Posted in Cuba News February 15, 2025
CCDS: The Middle East Wars and United States Imperialism
8:55am #36666
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Saturday, February 15, 2025
Why Migration
Harry Targ
(“The vice president’s speech in Munich, expressing support for far-right, anti-immigration parties and criticizing suppression of conservative voices, was a global extension of his core political themes.” Mchael C. Bender, Vance Shocks Europe With a Message That He Has Long Promoted at Home” New York Times, February 14, 2025)
People migrate from one place to another for a variety of reasons. A good part of that migration has to do with international relations, national economies, and the increasingly globalized economy. Literally millions of people have moved from one geographic space to another in the twenty-first century, in most cases for reasons of physical fear or economic need. Two prominent causes that “push” people to leave their communities and homeland relate to “hybrid wars” and neoliberal globalization.
Hybrid
wars refer to the long-term policies of imperial powers to systematically
undermine political regimes that pursue policies and goals that challenge their
global hegemony. Over long periods of time imperial powers have used force,
covert operations, supporting pliant local elites, and funneling money to
disrupt local political processes. If targeted countries still reject outside
interference the imperial power uses force to overthrow recalcitrant
governments. In the 1980s all these tactics were used by the United States to
crush revolutionary ferment in Central America. Of course, the US hybrid war
strategy has been a staple of United States policy in the region ever since
President Franklin Roosevelt declared the policy of “The Good Neighbor.”
Neoliberalism refers
to the variety of policies that rich capitalist countries and international
institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the
World Trade Organization have imposed on debt-ridden poor countries. These
policies require poor countries to cut back on public services, deregulate
their economies, reduce tariffs that protect their own industries and
agriculture, and in other ways insist that poor countries open their economies
to foreign investment and trade penetration. The impacts of neoliberalism have
been to impose austerity on largely marginalized populations. Their agriculture
and industries have been undermined by subsidized agribusinesses from the
Global North and global investors. Since the initiation of neoliberal policies
in the 1970s gaps between rich and poor nations and rich and poor people within
nations have grown all across the world, with a few exceptions such as China.
In sum,
people everywhere have experienced the creation of repressive regimes and
economic policies that have shifted vast majorities from modest survival to
deep poverty. (Susan Jonas once wrote that the Guatemalan people lived more
secure lives before the arrival of Spanish colonizers in the fifteenth century
than ever since). The globalization of the economy, increased violence and
repression within countries (largely involving United States interference),
increasing income and wealth inequality and poverty, and the rise of repressive
regimes everywhere, has led to massive emigration. Some estimates indicate that
37 million people left their home countries (some 45 countries) between 2010
and 2015 for humanitarian reasons.
One of the ironies of world history is that capital in the form of investments, trade, the purchase of natural resources, the globalization of production, and military interventions have been common and necessary features of capitalism since its emergence in the sixteenth century. But, paradoxically, and except for the global slave trade and selected periods of history, the movement of people has been illegal. (Sometimes branding migrants as “illegal” has been a device to cheapen their labor). The idea of national sovereignty has been used to justify categorizing some human migrants as “illegal.” If capital is and has been legal, the movement of people should be legal as well. It makes no sense, nor is it humane, to brand any human beings as “illegal.”
In sum, the expression of fear, outrage, and lack of sensitivity for those who have been forced to migrate by Vice President Vance reflects a cruelty and lack of humanity that is central to United States foreign and domestic politics. And he, and his administration, are becoming allied with those Europeans who share his ideology.
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
REMEMBERING “STAR WARS” OR “THE STRATEGIC DEFENSE INITIATIVE”
Some Fantasies Never Die, particularly if they are profitable.
Harry Targ
(Alan MacLeod / MintPress News Donald Trump has announced his intention to build a
gigantic anti-ballistic missile system to counter Chinese and Russian nuclear
weapons, and he is recruiting Elon Musk to help him. The Pentagon has long
dreamed of constructing an American “Iron dome.” https://scheerpost.com/2025/02/11/the-pentagon-is-recruiting-elon-musk-to-help-them-win-a-nuclear-war/)
In the
1980s, President Ronald Reagan was instituting a military budget that in total
was greater than all US military expenditures from the founding of the nation
until the 1980s. Military doctrine, in accordance with the huge increase in
military spending, shifted from maintaining a capability to deter aggression
from other nations, particularly the former Soviet Union, to the development of
a first strike capability, that is to be able to strike an enemy first. This
shift in policy was coupled with the president claiming that the former Soviet
Union constituted an “evil empire,” one that had to be pushed back, weakened,
and destroyed.
As
part of the reinstitution of a New Cold War with the Soviet Union, after a
decade of détente, Reagan announced in a dramatic speech the development of the
new Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which became known as the “Star Wars”
program. The president claimed that the United States could develop a
space-based defensive shield that could protect North America from any attack
from a foreign power.
SDI
became a boondoggle for the military/industrial complex. Especially
universities saw the project as a source of significant increases in revenue.
However, large sectors of the scientific community declared that Star Wars was
wasteful and technologically impossible to achieve. (Many Purdue University professors
signed a petition promising not to accept any Star Wars funding).
Along
with its lack of feasibility, most strategic analysts questioned the
President’s claim that SDI was merely a defensive weapon. They argued, in the
context of Reagan’s hostile rhetoric about the Soviet Union and the claim that
the US could achieve physical protection from attack, that the Soviets would
perceive SDI as an offensive weapon. They might conclude that the United States
was developing a defensive shield so that it might choose to launch a
first-strike against the Soviet Union.
The
military doctrine of “deterrence,” dominating military thinking on both sides
of the Cold War for years was that neither power could afford to launch a
first-strike attack on the other because the second-strike response would be so
devastating that functioning societies in both countries would be destroyed.
Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara aptly labeled this doctrine
Mutually Assured Destruction (or MAD). In short, with SDI, an enemy of the US
could believe that they might be attacked at any time. Consequently “Star Wars”
was profoundly destabilizing, increasing the possibility of nuclear war.
Twenty-six
years later, President Trump declared that the United States henceforth would
recognize that space should be the site for military preparedness to defend
national security. To achieve this goal the US Space Force would lead the way
(Gregory Niguidula, “Trump’s Space Force is a Strategic Mistake,” Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists, January 21, 2019). In the National
Defense authorization Act of 2020, Congress approved the idea of establishing a
new sixth branch of the military, the United States Space Force.
Meanwhile,
the United States in 2025 continues to have over 800 military bases of various
sizes around the world and military programs with almost 40 countries,
sometimes including private military contractors. The United States also
pursues what VJ Prashad calls “hybrid wars,” economic sanctions, covert
operations, and ideological campaigns against so-called “authoritarian” states.
Perhaps
most threatening from the standpoint of increasing the probability of war is a
dramatic increase in verbal hostilities toward China. The rhetoric has been
coupled with warnings from influential think tanks that the United States, “the
world’s leading democracy,” was falling behind Chinese in influence, power,
economic capabilities, and mostly technological advances. In addition, the
Obama Administration declared that the United States was pivoting its security
concerns to Asia. Trump and Biden have moved US ships to the South China Sea,
sought an alliance with Asian nations against China, and recently President
Biden signed a naval agreement with Australia.
Observers
of the international scene regard these developments in US/China relations,
over the last three administrations as profoundly destabilizing, perhaps a “New
Cold War.” Of course, the most horrific possibility is escalation from
conventional to nuclear war. Therefore, it is in this context that the
creation of a sixth branch of the military, the United States Space Force, and
its growing penetration of major domestic institutions, including universities,
is troubling.
This
new branch of the military, seeking legitimacy and the expansion of its own
power and resources, is embedding itself in what could be called the
military/industrial/academic complex. And, from the standpoint of universities,
which are experiencing declining financial resources, new space-oriented
research constitutes a vital source of revenue paralleling that provided by the
dubious Star Wars program of the 1980s.
So from “Star Wars” to the “Iron Dome” profits soar and the danger of nuclear war increases.
From "Dr Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" a movie 1984 film
Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, the truth is not always a pleasant thing, but it is necessary now make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless, distinguishable post-war environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed.
President Muffley:
You're talking about mass murder, General, not war.
Turgidson:
Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say... no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh... dependent on the breaks.
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Theorizing About Social Movements and Activism
Harry Targ
(This
was part of an essay that was written a decade ago. Thie issues and debates
still matter)
Social movement activism has spread like wildfire across the entire globe over the last decade. One group of scholars studied “protest incidents” in over 80 countries from 2006-2013. They found 840 protests in these countries with at least half motivated by demands for economic changes and democratization. A centerpiece of movements from Greece to Chile, to Spain, to Canada to the United States has been outrage against neoliberal policies (sometimes referred to as “austerity” policies). Fundamentally these policies involve shifting wealth from the vast majority to the tiny minority. In the United States, the Occupy Movement introduced an accurate metaphor for this transformation: the one percent versus the 99 percent. Moral Mondays movements in over a dozen states in the South and Midwest emerged as one large-scale protest against the imposition of austerity and the weakening of democratic institutions.
David Harvey, a political theorist, has posited a “co-revolutionary theory” about social movements. He argues that because there are so many problems in so many different locations in society political activism can and must start anywhere. If one is at a university or elsewhere in the education system struggles over “mental constructs’ matter. If persons are engaged in or near the electoral arena targeting politicians must be done. Work in the corporate sector, the media, government institutions are all sites for the application of political pressure and organizing. What needs to be remembered however is that all the separate struggles are interconnected and that activists need to understand how each struggle relates to every other struggle. Also, victory in one place and time does not mean that the goals of struggle have been achieved. In the end, Harvey argues that the interconnected crises relating to class, race, gender, homophobia, war and peace, and the environment are intimately connected to the capitalist system.
Further, activists debate the utility of political engagement around elections and legislation compared to mass movement activity. Some progressives have proposed as a solution to this dilemma, developing an “inside/outside” strategy. The inside/outside strategy argues for pursuing electoral work, electing candidates who might act on the people’s behalf, and lobbying to secure legislative victories, even if such efforts cannot solve the panoply of economic, environmental, war, racial and other problems that are faced. Electoral and legislative work, however, needs to be supplemented by “street heat;” building a mass movement that can be mobilized to publicly demonstrate its outrage and its demands for change. The outside strategy might include creating a large, disciplined organization with resources that can respond to and lead the mass movement of people for change. It is through the outside strategy that politicians can be forced to carry out the will of the people.
Rev. William Barber ten years ago through his “fusion politics” approach incorporated all of the above thinking. Fusion politics, he said, emphasizes the need for progressive groups to work together in coalitions, in partnerships, in common organizational fronts to bring the energy of all groups together. Ruling classes or power elites do not respond to change unless masses of organizations and people come together to make demands.
The 99 percent do not have the material resources- the money, ownership of media outlets, influence over education and police power-to bring about change. All they have potentially are their numbers. And the fusion politics model is about mobilizing masses of people, developing effective and democratic organizations, and applying people power all across the political and economic map.
Moving Ahead in 2025 the Following Questions Remain
1.How do we organize locally and statewide, particularly in “red states”
2.How do we develop in our literature and public agenda the view that what we are struggling against is a forty-year program of austerity, redistributing the wealth and power from the many to the few. And how can we effectively show that our local struggles parallel those in other states and countries.
4.How can we take the general worldview and discuss:
https://www.brandeis.edu/peace-conflict/pdfs/198-methods-non-violent-action.pdf
Conclusion
The world is in turmoil. Protests all across the globe have some common origins, causes, and solutions. While communities have their own problems they are not too different from those elsewhere. The ongoing work must involve addressing the particular while being cognizant of the general, building coalitions of shared responsibility and respect, organizing people power from the centers of power to the streets, and reconstructing institutions that serve, not oppress the people.
Monday, February 3, 2025
RACISM ON THE CAMPUS: THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES (A revised repost from November 15, 2015 and February 1, 2004)
Black History Month: Some Purdue Remembrances
Harry Targ
Journal and Courier photo
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Frederick Douglass
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of
the color line. W.E.B. DuBois
What a proud contrast to the environments that appear
to prevail at places like Missouri and Yale. Mitch Daniels
All across the country students, black and white, hit
the streets and the campus malls to protest racism; structural and
interpersonal. One thousand students rallied at Purdue University on Friday,
November 13, 2014 to show solidarity with students at the University of
Missouri and to announce 13 demands they were making to address racism at
Purdue; a racism that the university president says no longer exists.
Of course, nationally and locally the struggle for
social and economic justice is historic. Rev. William Barber, leader of the
Moral Mondays Movement, points to the “Three Reconstructions” in post-Civil War
American history. The First Reconstruction occurred in the 1860s and 1870s when
black and white farmers and workers came together to write constitutions and to
create a new democratic Southern politics. The hope this first reconstruction
raised for a truly democratic America was dashed by a shift to the right of the
federal government, the reemergence of the old Southern ruling class, and the
rise of a brutal violent terrorist organization, the Ku Klux Klan. Racist policies, coupled with terrorism, instilled formal
racial segregation in the South and subtle forms of institutionalized racism
throughout the rest of the country. (A later rendition of the KKK dominated
Indiana politics in the 1920s. See for example the powerful book by Timothy
Egan, A Fever in the Heartland).
The Second Reconstruction, Barber asserts, was
inspired by the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision which
declared that segregated schools were unconstitutional. With militant sectors
of labor, a grassroots Southern civil rights movement revived all across the
country. In the 1960s, it culminated in civil rights legislation that outlawed
racial segregation and guaranteed voting rights. Also, the “war on poverty” was
launched. Shortly after these victories, the Republican Party presidential candidate
Richard Nixon employed the so-called “Southern Strategy” to shift federal and
state politics to the right. The forerunners of today’s Tea Party (and Trump
supporting MAGA) rightwing reaction expanded their political power at the
federal and state levels. (and Nancy MacLean documents how opposition to the
Brown decision evolved into a vast and powerful rightwing network in the United
States financed by the Koch Foundation and other wealthy rightwing people and
foundations, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radican Right’s Plan
for America, 2017).
Rev. Barber believes that, with the movement that
elected President Obama, there emerged a Third Reconstruction. It featured the
mobilization of masses of people--blacks and whites, men and women, gays and
straights, blue collar and white collar workers, young and old, people of faith
and those who choose no faith--coming together to reconstitute the struggle for
the achievement of a truly democratic vision. This vision is of a society that
is participatory, egalitarian, and economically and psychologically fulfilling.
The Struggle for Racial Justice at Purdue University
https://youtu.be/lMaQyMyQpDc?si=8OmrAB9LTrLGA5ri
The resurgence of protests on college campuses over
the last decade, although narrowly focused, represents the contemporary form of
the kinds of struggles for social justice Frederick Douglass talked
about. For example, on the campus of Purdue University, the struggle
for racial justice has a long history. For the first 60 years of the twentieth
century the African American population was less than one percent of the
student body. The numbers of African American students grew to a few
hundred in the 1960s. And in the context of the Second Reconstruction and
activism around civil rights and opposition to the war in Vietnam, some
students organized a “Negro History Study Group” (which later became the Black
Student Union). In 1968, to dramatize what they saw as institutional racism
coupled with an environment of racial hostility, more than 150 Black students
carrying brown bags marched to the Executive Building. At the building they
took bricks from the bags. The bricks were piled up and a sign “Or the Fire
Next Time,” was set next to the bricks. The students submitted a series of
demands including the development of an African American Studies Program and a
Black Cultural Center.
The demonstration was dramatic. The demands clear. The
justice of their motivation was unassailable. Administrators and faculty set up
committees to discuss the protests. And in the short run, only minor changes
were implemented, such as Purdue’s 1968 hiring of the first African American
professor in Liberal Arts.
One year later, after an African American member of
the track team was castigated for wearing a mustache and his verbal response
led to his arrest, Black students launched another protest march with more
demands. This time the Administration and the Board of Trustees authorized the
establishment of the Black Cultural Center, which today is an educational,
social, and architectural hub of the campus. In 1973, Antonio Zamora, educator,
accomplished musician, and experienced administrator was hired to lead the
campus effort to make the BCC the vital embodiment of the university that it
has become. One of the leaders of the 1969 protest, Eric McCaskill, told then
President Hovde by phone during the protest march and visit to the Executive
Building: “We are somebody. I am somebody.”
History of protests at Purdue shows 'another world is possible' https://www.purdueexponent.org/city_state/history-of-protests-at-purdue-shows-another-world-is-possible/article_51b69386-b15e-11ea-8b76-b31b38228621.html
Forty-six years later one thousand similarly motivated students rallied together on Friday, November 13, 2014 on the Purdue campus. They expressed outrage at the systematic violence against people of color throughout the society and the perpetuation of racism in virtually every institution. On the Purdue campus they protested the lack of full, fair representation of African Americans on the faculty and in the student body, a climate on and off campus that perpetuates racism, and the continuation of all the old stereotypes of minority students that has prevailed for years. They also shared their solidarity with the students of the University of Missouri and they made it crystal clear their disagreement with the statement by the Purdue University President that the Purdue campus was different.
The organizers provided thirteen demands including:
-an acknowledgement by the President of Purdue
University that a hostile and discriminatory environment still exists at Purdue
-the reinstatement of a Chief Diversity Officer with
student involvement in the hiring process
-the creation of a “required comprehensive awareness
curriculum”
-the establishment of a campus police advisory board
-a 30 percent increase of underrepresented minorities
in the student body and on the faculty by 2019-2020
-greater representatives of minority groups on student
government bodies
Frederick Douglass was correct. Progress
requires struggle. DuBois is still correct about the twenty-first century as he
was about the prior one: the problem of our day remains “the color line.” And
many of those who observed, participated in, and applauded the organizers of
protests in 1968, 2015 and today at Purdue recognize that the
struggles are long, the victories sometimes transitory, and each generation of
activists is participating in a process of fundamental change that will move
society in a more humane direction. The generations of Purdue students of the
1960s and the twenty-first century are linked in a chain for justice.
The Struggle Continues as the importance of DEI Becomes a Political Tool
Today, the percentage of underrepresented
students continues to be low and various programs of relevance to educating all
students, including underrepresented ones, of the mixed history and culture of
the United States are being threatened with extinction, But Purdue University
continues its commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Programs
and principles should be celebrated and supported. And, this month, Black
History Month, we should remember and pay homage to those students, faculty,
and staff who stood up for programs that have made Purdue University a more
comfortable and intellectually vital place for everybody.
https://stories.purdue.edu/vice-provost-gates-aims-to-transform-campus-culture/
https://www.purdue.edu/diversity-inclusion/about-us/what-we-do.html
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