The Big Dick School of American Patriotism

Nan Levinson

Let's face it: we live in a state of pervasive national security anxiety. There are various possible responses to this low-grade fever that saps resolve, but first we have to face the basis for that anxiety -- what I've come to think of as the Big Dick School of Patriotism, or (since anything having to do with our present version of national security, even a critique of it, has to have an acronym) the BDSP.

The BDSP is based on a bedrock belief in how America should work: that the only strength that really matters is military and that a great country is one with the capacity to beat the be Jesus out of everyone else. Think of it as a military version of 50 Shades of Grey, with the same frisson of control and submission (for the American citizen) and the assumption that a good portion of the world is ripe to be bullied.

The BDSP is good citizenship conflated with JROTC, hosannas to sniper kills, the Pentagon's commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War -- what are we celebrating there anyway? -- Rudolph Giuliani pining for a president who loves America in Reaganesque fashion, and the organizers of South Boston's St. Patrick's Day, who wouldn't let the local chapter of Veterans For Peace march with their banners because, so the story goes, they didn't want the word “peace” associated with veterans.

Of course, the Big Dick School of Patriotism isn't new -- revolutionary roots, manifest destiny, history as the great pounding of hooves across the plain, and all that. Nor is it uniquely American, even if there is something culturally specific about our form of national hubris on steroids. Still, there have been times in our history when civilians -- some in power, some drawing strength from numbers -- have pushed back against the military and its mystique, or at least have demanded an accounting of its deeds. And of course, until the Cold War bled into 9/11, there was no national security state on the present gargantuan scale to deal with.

As he was leaving office, President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned against the overweening power of what he called “the military-industrial complex.” As a senator, J. William Fulbright similarly warned of “the arrogance of [American] power” and used his Foreign Relations Committee chairmanship to challenge the Vietnam War -- whereupon Fred Friendly, president of CBS News, got that network's executives to agree to preempt “Captain Kangaroo” and cover those hearings live.

On the populist side, there was General Smedley Butler, who campaigned against the military in his retirement, the Bonus Marchers of Great Depression Washington, and of course the massive antiwar resistance and remarkable insubordination of American soldiers during the Vietnam War. Similarly, some soldiers from the all-volunteer force of our era worked to undermine the U.S. occupation of Iraq in various (though far less pervasive) ways, including conducting “search and avoid missions” in which they would park, hang out, and falsely report that they were searching for weapons caches.

These days, no one in America directly takes on the military. Not the president, who just requested $534 billion for the new Pentagon budget, plus an additional $51 billion for supplemental war funding. Not Congress, where the range of debate over an “authorization” of war in Iraq and Syria goes from “hawks,” who want assurances that we'll blow ISIS to oblivion by any means, to “doves,” who want assurances that there will be no “boots on the ground” while we blow ISIS into oblivion. Certainly not the courts, which, among other things, have consistently refused to let military objectors invoke their right to disobey illegal orders. And not American citizens who are now well trained to spend their time thanking their all-volunteer warriors for their sacrifices before turning back to the business of everyday life.

It seems to matter little to anyone that, since 9/11, what is supposed to be the greatest fighting force in the world has been stymied by modestly armed insurgencies -- in response to which we keep buying our military yet newer props like the wildly overpriced, over-touted, and underachieving F-35 fighter plane, and sending them back to clean up the very messes they helped produce not so long before. There never seem to be any consequences to this repetitive course of action. Well, none if you don't count the squandering of whatever political capital this country had after 9/11, or the way a million or so veterans injured in Iraq and Afghanistan will require costly care for the rest of their lives, or the billions spent on war rather than the environment, infrastructure, education, or [fill in your favorite civic need here].

Okay, it's true that a tiny crew of largely overlooked politicians like Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Barbara Lee of California did try to limit war funding; that Obama did finally resist calls for invading Syria (before he began bombing it); and that the Supreme Court did rule that the Stolen Valor Act of 2005, which criminalized lying about military awards, was unconstitutional.

But how much attention gets paid to all that? Massively less than to the glories of American Sniper.  Or to Commander-in-Chief Obama reassuring soldiers that, regardless of race, creed, class, religion, or whom we choose to love, “when it comes to our troops, when it comes to you and your families, as Americans we stand united. We are proud of you. We support you. And we can never thank you enough.”

And why would anyone with political ambitions claim otherwise when there's no gain, no glory in it? After all, the American public may be weary of war, but a widely-cited annual poll found a majority of them in favor of taking on ISIS, even if it embroils us in a big-dick war in Syria. 

Making the Military into a Clique

So what gives? How do you explain an America in which, despite the disastrous record of the U.S. military these last 13 years and the growth of extremist Islamic groups in the same period, there is essentially no pushback in this country.  One obvious answer is that it's easy to keep valorizing the military when you have nothing to do with it. That big, busy, well-funded world-unto-itself currently includes less than 1% of the population. Add in their families and the civilians who work on or near military bases (or in the Pentagon) and, as a rough estimate, perhaps you have something in the vicinity of 5% of Americans who interact with the military on a regular basis. For the other 95% or so, the rest of us, what that military does, especially in distant lands, is just a blip on the busy-busy screen of our consciousness. Yet the further we get from the military, the more beguiled we are by it.

It helps, of course, that young Americans don't have to worry about being drafted against their wishes. The last citizen was drafted in 1973 and, despite calls in these years for the reinstatement of conscription, no one in the BDSP seems in any hurry to do so. “One lesson learned from Vietnam,” the father of a Marine told me, “is if you're going to start a war, don't even pretend to threaten the sons and daughters of the upper middle class and the rich.”

It isn't just the absence of threat that distances the public from American war making, however. It's also the inbred nature of the military itself.  In the Vietnam years, when about one-third of the troops who fought were conscripts, all soldiers spent a year “in-country.” This meant individuals rotated in and out of the war zone at different times rather than as intact units, and soldiers circulated back into civil society regularly. This was certainly good for civil society -- we heard about the war directly from the people fighting it -- but it wasn't so great for the armed forces.

So when the change came to an all-volunteer service, the military made a point of training and deploying units together to increase cohesion. And cohere they do, from a long, grueling period of training and indoctrination through an all-encompassing military world in which you live, work, and play with the same people 24/7 to the secret handshake of shared jargon and experience that is meant to bond you for life.

Not coincidentally, this makes dissent within the military ever less likely. A number of soldiers and marines have told me over the years that they deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan with their units despite misgivings about the wars they were to fight because, if they hadn't, someone else -- usually someone they knew -- would have had to go in their stead. The result of all this cohesion is the sort of cliquishness that would make a 13-year-old whispering in a school cafeteria blush. I'd guess that it also makes politicians who aren't fully enrolled members of the BDSP leery of challenging the military on what may be matters of life and death.  It certainly leaves the citizenry in that position.

Yet separate from us as those soldiers may be, they're still our troops, our movie heroes, and (I suspect) our source of guilt, because they fought our wars while we were otherwise engaged. Contemporary war may be sanitized for the American public and no longer televised Vietnam-style, but all that shaking of our heroes' hands and wringing of our own hands about their victimization comes out of some sense of responsibility sloughed off. 

The Personnel Is Political

A draft would certainly make a difference in this increasingly strange civilian-soldier nexus, but its absence is hardly the only reason that Americans now hold our armed forces sacrosanct in a way that once would have seemed foreign indeed. For starters, the military functions as a powerful lobby in Washington, which is increasingly effective when it comes to reinforcing a hands-off approach to its affairs and blocking outside scrutiny. Take, for example, the Military Justice Improvement Act of 2013.  It would have moved prosecution of felony-level sexual assault cases from the military chain of command, which controls most aspects of an enlistee's life, to independent military prosecutors. Trust us, insisted the top brass, we can police ourselves, never mind that one in five servicewomen reported unwanted sexual contact and 25% of them said the offender was someone in their chain of command. The bill fell to a filibuster in the Senate last year.

One strategy the military employs in dealing with Congress is something called “jointness.” It's a relatively recent coinage for cross-service cooperation in research, planning, procurement, and operations. While it's focused on increasing operational flexibility and efficiency among branches of the military, it's also meant to heighten intra-service collaboration when it comes to lobbying for funding. (The stratagem of awarding lucrative contracts in key congressional districts of both parties doesn't hurt either.)

Although the Pentagon's budget has decreased in recent years, that follows enormous growth in the post-9/11 decade -- as much as 40% in real terms between 2001 and 2012. The administration's new budget request is supposed to take into account the end of two costly wars, yet it still exceeds the $499 billion cap called for by sequestration, and that base budget is only part of what we're spending overall on American war-making.

When you're a hammer, the saying goes, everything looks like a nail. And when more than half of the federal discretionary budget goes to the military, every international problem looks like a job for them. According to the National Security Strategy report the White House released in February, “Any successful strategy to ensure the safety of the American people and advance our national security interests must begin with an undeniable truth -- America must lead.” And who will be, as they say, at the tip of the spear? “Our military is postured globally to protect our citizens and interests, preserve regional stability, render humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and build the capacity of our partners to join with us in meeting security challenges.”

In other words, one attitude that increasingly grips this country is that, if it's going to be done at all, it's probably going to be done by the military. It has been sold to us as the best, maybe the only functioning part of the government. Not surprisingly, then, the most recent annual Gallup poll found that almost three-quarters of those surveyed had “quite a lot” or a “great deal” of confidence in the military.  Since 2001, that public confidence has never fallen below 66%.

In touting “Toward the Sounds of Chaos,” its most recent recruiting campaign for the Marines, ad agency J. Walter Thompson claims that enlistment “provides an opportunity to face down everything from traditional warfare to the natural disasters that necessitate highly organized humanitarian assistance.” This spreading send-in-the-Marines mentality -- one form of the post-9/11 BDSP way of life -- keeps us from a reasonable assessment of the best uses of our military forces.

Last fall, for instance, President Obama dispatched about 3,000 Army personnel to Liberia to build and staff treatment facilities for Ebola patients. Once upon a time, the U.S. was quite capable of mounting a genuine civilian humanitarian relief mission. Now, if you've got thousands of physically able workers on the payroll with a job description that includes risk, I suppose that deploying them to a disease zone makes sense. Still, if you needed hospitals built and staffed, wouldn't it make more sense to send in civilian builders, nurses, and doctors? 

Be Afraid, Very Afraid

In truth, the Big Dick School of Patriotism is invested in keeping only one “branch” of government functional: the U.S. military and the national security state that goes with it, even as it trumpets constant terrors and threats this country must face.

The National Security Strategy lists terrorism, cyber-vulnerability, climate change, and infectious diseases as rising threats to global security. That's a frightening enough quartet and hardly a complete list of actual dangers. Amid them, our headlines fill regularly with “threats” that are nightmarish, but soon dissolve like bad dreams in the morning light. The latest, from a video by the Somali terrorist organization al-Shabab, was to the Mall of America in Minnesota and, farfetched as it was, the media and the political class ran with it. I found the Mall of America pretty scary on a regular shopping day, but such endless threats and the hysteria that surrounds them do make our self-protective instincts kick in. Jeh Johnson, the head of Homeland Security, even warned mall-goers to be particularly careful because, he said, “it's the environment we're in, frankly.”

Is it?  It's increasingly hard to tell in BDSP America. Fear can be a useful political tool because people who believe they're surrounded by enemies are primed to accept almost anything. When you feel you're losing control, the response is often to try to get more control, which is part of the appeal of the BDSP crew, with their exaltation of swarms of people in uniforms equipped with tanks and guns.

When that swarm is reputedly the best trained, most effective military since the Roman Legions exited the planet, that ought to be a lot of control. Except, of course, that it isn't. Or tell me that things don't seem more out of control now than 13 years ago, after calamity rained from the sky and the BDSP types whooshed in to save us all.

The eternal emphasis on militarism, even when it's portrayed as triumphalism, has the effect of ratcheting up anxiety. Security is one of the basic things a government owes its citizens, but security is both a state of being and a state of mind. If security is always at issue, how can we ever feel safe?

In the end, maybe the Big Dick School of Patriotism comes down to this: we embrace the idea of an all-powerful military because at a time when the world seems such a fragile and hostile place, if even our military won't keep us safe, who will?  

Unless there just might be a better way to go through the world than by carrying a big dick?

Stratfor: "US Aims To Prevent A German-Russian Alliance”

German Economic News

Watch the video here
http://deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de/2015/03/17/stratfor-usa-wollen-deutsch-russische-allianz-verhindern/

The head of the private intelligence agency Stratfor has for the first time publicly said that the US government considers to be its overriding strategic objective the prevention of a German-Russian alliance. Blocking that alliance is the only way to prevent an alternative world power capable of challenging extension of the American position of being the world’s lone superpower. [In this video, he says that the U.S. will fail in that overriding objective; German technology and capital will combine with Russian natural resources and “land-power,” to produce a truly bipolar world: U.S. v. Eurasia. So: he sees the U.S. strategy as being to block that, by weakening both Germany and Russia. That strategy would explain what Obama is doing in Ukraine, and the sanctions that are hurting both Russia and Germany, but Friedman thinks that nothing can work.]

Background:

The American political scientist George Friedman is chief of intelligence think tank "Stratfor Global Intelligence", which he founded in 1996. The headquarters of Stratfor is located in Texas. Stratfor advises 4,000 companies, individuals and governments around the world, reports the New York Times. These include Bank of America, the US State Department, Apple, Microsoft and Lockheed Martin, Monsanto and Cisco, on security issues.

In December 2011 there was a hacker attack on the computer system of Stratfor.Then 90,000 names, addresses, credit card numbers, passwords Stratfor clients were published. The attack was by the hacker Jeremy Hammond. But later it turned out that an FBI employee Hammond had instigated the attack on the Stratfor system. The FBI was involved in all phases of the attack.

Friedman published in 2009 a book titled "The Next 100 Years", in which he discussed security policy issues for the 21st century. He said that between 2020 and 2030, Turkey, Poland and Japan, with US support, will be regional powers. In the same period, a pro-American block of several States will be formed in Eastern Europe. [The latter has already happened. Furthermore, on page 66, he said: “Europe may yet have to deal with the resurgence of Russia, the bullying of the United States, or internal tensions.” All three of those things have also already happened.]

Obama And The ‘News' Media Continue To Falsify About Obamacare

Eric Zuesse

The Obama Administration basically lied on Monday, March 16th, when it said that it had reduced the percentage of healthcare uninsured Americans from 20.3% down to 13.2% — and the ‘news' media in this country stenographically reported their lie, without noting that it is a lie; and without noting that the real figures are 14.6% reduced down to 12.9%. 

The press also crucially avoided to mention that when Senator Obama ran for President in 2008 he was promising the country that his plan would reduce the uninsureds rate down to 0%, so that there would be (and he kept promising this) “universal coverage” (which means a 0% uninsureds rate).

This government-lying, and press-stenography of the lies, are both like the government lies and press-stenography about Saddam Hussein and Iraq were in 2002 and 2003, and the government lies and press-stenography about Vladimir Putin and Ukraine are today: it is government of the public, by deceit, in which the nation's press is complicit with the lying of government officials, so that real democracy becomes impossible — people end up voting on the basis of lies (which hide the real problems and solutions, things that would reduce the aristocracy's power).

Here are the details of this sad state of affairs, regarding specifically lying about Obamacare:

The government report on which the allegation is based shows the period from October 2013 up to the present time. In October 2013, the uninsured rate (as the Obama team cruched the numbers) was 20.3%. At the present time it is 13.2%.

To a naive and unquestioning reader (who doesn't even think about what “universal coverage" means), that sounds pretty good. However, here is how the government jiggered the figures in order to make it seem that way (to the naive masses), when it's not:

The data upon which the government's graph is based come from Gallup's ongoing samplings of the public. Gallup has independently and much more honestly graphed the uninsured percentages going back to the time when the first Presidential primaries were being held in 2008 and when all three of the leading Democratic Presidential aspirants (Clinton, Obama, and Edwards) were promising “universal coverage,” something which already exists in all other developed countries (100% of the population having health insurance), and when all three of those Democratic candidates were offering essentially the same plan (except that Obama's didn't include the individual mandate, but the plan that he proposed to Congress in 2009 did include that, so the plan that he proposed as President was basically the exact same one that Hillary Clinton and John Edwards had been proposing — and all three of them were lying).

Here is the Gallup graph:

As you can see, the rate of uninsureds when Obama was promising a 0% rate or “universal coverage,” was 14.6%. The rate now is 12.9%

What Obama (his hires) is doing now is to compare as the starting-gate the uninsured rate that pertained when the rate was at the all-time high in October 2013, after years of people getting off of their existing health plans because they couldn't afford them or were expecting something much better to open up under the new Obamacare health exchanges, and to compare that all-time-high rate to the rate now. 

As you can see from this chart, the uninsured rate peaked at 18.0% at that time, the time when people started signing up for Obamacare. This rate was 3.4% higher than the 14.6% rate at the starting-gate, back in 2008, when Obama (and Clinton, and Edwards) were promising a 0% rate, “universal coverage.”

There is a difference between the way that Gallup calculates these percentages from their surveys, and the way that Obama does — the Obama team shows this graph instead of Gallup's:

As you can see, their method of crunching the numbers comes up with consistently higher figures for percentages of the population who are uninsured.

Here is an example of the stenographic ‘news' reporting we get of such government-lying, in the United States.

That's from a Democratic Party ‘news' organization — i.e., from one that's controlled by a ‘liberal' aristocrat. (Liberal aristocrats do, however, tolerate critical coverage of Democratic policies, but only up to a point. And aristocrats, even of the opposite or conservative side, will never say that a President is “lying.") Here's ‘coverage' of this ‘news' from the Republican — i.e., right-wing fascist — side of the aristocracy: they ignore it altogether, because the flim-flam from the ‘liberal' side makes the ‘liberal' look good, and because the job of right-wing fascist ‘journalism' isn't to do real investigative journalism but instead to keep pumping out the lies that sustain right-wing fascism. (And right-wing fascist aristocrats won't let anything through that criticizes fascism, at all. They are fascist purists. They're just more extreme than liberal fascists.) American ‘journalism' thus is basically a good-cop-bad-cop routine, between fascism, and extreme fascism.

If Republican aristocrats were to attack a ‘Democrat' like Obama in an honest and truthful way, they'd point out that:

Obamacare increases the insureds-rate by 87.7%/85.4%, or 2.7% since 2008.

Obamacare increases insureds from 85.4% up to 87.7%.

Candidate Obama's promise of “universal” meant 100%.

Obama lied in his top campaign-proposal; there was no way it could even possibly produce 100%.

But for them to do that, they would be attacking Obama from the progressive side, which is the exact opposite side from the aristocracy: it's the public's side. So: they can't honestly attack Obama — and he knows this. All they can do is lie against him — which they thus constantly do.

On both “the left” and “the right” side of the aristocracy, there is a deeper unity: the aristocracy's unity is against the public.

They've got to keep us controlled, voting for their ‘left' and ‘right' politicians.

Here are the main previous articles I've done specifically on Obama's lies about ‘universal coverage' under Obamacare: 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-lied-about-obamacare/5434878

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/01/obama-lied-obamacare.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/obama-lied-about-obamacar_b_5161578.html

This “universal healthcare” thing is an ongoing lie from Obama, because there is (as I explained here) no way that the plan that he proposed, nor the one that he selected Senator Max Baucus to design to meet his intentions and ram through Congress, could even possibly produce a 100% insureds-rate, or “universal coverage.” The rest of the industrialized world has it (and has better healthcare at lower prices), but we still don't. 

Thank America's aristocracy — both wings of it (and their press) — for that. 

Nandigram: Perfect Example Of Disempowering Empowered Women

Nisha Biswas

Nandigram, a rural area with two community development blocks in Haldia subdivision of Purba Medinipur, is not known as such but is the name of historic resistance - struggle and the win of its people against the forcible acquisition of 10,000 acre land by the West Bengal government for proposed Chemical hub between 2007 to 2010. Since then Nandigram is inspiration for many agrarian and anti- land acquisition struggles. It was mainly due to Nandigram that the then UPA government was compelled to change SEZ and Land Acquisition Acts. The movement took the steam out of the more than three decades CPI(M) rule and TMC won the state assembly election in 2011 with unprecedented majority.

Women of Nandigram played a key role in its resistance movement. They were in the forefront. Supriya Jana lost her precious life in indiscriminate firing by police. As many as 17 women were raped, many were molested and around a hundred were injured. Women like, twice gang raped Radha Rani Ari, Tapasi Das whose thigh was almost sawed and had uterus hit when police opened fire on unarmed women and children and who still lives in perpetual pain, Swarnmoyee Das whole left elbow was so badly injured that it still remains badly injured, elderly Narmda Shee became the face of the Nandigram movement.

Their courage, energy and never dying attitude inspired many. It was the time to dream, time to hope, time to empower, time to live and time to die. They went all over the country to tell their tales. The then opposition party chief Ms Mamata Banerjee supported them and shrewdly snatched the credit. People of Nandigram in general and women in particular thought that she would bring the change that they had dared to dream. Riding on the waves of Singur and Nandigram movements she snatched power from CPI(M) and became Chief Minister of West Bengal on May 20, 2011.

A seven-member team of Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression, West Bengal (WSS, WB) visited Nandigram 4days ahead of observation of “Martyr’s Day”, observed on 14th March of each year to commemorate the historic struggle of Nandigram against land acquisition, this year.

What the team saw was terrible saddening and disturbing. That these women who were once the powerful leaders are today not only distressed but are also disempowered.

Now, they are nowhere in the leadership of Bhumi Uchhed Pratirodh Committee (BUPC), formed at the time of struggle. They are not even invited for BUPC meetings or on March 14 to observe Martyr’s Day. The leadership of BUPC did not know what happened to the cases that they filed against police and ruling party goons. On the other hand, in December 2013 CBI has instituted case against more than 30 men and women, including women who were severely injured/ raped for inciting violence and attacking the police and the CBI’s request for permission to initiate criminal proceeding against some police officials is still lying with the state government. The women, who not only suffered rape, bullet wounds and state terror but had remained in the fore front of the heroic struggle against forcible land acquisition, and were subsequently instrumental in unseating Left Front from power, have today been completely edged out of the political space.

Women like Tapasi Das and Swarnmoyee, who needed prolonged treatment and support for the disability caused by bullet injuries were left to fend for them selves. None of the women was awarded or given any job in recognition of their contribution to the movement. In rare cases men of the family are given some temporary job with Metro Rail, but women were just forgotten. Tapasi Das, who lives in continuous pain and is bed ridden for most of the time, is not provided any medical or emotional support. Local MP gives her Rs 1500.00 per month, out of which the courier pockets a hundred rupees, is not sufficient for her travelling to doctor’s chamber. Her family finances do not permit to consult a specialist.

A grand hospital built in the memory of martyrs and to take care of medical needs of the locality, is a picture of grim dereliction and waste. Main gates remained locked and the watchman’s assertion of doctor visiting once or twice a month remains questionable.

Radha Rani Ari, who travelled all over the country with Ms. Banerjee to narrate the barbaric sexual atrocities inflicted on her, recalls how in the run-up of assembly election she was much sought after by the present ruling party. Now that the TMC party of Ms Banerjee is firmly in power, she has been carelessly abandoned. She says “My body was like a property that would get votes” and that now very often she contemplates suicide. Angur Das, who was raped along with her two daughters, one married with two kids and the other unmarried at that time, is today a grim picture of neglect. She remembers the promise that marrying her daughter was party’s responsibility. Her all the three sons work in UP in a carpet factory. Elder daughter Kabita was not allowed to return to her marital home after this incident. Younger daughter Ganga’s well – being hangs on the thin thread of payment/nonpayment of hefty dowry agreed. Only three out of sixteen raped have received compensation of Rs 2.00 lakh.

Brute force of male domination has silenced women. All the rape accused, like Badal Garu, Kalia Garu, Rabin Das, etc., have retuned to their homes after spending years of exile to escape public wrath. Rumor is their rehabilitation has taken place after negotiation with BUPC (male) leadership. Garu clan lives in radha Rani’s area and is next-door neighbors of Angur Das. It makes women further insecure and adds to the reasons of their depression. These men are devoid of any remorse, and with the support of BUPC to whose leadership they had paid hefty fine, causes fear in these women. On confrontation, BUPC leaders tell them, “What is your problem?” They are not ready to understand that their problem is not only justice is not done; they are being humiliated every day. Even neighbours are now pointing fingers at the rape survivors.

Being the battleground that changed the political scenario of West Bengal and have caused major policy changes, Nandigram remains the very picture of neglect. Roads are the same picture of rejection, agriculture still remains single crop, ponds are not renovated and canals are yet to be dug, causing men-folk to migrate in search of work. Even MNREGA work is erratic.

Nandigram today is a sad picture of rejection. Women, who were the integral part of the movement and were at the forefront of the anti-acquistion stir that eventually catapulted the Trinamool Congress into power in West Bengal are now confined to their homes and are subjected to all kind of oppression.

Agricultural Crisis And Remedial Pathways For India

Sunny Sandhu

Agriculture is one of the main engine of society . Modern society rests on this very ancient profession . In India like in many parts of the world , it has been looked up as a spiritual activity from age immemorial. Many festivals across different cultures are related to harvests and the changing seasons , as all over the world farming is one of the most important occupation. In India there is a saying Uttam kheti , madhyam vyapar and neech naukri (best is farming , business is medium and servitude is least desirable ). But this is no longer true , farming is no longer a very sought after profession . Farmer suicides and debt are making news headlines across the world . Governments across the world are trying to support their farmers with subsidies , waiving loans etc . Farmers are selling their land and sending their children abroad to study especially in Punjab , as they see that there is no future for them .

The reason for this are in the new agricultural paradigms and technology which were introduced as the Green Revolution and now the genetically modified crops . Both these paradigms have changed totally the way farming was done in the past . From a spiritual profession it has been turned into a chemical warfare and a purely economic pursuit . The connection of the farmer with mother earth has disappeared . The entire planet has been poisoned with the various pesticides . Pesticides can be found in the arctic and the antarctic , where nothing really grows . Modern Agriculture System has been one of the biggest CO2 producers and thus has induced climate change . Biodiversity has suffered as well .Fresh water resources are being depleted at an ever faster rate .Land is becoming toxic and loosing its fertility . Food quality is also suffering.

Rising cancer incidence , infertility , diseases of the reproductive system are all related to pesticides . Changing Food culture has triggered the epidemic of diabetes and heart diseases as well . People have moved away from traditional foods to fast foods . From natural products to artificial products . The quality of foods have changed and this has affected human health across the globe .

India now gets bumper crops , but there is nowhere to store these crops , hence they lie rotting in the open . And people are still dying of hunger . So one has to really rethink the logic of green revolution and genetic crops for food security .

Genetically modified crops were introduced with genes from other species so as to fight pests , they were supposed to free the farmer form pesticides . But they have failed as well . Pesticides continued to be sprayed everywhere . GM crops comes with added danger of loosing our sovereignty of our seeds . GM farmers cannot plant their own seeds , which is a new form of slavery .Monsanto continues to pursue the agenda of Control the food ,control the people .

We the people of India are paying taxes which are given as subsidies to farmers which in turn are being used to pollute and destroy our ecosystems and health . We have to change this for better future .

The future lies in farming methods which work in harmony with nature . Permaculture , Organic farming and natural farming are giving us the right direction . Current world record for rice production is to a Natural farmer in Bihar which speaks volumes of the capability of natural farming . Organic farming ensures biodiversity . Food is of better quality and there are no harmful pesticides in it . Organic farming brings in more traditional crops which are better suited for local populations . Different techniques are used to preserve moisture , thus reducing water usage and wastage . Preservation of seeds is an important part of the organic movement . Land quality is improving as well . By not depending on Oil based fertilisers and products , it reduces carbon footprint .

Organic foods are expensive as input cost is higher , this can be changed if the current agricultural subsidy is shifted into organic farming instead of poison farming . States like Kerala and Sikkim are going to be fully organic in 2015 . Kerala was the first state to declare a cancer epidemic due to pesticides . Punjab is the other but the current political regime of AKALI DAL -BJP has failed the people of the state .Punjab has been producing 60 percent grains of the entire country and has paid the price of poison farming . Its now famous for its falling water levels , cancer train express , farmer suicides and villages for sale . At a recent National Organic Farming Convention , CM Prakash Singh Badal proudly said that there is 550 acres of organic farm in Punjab and 1000 organic farmers . This is too little . I wonder how much did Badal family profit from the Cancer Hospitals which were set up across the state ?

Its upto the youth to take the challenge , know where your food is coming from . Know whether your eating toxic food or healthy food . Ask the politicians why are our taxes being used for poison farming ? Is it because they have corporate interests in the Poison agriculture industry ? How much is Monsanto paying them to introduce GM seeds ? Are our own seeds not good enough ? If you love river ganga so much , then why let pesticides poison it ?

NaMo model of development has already spelt doom for the farmers , its clear that its pro corporate and anti farmer government , like the previous government as well . Changing of Land laws in favor of corporates is the start . GM crops are being cleared at an alarming rate . Lip service is being done to promote organic and natural farming . We the youth of india has to rise to this toxic challenge and ensure to safeguard our ecosystems , biodiversity , bhoomi , river goddesses and beej (seeds).

A "Kill And Compensate" Package For Farmers In India

Samar

While the whole country was celebrating Holi, a joyous festival of colours, three farmers that were contemplating suicide in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh went ahead and took their own lives. One of them, wearing the same colour soaked dress he had celebrated the festival in, hung himself to a tree.

A powerful hailstorm, which caused extensive damage to crops in the region like wheat, mustard, and lentils, is being cited as the reason behind the farmers taking such an extreme step. However, such suicides are not exceptions. There is a deep and systemic rot in India that makes farmers vulnerable and is leading them to suicide across the countryside.

It is not as if the authorities are unaware of this rot. Just a week before Holi, Mohanbhai Kundaria, Minister of State for Agriculture, informed Parliament about the spike in the number of farmers committing suicide in 2014. The numbers shared in Parliament pegged farmer suicides in India at 1109 in 2014, 879 in 2013, and 1046 in 2012. Despite being gross underestimations, courtesy the manifest flaws in data collection, the numbers are alarming.

To put it in perspective, though the total number of farmer suicides in 2014 is not yet available in public domain, the National Crime Records Bureau, the apex governmental body for crime records in India, pegged the corresponding numbers at 11,744 for 2013 and 13,754 for 2012. In order to avoid embarrassment, authorities tend to attribute a significant section of these suicides to “other” non-agrarian causes, with “personal reasons” being the categorical trick of choice. What the statistics fail to show is that most “personal” reasons behind the decision of farmers to end their own lives are precipitated by the agrarian crisis.

Some states like Chhattisgarh use a different kind of categorical trickery to try and misdirect alarm. As P. Sainath, a journalist reputed for his reporting on the Indian agrarian crisis, has shown, states like Chhattisgarh simply take out some of the farmer suicides out of the "Self-employed (farming/agriculture)" category and put these dead men and women in the category of "Self-employed (Others)." None of these efforts have, however, succeeded in undermining the gravity of the crisis, termed as “national shame” by Basudev Acharya, the head of the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture that visited Vidarbha District in 2012.

Authorities are well aware of the reasons behind the farmers taking their own lives too. These get listed as crop failure, indebtedness, drought, socio-economic, and personal reasons – with “personal reasons” being a euphemism for serious depression caused by the stress of the other reasons. However, the information has not bothered the government enough for it to undertake extensive overhaul of the agricultural sector or take immediate steps to prevent imminent suicides.

The hailstorm that led to the Holi suicides in Bundelkhand was not unexpected. While the farmer’s bore the brunt of the storm, innumerable past experiences have made the authorities aware of the potential arrival of such a storm, and the destruction of the crops and those that depend on the crops. Authorities know that such incidents have led to a spurt in farmers’ suicides. However, no panic buttons were pressed to make preparations.

The pattern is as follows: the authorities will not take concrete action until there is a higher than usual spate in farmer suicides in a particular region. Such spurts invite public scrutiny forcing officials into make it seem like action is being taken, when even this is pretense. Once the attention subsides, it is back to business as usual – being indifferent to the agrarian crisis that has engulfed the country’s peasantry. Three suicides on Holi and two more that followed the festival in Bundelkhand are clearly not number enough for either the union or state governments to be stirred to action.

Why does India, which claims to be the largest democracy in the world, abandon citizens so? Why do a plethora of welfare schemes fail to save vulnerable farmers? Why are there no policies and funds for such contingencies? The country and its agriculture need an overhaul, both at policy and ground level.

It does need long term solutions like land reforms, an irrigation network capable of tackling monsoon failure, cooperatives enabling farmers to get seeds and fertilizers at affordable rates, and heavy investment in agricultural technology and equipment. Indian agriculture also requires infusing money in the hands of the farmers, where it is needed most, through banking/cooperative networks catering to farmers needs. Weeding out private moneylenders who fleece the farmers with astronomical interest rates and strong-arm tactics to recover loans has for long been a burning need. And, a procurement system that helps farmers – and not the lobbies that buy agricultural products at the cheapest rates immediately after the harvest only to hoard and make profit out of it later – is still awaited.

On the other hand, the Indian government needs to build a real time response system for the crisis and calamities that trigger suicide spikes. There is no shortage of schemes purporting to help farmers in distress. Declaring compensation for crop damages is a routine exercise, for instance. What is not routine is both the implementation of such schemes and reaching out to farmers when they need it the most, when there is an immediate risk of them taking the extreme step.

Building a system that reaches out to individual farmers in distress might sound easier said than done, going by the experience of all the helplines aimed at preventing suicides in general. On the contrary, it might be easier, with the system already possessing all the required officials, down to the last village revenue clerks and village development officers. It is just that right now the system is poised against and not for the farmers. It is used more to harass them than helping out. Turning it the other way around would not take much more than strong political will and commitment to the farmers’ cause.

These officials can be instrumental in reaching out to the farmers in case of crop damage, with timely estimation of losses and disbursal of compensation. Suicides are not going to stop without such a structure being built.

Of course, the government can always try to continue in default mode: sit on the crisis till the statistics of shame are embarrassing enough to make it act like it is acting, and declare relief packages, which are then often siphoned by the nexus of complicit bureaucrats and politicians. But, how long citizens will put up with these “kill and compensate” packages is a whole other question.

Washington’s War on Russia

MIKE WHITNEY

“In order to survive and preserve its leading role on the international stage, the US desperately needs to plunge Eurasia into chaos, (and) to cut economic ties between Europe and Asia-Pacific Region … Russia is the only (country) within this potential zone of instability that is capable of resistance. It is the only state that is ready to confront the Americans. Undermining Russia’s political will for resistance… is a vitally important task for America.”

-Nikolai Starikov, Western Financial System Is Driving It to War, Russia Insider

“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”

-The Wolfowitz Doctrine, the original version of the Defense Planning Guidance, authored by Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, leaked to the New York Times on March 7, 1992

The United States does not want a war with Russia, it simply feels that it has no choice. If the State Department hadn’t initiated a coup in Ukraine to topple the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, then the US could not have inserted itself between Russia and the EU, thus, disrupting vital trade routes which were strengthening nations on both continents. The economic integration of Asia and Europe–including plans for high-speed rail from China (“The New Silk Road”) to the EU–poses a clear and present danger for the US whose share of global GDP continues to shrink and whose significance in the world economy continues to decline. For the United States to ignore this new rival (EU-Russia) would be the equivalent of throwing in the towel and accepting a future in which the US would face a gradual but persistent erosion of its power and influence in world affairs. No one in Washington is prepared to let that happen, which is why the US launched its proxy-war in Ukraine.

The US wants to separate the continents, “prevent the emergence of a new rival”, install a tollbooth between Europe and Asia, and establish itself as the guarantor of regional security. To that end, the US is rebuilding the Iron Curtain along a thousand mile stretch from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Tanks, armored vehicles and artillery are being sent to the region to reinforce a buffer zone around Europe in order to isolate Russia and to create a staging ground for future US aggression. Reports of heavy equipment and weapons deployment appear in the media on nearly a daily basis although the news is typically omitted in the US press. A quick review of some of the recent headlines will help readers to grasp the scale of the conflict that is cropping up below the radar:

“US, Bulgaria to hold Balkans military drills”, “NATO Begins Exercises In Black Sea”, “Army to send even more troops, tanks to Europe”, “Poland requests greater US military presence”, “U.S. Army sending armored convoy 1,100 miles through Europe”, “Over 120 US tanks, armored vehicles arrive in Latvia”, “US, Poland to Conduct Missile Exercise in March – Pentagon”

Get the picture? There’s a war going on, a war between the United States and Russia.

Notice how most of the headlines emphasize US involvement, not NATO. In other words, the provocations against Russia originate from Washington not Europe. This is an important point. The EU has supported US-led economic sanctions, but it’s not nearly as supportive of the military build up along the perimeter. That’s Washington’s idea and the cost is borne by the US alone. Naturally, moving tanks, armored vehicles and artillery around the world is an expensive project, but the US is more than willing to make the sacrifice if it helps to achieve its objectives.

And what are Washington’s objectives?

Interestingly, even political analysts on the far right seem to agree about that point. For example, check out this quote from STRATFOR CEO George Friedman who summed it up in a recent presentation he delivered at The Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs. He said:

“The primordial interest of the United States, over which for centuries we have fought wars–the First, the Second and Cold Wars–has been the relationship between Germany and Russia, because united there, they’re the only force that could threaten us. And to make sure that that doesn’t happen.” … George Friedman at The Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs, Time 1:40 to 1:57)

Bingo. Ukraine has nothing to do with sovereignty, democracy or (alleged) Russian aggression. That’s all propaganda. It’s about power. It’s about imperial expansion. It’s about spheres of influence. It’s about staving off irreversible economic decline. It’s all part of the smash-mouth, scorched earth, take-no-prisoners geopolitical world in which we live, not the fake Disneyworld created by the western media. The US State Department and CIA toppled the elected-government in Ukraine and ordered the new junta regime to launch a desperate war of annihilation against its own people in the East, because, well, because they felt they had no other option. Had Putin’s ambitious plan to create a free trade zone between Lisbon to Vladivostok gone forward, then where would that leave the United States? Out in the cold, that’s where. The US would become an isolated island of dwindling significance whose massive account deficits and ballooning national debt would pave the way for years of brutal restructuring, declining standards of living, runaway inflation and burgeoning social unrest. Does anyone really believe that Washington would let that to happen when it has a “brand-spanking” trillion dollar war machine at its disposal?

Heck, no. Besides, Washington believes it has a historic right to rule the world, which is what one would expect when the sense of entitlement and hubris reach their terminal phase. Now check out this clip from an article by economist Jack Rasmus:

“Behind the sanctions is the USA objective of driving Russia out of the European economy. Europe was becoming too integrated and dependent on Russia. Not only its gas and raw materials, but trade relations and money capital flows were deepening on many fronts between Russia and Europe in general prior to the Ukraine crisis that has provided the cover for the introduction of the sanctions. Russia’s growing economic integration with Europe threatened the long term economic interests of US capitalists. Strategically, the US precipitated coup in the Ukraine can be viewed, therefore as a means by which to provoke Russian military intervention, i.e. a necessary event in order to deepen and expand economic sanctions that would ultimately sever the growing economic ties between Europe and Russia long term. That severance in turn would not only ensure US economic interests remain dominant in Europe, but would also open up new opportunities for profit making for US interests in Europe and Ukraine as well…

When the rules of the competition game between capitalists break down altogether, the result is war—i.e. the ultimate form of inter-capitalist competition.

See? Analysts on the right and left agree. Ukraine has nothing to do with sovereignty, democracy or Russian aggression. It’s plain-old cutthroat geopolitics, where the last man left standing, wins.

The United States cannot allow Russia reap the benefits of its own vast resources. Oh, no. It has to be chastised, it has to be bullied, it has to be sanctioned, isolated, threatened and intimidated. That’s how the system really works. The free market stuff is just horsecrap for the sheeple.

Russia is going to have to deal with chaotic, fratricidal wars on its borders and color-coded regime change turbulence in its capital. It will have to withstand reprisals from its trading partners, attacks on its currency and plots to eviscerate its (oil) revenues. The US will do everything in its power to poison the well, to demonize Putin, to turn Brussels against Moscow, and to sabotage the Russian economy.

Divide and conquer, that’s the ticket. Keep them at each others throats at all times. Sunni vs Shia, one ethnic Ukrainian vs the other, Russians vs Europeans. That’s Washington’s plan, and it’s a plan that never fails.

US powerbrokers are convinced that America’s economic slide can only be arrested by staking a claim in Central Asia, dismembering Russia, encircling China, and quashing all plans for an economically-integrated EU-Asia. Washington is determined to prevail in this existential conflict, to assert its hegemonic control over the two continents, and to preserve its position as the world’s only superpower.

Only Russia can stop the United States and we believe it will.

The Strange Case Against Abid Naseer

Binoy Kampmark

There was nothing ordinary about the Abid Naseer trial, which was a proceeding that gave off different fumes and smells depending on the audience. After September 11, 2001, terror trials became something of a carnival, with manipulated legal whispers and stretched suggestions as to how best to net suspects. Naseer, a Pakistani national, claimed that the voluminous chat sessions with his supposed co-conspirators via the Qiran.com site were entirely based on seeking a rather innocent target: a suitable wife. The prosecutors claimed, on the contrary, that he wished to cause catastrophic mayhem to a mall in Manchester and the New York subway – with the help of associates.

Writing in Lawfare, Diane Webber asked the question why Naseer found himself being convicted in a Brooklyn Federal Court on March 4. The “saga,” as Webber termed it, “has an additional strange element underlying the whole case: Naseer was apparently convicted in the wrong country, and was extradited from the country where his crime took place to take trial there.”

The troubling feature, and one that has characterised the seemingly fluid nature court proceedings have been launched after September 11, 2001, lies in glaring procedural problems. The UK authorities found themselves unable to prosecute Naseer due to taxing evidentiary standards. The Crown Prosecution Service, as Webber notes, has to have sufficient evidence to support what is deemed a “realistic prospect of conviction”.

In the somewhat more mangled words of the Crown Prosecution Service, “The Code requires that in order for a prosecution to take place, there must be sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction, meaning that a conviction is more likely than not.” It was easier, in fact, to extradite the suspect to the US, which requires the somewhat lower standard of probable cause that the suspect perpetrated the offence. Hence the absurd spectacle of MI5 agents dressed in wigs and wearing make-up in a US court session (BBC News, Feb 24).

As a CPS spokesperson explained, using words that should make civil liberty advocates shriek with dismay, “The evidence in our possession in relation to Abid Naseer which would have been admissible in a criminal court was very limited.” The spokesperson proceeds to show how utterly hopeless the prosecution case was to begin with, a notable point given that Naseer’s activities had supposedly taken place on British soil. “Crucially, there was no evidence of training, research or the purchasing of explosives.” Nor did the prosecutors have “evidence of an agreement between Abid Naseer and others which would have supported a charge of conspiracy in this country.”

Naseer was not prosecuted, as he should have been had the case been viable, in a British court, suggesting that a bit of judicial outsourcing goes a long way. (We have seen it in the context of allies who happily allow their own nationals to be tried and convicted in foreign jurisdictions for ease of effort.) The result was a legal feast of absurd efforts to keep Naseer under some form of lock and key.

Deportation was sought on grounds that the Pakistani national’s presence would pose a threat to national security, in other words, conducive to the public good. Naseer appealed, with the Special Immigration Appeals Commission affirming (May 18, 2010) the view that he did constitute a serious threat, but could not deport him to Pakistan, where he faced a real risk of illegal detention, disappearance or torture. In the damning words of Mr Justice Mitting, “There is a long and well-documented history [in Pakistan] of disappearances, illegal detention and of the torture and ill-treatment of those detained, usually to produce information, a confession or compliance” (para 32).

The release of Naseer then brought US authorities into play, who sought his extradition for purported roles in bomb plots linked to targets in the UK, Norway and the US. The British prosecution team did not seem to concern itself with seeing the extradition documents to begin with, and the District Judge at Westminster Magistrates Court in London duly approved the US request. “The CPS lawyers that decide on a domestic prosecution do not see the papers submitted by the American extradition request or vice versa.” Is there any wonder, then, that individuals domiciled or resident in the UK might feel a certain concern that they might be shipped off to the wonders of US penal justice?

As if perceiving the local British rules to be a failure of prosecutorial discretion, it became essential that American partners would charge to the rescue. Justice is such a malleable, elastic creature. As the CPS itself noted, the Scott Baker Review of 2012 gave a clean bill of health to the UK’s extradition arrangements with the US. They were “fair” and “balanced”.

The evidence adduced at the trial provided glazed terror pundits, overly engaged security voyeurs, and virtually everybody else with a range of striking impressions. For one thing, the famed incompetence of the CIA was again on show – the result of material found by the raid on Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound in Pakistan. The documents produced at Naseer’s trial do make for interesting reading about al-Qaeda’s struggle with the drone campaign, but they make no mention of the Pakistani national.

The documents also show how money ended up being used by Afghan authorities to recover a diplomat in the custody of al-Qaeda authorities. The price for Abdul Khaliq Farahi, Afghanistan’s future ambassador to Pakistan, was a healthy $5 million. But Kabul deemed it a bit rich. This resulted in a raid on a CIA bank account used in remunerating Hamid Karzai for various expenses. (Karzai was hardly a stranger to being in US clover.) “Allah blessed us with a good amount of money this month,” claimed Atiyah Abd al-Rahman in a letter to bin Laden. Given the loss of recruits and personnel via drone strikes, the money would enable the organisation to make a few more purchases.

The bounty of evidence, and the subsequent verdict, was hardly the end of it for Naseer. A few days after his initial conviction, the bemused Pakistani had to be reconvicted. The reason for this double conviction: no court stenographer was present at the original verdict. “Due to my inadvertence,” claimed an inattentive Federal Judge Raymond Dearie, “we took the verdict without the reporter. We have a need to comply with the rule and create a record.” In its usual language, the New York Daily vengefully noted how, “Two days after it was discovered that no stenographer was present when Naseer’s verdict was taken, the jury forewoman returned to the courtroom Friday to confirm the terrorist thug was indeed found guilty of all three counts.” The terrorist thug must have been well and truly bemused by the wonders of Anglo-American justice.

US Refuses to Seriously Tackle Police Brutality and Racism

Linn Washington

The report released in early March by a panel President Obama appointed to examine serious shortcomings in police practices across America, including the shooting of unarmed people, mostly non-white, listed problems and proposed solutions that are hauntingly similar to those found in a report on police abuses released 47 years ago by another presidential panel.

The March 1968 report of the presidential panel popularly known as the Kerner Commission noted with dismay that many minorities nationwide regarded police as “an occupying force” – a presence that generated fear not feelings of security.

The March 2015 report from President Obama’s panel made a similar finding, noting that perceptions of police as an “occupying force coming in from the outside to rule and control the community” had sabotaged the ability of law enforcement to build trust in many communities.

Reactions to police brutality, particularly fatal encounters, triggered protests and riots that sparked both President Barack Obama and President Lyndon Johnson almost two generations earlier to appoint these two panels.

Sadly, the recommendations from President Obama’s panel could sink under the weight of the same forces that sank full implementation of the Kerner Commission proposals: systemic recalcitrance from all sectors of American society to reforms devised to remediate festering race-based inequities.

The Obama panel recommended “civilian oversight of law enforcement,” calling this step essential to “strengthen trust with the community.” The Kerner Commission report had similarly called for the establishment of “fair mechanisms to redress grievances” against police.

However, for decades, police unions, backed by “law-and-order” politicians, in city councils, state legislatures and Congress, have vigorously opposed independent oversight by civilians and even oversight from governmental entities.

Such opposition mounted by America’s national police union – the Fraternal Order of Police – early last year killed Obama’s nomination of a civil rights lawyer to head the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. The national FOP in that case made it clear it resented any Justice Department monitoring of state and local police practices. Despite patterns of police misconduct that had led to what was at best only infrequent Justice Department monitoring, U.S. Senators – Republicans and Democrats – backed the national police union’s opposition to Obama’s nominee.

The Kerner Commission, which had examined race-based inequities beyond police brutality, called for a massive influx of resources to tackle poverty and discrimination.

That proposal from President Johnson’s panel, formally titled The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders because it was a wave of riots and uprisings in cities across the country in the 1960s that led to its creation, prompted immediate opposition from conservatives. Resources being poured into the war in Vietnam further crippled that proposal.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., during the year before his April 1968 assassination, stridently criticized conservatives for failing to forthrightly attack poverty and he blasted President Johnson for channeling increasing resources to the Vietnam War, which then shortchanged Johnson’s programs to address poverty. King had blasted police brutality twice during his seminal “I Have A Dream” speech in 1963.

One proposal from Obama’s panel, formally known as the Task Force on 21st Century Policing, called for initiatives “that address the core issues of poverty, education, health and safety.” This panel pointed out the persistently ignored reality that the “justice system alone cannot solve many of the underlying conditions that give rise to crime.” Clouding chances of federal funding increases to fight poverty is the fact that conservatives controlling Capitol Hill have consistently blocked Obama’s modest anti-poverty proposals.

One core yet consistently downplayed dynamic driving inaction on police abuses is the refusal of too many Americans to acknowledge the reality that police brutality exists and that it disproportionately impacts minorities.

A survey conducted by the 2015 Obama panel found that 72 percent of whites felt police treated blacks and whites equally while 62 percent of blacks felt they received unequal (and unjust) treatment from police.

The 1968 Kerner report declared that abrasive relations between police and minority groups “have been a major source of grievance, tension and ultimately disorder.”

The Kerner report found that police abuses were a key factor leading to most of the 24 riots it studied in 23 cities. A quarter of a century later, not much had changed. America’s most destructive riot, the 1992 eruption in Los Angeles following the acquittal of four white policemen charged in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King caused 53 deaths and over $1-billion in property damage. Another 22 years later, the riots in Ferguson, Missouri last summer, erupted in the wake of the fatal shooting of unarmed black teen Michael Brown by a white policeman.

The refusal of either state or federal authorities to file any charges against the officer who fatally gunned down Brown underscored what the 1968 Kerner Commission stated was a “widespread belief” among blacks that a “double standard of justice” existed in America.

Another factor in the persistence of police abuses is the failure of authorities to practice what they preach.

The Obama panel called for the adoption and enforcement of policies “prohibiting profiling and discrimination” – a suggestion long ignored by Obama panel co-chair Charles Ramsey, the Police Commissioner in Philadelphia. Yet, Ramsey’s department has been stopping and frisking mostly young black men, and resisting changes to that tactic, for his entire tenure in Philadelphia.

A report issued by the Pennsylvania ACLU just days before release of the Obama panel’s interim report, faulted Philadelphia police for targeting blacks in that city’s controversial Stop-&-Frisk campaign, which is the prime anti-crime initiative of Philadelphia’s mayor, Michael Nutter, an African-American like Ramsey.

Philadelphia police under Ramsey’s command targeted blacks for 72 percent of stops and 80 percent of frisks of pedestrians during one six month period in 2014, according to that ACLU report monitoring the PPD’s poor compliance with a 2011 federal court consent decree meant to end racist profiling.

In over 95 percent of all frisks in Philadelphia during the 2014 review period, the ACLU report stated, police recovered neither weapons nor drugs. That low recovery of contraband meant that tens of thousands of law-abiding minorities endured police searches based solely on their skin color.

A recent US Justice Department report found police in Ferguson unfairly targeted blacks for enforcement in part to produce court fines to fuel the city budget of Ferguson. “The harms of Ferguson’s police and court practices are borne disproportionately by African Americans and there is evidence that this is due in part to intentional discrimination on the basis of race,” the USJD report stated.

Obama’s panel, like the Kerner Commission before it, has provided some palpable proposals for moving away from repressive and racist policing. However, the question remains: Does America have the will or even the desire to attack racism and lawlessness within law enforcement?

Doctors as Targets in Syrian War

Cesar Chelala

After four years of hostilities, the Syrian war doesn’t show any signs of abating, and the needs for all kind of assistance grow more urgent every day. The situation is even more complex as medical and paramedical personnel have become targets of repression by the government. As a result, thousands of physicians have left the country and those still there face great challenges in providing health assistance to the population.

Due to the government tactics of placing huge communities under siege means that doctors have to struggle to provide health care to the population, frequently running out of essential drugs and basic medical supplies. To make matters even more complex, some suppliers refuse to sellessential materials such as gauze or surgical threads for fear of being arrested or shut down for supplying basic elements to a besieged area, as reported by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). A doctor reported to MSF, “It is precious, dangerous, incriminating. There are secret outlets supplying us with gauze.”

Because hospitals have undergone sustained attacks from airstrikes and barrel bombs, many of them have to operate below ground level. Some patients –particularly those under stable conditions- are kept at ground level and are moved to the basement once the shelling restarts. At least 610 medical personnel have been killed, and there have been 233 deliberate or indiscriminate attacks on 183 medical facilities, according to the report “Doctors in the Crosshairs: Four Years of Attacks on Health care inSyria,” released last February by Physicians for Human Rights.

In July 2012, the Syrian government passed an antiterrorism law that made it a crime to provide medical care to those presumed to be supporting the rebels. In addition, regime thugs regularly hunt the hospitals looking for rebels interned there who were fighting the government.

Physicians for Human Rights also reports that the Syrian government is responsible for 88 percent of the recorded hospital attacks and 97 percent of medical personnel killings, as well as of 139 deaths directly attributed to torture or execution. As a consequence of this violence against them, an estimated 15,000 doctors have fled the country in the past three years. This number represents almost half of the certified physicians in a country whose health system was once one of the most advanced in the Arab world. In Aleppo, a city with a population of 2,500,000 only 250 doctors remained, out of 6,000 the city once had in July 2013.

The war has had devastating effects on the health of the population. More than half a million Syrians have suffered serious injuries that will demand long-term care, and outbreaks of communicable diseases have increased significantly. Some chronic conditions such as diabetes, and kidney and heart disease that could be managed under normal conditions are now escalating into life-threatening illnesses. According to some estimates, 200,000 people have died in Syria because of lack of adequate and timely medical care.

Amnesty International has reported another disturbing finding: the abuse of patients by doctors and medical personnel. “It is deeply alarming that the Syrian authorities seem to have given the security forces a free rein in hospitals, and in many cases hospital staff appear to have taken part in torture and ill treatment of the very people they are supposed to care for,” stated Cilina Nasser, Amnesty International Middle East and North Africa researcher.

Amnesty International researchers have found that several patients had been assaulted by medical staff, health workers and security personnel in hospitals in Banias, Homs and Tell Kalakh, as well as in the military hospital in Homs. One doctor at this hospital told Amnesty International that he had seen four doctors and more than 20 nurses abusing patients, a flagrant violation of medical ethics and humanitarian behavior.

“The Syrian government has targeted health care and increasingly used it as a weapon of war to destroy its opponents by preventing care, killing thousands of civilians along the way,” states Physicians for Human Rights.” It is a miserable record for the Syrian government, one for which one day it will have to respond.