Security State Critic Embraces Total War

"Close Your Heart to Pity": A Security State Critic Embraces Total War

by Chris Floyd - Empire Burlesque

July 18, 2016

William Arkin has long been an outstanding investigator of the “National Security State,” bringing to light many of its sinister operations. But he seems to have looked into the abyss too long, for now, in a recent article in Cryptome, he is offering a counsel of despair that reflects the worst and most extreme stances of the National Security State toward terrorism, while completely overlooking that same State’s role — still continuing today — in fostering, funding and arming Islamic extremism.

We have not even begun to address this “root cause” of violent Islamic extremism in its modern, organized form. Arkin undoubtedly knows this history. He knows how an international jihad army was shaped, funded and armed by the United States and Saudi Arabia in order to create so much terror and chaos in Afghanistan that the Soviet Union would be forced to intervene to save the secular government there. He knows that the architect of this policy, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is very open and proud of this. He knows about Reagan’s “freedom fighters” who tied their opponents between tanks and tore them to pieces. He knows how Washington fuelled extremist jihad for years, until it achieved its aim: giving the Soviet Union “its own Vietnam,” as Brzezinski put it to Jimmy Carter. Once the Soviets pulled out, of course, the United States promptly forgot about Afghanistan, leaving it at the mercy of pitiless warlords and extremists.

Arkin knows that the United States facilitated Islamic extremists in the former Yugoslavia. Arkin knows that the United States is helping vicious extremists in Syria right now, including extremist factions allied with Al Qaeda. Arkin knows the United States has a long-standing, no-questions-asked alliance with the greatest purveyor of virulent Islamic extremism in the world: Saudi Arabia. Arkin knows that the United States is directly involved in Saudi Arabia’s savage slaughter in Yemen, which has cleared the way for the growth of both al Qaeda and Isis in that country.

Arkin knows that America’s chief ally in the region, Israel, is in a tacit alliance with Saudi Arabia to support violent extremists in Syria. He knows Israel treats ISIS soldiers in its hospitals, he knows Israeli officials have said they would prefer an Islamist regime in Syria to Asad’s government. Arkin knows that Barack Obama said, with admirable candor, that he held off on taking action against ISIS as it began its rampage through Iraq precisely because he wanted to “put pressure” on the government in Baghdad to change its leadership, which Washington no longer liked. This was said in a much-publicized interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. Arkin cannot be unaware of this.

In sum — and leaving out a much longer history of American and Western and Israeli policies of fostering Islamic extremism to advance various political goals — the continuing and active involvement of the world’s leading democracies in directly and indirectly arming, funding and spreading Islamic extremism cannot be denied. But it is not even mentioned by Arkin. He simply says that ALL “reasonable” approaches to quelling terrorism have been tried, and have failed. Therefore, there is nothing left to do but examine “our enemies” — with, to be sure, due acknowledgement of their humanity and a careful consideration of their cause — and then “embrace an uncompromising war” against those unfit for human society. Somehow, he thinks, this will lead to the end of the growing militarization and authoritarianism that he says, quite rightly, is destroying our own freedoms. Somehow, the launching of an all-out, uncompromising, unreasonable war against “pure evil” will cause the militarists and authoritarians to have LESS power in our society. The hyper-militarization of society such a total war would require will somehow, magically, lead us back to our freedom. For surely history has taught us that authoritarians always happily give up their authority once “pure evil” has been defeated.

And of course, such an approach will not solve the problem of terrorism as he outlines it. He says that if, after judicious examination of their cause, we decide “our enemies” are “just pure evil”, then we need to steel ourselves and “embrace an uncompromising war to better humanity.” Who will make this judgment? (I think we know who.) What if other nations don’t agree that this or that enemy is “beyond the pale” and decide to support them instead? And if we embrace this unreasonable, uncompromising war — which will certainly kill multitudes of innocent people — why will this not create even more hatred, extremism and thirst for revenge? Since “terrorism” does not abide in one nation, where will this uncompromising war be aimed? Arkin says his approach doesn’t mean “bombs and more bombs” — what then does it mean? An “uncompromising war” fought with water pistols? How can you eliminate “pure evil” without bombs and more bombs? Or is he advocating the expansion of death squads to take out individuals whom someone somewhere has concluded are “pure evil” and must be eliminated?

I understand where Arkin is coming from. I know he thinks that this will somehow stop the societal rot being caused by the Terror War. But what he is doing, ultimately, is “embracing” the most extremist stance of the Terror Warriors: that we should stop all this pussyfooting around and just slaughter these wretches of “pure evil” with a savage war that “won’t be pretty.” This, he says — just like Trump, Cruz and many others — is a “better path” to peace than our “muddled reasonableness.”

But again, he has failed to consider one of the most vital and consequential factors in the growth of violent Islamic extremism: its support by the very forces who claim to be fighting for civilization. You cannot say we have “tried everything” to quell terrorism and now must embrace total war, if we have not even acknowledged this factor, much less tried to deal with it.

MP Charged with Treason for Reporting Turkey's Connection to 2013 Ghouta Sarin Attack

The Ghouta chemical attack and the unraveling of Ankara's official story 

by Neil Clark - RT

December 16, 2015

It was the chemical weapons attack that so nearly led to direct war between the US, the UK, France and the Syrian government; a war which most likely would have delivered the whole of Syria to IS and Al-Qaeda extremists.

The horrific Ghouta attack of August 21, 2013, which killed hundreds of civilians, including many children, was blamed on President Assad and his government by Western political leaders and elite media commentators.

Those who dared to question this version of events were predictably denounced as ’conspiracy theorists’ and/or ’Assad apologists’.

Today, however, new evidence has emerged that questions the ‘official’ narrative. Could it be that, as was the case with Iraqi WMDs, we were lied to again by those individuals desperate to launch another ‘regime change’ war in the Middle East?

Interestingly, the US and its allies never publicly produced any hard evidence showing that Syrian government forces had carried out the attacks, but told us that it had to be them because no one else possessed or had the capability to use chemical weapons.

But now Turkish MP Eren Erdem has told RT that Islamic State terrorists, then going under the name of Iraqi Al-Qaeda, received all the necessary materials to produce deadly sarin gas via Turkey.

Erdem, who is now being charged with treason for his comments, revealed that an investigation by Turkish police was started but then the case was closed, and all the suspects were released near the Turkish/Syrian border. He accused the Turkish authorities of a high-level cover up.

The Turkish MP says the evidence shows that IS, and not the Syrian government, was responsible for the Ghouta attacks.

“This attack was conducted just days before the sarin operation in Turkey. It’s a high probability that this attack was carried out with those basic materials shipped through Turkey. It is said the regime forces are responsible, but the indictment says it’s ISIS. UN inspectors went to the site but they couldn’t find any evidence. But in this indictment, we’ve found the evidence. We know who used the sarin gas, and our government knows it too,” Erdem said.

It’s not just Erdem’s testimony that challenges the official version of events.

As case for toppling Assad unravels MIT experts expose faulty intelligence over 2013 Ghouta chemical weapons attack.https://t.co/eV4WwH9JAL— John Wight (@JohnWight1) December 14, 2015

US experts do too. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) report by former UN weapons inspector Richard Lloyd and Professor Theodor Postol challenged the intelligence on which US claims against the Syrian government were made.

They revealed that the range of the rocket which was supposed to have carried the nerve gas was too short to have been launched from government-controlled areas.

“The Syrian improvised chemical munitions that were used in the August 21 nerve gas attack in Damascus have a range of about two kilometers. This indicates that these munitions could not possibly have been fired at East Ghouta from the ‘heart’ or the eastern edge of the Syrian government controlled area in the intelligence map published by the White House on August 30th 2013,” the report concluded.

The report pointed out that all the possible launching points for the rocket were in rebel-controlled areas.

“My view when I started this process was that it couldn’t be anything but the Syrian government behind the attack,” said the report's co-author, Professor Postol.

 “But now I’m not sure of anything. The administration narrative was not even close to reality. Our intelligence cannot possibly be correct.”

Award-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh also countered the ‘administration narrative’ in articles published in the London Review of Books.

“Most significant, he (President Obama) failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin,” Hersh wrote in a piece entitled ’Whose Sarin?’ in December 2013.

Logic and sheer common sense also suggests that President Assad was not responsible for the attacks.

Imagine you were Bashar al-Assad in August 2013. You know that some of the most powerful nations on earth are desperately looking for an excuse to bomb you, as they know that the 'rebels' they've been backing aren't strong enough to topple you and your government without air support.

So what do you do? Well, at the very moment when a team of UN chemical weapons inspectors are in Damascus, you order a chemical weapons attack just 12 kilometers from the center of the capital.

Does that sound logical? If we think that's what Assad did, then we must believe that he is not only a brutal leader but a foaming at the mouth madman. But what evidence do we have that a man who has ruled Syria since 2000 is actually insane? That's effectively what the neocons/pro-war lobby are expecting us to believe i.e. that Assad would, right when the UN are in town, do the very thing that the US/UK and others want him to do in order to provide them with a pretext for an attack. What a very obliging fellow that Mr. Assad is!

The faulty logic behind the war lobby’s claims was highlighted by George Galloway MP in his memorable speech against bombing Syria in the British Parliament. “To launch a chemical weapons attack in Damascus on the very day a UN chemical weapons team arrives in Damascus must be a new definition of madness,” Galloway declared.

I was right about the chemical weapons attack on Ghouta though ridiculed at the time. We narrowly avoided going to war on Syria on a hoax.— George Galloway (@georgegalloway) December 14, 2015

It’s worth noting where the ’evidence’ that Assad’s forces were responsible for the attack originated. “The bulk of evidence proving the Assad regime's deployment of chemical weapons, which would provide legal grounds essential to justify any Western military action, has been provided by Israeli military intelligence, the German magazine Focus has reported,” announced the Guardian on August 28, 2013.

According to Fox News, an Israeli military intelligence listening unit, called number 8200 “helped provide the intelligence intercepts that allowed the White House last weekend to conclude that the Assad regime was behind the attack.”

Israel did not publicly release these so-called intercepts, and of course that country had, and still has, a very obvious vested interest in toppling a government allied to Hezbollah and Iran.

The Ghouta chemical attack looked as if it would be the shocking event that would give the war-hawks the chance to bomb Syria and topple the Assad government.

But, unexpectedly, the British Parliament threw a spanner in the works and voted against war. It probably didn’t help that even Prime Minister David Cameron admitted that there was “no 100 percent certainty” about who was responsible for Ghouta.

The bitterness and anger of the neocons afterwards, which I detailed here, told us how badly they had wanted their ’regime change’. Ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern revealed how he had been in a TV studio with two uber-hawks, Paul Wolfowitz and Joe Lieberman, and remarked on the “distinctly funereal atmosphere.”

“I felt I had come to a wake with somberly dressed folks (no pastel ties this time) grieving for a recently, dearly-departed war.”

Over two years on, it’s frightening to think what would have happened if the neocons had got their war in 2013. The RAF would effectively have become the air force of Al-Qaeda and ISIS. If the Syrian government had fallen in late 2013 or early 2014, radical Islamists and not non-existent ‘moderate rebels‘ would have been the beneficiaries. The black flag of ISIS would be flying high in Damascus and religious executions would be commonplace.

Yet incredibly, those who pressed so hard for war against a secular government fighting the Islamic State and al-Qaeda in 2013, are still upset that they didn't get their way. UK Chancellor of the Exchequer and fanatical war-hawk George Osborne, said in September that Parliament voting not to bomb Syria in 2013 was “one of the worst decisions ever made.”

In the New Statesman magazine this week, Blairite Labour MP Mary Creagh called the failure to bomb the Syrian government post-Ghouta, “an understandable but unforgivable mistake and the one vote that I deeply regret.”

Yes, you read it right; an MP who voted to bomb ISIS two weeks ago deeply regrets not voting to bomb the government fighting ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliates two years ago.

Despite the official narrative on Ghouta unraveling before our eyes, some pro-Establishment Western media, including the BBC’s flagship current affairs program Newsnight, continues to assert that the chemical attack in Ghouta was carried out by the Assad government, as if it was all 100 percent proven.

EXCLUSIVE: Sarin materials brought via Turkey & mixed in Syrian ISIS camps– Turkish MP to RT https://t.co/TmzwpqOV9Hpic.twitter.com/MGNgnUNOaE— RT (@RT_com) December 14, 2015

My fellow RT Op-Edge columnist Dan Glazebrook lodged an official complaint with the BBC over its broadcasting “without comment,” and with an omission of the word “allegedly,” that President Assad had used chemical weapons at Ghouta.

The BBC replied: “You are right to point out that the UN did not establish that the Syrian government was responsible…. Nevertheless a number of governments concluded that the Syrian government was responsible.”

The governments the BBC referred to were of course those who were itching for an excuse to bomb Syria, namely the US, the UK and France.

We will probably never know for sure who were the evil people who fired the rockets on 21st August 2013, but taking everything into consideration, the likeliest explanation of Ghouta is that it was a ‘rebel’ operation, designed to pave the way for Western bombing of the Syrian government.

“As the months have passed…scientific studies amassing an impressive body of evidence have shown that, not only were Washington’s claims of “certainty” that Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons in their war with extremist fighters utterly baseless, but in fact the reality was quite the opposite, the rebels were the most likely culprits of the attack,” wrote Eric Draitser on the first anniversary of the attacks.

Now we have the explosive testimony of Eren Erdem too.

As was the case with Iraq’s non-existent WMDs, and Iran’s unproven nuclear weapons program, it looks, once again, as if the real conspiracy theorists were those at the top, and not those plucky souls who dared to question the war party line.

Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. He has written for many newspapers and magazines in the UK and other countries including The Guardian, Morning Star, Daily and Sunday Express, Mail on Sunday, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, The Spectator, The Week, and The American Conservative. He is a regular pundit on RT and has also appeared on BBC TV and radio, Sky News, Press TV and the Voice of Russia. He is the co-founder of the Campaign For Public Ownership @PublicOwnership. His award winning blog can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. He tweets on politics and world affairs @NeilClark66

Published time: 16 Dec, 2015 13:52
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A Plague on Both Your Houses: American Authoritarianism and the End of Civilization

The Plague of American Authoritarianism

by Henry Giroux - CounterPunch

Authoritarianism in the American collective psyche and in what might be called traditional narratives of historical memory is always viewed as existing elsewhere. Viewed as an alien and demagogic political system, it is primarily understood as a mode of governance associated with the dictatorships in Latin America in the 1970s and, of course, in its most vile extremes, with Hitler’s poisonous Nazi rule and Mussolini’s fascist state in the 1930s and 1940s.

These were and are societies that idealized war, soldiers, nationalism, militarism, political certainty, fallen warriors, racial cleansing, and a dogmatic allegiance to the homeland.[i] Education and the media were the propaganda tools of authoritarianism, merging fascist and religious symbols with the language of God, family, and country, and were integral to promoting servility and conformity among the populace. This script is well known to the American public and it has been played out in films, popular culture, museums, the mainstream media, and other cultural apparatuses. Historical memory that posits the threat of the return of an updated authoritarianism turns the potential threat of the return of authoritarianism into dead memory. Hence, any totalitarian mode of governance is now treated as a relic of a sealed past that bears no relationship to the present. The need to retell the story of totalitarianism becomes a frozen lesson in history rather than a narrative necessary to understanding the present

Hannah Arendt, the great theorist of totalitarianism, believed that the protean elements of totalitarianism are still with us and that they would crystalize in different forms.[ii] Far from being a thing of the past, she believed that totalitarianism “heralds as a possible model for the future.”[iii] Arendt was keenly aware that the culture of traditionalism, an ever present culture of fear, the corporatization of civil society, the capture of state power by corporations, the destruction of public goods, the corporate control of the media, the rise of a survival-of-the-fittest ethos, the dismantling of civil and political rights, the ongoing militarization of society, the “religionization of politics,”[iv] a rampant sexism, an attack on labor, an obsession with national security, human rights abuses, the emergence of a police state, a deeply rooted racism, and the attempts by demagogues to undermine critical education as a foundation for producing critical citizenry were all at work in American society. For Arendt, these anti-democratic elements in American society constituted what she called the “sand storm,” a metaphor for totalitarianism.[v]

Historical conjunctures produce different forms of authoritarianism, though they all share a hatred for democracy, dissent, and human rights. It is too easy to believe in a simplistic binary logic that strictly categorizes a country as either authoritarian or democratic and leaves no room for entertaining the possibility of a mixture of both systems. American politics today suggests a more updated if not different form of authoritarianism or what some have called the curse of totalitarianism. In this context, it is worth remembering what Huey Long said in response to the question of whether America could ever become fascist: “Yes, but we will call it anti-fascist.” [vi] Long’s reply indicates that fascism is not an ideological apparatus frozen in a particular historical period, but as Arendt suggested a complex and often shifting theoretical and political register for understanding how democracy can be subverted, if not destroyed, from within.

The notion of soft fascism was articulated in 1985 in Bertram Gross’s book, Friendly Fascism, in which he argued that if fascism came to the United States it would not embody the same characteristics associated with fascist forms in the historical past. There would be no Nuremberg rallies, doctrines of racial superiority, government-sanctioned book burnings, death camps, genocidal purges, or the abrogation of the constitution. In short, fascism would not take the form of an ideological grid from the past simply downloaded onto another country under different historical conditions. Gross believed that fascism was an ongoing danger and had the ability to become relevant under new conditions, taking on familiar forms of thought that resonate with nativist traditions, experiences, and political relations. Similarly, in his Anatomy of Fascism, Robert O. Paxton argued that the texture of American fascism would not mimic traditional European forms but would be rooted in the language, symbols, and culture of everyday life.

According to Paxton:

No swastikas in an American fascism, but Stars and Stripes (or Stars and Bars) and Christian crosses. No fascist salute, but mass recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance. These symbols contain no whiff of fascism in themselves, of course, but an American fascism would transform them into obligatory litmus tests for detecting the internal enemy).[vii]

It is worth noting that Umberto Eco in his discussion of “eternal fascism,” also argued that any updated version of fascism would not openly assume the mantle of historical fascism; rather, new forms of authoritarianism would appropriate some of its elements, making it virtually unrecognizable from its traditional forms.[viii] Eco contended that fascism, if it comes to America, will have a different guise, although it will be no less destructive of democracy.

The renowned political theorist Sheldon Wolin, in Democracy Incorporated, expanded and updated these views by arguing persuasively that the United States has produced its own unique form of authoritarianism, which he calls “inverted totalitarianism.”[ix] Wolin claimed that in the United States an emerging totalitarianism has appeared in form different from what we have seen in the past. Instead of a charismatic leader, the government is now governed through the anonymous and largely remote hands of corporate power and finance capital. Political sovereignty is largely replaced by economic sovereignty as corporate power takes over the reins of governance. The more money influences politics, the more corrupt the political culture becomes. Under such circumstances, holding office is largely dependent on having huge amounts of capital at one’s disposal, while laws and policies at all levels of government are mostly fashioned by lobbyists representing big business corporations and financial institutions. Moreover, as the politics of Obama’s health-care reform indicate–a gift to the health insurance giants–such lobbying, as corrupt and unethical as it may be, is now carried out in the open and displayed by insurance and drug companies as a badge of honor–a kind of open testimonial to their disrespect for democratic governance and a celebration of their power.

Rather than forcing a populace to adhere to a particular state ideology, the general public in the United States is largely depoliticized through the influence of corporations over schools, higher education, and other cultural apparatuses. The deadening of public values, civic consciousness, and critical citizenship are also the result of the work of anti-public intellectuals representing right-wing ideological and financial interests, a powerful corporate controlled media that are largely center-right, and a market-driven public pedagogy that reduces the obligations of citizenship to the endless consumption and discarding of commodities. In addition, a pedagogy of historical, social, and racial amnesia is constructed and ciculated through a highly popular celebrity culture and its counterpart in corporate-driven news, television, radio, and entertainment to produce a culture of stupidity, censorship, and diversionary spectacles.

The protean forces for creating an authoritarian state are in full play in the United States and extend far beyond the shadow of a debased and corrupt politics. A set of complex forces working in tandem is slowly, insidiously eroding the very foundations of a civic and democratic culture. Some of the most glaring issues are massive unemployment; a rotting infrastructure; the defunding of vital public services; the dismantling of the social safety net; expanding levels of poverty, especially for children; and an imprisonment binge largely targeting poor minorities of color. At the same time, a reign of lawlessness is overtaking the United States as police violence and state terrorism result in the killing of an increasing number of black men, women, and young people. But such a list barely scratches the surface. Institutions that were once designed to serve the public good now wage war against all things public. For instance, we have witnessed in the last thirty years the restructuring of public education as either a source of profit for corporations or an updated version of control modeled after prison culture coupled with an increasing culture of lying, cruelty, and corruption.

A culture of thoughtlessness now drives the predatory formative culture that allows a range of anti-democratic tendencies to flourish–tendencies that embody a new and extreme form of lawlessness and a theater of cruelty. Civic literacy in the United States is not simply in decline, it is the object of scorn and derision. The corporate controlled media have abandoned even the pretense of holding power accountable and now primarily serve as second rate entertainment venues spouting the virtues of balance, consumerism, greed, and American exceptionalism.

The seeds of extremism are everywhere. Instead of being educated, school children are handcuffed and punished for trivial infractions or simply taught how to take tests and give up on any vestige of critical thinking. Celebrity culture now works in tandem with neoliberal values to vaunt as models individuals who represent extreme forms of solipsism and a cultivated idiocy. The war on democracy by the financial elite and other religious and political fundamentalists is intent on defunding and eliminating every public sphere that serves the public good rather than moneyed interests. A war culture now shapes every aspect of society as war-like values, a hyper-masculinity, and an aggressive militarism seeps into every major institution in the United States including the schools, the media, and local police forces. The criminal justice system has become the default structure for dealing with social problems. More and more people are considered disposable and excess because they are viewed as a drain on the wealth or offend the sensibilities of the financial elite who are rapidly consolidating class power.

The spirt of aggression and the spectacle of violence permeates the culture and deeply imprints domestic and foreign policy. As Robert Koehler points out, “America is armed and dangerous—and always at war, both collectively and individually.”[x] The outcome of this unfolding nightmare will be not only a political and economic instability but this disappearance of public institutions to serve public needs, if not politics itself. At the same time, the destruction of a public culture that embraces and sustains democratic values and practices will be intensified. Surely all this points to what Hannah Arendt believed was the harbinger of totalitarianism–the disappearance of the thinking and speaking citizens who make politics possible.

What is particularly troublesome is the manifestations of totalitarianism in the discourse and proposed policy measures of the extremists that now govern the Republican Party and how this is taken up in the mainstream media. One finds in the rhetoric of Donald Trump, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie and others a mix of war like values, expressions of racism, a hatred of women’s rights, unabashed support for the financial elite, a religious fundamentalism, a celebration of war, and a deep seated hostility for all things public. Chris Christie sells himself to the American public as a bully and believes that threatening violence is a crucial element of leadership. This was on full display when he recently stated that teacher’s unions “are the single most destructive force in public education in America [and deserve] a punch in the face.”[xi]

Threatening violence appears to be a powerful ideological register shared by many of the Republican Party candidates. Donald Trump comes close to supporting a form of racial cleansing by threatening to depart 11 million undocumented Mexican immigrants all the while demonizing them as rapists and criminals. This script has been played out before just prior to the genocide promoted in Nazi Germany. Mike Huckabee, Marco Rubio, and Scott Walker want to abolish a woman’s right to abortion, and go so far as to argue that they would not permit women to get an abortion even if their lives depended on it. Huckabee takes this threat even further. When Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi asked Huckabee if he would send “the FBI or the National Guard to close abortion clinics,” he answered “”We’ll see when I’m president.”[xii] Huckabee is a real piece of work stating at one point that he would deny an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim.[xiii] This hatred of women and the need to control and domesticate them to the crudest forms of male hegemony and control is central to all fascist regimes.

All of these candidates, with the exception of Rand Paul, support the surveillance state and warrantless spying on American citizens. All of the candidates want to send troops to the Middle East to fight Islamic extremists, expand the military, and Trump goes so far as to claim he wants to seize the oil wells in Syria in order to appropriate their wealth–no apologies for naked imperialism here. Rick Santorum brags that if he is the next president of the United States he will be a wartime president, and add that he will also defend the “sanctity of life in the womb.”[xiv] John Dean in resurrecting arguments about the authoritarian personality argues that Donald Trump, though this applies to most of the Republican Party leadership, has four clear characteristics or traits that distinguish them as authoritarian: “They are dominating; they oppose equality; they desire personal power; and they are amoral.”[xv] This echoes the classic work by Theodor Adorno on the authoritarian personality.

Similarly, the mainstream media treats this group of extremists who promote a culture of fear, racism, and hatred as eccentric, odd, crazies, colorful, or simply toxic. All the while, they refuse to acknowledge that the extremism on full display among these politicians reveals a dark and more threatening side of politics, one that exposes the unapologetic register of totalitarianism and goes far beyond either the psychologizing of authoritarianism or locating it within the aberrant personalities of a few politicians. Totalitarianism is a complex systemic register that is deeply woven into American ideology, governance, and policy. It is present in the attack on the welfare state, the attack on civil liberties, the indiscriminate killing of civilians by drones, illegal wars, the legitimation of state torture, and the ongoing spread of domestic violence against minorities of class and color.

A few journalists have raised the specter of totalitarianism but they largely confine the charge to the bellicose Donald Trump. For instance, Connor Lynch claims points to Trump’s authoritarian discourse which is “full of race baiting, xenophobia and belligerent nationalism.” [xvi] Jeffrey Tucker goes further arguing that Trump’s popularity not only draws support from “the darkest elements of American life” but also mimics a form of neoliberalism in which economics is affirmed as a way of governing all of social life.[xvii] For Tucker, Trump is representative of a mode of totalitarianism that “seeks total control of society and economy and demands no limits on state power.”[xviii] Those on the Left, such as Norman Solomon, who raise this issue are largely marginalized.

What is useful about these critiques is that they acknowledge that democracy is dead in the United States and that the forces of tyranny and authoritarianism offer no apologies for their hatred of democracy and the culture of poverty, immiseration, and cruelty that they want to impose on the American people, if not the rest of the world. What they fail to acknowledge is that the anti-democratic forces at work in the new totalitarianism are not limited to the discourse of the new extremists. Totalitarianism is not merely about errant personalities. It is also about the ideological, political, cultural, and governing structures of society. These systemic forces have been building for quite some time in the United States and have been recognized by our most astute writers such as Sheldon Wolin and Chris Hedges. What is new is that they are not only out of the shadows but are enthusiastically embraced by a segment of the population and articulated in all of their fury by a number of politicians. Totalitarianism is not simply a personality disorder and is not limited to the power of a few erratic politicians; it demands and cannot survive without mass support—it is systemic, a desiring machine, a politics, a culture, and a distortion of power. And it is not limited to Republican Party extremists.

Take for instance the comments on CNN by the alleged liberal Wesley Clark, a former 4-star general and one-time Democratic candidate for President of the United States. Clark called for World War II-style internment camps to be revived for “disloyal Americans.” Clark unapologetically argued for people to be identified who are most likely to embrace a radical ideology stating that “If these people are radicalized and they don’t support the United States and they are disloyal to the United States as a matter of principle, fine. It is their right and it’s our right and obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict.”[xix] Calling for domestic internment camps for radicals is more than chilling and suggests the degree to which a poisonous nationalism mimics the legacy of Nazi Germany.

As Bill Dixon has observed “We live in an era in which the conditions that produce totalitarian forms are once again with us.”[xx] A new form of authoritarianism is now shaping American society. What is equally true is that there is nothing inevitable about this growing threat. This dystopian politics must be exposed, made visible, and challenged on both the local, national, and global planes.

What is crucial is that the mechanisms, discourse, culture, and ideologies that inform authoritarianism must become part of any analysis that now addresses and is willing to challenge the anti-democratic forces at the heart of American politics. This means, in part, focusing on the ongoing repressive and systemic conditions, institutions, ideologies, and values that have been developing in American society for the last forty years, at the very least. It means finding a common ground on which various elements of the left can be mobilized under the banner of a radical democracy in order to challenge the diverse forms of oppression, incarceration, mass violence, exploitation, and exclusion that now define the authoritarian nature of American politics. It means taking seriously the educative nature of politics and recognizing that public spheres must be created in order to educate citizens who are informed, socially responsible, and willing to fight collectively for a future in which a radical democracy appears sustainable. This suggests an anti-fascist struggle that is not about simply about remaking economic structures, but also refashioning identities, values, social relations, modes of identification as part of a democratic project along with what it means to desire a better and more democratic future.

Hannah Arendt was right in stating that “the aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any,” suggesting that totalitarianism was as much about the production of thoughtlessness as it was about the imposition of brute force, gaping inequality, corporatism, and the spectacle of violence.[xxi] Totalitarianism destroys everything that democracy makes possible and in doing so thrives on mass terror, manufactured stupidity, and the disappearance of politics, all the while making of human beings superfluous. Yet, power however tyrannical is never without resistance. Dark times are not ahead, they are here but that does not mean they are here to stay.


Notes.

[i] See, for instance, Mabel Berezin, Making the Fascist Self: The Political culture of Interwar Italy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997).

[ii] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York: 2001).

[iii] Marie Luise Knott, Unlearning With Hannah Arendt, trans. by David Dollenmayer, (Other Press: New York, NY. 2011, 2013), p 17.

[iv] I have taken this term from Zygmunt Bauman, Living on Borrowed Time: Conversations with Citlali Rovirosa-Madrazo, (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2010), p. 132.

[v] See Bill Dixon insightful commentary on Arendt use of “sand storm” as a metaphor for analyzing the protean elements of totalitarianism. Bill Dixon, “Totalitarianism and the Sand Storm,” Hannah Arendt Center (February 3, 2014). Online: http://www.hannaharendtcenter.org/?p=12466

[vi] Paul Bigioni, “The Real Threat of Fascism”, CommonDreams.org, (September 30, 2005). online at: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0930-25.htm

[vii] Robert O’ Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Knopf, 2004), p. 202.

[viii] Umberto Eco, “Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt,” New York Review of Books (February 2010), pp. 12-15.

[ix] Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, (Princeton University Press, 2008).

[x] Robert Koehler, “Armed Insecurity,” Counter Punch, (July 24, 2015). Online at: http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/24/armed-insecurity/

[xi] Chris Christie, “Chris Christie: Apologize for Threatening Teachers,” AFT A Union of Professionals, (August 15, 2015). Online at: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/chris-christie-apologize-for-threatening-teachers

[xii] Matt Taibbi, “Inside the GOP Clown Car,” Rolling Stone (August 12, 2015). Online: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-the-gop-clown-car-20150812

[xiii] Emily Atkin, “Huckabee Supports Denying Abortion to 10-year-Old Rape Victim,” Think Progress (August 16, 2015). Online: http://thinkprogress.org/election/2015/08/16/3692100/huckabee-paraguay-rape-abortion/

[xiv] Lou Dubose, “Ted Cruz and the Politics of Faith and Fear,” The Washington Spectator, (July 27, 2015). Online at: http://washingtonspectator.org/ted-cruz-and-the-politics-of-faith-and-fear/

[xv] John Dean, “Trump Is the Authoritarian Ruler Republicans—and Some Dems—Have Been Waiting For,” Alternet, (August 13, 2015). Online at: http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/trump-authoritarian-ruler-republicans-and-some-dems-have-been-waiting

[xvi] Conor Lynch, “Donald Trump is an actual fascist: What his surging popularity says about the GOP base,” Salon, (July 25, 2015). Online at: http://www.salon.com/2015/07/25/donald_trump_is_an_actual_fascist_what_his_surging_popularity_says_about_the_gop_base/

[xvii] Jeffrey A. Tucker, “Is Donald Trump A Fascist?,” Newsweek, (July 17, 2015) Online at: http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-fascist-354690

[xviii] Ibid. Jeffrey A. Tucker, “Is Donald Trump A Fascist?.”

[xix] Murtaza Hussain, “Welsely Clark Calls for Internment Camps for ‘Radicalized Americans.” The Intercept (July 20, 2015). Online: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/20/chattanooga-wesley-clark-calls-internment-camps-disloyal-americans/

[xx] Bill Dixon, “Totalitarianism and the Sand Storm,” Hannah Arendt Center (February 3, 2014). Online: http://www.hannaharendtcenter.org/?p=12466

[xxi] Hannah Arendt, “Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government,” The Origins of Totalitarianism, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York: 2001). p. 468.

Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University. His most recent books are America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth (Monthly Review Press, 2013) and Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education (Haymarket Press, 2014). His web site is www.henryagiroux.com.

Gaza Hospitals Imperiled

Four Main Gaza Hospitals Could Shut Down

by IMEMC

The Palestinian Ministry Of Health in Gaza has reported that four main hospitals in the besieged and warn-torn coastal region are facing closure as they are running out of fuel than runs their power network.

File - Image By Palestine News Network

Spokesperson of the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Dr. Ashraf al-Qedra, has reported that the Shifa Medical Center, Kamal ‘Adwan Hospital, the Gaza-European Hospital, and the Rantisi Hospital for Children, could stop functioning within hours.

On his Facebook and Twitter accounts, Dr. Al-Qedra said the above mentioned hospitals are running out of fuel used to operate their power generators.

Despite Israel’s allegations of “easing the siege on Gaza,” the coastal enclave, still devastated and in ruins following last year’s Israel’s war and aggression, remains lacking basic supplies, including medical supplies.

Israel also frequently bombarded and destroyed the Gaza Power Plant, and deliberately targeted the infrastructure of the already impoverished, besieged, and densely populated region.

Off the Rails: Lac-Mégantic Reveals Massive Danger Oil Trains Pose

New Oil-by-Train Dangers Exposed in Canada

by Roger Annis - CounterPunch

For the second time in three months, a CP Rail train carrying toxic and flammable hydrocarbons has derailed in the city of Calgary. On September 11, eight railway wagons carrying close to one million liters of a highly flammable gasoline product (diluent) used in the pipeline transport of tar sands bitumen derailed in the Inglewood neighbourhood.

The train was traveling at a slow speed while exiting CP Rail’s Alyth yard located near the center of the city. Brian McAsey, assistant deputy fire chief of Calgary, told the Calgary Herald, “(The product) is extremely flammable and very volatile.” The derailment also ruptured a natural gas line. Apparently, none of the product spilled from the rail wagons.

Seventy five residents of Inglewood staged a protest action two days later at the yard. They chanted “CP Rail, CP Fail”, expressing their anger and frustration with the failure of the company to address concerns stemming from its growing transport of oil-by-train and expansion of noisy and polluting diesel locomotive repair work at the Alyth yard.

Lara Murphy, one of the organizers of the action, told CBC News, “We don’t want another Lac Mégantic to happen.” She echoed the views of Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi who has criticized the rail transport setup in Canada which presently has municipalities responsible for emergency response and cleanup but which makes it very difficult for them to know what, exactly, is rolling through its jurisdiction on rail.

Nenshi told reporters, “This is not just massively inconvenient — it’s massively dangerous”.

Murphy told the online Calgary Beacon, “Our biggest concern is with the ramped up transportation of oil and gas by the rail industry as a whole”.

“If we’re gonna transport this oil, I feel and the group feels we need more transparency from the rail companies.”

She is part of the Inglewood Community Association that has been fighting CP Rail ever since it began to expand the traffic and locomotive repair work at Alyth in 2009. That brought formal noise complaints from the community. Last month, a victory was scored when the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) ordered the railway to shift its locomotive work to a different location within the yard and to curb some of its overnight work. (For more detail on the noise problems, see page 6 of this Inglewood community bulletin from March 2011).

On June 27, six wagons on a CP Rail train carrying similar product jumped the tracks while crossing the Bow River on the 100-year old Bonnybrook Bridge. Reportedly, the weight of the cars caused the structural support of the bridge to give way.

That accident happened at the height of catastrophic flooding of Calgary and southern Alberta that month. The rushing water of the Bow River, which passes through the center of the city, might have weakened the bridge’s structure, but this was never officially determined.

Oil by rail in large volumes is a new phenomenon in Canada and the United States, beginning only some three years ago. It is expanding rapidly and among the many safety concerns it raises are questions about the ability of old and deteriorating rail lines and bridges to handle the exceptional weight of these trains. This may be a common denominator of the two accidents in Calgary.

In 2009, there were 500 railway oil wagons moved in Canada. This year, there will be app. 140,000. In the U.S., there were 9,500 wagons moved in 2008. That jumped to 234,000 in 2012 and is on course to nearly double that in 2013. Each wagon carries app. 600 barrels.

Oil train safety regulations weak and flaunted

Meanwhile, ongoing investigations by Canadian transportation authorities into the July 6 oil train disaster in Lac Mégantic, Quebec are revealing startling facts about poor railway safety in Canada.

A preliminary report by Transport Canada issued on Sept 12 says Quebec portions of the rail track of the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway are in “defective” and “substandard” condition and do not meet safety standards. One section of the line was closed by inspectors following their investigations.

The MM&A line connects Farnham, Quebec, just south of Montreal, through Lac Mégantic to northern Maine. The line has been severed by the disaster and it is not know when and if the destroyed track will be replaced. Post-disaster sensitivity as well as the heavy contamination of the soil where the disaster occurred will require that a replacement be built on a new right of way around the town.

CP Rail and Irving Oil contracted with the MM&A in 2012 to join in transporting crude oil from North Dakota to Irving’s refinery, Canada’s largest, in Saint John, New Brunswick, on the Atlantic coast. CP brought the oil trains as far as Farnham; the MM&A moved them as far as northern Maine; the Irving-owned NB Southern Railway then completed the journey.

Irving Oil, part of the secretive Irving family conglomerate, has switched app. 25 per cent of its refinery supply away from overseas sources to North Dakota. The shift is prompted by changes in the prices of crude oil that have made North Dakota oil cheaper than overseas oil.

Several days earlier, the Transportation Safety Board (TSB) of Canada issued a statement on one aspect of its ongoing investigation into the Lac Mégantic, Quebec. The federal agency says the identification and labeling of the oil carried on the fateful train through the town was false.

Investigators were puzzled from the get-go by the extreme volatility of the product on the train. It exploded in a giant fireball near midnight on July 6 in the center of the town when most of the 72-wagon train derailed. Forty seven people died and the surrounding ground and waters have been heavily polluted.

As reported in the Globe and Mail, the TSB has cited the North Dakota shipper, an affiliate of Miami-based World Fuel Services Corp., and the purchaser of the oil, Irving Oil, for failing to ensure the oil was properly classified and identified, including on the classification notice that must be attached to each wagon. The report does not mention CP Rail’s responsibility.

It turns out that the oil, which originated in the Bakken oil field in North Dakota (now the second largest reserve of oil in the U.S. thanks to new, fracking technologies), is light and highly flammable. It should have been labeled a ‘class two’ hydrocarbon instead of the ‘class three’ designation it carried. ‘Class two’ means more volatile and dangerous.

The change in designation might not have changed the outcome because there are no additional regulations that it triggers. But it might have prompted additional care in securing the train, which was stationed overnight and by all evidence was inadequately braked. It lost its braking and rolled driverless into Lac Mégantic. Regardless, it’s another example of the lax rail safety regulations in the U.S. and Canada that the disaster has brought to light. Rail carriers and their customers operate with too little public and regulatory scrutiny.

Since the July 6 disaster, the Irving conglomerate has found other routes to continue receiving North Dakota crude, including along the CN main line that connects Montreal to Halifax, Nova Scotia. CP Rail and CN Rail are the two branches of Canada’s railway duopoly. Each also has extensive track in the United States.

A report in the Sept 14 Portland Press Herald says that North Dakota crude shipments to Saint John through New England via another shortline railway similar to the MM&A–Pan Am Railway–have rolled to a halt. That decision is being welcomed by opponents of oil by rail in Maine, including the groups 350 Maine and Maine Earth First! that have been protesting and attempting to block the shipments.

Fossil fuel expansion in a warming world

Railway safety aside, the principle concern that the tragedy in Lac Mégantic has highlighted is the crazed and reckless path of unbridled extraction and burning of fossil fuels down which the economic elites of the world are dragging humanity.

To wit, the Canadian government is ramping up efforts on behalf of the oil industry to find outlets for Alberta tar sands oil. Frustrated by the campaign in the U.S. that has so far given pause to President Obama in approving the Keystone XL Pipeline, the government is lobbying heavily in the U.S. for the virtues of tar sands oil, saying its pollution footprint is less than coal and that Canadian oil has a better “human rights” imprint than foreign oil.

The government is also flooding the province of British Columbia with its cabinet ministers and messaging in efforts to weaken an environmental movement there that has so far blocked or slowed two proposed tar sands bitumen pipelines to the Pacific coast of Canada—Enbridge company’s Northern Gateway and the proposed expansion of the existing, Kinder Morgan company’s Trans Mountain Pipeline. The government is paying particular attention to wooing all-important support from First Nations peoples, including with money and promises of jobs.

The Pacific coast of BC is also getting hammered with expansion of coal exports fed by rail from western Canada and the U.S. and with a vast plan to expand natural gas fracking in the BC northeast and ship it to the coast by pipeline for liquefaction and export.

The tar sands pipeline blockage to the south and west has prompted a proposed, $12 billion ‘Energy East’ pipeline project that would carry tar sands bitumen from Alberta to Montreal and then on to the Atlantic coast at New Brunswick and Maine in two proposed branches. Opposition to that project is beginning to build.

Tar sands proponents received a setback recently when iconic singer/songwriter Neil Young traveled to the northern Alberta tar sands region and reported it’s a ‘wasteland’. He says it resembles Hiroshima, Japan following the U.S. nuclear attack of 1945.

Roger Annis is a member of the newly-formed Vancouver Ecosocialist Group. He blogs on environmental and other issues at A Socialist in Canada.

In Defense of Integrity: Policy Critic Falls Prey to IRS

When the Man Comes Around: Saving a Voice of Integrity and Compassion

by Chris Floyd - Empire Burlesque

Arthur Silber is in trouble. The IRS has targeted his sole source of income -- PayPal donations to his website -- and have taken everything that was in it. Now his PayPal account is unusable. His situation is dire.

Regular readers here will know that Silber -- a peerless, powerful voice on the many madnesses that beset our world today -- is dealing with catastrophic health issues and crippling poverty. Yet still he manages to produce an astonishing body of work -- important essays of original, astringent insight and raucous, penetrating wit. Quite simply, there is no one else like him writing in the political blogosphere (or elsewhere). His is a vital voice that we cannot afford to lose.

But in this, our low, dishonest century, we see that at every turn, great criminals are lauded, honored, protected and rewarded, while those who speak the truth to power -- and about power -- are crushed beneath the boot heels of the imperial machinery. This can take high-profile form -- as in the cases of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, for example -- but it also happens every day to countless people across the land, and across the world, who never make the headlines, who simply try their best to live their lives with integrity and compassion, yet fall into the maw of the machine. Such virtues have no place in the rapacious world constructed by, and for the benefit of, our gilded elites.

Silber's work blazes with integrity and compassion. He's not a hack chewing partisan cud or a guru belching dogma, but a thinker thinking thoughts that can grow, evolve, deepen and change. You will never come away from his essays without having your mind engaged, invigorated, spurred to further, fruitful reflection, even turned in new directions. What more can you ask of a writer? And how many writers do we have like that?

So I would urge you to get over to his site and read the recent posts (here and here) that outline his present situation. He needs, first of all, some legal help in treading the IRS labyrinth, and also your continued support to sustain his work, which benefits us all. (He gives an address where people can contact him regarding ways of donating despite the current blockages.) Again, do go there, and do whatever you can.

For Whom the War Tolls: Citizens Refusing to Pay Anymore

Some Don’t Pay Their War Taxes

by David Swanson - CounterPunch

This past Saturday morning felt like mid-winter in Asheville, North Carolina, but was actually some weeks past tax day, and dozens of people were gathered in front of a federal building to say something about what federal income taxes are used for — something much more unusual than one would expect.

Posters carried messages including: “War steals from the poor” and “Defund Militerrorism.” This in itself was not so unusual. Opponents of war often use tax season to inform their friends and neighbors that roughly half of income tax dollars go to war preparation. We could have the educations and health and happiness that other nations have if we didn’t waste our money on the military, we say. We’d have more and better jobs, and jobs we could feel better about, we tell people.

If only our taxes weren’t put to such bad ends.

But the people gathered from across the country in Asheville on Saturday were in town for a meeting of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. They had gathered on Saturday morning to announce the awarding of grants of thousands of dollars to a long list of great humanitarian causes — all the things we wish our taxes were going to. For these people, this is in fact what their taxes are going to. Many of them have put the dollars they owe in taxes into one of a number of funds set up for this purpose. They can take their money back if they choose, but meanwhile the interest it earns goes to worthy causes of their choosing in the form of these grants announced in something more like a celebration than the usual tax-day lamentation that war opponents are all familiar with.

Following the announcements in front of the federal building, the small crowd stretched out in a long single-file line walking through Asheville, posters held high, making a tour of locations in the lives of the homeless and destitute, locations in need of the money that went to buy the bombs Israel was just then dropping on Syria.

It is possible to not pay your taxes and to use that refusal as a protest of war spending. It is possible to withhold the portion of your taxes that goes to war preparation (although of course you have no control over what the government does with the portion that you pay). It is possible to withhold a token amount in protest. It is possible, whether you pay your taxes in full or not, to include with your filing a letter informing the IRS of your objection to the war portion of the tax bill. And people are taking all of these steps, some at serious sacrifice, most without any great difficulty.

Congressman John Lewis introduced last session, and is expected to again, legislation that would allow those who object to funding war to have their taxes used only for non-military purposes. If this legislation were to pass, and if large numbers of people were to begin making use of it, the war machine could be defunded — and everything else be more greatly funded — without any personal risk to any participants. See http://peacetaxfund.org

In the meantime, tax resisters must violate the law — even if they can choose to do so in the name of upholding a higher law (such as the Kellogg-Briand Pact) or a moral law that overrides the other kind.

I believe that those resisting war taxes deserve our gratitude, and that many more should join them. They are a welcoming movement that encourages and supports those participating in war tax resistance at any level, participating sporadically, or engaging in long-term resistance for decades. They do not set up war tax resistance as a tactic in competition with rallying, educating, lobbying, marching, counter-recruitment, or other approaches to advancing economic conversion. Rather, they participate in all of these other approaches as well. But they urge those who protest war to consider the possibility of ceasing to pay for it.

War tax resistance is not for everyone. Some can best contribute to the cause of peace and justice by other means. But it is an approach many can take.

A lot of war tax resisters choose to live a lifestyle that brings in so little income that they owe no taxes. What distinguishes them from anyone else living “below the line,” is that they inform the government and anyone else they can that they have chosen to do this and why. So, if you oppose material consumption, if you choose to live off-the-grid, if you can feed and care for yourself without a big salary, and you already don’t owe taxes, you might want to consider whether part of your motivation in choosing that lifestyle is war tax resistance. If it is, please consider the fact that nobody knows this unless you tell them. Tell the IRS and Congress. Tell the media. Tell everyone you can. It costs you nothing but could do a world of good.

Other war tax resisters owe taxes but don’t pay them, or don’t pay part of them, or don’t file at all. I consider a lot of these people heroes. I’m not naming them, because it has traditionally been the high-profile resisters who have been targeted for seizure of property or prosecution (actions that are extraordinarily rare and growing even rarer). Of course it’s hard to take part in a movement that must grow to succeed and yet avoid doing it in a high-profile way. Some don’t. Some broadcast their war tax resistance far and wide. Others keep it to themselves. But we should know they are there and consider their silent example all the same. Some clearly resist taxes for their own personal peace of mind, not caring who else knows. That can be seen as self-indulgent, but if more people’s minds required such actions we’d all be better off.

Some tax resisters are willing to devote significant hours to dealing with the IRS. Others actually enjoy that ordeal. And in some cases the results include terrific stories of how IRS employees are won over to the cause. Other war tax resisters avoid devoting much time to it. Some ignore the IRS but move any money from their PayPal account to their bank account every day and withdraw everything from their bank account every day.

War tax resisters have little in common with tax cheats. They openly tell the government what income they have and what they own. But some of them go to great efforts to keep the government from getting its fingers on what they own.

There are risks in war tax resistance. There is a risk of owing taxes plus penalties. If you don’t file, there is a risk of the IRS inventing higher income for you than you actually had. But if you file and refuse to pay, some ten years later that debt disappears. And most war tax resisters simply never pay for war and never suffer for taking that stand.

Even so, there are deeper problems to consider. While our taxes go to wars and militarism and the criminalization of drugs and warrantless spying and police brutality and highways and prisons and pro-fracking “regulators,” and so forth, our taxes also go to many good worthwhile enterprises. When we defund the government we defund the good with the bad. We can’t recreate the efficiency of scale found in Medicare by funneling our withheld tax dollars into local health clinics. We can’t as easily support the sense of collective public purpose that holds a society together while opposing taxation. We can’t properly respond to anti-abortion tax resisters or anti-public-education tax resisters or corporate tax cheats while opposing taxation. If we don’t massively increase taxes on billionaires and defund the military, our future is bleak. One of those two necessary changes won’t work without the other. But it gets harder to talk about taxing billionaires while opposing taxation, even if we’re just opposing taxation as it exists right now, even if we’re paying our state and local and payroll taxes and only resisting federal income tax.

Despite all of those reservations, I think war tax resistance is a critical part of building the movement of mass resistance of various forms that we need right now. I encourage everyone to carefully consider it, and to consider being part of a support community for those engaged in it, whether or not you engage in it yourself. Movements are growing to resist home foreclosures and to resist the repayment of student loans. Resistance of war taxes — of this machine that eats half of federal discretionary spending every year while funneling our money to those who already have too much — should be an integral part of a broader movement of resistance to financial injustice. Those who’ve been doing it for decades have much to teach.



David Swanson is author of War is a Lie. He lives in Virginia.

Israeli Settlers Attack Olive Trees, Cut Chances for Peace

Settlers Cut Olive Trees Near Ramallah

by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies

Thursday May 2 2013, a number of armed extremist settlers of the Ofra illegal settlement, attacked Palestinian orchards in Deir Jareer village, east of the central West Bank city of Ramallah, and cut nearly 50 olive trees.

Local sources in the village reported that the olive trees belong to two residents identified as Mohammad Jihad Shajaeyya, and Mohammad Mahmoud Hamdan.

The settlers left the area after their attack; Israeli soldiers arrived at the scene, attacked and pushed the Palestinians out of their lands.

A few weeks ago, a number of extremist settlers attacked a Palestinian villager in the area causing various injuries, and the local residents responded by burning mobile homes illegally installed by the settlers on Palestinian lands.

On Tuesday, several Palestinians, mainly schoolchildren, were injured after a group of extremist Israeli settlers hurled stones at their vehicles, including a school bus, close to various roadblocks, near the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

The settlers also set ablaze dozens of Palestinian olive trees that belong to villagers of Huwwara, Aseera Al-Qibliyya, Madama and Orif, all near Nablus.

Furthermore, a number of settlers also hurled stones at Palestinian vehicles near the Ennab roadblock, east of the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem.

In related news, a young Palestinian man was stabbed and seriously injured in Jerusalem, and was moved to the Hadassah Israeli hospital in the city.

Also on Tuesday, Israeli sources reported that a Palestinian man stabbed and killed an Israeli settler of the Yitzhar illegal settlement, near Nablus. The attack took place near the Za’tara roadblock.