BBC: Imperial Tool

By Stephen Lendman

10 April, 2008
Countercurrents.org

At a time of growing public disenchantment with the major media, millions now rely on alternate sources. Many online and print ones are credible. One of the world's most relied on is not - the BBC. It's an imperial tool, as corrupted as its dominant counterparts, been around longer than all of them, now in it for profit, and it's vital that people know who BBC represents and what it delivers.

It was close but not quite the world's first broadcaster. Other European nations claim the distinction along with KDKA Pittsburgh as the oldest US one. BBC's web site states: "The British Broadcasting Company Ltd (its original name) was formed in October 1922....and began broadcasting on November 14....By 1925 the BBC could be heard throughout most of the UK. (Its) biggest influence....was its general manager, John Reith (who) envisioned an independent British broadcaster able to educate, inform and entertain the whole nation, free from political interference and commercial pressure."

That's what BBC says. Here's a different view from Media Lens. It's an independent "UK-based media-watch project....offer(ing) authoritative criticism" reflecting "reality" that's free from the corrupting influence of media corporations and the governments they support.

Its creators and editors (Davids Cromwell and Edwards) ask: "Can the BBC tell the truth....when its senior managers are appointed by the government" and will be fired if they step out of line and become too critical. It notes that nothing "fundamentally changed since BBC founder Lord Reith wrote the establishment: 'They know they can trust us not to be really impartial.' " He didn't disappoint, nor have his successors like current Director-General and Chairman of the Executive Board Mark Thompson along with Michael Lyons, Chairman, BBC Trust that replaced the Board of Governors on January 1, 2007 and oversees BBC operations.

On January 1, 1927, BBC was granted a Royal Charter, made a state-owned and funded corporation, still pretends to be quasi-autonomous, and changed its name to its present one - The British Broadcasting Corporation. Its first Charter ran for 10 years, succeeding ones were renewed for equal fixed length periods, BBC is in its ninth Charter period, and is perhaps more dominant, pervasive and corrupted than ever in an age of marketplace everything and space-age technology with which to operate.

It's now the world's largest broadcaster, has about 28,000 UK employees and a vast number of worldwide correspondents and support staff nearly everywhere or close enough to get there for breaking news. It's government-funded from revenues UK residents pay monthly to operate their television receivers - currently around 22 US dollars, and it also has other growing income sources from its worldwide commercial operations supplementing its noncommercial ones at home.

Most important is how BBC functions, who it serves, and Media Lens' editors explain it best and keep at it with regular updates. They argue that the entire mass media, including BBC, function as a "propaganda system for elite interests." It's especially true for topics mattering most - war and peace, "vast corporate criminality," US-UK duplicity, and "threats to the very existence of human life." They're systematically "distorted, suppressed, marginalized or ignored" in a decades-long public trust betrayal by an organization claiming "honesty, integrity (is) what the BBC stands for (and it's) free from political influence and commercial pressure."

In fact, BBC abandoned those notions straight away, and a glaring example came during the 1926 General Strike. Its web site says it stood up against Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill who "urged the government to take over the BBC, but (general manager) Reith persuaded Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin that this would be against the national interest" it was sworn to serve.

Media Lens forthrightly corrects the record. Reith never embraced the public trust. He used BBC for propaganda, operated it as a strikebreaker, secretly wrote anti-union speeches for the Tories, and refused to give air time to worker representatives. It got BBC labeled the "British Falsehood Corporation," and proved from inception it was a reliable business and government partner. It still is, of course, more than ever.

Consider BBC's role during WW II when it became a de facto government agency, and throughout its existence job applicants have been vetted to be sure what side they're on. Noted UK journalist John Pilger explains that independent-minded ones "were refused BBC posts (and still are) because they were not considered safe."

Only "reliable" ones reported on the 1982 Falklands war, for example, that Margaret Thatcher staged to boost her low approval rating and improve her reelection chances. Leaked information later showed BBC executives ordered news coverage focused "primarily (on) government statements of policy" and to avoid impartiality considered "an unnecessary irritation."

This has been BBC practice since inception - steadfastly pro-government and pro-business with UK residents getting no public service back for their automatic monthly billings to turn on their TVs - sort of like force-fed cable TV, whether or not they want it.

Back on BBC's web site, it recounts its history by decades from the 1920s to the new millennium when post-9/11 controversies surfaced. BBC only cites one of them rather pathetically. This critique gives examples of its duplicity across the world.

Misreporting on Iraq - Deception over Truth

The controversy BBC mentioned was the so-called Hutton Inquiry into the death of Ministry of Defense weapons expert Dr. David Kelly. On July 18, 2003, reports were he committed suicide, but they were dubious at best. Here how BBC explained it: "a bitter row with Government" emerged after a "Today programme suggested that the Government 'sexed up' the case for war with Iraq in a dossier of evidence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (BBC governors) backed the report, rejecting (PM) Tony Blair's (demands) for a retraction."

"The row escalated over the following weeks when editorial flaws became evident." Then came Kelly's "suicide." It made daily headlines because he was the source of the BBC report. "The Hutton Inquiry followed, and on January 28, 2004 chairman Gavyn Davies resigned when Lord Hutton's findings were published. The following day the remaining governors accepted the resignation of Director-General Greg Dyke."

True to form, BBC suppressed the truth, so here's what we know. David Kelly, as an insider, accused authorities of faking a claim of Iraq WMDs that could be unleashed in 45 minutes with devastating effects. He then mysteriously turned up dead (three days after appearing before a televised government committee) to assure he'd tell no more tales with potentially smoking-gun evidence for proof. He apparently had plenty.

What BBC and the Blair government suppressed, a Kelly Investigation Group (KIG) examined and revealed. Consider these facts:

-- Kelly's death was pronounced suicide without an autopsy;

-- Lord Hutton was aging and never before chaired a public inquiry, let alone one this sensitive making daily headlines;

-- no formal inquest was ordered and was subsumed into the Hutton Inquiry;

-- evidence showed Kelly's body was moved twice;

-- a supposed knife, bottle of water, glasses, and cap reported by later witnesses weren't seen by the first ones who found Kelly;

-- hemorrhaging from a left wrist arterial wound was ruled the cause of death, but there was little blood to substantiate it; other suspicious findings also suggested a thorough independent investigation was warranted.

In fact, evidence became clear that the real agenda was cover-up. Key witnesses weren't called to testify. An anesthesiologist specialist read two KIG accounts (of known facts) about Kelly's death and concluded that "the whole 'suicide' story (was) phony in the extreme....He was clearly murdered." Another surgeon confirmed that Kelly couldn't have died of hemorrhage as reported. It's impossible to bleed to death from that kind of arterial severing.

Three other doctors also examined evidence, commented, and concluded that Kelly didn't commit suicide. The doctors and KIG then wrote an 11 page letter to the Coroner, cited their concerns in detail, and got no response. In a follow-up phone call, the Coroner said that he saw the police report and felt everything was in order.

In the meantime, the Hutton report came out and was leaked a day early to defuse a possible murder angle. Concurrently, the Coroner refused to reopen the investigation, the Hutton Inquiry was bogus, it never proved suicide and, in fact, was commissioned to suppress Blair government lies, whitewash the whole affair, and end it with considerable BBC help.

In this instance, things didn't play out as BBC planned, thanks to correspondent Andrew Gilligan. On May 29, 2003, he delivered what became known as his "6:07 AM dispatch" and said his source (David Kelly) alleged that the government "sexed up" the September dossier with the 45 minute WMD claim knowing it was false. He was immediately reigned in on subsequent accounts, but the damage was done, and Gilligan upped the stakes in a June 1 Mail on Sunday article.

In it, he quoted Kelly blaming Alastair Campbell (Blair government's 1997 - 2003 Director of Communications and Strategy) for embellishing the dossier to provide cause for war against Iraq. The fat was now in the fire with Kelly through Gilligan accusing the Blair government of lying and BBC having to find an out and get back to business as usual.

It wouldn't be simple with an exposed Campbell diary entry revealing he intended to go after Gilligan and apparently Kelly and do whatever it took to nail them. It all played out for days with Campbell demanding an apology and retraction, BBC wanting it to go away, Kelly's July death, and other Blair allies defending the government with threats about reviewing BBC's Charter until it ended predictably and disgracefully.

BBC cut a deal. Saying they resigned in late January 2004, it fired Gilligan along with Chairman Gavyn Davies and Director-General Greg Dyke. Even they weren't immune to dismissal at a time of an "aberrant" report that later proved true. For BBC, it was back to business as usual under new management supporting two illegal wars showing no signs of ending or BBC reporting truthfully about them.

From the start, it championed Tony Blair's "moral case for war," was a complicit cheerleader for it with the rest of the media, and found no fault with Washington and London's blaming Iraq's regime for what it didn't cause or could do nothing to prevent. Instead, round the clock propaganda ignored the facts and barely hinted at western responsibility for the most appalling crimes of war and against humanity that continue every day.

It's the way BBC reports on everything. Fiction substitutes for fact, news is carefully filtered, wars of aggression are called liberating ones, yet consider what former BBC political editor Andrew Marr wrote in his 2004 book on British journalism: Those in the trade "are employed to be studiously neutral, expressing little emotion and certainly no opinion; millions of people would say that news is the conveying of fact, and nothing more."

Even worse (and most humiliating) was his on-air 2003 post-Iraq invasion comment that he'd like to erase: "I don't think anybody (can dispute) Tony Blair. He said that they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both these points he has been proved conclusively right. (Even) his critics (must) acknowledge that tonight he stands as a larger man and a stronger prime minister as a result."

So much for truth and accuracy and a free and impartial BBC. It continues to call a puppet prime minister legitimate; an occupied country liberated; a pillaged free market paradise "democracy;" with millions dead, displaced and immiserated unreported like it never happened.

Supporting Aggression in Afghanistan

BBC was no better on Afghanistan and considered the war largely over when Kabul fell on November 13, 2001. The bombing continues, but it was yesterday's news, and only Taliban "crimes" matter. Unmentioned was how John Pilger portrayed the country in his newest book "Freedom Next Time." He called it more like a "moonscape" than a functioning nation and likely more abused and long-suffering than any other.

Contrast that description with BBC's reporting that Afghanistan is now free from "fear, uncertainty and chaos" because the US and UK "act(ed) benignly; (their) humanitarian military assault is beneficial (but those) meddlesome (Taliban) are trying (to) undermin(e) our good work." Unreported is what really lay behind the 9/11 attack and the price Afghans and Iraqis keep paying for it.

BBC's Disturbing Balkan Wars Reporting

BBC's shame is endless, and consider how it reported on the 1990s Balkan wars that evoked popular support on the right and left. Slobadon Milosevic was unfairly vilified for the West's destruction of Yugoslavia. Things culminated disgracefully with a 1999 seventy-eight day NATO assault on Serbia. Its pretext was protecting Kosovo's Albanian population, but its real aim was quite different - removing a head of state obstacle to controlling Central Europe, then advancing east to confront a few others.

Milosevic was arrested in April 2001, abducted from his home, shipped off to The Hague, hung out to dry when he got there, then silenced to prevent what he knew from coming out that would explain the conflict's real aim and who the real criminals were.

The war's pretext was a ruse, Kosovo is a Serbian province but in 1999 was stripped away. Ever since, it's been a US-NATO occupied colony, denied its sovereignty, and run by three successive puppet prime ministers with known ties to organized crime and drugs trafficking. It's also home to one of America's largest military bases, Camp Bondsteel, and it's no exaggeration saying the territory is more military base than a functioning political entity.

Then on February 17, 2008, during a special parliamentary session, Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence. It violated international law but got something more important - complicit western backing (outweighing a one-third EU nation block opposition). It also got one-sided BBC support. Its reporting took great care to ignore an illegal act, leave unmentioned that Kosovo is part of Serbia, or explain the UN's (1999) Security Council Resolution 1244. It recognizes the "sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" and only permits Kosovo's self-government as a Serbian province. No longer with plenty of BBC help making it possible.

Targeting Hugo Chavez and Assailing His Democratic Credentials

BBC misreports everywhere at one time or other, depending on breaking world events and the way power elitists view them. Consider Venezuela and how BBC reported on Chavez's most dramatic two days in office and events preceding them. Its April 12, 2002 account disdained the truth and headlined "Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez (was) forced to resign by the country's military. (His) three years in power (ended) after a three-day general strike....in which 11 people died....more than 80 others (were) injured," and BBC suggested Chavez loyalists killed them. It reported "snipers opened fire on a crowd of more than 150,000 (and it) triggered a rebellion by the country's military."

During anti-Chavez demonstrations, "Mr. Chavez appeared on the state-run television denouncing the protest, (then BBC falsely reported corporate TV channels it called independent ones) were taken off the air by order of the government. (High-ranking) military officers rebell(ed) against Mr. Chavez. (He) finally quit after overnight talks with a delegation of generals at the Miraflores presidential palace."

"BBC's Adam Easton, in Caracas at the time, says there are noisy celebrations on the streets, (and former army general) Guaicaipuro Lameda said Mr. Chavez's administration had been condemned because it began arming citizens' committees (and) these armed groups....fired at opposition protesters."

In another report, BBC was jubilant in quoting Venezuela's corporate press. They welcomed Chavez's ouster and called him an "autocrat," "incompetent" and a "coward." They accused him of "order(ing) his sharpshooters to open fire on innocent people (and) betray(ing his) country."

BBC went along without a hint of dissent or a word of the truth, but where was BBC when a popular uprising and military support restored Chavez to office two days later? It quietly announced a "chastened....Chavez return(ed) to office after the collapse of the interim government....and pledged to make necessary changes." In spite of vilifying him in the coup's run-up, cheerleading it when it happened and calling it a resignation, BBC put on a brave face. It had to be painful saying: "The UK welcomed Mr. Chavez's return to power, saying that any change of government should be achieved by democratic means."

It's hard imagining Caracas correspondents Greg Morsbach and James Ingham see it that way. Morsbach called the country a "left-wing haven" on the occasion of 100,000 people taking part in the 2006 World Social Forum in the capital. He said the city is "used to staging big events (opposing) 'neo-liberal' economic policies," then couldn't resist taking aim at Chavez. "Five hundred metres away from the (downtown) Hilton," Morsbach noted, "homeless people scavenge in dustbins for what little food they can find." He then quoted a man named Carlos "who spent the last three years sleeping rough on the streets" and felt Bolivarianism did nothing for him.

It's done plenty for Venezuelans but Morsbach won't report it. Under Chavez, social advances have been remarkable and consider two among many. According to Venezuela's National Statistics Institute (INE), the country's poverty rate (before Chavez) in 1997 was 60.94%. It dropped sharply under Bolarvarianism to a low of 45.38% in 2001, rose to 62.09% after the crippling 2002-03 oil management lockout, and then plummeted to a low of around 27% at year end 2007. In addition, unemployment dropped from 15% in 1997 to INE's reported 6.2% in December 2007.

Morsbach also omitted how Chavez is tackling homelessness. He's reducing it with programs like communal housing, drug treatment and providing modest stipends for the needy. His goal - "for there (not) to be a single child in the streets....not a single beggar in the street." It's working through Mission Negra Hipolita that guides the homeless to shelters and rehab centers. They provide medical and psychological care and pay homeless in them a modest amount in return for community service. No mention either compares Venezuela under Chavez to America under George Bush (and likely Britain under anyone) where no homeless programs exist, the problem is increasing, nothing is being done about it, and the topic is taboo in the media.

Instead in a BBC profile, Chavez is called "increasingly autocratic, revolutionary (and) combative." He's a man who's "alienated and alarmed the country's traditional political elite, as well as several foreign governments," (and he) court(s) controversy (by) making high-profile visits to Cuba and Iraq" and more. He "allegedly flirt(s) with leftist rebels in Colombia and mak(es) a huge territorial claim on Guyana."

The account then implies Chavez is to blame for "relations with Washington reach(ing) a new low (because he) accused (the Bush administration) of fighting terror with terror" post-9/11, and in a September 2006 UN General Assembly speech called the president "the devil."

Chavez's December 2007 constitutional reform referendum was also covered. It was defeated, the profile suggested controversial elements in it, but omitted explaining its objective - to deepen and broaden Venezuelan democracy, more greatly empower the people, provide them more social services, and make government more accountable to its citizens. Instead, BBC highlighted White House spokeswoman Dana Perino saying: Venezuelans "spoke their minds, and they voted against the reforms that Hugo Chavez had recommended and I think that bodes well for the country's future and freedom and liberty."

In another piece, Inghram took aim at the country's "whirlwind of nationalisations, and threats to private companies (are) changing Venezuela's economic climate and threaten to widen a tense social divide." It's part of Chavez's "campaign to turn Venezuela into a socialist state" with suggestive innuendoes about what that implies, omitting its achievements, and reporting nothing about how business in the country is booming or that Chavez's approach is pragmatic.

Instead, Inghram cites his critics saying "his plan is all about power" (and) bring(ing) no benefit to the nation" in lieu of letting business run it as their private fiefdom. It's how they've always done it, Venezuelans were deeply impoverished as a result, and BBC loves taking aim at a leader who wants to change things for the better and is succeeding.

It refers to his "stepp(ing) up his radical revolution since being re-elected in December 2006." Venezuela is "very divided" and its president "far too powerful (and) can rule by decree" - with no explanation of Venezuela's Enabling Law, his limited authority under it, its expiration after 18 months, and that Venezuela's (pre-Bolivarian) 1961 constitution gave comparable powers to four of the country's past presidents.

BBC further assailed Chavez's refusal to review one of RCTV's operating licenses and accused him of limiting free expression. Unreported was the broadcaster's tainted record, its lack of ethics or professional standards, and its lawless behavior. Specifically omitted was its leading role in instigating and supporting the aborted April 2002 coup and its subsequent complicity in the 2002-03 oil-management lockout and multi-billion dollar sabotage against state oil company PDVSA.

Despite it, RCTV got a minor slap on the wrist, lost only its VHF license, and it still operates freely on Venezuelan cable and satellite. Yet, if an American broadcaster was as lawless, it would be banned from operating, and its management (under US law) could be prosecuted for sedition or treason for instigating and aiding a coup d'etat against a sitting president. BBC ignored RCTV's offense, assailed Hugo Chavez unjustifiably, and reported in its usual deferential to power way.

It falsely stated RCTV's license wasn't renewed because "it supported opposition candidates (and said) hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in Caracas....some to celebrate, others to protest." Unexplained was that pro-government supporters way outnumbered opponents, it's the same every time, and they gather spontaneously for every public Chavez address. Also ignored is that opposition demonstrations are usually small and staged-for-media events so BBC and anti-Chavistas in the press can call them huge and a sign Chavez's support is waning. As BBC put it this time: The situation "highlight(s), once again, how deeply divided Venezuela is" under its "controversial" president - who's popular support is so considerable BBC won't report it.

BBC's War Against Mugabe

On April 4, The New York Times correspondent Michael Wines wrote what BBC often reports: "New Signs of Mugabe Crackdown in Zimbabwe." It highlighted "police raids....against the main opposition party, foreign journalists (and) rais(ed) the specter of a broad crackdown (to keep) the country's imperiled leaders in power."

Below is what BBC reported the same day in one of its continuing inflammatory accounts in the wake of Zimbabwe's March 29 presidential and parliamentary elections. It pitted the country's African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) President Robert Mugage against two opponents - the misnamed Movement for Democratic Change's (MDC) Morgan Tsvangirai (a western recruited stooge) and independent candidate Simba Makoni.

In its role as an unabashed Tsvangirai cheerleader, BBC headlined: "Mugabe's ZANU-PF prepares for battle" after its parliamentary defeat - MDC winning 99 seats; ZANU-PF 97 (including an uncontested one); a breakaway MDC faction 10 seats and an independent, one, in Zimbabwe's 210 constituencies with only 206 seats being contested; ZANU didn't contest one seat, and three MDC candidates died in the run-up to the poll.

Results for the 60 (largely ceremonial) Senate seats were announced April 5 with ZANU-PF winning 30 and the combined opposition gaining the same number. In addition, ZANU-PF announced 16 parliamentary seats are being contested and ordered recounts for them that could change the electoral balance. Mugabe is also challenging the presidential tally, asked the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to delay releasing it and wants it retabulated because of what he calls "errors and miscalculations."

MDC officials called the move illegal, BBC seems eager to agree, and then went on the attack the way it always does against independent black republics. It can't tolerate them, but it's especially hostile to Zimbabwe. It's the former Rhodesia that British-born South African businessman, politician and De Beers chief Cecil Rhodes founded shortly after Britain invaded in 1893 and conquered Matabeleland. UK soldiers and volunteers were given 6000 (stolen) acres of land and within a year controlled the area's 10,000 most fertile square miles through a white supremacist land grab. They went further as well, confiscated cattle, and coerced the native Ndebele people into forced labor. Brits also exploited the Shonas, they rebelled, and a year later were crushed at the cost of 8000 African lives.

Decades of exploitation followed, a 1961 constitution was drafted to keep whites in power, Rhodesia declared its independence in 1965, but Britain intervened to protect white privilege. UN sanctions and guerrilla war followed, Southern Rhodesia declared itself a republic in 1970, then became the independent nation of Zimbabwe (the former Southern Rhodesia, then just Rhodesia in 1964) in April 1980 after 1979 elections created independent Zimbabwe Rhodesia.

Robert Mugabe was elected president, won overwhelmingly, remained the country's leader for 28 years, and at age 84 ran again for another term on March 29. He's called outspoken, controversial, and polarizing but for millions in Zimbabwe (and in Africa) he's a hero of his nation's liberation struggle against white supremacist rule.

America, Britain and other colonial powers, however, don't view him that way, and therein lies today's conflict. A racist UK can't tolerate an independent black republic and uses its state-owned BBC to vilify Mugabe and target him for regime change in a pattern all too familiar.

In a close March 29 election, vote-rigging is suspected, results days later weren't announced, and BBC accused ZANU-PF of knowing and concealing them as well as governing dictatorially. With no official totals, it stated "Mugabe....failed to pass the 50% barrier needed to avoid a second-round run-off." It's now been announced, by law must be held within 21 days of March 29 (by or before April 19), but AP reports "diplomats in Harare (the capital) and at the UN said Mugabe (wants) a 90 day delay to give security forces time to clamp down."

BBC expects trouble, appears trying to incite it, and denounces Mugabe loyalists as hard-line, militant and known for their violence. In battle mode, correspondent Grant Ferret from Johannesburg (BBC's banned from Zimbabwe because of its anti-Mugabe reporting) states: "Intimidation is....likely to be part of the second round. Offices used by the opposition were ransacked on Thursday night (April 3) (and) two foreign nationals (were) detained (for) violating the country's media laws." An NGO worker "promoting democracy" was also detained.

Correspondent Ian Pannell joins the assault. He stresses a crumbling economy, out-of-control inflation, people unable to cope and talking everywhere about "a struggle to make ends meet." They "spend hours queuing at the bank or waiting in line at a bakery where lines stretch around the corners. Many shops have as many empty shelves as full ones," Zimbabweans are suffering, and "80% of the workforce" has no regular job. People survive anyway they can, there's "a thriving black market," overseas remittances help, but "fields (are) without crops, shops without goods, petrol stations....low or empty, women at the side of the road begging for food, traders desperate for customers and hard currency."

There's no denying Zimbabwe is under duress, but BBC won't explain why. It never reported that ever since Mugabe's ZANU-PF ended white supremacist rule, he's been vilified for being independent, redistributing white-owned farms, mostly (but not entirely) staying out of the IMF's clutches, and waging a valiant struggle to prevent a return to an exploited past.

Doing it hasn't been easy, however. It's meant getting little or no outside aid, bending the rules, restraining civil liberties, banning hostile journalism like BBC's, but up to now (most often) holding reasonably free and fair elections and winning every time. Despite Zimbabwe's problems, Mugabe's popular support has been strong, especially from the country's war veterans who didn't fight for freedom to hand it back to new colonial masters.

But it looks like that's where Zimbabwe is heading. The March 29 election showed weakness. The opposition made it close and forced a runoff (unless a retabulated count shows otherwise). It controls the parliament (barring a retallied change) and has strong western support that smells blood. Behind the scenes, regime change is planned and this time may succeed. An 84 year old Mugabe's time may be passing - if not now, soon.

Zimbabwe's economy has collapsed, drought problems have been severe, food and fuel shortages are acute, 83% of the population lives on less than $2 a day, half the people are malnourished, more than 10% of children die before age five, and the country's HIV/AIDS rate is the fourth highest in the world. In addition, average life expectancy plunged to 37.3 years, inflation is out of control, conditions are disastrous, and it was mostly engineered by 2002 western-imposed sanctions.

Fifteen EU member states and Australia support them plus America after passage of the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 (ZIDERA). Its effect has been devastating on an already weakened economy. It cut off the country's access to foreign capital and credit, denied its efforts to reschedule debt, froze financial and other assets of ZANU-PF officials and companies linked to them, and effectively brought the economy to its knees.

ZIDERA states that economic and other sanctions will be enforced until the US president certifies that the "rule of law has been restored in Zimbabwe, including respect for ownership and title to property....and an end to lawlessness." Unmentioned is the Act's real purpose - restoring white supremacist rule, exploiting the black majority and doing to Zimbabwe what's happening throughout Africa and in nearly all other developing states.

If Mugabe goes, the IMF can swoop in with a promised $2 billion (renewable) aid package for a new MDC government with the usual strings attached - sweeping structural adjustments, privatizing everything, ending social services, mandating mass layoffs, crushing small local businesses, escalating poverty, and returning the country to its colonial past under new millennium management under a black stooge of a president to make it all look legitimate.

BBC has a role in this, and it's been at it for decades. It's waged a multi-year anti-Mugabe jihad and seems now to be going for broke. For days, broadcasts practically scream regime change. Reports are inflammatory, visibly one-sided, with correspondents saying (MDC's) Tsvangirai won, election results are being withheld, no runoff is necessary, and when it's held Mugabe will use violence to retain power.

On April 5, BBC quoted Tsvangirai accusing Mugabe of "preparing to go to war against the country's people (and) deploying troops and armed militias to intimidate voters ahead of a possible runoff....thousands of army recruits are being recruited, militants are being rehabilitated and some few claiming to be war veterans are already on the warpath."

Tsvangirai wants the courts to force officials to release the results, Zimbabwe's High Court is hearing MDC's petition, but earlier it was claimed "armed police prevented MDC lawyers" from petitioning the Court to get them. BBC quoted one of them saying "police had threatened to shoot them," then quoted Tsvangirai again saying Zimbabwe's central bank was printing money for bribes and government-financed violence and intimidation campaigns.

BBC also suggests that international intervention is needed "to prevent violence if a second round is held (because) violence and intimidation (have) been characteristic of past (Zimbabwe) elections." It quotes another MDC spokesman saying ZANU-PF will "use a runoff to exact revenge....it's a strategy for retribution."

Its correspondent Peter Biles reports "the ruling party remains divided....many (want) a change of leadership, and believe under Mr. Mugabe, Zimbabwe has no future." BBC hammers at this daily in a full-court press to force out Mugabe either willingly or with outside intervention, and now is the time.

A broadcaster is supposed to be neutral, fair and balanced and BBC states "Honesty and integrity (is) what (it) stands for." BBC is dedicated to "educate (and) inform, free from political interference and commercial pressure."

The US-based Society of Professional Journalists states in its Preamble that it's the "duty of the journalist (to seek) truth and provid(e) a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. (They must) strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist's credibility....Seek truth and report it....honestly, fairly, courageously."

In serving power against the public interest for 86 years, BBC fails on all counts.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM - 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8566

posted by Steve Lendman @ 3:39 AM

Monday, April 07, 2008
Destroying Public Education in America

Destroying Public Education in America - by Stephen Lendman

Diogenes called education "the foundation of every state." Education reformer and "father of American education" Horace Mann went even further. He said: "The common school (meaning public ones) is the greatest discovery ever made by man." He called it the "great equalizer" that was "common" to all, and as Massachusetts Secretary of Education founded the first board of education and teacher training college in the state where the first (1635) public school was established. Throughout the country today, privatization schemes target them and threaten to end a 373 year tradition.

It's part of Chicago's Renaissance 2010 Turnaround strategy for 100 new "high-performing" elementary and high schools in the city by that date. Under five year contracts, they'll "be held accountable....to create innovative learning environments" under one of three "governance structures:"

-- charter schools under the 1996 Illinois Charter Schools Law; they're called "public schools of choice, selected by students and parents....to take responsible risks and create new, innovative and more flexible ways of educating children within the public school system;" in 1997, the Illinois General Assembly approved 60 state charter schools; Chicago was authorized 30, the suburbs 15 more, and 15 others downstate. The city bends the rules by operating about 53 charter "campuses" and lots more are planned.

Charter schools aren't magnet ones that require students in some cases to have special skills or pass admissions tests. However, they have specific organizing themes and educational philosophies and may target certain learning problems, development needs, or educational possibilities. In all states, they're legislatively authorized; near-autonomous in their operations; free to choose their students and exclude unwanted ones; and up to now are quasi-public with no religious affiliation. Administration and corporate schemes assure they won't stay that way because that's the sinister plan. More on that below.

George Bush praised these schools last April when he declared April 29 through May 5 National Charter Schools Week. He said they provide more "choice," are a "valuable educational alternative," and he thanked "educational entrepreneurs for supporting" these schools around the country.

Here's what the president praised. Lisa Delpit is executive director of the Center for Urban Education & Innovation. In her capacity, she studies charter school performance and cited evidence from a 2005 Department of Education report. Her conclusion: "charter schools....are less likely than public schools to meet state education goals." Case study examples in five states showed they underperform, and are "less likely than traditional public (ones) to employ teachers meeting state certification standards."

Other underperformance evidence came from an unexpected source - an October 1994 Money magazine report on 70 public and private schools. It concluded that "students who attend the best public schools outperform most private school students, that the best public schools offer a more challenging curriculum than most private schools, and that the private school advantage in test scores is due to their selective admission policies."

Clearly a failing grade on what's spreading across the country en route to total privatization and the triumph of the market over educating the nation's youths.

In 1991, Minnesota passed the first charter school law. California followed in 1992, and it's been off to the races since. By 1995 19 states had them, and in 2007 there were over 4000 charter schools in 40 states and the District of Columbia with more than one million students in them and growing.

Chicago's two other "governance structures" are:

-- contract (privatized) schools run by "independent nonprofit organizations;" they operate under a Performance Agreement between the "organization" and the Board of Education; and

-- performance schools under Chicago Public Schools (CPS) management "with freedom and flexibility on many district initiatives and policies;" unmentioned is the Democrat mayor's close ties to the Bush administration and their preference for marketplace education; the idea isn't new, but it accelerated rapidly in recent years.

Another part of the scheme is in play as well, in Chicago and throughout the country. Inner city schools are being closed, remaining ones are neglected and decrepit, classroom sizes are increasing, and children and parents are being sacrificed on the alter of marketplace triumphalism.

Consider recent events under Mayor Richard Daley in Chicago. On February 27, the city's Board of Education unanimously and without discussion voted to close, relocate or otherwise target 19 public schools, fire teachers, and leave students out in the cold. Thousands of parents protested, were ignored and denied access to the Board of Ed meeting where the decision came down pro forma and quick. And it wasn't the first time. For years under the current mayor, Chicago has closed or privatized more schools than anywhere else in the country, and the trend is accelerating. Since July 2001, the city closed 59 elementary and secondary schools and replaced many of them with charter or contract ones.

Nationwide Education "Reform"

Throughout the country, various type schemes follow the administration's "education reform" blueprint. It began with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) that became law on January 8, 2002. It succeeded the 1994 Goals 2000: Educate America Act that set eight outcomes-based goals for the year 2000 but failed on all counts to meet them. Goals 2000, in turn, goes back to the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and specifically its Title I provisions for funding schools and districts with a high percentage of low-income family students.

NCLB is outrageous. It's long on testing, school choice, and market-based "reforms" but short on real achievement. It's built around rote learning, standardized tests, requiring teachers to "teach to the test," assessing results by Average Yearly Progress (AYP) scores, and punishing failure harshly - firing teachers and principals, closing schools and transforming them from public to charter or for-profit ones.

Critics denounce the plan as "an endless regimen of test-preparation drills" for poor children. Others call it underfunded and a thinly veiled scheme to privatize education and transfer its costs and responsibilities from the federal government to individuals and impoverished school districts. Mostly, it reflects current era thinking that anything government does business does better, so let it. And Democrats are as complicit as Republicans.

So far, NCLB renewal bills remain stalled in both Houses, election year politics have intervened, and final resolution may be for the 111th Congress to decide. For critics, that's positive because the law failed to deliver as promised. Its sponsors claimed it would close the achievement gap between inner city and rural schools and more affluent suburban ones. It's real aim, however, is to commodify education, end government responsibility for it, and make it another business profit center.

Last October, the New York Times cited Los Angeles as a vision of the future. It said "more than 1000 of California's 9500 schools are branded chronic failures, and the numbers are growing." Under NCLB, "state officials predict that all 6063" poor district schools will fail and will have to be "restructured" by 2014, when the law requires universal proficiency in math and reading." It's happening throughout the country, and The Times cited examples in New York, Florida and Maryland. Schools get five years to deliver or be declared irredeemable, in which case they must "restructure" with new teachers and principals.

In Los Angeles and around the country, "the promised land of universal high achievement seems more distant than ever," and one parent expressed her frustration. Weeks into the new school year, she said teachers focus solely on what's likely to appear on exams. "Maybe the system is not designed for people like us," she complained. Indeed it's not.

New Millennium Education

That's the theme of Time magazine's December 9, 2006 article on the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE). It's on NCEE's New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce. Time called it "a high-powered, bipartisan assembly of Education Secretaries, business leaders and a former Governor" and the pre-K to 12 education blueprint they released. It's called "Tough Choices or Tough Times," was funded by the (Bill) Gates Foundation, and below is its corporate wish list:

-- moving beyond charter schools to privatized contract ones; charter schools are just stalking horses for what business really wants - privatizing all public schools for their huge profit potential;

-- ending high school for many poor and minority students after the 10th grade - for those who score poorly on standardized tests intended for high school seniors; those who do well can finish high school and go on to college; others who barely pass can go to community colleges or technical schools after high school;

-- ending remediation and special education aid for low-performance students to cut costs;

-- ending teacher pensions and reducing their health and other benefits;

-- ending seniority and introducing merit pay and other teacher differentials based on student performance and questionable standards;

-- eliminating school board powers, all regulations, and empowering private companies;

-- effectively destroying teacher unions; and

-- ending public education and creating a nationwide profit center with every incentive to cut costs and cheat students for bottom line gains; this follows an earlier decades-long corporate - public higher education trend that one educator calls a "subtle yet significant change toward (university) privatization, meaning that private entities are gradually replacing taxpayers as the dominant funding source as state appropriations account for a lower and lower percentage of schools' operating resources;" corporations now want elementary and secondary education control for the huge new market they represent.

The Skills Commission's earlier 1990s work advanced the scheme and laid the groundwork for NCLB. It came out of its "America's Choice: High Skills or Low Wages" report on non-college-bound students. It called them "ill-equipped to meet employer's current needs and ill-prepared for the rapidly approaching, high-technology, service-oriented future." It recommended ending an "outmoded model" and adopting a standards-based learning and testing approach to enforce student - teacher accountability.

Both Commission reports reflect a corporate wish list to commodify education, benefit the well-off, and consign underprivileged kids to low-wage, no benefit service jobs. It's a continuing trend to shift higher-paying ones abroad, downsize the nation, and end the American dream for millions. So why educate them.

School Vouchers

They didn't make it into NCLB, but they're very much on the table with a sinister added twist. First some background.

It's an old idea dating back to the hard right's favorite economist and man the UK Financial Times called "the last of the great (ones)" when he died in November 2006. Milton Friedman promoted school choice in 1955, then kick-started it in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan. He opposed public education, supported school vouchers for privately-run ones, and believed marketplace competition improves performance even though voucher amounts are inadequate and mostly go to religious schools in violation of the First Amendment discussed below.

Here's how the Friedman Foundation for Education Choice currently describes the voucher scheme: it's the way to let "every parent send their child to the school of their choice regardless of where they live or income." In fact, it's a thinly veiled plot to end public education and use lesser government funding amounts for well-off parents who can make up the difference and send their children to private-for-profit schools. Others are on their own under various programs with "additional restrictions" the Foundation lists without explanation:

-- Universal Voucher Programs for all children;

-- Means-Tested Voucher Programs for families below a defined income level;

-- Failing Schools, Failing Students Voucher Programs for poor students or "failed" schools;

-- Special Needs Voucher Programs for children with special educational needs;

-- Pre-kindergarten Voucher Programs; and

-- Town Tuitioning Programs for communities without operating public schools for some students' grade levels.

What else is behind school choice and vouchers? Privatization mostly, but it's also thinly-veiled aid for parochial schools, mainly Christian fundamentalist ones, and the frightening ideology they embrace - racial hatred, male gender dominance, white Christian supremacy, militarism, free market everything, and ending public education and replacing it with private Christian fundamentalist schools.

In March 1971, the Supreme Court ruled in Lemon v. Kurtzman against parochial funding in what became known as the "Lemon Test." In a unanimous 7 - 0 decision, the Court decided that government assistance for religious schools was unconstitutional because it violates the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. It prohibits the federal government from declaring and financially supporting a national religion, and the First Amendment states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;...."

That changed in June 2002 when the Court ruled 5 - 4 in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris that Cleveland's religious school funding didn't violate the Establishment Clause. The decision used convoluted reasoning that the city's program was for secular, not religious purposes in spite of some glaring facts. In 1999 and 2000, 82% of funding went to religious schools, and 96% of students benefitting were enrolled in them.

The Court harmed democracy and the Constitution's letter and spirit. It also contradicted Thomas Jefferson's 1802 affirmation that there should be "a wall of separation between church and state." No longer for the nation's schools.

Nationwide Efforts to Privatize Education

In recent years, privatization efforts have expanded beyond urban inner cities and are surfacing everywhere with large amounts of corporate funding and government support backing them. One effort among many is frightening. It's called "Strong American Schools - ED in '08" and states the following: it's "a nonpartisan public awareness campaign aimed at elevating education to (the nation's top priority)." It says "America's students are losing out," and the "campaign seeks to unite all Americans around the crucial mission of improving our public schools (by using an election year to elevate) the discussion to a national stage."

Billionaires Bill Gates and Eli Broad put up $60 million for the effort for the big returns they expect. Former Colorado governor and (from 2001 - 2006) superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District Roy Romer is the chairman. The Rockefeller (family) Philanthropy Advisors are also involved as one of their efforts "to bring the entire world under their sway" in the words of one analyst. Other steering committee members include former IBM CEO and current Carlyle Group chairman Lou Gerstner; former Michigan governor and current National Association of Manufacturers president John Engler; and Gates Foundation head Allan Golston.

"Ed in '08" has a three-point agenda:

-- ending seniority and substituting merit pay for teachers based on student test scores;

-- national education standards based on rote learning; standards are to be uniformly based on "what (business thinks) ought to be taught, grade by grade;" it's to prepare some students for college and the majority for workplace low-skill, low-paid, no-benefit jobs; and

-- longer school days and school year; unmentioned but key is eliminating unions or making them weak and ineffective.

In addition, the plan involves putting big money behind transforming public and charter schools to private-for-profit ones. It's spreading everywhere, and consider California's "Program Improvement" initiative. Under it, "All schools and local educational agencies (LEAs) (must make) Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP)" under NCLB provisions nearly impossible to achieve. Those that fail must divert public money from classrooms to private-for-profit remediating programs. It's part of a continuing effort to defund inner city schools and place them in private hands, then on to the suburbs with other "innovative" schemes to transform them as well.

Under the governor's proposed 2008 $4.8 billion education budget cut, transformation got easier. As of mid-March, 20,000 California teachers got layoff notices with State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell saying this action puts student performance "in grave jeopardy." Likely by design.

Plundering New Orleans

Nowhere is planned makeover greater than in post-Katrina New Orleans, and last June 28 the Supreme Court made it easier. Its ruling in Meredith v. Jefferson County (KY) and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District effectively gutted the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that affirmed: segregated public schools deny "Negro children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment."

In two troubling 5 - 4 decisions, the Roberts Court changed the law. They said public schools can't seek to achieve or maintain integration through measures taking explicit account of a student's race. They rewrote history, so cities henceforth may have separate and unequal education. Then it's on to George Wallace-style racism with policies like: "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" with the High Court believing what was good for 1960s Alabama is now right for the country.

The Court also made it easy for New Orleans to become a corporate predator's dream, and it didn't take long to exploit it. Consider public schools alone. The storm destroyed over half their buildings and scattered tens of thousands of students and teachers across the country. Within days of the calamity, Governor Kathleen Blanco held a special legislative session. Subject - taking over New Orleans Public Schools (NOPS) that serve about 63,000 mostly low-income almost entirely African-American children. Here's what followed:

-- two weeks after the hurricane, US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings cited charter schools as "uniquely equipped" to serve Katrina-displaced students;

-- two weeks later, she announced the first of two $20 million grants to the state, solely for these schools;

-- then in October 2005, the governor issued an executive order waiving key portions of the state's charter school law allowing public schools to be converted to charter ones with no debate, input or even knowledge of parents and teachers;

-- a month later in November, the state legislature voted to take over 107 (84%) of the city's 128 public schools and place them under the state-controlled "Recovery School District (RSD);" and

-- in February 2006, all unionized city school employees were fired, then selectively rehired at less pay and fewer or no benefits; it affected 7500 teachers as well as custodians, cafeteria workers and others.

Within six months of Katrina, the city was largely ethnically cleansed, the public schools infrastructure mostly gutted, and a new framework was in place. It put NOPS into three categories - public, charter and the Recovery School District with the latter ones run by the state as charter or for-profit schools.

New Orleans Loyola University law professor Bill Quigley described the plunder and called it "a massive (new) experiment....on thousands of (mostly) African American children...." It's in two halves.

The first half based on Recovery School District's estimated 30,000 returning students in January 2007:

-- "Half of (these children were) enrolled (in) charter schools." They got "tens of millions of dollars" in federal money, but aren't "open to every child....Some charter schools have special selective academic criteria (and can) exclude children in need of special academic help." Others "have special administrative policies (that) effectively screen out many children." This latter category has "accredited teachers in manageable size classes (in schools with) enrollment caps....These schools also educate far fewer students with academic or emotional disabilities (and) are in better facilities than the other half of the children...."

"The other half:"

These students were "assigned to a one-year-old experiment in public education run by the State of Louisiana called the 'Recovery School District (RSD)' program." Their education "will be compared" to what first half children get in charter schools. "These children are effectively....called the 'control group' of an experiment - those against whom the others will be evaluated."

RSD "other half" schools got no federal funds. Its leadership is inexperienced. It's critically understaffed. Many of its teachers are uncertified. There aren't enough of them, and schools assigned students hadn't been built for their scheduled fall 2007 opening. In addition, some schools reported a "prison atmosphere," and in others, children spent long hours in gymnasiums because teachers hadn't arrived. In addition, there was little academic counseling; college-preparatory math; or science and languages; and class sizes are too large because returning students are assigned to too few of them.

Many RSD schools also have no "working kitchens or water fountains (and their) bathroom facilities are scandalous....Hardly any white children attend this half of the school experiment." RSD schools are for poor black students getting short-changed and denied a real education by an uncaring state and nation and corporations in it for profit.

Quigley described a system for "Haves (and) Have-Nots," and race defines it. He also exposed the lie that charter schools are public ones. Across the country, but especially in New Orleans, school officials are unaccountable, can pick and choose their students, and can decide who gets educated and who doesn't.

Separate and Unequal

In his 2005 book "The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America," Jonathan Kozol explains a problem getting worse, not better. Using data from state and local education agencies, interviews with researchers and policy makers, and the Harvard Civil Rights Project, his account is disturbing at a time of NCLB and other destructive initiatives.

Harvard Civil Rights researchers captured the problem in their Brown v. Board of Education 50th anniversary assessment stating: "At the beginning of the twenty-first century, American public schools are now 12 years into the process of continuous resegregation." Desegregation from the 1950s through the late 1980s "has receded to levels not seen in three decades." The percent of black students in majority-white schools stands at "a level lower than in any year since 1968" with conditions worst of all in the nation's four most segregated states - New York, Michigan, Illinois and California. "Martin Luther King's dream is being celebrated in theory and dishonored in practice" by what's happening in inner-city schools. King would be appalled "that the country would renege on its promises," and the Supreme Court would authorize it in their two above cited decisions and an earlier 1991 one:

-- Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell that ruled for resegregating neighborhood schools mostly in areas of the South where desegregation was most advanced.

According to recent National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data, blacks and Latinos now comprise about 95% of inner-city students in the nation's 100 largest school systems - accounting for more than one-third of all public school students. Kozol writes about "hypersegregation" with "no more than five or 10 white children (in) a student population of as many as 3000," and this is the "norm, not the exception, in most northern urban areas today." It's "fashionable," he says, to declare integration "failed" and settle for a new millennium version of "Plessey" and its "separate but equal" doctrine that "Brown" repudiated until now.

Despite high-minded political posturing and programs like NCLB, the truth is these youngsters are forgotten and abused. They're warehoused in decrepit facilities, curricula offerings ignore their needs, testing is unrelated to learning, teachers don't teach, the whole scheme is swept under the rug, and "educating" the unwanted is "standardized" to produce good workers with pretty low skill levels for the kinds of jobs awaiting them. Kozol refers to "school reform" as a "business enterprise with goals, action plans, implementation targets, and productivity measures," and above all what marketplace potential there is.

Separate and unequal is the current inner city school standard. Unless it's exposed, denounced and reversed, (and there's no sign of it), millions of poor and minority children will be denied what the "American dream" increasingly only offers the privileged. And no one in Washington cares or they'd be doing something about it.

Disturbing New Dropout Data

A new Editorial Projects in Education (EPE) Research Center report released April 1 is revealing, disturbing but not surprising. It states only 52% of public high school students in the nation's 50 largest cities completed the full curriculum and graduated in 2003 - 2004. This compares to the national average of 70%. Below are some of the findings:

-- 1.2 million public high school students drop out each year;

-- 17 of the 50 troubled cities have graduation rates of 50% or lower; in Detroit it's 24.9%; Indianapolis is 30.5%; Cleveland at 34.1%; Baltimore - 34.6%; Columbus - 40.9%; Minneapolis - 43.7%; Dallas - 44.4%; New York - 45.2%; Los Angeles - 45.3%; Oakland - 45.6%; Kansas City - 45.7%; Atlanta - 46%; Milwaukee - 46.1%; Denver - 46.3%; Oklahoma City - 47.5%; Miami - 49%; and Philadelphia - 49.6%;

-- Chicago barely came in at 51.5%;

-- the data show public education in the 50 largest cities' principal school districts in a virtual state of collapse;

-- dropout rates for blacks and Latinos are significantly higher than for white students;

-- dropouts are eight times more likely to end up in prison; family income is the main problem; in cities most affected, it goes hand in hand with a lack of good jobs and a sub-standard social infrastructure;

-- key to understanding the overall problem nationwide is the gutting of social services, widening income gap between rich and poor, exporting manufacturing and other high-paying jobs abroad, and politicians and business exploiting the needs of the many to benefit the few;

-- NCLB "reform" is called the solution; Democrats and Republicans are complicit in promoting it, and no one in government explains the truth - the report reveals a sinister scheme to end public education, say it causes poor student performance, and privatize it so the "market" can provide it to well-off communities and merely exploit the rest for profit.

Why else would the (Bill) Gates Foundation have funded the study and Colin Powell's America's Promise Alliance have sponsored it. APA is partnered with business, faith-based (Christian fundamentalist) groups, wealthy funders, and organizations like the American Bankers Association, right wing Aspen Institute, Business Roundtable, Ford Motor, Fannie Mae, Marriott International, National Association of Manufacturers, US Chamber of Commerce and many other for-profit ones and NGOs.

Educational Maintenance Organizations

It's a new term for an old idea that's much like their failed HMO counterparts. They're private-for-profit businesses that contract with local school districts or individual charter schools to "improve the quality of education without significantly raising current spending levels." They're still rare, but watch out for them and what they're up to.

An example is the Edison Project running Edison (for-profit) Schools. It calls itself "the nation's leading public school partner, working with schools and districts to raise student achievement and help every child reach his or her full potential." In the 2006-2007 school year, Edison served over 285,000 "public school" students in 19 states, the District of Columbia and the UK through "management partnerships with districts and charter schools; summer, after-school, and Supplemental Educational Service programs; and achievement management solutions for school systems."

Edison Schools, and its controversial charter schools and EMO projects, hope to cash in on privatizing education and is bankrolled by Microsoft's co-founder Paul Allen to do it. The company was founded in 1992, its performance record is spotty, and too often deceptive. It cooks the books on its assessments results that unsurprisingly show far more than they achieve. That's clear when independent evaluations are made.

Kalamazoo's Western Michigan University's Evaluation Center published one of them in December 2000. Miami-Dade County public schools did another in the late 1990s. Both studies agreed. They showed Edison School students didn't outperform their public school counterparts, and they were kind in their assessment.

Even more disturbing was Edison's performance in Texas. It took over two Sherman, Texas schools in 1995, then claimed it raised student performance by 5%. But an independent American Institutes for Research (AIR) study couldn't confirm it because Edison threatened legal action if its results were revealed. It was later learned that AIR's findings weren't exactly glowing and were thus suppressed. However, Sherman schools knew them, and when Edison's contract came up for renewal, the company withdrew before being embarrassed by expulsion.

The city's school superintendent had this assessment. He said Edison arrived with promises to educate students at the same cost as public schools and would improve performance. In the end, the city spent an extra $4 million, and students test scores were lower than in other schools. The superintendent added: "They were more about money than teaching," and that's the problem with privatized education in all its forms - charter, contract or EMOs that place profits over students.

Unless public action stops it, Edison is the future and so is New Orleans in its worst of all forms. It's spreading fast, and without public knowledge or discussion. It's the privatization of all public spaces and belief that marketplace everything works best. Indeed for business, but not people who always lose out to profits.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM to 1PM for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests.

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Asia must rally behind China

By Chan Akya

The coming Beijing Summer Olympic Games promise to be the most political event since the first time non-Greeks participated in the ancient form of the sports enclave. This is no exaggeration, as the Games will mark the first big step by China in the international arena as a power in its own right, while also providing many Westerners with their first glimpse of the ancient civilization.

Looking at the tone of the Western media towards the Games though, it is clear that cudgels are being taken up and tools are being sharpened for a propaganda battle aimed at denting the political and cultural mileage that would rightfully accrue to China from such a spectacle.

Tibet is the latest cause celebre, if it hadn't come along perhaps with the active encouragement of the US Central Intelligence Agency - to the acute embarrassment of India, which houses the exiled Dalai Lama in good faith - then global media would have been more than happy to pick up another cause, ranging from Taiwan to any ragtag Falungong practitioner that could be found wandering the streets of California. Perhaps even Hollywood moguls like Steven Spielberg would have been given their anti-China scripts to write and produce, much in the fashion of Dogs of War.

The constant stream of attacks on China in the Western media has confused many Asians, and this is understandable, given that the roots of the current propaganda battle have more to do with geo-economics than mere geopolitics. For people like me who consider the one a continuation of the other, the distinction is lost anyway. The key question here is to understand why the Group of Seven (G7) of leading economic powers is acting against China, and what are the consequences for the rest of the region.

Understanding G7 fears
Regular readers of this column will know that I consider the G7 somewhat contemptuously, as my past article on the subject (Dear dinosaurs, Asia Times Online, October 20, 2007) makes amply clear. The annual conclave - finance officials of member countries huddle in Washington this week - is nothing but an excuse for a bunch of tomorrow's redundant powers to confab and gather enough memorabilia with which to entertain themselves in their dotage.

The background to this bout of anxiety regarding China in the Western world's media, not least in its financial media, is of course the existential crisis that confronts the major economic powers of today - the US, which is staring at the demise of its currency as the global reserve denomination (Dead-dollar sketch, Asia Times Online, March 4, 2008) and the various pockets of Europe that need to come to terms with their own mortality more urgently than any other group of people (see Euro-trash, Asia Times Online, March 11, 2008).

While these two articles were perhaps too brief to examine the full range of issues confronting these economic zones in question, the main points about a dysfunctional financial system that needs constant care and capital from the collective savings kitty was pointed to. In turn, lacking the demographic strength required to engineer enough financing for these activities, both the US and Europe now feel an acute need to continue gathering capital from the rest of the world and in particular, the great savers of Asia.

China is hardly the sole target of the G7 nostalgia brigade. In my previous article (A conspiracy against gold, Asia Times Online, April 3, 2008), I laid out the steps being taken by global central banks against the potential for gold to replace fiat currencies at the center of the global financial system. Being only able to buy or sell the precious metals at prices set by markets, central banks have no power to actually manipulate the underlying value of gold.

Alternatives to the dollar
Thus, if they choose to sell the commodity and drive its price down, it is highly likely that bouts of inflation currently being seen in the global economic system will eventually force every right-thinking investor to consider alternatives to the US dollar and the euro. This is perhaps the biggest fear confronting central bankers across G7, thereby necessitating unprecedented steps aimed at restoring the credibility of various fiat currencies by first inflating asset values such as stock prices.

The biggest losers in this policy debate are of course Asian countries, whose collective savings are falling in value with every move in the US dollar and its fiat currency cohorts, thanks to the mountains of savings that are held in those currencies. Asian central bankers being a bunch of decidedly unimaginative folks, in effect work for the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank (ECB). But even they are not stupid enough to imagine that Asian savers will be fooled forever, therefore the idea is to buy as much time as possible.

This state of an unsettled equilibrium can go on long enough for the US Fed and the ECB to demolish purchasing power and effect a bankruptcy of Asian savings though stealth.

What can Asian countries do?
I have long argued that Asians buying US dollar and euro-denominated assets for their reserves is the same idea as imperialism, wherein workers accept IOUs on the companies they work for, in place of hard cash. With a bulk of their future purchasing power tied in enterprises that must succeed for them to get paid, workers over time forsake good working conditions and other necessities to ensure that the indentures are paid.

In other words, Asia provides the debt financing required for the global equity markets to function, which in turn account for a substantial portion of the savings of many rich countries including the US and Britain. Pull the debt financing away and all equity values converge to zero - but equity investors are clearly betting that Asians will never get the smarts to do that.

Given this continued demolition of their purchasing power and eventual penury for many Asian countries, despite their high savings of today, it becomes important for the region to rally around China. This can be done in many ways, but a few baby steps will go a long way in reminding G7 where the world's true economic power lies today.

1. Firstly, every one of Asia's top leaders must pledge to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, and must do so in public immediately. This will serve adequately as snubs to various European leaders (such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy) who have threatened to boycott the ceremony.
2. Secondly, the region's central banks should collaborate to dump billions of US Treasuries, federal agency securities, European government bonds and mortgage-related securities over the next few weeks. This will push yields up sharply across G7 and serve notice of a buyer's strike.
3. Thirdly, Asian countries must demand that G7 countries honor their own empty rhetoric with respect to free markets by allowing untrammeled access to Asian companies intending to buy G7 banks and corporates. No more talk of evil sovereign wealth funds, thank you - you owe us money, so we will take whatever steps required getting it back.
4. Lastly, the region's currencies should adopt a soft peg to the Chinese yuan, allowing the pace of appreciation against the US dollar for the whole region to be dictated by the country with the largest potential losses in such a situation, namely China.

How China can help?
To be sure, there are many prickly issues between China and its Asian neighbors that the former can help to iron out over the short term, in turn pushing key democracies such as Japan, South Korea and India into its own orbit and away from the US influence that so pervades the region. A few helpful steps would include:

1. Renounce violence against Taiwan. Realistically, no Asian country will allow Taiwan to become independent, and without that there is no chance of any such eventuality. Therefore, China need not bother about the military option that it would never have to use.
2. Dropping the strident rhetoric against personalities such as the Dalai Lama, as Mao Zedong-era language is an embarrassment for today's China and only emboldens its opponents.
3. Withdraw support from embarrassing tin-pot dictatorships such as North Korea, Myanmar and Sudan.
4. Provide leadership on matters shown above, engaging its Asian neighbors as fellow industrialists rather than competitors. This includes leading the region on adjusting currency values as well as providing cooperation on other economic matters.

In February, the G7 urged China to accelerate appreciation of its effective exchange rate, while the major economies also want it to further open up trade, cut investment barriers and increase disclosure on sovereign wealth funds. The US may also like China to buy a lot more Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac (US agencies) securities that would in turn support the housing sector.

The most recent G7 meeting in October was a comedy, but this time the rhetoric isn't going to be funny for Asia as leaders gather to push for more aggressive action that would save their economies while bankrupting Asian purchasing power. This cannot be allowed to happen. Therefore, Asian leaders must see through the current smokescreens around China to understand that they are themselves the primary targets of all such actions. It is time to flex some Asian muscle.

(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Asia must rally behind China

By Chan Akya

The coming Beijing Summer Olympic Games promise to be the most political event since the first time non-Greeks participated in the ancient form of the sports enclave. This is no exaggeration, as the Games will mark the first big step by China in the international arena as a power in its own right, while also providing many Westerners with their first glimpse of the ancient civilization.

Looking at the tone of the Western media towards the Games though, it is clear that cudgels are being taken up and tools are being sharpened for a propaganda battle aimed at denting the political and cultural mileage that would rightfully accrue to China from such a spectacle.

Tibet is the latest cause celebre, if it hadn't come along perhaps with the active encouragement of the US Central Intelligence Agency - to the acute embarrassment of India, which houses the exiled Dalai Lama in good faith - then global media would have been more than happy to pick up another cause, ranging from Taiwan to any ragtag Falungong practitioner that could be found wandering the streets of California. Perhaps even Hollywood moguls like Steven Spielberg would have been given their anti-China scripts to write and produce, much in the fashion of Dogs of War.

The constant stream of attacks on China in the Western media has confused many Asians, and this is understandable, given that the roots of the current propaganda battle have more to do with geo-economics than mere geopolitics. For people like me who consider the one a continuation of the other, the distinction is lost anyway. The key question here is to understand why the Group of Seven (G7) of leading economic powers is acting against China, and what are the consequences for the rest of the region.

Understanding G7 fears
Regular readers of this column will know that I consider the G7 somewhat contemptuously, as my past article on the subject (Dear dinosaurs, Asia Times Online, October 20, 2007) makes amply clear. The annual conclave - finance officials of member countries huddle in Washington this week - is nothing but an excuse for a bunch of tomorrow's redundant powers to confab and gather enough memorabilia with which to entertain themselves in their dotage.

The background to this bout of anxiety regarding China in the Western world's media, not least in its financial media, is of course the existential crisis that confronts the major economic powers of today - the US, which is staring at the demise of its currency as the global reserve denomination (Dead-dollar sketch, Asia Times Online, March 4, 2008) and the various pockets of Europe that need to come to terms with their own mortality more urgently than any other group of people (see Euro-trash, Asia Times Online, March 11, 2008).

While these two articles were perhaps too brief to examine the full range of issues confronting these economic zones in question, the main points about a dysfunctional financial system that needs constant care and capital from the collective savings kitty was pointed to. In turn, lacking the demographic strength required to engineer enough financing for these activities, both the US and Europe now feel an acute need to continue gathering capital from the rest of the world and in particular, the great savers of Asia.

China is hardly the sole target of the G7 nostalgia brigade. In my previous article (A conspiracy against gold, Asia Times Online, April 3, 2008), I laid out the steps being taken by global central banks against the potential for gold to replace fiat currencies at the center of the global financial system. Being only able to buy or sell the precious metals at prices set by markets, central banks have no power to actually manipulate the underlying value of gold.

Alternatives to the dollar
Thus, if they choose to sell the commodity and drive its price down, it is highly likely that bouts of inflation currently being seen in the global economic system will eventually force every right-thinking investor to consider alternatives to the US dollar and the euro. This is perhaps the biggest fear confronting central bankers across G7, thereby necessitating unprecedented steps aimed at restoring the credibility of various fiat currencies by first inflating asset values such as stock prices.

The biggest losers in this policy debate are of course Asian countries, whose collective savings are falling in value with every move in the US dollar and its fiat currency cohorts, thanks to the mountains of savings that are held in those currencies. Asian central bankers being a bunch of decidedly unimaginative folks, in effect work for the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank (ECB). But even they are not stupid enough to imagine that Asian savers will be fooled forever, therefore the idea is to buy as much time as possible.

This state of an unsettled equilibrium can go on long enough for the US Fed and the ECB to demolish purchasing power and effect a bankruptcy of Asian savings though stealth.

What can Asian countries do?
I have long argued that Asians buying US dollar and euro-denominated assets for their reserves is the same idea as imperialism, wherein workers accept IOUs on the companies they work for, in place of hard cash. With a bulk of their future purchasing power tied in enterprises that must succeed for them to get paid, workers over time forsake good working conditions and other necessities to ensure that the indentures are paid.

In other words, Asia provides the debt financing required for the global equity markets to function, which in turn account for a substantial portion of the savings of many rich countries including the US and Britain. Pull the debt financing away and all equity values converge to zero - but equity investors are clearly betting that Asians will never get the smarts to do that.

Given this continued demolition of their purchasing power and eventual penury for many Asian countries, despite their high savings of today, it becomes important for the region to rally around China. This can be done in many ways, but a few baby steps will go a long way in reminding G7 where the world's true economic power lies today.

1. Firstly, every one of Asia's top leaders must pledge to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, and must do so in public immediately. This will serve adequately as snubs to various European leaders (such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy) who have threatened to boycott the ceremony.
2. Secondly, the region's central banks should collaborate to dump billions of US Treasuries, federal agency securities, European government bonds and mortgage-related securities over the next few weeks. This will push yields up sharply across G7 and serve notice of a buyer's strike.
3. Thirdly, Asian countries must demand that G7 countries honor their own empty rhetoric with respect to free markets by allowing untrammeled access to Asian companies intending to buy G7 banks and corporates. No more talk of evil sovereign wealth funds, thank you - you owe us money, so we will take whatever steps required getting it back.
4. Lastly, the region's currencies should adopt a soft peg to the Chinese yuan, allowing the pace of appreciation against the US dollar for the whole region to be dictated by the country with the largest potential losses in such a situation, namely China.

How China can help?
To be sure, there are many prickly issues between China and its Asian neighbors that the former can help to iron out over the short term, in turn pushing key democracies such as Japan, South Korea and India into its own orbit and away from the US influence that so pervades the region. A few helpful steps would include:

1. Renounce violence against Taiwan. Realistically, no Asian country will allow Taiwan to become independent, and without that there is no chance of any such eventuality. Therefore, China need not bother about the military option that it would never have to use.
2. Dropping the strident rhetoric against personalities such as the Dalai Lama, as Mao Zedong-era language is an embarrassment for today's China and only emboldens its opponents.
3. Withdraw support from embarrassing tin-pot dictatorships such as North Korea, Myanmar and Sudan.
4. Provide leadership on matters shown above, engaging its Asian neighbors as fellow industrialists rather than competitors. This includes leading the region on adjusting currency values as well as providing cooperation on other economic matters.

In February, the G7 urged China to accelerate appreciation of its effective exchange rate, while the major economies also want it to further open up trade, cut investment barriers and increase disclosure on sovereign wealth funds. The US may also like China to buy a lot more Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac (US agencies) securities that would in turn support the housing sector.

The most recent G7 meeting in October was a comedy, but this time the rhetoric isn't going to be funny for Asia as leaders gather to push for more aggressive action that would save their economies while bankrupting Asian purchasing power. This cannot be allowed to happen. Therefore, Asian leaders must see through the current smokescreens around China to understand that they are themselves the primary targets of all such actions. It is time to flex some Asian muscle.

(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Zinn on Patriotism

Obama in American history
Howard Zinn
Interview by Kaveh L Afrasiabi

American historian, political scientist, social critic, activist and playwright Howard Zinn is best known as author of the bestseller A People's History of the United States, a cartoon version of which is due out this month. He is currently Professor Emeritus in the Political Science Department at Boston University.

Kaveh Afrasiabi: Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama is running on a platform for change and, yet, he does not seem decisive on important domestic or foreign policy issues. Do you agree?

Howard Zinn: I agree his proposals do not meet the need. On the war, where we need an immediate withdrawal of troops he asks only a partial withdrawal and seems to want to keep the private contractors there. Furthermore, his peace position on Iraq, if you can call it that, is countered by a "war position" on Afghanistan (he says, bring troops out of Iraq, send troops to Afghanistan!) and also on Iran ("keep our options open", which means military force must be an option). He has talked about not just opposing the Iraq war but the "mindset" that led us into the war.

He clearly has not changed his own mindset about the use of military force. His domestic agenda likewise does not go far enough, despite his rhetoric his "universal health care" plan is not universal. It still depends on individuals taking out insurance, working with insurance companies, instead of the government guaranteeing everyone free health care (the single-payer system, which other countries use successfully at half the cost of our inadequate system, and which both Obama and [Hillary] Clinton studiously avoid).

KA: What is your reaction to the criticism that Obama lacks the necessary experience to occupy the Oval Office?

HZ: The experience argument is ridiculous. No one has the experience of being president until he or she is president. Other experience - being a senator, being governor, are not compatible. We have had "experienced" presidents who have been disastrous ([Ronald] Reagan was a governor, [George H W] Bush senior had loads of experience in various posts) - the important thing is intelligence and values. Obama has the intelligence. Experience is not his problem. His problem is a rather superficial approach to both foreign and domestic policy.

KA: Obama's critics have attacked him for not being patriotic enough, but doesn't his premise of "change we can believe" also entail a new, more enlightened sense of American patriotism?

HZ: The patriotism argument is nonsensical, just a cheap way of drawing on the American culture of "patriotism" which is an inadequate approach to policy. Patriotism is defined in the traditional culture as obedience to government, which is an anti-democratic concept, indeed, totalitarian. It is also defined as favoring militarism and war, which is against the interests of the people, and patriotism should mean defending the interests of the people, not the government, not the wealthy elite. Obama should meet the charge head on and insist on his definition of patriotism commensurate with the 21st century realities rather than the archaic, conventional one.
KA: Should the left in America support Obama?

HZ: Obama will be better than the alternative, so we must support him at the polling booth. But before and after election day he should be subject to sharp, bold criticism to move him forward.

KA: Do you have any recommendations for the Obama camp?

HZ: Stop talking about Hillary, talk about [President George W] Bush and [John] McCain, and their continuation of the war and business as usual. Talk about changing this country from a war-making country to a peaceful one, talk about the need to discipline greedy corporate America, about true health security with a single-payer system, about learning from the policies of the New Deal - government-created jobs, etc, but going beyond that.

All of this will be welcomed by the electorate, who have declared their opposition to the war and will welcome the idea of immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Obama should talk about how American security comes through strength in our relations with the rest of the world, how he can heal the enormous wounds inflicted by Bush, by building bridges to other people when in comparison the Republican nominee perpetuates the discourse of fear and insecurity.

Saving The American Left: The Case For A New Progressive Creed

By Bernard Chazelle

04 April, 2008
Countercurrents.org


The American left is in the throes of an existential crisis. Some say it's a failure of nerve, others a loss of belief. It is the latter. Neoliberalism has sucked the oxygen out of the left by deflating the political sphere to the economic one. The left must articulate a new creed around three principles: empowerment (the economic is ancillary to the political); social justice (the disadvantaged have an unconditional claim upon the collectivity); and decency (the state may not humiliate anyone). To make its case, the left must redefine that most exalted form of self-interest, patriotism, as pride in a society that grants all of its members the means to belong.


First, the mythology:

Democrats burst with Big Ideas. Unfortunately, ballots and Big Ideas don't mix and the timing is never quite right. But you watch. Once the Congress is theirs, once the White House curtains have been picked, the Dems will get crackin' on 'em Big Ideas—or on the reelection campaign, whichever comes first.

Big Ideas being what they are, big, squeezing them into words can be a challenge. Luckily, with academia's brightest bulbs lighting up the pup tent, liberals can articulate better than anyone why it is they can't articulate anything. So they'll pen earnest treatises on the need to call taxes “membership fees” and trial lawyers “public protection attorneys.” Like it or not, this has proven quite effective, and Howard Dean, for one, likes to credit Lakoff's framing theories for his victorious run for the White House.

Who cares if the Clintonistas and their merry band of DLC hangers-on spoiled the broth with their third-way brand of workfare centrism and smiley-face imperialism? Across the blogosphere, a nascent grassroots movement is afoot, blowing the winds of change against the Repub-lite sellout show. It's coming. This time, it's really coming!

Like all myths, these wishful fantasies contain a grain of truth: Democrats are diffident, tactical, and quick to concede the terms of the debate. The netroots channel genuine passion about liberal causes and the blogs are buzzing. There is palpable excitement out there on the left. A pity there is no there there. America has lefties but no left.

The verdict is brutal. By virtually any measure, the United States is the least progressive nation in the developed world.(1) It trails most of Western Europe in poverty rates, life expectancy, health care, child care, infant mortality, maternity leaves, paid vacations, public infrastructure, incarceration rates, and environmental laws. The wealth gap in the US has not been so wide since 1929. The Wal-Mart founders' family owns as much as the bottom 120 million Americans combined.(2) Contrary to received opinion, there is now less social mobility in the US than in Canada, France, Germany, and most Scandinavian countries.(3,4) The European Union attracts more foreign students than the US, including twice as many from China. Its consensus-driven polity, studies indicate, has replaced the American version as the societal model to which the developing world aspires.(5)

And yet could America be a right-wing nation of closet lefties? A Zogby poll reveals overwhelming support for rehabilitation over incarceration for young offenders. In an NES survey, those who want “government to provide many more services even if it means an increase in spending” outnumber backers of spending cuts by 2 to 1. A Pew study cites the same ratio of people who consider corporate profits excessive. It also finds that a majority of Americans believe “government should help the needy even if it means greater debt.” (6)

Democratic leaders, bless their souls, believe no such nonsense. They'll warn you incessantly that any public policy leaning a nano-angstrom to the left is a suicide pact. They'll brush off any talk of raising the top marginal tax rate of 35% to anything approaching the 70% of the Nixon years.(7) Yes, the progressive Bill Clinton expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit and signed the Family and Medical Leave Act. He also increased extreme poverty despite high economic growth.(8) He extended the death penalty to non-homicides and oversaw the largest increase in incarceration rates in the 20th century (double what it was under Reagan).(9,10) He exacerbated inequalities, gave up on Kyoto, and, by his own Labor secretary's account, presided over “one of the most pro-business administrations in American history.” (2,11) His signature social policy, welfare reform, dismantled one of the pillars of the New Deal: the federal cash assistance program for 9 million poor children (AFDC).(12)

By contrast, the conservative Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency, extended the Clean Air Act, introduced the Supplemental Security Income program (to assist the elderly and the disabled), launched the Minority Business Development Agency, signed the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and implemented the first federally-mandated affirmative action program.(13) Nixon was a “Southern strategist” and a right-wing crook: he was also to the left of Bill Clinton.

The senior Democratic senator from New York, the “ultra-liberal” Chuck Schumer, recently killed efforts to raise the tax rate of hedge fund managers to that of his cleaning lady: a nice government handout to overpaid bankers that is worth, annually, half of the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.(14,15) “I am not a populist,” said Schumer.(16) (Maybe just an opportunist.) During the 2008 presidential campaign, the New York Times gently mocked John Edwards's unauthorized concern for the poor as “raw populism.” (17) That word again. The other P-word, poverty, has acquired in the liberal mind the cosmic permanence of gravity. Much like in the Middle Ages, short of killing the poor, the thinking goes, one cannot kill poverty—even in the richest nation on earth. This capitulation to imaginary laws of economics marks the ascendancy of neoliberalism as the dominant dogma of the ruling class. This is a worldwide phenomenon but its origins are uniquely American. One may wonder: if it's worked against the interests of so many, how then did it happen?

Neoliberal Triumph

The success of neoliberalism is owed, like much else in American history, to race and inflation. The civil rights movement's heroic victories triggered a white backlash that, stirred up by the stagflation of the 70s, designated welfare as its whipping boy. While the left fell apart under the strain of its own failures and the pressure of the New Right, the Dems' axis of opportunism closed ranks with dyed-in-the-wool backlashers to excise the term “underclass” from the political discourse and replace it with the racial codeword “responsibility.” The collective benefit of pulling people out of poverty (more on this later) gave way to the moral hazard of unearned assistance to the poor. By this brilliant maneuver, the state was off the hook.

Thus shorn of social purpose, the sole objective of the economy was now to create the conditions for a bigger economy. This self-referential absurdity worked out well for some. At their prodding, politicians on both sides of the aisle wrapped the neolib agenda in cotton candy (“I feel your pain”) and sold it to the public as an inclusive doctrine (“rising tides lift all boats”). While the media peddled ad nauseum the seductive narrative that unfettered growth will cure all ills, the public intellectuals played their customary herding role as guardians of the norm. Lobby-driven campaign financing did the rest. Neoliberalism became the new dogma, the pensée unique.

The dogma tolerates social conflicts insofar as they remain orthogonal to the economic fault lines. Multiculturalism and identity politics are tolerable but class concerns are ruled out of order. Affirmative action and Roe v. Wade are fine but prenatal care and maternity leaves are “fiscally imprudent.” While globalized trade has benefited many countries, the ultra-rigid neoliberal policies pushed by the United States and the international institutions it controls have had nasty consequences: per-capita income for nearly half of the world's countries was lower in 2000 than it was a decade earlier.(18) Yet even a reasoned critique of the current economic order is seldom allowed into the dominant discourse. It's not censorship; it's gatekeeping. And it works. The withering scorn heaped upon a fine “European” centrist like Kucinich is indicative of the intolerance for any deviation from the orthodoxy.

Marxism died for all the right reasons, but regrettably so did with it the only systematic attempt in the history of political philosophy to put the underdog at the heart of the reflection. Sensing a vulnerability, opponents pounced with glee and festooned any leftish idea with the blood and tears of every Gulag victim. Soon sedated by the illusory success and soothing materialism of the Clinton years, progressives lost the means and the will to fight back.

The Great Sellout came at a price: electoral disaster. Yet, while busy mastering the fine art of the concession speech, Democrats swatted away all attempts at rebuilding a movement. To this day, their triangulating appetite for compromise remains voracious and they rarely flinch from flinching. Unless, that is, the cause is sensible but symbolic, like protesting the display of the Ten Commandments in a court of justice. Progressives need not prioritize because their moral world is flat. Why obsess over war and poverty when, instead, you can ventilate about courthouse furniture? Their creed, such as it is, is a recitation of platitudes: feel-good drivel about vibrant communities, boundless opportunities, growing prosperity, and other such controversial matters. They engage in vigorous policy debates but none of them is germane to the creed—would you expect a discussion of the Clear Skies bill to be informed by a belief in breathing?

Just as science should be falsifiable, ideologies should be disbelievable. A creed that can be rejected only by the enemies of motherhood and apple pie is useless because it denies one the means to make tough choices. But can such a thing ever be useful, let alone necessary?

Yes and yes. A creed serves two functions: to feed the soul and to guide hard decisions. Neoliberalism takes care of the decisions and the little that's left is fast food for the soul. To see why, consider the Revolutionary motto, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” A good measure of a left-wing belief system is how tightly it keeps the three threads together. Take away the last one and your creed is soulless; remove the first two and it is toothless. Fraternity (for lack of a less sexist term) arbitrates between liberty and equality: it speaks to the why and the how; they speak to the what. Neoliberalism gutted the motto and left progressives with the monumental task of turning ethics into policy without the normative mediation of a conceptual framework.

True, as a drive for free markets, globalization, deregulation, privatization, elimination of economic distortions, deunionization, and market-driven policymaking, neoliberalism is no more a theory of social justice than greed is a theory of property rights. It did not supplant the progressive creed so much as let it shrivel into a mere quest for decency—a noble pursuit to be sure, but one that is doomed without a set of principles to guide it. It's not enough to have your heart in the right place: your brain, and especially your will, must be there, too.

For what does it mean to seek a decent society if we won't say what we're willing to trade off for it? Let's take an example. Why should long prison sentences for violent offenders be shortened if, hypothetically, they could be shown to reduce crime? Excessive imprisonment and snatching old ladies' purses are both violations of common decency. Does one trump the other? Sentiment alone cannot answer that: only a higher set of beliefs can. Note that hard choices are nothing new. We tolerate obscene numbers of wife beatings and drunk-driving deaths just to make it legal to wash down our osso buco with Chianti. The Prohibition era made a different choice. Today's liberals assure us that such tradeoffs are passé. Surely one can eliminate poverty and maximize economic growth. The evidence suggests one cannot. A good society requires tough choices. The cost of denial is a chronically reactive stance toward social ills: a preference for remediation over prevention, incarceration over job training, charity over antipoverty programs, etc.

Fukuyama got it all wrong. It's not the End of History we're witnessing. It's the End of the Political: the denial of human agency in the regulation of economic forces. Thomas L. Friedman calls it the Golden Straitjacket. He explains its benefits: “Once your country puts it on, its political choices get reduced to Pepsi or Coke.” (19) And if you try root beer, Somalia is next. Neoliberalism is just another word for nothing left to decide. The fall of the Berlin Wall buried Marxism but historical determinism lives on in Washington.

TINA, Thatcher shouted from the rooftops—There Is No Alternative. Let's test this claim. America is richer than Europe; yet, to quote Jared Diamond, “Western Europe's standard of living is higher by any reasonable criterion [...]” (20) France is slightly more productive than the United States and its Human Development Index is higher; yet its GDP per head is 25% smaller.(21—23) Why? Because Americans choose to work longer hours. This was not always so: in 1970, the French worked 10% more than Americans; now they work 28% less.(24) Apparently, There Is An Alternative. Free markets have rules and constraints, but so does piano composition, and the range from Chopin to Monk is hardly suggestive of a straitjacket. Western Europe is living proof that mixed-economy welfare states can be prosperous. The point here is not which system is better: it is that both are possible. It's all a matter of choice. TINA is a sham.

A Progressive Creed


The perspective from the left is one of justice, not charity. Note how the direction is reversed. Charity is centrifugal: it proceeds from us toward the outer fringes of society. Justice is centripetal: it starts at the periphery and pulls back toward us. Society must care for the disadvantaged not because they are the Other but precisely because they are not. Charity is virtuous but ethically dodgy because of a double asymmetry: giving out of pity (or even compassion) humiliates the recipient, who cannot reciprocate, while enhancing the giver's self-esteem.(25) Donating old clothes to the Salvation Army proceeds on the assumption that a garment no longer good enough for me surely is good enough for somebody else. This is both right and repugnant. Welfare can be degrading, too. But, as Avishai Margalit has argued, entitled assistance is structurally less humiliating than benevolence.(25) In the spirit of his “decent society,” no state institution may cause loss of self-respect. In that regard, one must single out the American penal system, with its exposed face in Abu Ghraib, as the most egregious violator of that obligation in this country—no serious progressive agenda can omit prison reform.

The right to freedom from destitution may not be made contingent on good conduct. In other words, social citizenship must be unconditional. The disgrace of Clinton's welfare reform was to make it discretionary. As Tony Judt noted, it “return[ed] us to the spirit of England's New Poor Law of 1834,” by which assistance had to be earned.(2) Responsibility is a civic virtue that society should promote (Wall Street being a good place to start) but never require, especially of its most vulnerable members.

The creed hinders the autonomy of economic forces by placing their regulation in the hands of the polity: liberty trumps efficacy. Surely this is the sort of “luxury” that rich societies can afford—fixating on economic growth is easier to justify in poor countries where the stakes are malaria vaccines rather than plasma screen TVs. Poverty in America has many causes: insufficient national wealth is not one of them.

I summarize below the main features of a progressive creed.(26) It must articulate a purpose (what world to wish for) and a perspective (how to look at the world):

The purpose is a society that, first, preserve equal liberties; second, attends preferentially to the needs of the disadvantaged. All citizens are granted an unconditional claim upon the collectivity to be accorded the minimum resources necessary for a life of dignity and a genuine sense of belonging. Freedom from humiliation is never to be made contingent on any norm of conduct (such as law abidance). Equality of opportunity is sought as the fairest means of redistributing access to fundamental liberties.


The perspective affirms faith in the power of human agency to mediate between liberty and social justice. It posits the primacy of the political and the necessity of a wide public sphere. It favors public investments in shared goods (eg, health, education, infrastructure, and the environment). It asserts the regulatory function of the state and its role as ultimate guarantor of social provision. It regards economic growth as a means to an end and labor as an end in itself, not merely input into production. It views the concept of economic class as an indispensable measure of social stratification in policymaking. It is tolerant of economic distortions to the extent that they serve social justice or promote citizenship.


A philosophical digression. The creed's preferential clause can apply either directly (eg, welfare) or indirectly (eg, public schools, medical research), and the conditions of the disadvantaged may be economic (poverty), social (discrimination), functional (handicaps), etc. In an echo of Rawls's “difference principle,” the clause posits that, second only to preserving equal liberties, society must mitigate the misfortunes of its least well-off members. A just society favors the disadvantaged because that would be our most likely preference, regardless of ideology, were we to join that society with no prior knowledge of our social status. In other words, behind a “veil of ignorance,” we would choose an allocation of resources that would make the worst possible outcome for us the least disadvantageous. Targeting the worst outcome and not, say, the best (as in playing the lottery) serves an obvious egalitarian purpose. Up to a point. The preferential clause is not inconsistent with the view that rising tides lift all boats. In fact, it may accommodate arbitrarily large inequalities as long as the poor do not get poorer. This may have the adverse effect of undermining social cohesion while increasing overall wealth. In that regard, equality of opportunity serves as a necessary corrective—though social harmony is not its primary justification: fair access to liberties is.

A different take on the preferential clause holds that prioritizing according to need delivers the biggest bang for the public buck: one dollar spent on feeding a poor child has higher utility than one dollar spent on polishing the deck of a yacht. Progressive taxation can be similarly justified by the lower marginal costs of wealth acquisition for the rich. This utilitarian interpretation strips the clause of its preferentiality component and makes its application vastly more restrictive than a deontological approach does. Of course, one can do away with Kant, Mill, and Rawls altogether, and simply declare the creed fine because it feels fine. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, I intend to flesh out that very intuition below. End of philosophical digression.

A debate has been raging lately regarding the merits of the common good as the basis for a new liberal creed.(27) Not only is the notion central to any serious progressive perspective, but its rhetorical power is undeniable. It must be handled with care, however. First, left to its own devices, the common good is merely a regulative concept, like zoning, and not a goal in itself. Once bound to particulars, it can mean public infrastructure—a priority that should be high on any progressive agenda—but also wiretapping, torture, and the draft. Which war hasn't been fought for the “common good”? Second, there is nothing distinctively progressive about it: from Hoover to Reagan to GWB, it has long been a conservative mantra.

Third, the common good's attendant doctrine of civic republicanism often carries a heroic undertone of shared sacrifice and self-abnegation that is both a little quaint and a little weird. Progressives cannot claim that a 3-trillion dollar war in Iraq is no sacrifice but a war on poverty would be—hint: $3,000,000,000,000 would go a long way toward rebuilding our inner cities. Sadly for hero worshippers, none of the objectives of a progressive creed requires heroism (tough choices, yes; sacrifice, no). One should also be careful not to allow the kindness of strangers to substitute for the obligations of the state. The thousands of volunteers who filled in for “Heckuva job Brownie” proved that American society is both generous and broken.

Fourth, there is the putative liberal sin that common-good evangelists seek to redress: the rise of interest-group politics. Granted, single-issue advocacy has long demonstrated a suspicious fondness for circular firing squads: what did those anti-frankenfood crusaders on stilts think they were doing at antiwar demos in 2003? Again, that unfailing inability to prioritize. It is, however, more than a little churlish to put the blame on minority politics when it is the other kind of “minorities,” ie, the insurers, trial lawyers, doctors, and gun owners, whose lobbies keep a stranglehold on Congress. The grievances of victimized groups have no need for legitimation on common-good grounds. It is not incumbent upon a rape victim to explain why assisting her is of benefit to society. Social justice is, de jure, universal but, de facto, minoritarian. It favors the invisible. The failure of the left is not that it countenanced interest-group pluralism: it's that it left it up to each group to explain why redressing their grievances serves the common good, when it was the left's own responsibility to do so. The argumentation rests on a rewriting of a conservative canon, patriotic citizenship. This may explain the left's reluctance to make the case. So, while you watch me rush in where angels fear to tread, please keep an open mind.



Did You Say Patriotic?


What's missing from the progressive agenda is not the chameleon-like notion of the common good so much as the pursuit of collective mastery and the promotion of a shared sense of belonging. Abundance is the promised land of neoliberalism and shopping its highest purpose. To be a citizen is to be a consumer: “Consumo ergo sum.” Such cartoonish ontological moorings induce in many the despair of the void. America's vindictive penal system indeed suggests a nation riven by fear. For this, in my view, we have less bin Laden to blame than TINA and the materialistic vacuity that goes along with it. The first order of business is to allow the polity to regain control of its environment—moral, social, and physical. The progressive creed is, first and foremost, a quest for citizenship.

No citizenship, no social justice. It's hard enough to help the poor: go try and do it with a straitjacket on. But empowerment alone is not enough. I may well understand that my path to freedom lies through Town Hall and not Wal-Mart. But what's that got to do with justice? Perhaps that's why common-gooders ask us to clone ourselves into mini-Mother Teresas. Without prejudging the case about the goodness of our hearts, the weakness of a sainthood-based creed is simply too obvious to ignore. If everyone were a saint, we would not need a creed in the first place. The trick, therefore, is to create a society of saints none of whose members is one. That's where patriotism kicks in.

First, some clarification. “My country, right or wrong,” said Carl Schurz, echoing Decatur. After that fateful utterance, the word patriot was destined to join the select company of pedophile and macaca in the stink bomb arsenal of language. So it is with my nose firmly held that I vocally question the patriotism of those who care more about winning Fallujah than losing New Orleans. The most humiliating national shaming in recent American history, Katrina, registers barely a blip in a presidential campaign: a portrait of the patriot as an ostrich? Americans can love their country or they can turn a blind eye to poverty and segregation: they cannot do both. Patriotic citizenship is the commitment to a society that grants all of its members the means to belong. It is an affirmation of solidarity. Its motivation is the virtuous, idealized pride in an honorable society. It is also a sublimated form of self-interest: violent crime and poverty are, indeed, correlated. Most of all, it is the awareness that shame taints pride and that, despite their tenuous relation, (b) trumps or demeans (a):

(a) The US is the world's richest nation; (b) the US outranks only Mexico in child poverty among OECD countries.(28)


(a) America's GDP per capita is 11 times higher than Sri Lanka's; (b) life expectancy for African-American men is 3 years shorter than for males in Sri Lanka.(29,30)


(a) African-Americans have been the force behind this country's most influential musical genres; (b) one third of all black men will go to prison at some point in their lives.(31)


(a) The US scoops up more Nobel prizes in medicine than any nation on earth; (b) 18,000 Americans will die this year for lack of health insurance.(32)


“To make us love our country,” Burke said, “our country ought to be lovely.” The alternative is to avert one's eyes from the unlovely. It can be done. Progressive policies are never the default option. Patriotic citizenship rests on the mobilizing power of shame. But does shame mobilize? Patriotism is a wonderful fertilizer of delusion. And delusion works. Reagan speechified his way into the White House with chants of: “We're the Greatest Nation on God's Green Earth!” Am I suggesting “We Suck!” as a progressive alternative? Not quite. Americans should glow with pride at the mention of Citizen Kane, the Village Vanguard, and the Grand Canyon. But so should they at the thought that their society is fundamentally decent. Which it is fundamentally not.

I will leave the matter of a progressive foreign policy for another day, for I believe it requires a different treatment that cannot be inferred from the creed discussed above. But here is a point of direct relevance. The most consequential misreading of the fall of the Berlin Wall was that America had become the world's sole superpower. The irony is that it's precisely when it ceased to be one. Suddenly freed from the need for US protection, our allies realized they could ignore Washington's orders with impunity, and they did just that in 2003. In that sense, Bush did not kill US hegemony: he only supplied the death certificate. As the reality of a multipolar world sinks in, America has a golden opportunity to shed its exceptionalism and become a normal, decent society. Oddly for a technological wonderland, some of its beliefs hark back to Dickens and Kipling: the emulation factor of the wealth gap; the cleansing power of force; the euphoric arrogance of its mission civilisatrice (less euphoric after Iraq); the fixation on absolute sovereignty. These are all 19th-century values. The winds of geopolitical change will work to America's advantage if they help steer its foreign policy into the path to modernity.

Economic insecurity, a weak public sector, lack of social protection, fear of immigrants—where did we see that before? In Europe in the first half of the last century. Neoliberals like to forget that the continent was as globalized on the eve of World War I as it is today. Which is odd, because their credo that trading nations don't fight one another was proven entirely correct—plus or minus a few dozen million deaths. No, I am not suggesting that America's anxieties forebode an authoritarian future. The failure of a progressive alternative is more likely to produce a society that is increasingly unequal, unjust, hollow, and paranoid.

Some will invoke the recession as an excuse to do nothing. They have it exactly backwards. Economic distress has a way of rousing people from their political torpor—what else got the New Deal going? Fine, but Washington is too divided to get anything done. Just the opposite. Nothing gets done because politicians are too united—in taking orders from their corporate paymasters. The status quo is so beneficial to lobbies that campaign funds are roughly proportional to the number of times a candidate promises to look but not touch.

Assuming a progressive project gets underway, what challenges lie ahead? We know where to find the problems—racism, poverty, health, child care, public schools, the penal system, infrastructure, the environment, campaign financing, etc. We know where to find the expertise—the world's best social scientists live in our midst. We know where to find the resources—highest GDP and all that. We know where to find the words for the prose of our policies and the poetry of our vision. In the public mind, however, the right is about winning and the left about not losing. A bit of a downer perhaps. The pessimism of the intellect, Gramsci said, must be balanced by the optimism of the will. The hard part of a progressive project will be to summon the moral courage to prioritize the task at hand and fuel the effort with an unshakable belief in the justness of the cause. For that, we need a creed.


[1] I will be using the words liberal and progressive interchangeably to refer to the dominant group of people who attach these labels to themselves. I will blur the distinction between these words not because it is unimportant but because it is not relevant to this essay.


[2] The Wrecking Ball of Innovation by Tony Judt, The New York Review of Books 54 (19), December 6, 2007.


[3] Economic Mobility: Is the American Dream Alive and Well? by Isabel Sawhill and John E. Morton, Economic Mobility Project, The Pew Charitable Trusts, 2007.


[4] Do Poor Children Become Poor Adults? Lessons from a Cross Country Comparison of Generational Earnings Mobility by Miles Corak, Institute for the Study of Labor, March 2006.


[5] Waving Goodbye to Hegemony by Parag Khanna, The New York Times Magazine, January 27, 2008.


[6] Will the Progressive Majority Emerge? by Rick Perlstein, The Nation, July 9, 2007.


[7] US Individual Income Tax , IRS.


[8] How Much Credit Does Clinton Deserve for the Economy? by J. Bradford DeLong.


[9] Punishment: A Comparative Historical Perspective by Terance D. Miethe and Hong Lu, Cambridge University Press, page 103, 2004.


[10] Too Little Too Late: President Clinton's Prison Legacy by Lisa Feldman, Vincent Schiraldi, and Jason Ziedenberg, The Justice Policy Institute, Washington DC, 2001.


[11] Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life by Robert B. Reich, Knopf, 2007

.
[12] The Fallout of Welfare Reform , Columbia University Record, 22 (3), September 20, 1996.


[13] Nixon, the Lefty by Mark Braund, The Guardian, July 6, 2006.


[14] Democrats Split Over Bill Affecting Backers by Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, November 7, 2007.


[15] WIC Program , USDA, 2008.


[16] In Opposing Tax Plan, Schumer Breaks With Party by Raymond Hernandez and Stephen Labaton, The New York Times, July 30, 2007.


[17] Primary Choices: Hillary Clinton , Editorial, The New York Times, January 25, 2008.


[18] Development Geography , Wikipedia.


[19] The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization by Thomas L. Friedman, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1999.


[20] What's Your Consumption Factor? by Jared Diamond, The New York Times, January 2, 2008.


[21] OECD Compendium of Productivity Indicators 2006 , page 32.


[22] List of Countries by Human Development Index , Wikipedia.


[23] The World Factbook , CIA, 2008.


[24] No Work and No Play by James Surowiecki, The New Yorker, November 28, 2005.


[25] The Decent Society by Avishai Margalit, Harvard University Press, 1998.


[26] I will omit mention of fundamental liberties that are widely shared among political philosophies (eg, freedom of conscience, speech, association, movement) and which I consider self-evident.


[27] Party in Search of a Notion by Michael Tomasky, The American Prospect, April 18, 2006.


[28] Child Poverty in Rich Countries, 2005 , UNICEF, Report Card No.6, 2005.


[29] The World Factbook , CIA, 2008.


[30] The Third World Health Status of Black American Males by Sandra L. Gadson, June 1, 2006.


[31] The Sentencing Project , 2008.


[32] Unstoppable Obama by Barbara Ehrenreich, The Huffington Post, February 14, 2008.

Empire Or Humanity?

 

By Howard Zinn

02 April, 2008
TomDispatch.com

With an occupying army waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan, with military bases and corporate bullying in every part of the world, there is hardly a question any more of the existence of an American Empire. Indeed, the once fervent denials have turned into a boastful, unashamed embrace of the idea.

However, the very idea that the United States was an empire did not occur to me until after I finished my work as a bombardier with the Eighth Air Force in the Second World War, and came home. Even as I began to have second thoughts about the purity of the "Good War," even after being horrified by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even after rethinking my own bombing of towns in Europe, I still did not put all that together in the context of an American "Empire."

I was conscious, like everyone, of the British Empire and the other imperial powers of Europe, but the United States was not seen in the same way. When, after the war, I went to college under the G.I. Bill of Rights and took courses in U.S. history, I usually found a chapter in the history texts called "The Age of Imperialism." It invariably referred to the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the conquest of the Philippines that followed. It seemed that American imperialism lasted only a relatively few years. There was no overarching view of U.S. expansion that might lead to the idea of a more far-ranging empire -- or period of "imperialism."

I recall the classroom map (labeled "Western Expansion") which presented the march across the continent as a natural, almost biological phenomenon. That huge acquisition of land called "The Louisiana Purchase" hinted at nothing but vacant land acquired. There was no sense that this territory had been occupied by hundreds of Indian tribes which would have to be annihilated or forced from their homes -- what we now call "ethnic cleansing" -- so that whites could settle the land, and later railroads could crisscross it, presaging "civilization" and its brutal discontents.

Neither the discussions of "Jacksonian democracy" in history courses, nor the popular book by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Jackson, told me about the "Trail of Tears," the deadly forced march of "the five civilized tribes" westward from Georgia and Alabama across the Mississippi, leaving 4,000 dead in their wake. No treatment of the Civil War mentioned the Sand Creek massacre of hundreds of Indian villagers in Colorado just as "emancipation" was proclaimed for black people by Lincoln's administration.

That classroom map also had a section to the south and west labeled "Mexican Cession." This was a handy euphemism for the aggressive war against Mexico in 1846 in which the United States seized half of that country's land, giving us California and the great Southwest. The term "Manifest Destiny," used at that time, soon of course became more universal. On the eve of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the Washington Post saw beyond Cuba: "We are face to face with a strange destiny. The taste of Empire is in the mouth of the people even as the taste of blood in the jungle."

The violent march across the continent, and even the invasion of Cuba, appeared to be within a natural sphere of U.S. interest. After all, hadn't the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 declared the Western Hemisphere to be under our protection? But with hardly a pause after Cuba came the invasion of the Philippines, halfway around the world. The word "imperialism" now seemed a fitting one for U.S. actions. Indeed, that long, cruel war -- treated quickly and superficially in the history books -- gave rise to an Anti-Imperialist League, in which William James and Mark Twain were leading figures. But this was not something I learned in university either.

The "Sole Superpower" Comes into View

Reading outside the classroom, however, I began to fit the pieces of history into a larger mosaic. What at first had seemed like a purely passive foreign policy in the decade leading up to the First World War now appeared as a succession of violent interventions: the seizure of the Panama Canal zone from Colombia, a naval bombardment of the Mexican coast, the dispatch of the Marines to almost every country in Central America, occupying armies sent to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. As the much-decorated General Smedley Butler, who participated in many of those interventions, wrote later: "I was an errand boy for Wall Street."

At the very time I was learning this history -- the years after World War II -- the United States was becoming not just another imperial power, but the world's leading superpower. Determined to maintain and expand its monopoly on nuclear weapons, it was taking over remote islands in the Pacific, forcing the inhabitants to leave, and turning the islands into deadly playgrounds for more atomic tests.

In his memoir, No Place to Hide, Dr. David Bradley, who monitored radiation in those tests, described what was left behind as the testing teams went home: "[R]adioactivity, contamination, the wrecked island of Bikini and its sad-eyed patient exiles." The tests in the Pacific were followed, over the years, by more tests in the deserts of Utah and Nevada, more than a thousand tests in all.

When the war in Korea began in 1950, I was still studying history as a graduate student at Columbia University. Nothing in my classes prepared me to understand American policy in Asia. But I was reading I. F. Stone's Weekly. Stone was among the very few journalists who questioned the official justification for sending an army to Korea. It seemed clear to me then that it was not the invasion of South Korea by the North that prompted U.S. intervention, but the desire of the United States to have a firm foothold on the continent of Asia, especially now that the Communists were in power in China.

Years later, as the covert intervention in Vietnam grew into a massive and brutal military operation, the imperial designs of the United States became yet clearer to me. In 1967, I wrote a little book called Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal. By that time I was heavily involved in the movement against the war.

When I read the hundreds of pages of the Pentagon Papers entrusted to me by Daniel Ellsberg, what jumped out at me were the secret memos from the National Security Council. Explaining the U.S. interest in Southeast Asia, they spoke bluntly of the country's motives as a quest for "tin, rubber, oil."

Neither the desertions of soldiers in the Mexican War, nor the draft riots of the Civil War, not the anti-imperialist groups at the turn of the century, nor the strong opposition to World War I -- indeed no antiwar movement in the history of the nation reached the scale of the opposition to the war in Vietnam. At least part of that opposition rested on an understanding that more than Vietnam was at stake, that the brutal war in that tiny country was part of a grander imperial design.

Various interventions following the U.S. defeat in Vietnam seemed to reflect the desperate need of the still-reigning superpower -- even after the fall of its powerful rival, the Soviet Union -- to establish its dominance everywhere. Hence the invasion of Grenada in 1982, the bombing assault on Panama in 1989, the first Gulf war of 1991. Was George Bush Sr. heartsick over Saddam Hussein's seizure of Kuwait, or was he using that event as an opportunity to move U.S. power firmly into the coveted oil region of the Middle East? Given the history of the United States, given its obsession with Middle Eastern oil dating from Franklin Roosevelt's 1945 deal with King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia, and the CIA's overthrow of the democratic Mossadeq government in Iran in 1953, it is not hard to decide that question.

Justifying Empire

The ruthless attacks of September 11th (as the official 9/11 Commission acknowledged) derived from fierce hatred of U.S. expansion in the Middle East and elsewhere. Even before that event, the Defense Department acknowledged, according to Chalmers Johnson's book The Sorrows of Empire, the existence of more than 700 American military bases outside of the United States.

Since that date, with the initiation of a "war on terrorism," many more bases have been established or expanded: in Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, the desert of Qatar, the Gulf of Oman, the Horn of Africa, and wherever else a compliant nation could be bribed or coerced.

When I was bombing cities in Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and France in the Second World War, the moral justification was so simple and clear as to be beyond discussion: We were saving the world from the evil of fascism. I was therefore startled to hear from a gunner on another crew -- what we had in common was that we both read books -- that he considered this "an imperialist war." Both sides, he said, were motivated by ambitions of control and conquest. We argued without resolving the issue. Ironically, tragically, not long after our discussion, this fellow was shot down and killed on a mission.

In wars, there is always a difference between the motives of the soldiers and the motives of the political leaders who send them into battle. My motive, like that of so many, was innocent of imperial ambition. It was to help defeat fascism and create a more decent world, free of aggression, militarism, and racism.

The motive of the U.S. establishment, understood by the aerial gunner I knew, was of a different nature. It was described early in 1941 by Henry Luce, multi-millionaire owner of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines, as the coming of "The American Century." The time had arrived, he said, for the United States "to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit, and by such means as we see fit."

We can hardly ask for a more candid, blunter declaration of imperial design. It has been echoed in recent years by the intellectual handmaidens of the Bush administration, but with assurances that the motive of this "influence" is benign, that the "purposes" -- whether in Luce's formulation or more recent ones -- are noble, that this is an "imperialism lite." As George Bush said in his second inaugural address: "Spreading liberty around the world… is the calling of our time." The New York Times called that speech "striking for its idealism."

The American Empire has always been a bipartisan project -- Democrats and Republicans have taken turns extending it, extolling it, justifying it. President Woodrow Wilson told graduates of the Naval Academy in 1914 (the year he bombarded Mexico) that the U.S. used "her navy and her army... as the instruments of civilization, not as the instruments of aggression." And Bill Clinton, in 1992, told West Point graduates: "The values you learned here… will be able to spread throughout the country and throughout the world."

For the people of the United States, and indeed for people all over the world, those claims sooner or later are revealed to be false. The rhetoric, often persuasive on first hearing, soon becomes overwhelmed by horrors that can no longer be concealed: the bloody corpses of Iraq, the torn limbs of American GIs, the millions of families driven from their homes -- in the Middle East and in the Mississippi Delta.

Have not the justifications for empire, embedded in our culture, assaulting our good sense -- that war is necessary for security, that expansion is fundamental to civilization -- begun to lose their hold on our minds? Have we reached a point in history where we are ready to embrace a new way of living in the world, expanding not our military power, but our humanity?

Howard Zinn is the author of A People's History of the United States and Voices of a People's History of the United States, now being filmed for a major television documentary. His newest book is A People's History of American Empire, the story of America in the world, told in comics form, with Mike Konopacki and Paul Buhle in the American Empire Project book series. An animated video adapted from this essay with visuals from the comic book and voiceover by Viggo Mortensen, as well as a section of the book on Zinn's early life, can be viewed by clicking here. Zinn's website is HowardZinn.org.

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