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Friday, August 31st, 2007
Volume 6, No. 16
15 pages
(Editor's note 1: Lawrence Theriot, a U.S. government analyst who studies Cuba very closely, has stated that
“a highly egalitarian redistribution of income has eliminated almost all malnutrition, particularly among children.”
A Short History by Minor Sinclair and Martha Thompson (Academics that are NOT communists)
Prior to the 1959 revolution, there was one word to describe Cuba: inequity. Only 8% of the farmers controlled 70% of the land. U.S. interests controlled most of the Cuban economy, including most of the large plantations, a controlling interest in the sugar production, the mining industry, oil refineries, electrical utilities, the communications system, and many of the banks.
The majority of the rural labor force consisted of landless, seasonal workers without schooling, healthcare, electricity or running water. They earned their living during only three months of the year, at planting time and at harvest. Rural workers were lucky to earn one-quarter of the national income.
At the time of the revolution, most of the wealthy landowners fled to the United States. Their former holdings were expropriated and given over to the laborers.
Cuba, Going Against the Grain: Agricultural Crisis and Transformation; Chapter 2, Cuba’s Distinction: Land Reform and a Modernized Peasantry, Sinclair, M., and Thompson, M. Oxfam America Report, June 2001.
The Cuban Miracle
By the 1980s, Cuba had surpassed most of Latin America in nutrition, life expectancy, education and per capita GNP. The literacy rate was an astonishing 96%, and 95% of the population had access to safe water.
In the early 1990’s the Cuban economy had to recover from the loss of its closest trading partner, the Soviet Union.
Cuban GNP has grown every year since 1995. There have been solid gains in employment, productivity and exports. Fruit production has returned to its 1989 level (and even surpassed it in the case of plantains). Vegetables and tubers for domestic consumption have seen a prodigious increase in production. Food intake has climbed to 2,473 calories and 51.6 grams per person, a 33% increase over caloric intake in 1994. Observers the world over have pronounced the Cuban efforts a success. Single handedly, without help from either the World Bank or the IMF (and in total contrast to the normal World Bank and IMF reform policy), Cuba has disproved the myth that organic agriculture cannot support a modern nation. Agrarian reform in the 1990s centered on a new system of sustainable agriculture, the development of healthy markets, and the privatization and cooperatization of the unwieldy state farms.)
(Editor's note 2: what follows is in response to the American Psychological Association's (APA) overwhelming approval of a resolution that psychologists can be present at torture sessions. There is some suggestion that the CIA was a party to this resolution. APA overwhelmingly approved this resolution at their most recent national meeting. Democracy Now reported fully on this resolution and was present at the meeting.—From a note by Stephen Soldz.
"you’d think a bunch of psychologists would know that the purpose of torture is torture, not info gathering or any other rationalization jack bauer types come up with. individuals torture b/c they enjoy it. states torture to demonstrate the arbitrary, totalitarian power of the state, the boot stamping on a human face forever, as 1984 put it. people, individuals & gov’ts, torture to demonstrate their unrestrained power & authority. state sanctioned torture shows that the individual and his/her rights mean nothing before the power of the state.
that a group of professional healers, well-educated in their profession, would not see thru this crap is astounding. the torture/terror/war mongers are afflicting all areas of public discourse, including the healing professions." Ballsy(?)
Also, it should be noted that Mary Pipher who had received the APA Presidential Award has turned back her award in protest of this action by the APA with regard to the vote on torture.)
4 Articles 15 Pages
1. July Foreclosures up 9 percent from June
3. What Kind Of System Does This To Its Youth?
1. JULY FORECLOSURES UP 9 PERCENT FROM JUNE
BY
ALEX VEIGA
| |
U.S. Home Foreclosures Jump Sharply in July, Up 9 Percent From June
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The number of foreclosure filings reported in the U.S. last month jumped 93 percent from July of 2006 and rose 9 percent from June, the latest sign that homeowners are having trouble making payments and finding buyers during the national housing downturn.
There were 179,599 foreclosure filings reported during July, up from 92,845 during the same period a year ago, Irvine-based RealtyTrac Inc. said Tuesday. There were 164,644 foreclosure filings reported in June.
The national foreclosure rate in July was one filing for every 693 households, the company said.
"While 43 states experienced year-over-year increases in foreclosure activity, just five states -- California, Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Georgia -- accounted for more than half of the nation's total foreclosure filings," RealtyTrac Chief Executive James J. Saccacio said.
The filings include default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions.
Some properties included in the survey might have received more than one notice, if the owners have multiple mortgages.
The company did break out individual properties as part of its report for the first six months of this year, when a total of 573,397 properties reported some sort of foreclosure activity.
That represents a 58 percent jump from the 363,672 properties in the first six months of 2006 and a 32 percent increase from the 433,504 in the last six months of 2006, the firm said.
In the July report, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan accounted for the highest foreclosure rates nationwide.
Nevada posted the highest foreclosure rate: one filing for every 199 households, or more than three times the national average. It reported 5,116 filings during the month, an increase of 8 percent from June.
Georgia's foreclosure rate was more than twice the national average, with one filing for every 299 households. The state reported 12,602 foreclosure filings, up 75 percent from June.
Michigan reported 13,979 filings in July, a 39 percent spike from June.
California, Florida and Ohio were among the states with the highest number of foreclosure filings in July, RealtyTrac said.
California cities continued to dominate top metropolitan foreclosure rates.
The state reported 39,013 foreclosure filings last month, the most by any single state. However, the number of filings rose less than 1 percent from June.
The state's foreclosure rate was one filing for every 333 households, RealtyTrac said.
Florida's foreclosure filings dropped 9 percent between June and July to 19,179. The July figure, however, represents a 78 percent jump from the year-ago period.
In recent months, the mortgage industry has been battered by rising defaults and foreclosures, primarily driven by borrowers with subprime loans and adjustable rate mortgages.
Lagging home sales and flat or decreasing home prices have made it more difficult for homeowners who fall behind on payments to sell their homes and clear the debt, spurring the rise in foreclosure activity.
Loan types seeing higher delinquencies and defaults in general are home equity loans or second mortgages used to cover a downpayment, subprime loans to people with shaky credit histories, and Alt-A loans, which can include interest-only and adjustable rate mortgages sold with little or no documentation.
2. THE MIND IN CHAINS
(About Ward Churchill)
BY
EVA LIDDELL
The latest efforts by folks in support of two well known university professors to either receive tenure or retain it is a little foreign to me but I'm workin' with it. I'm from the generation that shut down universities during college strikes in the 1960's. I can't recall anybody chanting during demonstrations for professor so and so to get tenure. We were urging professors to drop out like everybody else and join in resisting a ludicrous war. Times change. But we're still in a war.
What struck me about Ward Churchill's essay that caused the stir leading to his current troubles, "The Roosting of Chickens" and the thing about little Eichmanns was that it was not that radical a piece of writing. (Something I bet he admits). It was catchy though. Telling Americans they're like Nazis is like saying frog. They'll jump.
When he wrote his essay I thought the analogy was already a little thread-bare. Using Germany or the "good German" as stereotypes of evil whether ultimate or banal strikes me as a little too easy. We've got plenty to work with by comparing ourselves to ourselves.
From the first grade on and up through the university system citizens are systemically taught not to judge for themselves. We are taught we have freedom of speech but we are trained not to think. We think we have academic freedom because we are trained to believe we are free. The ultimate goal of our educational system, the dogmatic smothering of minds is overseen by the Department of Education, state boards of regents and the university education departments. Universities are one of the most policed sectors of the State. Should a university professor happen to defy the knowledge factory he has defied the State which aggrandizes itself through the university system. That's why so few do. It's why we have people like Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of our foremost court historians to show us how the game is played.
Get sued for a million dollars for plagiarism and your academic cronies will protect you if you quickly produce a worshipful book about one of our most revered presidents, Abraham Lincoln. When countries all over the world were ending slavery by peaceable means Lincoln needed to kill seven hundred thousand Americans to do it. One of the most important myths coming out of the university system is sustaining the Lincoln Mythos which underpins our Democracy Mythos. Very few people educated in the U.S. school system think Lincoln was anything except a hero, our Great Emancipator. We don't stop to examine that the slaves he emancipated were in states that already had seceded from the Union so "emancipating" them didn't do them much good. Let alone that up until Lincoln's presidency States had the right to secede from the Union until he took that freedom away making the states themselves enslaved to a centralized government. If we think about Lincoln other than how we are taught professors alert us that we are "state rights' wackos" or something.
Another myth straight out of our schools is the notion that slavery existed for "ninety years" replaced by Jim Crow as if slavery wasn't really slavery until the Constitution was ratified. Who then were those people in chains two hundred and fifty years before the Civil War? We are taught that our "founding fathers" ran America with an institutionalized system of slavery until a turn in consciousness made people realize that slavery was bad. That's odd. Millions of people knew in the 1600's that slavery was bad, namely the slaves. I guess it only counts if white people figure it out.
It is interesting that Ward Churchill's essay dealt with the fact that if we have a bad foreign policy like the one after 1945 we might get it thrown back in our faces sooner or later. But our foreign policies had been resisted long before 9/11. Native Americans fought a courageous war against the whites for four hundred years. When they formally surrendered, they were thrown into concentration camps euphemistically called "reservations" where they've been ever since. See what I mean about comparing ourselves to ourselves? What do we need the Germans for?
We need Germany as the ultimate evil because if Germany is the ultimate evil the U.S. is less evil. That could be one of the reasons that the university system supported Steven Spielberg's project to bring in thousands of computers as instructional tools teaching the German Holocaust to students of color. Black and Hispanic kids are taught that if they think they had it bad look at the Jews they had it worse. Two hundred and fifty years of chattel slavery undermined. The American Mythos preserved.
There is a pamphlet called "The Chickens of the Interventionist Liberals Have Come Home to Roost" by Harry Elmer Barnes. Written in 1973 it was directed against the liberals who thought nothing about smearing or destroying the lives and the reputations of the old liberal academics who wrote prescient books in the 1930's about the policies of FDR, what the consequences of those policies might mean for us and for the world. Barnes' screed meant to remind these people who were bitter about eventually getting McCarthyized that they once had been just as vicious against free speech when it served their purposes, war. Chickens roosting he wrote.
I admire Norman Finkelstein and Ward Churchill for writing what they did. They pissed off the wrong people. The universities are reacting as if their corns have been stepped on.
Yet the essential myths that comprise the American dream remain undisrupted.
3. WHAT KIND OF SYSTEM DOES THIS TO ITS YOUTH?
BY
LINDA FLORES
(They're treating us like criminals…)
Student at Curtis High School, Staten Island, New York City:
“Sometimes the classroom feels like a jail cell.”
Jane Min, Flushing High School, Queens, New York City
Imagine if schools were places where youth were treated like the precious people they are--where their creativity, their curiosity, and their critical thinking were valued and encouraged. Imagine if, in school and out of school, the youth were challenged and unleashed and they were called upon to discuss and debate everything from Shakespeare to religion, from the state of the planet to how society-–including their own schools-–should be run. Imagine if the rebellious spirit and questioning of the youth were not only not squashed and corralled--imagine if it were valued as a crucial part of revolutionizing society.
But in this society, we can only imagine this. And for way too many youth, the experience is exactly the opposite. Schools are ringed with fences and metal detectors. Instead of the sounds of debate and lively discussion over string theory or globalization, the hallways ring with echoes of cops, Glocks at their hips, screaming to the youth to "Get the fuck back in line!"
When youth come to school, instead of knowing they are coming to a safe place where they will learn and be learned from, they live with fear: will they be frisked and humiliated in front of everyone for no real reason? Will they be arrested if they wander out of the metal detector line? Will they make it home at the end of the day, or will they be taken to jail for swearing or getting into a fight?
An important report, “Criminalizing the Classroom: The Over-Policing of New York City Schools,” was released by the New York Civil Liberties Union in March 2007 (available at:
http://www.nyclu.org/pdfs/criminalizing_the_classroom_report.pdf).
It covers the experience of youth in New York City, but it provides an all-too-rare glimpse at the experience of youth all over this country, particularly Black and Latino youth--the harassment, degradation, brutalization, and criminalization that they are forced to endure when they come to school. The report is drawn from interviews with parents, teachers, school administrators and staff, and, importantly, surveys from 1,000 youth in New York City schools.
In New York City, the public schools have been policed by the NYPD since 1998. In the 2005-2006 school year, there were a total of 4,625 cops (200 of them armed) patrolling the schools as so-called “School Safety Agents (SSAs).” The NYCLU report points out that if the NYPD’s School Safety Division were its own police force, it would be the 10th largest in the country--larger than the entire police force in Washington, D.C., Detroit, or Boston.
Cops Like School Prison Guards:
Under the school “safety” program, any junior high and high school in the New York public school system is subject to “roving metal detectors.” What this has meant is cops coming into schools unannounced, setting up a military-style task force. In an approach very similar to what U.S. soldiers do in Iraq, the cops swarm in, take over the school's cafeteria or gym, and turn the school into a police zone, snaked with lines of students waiting to pass through the metal detectors.
Students are forced to wait for hours in line as their bags are searched and their cell phones (prohibited in the school district) or cameras (not prohibited) are confiscated. And 21 percent of the city's junior high and high schools now have metal detectors permanently installed. At Wadleigh Secondary School in Manhattan, one student who found a “roving” metal detector at his school called his mother to come pick up his phone before it was confiscated--and was then arrested when he tried to explain why he wasn't waiting in line.
These cops in the schools act like, and basically function as, prison guards: barking orders, pushing and shoving students, deciding arbitrarily what is and is not allowed on any given day. Students' bags are searched, and everything from house keys to spare change is confiscated. The cops decide what they will and won't let students bring in to schools. For example, some students who had permission to carry cell phones had them taken. Some students had their iPods confiscated and never returned. And at an aviation magnet high school, students had their engineering supplies taken for supposedly being “weapons.”
Cops have confiscated students' food and then eaten it. Students are routinely yelled at and cursed at, and have reported being physically shoved through the metal detectors or shoved against the wall to be frisked regardless of whether they set off the metal detectors. At one school, the cops taunted one student who was wearing a nice coat, accusing him of stealing it. When one cop found a blank CD in a student's backpack he said, “Is that rap? That's probably why you're being searched.” In one eight-month period more than 17,000 items were taken from students in the “roving” metal detector program--70 percent of them were cell phones, and 29 percent were iPods and similar items. Not one gun was found.
The NYCLU report detailed numerous instances where the cops actively terrorized and brutalized students. At one school, cops chased students who tried to avoid the checkpoints, screaming, “Round them up!” At Samuel Tilden High School in Brooklyn, a 17-year-old student named Biko Edwards was walking toward his chemistry class when a vice principal stopped him. When Biko protested not being allowed to go to class, the vice principal called in a cop. The report describes what happened next:
“Officer Rivera then grabbed Biko and slammed him against a brick door divider, lacerating Biko’s face and causing him to bleed. Officer Rivera then sprayed Mace at Biko’s eyes and face, causing Biko’s eyes to burn. Rather than treat the student, Officer Rivera then called for back-up on his radio, and proceeded to handcuff Biko… [He]was taken to a hospital where he spent approximately two hours being treated for his wounds, and spending most of his time in the hospital handcuffed to a chair… He faces five criminal charges.”
And what happens to young women in these schools--are they places where young women are treated as human beings with value and intelligence, and not as a collection of body parts? Are the schools themselves a place where young women and men are encouraged to debate the oppression of women, and called upon to solve it? No--the schools are places where women are harassed and groped by the armed enforcers of the state themselves. One student reported that “the police like to put their hands on kids without reason.” And 27 percent of students surveyed reported that officers touched or treated them in a way that made them feel uncomfortable. Young women whose underwire bras set off the metal detectors reported they were forced to lift up their shirts, supposedly to prove they weren't carrying any weapons, or to unzip or unbuckle their pants supposedly to prove they weren't concealing cell phones. Young women have been searched by male officers, and the report says, “students and teachers alike complain that male SSAs subject girls to inappropriate behavior, including flirting and sexual attention.” At one high school, cops were heard making remarks about a young woman's body. At another school, a gay student was humiliated every day as male cops would flip coins to see who had to search him.
Teachers Also Targeted:
And what about those teachers who really are trying to make a difference? Who care about the students and despite low pay, cutbacks, deteriorating buildings, and increasingly fascistic rules, and who are really trying to connect with students and give them an education? Who do not like the way schools are being turned into prisons?
The ACLU report exposes how teachers who dare to defend their students are attacked and brutalized, sending a crystal clear message to the youth: "No one is going to defend you. Look what happens to anyone that does." Take one story recounted in the report:
“On March 8, 2005, at least seven NYPD officers arrived at the New School for Arts and Sciences after teachers called 911 to ask for medical assistance for a student who had been involved in a fight.
“Several teachers had successfully stopped the fight and controlled the situation before the police responded, and Cara Wolfson-Kronen, a social studies teacher, informed the 911 operator that the fight had been defused. Despite this, one of the officers demanded that the teachers identify the students who had been involved in the fight and said that they would be handcuffed.
“Quinn Kronen, an English teacher, pointed out that those students were now peacefully sitting in the classroom. Officer Bowen responded by yelling: 'You fucking teachers need to get your shit together. These kids are running crazy. You need to get rid of them.' When Mr. Kronen objected to such language, Sergeant Walter told Mr. Kronen that he had 'better shut the fuck up' or she would arrest him. When Ms. Wolfson-Kronen objected, Sergeant Walter said: 'that is it; cuff the bitch.' Officers arrested Ms. Wolfson-Kronen, paraded her out of school in handcuffs and forced her to stand outside in sub-freezing temperature without a jacket. They also arrested Mr. Kronen.
“The teachers were detained at the 41st Precinct for approximately two hours before being released. The charges against them — disorderly conduct — were dismissed at their initial court hearing, because their alleged wrongdoing did not constitute unlawful activity.
“On March 22, 2005, Mr. Kronen and Ms. Wolfson-Kronen received an anonymous letter signed by 'The Brotherhood.' The letter threatened them with physical harm for 'messing up with our fellow officers' continuing: 'If I were you I’d be planning my getting out of New York fast.'”
In October 2006, Adhim Deveaux, a math teacher at the Urban Assembly Academy of History and Citizenship, ran outside after hearing that one of his students was being assaulted by a cop. After seeing the student being slammed onto a car, Deveaux went up to the cop, hoping he could calm the situation down; he said, “He’s my student, I’m his teacher. He’s just a kid.” In response the cop hit and shoved Deveaux and then another cop grabbed Deveaux from behind, slammed him onto the sidewalk and handcuffed him. Deveaux was taken to the precinct and charged with assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest, and obstructing governmental administration.
This teacher was trying to defuse a situation before it got worse: in any society where the police or other kinds of authorities were really about serving the people, they would welcome this and try to work with and rely on the teacher--and they would listen when the teacher pleaded, "He's just a kid." But these cops arrested the teacher, because enforcing repressive prison-like conditions in the schools is what they are about--not trying to solve problems among the students and teachers.
Criminalization of the Youth:
The NYCLU report details numerous times where students were attacked and/or arrested for petty and ridiculous offenses like swearing, being late for school or refusing to turn over their cell phones. Their web site mentions a case of a 13-year-old girl who was handcuffed and taken into custody in May for drawing on her desk in school, charged with graffiti. These are youth who are doing nothing wrong--and they are being pulled into the criminal system and treated like criminals themselves.
And this kind of criminalization of the youth is not limited to New York City. Bob Herbert, a writer for the New York Times, has written a number of columns about outrageous instances of police brutality against youth, including a 6-year-old Black girl in Florida who was handcuffed and driven to jail because she threw a tantrum in kindergarten, and a 7-year-old Black boy in Baltimore handcuffed for riding a dirt bike on the sidewalk. Herbert points to the racist discrimination involved in such cases. For instance a 14-year-old Black girl in Texas was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2006 for shoving a hall monitor (she was recently released) while a white girl in the same town convicted of arson was sentenced only to probation.
Commenting on how students are “belittled, shouted at, cursed at, instrusively searched and improperly touched by cops,” Bob Herbert points out: “This poisonous police behavior is an extension into the schools of the humiliating treatment cops have long been doling out to youngsters--especially those who are black or Latino--on the city's streets.” ("Poisonous Police Behavior," June 2, 2007)
What kind of message is this sending to the youth? Schools should be places where the youth are encouraged to test and try out limits, where they are encouraged to make mistakes, where the most important thing is making sure their minds are really challenged and unleashed. But not in this society. When a young woman is handcuffed for drawing on a desk, or a 6-year-old is handcuffed for throwing a tantrum, this is a reflection of how this society views youth. And the message to the youth themselves here is unmistakable: This is not your world. Your lives don't matter. The only future this system has for you is a shit job or prison. And when the cops arrest these youth, these illegitimate and bogus arrests are used to "prove" that the youth really are criminals, and to isolate these youth further from the rest of society.
It is not simply that these cops are racist, brute thugs who hate and fear the youth they are charged with controlling--although that is unmistakable after reading things like this report. The outrageous and brutal use of the police in the schools and more generally against the youth reflects the role of the police in enforcing exploitative and oppressive relations in society, including national oppression. These police are not in the schools (or anywhere else) to “serve and protect” the people. They are there to serve and protect the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation that many of these youth face with the highest unemployment and worst housing, education, and health care.
The report states that “during the 2004-2005 school year, 82 percent of children attending high schools with permanent metal detectors were Black and Latino, a minority enrollment rate eleven percentage points higher than in schools citywide. At DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, the largest high school with permanent metal detectors in the city, there are 4,511 students and not one school librarian.”
What kind of system is it, where youth are forced to go to overcrowded, under-funded schools that look more like prisons than places of learning and growth? What kind of system treats the energy, the creativity, the rebelliousness of youth, as something to be snuffed out, rather than cherished and unleashed? What kind of system has enforcers who harass youth for not going to school--and then harass and even arrest them, for petty bullshit, when they do?
Those who peddle the lie about America being the "land of opportunity where any kid can become president,” who prattle on about the "value of education" and “no child left behind”--while saying and doing nothing about the prison-like conditions in schools--have no right to speak about “individual responsibility” and how the youth need to take make “better choices.”
To quote Pink's song "Dear Mr. President": " How can you say/No child is left behind?/We're not dumb, and we're not blind/They're all sitting in your cells/While you pave the road to hell…"
This wasting and squandering of human potential, this dehumanizing of the youth, is unacceptable and intolerable. We could have an entirely different society--a society where there is no need at all for schools with state-sanctioned armed thugs, jacking up and locking down students.
NOAM CHOMSKY
In crude and brutal societies, the Party Line is publicly proclaimed, and it must be obeyed, or else. What you believe is your own business, of lesser concern. In societies where the state has lost the capacity to control by force, the Party Line is not proclaimed. Rather, it is presupposed, and then vigorous debate is encouraged within the limits imposed by unstated doctrinal orthodoxy.
The crude system leads to natural disbelief. The sophisticated variant gives the impression of openness and freedom, and serves to instill the Party Line as beyond question, even beyond thought, like the air we breathe. In the ever more precarious standoff between Washington and Teheran, one Party Line confronts another. Among the well-known immediate victims are the Iranian-American detainees Parnaz Azima, Haleh Esfandiari, Ali Shakeri and Kian Tajbakhsh. But the whole world is held hostage to the US-Iran conflict, where, after all, the stakes are nuclear.
Unsurprisingly, President Bush's announcement of a "surge" in Iraq — in reaction to the call of most Americans for steps toward withdrawal, and the even stronger demands of the (irrelevant) Iraqis — was accompanied by ominous leaks about Iranian-based fighters and Iranian-made IEDS in Iraq aimed at disrupting Washington's mission to gain victory, which is (by definition) noble.
Then followed the predictable debate: The hawks say we have to take violent measures against such outside interference in Iraq. The doves counter that we must make sure the evidence is compelling. The entire debate can proceed without absurdity only on the tacit assumption that we own the world. Therefore interference is limited to those who impede our objectives in a country that we invaded and occupy.
What are the plans of the increasingly desperate clique that narrowly holds political power in the United States? Reports of threatening, off-the-record statements by staffers for Vice-President Cheney have heightened fears of an expanded war. "You do not want to give additional argument to new crazies who say, 'Let's go and bomb Iran,"' Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the BBC last month.
"I wake up every morning and see 100 Iraqis, innocent civilians, are dying."
US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, as against the "new crazies," is supposedly pursuing the diplomatic track with Teheran. But the Party Line holds, unchanged. In April, Rice spoke about what she would say if she encountered her Iranian counterpart Manouchehr Mottaki at the international conference on Iraq at Sharm el Sheikh. "What do we need to do? It's quite obvious," Rice said. "Stop the flow of arms to foreign fighters; stop the flow of foreign fighters across the borders." She is referring, of course, to Iranian fighters and arms. US fighters and arms are not "foreign" in Iraq. Or anywhere. The tacit premise underlying her comment, and virtually all public discussion about Iraq (and beyond) is that we own the world.
Do we not have the right to invade and destroy a foreign country? Of course we do. That's a given. The only question is: Will the surge work? Or some other tactic? Perhaps this catastrophe is costing us too much. And those are the limits of the debates among the presidential candidates, the Congress and the media, with rare exceptions. That's part of the reason the debates are so inconclusive. The basic issues are not discussable.
Doubtless Teheran merits harsh condemnation, certainly for severe domestic repression and the inflammatory rhetoric of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (who has little to do with foreign affairs). It is, however, useful to ask how Washington would act if Iran had invaded and occupied Canada and Mexico, overthrown the governments there, slaughtered scores of thousands of people, deployed major naval forces in the Caribbean and issued credible threats to destroy the United States if it did not immediately terminate its nuclear energy programs (and weapons). Would we watch quietly? After the United States invaded Iraq, "Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy," said Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld.
Surely no sane person wants Iran (or anyone) to develop nuclear weapons. A reasonable solution to the crisis would permit Iran to develop nuclear energy, in accord with its rights under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but not nuclear weapons. Is that outcome feasible? It would be, under one condition: that the United States and Iran were functioning democratic societies, in which public opinion has a significant impact on public policy, overcoming the huge gulf that now exists on many critical issues, including this one.
That reasonable solution has overwhelming support among Iranians and Americans, who agree quite generally on nuclear issues, according to recent polls by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, at the University of Maryland. The Iranian-American consensus extends to complete elimination of nuclear weapons everywhere (82 per cent of Americans), and if that cannot be achieved, a "nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East that would include Islamic countries and Israel (71 per cent of Americans)." To 75 per cent of Americans, it is better to build relations with Iran rather than use threats of force.
These facts suggest a possible way to prevent the current crisis from exploding, perhaps even to World War III, as predicted by British military historian Correlli Barnett. That awesome threat might be averted by pursuing a familiar proposal: democracy promotion — at home, where it is badly needed. Although we cannot carry out the project directly in Iran, we can act to improve the prospects for the courageous reformers and oppositionists who are seeking to achieve just that. They include people like Saeed Hajjarian, Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi and Akbar Ganji, and those who as usual remain nameless, among them labour activists.
We can improve the prospects for democracy promotion in Iran by sharply reversing state policy here so that it reflects popular opinion. That would entail withdrawing the threats that are a gift to the Iranian hardliners and are bitterly condemned for that reason by Iranians truly concerned with democracy promotion. We can act to open some space for those who are seeking to overthrow the reactionary and repressive theocracy from within, instead of undermining their efforts by threats and aggressive militarism.
Democracy promotion, while no panacea, would be a useful step towards helping the United States become a "responsible stakeholder" in the international order (to adopt the term used for adversaries), instead of being an object of fear and dislike throughout much of the world. Apart from being a value in itself, a functioning democracy at home holds promise for a simple recognition that we don't own the world, we share it.
