The Ruthless Truth blog

http://RevolutionNews.us — November 2009 — It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got…BECAUSE THE OWNERS OF THIS COUNTRY DON’T WANT THAT. I’m talking about the real owners now…the REAAL owners. The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.”..
“Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice . . . you dont. You have no choice. You have OWNERS. They OWN *you*. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. Theyve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying . . . lobbying, to get what they want . . . Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but Ill tell you what they dont want . . . they dont want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They dont want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. Theyre not interested in that . . . that doesnt help them. Thats against their interests. Thats right. They dont want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly theyre getting ***** by a system that threw them overboard 30 *****’ years ago. They dont want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers . . . Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly ***** jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now theyre coming for your Social Security money. They want your *****’ retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? Theyll get it . . . theyll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this *****’ place. Its a big club and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in The big club. By the way, its the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people . . . white collar, blue collar it doesnt matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means . . . continue to elect these rich ***** who dont give a ***** about you. They dont give a ***** about you . . . they dont give a ***** about you. They dont care about you at all . . . at all . . . at all, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Thats what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick thats being jammed up their ***** everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth. Its called the American Dream, ’cause you have to be asleep to believe it . . .
-George Carlin

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32 Seconds Of Nassim Taleb Kicking Bob Rubin’s Ass (Video)

Watch. I live for moments like this one.

(Click Photo Snapshot To See Video)

Nassim Taleb:

"It’s not Socialism, it’s not Capitalism.  It’s the worst of both."

"The truck driver is paying taxes to subsidize Robert Rubin’s bonus."

Commentary from JH:

The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb speaking at The Big Picture conference points out how taxpayers paid for the losses at Citigroup AND subsidized Bob Rubin’s bonuses — which he earned by helping set Citi up to take those same losses.

Taleb also brings up two of my favorite topics of conversation: pitchforks and clawback.  (OK, I imagined the pitchforks.)  But why SHOULDN’T we claw back Bob Rubin’s bonuses, Taleb demands to know.  Good question, Mr. Taleb.  I’m sure we could think of other candidates for clawback, too: Paulson, Thain, Prince, O’Neil, Casanno, Blankfein, et al.

Here’s some bonus video of Taleb on GPS with Fareed Zakaria, railing about Rubin and Citi.

32 Seconds Of Nassim Taleb Kicking Bob Rubin’s Ass (Video)  – Home – The Daily Bail

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Reviewing David Swanson’s “Daybreak”

by Stephen Lendman

Global Research, September 9, 2009

David Swanson is co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org and Washington Director of Democrats.com. He’s also a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, the Backbone Campaign, and Voters for Peace as well as a member of the legislative working group of United for Peace and Justice.

Subtitled “Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming A More Perfect Union, Daybreak” is Swanson’s first book, a timely and impressive account of presidential extremism, congressional complicity, the urgency for progressive change, and how to do it.

Swanson exposes what was wrong under George Bush and provides a compelling prescription for real change.

In his book “Cracks in the Constitution,” Ferdinand Lundberg explained that the supreme law of the land, the Constitution, never deterred presidents or sitting governments from doing what they wished, then inventing justifications for their actions. During eight years in office, George Bush personified it and said so in his own words. In 2005, he told congressional Republican leaders:

“I’m the president and the commander-in chief. Do (things) my way. Stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It’s just a goddamned piece of paper.” Both parties acceded. The administration got away with murder. Separation of powers were abandoned. Checks and balances barely exist. Lawlessness became the new standard, and the republic took a giant step backward toward despotism and dystopia under a culture of violence, police state laws, and a Wall Street-run asset-stripping system – parasitically destroying America, wrecking the economy for profit, and forcing the public into permanent debt peonage.

Swanson’s book is a call to arms for change, an alert about what’s wrong with the nation, the urgency to restore the rule of law, save the republic, and necessity to get engaged enough to matter. After eight years under Bush – Cheney and Obama’s early months, the government is more than ever corrupted, imperial, and extremist. Undoing the damage will take years of committed effort, and Swanson explains how:

– understand the imminent danger;

– replace today’s media system with a more democratic one;

– develop new thoughts and actions;

– engage to work for change;

– cooperate with other nations, don’t exploit them;

– consider eight years of damage and serious problems built up over decades;

– demand accountability for wrongdoing; and

– “encourage the American people to take actions that are absolutely necessary. Now.”

Presidential Power Grab and How to Repair It

George Bush’s “attorneys openly argued before a congressional committee that the president (may) violate any law until the Supreme Court specifically rules in favor of it.” He used signing statements to rewrite them, issued one-man rule Executive Orders, and unconstitutionally usurped “unitary executive” powers that Chalmers Johnson called a “bald-faced assertion of presidential supremacy….dressed up in legalistic mumbo jumbo.”

Congress let him bypass the Constitution and do as he pleased. Police state laws were enacted. Permanent wars are waged for world dominance. Torture became official US policy. Government is more secretive and intrusive than ever. Illegal spying is pervasive. Dissent is targeted. Social decay is deepening. Democracy is eroding and dying. Incestuous ties between favored business interests and government created a cesspool of corruption, and America is plagued more than ever by the dynamic that doomed earlier empires – what Chalmers Johnson calls “isolation, overstretch, the uniting of local and global forces opposed to imperialism, and in the end bankruptcy.” Under Obama, little so far has changed as the nation strays further toward tyranny and ruin.

The Power of War

Article 51 of the UN Charter authorizes the “right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member….until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security.” Preemptive attacks are banned at all times with no exceptions.

The Nuremberg Charter’s Article VI explicitly prohibits the following:

– crimes against peace;

– planning and waging wars of aggression;

– war crimes; and

– crimes against humanity.

The Nuremberg Tribunal also stated that, “To initiate a war of aggression….is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime (against peace) differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

The Constitution’s Article I, Section 8 empowers Congress alone to declare war, even though since 1941 it deferred unconstitutionally to the president.

If America is under attack or faces an imminent threat, the November 1973 War Powers Resolution lets the president deploy US forces for up to 60 days plus an additional 30 days for withdrawal, subject to congressional authorization and without a declaration of war.

Post-9/11, no threat existed, yet the Bush administration used deception to wage illegal aggressive wars in defiance of the above constitutional and international law standards. Republican and Democrat Congresses acceded, and so has Barack Obama by continuing an open-ended Iraq occupation and stepped up belligerency against Afghanistan and Pakistan, with perhaps other nations and regions to follow.

If it chooses, Congress can end wars by no longer funding them. Article I, Section 7, Clause I says:

“All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills.”

Either House may originate an appropriations bill although the House claims sole authority to do it. Either may amend bills of any kind, including revenue and appropriation ones. Congress has the power of the purse, so it alone, if it wishes, can fund or end wars. Under George Bush and Barack Obama, Democrats and Republicans are united to continue them.

September 11 was the pretext for launching a long-planned premeditated attack against Afghanistan – a non-belligerent country posing no threat to America and one that sought peaceful engagement. Non-existent weapons of mass destruction then became justification for waging preemptive war against Iraq. Both conflicts are blatantly illegal, yet continue without end.

On January 17, 2003 (ahead of the Iraq war), Law Professor and international human rights law expert Francis Boyle introduced six articles of impeachment against George W. Bush on charges of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” including:

– trying to suspend Habeas Corpus;

– backing the unconstitutional USA Patriot Act;

– the mass-rounding up and incarcerating of foreigners;

– conducting kangaroo tribunal proceedings;

– violating and subverting the Posse Comitatus Act;

– conducting lawless searches and seizures; and

– violating the First Amendment, the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions, US War Crimes Act, UN Convention Against Torture, and Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

As a result, “George Walker Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.” So far, Barack Obama shares equal guilt under US and international law.

On June 10, 2008, Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 Articles of Impeachment against George W. Bush, citing among other charges:

– “Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for War Against Iraq;”

– lying to Congress and the public about weapons of mass destruction and calling Iraq a security threat;

– violating the Constitution and UN Charter;

– “Initiating a War Against Iraq for Control of That Nation’s Natural Resources;”

– “illegally misspen(ding) funds to begin a war in secret prior to any congressional authorization;”

– authorizing torture and extraordinary renditions to secret “black sites;”

– threatening to attack Iran;

– illegally spying on Americans; and

– obstructing investigations about the 9/11 attacks.

No action was taken, so George Bush, Dick Cheney and other high officials in their administration faced no charges in office and still don’t today.

The Power of Money

As explained above, only Congress has “the power of the purse” to spend or not spend as it chooses and also how much. Under constitutional and statutory law, “it is illegal to use government funds for anything other than what Congress appropriates them for.” Yet lawless spending occurs regularly, including through unaccountable black budgets, and Congress does nothing to stop it.

Through a signing statement, George Bush empowered himself to transfer funds from authorized programs to secret ones. It was one of Kucinich’s impeachment charges against him.

Then in 2008, the Bush administration began looting the federal Treasury to reward criminal bankers for their crimes and accelerated the process of transferring public wealth to Wall Street. Obama greatly stepped up the practice, and on July 20, 2009, AP reported that:

“The federal government has devoted $4.7 trillion to help the financial sector through its crisis, a watchdog report said Monday,” referring to Neil Barofsky, the Special Treasury Department’s Inspector General in charge of overseeing the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).

“Under the worst of circumstances, the report said, the government’s maximum exposure could total nearly $24 trillion, or (an) $80,000 (liability) for every American.”

On March 31, Bloomberg reported that the Treasury and Fed “spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion,” an amount approaching America’s 2008 $14 trillion GDP. Currently, the number at least matches and may exceed it.

At the same time, the economic crisis is worsening. Credit remains frozen. The worst housing and commercial real estate slump since the Great Depression continues. Foreclosures threaten millions. Job losses keep mounting. True unemployment, according to economist John Williams (with all uncounted categories included), approaches 21% and is rising. Savings have greatly eroded. Government debt levels are unparalleled during peacetime. Major banks are effectively insolvent. Households are too over-extended to spend or borrow more, and the administration offered little relief to them or states unable to meet their budget commitments, so they adjust by slashing essential social services, including health care, education, and everything for the most needy.

Power of the Judiciary

For years and especially under George Bush, the federal judiciary has been stacked with judges from or affiliated with the extremist Federalist Society. It advocates rolling back civil liberties; ending New Deal social policies; opposing reproductive choice, government regulations (except industry approved ones), labor rights and environmental protections; and subverting justice in defense of privilege.

Bush’s Justice Department was just as corrupted by putting politics ahead of the rule of law, hiring and firing prosecutors and other employees based on their loyalty to the Republican party, targeting the innocent opportunistically, waging war on Islam and Latino immigrants, creating justifications for administration crimes, then turning a blind eye to them.

For eight years, waging illegal wars, committing crimes of war and against humanity, violating constitutional and international laws, legalizing torture as official US policy, sanctioning police state laws, spying illegally on Americans, permitting government and corporate fraud, criminalizing dissent, and creating “a justice system stripped of all justice,” became federal policy under George Bush and remains so under Obama.

Treaty and Appointment Powers

US presidents may make treaties with the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senate. However, Status of Forces Agreements (or SOFAs) require only the approval of host countries or enough pressure applied to get it. To legitimize America’s occupation, the Iraq SOFA illustrates the process.

Chalmers Johnson calls all of them “foreign military enclaves….completely beyond the jurisdiction of the occupied nation,” a modern day version of 19th century China’s “extraterritoriality” granting foreigners charged with crimes the “right” to be tried by his or her own government under his or her own laws.

Iraq’s SOFA legitimizes permanent occupation and continued war beyond control of Congress or Iraqi officials. Nominally a 2011 withdrawal date was set, but given the impotency of the Iraqi government and the way past agreements were manipulated, US forces will remain indefinitely on dozens of bases, at least five super ones, and perhaps others yet to be built. No change is envisioned under Obama despite rhetoric claiming otherwise.

Federal appointees as ambassadors, ministers, consuls, judges, and others must be approved by the Senate, yet presidents may fill vacancies when the body is in recess. Bush took full advantage in appointing John Bolton UN ambassador over Senate objections. Yet most often, the Senate acquiesced to some of his most egregious nominees, including to the federal bench.

Executive Power

US presidents are the most powerful officials anywhere under our system of government. Regardless of the occupant, the office is inherently imperial as one man can exploit it to his advantage, effectively becoming a dictator if he wishes. The Constitution’s Article II, Section 1 grants him near-limitless power in a single innocuous sentence stating: “The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”

Article II, Section 3 adds: “The President shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed” without saying that Presidents may make as well as execute laws, even though nothing in the Constitution permits it, and Article I, Section 1 reads: “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.”

However, executive power is key in the hands of presidents to exploit as it’s concentrated in one (party bosses selected) man, chosen by an Electoral College that can subvert the popular vote if it wishes.

In times of war, presidents as military commander-in-chief are effective tyrants, and even though Article I, Section 8 grants only Congress the right to declare it, since 1941, all presidents did solely on their own authority.

They can also grant commutations or pardons freely except in cases of impeachment, make treaties with the advice and consent (not ratification) of the Senate, terminate them as well, and can rule by decree through executive agreements with foreign governments.

With rare opposition, they can appoint or discharge officials, veto congressional legislation, and nearly always be sustained. While only Congress has appropriating authority, they can release or not release funds for executive branch spending.

A huge bureaucracy is at their disposal, including powerful officials like the Secretaries of Defense, State, Treasury, and Homeland Security, and the Attorney General in charge of the Justice Department.

They can make one-man laws through Executive Orders and signing statements, powers easily abused as George Bush proved. He usurped “unitary executive” power to declare the law is what he said it was and got no congressional or judicial opposition to stop him.

Bush and earlier presidents, including Franklin Roosevelt during WW II, showed that presidents are unencumbered by constitutional restraints and can effectively rule as a sovereign, easily circumventing Congress and the courts to render the separation of powers neutralized.

Presidents also have their own private army through the Department of Homeland Security, the vast US intelligence apparatus, and much more. The CIA comprises one part. It functions as a praetorian guard operating freely outside the law and backed by a $50 billion + black budget with greater amounts available if requested.

In theory, presidents must obey the law, but can creatively interpret it to get away with murder unless Congress and the courts stop them. Rarely does it happen and never for George Bush. As for impeaching and convicting presidents for malfeasance, John Adams said it would take a national convulsion to do it, and Article II, Section 4 states it can only be for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Based on the historical record, it’s near-impossible to do as no president was ever removed this way and only two were ever impeached, both unjustly. Nixon resigned on his own volition, but might, in fact, have been removed if he hadn’t.

Above all others, Bush and Cheney deserved impeachment, but efforts to do it failed because few in Congress had the courage of Dennis Kucinich. As a result, they were unrestrained, even though this isn’t what the framers had in mind. Short of a constitutional re-make, other executives will be similarly empowered and as able to take full advantage. George Bush wasn’t the first. He won’t be the last, and others ahead may be worse as America hurtles recklessly toward tyranny because no constraints are in place to stop it.

Pardoning Power

As explained above, presidents can grant clemency and pardons, except in cases of impeachment. Often the power is abused, and most presidents are guilty, though some far more than others. Cases in point: Ford pardoning Nixon and GHW Bush pardoning six Iran-Contra criminals, including former Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger, former National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, and former Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Elliott Abrams. GW Bush commuted I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby’s sentence for having obstructed justice by blocking the investigation of a crime.

It remains to be seen if a president can pardon his officials for crimes he authorized and perhaps even himself. Nothing in the Constitution prevents it, so creative lawyers may find a way, and what’s in place to stop them.

The Cheney Branch

No vice president matched Cheney’s power, his abuse of office, the secret government he ran, the damage he caused, and the weakening of democratic rule of law on his watch. Vice presidents also preside over the Senate, have the final say in case of tie votes, and are first in the presidential line of succession should the executive die, resign, or be removed.

As the nation’s strongest ever vice president and most ruthless, Cheney directed US national security policies, sidestepped George Bush on major issues, put his top loyalists in key posts, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, stacked the bureaucracy with neocon extremists like himself, and held out for eight years despite repeated calls for his removal.

He justified seizing unconstitutional powers “because the world is dangerous (and) because I say we have that obligation.” He was the power behind National and Homeland Security Presidential Directives like NSPD-51/HSPD-20 to establish “Continuity of Government (COG)” procedures under a “Catastrophic Emergency” defined as:

– “any incident (such as a terrorist attack), regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the US population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.”

COG is “a coordinated effort within the Federal Government’s executive branch to ensure that National Essential Functions continue to be performed during a Catastrophic Emergency.”

These directives give presidents and powerful vice presidents unprecedented authority free from constitutional constraints. Martial law without congressional approval can be declared in case of a “national emergency,” so both can rule with dictatorial powers under police state laws. Bush and Cheney took full advantage. So can future executives.

Congressional Collapse

The Democrat-controlled 111th Congress is just the latest in more recent failed ones and that of government overall. The electoral process bears much of the blame. It’s scripted and corrupted. Secrecy and back room deals substitute for a free, fair, and open process. Candidates are pre-selected. Big money owns them. Both parties share equal guilt. The major media play a dominant role. Favored candidates have a distinct advantage. Alternative ones are marginalized. Horse race journalism substitutes for real debate, while the public interest is nowhere in sight.

Democrats and Republicans comprise two wings of one party representing privilege, not the greater good, and therein lies the problem. On Capitol Hill, democracy is rhetoric, not real. Profiles in courage are as rare as mild Chicago winters, and as Harry Truman famously said, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”

Influence peddling is a way of life. What “payola” is to the music industry, “pay-to-play” is to Washington, and the more anted up, the more favors curried, but the “price of admission” keeps rising. Changing things requires major reform starting with a total electoral process makeover.

Get big money out of it and replace it with publicly funded elections. End corporate run electronic voting. Mandate verifiable hand-counting by nonpartisan civil servants. Adopt proportional representation over winner-take-all. Institute instant runoff voting (IRV). Automatically enfranchise all US citizens at birth under one uniform national law. Prohibit paid political advertising and require broadcasters to provide free air time to all candidates equally over over a shorter electoral cycle. Make democracy in America real, not the best kind money can buy.

Make the impeachment and conviction process work by using them against presidents and others having no place in honest government. End the idea that “We Won’t Impeach (or Convict) You No Matter What.” Get oversight back into the system. Make abuse of office a crime and hold offenders accountable. Hold public hearings. Demand vital documents. Issue binding subpoenas. Make not showing up criminal. Jail those refusing to cooperate. Make it apply to top officials, including the president and vice president. Use independent special prosecutors freely, fully empowered by their mandate. Put teeth back into the rule of law.

Undoing the Imperial Presidency and the Wars They Wage

America’s imperial presence is everywhere through a global network of bases able to strike any nation perceived as a threat and intimidate others into submission. Host country populations perceive us as intrusive, hostile, and detrimental to their own interests with good reason.

They reflect empire and an aim to dominate everywhere, not security, at the expense of appropriated public land, environmental pollution and destruction, unacceptable noise, and human rights abuses by abusive troops committing crimes that include murder and rape.

They control trade, resources, local cheap labor, and political, economic, and social life in host countries. They force compliance with America’s will through the Pentagon’s might and freewheeling use of it. They’ve made America a global pariah, and they’re illegal and oppressive as unwelcome occupiers.

Respecting International Treaties

Under the Constitution’s Article VI, “….all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby…”

As explained above, presidents can make treaties with the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senate, and can terminate them by executive edict as George Bush did in renouncing the ABM Treaty with Russia. They can also violate them freely with impunity, including the UN Charter, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions, among others. They can block ratifying ones like Kyoto, the Comprehensive Test Ban and Landmine Treaties, PAROS to prevent an arms race in space, and the ICC. They can approve harmful ones like the WTO and NAFTA. They can hurt or harm with a stroke of a pen or do nothing by abstaining.

They and Congress can enact real change by allocating public dollars equitably for essential social needs, including universal health care and education. They can end imperial wars and occupations, downsize the military, close global bases, produce fewer weapons, become a good neighbor, not a menacing one. They can end corporate welfare and other giveaways, rebuild essential infrastructure, put people back to work, reindustrialize the country, end Wall Street’s dominance, nationalize or abolish the Federal Reserve, and let government be of, for, and by the people the way Lincoln envisioned. They can do all that and more but won’t.

Forming a More Perfect Union

We can restore the Bill of Rights and add new ones, revoke illegal laws like the USA Patriot Act, and enforce all constitutional, statutory, and international ones. We can reinvent democracy and make it real. We can make social equity and equal justice the law of the land. We can be good neighbors, not intimidating ones.

We can protect against “arbitrary arrest, detention, exile, or enforced disappearance, and from all forms of slavery and forced labor, with criminal penalties for violators and compensation for victims.” We can ban torture, illegal surveillance, political witch-hunts, and corporate personhood. We can protect, not wreck the environment, prohibit unsafe foods and drugs, enforce collective bargaining and human and civil rights. We can guarantee safety net protections for the needy, end homelessness and hunger, elevate living standards, and make corporations and the rich pay their fair share.

We can take the power of money out of politics, convene a second constitutional convention, redo the document Michael Parenti said protected “a rising bourgeoisie(’s freedom to) invest, speculate, trade, and accumulate” to assure that people who own the country run it. We get it right this time, but grassroots pressure is needed to do it. We can discover that organized people can beat organized money with enough will.

We no longer need tolerate extreme inequalities of wealth, lost civil liberties, human rights abuses, destructive foreign wars, the American dream turned nightmare, and politics more corrupted than ever regardless of the party in power. Ideas for change abound. Free and open debate are needed to pick the best, then organize for change and work to enact them for the fundamental goal of equity and justice for all in a nation again to be proud of.

Citizen Power

People are crying for change, but only grassroots activism can bring it. In his call to arms, Swanson says:

“We have reached a critical moment, at great expense, but with great possibility. Things have gotten bad enough in the minds of enough Americans that there is an opening for creating a mass movement for real change, and that movement is already growing all around us.” After eight years under Bush – Cheney and a complicit Congress, “What is needed in US civil society is a revolution,” a non-violent one.

But “Throughout history, the most powerful movements have (been met by) the most powerful suppressive reactions….Our own power and potential for greater power lies in the coalition we can build of activist groups focused on domestic and international issues, in organizing and training, in funding, in media of our own creation, in leaders, in sympathetic and organized government employees, in protection we can offer to whistleblowers and resisters, in our international allies, in local and state governments, and possibly even in the Congress or the Supreme Court resisting the abuses of the White House in the interests of a balance of powers.”

Short of effective real change, odds are “our future will take us from bad to worse,” and produce a government even more harmful to the public interest. “The choice belongs (collectively) to all of us together” to prevent it and work for the America we want. But wishing won’t make it so.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday – Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

Stephen Lendman is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Stephen Lendman

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Joel Beinin
Middle East Report Online
Sat, 08 Aug 2009 21:40 UTC

© Unknown

The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the oldest such festival in the United States, was founded in rebellion against received wisdom. Since 1980, the festival has promoted independent Jewish films that contest the conventional Hollywood depiction of Jewish life, particularly its lachrymose over-concentration on Jewish victimhood, and regularly presented "alternatives to the often uncritical view of life and politics in Israel available in the established American Jewish community." The festival’s audience, mostly Jewish, has reacted positively to this policy, even in 2005, when the organizers decided to show Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now, the theme of which is suicide bombing.
Critical Israeli Jewish auteurs have also been welcome. In 2008, the Israeli director Shai Carmeli Pollak came to San Francisco to present his film, Bil’in Habibti (Bil’in, My Love), which records the non-violent struggle of Palestinians, supportive Israelis and internationals to stop construction of Israel’s separation barrier in a West Bank village. The festival has previously screened two films by Simone Bitton, a Moroccan-born, dual Israeli-French citizen. The first, Mahmoud Darwich: The Land as Language (1998), is an appreciative biopic about the late Palestinian poet laureate. The second, Wall (2005), is an unflattering examination of the separation barrier.
Bitton’s current work, Rachel (Ciné-Sud Promotion, 2008), is not yet in distribution. It has appeared only at film festivals, in Berlin, Paris, New York, Sarajevo, Toronto and elsewhere. In the fall of 2009 it will play at the Haifa Film Festival in Israel. On July 25 and August 4, it was shown at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
The festival’s board of directors surely knew that showing Rachel — which investigates the violent death of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year old American peace activist, at the hands of the Israeli army — would discomfit some Jewish viewers. But they were likely unprepared for the strident, even hysterical, objections of the official organizations of the Bay Area Jewish community. In light of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival’s history, it is difficult to imagine that these organizations were exercised primarily by the content of the film. Indeed, they saved their strongest language for the "virulently anti-Israel, anti-Semitic" co-sponsors of the screening, Jewish Voice for Peace and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), and the decision of the festival organizers to invite Rachel’s mother, Cindy Corrie, whom they dubbed an "Israel basher," to take part in a question-and-answer session after the lights went up.
But generic anger at "Israel bashing" is an unsatisfying explanation for the Jewish organizations’ ire, since Jewish Voice for Peace had previously co-sponsored films at the festival and Carmeli Pollak and other Jewish filmmakers had criticized Israel’s occupation policies in much sharper terms than anything anyone in the Corrie family has said on the record. Perhaps the problem was that the festival organizers brought non-Jews — AFSC and Cindy Corrie — under the community tent to witness something of which many members of the community are ashamed.
Forensic Investigation
The death of Rachel Corrie brought a raft of journalistic inquests, all ostensibly concerned to sift through the competing claims of her fellow activists in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), who say she was murdered, and the Israeli state, which prefers to call her untimely end a "regrettable accident." Some of the media accounts were skeptical of the army’s internal inquiry, others less so. Many reporters seemed more eager to grill the ISM activists who were present than the soldiers, in lockstep with the Israeli army’s own counterattack: "We are dealing with a group of protesters who are acting very irresponsibly, putting everyone in danger — the Palestinians, themselves and our forces — by intentionally placing themselves in a combat zone." And the army, despite Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s reported promise to President George W. Bush of a "thorough, credible and transparent" investigation, was hardly open to outside scrutiny. Human Rights Watch, which included a section on Corrie in a June 2005 report on faulty Israeli military inquiries, was unable to pronounce a verdict upon how she died, but did conclude that "the impartiality and professionalism of the Israeli investigation into Corrie’s death are highly questionable." In any event, the following facts are not in serious dispute.
On March 16, 2003, Corrie, a senior at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, was crushed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza. The mammoth Caterpillar D9 bulldozer, custom-fitted with armor by Israel, was leveling the ground and demolishing Palestinian homes in the city of Rafah along the Philadelphi axis — the road that runs along the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Many homes and buildings had already been destroyed to create an open space in preparation for constructing a wall on the border. Corrie was working with the ISM, an organization dedicated to non-violent, direct action in solidarity with the Palestinian people under military occupation. She was killed as she stood, unarmed, in front of the home of a Palestinian pharmacist, Samir Nasrallah, in an attempt to prevent the bulldozer from razing it.
Rachel is a deeply moving portrayal of Rachel Corrie the person and ISM volunteer. And though no firm conclusion is asserted, the film is also the most thorough, credible and transparent investigation yet conducted into exactly how she died and who was responsible. As Bitton has written, on a Facebook page dedicated to Rachel, it "does some of what a court should have done" in putting the Israeli state’s narrative of Corrie’s death under the microscope.
Simone Bitton focuses first on the last eight weeks of Corrie’s life, her reasons for going to Gaza, her relationships with several Palestinians, with whom she became quite close, and the work of the ISM in Rafah. The ISM was conceived in the spring and summer of 2001. During the first three weeks of the second intifada, which erupted following Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif in September 2000, the right-wing Israeli daily Ma’ariv reported that Israeli forces fired a million bullets at mostly unarmed Palestinian demonstrators. This hail of lead flew before any suicide bombings or other acts of terror inside the pre-1967 borders of Israel took place. (The last suicide bombing had been in 1996.) In the face of this imbalance of force, Ghassan Andoni, George Rishmawi, Huweida Arraf and others developed the idea that a non-violent international presence could protect Palestinians from the ravages of the Israeli military. In addition, they thought, international witnesses who communicated what they saw and experienced could enhance international awareness and media coverage of Israeli violence. The first ISM contingent arrived in Palestine in August 2001. Corrie was an enthusiastic participant, writing home, "Coming here is one of the best things I’ve ever done." The recitation of these words in the film is a gut-ripping moment, as those in the audience know that Rachel Corrie will soon die.
At Pains to Explain
Rachel devotes very careful attention to the circumstances of the protagonist’s death. Like a forensic detective, Bitton gathered pertinent oral testimonies, documents, photographs and video footage. Only the voices of those directly involved are heard: Corrie’s ISM colleagues and Palestinian friends and hosts in Rafah, ISM co-founder Andoni, the Israeli military police officer who investigated the case, the Tel Aviv coroner who examined the body, and Jonathan Pollak, a member of the Israeli group, Anarchists Against the Wall (and brother of filmmaker Shai Carmeli Pollak), who put up Corrie’s colleagues in his Tel Aviv home after she died. Rachel Corrie herself is heard as well, through a narrator’s readings of her e-mails home.
There are no abstract political proclamations. Conflicting testimonies are juxtaposed. It is notable that, of all the persons interviewed, Andoni is the only one who considers that he may bear some responsibility for Corrie’s death, since he trained her and sent her to Rafah. Simone Bitton proceeds like an attorney questioning witnesses, sans speeches to the jury or inferences from the testimony. This technique makes the film a powerful documentary record whose value goes far beyond Bitton’s obvious sympathy for Corrie and her questioning of the official story.
That story — "It is clear the death of Ms. Corrie was not caused as a result of a direct action by the bulldozer or by its running her over" — does not hold up well under Bitton’s lens. On camera, the Israeli military police officer who led the investigation expresses a twinge of doubt about his own conclusions. He admits that he did not visit the site of the Nasrallah home and relied primarily on the testimony of soldiers. Among the eyewitnesses he did not interview were the ISM volunteers who saw the bulldozer run over Corrie from a distance of as little as ten yards. They maintain that their comrade was quite purposely run over, not once, but twice. The official claim that the bulldozer driver did not see Corrie because she was behind a pile of dirt is definitively disproved by Israeli army video footage that shows her standing on top of the mound, wearing a highly visible reflective orange jacket, as the bulldozer approached.
In April 2003, Israel’s National Center of Forensic Medicine released an autopsy report that attributed Corrie’s death to "pressure on the chest (mechanical asphyxiation) with fractures of the ribs and vertebrae of the dorsal spinal column and scapulas, and tear wounds in the right lung with hemorrhaging of the pleural cavities." How could this finding — she was crushed — be squared with the military police’s seeming absolution of the bulldozer? As the coroner who performed the autopsy is at pains to explain to Bitton, it is possible that Corrie was killed by the weight of the dirt on her body as the bulldozer was passing over her. Since there was no indication that metal had touched her body, he could not conclude that the bulldozer itself killed her.
It is not only the Israeli officials whose conduct is suspect, the film goes on to show. The coroner acknowledges that the Corrie family had a right to be present at the autopsy; since they could not attend, it would have been proper for the US embassy in Tel Aviv to send a representative. Yet embassy officials, despite the request of the Corrie family that they witness the procedure, told the coroner that they were not interested in doing so. Therefore, he proceeded on his own.
The Corrie family has tried persistently to get the US government to mount its own inquiry. A resolution introduced by their congressman, Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA), directing the Department of Justice to open an investigation received 78 co-sponsors but died in committee. John McKay, the former US Attorney for western Washington and one of eight US attorneys fired by the Bush administration in 2006, told the Corries, "There will never be a US investigation into Rachel’s case." The US government remains loath to intercede despite its own position, recorded in a letter to the Corries from former State Department official Lawrence Wilkerson and never rescinded, that Israel’s investigation was inadequate.
Did the bulldozer driver, whose name is kept confidential by the Israeli army, intentionally kill Rachel Corrie? The film is agnostic on this point. According to Bitton, "The intentional crime my movie addresses is not Rachel Corrie’s death. It is the willful destruction of entire neighborhoods, carried out with the knowledge that people who stay in their homes or attempt to defend them will be killed in the process. One clearly sees where this leads us: Six years later, in the same spot, the same army kills hundreds of innocent victims in supposedly targeted bombings. Today the end result has been reached: All Palestinian civilians, as well as anyone seeking to give them assistance, are potential collateral victims; their lives are, strictly speaking, not worth anything anymore. Talking about war crimes or bringing up the Geneva Conventions makes you look naïve, archaic."
These words were written in early 2009, on the heels of Israel’s "all-out war" upon "Hamas and its kind" in Gaza, an operation that left well over 1,000 unarmed Palestinians dead, but they were applicable in 2003 as well. The Israeli army began destroying blocks of homes in Rafah, to cap the same cross-border supply tunnels that achieved such notoriety during the Gaza war, in 2001.
The Value of One Life?
There is undoubtedly something disturbing about making a film focused on the life and death of one young American woman while Israel has killed thousands of non-combatant Palestinians since the outbreak of the first intifada in 1987. One justification is that both the Jewish and Muslim traditions affirm that the value of the life of every human being is equally boundless. Another is the testimony of the soldier who says, "We didn’t know they were foreigners; we thought they were Palestinians." Does this suggest that, if Rachel Corrie had been a Palestinian, it would have been routine to kill her? Might the world media have failed to notice her death, particularly since any investigation would have been perfunctory at best? Israel’s record in the Occupied Territories and the corporate media’s response to it indicate that this surmise is not unwarranted. Yet the response to Corrie’s death has not been overwhelming either.
Until Corrie’s death, the ISM did not imagine that the Israeli army might kill internationals. In fact, she was the first of several international victims. On April 11, 2003, another young ISM activist, Tom Hurndall, was shot in the head in the Gaza Strip by an Israeli sniper, Taysir al-Hayb. (Al-Hayb is a Bedouin with several family members serving in the Israeli military.) Hurndall went into a coma and died nine months later. In April 2005 an Israeli military court convicted al-Hayb of manslaughter and obstruction of justice; he was sentenced to eight years in prison. A year later, a British inquest jury determined that Hurndall was a victim of "unlawful killing." According to the Hurndall family lawyer, this legalism means "intentionally killed," or murdered.
On May 2, 2003, James Miller, a Welsh filmmaker, was shot dead by an Israeli soldier, Capt. Hib al-Hayb. The Israeli military police concluded that they could not determine that al-Hayb’s shot was responsible for Miller’s death. The captain was disciplined for violating the rules of engagement, however, and for changing his account of the incident. In April 2006, an inquest jury of a London coroner’s court returned a verdict of unlawful killing. In August 2007 the Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported that the British attorney general had written to his Israeli counterpart requesting a criminal investigation, on the basis that ballistic tests carried out in Israel "could only show that the bullet that killed James [Miller] did not come from the rifle barrels of the weapons that were examined." On the basis of their own ballistic analysis, the British believe the Israelis tested the wrong rifles or even switched the barrel of the offending weapon. Israel has not prosecuted Capt. al-Hayb.
There have been non-lethal shootings as well. On April 5, 2003, Israeli forces shot many rounds of machine gun fire at the face of Brian Avery, an American volunteer with the ISM in the West Bank town of Jenin. The shots broke his jaw and eye socket, and Avery sued for damages. The army refused to investigate the case, claiming that no soldiers had reported the incident. In February 2005 the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the army to reopen the case. Avery settled out of court for $150,000 in November 2008. Most recently, on March 13, 2009, 37-year old Tristan Anderson from Oakland, California suffered critical brain damage in the West Bank village of Ni’lin when Israeli forces shot him in the head with a new high-velocity tear gas canister which has been used since the December 2008 launch of Israel’s assault on Gaza. Anderson was demonstrating, along with villagers, Israelis and other internationals, against the separation barrier Israel is constructing that would effectively annex one quarter of Ni’lin’s land. A resident of Ni’lin was shot in the leg with live ammunition in the same demonstration. Anderson remains in critical condition, and his long-term prognosis is uncertain.
Rachel does not address these casualties or attempt to assess the long-term effect of the ISM’s interventions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since no form of resistance — non-violent or armed — was able to deter Israel’s slaughter of civilians in the Gaza Strip in the winter of 2008-2009, perhaps it is fair to say that the most substantial impact of the ISM’s work was on the volunteers themselves. The film briefly explores the variety of personal and political motives that brought Rachel Corrie and her colleagues to Palestine. Among them are untutored idealism and youthful naïveté (which they themselves acknowledge in retrospect). None of them were "experts" in the history of the conflict or fully understood the complexities of the Palestinian society into which they inserted themselves. But now they have learned a hard lesson: Anyone who gets in Israel’s way may be killed.
Crossing a Line
While Ghassan Andoni and some of the ISMers demonstrate some capacity for critical reflection about Rachel Corrie’s death, the official institutions of the Bay Area Jewish community were united in rejecting such reflection. The official Jewish institutions certainly were not ready to consider Jonathan Pollak’s climactic explanation for his willingness to host ISM volunteers in his home: "I could not live in this place without resisting, not merely verbally, but by action." Pollak, an Israeli Jew, has been injured several times by the Israeli army while demonstrating non-violently in Bil’in. A soldier shot him in the head with a tear gas canister in April 2005, causing two internal brain hemorrhages and a wound requiring 23 stitches. Since the Jewish institutions have not erupted in protest over equally provocative films in the past, perhaps their over-the-top reaction to the screening of Rachel was a form of circling the wagons after the widespread international condemnation of Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip.
The faceoff in the Bay Area Jewish community was initiated by an editorial in the Jewish weekly, J, which was particularly incensed that, since Simone Bitton was unavailable, Cindy Corrie would take questions after the screening. "Cindy Corrie’s appearance crosses a line," the J editors wrote. "The Jewish Film Festival is under no obligation to offer a microphone to Israel bashers." Suggesting that there are and ought to be "lines" marking the boundaries of "acceptable discourse" in the Jewish community, to use a term employed by the festival’s executive director Peter Stein at the screening, sounds suspiciously like the McCarthyite notion of "un-American activities." Why the elder Corrie was presumed to be an "Israel basher" the editors did not specify.
While J arrogated to itself the right to draw lines, the two leading Jewish charitable foundations in the Bay Area, Koret and Taube, pushed the panic button. The foundations attacked the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival for making "three egregious errors": First among them was "partnering with Jewish Voice for Peace and the American Friends Service Committee, two virulently anti-Israel, anti-Semitic groups that support boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel. Both are closely associated with the International Solidarity Movement and other groups that aid and abet terror against the Jewish state. These groups cross the line for inclusion in the Jewish community." Second was "to present a film that lays blame for the accidental death of a civilian at the door of the State of Israel." And third was to "invite Cindy Corrie into our community. This bereaved mother cannot help but have a negative bias toward Israel. Why would a Jewish organization hand her a microphone and a soapbox from which to condemn Israel as Jewish audiences are expected to sit and listen politely? There is no possible counterbalance to an emotional, grieving mother."
The foundations’ rhetoric is tendentious, at best. Jewish Voice for Peace forthrightly supports selective divestment, targeting US companies that aid Israeli occupation policies, and its members have been active in the effort to induce Caterpillar to stop selling Israel the bulldozers that knock down Palestinian residences in violation of international law. The organization does go further than many Jewish anti-occupation groups in refusing to condemn more expansive boycott and divestment campaigns. Its website is articulate on the point that such endeavors, and criticism of Israel generally, are not perforce anti-Semitic or even "anti-Israel." Jewish Voice for Peace has, indeed, published a book-length refutation of that canard, Reframing Anti-Semitism: Alternative Jewish Perspectives (2002). At the same time, the organization’s members insist on speaking out against the occupation as Jews, rather than merely as US citizens or defenders of human rights, precisely because (according to the website) "as Jews, we can make the distinction between real anti-Semitism and the cynical manipulation of that issue to shield Israel from legitimate criticism." The foundations’ attack on the venerable Quaker peace organization, AFSC, is similarly reliant on an untenable definition of "anti-Israel" that brooks no quibble with the Jewish state’s policies. And since two key staffers of AFSC’s Middle East program in San Francisco, including Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, are Jewish, the allegation of anti-Semitism is predicated upon the insipid idea that these Jews are "self-hating."
Is Cindy Corrie in the grip of "negative bias toward Israel" and its partisans in the United States? Judging by the YouTube video of her post-film discussion with Stein and the audience, no. Asked by Stein if she understood the vehement protests against her presence, she said she regarded them as part of a "very healthy discussion" within the Jewish community. She further remarked that members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), with whom she disagrees politically, "believe they’re doing good." Her comportment was consistent with the words of Rabbi Brian Walt, executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America: "If I were in [the Corries'] situation, I would imagine that the temptation to hate those who killed my daughter would be hard to resist…. Despite their daughter’s tragic death, the Corries have never spoken in a hateful way toward Israel or Jews. On the contrary, they are deeply committed to peace and to the security of all people in the conflict, Israelis and Palestinians." Indeed, the 1,200 people (mostly Jews) in the Castro Theater on July 25 seemed generally appreciative of Corrie’s remarks.
Nonetheless, the film festival organizers clearly felt the pressure mobilized by the official Jewish organizations. Five days before the festival began, board president Shana Penn resigned with five months left on a two-year term, citing "healthy differences on how to approach sensitive issues." (She will remain on the board.) In the end, the organizers allowed Michael Harris of San Francisco Voice for Israel (affiliated with the ultras of Stand With Us) to speak briefly before what he called "the Rachel Corrie hagiography" played on screen. His remarks are also on YouTube. Where Cindy Corrie was conciliatory, Harris was pugilistic, saying that Rachel "intentionally put herself in harm’s way," enumerating the names of suicide bombing victims who were doing nothing "more risky than riding a bus, or going to buy a slice of pizza or a cup of coffee" and even averring (to loud boos) that these deaths explained why the bulldozer that killed Rachel was operating in Gaza.
It is difficult to imagine that Jewish Voice for Peace or Simone Bitton would be invited to counter the presentation of a speaker from San Francisco Voice for Israel, or AIPAC, or the Israeli consulate. So were the Bay Area Jewish organizations really upset about lack of balance? The leading figures at J and the Koret and Taube Foundations certainly know that there is sharp debate among Israelis about the occupation, home demolitions and the morality of army actions, so were they really concerned with protecting the security of Israel? A more convincing hypothesis is that their outcry is about power. The official institutions of the Jewish community are built on a foundation of money (lots of it) and draw their strength from the two main pillars of American Jewish identity — Holocaust commemoration and unquestioning "support for Israel." Taking away one of these pillars would be an institutional disaster.
Although the furor over Rachel in the San Francisco Jewish community is a tempest in a teapot compared to the daily catastrophes suffered by the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, it does have some significance. It demonstrates as definitively as possible that the American Jewish community is deeply split on the question of Israel-Palestine. Public opinion polls suggest that the Koret and Taube Foundations represent the minority position in the community, certainly among Bay Area Jews. More and more American Jews find themselves attracted to the moral commitment that animates Rachel, and left cold by the tactics of pressure groups that spend so much money to shut down debate over Israel and its occupation policies. And that is why the pressure groups are beginning to fail.

Comment: Read also: Thou shalt not present the Truth! Documentary sparks uproar at Jewish film fest

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/191023-Rachel-Corrie-in-Palestine-and-in-San-Francisco

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