Valmont coal plant: A Plea for organizing w/o Politics:

I recently attended the public hearing about the proposal to renew the operating license for Xcel’s Valmont coal plant here in Boulder.  Of the seventy some impassioned speakers that I heard that night only one appeared to be in favor of renewing this license.  However, in the faux democracy of the United States the voice of the people, no matter how loud and widely represented, is seldom heeded over that of large corporate interests.  My concern is that Xcel will soon have their permit, despite the outrage of the people.  With that in mind, I would like to duplicate here the testimony I provided to the committee, as the message was more intended for my fellow citizens than the unhearing ears of the Clean Air Commission:

“My name is Kevin Moran, and I’m from …um… reality, as opposed to bureaucracy.  I went with some friends the other day to an informational and collaborative meeting about the Valmont coal plant.  The organization that put on the meeting had done some great, solid research into the local environmental impacts of the plant, and presented a well-constructed and conclusive argument of the urgency in assuring the plant cease to operate. However, I was a little dismayed and somewhat concerned that much of the group commentary that resulted was in regards to whether closing the plant would be inconvenient for our level of consumption.

            Let me be perfectly clear here: this consumption carries with it an unbearable cost. Burning coal diminishes our local air quality on a long term basis, a consequence openly apparent only on those mysterious hazy days we get here in Boulder, and in the health problems that inevitably plague populations forced to breath toxic air.  Burning coal encourages corporations to blow up entire mountains on the other side of our continent, hailed as the most efficient means of retrieving coal from its natural reservoirs.  Coal is a massive source of greenhouse gasses and anthropogenic climate change, which I’m sure all of us are aware is a serious threat to all of Earth’s life systems, on top of the mass extinction we are already seeing today.

            If our consumption is to justify these consequences, then it is this consumption which must be seriously confronted.  However, I don’t believe we will truly readjust our consumption until a diminished supply forces us to, i.e. shutting down the Valmont coal plant.

            Now, in the way of strategy I am reminded of a story a friend told me recently.  He was attending another public hearing in Denver  about a similar situation with another proposed Xcel coal plant.  He had to leave early, and he found himself standing in front of the ticker that displays news headlines at the end of the 16^th st Mall.  As citizens just down the street were in the process of voicing their legitimate concerns on the matter, at the very same time the ticker boasted a headline that read “Xcel guarantees opening of new Pueblo plant”.  For those of us who believe our government is little more than a facilitator of corporate profit at the expense of public interest, this was merely a reaffirmation of the same paradigm.

            My point is that under no circumstances should we, the people in this room allow a stacked deck to prevent us from carrying out our responsibility as a community in maintaining a long term relationship with this planet.  I, by chance, this pattern upholds and the public interest of Boulder is similarly railroaded in favor of Excel, I say lets organize among ourselves to shut down the Valmont plant with direct action at critical mass.  You say this is a public hearing, well I hope the public can hear me! Your president, who purportedly represents you, has insufficiently committed to cutting our emissions by 2050.  Well I say forget the politicians! Only we have the power to shape our future, not some empty bureaucratic policy.  Lets organize and cut emissions today while we’re only committed to a couple of mildly catastrophic degrees of warming. I’d like to end by quoting folks like Stokely Carmichael and Bobby Seale in saying, “All power to the people!””

Why drive out the G20?

Why drive out the G20?

 

            The rows of riot geared cops along the perimeter, like the government representatives deliberating within the fortified and isolated compound in the distance, profess to be protectors of the People, but in reality serve as a barricade between the private corporate interest of the megarich and public outrage at the systematic dismantling of our future.  Behind the legions of stormtroopers, the teargas, the snipers, and the razor wire, decisions are made by a greedy and powerful few of how best to perpetuate the current paradigm of exploitation, destruction, and profiteering; how their model can be repackaged and preserved to plague another generation of unknowing sheeple.  Our collective future continues to be systematically sold off to the capitalist market gods with every new clearcut, mountain top removal, with the toxification of our land, air and water; with each new sweat shop, rubber plantation, each forced relocation; each new predator drone or guided missile system.   As the greedy hands of the market fill every untainted corner, every isolated crack where once free individuals remained, we witness the rendering of a universally colonized slave class whose sole purpose on this planet is to work and buy, production and consumption, replacing the immaterial and priceless feelings and relationships that have long characterized humanity with plastic flashy things, false currencies and meaningless “jobs”, like starving little mice chasing lies to turn the wheels of corporate profit. They labor only to construct in each of us through constant bombardment and reinforcement a false sense of normalcy in hopelessness to which we are all inescapably trapped; pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!  What many have come to see as the undisputable and inexorable condition of modern reality, or even the expectable symptoms of human “progress”, only the weary few have historically recognized as the self-fulfilling damnation of life on this planet, the mechanized awl hollowing out the human spirit, condemning our friends and loved ones to a life of servitude and misery that they may never have the contrasting emotional vocabulary to identify.  The focus on this year’s G20 meeting in Pittsburgh will undoubtedly be to apply a new spin to this same 250 year old pattern, an attempt to make capitalism palatable as it faulters once again in the downswing of its fifth Kondratieff cycle.

            In pondering the existence and function of this country club of the 20 richest states (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States of Slave Colonies), Emmanuel Wallerstein’s conceptualization of the world system immediately comes to mind.  In Wallerstein’s model, the world is dominated by a single capitalist system, comprised of core (“rich”) states, periphery (“poor”) states, and semiperiphery states.  Simply put, core states exploit periphery states for profit, and semiperipheral states have characteristics of both exploiter and exploited.  The important thing to note here is that there is no linear ladder of “development” to be ascended over time by “underdeveloped” states, and there is no point at which all states can reach core status.  Such a scenario, though frequently dangled before the exploited to enhance the transfer of wealth into greedy hands, could never exist in a capitalist system as there would be no one left to exploit, or to capitalize off of.  The G20, already boasting 85% of the world’s GNP, gathers periodically to discuss how they can further solidify their position, to bury their collective boot deeper into the throat of world (over)production and (over)consumption.  An important flaw in Wallerstein’s model, however, is evident in its failure to account for areas of undeniable peripheral characteristics (unemployment, poverty, homelessness, destitution) within each core state. The United States for example, the world’s most “developed” slave colony, endures an unemployment rate of around 50% among African American males in the gluttony/trade capitol of New York City, higher than the unemployment rate of Afghanistan.  This brings us to another important characteristic of the Group of 20 (made up of both core and semiperipheral states).  Equally prominent as the exploitation of peripheral countries by these greedy pigfucking cashsuckers is their blatant and consistent exploitation of the marginalized portions of their respective domestic populations, which is to say everyone except wealthy corporate and political classes, which is to say 99% of the population.  In this we see the forceful removal of indigenous populations for resource extraction, the violent repression of dissent, the assassination of labor organizers, the gentrification of “poor” communities, and the anthropogenic decline of all ecosystems.  The collusion of the G20, though sadly with the winning approval of a startling portion of their own slaves, can only mean the acceleration of this economic disparity at the expense of all the living inhabitants of this planet.  This too is undeniable considering the only way to expand this artificial wealth is by making money off other people’s money (banking and finance) and the further raping of the natural environment (which is really the opposite of expanding wealth, as artificially replacing the natural systems that sustain life, in so far as that is possible, would be far more expensive than all the wealth ever extracted when theses systems fail).

            So when the G20 converges upon Pittsburgh this September, so too will the enraged masses, offering up to them and to the world a different model of human existence.  Our model is not one in which matters of distribution, ecology, and values are not determined by a small fringe population of string pullers and profiteers, but by the people who have up until this point only endured the consequences of this so-called “progress”.  It is a model in which the needs of the living things of this planet are not decided upon (or often overlooked altogether) by the increasingly rich, but by the living things on this planet.  It is neither dictatorial nor representative, but participatory.  It is a non-model that sheds all models, where the agenda is driven not by fictitious market forces but by issues of immediate reality.  This is by no means a new model.  This is a world for which environmentalists, labor organizers, human rights activists, and anarchists have long fought.  However, despite decades if not centuries of heartfelt struggle, the disparity and destruction continues only to accelerate with each passing year.  Nothing could be a greater indicator of the necessity for broader tactics than the death of the natural world.  A formidable militant arm would show the world that we will no longer constrain ourselves to the tools offered up to us as gifts by the status quo, just as nonviolent protesters are required en masse to win the minds of the fence sitters.  Both efforts must agree upon their equal utility, and recognize that infighting will only hinder the movement.  A successful movement will consist of a clear collusion and agreement between the two.  Unfortunately what we have now is a movement in which nonviolent protesters set aside their passive values only when in a position to protect the property of the oppressors from those who are brave enough to step outside the cage of societally acceptable behavior in the spirit of revolution.  The dissent will truly need to step it up if they are to make any sort of impact, as the powerholders and their pig enforcers already have.  If last summer taught us anything, with all the freedom cages, preemptive arrests, and widespread detaining of independent media, it is that the system is not yet ready to change on its own prerogative alone.  This summer, the people are going to have to push harder. 

            In defending the disastrous trajectory of modern history until present, the powers that be often refer to the freedoms afforded to us under their governing. Well, we are here to tell the world that freedom is not something that is gifted to us by any ruling party, but rather it is something that must be taken by each individual, with each deliberate and conscious action. It is time to give up these false values and currencies spoonfed to us by the string-pullers, to see the world for what it is, and to take responsibility for the administration of our own lives. In September, Pittsburgh will show the world that truly free people are ungovernable.

Trading Republic for Empire in the Americas

For decades the US Army School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Ga has been the target of great public outrage throughout Latin America, and increasingly within the United States.  The rise in public scrutiny of the training facility has resulted in numerous relocations, a name change, and a few more or less arbitrary administrative alterations. Since its opening in Panama over six decades ago, the school has trained soldiers and officers from most Latin American countries in modern warfare, counterinsurgency, and interrogation techniques.  Graduates have filled the ranks of Latin American militaries, from foot soldiers to the more well-known dictators like Manuel Noriega and Hugo Banzer, many of whom have consistently been linked to instances of mass murder, kidnapping, torture, and execution.  Despite the frequent boasting of human rights standards by US leaders throughout this period, graduates of the school include some of the most notorious names in human rights abuses in the western hemisphere.  Many prolific scholars to be discussed have long acknowledged that the maintenance of empire,  a political unit having an extensive territory or comprising a number of territories or nations and ruled by a single supreme authority[i], can come only and inevitably at the expense of the ideals of a republic, such as self determination, democracy, human rights, and equal protection under the law.  The training of Latin American militaries and their utilization in support of US interest is a sterling example of the US government discarding these ideals for imperial ambitions.  While much more training takes place in many covert and lesser-known facilities, this paper focuses primarily on the contradictions between elements of the imperial and the republican and democratic, presented by the official and well documented history of the School of the Americas (recently renamed “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation,” but for the purposes of this paper will be referred to as SOA).  Additionally, this is by no means an exhaustive history of the school, but a useful study in the hypocrisy of a democratic empire.           

            Agnew draws an important distinction between qualities possessed by the United States government in determining it to be either an empire or simply a hegemonic power.  Quoting Rosen, he defines the distinction as, “Empire is the rule exercised by one nation over others both to regulate their external behavior and to ensure minimally acceptable forms of internal behavior within the subordinate states. Merely powerful states do the former, but not the latter.[ii]”  While Agnew seems to lean toward mere hegemony, the history of leveraging military aid to influence the internal politics of many Latin American states indicates a level of imperialism that would fit even the more conservative definitions. With around 730 foreign military bases foreign military bases[iii] and a history of well over 200 overt military and clandestine interventions on foreign soil[iv], the United States government seems much less reluctant to operate as an empire than it is to call itself one.  This reluctance is largely the product of the ideological conundrum that comes to any proud republic whose acquisition and political transition into imperialism comes at the expense of republican values, whether those of ancient Rome, Great Britain, or of the United States[v].  John Agnew points out that, as empire is acquired and subsequently maintained, governments attempt to avoid this inevitable conflict by continuing to boast the standards of republic to the domestic population in order to justify its external endeavors[vi].  Similarly, vigorous promotion of democracy, self determination, and basic human rights that has long justified the training programs (and their results) of the US Army School of the Americas have often been reflected only in rhetoric, historically overshadowed by the many measures taken by its graduates in the imposition of US imperialism in the region. To understand how and why the United States has taken such an active role in many of the major atrocities throughout Latin America in the last century, it is important to understand how the interest in modernizing Latin American militaries and gaining the obedient ear of juntas and dictators has operated as a function of US imperial foreign policy. A particular quality of the US empire is that it is highly decentralized, operating less on a model of territorial acquisitions and more on economic infiltration, driven by private corporations, and enforced by military superiority.  This is somewhat of an aggregate of some characteristics Hardt and Negri’s “neo-empire,” [vii] and empire of the market independent of a particular state, though largely centered around US capitalist interests, and heavily military-oriented.  Through the cold war and well into the modern era of neoliberal geopolitics[viii], the US has used this aptitude for developing foreign militaries to represent a strategic commitment to anti-communist or pro-world trade regimes, and to secure an unofficial branch of US military coercion in the South, willing and able to enforce US policy when needed[ix].  Frequently, efforts by the US government to project prevailing geopolitical codes of containment, and later market access and neoliberalism, have come at the great cost of human rights abuses and oppression of entire populations, a result of persistent failure to take into account the implications of the interaction between imperial policy projections and entirely distinct and preexisting political conditions within Latin American states.  During the Cold War, US actions in securing an economic foothold in Latin America were dominated (or perhaps simply justified) by the paranoia that a Soviet led communist infiltration would jeopardize their economic hegemony.  Meanwhile, wealthy landowners, politicians, and the military class took advantage of the US’s strictly anti-Soviet policy to take violent control of the land, resources, and government, badly exacerbating preexisting conditions of poverty and inequality[x].  Thus, with the significant aid and training given by the US military throughout Latin America the ends tend to reflect only the violent means.  In many ways, the utilization of the SOA and other US military training programs to further US hegemony has consistently undermined the democratic ideals to which the modern empire so often espouses. As John Agnew put it, “That republic and empire are inherently contradictory has usually been ‘resolved’ by attempting to practice and portray the expansionist impulse as conforming to at least minimal republican principles: bringing ‘good government’ expanding ‘democracy,’ building ‘international community,’ and achieving ‘global consensus’. This was particularly the case when the United States was faced with an especially potent global foe representing a very different model of government and political economy: the Soviet Union.”[xi]

With consensus established around the ideological dichotomy that was to define the new ordering of the world system, the Truman administration shifted eyes from the European main stage toward securing capitalist hegemony in Latin America.  There, states ruled by wealthy elites but populated by peasantry, poor farmers, and indigenous groups, as seen by US corporate interests and subsequently the government, showed the kind of volatility that catalyzed the initial rise of communism[xii].  With all other western powers but the US abandoning their Latin American investments in the region after WWII, the US government saw the kind of vacuum created that George Kennan had warned about, that could open the region up to Soviet influence[xiii].  At the same time, this vacuum was seen as an opportunity by US corporations and subsequently in the government to expand Latin American profits and influence.  With this, the Truman administration employed the kind of containment advocated by Kennan years earlier, filling the vacuum with a dependence on US military aid and economic investments.  In 1947 the US signed the Rio Pact, an agreement to modernize and work with the militaries of states that were willing to cooperate with US world vision[xiv].  The pact came one year after the opening of the US Army Latin American Ground School in the Panama Canal Zone, which would later be known as the School of the Americas.  The school would accompany the military aid promised in the Rio Treaty with sophisticated and superior training and organization necessary to operate a modern military.  In addition, the school was meant to indoctrinate Latin American militaries with so-called American values and the American vision of world order, Capitalism vs. Communism[xv].  The idea was that with ally states convinced of US military superiority, strong administration of anticommunist sentiment, and shared economic interest with social and political elites, the US government could exercise total control over the politics and economics of the region[xvi].   Maintaining military hegemony without direct intervention by US troops was the earliest characteristic to take root in Cold War era Latin American politics, of what Agnew describes as the new tendencies of empire, namely, “constructing alliances… using economic and military leverage,” rather than outright seizure of territory[xvii].  However, it wasn’t long before training to promote military dependence and violent forms of control rendered the US government’s apparent affinity for spreading democracy secondary to maintaining stability of its hidden arm of empire. 

            Among the founding principles of the US republic to be disregarded by SOA trainees at the will of the economic empire are self-determination and democracy.  Initially, it was the stance of Washington to support the wave of democracy that swept Latin America after WWII.  However, with new democracies came a level of political openness seldom known to many of these states, spurring formidable social reform movements to counter long standing social inequalities and oppressive class structuring left over from the colonial era[xviii].  Movements driven by a class struggle of peasants, farmers, and indigenous groups began to win democratic concessions such as welfare, land rights, and the nationalization of key industries.  Authoritarian regimes, on the other hand, had no trouble quashing dissent by violent means, and rarely had to concede such social reforms. The US government, alarmed by wealthy landowners and US corporations heavily invested in many of these reformist states began to see these class struggles as heightened instability, jeopardizing the establishment of US hegemony.  Soon after, the Truman and later Eisenhower administrations began to see dealing with Dictators like Nicaragua’s Samoza and Cuba’s Batista as more stable for maintaining US influence than their ties with new social democracies like Guatemala and Argentina[xix]. As Ignatieff, a true apologist of this imperial double standard, wrote, “Whenever it has exerted power over seas, America has never been sure whether it values stability- which means not only political stability but also the steady, profitable flow of goods and raw materials [sic] – more than it values its own rhetoric about democracy[xx].” Thus, when elite and military classes began to use the training and military hardware supplied by the US to overthrow democratic regimes and install military dictatorships, rather than make a fuss they did exactly what Ignatieff’s logic advocates; threw out their fetish for democracy in favor of hegemony and increased funding and enrollment in training programs. 

            The impact of these coups operating with US encouragement began so immediately after the US commitment to modernize these militaries that, “by 1952, nearly every democracy that had come into power in the postwar period was upended.”[xxi]  Dictatorships seemed so favorable by Washington that it soon moved beyond simply empowering militaries with training at the ground school and supplying weaponry.  The first of such experiments was under the Eisenhower administration, when at the behest of United Fruit Corporation a US trained mercenary force was aided by a propaganda campaign by the newly formed CIA in overthrowing the left-leaning Guatemalan government[xxii].   After the Cuban revolution, this doctrine of aggressively dissuading soviet involvement, or any leftist behavior, was continued under Kennedy and LBJ, and later by Nixon. SOA graduates and other US trained troops took part in the installment of anti-communist, anti-socialist military dictatorships in Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil, and later Chile and Argentina[xxiii].  So central was the School of the Americas to the transformation of democratic states to military juntas that, as the Washington Post reported as early as 1968, “it is known throughout Latin America as the ‘escuela de golpes’ or coup school”[xxiv].   Following Ignatieff’s logic, this represents the US empire giving up their preference for democracy in favor of the greater good of capitalism.  However, as even Ignatieff points out, “The core beliefs of our time are creations of the anticolonial revolt against empire: the idea that all human beings are equal and that each human group has the right to rule itself free of foreign interference. [xxv]” Self determination is just one of the ideals thrown to the wind with the utilization of the SOA in geopolitics.  This is surprisingly neither a matter of contention nor embarrassment for some prominent US policy makers. As Henry Kissinger said in reference to the US mandate Chilean regime change, “I don’t see why we should have to stand by and let a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.”[xxvi] Any justification of this logic under Ignatieff’s parameters, however, would imply that capitalism is the greatest good, not only above democracy, but above basic human rights.  Whether or not this logic applies reasonably to US military support of the juntas, via the SOA and other military training and support, is in serious doubt, given the legacy of human rights abuses that followed the empowerment of military states.

            With self determination decidedly secondary to so-called “stability”, issues of poverty and class separation deteriorated badly under the violently established, US backed free market dictatorships.  As a result, the rule of the Juntas gave rise to populist movements throughout Latin America, from Guatemala down to Argentina.  The combination of debilitating poverty resulting from neoliberal economic policies[xxvii] and dictatorships that suppressed any dissent led to the popularization if guerrilla movements throughout the region as the only reasonable avenue for reform for peasant farmers and indigenous populations.[xxviii]As such, many of the 60,000 some Latin American trainees from the SOA[xxix], heavily trained in counterinsurgency, spent their careers suppressing dissent for dictators that didn’t mind opening up trade for resource extraction by US corporations.  In the Juntas, the US had strong ideological, anti-communist allies, and as such, any populist uprisings demanding economic equality could be quickly written off as communists, often suppressed violently.  Many client states saw long periods of unrest, characterized by resistance movements and their dictatorial counterpart: US trained death squads.  While the rhetoric of the US empire frequently displays a commitment to the republican value of adherence to law, and accordingly promotion of human rights, “(US trained) state security forces were responsible for the vast majority of massacres, murders, disappearances, and extrajudicial executions that characterized the twentieth century Latin American ‘dirty wars’.”[xxx]The effects of US trained soldiers in the ensuing class struggle during this period were widespread, and rarely did it reflect the empire’s values of democracy and human rights.  It was during these last couple decades of the Cold War that the school earned another popular pseudonym, “The School of Assassins”.

            Throughout the 50’s and 60’s, as the US fought two anti-communist wars in Asia, the SOA had a steady increase in enrollment from Chile[xxxi].  Heavily indoctrinated with anti-communist sentiment, the largely US trained Chilean military overthrew the government in a violent US corporation-instigated, CIA-coordinated coup, murdering the socialist-reformer leader Salvador Allende.[xxxii]In a detente period more generally known for a decline in the Cold War[xxxiii], thousands of Chilean soldiers and state police were trained under the Nixon administration-Pinochet dictatorship at the SOA, a period typified by mass disappearances, torture, and public execution.[xxxiv]

            Bolivia saw a massive increase in soldiers training at the SOA during the failed coup in 1967, led by Che Guevarra to liberate Bolivian peasants[xxxv].  In 1971, after SOA graduate Hugo Banzer overthrew the Bolivian government in yet another violent coup, Bolivia saw another increase in SOA enrollment, coinciding with a period of immense violence and oppression.  Banzer was a strong component of the Chilean born Operation Condor, a transnational intelligence cooperation that resulted in the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of politically active leftists throughout the Southern Cone at the hands of state police death squads[xxxvi], utilizing the techniques disseminated by the School of the Americas[xxxvii].  Following the Banzer regime, Bolivia saw a rash of military coups, fueled by Bolivian officers’ lust for advancement, and notably encouraged by the sentiment of absolute military power presented by years of enrollment in the SOA, an “echo chamber for coups”.[xxxviii] 

            Though largely lauded for their contributions in bringing human rights back into international political discourse from more hard–line Cold War rhetoric[xxxix], under the Nixon and Carter administrations the 1970’s saw similar periods of US and SOA trained violence and disappearances in Guatemala, Argentina, Uruguay, and Peru[xl].  However, if the more pragmatic behavior of these two administrations proved merely amoral in their support of certain regimes, the renewed ideological code of the Reagan administration displayed outright imperial militarization of the South, with a seeming disdain or at least disregard for human rights.  The hypocrisy of US self-imaging and actual policy outcomes is strongly reflected in both Reagan’s rhetoric and his record.  As Michael Doyle reports, “In a speech before the British Parliament in June of 1982, President Reagan proclaimed that governments founded on a respect for individual liberty exercise “restraint” and “peaceful intentions” in their foreign policy. He then announced a “crusade for freedom” and a “campaign for democratic development” (Reagan, June 9, 1982)[xli].  During Ronald Reagan’s “War on Terror” in Central America (more appropriately titled by Noam Chomsky, Ronald Reagan’s “terrorist campaign”[xlii]) the majority of the enrolled population of the school came from the Salvadorian military[xliii].  Under Reagan’s hard-line anti-communist geopolitics, years of social struggle by indigenous and labor groups began to gain steam under an oppressive but pro-US regime.  During this period, the US trained Salvadorian military executed, tortured, raped, and mutilated[xliv] tens of thousands of Salvadorian women children, and men. The decade was marred by early US neoconservative discourse of a massive military emphasis, leading to such notorious atrocities as the Massacre at El Mazote and the Jesuit Massacre.  Truly, the decline of the cold war was, for many Nicaraguans and Salvadorians, was a period of violence of nightmare proportions.  So contradictory was US policy to the nations image as a republic that the administration was forced to create a sort of red-white-and-blue-washing propaganda campaign to justify the actions of US trained troops[xlv], directly exemplifying Agnew’s aforementioned observation of a republic’s rationalization of empire.

            With the fall of the Soviet Union, and with it the old ideological component of US foreign policy, what remained was the new free market capitalist ideology that had come to draw the distinction between capitalist and communist economics.  No longer was the priority to stamp out any sign of communism to secure capitalist investments, but to magnify those investments via laissez faire[xlvi]. The new neoliberal economics that infiltrated Latin America under the Pinochet dictatorship and infected many other states thereafter in the era of Reagnomics[xlvii], has given new credence to Hardt and Negri’s sentiment of economic empire.  Characterized by deregulation, absolute privatization, liberalizing to foreign trade, and slashing social spending budgets[xlviii], this misguided economic dogma called neoliberalism, designed primarily to benefit foreign investors, has since been the smoking gun of fallen economies throughout the region, from Mexico to Argentina. Enacted by restructuring conditions attached to loans provided by the World bank and IMF, NGO’s that comprise Hardt and Negri’s neoempire[xlix] (over which the US has absolute veto power), these policies, while lucrative for economically stable elites, have historically inflamed preexisting conditions of disparity[l]. In this modern era, the SOA trained security forces are utilized to subside popular outrage in states that have been subjected to such devastating policy measures, such as Mexico, Argentina, and Bolivia[li].   While the abductions and mass murders that has defined previous eras has largely subsided in most of these countries, such a concept as popular uprising in demand for reform seems a defining feature of democracy, arguably the single most touted of all republican ideals of the US empire, one of many easily set aside in maintaining capitalist rule. 

            Since the 70’s, advancement of neoliberal policy, and later the furthering of free trade agreements (FTA’s) like NAFTA (North American) and CAFTA (Central American) resulted in the decimation of labor, environmental, and health regulations, and flooded Latin American markets with cheap subsidized goods from the US, leading to a further skyrocket in unemployment and poverty.  As Greg Grandin put it in his book, Empire’s Workshop, “By the end of the 1960’s, 11 percent of Latin Americans were destitute.  By 1996, the total number of destitute grew to a full third of the population.  That’s 165 million people.”[lii] With unemployment soaring as social safety nets were slashed, “forced entrepreneurialism”[liii] led to a drastic increase in the drug trade.  In addition to training for suppression of popular uprising, enrollment in the SOA increased as counter-narcotics training took the main stage of the so-called “war on drugs”.  Peasant and indigenous farmers who lost their livelihood with the monopolization of corporate agro-business and turned to growing coca as the only viable alternative are now the target of a ruthless counter-narcotics campaign in Peru, Bolivia (until recently when indigenous president Evo Morales expelled the DEA and withdrew all Bolivian enrollment in the school) and especially Colombia. In Colombia in particular, much of the SOA training and military aid today is siphoned into combating opposition to free trade policy, i.e. Leftwing paramilitaries, but also Labor organizations, indigenous rights movements, and student activists, frequently using body counts as a measure of success[liv].

 Through numerous examples it has become apparent that the emphasis on military power fostered by the US and represented in the SOA has created a mentality of “whoever has the most guns makes the rules,” which has lead to long periods of unspeakable violence. Through decades of brutality, it is difficult to assess to what degree correlation indicates causation with the human rights record of various regimes and their participation in SOA training programs.  Many have a poor human rights record perhaps independent of whether or not they had soldiers enrolled at the SOA.  Clearly, not all conflicts are equal, and the influence of SOA enrollment surely had varying degrees of influence in the greatly distinct circumstances of Guatemalan vs. Salvadorian state violence, or on the political ideologies of Carter vs. Reagan administrations.  Perhaps, as proponents of the school maintain, the US is not betraying its values, and that its effort to spread democracy throughout the South has been marred only by a few bad apples.  However complex a relationship to establish, a study by Kathrine McCoy was able to uncover a direct causal connection between SOA training and human rights abuses.  According to the statistical analysis of her study, there is a direct positive relationship between the number of SOA training courses attended by any particular trainee and the likelihood of that trainee to go on to commit human rights abuses.[lv]To put it another way, the longer a soldier trains at the School of the Americas, the more likely they will be to commit crimes against humanity.

Clearly, the training of foreign militaries at the SOA to gain military control throughout the region reflects a serious dichotomy between the power of empire and the moral standard of republic.  Ignatieff’s reflection on this historic tradeoff can be directly applied to the continuation of the school when he writes, “these are not the actions of a republic that lives by the rule of law but of an imperial power reluctant to trust its own liberties.[lvi]”  However, this is not universally regarded as a bad thing.  Ignatieff himself believed that theses values could be justifiably discarded for a greater good.  In reference to Machiavelli, Doyle points out, “not only that republics are not pacifistic, but that they are the best form of state for imperial expansion. Establishing a republic fit for imperial expansion is, moreover, the best way to guarantee the survival of a state.”[lvii] Whether mere maintenance of power is a sufficiently greater good to warrant the abandonment of democracy, self determination, and individual liberty is a matter of great dispute.  Deeply exemplified in the correlation between training conducted at the School of the Americas and the desertion of republican values in instances of regime change, massacres, kidnapping, torture, and executions, US leaders have consistently made their decision in favor of expanding power, despite the great human cost throughout Latin America in the 20^th century, and now well into the new millennium.

 

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[i] http://www.thefreedictionary.com

[ii] John Agnew, “American Hegemony into American Empire,” Antipode(2003), p. 875

[iii] Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis, p. 139

[iv] William Blum, Killing Hope

[v] Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis, p. 54-89

[vi] John Agnew, “American Hegemony into American Empire,” Antipode(2003), p. 873

[vii] M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire

[viii] Secor Roberts and Sparke,  “Neoliberal Geopolitics”, Antipode (2003), p. 886

[ix] Lesley Gill, The School of the Americas, p. 7

[x] Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop p.41

[xi] John Agnew, “American Hegemony into American Empire,” Antipode(2003), p. 875 

[xii] Katerine McCoy, Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 32, No. 6 (Nov., 2005), p.60

[xiii] Ibid., p.61

[xiv] Lesley Gill, The School of the Americas, p. 63

[xv] Ibid., p. 65

[xvi] Ibid., p. 60

[xvii] John Agnew, “American Hegemony into American Empire,” Antipode(2003), p. 873

[xviii] Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop, p. 40

[xix] Ibid., p. 41

[xx] Michael Ignatieff , “The American Empire: the Burden,” NY Times Magazine 2003 p.      158

[xxi] Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop, p.42

[xxii] Ibid., p. 43

[xxiii] Ibid., p.49

[xxiv] The Washinton Post, 5 February 1968

[xxv]Michael Ignatieff , “The American Empire: the Burden,” NY Times Magazine 2003, p. 163

[xxvi] The Buffalo News, 2 December 2002

[xxvii] Lesley Gill, The School of the Americas, p. 134

[xxviii] Vanden and Prevost, Politics of Latin America, p. 61

[xxix] Katerine McCoy, Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 32, No. 6 (Nov., 2005), p. 53

[xxx] Lesley Gill, The School of the Americas, p. 11

[xxxi] Ibid., p. 79

[xxxii] Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, p. 548

[xxxiii] Taylor and Flint, Geopolitics Revived, p. 78

[xxxiv] Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis, p. 108

[xxxv] Lesley Gill, The School of the Americas,  p. 79

[xxxvi] Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop, p.48

[xxxvii] Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, p. 569, 667

[xxxviii] Lesley Gill, The School of the Americas, p. 98

[xxxix] David Foresythe, “American Foreign Policy and Human Rights,” Universal Human Rights, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Jul. – Sep., 1980), p. 35-53

[xl] Lesley Gill, The School of the Americas, p. 96

[xli] Michael W. Doyle, “Liberalism and World Politics,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 80, No. 4 (Dec., 1986), p. 1151

[xlii] Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival,  p. 9

[xliii] Lesley Gill, The School of the Americas,   p. 106

[xliv] Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop,  p. 90

[xlv] Ibid.,  p.124

[xlvi] Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop, p.188

[xlvii] Ibid. 181

[xlviii] Ibid. p. 201

[xlix] M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire

[l] A. Portes and B. Roberts, “The Free-Market City: Latin American Urbanization in the Years of the Neoliberal Experiment” Studies in Comparitive International Development, p. 43-82

[li] Greg Pallast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, p. 144-158

[lii] Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop, p. 198

[liii] A. Portes and B. Roberts, “The Free-Market City: Latin American Urbanization in the Years of the Neoliberal Experiment” Studies in Comparitive International Development, p. 47

[liv] Lesley Gill, The School of the Americas, p. 159

[lv] Katerine McCoy, Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 32, No. 6 (Nov., 2005), p. 58

[lvi] Michael Ignatieff , “The American Empire: the Burden,” NY Times Magazine 2003, p. 156

[lvii] Michael W. Doyle, “Liberalism and World Politics,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 80, No. 4 (Dec., 1986), p. 1154

Orwellian Forecast from 9/1/08

This last weekend, in St. Paul and Minneapolis MN, as the stage was being set for the upcoming Republican National Convention, police were executing heavily armed preemptive raids on several groups organizing nonviolent anti-war protests for the upcoming week (Fog City Journal).  Acting on intelligence from the FBI, police entered several homes and buildings thought to contain protesters, breaking down doors, holding men, women, and children at gunpoint, seizing political literature, and arresting hundreds.  According to twin city reporters, police in full riot gear even handcuffed lawyers and journalists, and boarded up many of the raided homes for “unspecified code violations”.  As horrifying as this is in a country once protected by the constitution and bill of rights, the real story lies in the fact that very few people seem to know or care about it.  Welcome to 1984.

            With as many as 1.2 million dead in our latest illegal war (according to an ORB study), record setting defense spending, record profits for government contractors, big oil, and the corporations that have hijacked our nation, and a federal government that equally flaunts through policy and denies in the media its imperialist aspirations, there should be no shortage of outrage.  However, even in the face of these recent and blatant violations of civil rights, the streets of even the most liberal American cities remain silent.  Even on a campus like CU, where I am a student, once reputed for political activism amongst the student body, I hear nothing but crickets.  Where are the demonstrations?  Where are the petitions?  Where is the fire that used to drive us to fight for the freedom of speech afforded by our first amendment?

Well, it’s hard to protest what you simply don’t know about, and sadly, in regards to the incompetence of the popular media in this country, this seems to be business as usual.  Just last week I was astonished to find, after returning to Boulder after a week of protests in Denver that included both Monday’s police brutalities and Wednesday’s historic peace march of 8,000 people led by Rage Against the Machine and Iraq Veterans Against the War, that nobody here in Boulder had really heard about it.  In fact, I had to dig around on the internet to find any trace of news coverage, and the reports I was able to find were, with few exceptions, strikingly inaccurate, and went largely unnoticed.  Whether this is a product conscious withholding of subversive information among popular media outlets, or a serious epidemic of head-up-your-ass syndrome among Americans, is unknown to me. 

            In either case, it’s time to wake up, America (even you, liberal media).  We are rapidly approaching a period of silence and oppression, when you can say anything you want so long as it is not in regards to the injustice our federal government imposes upon people around the world with taxpayer dollars, and provided that nobody else is saying it with you.  With homeland security rapidly infringing on our rights, we may already have to worry about being raided for the books we read, or the movies we watch, or the peace rallies we attend. 

Personally, I’m not going out like that.  I’m not just going to go about my business as the financial elite turn our great nation into a police state, and the rest of the globe into their own personal diamond mine.  We’ve all heard the battle cry of the peace movement, and I’m here to tell you that the power has always been to the people.  Now more than ever it is our obligation to stand up and use it.  Turn off your TV and educate yourselves as to what your higher ups are up to; you’ll be astonished to find that it’s not about “freedom” or “justice” or “Jesus” as our president would have us believe.  It is time to find your voice and take back this runaway democracy.  Strive for real change, not just a new face on the same war machine.  And if, by chance, in November that new face doesn’t bring about the change you hoped for, don’t be afraid to dust off that old first amendment and exercise it.  You may experience some atrophy; this is normal.

Chattering Gears 9/27/08

As the first presidential debate fueled on Friday night, despite near cancellation, both candidates opened with solid points in regards to the financial bailout plan, stressing an important need for caution and oversight.  Obama went on rightfully to grill McCain about spending in the war in Iraq, which McCain continued to defend as necessary.  However, as the jabs and pokes continued, much of what could be heard from both candidates was not the sound of change, as they both avidly advertise, but of the same old gears on the same old war machine turning as unrelenting as ever, fueled by misunderstanding and half truths.

In effectively setting up a pretext for conflict with Russia, they condemned the recent Russian offensive against Georgia.  The two candidates alluded to the fact that a future military conflict with Russia is not outside the realm of possibilities.  However, what they seem to have left out is the fact that Georgia, perhaps due to the influence of the CIA in the country, first attacked the Russians in a combined air and ground campaign in South Ossetia , prompting Russia to move troops forward to attack Georgian troops. This initial August 7th attack was characterized by Russian officials as “Russia’s 9/11,” though few Americans know this.

Obama often condemned the military activity in Iraq throughout the course of the debate, prompting McCain to defend it as the forefront in the war on terror.  In their talks of victory in the controversial war, the two often conjured the name of Colonel Petraeus, though neither quoted him as saying that he will never declare victory in Iraq, as BBC News did earlier this month.

 Obama continued to argue that Afghanistan was the good fight, somehow much more justifiable than that in Iraq.  What the candidate seemed to disregard was the Taliban were no more responsible for the attacks on September 11^th than Saddam Hussein.  Unmentioned is the fact that the United States began its campaign on the Taliban, and subsequently the Afghani people, not because they attacked us, but because they refused to hand over Osama Bin Laden, and only because the U.S. never provided the evidence that he was responsible.  Remember the “white paper” that Colin Powell said would be released, outlining Al Quaida’s involvement?  Such a document was never released.  Instead, they kept repeating themselves until the American people accepted Afghanistan as a threat and an enemy.   The fact is that the Bush administration had been contemplating an invasion of Afghanistan before 9/11.  Google it.

            Senator Obama redeemed himself, if only in part, pointing out that, historically, our tendencies and readiness toward militancy has only worked against us in bolstering the threat of violent Anti-American opposition.  In a short glimmer of hope, he emphasized the dire need for diplomacy in subduing dissatisfaction with American global influence, instead of a quickness to militancy.

            McCain cringed at the idea of diplomacy.  He went on to assert that unconditional diplomacy was nothing more than aiding the enemy’s cause.  This is classic Bush administration mentality.  In this he failed horribly to acknowledge the seriousness of the existent negative affects of our nations influence throughout the global community, and the contempt that it breeds.  If these problems go unaddressed with diplomacy, and are shut out due to differences in government, as Obama astutely pointed out they were for so long, in places like Korea, and Iran today, they will ultimately only intensify.           

            Somewhere in between his porkbelly rants, McCain pointed out that we cannot allow another Holocaust to occur, at the hands of Iran or any other nation that continues to threaten our ally, Israel.  What he did not mention, or simply does not understand, is that the body count in the Middle East as a result of U.S. militarism in the region is approaching holocaust figures, just as it did in Vietnam.

            Both candidates spoke of the rising threat of terrorism, but what they simply do not tell you is that their common method of combating this threat simply doesn’t work. Large scale military operations that victimize vast numbers is not effective in stomping out the threat of a few.  The murder of over a million civilians, both direct in bombings and gunfights, and indirect in unnecessary and deliberate destabilization, only goes to aid terrorist recruitment.  Instead, as history has shown, terrorism is more effectively fought through small discrete operations by police and special forces, in combination with diplomacy and compromises.  The fact is, our federal government has knowingly put Americans at a greater risk from an increasing global opposition, an issue largely untouched in the first presidential debate, if only because neither candidate claims to want to cut back our militarism in any significant way, as the gears turn on and on and on….