TELLS THE FACTS AND NAMES THE NAMES · VOLUME 25 NUMBER 2 2018 mexico’s big elec john reedand The newnuclearweaponsby johnlaforge t t he fbia he presiden t work by paul krassner t and t he russian revolu t ions by ken t he porns t t pa ar b t erson t y ru ion by t h fowler P . saina t h

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PO Box 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 Alexander Cockburn 1 (707) 629-3683 1- year print/digital edition $45 1941–2012 table of contents VOLUME 25 NUMBER 2 · 2018 letters to the editor ...... 5 columns Roaming Charges...... 6 borderzone notes Badge of Impunity 1968 + 50: The Year of Youth by Jeffrey St. Clair How America’s police get away by Laura Carlsen...... 10 with murder. eurozone notes Empire Burlesque...... 7 MSNBC’s Progressive The Working Poor Bot-ulism By Chris Floyd by Daniel Raventós and Julie Wark...... 12 Liberals’ undying obsession articles with Putin. Bottomlines...... 8 New Nuclear Weapons Express Train to by John LaForge...... 14 the 19th Century By Pete Dolack John Reed and the Russian Revolution Back to trickle-down economics. by P. Sainath...... 21 Between the Lines...... 9 Mexico’s Big and Contentious Elections The President and the Porn Star by Kent Paterson ...... 26 By Ruth Fowler The FBI At Work Sex as transaction. by Paul Krassner ...... 30 culture & reviews Appalachia Say You Will by Lee Ballinger...... 32 Soderbergh’s Truth by Ed Leer ...... 34 You’re holding an official copy of Counter- print + digital subsCriptions include the bi-monthly Punch Magazine which contains exclusive magazine by mail (6 issues per year), containing exclusive articles and special features you will not find articles and special features you can’t find on our web- site. Each edition of the magazine is (36) pages. Subscrip- on the CounterPunch website or anywhere tions begin within 3 weeks of subscribing, and start with else on the internet. the current issue being advertised at the time the order is Current subscribers can find their expiration placed unless specified otherwise. 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Yearsley’s Prize tive military force in history. The Evicted are often fearful of the mere I was delighted to learn from Bob Alvarez There was a forum on home existence of black people. As yesterday’s NY Times that evictions in Kansas City back if they are only used to being David Yearsley, one of my Drones Over Syria in December, organized by the around other white people and favorite CounterPunch writers, If the President was really public library and the local don’t really personally know received a Guggenheim award. psychopathic and really wanted PBS station. It was attended many black people. They then This is as well an implicit to maneuver everyone in the by over 600 people. Tara project their fear and bias onto tribute to Counterpunch, establishment & general public Raghuveer, who is a Harvard non-white bodies... sometimes which publishes so many fine into gracefully submitting to grad and studied with Matthew getting them killed. writers from a wide range of his batshit insanity, he would’ve Desmond, presented her Priya Reddy cultural fields. sent drones to Mueller’s offices. research on eviction rates in Starbucks & Cops Best regards, Since he’s as “sane” as Hillary Kansas City. She found that the June Zaccone Clinton and maybe even John eviction rate was around 98% As a Starbucks Barista, I can Ellis “Jeb!” Bush, he’s only for court cases that went to the say that our safety training Tired of War gonna send drones into Syria… final judgment phase. almost always has us rely- Syrians are beyond tired of war. Matthew Hardwick Chuck Munson ing on calling the police if we And we are tired of dictators, experience or suspect danger. interventionists, opportunists, Sanders and the South When Writing Fails The company needs to take and lackeys, spanning across My sense is Sanders under- Just writing about this stuff is more sensible approaches and all borders and political affilia- estimated his likely success, no longer enough. America train its employees in a way tions. Every time I hear about probably hoping to do a little needs a new grass roots that mitigates police involve- another one of these attacks, I better than Kucinich did, in a movement, independent of ment, as it usually escalates want to scream: “You want to symbolic message campaign the Democrats, to take to situations and leads more likely help? END THE WAR. DON’T about inequality, never think- the streets as it did 50+ years to violence. This company is PROLONG IT.” The U.S. has ing that he could be competi- ago, except this time with a culpable in part. never had a real “Syria policy” tive in the race. Apparently he real political agenda and the David Chaykowski that elevated concern for worked half time in the Senate determination, the stamina to Syrian human rights, devel- in months prior to primaries last it out. Thanks for Your Service opment, and progress. And instead of campaigning full Vaska Tumir A bunch of us were standing Congress? Their concern in the time. By the time of most of the on a corner in Santa Cruz, CA, past was to sanction Syria and southern primaries on super Facebook Farce some years ago, demonstrating isolate the country (in part, Tuesday, there were too many The spectacle of a bunch of against a war, I forget which because that special lobby told states to try to cover. And after Baby Boomer politicians whose one. A car stopped and Dennis them to). So now they’re horri- the severe defeat in South skills re:Internet/Social Media Kucinich got out. He went up fied? Now they care about my Carolina, where he’d put in lots are limited, at best, clinging to to each of us and shook our relatives and friends over there, of effort complete with events their Blackberries and Twitter hands. I’ll never forget that. who have suffered for far too backed by Danny Glover, his no matter how many 20-year- Will Yaryan long? Nope. campaign probably didn’t think olds they hire to educate them Farrah Hassen they could get much traction in and who have a fatal aversion the other southern states going to effectively regulating any- Police Action up against the Democratic thing, cluelessly interrogating So the administration con- Party machine there and Zuckerberg pretty much sums siders military strikes on Clinton’s longtime familiarity up why the Boomer politicos Syria a mere “police action.” with the establishment and need to exit stage right and Remember Truman’s “po- voters there versus his utterly support the younger genera- lice action” in Korea where unknown status to many in tions as they try and clean up 4 million people perished? the south. And probably as the the mess. NY Times noted, he didn’t help Send Letters to the Editor Following Truman’s pro- Michael Donnelly nouncement, the U.S. Congress himself by his disdain to speak to PO Box 228, Petrolia, CA quadrupled the DOD budget of his civil rights activism in Black Bodies, White Minds 95558 or, preferably, by email the 60s. in 1952—paving the way for the Many white people seem to counterpunch@ creation of the most destruc- Bernardo Issel to feel easily threatened & counterpunch or. g

5 case involved the shooting of an Arizona Roaming Charges woman in 2010 by police who had come to her house for a “welfare inspection.” When police arrived, Amy Hughes came Badge of Impunity out of her house holding a kitchen knife at her side. Hughes made no threat- by Jeffrey St. Clair ening moves but failed to respond to Officer Andrew Kisela’s demands to drop the blade. He then shot her four hat does it take to awaken a som- hand held only a white i-Phone. When times without a warning. Fortunately, nambulant media these days? the reality of what taken place began Hughes survived and sued the Arizona W Getting shot in the back 8 times to sink in, one of the cops says, “Hey, cop for use of excessive force. The Court by trigger-happy cops while standing in mute,” and the audio is silenced. The ruled that Kisela, and by extension all your grandmother’s backyard? That was police story changed over the ensuing other police, was entitled to “qualified the fate of young Stephon Clark on the days: Clark was carrying a gun, he was immunity” from lawsuits because the night of March 18 in the Meadowview carrying a tool bar, he was breaking into shooting did not “violate clearly estab- neighborhood of Sacramento, whose houses, he was using a concrete block lished statutory or constitutional rights ghastly murder by police briefly diverted or an aluminum gutter railing. None of which a reasonable person would the attention of the national press from of this stood up to the simple facts. A have known.” its Trump fixation. But after a couple of 22-year-old unarmed black man had Good luck holding cops accountable days, MSDNC and the New York Times, been shot seven times in the back on for even the most egregious actions were, like the White House, content to suspicion of breaking a few windows. after this ruling. In fact, it’s now more let Clark’s killing recede from the head- The mayor of Sacramento, Darrell likely that American citizens will be lines and become just another “local Steinberg, said he was “in no position held responsible for people cops shoot issue.” to second guess” the officers. And, just than the cops themselves. This sounds Why did the cops fire 20 shots at days after Clark was killed, two police crazy and it should, but it’s also true. Stephon Clark? The official story was unions donated a total of $13,000 to Consider the case of Lakeith Smith, who that Clark had been seen breaking car the woman investigating the shooting, was 15-years-old when he took part in windows in his neighborhood, a des- city DA Anne Marie Schubert. “It’s not a burglary in Millbrook, Alabama that titute area of Sacramento that is under an exception to the rule—it is the rule. went horribly wrong when police inter- police occupation. According to police, Their relationships with each other are rupted the break-in and shot and killed Clark had been tracked by a helicopter incestuous,” said Cat Brooks, executive his accomplice, A’Donte Washington. for this alleged act of vandalism. The he- director of the Oakland-based Justice The officer who shot Washington was licopter police warned the cops on the Teams Network. “Prosecutors are swiftly cleared of any wrongdoing, but ground that Clark was holding a tool beholden to law enforcement unions.” Smith was charged and convicted, under bar. When police confronted Clark, he The media can’t be bothered to Alabama’s cruel Accomplice Liability was standing near his grandmother’s spend too much time on killings that Act, of murdering his friend, who had house and then ran into the backyard. have become routine, unless there’s actually been killed by the cop. Tried The cops followed, guns drawn, body grisly video footage. In the 24-hour as an adult, Smith was sentenced to 65 cameras rolling. One officer shouts, period around Clark’s death, at least years hard time. “Show me your hands! Gun!” Three five other men were killed by cops: Cops wear a badge of impunity. seconds pass before the cop yells: “Show Michael Holliman in Lone Rock, More than 1,500 Americans are killed me your hands! Gun! Gun! Gun!” Then Arkansas, Reuben Ruffin, Jr. in Daviess by police each year. That’s almost 10 Clark is shot multiple times in the back. County, Kentucky, Manuel Borrego in El percent of all homicides in the country. He falls to the ground and is shot once Monte, California, Jermaine Massey in Yet few of these killings are questioned more. The encounter, from the time Greenville, South Carolina and Osbaldo and almost none are prosecuted. Most the helicopter spotted Clark to the fatal Jimenez in Escondido, California. Only homicide victims are killed by someone shooting, lasted less than two minutes. Clark’s murder merited mention on they knew: a friend, a business partner, The police let Clark bleed out for five CNN’s chiron. So many killings, so little a lover, a spouse, a parent, a child. In minutes before placing his dying body airtime. today’s America, when people are killed in handcuffs. “He had something in Two weeks after the Sacramento by someone they don’t know that killer hands, one of the cops said. “Looked like shooting, the Supreme Court handed is more and more likely to be a person a gun from our perspective.” But Clark down an appalling decision that will who had sworn to protect and serve was unarmed. No gun, no tool bar. His only encourage more police killings. The them. cp

6 HAYNES: Tricky devils. Genetics will empire burlesque tell, I guess. CAMBRES: Absolutely. Anyway, I called Brennan himself, and he called Pajama Game: MSNBC’s Bill Kristol who called Sam Power who called Henry Kissinger, and the con- sensus of the intelligence community Progressive Bot-ulism is clear: Russian bots are reaching into by Chris Floyd our high schools—even our elemen- tary schools, Maddie!—to radicalize our youth. Of course, these kids don’t OICEOVER: Tonight, MSNBC After extensive consultations with like getting shot—but organizing? presents a special edition of “In our experts—ex-CIA chiefs, former Protesting? Where will that lead? At V Deep with Maddie Haynes,” reveal- NSA officials, retired military brass some point, they might not just question ing a shocking secret behind the seem- heading private security companies, the authority of a garish vulgarian like ingly benign “March For Our Lives.” Bush-Cheney alumni rehabilitated by Trump, but the authority of our whole Here’s Maddie. their criticism of Trump and Russian bipartisan system! HAYNES: Thanks, Jim. Yes, on March bot hunters led by insatiable warmongers Right now, they’re just focused on 25th we were all stirred by the remark- from the Project for a New American sporadic outbreaks of gun violence able scenes of hundreds of thousands of Century—we have confirmed that aimed at people like them. But what if schoolchildren marching through the Vladimir Putin was directly involved in they ever start connecting this to the streets of America—indeed, the world fomenting the chaos that filled America’s larger violence that their bipartisan gov- —demanding action against mass shoot- streets on that fateful day of March 25th. ernment is aiming at young people—and ings and gun violence. Since that time, We go now to our top investigative jour- others—around the world? What if they this network has been in the forefront of nalist, Whittaker Cambres. Whit, how tie this bipartisan system of violence, those seeking to amplify the message of did you unravel this sinister scheme? death, ruin, corruption and deceit the march. CAMBRES: Maddie, it began when we abroad to the corrosion and decay of But MSNBC is also dedicated to the were doing our usual deep-dive moni- their own country, their own communi- pursuit of truth, no matter where it toring of the Putin propaganda machine ties, to the curdling of opportunity and might lead, and no matter whose ox is by watching RT in our pajamas at home. security in their own lives? gored. And we all know there is only We saw that the Kremlin sock-puppet HAYNES: My god, Whit, that could one prism for truth in American politics network was not saying anything derog- spell the end of our progressive neolib- today: Russia. Every issue must be atory about the march, but giving large eral path of common-sense, incremental examined largely—or even solely—on amounts of airtime and web space to compromise with the War Machine, Wall the basis of how Vladimir Putin is using the students and their stirring speeches. Street, the Security State and corporate it to pursue his ruthless agenda of weak- They even mentioned that their top op- kleptocrac! But what can we do? ening and subverting our great—because erative, Donald Trump, had cowardly CAMBRES: There’s still hope, Maddie. we are good— democracy. flown to his Florida bolthole to escape Reliable sources tell me that Robert For example, we have shown, time and the protests. Mueller is preparing indictments against time again, how the Moscow Machiavelli HAYNES: I’ll bet that set off alarm nine Russian bot accounts—identi- used Bernie Sanders as a dupe to cripple bells! fied through unknown methods by the campaign of the most qualified CAMBRES: You bet, Maddie. As Bill Kristol’s group—which have alleg- person ever to run for president. We one of our go-to guys, John Brennan, edly been pushing divisive stories about have shown, in staggering, bludgeon- has said, Russians are genetically pro- school shootings via ads on Facebook, ing detail, how Putin has used social grammed to be deceitful. Whatever WebCrawler and other sites popular media to sow division among us, hyp- the Russians do, there’s a double-triple- with today’s youth. notizing millions of decent Americans quadruple-sided game going on behind HAYNES: Well, if anyone can save into becoming racist, neo-fascist Trump it. If they don’t attack something, that us, Mueller can! Thanks for the report, followers, while beguiling millions of means they support it and it must be Whit. And hey—I like those pajamas! Ha others into supporting radical, conten- bad. Unless, of course, it means they ha ha ha! tious causes such as Black Lives Matter, actually don’t support it, but want us to CAMBRES: Ha ha ha ha! cp BDS and the Dakota Pipeline protests. think they do, so that we’ll end up attack- Sadly, we must now report that the ing what they don’t actually support and March for Our Lives is no exception. supporting what we should be attacking.

7 of the store closings, Wal-Mart claimed bottom lines its wage increases and benefit provi- sions would cost it $700 million. But the company will save $2.2 billion a year Express Train to the from the tax cuts. The biggest beneficiaries of Wal-Mart’s tax cuts are none other than the Walton 19th Century family, the heirs to the Wal-Mart by Pete Dolack fortune and who own about half of the company’s stock. The company hasn’t odern conservatism wants to take Speculators love buybacks because it yet announced a fresh buyback plan us back to the 19th century, with means extra profits for them. Corporate for 2018, but had already committed M a stop in the Reagan era on the executives love them because, with fewer itself in October 2017 to spending $20 way. Ah, the 19th century—the good old shares outstanding following a buyback billion on stock buybacks. Please don’t days when there were no pesky govern- program, their company’s “earnings shed any tears for the Walton family— ment regulations, no unions, and private per share” figure will rise for the same the company has steadily increased its mercenary corporate militias kept the net income, making them look good dividend payouts over the years and is rabble in line. So before we can set the in the eyes of Wall Street. Other share- now paying 52 cents a share four times clocks back that far, we get one more try holders love buybacks because the a year. That means the Walton family at “trickle down” economics, courtesy profits will now be shared among fewer receives billions of dollars a year just of the Trump administration’s rammed- shareholders. from their dividends, without lifting a through tax plan. In just the first nine weeks of 2018, finger. Good work if you can get it. Corporate leaders will magically U.S. corporations announced a total of Perhaps an unusually egregious create new jobs! Uh-huh. We’ve heard $214 billion in stock buybacks—a total example, but hardly unique. A report this siren song before, and it’s going to greater than that of any prior full quar- issued by Morgan Stanley last month work even less well this time around. terly period. To cite just a handful of reported that 13 percent of the value of Except we should change the tense of examples, Cisco Systems will spend $25 the corporate tax cuts will go toward pay the preceding sentence, because the only billion buying its own stock; PepsiCo raises, bonuses and employee benefits, expected immediate result of gigantic will spend $15 billion doing so, and will with nearly half going to stock buybacks. tax cuts is already happening—fattening increase its quarterly dividend, thus Given Morgan Stanley’s Wall Street per- the wallets of corporate executives and shoveling still more money into specu- spective, it is likely the former is over- Wall Street speculators. That is not to lator wallets; and Wells Fargo will spend stated and the latter understated. forget the future cuts to Social Security, $21 billion. Yes, the same Wells Fargo Money spent on buybacks had already Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps and known for its infamous business plan tripled from 2009 to 2016. The 500 other social services, certainly high on of opening fake accounts in the name of biggest U.S. corporations spent $1 trillion the list of intended outcomes. Already its bank customers. (No accident there, on buybacks and dividends in 2016 and the Trump régime has proposed $193 by the way. A member of my family that’s an even more phenomenal total billion in cuts to the Supplemental who once worked as teller told me she than it initially appears—that $1 trillion Nutrition Assistance Program. and all other tellers were under constant was about $115 billion more than their Those of you old enough to have been pressure to get all customers to open a combined net income. around for the Reagan administration’s minimum of five accounts each.) What’s in it for you? You’ll get to share tax cuts for the wealthy: Did the wealth And those smatterings of job an- in the glory of robust profits for the boss, trickle down to you? Still waiting, aren’t nouncements? Mostly smoke and basking in the bright light of the new you? And thanks to rulings by the U.S. mirrors. Take Wal-Mart. First, the retail neon sign your company is installing on Securities and Exchange Commission chain announced that it would raise its its headquarters building and warming giving the green light to stock buybacks, minimum starting wage, and increase yourself in the knowledge that you’ve this drought will be even drier. Already, its maternity and family-leave benefits, done your part in making Wall Street stock manipulation, and not job creation taking care to tie these improvements richer. Your landlord will accept that as or wage increases, is where the corporate to the Trump tax cuts. Mere hours later, payment for this month’s rent. Won’t he? tax savings are going. Wal-Mart announced it would close 63 cp A buyback is when a corporation of its Sam’s Club stores. Good-bye jobs! buys its own stock from its sharehold- (In January alone, it announced at least ers at a premium to the current price. 1,500 layoffs.) Before the announcement

8 occurrence. Between the lines Adult, operating in a guerrilla fashion in and throughout Los Angeles—de- scending upon empty mansions with less The President and the than 24 hours warning, sweeping in with janky, cobbled together equipment and cheap LED’s—consistently morphs to Porn Star stay one step ahead of a moralizing and by Ruth Fowler judgmental establishment that is intent on either shutting it down outright, or fabricating paternalistic and utterly un- he news POTUS has allegedly had same scale as non-sex workers. (Most) workable regulations which claim to an affair with adult actress, Stormy sex when you are a pornstar, is not about focus on participants’ ‘health’. Whether T Daniels, is so predictable that I per- love, affairs, romance and cheating. Sex it’s through regulating condom use, STD sonally struggled to find it newsworthy. is work, therefore, a form of currency, testing or the internet, controlling other It seems like something we’ve always a domestic and pedestrian event that people who fuck for a living and telling known about Donald Trump—the ‘grab usually takes place with around four them that they are inhuman, seems to be you by a pussy’ human phenomenon people watching disinterestedly from a one way that America can feel OK with ‘leading’ our country—that the ensuing ridiculously proximate distance, a boom simultaneously jerking off to them. media frenzy seems hyperbolic and in- hovering three feet away from your Ironically, we might note, Trump sincere—and focused entirely around face, a camera jammed close to your has never voiced any kind of moraliz- Stormy’s career in the adult industry. It dick, someone’s iPhone timer ticking ing diktat over sex, marriage or ethics. is not that Trump had an affair—clearly away the requisite 24 minutes until the He’s always made himself known as the America is, at this point, pretty OK with ‘pop-shot’—the climactic moment a asshole who will grab potential sexual the fact Trump fucks anything that will guy cums all over a female performer. partners by the pussy and doesn’t see or will not have him and isn’t particularly The stigma surrounding porn is what consent as an obstacle to consummation. tied to the marital bed. It is that Trump makes it sell and gives the industry its Porn is all about consent. It’s all about had sex with a pornstar, someone who dirty, wonderfully seedy sheen. The prioritizing female talent above the male, has sex in public for money, someone sense of the taboo—so entirely absent who is seen as the prop. Porn is all about who has no shame in selling the sex she from a chilly porn set in someone’s producing content in a way which is ac- has for money, and openly and honestly empty mansion in the Valley crewed by ceptable and pleasurable to the talent does so with her face, dripping in cum, people who have seen other people’s sex performing. It is about commodifying plastered all over a DVD cover. a million times too often to find anything what the rest of the world struggles with, For the past three months, I’ve noteworthy about the event, instructions morally and ethically, on a daily basis. been working in and around the porn being barked out by a Director who just What is most surprising about the industry, documenting pornstars, di- wants to get the hell out of there—doggy, Stormy Daniels scandal is that we even rectors and crew with a stills camera reverse cowgirl, blow job, soft-core—is describe their sex as “an affair”. It was a for a journalistic project. The news necessary for the industry to keep going. transaction, pure and simple, devoid of about Stormy and Trump has been cir- The stigma is what porn thrives on— the emotional and intellectual struggles culating that industry for months: not making you think, that the things they which delineate anything to do with really a secret, so much, as something do, should be getting you off. Frankly, the heart. Like the porn stars America that everyone knew about and wasn’t after several years as a stripper, and now despises, Trump gets the distinction entirely sure anyone else would be inter- three months following porn stars, I’m between sex and love, and yet unlike ested in. When it seems America does often surprised that I haven’t had sex these porn stars who are stigmatized, not really care about the President mo- as often as I feel like I have. Sex—mine, loathed and despised—he is applauded lesting a woman, those of us who have yours, the couple getting paid hundreds for it. cp been around the sex industry and under- of dollars to do it across the room from stand the stigma, can’t really understand me—has saturated my ironically sexless why anyone would care the President life, and navigating the constraints of molested a woman who is a pornstar— the ‘real’ world, where sex takes on an ie, someone who, in most of America’s entirely different place and value, riven eyes, has forfeited her right to be consid- with Judeo-Christian rules, moral and ered a human being and a woman on the ethical pitfalls, is a confusing and bizarre

9 weapons out of the hands of assassins. They can downsize an industry of arms borderzone notes manufacturing and sales that makes millions by assuring that anyone who wants a gun gets one, and that thou- sands of people, mostly men, want guns. The impact would also cross borders. 1968 + 50 Gun smuggling has become a major part of the arms industry’s business model, as Mexican drug cartels take advan- tage of the easy access. U.S. gun makers The Year of Youth and sellers and the government that by Laura Carlsen supports them don’t only have the blood of Parkland students on their hands; outh activism exploded in 1968 and they’re forced to confront. And they’ve they also have the blood of thousands of transformed societies throughout risen up to say that that’s not a future youth in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Y the world. Fifty years later, it’s hap- they can live with. Monterrey. For years, Mexican victims’ pening again. With the media actually paying at- organizations have been pleading with The March for Our Lives stunned tention this time, most people have the U.S. Congress to tighten laws that the political establishment and un- heard the moving words of the Parkland would reduce the flow of arms to their leashed the vitriol of the right. That’s a students and other students who have country. good sign. The huge number—between survived attacks, lost friends to gun For now, the youth movement is 800,000 and 1,000,000 in Washington violence or live in fear. Millions of focused on legislation, while flexing its DC alone—were part of it, but even people experienced the resounding considerable electoral muscle. The signs more impressive was the conviction and silence in Emma Gonzalez’s speech that and slogans—“get rid of public servants the eloquence of the students. carried them into a classroom where who only care about the gun lobby”, Demands to tighten access to guns, terror reigned for six minutes. “Vote them out” and “Our ballots will especially weapons designed to murder From day one, the teens at the fore- stop bullets”—promise a newly ener- large numbers of human beings, have front of this movement put the blame gized youth vote that has the potential always followed mass shootings. They where it belongs—on big money in to make major changes. The regula- have failed. This time is different. Before, politics and back-pocket politicians. For tions are important, but at root, it’s the it had been mostly the parents who them, it’s not just about regulations. It’s a violence of everyday life that catalyzed spoke up. Now it’s the kids. The crime question of basic values—for life or for the movement. at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High the industry of death. The demand to get That’s why there’s a growing conflu- tapped into the deep grief and fear that NRA money out of politics goes to the ence between the youth’s March for Our many adolescents feel, and the sense of heart of our rapidly eroding democratic Lives, Black Lives Matter organizing betrayal of growing up in a society that system, and the students know that. against police brutality, the drug policy fails to value their lives and safety. In public forums, they pin politicians reform and anti-incarceration move- A few months ago, before the down to choose between them or the ments, and women speaking out against Parkland massacre on February 14, campaign donations. A now viral video sexual assault and harassment. They all no one could predict that a rally for of a town hall meeting shows Marco feel the brunt of violence that has been “common-sense gun laws” could bring Rubio sweating bullets as he justifies exacerbated by a refusal of authorities out so many people, so passionately NRA donations. He ends up saying that to control it or even recognize it. As committed. The march, the voices of voters “bought into my agenda” (and so high school student Edna Chavez who the kids and the outpouring of support did the NRA, to the tune of $3.3 million). lost her brother Ricardo to gun violence revealed a much broader grievance than After 17 students were murdered in his said, “I learned to dodge bullets before I the lack of gun regulation. Children own state, his response enraged the learned to read”. and teens in the world’s most developed students and people across the nation. Violence characterizes this moment country feel unsafe. They feel unsafe in The gun lobby has consistently in history. Capitalism and patriarchy act their schools, in their neighborhoods managed to marginalize gun regulation with greater violence to assert control and in the streets. They’re pointing a as a public safety issue, but it’s funda- over dwindling resources and challenges finger and saying the system promotes, mental. Sensible regulation can keep to power. Grassroots movements resist- supports and condones the violence assault rifles and other high-power ing and defending have increased. It’s

10 not just in the United States, it’s in coun- whether it was the student, civil rights threat that hangs over the head of the tries all over the world, locked in per- or anti-war movement, created a long- people the system wants expelled, im- manent wars for resources, and because term chilling effect that tamped down prisoned, silenced or dead. Homeland war is good business. Violence that the rebellion but left the example. As and national security programs target seems random or individual becomes Martin Luther King’s 9-year old grand- them and strip away rights that could systemic when the system neither daughter Yolanda told the March, “My protect them from delinquents and state prevents nor controls it, and in many grandfather had a dream that his four violence. These policies are the opposite cases generates it. little children would not be judged by of security. Trump’s response to arm teachers the color of their skin, but by the content Young people have responded by follows the script for how to turn in- of their character… I have a dream that saying no to the threat. In the US they security into a way to feed the same enough is enough. That this should be a marched for their lives, in Mexico City system that created that insecurity. It’s gun-free world.” they marched to protest the disappear- the classic macho response to meet Although we may not have seen it ances and assassinations of the young in violence with violence that makes coming now and in this way, it’s logical the context of the war on drugs. There’s defense companies rich and reinforces that young people are speaking out a sense that we’ve come to a breaking patriarchal dictums of control through against violence in daily life. Violence is point. force. In response, finally, young people and millions of others are calling for real security, the kind that is built on a In a capitalist and patriarchal solid culture of non-violence rather than walls or guns. society, systematic violence is a Today’s youth move-ment conjures memories of 1968, amid the fifty-year powerful tool of social control . commemorations of the civil rights movement, the SDS days of resis- the sinister thread that weaves through The youth know this isn’t a one-day tance, May in France, the massacre of our lives and that we’ve been told to call battle. They’re ready for the long haul. Tlatelolco in Mexico, and youth move- normal. Although the government and They celebrate diversity and have a ments across the globe. Rebellion was the media represent it as the random greater respect for women than their the zeitgeist of ’68. In dozens of coun- outcome of unbalanced individuals predecessors and that’s a great strength. tries with different histories and political or the necessary response to threats, This new generation of young activists contexts, young people organized and students are speaking out to say that challenges prior social consensus on broke through the barriers of repression laws, economic forces and rulers incite race and gender. Jamelle Bouie writing and depression, of hopelessness and res- the violence and gain from it. Industries in Slate Magazine calls it “the next ignation. In broad strokes, their move- that encourage the use of assault consensus”: “Millennials, now the most ments challenged the dictums of a capi- weapons for sport and place them in diverse generation of adults in American talist society that presented itself as the the hands of men bred on a culture of history, are at the vanguard of a shift only future. They danced in the streets, macho violence and governments whose toward greater color-consciousness in organized in communities, threw rocks response to gun violence is more arms American politics”. Surveys show this and rocked the powers-that-be. They form part of this dangerous loop. generation acknowledges and rejects called for freedom and experimented The problem goes even deeper. In a racism and supports immigrants at a with what that meant. capitalist and patriarchal society, sys- much higher rate than previous gen- Today’s movement calls for safety. tematic violence is a powerful tool of erations. Although there has been less The right to live and continue to social control. Attempts to isolate and explicit talk about gender equality, the breathe. That’s a powerful indicator of personalize attacks by white men, can’t strong and articulate voices of girls and how violent our societies have become. hide the racism, misogyny and hatred young women reflect a sea change from In some ways, it’s a historic reaction to of the other behind the attacks. Amid the sixties male-dominated student what happened in 1968. The flipside to the hand-wringing and “thoughts and movements. the rebellion that year was repression. prayers”, the message is clear—we can If in 1968, the system that young As young people stood up to say ‘no do this to you. people lived under had become stifling, more’, they found themselves looking The relative lack of punishment for today it has become deadly. Like 1968, down the barrel of a gun. The extreme these crimes, most obviously in the 2018 will be remembered as the year that response of governments to student case of police brutality, enforces the millions of young people, all over, stood uprisings and fights for freedom, message. Murder is the ever-present up and said no to the violence. cp

11 or all the mealy-mouthed assuranc- es that employment is “on the rise”, F what’s really on the rise in Europe eurozone notes is poverty. But Europe is by no means homogenous. For some, life is sweet in a Europe which, according to Capgemini data and geographically speaking, con- DAMNED IF YOU DO, DAMNED IF YOU DON’T centrates 806 of 2,473 of the world’s bil- lionaires. The less advantaged peoples are not homogenous either. Employment rates show a north-south divide at both The Working Poor country and regional levels, and they are much lower for women than men, by Daniel Raventós and Julie Wark with the widest gender gaps appearing for women in age ranges associated with sponsible for the present global situ- Address, “Almost 8 million jobs have caring for children, dependent family ation causing “Europe’s problem” of been created during this mandate so members or grandchildren. Poverty is immigrants and refugees. In former far. With 235 million people at work, obviously self-perpetuating when the colonies and poor countries, vulnerable more people are in employment in the least-educated people, many of them employment affects three out of four European Union than ever before”. But immigrants and refugees, enduringly workers, almost 1.4 billion people, more he did beg a couple of key questions. show the lowest employment rates. than 300 million of whom have a per What kind of jobs? Who is doing what And the most disadvantaged groups capita household income or consump- and for what? now include growing numbers of young tion of less than US$1.90 per day, and The OECD tells another story people who must accept part-time and young people (some 156 million) are in its report, “Understanding the fixed-term “rubbish” contracts. disproportionately affected. The figure Socio-Economic Divide in Europe” In three EU member states—Bulgaria for Sub-Saharan Africa is almost 70%. (January 26, 2017), pointing out that if (41.3%), Romania (37.3%), and Greece Yet people who flee to the EU for their the average income of the richest 10% (35.7%)—more than a third of the livelihoods—and their very lives—are was seven times higher than that of population was at risk of poverty and contemptuously labeled “economic the poorest 10% in the 1980s, it is 9½ social exclusion in 2015. And poverty is refugees”, insinuating that “they are times higher today. The 10% wealthi- showing a relatively new facet in Europe greedy and coming to take your job”. est households have amassed 50% of which is niggling at some consciences In Europe, in-work poverty has total wealth and the 40% least wealthy and bothering conventional analysts appeared as one of the products of just over 3%. And a quick compari- who need to explain why, despite the four decades of out-of-control capital- son of working conditions before and purported partial economic recovery, ism and, in particular, the economic after the crisis shows, once again, that there are more people working full-time policies imposed since the onset of the the differences between EU member but more people are living in poverty. crisis ten years ago. As researchers from states are considerable. Spain—bailout The numbers of working poor, officially the Hans-Böckler-Foundation’s Institute poster child with one of the Eurozone’s defined as workers who earn less than of Economic and Social Research (WSI) highest growth rates—stands out as 60% of the average wage in their respec- found in a study of eighteen EU coun- being among the worst countries in this tive states, are rising fast. In Greece, tries from 2004 to 2014, austerity enthu- regard. Temporary workers account for Croatia, Hungary, Portugal, Cyprus, siasts in all these countries have a clear more than 25% of the workforce, and the UK and Italy wages (adjusted for objective: to make the unemployed work 90% of contracts signed in 2015 were inflation) have been falling since 2009. for low wages. Germany, Europe’s most temporary. Some people have had more The problem of poverty is not only due powerful economy, is no exception. The than 130 contracts in two and a half to the fact that 17,978 million men and figure for poor workers doubled from years. One in five people are at risk of women in the EU-28 were unemployed 1.9 million (4.8%) in 2004 to 4.1 million poverty or social exclusion, a number in December 2017 but the closely-related (9.6%) in 2014. If the increase is greater that rises to more than one in three for reality: the deplorable quality of jobs in absolute numbers, it is because the children. In beautiful Seville, so loved by and working conditions for those who total number of workers rose from 39.3 tourists, more than 40% of children live are employed. to 42.6 million. Yes, they’re creating in poverty. Of course, it’s not just a European jobs. EU President Jean-Claude Juncker The social effects are long-term and matter because Europe is partly re- bragged in his 2017 State of the Union devastating. Eurofound’s 2016 European

12 Quality of Life Survey shows that the Surveys asking workers about the with threatened or real abuse, into de- working poor are much more likely sense of their employment quickly humanizing conditions of servitude, as to have mental health problems than demolish trite notions of “traditional a commodity that is all but owned by the working population in general. functions”. It’s no secret that many an “employer”, with physical constraints Inadequate, overcrowded, dark, damp, people consider that their work makes on freedom of movement, and (mainly cold housing in dangerous neighbor- no sense. For example, The Wall Street in cases of immigrant girls and women) hoods with no recreational or green Journal (July 19, 2016) reported that being trafficked, especially in the sex zones spawns serious vulnerability in job satisfaction in the US had “hit a trade. Young people are terribly sus- terms of health, education, crime, pol- 10-year high”, but with only 46.9% of ceptible to exploitation in conditions of lution, vandalism, physical safety, more workers expressing satisfaction with semi-servitude. Ignacio Doreste from social exclusion and more poverty. The their jobs. So does wage labor really the European Trade Union Congress, EU Horizon 2020 project NEGOTIATE dignify a person? Indeed, many jobs points out that, on “youth salaries” of pays special attention to young people, attack dignity, freedom and justice, the as little as four euros per hour, young showing links between unemployment, three basic principles of human rights. people need at least two full-time jobs cannabis use and mental illness. The Recognition of this goes way back to just in order to survive. But they’re associated falling birth rates portend a Roman law which makes a clear distinc- not free to make life choices. Without “perfect demographic storm”. tion between two kinds of job contract, radical change, the vicious circle can The plight of the working poor in the the locatio conductio operis and the only get more vicious. West calls into question old assumptions locatio conductio operarum. With the One measure which could constitute about the “traditional functions”—self- former, an individual contracted another radical change is universal basic income esteem, reinforced social relations, and (a silversmith or a tanner, let’s say) to (UBI) but, like many another good idea, living in dignity—of wage labor. We’re do the job specified in the contract. The it is being sequestered by billionaires not referring to work in general as latter meant that one person provided like Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and this would include both instrumental unspecified services to another for a Mark Zuckerberg. They see it as a “safety and autotelic activities (with an end or certain period of time. The first contract net” (whose?), a way of confronting in- purpose in themselves) as well as vol- respects the worker’s dignity because a creased automation in industry. Many untary and reproductive (domestic and free person offers another free person a right-wing UBI supporters see it as a care) work. In the case of wage labor, the clearly designated kind of service, but way of doing away with or minimizing “traditional functions” start looking de- the second type subverts dignity because welfare and public services. They’re not lusional. Work is more like Huey Lewis’ making one person dependent on an- far from Friedrich Hayek’s dictum that blue-collar rock depiction back in 2005: other’s whims is an assault on freedom. a minimal income is a “necessary part of “Busboy, bartender, ladies of the night / Or, as the oligarchic republican Cicero the Great Society in which the individ- Grease monkey, ex-junky, winner of the put it in De Oficiis, “the very wage they ual no longer has specific claims on the fight / Walkin’ on the streets it’s really all receive is a pledge of their slavery”. members of the particular small group the same / Sellin’ souls”. Hardly anyone One thing is part-time wage slavery into which he was born”. It becomes a gives a damn about people having to as understood by republican thinkers in kind of charity which, ignoring causes, suffer the indignity of “sellin’ souls”. ancient Greece and Rome, and another poverty and suffering, takes them for Remunerated work is usually instru- is the tightly interconnected global phe- granted as collateral damage of an un- mental (unlike autotelic activity), with nomenon of present-day slavery, with challengeable economic system, an ill some kind of end in sight, like accom- 40.3 million people affected, 10 million to be arbitrarily ameliorated but not modation, food, clothing, leisure activity of them children, and 24.9 million in abolished. and so on. What counts is the instru- forced labor. But there are similarities. But, given the huge numbers of un- mentality of attaining something else Many westerners think of slavery as an employed, working, and slaving people and, at the most basic level, staying alive. atrocious practice occurring in poor, living in conditions of the starkest Marx sums it up. When “labor is external underdeveloped countries. But much material existence, this universal, un- to the worker […] it is forced labor. It is of today’s slavery—as Cicero under- conditional measure might also lay the therefore not the satisfaction of a need; stood it—is alive and well in the West foundations for change toward a much it is merely a means to satisfy needs too when women are forced into pros- more just, free, environmentally respon- external to it. […] External labor, labor titution, septuagenarians can’t retire sible society. Naomi Klein, speaking in in which man alienates himself, is a labor because they can’t survive on a Social favor of a UBI, observes: “when people of self-sacrifice, of mortification.” And Security check, and it can also typify don’t have options, they’re going to long before Marx, Aristotle described domestic work, factories, and sweat- make bad choices.” Unemployment and wage-labor as “part-time slavery”. shops. Vulnerable people are forced, poor employment are not just a matter

13 of work but one with grave social, political, economic, and en- $1.2 trillion by department, the GAO estimates that $890 billion vironmental ramifications. Giving people the means to make will go to the Pentagon and $352 billion to the Department good choices might even allow things to get revolutionary. cp of Energy (DOE) and its bomb-building wing known as the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). While the CBO’s cost estimate is flabbergasting enough, the The New Nuclear Weapons agency “lowballed” its estimate by at least $541 billion accord- $ ing to Robert Alvarez, a former DOE senior policy advisor. 1.74 Trillion for H-bomb Writing in the Washington Spectator, Alvarez notes that by excluding the costs of environmental restoration and waste Profiteers and “Fake” management in the 70-year-old nuclear weapons complex, the CBO “hides” and downplays more than half-a-trillion dollars. Cleanups The $541 billion “comes from the same congressional spending By John LaForge account” as the $1.2 trillion weapons complex upgrade, Alvarez “We like to cook. We don’t like to do the dishes.” notes, raising the actual inflation-adjusted total estimate to $1.74 trillion. Clean-up costs were perhaps left out to reduce Trivializing nuclear weapons the way he makes light of the hair-raising sticker shock usually prompted by trillions in sexual assault, white supremacy, beating up critics, deport- new federal spending. ing millions, shooting someone in the street, bombing civil- Ignoring or belittling the toxic and radioactive legacy of ians and torturing suspects, Donald Trump blithely “tweeted” decades of US nuclear weapons production is a longtime about the US arsenal in December 2016: “The US must greatly practice among weapons proponents. One Livermore National strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as Lab design engineer told me 30 years ago over the phone, the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” “We like to cook; we don’t like to do the dishes.” Three typical Mr. Trump’s handlers were trying to steal thunder that day, examples of this condescension toward contaminated produc- Dec. 23rd, from the UN General Assembly where most of the tion sites—Oak Ridge Tenn., and Los Alamos, New Mexico, world actually was coming to its senses regarding nuclear and Kansas City, Missouri—are looked at below. weapons, voting overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution to The $1.7 trillion weapons complex rebuild was originally begin negotiating a treaty banning them. The remarkable proposed in 2016 by President Obama, who reportedly agreed Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons or Ban Treaty was to it as a quid pro quo for the Senate’s Ratification of the New finally adopted by the UNGA on July 7, 2017, and will take effect Start Treaty with Russia. The weapons industry bonanza when it’s ratified by 50 states. Then, on Oct. 6, the International appears to be a zero sum tribute to inflation, since it won’t Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons was declared the 2017 increase the size of the nuclear arsenal. Another couple of Nobel Peace Prize winner for its successful effort to see the trillion will have to be diverted, however, if, as reported by NBC UN adopt the Ban Treaty. Of course, the US government was News last Oct. 11, President Trump’s summertime demand for a having none of it. “tenfold increase” the nuclear arsenal’s size is enacted. It’s only a Both the Obama and Trump administrations publicly partial relief that no one takes Trump’s asinine misnomer seri- opposed and obstructed efforts to enact the ban, and last ously in this instance, and that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson October the Congressional Budget Office reported on the left the July meeting calling the game show president “a fucking colossal price of their all-out pro-nuclear stampede in moron.” the opposite direction. The CBO’s report (Approaches for Managing the Costs of US Nuclear Forces, 2017 to 2046) “We don’t have money anymore” but for war projects that the military-industrial complex’s plan to rebuild While debating the Republican’s $1.5 trillion tax cut bill, the entire US nuclear arsenal from top to bottom, including Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, Chair of the Senate Finance new warhead production facilities, would cost $1.2 trillion Committee, spoke about the Children’s Health Insurance between 2017 and 2046. Program (CHIP) which needed its $15 billion appropriations This staggering sum involves contested plans to produce: renewed after expiring last Oct. 1. CHIP subsidizes health new nuclear-armed long-range bombers, land-based missiles, exams, doctor visits, prescriptions and other medical care for missile-firing submarines, and their propulsion reactors ($772 children in 9 million low-income families. Mr. Hatch actually billion); new nuclear cruise missiles; the first guided or “smart” said on the record: “[T]he reason CHIP is having trouble is gravity H-bomb, and jet fighters to carry them ($25 billion); because we don’t have money anymore.” Mr. Hatch had just a rebuilt complex of laboratories and production facilities, given away CHIP’s budget 100 over in a single tax cut gifting in Tennessee, New Mexico and Missouri ($261 billion); and industrialists and the super-rich. With austerity budget cuts replacement command and control systems that enable the like the Republicans’ Oct. 2017 budget proposal to gouge $1 ongoing threat to use the weapons ($184 billion). Allocating the trillion from Medicaid and nearly $500 billion from Medicare,

14 Accurate H-bombs are not needed for deference . The “improvement” means the Air Force intends to use the B61s before the US is attacked in a nuclear first-strike . and over half of federal discretionary funds lavished on the removed from Eastern Europe,” and since “nuclear weapons Pentagon, Mr. Hatch must have meant the country doesn’t have [were] be removed from [South Korea], certainly they don’t money anymore except for weapons and war. The CHIP was need to be physically present in Europe.” Arkin also points eventually funded after a temporary government shutdown, to NATO trend-setters who already rejected “nuclear sharing” but the White House’s Feb. 12 proposed budget would cut and ousted their US B61s: Greece in 2001, and Britain in 2008. $17 billion from the anti-poverty Supplemental Nutrition TheLos Angeles Times has reported that “since the end of the Assistance Program known as SNAP, slash the Department of Cold War, most military leaders believe that our short-range Education budget by 10 percent, and phase out federal funding ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons [B61s] based in Europe have virtu- for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. ally no utility.” In April 2010, when he was Vice Chair of the The Trump Administration’s official Nuclear Posture Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. James Cartwright was asked by the Review, issued Feb. 2nd, regurgitates the $1.7 trillion weapons Council on Foreign Relations, “Is there a military mission per- complex rebuild plan without evidence of a need for cost- formed by [B61] that cannot be performed by either US stra- cutting. A closer consideration of the 30-year-long, trillion- tegic forces or US conventional forces?” The general answered dollar giveaway for military contractors mocks Republican simply, “No.” calls for belt-tightening in discretionary spending and shows But popular opinion and military expertise aside, the NNSA Obama-era arms control talk as nothing but permanent bomb forged ahead in 2015 and estimated the B61 replacement cost building. at $8.1 billion over 12 years. By January 2018 the projection had increased to between $12 and $13 billion, 35% over-run. Already The B61-12 guided nuclear gravity bomb five years behind schedule, but with plans to produce 480 of the (~$13 billion) new bombs, the B61-12s could each cost as much twice their The Air Force is pursuing the first ever “smart” gravity weight in gold. H-bomb known as the B61-12. With variable explosive force Boeing has won a choice $1.8 billion contract to develop just of up to 350 kilotons, model 12 of the B61 will reportedly have the new “tail kit” for the B61, making it “smart” and, accord- 60% better accuracy than present-day models known as B61-3, ing to Jay Coghlan, the executive director of Nuclear Watch -4, -7, -10, and -11. Critics point out that accurate H-bombs are New Mexico in Santa Fe, Lockheed Martin Corp. (the general not needed for deterrence. The “improvement” means the Air contractor) is making a brand new H-bomb. Hans Kristensen Force intends to use the B61s before the US is attacked—in a with the Federation of American Scientists agrees, saying that Pearl Harbor-like sneak attack known as a nuclear first-strike. the B61-12 “is a new weapon because a guided nuclear bomb The offensive and destabilizing capability of the planned does not exist in the United States.” As a novel weapon, pro- B61-12 may have led retired US Airforce Gen. Eugene Habiger, ducing the B61-12 will violate both the US-ratified Nuclear a former commander of Strategic Command overseeing all Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and President Obama’s pledge US nuclear weapons, to tell the San Antonio Express News not to develop new nuclear weapons. Even the current deploy- last July 22 that, “the [B61] bombs no longer have any military ment of US H-bombs to five NATO countries who are all NPT usefulness.” signatories is an open violation of the treaty’s Articles I and II Still, the Air Force wants to build a few hundred new B61s which explicitly prohibit any such transfer. to replace about 180 currently deployed in the face of broad But legal technicalities aside, and considering just the big public and official opposition at six NATO bases—in Germany, business end of the B61, William Hartung, a Fellow at the Italy, Turkey, Belgium and The Netherlands—and to pad the Center for International Policy, notes that Lockheed Martin US stockpile. German public opinion on the B61s, shared “gets two bites at the apple,” because the company also designs across Europe generally, according to a 2016 survey by the and builds the F-35A fighter-bomber “which will be fitted Forsa Institute, found that 85% of those polled support per- to carry the B61-12.” Other general contractors getting in on manent withdrawing the US bombs, and 88% oppose US plans the action by building their jets to carry the new bomb will to replace Germany’s 20 remaining B61s. be McDonnell Douglas (the F-15E), General Dynamics (the William Arkin, a national security consultant for NBC News F-16), Northrop Grumman (the B-2A, and the B-21), Boeing Investigates, reports that “Soviet nuclear weapons have been (the B-52H), and—although the German government hasn’t

15 yet decided to allow it—Panavia Aircraft, builder of Germany’s B-21 had finished “preliminary design review” and that the new Tornado jet. first bomber may be operational by the mid-2020s. Arthur Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico is the lead Villasanta, reporting on Gen. Wilson’s testimony for chi- designer of the new B61. Both Sandia and the Kansas City natopix.com, noted that the Air Force wants 100 of the “very bomb plant in Missouri are operated by Honeywell which long-range” B-21s at an estimated total cost of $80 billion or up stands to take a big chunk of the B61-12’s $13 billion to the to $564 million per plane. The remaining $136-to-$150 million bank. Los Alamos National Lab was in on early designs, so its in Gen. Wilson’s estimate may be a matter of padding, but given private operators—Bechtel, BWXT Government Group, URS the weapon industry’s routinized cost over-runs and delays, the Corp., and the U. of California—have also been in on the take. general’s $80 billion price-tag and timeline projections are as reliable as TV commercials. “Interoperable warhead” ($50 billion) Unlike the other Air Force heavy bombers—the B-1B This boondoggle of laboratory inventiveness is a warhead “Lancer” built by Rockwell Corp., and the B-2 “Spirit” made by that in theory would be used interchangeably on submarine Northrup-Grumman Corp.—the B-21 is reportedly being built missiles, land-based rockets, and even air-launched weapons. to carry all the nuclear weapons now used on the B-52s. These Its enormous budget was slashed and then postponed tem- include: “12 Advanced Cruise Missiles, 20 Air-Launched Cruise porarily by Congress, but the program is not dead. Coghlan, Missiles, and eight bombs,” according to airforce-technology. with Nuclear Watch New Mexico, notes that the three planned com. The website didn’t specify that the “bombs” are the B61 nuclear gravity bombs which are also scheduled for upgrade and replacement in the trillion-dollar tax give-away. Without even attempting to present to Congress some The missile makers see “need” to replace today’s bombers, the Air Force says it wants the retirement of the to operate the new B-21s along with its B-1s (until 2038), and its B-2s (until 2058), according to Kris Osborn writing for big rockets as a threat to thenationalinterest.com, belying the idea that new bombers are a needed. The GBO report combined the nuclear weapons their stockholders and “mission” costs of operating all three heavy bombers and sees $127 billion overall, not the $80B lofted by the Air Force. consequently promote The B-21 is reportedly being built to attack extremely far-off dangers and “needs” targets, beyond even what today’s B-52s can reach—further, that is, than the 16,000 miles round-trip bombing run that where none exist . one B-52H flew (a world-record for a combat mission), flying from Guam to bomb Iraq in 1996, according to Ron Dick and Dan Patterson in Aviation Century. The B-52“H” is the eighth versions of the so-called interoperable warhead, “are arguably of Boeing’s endlessly profitable series of B-52s. huge make-work projects for the nuclear weapons labs … However, the need for bomber “modernization” has been which ironically the Navy doesn’t even want,” citing a declas- refuted by the Air Force itself, which coldly boasts of its current sified Sept. 27, 2012, Navy memo that says “we do not support fleet’s killing power. Maj. Kent Mickelson, operations director commencing with the effort at this time.” for the USAF 394th combat training squadron, refuted the pretext in an April 2016 interview, saying that today’s B-2 The B-21 Raider or “China bomber” ($127 billion) “is still able to do its job just as well as it did in the ‘80s. … A new long-range, nuclear-armed “stealth” bomber known [N]obody should come away with the thought that the B-2 as the “B-21” or “Raider” has also been dubbed the “China isn’t ready to deal with the threats that are out there today. bomber” because some in the military claim it’s being designed It is really an awesome bombing platform.” Mickelson should to attack China. In October 2015, the Air Force awarded know, Osborn reported since he helped plan and execute the Northrop Grumman Corp. a “secret” contract to begin its en- US bombardment of Libya in 2011. gineering and construction development, now underway at Palmdale, California. Last March, the Air Force identified some The Columbia Class ballistic missile submarine of the other major suppliers getting in on the gravy train: Pratt ($313 billion) & Whitney (engines), Rockwell Collins, Spirit Aerosystems, The Navy submarines that fire long-range nuclear weapons Janicki Industries, BAE Systems, GKN Aerospace, and Orbital are called Tridents or Ohio Class subs. Shipbuilders and ATK. admirals want to retire and replace their 14 Tridents (designed Air Force vice chief of staff Gen. Stephen Wilson, speaking and built by General Dynamics Electric Boat Div.) with 12 to the House Armed Services Committee last March, said the new so-called Columbia Class ballistic missile subs. Beyond

16 The B-21 stealth bomber.

General Dynamics, the industrial base that takes tax money the first two new subs and initial plans for a third—lead ships for building such subs, two football fields long and costing 7 to are always pricey—is $8 billion over the Navy’s 2015 estimate. 8 billion apiece, includes hundreds of supplier firms, labs and research facilities across the country. The Long Range-Stand-Off (LRSO) missile ($30 The CBO report says that over the 2017-2046 period, the billion) total Navy and Energy Department costs to maintain and The Long Range Stand-Off missile is supposed to replace the modernize today’s Trident subs, their ballistic missiles and nuclear-armed Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM). The Air their warheads—while building their replacements—are pro- Force already has about 528 operational ALCMs at Minot Air jected to be $313 billion. Of the total, $79 billion would be for Force Base in North Dakota, so the “new cruise missile” has operating and sustaining the current systems. The remain- been called unnecessary by everyone from peace activists to ing $234 billion would be for the next generation of systems, retired Pentagon chiefs. Cancelling the project would report- including operation and sustainment of those systems once edly save $30 billion, or two CHIP allotments for which we they are fielded. The Navy also wants all new missiles for the “don’t have money anymore.” Columbia Class, for a few tens of billions of dollars more. The military and its contractors can be counted on to ex- The Congressional Research Service has been mildly critical aggerate the need, value, and capability of the new weapons, of the Navy’s history of gross cost over-runs. In a December and the interchangeable players in industry and the Pentagon 2017 report, the CRS said, “Some of the Navy’s ship designs always say the same thing about “national security.” So the in recent years … have proven to be substantially more ex- LRSO is being touted by the Pentagon, Lockheed, and Congress pensive to build than the Navy originally estimated,” citing a as crucial for “countering Russian aggression,” pointing to Congressional Budget Office study that found “the Navy in Moscow’s annexation of Crimea. These pretexts must be ver- recent years has underestimated the cost of [prototype ships] balized with a wink since H-bombs can’t counter Russian or by a weighted average of 27%.” Just the average cost over-run Chinese actions on their own borders without incinerating the for the $313 billion Columbia submarine program would cover contested areas. CHIPs $15 billion annual budget—if only Mr. Hatch had any The LRSO missile has been condemned by former Sec. of money anymore. Defense William Perry as the most “uniquely destabilizing” Not surprisingly, General Dynamic Corp.’s price hikes for the new weapon in the government’s rebuilding extravaganza. new submarine are already underway. The CBOs $90 billion Its most well-known unnerving aspect is that it can carry (2017) cost estimate for the program’s first 10 years, covering either a nuclear or a non-nuclear warhead. Mr. Perry and

17 former Assistant Sec. of Defense Andy Weber argued in the systems—for a cost of about $149 billion over 30 years. Washington Post, “We should no longer run the risk that a Last August, Northrop Grumman Corp. and Boeing Corp. conventionally armed cruise missile might be mistaken for one were awarded contracts ($349.2 million and $328.6 million, with a nuclear warhead, thus starting a nuclear war by mistake.” respectively) to competitively churn out GBSD missile tech- Marylia Kelly, coordinator of Tri-valley CARES, a watchdog nology and program studies. Again, the Air Force will pick a group that hounds the Livermore National Lab in California, winning contractor while the missile biz “competition” sees no reports that the pro-war Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein success like failure. has said, “The LRSO … by the Pentagon’s own admission Currently spread across parts of Wyoming, Colorado, would have a role ‘beyond deterrence.’ Congress shouldn’t fund Nebraska, Montana and North Dakota, today’s Minuteman dangerous new nuclear weapons designed to fight unwinnable III missiles have been authoritatively ridiculed as “the greatest nuclear wars.” source” of the danger of an accidental nuclear war. Retired In spite of the pointed criticism, the Air Force wants to Secretary of Defense and respected nuclear weapons expert start fielding the LRSO by 2030, and last August, the Pentagon William Perry, in op-eds in the New York Times in 2016 and awarded separate $900-million contracts, one each to the Washington Post (in 2017, with Gen. James Cartwright, a Lockheed Martin Corp. and to Raytheon Corp., for a 5-year former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), has said, “the development competition for the LRSO. United States can safely phase out its land-based ICBM force,” The Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center will reportedly select saving money and eliminating “the most dangerous weapons a single winning contractor to build the new missile in 2022. in the world” which “could even trigger an accidental nuclear This industrial competition among profiteers is managed so war.” Reporting on Mr. Perry’s Dec. 3, 2015 speech, Defense cynically that even the loser banks hundreds of millions. The News reported “[Perry] said ICBMs are simply too easy to bard must have been thinking of the masters of war when he launch on bad information and would be the most likely source sang, “there’s no success like failure.” of an accidental nuclear war. He referred to the ICBM as ‘de- While these billion-dollar deals sound like huge jackpots stabilizing’ in that it invites an attack from another power.” for the big corporations, the Ritz-Carlton context is impor- Even nuclear weapons advocates like current Pentagon chief tant, if hard to fathom. Imagine this: the Pentagon paid $46 Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis have questioned the retention billion to Lockheed Martin alone in just the past fiscal year. of ICBMs, telling the Senate Armed Services Committee in As CEO Marillyn Hewson likes to say, “The hell with conflict January 2015 that, “You should ask: ‘Is it time to reduce the resolution.” triad … removing the land-based missiles?’” More recently, It’s not that the cushy, high-paying, high-status jobs must Brent Talbot of the Air Force Academy faculty, writing fondly be protected for decades without producing usable products, about other H-bombs in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, but, rather, as Gen. Robin Rand, commander of Air Force slammed plans to replace land-based giants, declaring that Global Strike Command [its real name], told the House Armed “Intercontinental ballistic missiles … should be phased out of Services Committee’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee last May, the nuclear arsenal.” “The LRSO [is] an absolutely essential element of the nuclear Both Sec. Perry and the GAO report that early cancellation triad.” of the GBSD and elimination of today’s ICBMs would save $149 Gen. Rand may have been pushing back against powerful billion. This is because the planned “interoperable warhead” skeptics like former Sec. Perry, who, in two scathing would then be far less complex (built only for submarines), Washington Post op-eds, reported that, “The US does not need and because retiring today’s land-based missiles between 2018 to arm its bombers with a new generation of nuclear-armed and 2021 would nix current plans to replace expensive rocket cruise missiles” [the LRSO], and demanded, “Mr. President, fuses on the Minuteman IIIs. kill the new cruise missile.” Heavy corporate pressure will be used in Congress to retain the Cold War dinosaurs, because, as the Federation of A “Ground Based Strategic Deterrent” long-range American Scientists reports, the Minuteman III has been prof- missile ($149 billion) itably updated for decades (and because they produce jobs, Although the Air Force’s long-range, land-based ballistic votes and campaign contributions in the states they occupy). missiles (ICBMs) are the most dangerous, accident-prone, “Modernization programs have resulted in new versions of the and scandal-ridden of the Pentagon’s three nuclear weapons [Minuteman] missile, expanded targeting options, significantly systems (sea-based, bomber-based, and land-based) it is still improved accuracy and survivability. Today’s Minuteman is moving ahead with a proposed replacement. If Congress the product of almost 35 years of continuous enhancement.” approves what’s been dubbed the Ground Based Strategic Just between 2001 and 2008, the Air Force lavished $1.8 billion Deterrent (GBSD), the Pentagon would buy 640 missiles on Boeing, Morton-Thiokol, Aerojet-General, and United (up from today’s 450), and would refurbish existing launch Technologies for their installation of new solid rocket fuel in silos, missile support equipment, and command-and-control all three stages of all 450 missiles.

18 Of course, the missile makers see the retirement of the big shut down [pit replacement plans] at Los Alamos for the time rockets as a threat to their stockholders and consequently being.” promote dangers and “needs” where none exist. The GAO Likewise, Dr. James Doyle, a veteran of 17 years as a political notes with apparent concern that abandoning the land-based analyst at the Los Alamos Lab, told The Guardian, “I’ve never weapons—with their incomprehensible 335-to-475-kiloton seen the justification articulated for the 50-to-80 pits per year warheads—shrinks the government’s ability to wage a “large- by 2030.” scale nuclear exchange.” Even more absurdly, a Nov. 2017 report from the NNSA sets the Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico against the Savannah Nuclear warhead production: 1) Los Alamos, New River Site in South Carolina in competition to be the site of the Mexico; 2) Oak Ridge, Tennessee; 3) Kansas City, unneeded new plutonium “pit” production. Savannah River is Missouri ($261 billion) currently building a factory to make commercial reactor fuel The government’s national nuclear weapons laborato- using excess military plutonium. The project is 28% complete, ries, Sandia, Los Alamos, and Livermore are now allowed delayed, and so over-budget that the NNSA is strangely toying to be run by private companies in a perpetual self-fulfilling with the idea of transforming its purpose midstream and conflict of interest. These companies both advocate and feed building a plutonium pit factory instead. The NNSA claims from the federal nuclear weapons tax trough. Sandia National the switch would cost no more than $5.4 billion. According to Laboratories is managed and operated by a wholly owned the Aiken Standard, a move from fuel fabrication to “pit” pro- subsidiary of Honeywell International, and Honeywell runs duction” would be scheduled for 2024-2031. The move would the new Kansas City Plant. The Los Alamos National Lab, in transfer 800 jobs from Los Alamos, where the pits were last New Mexico, the Lawrence Livermore Lab in California, and produced. the Y-12 bomb plant in Tennessee are now all managed and Y-12 Bomb Plant, Oak Ridge, Tenn. ($19 billion) operated by Bechtel. These will be the big winners in what the GAO report estimates will be a $261 billion rebuild of these Part of the bomb-building infrastructure upgrade involves weapons labs. the production of highly-enriched uranium “secondaries,” the thermonuclear cores of nuclear weapons, which are fash- Los Alamos National Lab ($7.5 billion) ioned at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Plutonium “pits” and uranium “secondaries” are the guts of Tennessee. A massive new complex, the Uranium Processing hydrogen bombs. The pits have long been turned out at the Los Facility (UPF), is under construction there to produce the Alamos National Lab in New Mexico. Upgrading pit produc- uranium cores for a new generation of “at least” 80 bombs a tion there could cost between $1.9 and $7.5 billion, according year. However, a major revamping of the plans was forced on to the NNSA, and lab is pushing hard to get the assignment. the project when the $600 million cost projection soared to I asked Don Hancock of Southwest Research and more than $19 billion, 31 times the original guess. Information Center, why the DOE and Trump’s new Nuclear The latest UPF mock-up has been cut to an estimated $6.5 Posture Review latched onto a goal of producing “at least” 80 billion. Ralph Hutchison reported last April that even this new plutonium pits every year. Hancock answered in an email, slimmed-down version, which he notes cuts corners on envi- “You’re asking the wrong question. The real question is ‘Why ronmental and worker safety, is still set to cost over 10 times any new pits at all?’” the original estimate. Hancock has revealed that the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Bechtel Corp., which manages and operates the Y-12 Texas now stores roughly 2,740 so-called “reserve” nuclear complex, is the majority partner of Consolidated Nuclear warheads, also referred to as “hedge” or “spare” units that can Security, the group building the UPF. The $60 billion firm’s be put to use at any time. A total of 15,000 plutonium warheads reach and profiteering is nearly unmatched in the nuclear are maintained at Pantex and are good for 50 years, according weapons racket. Its $32 billion in revenue for 2016 came in to a report in the Guardian. The United States, with almost part from managing and operating the Los Alamos National 1,900 deployed nuclear weapons ready to launch, and at least (H-bomb) Lab in New Mexico, the Lawrence Livermore 10 times more usable “spares” than most nuclear-armed states H-bomb Lab in Calif., and the Pantex Plant, in Amarillo, Texas have in their entire arsenals, has no reason to produce new —the nation’s final assembly point for nuclear weapons. weapons whatsoever. If successful, OREPA’s federal lawsuit filed against the Hutchison, of the watchdog group OREPA in Tennessee, prospect of a dangerous new UPF may yet foil the industry’s spoke to the subject in an Dec. 26 email: “We have argued hopes for a needless new warhead assembly-line. OREPA’s that Congress should commission a ‘lifetime study’ of the Y-12 Hutchison argues, “With no legitimate need for the UPF, ‘secondaries,’ preferably by the think tank JASON that discov- the project should be cancelled and funding redirected to a ered, when it completed a plutonium pit ‘lifetime study,’ that facility to dismantle retired nuclear weapons and to cleaning pits were useful for twice as long as NNSA said, a finding that up high-risk facilities like Y12 that pose, in the words of the

19 “Ground Based Strategic Deterrent” missile test, Vandenberg Air Force Base. Photo courtesy Lompoc Record.

DOE’s Inspector General, an ‘ever-increasing risk to workers the giant Honeywell-operated Kansas City Plant that made and the public.’” non-nuclear parts for every warhead in the arsenal from 1949 While the owners, management and workers at Y-12 drool and to 2014. A newly minted $750 million bomb factory, collegiate- tool-up for the potential financial diamond mine of new weapons ly named “National Security Campus,” took over for the heavily programs, environmentalists watching the 70-year-old facility contaminated KCP in 2014. had to bring a federal lawsuit to challenge the government’s Local community activists have had to organize to confront shabby assessment of plans to produce new highly enriched the government’s scandalous mistreatment of injured former uranium, the thermonuclear cores, for nuclear weapons. KCP workers and to challenge the DOE’s flimsy plans for According to Hutchison, the July 2017 lawsuit—brought environmental remediation at the abandoned site known as by OREPA, Nuclear Watch New Mexico and the Natural Bannister Federal Complex. PeaceWorks Kansas City reports Resources Defense Council—challenges the NNSA over, that, “The mission of the Coalition Against Contamination is to among other things, its un-analyzed plan “to use two deterio- support workers and their families whose health was impaired” rating buildings that violate current environmental and earth- by beryllium and other toxins that were heavily used at the quake standards” without bringing the old wrecks up to code. factory. Coalition member Ann Suellentrop, KC says the group also warns locals about the US Labor Department’s unlawful Kansas City Plant ($750 million) denials (exposed by a DOL whistleblower) of worker compen- A poster child for the flippant minimization of clean-up sation claims and also about the “potential threat from toxins hazards at nuclear weapons production sites is Kansas City, released during the demolition and cleanup” of Bannister. Missouri, where the DOE has already finished part of the Last October, CenterPoint Properties, which coinci- enormous H-bomb infrastructure upgrade, having replaced dently took home hundreds of millions building the new

20 bomb building “campus,” won the contract to clean-up the “suicidal” wish to attack the United States, to Russia’s annexa- old Bannister site. CenterPoint says it can be done for $200 tion of Crimea, and China’s island-building—are just as ludi- million, one-quarter of the $800 million estimate made previ- crous, but generally succeed in winning limited support for the ously by the DOE. The Coalition Against Contamination has pollution-intensive weapons complex. condemned the shabby proposal and is demanding that the Another part of the answer is explained by researcher site be restored to a residential rather than industrial clean-up William Hartung in his writing about the corrupt influence on standard in order to protect surrounding communities. Congress exerted by the gargantuan arms industry which profits Current plans call for reclamation only to industrial stan- from building the bombs. In Sleepwalking to Armageddon dards, and, consequently, are recklessly dangerous, says (edited by Helen Caldicott, The New Press, 2017), Hartung Suellentrop. “The coalition advocates for use of tenting to notes that the giant weapons contractors contributed $50 cover the 300-acre toxic brownfield during clean-up to prevent million in campaign contributions to Congressional candidates dispersal of the dusts,” she says. Tenting would also work to in just the three election cycles since 2009. Simultaneously, and prevent beryllium and other heavy metals from further con- dwarfing that enormous sum, the weapons sector keeps almost taminating groundwater and local streams during demolition. two lobbyists on Capitol Hill for every member of Congress CenterPoint’s cost-cutting may save millions, but the potential and it spent $680 million on lobbying just in the last five years. dispersal of beryllium puts next door neighbors at great risk. Likewise, Greg Mello, of the watchdog Los Alamos Study Beryllium is so toxic that its manipulation always requires Group in Albuquerque, told the Guardian that the reason industrial-strength dust control equipment and procedures; new H-bomb production is ever being considered is “private inhaled or ingested contaminated dusts can cause the chronic, greed” plain and simple. “Ever since they [the national lab- life-threatening disease berylliosis. oratories] were privatized in 2006, for-profit corporations now run all the government’s nuclear weapons labs,” Mello How the weapons complex keeps humming notes. So the military-industrial-weapons complex taints Some nuclear war experts like Sec. Perry have pointed whole Congressional districts with self-serving campaign out that H-bombs are superfluous in view of what he called contributions and a few thousand bomb-building jobs; and “the reality of today’s US conventional military dominance.” it enshrines a vast persistent structural base of managerial, Non-nuclear “conventional” weapons dominance is now a fact academic, scientific, labor, and political support for useless established by the non-nuclear US military bombardment, oc- and unlawful nuclear weapons development. In his farewell cupation and take-over of Afghanistan and Iraq. address, President Eisenhower warned us to guard against this Former Reagan presidential advisor and founder of the anti- situation to no avail. Soviet ‘Committee on the Present Danger’ Paul Nitze made the Former Defense Secretary Perry’s outspoken criticism of point perfectly in 1999, soon after retiring. “In view of the fact the bank-busting cost of a nuclear complex rebuild managed that we can achieve our objectives with conventional weapons, to move a group of just 10 US senators to write to President there is no purpose to be gained through the use of our nuclear Obama urging him to “scale back plans to construct unneeded arsenal.” Nitze’s New York Times op-ed “A Threat Mostly to new nuclear weapons.” It seems the other 90 were busy raising Ourselves,” included what should have been the epitaph for campaign funds from the bomb builders. cp the nuclear arsenal: “I see no compelling reason why we should John LaForge is Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and not unilaterally get rid of our nuclear weapons. To maintain environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and is co-editor with them … adds nothing to our security. I can think of no cir- Arianne Peterson of “Nuclear Heartland, Revised: A Guide to the cumstances under which it would be wise for the United States 450 Land-Based Missiles of the United States.” to use nuclear weapons, even in retaliation for their prior use against us.” With most of the world in agreement with the experts and moving to boldly stigmatize and shun nuclear weapons, how The Writer Who Shook the World do Congress, the Pentagon and the White House gettaxpayerss to pony up the trillions? John Reed and the Part of the answer is decades of dreadful, seemingly plau- Russian Revolution sible, and well-publicized, if fake, threats used to scare the public into nuclear madness. The “missile gap,” the “bomber By P. Sainath gap,” the “threat of a Soviet invasion of Europe” and the bizarre ‘If Mark Twain or John Reed were alive today and looking for “window of vulnerability,” were all useful fictions that kept work, would they find it at your newspaper or channel? Could contracts flowing to the arms industry. Today’s manufactured Twain have a column? Would you carry Reed’s despatches?’ threats—from Iraq’s “WMD,” to Iran’s “destabilizing” medical That was a question I put to several American editors and isotope and reactor fuel production facilities, to North Korea’s journalists in 2000. I was touring the USA as an Eisenhower

21 Fellow and meeting, often interviewing, many media person- his room. Reed was not going to live the high-life as a reporter. alities there. My focus was on mavericks, anti-establishment, He would stay in a room that opened out to the Moscow air, progressive and radical journalists, including Studs Terkel, and would eat whatever he could find, Gore Vidal, Alexander Cockburn and Adam Hochschild. “We dined at a vegetarian restaurant with the enticing However, I did meet some very mainstream ones, including name, ‘I eat nobody’, and Tolstoy’s picture prominent on the Walter Cronkite, well past 80, but quite alive and articulate. walls, and then sallied out into the streets.” Also, Joe Lelyveld of The New York Times. I usually asked these questions at the end of those very different meetings. John Reed was a reporter and journalist. Not a stenographer Cockburn spilt his coffee laughing out loud at the idea of to the powerful. Nor embedded with the oppressors of those he a Twain or Reed finding a place on staff in the contemporary was covering. That, of course, did not go down too well with corporate media. Terkel, though unwell, stood up and enacted Big Media even in his time. a scene he’d been through in the McCarthy period, when he’d For Charles Russell, who reviewed the book for The New been blacklisted and was an untouchable in the media. ‘I gotta York Times (April 27, 1919), Reed’s message boiled down: act this out. Watch me’, he said. ‘I’m a great ham’. Vidal (another To revolt for the sake of revolting, to fight for the joy of ‘blacklister’ of the time) joked he probably wouldn’t find a job fighting, to slay valiantly, to ride furiously, to shout vehe- with them himself—in 2000. Cronkite said he thought Twain mently are activities glorious. This we can easily perceive might get a column or show but would lose it very quickly from Mr. Reed’s book, as from the others. But as to why —mainly because ‘Samuel Langhorne Clemens’ contempt for we should revolt, fight, slay, ride, and shout we are left the bosses of our time would surface quickly and hilarious- darkling. ly’. Clemens was Twain’s real name. Of Reed, Cronkite said, pausing a few seconds, that after six decades ‘in our profession, So it was nice to see the New York Times acknowledge him I’d think you’d have to give that perspective a place’. in its Red Century Series this year. That includes a thought- Lelyveld pondered a moment and said upfront, ‘Twain ful and reflective piece by London-based journalist-author probably would not find a column here…or in most main- Jack Schenker. There is also a piece in that series on the ‘10 stream publications…we do have a Bob Herbert, but…’ It days still shaking the world’ by—no kidding—Condoleezza seemed to me he felt Twain’s scathing irreverence would not Rice (October 17, 2017). It was Rice, as then U.S. Secretary of easily find a place in any major paper. My question on Reed State and a great supporter of the WMD fabrications, who in either did not register, or he did not find the author of Ten Days 2002 wrote a major piece in—you guessed it—The New York That Shook the World worthy of consideration at all. Since it Times, on ‘Why We Know Iraq Is Lying’. Before she joined the was one posed as I was stepping out of his office, we couldn’t administration of George W. Bush, Rice was a Soviet special- pursue it. ist at Stanford University. Despite the title ripping off on his This was late September 2000, less than a year away from own, Reed gets just a few words in her Red Century piece. But 9/11. Not long after which The New York Times, which would they’re interesting words, have dismissed the credentials of John Reed, enthusiastically Ten Days That Shook the World captures the excitement of published Judith Miller’s many Words of Mass Deception on that moment. The author, John Reed, was an American who mythical Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Miller would made no secret of his Bolshevik sympathies. He nevertheless later be ‘embedded’ with a U.S. military unit in that country. provided a riveting and vivid—if not impartial—account of She would be forced to resign from The Times in 2005, but her the most pivotal phase of the revolution, as viewed from the job as an embedded hack was done. ground. John Reed was embedded in the reality of the Russian From his vantage point, Reed could only tell a part of the Revolution—and before that the peasant uprising in Mexico. story, however. He was not cocooned with military or mercenary protection. In the chaos of the revolutionary uprising of 1917, he came close No single report or book can ever tell more than a part of the to being shot or otherwise killed by people on different sides story of something so large as the Russian Revolution of 1917. of the battle. But, though exuberant, he did not mythologise or Yet, as AJP Taylor (probably the most popular British historian romanticise himself. And never lost his sense of humour. His of the 20th century) wrote in his preface (Penguin 1977) to Ten account of the first hotel he went to in Moscow after November Days That Shook the World, 7, ‘we entered an office lit by two candles’. Reed and his com- Reed’s book is not only the best account of the Bolshevik panions were welcomed in this hotel office. ‘Yes, we have some Revolution, it comes near to being the best account of any very comfortable rooms’, they were told, ‘but all the windows revolution. are shot out. If the gospodin does not mind a little fresh air’. It is important to remember that the gospodin, the Russian word Reed the journalist himself made no claim to being impartial. for ‘mister’, would have to suffer below freezing temperatures in

22 In the struggle, my sympathies were not neutral. But in without that racial disdain that so much of US journalism still telling the story of those great days I have tried to see reeks of. In Ten Days That Shook the World and elsewhere, he events with the eye of a conscientious reporter, interested in wrote of Russians, Americans, Europeans and others without a setting down the truth. trace of prejudice. He was dealing with human beings. Lippman knew Reed. And had once even praised his The authenticity of his writing on the revolution gained coverage of the Colorado Coalfield War as ‘undoubtedly the from its being a first-hand, eyewitness account. Seen from finest reporting that’s ever been done’. In the years that followed, the streets and barricades, drawn from the meeting halls and Reed stayed on the Left. Lippmann became a pillar of the es- fiery debates. Acute powers of observation, aligned always tablishment, churning out reams of U.S. war propaganda. He with a sensitivity towards ordinary people. Not ‘experts.’ Quite would even peddle his own, to push his government towards unlike the eager-to-embed hacks who would decades later go interning fellow citizens in prison camps on US soil during all the way to Afghanistan and Iraq and work from briefings World War II. Well over two-thirds of the 120,000 Japanese of the U.S. military units that had them on a leash—only to Americans who were thrown into these camps were U.S. produce stories that could have been written just as easily in citizens, born in that country. Orphans were not spared, nor Washington D.C. Some of them probably were. Reed always even Japanese children adopted by white American parents. sought to escape censorship from governments. Very unlike None of those interned was charged with a crime. They were the steno-serfs of our time who would each day meekly submit incarcerated anyway. their copy to their military for approval. (It sort of gave the In a dreadful piece, ‘The Fifth Column On The Coast’ word ‘copy’ a new meaning). Reed’s writing skills lent excitement and urgency to his account. Painting vivid pictures in words, he captured a moment, many moments, in time. Describing Petrograd ‘on the eve’, Reed’s writing skills Up in the Nevsky in the sour twilight, crowds were battling lent excitement and for the latest papers, and knots of people were trying to make out the multitudes of appeals and the proclamations urgency to his account . posted in every flat place. …An armoured automobile went slowly up and down, siren screaming. On every corner, in every open space, thick groups were clustered; arguing (February 12, 1942), Lippmann targeted Japanese Americans. soldiers and students. Night came swiftly down, the wide- He warned of the ‘imminent danger of a combined attack spaced streetlights flickered on, the tides of people flowed from within and from without’. He did concede that ‘there endlessly…It is always like that in Petrograd just before has been no important act of sabotage on the Pacific coast’. trouble. For him, that only proved ‘that the blow is well organised and that it is held back until it can be struck with maximum Inside the Smolny, where the revolution set up its offices, effect’. Veteran journalist Richard Reeves believes Lippmann’s … the long, gloomy halls and bleak rooms seemed piece pushed President Roosevelt into giving California au- deserted. No one moved in all the enormous pile. A deep, thorities the go-ahead for the prison camps. Reeves is author uneasy sound came to my ears, and looking around, I of the heat-rending book Infamy: The Shocking Story of the noticed that everywhere on the floor, along the walls, men Japanese-American Internment in World War II. were sleeping. Rough, dirty men, workers and soldiers, Years later, Lippman was to look back on the propaganda spattered and caked with mud, sprawled alone, or in of the war: ‘It seemed impossible to wage the war energeti- heaps, in the careless attitudes of death. Some wore ragged cally except by inciting the people to paroxysms of hatred and bandages marked with blood. Guns and cartridge belts to utopian dreams’. He did not, though, mention the tragic were scattered about… event. Lippmann is celebrated as the father of modern jour- “In the upstairs buffet so thick they lay that one could nalistic objectivity. Harvard’s key journalism institution, the hardly walk. The air was foul. Through the clouded Nieman Foundation, is housed in a building named after him. windows, a pale light streamed. A battered samovar, cold, Of fellow-Harvardian Reed, Lippmann once wrote, ‘By tem- stood on the counter, and many glasses holding dregs of perament, he is not a professional writer or reporter. He is a tea… person who enjoys himself’ (The New Republic, December 26, Reed came from a privileged background. He was—like 1914). In today’s Big Media jargon, Reed would be labelled an Walter Lippmann—a Harvard graduate. He was—unlike ‘activist’, not a journalist. Lippmann—never a war propagandist for his government. There was also this difference between Reed and so many Reed, when covering Pancho Villa’s revolt, wrote of Mexicans of the ‘star journalists’ of today. He did not return from exotic

23 locales with ‘war stories’ of which he was himself the focus. the spectacle. Reed probably hoped the pageant would also No ‘Christiane Amanpour in Baghdad’ nor ‘Anderson Cooper work as a benefit performance for and by the strikers. on Syria’s border’—where the war in those countries is less In Colorado, he covered the miners’ strike of 1913-14 which important than the mere presence of these television icons on the Rockefellers and other mining interests of the day moved their soil, however briefly. CNN’s own promos leave you in to crush with great barbarism. Reed arrived there a few days do doubt as to who makes the story—and it’s not the natives, after the infamous Ludlow massacre which saw the Colorado not even the friendly ones. Ten Days that Shook the World was National Guard attack a settlement of over a thousand workers. not promoted as ‘John Reed from Red Square.’ There was a The workers fought back. revolution in Russia. He covered it. He was not invisible in his Estimates of the number of deaths vary but are all sadden-

John Reed in Moscow, 1920. reporting, but was clear that he wasn’t the story. And he was ing. In all, perhaps, over two dozen people died at Ludlow, consistent: the principles he stood for in Mexico and in Russia several in firing—the Guard used machine guns—and also 11 were also those he practiced at home. Within the United States children and 2 women who suffocated to death in the miners’ he covered—and participated in—the struggles of workers, camp, owing to fires the Guard had set to burn the tents. More miners, and other poor people. lives were lost in the days that followed, in Guard action and As the historian Howard Zinn put it of Reed, in rioting. Still more were slain in the other battles of the ‘Colorado Coalfield War.’ Overall, from differing estimates, it He rushed into the centre of wars and revolutions, strikes would seem the total ran to over a hundred deaths in the ‘war.’ and demonstrations, with the eye of a movie camera, before In Reed’s powerful prose, there was one, and the memory of a tape recorder, before that existed. He made history come alive for the readers of In three hours every striker for 50 miles in either direction popular magazines and impoverished radical monthlies. knows that the militia and mine guards had burned women and children to death. Monday night they started, with all Reed was moved by the silk weavers and workers strike in the guns they could lay their hands on, for the scene of the Paterson, New Jersey. And was arrested in 1913 while trying action at Ludlow. All night long the roads were filled with to speak for the strikers. (The first of many times he would be ragged mobs of armed men pouring towards the Black arrested in his lifetime). Deeply moved by the brutal crack- Hills. And not only strikers went. In Aguilar, Walsenburg down on the workers, he went on to stage a pageant recreating and Trinidad, clerks, cab drivers, chauffeurs, school scenes from those battles—in New York’s old Madison Square teachers, and even bankers seized their guns and started for Garden. As many as 1,200 strikers were reported to have par- the front. It was as if the fire started at Ludlow had set the ticipated in the pageant. Many thousands more came to watch whole country aflame.

24 Contrast that with The New York Times’ calling for the use Reed was to return to the United States where, of course, he of force in the Colorado War, was indicted for sedition. The trials of Reed and his editor Max “With the deadliest weapons of civilization in the hands of Eastman ended with hung juries. Reed had already returned savage-mined men, there can be no telling to what lengths the to Russia where he died of typhus in 1920. war in Colorado will go unless it is quelled by force … The His wife Louis Bryant wrote to his editor Max Eastman President should turn his attention from Mexico long enough while Reed’s illness raged. She wanted him to take plenty of to take stern measures in Colorado.” rest before he returned to the United States where she feared John Reed didn’t just speak ‘truth to power’—he spoke the he would be imprisoned. truth about power. Relentlessly, passionately, powerfully. Early in his sickness I asked him to promise me that he Reed was fiercely independent, truthful, but did not pretend would rest before going home, since it only meant going to be neutral—a distinction completely lost with the onset of to prison. I felt prison would be too much for him. I corporate-driven journalism. remember he looked at me in a strange way and said, ‘My Reed set out in his early days viewing himself as a poet—but dear Little Honey, I would do anything I could for you but his poetry was not distinguished. It was certainly not his strong don’t ask me to be a coward’ point. However, some of his prose borders on and melds with the poetic. And that comes out best in his first book Insurgent Ten Days That Shook the World did more than give its fans a Mexico. A spellbinding account of the uprising in Mexico of good read. It raised questions, it carved out a kind of journal- the poor and the destitute led by Pancho Villa, one of the great ism that would allow the marginalised in society to be heard figures of the Mexican revolution. But that’s another book, in their own voice. It inspired readers rebels, revolutionaries. another story. It still seems worthwhile to repeat the lines As Howard Zinn would write of him, about Reed by Alfredo Varela in the preface to the Argentinian John Reed could not be forgiven by the Establishment for edition of Insurgent Mexico, refusing to separate art and insurgency, for being not only In the end he is a mural painter. The great fresco is his rebellious in his prose but imaginative in his activism. speciality, the panoramic picture which reveals history in a Protest joined to imagination was dangerous, courage thousand details. combined with wit was no joke. Grim rebels can be jailed, but the highest treason, for which there is no adequate By the time John Reed reached Russia, he had seen and punishment, is to make rebellion attractive. developed his own understanding of class war. If Insurgent Mexico was near poetry, Ten Days That Shook the World is pul- This article is adapted from Sainath’s introduction to sating prose. It is also takes the reporting of the marginalised LeftWord’s new edition of Ten Days That Shook the World. cp to yet another, incredible level. Reed works in documents, dec- larations, debates a great deal more than in his earlier writings, References: yet the excitement never flags. And he sets the record straight Charles E. Russell, ‘Bolshevism, in Theory and on many things including ‘the loot of the Winter Palace’. Practice, As Friend and Opponent See It’, The Reed saw ordinary people becoming ‘self-appointed senti- New York Times, April 27, 1919. nels’ to protect the treasures of the Palace. And where the poor Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United themselves were ransacking anything, States (Harper & Row, 1980). The paintings, statues, tapestries and rugs of the great state John Reed, Insurgent Mexico (D. Appelton and Co., apartments were unharmed…The most highly-prized loot 1914). was clothing which the working people needed. In a room Louise Bryant, Six Red Months in Russia (George where furniture was stored, we came upon two soldiers H. Doran, 1918). ripping the elaborate Spanish leather upholstery from chairs. They explained it was to make boots with… Shaking the World: John Reed’s Revolutionary Journalism, ed. J. Newsinger (Bookmarks, 1999). Indeed, some precious stuff was also stolen. He cites the Bolsheviks then and later repeatedly appealing for the return P. Sainath is the founder and editor of the People’s Archive of of the ‘inalienable property of the Russian people’, of the Rural India. He has been a rural reporter for decades and is the ‘valuable objects of art that were stolen’. The new Soviet gov- author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought. ernment created ‘a special commission comprised of artists and archaeologists to recover the stolen objects’. Even more appeals were made. About half the loot was recovered, some of it in the baggage of foreigners leaving Russia.

25 A Pew Research Center survey released last year found only The Old and the New 17 percent of Mexicans trusted the national government and, ominously, 42 percent gave a positive opinion of hypothetical Mexico’s Big and military rule. Benefitting from the gross failure of the civilian law enforce- Contentious 2018 Elections ment and justice system to curb delinquency and tackle cor- By Kent Paterson ruption, authoritarian solutions to the Mexican crisis hover as a backdrop, evidenced by the recent congressional passage “Never forget October 2.” Recalling the 1968 government of a new internal security law, approved over the objections of conducted massacre in Mexico City, every year the words com- national and international human rights organizations, which memorate the somber day in Mexican history when hundreds institutionalizes the role of the Mexican military in the so- of students and others were gunned down while demanding called drug war. democracy and social reforms. Now, as the 50th anniversary of the bloody repression approaches, Mexicans are again at a Bloody Election Year Red Flags crossroads in charting a political future in which demands of Although the INE assures that 2018 will witness a fair and the ‘68 movement are realized. peaceful election process, red flags are fluttering high in the On July 1, the country will elect a new president, congress political winds, especially over regions dominated by orga- and officials in 30 of the nation’s 32 states. More than 3,400 nized crime groups increasingly intertwined with political posts are up for grabs, according to the official National parties and possessing the “dark” money capable of influenc- Electoral Institute (INE), the agency overseeing the federal ing the vote. contest and assisting with state ones. Fanning fears were the murders from late November to the The winners of July’s contests will help stay or alter Mexico’s first week of March of at least 27 current or former government course at a moment when the neo-liberal economic model officeholders and aspirtants, primary candidates and political implanted in the country during the 1980s has widened in- party members in various states, according to Mexican press equality, corruption and delinquency rage all about, and the accounts. In Guerrero state alone, the daily El Sur documented Trump administration, in its zeal to project a Neo-Monroe 12 political aspirants who were murdered between April 2017 Doctrine in Latin America, is pressuring its southern neighbor and February 2018. on different fronts. Quoted in El Sur, Beatriz Mojica, senatorial candidate for Contextually, the 2018 elections occur when prospects for the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), concluded that political and social reforms that once electrified the nation the murders constituted an “emergency situation” necessitating are long dissipated, political parties and politicians are held in safe election guarantees from the president and the governor. disrepute, and viable alternatives for change seem distant or Early in the year, Proceso magazine’s Arturo Garcia impossible to many. Rodriguez prophetically assessed the killings as a “grave prec- Dr. Lorenzo Meyer, prominent Mexican historian and col- edent of what will continue happening during the electoral umnist, argues that Mexico has fallen short in transitioning process.” from the one-party state of the Institutional Revolutionary Interviewed shortly before the March 2 assassination Party (PRI) that dominated the country’s political life from of recent mayoral hopeful Homero Bravo in Zihuatanejo, 1929 to 2000, despite multiple political reforms, the appear- Guerrero, Leticia Rodriguez, leading Morena activist in the ance of greater press freedom and alternating periods of gov- Pacific Coast town, mulled the wave of slayings, including ernance between the PRI and other political parties at the the February murders of two women politicians in Guerrero, federal, state and municipal levels. Antonia Jaimes of the PRD and Dulce Nayeli Rebaja of the “Today’s system is neither authoritarian or democratic. It is PRI. In a territory where “narco-politics” reigns, mystery in a state of flux..,” Meyer was quoted in Reforma newspaper. pervades and impunity prevails, such killings always leave “We have had less dirty and more dirty elections, more fraudu- doubts, Rodriguez observed. lent and less fraudulent elections, but we have never arrived to “I don’t mean to victimize the victims, but there is always the point of a true election with 21st century standards.” a suspicion of why this person, why their candidacies were Fernando Rivera, veteran political analyst and a co-founder terminated,” she said. of presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s The harassment of Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico City mayoral National Movement for the Regeneration of Mexico (Morena) candidate for Morena, reinforced suspicions of organized party in Aguascalientes, said the 2006 election which Lopez political sabotage. On multiple occasions during December Obrador officially lost by less than a one percent margin was and January, shadowy groups disrupted Sheinbaum’s events, “considered a fraud,” triggering post-electoral protests. Fraud injuring La Jornada reporter Angel Bolanos in one instance. was also in the air the second time the candidate lost in 2012 Many analysts consider the Mexico City mayor’s seat the but was “more difficult to document,” Rivera said.

26 Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Mexico City, 2012. Photo courtesy Eneas De Troya (Wikimedia). second or third most powerful political post in the nation, 5, independent Acapulco journalist and YouTuber Pamela and Sheinbaum is in strong standing to win the job. Montenegro was shot to death. Apart from attacks on politicians, violence against civil Jan Jarab, Mexico representative for the United Nations society activists and journalists clouds the election year High Commissioner for Human Rights, urged authorities to picture. According to the Cerezo Committe human rights investigate a lead pointing to the complicity of government organization, 48 activists and journalists nationwide were officials in Montenegro’s murder. murdered during 2017—by far the worst year for such violence “Besides, we can’t forget that this aggression against a jour- in a review done by the group for the period beginning in 2007. nalist focused on political criticism happened in the middle of Slaughtered along with family members in Guerrero last an electoral process,” Jarab said in a communique. “Authorities October, small farm leader Ranferi Hernandez represented the must clarify crimes against journalists, who by diverse media intersection between politics and social movement activism. exercise freedom of expression and contribute to an informed After a political exile in France in the late 1990s, Hernandez and critical society...” returned to Mexico and was elected as a legislator for the then In assessing the upcoming elections, the persistence of center-left PRD party. deep-seated illegalities like conditioning the delivery of social More recently, Hernandez was backing Lopez Obrador in services for votes and/or outright vote-buying, as were widely the presidential race and reportedly considering another legis- reported in four controversial 2017 state elections, must be lative run. His assassination removed a historic and influential considered. actor from the state’s political scene. “If the circle of illegal money-vote buying-social programs- 2018 started off on a bad note, too. On January 13, political vote cooptation continues, an authentic (democratic) transi- journalist Carlos Dominguez was stabbed to death in front of tion will continue as a (paper) project and the continuity of family members at an intersection in the northern border city a degrading reality will persist as our only horizon,” Meyer of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. warned in his weekly column. “Until the Mexican government decides to change the pattern of impunity in the country, criminals will continue to The Old and The New in 2018 get away with killing journalists,” said Alexandra Ellerbeck, Three big political coalitions will vie for the presidency North American program coordinator for the New York-based and congress. The governing PRI has again joined hands with Committee to Protect Journalists. the Mexican Green Party and New Alliance Party in a bid to In the southern state of Oaxaca, meanwhile, reporter retain power, naming former budget and taxation secretary Agustin Silva vanished in January, while the following Jose Meade as the presidential pick. month three members of Committee for Indigenous Rights Cognizant of the PRI’s tarnished political status, the PRI (CODEDI) were gunned down in an ambush. On February chose Meade, who is not a party member and has served in

27 both PRI and National Action Party (PAN) administrations, in other progressive forces. As March rolled around, the CIG and an effort to paint his candidacy as a “citizen” run. A 49-year-old National Indigenous Congress were analyzing their next steps Yale graduate, Meade hails from the second wave of Mexican in the electoral process. technocrats schooled in the Washington Consensus of free Marichuy’s supporters charged that technical and geograph- trade and U.S-style elections. ic problems impeded the required electronic uploading of sig- Morena party leader Lopez Obrador is making his third run natures to the INE. For his part, Ferriz asserted widespread for the nation’s top job, in an alliance with the small Labor commercial trafficking of voter rolls tainted the independent and Social Encounter (PES) parties grandiloquently dubbed primary. “Together We Will Make History.” Scores of independents also gathered signatures for a whack A third coalition, uniting the conservative PAN with the at congressional seats, with seven of them finally approved by shrinking PRD and centrist Citizen Movement party, is the INE for Senate races and 39 others for the Lower House fielding 39-year-old former PAN leader Ricardo Anaya as its contests. man. The federal institute disqualified many aspirants for al- Perhaps deftly, Anaya has lashed out at the Pena Nieto ad- legedly submitting false or irregular signatures or not filing ministration over a scandal fed by government leaks alleging campaign expenditure reports. Accordingly, the INE declared Anaya’s involvement in money laundering connected to a real that legal sanctions against some unsuccessful contenders estate deal. could be forthcoming. Crying foul, Anaya demands both an independent pros- Other newer elements in the 2018 political scene include ecutor and a truth commission with foreign participation to reforms that require half of many party candidacies be impartially investigate the allegations. assigned to women, as well as allowing the consecutive re- Traditional notions of left, right and center are muddled election of certain offices such as mayor. The Morena Senate as the election process moves forward. Befitting the non- candidacy of Nestora Salgado is another notable development ideological drift of Mexican politics in favor of pragmatic or in this year’s race. opportunistic group and personal interests, the national party After living in the U.S for many years, Salgado returned coalitions aren’t necessarily duplicated in the state and munici- to her native Mexico, becoming a commander in Guerrero’s pal races, where one party or another is peeling off on its own grassroots community police. Arrested in 2013, Salgado was or combining with parties from the rival coalition, usually over subsequently freed after an international freedom campaign local candidate nominations. accused the government of trumping up charges designed to Permitted to run outside party confines for the first time in suppress an effective popular movement. a presidential race, three “independents,” all former members For Leticia Rodriguez, though, “The progress of women of the PRI, PAN or PRD, were still poised in March to gain in politics has been little.” Rodriguez traced the history of INE approval for a spot on the ballot. In order to achieve ballot women in Mexican politics, noting that even though women status, each contender had to present almost 900,000 verified were active participants in the 1910 Mexican Revolution female signatures of registered voters from at least 17 states. suffrage was not granted until 1953. A second advance occurred The three finalists include one time Priista Jaime “El Bronco” in the 1970s, when Mexico City feminist activists raised public Gonzalez, governor-with-leave from the northern border state consciousness about gender inequality and violence against of Nuevo Leon; Margarita Zavala, former PAN lawmaker and women, Rodriguez added. wife of ex-president Felipe Calderon; and Armando Rios Piter, “This was an important movement, and positions opened ex-PRD member and senator from Guerrero. up for women. But all these issues remain pending,” the former Not making the cut were Edgar Ulises Portillo, a Mexico City Zihuatanejo city council member said. For instance, abortion academic who targeted the same Millenial vote as Rios Piter; is still largely viewed as a moral issue rather than a matter Maria “Marichuy” Martinez, an indigenous healer from Jalisco of women’s control over their bodies, Rodriguez affirmed. who serves as the spokesperson for the Zapatista-supported Liberalized in Mexico City, abortion is nevertheless subject to Indigenous Government Council (CIG) and journalist Pedro restrictions across the rest of the nation. Ferriz. For the third election cycle now, Mexicans who live abroad In February, as the primaries wrapped up, Marichuy was and are registered to vote will be allowed to cast ballots via injured in a vehicular accident in the state of Baja California mail. As in previous contests, the United States has been the Sur that left one of her collaborators dead. scene of election year visits by the major presidential contend- For Marichuy and the CIG, however, their plunge into ers to migrant communities. electoral politics wasn’t really about getting elected to office. Whether 2018 will attract significantly better migrant par- Instead, the indigenous movement viewed the 2018 elec- ticipation than in earlier elections is questionable. With a tions as an opportunity to spread its message, consolidate the March 31 registration deadline looming, the INE reported in movement across the nation and build bridges to the left with late February that only 467,566 of the more than 11 million

28 estimated Mexican nationals residing outside the country were Poniatowska. Despite the emergence of a “made-over” AMLO registered to vote. Of that number, 57,106 people had already in 2018, the presidential contender maintains a reform agenda expressed their intentions to vote. that tilts left and irks powerful enemies at home and abroad. In 2006, the first year Mexicans living abroad were permit- In a nomination acceptance speech, Lopez Obrador rattled ted to vote in a presidential election, 34,000 voters mailed in off 51 concrete actions he will promote as president, including in their ballots mail, according to the old Federal Election raising workers’ wages, transforming the 50 Mexican consul- Institute. In 2012, the number rose to slightly more than ates in the U.S. into defense centers for migrants, and disman- 41,000, later reports indicated. Though few migrants have tling the CISEN national intelligence agency implicated in voted in past elections, expatriates remain a potential swing political spying. vote. In both 2006 and 2012, the PRI came in way last among He promises to reclaim at least part of Mexico’s oil sover- Mexicans abroad. eignty from foreign interests; reinvest in a countryside that’s In 2018 the huge and wild card-like youth vote looms been turned upside down by official neglect, corporate global- “fundamental,” according to Rivera. In his home state of ization and narco conquest; guarantee popular access to costly Aguascalientes approximately 43 percent of the registered secondary and higher education; overturn an unpopular No voter roll consists of young people aged 18 to 34, the local Child Left Behind like law; end privatizations; and hike paltry edition of La Jornada reported. The youngest strand of the senior pensions. roll will be allowed to for the first time, Rivera noted, though Without raising taxes, AMLO pledges to finance such it’s not clear who they will mainly support for or even it they reforms by slashing governmental corruption and subjecting will actually vote in large numbers. high officials who are accustomed to living like royalty to “re- Interfaced with publican austerity.” the generational “We are going question is the in- after the roots of creasing influence One FBI memo tried to smear Tom the regime of injus- of social media tice, corruption and networks and the Hayden with the worst possible label privilege that exists decline of commer- in the country,” cial television once of they could invoke: “FBI informer ”. Lopez Obrador closely controlled vowed to thousands by the government, of supporters at a “especially among the youth, who might not even watch it. February rally in Guadalajara closing the primaries. They’re not interested in news on Televisa,” Rivera said. “There Sizing up the elections, journalist and author Jenaro Villamil is an incredulousness among many people” of anything ema- pinpointed factors auguring an AMLO victory, among them nating from government quarters or corporate media, he the fracturing of the three major political parties, the collapse added. of the PRD and the rise of Morena as the country’s left-leaning force, President Pena Nieto’s rock-bottom rankings, and a All Eyes on Lopez Obrador crafty divide-and-conquer strategy pursued by Lopez Obrador. Historically identified with the left nationalist tendency in In Rivera’s view, AMLO has another big plus in the ground Mexican politics, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) game: he alone among the presidential contenders has visited leads the presidential polls with anywhere from about a every municipality in Mexico, spending the last 12 years on quarter to more than a third of respondents. the road and meeting with locals in even the most remote, Yet the Lopez Obrador of 2018 has struck a far different tone forgotten parts of the country. than in previous races, pivoting to the center and enlisting the support of thousands of defecting members of a host of politi- Who is the Real Big Bad Wolf? cal parties. A who’s who of the nation’s elite and even one-time Given Lopez Obrador’s resurgence, the strident attacks enemies like former leading PAN politicians such as Gabriela against him as a dangerous radical and irresponsible populist Cuevas and German Martinez now form part of Team AMLO. are not surprising. For Washington and its right-wing allies in Proceso documented more than 34 individuals connected to Latin America, the presidential frontrunner looms as a thorn Mexican economic, political and media elites who hold im- in their side, maybe even a big, sticky one. portant campaign positions or are slated to serve in Lopez A politician who frequently invokes historic nationalist Obrador’s cabinet if he wins the presidency. presidents like Benito Juarez and Lazaro Cardenas, President The 64-year-old former Mexico City mayor’s alliance with Lopez Obrador could prove a serious obstacle in the intensi- the PES, a grouping with conservative positions on sexuality, fying campaign of the Trump administration and the Latin sparked protests by some supporters like iconic writer Elena American right to isolate oil-rich Venezuela and finish off the

29 Bolivarian Revolution. “Whoever wins, I don’t know if they will resolve this because To Washington’s displeasure, AMLO holds a firm stance (organized crime groups) are increasingly pulverized and against the Trump administration’s border wall. violent,” he cautioned. “If Trump insists (on the border wall) we will go to the Concurring with federal election officials, Rivera predicted United Nations to present our complaint. We will do what an avalanche of post-election legal challenges in the courts. (Mexican president) Peña Nieto has not done,” Lopez Obrador “There are going to be many complaints, irregularities and said while on the primary campaign trail. incidents,” he said. “It’s hoped (election judges) will act with As for NAFTA, the former Mexico City mayor has declared impartiality.” that a new trade deal should be postponed until after the Will Mexicans overcome cynicism, fear, confusion, bribes July 1 elections. His position is generally shared by promi- and violence on July 1? Will a massive voter turnout overwhelm nent Morena senators and a network of nearly 100 unions, attempts at electoral manipulation? For his part, based on es- small farmer organizations and civil society organizations like timates by the political parties, Rivera projected more than Greenpeace Mexico and the Digital Rights Network which two-thirds of registered voters will go the polls. Rodriguez, advocate a withdrawal from NAFTA if popular interests aren’t too, rejected the notion that abstentionism might rule the day. prioritized. “People want to go out and change the circumstances of the Embellishing a script from 2006 and 2012, Lopez Obrador’s country,” she insisted. cp opponents are trying, without success so far, to paint the front- runner as a Venezuelan and Russian stooge. Kent Paterson is a journalist living in New Mexico. Breathing life into a sagging story, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared at a February 2 press conference in Mexico City that Russian “fingerprints” were on elections worldwide Poison Pens and that Mexico should “pay attention.” Nonetheless, the senior U.S. official offered no concrete evidence of Russian The FBI At Work intervention in the Mexican elections. By Paul Krassner Tillerson’s comment came during a Latin American tour aimed at solidifying the anti-Venezuela bloc. Howard Rasmussen was not his real name. Actually, he “We respect all the governments of the world and ask that was an FBI agent working in the New York office. That was 50 they respect our principles of non-intervention and self- years before the contrast pendulum of the current FBI. One determination of the peoples,” Lopez Obrador said in response day in October 1968, Rasmussen was reading an article in Life to Tillerson’s remarks. magazine. Then he sat down at his typewriter, trying creatively Tillerson’s Russia warning was delivered on the 170th an- to choose every word so carefully that it would reek of cred- niversary of the U.S.-Mexico Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, a ibility, as he composed a letter to the editor of Life on plain militarily strong-armed agreement which ceded much of the stationery. modern-day U.S. West to Washington and a historical date Rasmussen complained, “Your recent issue which devoted that’s well remembered south of the border. three pages to the aggrandizement of underground editor “Since when has the U.S. not interfered, though in different Paul Krassner was too, too much…you must be aware that degree depending on the circumstances, in our internal life?” The Realist is nothing more than blatant obscenity…To classify questioned Lorenzo Meyer.” Nowadays, it’s the same wolf that Krassner as some sort of ‘social rebel’ is far too cute. He’s a cries, ‘the other wolf is coming.” nut, a raving, unconfined nut…count me out, gentlemen.” Rasmussen signed his letter “Brooklyn College, School of A Thorny Election Day and Beyond General Studies.” Far from a given, Lopez Obrador’s victory and reform Before he could be permitted to mail the letter to Life, he was agenda could prove difficult to implement if the new presi- required to send a copy to FBI headquarters in Washington, dent is faced with a divided Congress, mused Fernando along with this memo: Rivera. A former citizen member of the old Federal Electoral The 10/4/68 issue of Life magazine contained a three page Institute, River contemplated another post-electoral scenario feature on Paul Krassner, editor of The Realist and self- like the one confronted by center-left opposition candidate styled “hippie.” Krassner is carried on the RI [Round-up Cuauhtemoc Cardenas after he won the 1997 Mexico City Index] of the NYO [New York Office]. mayoral race. Bureau authority is requested to send the following letter After the reformer’s win, crime and violence initially shot to the editors of Life on an anonymous basis. It is noted up as organized crime and corrupt authorities attempted to that the Life article was favorable to Krassner. undermine the new government, Rivera recalled. If anything, Rasmussen was merely doing his job, writing that poison- nationwide insecurity is even more problematic. pen letter, but is that how taxpayers’ money was supposed to

30 Lester of the Guardian and Leslie R. Campbell, sometime be spent? I had broken no law. The return memo—approved teacher at JHS 271, from which it appeared that the only by J. Edgar Hoover’s top two aides—was addressed to agents solution to Negro problems in America would be the elimi- at the New York office: nation of the Jews. May we suggest the following order of “Authority is granted to send a letter, signed with a fictitious elimination? (After all, we’ve been this way before.) name, to the editors of Life magazine. Furnish the Bureau the •All Jews connected with the Establishment. results of your action. •All Jews connected with Jews connected with the NOTE: Krassner is the Editor of The Realist and is one of Establishment. the moving forces behind the Youth International Party, *All Jews connected with those immediately above. commonly known as the Yippies. Krassner is a spokes- •All Jews except those in the Movement. man for the New Left. Life magazine recently ran an article •All Jews in the Movement except those who dye their favorable to him. skins black. New York’s proposed letter takes issue with the pub- lishing of this article and points out that the The Realist •All Jews (Look out, Jerry, Abbie, Mark and Paul!) is obscene and that Krassner is a nut. This letter could, if Once again, this flyer was approved by the FBI director’s printed by Life, call attention to the unsavory character of top aides: Krassner. “Authority is granted to There were Rasmussens all prepare and distribute on an over the place. One memo anonymous basis to selected tried to smear Tom Hayden One memo tried to smear individuals and organizations with the worst possible label in the New Left the leaflet sub- they could invoke—“FBI Tom Hayden with the worst mitted…Assure that all neces- informer.” The FBI distributed sary precautions are taken a caricature depicting Black possible label they could to protect the Bureau as the Panther leader Huey Newton invoke “FBI informer ”. source of these leaflets that “as a homosexual,” and ran a suggest facetiously the elimi- fake “Pick the Fag” contest, re- nation of these leaders.” ferring to Dave McReynolds as Of course, if some overly “Chief White Fag of the lily-white War Resisters League” and militant black obtained that flyer and eliminated one of those “the usual Queer Cats–like Sweet Dave Dellinger and Fruity “New Left leaders who are Jewish,” the FBI’s bureaucratic butt Rennie Davis.” would be covered: “We said it was a facetious suggestion, didn’t The FBI always took pains to instruct agents to “Insure we?” mailing material utilized and paper on which leaflet is prepared But truly, in 1982, Julius Lester converted to Judaism. cannot be traced to the Bureau.” In that context, “Bureau au- Now, go, Mueller! cp thority was received for New York to prepare and mail anony- Paul Krassner is editor of The Realist. mously a letter regarding [an individual’s] sexual liaison with his step-daughter (Age 13) to educational authorities in New Jersey” where he was a teacher. In 1969, the FBI’s previous attempt at mere character assas- sination of me escalated to a slightly more literal approach. This wasn’t included in my own Co-Intel-Pro (Counter-Intelligence available at Program) files but, rather, discovered elsewhere by Sam Leff. store.counterpunch.org At the Chicago convention, Leff had erased the line between anthropologist and activist. Later, as a Yippie archivist, he or (707) 629-3683 investigated a separate FBI project calculated to cause rifts between the black and Jewish communities. The FBI produced a WANTED poster featuring a large swastika. In the four square spaces of the swastika were photos of Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Mark Rudd of SDS, $ and myself. Underneath the swastika was this message: 16 .95 plus shipping LAMPSHADES! LAMPSHADES! LAMPSHADES! ISBN-13: 978-1849353045 New York radio station WBAI recently featured e-book ISBN: 978-1-849353052 programs under the tutelage of black revolutionary Julius

31 culture & reviews

centered in Appalachia. “We’ve gone Vance describes as a “dear friend,” Appalachia Say from having nearly eradicated it in the has employed Vance as a contributor mid-1990s to the highest concentration to his magazine, a publication which You Will of cases that anyone has ever seen,” says praised Hillbilly Elegy for proving that by Lee Ballinger Scott Laney of NIOSH. white Appalachians have “followed the “The Appalachian mountain “In 1979,” Elizabeth Catte writes black underclass and Native Americans people today are no better in What You Are Getting Wrong About into family disintegration, addiction, than barbarians. They have Appalachia, “Harvard paid just $2.82 in and other pathologies.” relapsed into illiteracy and annual property taxes on 11,182 acres Vance says PayPal billionaire Peter witchcraft. They are the of land in Martin County, Kentucky.” Thiel, who helped Vance transition from American counterparts of While Harvard freeloads off of a corner poverty to the one percent by hiring the latter-day white barbar- of Appalachia in order to add to its $36 him at Thiel’s Mithril venture capital ians of the Old World.”— A billion endowment, forty percent of fund, is “super-thoughtful and incred- Study of History by Arnold Martin County residents live in poverty. ibly nice.” Thiel says that giving women Toynbee, who never set foot in Adding insult to injury, water bills there the vote undermines democracy. That’s Appalachia come with warnings that the local water thoughtful. Nice. Thiel donated $1.25 could increase the risk of cancer. million to Donald Trump’s presidential Toynbee’s much-lauded book, pub- West Virginia loses $220 million a campaign. How thoughtful and nice lished right after World War II, found year from its state budget due to cor- was that? Upon his election, Trump im- an echo during the 1950s in the Chicago porate tax cuts facilitated a decade ago mediately appointed billionaire Wilbur Tribune. In a series of editorials, the by a Democratic majority in the state Ross as secretary of commerce. Ross paper attacked Appalachian newcom- legislature. was the owner of a coal mine in Sago, ers for turning the city into “a lawless In 1995, Purdue Pharma won federal West Virginia where twelve Appalachian free-for-all with their primitive jungle approval for the highly addictive pain miners died in an explosion in 2006. tactics … with the lowest standard of medication OxyContin, which ended Whose fault was that? living and moral code of all… No other up generating $35 billion in sales for the Meanwhile, J.D. Vance is about to group is so completely devoid of self- company. According to Sam Pizzagati get an even higher profile, having just pride and responsibility… even worse in Inequality.org, “The FDA examiner sold Hillbilly Elegy’s film rights to than Negroes.” who ran the approval process would Oscar-winning director Ron Howard. This is hardly just some ancient later come to work for Purdue….A It might seem strange, looking history, fading away in the digital age. congressional committee has just found through the distorted modern lens that Today we are confronted with the that ‘two of the nation’s biggest drug dis- has been so carefully crafted for us, but likes of Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, tributors shipped 12.3 million doses of Appalachian whites were once por- a best-seller since its publication in powerful opioids to a single pharmacy trayed in heroic terms. Unfortunately, it the summer of 2016. Vance dismisses in a tiny West Virginia town over an was for their role in dispossessing Native Appalachians as lazy and drug-addled, eight-year period.’” Americans of their land. “In every concluding that their problems “were “Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty skirmish with Shawnee, in every frontier not created by governments or corpora- to a felony count of ‘misbranding’ battle, the pioneers made visceral claims tions or anyone else. We created them.” OxyContin,” author Sam Quinones to territory,” writes Steven Stoll in Ramp Really? Let’s look at some facts. writes. “To avoid federal prison sen- Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia. Between 1900 and 2005, some tences for its executives, the company “Their unsanctioned seizure of a con- 104,500 coal miners were killed on the paid a fine of $634.5 million.” tested frontier justified the expansion job in America, according to Jeff Biggers We did not create our problems- of American authority.” in United States of Appalachia. -corporations and government and the This westward push was accompa- Scientists at the National Institute for synergy between them did that. J.D. nied by the depiction of settlers as brave Occupational Safety and Health have Vance blames us, the victims. He isn’t pioneers—Daniel Boone and many identified the largest cluster of advanced alone, of course. National Review ex- others. “The admiration of mountain- black lung disease ever reported, ecutive editor Reihan Salam, whom eers marked a particular geopolitical

32 moment,” Stoll notes. “By 1860, that 1900 and 1930, the African-American In the wake of Donald Trump’s moment had ended...Their story no population in Appalachia increased election as president, both Ted Koppel longer coincided with the one about a from 40,000 to 108,000. and the Huffington Post declared that nation destined to embrace a continent... At one point, 46 percent of coal McDowell County, West Virginia was Mountain whites lost their lands under miners in northern Alabama were unambiguously Trump Country, with the same assumptions, if not the same black, 15 percent in Kentucky. This the clear implication that this was an tactics, deployed against Indians. They was especially true in iconic Harlan accurate regional symbol. shared one other thing in common: County, where towns such as Benham In the 2016 election, only 27 percent their displacements made them poor.” and Lynch attracted thousands of of McDowell County voted for Trump Land became a commodity and African-American miners. and voter turnout there was at a record distant owners (George Washington Eastern Kentucky was shaped in part low. In 2008, Barack Obama won once owned 30,000 acres in Appalachia) by the history of slavery. There were the county by 8 percent. In the 2016 sent out their agents to enforce their several lynchings there in the early Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders, titles and buy up more. They were de- twentieth century. Pikeville had once with his program of free education and termined to rip out the timber, dig up been the site of a thriving slave market. free medical care, won handily there, as the coal, and send the profits back east. Yet when authors Thomas Wagner he did in every county in West Virginia In the process, a definitive end was put and Phillip Obermiller interviewed and across much of Appalachia. In to the practice of mountaineers treating several black Harlan County miners, McDowell County, there was strong the land as a commons, a community they found that “In coal towns, blacks local support for the recent statewide resource. This was justified by force- and whites neighbored often and easily teachers’ strike, which pitted the state’s feeding the concept of private property within their own communities. Social educators against governor Jim Justice, into the body politic. Human displace- interaction was frequent, food and a billionaire coal mine owner. ment was regarded as a small price to favors were exchanged on an almost When you stop and think about it, pay for “progress.” daily basis, and emergency assistance McDowell County may actually be the This was the birth of Appalachia, a was just a neighbor or two away.” This opposite of Donald Trump. region but also a process, a process that happened despite the fact that mine In 1996 Charlotte Pritt rode an continues today. As Steven Stoll notes: owners, recognizing the problems anti-corporate platform to the West “The southern mountains are half a racial unity could cause them, had their Virginia gubernatorial nomination, billion years old, but Appalachia did security forces break up interracial defeating current U.S. Senator Joe not exist before the industrial invasion social interactions. Manchin. Instead of endorsing Pritt, of those uplands during the nineteenth Singer Bill Withers, a native of Slab the Democratic Party supported the century.” Fork, West Virginia and the son of a Republican candidate and Pritt lost in Today Appalachia has 25 million coal miner, remembers that “You had a close general election. In 2016 Pritt people spread across 737,000 square to go to the back door if you wanted a garnered 42,068 votes under the banner miles. The popular conception is that milkshake or something from one of the of the tiny, underfunded Mountain/ the region is dominated by people of restaurants in town. But the kids left to Green Party. In McDowell County, she Scots-Irish descent. Elizabeth Catte their own devices, we played together.” came in third out of five candidates for responds that “More than 80 percent On the other hand, according to governor. of Appalachia’s population identifies retired Harlan County miner Joe Lissa Lucas, running for the office of as white, but for the past thirty years, William Trotter, “Working class solidar- West Virginia State Delegate under the African Americans and Hispanics have ity was a highly precarious affair…White slogan of “Holler From The Hollers,” fueled more than half of Appalachia’s workers and employers coalesced to a recently drove one hundred miles to population growth….There are more substantial, even fundamental, degree a public hearing at the state capitol to people in Appalachia who identify as around notions of black inferiority.” read off a list of the fossil fuel donors African-American than as Scots-Irish.” who had funded many of the politicians Poor whites also became a despised This should come as no surprise. present. She was promptly expelled from race. Racialization has often gone Appalachia is well-known for coal, but the chamber. The response to this was a along with ejectment and enclo- most people don’t realize that black wave of support, notably over $50,000 sure, offering an intellectual tool for miners dug a lot of it. At the time of donated to Lucas’s campaign (in 2016, all taking resources away from people the epic 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain three candidates combined raised only said to be incapable of progress or in which coal miners battled police and $17,498). change. This is what we find in the the army, thirty percent of the miners in West Virginia and the rest of southern mountains.—Steven Stoll McDowell County were black. Between Appalachia fueled the American

33 Industrial Revolution, giving the nation new video from country music superstar because, “he made a lot of great films. A mountains of coal and tens of billions of Carrie Underwood, who grew up on a lot of different films, which I would like board feet of lumber. But that is the old. farm in Checotah, Oklahoma and who to do.” In the same interview, Soderbergh Between 1950 and 1970, the number of has performed in Appalachia throughout points out that both Kafkaand his debut, coal miners in the U.S. fell from 513,860 her career. Close to half of the large cast Sex, Lies and Videotape deal with the to 128,375. There are now only about in “The Champion” video are people of search for truth, one on a personal level, 36,000 miners. Alpha Natural Resources, color, including Muslims. Special guest the other societal. It’s fascinating that the nation’s second-largest coal company, is hardcore rapper Ludacris. The civil so early on, Soderbergh knew the type filed for bankruptcy in 2015, shedding rights movement is featured prominent- of filmmaker he wanted to be as well as 6,500 jobs and closing eighty mines in ly, with a nod to the Me Too movement the central theme that would preoccupy the process. Not one of the thirteen most and to workers, farmers, marching bands his entire body of work. His latest film, productive mines in the United States and athletes fast and slow. It ends with a Unsane is his first full-blown horror piece today is located in Appalachia. stunning mosaic that includes all of it. and his first shot entirely on an iPhone. If that is the old, then what is the new? “The Champion” video might seem That said, it still finds the director -in Steven Stoll proposes a “Commons corny to some, but for context compare vestigating the thorny nature of truth. Communities Act,” a sweeping legisla- it to a presentation Hillbilly Elegy author It is not a great film, Hawksian or oth- tive change informed by both the elimi- J.D. Vance made at the University of West erwise, but it is different and we should nation of most coal mining jobs and the Virginia on February 21. According to a be grateful to have an elder-statesman of planetary destruction caused by fossil local blogger, “Vance’s talk reinforced cinema whose willing and able to take fuels. The Act proposes the creation of familiar negative stereotypes about the risks that Soderbergh takes. a vast series of “commons communi- Appalachia at nearly every turn—we’re The premise of Unsane is a par- ties,” locally owned and administered. deliberately ignorant, too lazy to work, ticularly pulpy one. A young woman The communities would be paid for by and too dependent on government as- named Sawyer Valentini has just moved an income tax on the one per cent and a sistance to want to do anything to take to a new city with a new job. From the tax on any corporation which “closes its ownership over our lives—and blamed first scene we see she’s tough if not a bit operations and moves elsewhere, leaving ‘environmental’ and ‘cultural’ factors for prickly by the way she talks to custom- behind toxic waste and poverty.” There the region’s problems.” ers on the phone or how she rebuffs the will be no homelessness, no corporation On a Dick Tracy wristwatch, J.D. advances of her new boss. Following a may purchase property in the commu- Vance and Donald Trump may be what mental breakdown during a one-night- nity, and incentives will be provided for time it is in America today. But on the stand, Sawyer seeks out a support group doctors and teachers to live there. town square clocks across Appalachia for stalkers, making it clear to the viewer But the details are less important than and the rest of the country, a new version why she moved. She mentions suicide to Stoll’s philosophy of change. “If our sense of standard time is straining to establish the therapist and before knowing what’s of the possible doesn’t contain an element itself. That momentum will continue to happening, she’s placed under psychiat- of the unlikely,” he writes, “then it’s only a build only to the degree that we recog- ric evaluation. Things go from inconve- compromise with what is. There can be nize our “common predicament.” We nient to terrifying when Sawyer starts no improvement without a viable politi- need to hurry up and talk to each other seeing her stalker as an orderly at the cal identity. This would require the white about it. Time is running out. cp facility. working class of the southern mountains As is the problem with most films Lee Ballinger is co-editor of Rock & Rap to stop identifying their interests with about supposedly sane people being Confidential. Free email subscriptions are those of the rich and powerful….Instead held in mental institutions, the first available by writing [email protected]. of telling a story about themselves that half of Unsane is frustrating not only separates them from African Americans, because of the staff’s refusal to listen American Indians, and all those who but also Sawyer’s poor ways of convey- have been dispossessed, they could tell a Unsane: ing her sanity. Her initial bouts of anger story about their common predicament.” only get her into more trouble. That For this to happen, it will also be nec- Soderbergh’s being said, the character of Sawyer is essary for everyone else to stop “iden- perhaps one of horror film’s most inter- tifying their interests” with the vicious Truth esting and dynamic of heroines. Where stereotypes of poor whites that remain By Ed Leer most modern genre films define their so easily accepted in America. In an interview around the time of female protagonists by a specific tragedy To get a glimpse of what such a society Kafka, Steven Soderbergh stated that his in the beginning to gain the audience’s might look and feel like, check out the filmmaking hero was Howard Hawks sympathy, Unsafe holds off on Sawyer’s

34 stalker past, instead focusing on how for Soderbergh, he spends the final egorized as more a retirement project she deals with work, family and dating. third untying the strains for us to see than a finished film. The compositions Once she’s stuck in the hospital, Sawyer the bigger picture. This seems to be the are sloppy and not at all close to what is shown to be calculating and even closest thing to truth Soderbergh’s films Sean Baker showed us was possible with ruthlessly manipulative. have to offer. He holds back certain in- an iPhone in his stunning Tangerine. The other strong suit the film formation, while letting slip just enough Considering, Soderbergh is currently has going for it is the villain. No. Not to make you think one way before re- shooting another film using the iPhone, Sawyer’s stalker. I’m referring to the vealing the lies and unknowns that led this may have been more a project he hospital itself. The question of Sawyer’s the viewer down one avenue of perspec- undertook to get test out the technology sanity is never just as Logan Lucky fully answered. was used to test What is answered out his distribution fairly quickly is model. how unscrupulous Considering that Highland Creek Soderbergh’s indie Behavioral Center contemporaries can be. Sawyer from the 1990s such learns from a fellow as Tarantino and patient Nate (Jay the Andersons (Wes Pharoah) that the and Paul Thomas) whole operation is have all receded one big insurance into large-scale scam and after seven period pieces shot days, the money on film, it is rather runs out and Sawyer refreshing to see a will be released. This director with the of course becomes same clout choose a challenge when to experiment and David Strine, her play around with a stalker, appears to consumer camera, be working as a making a micro- Still from Unsane (2018). night shift orderly. budget genre film. The question is whether we can trust tive. It’s no coincidence that Soderbergh Howard Hawkes was able to make what Nate, a mental patient, tells Sawyer. named his recent HBO series (and inter- so many films of all different genres Or should we trust Sawyer when she active app) Mosaic. because he was protected within the starts seeing her stalker, having previ- Soderbergh has always been an Studio System. While Soderbergh has ously mistaken other people for David? advocate of digital technology, being worked with studios on larger films, he If Nate is to be believed, then it’s easy one of the first serious directors to shoot successfully, and daringly carved out to see how an unethical place like features entirely on the medium. His a diverse body of work while existing Highland wouldn’t screen their em- work was exciting because he was one in the wilds of independent distribu- ployees too carefully. If Nate is making of the most light-on-his feet commer- tion. More important, as Hawkes would up the whole thing, perhaps Sawyer cial filmmakers, sometimes even acting say, the films of Soderbergh are never is just as delusional. Sawyer’s mother as his own director of photography. The boring. cp attempts to come to the rescue only to use of the iPhone is certainly crucial to Ed Leer is a writer and filmmaker- run into legal red tape with a Nurse the story of Unsane. It never gives the based in LA. He studied English at the Ratchett-esque Hospital Administrator, viewer a dominant, “traditional” image University of Iowa and Screenwriting at painted-on smile and all. While it seems they can trust. The whole film looks Chapman University. He is a frequent Sawyer’s mother will add an objective like it could have been shot undercover contributor to the CounterPunch Culture view of the events, Soderbergh hints that without the characters’ knowledge. section. perhaps family ties make her perspec- The downside to this is that it feels tive unreliable. too light and inconsequential, like

Each of these strains of truth gets Soderbergh’s feet have left the cin- stuck in a big knot and, as is common ematic ground. Unsane should be cat-

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