Sunday, March 23, 2025

The Misuse of Antisemitism Stifles Discussion in Indiana

Harry Targ

The Governor of Indiana issued the following executive order, "Enduring Student Safety at State Educational Institutions" 

Indiana Executive  Order 25-39  https://www.in.gov/gov/files/EO-25-39-.pdf

Jewish Voice for Peace Indiana Responded:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H0JExG5uEAFrnRv9HdqC_ZQ_-NmDFGTU/view


CHARGES OF ANTISEMITISM STIFLE DISCUSSION, DEBATE, AND PROTEST IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN INDIANA


 DHS agents detained Mahmoud Khalil, a green card-holding Palestinian activist who took part in the Gaza protests at Columbia University

 (Originally posted on April 23, 2024 but even more relevant today as the Trump Administration and state governments are increasingly stifling dissent.including incarcerating those who criticize the wars in the Middle East).

Today the corporate media and lobby groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are seeking to squash debate concerning Israel’s war on Gaza and the US three billion dollars a year perpetual military aid to Israel. Criticism of Israel’s brutal bombing of Gaza is defined as threatening to Jewish students and more generally is defined as antisemitism. Using charges of antisemitism as the excuse for repressing dissenting views and protest on campuses all across the United States has become common. Charges of antisemitism have become the McCarthyite “threat of communism” of our own day.

In 2024,  the Congress, the media, politicians everywhere reignited claims about the threat of antisemitism.  The House Committee on Education and the Workforce reassembled to interrogate the President of Columbia University for four hours. And, in response, university authorities arrested 100 students protesting Columbia’s complicity with the state of Israel.

A Congress, a media, politicians who historically ignore the sensitivities of those who are not Christian, and at various points in time in US history have refused to admit Jews fleeing oppression and threats of massacre, wax eloquent about how Jews are being made ‘uncomfortable.” USA Today reported on the dramatic increase in antisemitism in all states of the US. Their “proof” included someone punched in the nose, or a person feeling that she must cover up the mezuzah on her door. Of course, no one should be made to feel uncomfortable in their daily lives but paradoxically that discomfort is being fueled by this nefarious campaign of warnings of antisemitism.

https://www.usatoday.com/.../antisemitism.../73165421007/

And who is making the claims of antisemitism? The Anti-Defamation League is one such publicist. The ADL in recent years has become an organization pursuing antisemitism and defending Israel. Other groups, whose task is primarily to defend the state of Israel, such as The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), have been fueling the nationwide hysteria.

And why the hysterical campaign now? First, the charges are designed to cover up and distort criticisms of the state of Israel’s genocidal bombings and starving of the people of Gaza and the growing violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Second, while there is no necessary connection to antisemitism at home, it is claimed, that to combat antisemitism in the United States greater military support of Israel is necessary (incidentally military aid to Israel leads to their purchase of guns, bombs, tanks, and drones, from US military contractors such as Lockhead Martin and Raytheon).

Third, control of the Middle East and Eastern Europe has been central to the geopolitical thinking of British and then US policymakers. Western militarists and diplomats have theorized that the imperial country (or its proxy) that controls the Middle East and Eastern Europe (the gateways to Asia) can control the international system. Both Israel and Ukraine are key US proxies in the worldwide struggle of the West to maintain global hegemony.

Finally, U,S, electoral politics has always been ethnic and racial. Raising the specter of antisemitism trumps (the pun intended) the vicious attacks on emigres from Latin America, Muslims, and Asians. The outrage against antisemitism shows the world that politicians are not racists.

And again, those of us from the Jewish community who speak out against the genocidal policy of Israel are outraged when we, as others, are criticized as being “antisemitic.” For us, the historic pain and suffering of our ancestors is being used to justify global imperialism, racism, and militarism.

 

Wednesday, March 19, 2025

SOME HISTORY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE GLOBAL NORTH AND GLOBAL SOUTH

 

Employment Crisis : Inequality and the Global South


How it impacts workers:
Transformation in the Global South

The end product… has been increasing global inequality in wealth and income and the continuation of massive poverty, powerlessness, and precariousness.

By Harry Targ (with David Cormier) / The Rag Blog / April 4, 2010

Neo-liberalism challenges the non-aligned movement

Since the 1970s, poor countries have been increasingly forced to embrace neo-liberal economic policies at home — cutting government programs, privatizing the economy, opening up the economy to foreign penetration, and shifting to an export-orientation — contrary to the agenda of the Non-Aligned Movement. For many countries, neo-liberal policies constituted a radical break from state policies in which government collaboration with or oversight of the economy were common (so-called heterodox policies).

The Non-Aligned Movement of newly independent countries began to meet in the 1950s. Their concern was the polarization of the international system around debates about “communism” and the “free world” or USSR/U.S. conflicts. For them the central issue was economic development. NAM countries became attracted to variants of Socialist or heterodox policies that called for strong state involvement in economic growth.

Because of United States/Soviet competition during the Cold War for the support of NAM, it gained voice in the United Nations system. Leaders of NAM countries began to demand a new international economic order or NIEO that would regulate international capitalism: limit the free reign of transnational corporations (TNCs), reschedule debts, liberalize patent laws, stabilize prices of agricultural commodities and raw materials, and in other ways regulate global capitalism to reduce some of its negative consequences for the Global South.

In Latin America, these policies were referred to as Import-Substitution Industrialization. The thinking behind ISI, initially developed by Economic Commission for Latin America economists and later amended by dependency theorists, was that manufacturing countries gain more from global exchange than export-oriented raw materials producing countries. Consequently Latin American countries needed to shift resources to industrialization. In the process, ISI policies required protections from unbridled foreign, i.e. United States, economic penetration.

The debt trap

The ability to further implement the NIEO and ISI was dramatically reversed by two historic world events. First, the Middle East wars led to dramatic increases in the price of oil during the 1970s. Oil poor countries that had embraced industrial development policies based on the importation of cheap oil experienced enormously increased trade deficits. Western banks choked with oil profits needed to find ways to use the glut of petro dollars. As a result, poor countries were forced to borrow huge sums of money from banks and banks encouraged the blossoming debt system.

To illustrate, indebtedness of the non-oil producing Global South increased five times between 1973 and 1982 reaching a total of $612 billion (Wayne Ellwood, The No-Nonsense Guide to Globalization, 43). By the new century, the total debt of developing countries had reached nearly $3 trillion, or $400 for each person living in the Global South (Ellwood, 48) In the 1990s, payments flowing from the South to the North in interest on loans exceeded loan funds entering the countries concerned.

In addition to the debt trap, as suggested above, the debt system came with a policy price: requirements that debtor countries reverse commitments to the NIEO vision and ISI policies. In the 1980s, the neo-liberal economic policies, central to the process of globalization, began to spread throughout the global economy. The debt system has been institutionalized ever since such that countries have become trapped in debt and requirements to carry out the policies of the banks.

The nail-in-the-coffin of Socialist or mixed-economy policies resulted from the economic and political disintegration of Socialism in the 1980s. The former Soviet Union sought to match the U.S. side of the arms race (the Reagan military build-up was the biggest in U.S. history). It found itself in expensive military quagmires in places such as Afghanistan. In addition, political legitimacy of the regime in the Soviet Union and across Eastern Europe declined with the inability of Socialist economies to match consumer growth in the West. The end result was the collapse of Socialism at the same time that the debt system was imposing neo-liberal policies everywhere.

Paradoxically, its advocates claimed, the neo-liberal policy agenda would increase the ability of poorer countries to participate in the global economy. Economic reforms at home would entice increased foreign investment. Shifting from tariffs to markets and from production for domestic consumption to production for sale on world markets would increase earnings which could be plowed into domestic economic development (as well as paying back the bankers for interest on loans).

Data on the 1990s indicated that direct foreign investment increased by about 15 times over the decade. However, 75% of the investment went to just 12 countries, the most industrialized of the countries of the Global South with the largest markets. These countries included Argentina, Brazil, China, Indonesia, Mexico, and South Korea.

Also trade data, exports and imports, indicated that the countries of the European Union, the United States, Japan, and Canada accounted for half of all world trade. Similarly a small number of countries accounted for half of the world’s imports. Despite claims by advocates, neo-liberal economic policies did not increase incorporation of most poor countries into the global economy.

The transformation of work

The transformation from Socialist or heterodox policies in the Global South to neo-liberalism, while not stimulating incorporation into the global economy and development, did facilitate changing work patterns. Neo-liberal policies, including privatization and shifting production from domestic consumption to exports, radically transformed rural work in many countries of the Global South.

Governmental pressures undermined traditional patterns of agriculture including land ownership and production processes. Land holdings were consolidated under the control of foreign or wealthy domestic investors. More productive and larger agricultural units began to produce commodities for sale in rich overseas markets.

Peasant farmers who in the past produced food stuffs for domestic consumption were replaced by agricultural workers and new technologies to produce winter vegetables and flowers for foreign customers. Countries which had produced enough food for their own people became net importers of food products. In addition, agricultural subsidies characteristic of the United States and countries of the European Union made it all but impossible for poor farmers to compete with the cheap imported food.

As a result of the new agriculture, and farmers forced off their land, migration to urban centers magnified, as more and more rural dwellers sought work. Cities in the Global South doubled or tripled in size, becoming surrounded by make-shift dwellings of people looking for work. Some rural migrants were able to find work in the new export-processing zones or sweat shop industries rising in some countries of the Global South.

The pool of cheap labor in the Global South, replenished by the transformation of agriculture, provided an attractive opportunity for textile, electronics, and other manufacturing employment, once basic to the manufacturing economies of the industrialized countries. The globalization of production occurred in tandem with the imposition of neo-liberal economic policies, and the transformation of agriculture.

These changes were reflected in changing employment/unemployment rates and the kind of work that became available in the Global South. From 1950 to 1990, there was a decline by almost 1/3 of those of working age in the world engaged in agriculture. The percentage of the world work force in agriculture in 1990 was down to 49%, from 67% in 1950 (In Latin America and the Caribbean the decline from 1950 to 1990 was from 54% to 25% in agriculture).

In addition, the growth in industrial employment between 1950 and 1990 was modest, not commensurate with the declining agricultural employment. (In Latin America, the decline in agriculture was more dramatic than the world figures while the increase in industrial employment was not greater than the world figures.) More recent International Labor Organization (ILO) data suggests that in the world at large “the share of employment in manufacturing declined between 1990 and 2001 in all economies for which data are available…” (ILO, 21 Nov. 2005).

Further, the world data (and the data for Latin America) indicate that the major sectoral growth in employment has been in the service sector. Increases in service sector employment ranged from 8% to 16% among countries in different economic strata. The largest growth in the service sector occurred in the lower-middle income countries.

The rise of the informal sector

Finally, the most significant shift in employment throughout the world, particularly in the Global South, is from the formal economy (agriculture, industry, and service) to the informal economy. Most workers in this growing sector of the work force are driven by a desperate need to provide the rudiments of life. Consequently, they are willing to do virtually anything to earn money.

This may involve lucrative small street market sales, or low wage home work (from house cleaning to garment assembly), or prostitution, or drug dealing. Work in the informal economy is not regulated. Workers enjoy no work place health and safety protections. They receive no health or retirement benefits. And, of negative consequence to the national government, they pay no taxes.

In a recent report produced by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations, “The Inequality Predicament,” a distinction is made between “haves” and “have-nots” in terms of employment. The former are employed in the formal economy. They are more likely “…to earn decent wages, receive job-related benefits, have secure employment contracts and be covered by relevant laws and regulations” (UN, 2005, 29). The informal sector represents the polar opposite in terms of wages, benefits, and rights. The growth of the informal sector worldwide, the report says, is intimately tied to growing global inequality.

The UN report estimates that “informal employment accounts for between one half and three quarters of non-agricultural employment in the majority of developing countries.” They indicate that the percentage of those who work in the informal sector varies across the Global South: 48% in North Africa, 51% in Latin America and the Caribbean, 65 % in Asia and 78% in Sub-Saharan Africa (UN, 30).

In addition, the report refers to studies that suggest that the informal sector accounts for significant shares of the overall income and gross domestic product of individual countries. One study of 110 countries in 2000 found that the 18% of the gross national incomes of OECD countries came from the informal sector, 38% in “transition” countries (formerly Socialist), and 41% in developing countries. The informal economy accounted for 42% of the GNP in Africa, 26% in Asia, and 41% in Latin America (UN, 30-34).

The precarious classes

Data shows that unemployment around the world rose over the period from 1993 to 2002 and declined somewhat in 2003. What may be the most significant finding from this data is the fact that the seeming recovery of 2003 only imperceptibly impacted on unemployment rates. Even if sectors of the global economy experience growth, some theorists suggest, recovery given the system of global capitalism is “jobless.”

The economic transformations initiated in the Global South in the 1970s occurred in the context of the concentration and globalization of capital and the declining resistance including the collapse of Socialism. The oil crisis, the rise of a global debt system, global policy shifts from state/market economies to neo-liberalism parallel significant changes in work activity from agriculture and industry to service, to the rise of the informal sector and unemployment. The end product of these transformations has been increasing global inequality in wealth and income and the continuation of massive poverty, powerlessness, and precariousness.

While rates of poverty declined over the last 20 years of the twentieth century, still half the world’s population in 2001 lived on less than $2 a day. And the percentage declines in extreme poverty, less than $1 a day, during this period mask the fact that more people in 2001 were in extreme poverty than 20 years earlier. The numbers of people in extreme poverty increased in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and India. The numbers of those in poverty declined in East Asia and the Pacific and China.

Also, it is clear that income inequality has been increasing between richer and poorer regions of the globe. With the OECD countries representing the rich countries, on a per capita income basis, shares of income of peoples in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean have declined between 1980 and 2001. Weller, Scott, and Hersch (2001) report that in 1980 median income in the richest countries (top 10 percent) was 77 times greater than the median income in the poorest countries (the bottom 10 percent). By 1999, the gap had expanded to 122 times.

The transformation of employment from agriculture and industry to service and the informal sector — a shift that has been characterized as one from “have” to “have-not” jobs — has been reflected in the continuation of massive poverty around the globe and substantial evidence that the distribution of wealth and income has worsened over the period of neo-liberal policy influence. “The Inequality Predicament” makes it clear as well that income inequality is reproduced in the distribution of access to health care, education, housing, access to water, and sanitation.

Data like these led Samir Amin (2003) to predict that the transformation of the global political economy was precipitating a crisis of poverty and human misery that will transcend the expectations of the most well-meaning humanists. Amin described the emergence of “precarious classes” in both rural and urban areas.

Estimating that half the world’s population (3 billion people) live in the country, he predicted that nearly 2.8 billion of them will become economically redundant. That is, given technology, 20 million people could provide the food needs for the planet. In the cities, 1.5 billion of 3 billion people are marginalized workers who experience work temporarily and/or who always live with the insecurity of job and income loss.

Over 4 billion people of the 6 billion living on the planet, Amin wrote, constitute “the precarious classes,” made redundant because of declining employment and being reduced to perpetual employment insecurity due to the exigencies of the pursuit of profit in an era of neo-liberal globalization. This situation, Amin asserted, constituted a coming global crisis not seen in human history.

[Harry Targ is a professor in American Studies who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical.]

The Rag Blog

NEW INTERNATIONAL REALITIES: A PRESENTATION AT THE CENTER FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE

 Skip to main content

A Conversation about New International Realities: The Rise of the Global South

Monday, March 17, 2025 - 1:00pm
CST
Harry Targ

Behind the turmoil of the Ukraine and Israeli wars, tensions between the United States and China, African contestation over neo-colonial political, economic, and military influence, and US meddling in the politics of Latin America, there are fundamental forces in play that seek to rearrange and change the architectures of global social relations. Simply put: the world, especially the Global South, has had enough of Western oppressive systems and their imperial thrust.

New institutions and solidarities, beyond the control and wishes of the West, are emerging in the Global South. These involve changing patterns of trade, finance, uses of national currencies in place of the dollar and Euro, and new expansive trade corridors and routes. This conversation will raise the proposition that we are living through a fundamental transformation of international relations, particularly the rise of the Global South. Comments and discussion will address where Mexico fits in this process.

Harry Targ taught foreign policy, US/Latin American relations, international political economy, and topics on labor studies in a Department of Political Science and a program in Peace Studies at Purdue University. He is a member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), His recent co-authored book, "From Upton Sinclair's 'Goose Step' to the Neoliberal University: Essays in the Transformation of Higher Education," can be ordered at http://stores.lulu.com/changemaker.  He be reached at targ@purdue.edu. Targ blogs at http://www.heartlandradical.blogspot.com/ He has participated in Center for Global Justice activities such as Radical Philosophy Association Cuba trips, the  CGJ conference on globalization, and prior online presentations.

The Center for Global Justice
is a project of the Radical Philosophy Association.

Mailing Address from U.S.: 220 N. Zapata Hwy., #11, Laredo, Texas 78043.

Email: admin@globaljusticecenter.org


Tuesday, March 11, 2025

The Misuse of Antisemitism Stifles Discussion in Indiana

Harry Targ

The Governor of Indiana issued the following executive order, "Enduring Student Safety at State Educational Institutions" 

Indiana Executive  Order 25-39  https://www.in.gov/gov/files/EO-25-39-.pdf

Jewish Voice for Peace Indiana Responded:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H0JExG5uEAFrnRv9HdqC_ZQ_-NmDFGTU/view


CHARGES OF ANTISEMITISM STIFLE DISCUSSION, DEBATE, AND PROTEST IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN INDIANA


 DHS agents detained Mahmoud Khalil, a green card-holding Palestinian activist who took part in the Gaza protests at Columbia University

 (Originally posted on April 23, 2024 but even more relevant today as the Trump Administration and state governments are increasingly stifling dissent.including incarcerating those who criticize the wars in the Middle East).

Today the corporate media and lobby groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are seeking to squash debate concerning Israel’s war on Gaza and the US three billion dollars a year perpetual military aid to Israel. Criticism of Israel’s brutal bombing of Gaza is defined as threatening to Jewish students and more generally is defined as antisemitism. Using charges of antisemitism as the excuse for repressing dissenting views and protest on campuses all across the United States has become common. Charges of antisemitism have become the McCarthyite “threat of communism” of our own day.

In 2024,  the Congress, the media, politicians everywhere reignited claims about the threat of antisemitism.  The House Committee on Education and the Workforce reassembled to interrogate the President of Columbia University for four hours. And, in response, university authorities arrested 100 students protesting Columbia’s complicity with the state of Israel.

A Congress, a media, politicians who historically ignore the sensitivities of those who are not Christian, and at various points in time in US history have refused to admit Jews fleeing oppression and threats of massacre, wax eloquent about how Jews are being made ‘uncomfortable.” USA Today reported on the dramatic increase in antisemitism in all states of the US. Their “proof” included someone punched in the nose, or a person feeling that she must cover up the mezuzah on her door. Of course, no one should be made to feel uncomfortable in their daily lives but paradoxically that discomfort is being fueled by this nefarious campaign of warnings of antisemitism.

https://www.usatoday.com/.../antisemitism.../73165421007/

And who is making the claims of antisemitism? The Anti-Defamation League is one such publicist. The ADL in recent years has become an organization pursuing antisemitism and defending Israel. Other groups, whose task is primarily to defend the state of Israel, such as The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), have been fueling the nationwide hysteria.

And why the hysterical campaign now? First, the charges are designed to cover up and distort criticisms of the state of Israel’s genocidal bombings and starving of the people of Gaza and the growing violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Second, while there is no necessary connection to antisemitism at home, it is claimed, that to combat antisemitism in the United States greater military support of Israel is necessary (incidentally military aid to Israel leads to their purchase of guns, bombs, tanks, and drones, from US military contractors such as Lockhead Martin and Raytheon).

Third, control of the Middle East and Eastern Europe has been central to the geopolitical thinking of British and then US policymakers. Western militarists and diplomats have theorized that the imperial country (or its proxy) that controls the Middle East and Eastern Europe (the gateways to Asia) can control the international system. Both Israel and Ukraine are key US proxies in the worldwide struggle of the West to maintain global hegemony.

Finally, U,S, electoral politics has always been ethnic and racial. Raising the specter of antisemitism trumps (the pun intended) the vicious attacks on emigres from Latin America, Muslims, and Asians. The outrage against antisemitism shows the world that politicians are not racists.

And again, those of us from the Jewish community who speak out against the genocidal policy of Israel are outraged when we, as others, are criticized as being “antisemitic.” For us, the historic pain and suffering of our ancestors is being used to justify global imperialism, racism, and militarism.

 

Thursday, March 6, 2025

Asian Workers Stories, An anthology

A Review

Harry Targ


Edited by Luka Lei Zhang, Hardball Press, 2025.

 “My efforts to contribute to the aspirations of the working class began with writing novels about hospital workers….(In)the majority of stories that were published in books or aired in movies or on television, the heroes were doctors  or psychiatrists....The service workers who maintained the institution and provided most of the services were either absent from the plot, window dressing or foils for the professional classes.” (Tim Sheard, “Insurgent Publishing for the Resistance,” Hard Ball Press, https://hardballpress.com

I’ll be ever’where-wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat. I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there…An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build-why, I’ll be there. (John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Penguin edition, 1992, 419).

I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good…Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood (Woody Guthrie. "Woodysez")  https://www.woodyguthrie.org).

The editor of this volume, Luka Lei Zhang, opens with an “editor’s note” that appropriately celebrates the collection of short stories and essays and the press which brought the collection to us:

This book stands as a testament to a collaborate endeavor rooted in the working-class milieu, encompassing the contributors of writers, translators, editors, graphic designers, and the publishing house, Hard Ball Press. It represents a concerted effort to forge a bond among contemporary worker writers within the Asian context, fostering a collective platform that unites their literary pursuits and talents.

And later: Each story represents a tapestry of experiences deeply rooted in distinct communities and is intricately connected to broader social and political contexts.

I have been taught to read novels or book length essays. It is through the novel genre that the reader, I thought, could vicariously experience and empathize with the characters.

Also, I might add, I was educated to read novels that prioritized the angst of isolated individuals, or family dramas, in the context of “the human condition.” Great literature did not portray characters as workers. This for me only began to change as I became exposed to the great tradition of proletarian literature. But my bias against the short story or short essay continued.

Then I picked up Asian Workers. The first fictionalized vignette is of a migrant worker communicating with his wife across countries from his worker location to his home country as she is about to deliver their new child. That last phone conversation does not happen for reasons that I will not divulge. It was a devastating story.

In four pages this short story captured for me the tragedy of migrant labor, the pain and suffering that workers experience just so they and their families can survive economically.

Story after story (near the end of the volume there are some essays) describes the extraordinary exploitation of immigrant labor, being underpaid, forced to give sexual favors, day after day indignities suffered by day laborers and domestic master/servant relations, and how the political economy of hired labor and its agents recruit and move labor from one country and another.

After reading this volume I felt I understood more about migrant labor than all the academic essays I had written or read on the subject. And, again, I felt the power of these vignettes, a few as short as three to five pages, the way I felt years ago reading The Grapes of Wrath.

Along with the vivid character of the narratives from the standpoint of the super-exploited these were stories written by and from the perspective of Asian workers; from Singapore, Bangladesh, India, Laos, Thai, the Philippines, Taiwan, China, Indonesia, and Malaysia. They were often recruited for labor in the Middle East. A few stories highlighted the salience of ethnic diversity among workers in communities.

In the end, Asian Workers is a wonderful read. These  stories and essays would serve well as accessible texts in classes and study groups on workers, on class, on class and ethnicity, on class, gender, and race and on the global political economy of labor.

Hard Ball Press should be commended for publishing documentaries and fiction about workers. The Press is continuing the tradition that was impactful in the days of proletarian literature.

 

 

Monday, March 3, 2025

The Historic Role of Women in Peace and Justice Movements

 (Reprinted from the Wisconsin Peace Action Mobilizer)

Harry Targ


As we celebrate Women’s History Month, it is critical to reflect on the centrality of women in the struggle for a peaceful and just world.


In 1915, 1,200 women from diverse backgrounds met in the Hague to create what became the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). They opposed World War I and would continue to oppose war.

WILPF, the oldest peace group in the United States was led for many years by Jane Addams, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

In 1961 another women’s peace group, Women Strike for Peace, organized a day-long national strike of 50,000 women in 60 cities demanding nuclear disarmament. They opposed nuclear testing, increased radiation in the atmosphere and marched to the slogan, “End the Arms Race: Not the Human Race.” 

Code Pink is a grassroots women-led organization opposing war and militarism, organized in 2002, and includes militant activists who advocate for peace, a human rights agenda, and demand conversion from military spending to spending for health care and green jobs.

The writing and activism of Jane Addams has been an important inspiration that runs throughout the educational, advocacy, and militant peace activity of women for the last 100 years. Addams’ classic essay, “Newer Ideals of Peace” was originally published in 1907 and reissued with an introduction by Berenice Carroll and Clint Fink in 2007.

In this essay, Carroll and Fink indicate that Addams postulated that the tasks of peace activists must go beyond just stopping war. According to Addams, achieving what peace researchers later called “negative peace,” ending wars, must be coupled with “positive peace.” Positive peace includes transformations of the societies that engaged in warfare. These transformations must include the end of hierarchies of all kinds including patriarchy, paternalism, the criminal justice system, and systems of domination and subordination at the workplace. And the spirit of nationalism must be replaced by internationalism.

 


 

 ***************************************************************************

CODEPINK Says Stop the War in Ukraine: Russian Troops Out, No NATO Expansion

https://www.codepink.org/whitehouseukrianeexchange

 

 

 

Thursday, February 27, 2025

RECALLING NATO

Harry Targ

History of NATOs Founding


After the founding of NATO and its establishment as a military arm of the West, the Truman administration adopted the policy recommendations in National Security Council Document 68 (NSC 68) in 1950 which declared that military spending for the indefinite future would be the number one priority of every presidential administration.

As Western European economies reconstructed, Marshall Plan aid programs were shut down and military assistance to Europe was launched. Greece and Turkey joined NATO in 1952, and fueling the flames of Cold War, West Germany was admitted to NATO in 1955. (This stimulated the Soviet Union to construct its own alliance system, the Warsaw Pact, with countries from Eastern Europe).

During the Cold War NATO continued as the only unified Western military command structure against the “Soviet threat.” While forces and funds only represented a portion of the U.S. global military presence, the alliance constituted a “trip wire” signifying to the Soviets that any attack on targets in Western Europe would set off World War III. NATO thus provided the deterrent threat of “massive retaliation” in the face of first-strike attack.

With the collapse of the former Warsaw Pact regimes between 1989 and 1991, the tearing down of the symbolic Berlin Wall in 1989, and finally the collapse of the Soviet Union itself in 1991, the purpose for maintaining a NATO alliance presumably had passed. However, this was not to be.

After the Collapse of the Soviet Threat

In the next twenty years after the Soviet collapse, membership in the alliance doubled. New members included most of the former Warsaw Pact countries. The functions and activities of NATO were redefined.

NATO programs included air surveillance during the crises accompanying the Gulf War and the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. In 1995, NATO sent 60,000 troops to Bosnia and in 1999 it carried out brutal bombing campaigns in Serbia with 38,000 sorties. NATO forces became part of the U.S. led military coalition that launched the war on Afghanistan in 2001. In 2011 a massive NATO air war on Libya played a critical role in the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime.

An official history of NATO described the changes in its mission: “In 1991 as in 1949, NATO was to be the foundation stone for a larger, pan-European security architecture.” The post-Cold War mission of NATO combines “military might, diplomacy, and post-conflict stabilization.”

And the Meanings of NATO

The NATO history boldly concludes that the alliance was founded on defense in the 1950s and détente with the Soviet Union in the 1960s. With the collapse of Communism in the 1990s it became a “tool for the stabilization of Eastern Europe and Central Asia through incorporation of new Partners and Allies.” The 21st century vision of NATO has expanded further: “extending peace through the strategic projection of security.” This new mission, the history said, was forced upon NATO because of the failure of nation-states and extremism.

Reviewing this brief history of NATO, observers can reasonably draw different conclusions about NATO’s role in the world than from those who celebrate its world role. First, NATO’s mission to defend Europe from aggression against “International Communism” was completed with the “fall of Communism.” Second, the alliance was regional, that is pertaining to Europe and North America, and now it is global. Third, NATO was about security and defense. Now it is about global transformation. Fourth, as its biggest supporter in terms of troops, supplies and budget (22-25%), NATO is an instrument of United States foreign policy. Fifth, as a creation of Europe and North America, it has become an enforcer of the interests of member countries against, what Vijay Prashad calls, the “darker nations” of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Sixth, NATO has become the 21st century military instrumentality of global imperialism. And finally, there is growing evidence that larger and larger portions of the world’s people have begun to stand up against NATO.

 Cognitive Warfare Continues 


The Cognitive Domain is a new space of competition, beyond the land, maritime, air, cybernetic and spatial domains.© NATO Innovation Hub

Harry Truman on free institutions versus totalitarian ones:

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.

One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.

The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.

I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. (from the Truman Doctrine speech, March 12, 1947)

And President Biden’s articulation of the struggle between democracy and authoritarianism:

“It is clear, absolutely clear … this is a battle between the utility of democracies in the 21st century and autocracies,” Biden said. “That’s what’s at stake here. We’ve got to prove democracy works.” https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/25/politics/biden-autocracies-versus-democracies/index.html)

And NATO’S Conception of Cognitive Warfare:

In cognitive warfare, the human mind becomes the battlefield. The aim is to change not only what people think, but how they think and act. Waged successfully, it shapes and influences individual and group beliefs and behaviours to favour an aggressor’s tactical or strategic objectives. In its extreme form, it has the potential to fracture and fragment an entire society, so that it no longer has the collective will to resist an adversary’s intentions. An opponent could conceivably subdue a society without resorting to outright force or coercion.

In cognitive warfare, the human mind becomes the battlefield. The aim is to change not only what people think, but how they think and act. Waged successfully, it shapes and influences individual and group beliefs and behaviours to favour an aggressor’s tactical or strategic objectives. In its extreme form, it has the potential to fracture and fragment an entire society, so that it no longer has the collective will to resist an adversary’s intentions. An opponent could conceivably subdue a society without resorting to outright force or coercion. https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2021/05/20/countering-cognitive-warfare-awareness-and-resilience/index.html)

The Meaning of Cognitive Warfare

This NATO document, of course, is addressing the world of international relations but the concept of “cognitive warfare” seems to parallel efforts “to change not only what people think, but how they think and act.” This project animates the efforts of media conglomerates-print, electronic, social media platforms. Changing how people think and act has its historic roots in campaigns to convince citizens to support wars, consume cigarettes, forget climate disasters, and to find flaws in populations because of class, race, gender, sexual preference, and/or religion. Creating images of enemies is central to launching wars. The processes of “branding” are similar in all realms of human experience.

And The Media


The media and political, economic, educational, religious, and entertainment institutions shape our consciousness. People are told, inspired, coerced, and manipulated to think in certain ways, usually ways that support the economic and political interests of the rich and powerful. Sometimes theoretical arguments about “ideological hegemony” are too abstract or too immobilizing. However, specific efforts at thought control  can be understood and identified. And campaigns to challenge them are feasible.

On Ideology

The economic and political structure of capitalism requires “an ideology, a consciousness, a way in which the citizenry can be taught to accept the system as it is. This ideology has many branches but one root, the maintenance and enhancement of the capitalist economic system. The elements of the dominant political ideology include:

privileging individualism over community; conceptualizing society as a brutal state of nature controlled only by countervailing force; acceptance of the idea that humans are at base greedy; and, finally, the belief that the avariciousness of human nature requires police force and laws at home and armies overseas.

The Battle of Ideas Matter

Statements by prominent Americans from the nineteenth century on have celebrated American exceptionalism. The frequency and intensity of such messages have been correlated with the rising of challenges to economic and political hegemony and orthodoxies that have arisen to challenge the status quo. As Howard Zinn and others have vividly pointed out resistance has been as much a fabric of US history as celebration. But to challenge resistance educational, information, and cultural institutions have intensified the prevailing mythologies. This cognitive warfare, of course, always includes efforts to censure uncomfortable and challenging alternatives.

So today, the US is faced with global challenges as its support of Israel, Ukraine and NATO are resisted. And more and more citizens are questioning rising militarism and police repression. It is in response to all this that the frank NATO call for a “cognitive war” was raised.

And for those of us who work for peace and justice it is worth remembering that the battle over ideas matter; in educational, media, cultural, and religious institutions.




 

 

 

The Bookshelf

CHALLENGING LATE CAPITALISM by Harry R. Targ

Read Challenging Late Capitalism by Harry R. Targ.