international law and basic human rights norms. In addition, a Canadian teachers' union has also called for academic boycotts. Is this an effective way to pressure the Israeli government to address the occupation in a way that brings about justice for the Palestinians?
IP: It is an effective way if it's not only an academic boycott. An academic boycott is only one component in what one cold call a cultural boycott of Israel, because it will be very hard in this globalized world we live in to bring about economic sanctions, which would have been the most effective in forcing a change in Israeli policy.
The second best, and more feasible, [way] is to send a message to Israel from the societies at large that its policies are unacceptable, that as long as it continues to do what it does it cannot be accepted ... It cannot be in the community of civilized nations.
 There is both a symbolic and a very political significance to a coordinated reaction by societies in the west for a message, a clear message, that is conveyed in the way of a boycott of divestment or any other symbolic act which says that there is a price tag attached to the policies that you pursue |
I think there is both a symbolic and a very political significance to a coordinated reaction by societies in the west for a message, a clear message, that is conveyed in the way of a boycott of divestment or any other symbolic act which says that there is a price tag attached to the policies that you pursue and as long as you pursue these policies, you are not welcomed here. Not as individuals -- you are not welcomed here if you represent a certain ideology, a certain state, and especially if you appear as an official representative of this state. We are not inventing the wheel, of course. The cultural boycott was a very crucial component in the action against Apartheid in South Africa. It was very effective and useful according to people who lived there.
The most important thing to remember about such actions is that they are nonviolent. One has to show that the Palestinians, and the Palestinians have to discover it themselves, that there are nonviolent possibilities in pursuing the struggle against Israeli occupation. Because if they are nonviolent, who could blame the Palestinians for using every desperate means at their disposal to try and stop one of the cruelest and most oppressive occupations in modern times?
CB: What of those [like the Israeli lobby groups] who would say that proposing a cultural and academic boycott is furthering anti-semitism? How do you respond to that?
IP: Three points are important in this connection. The first one should highlight the fact that many progressive and liberal Jews both in the United States and in Europe are involved in the cultural boycott action. In fact, in the name of their Jewish identity, heritage, their understanding of Jewish values, they stood alongside those demonstrators against the violations of human rights in the southern United States, in South America, in South Africa, and in Southeast Asia -- they see no difference when it comes to Israel-Palestine. In fact, in this case, even though it's a Jewish state that violates human rights, it does not change their position. Whoever is the violator, they should stand against them.
The second [point] is, the Israelis are over-using the anti-semitic accusation against anyone who criticizes them. Not only [against] those who call for a boycott, even the mildest criticism of Israel is depicted here as an act of anti-semitism. I think with a good educational network, one could disseminate the views that this is an Israeli tactic that has very little to do with real or actualized upsurges of anti-semitic feelings, which definitely still prevail in some parts of the world. Maybe one or two known anti-semites have joined the wagon, but that doesn't prove anything. The fact is that Israel wants to be immune from any criticism. And the shield it uses is always anti-semitism.
Thirdly, and most important, one should differentiate between Zionism and Judaism. By now we can see after 60 years the implementations of the Zionist ideology on the ground from the Palestinian point of view.
This ideology may have done some good things for Jews around the world, but it is definitely something that does not allow the Palestinians to live in peace or even to live at all on their homeland, and this is Zionism. It has some connection to Judaism, but its not about Judaism. It's about a certain colonial ideology that still, in the 21st century, is ascribed to by a state which is an unfinished project. The State of Israel has not been built properly. As you know, we don't even have final borders.
| It's very important to educate people that this is not a Jewish question that we are dealing with; we are dealing with a certain relic of the colonial period |
I think it's very important to educate people that this is not a Jewish question that we are dealing with; we are dealing with a certain relic of the colonial period that is still allowed to continue in a post-colonial situation. And as long as it continues as it does, [it] complicates the relationship between the Western world and the Arab world and the Muslim world.
CB: On November 7th the Democratic Party won elections that will allow them to control the Congress of the United States. The Democrats have been critical of the Bush administration's policies regarding the handling of the Iraq war. But the party has reiterated that the relationship between the U.S. and Israel would not change. Is this policy the best course of action for both countries, much less the Palestinians?
IP: Well, the results of the mid-term elections are good news from many aspects for the American public. But I don't think [the elections] bring any good news to this part of the world. In other words, I don't think that the shift in the balance of power in both houses would change American policy towards Palestine. It may change, and it should change of course, American policy in Iraq. But I think the Democratic Party is as committed to protecting Israel at the expense of the Palestinians as was the Republican administration. I don't think that in the foreseeable future we are going to see any fundamental change in American policy towards Israel.
You ask whether it should. Of course it should. It should because if [the Democratic Party] is loyal to the new perspective it brings to American politics -- the idea that Americans should have some inhibitions in international behavior, that the use of force in Iraq was wrong, and that there is a problem with the American image and standing in the world -- if indeed this is the message of the Democrats to American politics, then I think they should pay attention to fact that the Americans' standing and position in the world is not only affected not by the invasion of Iraq, but also the unconditional support that America gives to Israel at the expense of the Palestinians.
I think that they should realize that only in a change in the attitude towards Israel and a much more honest brokerage of the conflict can really bring constructive change in the relationship between the United States and the Arab world; the Muslim world is, after all, one quarter of the world's population.
CB: Peace Now [an Israeli Peace organization], has found that approximately 40 percent of the settlements, including long-standing communities, are built on private Palestinian land and not on state-owned land. Peace Now was given this information from a source inside the Civil Administration who wanted to expose the wide-scale violations of private Palestinian property rights by the government and the settlers. Do you believe that there are more in the government who disagree with the treatment of the Palestinians and are willing to speak out?
IP: Maybe there are more but I believe that this is not enough. This kind of criticism by Peace Now about the piece of information that they leaked to us is very important. But don't forget for one moment any square inch that has been taken by Israel is an illegal occupation, not only the 40 percent that was private land.
| The problem in Israel is [that] between Peace Now [and Avigdor] Lieberman, contrary to what people are saying, there isn't that much of an ideological distance |
It may be a starker violation but the whole Israeli presence there is a violation of human rights and civil rights. What is needed is much more than this kind of criticism. The problem in Israel is [that] between Peace Now [and Avigdor] Lieberman, contrary to what people are saying, there isn't that much of an ideological distance. It's a tactical question of how best to ensure a Jewish state with a vast demographic majority is not exclusive.
Lieberman says, let's take any territory we need and achieve that goal by downsizing the number of Arabs living there. Peace Now says, no, let's take less land and downsize the land rather than the population and then we can have the coveted exclusive supremacist state. Both positions are morally and politically wrong and unacceptable because at the end of the day you have 20 percent to 30 percent of [Israel's population comprised of] Palestinians, even in the smallest state that Peace Now covets and Peace Now is not willing to see them as equal citizens.
And people, even in Peace Now, would put the idea of a Jewish state above any other failure, democratic or liberal. So I think that even if I would have found in the government or the administration people who want a cleaner mode of occupation, a more legitimized occupation, I would of course welcome it. But I'm warning [that] we've been there before. These people have even been in government and they didn't make any change because the reason for the ongoing conflict between Israel/Palestine is not because Israel occupies parts of the West Bank and Gaza and is not willing to give them back. The reason we have the conflict is the Zionist ideology. This is where it starts and this is where it ends. As long as the vast majority of Jews in Israel subscribes this ideology in its present interpretation, I'm afraid we will not see peace and reconciliation coming to this land.
CB: Finally, Ilan Pappe, what can people who hope for the security of both the Israelis and Palestinians do?
IP: Well I think everybody has his or her role to play, especially people who care; either those that belong to Israel-Palestine or care about Israel/Palestine. I think the Palestinians have their role of resistance; the progressive forces inside Israel continue to try and educate and change the point of view of their compatriots.
But society outside has to play the same role that the anti-Apartheid movement played in the West during the heyday of Apartheid. We need a strong lobby inside the western world -- especially in the United States, but also in Europe. That [lobby] would send a very clear message to Israel that these polices and ideologies are not acceptable, especially if you want to be part of the democratic world, and we need you to change your policy, the ideological nature of the state, and have a much more democratic society on the ground.
Israel needs a wake-up call. Israelis don't know that this is what the world thinks about them and I think that civil societies around the world can be the alarm clock for them, and they should be the alarm clock.
Christopher Brown is an independent grassroots journalist living in San Francisco, CA. He has a blog on Palestine at www.cbgonzo.blogspot.com.
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