Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices – Page 15

2011/10/12

David Isenberg: 9/11 and the Rule of Law – What We Still Do Not Know Ten Years Later

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call

After September 11: What We Still Don’t Know

David Cole

New York Review of Books, 29 September 2011

EXTRACT

Because so much was done under the veil of secrecy, much remains unknown about the extent of the illegality. Mark Danner’s publication in these pages of the Red Cross’s report on the abusive interrogations of “high-value” detainees provides a glimpse at the horrors US agents inflicted.⁴ But we do not even know how many people US officials have abducted, rendered, disappeared, tortured, or killed. We do not know the extent of the injuries suffered, and still being suffered, by those we abused. We still know relatively little about the mistreatment of most of the Guantánamo detainees. We have not apologized to even a single victim—not even to those, like Canadian citizen Maher Arar and German citizen Khaled al-Masri, who were targeted for renditions and torture based on misinformation, and have been cleared of any wrongdoing themselves.

Meanwhile, our former president in his memoir has proudly proclaimed that he personally authorized waterboarding—a practice we prosecuted as torture in the past when it was used against our troops. The former vice-president recently replied affirmatively when asked whether waterboarding should “still be a tool” of interrogation. Failing to condemn such blatant wrongdoing in some official way leaves an open wound both for the victims and for the integrity of our system, and implies that the tactics were neither lawless nor immoral. The rule of law may be tenacious when it is supported, but violations of it that go unaccounted corrode its very foundation.

All of which only underscores the continuing need for an engaged civil society committed to the ideals of liberty and law. The past decade suggests that the rule of law may be stronger than cynics thought. It teaches that adherence to values of liberty, equality, and dignity is more likely to further than to obstruct our security interests. But it also illustrates our collective reluctance to confront our past, a reluctance that threatens to erode our most important values.

Read full story.

2011/10/122011/10/12

Mini-Mi: Top 5 Facts About America’s Richest 1%

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

The Top 5 Facts About America’s Richest 1%

VIDEO

The American dream is alive and well for the wealthiest 1% of Americans, but unfortunately, if you are in the other 99% the jury is still out.

“America is obviously a country where you can go from being middle class to upper class, but right now class mobility has sort of collapsed in the United States,” says Zaid Jilani, senior reporter for the progressive think tank ThinkProgress.org. (See: America's Middle Class Crisis: The Sobering Facts)

This grim reality is in part the impetus for the Occupy Wall Street movement, which, now in its fourth week, will take to the streets of Manhattan's Upper East Side Tuesday in what it is calling the “Millionaire's March.” Demonstrators will rally outside the homes of some of the city's wealthiest, including News Corp. (NWS) head Rupert Murdoch and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon, to protest New York state's 2% millionaire tax set to expire at the end of the year.

As the Occupy Wall Street movement continues to grow, The Daily Ticker wanted to find out just how rich America's super-rich 1% really is. Jilani recently compiled the following research, entitled How Unequal We Are: The Top 5 Facts You Should Know About The Wealthiest One Percent of Americans.

As discussed in the accompanying interview, here's what Jilani outlined on his blog:

Continue reading “Mini-Mi: Top 5 Facts About America's Richest 1%”

2011/10/112011/10/17

Katrina Heuvel: Reshaping US Politics with Moral Clarity

09 Justice, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government

Will Occupy Wall Street's Spark Reshape Our Politics?

Katrina vanden Heuvel on October 11, 2011 – 2:21pm ET

Editor’s Note: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

When the organizers of Occupy Wall Street first gathered to discuss their plan of action, the strategy that resonated most came from those who had occupied squares in Madrid and Athens, Tunis and Cairo. According to David Graeber, one of Occupy Wall Street’s organizers, “they explained that the model that seemed to work was to take something that seemed to be public space, reclaim it, and build up an organization and headquarters around [it].”

Six weeks later, on September 17, the occupation in downtown New York began, with scant attention, minimal and often derisive media coverage, and little expectation that it would light a spark where others had not. Now, in its fourth week, Occupy Wall Street has the quality of an exploding star: It is gathering energy in enormous and potent quantities, and propelling it outward to all corners of the country.

The protesters in the nascent movement have been criticized for being too decentralized and lacking a clear list of demands. But they are bearing witness to the corruption of our politics; if they made demands to those in power, it would suggest those in power could do something about it. This contradicts what is, perhaps, their most compelling point: that our institutions and politicians serve the top 1 percent, not the other 99.

The movement doesn’t need a policy or legislative agenda to send its message. The thrust of what it seeks–fueled both by anger and deep principles–has moral clarity. It wants corporate money out of politics. It wants the widening gap of income inequality to be narrowed substantially. And it wants meaningful solutions to the jobless crisis. In short, it wants a system that works for the 99 percent. Already Occupy Wall Street has sparked a conversation about reforms far more substantial than the stunted debate in Washington. Its energy will supercharge the arduous work other organizations have been doing for years, amplifying their actions as well as their agendas.

Occupy Wall Street is now in more than 800 cities and counting. Each encampment has its own character, from thousands marching in San Francisco to a handful gathering in Boise. These are authentic grassroots operations, so each one will reflect the local culture of protest while reproducing what seems right from the original.

Republicans have reacted bitterly.

Editor’s Note: Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

#ElectoralReform #OWS Two-Sided Demand Hand-Out

#OccupyWallStreet Rolling Update + US Revolution RECAP

2011/10/112011/10/22

Mini-Me: Katrina vanden Heuvel on Electoral Reform

09 Justice, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Legislation

Katrina Vanden Heuvel, writer for the Nation was interviewed on Democracy Now and mentioned electoral reform (after Danny Schecter segment) in hopes that it would sprout from/around Occupy Wall Street.

Independent Media Stalwarts Katrina vanden Heuvel & Danny Schechter Speak Out at Occupy Wall Street

Democracy Now!, 11 October 2011

“The moral clarity of this movement is what I think has moved people to get up and walk and be in motion,” says Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation magazine. “And what’s so interesting to me is—I was here last Wednesday for the march to Foley Square—that so many groups, which have been trying to get some energy, are finding the spark in here and coming together.” [includes rush transcript]

QUOTE: “The moral clarity of this movement is what I think has moved people to get up and walk and be in motion,” says Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation magazine. “And what’s so interesting to me is—I was here last Wednesday for the march to Foley Square—that so many groups, which have been trying to get some energy, are finding the spark in here and coming together.” [includes rush transcript]

Phi Beta Iota: Katrina's interview begins at 41:20. A pox on the two-party tyranny–one bird, two wings, same shit. OccupyWallStreet is not just independent, but independent of those who pretend to organize “independents.”

#OccupyWallStreet Rolling Update + US Revolution RECAP

2011/10/11

Chuck Spinney: Zionism as a Fatal Cancer in America

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence

The Real Story of How Israel Was Created

CounterPunch, October 11, 2011

To better understand the Palestinian bid for membership in the United Nations, it is important to understand the original 1947 U.N. action on Israel-Palestine.

The common representation of Israel’s birth is that the U.N. created Israel, that the world was in favor of this move, and that the U.S. governmental establishment supported it. All these assumptions are demonstrably incorrect.

In reality, while the U.N. General Assembly recommended the creation of a Jewish state in part of Palestine, that recommendation was non-binding and never implemented by the Security Council.

Second, the General Assembly passed that recommendation only after Israel proponents threatened and bribed numerous countries in order to gain a required two-thirds of votes.

Third, the U.S. administration supported the recommendation out of domestic electoral considerations and took this position over the strenuous objections of the State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon.

The passage of the General Assembly recommendation sparked increased violence in the region. Over the following months the armed wing of the pro-Israel movement, which had long been preparing for war, perpetrated a series of massacres and expulsions throughout Palestine, implementing a plan to clear the way for a majority-Jewish state.

It was this armed aggression, and the ethnic cleansing of at least three-quarters of a million indigenous Palestinians, that created the Jewish state on land that had been 95 percent non-Jewish prior to Zionist immigration and that even after years of immigration remained 70 percent non-Jewish. And despite the shallow patina of legality its partisans extracted from the General Assembly, Israel was born over the opposition of American experts and of governments around the world, who opposed it on both pragmatic and moral grounds.

Let us look at the specifics.

Read full article with specifics.

Phi Beta Iota: The specifics demonstrate with great clarity that at the time the U.S. Government had intelligence but lacked integrity. Today the U.S. Government lacks both intelligence and integrity. Electoral Reform is the sole possible demand that can resolve the crisis of US democracy and US capitalism run amok–inverted into velvet theatrical facism.

2011/10/112011/10/17

Jon Lebkowsky: What #OccupyWallStreet is about

Blog Wisdom, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence

What #OccupyWallStreet is about

#OccupyWallStreet is just the sort of movement I’ve been expecting. It’s a true grassroots movement catalyzed and sustained by social media (which is probably crucial, as I explained in an earlier post). While there is an overriding agenda about economic justice, OWS represents a diversity of interests and concerns. It’s a working class phenomenon, but it includes both blue collar and white collar workers, many of them newly unemployed. These are the statistics that corporations ignore when they cut jobs and strip healthcare benefits. These are people who heard a promise throughout their lives and saw it shattered to dust over the last decade. These are people who have created much of the value that millionaires and billionaires have captured and stashed in their Swiss bank accounts. These are honest, hardworking swimmers who didn’t see the sharks coming until it was too late.

Remember Frank Capra’s film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” where an ordinary guy played by James Stewart takes on Washington corruption? Sending a true-blue Mr. Smith to Washington didn’t work to his advantage, the level of corruption almost took him down. What happens, though, if you have an army of idealistic, straight-shooting Mr. Smiths who actually believe that the system should work for everybody, not just the wealthiest 1%? To me the Occupy movement is that army, and they’re occupying not Washington D.C., but Wall Street, which has become the real seat of power as corporations ascend and governments weaken.

I saw a talk last night by David Cobb, a former shrimper and construction worker who got his law degree in 1993 and was the Green Party’s presidential candidate in 2004. He’s currently active with MoveToAmend.org, and organization that seeks an amendment to abolish the concept of corporate personhood, arguing that corporations never should have been assigned the rights normally assigned to a person in the first place. Why is this a problem? The biggest issue currently is the assertion of a corporation’s Constitutional right to contribute to political campaigns. The question is the extent to which corporate power and influence over government should be limited. Cobb’s argument was that the supposed American democracy is not really “of, by, and for the people” because corporations are making and enforcing (through influence) decisions that we should be making together. What’s an example? One might be the complex of government decisions connected with the recent “too big to fail” financial crisis and bailouts, including weakened regulation of banking and credit card industries. It’s the financial crisis, and more so the response to it, and resulting loss of jobs and benefits, that’s brought diverse citizens to the streets in the “Occupy” movement. Also, for that matter, it was an inspiration for the formation of the Tea Party on the right side of the fence.

Like Cobb, I don’t think the issue is the idea of the corporation, of people coming together to create an entity to accomplish something, like building a business or fulfilling a not for profit mission. The problem is an imbalance of power and influence, and the growing sense that a few rule the many. Most of us grew up believing in something called democracy, which is difficult to achieve and too easy to game. Cobb pointed out that there’s been a democratization trend – more and more people assigned the rights of a person, women minorites, etc. But at the same time there’s a corporatist trend, a kind of gentler version of what we used to call fascism, that has been growing and is currently ascendant and taking as much power as possible.

I don’t think it’s too radical for the people to demand their rights as persons and as citizens, and assert those rights against the rights of “legal fictions,” i.e. corporations. But (as I posted in Facebook and Google+ earlier), we have to stop feeling outraged and start feeling a tranquil and firm sense of empowerment. That’s what I think I’m seeing in the OWS demonstrations so far.

2011/10/112011/10/17

John Robb: Permanent Global Protest #ows

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Hacking, IO Deeds of Peace

JOURNAL: Permanent Protest #ows

One of the most interesting aspects of Occupy Wall Street (#ows) is the work it is doing to set up permanent occupations in EVERY city (over 1,000 locations globally, and growing) of note.

Here's a quick overview:

Navigation of the complex legalities of sleeping/living in an urban, public space (park, square). Every major city has a thicket of regulations in place to prevent people from congregating, let alone sleep overnight.

Defusing provocations from police to prevent more aggressive action. The police made a couple of attempts at provocations already (lots of pepper spray, lots of beatings with batons, and lots of arrests) in NYC. So far, the protesters just took it and didn't fight back.

Acquiring provisions. On-line support has helped the protest acquire many of the food, water, and other items it needs (although its unclear how many locations get anything approaching the level of support seen in NYC).

Food preparation. By keeping the permanent group small, the need for food/food prep stays manageable.
Shelter. Most locations selected prohibit tents. Lots of variants (cardboard, tarps, etc.) have emerged. This is going to be tougher in winter in the northern climes, but not undoable with small numbers of overnight residents.

Defense. Currently, the occupy movement is strictly adhering to the regulations and non-violence to avoid being ejected from their locations. The best medium term defense is a flashmob.

Media. 24x7x365

Local Governance. Open source. Consensus needed. Leaderless (pitch in if something needs doing, but don't assume you are running the show).

A permanent camp in each location means that there is a gathering point for HUGE protests in the future (quick response to shocks/events/etc.). Also, protests that span hundreds or thousands of cities simultaneously.

Pretty cool dynamic developing: a protest Horde?