Strategic Framework for Challenging Establishment Power

It's difficult to ponder changing the status quo... the powerful establishment seeks, in general, to maintain the staus quo. Where does one start? Having a strategy helps. Here's a strategy shared with me by a college friend who has committed his life to promoting deep social change.

A Three-Element Strategy for Personal Activism:

It's certain that many of us share the sense that we need to move "beyond" the status quo, but we don't know how to do that. This sentiment is, in part, a reflection of the fact that our social construct is strongly defined by corporate power. An example of this might be that a corporation commits clear abuse, yet it is practically impossible to challenge that abuse because the channels to do so are filled with barriers that have been accumulated over decades of insider corporate tinkering with our judicial and legal systems. Add to that a pervasive control of mass media, and hence public awareness, that effectively isolates progressive activists from the rest of society.

So, how do we go forward? Here are three broad strategic elements by which to invest your activist energies:

Element 1: Invest part of your time in the multi-generational struggle to retract corporate constitutional rights that have been accumulated over decades. This sounds abstract, but think of it as being similar to ending slavery, which was once a legal business practice until the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the constitution were adopted. (Ironically, corporations have abused these amendments by getting the US Supreme Court to recognize them as "persons" within this Constitutional context.)

Element 2: Invest part of your time on time-sensitive issues, like saving that 700-year-old tree in your neighborhood that "needs to be chopped down" to widen a road. It's easy to become solely devoted to urgent issues of the day, so making linkages between this element and the other two is a helpful way to integrate your activism into this holistic strategy.

Element 3: Invest part of your time in identifying and promoting alternatives to status quo systems. It's easy to expose the flaws in the current "system," but difficult to develope and implement workable alternatives. Concrete steps in this regard include educating yourself and others about alternatives models of social interaction, supporting fledgling experiments into alternative models, like worker-owned businesses and so on.

By working within this construct on our own, we will be working together in a distributed way. It is a low-cost way to be organized, in the broad sense of the word.

Sources:

Dave Henson, one of the founders of the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD).

Presidential Candidates: What a Let Down

OK. It's true. Obama has told us that it's up to the people to demand change. So, we better start making noise.

The President is a tool of which ever elite faction gains control. When I say "elite" I mean the wealthy and powerful, not intellectuals who ponder big issues.

LibHom recently tallied a sickening number of examples of Obama selling out. They're sickening, because that's the way your stomach will feel when you read them.

I was reminded of the recent interviews I've heard with Andrew Bacevich, author of The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. Rightly, Bacevich holds both parties accountable for the pending demise of the country:

There’s a lot in the book that tries to hold the Bush administration accountable for recent events, but I would not for a second want to suggest that the crisis in which we find ourselves today ought to be laid simply at the foot of the Bush administration or the Republican Party, because it’s been a long time coming.

[both political parties,] over the last twenty years or so, [have had] an increasing willingness to use military force to cause the world to look the way we want it to look. And I think that that expression of American exceptionalism is one that’s not only utterly false, but is greatly at odds with own interests as a country.

However, it's not at odds with the goals of transnational corporations that make windfall profits from "opening foreign markets." In short, both Republicans and Democrats have used military force to prop up unpopular dictators so that the natural resources and labor of foreign countries can be exploited. They take advantage of the grains of truth in "fighting communism" and now "the war on terrorism," to bully their way into massive profits for a few people, including pay-offs to the political elite in both parties.

It's a scam that no-one has exposed better than Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler in his essay "War is a Racket."

A sample:

I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of our country's most agile military force--the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to Major General. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I suspected I was part of a racket all the time. Now I am sure of it. -- S. D. Butler

Sources:

Democracy Now, "The Limits of Power: Andrew Bacevich on the End of American Exceptionalism", August 20, 2008.

Predictable Consequence of Air Strikes

The phrase "I told you so" doesn't play well among anyone, and certainly isn't accepted by an elite pundit class that continues to blather via corporate media despite consistently getting it wrong. But I and and many others have predicted increased use of areal bombings and resultant civilian deaths. (See also: comparison of Vietnam and Iraq war time lines).

The fact is it doesn't take an expert to figure out that, as the US reduces troop strength it will increase the use of "air power." By its nature, despite false hopes of "smart bombs," bombs, missiles, cannons and heavy machine guns fired from the air are crude. The information on which such attacks are made is often crude. The potential for getting the information right, but actually shooting at the right target is farily high. The result is more civilian killings by the US, and that has been happening for some time now.

Today we hear another in a long series of such incidents.

A U.S. military airstrike this week killed 47 civilians traveling to a wedding, the head of an Afghan government commission investigating the incident said Friday.

The airstrike on Sunday in Deh Bala district of Nuristan province also wounded nine civilians, said Burhanullah Shinwari, the deputy chairman of the Senate, who led the delegation.

Will the commission findings change anything? Maybe, in the short term, the US will be a bit more careful. But any significant change in civilian deaths at US hands will only occur if US forces withdraw completely, which in Afghanistan is highly unlikely. You won't hear the pundit class saying this, because they can't. The rich and powerful won't let it happen. So the people's press will have to keep making this point until the rest of the people catch on.

Sources:

Associated Press, 47 Afghan civilians killed by US bombs, group says, Amir Shah, July 11, 2008.

U.S. Bombings in Iraq Increased Fivefold in 2007

The following report updates my blog entry of January 11, 2008 on this topic. According to news headlines from DemocracyNow:

U.S. Bombings in Iraq Increased Fivefold in 2007

New figures from the Pentagon show the U.S. carried out fives times as many aerial bombings in Iraq last year as it did in 2006. According to the Washington Post, U.S. forces dropped more than 1,400 bombs—an average of nearly four a day. The 2006 total was 229 bombs, an average of four per week. The UN estimates at least two hundred civilians were killed in U.S. bombings from April until the end of the year. The figures come as the U.S. continues an extensive bombing campaign over Arab Jabour south of Baghdad. In one of the largest strikes since the 2003 invasion, U.S. warplanes dropped 40,000 pounds of bombs in a ten-minute span one week ago. Military experts are predicting an increase in the bombing, should the U.S. draw down its forces in Iraq. Airstrikes are also at record levels in Afghanistan. NATO bombings topped 3,500 last year, doubling the number for 2006.

Sources:

DemocracyNow Headlines, January 17, 2006.

Pure Propaganda: Air Strikes a Success

The record, logic and the physics are clear. Increased areal bombing increases civilian deaths, regardless of increased accuracy of the weapons.

In Vietnam, the US drew down troops, increased bombing and civilian deaths increased. For over a year now, in addition to troop increases in Iraq, the US has significantly increased air attacks. A resulting increase in civilian deaths has been documented by many sources.

The Associated Press reports, "Commanders tout success of Iraq strikes." [1] This is a clear propaganda piece, and unfortunately, the AP is serving as the stenographer.

We know, and AP editors know, that my opening statements are true. That's why they throw the following bone to the unwashed masses:

Despite the massive size of the air strikes, Donnelly said that to the military's knowledge, no civilians were killed. That could not immediately be independently confirmed. He added that the targeting of three targets was called off because unmanned surveillance planes showed civilians in those areas.

As a government official, I know what the phrase "to the military's knowledge" means. It means, "we know that this policy of increased use of areal bombing increases civilian deaths, but in this particular case, we don't have detailed data, so... maybe civilians didn't die."

There's an implication that the military will get back to us later when they have more "knowledge." But how many of us will ever hear about their improved knowledge on this particular case? I follow this Iraq war fairly closely, and can almost guarantee I will NOT ever hear what happened to civilians in this case, even if the military gains the "knowledge".

But I have enough knowledge to see through the propaganda. It's a pathetic embarrassment to be American in the face of this Orwellian state of affairs. So I write a stupid blog entry, and go to work. I should do better than that.

Here's the contact for the Associated Press. Refer to the article sourced below. Ask them to find out, and report back to you, how many civilians died in this particular set of air strikes.

See Update: "U.S. Areal Bombings in Iraq Increased Fivefold in 2007"

The Date in 2003
Bush tells [former] Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar he plans to go to war two days before he tells Secretary of State Powell. This fact is revealed to the public April 18, 2004 [2].

Sources:

1. Associated Press, Commanders tout success of Iraq strikes, BRADLEY BROOKS, January 11, 2008.

2. Mother Jones, Chronicle of a War Foretold, Tim Dickinson and Jonathan Stein, Sept - Oct 2006.

Photo: This photo happens to be of Lebanon, but it's counter propaganda value is justified. We need an image in our mind of what "bomb" or "explosion" means.

Peace Movement Strategy for September?

So, we hear today that

Bush paid a surprise visit to a gathering of GOP congressional staffers and White House aides trying to determine an effective strategy for communications about war policies.

Why am I not surprised that they met to talk about their propaganda strategy and not their foreign policy strategy? This is confirmed by the following:

One participant said the president told the staffers he would not rethink his Iraq policies until after a critical military assessment in September.

That's right, Bush isn't even going to think about policy strategies until September.

We're told, however, that his Joint Chiefs of Staff are thinking about options come September: More troops or the same level of troops.

It's only a matter of time until troops are scaled back and the US shifts to using more "air support." In fact, the later is already happening.

The escalation worries some about an increase in “collateral damage,” casualties among Iraqi civilians. [2]

As US troops withdraw, increased air power is almost inevitable. We have the experience of the Vietnam timeline to draw on.

The US peace movement has to sharpen its message and demand that such bombings not occur. In addition, we need to expose the giant military bases in Iraq and demand that they are closed; we don't simply want the Democrat's Republican-lite troop redeployment.

So, what's the Peace Movement's strategy for September 2007? A better question is, what's the August strategy?

Sources:

1. Associated Press, Democrats push all-night debate on Iraq, ANNE FLAHERTY, July 17, 2007.

2. Associated Press, BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq, U.S. air power beefed up, used more in Iraq, July 15, 2007.