… [From this] contradiction arises the strange paradox that the poverty for the worker must be perpetual, in order to be compelled to work for the rich.
W.E.B. Du Bois, 1953
Many of us are just ill-equipped to deal with the darkness. We’ve been living in America’s Disney World too long.
Dr. Cornel West
The original prompt read: Write a letter in praise of someone in your community.
“This is our essay prompt for Friday night,” I said on Wednesday night as the intensive writing session came to an end.
“No. We don’t have anyone to praise in our community.” NO.
Older African and younger Black and Latino/a students populate the classroom.
“Okay. I will come up with another topic.”
At home, I select a topic from an English writing workbook:
You should not shop at Wal-Mart because they do not provide health care benefits for most workers.
It is a typical, simple, beginners prompt for a basic five-paragraph essay for the next session.
Wal-Mart executives cultivated support among lack city council members and church leaders in Chicago, according to Anmol Chaddha in Colorlines, “for building two stores…each about the size of ten football fields.” Wal-Mart’s strategy, Chaddha writes, is to bring “Wal-Mart to the ‘hood’—touting not just lower prices but also racial equity.”
“With over $280 billion in annual sales and 3,500 stores across the United States, the company is now selling itself as a solution to urban racial inequality.”
Wal-Mart’s “pitch” for conquering the “hood,” Chaddha explains, is to convince “poor people of color” that Wal-Mart means jobs and inexpensive goods.
What executives don’t mention is that the jobs come with notoriously low wages and that the company has cracked down on union organizing. But Wal-Mart executives know that poor people of color are in no position to be picky about who brings what jobs to the community.
Over 1.2 million workers make Wal-Mart the “largest private employer in the United States [and] also the leading employer of African American and Latino workers.”
Wal-Mart is not the only corporation capitalizing “amidst this urban gold rush for developers,” Chaddha explains. Staples, Marriott Hotel, and Ikea are just a few corporations spreading their wings in Black communities throughout the nation.
You can read and study Das Kapital until the heavily annotated pages of your copy fall loose from the book’s bind, but ultimately the students, particularly those on the margins of society, will teach.
Back in the classroom, I am at the board writing the new topic. I heard behind me, “she means ‘work.’” In other words, you should not work at Wal-Mart…
She has that wrong, of course—meaning, I have it wrong.
“Miss. Miss. Dr. Miss, don’t you mean ‘work” at Wal-Mart”?
“I mean ‘shop,’” I answer looking at the prompt again. Empathy, I say to myself.
“Shop?”
“What’s the problem?”
Why should we stop shopping at Wal-Mart?
What’s that gotta do with us?
“Health care for others?” I asked.
“Wal-Mart is cheap!”
“Don’t you know why?” I paint a picture featuring workers, women sitting in a room, working long hours, piecing together sneakers, shirts, pants—women earning slave wages. “There is the shopper from an urban area, you, the Wal-Mart worker with low wages and no health care benefits, and the sweatshop worker in China.”
Now, who is in the margins? I am someone out of touch with reality!
“Okay, please, start the essay.”
Some twenty hours later, I am transported to the “hood” as I read paper after paper praising Wal-Mart.
The items are cheap…
My family shops at Wal-Mart
If people fill out a job application at Wal-Mart, then they know they will not have health care benefits…
Corporations can’t afford to pay workers health care!
A sister works without health care, therefore…
Wal-Mart helps children!
Would that be the children of women working for slave wages at sweatshops in over 40 countries?
Is an hourly wage of a little more than $8 helping the children of Black and Latino/a workers at Wal-Mart?
The students did write a praise letter—in support of corporate leadership in their community!
The conquistadors have never stopped capitalizing on others with material resources and sellable labor. Tactics have changed not the strategy of conquering. “At opportune moments,” writes Frantz Fanon in Wretched of the Earth, “the [enemy] combines his policy of brutal repression with spectacular gestures of friendship, maneuvers calculated to sow division, (sic) and ‘psychological action.” The enemy employs “the traditional collaborates” and “the lumpenproletariat.” The enemy, Fanon continues,
discovers the existence, side by side with the disciplines and well-organized advance guard of rebellion, of a mass of men who participation is constantly at the mercy of their being for too long accustomed to physiological wretchedness, humiliation, and irresponsibility.
Convince the poor and undereducated that they have someone looking out for them!
Malcolm’s plea for the development of Black entrepreneurs and Black self-reliance—is damned! The Sam Walton’s of the world have been successful community organizers!
What was supposed to be a lesson in essay writing for these students becomes a lesson in the corporation’s growing interests in the lumpenproletariat.
When it comes to historical resistance against those who would withhold justice, freedom, indeed, human rights, Black Americans are on the record as coordinators of protest. As an enslaved population to budding capitalists, Black Americans were not human and certainly not citizens of the United States. To be white in the United States was not to be Black! Whites begin at one starting gate as immigrants and Blacks at another as enslaved labor.
Black Americans struggled to survive the brutality of slavery and protested the political and social oppression of legalized segregation. Most important, Black humanity is always in question, always at risk of being denied the right of recognition by those for whom the myth of white supremacy must sustain the superiority of Euro-Americans. In the face of this stubbornness, particularly directed at the Black community, Black resistance demands a constant stands of opposition, for we are far more vulnerable to the hatred of the mob—in the person of these modern-day, market-driven conquistadors.
Dissent, for any U.S. citizen, triggers the government’s law enforcement and military apparatus; however, dissent is perilous, particularly for Black Americans. Consider the long delay and the side winding maneuvers by the government when it came to civil rights for Black Americans and the systematic assassination of those Black leaders who called on the community to reject a demoralizing and a dehumanizing economic system.
The most vulnerable among us, writes Fanon, is the lumpenproletariat. “Any movement for freedom ought to give its fullest attention to this lumpenproletariat.” When it is feasible and profitable, the oppressor’s frown becomes a smile directed at the weak and vulnerable within the Black community. This segment of the community, starved for anything that will acknowledge its humanity, Fanon writes, “is so precarious and dim that it is affected by the slightest spark of kindness.” As willingly as the lumpenproletariat will work and then shop grateful on the new master’s plantation, he will pick up a police or military issue weapon and defend his right—to enslavement. If the leadership of rebellion fails to consider the growing masses of the “wretched of the earth,” writes Fanon, this mass of people “will throw itself into the battle and will take part in the conflict—but this time on the side of the oppressor.” The oppressor, on the other hand, “never loses a chance of setting the niggers against each other,” and the oppressor “will be skillful in using that ignorance and incomprehension,” characteristic of the lumpenproletariat, to his advantage.
The whole of Earth rattles as it tries to absorb such an unholy alliance.
We praise the workers and students in the Honduras, in Iran, in France. We praised the workers at Republic Windows in Chicago when they locked themselves behind the doors of their workplace and refused to permit owners to leave them without work, pay—an explanation. In the confines of the hood (as opposed to Black neighborhoods), the corporations are uniting corporate strategists with the servitude of weakened Red, Black, and Brown people. Genocide has a corporate smiley face, but the Left is silent. It is no wonder that similar to the corporate conquistadors, the Black lumpenproletariat lacks all empathy for humanity—including her own when lead by the likes of the Walton Klan!
The culpability of the Left notwithstanding, the Left has a responsibility to challenge corporations and corporate strategies that privatize the minds and bodies of the lumpenproletariat and ultimately weakens the Left’s overall opposition to the corporate-military complex.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
No Consumer's Servitude Left Behind: Wal-Mart's Successful Community Organizing
… [From this] contradiction arises the strange paradox that the poverty for the worker must be perpetual, in order to be compelled to work for the rich.
W.E.B. Du Bois, 1953
Many of us are just ill-equipped to deal with the darkness. We’ve been living in America’s Disney World too long.
Dr. Cornel West
The original prompt read: Write a letter in praise of someone in your community.
“This is our essay prompt for Friday night,” I said on Wednesday night as the intensive writing session came to an end.
“No. We don’t have anyone to praise in our community.” NO.
Older African and younger Black and Latino/a students populate the classroom.
“Okay. I will come up with another topic.”
At home, I select a topic from an English writing workbook:
You should not shop at Wal-Mart because they do not provide health care benefits for most workers.
It is a typical, simple, beginners prompt for a basic five-paragraph essay for the next session.
Wal-Mart executives cultivated support among lack city council members and church leaders in Chicago, according to Anmol Chaddha in Colorlines, “for building two stores…each about the size of ten football fields.” Wal-Mart’s strategy, Chaddha writes, is to bring “Wal-Mart to the ‘hood’—touting not just lower prices but also racial equity.”
“With over $280 billion in annual sales and 3,500 stores across the United States, the company is now selling itself as a solution to urban racial inequality.”
Wal-Mart’s “pitch” for conquering the “hood,” Chaddha explains, is to convince “poor people of color” that Wal-Mart means jobs and inexpensive goods.
What executives don’t mention is that the jobs come with notoriously low wages and that the company has cracked down on union organizing. But Wal-Mart executives know that poor people of color are in no position to be picky about who brings what jobs to the community.
Over 1.2 million workers make Wal-Mart the “largest private employer in the United States [and] also the leading employer of African American and Latino workers.”
Wal-Mart is not the only corporation capitalizing “amidst this urban gold rush for developers,” Chaddha explains. Staples, Marriott Hotel, and Ikea are just a few corporations spreading their wings in Black communities throughout the nation.
You can read and study Das Kapital until the heavily annotated pages of your copy fall loose from the book’s bind, but ultimately the students, particularly those on the margins of society, will teach.
Back in the classroom, I am at the board writing the new topic. I heard behind me, “she means ‘work.’” In other words, you should not work at Wal-Mart…
She has that wrong, of course—meaning, I have it wrong.
“Miss. Miss. Dr. Miss, don’t you mean ‘work” at Wal-Mart”?
“I mean ‘shop,’” I answer looking at the prompt again. Empathy, I say to myself.
“Shop?”
“What’s the problem?”
Why should we stop shopping at Wal-Mart?
What’s that gotta do with us?
“Health care for others?” I asked.
“Wal-Mart is cheap!”
“Don’t you know why?” I paint a picture featuring workers, women sitting in a room, working long hours, piecing together sneakers, shirts, pants—women earning slave wages. “There is the shopper from an urban area, you, the Wal-Mart worker with low wages and no health care benefits, and the sweatshop worker in China.”
Now, who is in the margins? I am someone out of touch with reality!
“Okay, please, start the essay.”
Some twenty hours later, I am transported to the “hood” as I read paper after paper praising Wal-Mart.
The items are cheap…
My family shops at Wal-Mart
If people fill out a job application at Wal-Mart, then they know they will not have health care benefits…
Corporations can’t afford to pay workers health care!
A sister works without health care, therefore…
Wal-Mart helps children!
Would that be the children of women working for slave wages at sweatshops in over 40 countries?
Is an hourly wage of a little more than $8 helping the children of Black and Latino/a workers at Wal-Mart?
The students did write a praise letter—in support of corporate leadership in their community!
The conquistadors have never stopped capitalizing on others with material resources and sellable labor. Tactics have changed not the strategy of conquering. “At opportune moments,” writes Frantz Fanon in Wretched of the Earth, “the [enemy] combines his policy of brutal repression with spectacular gestures of friendship, maneuvers calculated to sow division, (sic) and ‘psychological action.” The enemy employs “the traditional collaborates” and “the lumpenproletariat.” The enemy, Fanon continues,
discovers the existence, side by side with the disciplines and well-organized advance guard of rebellion, of a mass of men who participation is constantly at the mercy of their being for too long accustomed to physiological wretchedness, humiliation, and irresponsibility.
Convince the poor and undereducated that they have someone looking out for them!
Malcolm’s plea for the development of Black entrepreneurs and Black self-reliance—is damned! The Sam Walton’s of the world have been successful community organizers!
What was supposed to be a lesson in essay writing for these students becomes a lesson in the corporation’s growing interests in the lumpenproletariat.
When it comes to historical resistance against those who would withhold justice, freedom, indeed, human rights, Black Americans are on the record as coordinators of protest. As an enslaved population to budding capitalists, Black Americans were not human and certainly not citizens of the United States. To be white in the United States was not to be Black! Whites begin at one starting gate as immigrants and Blacks at another as enslaved labor.
Black Americans struggled to survive the brutality of slavery and protested the political and social oppression of legalized segregation. Most important, Black humanity is always in question, always at risk of being denied the right of recognition by those for whom the myth of white supremacy must sustain the superiority of Euro-Americans. In the face of this stubbornness, particularly directed at the Black community, Black resistance demands a constant stands of opposition, for we are far more vulnerable to the hatred of the mob—in the person of these modern-day, market-driven conquistadors.
Dissent, for any U.S. citizen, triggers the government’s law enforcement and military apparatus; however, dissent is perilous, particularly for Black Americans. Consider the long delay and the side winding maneuvers by the government when it came to civil rights for Black Americans and the systematic assassination of those Black leaders who called on the community to reject a demoralizing and a dehumanizing economic system.
The most vulnerable among us, writes Fanon, is the lumpenproletariat. “Any movement for freedom ought to give its fullest attention to this lumpenproletariat.” When it is feasible and profitable, the oppressor’s frown becomes a smile directed at the weak and vulnerable within the Black community. This segment of the community, starved for anything that will acknowledge its humanity, Fanon writes, “is so precarious and dim that it is affected by the slightest spark of kindness.” As willingly as the lumpenproletariat will work and then shop grateful on the new master’s plantation, he will pick up a police or military issue weapon and defend his right—to enslavement. If the leadership of rebellion fails to consider the growing masses of the “wretched of the earth,” writes Fanon, this mass of people “will throw itself into the battle and will take part in the conflict—but this time on the side of the oppressor.” The oppressor, on the other hand, “never loses a chance of setting the niggers against each other,” and the oppressor “will be skillful in using that ignorance and incomprehension,” characteristic of the lumpenproletariat, to his advantage.
The whole of Earth rattles as it tries to absorb such an unholy alliance.
We praise the workers and students in the Honduras, in Iran, in France. We praised the workers at Republic Windows in Chicago when they locked themselves behind the doors of their workplace and refused to permit owners to leave them without work, pay—an explanation. In the confines of the hood (as opposed to Black neighborhoods), the corporations are uniting corporate strategists with the servitude of weakened Red, Black, and Brown people. Genocide has a corporate smiley face, but the Left is silent. It is no wonder that similar to the corporate conquistadors, the Black lumpenproletariat lacks all empathy for humanity—including her own when lead by the likes of the Walton Klan!
The culpability of the Left notwithstanding, the Left has a responsibility to challenge corporations and corporate strategies that privatize the minds and bodies of the lumpenproletariat and ultimately weakens the Left’s overall opposition to the corporate-military complex.
W.E.B. Du Bois, 1953
Many of us are just ill-equipped to deal with the darkness. We’ve been living in America’s Disney World too long.
Dr. Cornel West
The original prompt read: Write a letter in praise of someone in your community.
“This is our essay prompt for Friday night,” I said on Wednesday night as the intensive writing session came to an end.
“No. We don’t have anyone to praise in our community.” NO.
Older African and younger Black and Latino/a students populate the classroom.
“Okay. I will come up with another topic.”
At home, I select a topic from an English writing workbook:
You should not shop at Wal-Mart because they do not provide health care benefits for most workers.
It is a typical, simple, beginners prompt for a basic five-paragraph essay for the next session.
Wal-Mart executives cultivated support among lack city council members and church leaders in Chicago, according to Anmol Chaddha in Colorlines, “for building two stores…each about the size of ten football fields.” Wal-Mart’s strategy, Chaddha writes, is to bring “Wal-Mart to the ‘hood’—touting not just lower prices but also racial equity.”
“With over $280 billion in annual sales and 3,500 stores across the United States, the company is now selling itself as a solution to urban racial inequality.”
Wal-Mart’s “pitch” for conquering the “hood,” Chaddha explains, is to convince “poor people of color” that Wal-Mart means jobs and inexpensive goods.
What executives don’t mention is that the jobs come with notoriously low wages and that the company has cracked down on union organizing. But Wal-Mart executives know that poor people of color are in no position to be picky about who brings what jobs to the community.
Over 1.2 million workers make Wal-Mart the “largest private employer in the United States [and] also the leading employer of African American and Latino workers.”
Wal-Mart is not the only corporation capitalizing “amidst this urban gold rush for developers,” Chaddha explains. Staples, Marriott Hotel, and Ikea are just a few corporations spreading their wings in Black communities throughout the nation.
You can read and study Das Kapital until the heavily annotated pages of your copy fall loose from the book’s bind, but ultimately the students, particularly those on the margins of society, will teach.
Back in the classroom, I am at the board writing the new topic. I heard behind me, “she means ‘work.’” In other words, you should not work at Wal-Mart…
She has that wrong, of course—meaning, I have it wrong.
“Miss. Miss. Dr. Miss, don’t you mean ‘work” at Wal-Mart”?
“I mean ‘shop,’” I answer looking at the prompt again. Empathy, I say to myself.
“Shop?”
“What’s the problem?”
Why should we stop shopping at Wal-Mart?
What’s that gotta do with us?
“Health care for others?” I asked.
“Wal-Mart is cheap!”
“Don’t you know why?” I paint a picture featuring workers, women sitting in a room, working long hours, piecing together sneakers, shirts, pants—women earning slave wages. “There is the shopper from an urban area, you, the Wal-Mart worker with low wages and no health care benefits, and the sweatshop worker in China.”
Now, who is in the margins? I am someone out of touch with reality!
“Okay, please, start the essay.”
Some twenty hours later, I am transported to the “hood” as I read paper after paper praising Wal-Mart.
The items are cheap…
My family shops at Wal-Mart
If people fill out a job application at Wal-Mart, then they know they will not have health care benefits…
Corporations can’t afford to pay workers health care!
A sister works without health care, therefore…
Wal-Mart helps children!
Would that be the children of women working for slave wages at sweatshops in over 40 countries?
Is an hourly wage of a little more than $8 helping the children of Black and Latino/a workers at Wal-Mart?
The students did write a praise letter—in support of corporate leadership in their community!
The conquistadors have never stopped capitalizing on others with material resources and sellable labor. Tactics have changed not the strategy of conquering. “At opportune moments,” writes Frantz Fanon in Wretched of the Earth, “the [enemy] combines his policy of brutal repression with spectacular gestures of friendship, maneuvers calculated to sow division, (sic) and ‘psychological action.” The enemy employs “the traditional collaborates” and “the lumpenproletariat.” The enemy, Fanon continues,
discovers the existence, side by side with the disciplines and well-organized advance guard of rebellion, of a mass of men who participation is constantly at the mercy of their being for too long accustomed to physiological wretchedness, humiliation, and irresponsibility.
Convince the poor and undereducated that they have someone looking out for them!
Malcolm’s plea for the development of Black entrepreneurs and Black self-reliance—is damned! The Sam Walton’s of the world have been successful community organizers!
What was supposed to be a lesson in essay writing for these students becomes a lesson in the corporation’s growing interests in the lumpenproletariat.
When it comes to historical resistance against those who would withhold justice, freedom, indeed, human rights, Black Americans are on the record as coordinators of protest. As an enslaved population to budding capitalists, Black Americans were not human and certainly not citizens of the United States. To be white in the United States was not to be Black! Whites begin at one starting gate as immigrants and Blacks at another as enslaved labor.
Black Americans struggled to survive the brutality of slavery and protested the political and social oppression of legalized segregation. Most important, Black humanity is always in question, always at risk of being denied the right of recognition by those for whom the myth of white supremacy must sustain the superiority of Euro-Americans. In the face of this stubbornness, particularly directed at the Black community, Black resistance demands a constant stands of opposition, for we are far more vulnerable to the hatred of the mob—in the person of these modern-day, market-driven conquistadors.
Dissent, for any U.S. citizen, triggers the government’s law enforcement and military apparatus; however, dissent is perilous, particularly for Black Americans. Consider the long delay and the side winding maneuvers by the government when it came to civil rights for Black Americans and the systematic assassination of those Black leaders who called on the community to reject a demoralizing and a dehumanizing economic system.
The most vulnerable among us, writes Fanon, is the lumpenproletariat. “Any movement for freedom ought to give its fullest attention to this lumpenproletariat.” When it is feasible and profitable, the oppressor’s frown becomes a smile directed at the weak and vulnerable within the Black community. This segment of the community, starved for anything that will acknowledge its humanity, Fanon writes, “is so precarious and dim that it is affected by the slightest spark of kindness.” As willingly as the lumpenproletariat will work and then shop grateful on the new master’s plantation, he will pick up a police or military issue weapon and defend his right—to enslavement. If the leadership of rebellion fails to consider the growing masses of the “wretched of the earth,” writes Fanon, this mass of people “will throw itself into the battle and will take part in the conflict—but this time on the side of the oppressor.” The oppressor, on the other hand, “never loses a chance of setting the niggers against each other,” and the oppressor “will be skillful in using that ignorance and incomprehension,” characteristic of the lumpenproletariat, to his advantage.
The whole of Earth rattles as it tries to absorb such an unholy alliance.
We praise the workers and students in the Honduras, in Iran, in France. We praised the workers at Republic Windows in Chicago when they locked themselves behind the doors of their workplace and refused to permit owners to leave them without work, pay—an explanation. In the confines of the hood (as opposed to Black neighborhoods), the corporations are uniting corporate strategists with the servitude of weakened Red, Black, and Brown people. Genocide has a corporate smiley face, but the Left is silent. It is no wonder that similar to the corporate conquistadors, the Black lumpenproletariat lacks all empathy for humanity—including her own when lead by the likes of the Walton Klan!
The culpability of the Left notwithstanding, the Left has a responsibility to challenge corporations and corporate strategies that privatize the minds and bodies of the lumpenproletariat and ultimately weakens the Left’s overall opposition to the corporate-military complex.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
President Obama: Tell the People Again: “Not a Pax Americana Enforced on the World by American Weapons of War.”
I have, therefore, chose this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is to rarely perceived - - yet it is the most important topic on earth : world peace.
What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace - - the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living -- the kind that enables man and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children - - not merely peace for Americans by peace for all men and women - - not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.
I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all of the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by the wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations unborn.
President John F. Kennedy
June 10, 1963, American University's Spring Commencement
The world is waiting for the newest Deciders to decide the fate of Afghani citizens and thousands of U.S. troops preparing to deploy to the land where Empires come to die. Do I send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan? He is thinking or, rather for General Stanley McCrystal, stalling the Empire’s Manifest Destiny plans.
President Barrack Obama wants new troop plans!
The U.S. government believes war is the answer. No resistance will go unpunished and no excuses will be tolerated. War and more war is the only reasonable course of action.
I came across an interview with author Gordon Goldstein (Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam) on C-Span. Near the end of his life, Bundy, who served as National Advisor for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, admitted that the Vietnam War could not be won and should not have been fought, said Goldstein. This was Bundy’s “lesson of disaster.” When Kennedy, in 1961, faced the first proposal by his generals and advisors to send ground combat forces, some 200,000, to Vietnam, Goldstein recalled, he was encircled by war hawks who promoted the proposal for war. Kennedy, skeptical that the U.S. could prevail in Vietnam, held his ground and denied their request. Kennedy’s courage in 1961, Goldstein suggests, should inspire a President Obama in 2009 as he decides on McCrystal’s proposal to send 40,000 more troops in Afghanistan.
Kennedy’s “courage” did not end the pursuit of war for Bundy, McNamara, LeMay, and Wall Street bankers. Something else needs contemplation.
I also remember the Kennedy of November 22, 1963.
Kennedy was assassinated. Many believe Kennedy, as does private investigator John Judge and others that the generals, headed by Joint Chief of Staff, Curtis LeMay, gave the order because Kennedy said NO to war. The full history of the U.S. and its engagement in violence includes war and assassinations.
All the rhetoric of American innocence cannot clean away the contamination of American violence. There are unfortunate consequences for challenging the War Lords and war profiteers in the U.S.! Our anti-war stance should include a debate on those assignations associated with war industry.
Surely the Decider is considering his immediate surroundings there in Washington D.C. where the extremists, he himself placed around him, make him pause. It is a matter of strategy, now, Goldstein points out. Then, for Kennedy, it was about the numbers. It is strategy now. Strategy.
Before November 5, 2009, when Major Nidal M. Hasan, Army Psychiatrist, decided to point his non-military guns and kill 12 fellow soldiers and one civilian and wound 31 soldiers, the Fort Hood community experienced on the average some 10 suicides per month. A reported 75 soldiers have taken their own lives at Fort Hood this year. Those are the numbers. The strategy at Fort Hood is to deploy troops anyway. Blood has to be spilled in order to sustain the madness. People have to suffer for the Empire to stay alive.
American born son of Palestinian parents, Major Hasan had recently received his marching orders: He was on his way to war in Afghanistan. From all reports, the news came at a time when Hasan was becoming a devoted Muslim, particularly since arriving at Fort Hood in July after his transfer from Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He went mad thinking about a war he did not yet see.
But Hasan saw something while he listened, observed, and counseled returning vets from Iraq and Afghanistan. What did he see when he sat before Americans traumatized by war but who spoke of the “enemy” while describing their actions in combat?
Did he project an image of himself in a country surrounded by the enemy as an American or as a Muslim? Did he see fellow soldiers like those he counseled, standing beside him, one minute speaking of him as the “camel jockey” and, the other minute, storming a village home occupied by women and children?
Did he ever think—how did he and these soldiers get to this place where the business is to kill or be killed?
And the drones from the Third Estate push on: Is he a Muslim? An Extremist? Did Hasan, as one report asked, harbor extremist thoughts? Would that be killing? Would that be killing?
An honest debate would have to recognize the expression of cruelty on the ground at Fort Hood, further lessons of disaster that are labeled as singular and monstrous aberrations of a sick mind. Citizens of a beloved community would have to put themselves in Hasan’s shoes and experience the shaky foundation. Am I an enemy, a Muslim or am I an American—a potential American hero? Who is courageous enough to step into those shoes when it is easier to speak of a Muslim, a singular monster, an extremist? Do extremists reside in some particular geographic space and are they distinguishable from their thoughts—thoughts about killing?
In the frantic rush to discover a motive, a video tape emerges. It is from June 2007 when Major Hasan was a senior-year psychiatrist at Walter Reed. The residents and interns are presenting to their classmates and supervisors on medical topics. Hasan opts to discuss, according to Washington Post writer, Dana Priest, “Islam, suicide bombers and threats the military could encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting in the Muslim countries of Iraq and Afghanistan.” It is an odd power-point presentation, an elephant among a sea of hopeful residents and interns talking about—what?—medical treatment for the severely wounded by IEDs, perhaps? Is this presentation the evidence that Hasan was mad? Is this it? Is this the moment—sure to pass as a usable lesson, until another moment, in which, to everyone’s horror, another Hasan or even John Smith arises and says no?
Behind Hasan are thousands of enlisted ready to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan—thousands considering the consequences of war.
The Decider, too, has to consider war—U.S. style—where killing and dying for War Lords and war profiteers makes heroes to mourn at Arlington National Cemetery.
What happens if President Obama backs off? If he decides that war is not the answer and request a withdrawal immediately of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan? What if he used his rhetorical skills, for once, wisely, and he recalls Eisenhower’s warning about the military industrial complex and its accompanying intelligence agencies? How would the world respond? How would citizens in the U.S. respond if the drones for war assure them that war is reasonable? How swift would the real Deciders take their revenge?
The Deciders born and breed of capitalism are relentless.
But there are some people who are courageous and not deterred by the insanity of war.
At Fort Hood, on November 10, Private Michael Kerns was present at the memorial services attended by President Obama and the First Lady where, ironically, our man of peace will speak of justice paying a visit to Hasan while he withholds justice for the War Lords and profiteers. Kerns, trained to kill, puts his weapon aside. Instead, a member of Iraq Veterans against the War, he holds out a letter, plea for sanity, in which he attempts to hand to President Obama. The Commander-in-Chief, the Decider, greets Kern until he sees the letter. He doesn’t shake Kerns hand. Instead, he, the Decider, decides the letter is not part of the procedures, not proper protocol. He moves on to the next soldier in line. The secret service secured the letter!
President Obama:
In your recent comments on the Fort Hood tragedy, you stated ‘These are men and women who have made the selfless and courageous decision to risk and at times give their lives to protect the rest of us on a daily basis. It's difficult enough when we lose these brave Americans in battles overseas. It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil.’ Sir, we have been losing these brave Americans on American soil for years, due to the mental health problems that come after deployment, which include post-traumatic stress disorder, and often, suicide.
You also said that ‘We will continue to support the community with the full resources of the federal government.’ Sir, we appreciate that — but what we need is not more FBI or Homeland Security personnel swarming Fort Hood. What we need is full mental healthcare for all soldiers serving in the Army. What happened at Fort Hood has made it abundantly clear that the military mental health system, and our soldiers, are (sic) broken.
You said ‘We will make sure that we will get answers to every single question about this terrible incident.’ Sir, one of the answers is self evident: that a strained military cannot continue without better mental healthcare for all soldiers.
You stated that ‘As Commander-in-Chief, there's no greater honor but also no greater responsibility for me than to make sure that the extraordinary men and women in uniform are properly cared for.’ Sir, we urge you to carry out your promise and ensure that our service members indeed have access to quality mental health care. The Army has only 408 psychiatrists — military, civilian and contractors — serving about 553,000 active-duty troops around the world. This is far too few, and the providers that exist are often not competent professionals, as this incident shows. Military wages cannot attract the quality psychiatrists we need to care for these returning soldiers.
We ask that:
1. Each soldier about to be deployed and returning from deployment be assigned a mental health provider who will reach out to them, rather than requiring them to initiate the search for help.
2. Ensure that the stigma of seeking care for mental health issues is removed for soldiers at all levels-from junior enlisted to senior enlisted and officers alike.
3. Ensure that if mental health care is not available from military facilities, soldiers can seek mental health care with civilian providers of their choice
4. Ensure that soldiers are prevented from deploying with mental health problems and issues.
5. Stop multiple redeployments of the same troops.
6. Ensure full background checks for all mental health providers and periodic check ups for them to decompress from the stresses they shoulder from the soldiers they counsel to the workload they endure.
Sir, we hope that you will make the decision not to deploy one single Fort Hood troop without ensuring that all have had access to fair and impartial mental health screening and treatment.
You have stated on a number of occasions, starting during your campaign, how important our military and veterans are to this nation. The best way to safeguard the soldiers of this nation is to provide ALL soldiers with immediate, personal and professional mental health resources.
Iraq Veterans Against the War
Will he, President Obama, listen to the soldiers? Will he hear what Hasan heard about war? Will he as Commander-in-Chief keep his promise and provide the care these veterans require after they return from theatre, as the War Lords call it?
What happened at Fort Hood has made it abundantly clear that the military mental health system, and our soldiers,(sic) are broken.
It is not just the soldiers who are broken. In the years since November 22, 1963, the U.S. has fought a never-ending stream of war and the military and military intelligence budget has soared to the detriment of domestic security. We have trained a generation of young people to torture only to be tortured by their memories. We have produced enemies who sincerely hate because they are hated. And yet the war Lords and profiteers are still willing and able to kill presidents and soldiers for the blood and gore (not glory) of war to continue. War is too profitable and presidents, soldiers, and citizens who get in the way are thought by them to be expendable. How far we have come from 1961 when Kennedy thought this nation capable of being “confident and unafraid” to “labor on - - not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace”?
We, citizens of the U.S., have a second chance again to say NO war to the military and intelligence War Lords and profiteers in Washington D.C. and to McCrystal and his cadre of sable rattlers.
We have a second chance and may not have another!
What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace - - the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living -- the kind that enables man and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children - - not merely peace for Americans by peace for all men and women - - not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.
I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all of the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by the wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations unborn.
President John F. Kennedy
June 10, 1963, American University's Spring Commencement
The world is waiting for the newest Deciders to decide the fate of Afghani citizens and thousands of U.S. troops preparing to deploy to the land where Empires come to die. Do I send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan? He is thinking or, rather for General Stanley McCrystal, stalling the Empire’s Manifest Destiny plans.
President Barrack Obama wants new troop plans!
The U.S. government believes war is the answer. No resistance will go unpunished and no excuses will be tolerated. War and more war is the only reasonable course of action.
I came across an interview with author Gordon Goldstein (Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam) on C-Span. Near the end of his life, Bundy, who served as National Advisor for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, admitted that the Vietnam War could not be won and should not have been fought, said Goldstein. This was Bundy’s “lesson of disaster.” When Kennedy, in 1961, faced the first proposal by his generals and advisors to send ground combat forces, some 200,000, to Vietnam, Goldstein recalled, he was encircled by war hawks who promoted the proposal for war. Kennedy, skeptical that the U.S. could prevail in Vietnam, held his ground and denied their request. Kennedy’s courage in 1961, Goldstein suggests, should inspire a President Obama in 2009 as he decides on McCrystal’s proposal to send 40,000 more troops in Afghanistan.
Kennedy’s “courage” did not end the pursuit of war for Bundy, McNamara, LeMay, and Wall Street bankers. Something else needs contemplation.
I also remember the Kennedy of November 22, 1963.
Kennedy was assassinated. Many believe Kennedy, as does private investigator John Judge and others that the generals, headed by Joint Chief of Staff, Curtis LeMay, gave the order because Kennedy said NO to war. The full history of the U.S. and its engagement in violence includes war and assassinations.
All the rhetoric of American innocence cannot clean away the contamination of American violence. There are unfortunate consequences for challenging the War Lords and war profiteers in the U.S.! Our anti-war stance should include a debate on those assignations associated with war industry.
Surely the Decider is considering his immediate surroundings there in Washington D.C. where the extremists, he himself placed around him, make him pause. It is a matter of strategy, now, Goldstein points out. Then, for Kennedy, it was about the numbers. It is strategy now. Strategy.
Before November 5, 2009, when Major Nidal M. Hasan, Army Psychiatrist, decided to point his non-military guns and kill 12 fellow soldiers and one civilian and wound 31 soldiers, the Fort Hood community experienced on the average some 10 suicides per month. A reported 75 soldiers have taken their own lives at Fort Hood this year. Those are the numbers. The strategy at Fort Hood is to deploy troops anyway. Blood has to be spilled in order to sustain the madness. People have to suffer for the Empire to stay alive.
American born son of Palestinian parents, Major Hasan had recently received his marching orders: He was on his way to war in Afghanistan. From all reports, the news came at a time when Hasan was becoming a devoted Muslim, particularly since arriving at Fort Hood in July after his transfer from Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He went mad thinking about a war he did not yet see.
But Hasan saw something while he listened, observed, and counseled returning vets from Iraq and Afghanistan. What did he see when he sat before Americans traumatized by war but who spoke of the “enemy” while describing their actions in combat?
Did he project an image of himself in a country surrounded by the enemy as an American or as a Muslim? Did he see fellow soldiers like those he counseled, standing beside him, one minute speaking of him as the “camel jockey” and, the other minute, storming a village home occupied by women and children?
Did he ever think—how did he and these soldiers get to this place where the business is to kill or be killed?
And the drones from the Third Estate push on: Is he a Muslim? An Extremist? Did Hasan, as one report asked, harbor extremist thoughts? Would that be killing? Would that be killing?
An honest debate would have to recognize the expression of cruelty on the ground at Fort Hood, further lessons of disaster that are labeled as singular and monstrous aberrations of a sick mind. Citizens of a beloved community would have to put themselves in Hasan’s shoes and experience the shaky foundation. Am I an enemy, a Muslim or am I an American—a potential American hero? Who is courageous enough to step into those shoes when it is easier to speak of a Muslim, a singular monster, an extremist? Do extremists reside in some particular geographic space and are they distinguishable from their thoughts—thoughts about killing?
In the frantic rush to discover a motive, a video tape emerges. It is from June 2007 when Major Hasan was a senior-year psychiatrist at Walter Reed. The residents and interns are presenting to their classmates and supervisors on medical topics. Hasan opts to discuss, according to Washington Post writer, Dana Priest, “Islam, suicide bombers and threats the military could encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting in the Muslim countries of Iraq and Afghanistan.” It is an odd power-point presentation, an elephant among a sea of hopeful residents and interns talking about—what?—medical treatment for the severely wounded by IEDs, perhaps? Is this presentation the evidence that Hasan was mad? Is this it? Is this the moment—sure to pass as a usable lesson, until another moment, in which, to everyone’s horror, another Hasan or even John Smith arises and says no?
Behind Hasan are thousands of enlisted ready to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan—thousands considering the consequences of war.
The Decider, too, has to consider war—U.S. style—where killing and dying for War Lords and war profiteers makes heroes to mourn at Arlington National Cemetery.
What happens if President Obama backs off? If he decides that war is not the answer and request a withdrawal immediately of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan? What if he used his rhetorical skills, for once, wisely, and he recalls Eisenhower’s warning about the military industrial complex and its accompanying intelligence agencies? How would the world respond? How would citizens in the U.S. respond if the drones for war assure them that war is reasonable? How swift would the real Deciders take their revenge?
The Deciders born and breed of capitalism are relentless.
But there are some people who are courageous and not deterred by the insanity of war.
At Fort Hood, on November 10, Private Michael Kerns was present at the memorial services attended by President Obama and the First Lady where, ironically, our man of peace will speak of justice paying a visit to Hasan while he withholds justice for the War Lords and profiteers. Kerns, trained to kill, puts his weapon aside. Instead, a member of Iraq Veterans against the War, he holds out a letter, plea for sanity, in which he attempts to hand to President Obama. The Commander-in-Chief, the Decider, greets Kern until he sees the letter. He doesn’t shake Kerns hand. Instead, he, the Decider, decides the letter is not part of the procedures, not proper protocol. He moves on to the next soldier in line. The secret service secured the letter!
President Obama:
In your recent comments on the Fort Hood tragedy, you stated ‘These are men and women who have made the selfless and courageous decision to risk and at times give their lives to protect the rest of us on a daily basis. It's difficult enough when we lose these brave Americans in battles overseas. It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil.’ Sir, we have been losing these brave Americans on American soil for years, due to the mental health problems that come after deployment, which include post-traumatic stress disorder, and often, suicide.
You also said that ‘We will continue to support the community with the full resources of the federal government.’ Sir, we appreciate that — but what we need is not more FBI or Homeland Security personnel swarming Fort Hood. What we need is full mental healthcare for all soldiers serving in the Army. What happened at Fort Hood has made it abundantly clear that the military mental health system, and our soldiers, are (sic) broken.
You said ‘We will make sure that we will get answers to every single question about this terrible incident.’ Sir, one of the answers is self evident: that a strained military cannot continue without better mental healthcare for all soldiers.
You stated that ‘As Commander-in-Chief, there's no greater honor but also no greater responsibility for me than to make sure that the extraordinary men and women in uniform are properly cared for.’ Sir, we urge you to carry out your promise and ensure that our service members indeed have access to quality mental health care. The Army has only 408 psychiatrists — military, civilian and contractors — serving about 553,000 active-duty troops around the world. This is far too few, and the providers that exist are often not competent professionals, as this incident shows. Military wages cannot attract the quality psychiatrists we need to care for these returning soldiers.
We ask that:
1. Each soldier about to be deployed and returning from deployment be assigned a mental health provider who will reach out to them, rather than requiring them to initiate the search for help.
2. Ensure that the stigma of seeking care for mental health issues is removed for soldiers at all levels-from junior enlisted to senior enlisted and officers alike.
3. Ensure that if mental health care is not available from military facilities, soldiers can seek mental health care with civilian providers of their choice
4. Ensure that soldiers are prevented from deploying with mental health problems and issues.
5. Stop multiple redeployments of the same troops.
6. Ensure full background checks for all mental health providers and periodic check ups for them to decompress from the stresses they shoulder from the soldiers they counsel to the workload they endure.
Sir, we hope that you will make the decision not to deploy one single Fort Hood troop without ensuring that all have had access to fair and impartial mental health screening and treatment.
You have stated on a number of occasions, starting during your campaign, how important our military and veterans are to this nation. The best way to safeguard the soldiers of this nation is to provide ALL soldiers with immediate, personal and professional mental health resources.
Iraq Veterans Against the War
Will he, President Obama, listen to the soldiers? Will he hear what Hasan heard about war? Will he as Commander-in-Chief keep his promise and provide the care these veterans require after they return from theatre, as the War Lords call it?
What happened at Fort Hood has made it abundantly clear that the military mental health system, and our soldiers,(sic) are broken.
It is not just the soldiers who are broken. In the years since November 22, 1963, the U.S. has fought a never-ending stream of war and the military and military intelligence budget has soared to the detriment of domestic security. We have trained a generation of young people to torture only to be tortured by their memories. We have produced enemies who sincerely hate because they are hated. And yet the war Lords and profiteers are still willing and able to kill presidents and soldiers for the blood and gore (not glory) of war to continue. War is too profitable and presidents, soldiers, and citizens who get in the way are thought by them to be expendable. How far we have come from 1961 when Kennedy thought this nation capable of being “confident and unafraid” to “labor on - - not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace”?
We, citizens of the U.S., have a second chance again to say NO war to the military and intelligence War Lords and profiteers in Washington D.C. and to McCrystal and his cadre of sable rattlers.
We have a second chance and may not have another!
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