Jan. 5, 2015,
Issue 212
ACTIVIST NEWSLETTER
For email
notices about new items contact us — jacdon@earthlink.net
—————————
CONTENTS:
1. The Sony Cyber-Attack: Who Done It?
2. U.S. Wars
Continue in New Year
3. Big Money and
the Elections
4. Conformity
Basic to Human Society
5. Pope
Francis Fights Climate Change
6. Corporate
Tax Theft Hides Multi-Billions
7. China’s Xi
Seeks Course Correction
8. Speciesism
— A License to Kill, Massively
9. Russia
Brands NATO a Threat
10. Why Do We Have
Police?
11. The Prison State
of America
—————————
1. THE SONY CYBER-ATTACK: WHO DONE IT?
By the Activist Newsletter
 |
| Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader. |
The U.S.
government’s case against North Korea for allegedly cyber-hacking Sony Pictures
appears to be falling apart — but that
hasn’t stopped President Obama from retaliating.
President Obama
imposed new sanctions on North Korea Jan. 2 for allegedly masterminding a
cyber-attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, but many cyber-security experts
are not convinced the country is guilty.
The Pyongyang
government is purported to have acted in reprisal for a tasteless new Hollywood
“comedy” about the assassination of Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader,
featuring a scene in which his head was blown to pieces.
The film, titled
The Interview, was released on Christmas and reportedly took in $15 million.
Some 2 million people have viewed it free online. We wonder how official
Washington would have reacted if the North Koreans produced a similar film with
President Obama literally blown to pieces.
 |
| Movie ad in South Korea. |
North Korea
denies FBI allegations it was responsible, and suggested that the two countries
join in an investigation of the matter. Obama rejected the offer. The FBI
announced it would stand by the charges it first made Dec. 19, although no
evidence has been presented so far.
From the time
the hacking became public Nov. 24, many knowledgeable sources have voiced their
suspicions that a disgruntled Sony Pictures insider was involved.
They argue that
the connections between the Sony hack and the North Korean government amount to
circumstantial evidence at best. Further, they say the level of the breach
indicates an intimate knowledge of Sony's computer systems that could have come
from someone on the inside.
News reports
this week quote a prominent California cyber-security firm Norse Corp — whose
clients include government agencies, financial institutions and technology
companies —that briefed law enforcement officials on evidence it collected that
pointed toward an inside job.
“We can't find
any indication that North Korea either ordered, masterminded or funded this
attack,” said Kurt Stammberger, a senior vice-president at Norse. Although
conceding that his findings were not conclusive, Stammberger added:
"Nobody has been able to find a credible connection to the North Korean
government."
The firm’s
evidence reportedly pointed to an employee who worked for Sony for several
years before being forced out among a number of firings in May. She is said to
be part of the hacker group named Guardians of Peace that probably mounted the
attack.
“America was too
quick to blame North Korea for the hack attack on Sony,” wrote the conservative weekly The Economist
Jan. 3. “It is sobering to think that the world’s greatest nuclear power and
the trigger-happy regime in Pyongyang could be brought into confrontation by a
motley array of mischief makers.”
2. U.S. WARS
CONTINUE IN NEW YEAR
 |
|
Map of Iraq and Syria. Deep
orange is controlled by the Islamic State.
|
By Jack A.
Smith, Editor
Militarily, the
U.S. is entering 2015 with its hands full.
1.
The U.S. war in Afghanistan known as “Operation Enduring Freedom” was supposed to have ended after 13 years on
Dec. 31, 2014, but it’s still going on under a new name — Operation Resolute
Support —and thousands of American troops are continuing in a combat role.
2.
The U.S. war against Iraq ended officially Dec. 31, 2011, but it has now
metamorphosed into Washington’s air war against the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq
and Syria. There are increasing hints U.S. ground troops may be sent in this
year. (3,000 American military advisers are already there and 1,500
allied troops are expected soon.)
3.
The U.S., British, French war against Libya ended with regime change in 2011,
but this oil-rich country is now engaged in civil wars, and is evidently
falling apart. In addition, the Islamic State has established a foothold in
Libya. It is likely the U.S. covertly or openly will intervene to safeguard its
interests.
4.
Washington has supported the regime-change war against Syria for three years,
politically and financially. Allied Saudi Arabia and other powerful Sunni
countries have paid for the jihadist fighters who lead the struggle. Now, the
U.S. needs the Syrian government and opposition to help fight against IS, but
the jihadists and their secular allies have joined forces to continue pummeling
the Damascus regime. The U.S. has not physically entered the war yet, but key
Democrats as well as Republicans have shown interest in doing so.
This accounting
does not include President Barack Obama’s drone wars in Yemen, western
Pakistan, Somalia or other countries, nor the provocative NATO expansion
against Russia and the U.S. military buildup in East Asia against China.
All the wars
against Muslim countries listed above have been launched since Sept. 11, 2001 —
and each, so far, has turned out to be either a humiliating failure, a
stalemate or has resulted in an undesired conclusion. The war against the IS
may not be decided for years and it seems doubtful it will end in a U.S.
victory. Following is a look at these events as the new year begins:
1. The
Afghanistan War Continues
The 13-year-old
Afghanistan war has “ended” as a stalemate for the U.S., if not a defeat.
Originally, the Pentagon was supposed to pull out of this terribly poor country
entirely by the end of 2014. Several months ago an agreement was reached with
newly elected President Ashraf Ghazi to permit some 11,000 American troops to
remain until the end of 2015 in “non-combat roles.”
In November,
responding to increased fighting by the Taliban, President Obama announced
American soldiers would now serve mainly as a combat force augmented by U.S.
air power, drones, the CIA and an unspecified number of contractors. It’s
ludicrous to claim the war is over. Some 4,000 NATO troops will also remain in
Afghanistan.
The conflict is
becoming more intense. In 2014, according to the UN, 3,200 Afghan civilians were
killed, as were more than 5,000 members of the Afghan security forces, the
highest toll since 2001. The fighting is expected to increase considerably this
year.
The U.S. had
pressured former President Hamid Karzai to allow the troops to remain for 10
more years, but he wouldn’t even agree to one year. It is possible Washington
will now work on Ghazi for permission to remain until 2024.
It was
unnecessary, in the first place, to invade Afghanistan after al-Qaeda’s attacks
on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. After all these years there is
nothing to show for the war but deaths and destruction, aside from the mystical
reincarnation of slain al-Qaeda leader Osama bin-Laden into the Islamic State’s
caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of Obama war number five.
Just before the
October 2001 invasion, during a period of intense national
hyper-patriotism, a section of the U.S. left (including this newsletter)
strongly opposed launching a war, calling instead for international police
action to bring al-Qaeda and its followers to justice. The ANSWER coalition
organized a “No War” rally in Washington that attracted 25,000 people just days
before President George W. Bush ordered the Oct. 7 bombardment of Afghanistan
that began the war. The great majority of Americans first backed the war but
that changed in a few years. The national activist left continued its
opposition to the Afghan adventure, but in less than two years it was also
leading the growing mass opposition to the Bush Administration’s plans to
attack Iraq.
Had Bush relied
on police action instead of war he would have saved the lives of more than 2,500 U.S.
soldiers, 3,248 U.S. contractors, 1,114 allied troops, over 13,000 Afghan
military and police plus tens of thousands of civilian lives, and probably over
a trillion U.S. dollars — so far. Afghanistan was a troubled country when the
U.S. invaded. Now it is a wreck except in a niche agricultural category: it
produces 90% of the world’s opium, right under Uncle Sam’s obviously knowing
nose despite the fact that opium-derived heroin makes its way as an addictive
drug into the thriving U.S. illegal market.
2. The
Fiascos In Iraq
 |
| Soldiers of the Islamic State. |
The
U.S.-initiated Iraq War, which lasted from March 2003 until the end of 2011,
resulted in a humiliating stalemate for the White House, covered up with
Obama’s praise for the role of the U.S. military the day they pulled out. A
huge antiwar movement developed in the U.S. and the world months before the
invasion but did not prevent the warmongering Bush Administration from launching
an illegal and unjust military escapade — with Democratic Party approval, of
course.
The
neoconservative coterie running the Bush White House actually believed it would
not only be victorious in a matter of months but would also pave the way for successful
invasions of Syria, Iran and possibly some other Middle Eastern countries.
Their pre-war estimates of the cost of invading, defeating, and occupying Iraq
were $50-$60 billion. In reality, it cost at least $4 trillion with some
estimates 50% higher when all costs are counted, including decades of interest
payments.
Compounding this
fiasco is the current U.S. war against the Islamic State, a direct derivative
of the Iraq war. It is too early to label this conflict a fiasco, but it could
well qualify after Obama or his successor sends in the ground troops, which
seems inevitable in time. This is actually America’s third war of choice
in Iraq in 24 years — 1990 (the Gulf War), followed by over 12 years of killer
sanctions, followed by the 2003-11 conflict.
 |
| The U.S. "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad in March 2003 ultimately led to the Islamic State. |
In 2003, Iraq
posed no threat to the U.S., had no role in 9/11 and did not harbor even one
member of al-Qaeda in the country. But President Bush and his neocon handlers
lied repeatedly to the American people about the “imminent danger” they faced from
this small and distant country. The invasion and occupation cost the lives of
4,489 U.S. soldiers, 3,455 U.S. contractors, 318 allied troops, 12,096 Iraqi
military and police. Up to one million Iraqis lost their lives and four million
became internal and external refugees. The country is a shambles. Washington’s
divide and conquer occupation strategy was a major factor in the subsequent
escalation of the Sunni-Shi’ite religious sectarianism that abounds today.
Early last year,
as a direct result of the U.S. stalemate in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq and
Syria (now the Islamic State) captured territory in both Syria and Iraq. This
organization broke into the headlines last June when it captured the major
Iraqi city of Mosul with a population of a million people. IS confiscated a
huge supply of American military equipment and looted the city’s banks,
becoming rich overnight. Suddenly the U.S. realized that the Iraq war hadn’t
ended at all, especially when IS has continued to seize more land and towns.
Within a couple
of months Washington organized a 60-state anti-IS alliance but in the absence
of ground troops it may be a mile wide but it’s just an inch deep. None, led by
the U.S., wanted to send troops. Obama is desperate for help on the ground from
both the Syrian and Iranian governments — which he kept out of the alliance —
but will not dare say so publicly.
So far the bulk
of the Iraqi army has not played a major role. The U.S. foolishly dissolved the
army it defeated in 2003 and decided in effect to build its own new Iraqi army
at a cost to American taxpayers of $25 billion over the years in training and
equipping. It turned out after the loss of Mosul that the new Iraqi officer
corps and military bureaucracy was so extraordinarily corrupt that the army had
to be retrained, a process still taking place, although a number of units are
now in the field.
 |
| Iraqi children of the war zone. |
Iraqi Shi’ite
militias and Iranian officers and troops have helped hold the fort on the
ground. The Iranians are fighting IS in Iraq, but on their own. Both Tehran and
Washington have stated they are not working together — a politically necessary
decision on both accounts. The New York Times reported Nov. 22 “even American
officials acknowledge the decisive role of Iranian-backed militias, particularly
in protecting Baghdad from an assault by the Islamic State.... Iran’s
increasingly public military role has proved essential in repelling the
advances of the Islamic State.”
According to
news reports Dec. 9: “Secretary of State John Kerry today called for Congress
to keep the door open for ground deployments of troops to fight the Islamic
State in not only Iraq and Syria, but also elsewhere in the Middle East.” This
report is ambiguous but Pentagon generals have been suggesting the need for
U.S. “boots on the ground” in Iraq and Syria. A number of Republicans in
Congress, led by Sen. John McCain, support sending U.S. ground troops to fight
IS.
3. Libya Is
Falling Apart
Over three years
ago (as their sham part of the Arab Spring) the U.S. and its NATO partners,
backed by reactionary Arab monarchies, decided to bring about violent regime
change in oil-rich Libya to establish a government that would far better serve
the interests of Western imperialism. Their alleged justification was to rid
the country of Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, whom they termed a vicious
dictator.
In reality, as
Patrick Cockburn wrote in the Independent (UK) in March: “The NATO powers that
overthrew Gaddafi did not do so because he was a tyrannical ruler, but because
he pursued a nationalist policy which was at odds with Western policies in the
Middle East.”
 |
| Recent IS convoy in Libya. |
The U.S., UK and
France — each of which repeatedly bombed and strafed the Libyan government and
military on behalf of rebel forces supposedly seeking democracy — bragged about
bringing “freedom” to the Libyan people when the regime fell and Gaddafi was
tortured to death by a mob. What they actually delivered to Libya was the chaos
of ethnic warlords, jihadists and racketeers. Libya has been without a
functioning government, police force, or army since the Gaddafi regime fell.
The catastrophe
resulting from Washington’s war for regime change was made clear in this Dec. 3
report from the BBC:
“Islamic State
militants have set up training camps in eastern Libya, the head of the U.S.
Africa command says. Gen David Rodriguez said there could be ‘a couple of
hundred’ IS fighters undergoing training at the sites. He said the camps were
at a very early stage, but the U.S. was watching them "carefully to see
how it develops.
“Libya has been
in turmoil since Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011, with various tribes,
militia and political factions fighting for power. Several Islamist groups are
competing for power in the east of the country, with some militants recently
declaring allegiance to IS.... In the aftermath of the revolution that ousted
Gaddafi, many rebel fighters left to fight with militant groups in Syria, and
some are believed to have returned home.
“The elected
government has lost Libya's three main cities amid the political crisis.
Benghazi, the country's second city, is in the hands of Islamist fighters, and
the internationally recognized parliament is now based in the coastal town of
Tobruk in the east.”
Writing Nov. 2
in the Independent, under the headline “The West is silent as Libya falls into
the abyss,” Cockburn noted:
“Without the
rest of the world paying much attention, a civil war has been raging in western
Libya since July 13 between the Libya Dawn coalition of militias, originally
based in Misrata, and another militia group centered on Zintan. A largely
separate civil war between the forces of retired Gen. Khalifa Haftar and the
Shura Council of Benghazi Revolutionaries is being fought out in the city.
Government has collapsed. Amnesty says that torture has become commonplace with
victims being ‘beaten with plastic tubes, sticks, metal bars or cables, given
electric shocks, suspended in stress positions for hours, kept blindfolded and
shackled for days.’”
Reuters reported
Dec. 10: “Almost 50 people have been killed in the past 10 days in fighting
between Libyan pro-government forces and Islamist groups in the second-largest
city, Benghazi. That brings the death toll to around 450 since army special
forces and troops led by Haftar launched an offensive against Islamists in
Benghazi.”
There was a
seeming incongruity to the strenuous U.S./NATO effort to bring about regime
change in Libya. To quote from Wikipedia:
 |
| U.S: Always so well intentioned. Bombs away! |
“From 1999
Gaddafi encouraged economic privatization and sought rapprochement with Western
nations, also embracing Pan-Africanism and helping to establish the African
Union. In December 2003, Libya renounced its possession of weapons of mass
destruction, decommissioning its chemical and nuclear weapons programs.
Relations with the U.S. improved as a result while UK Prime Minister Tony Blair
met with Gaddafi in the Libyan Desert in March 2004. The following month,
Gaddafi travelled to the headquarters of the European Union (EU) in Brussels,
signifying improved relations between Libya and the EU, the latter ending its
remaining sanctions in October.”
Nothing seems to
have changed between Washington and Tripoli from that time to 2011 when the
U.S. and its partners began bombing Libya to assist the faltering rebel
factions who were running out of steam. President Obama, convinced that the new
regime would quickly subordinate itself to Washington, suggested that democracy
would flourish in the country as soon as the rebels took over. It was one more
gross miscalculation.
The U.S. obviously
must regret the outcome of its regime-change fiasco and will have little choice
but to intervene in one way or another if matters are not resolved to its
satisfaction.
4.
Syrian Regime Still Struggles To Survive:
 |
|
Syrian loyalist soldiers hold their
weapons as they walk in the Handarat area, north of Aleppo, after saying they
have regained control of the area, Oct. 4, 2014. (photo by REUTERS/George
Ourfalian)
|
President Obama
has been calling for the overthrow of the Syrian government led by President
Bashar al-Assad for over three years — another duplicitous attempt to
demonstrate Washington’s backing for the Arab Spring when it was fashionable to
do so in 2011. In this case, as in others, Obama sought regime change in the
guise of democracy to bring about a government considerably more willing to
satisfy U.S. regional interests than Assad, a strong ally of America’s two
perceived opponents — Iran and Russia.
America’s
interest in Syria is geopolitical — maintaining control of the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Turkey and other regional Sunni states seek to
weaken Shi’ite influence and neutralize Iran by getting rid of Assad’s Alawite
regime (a branch of Shia theology).Most of the rebels seek to replace him with
a Sunni-led government as religiously fundamentalist as they could get away
with in a non-sectarian society where at minimum 35% were non-Sunni
Muslims and Christians.
In the last two
years and some months, various jihadist forces took over the bulk of fighting,
but the White House still demanded the ouster of Assad. By doing so Obama
conveyed the impression Washington supported the jihadist-led rebel campaign.
Evident U.S. backing for the civil war further encouraged Saudi Arabia and
Turkey, among others, to increase their political and material support for
rebel jihadist fundamentalists.
Though
somewhat muted today since going to war with IS last summer, the White
House officially remains desirous of ousting Assad, despite the fact that the
formidable Islamic State is the leading force in the anti-Assad rebellion as
well as fighting to win power in neighboring Iraq. Now that it is preoccupied
in a war with the Islamic State, Washington may have postponed the matter of Assad’s
overthrow until subduing the religio-fascist IS, a far more formidable
antagonist.
The rebel-launched
civil war against the Assad government has taken a terrible toll in lives
and infrastructure. It is estimated that some 200,000 people have been killed
so far. A great many have been civilians. The U.S. government and news media
consistently imply that nearly all the deaths are of civilians killed by the
Assad regime, which is untrue. Combatants constitute the majority of the
deaths.
 |
| Syrian refuge children. Two of many thousands. |
Obama should
have ended his ill-advised anti-Assad regime change campaign in Syria as soon
as it became obvious two years ago that dozens of big and small jihadi groups
had taken over most of the fighting against the regime in Damascus. During
these two years IS has become strong enough to control about one third of the
territory of both Syria and neighboring Iraq.
In addition to
continuing Islamic State attacks on Syrian government installations and
territory, various other jihadist groups are continuing the fight to overthrow
the Assad regime, even though the U.S. has appealed for them to temporarily
postpone the war on Damascus and join the anti-IS fight. Last week Stratfor
reported al-Qaeda’s “Jabhat al-Nusra and its allies in Ahrar al-Sham pose
one of the biggest threats to loyalist forces.... Al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters
have made their way to long-contested Daraa province, where they have
maintained relatively friendly ties with operatives of the (U.S.-backed) Free
Syrian Army. Together these forces have scored significant battlefield victories,
claiming more than 80% of Quneitra province from loyalists.”
What Now?
The years have
shown that Obama is a war president and (once again) the Democrats are a war
party, not exactly as wretched as the Republican war party but bad enough. Both
support a militarist and imperialist foreign policy intended to insure
continued American world domination.
There is not
even a small hint that the U.S. government intends to modify its war-making
ways in 2015 or thereafter. Now that the right wing is about to control both
houses of Congress this situation may well worsen. And the 2016 presidential
election probably will be worse still with two warhawks competing for the White
House.
In the absence
of a large, viable progressive third party to fight against the war parties, it
is up to the left and progressive movements and NGOs to step up their peace and
justice activities.
Where is the
U.S. antiwar movement in all of this? It certainly exists in the ANSWER
coalition that protested against the new Iraq war and a few months ago
organized a score of demonstrations across the U.S. in opposition to war in
Gaza that brought out tens of thousands of people. There are a few other
national groups, largely of the left, such as World Can’t Wait, and a couple of
groups that essentially live online and call occasional conferences. These
organizations have opposed all the U.S. wars mentioned in this article — but
there’s a problem:
The peace
movement was massive during the eight-year Republican Bush Administration, and most
of the rank and file were Democrats, even if the national leaderships were
frequently aligned with the political left. Tragically, the antiwar movements
began to decline markedly when Obama won the November 2008 presidential
election and the peace forces virtually collapsed during the first months after
he took office.
The Democratic
base of the movement stopped attending peace rallies, even though many
Democrats retained antiwar sentiments and public opinion turned against the
wars. They didn’t want to take public action against a Democratic president,
even as he not only continued but expanded Bush’s wars. It is to be hoped that
peace Democrats have learned a lesson after these years of war under Obama.
It is certainly
time for a revival of the mass antiwar movements. The two establishment parties
are pro-war. Unless these movements get big enough to produce a multitude of
truly mass protests and other actions including civil disobedience, the
Washington warmakers will simply continue going from war to war.
————————
3. BIG MONEY AND THE ELECTIONS
3. BIG MONEY AND THE ELECTIONS
 |
| "We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office" - Aesop |
By Kenneth P.
Vogal, POLITICO Dec. 29, 2014
The 100 biggest
campaign donors gave $323 million in 2014 — almost as much as the $356 million
given by the estimated 4.75 million people who gave $200 or less, a POLITICO
analysis of campaign finance filings found.
And the balance
almost certainly would tip far in favor of the mega-donors were the analysis to
include nonprofit groups that spent at least $219 million — and likely much
more — but aren’t required to reveal their donors’ identities.
[Not included
are contributions from labor unions and most corporations, state-level
campaigns and political committees, nor, importantly, does it include an
increasingly significant subset of national political groups registered under a
section of the Tax Code — 501(c) — that doesn’t require them to disclose their
donors.]
The numbers —
gleaned from reports filed with the Federal Election Commission and the
Internal Revenue Service — paint the most comprehensive picture to date of an
electoral landscape in which the financial balance has tilted dramatically to
the ultra-rich. They have taken advantage of a spate of recent federal court rulings, regulatory decisions and feeble or bumbling oversight to spend ever-greater sums in politics —
sometimes raising questions about whether their bounty is being well spent.
Taken together,
the trend lines reflect a new political reality in which a handful of
super affluent partisans can exert more sway over the campaign landscape than
millions of donors of more average means. And that’s to say nothing of the
overwhelming majority of voters who never spend so much as a single dime on
politics. (The Center for Responsive Politics estimates that only 0.28 percent of American adults donate to campaigns.)
The widening
imbalance revealed by POLITICO’s analysis illustrates “the insanity of this
system” and is further discouragement to would-be small donors, asserted Larry
Lessig, a Harvard professor who this year helped launch a self-described
“crowdfunded” super PAC. Called Mayday PAC, it spent $10.6 million from a mix
of micro- and mega-donors on a quixotic crusade to elect congressional candidates who it
hoped would support policies that empower mom and pop contributors.
“As you see that
your democracy is controlled by a smaller and smaller number of funders, you
have less and less interest to be engaged in it,” said Lessig.
Yet the power of
the ultra-rich was also ironically highlighted by Mayday’s own fundraising. It yielded
a total of $3 million from just seven donors, most of whom made POLITICO’s top
100 list — LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman (who ranked No. 64, gave $1 million
to Mayday and another $60,000 to various Democratic and liberal committees),
Napster co-founder Sean Parker (No. 43; $500,000 to Mayday and $1.1 million to
a mix of liberal and conservative committees), Boston investor Vin Ryan
(No. 70; $500,000 to Mayday and $400,000 to liberal candidates and groups),
billionaire heiress Pat Stryker (No. 52; $300,000 to Mayday and $1 million to
liberals) and retired shoe executive Arnold Hiatt (No. 98; $250,000 to Mayday and $500,000
to liberals).
In the end,
Mayday PAC suffered embarrassing disappointment in 2014, winning only two out of eight
races in which it played. “Obviously, 2014 makes it hard to be optimistic about
it in any immediate term,” Lessig said, “but the democracy fails unless we
change this system, so I am confident that eventually we’ll figure out how to
make this change happen.”
Top conservative
donors and their representatives dismissed liberal concerns about the expansion
of big money in politics as hypocritical and lacking in context. More than
twice as much money was spent on Halloween this year — $7.4 billion — as on federal elections — $3.67 billion — one donor representative pointed out.
—————————
4. CONFORMITY BASIC TO HUMAN SOCIETY
 |
|
Chimpanzee (left) and orangutan. Less conforming?
|
From the
playground to the board room, people often follow, or conform, to the behavior
of those around them as a way of fitting in. New research shows that this
behavioral conformity appears early in human children, but isn't evidenced by
apes like chimpanzees and orangutans, the closest living relatives to humans.
"Conformity
is a very basic feature of human sociality. It retains in-and out-groups, it
helps groups coordinate and it stabilizes cultural diversity, one of the
hallmark characteristics of the human species," says psychological
scientist and lead researcher Daniel Haun of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology and the University of Jena (both in Germany).
"This does
not mean that conforming is the right thing to do under all circumstances --
conformity can be good or bad, helpful or unhelpful, appropriate or
inappropriate both for individuals and the groups they live in. But the fact is
that we conform often and that human sociality would look very differently
without it," Haun explains. "Our research shows that children as
young as 2 years of age conform to others, while chimpanzees and orangutans
instead prefer to stick with what they know."
The research,
published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for
Psychological Science, is novel in that it provides a direct comparison between
apes and humans indicating that the tendency to abandon one's own preferences
just in to fit in appears to be particularly pronounced in humans.
In previous
research, Haun and colleagues had found that both human children and
chimpanzees rely on the majority opinion when they are trying to learn
something new, which makes sense if the group has knowledge that the individual
doesn't. But other research has shown that human adults sometimes follow the
majority even when they already have the relevant knowledge, just so that they
don't stand out from the group.
To find out
whether very young children and apes would also show this so-called
"normative" conformity, Haun and co-authors Michael Tomasello and
Yvonne Rekers presented 18 2-year-old children, 12 chimpanzees, and 12
orangutans with a similar reward-based task.
Each participant
was shown a box that contained three separate sections, each of which had a
hole in the top. By interacting with the box, the participants learned that
although the ball could be dropped in any of the three sections, only one of
the sections would deliver a treat (peanuts for the apes and chocolate drops
for the children).
After
familiarizing themselves with the box, the participants then watched while
three familiar peers, who had been trained to all strongly prefer the same
colored section of the box (different from the participants' preference),
deposited their balls.
The tables then
turned and the participant had to decide which section to drop his or her own
balls into as his or her peers looked on.
The results
revealed that children were more likely to adjust their behavior to match that
of their peers than were the apes. Whereas the human children conformed more
than half of the time, the apes and orangutans almost always ignored their
peers, opting instead to stick with the original strategy they had learned.
A second study
with a group of 72 2-year-olds showed that children tended to switch their
choice more when they made the choice in front of their peers than when they
made the choice privately.
Interestingly,
the number of peers didn't seem to make a difference in whether children
conformed -- children were equally likely to switch their choice whether it was
demonstrated by one peer or by three peers.
The clear
pattern of conformity among the toddlers suggests that the motivation to fit in
emerges very early in humans.
"We were
surprised that children as young as 2 years of age would already change their
behavior just to avoid the relative disadvantage of being different," says
Haun.
The researchers
are currently investigating whether environmental factors, such as
institutionalized schooling and different child-rearing practices, impact
children's tendency to conform.
—————————
5. POPE FRANCIS
FIGHTS CLIMATE CHANGE
By Deirdre
Fulton, Commondreams, 12-29-14
Pope Francis
will take on global warming in 2015, with a lengthy speech on human ecology and
climate change to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, an address to the United
Nations general assembly, and a summit of the world’s main religions, according to the Observer (UK).
The paper
reported Dec. 28: “The reason for such frenetic activity, says Bishop Marcelo Sorondo,
chancellor of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, is the pope’s wish
to directly influence next year’s crucial UN climate meeting in Paris, when
countries will try to conclude 20 years of fraught negotiations with a
universal commitment to reduce emissions.
"Our
academics supported the pope’s initiative to influence next year’s crucial
decisions," Sorondo told Cafod, the Catholic development agency, at a
meeting in London. "The idea is to convene a meeting with leaders of the
main religions to make all people aware of the state of our climate and the
tragedy of social exclusion.
[Recent U.S.
polling by the Public Religion Research Institute and the American Academy of
Religion suggests that most of the nation’s 75 million Catholics seem to agree
with the pope that climate change poses a serious threat. “Nearly
three-quarters of Hispanic Catholics surveyed agree that climate change
constitutes a crisis or a major problem. The same is true for 53% of white
Catholic respondents. Of the groups surveyed, Jews are the most concerned about
climate change, with nearly 80% calling it a crisis or major problem. On the
other end of the spectrum, 54% of white evangelicals see climate change as only
a minor problem, or not a problem at all.”
Following a
visit in March to Tacloban, the Philippine city devastated in 2012 by typhoon
Haiyan, the pope will issue an “encyclical” on the subject of climate change,
urging all Catholics to take action on moral and scientific grounds. The
document will be sent to the world’s 5,000 Catholic bishops and 400,000
priests, who will distribute it to parishioners.”
While it remains
to be seen exactly how he'll frame his argument, the pope has given some
indication of his stance on climate change and how it intersects with other
issues of the day.
In October, the
pope told a meeting of Latin American and Asian landless peasants and other
social movements: "The monopolizing of lands, deforestation, the
appropriation of water, inadequate agro-toxics are some of the evils that tear
man from the land of his birth. Climate change, the loss of biodiversity and
deforestation are already showing their devastating effects in the great
cataclysms we witness."
Earlier this
month, in a message to Peru’s environment minster Manuel
Pulgar Vidal, who led the climate discussions in Lima, Francis said addressing climate
change is a "grave ethical and moral responsibility" and warned that
"the time to find global solutions is running out."
—————————
6. CORPORATE TAX THEFT HIDES MULTI-BILLIONS
By Paul
Buchheit
As schools and
local governments are going broke around the country, companies who built their
businesses with American research and education and technology and
infrastructure are paying less
in taxes than ever before. Incredibly, over half of U.S. corporate foreign
profits are now being held in tax havens, double the share of just 20 years ago.
Corporations are stealing from the nation that made them rich.
There are many
examples of greed among individual firms, based largely on 2014 SEC documents
submitted by the companies themselves:
• Exxon has almost 80% of its productive oil and gas wells in the
U.S. but declared only 17% of its income here. The company used a theoretical
tax to account for 83% of last year's income tax bill, and paid less than 2% of
its total income in current U.S. taxes.
• Chevron has about 75% of its oil and gas wells and almost 90% of
its pipeline mileage in the United States, yet the company claimed only 13% of
last year's income in the U.S., and paid almost nothing (less than a tenth of a
percent. in current U.S. taxes.
• Pfizer had 40% of last year's sales in the U.S., but claimed
losses in the U.S. and $17 billion in profits overseas.
• Bank of America, despite making 84% of its 2011-2013
revenue in the U.S., declared just 31% of its profits in the United States.
• Citigroup had 43% of its 2011-2013 revenue in
North America but declared less than 3% of its profits in the United States.
• Apple still
does most of its product and research development in the United States. Yet
the company moved $30 billion in profits to an Irish subsidiary with no
employees, with loopholes in place to avoid establishing residency in any
country. The subsidiary files no returns and pays no taxes. Apple CEO Tim Cook
said, "We pay all the taxes we owe."
• Google's
business is based on the Internet, the Digital Library Initiative, and the
geographical database of the U.S. Census Bureau. Yet the company has gained recognition as one of the world's biggest tax avoiders.
—Excerpted from ICH, Dec.
19. Paul Buchheit teaches economic inequality at DePaul University.
—————————
7. CHINA’S XI SEEKS COURSE CORRECTION
 |
|
Xi Jinping presides
at Communist Party’s Fourth Plenum in late October.
|
Since coming to
power in 2012, Chinese President Xi Jinping has exhibited a more forceful and
direct style of governance than his predecessor. That has included an
unprecedented domestic anti-corruption campaign, a renewed push at corporate
sector reform and a more strident posture in many aspects of foreign policy.
Some foreign commentators have interpreted these moves as an attempt to
recentralize political power and even re-establish the “cult of personality”
around political leaders that prevailed in China for much of the 20th century.
An alternative
interpretation is that Xi’s government has acknowledged fundamental problems
within the Chinese political economy and is taking meaningful steps to address
them. The system of collective rule that has emerged in China since 1978 had
become corrupted. There has been a realization in Beijing that more intelligent
and transparent governing structures are required to facilitate China’s
continued socio-economic development.
Rather than
articulating a new brand of triumphalism, China’s Communist Party is in fact
engaged in a period of introspection and self-correction. The government seems
less focused on propaganda-driven “pomp and ceremony” and more determined to
address underlying structural issues. The Fourth Plenum in late October in
Beijing, for instance, was the most low-key of such events in recent memory.
Moreover, Xi may be centralizing political power, but he is simultaneously
devolving many of the functions of power, be it to the market, regional
governments or indeed to Chinese citizens.
[On a related
matter, the Wall Street Journal commented Oct. 20: “Barely a week after the Communist Party surprised many in Beijing by resurrecting a debate from the
1970s about the usefulness of ‘class struggle’ to contemporary China, President Xi recently dipped even further back into the annals of party
rhetoric by advocating ideas about art and literature reminiscent of those Mao
Zedong first put forward in the 1940s. The exhumation of these ideological
corpses from the Communist Party’s past, coming just ahead of a plenary meeting
of the party’s top leadership in Beijing to discuss the role of law,
should serve to dampen any lingering expectations for political
liberalization in the short-term for China."]
With hindsight,
it’s clear that the previous administration of Hu Jintao was deficient in its
capacity to transmit and implement policies throughout the political economy. A
weak central leadership struggled to impose its will on local elites and vested
corporate interests. China’s headline economic growth remained impressive, but
at the expense of broader social development. Issues such as regulatory
neglect, graft, localism and bureaucratic complexity became increasingly
chronic, damaging policy outcomes.
 |
| A poster of Chairman Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution. Three years after he died in 1976 his successors began to introduce capitalist economics into the system. |
Viewing Xi’s
maneuvers this way may perhaps seem naive. Undeniably, previous anti-corruption
campaigns under his predecessors have done little to address the root causes of
the problem, with state-owned enterprises emerging unscathed and retaining
their monopoly privileges, and systemic improvement in the structures of
governance remaining scant. It is also true that the reform momentum appears to
have faded in recent months. This soft-pedaling is partly because the tough
decisions are getting closer and partly because the agencies that form
government policy are now focused on drawing up the 13th Five-Year Plan rather
than pushing through any marquee measures in the next 18 months.
There are,
however, reasons to believe Xi’s pledge to clean up corruption and reform
governance is indeed different. Enforcement of low-level regulations has
improved remarkably over the past 18 months. The new government is feeling its
way ever further toward real market-based reform. The anti-corruption drive has
been relentless, reaching into senior political organizations and patronage
systems and even the People’s Liberation Army. Xi’s actions seem less
influenced by political allegiances than previous campaigns. Most
encouragingly, tentative steps have been taken to increase transparency in the
judicial system, while key civil issues such as illegal land transfers, petty
rent-seeking by low-ranking officials and state-owned corporate malfeasance
have all been significantly reduced.
Another topic of
some debate is the evolution of Xi’s public persona as framed both for a
domestic and an international audience. Xi’s style is clearly more high-profile
than that of his predecessor, Hu. Coupled with his familial background and more
populist approach, Xi has been able to engender broad-based support from organs
of the state and Chinese citizens—a status that ultimately empowers him to face
down vested interest groups that have been able to disrupt previous reform
drives. While this has attracted suspicions of the return of the “cult of
personality,” in reality Xi’s public relations efforts are not radically
different from those pursued by politicians the world over.
Despite this
more approachable domestic persona, internationally China’s posture has become
notably more robust, particularly with regard to regional territorial issues.
Arguably, this was in itself a strategy to cement domestic legitimacy.
Beijing’s muscle flexing, especially in the South China Sea, has sent a clear
message to other Asian nations, but it is as yet unclear if there has been any
strategic gain from this more assertive stance.
Similarly, it is
too early to infer whether the “softening” at last month’s APEC summit in
Beijing and subsequent G-20 meeting in Brisbane, Australia—including
stabilizing relations with Japan, concluding free trade agreements with South
Korea and Australia and announcing a landmark agreement with the United States
on emission reductions—is really a strategic pivot or just a temporary hiatus
in the confrontational narrative of recent months. Ultimately, although China’s
political system may be maturing domestically, it seems Beijing is still
struggling to strike the right tone in terms of international relations. While
state media seems keen to portray Xi as an authoritative but accessible
statesman, the most notable feature of his foreign policy in the past two years
has been the wholesale deterioration of relations with the rest of East Asia,
set against a considerable warming of relations with Russia.
A sympathetic
analysis is that Xi is, in a Chinese context, a uniquely modern politician with
the political clout and acumen to address critical issues that had coalesced in
recent years into a major challenge to the Communist Party’s legitimacy. Far
from a new era of triumphalism, Xi is overseeing a top-to-bottom cleansing of
the political class and the opaque structures of governance that had given them
protection. There is a broad-based recognition among policymakers in Beijing
that things have to change domestically. Whether that will also translate into
a new approach to foreign policy remains to be seen.
— From World
Politics Review, Nov. 24. Iain Mills is an independent China analyst
specializing in energy and commodity markets, financial market
development, political evolution and rise in Asia.
—————————
8. SPECIESISM —
A LICENSE TO KILL, MASSIVELY
By Animal
Equality
Animals are not
simply food products, but thinking, feeling individuals who want to enjoy their
lives. An animal's life is as important and irreplaceable to them, as ours is
to us. But as children we are conditioned to view cows, pigs, chickens, sheep
and fish as inferior beings whose reason for existence is to provide us with
meat, milk and eggs. This way of seeing other species is known as speciesism —
the assumption of human superiority leading to the exploitation of animals,
including brutal violence and continual mass slaughter.
It's time for us
to change the way we see the other animals with which we share the planet. We
need to stop thinking of them as just resources, and to start viewing them for
who they are: individual sentient beings whose lives deserve to be respected
and valued.
Studies show
that animals, too, experience emotions and sensations that humans do such as
anxiety, pleasure, intense pain, fear of dying or boredom and these feelings
matter to them just as much as ours do to us. Despite this, other sentient
beings are confined and killed for food, their bodies are used in experiments,
their skins for clothing, their appearance or behavior for entertainment. Our
desire to use them for our benefit is considered more important than their
right to their own bodies, and unable to defend themselves, they suffer and die
in their billions.
—————————
 |
NATO in Ukraine would pry open the traditional invasion route to Russia through the North European Plain since the days of the Teutonic Knights to World War II. This is Moscow's fear.
|
[Former Indian
diplomat and current international news analyst M. K. Bhadrakumar wrote three
articles in late December on Russia on the website Indian Punchline — Russia
and NATO, Russia and Obama, and Russia-China relations. We reprint all of part
1, most of 2 and an excerpt from 3, all in one article.]
By M. K.
Bhadrakumar – Dec. 27, 2014
A crisp two-line
announcement by the Kremlin on Dec. 26 may have
punctuated the run of the quarter-century old post-Cold War era in world
politics. It merely said that President Vladimir Putin has approved certain
changes (“clarification”) to the Russian Military Doctrine.
Russia’s
Security Council has separately amplified that the updates pertained to several
developments in the recent period. But, principally, it appears that the
revised version highlights the expansion of NATO’s military capabilities as one
of the main threats to Russia’s national security.
It flagged that
NATO is actively moving toward unfolding a global antiballistic missile system,
increasing its military potential, violating norms of international law by
arrogating to itself global functions, and deploying its military
infrastructure closer to Russia’s border, including through the expansion of
the alliance. The thrust of the revised document is on the NATO’s expansion
towards Russia’s borders. Once bitten twice shy, as they say. Russia is not
leaving anything to chance, given the likelihood that the U.S. is pushing for
Ukraine’s membership of the alliance.
Moscow would
have reason to suspect the motivations behind the move by the Ukrainian
government, which is stacked with pro-US figures (including a finance minister
who used to be a former state department official), to pass a resolution
annulling the country’s ‘non-aligned’ status. Moscow’s reaction was immediate and strong, warning that
Ukraine’s NATO membership would “affect Russia’s national security interests
and compel our country to retaliate appropriately.”
 |
| U.S. soldier trains Ukrainian military personnel. |
Russia’s
characterization of NATO as a threat to its security has profound implications.
In the mid-1990s, when Yeltsin’s Russia was ‘persuaded’ to acquiesce with the
NATO expansion into Central Europe (violating the assurances given to Mikhail
Gorbachev while agreeing to the re-unification of Germany), the sop offered by
Bill Clinton (and Strobe Talbott) was that Russia and NATO would independently
build the sinews of a cooperative relationship. That has now become history.
Clearly, Russia
will not acquiesce any further with NATO expansion. A flashpoint will arise if
the NATO moved into Ukraine, which seems likely. Russia is forcing Europe to
make a choice: Does it want to tag along with the U.S. agenda on NATO expansion
(and provoke Russian retaliation) or cry halt to any further expansion? The
Russian decision to formally view NATO as an adversary fundamentally changes
the security climate in Europe.
Presumably,
Russia has reached the conclusion that the U.S. simply will not allow a
resolution of the Ukraine crisis and the pro-American government led by
President Petro Poroshenko follows the American script, recent positive trends notwithstanding.
There is a high
probability that Russia is possessing incriminating evidence that implicates
the US and Ukraine in the shooting down of the Malaysian aircraft MH17 in July.
(See my earlier blog Who shot down MH17 in Ukraine?). Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov may be
already slowly and steadily tightening the screws on Washington and Kiev. In an
interview with Russian state television on Thursday, Lavrov virtually taunted
that US and Ukraine have to answer some tricky questions:
“We still have
no replies to the questions: Where are the data from the U.S. satellites that
monitored the area on that day? Where are the data from US planes that were
flying over that area? Where are the testimonies by Dnipropetrovsk air traffic
controllers who were responsible for keeping track of flights in that part of
Ukraine’s airspace? We have long requested a logbook of all sorties Ukrainian
combat planes based on that area flew on that day… We only hear accusations
that Russia is to blame for everything, that the militias are to blame for
everything, and that our questions are being asked for the sole purpose of
misleading the investigation… It is impossible to pretend ignorant on and on
when very specific questions are asked again and again. We have opened a
criminal case. It will be impossible to ignore this process. The questions will
have to be answered.”
For sure, the
New Year is set to begin on an acrimonious chapter in the Russian-American
relationship. The indications are piling that taking stock of the ‘big picture’
that the U.S. is across the board challenging Russia’s core interests and vital
concerns, Moscow is taking the gloves off instead of remaining on a defensive
mode as it has been so far. The Xinhua news agency in a Moscow datelined report
quoted Russian experts who “believe that further sanctions are likely to be
imposed by the West against Russia, while indirect military confrontations are
also possible, especially on Ukrainian territories, between Russia and NATO
troops.”
On Dec. 26,
correspondent Bhadrakumar wrote in an article titled Obama’s Russia Fiasco:
The Cold-War
style propaganda against Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Western media
may have peaked. So much garbage has been thrown at the Russian leader that the
inventory must be getting depleted. But amidst all the mudslinging, Putin
himself remains nonchalant, again belying the character sketches of him that he
can’t take criticism. Apparently he can.
Besides, Putin’s
popularity within Russia itself is soaring above 80% currently. It is doubtful
if any world leader can match Putin’s popularity today. And that also probably
explains Putin’s indifference to the western media attacks on him. As he told
an interviewer once, he was elected, after all, to serve his country and not
for being ‘nice’ to Barack Obama.
An American poll
conducted by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs
Research at the University of Chicago has come up with some stunning results:
“Putin is
extremely popular among the Russian people, enjoying an approval rating of
81%.... Economic woes are top of mind among the Russian people and they agree
western sanctions are hurting the economy, but they do not yet feel a negative
impact on their pocketbooks.... Most Russians feel their country is headed in
the right direction and are optimistic about their own personal finances in the
coming years.... Two thirds of Russians favor supporting the separatist
movement in Ukraine.”
.... How should
Obama view the startling results of the AP-NORC poll? Evidently, the poll shows
that his Russia policy is in a shambles. If the hope was that under the weight
of sanctions, Russian economy will pack up and popular disaffection with Putin
will cascade and that in turn will be the end of the Russian leader’s political
life, well, things are going haywire.
Objectively
speaking, the Russian people are pretty much pleased with Putin’s policies. And
Obama’s calculation that he is cleverly separating the Russian leader from his
people has gone horribly wrong. Putin is actually enjoying a popularity, which
is more than double that of Obama’s. Self-styled Russian hands in the US were forecasting
cracks in the Russian system. But nothing of the sort happened.
What Obama
overlooks is that the Russian people are very different from the average
American who is gullible about what goes on in the world outside. The Russian
people are literate and politically conscious – thanks to the Soviet
legacy – and they do understand what the U.S. “containment strategy” toward
Russia or NATO’s expansion is all about. They understand that Ukraine crisis is
an existential struggle for strategic balance with America. So, they want Putin
to stay on course.
Putin intends to
exploit his popularity to implement something that seems close to his heart,
namely, a restructuring of the Russian economy and cutting down its heavy
dependence on oil income. It’s a long haul, but reform is in the air. Putin’s address
to the council of ministers in the Kremlin on Thursday leaves one in no doubt
that Russia is digging in. True, Russian economy is in difficulty, but aside
the propagandists in the West presenting apocalyptic visions, no one seriously
expects the Russian economy to come down on its knees.
All in all,
Obama faces a formidable intellectual challenge here. Does he press ahead with
more of the same mindless bluster passing off as Russia policy in the next year
too? If that is the case, what is it that he hopes to achieve? By now it is
widely accepted by American pundits that Putin doesn’t blink. What does that
belated realization mean?
It can only mean
that this confrontation, unless ended now, could be about to enter a dangerous
escalatory spiral. The dynamic at play is unmistakable. And yet, Obama just
signed the bill empowering him to impose further sanctions on Russia and, worse
still, to give Ukraine $350 million worth of arms. Putin – and the Russian
people – only feel convinced more than ever before that what Obama aims at is a
regime change in Russia.
But regime
change is, clearly, not something the Russian people want – according to the AP-NORC poll.
On Dec. 22,
correspondent Bhadrakumar wrote an article titled Russia, China — Neither
Allies nor Rivals. Here is an excerpt:
 |
| Presidents Xi and Putin: "Neither allies nor rivals?" |
Some speculators
even went to the extent of fancying that the fate of the American dollar is
sealed and it is a matter of months before the Bretton Woods system comes
crashing down.
This was of course
fantasyland and anyone who has followed the trajectory of Russian-Chinese
relations through the past decades would know that there are far too many
complexities (and contradictions) involved in this relationship and it can
never be the case that they would simply decide one day to embrace each other
and become allies.
Paradoxically,
the U.S strategy toward Russia and China is itself predicated on the virtual
certainty that the latter two can never form an axis in the international
system.
Of course, it is
in the interests of fostering the tendencies of “polycentrism” in world
politics that Russia and China should walk shoulder to shoulder. But then, such
a thought will forever remain in the domain of wishful thinking or a pipedream.
China is far too
self-centered and “pragmatic” a power to think of joining alliances, and as for
Russia, it is fiercely independent in foreign policies and intensely conscious
of its proud history. It can never be a junior partner to another power....
President Vladimir
Putin asserted only a few weeks ago in his address to the Federal Assembly in
Moscow that Russia will never allow itself to be an inferior military power
vis-a-vis any country. Which was as much a reference to China as it was to the
United States....
Putin made it
absolutely clear during his [three-hour annual press annual press conference in
Moscow Dec. 18] that Russia intends to tighten its belts and pull through on
its own steam through the coming one-year period ahead until the growth of the
world economy picks up and in the meanwhile Russia proposes to undertake a
much-needed structural reform in terms of reducing the dependence on oil
income.
Putin also
rebutted the West’s propagandistic reports on the Russian economy. He explained
the comfortable position with regard to foreign exchange reserves and stressed
that there is going to be no rollback in social sectors or defense expenditure.
With regard to
China, he showed no signs of any intention on Moscow’s part to take help from
China or even to contemplate such dependence on China....
—————————
10. WHY DO WE HAVE POLICE?
[The police have a variety of responsibilities, some positive, some
negative. This article sheds light on the basic social function of the
police in the United States and explains why it is that the poor and African
Americans are so frequently their targets. The writer is an Associate Professor
of History at the College of DuPage. He authored the book, “The Rise of the
Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850-1894,” University of
Illinois Press.]
By Sam Mitrani
In most of the liberal discussions of the recent police killings of
unarmed black men, there is an underlying assumption that the police are
supposed to protect and serve the population. That is, after all, what they
were created to do. If only the normal, decent relations between the police and
the community could be re-established, this problem could be resolved.
Poor people in general are more likely to be the victims of crime than
anyone else, this reasoning goes, and in that way, they are in more need than
anyone else of police protection. Maybe there are a few bad apples, but if only
the police weren’t so racist, or didn’t carry out policies like stop-and-frisk,
or weren’t so afraid of black people, or shot fewer unarmed men, they could
function as a useful service that we all need.
This liberal way of viewing the problem rests on a misunderstanding of
the origins of the police and what they were created to do. The police were not
created to protect and serve the population. They were not created to stop
crime, at least not as most people understand it. And they were certainly not
created to promote justice. They were created to protect the new form of
wage-labor capitalism that emerged in the mid to late nineteenth century from
the threat posed by that system’s offspring, the working class.
This is a blunt way of stating a nuanced truth, but sometimes nuance just
serves to obfuscate.
 |
| The badge of the slave patrol. |
Class conflict roiled late nineteenth century American cities like
Chicago, which experienced major strikes and riots in 1867, 1877, 1886, and
1894. In each of these upheavals, the police attacked strikers with extreme
violence, even if in 1877 and 1894 the U.S. Army played a bigger role in
ultimately repressing the working class. In the aftermath of these movements,
the police increasingly presented themselves as a thin blue line protecting
civilization, by which they meant bourgeois civilization, from the disorder of
the working class. This ideology of order that developed in the late nineteenth
century echoes down to today – except that today, poor black and Latino people
are the main threat, rather than immigrant workers.
Of course, the ruling class did not get everything it wanted, and had to
yield on many points to the immigrant workers it sought to control. This is
why, for instance, municipal governments backed away from trying to stop Sunday
drinking, and why they hired so many immigrant police officers, especially the
Irish. But despite these concessions, businessmen organized to make
sure the police were increasingly isolated from democratic control, and
established their own hierarchies, systems of governance, and rules of
behavior.
 |
| Today's militarized police seem ready for war, not merely defending domestic peace. |
There was a never a time when the big city police neutrally enforced “the
law,” or came anywhere close to that ideal (for that matter, the law itself has
never been neutral). In the North, they mostly arrested people for the vaguely
defined “crimes” of disorderly conduct and vagrancy throughout the nineteenth
century. This meant that the police could arrest anyone they saw as a threat to
“order.” In the post-bellum South, they enforced white supremacy and largely
arrested black people on trumped-up charges in order to feed them into convict
labor systems.
The violence the police carried out and their moral separation from those
they patrolled were not the consequences of the brutality of individual
officers, but were the consequences of careful policies designed to mold the
police into a force that could use violence to deal with the social problems that
accompanied the development of a wage-labor economy.
For instance, in the short, sharp depression of the mid-1880s, Chicago
was filled with prostitutes who worked the streets. Many policemen recognized
that these prostitutes were generally impoverished women seeking a way to
survive, and initially tolerated their behavior. But the police hierarchy
insisted that the patrolmen do their duty whatever their feelings, and arrest
these women, impose fines, and drive them off the streets and into brothels, where
they could be ignored by some members of the elite and controlled by others.
Similarly, in 1885, when Chicago began to experience a wave of strikes,
some policemen sympathized with strikers. But once the police hierarchy and the
mayor decided to break the strikes, policemen who refused to comply were fired.
In these and a thousand similar ways, the police were molded into a force that
would impose order on working class and poor people, whatever the individual
feelings of the officers involved.
Though some patrolmen tried to be kind and others were openly brutal,
police violence in the 1880s was not a case of a few bad apples – and neither
is it today.
 |
| Ferguson woke people up. |
The police were created to use violence to reconcile electoral democracy
with industrial capitalism. Today, they are just one part of the “criminal
justice” system which continues to play the same role. Their basic job is to
enforce order among those with the most reason to resent the system – who in
our society today are disproportionately poor black people.
A democratic police system is imaginable – one in which police are
elected by and accountable to the people they patrol. But that is not what we
have. And it’s not what the current system of policing was created to be.
If there is one positive lesson from the history of policing’s origins,
it is that when workers organized, refused to submit or cooperate, and caused
problems for the city governments, they could back the police off from the most
galling of their activities.
Murdering individual police officers, as happened in in Chicago on May
3rd 1886 and more recently in New York on December 20th, 2014, only reinforced
those calling for harsh repression – a reaction we are beginning to see
already. But resistance on a mass scale could force the police to hesitate.
This happened in Chicago during the early 1880s, when the police pulled back
from breaking strikes, hired immigrant officers, and tried to re-establish some
credibility among the working class after their role in brutally crushing the
1877 upheaval.
The police might be backed off again if the reaction against the killings
of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and countless others continues. If
they are, it will be a victory for those mobilizing today, and will save lives
– though as long as this system that requires police violence to control a big
share of its population survives, any change in police policy will be aimed at
keeping the poor in line more effectively.
We shouldn’t expect the police to be something they’re not. As
historians, we ought to know that origins matter, and the police were created
by the ruling class to control working class and poor people, not help them.
They’ve continued to play that role ever since.
— From the Labor and Working-Class History Association, Dec. 29, 2014,
lawcha.org.
————————
11. THE PRISON
STATE OF AMERICA
By Chris Hedges
Prisons employ and exploit the ideal worker. Prisoners do not receive
benefits or pensions. They are not paid overtime. They are forbidden to
organize and strike. They must show up on time. They are not paid for sick days
or granted vacations. They cannot formally complain about working conditions or
safety hazards. If they are disobedient, or attempt to protest their pitiful
wages, they lose their jobs and can be sent to isolation cells. The roughly 1
million prisoners who work for corporations and government industries in the
American prison system are models for what the corporate state expects us all
to become. And corporations have no intention of permitting prison reforms that
would reduce the size of their bonded workforce. In fact, they are seeking to
replicate these conditions throughout the society.
States, in the name of austerity, have stopped providing prisoners with
essential items including shoes, extra blankets and even toilet paper, while
starting to charge them for electricity and room and board. Most prisoners and
the families that struggle to support them are chronically short of money.
Prisons are company towns. Scrip, rather than money, was once paid to coal
miners, and it could be used only at the company store. Prisoners are in a
similar condition. When they go broke—and being broke is a frequent occurrence
in prison—prisoners must take out prison loans to pay for medications, legal
and medical fees and basic commissary items such as soap and deodorant. Debt
peonage inside prison is as prevalent as it is outside prison.
 |
| An increasing number of women prisoners. |
Fines, often in the thousands of dollars, are assessed against many
prisoners when they are sentenced. There are 22 fines that can be imposed in New
Jersey, including the Violent Crime Compensation Assessment (VCCB), the Law
Enforcement Officers Training & Equipment Fund (LEOT) and Extradition Costs
(EXTRA). The state takes a percentage each month out of prison pay to pay down
the fines, a process that can take decades. If a prisoner who is fined $10,000
at sentencing must rely solely on a prison salary he or she will owe about
$4,000 after making payments for 25 years. Prisoners can leave prison in debt
to the state. And if they cannot continue to make regular payments—difficult
because of high unemployment—they are sent back to prison. High recidivism is
part of the design.
Corporations have privatized most of the prison functions once handled by
governments. They run prison commissaries and, since the prisoners have nowhere
else to shop, often jack up prices by as much as 100 percent. Corporations have
taken over the phone systems and charge exorbitant fees to prisoners and their
families. They grossly overcharge for money transfers from families to
prisoners. And these corporations, some of the nation’s largest, pay little
more than a dollar a day to prison laborers who work in for-profit prison
industries. Food and merchandise vendors, construction companies, laundry
services, uniforms companies, prison equipment vendors, cafeteria services,
manufacturers of pepper spray, body armor and the array of medieval instruments
used for the physical control of prisoners, and a host of other contractors
feed like jackals off prisons. Prisons, in America, are a hugely profitable
business.
Our prison-industrial complex, which holds 2.3 million prisoners, or 25
percent of the world’s prison population, makes money by keeping prisons full.
It demands bodies, regardless of color, gender or ethnicity. As the system
drains the pool of black bodies, it has begun to incarcerate others. Women—the
fastest-growing segment of the prison population—are swelling prisons, as are
poor whites in general, Hispanics and immigrants. Prisons are no longer a
black-white issue. Prisons are a grotesque manifestation of corporate
capitalism. Slavery is legal in prisons under the 13th Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution. It reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as
punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall
exist within the United States. …” And the massive U.S. prison industry
functions like the forced labor camps that have existed in all totalitarian
states.
Corporate investors, who have poured billions into the business of mass
incarceration, expect long-term returns. And they will get them. It is their
lobbyists who write the draconian laws that demand absurdly long sentences,
deny paroles, determine immigrant detention laws and impose minimum-sentence
and three-strikes-out laws (mandating life sentences after three felony
convictions). The politicians and the courts, subservient to corporate power,
can be counted on to protect corporate interests.
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest owner of for-profit
prisons and immigration detention facilities in the country, had revenues of
$1.7 billion in 2013 and profits of $300 million. CCA holds an average of
81,384 inmates in its facilities on any one day. Aramark Holdings Corp., a
Philadelphia-based company that contracts through Aramark Correctional Services
to provide food to 600 correctional institutions across the United States, was
acquired in 2007 for $8.3 billion by investors that included Goldman Sachs.
— From TruthDig, Dec 28, 2014.
