Bulletin N° 213
Subject : ON WORLD CLASS
STRUGGLE: FROM THE CENTER FOR THE ADVANCED STUDY OF AMERICAN
INSTITUTIONS AND
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS,
16 November 2005
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
We have received many articles from readers expressing their hopes (and
anxieties) concerning the evolution of democracy in the
Eventually, an international social class consciousness is likely to
take
shape, despite new levels of repression. As individuals find themselves
compelled to acknowledge their genuine needs, to confront their own
disappointments and seek a better understanding of the nature of those
forces
that would prevent them from realizing their legitimate desires, they
will find
strength by organizing around their social class interests instead of
continuing to compete individually for small favors and commodities
handed out
for "good behavior".
Resistance in
We can look forward to more propaganda and more psychological warfare
aimed at
dissolving this emerging class consciousness before it blossoms into a
full
blown democratic movement and becomes a real threat to entrenched
capitalist
interests. One voice representing these capitalist interests at the
time of the
Vietnam War was recorded on audio tape, when President Richard Nixon
instructed
his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger :
This forthright imperialist declaration of war against humanity by
a
United States President is an illustration of one current of American
political
tradition. It is part of the Euro-American imperialist heritage, which
sustains
the Bush/Cheney cabal to this day, with strategic collaboration by the
media.
On the other hand, representing an anti-imperialist element in western
tradition, the international socialist professor of history, Eric Hobsbawm, concludes his book, The
Age of Extremes, with the following observation :
The international conflicts we see today represent a continuous,
but
highly accelerated, episode in the historic struggles for democratic
control
over the political economies of institutions that govern every aspect
of
our
lives. Periodically, throughout history, the intensity of conflicts
during
confrontations, such as wars, labor strikes, or mass demonstrations,
has laid
bare some of the political and economic contradictions which served to
alienate
working people from one another and from the centers of power.
CEIMSA associates, by
sending us articles and their essays, continue to
support
our efforts to understand WHY we now find ourselves at this historical
conjuncture, and WHAT we might do to improve our lives and the
environment in
which we live.
Below are nine communications recently received by CEIMSA
which shed
light on the process of social-movement formations today that are
linking
ordinary American citizens to the rest of the world.
By engaging in activities that would disarm their common sources of
oppression,
the scholars and students associated with CEIMSA have given formal
recognition
to the existence of a world class struggle. Their intellectual
commitment to
"science for the people" is a necessary element in this struggle for
participatory democracy and economic equality.
Item A. is an article from
Item B. is an interview with Dahr
Jamail, by "Unknown News" editor, Don Nash,
who asks him "ten questions on
Item C. is a brief report form
Kathleen Allee in
Item D. is a
article describing FBI spying on
Item E. is an international
perspective
of the Bush-II administration from
Item F. is an article sent to
us by our
research associate, Michael Parenti
(author of Democracy
for the Few), on the political history of the Supreme Court, lest
we
forget. . . .
Item G. is an article by
Howard Zinn, (author of Voices
of a People's History of the United States)who
also warns us not to expect much from the Supreme Court : as the stakes
rise,
the Supreme Court Justices could always be counted on to protect
privilege and
wealth against the interests of the people.
Item H. is Professor Noam
Chomsky's analysis of the October attack on his work by the London Guardian,
and what lessons can be learned from the dishonesty, which now
threatens
the reputation of this "progressive" paper.
And finally,
Sincerely,
Francis McCollum Feeley
Professor of American Studies/
Director of Research
Universsité Stendhal-Grenoble
III
http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/
_____________
A.
from Jay Arena :
12 November 2005
The
This war abroad, as some sections of the
The Bi-Partisan Neoliberal Assault on
Public
Housing
In the early 1980s
Ethnic and Class Cleansing: The Case of the St. Thomas Housing
Development
The location of the pre-hurricane demolished housing developments is
important
for understanding the destruction Katrina heaped on poor families. For
example,
the now-destroyed St. Thomas development, which at one time had been
home to
over 1,500 Black, and some white, working class families, was located
along the
riverfront, where flooding did not occur or quickly receded. In the
late 1990s,
after a decade long effort, local and federal officials demolished the
In contrast to the misery faced by most of the former Black working
class
residents removed from the area, influential white businessmen
prospered. For
example, real estate tycoons like Pres Kabacoff
and
Joe Canizaro--both of whom Mayor Ray Nagin has appointed to the Rebuild New Orleans
Commission--made millions through the ethnic and class cleansing of the
area. In addition, community activist Barbara Major, a close
associate of
Joseph Canizaro who helped facilitate and
legitimate
In contrast to the "winners," only a handful of residents have been
able to return to the renamed, privatized, "
The "public-private partnership" that oversaw the
What will happen to the residents at these former developments, you
might ask?
Well, HUD secretary Jackson reassured
people that
"We will be involvedIf they want to go
back
home, we will do everything in our power to make sure they are
comfortable."
Yet, he added that most people, after staying away for over six months,
will
not want to come back. Adonis Expose, communications director of the
Housing
Authority of
Iberville Housing Development: Katrina as Pretext for Seizing Prime
Real
Estate
The policy of refusing re-entry to homes is particularly criminal
in the
case of the Iberville housing development, where floodwaters did not
enter
apartments. HANO is not allowing the over 600 Black working class
families that
resided at Iberville, which sits next to the French Quarter, from
moving back
into their homes. The official explanation is that soil and other
environmental
tests must first be undertaken to guarantee safety--yet this "concern"
is only raised with regard to public housing residents. No timetable is
given
for when tests will be completed.
Timothy Ryan, a pro-business economist and University of New Orleans
chancellor, in another brief instance of public candidness by local
elites,
pointed to the real motives behind blocking re-entry of Black working
class
families to the development: "[Iberville] has retarded French Quarter
development for 30 years", he bemoaned [NB: Housing authority officials
began desegregation of the-then all white development beginning only in
1965].
The good professor proffered "taking Iberville and mak[ing] it a retirement community" as a
"solution" to the (Black working class) "problem."
More Neoliberal Air Strikes Launched
Against
Education, Health, Civil Liberties
The over 60,000 students that attended New Orleans public schools
before
Katrina came primarily from Black working class families. As with
public
housing, public education had faced a barrage of attacks from business
and
government officials. For example, over the last several years the New
Orleans
school board have instituted rules--such as not posting important
agenda items
until just before meetings start-- to make it much more difficult for
parents
and other members of the public to give input at school board meetings.
To
further stifle debate, the local press and school board members, such
as James Fahrenholz, have vilified
courageous local activists, such
as Assata Olugbala,
who
consistently speak out at board meetings. In addition,
semi-privatized
charter schools, often with pressure from the state department of
education,
have been imposed. Finally, this summer the State legislature and Board
of
Education, along with local school board "reformers", hired a private
management "turnaround" firm, Alvarez
& Marsal, to manage the district. This
outfit was
previously used in
Under cover of the disaster, Alvarez and Marsal,
with
full support from local and state officials, are systematically
dismantling the
school system. First to go were teachers and support staff, who were
all
laid-off indefinitely, and their union contracts ripped up. Next, local
and
state school officials announced that schools opened on the non-flooded
west
bank of
On the east bank of
The same pattern of using the hurricane to deepen the neoliberal
agenda is evident in the health care arena. Since taking office two
years ago
Governor Blanco has decimated the public Charity hospital system
budget, partly
by allowing private nursing homes and hospitals to raid the state's
Medicaid
allotment. As a result, the state closed or reduced vital
services, such
as the walk-in clinics, over the last several years. Now, State
officials
plan to permanently close
To manage the discontent these cuts inevitably generate the government
is
beefing up its repressive forces. Wherever working class people go for
help in
the
Join the Working Class Fightback!:
The racist, anti-working class agenda being pursed by the ruling
class is
not going unchallenged. Local social justice activists, some of whom
have the
spent decades on the front lines in New Orleans fighting for economic
justice
and social equality are currently involved in ongoing struggles in the
Greater
New Orleans area to stop unfair evictions, reopen public housing,
schools, and
secure alternative housing for storm victims. They recognize that
it will
take a national movement to stop the post-Katrina offensive against
affordable
housing, public healthcare, public education and police repression now
besieging the community. Yet, they also realize that this
struggle must
incorporate the people of
In contrast to the neoliberal agenda,
activists in
New Orleans-based grassroots groups, such as the anti-war, pro-public
housing
group C3/ Hands Off Iberville, are proposing a pro-working class,
anti-racist
reconstruction plan that demands:
" No to ethnic and class cleansing-a pro-worker and African-American
friendly environment, affordable public and private housing, universal
healthcare, a mass public works rebuilding program that pays a living
wage, an
end to police brutality in our community.
" We call for financing this through, one,
taxing
the oil companies---$1 tax for every $1 price increase since the run up
the
These activists, argue that "the utter failure of all levels of
government
to look after the most basic needs of the working class and the
African-Americans of the
For more information on how you an support this effort call
C3/Hands
Off Iberville representative Mike Howells at 504-587-0080 or the
author,
Jay Arena at 504-520-9521 or email him at jarena@tulane.edu.
-------------------------
Jay Arena is PhD student in
the
Department of Sociology at
_____________
B.
from Don Nash :
http://www.unknownnews.org/
Nov. 4, 2005
10
Questions and Answers about
(Dahr Jamail
Interviewed by *Don Nash*/, /Unknown News/)
*Q.* /What does
Most of
The security situation is more accurately described as a brutal,
guerrilla war which spiraled out of control over a year ago. Attacks on
US forces even now average over 70 per day, and are expected to increase
in coming months.
The myth that the
just that-a myth. Even the heavily fortified "Green Zone" is mortared
on
a regular basis. If one wishes to fly in or out of
necessary for also over a year due to the inability of the military to
safeguard the area around the airport. Like in
shot down if they don't use the spiral method of taking off/landing.
The infrastructure is in shambles. For most of the western companies who
were awarded the no-bid cost-plus contracts in
contract -- guaranteed profits with no oversight. Companies like Bechtel
have been paid out in full for their initial contract worth $680 million
and awarded contracts totaling over $3.8 Billion, despite the fact that
many of their projects in their initial contract were not even begun.
Meanwhile, Iraqis suffer and die from waterborne diseases, child
malnutrition is worse than during the sanctions, and there is over 70%
unemployment.
*Q.* /How do the Iraqi people feel overall about the U.S. occupation?/
According to *a recent poll*
<
http://www.unknownnews.org/0510281023Iraquispolled.html>
commissioned
by the British military, 82% of Iraqis want all occupation forces
removed from their country, less than 1% feel occupation forces have
improved security, and 45% openly admitted to feeling that attacks
against US forces are justified. This is quite similar to what I've seen
during my 8 months in
larger percentage (greater than 45%) of Iraqis in support of the Iraqi
resistance.
*Q.* /Is there anyway to know how many
Iraqis are
being held in
detention by the
No. But there is now a huge number of missing persons in
100,000 according to two
of), many of which are feared to be detained by the
for
detention facilities in
*Q.* /What really happened in Fallujah and
Ramadi?/
During the November, 2004 siege of Fallujah,
60% of
the city was
completely destroyed. Most of the rest of it had moderate to severe
damage done as well. Iraqi NGO's and medical workers in and around
Fallujah estimate over 4000 dead, mostly
civilians.
To this day, over
50,000 residents of Fallujah remain
displaced.
The
white phosphorous (a new form of napalm) during the siege, and appear to
have used forms of chemical weapons as well.
I have described Fallujah as a modern day
it a massacre rather than a siege. Fallujah
is the
model of Bush
Administration foreign policy. There has been next to no reconstruction
completed inside the city, as was promised by occupation authorities.
*Q.* /Are there other towns in
we havent heard about?/
Many in the
during the Muqtada al-Sadr
intifadas), Haditha,
Hit and
parts of Baquba,
military operations.
*Q.* /Is
Yes, state-sponsored civil war. The US-backed puppet Iraqi government is
using the Badr Army (Shia)
and the Kurdish Peshmerga militia to
battle a
primarily Sunni resistance. Most ordinary Iraqis loath the idea of civil
war, but fear the possibility of it occurring as the U.S.-backed tactic
of divide and conquer moves forward in occupied Iraq.
*Q.* /How do the Iraqi people feel about the American people?/
Fortunately, most are quick to differentiate between the
and American people. But unfortunately, in places like Fallujah,
Haditha
and Al-Qa'im where US operations have
caused so much
death and
destruction, that distinction is being blurred and lost.
*Q.* /Is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
alive?/
Personally, I don't believe he is alive. I researched this heavily when
I was last in
(al-Zarqa), and after interviewing many of
his
neighbors and old friends
found that most of them believe he was killed in
during the
Any claim that he is a leader of the
group in
*Q.* /Do the Iraqi people have any hope for a future?/
Not much nowadays. Most who can afford it are leaving
have little choice but to stay in Iraq can look forward to continued and
increasing violence, no reconstruction, a fundamentalist state and an
endless US occupation which was failed before it even began.
*Q.* /Are the American people obligated to help the Iraqi people? And
what could be done?/
The American people are completely obliged to help the Iraqi people
because it is the fault of the American people that the Bush cabal was
allowed to invade
their power to end this illegal and immoral occupation as quickly as
possible is complicit with the war crimes being committed in
daily basis.
Thank you, Dahr Jamail.
_______________________________________________
All images, photos, photography and text are
protected
by
More writing, commentary, photography, pictures and images at http://dahrjamailiraq.com
_____________
C.
from Kathleen Allee
5 November 2005
Dear Francis,
Thank you again for keeping us (Americans) updated on what's going on
in our
country.
It is still quite difficult to get information that is accurate and
unbiased
here.
This is an unfolding story and I don't have much information but, here
in
barred on Nov. 2 from leaving their schools for an anti-war, anti-Bush
rally. PUBLIC schools actually
chained their doors to keep them in. Some students handing out
flyers
announcing the rally have been
suspended and may be expelled.
This is all I know, because I heard it on KPFK 90.7, alternative radio
in
to locate any other information.
But, it a very strange, fear based climate we are in these days.
It is
very hard to be a liberal (or
progressive)and secular.
How is everyone. . . .
kathleen
__________________
D.
from Barton Gellman :
The Washington Post
6 November 2005
The FBI's Secret Scrutiny :
In hunt for terrorists, bureau examines records of ordinary Americans
By Barton Gellman
The FBI came calling in
Under the shield and stars of the FBI crest, the
letter
directed Christian to surrender "all subscriber information, billing
information and access logs of any person" who used a specific computer
at
a library branch some distance away. Christian, who manages digital
records for
three dozen Connecticut libraries, said in an affidavit that he
configures his
system for privacy. But the vendors of the software he operates said
their
databases can reveal the Web sites that visitors
browse,
the e-mail accounts they open and the books they borrow.
Christian refused to hand over those records, and
his
employer, Library Connection Inc., filed suit for the right to protest
the FBI
demand in public. The
The
The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national
security
letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase
over
historic norms. The letters - one of which can be used to sweep up the
records
of many people - are extending the bureau's reach as never before into
the
telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary
Americans.
Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security
letters
do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They
receive
no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The
executive
branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to
classified reports. The Bush administration defeated legislation and a
lawsuit
to require a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the
use of
a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot.
The burgeoning use of national security letters
coincides
with an unannounced decision to deposit all the information they yield
into
government data banks - and to share those private records widely, in
the
federal government and beyond. In late 2003, the Bush administration
reversed a
long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on
innocent
American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed.
Late
last month, President Bush signed Executive Order 13388, expanding
access to
those files for "state, local and tribal" governments and for
"appropriate
private sector entities," which are not defined.
National security letters offer a case study of the
impact
of the Patriot Act outside the spotlight of political debate. Drafted
in haste
after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the law's 132 pages wrought scores
of
changes in the landscape of intelligence and law enforcement. Many
received far
more attention than the amendments to a seemingly pedestrian power to
review
"transactional records." But few if any other provisions touch as many
ordinary Americans without their knowledge.
Senior FBI officials acknowledged in interviews that
the
proliferation of national security letters results primarily from the
bureau's
new authority to collect intimate facts about people who are not
suspected of any
wrongdoing. Criticized for failure to detect the Sept. 11 plot, the
bureau now
casts a much wider net, using national security letters to generate
leads as
well as to pursue them. Casual or unwitting contact with a suspect - a
single
telephone call, for example - may attract the attention of
investigators and
subject a person to scrutiny about which he never learns.
A national security letter cannot be used to
authorize
eavesdropping or to read the contents of e-mail. But it does permit
investigators to trace revealing paths through the private affairs of a
modern
digital citizen. The records it gathers describe where a person makes
and
spends money, with whom he lives and lived before, how much he gambles,
what he
buys online, what he pawns and borrows, where he travels, how he
invests, what
he searches for and reads on the Web, and who telephones or e-mails him
at home
and at work.
As it wrote the Patriot Act four years ago, Congress
bought
time and leverage for oversight by placing an expiration date on 16
provisions.
The changes involving national security letters were not among them. In
fact,
as the Dec. 31 deadline approaches and Congress prepares to renew or
make
permanent the expiring provisions, House and Senate conferees are
poised again
to amplify the FBI's power to compel the secret production of private
records.
The House and Senate have voted to make
noncompliance with a
national security letter a criminal offense. The House would also
impose a
prison term for breach of secrecy.
Like many Patriot Act provisions, the ones involving
national security letters have been debated in largely abstract terms.
The
Justice Department has offered Congress no concrete information, even
in
classified form, save for a partial count of the number of letters
delivered.
The statistics do not cover all forms of national security letters or
all
"The beef with the NSLs
is
that they don't have even a pretense of judicial or impartial
scrutiny,"
said former representative Robert L. Barr Jr. (
'A Routine Tool'
Career investigators and Bush administration
officials
emphasized, in congressional testimony and interviews for this story,
that
national security letters are for hunting terrorists, not fishing
through the
private lives of the innocent. The distinction is not as clear in
practice.
Under the old legal test, the FBI had to have
"specific
and articulable" reasons to believe the
records
it gathered in secret belonged to a terrorist or a spy. Now the bureau
needs
only to certify that the records are "sought for" or "relevant
to" an investigation "to protect against international terrorism or
clandestine intelligence activities."
That standard enables investigators to look for
conspirators
by sifting the records of nearly anyone who crosses a suspect's path.
"If you have a list of, say, 20 telephone numbers
that
have come up . . . on a bad guy's telephone," said Valerie E. Caproni, the FBI's general counsel, "you want to
find
out who he's in contact with." Investigators will say, " 'Okay, phone company, give us subscriber information and
toll
records on these 20 telephone numbers,' and that can easily be 100."
Bush administration officials compare national
security
letters to grand jury subpoenas, which are also based on "relevance"
to an inquiry. There are differences. Grand juries tend to have a
narrower
focus because they investigate past conduct, not the speculative threat
of unknown
future attacks. Recipients of grand jury subpoenas are generally free
to
discuss the subpoenas publicly. And there are strict limits on sharing
grand
jury information with government agencies.
Since the Patriot Act, the FBI has dispersed the
authority
to sign national security letters to more than five dozen supervisors -
the
special agents in charge of field offices, the deputies in
"Congress has given us this tool to obtain basic
telephone data, basic banking data, basic credit reports," said Caproni, who is among the officials with
signature
authority. "The fact that a national security letter is a routine tool
used,
that doesn't bother me."
If agents had to wait for grounds to suspect a
person of ill
intent, said Joseph Billy Jr., the FBI's deputy assistant director for
counterterrorism, they would already know what they want to find out
with a
national security letter. "It's all chicken and egg,"
he said. "We're trying to determine if someone warrants scrutiny or
doesn't."
Billy said he understands that "merely being in a
government or FBI database . . . gives everybody, you know, neck hair
standing
up." Innocent Americans, he said, "should take comfort at least
knowing that it is done under a great deal of investigative care,
oversight,
within the parameters of the law."
He added: "That's not going to satisfy a majority of
people, but . . . I've had people say, you know, 'Hey, I don't care,
I've done
nothing to be concerned about. You can have me in your files and that's
that.'
Some people take that approach."
'Don't Go Overboard'
In Room 7975 of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, around
two
corners from the director's suite, the chief of the FBI's national
security law
unit sat down at his keyboard about a month after the Patriot Act
became law.
Michael J. Woods had helped devise the FBI wish list for surveillance
powers.
Now he offered a caution.
"NSLs are powerful
investigative tools, in that they can compel the production of
substantial
amounts of relevant information," he wrote in a Nov. 28, 2001,
"electronic communication" to the FBI's 56 field offices.
"However, they must be used judiciously." Standing guidelines, he
wrote, "require that the FBI accomplish its investigations through the
'least intrusive' means. . . . The greater availability of NSLs
does not mean that they should be used in every case."
Woods, who left government service in 2002, added a
practical consideration. Legislators granted the new authority and
could as
easily take it back. When making that decision, he wrote, "Congress
certainly will examine the manner in which the FBI exercised it."
Looking back last month, Woods was struck by how
starkly he
misjudged the climate. The FBI disregarded his warning, and no one
noticed.
"This is not something that should be automatically
done because it's easy," he said. "We need to be sure . . . we don't
go overboard."
One thing Woods did not anticipate was then-Attorney
General
John D. Ashcroft's revision of Justice Department guidelines. On May
30, 2002,
and Oct. 31, 2003, Ashcroft rewrote the playbooks for investigations of
terrorist crimes and national security threats. He gave overriding
priority to
preventing attacks by any means available.
Ashcroft remained bound by Executive Order 12333,
which
requires the use of the "least intrusive means" in domestic
intelligence investigations. But his new interpretation came close to
upending
the mandate. Three times in the new guidelines, Ashcroft wrote that the
FBI
"should consider . . . less intrusive means" but "should not
hesitate to use any lawful techniques . . . even if intrusive" when
investigators
believe them to be more timely. "This point," he added, "is to
be particularly observed in investigations relating to terrorist
activities."
'Why Do You Want to Know?'
As the Justice Department prepared congressional
testimony
this year, FBI headquarters searched for examples that would show how
expanded
surveillance powers made a difference. Michael Mason, who runs the
Washington
field office and has the rank of assistant FBI director, found no ready
answer.
"I'd love to have a made-for-Hollywood story, but I
don't have one," Mason said. "I am not even sure such an example
exists."
What national security letters give his agents,
Mason said,
is speed.
"I have 675 terrorism cases," he said. "Every
one of these is a potential threat. And anything I can do to get to the
bottom
of any one of them more quickly gets me closer to neutralizing a
potential
threat."
Because recipients are permanently barred from
disclosing
the letters, outsiders can make no assessment of their relevance to
Mason's
task.
Woods, the former FBI lawyer, said secrecy is
essential when
an investigation begins because "it would defeat the whole purpose"
to tip off a suspected terrorist or spy, but national security seldom
requires
that the secret be kept forever. Even mobster "John Gotti
finds out eventually that he was wiretapped" in a criminal probe, said
Peter Swire, the federal government's
chief privacy
counselor until 2001. "Anyone caught up in an NSL investigation never
gets
notice."
To establish the "relevance" of the information
they seek, agents face a test so basic it is hard to come up with a
plausible
way to fail. A model request for a supervisor's signature, according to
internal FBI guidelines, offers this one-sentence suggestion: "This
subscriber information is being requested to determine the individuals
or
entities that the subject has been in contact with during the past six
months."
Edward L. Williams, the chief division counsel in
Mason's
office, said that supervisors, in practice, "aren't
afraid to ask . . . 'Why do you want to know?' " He
would not say how many requests, if any, are rejected.
'The Abuse Is in the Power Itself'
Those who favor the new rules maintain - as Sen. Pat
Roberts
(R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, put
it in a
prepared statement - that "there has not been one substantiated
allegation
of abuse of these lawful intelligence tools."
What the Bush administration means by abuse is
unauthorized
use of surveillance data - for example, to blackmail an enemy or track
an
estranged spouse. Critics are focused elsewhere. What troubles them is
not
unofficial abuse but the official and routine intrusion into private
lives.
To Jeffrey Breinholt,
deputy chief
of the Justice Department's counterterrorism section, the civil
liberties
objections "are eccentric." Data collection on the innocent, he said,
does no harm unless "someone [decides] to act on the information, put
you
on a no-fly list or something." Only a serious error, he said, could
lead the
government, based on nothing more than someone's bank or phone records,
"to freeze your assets or go after you criminally and you suffer
consequences that are irreparable." He added: "It's a pretty small
chance."
"I don't necessarily want somebody knowing what
videos
I rent or the fact that I like cartoons," said Mason, the
Barr, the former congressman, said that "the abuse is in the power
itself."
"As a conservative," he said, "I really
resent an administration that calls itself conservative taking the
position
that the burden is on the citizen to show the government has abused
power, and
otherwise shut up and comply."
At the ACLU, staff attorney Jameel
Jaffer spoke of "the profound chilling
effect" of this kind of surveillance: "If the government monitors the
Web sites that people visit and the books that they read, people will
stop
visiting disfavored Web sites and stop reading disfavored books. The
FBI should
not have unchecked authority to keep track of who visits [al-Jazeera's Web site] or who visits the Web site
of the
Federalist Society."
Links in a Chain
Ready access to national security letters allows
investigators to employ them routinely for "contact chaining."
"Starting with your bad guy and his telephone number
and looking at who he's calling, and [then] who they're calling," the
number of people surveilled "goes up
exponentially," acknowledged Caproni, the
FBI's
general counsel.
But Caproni said it
would not be
rational for the bureau to follow the chain too far. "Everybody's
connected" if investigators keep tracing calls "far enough away from
your targeted bad guy," she said. "What's the point of that?"
One point is to fill government data banks for
another
investigative technique. That one is called "link analysis," a
practice Caproni would neither confirm nor
deny.
Two years ago, Ashcroft rescinded a 1995 guideline
directing
that information obtained through a national security letter about a
U.S.
citizen or resident "shall be destroyed by the FBI and not further
disseminated" if it proves "not relevant to the purposes for which it
was collected." Ashcroft's new order was that "the FBI shall
retain" all records it collects and "may disseminate" them
freely among federal agencies.
The same order directed the FBI to develop "data
mining" technology to probe for hidden links among the people in its
growing cache of electronic files. According to an FBI status report,
the
bureau's office of intelligence began operating in January
Data mining intensifies the impact of national
security
letters, because anyone's personal files can be scrutinized again and
again
without a fresh need to establish relevance.
"The composite picture of a person which emerges
from
transactional information is more telling than the direct content of
your
speech," said Woods, the former FBI lawyer. "That's certainly not
been lost on the intelligence community and the FBI."
Ashcroft's new guidelines allowed the FBI for the
first time
to add to government files consumer data from commercial providers such
as LexisNexis and ChoicePoint
Inc.
Previous attorneys general had decided that such a move would violate
the
Privacy Act. In many field offices, agents said, they now have access
to ChoicePoint in their squad rooms.
What national security letters add to government
data banks
is information that no commercial service can lawfully possess. Strict
privacy
laws, for example, govern financial and communications records.
National
security letters - along with the more powerful but much less
frequently used
secret subpoenas from the
'What Happens in Vegas'
The bureau displayed its
ambition
for data mining in an emergency operation at the end of 2003.
The Department of Homeland Security declared an
orange alert
on Dec. 21 of that year, in part because of intelligence that hinted at
a New
Year's Eve attack in
The FBI sent Gurvais Grigg, chief of the bureau's little-known
Proactive Data
Exploitation Unit, in an audacious effort to assemble a real-time
census of
every visitor in the nation's most-visited city. An average of about
300,000
tourists a day stayed an average of four days each, presenting Grigg's team with close to a million potential
suspects in
the ensuing two weeks.
A former stockbroker with a degree in biochemistry, Grigg declined to be interviewed. Government and
private
sector sources who followed the operation described epic efforts to
vacuum up
information.
An interagency task force began pulling together the
records
of every hotel guest, everyone who rented a car or truck, every lease
on a
storage space, and every airplane passenger who landed in the city. Grigg's unit filtered that population for leads.
Any link
to the known terrorist universe - a shared address or utility account,
a check
deposited, a telephone call - could give investigators a start.
"It was basically a manhunt, and in circumstances
where
there is a manhunt, the most effective way of doing that was to scoop
up a lot
of third party data and compare it to other data we were getting," Breinholt said.
Investigators began with emergency requests for help
from
the city's sprawling hospitality industry. "A lot of it was done
voluntary
at first," said Billy, the deputy assistant FBI director.
According to others directly involved, investigators
turned
to national security letters and grand jury subpoenas when friendly
persuasion
did not work.
Early in the operation, according to participants,
the FBI
gathered casino executives and asked for guest lists. The MGM Mirage company, followed by others, balked.
"Some casinos were saying no to consent [and said],
'You have to produce a piece of paper,' " said
Jeff Jonas, chief scientist at IBM Entity Analytics, who previously
built data
management systems for casino surveillance. "They don't just market
'What
happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.' They want it to be true."
The operation remained secret for about a week. Then
casino
sources told Rod Smith, gaming editor of the
What happened in Vegas stayed in federal data banks.
Under
Ashcroft's revised policy, none of the information has been purged. For
every
visitor, Breinholt said, "the record of
the
Grigg's operation found
no
suspect, and the orange alert ended on Jan. 10, 2004."The whole thing
washed out," one participant said.
'Of Interest to President Bush'
At around the time the FBI found George Christian in
Connecticut, agents from the bureau's Charlotte field office paid an
urgent
call on the chemical engineering department at North Carolina State
University
in Raleigh. They were looking for information about a former student
named Magdy Nashar,
then suspected in
the July 7 London subway bombing but since cleared of suspicion.
University officials said in interviews late last
month that
the FBI tried to use a national security letter to demand much more
information
than the law allows.
David T. Drooz, the
university's
senior associate counsel, said special authority is required for the
surrender
of records protected by educational and medical privacy. The FBI's
first request,
a July 14 grand jury subpoena, did not appear to supply that authority,
Drooz said, and the university did not
honor it. Referring
to notes he took that day, Drooz said Eric
Davis, the
FBI's top lawyer in
The next day, July 15, FBI agents arrived with a
national
security letter. Drooz said it demanded all records of Nashar's
admission, housing, emergency contacts, use of health services and
extracurricular activities. University lawyers "looked up what
law
we could on the fly," he said. They discovered that the FBI was
demanding
files that national security letters have no power to obtain. The
statute the
FBI cited that day covers only telephone and Internet records.
"We're very eager to comply with the authorities in
this regard, but we needed to have what we felt was a legally valid
procedure," said Larry A. Neilsen, the
university provost.
Soon afterward, the FBI returned with a new
subpoena. It was
the same as the first one, Drooz said, and
the
university still had doubts about its legal sufficiency. This time,
however, it
came from
The FBI's
'Unreasonable' or 'Oppressive'
The electronic docket in the Connecticut case, as
the New
York Times first reported, briefly titled the lawsuit Library
Connection Inc.
v. Gonzales . Because identifying details were not supposed to be left
in the
public file, the court soon replaced the plaintiff's name with "John
Doe."
George Christian, Library Connection's executive
director,
is identified in his affidavit as "John Doe 2." In that sworn
statement, he said people often come to libraries for information that
is
"highly sensitive, embarrassing or personal." He wanted to fight the
FBI but feared calling a lawyer because the letter said he could not
disclose
its existence to "any person." He consulted Peter Chase, vice
president of Library Connection and chairman of a state intellectual
freedom
committee. Chase - "John Doe 1" in his affidavit - advised Christian
to call the ACLU. Reached by telephone at their
homes, both
men declined to be interviewed.
The central facts remain opaque, even to the judges,
because
the FBI is not obliged to describe what it is looking for, or why.
During oral
argument in open court on Aug. 31, Hall said one government explanation
was so
vague that "if I were to say it out loud, I would get quite a laugh
here." After the government elaborated in a classified brief delivered
for
her eyes only, she wrote in her decision that it offered "nothing
specific."
The Justice Department tried to conceal the
existence of the
first and only other known lawsuit against a national security letter,
also
brought by the ACLU's Jaffer and Ann
Beeson. Government
lawyers opposed its entry into the public docket of a
U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero, in a ruling that
is
under appeal, held that the law authorizing national security letters
violates
the First and Fourth Amendments.
Resistance to national security letters is rare.
Most of
them are served on large companies in highly regulated industries, with
business interests that favor cooperation. The in-house lawyers who
handle such
cases, said Jim Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy
and
Technology, "are often former prosecutors - instinctively
pro-government
but also instinctively by-the-books." National security letters give
them
a shield against liability to their customers.
Kenneth M. Breen, a partner at the New York law firm
Fulbright & Jaworski, held a seminar
for
corporate lawyers one recent evening to explain the "significant risks
for
the non-compliant" in government counterterrorism investigations. A
former
federal prosecutor, Breen said failure to provide the required
information
could create "the perception that your company didn't live up to its
duty
to fight terrorism" and could invite class-action lawsuits by families
of
terrorism victims. In extreme cases, he said, a business could face
criminal
prosecution, "a 'death sentence' for certain kinds of companies."
The volume of government information demands, even
so, has
provoked a backlash. Several major business groups, including the
National
Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,
complained in an
Oct. 4 letter to senators that customer records can "too easily be
obtained and disseminated" around the government. National security
letters, they wrote, have begun to impose an "expensive and
time-consuming
burden" on business.
The House and Senate bills renewing the Patriot Act
do not
tighten privacy protections, but they offer a concession to business
interests.
In both bills, a judge may modify a national security letter if it
imposes an
"unreasonable" or "oppressive" burden on the company that
is asked for information.
'A Legitimate Question'
As national security
letters have
grown in number and importance, oversight has not kept up. In each
house of
Congress, jurisdiction is divided between the judiciary and
intelligence
committees. None of the four Republican chairmen agreed to be
interviewed.
Roberts, the Senate intelligence chairman, said in a
statement issued through his staff that "the committee is well aware of
the intelligence value of the information that is lawfully collected
under
these national security letter authorities," which he described as
"non-intrusive" and "crucial to tracking terrorist networks and
detecting clandestine intelligence activities." Senators receive
"valuable reporting by the FBI," he said, in "semi-annual
reports [that] provide the committee with the information necessary to
conduct
effective oversight."
Roberts was referring to the Justice Department's
classified
statistics, which in fact have been delivered three times in four
years. They
include the following information: how many times the FBI issued
national
security letters; whether the letters sought financial, credit or
communications
records; and how many of the targets were "
Committee members have occasionally asked to see a
sampling
of national security letters, a description of their fruits or examples
of
their contribution to a particular case. The Justice Department has not
obliged.
In 2004, the conference report attached to the
intelligence
authorization bill asked the attorney general to "include in his next
semiannual report" a description of "the scope of such letters"
and the "process and standards for approving" them. More than a year
has passed without a Justice Department reply.
"The committee chairman has the power to issue
subpoenas" for information from the executive branch, said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.),
a House
Judiciary Committee member. "The minority has no power to compel, and .
.
. Republicans are not going to push for oversight of the Republicans.
That's
the story of this Congress."
In the executive branch, no FBI or Justice
Department
official audits the use of national security letters to assess whether
they are
appropriately targeted, lawfully applied or contribute important facts
to an
investigation.
Justice Department officials noted frequently this
year that
Inspector General Glenn A. Fine reports twice a year on abuses of the
Patriot
Act and has yet to substantiate any complaint. (One investigation is
pending.)
Fine advertises his role, but there is a puzzle built into the mandate.
Under
what scenario could a person protest a search of his personal records
if he is
never notified?
"We do rely upon complaints coming in," Fine said
in House testimony in May. He added: "To the extent that people do not
know of anything happening to them, there is an issue about whether
they can
complain. So, I think that's a legitimate question."
Asked more recently whether Fine's office has
conducted an
independent examination of national security letters, Deputy Inspector
General
Paul K. Martin said in an interview: "We have not initiated a
broad-based
review that examines the use of specific provisions of the Patriot Act."
At the FBI, senior officials said the most important
check
on their power is that Congress is watching.
"People have to depend on their elected
representatives
to do the job of oversight they were elected to do," Caproni
said. "And we think they do a fine job of it."
--------
Researcher Julie Tate and research editor Lucy Shackelford contributed
to this
report.
________________
E.
from Ezequiel Adamovsky
:
November 5, 2005
Bush
in
by Ezequiel Adamovsky
A few years ago, Tulio Halperin Donghi,
Indeed, the very word "imperialism" (not to mention
"capitalism") was for most of the 90s something of a relic in
George Bush's visit, quite expectedly, was to be resisted by local
activists
and social movements. That we all knew. Somewhat unexpected was the
general strike
called by CTA, one of the main national unions, which was observed by
many
workers throughout the country. But nobody would have guessed such an
intense
participation of common people and even mainstream public figures in
anti-Bush
activities.
The first surprise came when the soccer hero Diego Maradona
- something of a pagan (politically incorrect) God in
On Thursday night they all took an "anti-FTAA train" to
The charismatic president of
But he went even farther: by quoting extensively from Marx, Mao Tse Tung, Che
Guevara, and Rosa Luxemburg, as well as some Latin American myths (such
as Evita, Jos頍art�nd,
of course, Fidel Castro), Chavez argued strongly in favor of a
post-capitalist
society, which he called "socialism of the 21st century". Maradona, like everybody else in the stadium,
clapped their
hands to death.
Meanwhile, there were massive anti-Bush demonstrations in the streets
of
The information about these political activities, and also about the
debates in
the III "Counter"
A poll in today's (Saturday 5 November) Clarin,
the
most important Argentine newspaper, confirms that we are dealing with a
wide
cultural phenomenon. Only 9% of the population
believe
that these kind of summits will be of any help for the people. In the
ranking
of popularity, Hugo Chavez got 38% of "positive image", while George
Bush barely obtained 5%.
Indeed, it is the American negative role in
To be sure, this is not a new phenomenon. Anti-American feelings became
more
and more widespread in the 90s, while the role of the
As a leftwing teenager in the 80s, I remember how hard it was to win a
political debate with my friends. Whenever I tried to make the point
that
"socialism" was what we needed to make our lives better, there was
always someone pointing to the example of the
American imperial domination is not only loosing control of some
peripheral
countries; it is also loosing the war over people's minds and hearts.
Long ago,
Antonio Gramsci argued that domination
rests upon a
combination of coercion and consensus. If the Italian thinker was
right,
American imperialism may be coming to an end.
___________________
F.
from Michael Parenti :
4 November 2005
Appearing
before the Senate Judiciary Committee as nominee for Chief
Justice of
the Supreme Court, John Roberts assured the senators that he would not
be one
of those noisome activist judges who inject their personal values into
court
decisions.
He would behave like an umpire calling balls and strikes. With a
completely
open mind, he would judge each case solely on its own merits, with only
the
Constitution to guide him, he said.
None of the senators doubled over with laughter.
A fortnight later, while George Bush was introducing another Court
nominee---his right-wing Jesus-freak crony Harriet Miers---he
prattled on about his judicial philosophy and how he wanted jurists to
be
strict constructionists who cleave close to the Constitution, as
opposed to
loose constructionist liberals who use the Court to advance their
ideological
agenda.
It is time to inject some reality into this issue. In fact, through
most of its
history the Supreme Court has engaged in the wildest conservative judicial activism in defense of privileged
groups.
Be it for slavery or segregation, child labor or the sixteen hour
workday,
state sedition laws or assaults on the First Amendment---rightist
judicial
activists have shown an infernal agility in stretching and bending the
Constitution to serve every inequity and iniquity.
Right to the eve of the Civil War, for instance, the Supreme Court
asserted the
primacy of property rights in slaves, rejecting all slave petitions for
freedom. In the famous Dred
Scott v. Sandford (1857), the Court
concluded that, be they
slave or free, Blacks were a subordinate and inferior class of beings
without
constitutional rights.
Thus did reactionary judicial activists---some of them
slaveholders---spin
racist precepts out of thin air to lend a constitutional gloss to their
beloved
slavocracy.
When the federal government wanted to establish national banks, or give
away
half the country to speculators, or subsidize industries, or set up
commissions
that fixed prices and interest rates for large manufacturers and banks,
or
imprison dissenters who denounced war and capitalism, or use the U.S.
Army to
shoot workers and break strikes, or have Marines kill people in Central
America---the Supreme Courts conservative activists twisted the
Constitution in
every conceivable way to justify these acts. So
much
for strict construction.
But when the federal or state governments sought to limit workday
hours, set
minimum wage or occupational safety standards, ensure the safety of
consumer
products, or guarantee the right of collective bargaining, then the
Court ruled
that ours was a limited form of government that could not tamper with
property
rights and could not deprive owner and worker of freedom of contract.
The Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868 ostensibly to establish full
citizenship for African Americans, says that no state can deprive any
person of
life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny any
person
equal protection of the laws.
In another act of pure judicial invention, a conservative dominated
Court
decided that person really meant corporation; therefore the Fourteenth
Amendment protected business conglomerates from regulation by the
states.
To this day, corporations have legal standing as persons thanks to
conservative
judicial activism.
By 1920, pro-business federal courts had struck down roughly three
hundred
labor laws passed by state legislatures to ease inhumane working
conditions.
Between 1880 and 1931 the courts issued more than 1,800 injunctions to
suppress
labor strikes. No trace of conservative restraint during those many
years.
When Congress outlawed child labor or passed other social reforms,
conservative
jurists declared such laws to be violations of the Tenth Amendment. The
Tenth
Amendment says that powers not delegated to the federal government are
reserved
to the states or the people. So Congress could not act.
But, when states passed social welfare legislation, the Courts
right-wing
activists said such laws violated substantive due process (a totally
fabricated
oxymoron) under the Fourteenth Amendment. So the state legislatures
could not
act.
Thus for more than fifty years, the justices used the Tenth Amendment
to stop
federal reforms initiated under the Fourteenth Amendment, and the
Fourteenth to
stymie state reforms initiated under the Tenth. Its
hard to get more brazenly activist than that.
A conservative Supreme Court produced Plessy
v. Ferguson (1896), another inventive reading of the Fourteenth
Amendments
equal protection clause. Plessy
confected the
separate but equal doctrine, claiming that the forced separation of
Blacks from
Whites did not impute inferiority as long as facilities were equal
(which they
rarely were). For some seventy years, this judicial fabrication
buttressed
racial segregation.
Convinced that they too were persons, women began to argue that the due
process
clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment (applying to state governments) and
the
Fifth Amendment (applying to the federal government) disallowed the
voting
prohibitions imposed on women by state and federal authorities.
But in Minor v. Happersett
(1875), the
conservative Court fashioned another devilishly contorted
interpretation: true,
women were citizens but citizenship did not necessarily confer
a citizens right to suffrage. In other
words, due process, and equal
protection applied to such
persons as business corporations but not to women or people of African
descent.
At times, presidents place themselves and their associates above
accountability
by claiming that the separation of powers gives them an inherent right
of
executive privilege. Executive privilege has been used by the White
House to
withhold information on undeclared wars, illegal campaign funds,
Supreme Court
nominations, burglaries (Watergate), insider trading (by Bush and
Cheney), and
White House collusion with corporate lobbyists.
But the concept of executive privilege (i.e. unaccountable executive
secrecy)
exists nowhere in the Constitution or any law. Yet the wild-eyed
right-wing
activists on the Supreme Court trumpet executive privilege, deciding
out of
thin air that a presumptive privilege for withholding information
belongs to
the president.
Bush just recently talked about how important it is for us to guard
executive
privilege in order for there to be crisp decision making in the White
House.
Crisp? So Bush presents himself as a strict constructionist while
making claim
to a wholly extra-constitutional juridical fiction known as executive
privilege.
With staggering audacity, the Courts rightist judicial activists have
decided
that states cannot prohibit corporations from spending unlimited
amounts on
public referenda or other elections because such campaign expenditures
are a
form of speech and the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech to
such
persons as corporations.
In a dissenting opinion, the liberal Justice Stevens noted, Money is
property;
it is not speech. But his conservative colleagues preferred the more
fanciful
activist interpretation.
They further ruled that free speech enables rich candidates to spend as
much as
they want on their own campaigns, and rich
individuals
to expend unlimited sums in any election contest. Thus poor and rich
can both
freely compete, one in a whisper, the other in a roar.
Right-wing judicial activism reached a frenzy point in George W.
Bush v. Al
Gore. In a 5-to-4 decision, the conservatives overruled the
By preventing a recount, the Supreme Court gave the presidency to Bush.
In recent years these same conservative justices have held that the
Fourteenth
Amendments equal protection clause could not be used to stop violence
against
women, or provide a more equitable mode of property taxes, or a more
equitable
distribution of funds between rich and poor school districts.
But, in Bush v. Gore they
ruled that the equal protection clause could be used to
stop a
perfectly legal ballot recount. Then they explicitly declared that the Bush
case
could not be considered a precedent for other equal protection issues.
In other
words, the Fourteenth Amendment applied only when the conservative
judicial
activists wanted it to, as when stealing an election.
We hear conservatives say that judges should not try to legislate from
the bench,
the way liberal jurists supposedly do. But a recent study by Paul Gewirtz and
By this measure, too, the conservatives are the more activist.
In sum, the right-wing aggrandizers in black robes are neither strict
constructionists nor balanced adjudicators. They are unrestrained power
hustlers
masquerading as sober defenders of lawful procedure and constitutional
intent.
If this is democracy, who needs oligarchy?
--------
Michael Parenti's recent books include Superpatriotism (City Lights), The
Assassination
of Julius Caesar (New
Press), and The Culture Struggle (Seven Stories Press), all
available in
paperback; also visit: www.michaelparenti.org.
________________
G.
from Howard Zinn :
13 November 2005
by
Howard Zinn
by
Noam
Chomsky
Kulturkrieg in Journalism: Using Emotion to
Silence
Analysis
The Origins of the Guardian Attack on Chomsky
by Diana Johnstone
Last
Halloween, The Guardian ran an attack on Noam Chomsky that amazed many readers who had
considered
The Guardian to be one of
her clever self. The interviewer was a young
Ms Brockes
obviously had scant familiarity with Chomsky's work. For all one can
tell, her
sole background preparation for this assignment was an article written
by her
colleague Ed Vulliamy and published by the
Balkan
Crisis Report of International War and Peace Reporting (IWPR, an outfit
heavily
subsidized by NATO governments) on 27 August 2004. Vulliamy's
article, "We Must Fight for Memory of Bosnia's Camps", calling for
monuments to perpetuate the memory of the 1992 Bosnian Serb detention
camps
which he visited as a reporter (but not, of course, the Muslim and
Croat camps
which he did not visit), includes an attack on me which is echoed very
precisely by Ms Brockes, even to
misspelling my name
in the same way. The entire background for her attack on Chomsky seems
to be
drawn from two paragraphs of Vulliamy's
article:
Revisionism over the carnage
in
verdicts in
After all, who would know
best: they
or the woman (and her peers and subordinates) on whose orders the
pogrom was
carried out? But no. In
and the true figure of Bosnian war dead (the official estimate is more
than
200,000 - Johnstone claims 50,000). And
just as
before, members of the chattering classes, unbelievably, have hailed
this
poison as "outstanding work", in a letter signed by, among others, Noam Chomsky, Arundhati
Roy, Tariq Ali, John Pilger,
et.al.
In her write-up of the
interview, Ms
Brockes interprets Chomsky's defense of
publication
of my book as a "defense of those who say the Srebrenica massacre was
exaggerated"
and drags in the ITN-Living Marxism (LM) controversy, confusing the
facts just
as in Vulliamy's article. She lauds "my
colleague, Ed Vulliamy", as one of the
"serious, trustworthy people" who disagree with Chomsky. So it
is not far-fetched to see Vulliamy's
influence in the
Brockes hatchet job.
(The above citation from the
Vulliamy article misrepresents the ITN-LM
case, as does Ms Brockes. The issue raised
by LM had to do with the way
photographs taken at Trnopolje camp, by
focusing on a
thin man on the other side of a wire fence which in reality did not
surround
the Muslim inmates, but rather the ITN crew itself, was used to create
the
impression that what was happening in Bosnia was a repetition of a
Nazi-style
Holocaust. I corrected that misrepresentation in my reponse
to The
Guardian, which was published by Counterpunch, but not by the Guardian.
I
pointed out then that the judgment of the court was based solely on the
subjective issue as to whether or not the ITN journalists
"deliberately"
set out to deceive the public. Moreover, in reality, nobody denied the
"existence" of the camps, which Vulliamy
claims to have "discovered", although he was led there by Bosnian
Serb guides. There are other misrepresentations in his article. For
example, I
have never made any claim as to the number of victims in
highest, which was offered without any evidence by the information
ministry in
killed by Serbs, which is quite impossible.)
From this citation, it
emerges that
the Brockes interview was a continuation
of the
vicious attack on me and the managing editor of the Swedish magazine Ordfront, Bj��Ecklund,
following his long article in the July/August 2003 issue on "lies
about Yugoslavia" which featured an interview with me and
excerpts
from my book, "Fools' Crusade".
The first shots in that
assault were
fired by Maciej Zaremba,
anex-Maoist of Polish origin turned
ideological watchdog,
in a flailing article published by
contact.
This shameful campaign was
used to
bring to heel Ordfront, which until then
had been the
most important left-oriented alternative to
"democratic West".
See http://www.nnn.se/n-model/foreign/ordfront.pdf
For starters, there is an
introduction
on Al Burke's web site:
http://www.nnn.se/n-model/foreign/ordfront.htm
Two Kinds of Journalism
Ms Brockes
colleague Ed Vulliamy is a proud
practitioner of what
is called "advocacy journalism", a reporter who openly and
passionately takes sides in conflicts he covers. I would prefer
to
describe it as sort of literary journalism, where phrase-making and
emotional
arousal take precedence over reason, or even, on occasion, facts. The
striking
feature is the unrestrained use of a florid style, reflected in his
choice of
adjectives. In the article cited above, for instance, he speaks of the
"putrid afternoon" when he had "the accursed honor" of
seeing "heinous walls", etc. As to content, in the case of the
Yugoslav disintegration wars, the emotional approach works best by
reducing
events to a certain number of notorious atrocities, proper to chill the
blood
and close the
mind to contemplation of political complications. Beyond advocacy, he
writes as
a sort of professional mourner and literary avenger.
Now, that is his right and
suits his
talent. I make no attempt to interfere with his mourning and his
advocacy. But I do object when his style of journalism is used to
condemn
a quite different type of journalistic writing: one that attempts to be
analytical and fair to all sides.
I readily acknowledge that
emotional
commitment is probably the most powerful motor for even the most
analytical
writing. But the difference is the attempt to be dispassionate,
to
exercise a certain self-control over the
emotional
flow of words. The watchdogs condemn efforts to be fair to all sides in
the
Yugoslav conflicts as "inflicting new pain on the victims"; Vulliamy wrote (article cited) that "Johnstone's book has inflicted new pain on those
who matter
the most: those who underwent endless days of mindless torture and
survived; on
the brave and almost forgotten women of Srebrenica who are still
desperately
searching
for their loved ones; and dishonours the
memory of
the victims."
In short, I am accused of
being a
sort of torturer, and Vulliamy is no doubt
able to
round up some poor Bosnian Muslim victims of his acquaintance, wave my
book at
them, and tell them that they have been dishonored and that he is
busily
defending them from the pain I am inflicting.
This does not really do much
for the
victims, but it does serve to preserve the Bosnian conflict as a purely
emotional issue, a manichean issue of good
versus
evil, which keeps it firmly on the terrain commanded by Vulliamy
himself, and the likes of Zaremba.
It enforces
the notion of a dualistic world, in which all is either black or white,
good or
evil, and anyone who tries to understand all sides of an issue is
condemned as
an appeaser, a coward, and perhaps even a handmaiden of the Devil.
In reality, trying to be
fair and
analytical does not at all preclude feeling sympathy for victims, and
other
human emotions. But for some writers, their emotional commitment
seems to
exclude all fairness and reasonable analysis. Whatever the political
aims of
such writers, a matter I cannot judge, their militant rejection of
dispassionate analysis can only play into the hands of political powers
who cloak their geostrategically
motivated military interventions in the rhetoric of humanitarian
imperatives.
*********************
Francis McCollum Feeley
Professor of American Studies/
Director of Research
Université Stendhal
Grenoble-3
http://www.ceimsa.org/