SIRATYST (Stuff I Read and Thought You Should Too) --
“To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”
(Calgacus, as quoted by Tacitus, Agricola 30-31)"
Before Neera Tanden can become Director of the Office of Management
and Budget, Senators must approve. And before that, they must ask
questions. Here are some suggestions for what they should ask.
1. You supported
an attack on Libya that proved fraudulently marketed, illegal, and
catastrophic in results, after which you argued in an email to your
colleagues for trying to force Libya to pay via oil profits for the
privilege of having been bombed. You wrote that this would be a good
solution to a U.S. budget deficit. One of your colleagues replied that
such a policy might create a financial incentive for attacking more
countries. What countries, if any, would you most favor attacking and
then billing for the service?
2. Reclaiming, thank you, reclaiming my time, what
criteria do you think one should use if one were to select the countries
most appropriate to attack and then bill for it?
3. You suggested in your email that the U.S. public
would better support future wars if the wars’ victims paid for them. You
hope to oversee a budget that is tipped more heavily toward militarism
than most, and possibly any, other national government on earth. A
majority of U.S. discretionary spending goes into militarism. You come
to the job from a think tank funded, in part, by weapons companies and
foreign dictatorships that do business with those weapons companies — a
think tank that has taken very weapons-friendly positions, even refusing
to oppose the war on Yemen. How does that qualify you to oversee the
sort of conversion to peaceful practices that will be required for
survival and prosperity?
4. You suggested in that same email that the
alternatives to making countries pay for being bombed would be to cut
Headstart or the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women,
Infants, and Children, or Medicaid. How do those alternatives make it
onto the list of possibilities, while reducing military spending does
not, reducing police and prison and border patrol and ICE and CIA and
NSA spending does not, taxing corporations does not, taxing billionaires
does not, taxing financial transactions does not, taxing carbon does
not?
5. You spent much of your nine years running a think
tank courting major corporate donors, and producing corporate-friendly
policies. You instructed your staff to check whether content might
offend big donors prior to publishing. You even censored major work
products to appease big donors, such as deleting a report chapter on New
York police abuse of Muslims after Michael Bloomberg chipped in over $1
million. You also censored criticism of the government of Israel and
gave a platform in Washington to its leader. You kept much of your think
tank’s funding secret, and the reasons why were pretty clear from what
became public. How does this qualify you to serve the public in an open
and transparent and representative government?
6. You’ve long advocated cutting Social Security,
one of the most successful and popular U.S. government programs ever. Is
that still your position, and why or why not?
7. You claim that you pushed, while observers say
you punched, a reporter for asking Hillary Clinton about her support for
the war on Iraq. Can you provide the Senate with guidelines for the
sort of questions to which the proper response is physical assault? Does
this question qualify? Do you, honestly, right now, want to punch me?
8. You have outraged numerous political opponents,
including members of both major political parties in this Senate. Much
of what you’ve already been asked about, we only know about because you
outraged your own employees. You once outed an anonymous victim of
sexual harassment, which shocked and outraged those involved. What
qualifies you as the best person to work harmoniously with every agency
in the U.S. government?
9. You sought to delegitimize the 2016 U.S.
presidential election, not with serious documented complaints, but with
baseless claims that the Russian government infiltrated and manipulated
the vote counting. Did you believe those claims? Do you believe them
now? Do you take any responsibility for the large numbers of other
people who believe them now?
10. What would be one example of a situation in which you would choose to become a whistleblower?
Twas the night before Christmas, And all through the States, Children were starving; no food on their plates. Facing eviction, families in despair, Waiting on Congress, who just didn't care. Leadership nestled snug in their beds, Only worried about pork for lobbyist friends.
from @PopularResistance description of the podcast linked above.
Miko Peled is an author, writer, speaker, and
human rights activist living in the United States. He is considered by
many to be one of the clearest voices calling for justice in Palestine,
support of the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
(BDS) and the creation of a single democracy with equal rights in all of
historic Palestine. Educated in Jerusalem, Japan and the United States,
Peled is also an accomplished professional martial artist. For 23
years, Peled ran a martial arts school that was dedicated to teaching
leadership skills and non-violent conflict resolution through martial
arts.
Miko is also a contributor to several online publications (Mint Press, The Electronic Intifada, Democracy Now, Mondoweiss), authors this blog (mikopeled.com), and produces The Miko Peled Podcast,
all of which he dedicated to advocating for the creation of one
democratic state with equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians. He
travels regularly to Palestine where he speaks and works with the
popular resistance, the BDS movement, and other justice groups. As a
result, he has been arrested several times by the Israeli authorities
for his activism.
The Justice Department is setting a dangerous precedent that threatens reporters — and the truth.
By Laura Poitras
Ms.
Poitras is a filmmaker and journalist who has reported extensively on
national security issues. She shared a Pulitzer Prize for public service
with The Guardian and The Washington Post for her reporting on the
N.S.A.’s mass surveillance program and is a founding board member of the
Freedom of the Press Foundation.
I
am guilty of violating the Espionage Act, Title 18, U.S. Code Sections
793 and 798. If charged and convicted, I could spend the rest of my life
in prison.
This is not a
hypothetical. Right now, the United States government is prosecuting a
publisher under the Espionage Act. The case could set a precedent that
would put me and countless other journalists in danger.
I
confess that I — alongside journalists at The Guardian, The Washington
Post and other news organizations — reported on and published highly
classified documents from the National Security Agency provided by the
whistle-blower Edward Snowden, revealing the government’s global mass surveillance programs. This reporting was widely recognized as a public service.
The Espionage Act
defines the unauthorized possession or publication of “national
defense” or classified information as a felony. The law was originally
enacted during World War I to prosecute “spies and saboteurs.” It does
not allow for a public interest defense, which means a jury is barred
from taking into account the difference between a whistle-blower
exposing government crimes to the press, and a spy selling state secrets
to a foreign government.
Before
Sept. 11, 2001, the Espionage Act was rarely used in the context of
journalism. The most notable exception is the case of Daniel Ellsberg,
who in 1971 was charged with violating the Espionage Act for providing
news organizations, including The Times,
with the Pentagon Papers. The charges against Mr. Ellsberg were dropped
when the illegal methods of the government’s evidence gathering —
breaking into his psychiatrist’s office and warrantless wiretapping —
were exposed.
All
this changed after Sept. 11, when the Espionage Act became a tool of
the government to selectively prosecute sources and whistle-blowers, and
to intimidate journalists and news organizations seeking to publish
reports that the government wanted to suppress.
During Barack Obama’s presidency alone, the Justice Department
prosecuted eight journalism-related Espionage Act cases against sources,
more leak prosecutions than all previous administrations combined.
Nicholas Kristof: A behind-the-scenes look at Nicholas Kristof’s gritty journalism, as he travels around the world.
One of the most alarming
abuses of the Espionage Act under President Obama was the case of
Stephen Kim, a State Department analyst who in 2010 was indicted under
the law for disclosing classified information to the Fox News journalist
James Rosen. In the Justice Department’s search warrant, Mr. Rosen is
described as a possible “co-conspirator.”
Mr. Rosen was ultimately not charged, but tragically Mr. Kim pleaded
guilty to one count of violating the Espionage Act and served 10 months
in prison. (I co-produced a film about the case.)
Despite
this escalation of prosecuting whistle-blowers and sources, the
government had never crossed the line to charging journalists or
publishers for receiving or releasing classified information — until
last year.
That was when the Justice
Department indicted Julian Assange, the founder and publisher of
WikiLeaks, with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act, on top of one
earlier count of conspiring to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
The
charges against Mr. Assange date back a decade, to when WikiLeaks, in
collaboration with The Guardian, The New York Times, Der Spiegel and
others, published the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, and subsequently partnered with The Guardian to publish State Department cables.
The indictment describes many activities conducted by news
organizations every day, including obtaining and publishing true
information of public interest, communication between a publisher and a
source, and using encryption tools.
I made a film about Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks called “Risk.” I filmed Mr. Assange for many years, and as the film shows, we had seriousdisagreements.
There are many reasons to be critical of Mr. Assange, and I have not
shied away from them. But we should be clear about what he is being
prosecuted for and the stakes for press freedom.
WikiLeaks’ publications exposed war crimes, revealed previously undisclosed civilian deaths in American-occupied Iraq, detailed government corruption in Tunisia on the eve of the Arab Spring, and generated countlessotherreports that dominated the front pages of newspapers around the world throughout 2010 and 2011.
WikiLeaks
was responsible for the most unvarnished reporting on American
occupations and foreign policy since the start of the “war on terror,”
and helped to shift the public consciousness.
None
of the architects of the “war on terror,” including the C.I.A.’s
torture programs, have been brought to justice. In contrast, Mr. Assange
is facing a possible sentence of up to 175 years in prison.
He
is detained at Belmarsh, a high-security prison in London, recently
under lockdown because of a coronavirus outbreak, and fighting
extradition to the United States. A British judge is expected to rule on
his extradition on Jan. 4. On Wednesday, 15 members of Britain’s Parliament issued a letter
to the secretary of state requesting to meet with Mr. Assange ahead of
the extradition decision, citing concerns of press freedom.
I
have experienced the chilling effect of the Espionage Act. When I was
in contact with Mr. Snowden, then an anonymous whistle-blower, I spoke
to one of the best First Amendment lawyers in the country. His response
was unnerving. He read the Espionage Act out loud and said it had never
been used against a journalist, but there is always a first time. He
added that I would be a good candidate because I am a documentary
filmmaker without the backing of a news organization.
It
is impossible to overstate the dangerous precedent Mr. Assange’s
indictment under the Espionage Act and possible extradition sets: Every
national security journalist who reports on classified information now
faces possible Espionage Act charges. It paves the way for the United
States government to indict other international journalists and
publishers. And it normalizes other countries’ prosecution of
journalists from the United States as spies.
To
reverse this dangerous precedent, the Justice Department should
immediately drop these charges and the president should pardon Mr.
Assange.
Since Sept. 11, this country
has witnessed an escalating criminalization of whistle-blowing and
journalism. If Mr. Assange’s case is allowed to go forward, he will be
the first, but not the last. If President-elect Joe Biden wants to
restore the “soul of America,” he should begin with unequivocally
safeguarding press freedoms under the First Amendment, and push Congress
to overturn the Espionage Ac
We demand that progressives in Congress refuse to vote for Nancy Pelosi until she pledges to bring Medicare for all to the floor of the House. Force the vote!
Sign the petition to keep Human Rights Defender Issa Amro from going to military prison. Call on the UN and EU to tell Israel to drop the baseless, politically motivated charges. Stand With Issa
Yannick Giovanni Marshall is an academic and scholar of African Studies.
Former
President Barack Obama speaks at a rally as he campaigns for Democratic
presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden on Monday,
November 2, 2020, at Turner Field in Atlanta [File:P/Brynn Anderson]
“If
you believe, as I do, that we should be able to reform the criminal
justice system so that it’s not biased and treats everybody fairly, I
guess you can use a snappy slogan, like ‘Defund the Police’, but, you
know, you lost a big audience the minute you say it.”
The quote above is taken from an interview the former United States
President Barack Obama gave to Snapchat show Good Luck America.
If there must be leaders – and leaders on fairness – they should not
be men who once presided over an imperialist state. There is no fairness
in drone strikes, deportations and detention, the attempted felling of
democratically-elected leaders or being the chief caretaker of colonial
land theft and the institutional violence that renders Indigenous and
Black populations at the greatest risk of succumbing to poverty and
police violence.
It is problematic for the former president to perform the role of
communication sage when his own sloganeering of “hope” and “change” did
not prove sufficient to meet the hopes for an end to torture and deaths
in custody. Or change in any satisfactory way discriminatory systems of
punishment and civil asset forfeiture. Or stymie the efforts of the
succeeding, less racial-equity-minded administration to resume a killing
spree on death row via the resumption of federal executions or the
deliberate mismanagement of a pandemic that disproportionately kills
non-white people.
Problematic, too, is associating activists’ articulation of a
programme to immediately divest from and incapacitate a classist and
historically anti-Black institution with a marketing strategy.
Far worse, however, is Obama’s work to reinforce the myth that
campaigns for Black survival must, first and foremost, work to present
themselves in the best light to invite wider society. Wider society is
the problem.
The
course of history is often changed by small groups of like-minded
people. The Combahee River Collective, the Black Panthers, MOVE, small
cells of enslaved people overthrowing the slave wagon en route to
transport them like cargo to a plantation. If these groups abandoned the
truth they felt in their bones, if they adjusted their message to
accommodate broader swaths of society they would not have been as
effective as they were.
The work of radical Black freedom is directed against dominant
society. What that society has been conditioned to find acceptable, what
it finds pleasing, what it finds warranted and the limits to what it
thinks is possible is our problem. We get to no satisfactory place by
conforming or drawing nearer to anti-Black society.
If all Black movements adjust their language as Obama suggests we
should, there would be no record of our truth, nor our fundamental and
passionate disagreement with the state of things. Unadulterated radical
Black imagining and voicings of a future free from anti-Blackness would
be erased from history. The only record we would have of our dissent is
sheepish pleadings to a racist society, sanded down to fit inoffensively
into fragile liberal ears.
There exists no audience that would be roused from the edges of their
seats by a clever, well-crafted motto. None who were not already
elbowing their way to the front lines of struggle as soon as they heard
about George Floyd, or Atatiana Jefferson or the Zong massacre. It is
not so much that our demands risk losing a big audience, as the big
audience window-shops our struggle. We have entirely too much faith in
the revolutionary will of those who respond to the ten-thousandth racist
murder with “it is so sad”.
Obama, himself, admitted that he was the kind of person who read
Frantz Fanon and Gwendolyn Brooks not for what they meant to our lives
but to pick up women. In this, he models the fleeting, parasitical
interest in the intellectual labour of Black radical thinkers that is
not always convertible to useful activism.
One wonders if Toni Morrison might have wriggled out of their
photographed embrace if she knew Obama may have sprayed the CliffsNotes
of her novels on himself like cheap cologne.
The
great white whale of support for Black lives will always prove elusive.
Polls have shown that the increase in support for the uprising against
racist killing is a chimera, vanishing almost as soon as it becomes
measurable. Those genuinely affected by George Floyd’s death in a
life-changing way are now radical and will not be turned away by what
may feel to some as a too-angry chant or too impractical demand.
Those, on the other hand, who were pushed by the swell of a crowd
forced to sit and watch an eight minute and 46-second killing so nakedly
discriminatory it debilitated, for a moment, their go-to excuses of
“bad apples” and see-through calls for retraining, are now relievedly
ebbing away with that crowd back to their settled places of faith in
“America, the fundamentally good”. To devote one’s talents to the work
of getting them back is a fool’s errand.
Instead of appealing to the people who can always stomach a bit more
anti-Black state violence, it may be better to rally those who have had
enough. Those who are not moved due to the efficacy of slogans but by
their disgust with institutionalised and constantly legitimated white
supremacist violence.
Liberal support is not indispensable to the cause of Black freedom.
In fact, liberalism is one of the most effective tools in keeping Black
liberation at bay. It glorifies waiting peacefully for justice. Not even
dogs are asked to sit during their abuse.
And it is liberals Obama has in mind when he speaks about a potential
audience. As a man who has had his effigy lynched and is called an
American-hating terrorist more than any person alive, he knows better
than most that conservatives do not come around no matter how much
deference is shown, how many times magnanimity is performed, or how many
times a Black hand reaches across to “the other side”.
Maybe slogans designed to save our lives should not be designed,
primarily, for others. Maybe direct and forthright statements have
longer longevity, provide better comfort and inspiration to those they
are intended to serve than the ones watered down to please an audience
ambivalent on the question of justice.
The
black glove-fisted chants of “Black Power” may, in the end, prove to
have done more good for the cause of freedom than “keep hope alive”.
Maybe #landback addresses a specific injury, agitates for material
reparations, and is a necessary cutting through the colonising culture
that trained its young to sing “this land is your land, this land is my
land”.
The bugle has sounded but the liberal reinforcements are not coming.
Instead, they have pretty much carried on with their lives save the
occasional nod to the phrase “the country is going through a racial
reckoning”. A phrase that suggests the demand for “accountability” is
the equal and opposite reaction to a hemisphere’s half a millennium of
anti-Black asphyxiation.
It is not clear how we would arrive at a criminal justice system that
treats everybody fairly in a country where half of the electorate voted
for the re-election of a white supremacist administration. Some of
these 73 million are senators, wardens, police union presidents,
security guards, judges and correctional officers. It is no more likely
that they are interested in an equitable society than yesterday’s
segregationists and confederates whose monuments they fight to preserve.
Revolutionaries, when they are white, are held up as models by
politicians like Obama. Even when their “snappy slogans” are a good deal
more aggressive, polarising and threatening than “Defund the Police”.
Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death!” was likely not
warmly received by British loyalists and yet he is praised.
Certainly, the Black people he enslaved and had whipped had just as
much right to be just as forceful. Certainly, the protest against the
“general warrant” that gave British colonial administrators the right to
rampage through settler homes can also be adopted by Black people
against the institution these settlers birthed. The one which broke down
Breonna Taylor’s door and shot. The one which gropes teenagers against
cars and stops and searches the vehicles of Black people who seem to be
addicted to having their tail lights out.
Obama’s implication that substantial change only comes about after a
door-knocking campaign and recruitment from those who have shown a
passing interest in Black survival is not supported by historical
evidence. It is a nationalist myth. One that shouts we are in this
together as one American people instead of bearing witness to society as
it is: a concatenation of local struggles, warring classes and
interests, historical patterns of discrimination, and an entrenched and
popular disinterest in justice for Black people.
The
liberals are not coming. Their war horses will never leave the stable
no matter how flowery the invitation. We would do well to stop listening
to Obama and get on with the business of uncompromising struggle for
freedom.
"Whoever speaks of “crisis” today risks being dismissed as a bloviator, given the term’s banalization through endless loose talk. But there is a precise sense in which we do face a crisis today. If we characterize it precisely and identify its distinctive dynamics, we can better determine what is needed to resolve it. On that basis, too, we might glimpse a path that leads beyond the current impasse—through political realignment to societal transformation.?
Even if one views these predictions as too ... cynical, the initial questions remains, but can be rephrased as an appeal for clarity among climate progressives:
Will the Sunrise Movement, Bill McKibben, and Eric Holthaus reject any policy that provides more net money and resources to ICE and Border patrol?
Will the Sunrise Movement, Bill McKibben and Eric Holthaus reject any policy that provides more net monies to the Pentagon?
I’d love to get an answer to these two questions — sincerely. The militarization of our climate response compels clarity on these issues before it’s too late.
[INCLUDES VIDEO: "Allegations of anti-Semitism, a damning report by the EHRC and ultimately suspension: how the British political establishment, mainstream media and Zionist lobby ran a targeted smear campaign against former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the leftist wing of the party."
“Since 1945, the U.S. has a history of imposing conflicts on other
places,” says renowned Indian historian and journalist Vijay Prashad. “I
don’t like terms like Vietnam War, Iraq War—these are very ideological
ways of understanding history. No, these are U.S.-imposed wars on the
Vietnamese and Iraqi people.”
For today’s show, Allen reflects on the history of post-WWII U.S. imperialism with Vijay Prashad and discusses his new book, Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations.
“One of the more far-reaching is that that
favorite question of American social scientists — whether race or class
‘variables’ better explain “American reality” — is a false one. Class
and race are concepts of a different order; they do not occupy the same
analytical space, and thus cannot constitute explanatory alternatives to
each other. At its core, class refers to a material circumstance: the
inequality of human beings from the standpoint of social power. Even the
rather diffuse definitions of applied social science — occupation,
income, status — reflect this circumstance, though dimly. The more
rigorous Marxian definition involving social relations of production
reflects it directly. Of course, the objective core of class is always
mediated by ideology, which is the refraction of objective reality in
human consciousness. No historical account of class is complete or
satisfying that omits the ideological mediations…. Race, on the other
hand, is a purely ideological notion. Once ideology is stripped away,
nothing remains except an abstraction which, while meaningful to a
statistician, could scarcely have inspired all the mischief that race
has caused during its malevolent historical career. The material
circumstance upon which the concept purports to rest — the biological
inequality of human beings — is spurious: there is only one human
species, and the most dramatic differences of appearance can be wiped
out in one act of miscegenation. The very diversity and arbitrariness of
the physical rules governing racial classification prove that the
physical emblems which symbolize race are not the foundation upon which
race arises as a category of social thought.”
Former US President Barack Obama has sparked an anti-war
backlash after saying in his new memoir he “took no joy” in ordering
deadly drone strikes, reasoning that his administration “couldn't afford
to look soft on terrorism.”
The ex-president’s new
book ‘A Promised Land’ sheds some light on the Obama administration’s
controversial expansion of the US drone program, which was launched
under his predecessor George W. Bush.
One of Obama’s original
campaign promises was for US withdrawal from middle-eastern conflicts.
However, that promise was not fulfilled during his eight years in
office, and the Democrat is now often accused of having further
escalated violence in the region through his policies in Libya, Syria,
and elsewhere.
In excerpts from the memoir published by Business Insider, Obama claims that his first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was “obsessed” with the administration’s infamous terrorist “kill list.” Rahm had “spent enough time in Washington to know that his new, liberal president couldn't afford to look soft on terrorism,” Obama writes.
Despite his willingness to ramp up the drone program, Obama confessed he “took no joy in any of this” and that it did not make him feel “powerful.” However, he adds that the work was “necessary” and that it was his responsibility “to make sure our operations were as effective as possible.”
However,
the liberal political icon’s anti-war critics don’t typically argue
that the drone program was ineffective, rather that it was more often
than not imprecise, killing many civilians in the process. The ‘Drone
Papers’ leak in 2015 revealed that, at least during one period, 90
percent of US drone strike victims were“not the intended targets.”
Obama infamously joked about the supposedly joyless drone strikes
during a well-remembered White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2010.
The then-president jokingly threatened boyband the Jonas Brothers with
assassination should they make a move on one of his daughters. “Boys, don't get any ideas,” he said, “I have two words for you: predator drones.”
It did not take long for Obama’s critics to express their outrage over the new book excerpt. He was accused of being “Machiavellian” for signing off on drone strikes “for optics.” Others were appalled by the idea that he would kill “to look tough.”
“I'm sure [his comments] makes the families of innocent civilian casualties feel better,” another person wrote.
One person quipped that he had only “pretended to be into drone assassinations” so he would “have something to talk about with the generals.”
"Fascism seems to have risen up zombie-like from the past, but
philosopher and political theorist Gabriel Rockhill argues that it's
been with us all along.
Today on the show, Allen traces a
counter-history of fascism—including its relationships to liberalism,
capitalism, and colonialism and how we understand/misunderstand its role
in the U.S.—with Gabriel Rockhill.
Gabriel Rockhill is a
professor of philosophy at Villanova University and the founding
director of the Critical Theory Workshop (Atelier de Théorie Critique).
He is the author or editor of nine books, including Radical History and
the Politics of Art (Columbia University Press, 2014), Interventions in
Contemporary Thought: History, Politics, Aesthetics (Edinburgh
University Press, 2016), Counter-History of the Present: Untimely
Interrogations into Globalization, Technology, Democracy (Duke
University Press, 2017). He recently published a series of articles
about fascism in Counterpunch and Black Agenda Report."
Excerpt (as an independent Marxist, I found this essay very inspiring):
Dixi et salvavi animam meam. With these Latin words Karl Marx concludes his Critique of the Gotha Program (1875) – “I have spoken and saved my soul.” One is unaccustomed to religious expression from the great communist, unless it be sarcastic, yet here he uses it to conclude a devastating analysis of the program of German workers party. What is Marx’s soul? How did he save it? And what about ours?
"If Biden has, in fact, received so
many more votes, why is the CNN-led media flock in such a hurry to
declare him the winner? Is it the media’s job to decide the winner in a
democracy? How will Trump and his sympathisers, about half of the people, react to what they must see as a provocation?
Why is Biden also offering no hope for the US itself and the world? How to explain this utterly strange happening and where will the US be in January 2021?
Robert Fisk was best known for his coverage of the Middle East, where he began reporting from in the 1970s
Veteran foreign correspondent Robert Fisk has died of a suspected stroke at the age of 74.
He
had been admitted to St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin after falling ill
at his home on Friday, and died shortly afterwards, the Irish Times
reported.
Fisk won numerous awards for his reporting on the Middle East, starting from the 1970s.
But he also drew controversy for his sharp criticism of the US and Israel, and of Western foreign policy.
Covering wars in the Balkans, Middle East and North Africa for UK newspapers over five decades, Fisk was described by the New York Times, in 2005, as "probably the most famous foreign correspondent in Britain".
Born in Maidstone, Kent in 1946, he later took Irish citizenship and had a home in Dalkey outside the capital Dublin.
Irish President Michael D Higgins has expressed his "great sadness" about Fisk's death on Sunday.
"With his passing the world of journalism and informed commentary on the Middle East has lost one of its finest commentators," he said in a statement.
After
starting his career at the Sunday Express, Fisk moved to Belfast in
1972 to cover the Troubles as Northern Ireland correspondent for the
Times. He became the paper's Middle East correspondent in 1976.
Based
in Beirut, he reported on the civil war in Lebanon, as well as the
Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the
Iran-Iraq War.
He
resigned from the Times in 1989 after a dispute with the owner Rupert
Murdoch and moved to the Independent, where he worked for the remainder
of his career.
In
the 1990s he interviewed Osama Bin Laden three times for the paper. He
described him as a "shy man" and looking "every inch the mountain
warrior of mujahedin legend" in their first interview in 1993.
'Gutsy and admired'
Robert
Fisk was brave and controversial. He was a brilliant writer, who did
his best work in wars, transporting readers to his side in some burning
village. He relished making enemies, especially if they defended US or
Israeli activities in the Middle East.
Fisk
could be obsessive. He collected bits of shrapnel, often American made
and fired by Israel, so he could use serial numbers to trace their
origins.
When
I visited Beirut from Jerusalem in the 1990s he served me gin and
tonics on his balcony overlooking the Mediterranean in a Yasser Arafat
souvenir glass. Robert was old school. He poked fun at the flak jacket I
brought to Lebanon from the former Yugoslavia, sniffing it to check for
slivovitza plum brandy.
Journalism
can be a dog-eat-dog trade. Fisk's colleagues were not always kind
about his work. I was an admirer, eating up his vivid reportage from
Beirut when I was at school, and was awestruck when first I met him.
I'll miss Robert, his guts and his appetite for the fight, even though
usually he followed a warm hello with some crack about the evils of
television news or the BBC.
After
the 11 September attacks plotted by Bin Laden, Fisk, an Arabic speaker,
spent the next two decades covering conflicts throughout the Middle
East, including in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
He
was highly regarded for his knowledge of, and deep experience in, the
region, and often dismissed journalists who sat behind desks instead of
venturing out into the field.
But
he also drew criticism for his attacks on Western policy in the Middle
East and was accused of being lenient towards the Syrian government in
his reporting of the country's long and brutal civil war.
Articles
by Fisk about the US and Israel were often considered highly
controversial. He said the Trump administration's acceptance in 2019 of
Israel's annexation of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights showed Israel had effectively annexed the US, and repeatedly accused Israel of committing war crimes against the Palestinians.
In 2011 Fisk was forced to apologise
after the Independent was successfully sued by the then-Saudi interior
minister over a report that alleged the minister had ordered police to
shoot and kill unarmed protesters, based on a document which turned out
to be fake.
Fisk married US journalist Lara Marlowe in 1994 but the pair divorced in 2006. He had no children.
The good news is that this can be done while at the same time
accomplishing our goals of ending poverty and improving human
well-being. Indeed, this is the core principle of degrowth. Recent
research has found that we can ensure good lives for all – for a global
population of 10 billion people by 2050 – with 60 per cent less energy than we presently use. Another study found that high-income nations could cut their material use by up to 80 per cent, while still providing for everyone’s needs at a high standard.
How do we get there? Scale down ecologically destructive and socially
less necessary production (SUVs, McMansions, industrial beef, food
waste, planned obsolescence, advertising, etc); shorten the working week
and introduce a public job guarantee, with a living wage, to maintain
full employment and mobilize labour for the transition; decommodify
public goods, disaccumulate capital, and distribute income more fairly.
All of these policies have significant public support. I describe
feasible pathways toward this end in Chapter 5 of Less is More (or see here for
a post-Keynesian approach). Doing this would enable us to accomplish a
rapid transition to renewables, in a matter of years, not decades.
In other words, we cannot reverse ecological breakdown while at the same time pursuing growth; but we can reverse
ecological breakdown while at the same time ensuring flourishing lives
for all. That’s the story we need to be telling. That is where hope
lies.
This week, people are planning protests across the nation beginning
the day after the election. Some, like Democratic Party-aligned groups
and unions, will only demonstrate if President Trump loses and refuses
to leave office. Trump will fail if he tries because the ruling class
has clearly shifted its support to Biden. Professor Adrienne Pine explains this in her analysis of the opposition to Trump. Others such as issues-based groups, coalitions and community groups are planning to take the streets no matter what the outcome of the election is.
This is good news because a mass mobilization of left and progressive
groups is needed to change the rightward direction in which the United
States is headed. Michael J. Smith’s explanation
of the “ratchet effect” describes the roles both Republicans and
Democrats have played in moving our politics in that direction since
1968. In a nutshell, each time the Republicans moved to the right, the
Democrats followed with the excuse that it’s necessary to win votes.
This locks in the rightward motion, opening space for Republicans to
move to the rightward again.
But Smith also writes, “the Democratic Party has assumed the
role of ensuring that the countervailing pressure from the Left doesn’t
happen. The party contains and neutralizes the Left, or what there is of
it. Left voters are supposed to support the Democrat, come what may.”
This is one of the reasons why the expression “the Democratic Party is
the graveyard of social movements” exists. How do we counteract that?
In a recent episode of Eleanor Goldfield’s series, Deception 2020, she and Eugene Puryear discuss
why the trope of “this is the most important election ever” is recycled
in every presidential election. It serves as a great distractor that
puts the focus on personalities rather than the broader social context
of where we are. It pits Republican and Democratic voters against each
other while the ruling class plays both sides, putting the most money on
the one that has the best chance of winning. The people hold their
noses and vote for whomever they consider to be the lesser evil while
the wealthy class knows their interests will be served no matter who
wins.
The year 2020 has brought into clear focus that we are living in a
failed state and can’t afford to be drawn into this distraction. The
number of new COVID-19 cases surpassed 100,000 in one day. The recession
is likely to deepen into a prolonged depression due to Congress’
failure to provide supports for families and their businesses and farms.
The climate crisis is raging. And structural racist violence goes on in
all of its forms while the Pentagon continues its insatiable
consumption of the federal budget leaving austerity for the rest of us
Instead of being caught up in this “political ping pong”, as Kevin
Zeese would call it, we need to focus on these grave issues before us. I
learned some lessons to avoid this ping pong during my involvement with
the health reform process in 2009-10 when we were advocating for
national improved Medicare for all while the Democrats were pushing
their version of a healthcare bill that protected the profits of the
health insurers, pharmaceutical companies and big businesses.
The lesson is best summarized using the acronym “ICU.” Think of it as
what is needed, especially in a time of crisis. The “I” stands for
independent. It is important not to tie our issue to the agenda of a
political party but to maintain independence from them while we press
for what we need, lest our struggle be co-opted. The “C” stands for
clarity, meaning we must be clear about what we are demanding. Members
of the corporate duopoly will always try to water our demands down with
proposals that may sound positive but are less than what we need. Look
at the Democrat’s Green New Deal as a current example that protects the
dirty energy industries and is too little, too late. And the “U” stands
for uncompromising. The ruling class will always tell us we are asking
for too much but we can’t compromise on fundamentals such as health
care, housing, education, financial security and an end to violence
against us. These are universal basic needs that nobody should be
denied.
With this 2020 vision, we can mobilize a broad movement that puts
forth a bold agenda of what we need and fights for it, no matter who is
elected. This is how we reverse the ratchet effect. We can look to Chile
as a recent example of a people succeeding in their struggle to reverse
the ravages of neoliberalism. Patricio Zamorano describes
how a similar situation to what we face, great inequality and
injustice, drove people to mobilize despite severe repression and win
the right to remake their Constitution.
Jeff Bachner/New York Daily News.
Violence on the rise
One reality we must prepare for is the continued rise in right wing
violence no matter who wins the election. If Trump wins and people
continue to struggle to end the injustices we face, right wing
extremists will be emboldened by a president who encourages them. If
Biden wins, they will be angered at what they view as a threat to the
gains they have made and may lash out.
In light of this, communities need to organize to be vigilant to what
is happening around them and to be proactive in creating structures
that provide safety and mutual aid, particularly for those who are most
vulnerable.
We live in an era of great polarization.
This is expected because it goes hand in hand with great inequality and
it often precedes moments of social transformation. Think of it as
heightening the contradictions and forcing a choice. Who are we and how
do we want our society to be?
George Lakey puts the polarization
into historical context. Almost one hundred years ago, when extreme
polarization existed in Europe, some countries moved to fascist
dictatorships while others moved to socialized democracies. The
difference was how the people organized and mobilized. Lakey suggests a
road map.
If people who consider themselves left or progressive fail to
organize and mobilize, we may go the way of a fascist dictatorship no
matter who wins this presidential election. If Trump wins, he may do
what others have done by trying to further consolidate his power into an
authoritarian state. If Biden wins, and he continues the neoliberal and
repressive policies that have marked his 47 years in elected office,
then the conditions will be created in 2024 or beyond for another
Democratic Party loss and an opening for a right wing leader who is more
effective than Trump at consolidating power.
Either way we must mobilize and protect our rights. While most of our
organizing will take place outside the electoral system because that is
where we have power, it will also be necessary to focus on preserving
whatever democratic rights exist and strengthening them.
Common Cause NY.
Protecting and improving the election process
As flawed as the electoral process in the United States is, it is the
system we currently have. Fair election and third party activists have
been working to change it for decades. Now, as it is on so many issues,
the major problems with that system – voter suppression, lack of
transparency and the process for choosing a president – are more
evident.
While the United States has never been a democracy, in fact a look at
the founding of the country shows the ruling class who wrote the
Constitution were afraid of it, the people believe in democracy.
Focusing on democratic rights in this election will bring people
together and build momentum to change the system.
Focusing on what President Trump says is a distraction. Recall that Trump was also saying that
he would not commit to accepting the outcome in the lead up to the 2016
election. The Democrats and the groups aligned with them are amplifying
fears to drive voter turn out, and it seems to be working. The latest Gallup Poll finds
almost 70% of registered voters are enthusiastic about the election,
which is an increase from the 50% who were enthusiastic in 2016 and
similar to 2008 levels. This is highest among registered Democrats.
Five Thirty Eight predicts
that due to the electoral process in a few states, for example
Pennsylvania is not allowed to start counting mail-in ballots until
Tuesday, and the way the states are looking right now, neither of the
major party candidates could reach the required 270 electoral votes on
election night. It could take a few days.
This is not cause for panic. Instead, let’s take a collective deep
breath and watch for problems with the process in our states.
Documenting these can be used to challenge and improve the process for
the next round. Already, people have been challenging the election process with more than 300 lawsuits filed in 44 states.
There is a small chance that President Trump will be re-elected. If
that happens, it will be critical to respect that result. To reject an
outcome of the election process we have opens the door to a breakdown of
that system and a vacuum that could threaten the hope of building more
democratic structures.
Remember, no matter what happens on November 3, our struggle goes on.
It is a long term struggle against deeply entrenched structures of
racism, capitalism, colonialism and imperialism that will have successes
and failures. Our best chance for a better future is to keep our eye on
the world we hope to create and keep working toward that goal.
PressTV’s
motto is to give “voice to the voiceless” and so we have given priority
to non-mainstream political groups during our coverage of the US
presidential election. We have spoken with socialists, Greens,
Libertarians and more, but the Democratic Socialists of America -
perhaps best exemplified by failed presidential candidate Bernie Sanders
- has openly blacklisted Iranian media.
After repeated requests, the Chicago chapter of DSA wrote to Press TV
that, “The officers of our organization have decided that it would not
serve our interests to do an interview.”
This caused PressTV management to contact DSA’s headquarters in New
York City to confirm if this allegedly-leftist political group was
really enforcing a blacklist on the entire media of an
internationally-recognized nation. As expected, no response was given,
so - crucially - no denial either.
It is a disheartening policy for a group which openly promises that -
if elected in greater numbers - their members will push the Democratic
Party and thus the entire nation to an unprecedentedly progressive left.
Take, for example, their most prominent member, Representative
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She said as recently as September, "I think,
overall, we can likely push Vice-President Biden in a more progressive
direction across policy issues. I think foreign policy is an enormous
area where we can improve; immigration is another one.”
That begs obvious questions: How can DSA officials from the national
down to the local level make US foreign policy more progressive if they
refuse to talk to foreigners and their representatives? Should DSA
members get elected or be appointed to public office, their members are
willfully ignorant of foreign viewpoints.
Just as worrying regarding the quality of the public service they
will provide, DSA cadres are being trained to use a unilateral approach
when dealing with non-Americans. Lastly, how authentic and patriotic is
DSA if they are not reflecting the values which the average American
seems to champion, such as the freedom of the press?
While Americans are days away from voting in their election, Iran’s next presidential election is in June.
It appears critical for Iranian voters to consider that if DSA - the
allegedly-leftist wing of the Democratic Party - refuses to engage in
normal cooperation with friendly Iranian media, then what is the
likelihood that such people are going to truly push Washington’s Iran
policy in a more open and progressive direction?
So even if Democrats win next week, DSA’s blacklist raises the
question: How could a Joe Biden presidency drastically alleviate the
US-led sanction war on Iran?
The Democratic Socialists of America should immediately reform their
wrongly-guided decision to blacklist Iranian media. Refusal to do so
would be an extremely belligerent policy which only helps to lay the
groundwork for ignorance, murderous sanctions, war and
anti-internationalism, and by a group which claims to be "Democratic"
and “Socialist.”
Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:
![Former President Barack Obama speaks at a rally as he campaigns for Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden on Monday, November 2, 2020, at Turner Field in Atlanta [File: AP/Brynn Anderson]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/AP_20307723037596.jpg?resize=770%2C513)
