Episode: 05.20.12: Counterpoint host Scott Harris considers Europe's economic
crisis; the successful lawsuit against govt. indefinite
detention of U.S. citizens; protests at the NATO Summit in
Chicago & the campaign to close down
the Indian Point nuclear plant Counterpoint, hosted by
Scott Harris, is heard every Monday night on WPKN 89.5
FM, Bridgeport, CT between 8:00 - 10:00 pm
ET. Webstreaming and audio archive at http://wpkn.org
Costas Panayotakis, Associate Professor of Sociology at
City University of New
York's New York City College of Technology
and author of "Remaking Scarcity:
from Capitalist Inefficiency to Economic Democracy," discusses the failure of
various Greek parties to form a government, prospects for a SYRIZA victory in
a new election – and how popular resistance to
austerity policies in Greece and elsewhere on the Continent has changed the debate across the Eurozone. http://btlonline.org/2012/CTPT/mp3/120520a-ctpt-panayotakis.mp3
Carl J. Mayer, one of two lawyers who filed a lawsuit, known as Hedges v.
Obama, on behalf of 7 high-profile plaintiffs including former New York
Times war correspondent Chris Hedges, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg
and celebrated writer and linguist Noam
Chomsky who are challenging provisions
of the what they assert are unconstitutional provisions
in the National Defense
Authorization Act. Mayer discusses Federal Judge for
the Southern District of
New York, Katherine Forrest's recent ruling
issuing a preliminary injunction that bars the U.S. government from subjecting apprehended terrorist suspects
to indefinite military
detention, under Section 1021 of NDAA, as she found the
law to be facially unconstitutional. http://btlonline.org/2012/CTPT/mp3/120520b-ctpt-mayer.mp3
Pat Hunt an organizer with the Coalition Against NATO/G8 War & Poverty Agenda,
discusses the anti-war and economic justice demonstrations against the NATO
summit in Chicago this past weekend as
well as the police repression of
activists engaged in lawful, peaceful protest. http://btlonline.org/2012/CTPT/mp3/120520c-ctpt-hunt.mp3
Marilyn Elie, co-coordinator Indian Point Safe Energy
Coalition and co-founder
of the Westchester Citizens Awareness Network, talks
about the ongoing
grassroots campaign to shut down the Indian Point nuclear power plant located
25 miles from New
York City and its metro population of 20 million people. http://btlonline.org/2012/CTPT/mp3/120520d-ctpt-elie.mp3
Some segments featured on Counterpoint are edited for rebroadcast on the
syndicated Between The Lines radio newsmagazine. Visit
their website at http://www.btlonline.org for free subscriptions to mp3 - podcast audio;
files,
program summaries and interview transcripts. An archive of Counterpoint
programs are accessible for free at http://www.wpkn.org
http://vimeo.com/42848523
Video of the nightly "casseroles" defying Quebec's Bill 78 criminalizing protest
Lyrics: You tell them You tell them That it was instinct that Drove you up to here. You tell them You tell them That your senses were screaming Deeply driven By a strange force Let it be your base camp. Let it be your base camp. You tell them You tell them That it was intuition that Drove you up to here A carelessness So necessary every now and then Let it be your base camp. Let it be your base camp.
By Anna Manzo
(I am writing this on Memorial Day, a day in which Americans commemorate the veterans of war and our parents and those who have since passed away. This is perhaps my way of honoring those who have always struggled for a better world for their loved ones...basically the whole of our humanity...)
AT LAST, the words I have longed to hear about mass movements: The
struggle for basic human rights is really a struggle of love –
and by the same token, creating a more loving and peaceful world. It's beautifully captured in this CommonDreams.org article headlined: "In Quebec, A Revolution of Love, Hope and Community." While
the author, Ethan Cox, relates his article to the Canadian
community, I feel the same views apply to the global movement over
economic injustice, one of the consequences of economic globalization,
which I had written of in 1998.
Since
Arab Spring, the Indignados, Occupy Wall Street and now Canada's Maple
Spring, much has been reported about the protests from the perspectives
of economics, politics, defense/security and terrorism. But the
"objective reporting" of the mainstream media, lacks the basic emotion
which truly unites us all: love.
Cox notes that the above video has gone viral, perhaps reflecting the feelings from Quebec university, college and technical
school students, whose original struggle was against 75 percent tuition
hikes, later raised to 83 percent after a marathon negotiation. The relatively low tuition fees are unheard of in the U.S., where college
education is seen more as a right of the privileged, not as a basic
human right. The Associated Press reports:
“The whole consensus around education was built around the Quiet
Revolution,” said Pierre Martin, a political science professor at the
Universite de Montreal. “That consensus would tend toward a tuition-free
model in the future. That was a promise.”
"As a result, he said,
Quebecers don’t compare their tuition rates to those in the U.S. or
English-speaking Canada, but to those in European countries where higher
education is free."
"Free" is
such a foreign concept to Americans...who gives anyone in the U.S.
anything free, especially on such a massive scale? After World War II
destroyed its infrastructure, did Europe countries realize its own
economic growth as so integral to its future that higher education
is seen as a gift, an investment to the youth, the next generation?What
about today's world, where so many jobs are being lost to computer
technology, outsourcing and the aftermath of the global economic crash?
Quebec's public education system, which extends beyond age
16 – is comprised of colleges which prepare students for either university-level
education, or for technical/trade schools. It is the majority of some 225,000 students in this three-tier system in Quebec that is largely in protest. Canada's higher education,
like its European counterparts, is largely subsidized by taxpayer funds. Yet those
taxpayers get a bigger return in social services for their hard-earned money, unlike the U.S.
where defense spending is nearly half the federal budget.
I am just starting to see U.S. mainstream media cover Quebec's province-wide protests,
which first became more forthright in February over tuition hikes,
and is now evolving into a protest over the constitutional right to
freedom of speech and assembly. The protests have now mainstreamed
beyond the brutal clashes with police, and into
neighborhoods, big and small – neighbors coming out of their homes
banging the "casserole"in a noisy form of community protest of banging pots and pans as is done in Latin America. Each night, the 15-min. protests begin at 8 p.m. to defy the emergency or "special law." The "special law", Bill 78, in intended not only
punish the student protesters by levying heavy fines for protests larger than 50 without proper permits – up to $35,000 for
student leaders and up to $125,000 for their associations. But it also includes prohibition of supporting the movement by sharing information
about it on Twitter and Facebook, or even wearing the "red square"
insignia of the strike. Critics say that the law criminalizes any kind
of protest.
The administrator of Translating the Printemps Erable,
a volunteer collective dedicated to translating French articles about
student movement into English, chastises Canada's English-speaking
media hesitancy in reporting on the issues of their movement, but then
goes further:
"If you do not live here, I wish I could properly convey to you what
it feels like ... It is magic. It starts quietly, a suggestion here and
there, and it builds. Everybody on the street begins to smile. I get
there, and we all—young and old, children and students and couples and
retirees and workers and weird misfits and dogs and, well, neighbours—we
all grin the widest grins you have ever seen while dancing around and
making as much noise as possible. We are almost ecstatic with the joy of
letting loose like this, of voicing our resistance to a government that
seeks to silence us, and of being together like this. I have lived in
my neighbourhood for five years now, and this is the most I have ever
felt a part of the community; the lasting impact that these protests
will have on how people relate to each other in the city is deep and
incredible.
"I come home from these protests euphoric. The first night I returned, I
sat down on my couch and I burst into tears, as the act of resisting,
loudly, with my neighbours, so joyfully, had released so much tension
that I had been carrying around with me, fearing our government, fearing
arrest, fearing for the future. I felt lighter. Every night, I exchange
stories with friends online and find out what happened in their
neighbourhoods. These are the kinds of things we say to each other: 'if I
loved my city any more right now, my heart would burst.' We use the
word 'love' a whole lot. We feel empowered. We feel connected. We feel
like we are going to win."
I am of the "baby boomer"
generation that has heard the stories of my parents and grandparents, who've known the desperate measures people undergo to meet basic human needs. They lived through the horrors of World War II, the fears of the Vietnam war, the Cold War and nuclear annihilation.
Through it all, I know there was an pain and sorrow they could not
express. I couldn't fully understand then the silence behind the tears
they didn't want me to see, but today I understand.
Like an unresolved family dysfunction of alcoholism, fears of economic scarcity and major wars repeated in generation after generation. It was difficult for people of those generations to speak of what collectively unites all people everywhere, because their world was
never as interconnected as today's.
There was never the
potential to resolve problems and conflicts before they flared into
wars, as there is now with the Internet and instant communication that
now can unite us anywhere in the world. Our parents and ancestors could only hope our leaders would safeguard us because they were the only ones who could command armies.
And now this generation knows the war on terror and the debt burden that a decade of fighting two wars. But today's generation can begin to help one another and realize we are all neighbors in a global community on this earth, in this tiny corner of the universe.
If only more would awaken and realize the possibilities that await us.
"I started to notice after the passage of Bill 78, and the mass
demonstration of May 22, a change. Not only in the streets, but online.
As the 'casseroles' spread, so did their footprint on the social
networks through which we express ourselves. Friends who had always
hated protests, right wingers, misanthropes, apolitical types and
everyone in between began to post pictures of themselves with pots and
pans outside their house.
My Facebook feed, which is normally full of cute pictures and a hodge
podge of random posts, unified. It coalesced in a way I had never seen
before. I now notice, and am surprised, if I see a single post unrelated
to this movement.
"Twitter, which had largely been ignored by Francophone Quebeckers, is
now swollen with tweets about the protests. The way we come together in
the streets has spread to our online presence. We share and comment and
talk. We come together as citizens of a community, galvanized by a
common cause.
"This movement may yet fail. It may be co-opted, or lose track of its
goals. It may fizzle or be beaten, as so many other movements have been.
But there can be no denying that something extraordinary is happening
in Quebec.
"If we, as a society, as a people, are to make a stand against the
governments which cut taxes on the rich and corporations and then plead
poverty as they dismantle our society, our communities, it will be here.
Cox ends with:
"Call me an idealist, call me a dreamer, call me anything you like. But
this is a moment in time we will tell our children about. Together, we
can start something here that spreads like wildfire across this
continent. What happens next is up to us."
As
someone who grew up in the 1960s, I ask of those from my generation who are now today's political and economic world
leaders: Why should we deny our children a world our ancestors could
only dream of?
For the first time in our
collective human history, in this generation, the dream of a more
peaceful, safe and loving world is within our grasp....
In
a world that is becoming increasingly divided between the haves and
have-nots, our children deserve from us all the love we can bestow
upon them. Education, like health care, should be a human right, not
simply a "privilege" – so that all can have a chance to
fulfill their human potential, and contribute to the sustainability of
their communities and a more peaceful, more safer world.
Supporting our children in this way would be the ultimate gift of love.
Episode: 05.14.12: Counterpoint host Scott Harris discusses Wisconsin's June 5th recall election; the Eurozone crisis & resistance to austerity; Obama's endorsement of gay marriage; CT's new campaign finance reform law
Counterpoint, hosted by Scott Harris, is heard every Monday night on WPKN 89.5 FM, Bridgeport, CT between 8 - 10 pm ET. Webstreaming and audio archive at http://wpkn.org
Matthew Rothschild, editor of the Progressive Magazine, discusses Wisconsin's upcoming June 5th recall election where Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett will be challenging Governor Scott Walker, and what's at stake in this historic election for the state and the nation. http://btlonline.org/2012/CTPT/mp3/120514a-ctpt-rothschild.mp3
Doug Henwood, editor and publisher of Left Business Observer and a
contributing editor at The Nation magazine, assesses the significance of recent
election results in France and Greece, and the growing popular resistance to
austerity policies with the European Union and elsewhere around the world. http://btlonline.org/2012/CTPT/mp3/120514b-ctpt-henwood.mp3
John Lewis, legal director with the group, Marriage Equality USA, discusses President Obama;s historic endorsement of same gender marriage and the political and societal impact of his announcement. http://btlonline.org/2012/CTPT/mp3/120514c-ctpt-lewis.mp3
Adam Smith, communications director with Public Campaign, talks about his group's effort to pressure Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy to sign HB
5556, that requires increased transparency for outside groups spending money in CT elections, mandating boards of directors to approve funds spent on campaigns and public disclosure of who is paying for campaign media advertisements. He'll also touch on national campaign finance issues, i.e. state-by-state efforts to overturn the Supreme Court Citizens United decision. http://btlonline.org/2012/CTPT/mp3/120514d-ctpt-smith.mp3
http://youtu.be/kQwUc79VGmM
UPDATED 5/25/12: Video from RT News with
Andrew Gavin Marshall, ThePeoplesBookProject.com in Montreal
By Anna Manzo
On Tuesday, tens of thousands of students and supporters coalesced in a defiant march in Montreal, marking the 100th day of student strikes over tuition increases for some 225,000 students in the university, junior college and technical school system in
Quebec.
What brought Tuesday's mass action was the May 18th passage of emergency Bill 78, which imposed stiff fines for participating in protests without permit, and punishment for supporting the movement by disseminating information on social media or wearing the strike's "red square" insignia.
Quebec's student unease had been on the rise since the 75 percent tuition increases had been proposed in 2010, and negotiations hit an impasse in recent weeks. Here's the students' chronology of the issues at http://tuitiontruth.ca and http://stopthehike.ca:
"For a year and a half, the student movement has been mobilizing and
organizing actions in order to stop the increase in tuition fees.
Student representatives have attempted discussions in good faith with
the government, but without success. On December 6, 2010, thousands of
us were in Québec City to demonstrate against the hike and more than
30,000 signed a petition for the same purpose. Symbolic actions were
held across Québec, and student rallies disrupted the activities of the
Liberal Party. We burst into the offices of the Ministry of Finance as
well as those of presidents and principals to demonstrate that the
student movement will not back down. March 31, 2011, more than 60,000
students were on strike for the same cause. On November 10th 30,000 were
in the streets. But it’s always the same answer: Charest stubbornly
refuses to listen to the people. We’ll have to strike harder."
On this website, http://www.arretezmoiquelquun.com/ also created by the students, is their statement to continue civil disobedience: Translated: "I disobey. Someone stop me! We pledge to continue fighting, to remain mobilized under fundamental freedoms. If we (are prosecuted) under Law 78, we are committed to dealing with them."
The student unrest had become particularly militant in mid-February of this year. I first learned of the protests when a source teaching at one of the universities wrote me in April, of strikers going into classrooms and intimidating instructors as well as students: "There have been arrests,
injunctions, riots, police brutality, a student has actually lost an eye and an
innocent bystander got his leg broken. The semester is officially over and I'm still
obligated to show up to my empty classroom (a 90-min. commute) and won't have my summer
vacation because of that.... 151 students got arrested in
Gatineau. Vandalism in our building, it's crazy!"
When I had last spoken to her after Bill 78 was signed, and before the march Tuesday, she had feared that her emails or Facebook account would be read.
Perhaps this news had not been covered in the U.S. because Quebec is a French-speaking province, and very few early news reports were in English.
"Let's Stop the Hike: Education is a Right"
from a protest in Quebec earlier this year
But the fundamental difference between Canadians and Americans is the Canadians' belief that healthcare and college education are basic human rights.
Tinker with any one of those in Quebec – especially those basic needs which indeed, do belong to the next generation with its youthful energy, idealism and many years ahead of them – and you're talking not just about an affront to basic human dignity, but the sense of survival in a globalized economy that has seen technology and outsourcing replacing human labor, the means of raising a family.
"In the painful tumult of daily protests, an entire generation of
Québécois youth is learning a political lesson no class would ever
teach: violence underlies all of society's inequalities, and power
doesn't yield an inch without a fight.
"The students' courage and
creativity in the face of such brutality has lit a fire under Quebec.
Their achievement has been to begin to clarify for a broad swath of
society that a tuition hike is not a matter of isolated accounting, but
the goal of a neoliberal austerity agenda the world over. Forcing
students to pay more for education is part of a transfer of wealth from
the poor and middle-class to the rich – as with privatization and the
state's withdrawal from service-provision, tax breaks for corporations
and deep cuts to social programs.
"The fault-lines of the struggle
over education – dividing those who preach it must be a commodity
purchased by 'consumers' for self-advancement, and those who would
protect it as a right funded by the state for the collective good – has
thus sparked a fundamental debate about the entire society's future."
Very few Americans know that their own country is the only one among developed nations which does not have universal health care or subsidized, public college education. Perhaps, because the U.S. was the least ravaged by World War II, its European allies – as well as Germany and Japan – realized that such taxpayer investments were vital to the recovery of their nations' destroyed infrastructure.
The tuition was originally to be increased 75 percent, an increase of
$1625 over a five-year period. After grueling negotiations, the new "compromise" was to be increase the tuition an estimated 82 percent or $254 each year over seven years, to which the student unions objected.
This may seem ridiculously low to Americans, where student debt now averages $25,000 a year and it's now harder to qualify for bankruptcy protection under laws in recent years. Yet, Quebec already has the lowest tuition of all the provinces, perhaps due to the highest tax rate of 25 percent.
In Montreal, after three weeks of nightly protests marked by over 100 arrests, Bill 78 was enacted with stiff fines and with unconstitutional provisions, according to its critics.
Since Tuesday, municipal police in Quebec have begun to enforce the draconian measures, according to the World Socialist website.
UPDATE 5/24/12: Read about another police state: Quebec has passed its emergency Bill 78 on May 18. To date, the Guardian UK reports a record Canadian high of 2,500 arrested during three months of student strike over tuition hikes.
Did you know that as Chicago prepared for the NATO summit,"F-16 warplanes screamed through the skies as part of a defense exercise and helicopters hovered incessantly?"
Such was the description in detailed news reports from The Guardian, a British newspaper.
Is this overkill? Even before the creation of this weekend's police state, Salon.com reported that hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent to militarize our nation against a terrorism threat that barely exists.
In my previous blog post, I focused on Naomi Wolf's comments about the Hedges v. Obama lawsuit and their small victory when a federal judge ruled that counter-terrorism Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 was unconstitutional. The provision would have allowed the equivalent of "Guantanamo for Americans" suspected of supporting terrorism. The judge said that the section would chill the First and Fifth Amendment rights of scholars, political activists and journalists.
Furthermore, Wolf noted that the effort to safeguard these rights was not backed by the huge coffers of government nor multinational corporations:
"The lawyers for the government have endless funds (our tax dollars); the
plaintiffs' lawyers all worked pro bono; the plaintiffs themselves paid
their own way to make their case. Yet, by these slender means, what was
essentially a coup in two paragraphs has been blocked from advancing
under cover of ignorance and silence to becoming the supreme law of the
land. But should our democracy hang by such a tenuous thread that it
relies on the sheer luck that this case was heard by a courageous judge
with a settled belief in the constitution of the United States?
I, too, dislike using so much energy to write about the issues of the surveillance and abuses of the police state. I would much rather focus on the positive solutions in
life, things that give our lives more meaning and help salvage our
future as human beings in this tiny corner of the otherwise miraculous universe we live
in.
But, I often find I cannot, as there are too many
people in power who fail to reflect on humanity's common origins and continue
to drive the immensely profitable engine of fear and war-mongering. While this mindset is a hold-over from ancient times that has sustained human survival over the millennia – when no
technology existed for humans to more readily resolve life-threatening issues of scarce resources except through military might – today the profit-making agenda of the military industrial complex is in overdrive, supremely imbalanced in what could be an otherwise sustainable economy, to the detriment of collective human progress.
I am especially galled at the enormous waste of taxpayer funds and energy – not only for perpetual war overseas, but domestically as, well, in the ever-expanding surveillance and police state being wrought to repress individuals whose concerns and voices are unheard, their basic needs unmet.
Simply put, if resources were shared more equitably, would there be no need for a police state? What are those in power so afraid of?
Chicago Police officers keep their eyes on protesters near
Randolph and Michigan Avenue.
(E. Jason Wambsgans, Chicago Tribune)
Read the excellent reporting by Guardian, UK newspaper's Bernard Harcourt on how President Obama's former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, now Chicago mayor, brought a police state to his city to protect the NATO summit (excerpted here):
"With Nato delegates arriving Saturday night, the City of Chicago has been turned into a police state. Courtesy of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who several months ago began implementing new draconian anti-protest measures, Chicago has gone on security lockdown.
Starting early Friday night, 18 May 2012, the Chicago Police Department
began shutting down – prohibiting cars, bikes, and pedestrians – miles
and miles of highways and roads in the heart of Chicago to create a
security perimeter around downtown and McCormick Place (where the Nato
summit is being held).
Eight-foot tall, anti-scale security fencing
went up all over that perimeter and downtown, including Grant Park; and
the Chicago police – as well as myriad other federal, state, and local
law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI and the US secret service –
were out in force on riot-geared horses, bikes, and patrols – batons at the ready. Philadelphia Police Department
is sending over reinforcements to help out; Chicago has also asked for
recruits from police departments in Milwaukee and Charlotte-Mecklenburg,
NC. Meanwhile, F-16 warplanes "screamed through the skies as part of a pre-summit defense exercise" and helicopters hovered incessantly.
The Chicago Police Department has spent $1m in "riot-control equipment"
in anticipation of the Nato summit. According to the Guardian, "The
city of Chicago's procurement services website shows that in March
[2012] $757,657 was spent on 8,513 'retro-fit kits' to be fitted to
police helmets. In February [2012] 673 of the same kits, which include a
face shield and ear and neck protectors, were purchased for $56,632." Plus, the Chicago Police Department will be deploying its two, new, expensive long-range acoustic device (LRAD) sound cannons – which it bought at $20,000 a pop. These are the type of devices that were used by the Pittsburgh police to deliver high-pitched alarm tones during the G20 summit meeting there in 2009.
Then,
there is the "secret suburban Chicago" police control center where
"officials from more than 40 different agencies sit side by side with a
giant central screen before them," as reported by the Chicago Sun Times.
From the multi-agency command center, all different types of federal,
state and local law enforcement can "view live video feeds from security
cameras that are already up and running throughout the city".
If you can just imagine all this tremendous ingenuity and know-how being used to allocate resources instead for basic human needs more equitably, would we really need this crazy-making kind of surveillance and immense, bullying brute force when the majority of the protesters are nonviolent?
The scale of such wasted energy and talent simply boggles the mind.
I
would like to believe for the first time in this generation, we are on
the cusp of a new world that has the technology to sustain us,
resolve our human differences and allow us collectively to reach the
dreams of health, safety and peace for all.
I'm sure all individuals on this planet crave the chance to spend our lives fully enjoying the
reasons which make us sensient
and alive, which make us uniquely human and not mere inorganic substances. That we can dream and actually create a world without fears of
thirst, hunger, homelessness or man-made violence, if only our political and economic leaders will begin to open their eyes to their inordinate wealth and power and can lead us all to freedom from enslavement – their own as well as ours.
A life our ancestors have dreamt of are things I
believe are now within humankind's grasp, if only we would just awaken and realize the opportunities that technology brings and our very own human nature is waiting to fulfill.
But
unfortunately, instead of using the immense talent and wealth of
resources to further guide us toward a sustainable co-existence where individuals' potential thrives and their talents are efforts are rewarded with
a more loving world and safer future, our political and corporate leaders are leading us back
into the dark ages, stagnating our collective human evolution.
Why? we must ask them.
Harcourt ends his article with this valid point:
"Nato will come and go, but the new anti-protest
laws, the new riot-gear, the two LRAD sound cannons, and all the
normalization of this police state … that will be with us for a long
time."
Wanted to share with you some observations from the plaintiffs in the Hedges v. Obama lawsuit over the National Defense Authorization Act's section that could allow indefinite detention of American citizens suspected of supporting terrorism. A hearing was held in Manhattan on March 30, and the district judge's ruling was delivered May 16.
I utterly dislike the enormous amounts of energy I must put into
writing about these issues, and I'm sure many Americans likewise would
rather avoid these topics. Personally, I would prefer to write about the positive issues in
life, things that give our lives more meaning and help salvage our
future as human beings in a tiny piece of a miraculous universe we live
in.
Here's Hedges' and Wolf's words that give me hope for the continuing evolution of humankind.
From the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges: "U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest, in a 68-page opinion, ruled Wednesday that Section 1021 of the NDAA was unconstitutional. It was a
stunning and monumental victory." His article, written Friday, can be found here: http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/64-64/11504-a-victory-for-all-of-us
Hedges writes:
Revolt, as Albert Camus
reminded us, is the only acceptable definition of the moral life.
Revolt, he wrote, is “a constant confrontation between man and his
obscurity. … It is not aspiration, for it is devoid of hope. That revolt
is the certainty of a crushing fate, without the resignation that ought
to accompany it.”
“A living man can be enslaved and reduced
to the historic condition of an object,” Camus warned. “But if he dies
in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind
of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object.”
From Naomi Wolf: "On Wednesday 16 May, at about 4pm, the republic of the United States
of America was drawn back – at least for now – from a precipice that
would have plunged our country into moral darkness. One brave and
principled newly-appointed judge ruled against a law that would have
brought the legal powers of the authorities of Guantánamo home to our
own courthouses, streets and backyards."
"The lawyers for the government have endless funds (our tax dollars); the
plaintiffs' lawyers all worked pro bono; the plaintiffs themselves paid
their own way to make their case. Yet, by these slender means, what was
essentially a coup in two paragraphs has been blocked from advancing
under cover of ignorance and silence to becoming the supreme law of the
land. But should our democracy hang by such a tenuous thread that it
relies on the sheer luck that this case was heard by a courageous judge
with a settled belief in the constitution of the United States?"
Find more under-reported Between The Lines news and podcasts at BTLonline.org. Like our page on Facebook at http://Facebook.com/BetweenTheLinesRadioNewsmagazine Follow Between The Lines on Twitter at @BTLRadioNews Follow me for sustainability perspectives @AnnaMManzo
On Wednesday, a Manhattan district judge placed a preliminary injunction on enforcement of a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act which could be interpreted broadly to allow indefinite detention of Americans suspected of supporting terrorism. Judge Katherine Forrest said the
section could also "chill the First and Fifth Amendment rights" of journalists, scholars
and political activists.
That same evening, Chicago police, with their guns drawn and using battering rams, broke into a South Side housing unit to arrest protesters preparing for the anti-NATO summit this weekend.
Three of those activists now face charges of terrorism conspiracy, according to MSNBC.com. Are they part of the nonviolent Occupy? Are they self-described violent anarchists? Or simply clueless hoodlums?
This scenario sound familiar? My fellow journalists Scott Harris, Hank Hoffman and I recall covering similar pre-emptive police actions during the 2000 IMF-World Bank protests in Washington, D.C., in which 600 protesters were arrested. And, during Republican National Convention protests in Philadelphia, a SWAT team pre-emptively raided Spiral Q studio as protesters prepared for Bread-and-Puppet style street theater during protest marches. The police alleged that plastic soda bottles and rags found on site were for molotov cocktails. Most of those arrested were either released fairly quickly, held until the protest passed or their charges were thrown out in court.
Then as now, protesters were concerned about First Amendment rights to dissent. But now, the "playbook" has become more
appalling since the Seattle World Trade Organization protests of 1999.
No charges of "terrorism" were ever leveled in those reports from a decade ago. However, the word "terrorism," is explicitly making the rounds on major news sites today.
The three suspects are each being held on $1.5 million bail,
according to the Chicago Tribune. Apparently, the FBI, Secret
Service and Homeland Security have targeted this group after a
monthlong investigation. A week ago, a YouTube video of a traffic stop captures their
harassment by Chicago cops.
According to Jeanine Molloff in the HuffingtonPost.com, a new law, "Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011" (by Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Fla. and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.), unanimously passed in the Senate, criminalizes protest within a certain range of officials requiring Secret Service protection at an officially defined "National Special Security Event" or NSSE.
Says Molloff: "H.R. 347 and its Senate companion bill, S 1794 makes protest of any type potentially a federal offense with anywhere from a year to 10 years in federal prison." NSSE events include the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions, the Academy Awards and even the Superbowl XXXVI.
Molloff states:
"The dangerous part of this 'executive order' lies not in the triviality
of a SuperBowl receiving taxpayer funded Secret Service protection --
but in the convenience manufactured for any President desperate to hide
deliberations of groups like the G-8, the G-20 and the World Trade
Organization. The classification of such events as NSSE -- insures the
rich and powerful against any pesky accountability or transparency to
the unwashed minions -- namely the US public. HR 347 and S. 1794
insulates such events as the G-8, WTO and presidential conventions
against tough questions and politically justified protests."
I suppose the NATO Summit could fall under this category as well.
Back in 2000, we had thought it important to cover the
dissenting voices and protests of people concerned about the consequence of economic globalization in Third World countries; voices that were hardly represented
in mainstream media, especially the media monopolies of the day.
I felt then that those who would
pick on "easy targets" (via neocolonial-style multinational corporatism) in the developing world and extract repayment of
high debts by simultaneously demanding cuts to education, healthcare,
infrastructure, social services – would someday turn on their fellow counterparts on the developed world. (John Perkins, in his 2004 book, "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" describes firsthand the dangers of economic globalization.)
Well, that day has come in the global aftermath of Wall Street's financial crash caused by mortgage-backed securities and credit-default swaps (unregulated "insurance" for speculative trading).
While no one who was responsible for the financial disaster has been prosecuted, ordinary taxpayers are footing the bill for Wall Street and
major bank bailouts, while experiencing the stresses of lengthy, high rates of unemployment, lost pensions, and foreclosed homes within a technology-driven work environment that is
quickly replacing human labor, and producing low-wage service sector jobs.
In Europe, millions of people who have known universal health care and subsidized college education are suffering massive job losses as their governments turn to Third World-like austerity measures: high debt payment priorities and massive cuts or privatization of social services, affecting government jobs and pensions. And they have been on the streets in massive protest.
And now, there's other undercurrents in democratic countries where nonviolent protest is being criminalized.
The 225,000 Quebec-wide system of universities, junior colleges and technical schools have been protesting or striking against proposed tuition hikes which raise their fees $254 a year for seven years (in the latest "compromise") for weeks now – the 100th day of ongoing protests will be this Tuesday.
The tuition fees, by U.S. standards, seem low, and are indeed lower than other provinces in Canada. But these Canadian students believe that "education is a human right," just as single-payer health care proponents in the U.S. believe health care is a basic human right. The students only have to look at the $25,000 average student debt of their counterparts in the U.S. and see the future...
A source tells me that there were 10,000 protesters on the streets last night after the vote to approve was announced. They are apparently, undeterred...
The law takes effect today.
UPDATE 5/20/12: The nightly protests continue!
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