The Test We are Giving Iran is Rigged -- Why Obama has to go bigger, much bigger, in making a deal with Iran -- or be prepared for a messy failure.
- BY JAMES TRAUB - September 27, 2013
Be still, my heart. First Iranian President Hasan Rouhani embarks on a very charming charm offensive. Perhaps a breakthrough is at hand. But then he decides to forgo a handshake with President Barack Obama and skips lunch. We have seen through those Persian wiles: The spark, as my colleagues at Foreign Policy sadly concluded, "may be fading." But wait -- our president calls their president on the phone, the first leader-to-leader contact since the 1979 revolution. Maybe there's hope! Or maybe Obama's been snookered?!
A lot of this is about us, not them. We have reached a mental state in which hopefulness feels like a species of naiveté. We seemed to have swiftly passed from not believing in military solutions to anything to not believing in any solutions at all. We're on a bender of despair. Our once young, once thrillingly idealistic president glumly acknowledged to the U.N. General Assembly, "hard-earned humility when it comes to our ability to determine events inside other countries." And God knows, it's true. Every single one of the major Middle East conflicts he passed in review -- Syria, Libya, Egypt -- has offered a wrenching demonstration of the limits of America's power to keep people in faraway places from tearing one another limb from limb.
But Iran is different, and I think Obama, at least, understands that difference very well. The United States is trying not to reach inside the country, but rather to offer some mix of threats and incentives to the nation's leaders in order to alter their external behavior. That's called diplomacy; it's what states have always done, with greater or lesser success. In rare cases, it's true, states operate beyond the reach of both carrots and sticks. Over the past 30 years, Iran has arguably been just such a "rogue state." The great question that the West now faces is whether the election of Rouhani, and the tiny hints of accommodation from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, mean that Iran is now biddable.
No one knows the answer to that question; thus Obama's extremely cautious statement before the United Nations that "the roadblocks may prove to be too great, but I firmly believe the diplomatic path must be tested." This is not, itself, a controversial proposition: Even the Democratic and Republican senators who have recently written letters to Obama admonishing him to keep the pressure turned up high on Iran agree that we need to test the leadership's bona fides. But administering a test that the other side is bound to fail isn't diplomacy.
That is where we are now. The United States and its five partners in the so-called P5+1 are demanding that Iran stop all uranium enrichment activities, turn over all highly enriched uranium, and accept intrusive inspections in return for a very modest increase in trade and a promise of future sanctions relief. This is a one-sided deal that could only be imposed on a nation that felt it had no choice but to accept humiliation. For Iran, it's a nonstarter.
Previous Iranian negotiators have rejected any deal that does not vouchsafe the country's alleged right to enrichment or offer a clear path to a future without sanctions. If the ayatollah has also allowed Rouhani to "test" the West's commitment to resolving the conflict peacefully, sticking to the current formula would be all the proof he and other hard-liners need that the West is really trying to bring Iran to its knees.
This is why many diplomats and nonproliferation experts have advocated a "big for big" solution in which the United States wins major concessions from Iran by making large concessions of its own; former State Department official Robert Einhorn offered a blueprint for such a transaction in an article in Foreign Policy earlier this year. One element of such a plan would be an agreement that Iran could continue to enrich uranium to the low concentrations necessary for peaceful purposes so long as it allows inspections intrusive enough to ensure that no undeclared nuclear material has been diverted. If Iran balked at such a deal, the West would have good reason to conclude that Iran's leadership had decided to achieve weapons capacity come what may.
That's a test. And it's a test Iran might even pass. According to notes from Rouhani's meeting with a group of regional experts convened by the Asia Society, Iran's president asserted that his country is seeking to find a mutually acceptable solution, work with the P5+1, and act with full transparency and within the parameters of international law. He said that the Iranians would be willing to grant the International Atomic Energy Agency access and meet the international safeguard agreement -- and, further, that Iran is willing to work toward removing all ambiguity surrounding its program (but will never forgo the right to pursue peaceful nuclear technology).
But so far, Obama hasn't been willing to apply that test; the politics have just been too excruciating. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who calls Rouhani "a wolf in sheep's clothing," steadfastly opposes leaving Iran with any enrichment capacity. So does most of the U.S. Senate. The letter that Sen. Chuck Schumer and Sen. John McCain sent to Obama insisted, in what has become boilerplate language, on "the suspension of all enrichment and reprocessing activities." A spokesman confirmed that "Senator Schumer does not support any Iranian nuclear enrichment at all."
Obama couldn't defy Congress on this -- even if he was politically prepared to do so -- since legislators must agree to roll back the sanctions that are crushing Iran's economy. And if Congress won't undo the sanctions so long as Iran retains an ongoing enrichment capacity, then Iranians won't agree to intrusive inspections, at which point any possible deal collapses. This will constitute the opposite of a "test," though it will allow congressional hawks to claim that they have proved Iran's intransigence. Diplomacy will thus fail without actually having been attempted.
And then what? Does Obama exercise the "military option" to prevent Iran from going nuclear? Both Netanyahu and congressional leaders have said that he must be prepared to do so, and Obama has complied by saying that he will confront rather than "contain" Iran. But a lot has changed in recent months, and not just in Tehran. The American people resoundingly rejected Obama's plan to fire a few missiles into Syria. Of course Iran, unlike Syria, is much more of a threat to American national security, but a massive strike against Iran, unlike a "shot across the bow" in Syria, would look very much like a war in the Middle East. I'm guessing that neither liberal Democrats nor libertarian Republicans will stand for it. How resolutely will, say, Sen. Marco Rubio demand a fusillade of Tomahawks? Given Rubio's abrupt volte-face on Syria, the question answers itself.
The alternative to diplomacy, in short, may be futility. For this reason, some legislators have pushed back against the hard line. Over the summer, North Carolina Democrat David Price and Pennsylvania Republican Charlie Dent sent their own letter to Obama asking for a new diplomatic initiative; they got 131 signatures, 18 of them from GOP congressmen. Many others urged them on from the sidelines. I spoke to Dent, who's very much a traditional conservative. In the aftermath of the brutal Syria debate, he said, "I don't think the president would attack Iran or anywhere else in the world. That leaves us with diplomacy or sanctions. That's why we have to try an overture." Dent blames Obama for hollowing out the credibility of military action, but he himself opposed the attack on Syria. Republicans will say it's Obama's fault, but it's their own constituents they're worried about.
This is, I admit, a very tiny opening for the president to squeeze through. Any deviation from the current formula will provoke the wrath of Congress and the Israel lobby. But Obama has got to break the stalemate. He has to show the Iranians that a meaningful end state lies beyond the painful concessions they will have to make. He has to be prepared to widen the scope of negotiations, including by offering Iran a place at the table in any future negotiations over the fate of Syria. There is no danger of excessive optimism here; everything that this president has touched in the Middle East has turned to dust. But in this one case his cautious, uncertain, all-too-easily reproachable statecraft just might yield a triumph of immense proportions.
A New Media Shield Law Would Only Shield Corporate Media
- By Dell Cameron
Recently, Americans have witnessed a barrage of scandals regarding the federal government’s extension of their surveillance powers. Following whistle blower Edward Snowden's revelations—which of course point to the National Security Agency's spy programs and the FISA Court's endorsement of broad domestic-surveillance policies—the American citizenry's Fourth Amendment right to privacy has taken center stage. The truth of these invasive and unconstitutional policies is giving rise to further argument, and laying ground for a practical forum to engage elected officials to more clearly define citizens' rights in the digital era.
Yet, while Americans are engrossed in the debate over whether or not their government should be allowed to collect and examine the online data of citizens en masse, particularly without suspicion of criminal activity, the vehicle by which these revelations came to light—journalism—is now also under attack.
The trial of former CIA agent Jeffery Sterling, who faces charges under the Espionage Act, has provided insight into how the federal government interprets the rights of journalists. In 2008 New York Times reporter James Risen was ordered to testify against Sterling, allegedly a source in his 2006 book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. Risen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, condemned the order and fought the subpoena. In a two-to-one ruling this past July, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued this shocking statement: “There is no First Amendment testimonial privilege, absolute or qualified, that protects a reporter from being compelled to testify... in criminal proceedings.” Risen has subsequently stated that he'd rather be imprisoned than reveal the identity of his source.
Also this past July, the Department of Justice issued a review of their news-media policies. While some protections were provided to “professional” reporters, it's clear that any journalist who isn’t employed by a major news company would not enjoy the same protections. As Electronic Frontier Foundation activist Morgan Weiland put it, “The report is part of a broader legislative effort in Washington to simultaneously offer protection for the press while narrowing the scope of who is afforded it.” While the DOJ's new guidelines may inevitably benefit James Risen, because he is a paid employee of an established news company, the same could not be said of any independent journalist, no matter how long they've been reporting or how credible their work is deemed by the public at large.
It's important to note that the revisions to DOJ policies do not provide actual legal protections for journalists. They are simply guidelines (better yet, suggestions) that dictate how the DOJ should behave in regards to interaction with the media. There is no legal protection provided by this memo that prevents federal law enforcement agencies from simply ignoring the guidelines all together and pursuing criminal charges against journalists.
Revisions to the Justice Department's policies concerning the media happened only after multiple instances in which the federal government covertly seized the telephone records and data of reporters. In May, the Associated Press announced that the Justice Department had obtained “outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters” during the months of April and May in 2012. In total, the records of 20 phone lines were included in the investigation. The DOJ attempted to justify its actions, offering up the Third Party Doctrine to deflect scrutiny. This exception states that authorities can acquire information transmitted to a third party, such as a telephone company or ISP, because the public has seemingly relinquished any expectation of privacy. In the Digital Era, where millions of Americans use service providers to access their bank records, interact with their physicians, and even communicate with confidential sources, this ridiculous rule is clearly contrary to the rights afforded under the Fourth Amendment—and presents a threat to the freedom of the press.
As American journalists and First Amendment advocates combat the US government over its assault on the media, members of congress and the Justice Department are engaged in a game of good cop/bad cop over this issue. The DOJ is attacking journalists, such as James Risen, and threatening to imprison them while Congress is advocating for expanded protections for the media under the law. To wit, those protections may come at a price, one that will most definitely sabotage the future of investigative journalism in America.
In May, a Senate bill titled the "Free Flow of Information Act Act of 2013” (S. 987) was introduced by Chuck Schumer and Lindsey Graham. The bill was originally introduced in 2007 (S. 2035), and then again in 2009 (S. 448), but either died in committee or failed a cloture vote. The bill is supported by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, but only if it includes specific language that excludes individuals she claims, “are not reporters at all.” Schumer echoed Feinstein's concerns, specifically calling out WikiLeaks, saying, “We’re very careful in this bill to distinguish journalists from those who shouldn’t be protected, WikiLeaks and all those, and we’ve ensured that.” At the time of writing, the "Free Flow of Information Act" is schedule for more debate before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 12.
This bill ironically purports to “maintain the free flow of information to the public by providing conditions for the federally compelled disclosure of information by certain persons connected with the news media.” The proposed law does not describe a “journalist” by that name, but instead a “covered person.” It defines this individual as someone who “regularly” reports on the news and excludes self-employed journalists. The House version of this bill (H.R. 1962) includes precarious language, solely defining this “covered person” as someone who reports for a news organization for “financial gain or livelihood.” The bill introduced by Representative Ted Poe (R-TX) suggests that the legal protections, already afforded to every US citizen under the Constitution, will only extend to an individual reporting the news for money.
It's common practice for politicians to color coat the purpose behind a controversial piece of legislation in an attempt to disguise it with a friendlier title for their colleagues and the general public. The current "Free Flow of Information Act" under discussion does nothing to support the free flow of information. In practice, this law would endanger internet bloggers, freelance writers, and citizen journalists who are guilty of nothing more than performing acts of journalism. Essentially, members of Congress have proposed a “media shield law” that paradoxically has no hope of shielding the media—unless of course the reporter in question happens to work for an establishment like CNN or the New York Times.
The US Constitution does not mince words on this subject: Congress has no authority to abridge the freedom of the press. Most importantly, many of today's respected citizen journalists represent more closely the kind of press originally referred to in that revered document, and certainly more so than anyone occupying a desk at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
Some would argue that it's essential for breaking news to be handled by so-called professionals in the modern era, a period of heightened national security, that in a time when government whistleblowers are disclosing classified documents claimed to damage US foreign relations and potentially endanger the lives of American troops abroad, no one person should have the right to report the facts of these delicate issues. While there should always be a consistent effort to verify information and weigh its value to the public against the cost of its disclosure, sometimes the close relationship that professional news companies have with the US government interferes with what's best for the American public.
In 2005, the New York Times reported that President George W. Bush had secretly, and deliberately, authorized the NSA to violate the rights of American citizens by wiretapping them without a legally required warrant from the FISA Court. This story earned reporters Eric Lichtblau and James Risen (the same) a 2006 Pulitzer Prize. But a single sentence in their article rightfully drew concerns from many. They reported, “After a meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed the publication for a year to conduct additional reporting.” The Times executive editor Bill Keller later admitted the delay in publication was actually longer than a year. In fact, the final decision on whether to publish the story or not landed, in Keller's words, on the “eve of the [presidential] election.”
The instinctive reaction for Americans is that the kind of “covered persons” outlined in Senator Schumer and Graham's media shield law work for organizations that may be more susceptible to government influence, such as the Times, a company that may hold back from reporting, for example, that an incumbent presidential candidate had broken serious laws or established conditions such that the American public is denied critical reasoning prior to reelection.
The "Free Flow of Information Act" will provide legal ground to the suggested protocols outlined in the Justice Department's Review of News Media Policies. Before anyone claims this so-called media shield law might be subject to a veto, remember that it was President Obama who ordered Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct the review and approved of its language.
Independent journalist Marcy Wheeler referred to a particular section of the Justice Department's review as the “WikiLeaks Exception,” which states: legal protections are “not intended to include persons and entities that simply make information available.” Individuals that simply release documents in their original form—the Justice Department insists—are not journalists because they are not using “editorial skills to turn raw materials into a distinct work.”
Likewise, Section 5 of the Free Flow of Information Act removes protections for WikiLeaks and organizations like it, stating that any “covered persons” revealing documents that may assist the federal government in “preventing or mitigating... acts that are reasonably likely to cause significant and articulable harm to national security” may be subject to “a subpoena, court order, or other compulsory legal process seeking to compel the disclosure of protected information.” Should this bill be passed by Congress, this section alone is enough incentive for President Obama to sign it into law. The implications of this language for journalists like Glenn Greenwald, who revealed the broad domestic-surveillance policies of the NSA, are frightfully apparent.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation and other independent journalists have outlined a clear goal for Congress to pursue: pass a media shield law that defines journalism as an action, not a profession. You cannot protect the First Amendment and ensure that America continues to have a free press by simply narrowing the definition of what a free press is. As Marcy Wheeler put it, “If the ultimate idea is to protect news-gathering activities, then why not establish what those activities are and then actually protect them, regardless of whether they are tied to a certain kind of institution?”
Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler has argued in defense of the kind of journalism that is intentionally unprotected in the "Free Flow of Information Act.” A week after taking the stand during Bradley Manning's trial, Benkler pointed to several past instances where whistleblowers had committed acts of journalism. One example was Dr. Daniel Ellsberg, the former US military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, revealing the misconduct of several White House administrations, particularly Lyndon Johnson's office during the Vietnam War. In a comment Benkler wrote for the Guardian, “Leak-based journalism is not the be-all-and-end-all of journalism. But ever since the Pentagon Papers, it has been a fraught but critical part of our constitutional checks in national defense. Nothing makes this clearer than the emerging bipartisan coalition of legislators seeking a basic reassessment of NSA surveillance and FISA oversight following Edward Snowden's leaks.“
As it stands, the introduction of any media shield law in Congress is not intended to protect journalists or prevent the disclosure of classified information that might place American lives in danger. It is meant to revoke the rights of journalists who have revealed threats to the American public from within their own government. They are intended to curtail the rights of independent journalists who won't oblige the White House with a sit-down before publishing vital news during a Presidential election. In the past, the industrialized news media has expressed support for this kind of law, showing their willingness to sacrifice rights of everyone but themselves. Already, organizations such as the National Press Photographers Association and the American Society of News Editors have issued statements encouraging their members to support the bill.
If the Justice Department can simply imprison a few journalists like James Risen, perhaps even the public will call for the passage of a new media shield law—one void of dangerous terms like “compelled disclosure,” “limitations on content,” and “allegedly unlawful.”
More from VICE:
Yes, the NSA Can Spy on Every US Citizen
Why U.S. Evades Metric System?
- By Bahram Maskanian
The metric system is an "International System of Units" agreed system of measure, originally introduced by France in 1799. The metric system three main units of measure are:
M Meter for length
Kg Kilogram for mass
S Second for time
The metric system has been officially sanctioned for use in the United States since 1866, but U.S. remains the only industrialized country that has not adopted the metric system as its official system of measurement. Many sources also cite Liberia and Burma as the only other countries not to have done so.
The main features of the metric system are the standard set of interrelated base units and a standard set of prefixes in powers of ten. These base units are used to derive larger and smaller units that could replace a huge number of other units of measure in existence. Although the system was first developed for commercial use, the development of coherent units of measure made it particularly suitable for science and engineering.
Why is U.S. Evading Metric System?
The obvious answer is of course the criminal, greedy goons of Wall Street, influencing all economic and political policies at the local and federal level, responsible for pressuring U.S. Department of Agriculture and government to pay billions of dollars to their billionaire farmer buddies for not growing crops, (listen closely: “getting paid money, that they never have to pay back, our tax-dollars for doing nothing”) thereby artificially creating shortage, thus a high demand to constantly raising the prices of all consumer goods. The reason for preventing the implementation of the metric system in the United States has to do with the final transaction between the seller and the buyer, to keep on price gouging the public and robbing the people, at the point of sell, making billions of dollars in undeserved profits.
Hard Commodities & Hard Commodities:
Well-established physical commodities are actively traded at spot and derivative markets. Commonly, these are basic material resources known as “Hard Commodities” such as, but not limited to: gold, silver, palladium, platinum, iron ore, aluminum, copper, crude oil, coal, salt, plus other commodities such as, but not limited to: rice, wheat, sugar, tea, coffee beans, cattle, pork, orange, soybeans and generally all of the so-called “Soft Commodities”, which are agricultural products grown on land, while hard commodities are the ones that are extracted through mining.
You see, all commodities are priced, bought and sold in the United States and all over the planet Earth using Ton, a unit of measure in metric system, which is 1,000 kilograms, or 2,205 pounds. All of the commodities prices are determined as one of many functions of commodity traders of Wall Street.
When you are buying a pound of beef, or (453.6 grams), you actually paying the price for a kilogram, or (1,000 grams) of beef, which means instead of getting a kilogram, or (1,000 grams) of beef you are getting a pound, or (453.6 grams), less than half of what you paid for, that is the bastards of Wall Street with their hands in your pockets, robbing you!
Believe It - Resistance to Corporate Power and Warmongering Is Growing All Around Us
- By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese
There are reasons to celebrate despite continued economic stagnation and growing debt: the culture of resistance in the US is here and it’s having an effect.
This week we reflect on the second anniversary of Occupy Wall Street and the fifth anniversary of the financial collapse.
There are reasons to celebrate despite continued economic stagnation and growing debt: the culture of resistance in the US is here and it’s having an effect. The corporate power that has so blatantly stomped on our rights and whipped Congress to do its bidding is faltering and losing its grip. There are cracks in the pillars of power, and it’s up to us to pry them open and shine light on the lies and corruption that have been used to steal our future. We see a movement that is building momentum.
We look back over the events of the past two years and we feel cautiously optimistic. We remember wondering as we watched the Arab Spring bloom and the encampments grow in Spain and state capitals like Madison whether people in the US were ready to rise up and demand more than the crumbs we’ve been convinced to accept for decades.
A turning point for us was in December, 2010 at an action in front of the White House to protest war. Many spoke that day about the need to build a culture of resistance in the US. Following that action, as we met with allies over the next few months, there was agreement that we needed to do something different. The traditional tools used to create change weren’t working. One-day protests, usually on a weekend, are ignored. It was time for something new, time to bring an occupation to the national capital.
As we met to organize the occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC, there was a strong sense of suspense. Some said that Americans weren’t feeling enough pain, that we hadn’t reached the tipping point. We decided that we would only find out if we tried, and so what if it didn’t work the first time. Most mass movements don’t arise spontaneously; they come after years of organizing and multiple failed actions. A key ingredient is persistence.
Similarly, the organizers of Occupy Wall Street acted out of anticipation. They staked out a place in the heart of the monster and held it. At first there were a few hundred, not the tens of thousands that Adbusters called for. But by holding that space courageously, more people were inspired to join them. People arrived from all over the country. Excitement and wonder were in the air. Could the people really take on Wall Street?
Obviously Wall Street thought so because they ordered excessive and constant police protection. They must have seen something brewing because Wall Street firms donated an unprecedented millions to the NYPD over the previous year. It was police aggression towards peaceful protesters that grabbed public attention and sympathy. A few weeks after the start of Occupy Wall Street, an amazing 43 percent of Americans supported Occupy.
By the time of the occupation of Freedom Plaza in early October, there were hundreds of encampments throughout the nation and around the world. The new language of the 99% raised class consciousness in ways that had not been heard for a long time. A spark had been lit and there was no going back.
Two years later, the physical encampments are gone, but the Occupy Movement remains. Occupying public space was a tactic, not an end in itself. It was a way to make the issues visible, a place for people to gather, a model for a new way of doing things based on respect, mutual aid and democracy and a metaphor for claiming what has been taken. The ‘public’ is disappearing, not just public space but also public services, research and resources have been privatized, expropriated for the profits of a few.
The roots of Occupy come from the anti-globalization movement that fought the World Trade Organization in the 1990’s. Since then, poverty, debt and the breadth of wealth inequality have grown. People in the US are experiencing the effects of neoliberal economic policies, the raw and callous corporate greed that has ravaged poorer nations.
When the financial crisis hit in 2008, there was an expectation that the government would respond appropriately to stabilize the economy and that we simply had to weather the storm. What we saw instead were massive bailouts of the industry that caused the crash and greatly inadequate steps to secure jobs, housing and health care. As Jerome Roos writes, “the most catastrophic thing about neoliberal crisis management is not only that it has a penchant to turn already catastrophic financial crises caused by runaway private speculation into an immense source of private gain for the same very financiers responsible for the catastrophe to begin with; but, even more nefariously, that it makes those catastrophes so much more catastrophic than they really need to be for almost everyone else.”
Many who voted for President Obama thought that he ran on a progressive platform and that he would take action to solve the many crises we faced. Obama made it sound like he was acting in the interest of the people. But Les Leopold points out that “We’re not heading toward greater income equality. We’re not building up the middle class or supporting unionization. We’re not eradicating poverty and hunger. We’re not expanding educational opportunity. We’re not rebuilding infrastructure. Nothing we’re doing looks anything like the society we built from the New Deal through the 1960s. We’re not doing any of the things that would lead to a more stable and just economy. In fact, we’re doing just the opposite, which means the billionaire bailout society will become even more firmly entrenched.”
This means that if left unchecked, the trends towards greater inequality and suffering will continue. But the billionaire bailout society went too far. According to a Stanford study, “animosity toward the financial sector reached its highest level in 40 years in 2010” which probably fueled the Occupy Movement, and anger remains high. A majority of Americans believe that “not enough was done to prosecute the bankers.”
When drowning in so many crises it is sometimes hard to see above the surface of the water, but the anti-globalization movement and its offspring, the occupy movement, are having an effect. Since 2000, the World Trade Organization has been unable to advance its agenda and 14 free trade agreements have been stopped by public pressure.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership and its sister the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership known as TAFTA, are being negotiated in secret as a way to pursue the WTO agenda through the backdoor. The TPP has been under negotiation for more than three years, and is supposed to be near its final stages. Recently, opposition to it has grown considerably and the process appears to be slowing. A recent study found that the TPP will reduce wages for the bottom 90 percent of people in the US while significantly increasing the wealth of the top 1 percent. The AFL CIO passed a resolution opposing the TPP and Teamster President James Hoffa wrote, “Workers on both sides of the deal get screwed while corporations rake in record profits. Like low-wage workers in the fast food and retail industries, workers must join together to let Congress know that the TPP is not the right path for the U.S.”
A broad coalition of groups have come together to stop the TPP. At the Occupy Wall Street protests this week in New York, the TPP was a top theme. In addition to marches and teach-ins focused on the TPP, the Money Wars street theater group performed its epic battle of Princess Laid-Off and the rebels against the TPP Death Star, Emperor Pipeline and Dark Banker. Actions are taking place this weekend and next week in Washington. If we are successful, this will be a huge victory against transnational corporate power.
There have been a number of wins recently against top corporations. The Nez Perce tribe and allies took on General Electric and won a case to stop megaloads for the tar sands from crossing their land in Idaho. Exxon was charged for illegally dumping toxic fracking waste in Pennsylvania. And JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon admitted that the bank broke the law.
Another important win that is inspiring many in the US took place in Colombia where farmers went on a prolonged strike to win back the right to use their own seeds. The anti-Monsanto and anti-GMO movement is strong here. Thousands of people marched this week in Kauai for a law to protect themselves from pesticides. Marches are being planned for another global day of action against Monsanto on October 12. And, despite an outpouring of money, a vote to label GMO products in Washington State is still holding strong.
And stopping the imminent attack on Syria was a win for people everywhere and a loss for the military industrial complex. Raytheon and Lockheed Martin in particular were set to make hundreds of millions from it. We must be vigilant though because the current diplomatic path could be used to justify an attack in the future.
It is important to recognize these wins and to build from them. They energize and inspire us to keep pushing when the power we are up against seems so overwhelming. It is also important to remember that we never know how close we are to achieving significant change. The occupy movement showed others that it was ok to take a stand and has spawned the idle no more, workers’ rights and climate change movements. David Callahan writes about the 7 ways that the occupy movement changed America.
Our eyes are open and we can’t ignore what we now see; as this article describes, we know that it is the plutocratic system, not individual inadequacy that is causing poverty in America. We know that the $1 trillion given by the Federal Reserve to private banks could have created 20 million desperately-needed jobs. We know that the 400 richest people in the US have more wealth than the GDP of entire countries like Canada and Mexico. And we know the names of those who control the wealth and exploit people and the planet for it. We no longer expect ‘leaders’ to create the change we need. We are all leaders and change depends on our actions.
The culture of resistance necessary to create the kind of world we want to live in is here. Actions are taking place daily in the US and around the world. You won’t hear about most of them in the mass media. This week alone, more than one hundred women, most of them undocumented, were arrested in Washington, DC to protest the ways that immigration policies harm their families. Dairy workers in New York protested their abusive working conditions. Protesters in Vermont, ages 65 to 94, chained themselves to the entrance of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power plant to demand its immediate closure and Marylanders protested outside an ‘arms bazaar.’ The Cascadia Forest Defenders scaled the capitol building in Oregon to drop a huge banner to protest clear-cutting.
Resistance is not all protesting, it also includes building alternative systems to meet our basic needs. Many who are active in OWS have been hard at work at this since the physical occupation was shut down. This week the Occupy Money Cooperative announced its launch with a fundraising campaign. They will provide low-cost financial services to the millions of Americans who are unbanked and underbanked and who are preyed upon by banks, check cashing services and payday lenders. It will be an opportunity for all to opt-out of big finance.
Just as OWS created the infrastructure that was used to organize Occupy Sandy and continues to provide services to those affected by Superstorm Sandy, occupiers in Colorado responded to the needs of people in the Boulder area who were hit by massive flooding. We hope that those in the Navajo Nation who have been devastated by flooding will also receive aid. And Tim DeChristopher reminds us of the importance of helping each other to fight the sometimes severe charges brought about by our actions.
Hard work is being done every day to take on entrenched corporate power and create a new world based on principles such as mutual aid, community, equity, solidarity and democracy. It is appropriate to stop and celebrate this work and what has been accomplished so far. Things are changing. Justin Wedes of OWS writes, “Sure, we face an uncertain future, but we embrace the chaos that defines our time. Because there is no alternative but to challenge the status quo of ever-increasing debt, shrinking job opportunities and disappearing civil rights.”
We can’t say what the outcome will be or whether we will live to see the world we hope to create. Can there even be an endpoint? Perhaps the most important piece of social transformation is not a goal but rather is the process of living in a way that is consistent with our values. We live in the culture of resistance which requires constant nurturing to bend the arc of time towards justice.
This article is produced by PopularResistance.org in conjunction with AlterNet. It is based on PopularResistance.org’s weekly newsletter reviewing the activities of the resistance movement.
Kevin Zeese, JD and Margaret Flowers, MD are participants in PopularResistance.org; they co-direct It’s Our Economy and co-host Clearing the FOG shown on UStream TV and heard on radio. Their twitters are @KBZeese and MFlowers8.
Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers are cohosts of Clearing the FOG on We Act Radio 1480 AM Washington, DC. They also codirect Its Our Economy and are organizers of the PopularResistancew.org.
Nation-less Corporation’s World Domination Pyramid
Beware of the following top crime families, responsible for all evils befalling on all people, all over the world, collectively orchestrating and funding wars, murder and mayhem, through their central banks, nation-less corporations and other institutions, deliberately causing millions upon millions of deaths and unimaginable destruction all over the world, to rule and control planet Earth, exposed by Thrive documentary film. - The evil bastards are as follows: Rothschild(s), Morgan(s), Rockefeller(s), Carnegie(s), Schiff(s), Herminie(s) and Warburg(s), for centuries these criminal families have been instigating and funding wars, murder, countless fake revolutions, creating and funding terrorist organizations through their secret societies, rewriting the true history as fiction to only benefit themselves and their racketeering businesses at all costs.
Evil shall triumph, only when good people do nothing to stop it!
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