Foreign Policy In Focus

Federal prosecutors seek to remove justification for the existence of nuclear weapons from the trial of the Transform Now Plowshares Three.

Remember the activists, including an 82-year-old nun, who infiltrated the Y-12 nuclear weapons complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee on July 12? They're members of  Transform Now Plowshares, the current version of the original Plowshares Christian pacifist movement. The Plowshares Eight initiated these kinds of actions in 1980 when they snuck into a General Electric nuclear missile facility in Pennsylvania.

Like their predecessors, the Transform Now Plowshares Three are as physically courageous as they are morally. A lengthy jail term could see at least one of its members, 82-year-old Sister Megan Rice, die while incarcerated.

At the trial in February they each face 15 years in prison and fines up to $500,000. Worse, as the co-director of a nuclear watchdog group in Wisconsin called Nukewatch, John LaForge, wrote at the Transform Now Plowshares site, "federal prosecutors have mentioned bringing two heavier charges, including sabotage 'during wartime,' which together carry up to 50 years."

Even worse, the Transform Now Plowshares Three may be left destitute of tools with which to defend themselves. LaForge explains.

If the government gets it way, the trial judge will keep facts about nuclear weapons away from jurors and make sure that questions about the Bomb's outlaw status are left out of jury instructions. … before starting deliberations.

On Nov. 2, federal prosecutors [urged the judge] to "preclude defendants from introducing evidence in support of certain justification defenses." The motion asks the court to forbid all evidence — even expert testimony — about "necessity, international law, Nuremberg Principles, First Amendment protections, the alleged immorality of nuclear weapons, good motive, religious moral or political beliefs regarding nuclear weapons, and the U.S. government's policy regarding nuclear weapons."

The prosecution's justification? That it is "not relevant." Even though

The U.S. Attorney's motion … confesses, "[w]e do not suggest that the deployment of nuclear armament systems does not violate international law, but merely that Congress has power to protect government property."

The value of the Transform Now Plowshares Three's efforts was initially depreciated because the only kind of soul searching resulting from their actions was about plant security, not the morality of nuclear weapons. Now, federal prosecutors would move to expunge justification for the existence of nuclear weapons from the trial and reduce it to a simple case of trespass and vandalism at a military installation.

Clearly, the U.S. Attorney's office fears that admitting discussion of the justice of nuclear weapons to the jurors' deliberations will only obstruct the progress of the trial. More to the point it probably knows it's an argument it can't win. 

It is eerily fitting that George McGovern's passing occurred in the final heat of a furious election campaign, precariously balanced between Republocrats and Democlicans, two corporately owned political parties.

The corporate media can try to fan the public pulse with staged debates and meaningless news of polls and money raised. But it's apparent that on issues from corporate welfare to labor rights, from the vast military-industry complex, to the rape of the Earth, there's merely, at best, a dime's worth of difference between the two parties.

George McGovern's failed 1972 presidential bid was significant because it was born on the wings of a vast grassroots conspiracy of campaigners. Long before the Internet emerged, these assiduous organizers phoned, canvassed, went door to door, and ran slates of delegates to the Democratic convention. It was the last gasp of an attempt to reclaim the Democratic Party for women, youth, gays, blacks, liberals, and other progressive Americans.

This push for real democracy started in 1968 with Eugene McCarthy's candidacy to end the war in Vietnam. It suffered severe blows at Mayor Richard J. Daley's Chicago Democratic convention in the form of ugly police brutality against students and youth protesting the war in Vietnam and the fixing of convention rules to favor the party bosses.

With renewed determination, the New Democratic Coalition was formed across America in 1968. It aimed to change the rules of the party and capture the 1972 nomination for a peace candidate who would finally end the war in Vietnam and address civil rights, poverty, human rights, and true national security — the liberal progressive agenda.

When George McGovern announced his candidacy, he promised to address our issues. He also pledged to reform the rules of the nominating process, which had utterly failed to reflect the support that Eugene McCarthy had garnered in the primaries leading up to the 1968 Chicago convention.

I went up and down my block in Massapequa, Long Island, as part of an army of canvassers to ensure that those who supported us voted in the Democratic primary. The establishment media rarely reported on our work. They predicted that Edmund Muskie would be the nominee. What a great surprise when our elected delegates showed up at the Miami Convention in 1972 with youth, women, blacks, Latinos, gays — a broad swath of progressive America — to nominate George McGovern!

The energy was electric as movie stars mingled with peace activists, civil rights workers, women's libbers, the gay community, and activists of every other shade and stripe. By capturing the nomination we thought we'd proved that the political process worked.

What an awful letdown, then, to see how the establishment fought back. The mainstream media never wrote about McGovern's forward looking platform for peace and prosperity and hounded him for choosing Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri to run as his running mate who was later discovered to have been hospitalized for a bipolar episode many years earlier. Although McGovern replaced Eagleton with Sargent Shriver, the press was relentlessly opposed to his platform and never reported on his WWII fighter pilot record, his outstanding values, or his creative ideas for ending poverty in America and ending the Vietnam War. They tarred him as a "hippie", tainted by his supporters. He won only Massachusetts and Washington, DC.

The establishment has guarded against a true people's choice like this ever since. We've never had another nominating process conducted as openly and democratically as the one that nominated George McGovern. Today, events are carefully staged-managed, designed not to upset corporate sponsors, and filtered through the corporate media, with Americans left in the dark.

McGovern's nomination was a shining moment for a democratic political process and also, sadly, a signal to the enemies of democracy to close ranks and do everything in their power to never allow it to happen again.

Alice Slater is a founder of Abolition 2000, working for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. www.abolition2000.org

Puzzling over the enduring enigma of the American public.

Note: This post suffers from a case of style drift. That is, it's only tangentially related to foreign policy.

At AlterNet, Chris Hedges recently made a strong case for individuals taking responsibility for how their actions (or lack thereof) affect society at large.

The greatest crimes of human history are made possible by the most colorless human beings. They are the careerists. The bureaucrats. The cynics. They do the little chores that make vast, complicated systems of exploitation and death a reality. … Good. Evil. These words do not mean anything to them. They are beyond morality. They are there to make corporate systems function. If insurance companies abandon tens of millions of sick to suffer and die, so be it. If banks and sheriff departments toss families out of their homes, so be it. 

I used to characterize apathy and lack of conscience as the enduring enigma of the American public. In fact, though, as I wrote in a post titled for Scholars & Rogues in 2010, apathy may be socially redeeming.

Apathy, of course, aids and abets corrupt leaders. But it wasn’t until the publication of a book in 1996 that I realized apathy might be socially redeeming. Titled Who Are You, Really? (Carroll & Graf), it was written by Gary Null, the noted (and controversial) nutritionist who is also that rarity in this day and age — a Renaissance man.

You may have heard of a personality assessment questionnaire used by prospective employers, among others, called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. If it was an acknowledged product of Carl Jung’s book Personality Types, Myers-Briggs, in turn, seems to have been the inspiration for the categories into which Null divides us humans. You can find the heading under which most of us fall in his chapter “Most of the People You’ll Ever Meet: Adaptive Supportive.”

What, you ask, is an Adaptive Supportive? Null explains:

Adaptive Supportives generally do functional work. They may be clerical-level employees or blue-collar workers in government agencies or factories. They may work at the checkout counters in retail establishments or at construction sites. … sticking with a job year after year sometimes constitute an unrecognized act of heroism on the part of members of this group.

In fact. . .

Adaptive Supportives play an absolutely essential role in our culture, as in any. Without them, the inner workings of society would simply cease to function. … Because there are so many of them, their values and way of life pervade our culture.

Summing up. . .

Adaptive Supportives are the followers in life — the vast majority of the people who adapt their lives to prevailing belief systems. … Their whole lifestyle is supportive of the status quo and they thrive on the sense of belonging that comes from “fitting in.”

In other words, it’s time to stop libeling them as apathetic. It’s just how they’re wired: Their passivity is in the service of fulfilling their role as the bedrock of society. But, as with all personality types, you take the good with the bad. Of course, the liberal left is more familiar with how harmful they can be to society, as well as themselves. Gary Null again:

The real danger with Adaptive Supportives is that they will cling to faulty belief systems. They have a strong sense of trust in one authority, and they feel vulnerable and threatened if an idea or person challenges that authority. … They relinquish control over their own lives, giving more power to authority figures than they do themselves. That gives them a myopic view of life and closes off many avenues of growth and transformation.

Can They Transcend Their Limitations?

Here’s Null’s answer:

When Adaptive Supportives do change, it’s usually because an authority figure has given them “permission” to do so. When the authority in their lives changes, they’ll shift course and go along with whatever the leader expects of them. If the pope were to allow women to become priests, the masses would adapt to the change and support it. … The irony is that Adaptive Supportives could be a tremendous force in society, simply by virtue of their numbers.

Resolving to act against injustice tends to result from personal growth, about which Null writes:

. . . Adaptive Supportives must recognize that there is nothing intrinsic about them that prevents personal growth. … But they have to take charge of their own development. They can’t wait for some big boss figure to give them permission to change, to say it’s okay. The few Adaptive Supportives who do break through the “big-boss barrier” become very excited about their own untapped potential. … The catch is that they may need someone to work with them — generally a more dynamic personality — to keep them motivated and to supply structure and direction.

Just because Adaptive Supportives embody the turning-ship cliché doesn’t mean we should be discouraged. In fact, Null’s analysis should encourage us to cease lecturing them and throwing up our hands in exasperation. Instead, engaging them individually, we can draw out their needs and fears, and address them without the harshness — toward themselves as well as others — to which Adaptive Supportives are accustomed.

Still, it can’t be denied that engaging them on subjects such as politics, culture, and the future of the planet can be a thankless task. The most hidebound are best left to stew in their own juices. But, in the long run, most Adaptive Supportives would probably be glad to be weaned off those who prey upon their insecurities.

Cross-posted from the Dissent Magazine blog Arguing the World.

Effective celebrity activists use their fame to bring attention and credibility to legitimate representatives of social movements.

That, in a nutshell, is my standard of celebrity activism done right. Ineffective celebrity activists...well, they do all sorts of things wrong. But, most fundamentally, they approach issues without any awareness of or connection to social movements. They might still have noble intentions, but they can end up being a net negative for social change efforts.

Coinciding with the thirtieth anniversary of John Lennon's death, Bill Easterly has published an interesting article in the Washington Post comparing the ex-Beatle's antiwar activism with the social engagement of U2's front man, Bono. Easterly writes:

For so many of my generation, growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, Lennon was a hero, not just for his music but for his fearless activism against the Vietnam War.

Is there a celebrity activist today who matches Lennon's impact and appeal? The closest counterpart to Lennon now is U2's Bono, another transcendent musical talent championing another cause: the battle against global poverty. But there is a fundamental difference between Lennon's activism and Bono's, and it underscores the sad evolution of celebrity activism in recent years.

Lennon was a rebel. Bono is not. 

Given our age of commodified dissent, I'm not interested in trying to determine who counts as truly rebellious and who doesn't. But I think Easterly makes some important points.

First, he notes that Lennon paid a real price for his antiwar stances. The FBI tracked his activities, and he fought for years with immigration officials in the Nixon administration who were set on deporting him from the United States. Bono, on the other hand, has turned up to dine in the White House, schmoozing with elites even while encouraging them to do more for the poor. In other words, his activism hasn't cost him much.

To me, this isn't a problem in and of itself. But it is a symptom of much larger shortcomings in Bono's approach. Rather than putting his focus on publicizing and legitimizing social movement leaders (those in the Jubilee debt relief movement, for example), Bono has put himself in a leadership role. He acts as a spokesperson, brandishes his supposed expertise, makes demands, negotiates, and accepts compromises. All these are things that should rightly be done by social movements and by representatives accountable to democratic structures within those movements. Ultimately these people should be accountable to those directly affected by the issue at hand. Absent any such structures, Bono has left himself vulnerable to cooptation.

Easterly describes Bono's model of activism as that of the "celebrity wonk":

[Lennon] was a moral crusader who challenged leaders whom he thought were doing wrong. Bono, by contrast, has become a sort of celebrity policy expert, supporting specific technical solutions to global poverty. He does not challenge power but rather embraces it; he is more likely to appear in photo ops with international political leaders—or to travel through Africa with a Treasury secretary—than he is to call them out in a meaningful way....

The singer appeared onstage with Bush at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington in 2002 as the president pledged a $5 billion increase in foreign aid. In May of that year, Bono even toured Africa with Bush's first Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, fully aware that the administration was capitalizing on his celebrity.

"My job is to be used. I am here to be used," he told the Washington Post. "It's just, at what price? As I keep saying, I'm not a cheap date."

While Bono calls global poverty a moral wrong, he does not identify the wrongdoers. Instead, he buys into technocratic illusions about the issue without paying attention to who has power and who lacks it, who oppresses and who is oppressed. He runs with the crowd that believes ending poverty is a matter of technical expertise—doing things such as expanding food yields with nitrogen-fixing leguminous plants or solar-powered drip irrigation.

These are fine moves as far as they go, but why have Bono champion them? The technocratic approach puts him in the position of a wonk, not a dissident; an expert, not a crusader.

In celebrating Lennon, Easterly doesn't allow for the agency of social movements. Instead he valorizes the figure of the "dissident" who helps to shake things up and discourage "groupthink" among experts. "True dissidents claim no expertise," he writes; "they offer no 10-point plans to fix a problem. They are most effective when they simply assert that the status quo is morally wrong."

This is a pretty limited view of how activism functions, as well as of how art can contribute to the creation of critical social consciousness. But, putting that aside, Easterly correctly notes that Lennon was more successful than Bono in using his art (in this case, music) to directly support a cause. He writes, "In 1969 'Give Peace a Chance' became the anthem of the movement after half a million people sung along at a huge demonstration at the Washington Monument…[T]wo more songs released [in 1971]—'Imagine' and 'Happy Xmas (War Is Over)'—expanded his antiwar repertoire."

While I appreciate Lennon's artistic contributions, he would still not be my model for celebrity activism. That would be someone like Harry Belafonte, who was a steadfast supporter of the civil rights and anti-apartheid movements, among other causes. Even at the peak of his fame, Belafonte could be relied upon to turn out at rallies and lend his magnetism to events. In just one of many notable instances, he played an important role in bankrolling the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during 1964's Freedom Summer in Mississippi. Not only did his funding provide a lifeline for activists in the South, his ongoing presence with the civil rights movement helped make it a fashionable cause for other donors, volunteers, and public figures.

Now in his eighties and less well known than he was in the 1960s, Belafonte nevertheless remains active, advocating for the people of Haiti and speaking at the recent One Nation rally. All this has earned him a page of scorn on David Horowitz's DiscoverTheNetworks.org, a site dedicated to tracking and defaming the Left.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but looking at Horowitz's site, I notice that he didn't make a page for Bono.

Mark Engler is a senior analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus and author of How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation Books, 2008). He can be reached via the website http://www.DemocracyUprising.com

Nearly 200 protesters gathered in front of the White House on the afternoon of June 14 to denounce continued U.S. support for Ethiopia’s incumbent regime. Chanting in native Amharic and rallying around the Ethiopian flag, the crowd members were predominantly from DC’s sizable Ethiopian diaspora.

On May 23, Ethiopia held its fourth national election since transitioning to democracy in 1993. The transition away from dictatorship seems incomplete, however, when all four election have reelected President Meles Zenawi and his monolithic EPRDF party by landslide majorities. This year’s officially reported win margin was 99.6% vote for Zenawi, representing the government’s repression of opposition, use of voter intimidation, and rejection of election monitors. This is a significant regression in democratic governance since the last election Ethiopia held in 2005.

The protesters reacted strongly to this regression, calling on the U.S. to change its foreign policy and aid practices, which currently help prop up Zenawi’s regime. Ethiopia receives the third largest amount of foreign aid from the U.S. after Israel and Egypt, receiving $862 million in foreign assistance in 2009. This inundation of aid and diplomatic silence by the U.S. is projected to be because Ethiopia is such valuable U.S. ally in the volatile horn of Africa and in the War on Terror.

But Ethiopians, both in the Horn of Africa and in the U.S. diaspora, are enraged that the U.S. is prioritizing the stability and anti-terrorism policies of their corrupt despot, Zenawi, over encouraging free and fair elections.

The State Department’s assistant press secretary has remained markedly vague and diplomatic, promising, "We will work diligently with Ethiopia to ensure that strengthened democratic institutions and open political dialogue become a reality for the Ethiopian people."