ESSAYS ON RACISM: REVISITING SOME PURDUE UNIVERSITY HISTORY

Harry Targ

As I revisit Black History Month at Purdue University, I am reminded of the enormous contributions African American students have made to whatever advances toward diversity and equity have occurred. I also remember initiatives that Purdue University faculty and administrators have taken to increase the rights and opportunities of “underrepresented minorities” on the campus. But the fact remains that Black student enrollments as a percentage of total enrollments at the West Lafayette campus have not grown; that Black student enrollments as a percentage of the total student population is two-thirds lower than the population of African Americans in the state of Indiana and the nation at large; and the percentage of African American faculty has not grown either.

As the informative documentary “Black Purdue” suggests https://youtu.be/lMaQyMyQpDc,  there have been significant changes at Purdue University since the 1960s, but also significant changes are still required. The demands of students coming out of the post-Ferguson rally on the Purdue campus in the fall of 2015 bear repeating.  https://youtu.be/lMaQyMyQpDc

This Black History Month we should continue to celebrate the heroics of  Black students at Purdue, including those in the late 1960s and 2015, and continue to support their just demands.

                                                           

RACISM ON THE CAMPUS: THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES

Harry Targ  Diary of a Heartland Radical


Originally posted on Sunday, November 15, 2015: Reposted January 27, 2017


(In November, 2015 Purdue students rallied in solidarity with African American students at other universities. One year later, Purdue University students protested the appearance of racist, Islamophobic, and anti-Semitic flyers around the campus attributed to a neo-fascist national organization. Subsequent to the November 20, 2016 protest a series of demands were made to the administration that would recognize the rhetorical threat the flyers represented. They also called for educational opportunities that would explain why the flyers created a threatening campus environment. Currently a group of students are sitting in at the executive building to dramatize their concerns. The essay below helps to ground the student activism today in the history of struggles to create a climate free of discrimination at one university).

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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, 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.


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 rightwing reaction expanded their political power at the federal and state levels.


Rev. Barber believes that, with the movement that elected President Obama, there has emerged a Third Reconstruction. It features 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 resurgence of protests on college campuses, 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.” Forty-six years later one thousand similarly motivated students rallied together on Friday, November 13, 2015 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 this latest protest at Purdue believe 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 second decade of the twenty-first century are linked in a chain for justice.

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ACTION, NOT STUDIES, NEEDED TO ADDRESS RACISM IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Harry Targ, Fall, 2015

The Office of the Provost [of Purdue University] recently established the Diversity Transformation Award, which challenges faculty to create research projects that improve recruitment, retention and overall success among underrepresented minority students and faculty, such as African-Americans, Hispanics, or people with disabilities. (Taya Flores, “Purdue Invests $1M into Diversity,” Journal and Courier, August 29, 2015).

The newspaper article cited above did not indicate whether or not the current  administration was aware of the efforts at Purdue that had been carried out in the past to address issues of recruitment and retention of faculty and students of color. In addition, the article did not refer to the extensive published research literature that has investigated strengths and weaknesses of policies many universities and colleges have adopted in the past. The subsequent posting on a Purdue website provided a more detailed and nuanced description of the research and programs that may be funded including brief mention of extending or adapting current programs of research and action. 

However, there is no mention of the many efforts that have been taken at Purdue University in the past to increase recruitment and retention of students, faculty of color, and staff nor does the article allude to prior extensive experiments and research at universities comparable to Purdue University. The Diversity Transformation Award Program (DTAP) might revisit and assess prior policy and research programs as part of the University’s commitment to diversifying the academic community. Selected examples are described below.

In the late 1980s, then Vice-President of Purdue University and Dean of the Graduate School Robert Ringel assembled a group of some forty faculty members from various colleges and programs in the university to address recruitment and retention of African American graduate and undergraduate students. These faculty members reflected the same lack of diversity that existed among the student body, undergraduate and graduate, in the university at-large. However, for all their limitations they were chosen by Vice-President Ringel because of their interest in promoting diversity. Those who participated enthusiastically endorsed the effort.

The faculty committee decided to create sub-committees to address recruitment and retention. Each sub-committee surveyed existing research, interviewed students, and developed a series of recommendations for the Vice-President to consider. Prior to this mobilization of faculty, Ringel had already established a program that invited college seniors from historically Black colleges to visit campus to consider pursuing graduate work at Purdue University. The projects initiated by Vice-President Ringel motivated faculty to give their time and expertise to making Purdue University, a public institution, as diverse a campus community as existed in the state of Indiana.

Several years later, Judith Gappa, University Vice-President for Human Relations, distributed a report authored with Myra D. Mason, Director of the Diversity Resource Office, entitled “From Barriers to Bridges: The Purdue University Plan for Enhancing Diversity.” The report was based on student surveys and focus-groups as well as data gathered about existing programs of action concerning recruitment and retention around the campus. The report listed a variety of successes in the pursuit of diversifying the student body and educational programs. 

It also referred to shortcomings such as inadequate funding for programs addressing diversity. Perhaps the most serious remaining issue cited was that of the 647 students surveyed: “…most do not believe the West Lafayette campus has yet achieved a positive climate for diversity. Black students experience a predominantly white campus differently from other groups; many minority students often feel isolated in the community. There is a need to recruit and hire larger numbers of minority faculty and staff” (Purdue News, “Purdue Diversity Report Completed,” September 8, 1997).

In 1997, Janice Eddy, an expert on creating environments in organizations that are sensitive to diverse work force populations, was hired to inform faculty, staff, and students about issues of racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination. She organized multicultural forums that were held across the campus, but primarily in the Colleges of Engineering, Science, and Agriculture, involving faculty, students, and staff. The goals of the two-day forums were to develop “cultural competence” and to create an environment of “inclusion and diversity.” The project was based on the assumption that preparing faculty and staff to engage in a more culturally diverse world was a necessary first step in providing for a tolerant and welcoming campus atmosphere for students. 

Eddy in collaboration with Barbara Benedict Bunker studied the impacts of the Purdue program, reporting on their results in “Innovations in Inclusion: The Purdue Faculty and Staff Diversity Story, 1997-2008” (Purdue Press, 2009). The publication chronicles the efforts to implement multicultural forums around campus and provides some assessments of successes and failures.

In 2009, the Black Cultural Center presented the first showing of an hour-long documentary “Black Purdue.” The first half-hour documented institutionalized racism at Purdue University from its foundation in 1869 until the late 1960s. It highlighted the 1969 Black student protests that demanded respect, a Black Cultural Center, and an education for the entire campus that reflected the history, values, and culture of the diverse population of the country. The second half of the video described various mentoring programs and student success stories of graduates in engineering, science, business, and liberal arts.  https://youtu.be/lMaQyMyQpDc

Purdue’s struggles with its racist past, student protest, and efforts to develop programs to increase recruitment and retention of faculty and students were paralleled by similar experiences at colleges and universities everywhere. Research based articles in education, the social sciences, and the teaching of science and engineering, suggest the enormous efforts that educational institutions have engaged in to overcome the history of racism in America. 

Caroline Sotello Viernes Turner, Juan Carlos Gonzalez, and J. Luke Wood published an article “Faculty of Color in Academe: What 20 Years of Literature Tells Us,” Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 2008, Vol. 1, No. 3. In it, the authors summarized results of 252 research-based publications by 300 authors that studied the causes and possible remedies for the under-representation (just 17 percent of full-time faculty) of minority faculty. The authors pointed out that “from 1988 to 2007 there was a continued rise in publications addressing the issue of the low representation of faculty of color.” The survey “documents supports, challenges, and recommendations to address barriers and build on successes.” It  was designed to review many years of scholarship to inform “researchers and practitioners” who were interested in better understanding recruiting and retaining faculty of color and developing policies to achieve these goals.  

The documentary film referred to above, various protests, and anecdotal evidence from racial incidents over the years suggest that racism has been and is a problem on the campus of Purdue University. Data indicates that faculty, staff, and students of color remain below the proportions of people of color in the state of Indiana. In the society at large, income and wealth inequality disproportionately disadvantages African-Americans and Latinos. 

Given the record of programs and studies of recruitment and retention of African Americans at Purdue University and the knowledge that is available from studies of programs at comparable universities, new ones will be enriched by building on knowledge of past research and action; not entirely starting over.

Also, new programs at Purdue might draw upon the experiences and wisdom of minority students already at Purdue. The video, “Black Purdue,” made it clear that much of the positive change that has occurred on the campus since the 1960s has resulted from the passionate, articulate, and courageous protests of students of that generation.

In sum, participants in the Diversity Transformation Award Program (DTAP) at Purdue University should reflect on the history of racism on the campus and the many efforts, some mentioned above, that were pursued to address it. The DTAP briefly mentioned consulting existing literature and studying programs of action carried out elsewhere. These efforts should be prioritized. In addition, Diversity and Inclusion administrators might compare historic efforts at Purdue University and elsewhere to recruit and retain women faculty and students to develop programs of action in reference to under-represented minorities.

In the end deliberations might lead to the conclusion that putting resources in the hands of those who need it, prospective students and faculty, might be a more effective first step in creating a more representative campus community. New programs and research projects may then usefully follow commitments of support to Indiana students and new faculty.

CHALLENGING UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY TOWARD ISRAEL IS NOT ANTI-SEMITISM! A Repost

Harry Targ

THE MIDDLE EAST: MILITARISM, GROWING ECONOMIC INEQUALITY, AND STARVATION

Global Economic Context         

Looking at the last third of the twentieth century, Canadian economist James Davies, in a study prepared by the World Institute for Development Economics Research, wrote “income inequality has been rising for the past 20 to 25 years and we think that is true for inequality in the distribution of wealth.” In 2000 the study showed that the top 1 percent of the world’s population accounted for 40 percent of its total net worth, with the bottom half owning 1.1 percent. Edward Wolff, another economist participating in the study, wrote “With the notable exception of China and India, the third world has drifted behind.” (New York Times, December 6, 2006).

The starkest interpretation of this kind of data was reflected in a 2003 article by Egyptian economist Samir Amin. He asserted that the global economy is creating what he called “the precarious classes.” Both in agriculture and manufacturing they cannot count on day-to-day remunerative activity to survive. Amin estimated that 2/3 to 3/4 of humankind are among the “precarious classes.”

Relevance to the Middle East in the 21st Century

A financial publication entitled “Arab Banker” printed a summary of a 2007 World Bank study, “Two Years After London: Restarting Palestinian Economic Recovery.” The World Bank, the Arab Banker, and other sources presented the following alarming data:

-The percentage of Gazans living in poverty steadily increased from 1998 (21.6%) to 2006 (35%).

-Israeli policies barring imports and exports which isolated Gaza from the Israeli and global economy made matters worse; a 90 % decline in Gaza’s industrial operations occurred between the 2006 parliamentary election victory of Hamas and 2007.

-Industrial employment in Gaza declined from 35,000 in 2005 to 4,200 in 2007. 

During the first decade of the new century, comparative economic data on Israel and the occupied territories indicated that West Bank and Gaza gross national product per capita was about 10 percent of that of Israel.

More recently, the United Nations issued a report entitled “Socio-Economic and Food Security Survey 2012: West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestine.” This report was produced under the auspices of the Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, and the World Food program. It documented a connection between food insecurity in Palestine and external constraints on the economies of the West Bank and Gaza imposed by occupation and blockades. Among their findings were the following:

-34 percent of Palestinian households, comprising over 1.5 million people, live in situations of food insecurity (19 percent in the West Bank and 57 percent in Gaza).

-Food insecurity increased since 2009, derived from growing unemployment, declining purchasing power, and slowed or abandoned aid thus decreasing jobs, income, and consumption.

-Food insecure households (often with larger families) are more likely to experience disabilities and chronic illnesses.

The report made three general recommendations: lift the embargo on Gaza, increase West Bank access to the Israeli economy, and support efforts to increase economic productivity in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Middle East Wars

The contested land of Palestine had been largely populated by Muslim peoples from the 7th century until the mid-twentieth century.  In 1947, the year that the United Nations recommended the partition of Palestine into two states, only 1/3 of the land’s inhabitants were of Jewish background. On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and the chairman of the Jewish Agency in Palestine, declared the establishment of a new state of Israel, and the first Middle East war between the new Israeli army and Arab states ensued. Palestinians and Arab neighbors regarded the creation of the new state as an occupation of the historic residents of the land. Over the course of this first Middle East war and those that followed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians became a displaced population.

Subsequently wars occurred in 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, and intermittently from the 1980s until today. (In the 1967 war Israel occupied, the West Bank, Gaza, the Old City of Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights, formerly Syrian land). These wars were fought between Israelis, Palestinians and states neighboring Israel. Disputes involved multiple issues including the legitimacy of the state of Israel; Israeli expansion, particularly its continuing construction of settlements in the West Bank and the displacement of Palestinian people; the rights of Palestinians inside Israel, and control of water and land throughout the region. Various organizations challenging the Israeli state and land expansion emerged over the last fifty years including the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, and Hezbollah. Several nations supported contending parties to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict such as the United States and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, former European colonial powers such as Great Britain and France, and neighboring Arab and other Muslim states.

The United States became Israel’s main ally during all these years. Since 1979 Israel has been the largest recipient on a per capita basis of foreign assistance from the United States of any of the latter’s clients. In addition, Israel has become the best equipped and most powerful military force in the region, largely due to the billions of dollars of US military assistance. Israel is the only state with nuclear weapons in the region. In a recent budget decision, the United States has agreed to provide military assistance totaling $3.8 billion per annum for ten years to Israel beginning in 2019.

Finally, pro-Israel lobby groups in the United States support continued military and economic aid to Israel. Israel, with United States support, opposes serious negotiations with what is now the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas-ruled Gaza. It is expected that recent West Bank/Gaza Palestinian agreements will harden Israeli opposition to serious negotiation.

Of course, Israel opposes initiatives from peace groups in the US and the international community. Currently, militant pro-Israel lobby groups as well as the Israeli government are pressuring Congress to pass legislation overturning Obama administration accords with Iran on nuclear weapons. Many also advocate US-led  military action against Iran.

Violence and instability in the region, the tragedy of 9/11, worldwide terrorism directed against US targets, and insurmountable and spreading conflicts have been directly related to Israel’s economic isolation of and military actions toward the Palestinian people and the continuing US support of Israel’s policies. Within the United States, critics of US support of Israel are excoriated and politicians are intimidated such that policy debate on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians inside Israel as well as economic embargoes and military attacks on interim Palestinian institutions and people in Gaza and the West Bank are largely censored from public discourse.

The particular mantra of rightwing groups, including Christian nationalists and Republicans and Democrats alike, label any critics of Israeli policy as “anti-Semitic.” Some of the strongest voices opposed to the total United States military and economic support for Israel come from progressives in the Jewish community. More Jewish people are becoming critics of Israel’s inhumane treatment of the Palestinian people. Many of these people proudly identify with their historical heritage of support for social and economic justice all around the world and are outraged by recent disingenuous claims of sympathy for the Jewish people from Conservative politicians in both political parties, think tanks and religious lobby groups, and sectors of the mainstream media.

Politics and Economics of the Middle East Today

Nar Arafeh, a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University, challenges the idea that economic development in the West Bank and Gaza alone could bring peace to the region. She argues that unless economic change is coupled with increased Palestinian political rights in the region resistance to Israel’s political/military domination will continue.

As to economics, although Palestine is expected to experience 3.5% growth in GDP in 2017, that growth is largely based on construction, presumably rebuilding housing units destroyed by Israeli bombs. She points out that the boost in construction in recent years in the West Bank and Gaza is coupled with economic stagnation including low growth and inadequate wages, increased unemployment, and declining foreign assistance. Israel controls the flow of labor from the West Bank to production sites as needed and limits more substantially Palestinian labor from Gaza. Arafeh says that “The ‘Palestinian Economy’ is a political construct, shaped to serve the more powerful player: Israel.” (Nar Arafeh, “Palestine’s Economic Outlook-April, 2017. Al Jazeera).

And on the human rights front, an Amnesty International report entitled, “Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories Report 2016/2017” stated that:

Israeli forces unlawfully killed Palestinian civilians, including children, in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), and detained thousands of Palestinians from the OPT who opposed Israel’s continuing military occupation, holding hundreds in administrative detention. Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees remained rife and was committed with impunity. The authorities continued to promote illegal settlements in the West Bank, including by attempting to retroactively “legalize” settlements built on private Palestinian land, and severely restricted Palestinians’ freedom of movement, closing some areas after attacks by Palestinians on Israelis. Israeli forces continued to blockade the Gaza Strip, subjecting its population of 1.9 million to collective punishment, and to demolish homes of Palestinians in the West Bank and of Bedouin villagers in Israel’s Negev/Naqab region, forcibly evicting residents.

What Does This Mean?

First, violence and political instability in the world is intimately connected to the absence of economic well-being.  The economic crises faced in recent years in the industrial capitalist world are small compared to the punishing crises of survival that some countries of the Global South still experience in the 21st century; countries and territories of the Middle East are prime examples.

Second, data suggests clearly that in the occupied territories (the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights, all conquered in the 1967 Middle East war) the notion of “precariousness” (joblessness, land theft, food insecurity, grotesque economic and political inequalities) is an apt way to describe the condition of the Palestinian people.

Third, shifting currents in Palestinian politics have been connected to patterns of economic growth and decay. In the 1950s and 1960s, secular leaders in the Arab world, including Palestinians, offered a vision of economic change and political autonomy for their people that was processed in Washington and European capitals as threatening to dominant economic interests. President Nasser of Egypt who opened relations with the Soviet Union and began to talk about Arab Socialism was a prime target of concern. Paradoxically, the US began to support political actors in the region with a religious agenda, countries such as Saudi Arabia and later in the 1980s followers of Osama Bin Laden who were fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan. In the 1980s also the United States supported Hamas in Palestine.

There is no easy solution but the United States and other wealthy countries have an obligation to participate in a disinterested economic reconstruction of the occupied territories and support for complete political autonomy of the Palestinian people. Only that will break the back of anger, hatred, and political instability. The United States should stop fueling the violence in the region by ending military aid to Israel. Economic reconstruction requires negotiation toward the creation of a viable secular Israeli state in which all participate or a separate Palestinian state with land repatriation and guarantees of security from Israeli military attack. In addition, Israeli settlements in the West Bank need to be dismantled. Economic development must be coupled with economic justice.

In the United States, the political climate needs to begin to change so that a resumption of frank dialogue can proceed concerning foreign policy toward Israel, ending the violence in the region, and supporting economic justice and political rights for the Palestinian people. For example, is it wise and humane for the United States to commit $3.8 billion annually in for military aid to Israel for the next ten years?

Labeling those who propose different United States foreign policies toward Israel as anti-Semitic do a disservice to peoples of the region and defame US activists, including Jews, who support peace and justice for the Palestinian people.

HYBRID WARS AGAINST IRAN

Harry Targ

from https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2020/01/hybrid-warswhat-is-new-and-what-is-not.html


Iran has been a country of particular concern of the United States at least since the end of World War II. The US propped up the Shah (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi) at the outset of the war to protect US bases which were used to transfer war materials to the former Soviet Union. After Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, elected in 1951, nationalized Iran’s valuable oil resource, Great Britain, whose Anglo-Iranian Oil Company had “owned “ the oil, began to urge the US to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister, instill full power in the monarch, the Shah, and reprivatize Iranian oil. In 1953 the US Central Intelligence Agency launched a coup to overthrow the Prime Minister and to establish the Shah as Iran’s all-powerful dictator. His brutality and repression lasted for years until a mass-based worker and religious-led movement ousted him from power in 1979. In the aftermath of the ouster of the Shah, religious leaders consolidated their control of the state, the Shah fled to the United States for medical treatment, the new regime demanded his return to stand trial for his crimes, and Iranian students took 52 US embassy personnel hostage for 444 days.

The United States responses to the transformation of the Iranian regime included President Carter’s declaration of his “doctrine,” which proclaimed that instabilities in the Persian Gulf region were vital to US national security. The US began to fund Iraq in its eight-year bloody war against Iran, which led to 500,000 Iranians killed. The United States urged Israel to invade Lebanon, escalate attacks on Palestine, and in general tilted in opposition to Iran and its allies in the region. The US also increased the sale of technologically sophisticated arms to Saudi Arabia. Therefore in the 1980s, US policy in the Persian Gulf and Middle East regions was driven by the growing hostility of Iran to the United States (once a pillar of US support in the Persian Gulf), the continued need of Europe and Japan for Iranian oil, and Iran’s vital geographic location, particularly in terms of its potential control of the  flow of oil to Europe and Japan.  But, in addition, the Iranian people had violated a cardinal rule of US global hegemony. They had risen up against rule by an American puppet. Much like Cuba in the Western Hemisphere, Iranians declared that they no longer would abide by a leader chosen by the United States and not them. (In fact, in the Nixon Administration, the Shah’s regime was identified as the key “gendarme” state in the Persian Gulf, the local US police enforcer).

Ever since the hostage crisis of 1979, the United States has imposed economic sanctions of one sort or another on Iran. After the long years of damage to the Iranian economy and the people at large, the  Nuclear Treaty of 2015 (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), was negotiated by Iran, the United States, member countries of the European Union, and Security Council members, Russia and China.  Along with Iran’s promise to stop the production of potential nuclear material, signatories agreed to end the freezing of Iranian assets deposited in US and European banks, to eliminate various prohibitions on Western investment in the Iranian economy, and to remove trade restrictions.

Almost immediately after the sanctions were lifted in the aftermath of the Nuclear Treaty, the Iranian economy grew: a 12 percent growth in GDP in 2016 and an additional but modest 3.7 percent in 2017. However, in 2018 President Trump withdrew from the Nuclear Treaty and re-imposed crippling sanctions. As a result, the Iranian economy contracted by 4.8 percent in 2018 and in a BBC report projected a further decline of 9.5 percent in 2019.

Iran’s oil exports and hence production was hit particularly hard. The value of Iranian currency declined dramatically and inflation in the country rose, particularly for the price of food. (BBC News. “Six Charts That Show How Hard US Sanctions Have Hit Iran,” December 2, 2019). Sanctions reduced purchasing power, increased the cost of living for food and transportation, reduced access of Iranian students studying abroad to financial resources, and led to the reduction of public services. 

This is the story of hybrid war against Iran: along with military threats and attempts to isolate Iran diplomatically, make the people suffer and cause increased outrage at the material conditions of life. The hope is that the people will rise up and overthrow the regime in power (and, of course, instances of corruption and repression will magnify protest responses). The scenario has been repeated over and over: Guatemala and Iran in the early 1950s, Cuba since 1960, and  now Venezuela and Iran again. And make no mistake about it: economic sanctions are targeted against civilian populations and constitute a strategy of war against the people, motivating them to rise up against their governments.


Meanings of the Hybrid War Concept for the Peace Movement


We can deduce a variety of conclusions from the Law of Hybrid Wars.

First, twenty-first century imperialism is not solely or primarily about direct military confrontation such as wars and/or covert acts of terrorism against targeted nations.

Second, hegemonic powers, such as the United States, see coalitions of states as a threat to global dominance. This is true in Eurasia, the countries along the Silk Road, and in Latin America where a crippled Bolivarian Revolution survives.

Third, policymakers do not primarily act impulsively. They see a threat, which includes transnational cooperation and resistance. Strategists then identify weak links in threatened coalitions. They formulate multi-dimensional, stage-by-stage responses. And these responses involve economics, culture, sowing seeds of division, promoting demonic narratives about target states, and at the same time they leave “all options on the table,” which means traditional military action.

Finally, it behooves the peace movement to be cognizant of twenty-first century methods of imperialism. It must fashion strategies that clearly and compellingly identify and combat economic sanctions recognizing that they, indeed, are acts of war.



From End The War Coalition, Milwaukee, Jim Carpenter

 "No war on Iran. U.S. out of Iran and Middle East. Bring war $$$ home to create good jobs, end poverty and transition to a green economy. End sanctions on Iran which are causing a humanitarian crises."



Congress will soon be  voting on legislation to prevent war with Iran. We expect the House to take votes next Thursday on Rep. Ro Khanna’s bill to defund an unauthorized war with Iran (H.R.5543, 89 cosponsors) and Rep. Barbara Lee’s bill to repeal the 2002 AUMF (H.R.2456, 104 cosponsors).  Both of these bills have picked up cosponsors in the last several days.

IN THE SPIRIT OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING: Essays in the Struggle for Social and Economic Justice

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IN THE SPIRIT OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING: 
Essays in the Struggle for Social and Economic Justice 
Harry Targ, Diary of a Heartland Radical

HYBRID WARS:WHAT IS NEW AND WHAT IS NOT? AN UPDATE ABOUT IRAN

Harry Targ

On The Law of Hybrid Wars

Andrew Korybko, a Russian scholar/journalist, has written about a new concept, “hybrid wars,” with a long history in practice. The author refers to the Law of Hybrid War as “The grand objective behind every Hybrid War is to disrupt multipolar transnational connective projects through externally provoked identity conflicts (ethnic, religious, regional, political etc.) within a targeted transit state” (Andrew Korybko, “Hybrid Wars 1. The Law of Hybrid Warfare,” Oriental Review.org, 4/3.2016). His  concern was United States targeted efforts to undermine efforts by Russia to integrate with Eurasian states and the US desire to disrupt China’s “silk road” projects. It is clear that the concept refers also to efforts by imperial states, particularly the United States, to undermine any efforts by other countries to develop political and economic solidarity that might threaten regional or global hegemony. And Korybko added that ”Hybrid Wars are externally provoked asymmetrical conflicts predicated on sabotaging concrete geo-economic interests.”

The tactics of Hybrid War prioritize identifying strategic weaknesses in target states. These do not necessarily prioritize targeting roads, bridges, or power plants for destruction but rather economic, political, ethnic, or other vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities may include ethnicity, religion, history, administrative boundaries, and socio-economic disparities. Using “soft power” the imperial state supports the introduction of seemingly neutral technologies or processes, such as the internet in the target country. New intrusions are supported by some Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) such as the Soros Foundation or the National Endowment for Democracy. NGOs claim to be motivated to facilitate political and economic development. As David Harvey has suggested NGO projects come with a frame of reference, a goal, and/or a conception of desirable economic or political paths the host country should take. From the Hybrid War perspective these intrusions are used to exacerbate the class, ethnic, and/or geopolitical tensions in the target state.

Most important for analysis is the argument raised by Korybko that a critical precondition for imposing hybrid war (and a critical tool of it) is the pressure brought by “globally recognized” sanctions. Early in the process of imperial intrusion, victimized states experience increased costs for importing critical commodities, food, energy etc., constraints imposed on exports, and denial of loan requests from international financial institutions. As political instability increases, targeted states are forced to spend more on security, thus sucking resources away from domestic needs. Thus, the Law of Hybrid War involves an imperial state deciding that transnational projects constitute a threat to its rule and assessing historic vulnerabilities of targeted states. Then the imperialists institute policies of intrusion on target states through technology, expansion of an NGO presence, and organizing a global sanctions regime against the targeted state. From a Hybrid War perspective, the imperial power hopes for such an exacerbation of tensions so that regime change will occur without the introduction of foreign troops.


https://orientalreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/AK-Hybrid-Wars-updated.pdf

Hybrid Wars Against Iran


Iran has been a country of particular concern of the United States at least since the end of World War II. The US propped up the Shah (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi) at the outset of the war to protect US bases which were used to transfer war materials to the former Soviet Union. After Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, elected in 1951, nationalized Iran’s valuable oil resource, Great Britain, whose Anglo-Iranian Oil Company had “owned “ the oil, began to urge the US to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister, instill full power in the monarch, the Shah, and reprivatize Iranian oil. In 1953 the US Central Intelligence Agency launched a coup to overthrow the Prime Minister and to establish the Shah as Iran’s all-powerful dictator. His brutality and repression lasted for years until a mass-based worker and religious-led movement ousted him from power in 1979. In the aftermath of the ouster of the Shah, religious leaders consolidated their control of the state, the Shah fled to the United States for medical treatment, the new regime demanded his return to stand trial for his crimes, and Iranian students took 52 US embassy personnel hostage for 444 days.

The United States responses to the transformation of the Iranian regime included President Carter’s declaration of his “doctrine,” which proclaimed that instabilities in the Persian Gulf region were vital to US national security. The US began to fund Iraq in its eight-year bloody war against Iran, which led to 500,000 Iranians killed. The United States urged Israel to invade Lebanon, escalate attacks on Palestine, and in general tilted in opposition to Iran and its allies in the region. The US also increased the sale of technologically sophisticated arms to Saudi Arabia. Therefore in the 1980s, US policy in the Persian Gulf and Middle East regions was driven by the growing hostility of Iran to the United States (once a pillar of US support in the Persian Gulf), the continued need of Europe and Japan for Iranian oil, and Iran’s vital geographic location, particularly in terms of its potential control of the  flow of oil to Europe and Japan.  But, in addition, the Iranian people had violated a cardinal rule of US global hegemony. They had risen up against rule by an American puppet. Much like Cuba in the Western Hemisphere, Iranians declared that they no longer would abide by a leader chosen by the United States and not them. (In fact, in the Nixon Administration, the Shah’s regime was identified as the key “gendarme” state in the Persian Gulf, the local US police enforcer).

Ever since the hostage crisis of 1979, the United States has imposed economic sanctions of one sort or another on Iran. After the long years of damage to the Iranian economy and the people at large, the  Nuclear Treaty of 2015 (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), was negotiated by Iran, the United States, member countries of the European Union, and Security Council members, Russia and China.  Along with Iran’s promise to stop the production of potential nuclear material, signatories agreed to end the freezing of Iranian assets deposited in US and European banks, to eliminate various prohibitions on Western investment in the Iranian economy, and to remove trade restrictions.

Almost immediately after the sanctions were lifted in the aftermath of the Nuclear Treaty, the Iranian economy grew: a 12 percent growth in GDP in 2016 and an additional but modest 3.7 percent in 2017. However, in 2018 President Trump withdrew from the Nuclear Treaty and re-imposed crippling sanctions. As a result, the Iranian economy contracted by 4.8 percent in 2018 and in a BBC report projected a further decline of 9.5 percent in 2019.

Iran’s oil exports and hence production was hit particularly hard. The value of Iranian currency declined dramatically and inflation in the country rose, particularly for the price of food. (BBC News. “Six Charts That Show How Hard US Sanctions Have Hit Iran,” December 2, 2019). Sanctions reduced purchasing power, increased the cost of living for food and transportation, reduced access of Iranian students studying abroad to financial resources, and led to the reduction of public services. 

This is the story of hybrid war against Iran: along with military threats and attempts to isolate Iran diplomatically, make the people suffer and cause increased outrage at the material conditions of life. The hope is that the people will rise up and overthrow the regime in power (and, of course, instances of corruption and repression will magnify protest responses). The scenario has been repeated over and over: Guatemala and Iran in the early 1950s, Cuba since 1960, and  now Venezuela and Iran again. And make no mistake about it: economic sanctions are targeted against civilian populations and constitute a strategy of war against the people, motivating them to rise up against their governments.


Meanings of the Hybrid War Concept for the Peace Movement


We can deduce a variety of conclusions from the Law of Hybrid Wars.

First, twenty-first century imperialism is not solely or primarily about direct military confrontation such as wars and/or covert acts of terrorism against targeted nations.

Second, hegemonic powers, such as the United States, see coalitions of states as a threat to global dominance. This is true in Eurasia, the countries along the Silk Road, and in Latin America where a crippled Bolivarian Revolution survives.

Third, policymakers do not primarily act impulsively. They see a threat, which includes transnational cooperation and resistance. Strategists then identify weak links in threatened coalitions. They formulate multi-dimensional, stage-by-stage responses. And these responses involve economics, culture, sowing seeds of division, promoting demonic narratives about target states, and at the same time they leave “all options on the table,” which means traditional military action.

Finally, it behooves the peace movement to be cognizant of twenty-first century methods of imperialism. It must fashion strategies that clearly and compellingly identify and combat economic sanctions recognizing that they, indeed, are acts of war.

 

LIES AND WAR! 2020 EDITION

Harry Targ

Post-modernists talk about “discourses,” “narratives,” “tropes,” and verbal “deconstructions.” They should be commended for suggesting how words are used to mobilize, inspire, deceive, promote self-interest, and, too often, justify killing everywhere. Former Arkansas Senator, J. William Fulbright in describing how he was tricked by his old friend President Lyndon Baines Johnson to support a resolution authorizing escalating war in Vietnam said: “A lie is a lie. There is no other way to put it.”

The story can begin any time. As World War Two was ending, the Greek government constructed by Great Britain after the Nazis were defeated was engaged in an effort to crush a rebellion by activists who objected to their newly imposed rulers. The Greek rebels included former anti-fascists freedom fighters, some of whom were Communists or Socialists. The British, no longer able to support the repression of the Greek Left in what was a civil war, called on the Americans for help.

In February, 1947, Truman foreign policy advisers met to discuss what to do about the Greek civil war and the threat of “Communism” spreading along the Mediterranean. The Republican Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Arthur Vandenberg, attending the meeting. said he would support U.S. military and economic aid for the unpopular Greek government. But, he said, tell the President he better “scare hell out of the American people.”

One month later, President Truman gave his famous Truman Doctrine speech to the Congress and the American people. He warned the American people, who until that time still had positive feelings toward the Soviet people, that the United States and the “free world” were going to be engaged in a long-term struggle against the forces of “international communism.” The Truman Doctrine was not about nations and movements with different interests and ideologies but rather a global struggle between the forces of good threatened by the forces of evil.

United States administrations ever since have justified aggressive foreign policies by lying and distorting the realities behind complex international relationships. In addition, when a politician, a journalist, a scholar, or a whole peace movement criticizes targeting nations and movements as diabolical and security threats, these critics are charged with being weak, indecisive, cowardly, or, even worse, stalking horses for the vile enemy or enemies.

Campaigns of propaganda masquerading as truth have been a constant feature of international relations, particularly since World War Two. The reality of U.S. struggles against demonized enemies tells a sobering story. Deaths in wars and interventions in which the United States participated from 1945 until 1995 totaled about ten million people. These figures, extracted from the valuable research of Ruth Sivard, (World Military and Social Expenditures, 1996) do not include injuries and forced migrations of millions of people fleeing combat zones. Nor do these figures include the wasteful trillions of dollars of military expenditures and environmental damage resulting from a war system.

And since the dawn of the new century, the United States and its allies in NATO make arguments justifying war based upon a new round of lies and distortions. The Persian Gulf is a region where whole nations were constructed by colonial powers after World War One. After the next World War, the United States agreed to provide arms and protection to the Saudi monarchs in exchange for oil. The U.S. also identified client regimes and movements to support its interests in the region. They included the former Shah of Iran, the state of Israel, various so-called Islamic Fundamentalist groups including those fighting in Afghanistan, to leaders the U.S. once supported such as Saddam Hussein and Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq. In the twenty-first century, the stability of whole countries, Iraq and Libya for example, was destroyed by United States interventions costing many thousands of  deaths and injuries and many more people fleeing violence.

As The Real News analysis below suggests, the American people have been lied to concerning Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, and as history suggests, virtually every case of United States military intervention, covert operations and/or economic sanctions.

https://therealnews.com/stories/liars-war-iraq-iran-history

Getting back to Senator Vandenberg’s advice to President Truman (“scare hell out of the American people”) about how to gain support for moral/military crusades, leaders and media are warning about a new global terrorist threat and renewed threats from Russia, China, and Iran. The intensity of the selling jobs, the perpetual lies, are testament to the good sense of the American people who continue to say “no more wars.”    

China Radio International: Panel Discussion on US/Iranian Crisis

http://chinaplus.cri.cn/podcast/detail/1/196470