HIGHER EDUCATION AND IDEOLOGICAL HEGEMONY: a power point

 HIGHER EDUCATION AND IDEOLOGICAL HEGEMONY.pptx

UNIVERSITIES, FOREVER WARS, AND THE NEW COLD WAR

Harry Targ

 

Reminiscing about the immediate aftermath of 9/11, President Bush’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mitch Daniels said in a recent interview: “OMB got some significant assignments, of course first of all to organize all the emergency funding for the military action which cleaned the Taliban out of Afghanistan, for the rebuilding of New York City, the compensation of the victims.” 

https://www.wibc.com/news/local-indiana/daniels-remembers-9-11-and-assignments-for-the-bush-white-house/

As many have noted, of course, the Taliban had nothing to do with the 9/11 terrorist acts, “cleaning out the Taliban” is an ugly way to refer to a people, and, of course, the Taliban have taken back control of the government of Afghanistan after twenty years of massive bloodshed and war. And while the people of Afghanistan may or may not approve of the return of the Taliban to power, they definitely want the United States to leave their war-torn country.

And back at home, in the aftermath of 9/11, the United States has expanded its war-making capacities at enormous costs to the American people—health care, overcoming climate change, reducing economic inequality, and responding to pandemics. And during this legislative session majorities in both parties support continued and massive increases in the military budget.

And Purdue University, where Mitch Daniels is currently President, a new program of research and development of weaponry to prepare for the next war is being developed. The Purdue Research Foundation in July announced the creation of a Purdue Aerospace District where university researchers, in collaboration with military contractors such as Rolls-Royce, will be developing a huge facility for research and development of hypersonic weapons to respond to future Chinese and Russian threats. Hypersonic weapons will “travel so fast they could cover hundreds of miles in minutes, leaving virtually no time to either intercept them or take cover.” (Sam Stall, “Purdue’s Aerospace District hyper about hypersonics,” Indianapolis Business Journal, September 3, 2021.

The idea of a New Cold War is not just loose talk but an effort to replicate the 1940s to the 1990s, and post 9/11 with all the attendant wasteful military spending, escalating tensions, and increasing the probability of nuclear war.

https://foreignpolicy.com/.../state-department-china.../...

Important theoretical questions are not being raised. For example, is war inevitable? Are other countries a threat to the United States? Should we conceptualize the world in the twenty-first century as one in which the United States and China are competitors and threats to each other? Should the United States commit itself to remaining the number one power in the world, however that is defined? Or should research prioritize human development and conflict resolution rather than “security? Is there a relationship between poverty, hunger, environmental devastation, the spread of weapons and war and violence? One wonders if more of government and corporate resources should be allocated to these many issues, rather than to ill-conceived, notions of national “security.”

And, finally, do collaborative efforts between universities, such as Purdue, with defense contractors and the Department of Defense best serve the needs of national security, conflict reduction, research, or education? And, in the end, does not this collaboration between the military, the university, and industry constitute a huge robbery of the wealth of society at the expense of social and economic development, ecological survival, and the prospects of peace?

President Eisenhower in 1960 warned about an unwarranted growth of the influence of the military/industrial complex in American society. Today he would characterize the danger as the military/industrial/academic complex. It includes the shifting of the research and education missions of higher education away from human development to war-making. 

Furthermore, these qualitative changes in university priorities are being made largely in non-transparent decision-making ways. But when challenged, the military/industrial/academic complex tends to defend its existence by claiming war is inevitable. And to secure support, when questioned, self-identified experts construct narratives of enemies; whether they be the Communists, the terrorists, China, the Cubans, the Venezuelans, artificial intelligence, or all of the above. As Andrew Bacevich so compellingly has argued, ever since the end of World War Two, the United States has created a “permanent war economy.” Given the increasing financial challenges universities face in the twenty-first century, collaboration with this permanent war economy becomes attractive to university administrators.

 

 

On Militarism and Resistance: Radio Interviews with Harry Targ and Art Heitzer

https://soundcloud.com/user-240416425/the-grass-is-greener-2021-09-18-1500-targ-on-911-heitzer-on-mildred-harnack

REMEMBERING THE IMPACTS OF 9/11s: a repost from 2011 and a postscript today

Harry Targ

9/11 in Chile

On the bright and sunny morning of September 11, 1973, aircraft bombed targets in Valparaiso, Chile, and moved on to the capital, Santiago. Following a well-orchestrated plan, tanks rolled into the capital city, occupied the central square, and fired on the Presidential palace. Inside that building, President Salvador Allende broadcast a final address to his people and fatally shot himself as soldiers entered his quarters.

Thousands of Allende supporters were rounded up and held in the city’s soccer stadium and many, including renowned folk singer Victor Jara, were tortured and killed. For the next fifteen years, Chilean workers were stripped of their right to form unions, political parties and elections were eliminated, and the junta led by General Augusto Pinochet ruled with an iron fist all but ignored outside the country until Chileans began to mobilize to protest his scheme to become President for life.

9/11 in the United States

Of course, 9/11/01 was different. The United States was attacked by foreign terrorists, approximately 3,000 citizens and residents were killed at the World Trade Center in New York, over a rural area in Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon. People all over the world expressed their sorrow and sympathy for the victims of the 9/11 attacks as the American people experienced shock and dismay.

But then everything began to change. Within days of the terrorist attacks, members of President Bush’s cabinet began to advocate a military assault on Iraq, a longstanding target of the Washington militarists of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Now is the time, they said, to take out Saddam Hussein, seize control of Iraqi oil fields, and reestablish United States control over the largest share of the oil fields of the Persian Gulf region. Cooler heads prevailed for a time, however. We cannot attack Iraq, critics said, because Iraq had nothing to do with the crimes in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington.

So it was decided that a war would be waged on Afghanistan, because the headquarters of the shadowy organization Al Qaeda, led by Osama Bin Laden, was said to be in that country (even though the Taliban government had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack). On October 6, 2001, that war was initiated and continued until August, 2021 (even though Bin Laden was killed in May, 2011).

Shortly after launching the war on Afghanistan, the neo-cons in the Bush administration began a campaign to convince the American people that we needed to make war on Iraq. Lies were articulated that the Iraqi dictator was really behind the global terrorists who perpetrated 9/11. He had weapons of mass destruction. He was part of a global Islamic fundamentalist cabal. At last, despite evidence to the contrary, the mobilization of millions of Americans against war, growing global resentment against the Bush Doctrine justifying preemptive wars, the United States attacked Iraq in March, 2003. That war too continued for years.

Over the last two decades, U.S. military budgets tripled, thousands of U.S. soldiers died or sustained irreparable injuries, and an estimated one million Afghan and Iraqi people, mostly civilians, died. Meanwhile the United States maintained over 700 military installations around the world, declared the great land and sea area around the globe at the equator the “arc of instability,” and engaged in direct violence or encouraged others to do so, from Colombia to Honduras in the Western Hemisphere, to Ethiopia and Somalia in the Horn of Africa, to Israel, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Syria and Libya in the Middle East and Persian Gulf, to Pakistan, and Afghanistan in East Asia. Presidents Bush and Obama declared that United States military overreach to be in the national interest of the country and to serve the humanitarian interest of the world. In recent years  U.S. military programs have included the use of computer operated aircraft, drones, that can target and kill anywhere based on decisions from command headquarters half way around the globe.

Meanwhile at home, the Patriot Act extended the prerogatives of the government to launch a program claiming to be essential to protect the people from domestic terrorists: spying on Americans; incarcerating people from virtually anywhere deemed to be a security threat; and establishing a political climate that intimidates critics of United States foreign policy.

Domestically, the decade since 9/11 was  characterized by sustained assaults on the basic living standards of the bottom 90 percent of the population in terms of wealth and income. Unemployment rose dramatically. Job growth ground to a halt. Health care benefits declined while costs skyrocketed. Virtually every public institution in America, except the military, was threatened by budget cuts: education, libraries, public health facilities, highways and bridges, fire and police protection, environmental quality. And over the two decades of war and military spending, these domestic problems have persisted, and with the pandemic people have been made more vulnerable.

Support for war overseas and at home during the last twenty years has been stoked by a so-called “war on terrorism” and an anti-government ideology, made popular earlier by the Reagan administration, that lionizes Adam Smith’s claims that only the market can satisfy human needs. Following 9/11, the “beast,” government, except for the military has been starved. Only in recent years, has a call for a Green New Deal and the argument that government must serve the people begun to reverse the ideology that was institutionalized after 9/11.

However, not all have had to sacrifice during this twenty-year “war on terror. The rich have gotten richer while the income and wealth of 90 percent of the population have experienced economic stagnation or decline. Media monopolization has facilitated the rise of a strata of pundits who simplify and distort the meaning of events since 9/11 by claiming that war is necessary; the terrorist threat is a growing global threat; as a nation and individually we need to arm ourselves; and subliminally it is people of color who constitute the threat to security and well-being. And, of course, military contractors have been the main beneficiaries of war and planning for war.

Where Do We Go From Here

So the United States 9/11 event was not the first. The Chilean 9/11 preceded the U.S. one by 28 years. Its people experienced a brutal military coup. And in the United States mass murder was committed by 19 terrorists. But in both cases the 9/11 event was followed by violence, threats to democracy, and economic shifts from the vast majority of the population to the wealthy and political/military elites. In both cases, draconian economic policies and constraints on civil and political rights were defined as required by threats to the “homeland.”

As the anniversary of the U.S. 9/11 is remembered, it is critical to reflect upon how the murder of 3,000 citizens and residents was defined as an opening salvo in a perpetual “war on terrorism:” how this war trumped traditional civil liberties afforded by the constitution; and how this war, it was said, must be waged at whatever cost to the lives and economic resources of the country. And, as with the Cold War, military spending took priority over every other activity for which the government had a role. 9/11/73 caused the Chilean people pain and suffering that they are still working to overcome. Unless the American people mobilize to challenge the policies, foreign and domestic, that were justified by the tragedy of 9/11, the United States will continue to move down a similar path the Chilean people traveled after their 9/11.

Postscript 2021

Reminiscing about the immediate aftermath of 9/11, President Bush’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mitch Daniels said in a recent interview: “OMB got some significant assignments, of course first of all to organize all the emergency funding for the military action which cleaned the Taliban out of Afghanistan, for the rebuilding of New York City, the compensation of the victims.” https://www.wibc.com/news/local-indiana/daniels-remembers-9-11-and-assignments-for-the-bush-white-house/

As many have noted, of course, the Taliban had nothing to do with the 9/11 terrorist acts, “cleaning out the Taliban” is an ugly way to refer to a people, and, of course, the Taliban have taken back control of the government of Afghanistan after twenty years of massive bloodshed and war. And while the people of Afghanistan may or may not approve of the return of the Taliban to power, they definitely want the United States to leave their war-torn country.

And back at home, in the aftermath of 9/11, the United States has expanded its war-making capacities at enormous costs to the American people—health care, overcoming climate change, reducing economic inequality, and responding to pandemics.

And Purdue University, where Mitch Daniels is currently President, a new program of research and development of weaponry to prepare for the next war is being developed. The Purdue Research Foundation in July announced the creation of a Purdue Aerospace District where university researchers, in collaboration with military contractors such as Rolls-Royce, will be developing a huge facility for research and development of hypersonic weapons to respond to future Chinese and Russian threats. Hypersonic weapons will “travel so fast they could cover hundreds of miles in minutes, leaving virtually no time to either intercept them or take cover.” (Sam Stall, “Purdue’s Aerospace District hyper about hypersonics,” Indianapolis Business Journal, September 3, 2021.

https://www.ibj.com/articles/hyper-about-hypersonic

 

In the classic song “Where Have All The Flower Gone?” Pete Seeger asks “Oh When Will They Ever Learn?”  

 

 

 

 

IT IS STILL TIME TO ORGANIZE ALL WORKERS: an updated 2012 repost from the Rag Blog)

 Harry Targ

Ten thousand times the labor movement has stumbled and bruised itself. We have been enjoined by the courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, traduced by the press, frowned upon in public opinion, and deceived by politicians. But not withstanding all this and all these, labor is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun (Eugene V. Debs).

After World War I workers believed it was time to unionize everybody who worked. Some organizers came out of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), some were enthusiastic followers of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), some were members of the Socialist Party-- followers of Eugene V. Debs, and many were inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution. Workers launched two nationwide strikes in steel and meat packing.

The ruling classes responded with force and fraud. As to the former, they used a multiplicity of means to crush strikes and they jailed and deported known radicals. The United States government participated with other regimes to intervene in the Russian civil war and to isolate the new revolutionary government diplomatically and economically.

As to fraud, corporations initiated various worker-management schemes to mollify worker discontent: from sporting activities, to counselor home visits, to the establishment of human relations departments. Also businesses embarked on a huge campaign to stimulate consumerism, including catalog purchases of products to buying on time to creating an automobile culture. Force and fraud worked. Labor union membership and worker militancy declined even though wages and working conditions did not improve substantially.

But by the late 1920s strikes in textile and mining occurred. With the onset of the Great Depression, radicals were organizing Unemployment Councils in urban areas. Dispossessed farmers began their long trek to the West Coast seeking agricultural work.

In 1934 alone, general strikes occurred in San Francisco, Minneapolis, Toledo and Akron Ohio. In the late 1930s, workers in South Bend, Indiana and Flint, Michigan added the “sit-down strike” to the panoply of militant tools used by workers to demand the right to organize unions, fair wages, health and safety at the work place, and pensions.

Many of their goals were achieved by the 1950s. 1953 was the peak year for organized labor. Thirty-three percent of non-agricultural workers were organized. Then union membership began a slow but steady decline. The Reagan “revolution” brought a return to many of the strategies of force and fraud employed in the 1920s. Declining worker power was dramatic. Both Republican and Democratic administrations used administrative tools, out-sourcing of jobs, so-called free trade agreements, and outright banning of rights to collective bargaining in various sectors to crush unions.

But as history shows, workers from time to time fight back, regain the rights they lost in prior eras, and continue the process of pushing history in a progressive direction. For example, 2011 and 2012 was such a time for fight back. Workers in Cairo, Madison, Madrid, Athens, and Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and all across the globe rose up.

In the United States  in 2012 there occurred an unpresented teachers strike in Chicago and later teacher mobilizations spread to West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona. Public sector workers have been hit very hard in recent years. Government officials rationalized anti-labor legislation as necessitated by fiscal crises. But these fiscal crises lead not to the end to services but to their privatization. Teachers, librarians, fire fighters and others were being laid off and replaced or rehired at wages a third less than they made as unionized public sector workers.

Chicago teachers have said no to this scam. They fought against the privatization of public schools, demanding the maintenance of job security for teachers so they could continue to meet the needs of all children. These included standing up for the principle that all children, not just children of the wealthy, were entitled to the best education that the society can offer. This example exemplifies the truism that throughout history workers’ demands have been beneficial for everybody.

Revisiting history can provide useful lessons from the past for the present. They are not specific roadmaps for action. But what the lessons of the past and the militancy of recent years, including the mobilization of  teachers suggests, is that now is a good time to think about all workers--in factories, on construction sites, in offices, in universities, everywhere—organizing unions. There is power in the union. 

(And from baristas, to gig workers, to faculty and graduate students, to nurses, to coal miners, to meat packers, to factory workers the spirit of worker militancy in 2021 is returning gradually to the halcyon days of the 1930s. We celebrate labor day 2021 and support  workers struggles for economic and social justice).

https://youtu.be/Wx3TDSyNXmU