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This Production of Sprouts Features Connecticut Journalist David Morse interviewing Jen Marlowe on “Darfur Diaries, Message from Home.” January 2007

“A student group started right after that screening. A student stood up in the audience and said ‘I want to start a group here on campus to do something, anyone who is interested in working with me meet me in the corner of the room’. They started out some Darfur specific activism that came out of that screening.” Jen Marlowe

Today on Sprouts human rights activist Jen Marlowe speaks with journalist David Morse about the film, “Darfur Diaries, Message from Home”. David Morse is author of the book, The Iron Bridge, and writes for Salon, Alternet, TomDispatch and other online publications as well as Yes Magazine Les Temps, and Friends Journal. He visited Sudan in 2005 and has been writing about the conflict in Darfur for two years. He interviewed Jen Marlowe in December of 2006 about this important film which she created with Adam Shapiro and Aisha Bain.

Co-producer David Morse: The Film Darfur Diaries has been engaging audiences at college campuses, film festivals, churches, synagogues and high schools. It has won several human rights awards including Best of Fest at the Tri Continental Film Festival in South Africa. Through this film audiences all over the world have now met these survivors who tell their stories with eloquence and dignity. Here are a few exerpts.

Orphaned boy being interviewed about losing his mother and not knowing where his father is. He mentions the Janjaweed.

Human rights worker: When I started my job in the human rights office I took eighty of these children you have seen to Wahabi asking for the NGOs and the agencies, ‘who can take care of these’? Most of these, those who lost their parents, most of their families, the burned villages, and some of them fled out and they don’t know where are their parents. No one accepted them. 61-year-old human rights worker Suleiman Jamous. Jen Marlowe is heading up an emergency effort to gain his release from a Kordofan, Sudan hospital where he is being detained.

Darfur Man: We have two options. Either fight to survive or grab some hands and sit until you are killed. So we are fighting for survival here.

David Morse: The film opens with pictures drawn by children. The drawings are then briefly animated to reveal the horrors they have witnessed. Some of these children need immediate care. Most suffer from deep emotional distress. But we also find surprising tenderness and hope as we encounter a society torn by war but capable of rebuilding itself if given the chance.

The mainstream media typically present Darfur without context. Genocide. Brutal attacks by militias sponsored by the government of Sudan. Government planes bombing civilians. But the treatment is very two dimensional. Darfur in Western Sudan becomes just another conflagration in Africa, remote, impossible to solve and irrelevant to U.S. security.

Nothing could be further from the truth. World powers are involved in the region. China buys most of Sudan’s oil and is its biggest trading partner. And of course China is also America’s biggest trading partner. This has geopolitical and military implications.

Russia is selling arms to the Sudan government. And as the conflict widens into Chad to the West, displacing tens of thousands, we see that this crisis has meaning for the whole Horn of Africa. The Central African Republic to the south, Ethiopia, Somalia; negotiators from the UN and African Union (AU) are trying to get the warring parties back to the peace table, attempting to restart the peace process. Al Qaeda has made its presence known in Somalia. But we should not let the Bush administration get away with simply declaring the region another front in the war on terror.

We need to push the administration instead to engage the key players. The time is ripe for grass roots organizers to step up their efforts. “Darfur Diaries,” the book and the film, provide good organizing tools for those who wish to call attention to the humanity at stake and to let government and UN officials know that they want peace in the region.

I met with Jen Marlowe in New York City in one of the many borrowed apartments she relies on to do her work.

You and Aisha and Adam have made a wonderful film called, “Darfur Diaries,” and you have written a book about that. Where did the inception of that idea come from?

Jen Marlowe: It actually began with Aisha, who starting in the fall of 2003, was doing an internship with the Center for the Prevention of Genocide in Washington, D.C. as part of her graduate work. She was getting a Master’s at American University.

She was given a folder by her boss that said, “Darfur. We got some reports that something is going on there. Figure out what it is.” So she started investigating, based on just a few pieces of paper in this folder, really built a whole network of people. It took time to uncover but she gathered information from aid workers, from the few journalists that had trickled in, from Darfuris that she had met in Washington, D.C. and then Darfuris that they gave her contact to that were back home in Darfur or in refugee camps in Chad. And she really pieced together a horrific picture of what was happening there. And there was absolutely nothing in the mainstream media at that time that was reflecting these reports that she was uncovering.

Her first approach was then to try to launch a media advocacy campaign to try to push the media to cover this, and so she started off calling every mainstream media source imaginable, whether it was newspaper, magazine, T.V., radio; letting them know what was going on, giving them information and giving them contacts, offering to set them up so that they could do their own primary research and not have to listen to her second hand accounts. And she was repeatedly told “no”. People were not interested in covering it.

David Morse: What sorts of things did they say to her?

Jen Marlowe: Ranging from saying, ‘well we’ll get back to you, leave a message we’ll get back to you,’ and then not responding. Ranging from that to, ‘we just did a story about Uganda, the same continent, so therefore we can’t report anything right now coming out of Darfur. She was told, ‘if it’s not already in the news it must not be news’. So as long as the network next door is not covering it, then they don’t have to cover it. It’s not a big enough story if it is not already being covered.

So she started venting this frustration to Adam, who had recently gotten back from his first film that he made in Baghdad. And he was beginning to wrap his brain around this idea of how film could be used as a tool of activism. Not just as a tool of education, not just to educate people, but to really inspire people to be a part of an effort to create change. And so he said to Aisha, ‘I want to go’. And Aisha’s first response was, ‘Well there’s a media blackout, it’s being called genocide, the borders are closed, it’s a mess.’ And Adam said, ‘Look Aisha there’s always a way in.’ She said, ‘Yeah you’re right’.

They started making the plans to go and trying to raise the money, and it was at that time that I had lunch with Adam. Adam and I had worked in Jerusalem previously and he was telling me about what he and Aisha were planning on doing. This was May of 2004. He said, ‘We’re planning to go and film in Darfur,’ and I had never heard of Darfur until that moment. And what struck me particularly when he started to tell me what was happening there was not only the horrifying accounts that he was telling me, but also the fact that I didn’t know. And it was during the ten year anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, that was the exact time that I was having lunch with Adam, and there was a lot of coverage of the ten year anniversary of what had happened in Rwanda.

I had been watching ceremonies, memorials, and speeches made by different dignitaries, ambassadors, who were reflecting on what had happened in Rwanda, and what hadn’t happened in terms of international intervention, and were making what sounded like very sincere speeches that ‘lessons had been learned and if the world were confronted again with a situation similar to Rwanda that this time the response would be different’. And I’m sitting and having this lunch with Adam and realizing that no one at any of these speeches were mentioning what was happening at that moment in Darfur about villages being burned to the ground, rape being used as a tool of war systematically against girls and women, mass murder of civilians, hundreds of thousands of refugees driven across the border to Chad and millions displaced inside Darfur, none of that was being acknowledged at the time that those speeches about Rwanda were being made. So I was shocked both about what Adam revealed to me was happening and about the fact that that was the first I had heard of it. And it was very soon after that that I asked Adam if they were looking for a third person and made the decision to go with them.

David Morse: You created this film, you were very early in the curve to have gone out there and done that, it’s been out for a few months not very long. Is it serving as an inspiration, is it doing some of the things that you want?

Jen Marlowe: I hope that it has and I believe that it has. We finished the film just over a year ago. It was officially released in terms of being released on DVD about two months ago. We had been screening different versions of it, actually, because we started screening it as soon as we had our first cut even before it was finished so we had been screening different versions of it for about a year and a half. And I think it has absolutely had an impact on people who have watched it. It’s an impact of people opening their eyes and seeing what’s going on and understanding the human impact of it.

For example, the debate about whether to use the word genocide, I think the focus that the media has on the numbers and on the statistics often is a way to mask the human impact of what is happening in Darfur and how that affects lives. They are showing people just in their victimization and they are showing refugees with a capital R or victims with a capital V as if that is their whole identity, which becomes its own form of dehumanization.

So I think one impact the film has had is helping people who watch the film understand that these are human beings whose lives and hopes and dreams are every bit as important as their own. Then you can extrapolate that about coverage in Africa in general but that unlike what you usually see on the media that yeah, people are articulate, they are intelligent, they have senses of humor, each one is a three dimensional human being that casts a shadow and we never get those kinds of images especially coming out of Africa.

I know it has inspired people to want to do something. I did a screening for example at the University of Minnesota and a student group started right after that screening. A student stood up in the audience and said, ‘I want to start a group here on campus to do something anyone who is interested in working with me meet me in the corner of the room when this event is finished.’ They started up some Darfur specific activism that came out of that screening and so there are examples like that.

I showed clips of the film at a high school in Seattle and in the discussion afterwards one student said, ‘well, why should I do work about Darfur when there’s problems going on in my own neighborhood. Shouldn’t I get involved and help my own neighborhood.’ And although I don’t agree that the problems in your own neighborhood are more or less important than the problems in other parts of the world my response to that was, ‘great, if seeing this film and being a part of this discussion has inspired you to get involved in what’s happening in your own backyard, to get involved, to get engaged in what’s happening around you, whether its your community or the world at large, then great, that’s fantastic.’

David Morse: That’s lovely and I think the film really does, because it reaches people’s humanity, I can imagine it transferring that way. And I realize – I just have to ask you about the guy who wanted to marry you. Can you tell that story?

Jen Marlowe: (Chuckles) Oh yeah, that’s not in the film, you got that one from the book.
We were in a village called, Muzbat it was actually our second time in that village, we had been there when we were first entering into Darfur and now we were on our way back out, back towards Chad. And we were having dinner at the compound where one of the SLA commanders was based and there was a young man who was one of the SLA fighters who showed up. He had a great sense of humor. He was laughing, he was joking around and at one point he turned to me and he had been joking so I was sure he was joking, and he said, ‘I’ll give you 200 camels to marry me.’

I said, ‘why me why not Aisha, Aisha is a very striking and beautiful person.’ And he said, ‘well, you’re short, I’m short, we could live side by side we could fight side by side.’ So I laughed because I was sure he was joking around and then more and more people started to come and everyone was singing, and Adam started filming, and it was going back and forth between songs that they were singing in Zagawa language because we were in the Dar Zagawa, the Zagawa tribal region.

It was going back and forth between songs of resistance and love songs and different people were singing and we thought isn’t this really fabulous? It’s so amazing to be part of this and then to have it on film.

Then months later when we were translating the footage someone who is a Zagawa tribe member of Darfur was helping us in Washington, D.C. and we were listening, it’s very fast paced, these songs were sort of rapid fire, probably the Zagawa version of a free style rap, and all of a sudden Musa looks at me and he says, ‘you know they are singing about you.’

I said, ‘what? Rewind that clip’. So we rewound a few seconds and he listened again and he looks at me and he says, ‘did you know that man wanted to marry you’? And I said what are you talking about, I thought he was joking, and so he translated all of the song lyrics and apparently he was waiting for my answer. And all of these people that had kept coming and joining us as the night continued and were continui9ng to sing were singing about me. One of the lyrics that I remember that they were saying were, ‘Ibrahim Jim wants to marry Jen, Jen is this white woman, she came to Muzbat, we all want to marry Jen but Ibrahim Jim is the lucky one the rest of us lost.’

So yeah that was one of the many things that we didn’t realize had happened until after we had gotten our footage translated.

David Morse: Tell one more surprise from the revisiting of that footage.

Jen Marlowe: Well there were a lot and they weren’t all as humorous as this one. I think one of the ones that still burns inside of me, actually it was the same night, that same night in Muzbat, we were invited to go to a wedding. There was a wedding that was happening and it was dark. There was no electricity. There were no generators in order to have any kind of light. There wasn’t even any oil for lamps. We were in a state of pitch darkness and we go to this wedding, and we were talking to the sister of the bride. And Aisha says to her that we are trying to make this film and we are trying to take these messages, to bring their messages to the world.

And a man named Musa was with us and helping translate and he translated her as saying that, ‘your talking is very good we appreciate what you are doing we appreciate your talking, please help yourself to the food.’ And there was this very scarce, you can’t even really call it a wedding feast, there were some pieces of fried dough and a few candies and we didn’t want to eat anything because we knew food was so scarce. But we also knew that the ethic of hospitality was so strong we certainly didn’t want to offend our host.

So she said, ‘please help yourself to the food.’ We each took a bite of the fried dough and said thank you very much this is delicious. –When we were translating the footage we found out that what she had said was actually in response to the fact that an Antonov airplane had flown over the village that day for the first time in several months. There had not been any Antonovs for several months, and the Antonov is the Sudanese Government’s bomber planes. So that had decimated the village previously.

David Morse: These bombers come from Russia?

Jen Marlowe: They are Russian planes, Russia is the largest arms supplier for the Sudanese Government. So what she had said was, ‘your talking is very good but what we really need is someone to stop the planes, can you please stop the planes.”

I’m sure that Mousa didn’t translate what she had said accurately because I think he didn’t want us to feel badly. He knew that we couldn’t stop the planes. And so I think he was trying to in some way protect us by not telling us what she was really asking us. But in retrospect when I think about that exchange, she says to us, ‘can you please stop the planes?’ and as a response we grab a piece of fried dough and bite it and say, “wow thanks for the food.’

When I first found that out I wanted to go right that moment back to Chad, sneak across the border, go back to Musbut Village, find this woman and just apologize because it was so horrifying that that had been our response to a very sincere plea that she was making.

David Morse: You’re listening to Sprouts, Radio from the Grassroots. I’m David Morse. Speaking with activists like Jen Marlowe can be a life clarifying experience. Her work is inspiring many individuals into action. The website DarfurDiaries.org is an international touchstone for activism. This is what Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, had to say about the film, “Darfur Diaries, Message from Home”, and the companion book “Darfur Diaries, Stories of Survival.”

In these hard times we must accept help from wherever we can find it. The dignity of the Darfurian people is such a help. It reminds us of who we are and what inner stability we might aspire to as humans no matter our circumstance. We must return this help to us by seeing Darfurians protected, safe, returned to their lands, their gardens, their animals, their wells and fields, their schools. Do not resist seeing and reading their story thinking it another violent assault on the heart. It is rather a gentle if persistent knock upon the door of every living human soul. Brother, sister, we’re still here holding a space for you, for humanity, are you still there? I left the book and the film feeling a great deal more hope for us all.

That’s Alice Walker, author of “The Color Purple”. In the second half of our interview I asked Jen Marlowe about the seeds of her passion in connection with Darfur.

Jen Marlowe: The seeds of my passion in Darfur, this is connected to the work that I do in human rights generally. For me it’s not just about Darfur. The people in Darfur are going through something horrific and need to have the world standing with them in solidarity. But for me that’s just as true as the people in Iraq, in Palestine, in Afghanistan. I think that what’s happening in Darfur is a horrendous situation. It’s certainly not an isolated situation, the people in Congo, the people right now in Somalia, are also facing very horrific situations.

David Morse: How do you keep from spreading yourself too thin? Many of us throw up our hands when we hear one more tragedy, one more awful cataclysm happening in the world. How do you find room for all of that?

Jen Marlowe: I’m not necessarily doing active work in all of the places that I just named. Some of them I am. But I recognize that as one human being I have limitations and its really a question of trying to do as much as I can, wherever I can, with the time I have, with the resources I have; I don’t mean financial resources but in terms of skill, knowledge, talents, capabilities, that kind of thing.

So arguably maybe I am spread too thin and I’m trying to do too much in too many places but like I said I feel like it’s all interconnected and we are all interconnected. For me it’s a question of trying to figure out how to do more and how to get more involved in more places, again given the limitations of time and of being one person.

David Morse: You don’t strike me as someone who is spread too thin so I guess I would feel, projecting, I would feel spread too thin. Darfur is in some ways safe. I don’t know whether to be ashamed to say this or not but I can say “no” to a lot of other things in order to stay focused on Darfur. I’m not particularly proud of that but it is a sort of survival mode. Obviously you are able to hold more, process more. Do you want to say anything to that?

Jen Marlowe: Thank you. That’s a kind observation. I guess I can’t see myself working in any area or any issue in isolation without recognizing its connections to the larger world and then once that’s recognize then its inevitable at least for me to feel some responsibility to getting involved.

David Morse: Is it sustainable? Do you get back as much as you give?

Jen Marlowe: That question could be looked at on different levels. Is it financially sustainable? This is one question. I’ve made it work so far in terms of sustaining energy and commitment and getting back as much as I give, absolutely, in fact, in terms of getting back I always feel that I receive much more than I give. And I feel that when I’m with Darfuries, I feel that when I’m with Palestinians, when I’m with people from Bosnia Herzegovina; I always feel, I hope, that I’m able to give something and contribute something, but I feel that what I get back in terms of education and in terms of inspiration far exceeds anything that I may have been able to give.

David Morse: How is it you life? Can you describe what you do? Ho w do you support this work?

Jen Marlowe: I’ve been earning money on other projects that I’ve done, we are starting now that the film is out and the book is out and we are going and speaking we are able to earn some money doing that which is very hopeful and welcome and we are also trying to donate a portion of that directly back to the people in Darfur by initiating the supporting of schools and the reestablishment of schools in the destroyed villages where we filmed. But I’ve made, and this is also true for my colleagues, for Adam and Aisha, we’ve all made lifestyle choices and life choices that have enabled us to do the kind of activism work that we want to dedicate ourselves to doing.

So for me, for example, I haven’t paid rent in over two years and I live as, I call myself a nomad, or more accurately probably a semi-nomad because I have a few different semi bases that I can parachute into when I need to but I have been able to avoid paying rent and I have extremely generous and kind friends and community that allow me to stay with them. There’s a lot of cities in this country and then a lot of other countries in the world where I can go and just spend months at a time staying with different people and that has enabled me –not paying rent not having car insurance, having the most minimal kind of health insurance. All of that has enabled me to be able to dedicate most of my time towards the activism and then use whatever resources I do have coming in towards furthering that work.

David Morse: Do you ever find your spirit flagging? Are there times when you feel weak or confused? And if so how do you get past those times?

Jen Marlowe: I don’t feel weak and I don’t feel confused. There are times that I feel incredibly frustrated at what’s happening in the world. There are times, well all time I wish that the impact could be greater, and not just the impact of my work alone but the impact of you know I consider myself to be part of a community of people that are trying to do good and meaningful work in the world and that’s in all different spheres and in all different ways. And yeah, all the time I wish that that impact could be greater but I also feel that part of the struggle itself is meaningful. So I don’t necessarily seek the meaning just in the end result although of course, yes, if we could put an end to some of these egregious abuses that are going on in the world that’s always the end goal. However, for me its also about the process of that and about the choices that we make every day and for me it’s the choice of which team to bowl on so to speak. Whether or not I know that the efforts I make go towards the result that I’m looking for it still won’t change the truth that I’m making because I know that at the end of the day that’s the team I want to bowl on. I don’t know if that makes sense but.

David Morse: Who are your inspirations?

Jen Marlowe: There are so many. Some of the ones that come to mind right now just because it’s part of the work that I’ve been doing, Cindy and Craig Corrie who are the parents of Rachel Corrie, an American activist that was killed in Palestine in the Gaza Strip. She was trying to prevent a pharmacist’s home from being bulldozed in the town of Rafa, in Gaza, and she was run over and killed by an Israeli bulldozer.

I never met Rachel her spirit and her writings have been inspiring, but the work that her parents have continued since her death has been such an example in so many different ways to me. I’ve been reading a lot of Alice Walker’s writings lately and I’ve had some contact with her over the past couple of months. This is true of Alice Walker, this is true of Cindy and Craig Corrie, I mean people who are able to catching-the-conscience combine very clear positions on the state of things in the world, that are able to combine that with a great deal of human compassion. That’s a particularly unique combination. There’s a woman named Suheir Hammad she’s a Palestinian/American poet-spoken word artist, and I’ve actually spent the last week editing some of her material and editing the conversation that she had with Reggie Haynes in New York, and I’ve been kind of living in her words, both her poetry and then also her reflections and her thoughts for the past three or four days. So she’s someone else who stands out to me as an inspiration. Again, because both because of a very clear view of the world, a very clear stance on injustices, but the ability to combine that with human compassion.

Poem by Suheir Hammad on Democracy Now

David Morse: Jen Marlowe has done peace building work in the Balkans, South East Asia, Cyprus, and the Middle East. She helped found the group, Rachel’s Words, honoring Rachel Corrie killed in Gaza. You can learn more about the Darfur Diaries film and book at darfurdiaries.org.

A postscript to the film, Suliman Jamos, a 61-year-old man who appeared in the film is now stuck in a hospital in Kordufan, Sudan, where the Sudanese Government will not allow the UN to transport him to medical care. Jen Marlowe and others are organizing an emergency appeal for his freedom. You can email Jen Marlowe at jenmarlowe@hotmail.com for more information.

On January 8th Jan Egeland, former UN Human Rights Chief told the press that the situation in Darfur is worse than ever. Human rights organizations are starting to mobilize. Action alerts and information can be found at the local and regional chapters of the Save Darfur Coalition and STAND that’s Students Taking Action Now on Darfur, and their web page is timetoprotect.org.

That’s it for Sprouts. Independent journalist David Morse provided this week’s content. He interviewed Jen Marlowe for a book he is working on about Sudan. He’s been sharing his interviews with http://talknationradio.com/?p=60 Talk Nation Radio. Articles by David Morse have appeared in Dissent, the Nation, New York Times Magazine, Salon, and elsewhere. His website with http://david-morse.com/darfur/links/ links on Darfur is http://david-morse.com/morse/ david-morse.com.

Sprouts is distributed and coordinated by Pacifica Radio Network. Thanks to Michael Yoshida at satellite operations. If you or someone at your station has a radio production that you wish to rebroadcast on Sprouts, to showcase it nationally, contact our air traffic controller, Ursula Ruedenberg, at Ursula@pacifica.org

This week’s show was produced at WHUS at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut. I’m Dori Smith. See you next week on Sprouts.

To Download the Audio go to Audioport.org and select “public files” or use this url:
Listen

Some links on Darfur and Sudan

From David Morse’s web page

BBC report, Sudan’s shadowy Arab militia the Janjaweed

US AID villages in Darfur

More links, types of things students are working on around the country

Darfur Genocide is Rwanda in Slow Motion By David Morse, Yes Magazine, Winter 2006

David Morse on Darfur as a Resource War TomDispatch

Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell, America and the Age of Genocide

The Democratic Congress has begun to discuss social policy and one of their first steps upon taking over the House was to pass an increase to the national minimum wage. What other bold new directions might they go in to correct social inequities that have been weakening American society? Europe holds some answers.

Talk Nation Radio for January 4, 2007
Grand Compromises — Europe Accepts Welfare State, Can American Capitalism be Transformed to Benefit Americans in the area of Health Care, Education, and Housing?

Produced by Dori Smith at Pacifica Affiliate WHUS, at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut http://www.whus.org
Total Running Time: 29:41
European Welfare State

Listen to the broadcast

Download at the Audioport by searching “Talk Nation Radio: James W. Russell on his latest book ‘Double Standard’

Jim Russell teaches at Eastern CT. State University. A former editor at New Left Notes of the National organization for Students for a Democratic Society, Jim Russell became a sociologist with an activist’s view toward social and political reform. His most recent book takes a look at the success of Europe’s public welfare systems and demonstrates the urgent need for change in America to reflect much more concern for the many citizens living in abject poverty or struggling to borrow for higher education.

The idea of the “welfare state” became taboo because of political rhetoric that began during the Reagan era. Yet, in Europe, even conservatives accept that government will collect taxes and use them to provide for the health and welfare of citizens.

Interview with James W. Russell on his book, ‘Double Standard, Social Policy in Europe and the United States’.

Welcome to Talk Nation Radio, a half hour discussion on politics, human rights, and the environment. We take a look at social policy in Europe and the United
States this time with James W. Russell author of the book ‘Double Standard, Social Policy in Europe and the United States,’ Published in 2006 by Rowman and Littlefield.

A Professor at Eastern Connecticut State University, Jim Russell’s background is that of civil rights and anti-war activist and scholar. He edited the New Left Notes the national newspaper of Students for a Democratic Society.

In the early 1990s he was named Fulbright Senior Lecturer and Researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. (Universidad National Autonoma de Mexico.)
Jim Russell helps us reexamine the term progressive, and he debunks the term Welfare State, pointing out it’s usefulness for political liberals, conservatives, and progressives, alike, working within capitalist systems. One of his previous books is, After the Fifth Sun: ‘Class and Race in North America’, (Prentice Hall). His articles have been published in Monthly Review, The Nation and The Progressive.

In his preface, Jim Russell states quote: “Not so long ago those of us brought up during the cold war years saw the future in terms of capitalism versus socialism. Surely, 1989, a historical year, changed all of that. The disintegration of most of the actually existing socialist countries has removed socialism as a viable option for completely reorganizing societies for at least the near future. That does not mean, however, that socialism is dead. Who knows whether at some point in the years ahead it may reemerge as an alternative socioeconomic system?

“For the present,” Russell writes, “the competition has shifted from capitalism versus socialism to competition between alternative models of capitalism—between capitalist societies with comprehensive welfare states, as represented by those in Western Europe, and those with weak ones, as represented by the United States. It is a competition between models that allow socialist or at least semi-socialist solutions to capitalist problems and those that doggedly insist on maintaining or attaining as pure a capitalism as possible.

If socialism is off the present world stage as a complete model, it still has a role to play in terms of developing ways to humanize capitalism as much as possible and perhaps preparing the way for some future development of a humane, prosperous, and democratic socialism.”

A professor at Eastern Connecticut State University, Jim Russell’s background is that of civil rights and anti war activist and scholar. He edited New Left Notes, the national newspaper of Students for a Democratic Society and then after receiving his PHD in sociology he turned his attention to teaching. He was named Fulbright Senior Lecturer and Researcher at the use English Universidad National Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City, during the early 1990s and was named to a five year term as Fulbright Senior Specialist in 2001. Professor Russell’s previous book is After the Fifth Sun, Class and Race in North America. He has written for Monthly Review, the Nation and the progressive. Jim Russell welcome to Talk Nation Radio.

Jim Russell: Thank you very much for having me. I’m delighted.

Dori Smith: Talk about that point in your preface where you discuss the Welfare State and changing models of capitalism so that they include more democracy.

Jim Russell: I think the word is very interesting because Europeans accept “welfare state” as just a matter of fact term. It’s something that everyone benefits from and there is nothing particularly controversial about it. Whereas in the United States the word, “welfare” is a state of being to be avoided at all costs. And so you have a lot of language issues that are here that have to do with the very different experiences with policy on both sides of the Atlantic.

Dori Smith: Again from your preface you describe the difference between capitalism and socialism and in that context you talk about the new forms of capitalism. Judging them if you will based on how the question of social welfare programs are addressed.

Jim Russell: I think if you were to summarize the differences between Western Europe and the United States in this respect, I think the best way to do it would be to say that in Western Europe people pay very high taxes but they receive very high social benefits at the same time. In the United States people pay very low taxes and really don’t receive much in the way of benefits. Now you might think that that all adds up to the same thing in the end but it really doesn’t because in Europe what ends up happening is that many things are distributed much more equally through the society. You end up with a greater sense of social cohesion in the societies, you end up with lower crime rates; you end up with generally a higher quality of life. You end up with streets that people feel safe walking on; you have a much greater sense of social security when you distribute things more equally. And like it or not taxes are the best way in which to gather together the income of a society and then redistribute it where it’s needed.

Dori Smith: I think a lot of people think that having social welfare programs means that that government is socialist, so just talk about the difference there.

Jim Russell: I mean there are very different ways to look at the European welfare state. Conservatives in Europe see it as a way of socializing charitable obligations. It’s not something that they see as particularly socialistic. The left wing parties see it as something that is a potential step towards socialism as a kind of socialist solution to capitalist problems. So you have a kind of grand compromise in Europe in which everyone or almost everyone generally agrees that the welfare state is a very good investment in a certain quality of life that Europeans enjoy.

In the United States we have this very wide open kind of 19th Century capitalism where we are really loathe to use the government to produce programs that will benefit the whole society. I mean there are certain things that Americans all agree on. They all agree that we should have public schools, social security is the federal government’s most effective and most popular program and actually quite interesting that’s very much of a kind of European approach to the issues of old age. So I don’t want to make it look like in Europe it’s this way and in the United States it’s this other way and they will never come together. There are people in Europe who would like the American model and there are certainly plenty of people in the United States who would like a more European approach to these questions. And we have programs in the United States that were they to be expanded such as Social Security, would perhaps bring us closer to certain European levels. And I think it’s very important in this context to really lay out what the actual differences are between Europe and the United States.

We can look at something like poverty. American poverty rates are about twice as high as European poverty rates. And one of the things that was very revealing to me when I did this research was that when you measure poverty you can measure it at two different points. At one point is when you just consider people’s income and you don’t consider the effect of taxation or the effect of government programs. We could call that point one. And then point two is after all of the effects of taxation and programs. –Well at point one if you measure poverty in Europe and the United States it’s about identical. About 35% of the people, if government did nothing, would be poor in both Europe and the United States. But then at point two, after you consider the effect of government programs, what you get is that the European rate is about half what the US rate is. So what that means is that the question of poverty is an issue of policy. It’s a decision that a society can make.

To me it’s further interesting that the European Union has decided that their rate of poverty is too high and so they have called for all countries within the European Union to lower their rate of poverty by the year 2010. I don’t recall ever since the 1960s any major political discussion that said; in the United States the rate of poverty is too high. And you won’t hear it in the political campaigns. I think it’s interesting that John Edwards has come out focusing on this and that’s really the first time I’ve heard that in several decades.

Dori Smith: And of course making his announcement that he is a candidate from the 9th Ward in (New Orleans) Louisiana is quite a statement as well.

Jim Russell: Absolutely, very symbolic. I mean I think when you look at social policy one of the ways to look at it is its impact on children and the elderly because those are the two groups that really cannot fend for themselves. And they really depend upon the main bulk of the population making a decision to support them.

Now, some people would say OK so you’re supposed to take care of people within your own family but you have no obligation outside of the family. Well the whole idea of a welfare state is we are all obligated to take care of all children and all elderly people. So the way you do that is again through taxation so that you can create programs to make sure that people when they live out their final years are not living them in poverty.

I think there are many different ways that you can measure that but in all of the ways that I went through the European approach to retirement and elderly people resulted in far less poverty in country after country compared to the United States. One of the real problems that’s coming in the United States is that we’ve had since the early 1980s this effort to transform retirement here in terms of privatizing it. We’ve all heard about Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security but what came before that was the attempt to shift away from pensions into 401K type programs. This meant that the whole risk of retirement was shifted from employers to employees. And I think that this is a disaster coming down the road. That we are going to have much greater inequality among elderly people that’s coming and a much greater degree of poverty.

Dori Smith: Talk about some of what we might call the good qualities of a healthy society or a democracy. Explain how you did your evaluation Jim Russell.

Jim Russell: OK, I do this looking at the literature from social policy and the various principles that are used in it. There are a couple of principles that are really important. One of them is the principle of social inclusion which is that a society works best if people are integrated within it which means that citizens are able to participate normally within their societies. From this point of view the problem of poverty is not just that the person doesn’t have income it’s that the person cannot participate within the society in a normal kind of way. And you want people to be able to participate normally. It’s good for them and it’s good for the society as a whole.

In Europe or in France, in particular, when people are unemployed, they are given access to free movie tickets on the idea that it’s much better for people to have the means to get out of their houses and go take in a movie and participate in a normal way than to have them slumped in front of a television set somewhere and isolated from people.

So social inclusion seems to me a way of approaching this issue that is taken very seriously in Europe and all discussions of social policy include that concept. We hear that word here because it’s a word that nobody can disagree with. It’s sort of a good sounding term like freedom and democracy. But I don’t think it’s taken quite that seriously.

A little more difficult of a concept that’s used a lot in terms of evaluating these programs is the concept of decomodification. Now a commodity is something that is produced in order to be sold. That’s what goes on in market places. When you have a society, one of the ways to judge how well it’s working, is the extent to which goods and services are distributed according to need and not according to just the ability of people to purchase, or what’s called technically, the purchasing power. And so let’s take what I think is the most glaring example that everyone is familiar with of the failures of American social policy here: health care.

Health care is a business in the United States. It’s a highly profitable business. It is highly comodified and so we end up with a situation in which 46 million people don’t have health insurance and many many more don’t have adequate health insurance. Now that’s a completely comodified approach to something like health care rather than saying OK well if you are sick or if you have been in an accident you have a need, so we will take care of that need.

It seems to me that you need to look at certain vital things that any society has. I mean are people getting enough food? Are they getting housing? Are they getting health care? Are they getting education? And to what extent is that distributed according to need? The more it’s distributed according to need the better.

Dori Smith: Just talk about the difference between a society that nurtures the success of the individual and calls that freedom versus the society that nurtures as many individuals as possible with the means at hand.

Jim Russell: Well it seems to me that that’s the whole concept of social solidarity, the whole idea that the more that the community thrives together the better it is for each individual, versus what has been very deep in the American cultural history, the whole notion of the individual and freedom from the community. It seems to me one handle on this is to look at income that people receive; most people think of income in terms of what’s there from their paycheck when they get it. But there’s a lot of other income that we receive indirectly, like if you have a park to go into, public schools to send your children to, you have people who plow the roads; all of those indirect things are really a source of social consumption. So that you can say that while we get a certain part of our income individually, individual wages, and a certain part of our income socially, as social wages. It seems to me one of the easiest ways to produce social solidarity is to shift more income into social wages and less into individual wages so that we end up not having to pay for health care, not having to pay for a college education for our children because we consume those things in common.

Or, we end up with pensions when we retire because throughout our working lives we paid taxes to support something like that. Or, we can even look at something like in Canada where that’s a closer example where the cost of colleges is far less than it is in the United States because people have decided that they would pay taxes all their working lives and then when their children got ready to go to college it would be there and available to them. Now you look at college education here in the United States and it’s the rate of increase is as high as medical care. You are ending up now with a whole generation of debt slaves of students who mortgage themselves to the hilt in order to get through college. It certainly wasn’t that way when I went to college in the 1960s because it was more of a societal commitment to that. So that’s one of the ideas of distributing more in terms of social wages and having a sense that we could all consume this together. I mean I don’t think you have to be a socialist to believe that that’s better because it produces a certain quality of life for the general community that is better than having us all hunkered down in our homes and just consuming individually.

Dori Smith: You are not strictly talking about governments that would be more defined as socialist or socialist leaning; you are talking about capitalist systems?

Jim Russell: Oh absolutely. To me one of the great revealing things about Europe is that European conservatives have generally made peace with the welfare state. They see it as a good investment from a very conservative point of view because it’s a way in which their obligations to the poor can be socialized. They believe that there will always be poor but they don’t believe that the poor should be just left to fend for themselves, that it’s much better for them, that they can walk the streets.

Dori Smith: Now I want to talk about the environment because that is a great equalizer, the wealthy and the poor alike have to live in the same environment. We’ve seen a few scandalous examples where corporations have assumed tremendous powers, one being in Iraq where corporations, oil corporations have moved in during a war to capitalize on the tragedy of the Iraqi people. Another is the case of the Exxon Valdez where the fishermen that had their livelihoods taken away from them still haven’t had any of the income from the billion dollar award. You know if a fisherman damaged Exxon property somehow, accidentally and with negligence involved, that fisherman would sure have paid the price by now.

Jim Russell: Right, absolutely. Absolutely. I agree.

Dori Smith: It just really shows us how the disparity is widening.

Jim Russell: Oh yeah, we can go back to our medical example. I mean it wouldn’t be so difficult in the United States to get national health insurance if it wasn’t for the fact that not having it is extraordinarily profitable to certain interests that have a greater amount of leverage over governmental power. That then brings us into the whole question of electoral reform and how you try to equalize the playing field here so that the public and its interest gets some priority.

Dori Smith: Well now you are talking a kind of Dickens’ America where people walk around chronically ill and that’s because there is a profit in it?

Jim Russell: Yes, absolutely, it’s very very profitable.

Dori Smith: I want to talk about some of the things that have been tried. I know in Connecticut they talked about the “living wage” and you mentioned that as an example in your book of some of what has to be done sometimes when there is a problem where people cannot afford to live under the system.

Jim Russell: The context in which I mentioned that was that there was a group in Manchester, the Working Families Party that attempted to get a living wage ordinance passed there. Then the Hartford Courant in an editorial said oh it is best always to allow the market to set the wage rate and not to try to do that with policy. And I looked at that as such a typical type of situation and comment because what happens when the market produces a wage rate that is a poverty rate. I mean that’s really the issue here. And the Courant editorial certainly had no answer for that whatsoever. But the market has become the new God in this neo-Liberal type of reality that we are in in this country where everything is justified according to the market. But what happens when the market really doesn’t produce human welfare, but it produces poverty conditions? Well that’s where you can see the limits of the market. The thrust that I make in my book is not so much for living wages as an approach to this but more in terms of developing programs, social programs like national health care and more generous programs on unemployment, on ways to create conditions so that the poor are not in terrible straights: it’s much better to go in that way of beefing up these types of social programs than to try to shift income into individual hands via living wages. I have no opposition mind you to the living wage campaign but I’m just saying that in a total approach to this we need to also be trying to create these types of programs that all of us share in.

Dori Smith: Now as we look at potential wider war in the Middle East and policies that seem to always fail in the sense that they apply to human beings, but succeed in the sense that they enrich corporations somehow; let’s talk a little bit about the rhetoric that seems to reflect concern for humanity but it’s really just pasting over the hard realities of what the policies will bring.
Are these people who believe their own rhetoric or is that attitude that the market will determine…is that just kind of an excuse that is relied on.

Jim Russell: In other words do we just have a group of cynical people here who are pulling the wool over people’s eyes?

Dori Smith: Well they sure are pulling the wool over people’s eyes intentionally but are they doing it thinking that it’s the right thing in the long run for the system they believe in?

Jim Russell: I tend to, I mean I don’t believe that there are conspiracies; I tend to think that people are fairly consistent ideologically with what they believe. If you look at say the Bush administration, while indeed they are doing a lot of things that are making a lot of people very rich at the top its also very consistent with the type of American conservatism, at least as it has been from the 1970s on, which is that it is better to shift money to the top because people at the top will then invest it and turn it into capital and capital will then provide jobs and so forth. The problem is that when you look at all of that it doesn’t really happen that way. You can’t just rely upon the market and capital accumulation to provide human welfare. You have to look at well, what is the situation, has the poverty rate gone down? You know what is the situation here? Are more people getting health care or are less people getting health care? –When you look at all of those things you can see that you cannot rely entirely on the market. So then you come to what is traditionally the liberal response which is that you need a regulated market and the problem with liberals in this country is that they’ve been very weak. They’ve been very defensive; in fact, they can’t even call themselves liberals now. We’re back to sort of the way it was in the 1950s about communists, except today’s communists are liberals in terms of a kind of forbidden word.

Dori Smith: But isn’t it a case too of the fox guarding the hen house in the sense that the people in charge of the regulations are part of the hierarchy that is profiting. We’ve been talking on the program with Heather Wokusch who has pointed out how often it’s the case that you will find industry executives transforming their lives and suddenly turning up as someone working for the EPA. And so when you are talking about regulations, who is doing the regulating makes a great deal of difference.

Jim Russell: Oh absolutely. Certainly now with the Bush administration they have named all sorts of industry people to become regulators.

Dori Smith: It’s a revolving door between Chevron and the White House.

Jim Russell: I mean those people are going to act consistently. I think in terms of public education if more people understood what it is that is behind people as a coherent but wrong approach to these questions as opposed to being it seems to me manipulated by people who look good on the air or sound nice or do those kinds of things or in the subject that we’re on I can give you a couple of examples that I think are good ones.

One is the famous example of the death tax. Most people in the United States are in favor of estate taxes because they only impact the rich. Then the money has helped to fund government programs including social programs. And public opinion polls show that over and over again people are in favor of estate tax. Well somebody figured that if you just changed the name of that to “death taxes” and then you said, “Isn’t that ridiculous. We get taxed on everything even when we die,” then you could turn public opinion against it. And it succeeded. Now the majority of people are opposed to the “death tax” and then of course they pushed through this tremendous boon to the richest people in the United States. Well that’s from a lack of understanding.

Same thing, the favorite word of the right on welfare is to call it “entitlements” –that you’re not entitled to anything. You’ve got to work for it. I mean that sounds so logical but it’s so wrong if you think about it. Are you going to say that a person who is sick is not entitled to be taken care of? Are you going to say that a person who is disabled should not expect anything from their society? Well if you change that word entitlement and you called it “social rights” it would sound a lot different rights” OK, if you started saying, “well what are the social rights we should expect as Americans?”

Should we expect health care as a social right? Should we expect college education as a social right? I mean a lot more people would say yeah, that’s right. Now it seems to me further, and this was a lot of the motivation for this book that I went into, is that most Americans don’t understand that they don’t have the best of all possible worlds. Europe, which economically is very similar to the United States, high income capitalist society, just has a very different social model and it works. Now when most Americans hear about Europe either they think, Oh, OK, nothing works there. Or, the Europeans are finally coming to their senses and they are going to adopt American programs and learn what we’ve always known. It’s just not true. If you interview Europeans, yeah you will find a few who would like the American approach, but the vast majority don’t want to give up their access to health care in order to have this kind of private insurance sweepstakes that we have in the United States.

Dori Smith: What advice to you have for the Democratic Party as they try to deal with some of the baggage left behind by the Bush administration and forge ahead?

Jim Russell: The Democrats should go back and look at their big successes, and they had a huge success when the whole Bush program to privatize Social Security just went nowhere. Bush absolutely met his social waterloo when he attempted to do that. And the Democrats really didn’t do a whole lot to oppose it. They certainly weren’t for it. But it was like the more that Bush spoke about it the more that people became opposed to it. There is something to be learned about that because this was an eminently democratic program under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, from the New Deal, the most popular federal program and the most successful one. –When this neo-liberal Republican machine attempted to go after it as the final prize, the final dismantling of social programs in the United States, they ran into an absolute stone wall of opposition. And I think a lot of it was opposition even from their base. You know people who are on the religious right who have members of their families who depend upon Social Security payments. And the Democrats have to really come out swinging on this issue and say OK; it’s time now to expand Social Security. It’s time now to tackle these problems that a lot of people have. I have heard statistics. Within a two year period one out of every three American adults is without health insurance at some point. And that’s a lot of people. If you ask, how many people have somebody in their family who doesn’t have health insurance, I’ll bet you will come up with a similarly very large proportion of the American population. And it’s time for Democrats to go after those kinds of issues that really do affect a lot of people and to really stick to their guns. Because they are going to have the same thing as when Clinton did it, that is all of the vested interests are going to start talking about, oh you are going to end up losing your right to chose doctors; but they are going to have to be very strong on it and willing to stick with it even if they lose. If they lose this time but they stick with it then they are going to win next time rather than to try to cobble together something that really doesn’t solve the problem like the prescription benefit that was passed in the last session.

Dori Smith: Jim Russell thank you so much for joining us on Talk Nation Radio.

Jim Russell: And thank you so much for having me.

We’ve been speaking with Jim Russell of Eastern Connecticut State University. You can find his book, ‘Double Standard, Social Policy in Europe and the United States, ‘ at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Rowman and Littlefield, Rowmanandlittlefield.com.

For Talk Nation Radio, I’m Dori Smith. Talk Nation Radio is produced in the studios of WHUS, Radio for the People, at the University of Connecticut. WHUS.org to listen live Wed. at 5 pm. Talknation.org and talknationradio.org for transcripts and discussions.

Bio: James W. Russell was born in New York and grew up in Oklahoma. Active in the 1960s civil rights and antiwar movements, he was the first editor of New Left Notes, the national newspaper of Students for a Democratic Society. He received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin and has taught at universities in San Francisco, Texas, Oregon, Mexico City, and Connecticut. Currently he teaches sociology and directs the Latin American Studies Program at Eastern Connecticut State University. From 1990 to 1992 he was a Fulbright Senior Lecturer and Researcher at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City. In 2001 he was named to a five year term as a Fulbright Senior Specialist. He is the author of six books, including Double Standard: Social Policy in Europe and the United States (Rowman and Littlefield) and After the Fifth Sun: Class and Race in North America (Prentice Hall), and a number of articles in publications such as Monthly Review, The Nation and The Progressive.

Transcript of Interview with Heather Wokusch, December 27, 2006 Talk Nation Radio

See transcript and audio of part one below.

The Progressives’ Handbook Volume 2, “Everything you Need to Know About the Bush Administration’s Record on Elections and Voting, Environment, and Foreign Policy, and what You can Do About It.”

Produced at Pacifica Affiliate WHUS at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut by Dori Smith Download as an MP3 file at Pacifica’s Audioport or Radio4all.net

Listen

Welcome to Talk Nation Radio, a half hour discussion on politics, human rights and the environment. I’m Dori Smith

Joining us for the half hour is international journalist, peace activist and feminist Heather Wokusch. An American living in Austria, Heather joined us by phone for an in depth discussion about her new book series The Progressives’ Handbook a kind of field guide for activists.

Heather also provides audio segments for community, low power FM, podcasting, and other types of media outlets on her web page Heather Wokusch.com. Her recent topics have included Bush Family Profits, The US Military’s Use of Depleted Uranium Munitions in Iraq and Afghanistan and Holding Tribunals on Bush. Here’s what Heather Wokusch had to say about that topic.

While Bush Administration members have made a sport of breaking the law both domestically and internationally their intransigence will come back to haunt one way or another. The Bush preemptive strike doctrine, for example, is a direct repudiation of the United Nations Charter, which explains why Bush’s 2002 National Security Strategy makes a point to protect Americans from the International Criminal Court.

Just last week, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff accused the UN and other world bodies of using international law as a “rhetorical weapon against us”. Chertoff’s view of international law as a threat to the U.S. is supported by Rumsfeld’s 2005 National Defense Strategy which notes, “Our strength as a nation state will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the week using international fora, judicial processes and terrorism”. In other words the Pentagon links judicial processes with terrorism and sees judicial processes as weakening the U.S. Nation State. I mean what kind of nonsense is that?

It’s worth remembering the aftermath of WWII when the International Military Tribunal indicted and tried over twenty Nazi leaders for war crimes ranging from waging a war of aggression, killing civilians, mistreating prisoners and plundering property. How eerily familiar those charges seem today and how ominous that only weeks ago, German prosecutors began pursuing a criminal investigation into the alleged role of Rumsfeld and numerous other administration members regarding prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

Rumsfeld will lose his legal immunity when he ceases to be Defense Secretary, a fact which must weigh heavily on Bush and others. Unsurprisingly, the administration has taken preemptive action against future war crimes charges, including pushing through the scandalous Military Commissions Act which provides them retroactive domestic protection from prosecution regarding prisoner abuse cases.

The administration has also tried to enervate the International Criminal Court including setting up bilateral agreements which arm-twist other countries into not prosecuting U.S. nationals or foreign nationals working for the U.S. Yet such bribery will only go so far. Bottom line, as calls for impeachment build at home Bush might heed advice he once gave to Osama Bin Laden: ‘you can run but you cannot hide.’

Dori Smith: Heather Wokusch you prompted me to go on the web site heatherwokusch.com and read what you have on your front page which happens to be right now, “Impeachment Hearings for Bush and Company, how about War Crimes Tribunals.” Give us the general gist of that piece that you have put together and what’s in it.

Heather Wokusch: On December 10th we had these big actions across the country talking about impeachment hearings but when you look at the Nuremberg Principles clearly what the Bush Administration has done across the board is a crime under International Law, a crime against peace. For example, waging of a war of aggression, war crimes including the wanton destruction of cities and towns, ill treatment of prisoners, crimes against humanity, and its very interesting because the Nuremberg Principles very clearly state that being the head of state or responsible government official does not relieve you from responsibility under International Law. So I thought it was just an interesting perspective to understand that clearly the Bush Administration could be seen as guilty of war crimes.

Now, I don’t believe that they will be charged, for example, Bush, Cheney, whoever, right now, primarily because who would charge them? Individuals in the E.U. presumably; however, many E.U. governments also were complicit in these extraordinary renditions, these secret prisons, these CIA flights. And so I can’t imagine that they will be rushing to bring war crimes charges. The interesting thing though is that there is a case in Germany right now against Rumsfeld, and the individuals who have brought this case against Rumsfeld, based on the prisoner abuse – they also have threatened to bring a similar case against him in Spain and a number of other countries – meant to educate people across the world to what he has done and also just to embarrass him. It’s something to think about. I can’t imagine that the war crimes tribunals will actually take place but it is something to think about along with the fact that something that many people don’t realize is that the U.S. is the only country that was condemned by the World Court for international terrorism, for the unlawful use of force. This was a case in 1986, the Republic of Nicaragua against the United States of America. So we tend not to think of ourselves as war criminals but when we look at the actions of our government, well that’s another case entirely.

Dori Smith: You are talking about the mining of Nicaragua’s harbors?

Heather Wokusch: Yes, that’s correct. And many people don’t realize that the U.S. was the only country condemned by the World Court for international terrorism. As a nation we do need to look at our actions.

Dori Smith: On page 112 of The Progressives’ Handbook Volume 2 Heather Wokusch writes about the ulterior motives of the Bush Administration. She writes, “In a March 2002 meeting with Republican and Democratic senators Bush was reportedly uninterested in discussing the different options of dealing with Saddam Hussein. As Time Magazine Reported in May, 2002, instead he became noticeably animated. According to one person in the room he used a vulgar epithet to refer to Saddam and he concluded with four words that left no doubt about Bush’s intentions. ‘We’re taking him out,’ Bush said.” [15. Time Magazine “We’re talking him out,” Daniel Eisenberg, (May 5, 2002) http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,235395,00.html]

That was quoting Heather Wokusch in Volume 2 of The Progressives’ Handbook. We should look at her pages on ulterior motives of the Bush Administration in context with breaking news stories about Saddam Hussein. Under pressure from Washington, Iraq’s fragmented courts system has upheld the death penalty for Saddam Hussein and it looks as though the former Iraqi dictator may be executed within weeks, an action that could spark further violence against U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians. It is yet another indication that unchecked, Iraq policy will keep moving in a destructive direction rather than toward increased security or calm. It is all seemingly illogical yet the ulterior motives Heather discusses center on the corporate side, on the threat posed by the fact that Iraq was positioned as a swing producer of oil prior to the invasion, something that was at odds with U.S. interests. Then there was Hussein’s interest in changing currencies. He had converted Iraq’s ten billion United Nations reserve fund from dollars to Euros, she explains.

Iraq under Saddam Hussein was clearly moving toward dealing with Russia and France on oil. According to Wokusch, “Russia’s Lukoil and Frances Total Elf Aquitaine were among 63 companies from 30 nations in line to hit Iraq’s oil jackpot. But given the history of U.S.-Iraq conflict, American companies were slated to lose big.”

From the book The Progressives’ Handbook p. 112-113 paragraph 5.

“No WMD, but of course, Iraq does have lots of oil. A report prepared for Cheney’s highly-secretive energy task force in April 2001 warned, ‘The energy sector is in critical condition… Gulf allies are finding their domestic and foreign policy interests increasingly at odds with America’s strategic considerations… Iraq has become a key ‘swing’ producer, posing a difficult situation for the U.S. government.’

“There was also the uncomfortable matter of Hussein’s having backed away from the dollar in 2000; he’d even converted Iraq’s $10 billion United Nations reserve fund to euros. The administration had to prevent the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries from moving closer to the euro as the oil transaction currency standard.

‘Cheney’s task force was additionally aware that Iraq had plans to open up its prized oil fields to overseas investors once the United Nation’s sanctions against it were lifted. Russia’s Lukoil and France’s Total Elf Aquitaine were among 63 companies from 30 nations in line to hit Iraq’s oil jackpot, but given the history of US-Iraq conflict, American companies were slated to lose big.”

I asked her to comment on the disparity between what many people see as a war to increase security versus a war to increase corporate profit.

Heather Wokusch: From that perspective, one would logically conclude that actually the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation and chaos is actually a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the U.S. to see who can have the most influence over OPEC and what happens to oil prices and oil availability. Just looking, for example, at the changes that Paul Bremer of the Coalition Provisional Authority pushed through in Iraq in his one year there, I mean May 2003 to June 2004, he is accused of having “misplaced” something like 33 billion dollars of Iraq’s own money for reconstruction, so in and of itself that’s just so egregious. But Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority illegally restructured Iraq’s economic system to essentially open it up to foreign business. Now, without adequate input from the Iraqi people he just unilaterally annulled the rules and regulations that had governed Iraq’s economy.

Now this is illegal to change a nation’s basic law during a belligerent occupation. The 1907 Hague Regulations ban it. You can’t do that. But that’s exactly what Bremer did. His most egregious act, one would say, was to push through something called, 100 Orders, and these fundamentally changed Iraq’s legal system essentially making it more convenient for foreign business to operate in Iraq and take the profits out.

Order 39 allows Iraq’s state owned businesses to be privatized. Now this did not include oil, but of course James Baker and his recent act is working on including oil as well. It permits 100% foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses and 40-year ownership licenses and unrestricted remittance of profits, for example.

Order 17 gives foreign contractors immunity from Iraq’s laws. So it just goes through -across the board – 100 Orders that make it easier for foreign corporations to take over Iraq. This is the precedent that we have set and it clearly is disgraceful.

Dori Smith: Heather we’ve been hearing reports about the so-called, “Salvador option” in Iraq and journalist Dahr Jamail filled us in on some of the grim details. U.S. involvement with the death squads in Iraq, a story that has leaked out here and there thanks to courageous reporters like Dahr and others, but it’s still not what we would call a mainstream story Now you mention the Salvador option in your book and provide some links to reports on this, just talk about the fact that in 2005 Newsweek reported that the Pentagon was looking at a proposal to send Special Forces teams to advice, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite Militia men to “target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers across the border into Syria.” Now today we see death squads. Did we see at the time that that 2005 Newsweek story was written the formation of the death squads?

Heather Wokusch: I believe we probably saw it way before then but this is when it came to light. And again, the very concept of the U.S. actually being involved in something like that again would relate back to the Bush perspective on the world and that is that you are with us or you are against us. And it doesn’t matter: if you are against us we will use whatever it is that it takes to bring you into submission – I guess if we could use those words. And so from that rather skewed perspective one would argue that the concept of a death squad would be acceptable, much in the same way that it was, for example, for Reagan, John Negroponte, whoever. But for the American people the concept that we would actually be involved in abductions and executions and abuse of that nature is just shocking. Even today you constantly hear the news that some people dressed in Iraqi police uniforms kidnapped and murdered how many people….well, you know they probably actually are police and in many instances they probably are funded by the U.S.

So it clearly is a very ugly element of war. And one that is taking place one would argue even today.

Dori Smith: We’re speaking with Heather Wokusch, author of The Progressives’ Handbook, a series that provides a journalist’s history into the full impact of Bush Administration policy. In terms of the environment, we learn about the U.S. Military’s use of depleted uranium, DU, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On America, Heather turns her attention to mountain-top mining, the Clear Skies Initiative, or as she puts it, “Pass the Inhaler,” “Clear Skies, Black Lungs.” There is a section called, “Superfund Rest in Peace,” and various others, one on contaminated military bases, one on nuclear plants, one on backroom deals and more.

Then there are Heather’s trademark; “Ten Easy Ways to Make a Difference Now”. This is part reference material for teachers and activists and part inspirational list, something to keep us from feeling hopeless. For those who are wondering why we have seen so many outbreaks of E. coli there is a possible answer in Heather’s section on the environment.

On page 55 of Volume 2 of The Progressives’ Handbook we learn that one of the Bush Administration’s first acts in office was to freeze the EPA’s proposal for stronger standards on U.S. sewage systems treatment. As a result, Wokusch writes, “over a trillion gallons of untreated sewage entered American waterways in the following four years.” And in 2003 she writes, “Water treatment plants were allowed to discharge sewage which hadn’t been treated for disease causing pathogens. The next time you take a dip, writes Heather Wokusch, you could have E. coli bacteria, the Hepatitis A virus or Giardia protozoa swimming right along next to you. I asked Heather to talk about one of her suggestions which is to learn about Superfund sites and other kinds of environmental problems that are local.

From The Progressives’ Handbook, p.55 paragraph 2.

“After an exhaustive five-year study, in January 2001 the EPA put forward strong standards regarding US sewage systems treatment. Predictably, Bush froze the EPA’s proposal upon assuming office, and as a result, over a trillion gallons of untreated sewage entered American waterways in the following four years.

Then in November 2003, the EPA proposed that on rainy days, water treatment plants should be allowed to discharge sewage which hasn’t been treated for disease-causing pathogens. In short, the next time you take a dip, you could have e. coli bacteria, the hepatitis A virus, or Giardia protozoa swimming right along next to you.” [15. The Center for American Progress & OMB Watch for the Citizens for Sensible Safeguards Coalition, “Special Interest Takeover: The Bush Administration and the Dismantling of Public Safeguards – A Record of Rollbacks,” (May 25, 2004) pg. 35, at www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=8202]

Heather Wokusch: It’s all around the general theme of taking it personally. When we think of global warming, for example, it seems like this kind of broad-based thing that somehow is affecting Eskimos but we don’t tend to take it personally unless we see Al Gore’s film or really look at these issues as affecting our lives.

So each of these ten points elucidates ways in which we can more clearly understand how the changes in the environment really do affect us. You know it really does affect our health, it affects our lives, and it affects the future of our children. And so at the end of each of these chapters is a list of various ways we can take these things personally but then once we have taken them personally do something about it. For example, as you had mentioned identify the toxicity in your community.

In the Weapons of Mass Destruction chapter I explain how you can identify if in fact there are horrible facilities building biological weapons or nuclear weapons in your neighborhood. I think that’s the first step because often we do have these things in our neighborhood and we don’t even know about it.

Dori Smith: On page 39 in your chapter on elections and voting you bring it down to how money, big money, controls US politics. And the only question is how to stop that. You have all kinds of important facts in here and I just want to mention a few of them: The 2000 Presidential campaign of George Bush, the Republican National Committee and then Governor Bush were the lucky recipients of over 200 million of special interest cash. You spell that out as 20.7 million from energy interests, 15.1 million from the health care industry, 14.6 million from agribusiness and 13.9 million from auto manufacturers and other transportation interests. Talk about that part of your book that has to do with this huge economic impact on our democracy.

Heather Wokusch: And indeed this goes back to what we were talking about before with the media. For example, here in Austria you don’t need to raise so much money because you don’t need to buy television ads and the amount of other kinds of advertisements that you can buy is highly regulated. So we first need to look at our election system and the way that it really has become corrupt in so many ways but certainly the fact that it is votes for sale. Now in relation to this 200 million of special interest cash, what it goes on to say is how individuals from each of these interests (be they energy interests or health care, or agribusiness or what have you) individuals from those lobbying areas were then dutifully appointed to Bush’s transition team and given power over the country’s agenda. It is a way in which corporations clearly have bought their way into the US electoral system.

I wonder if you remember in 2004 a gentleman named Dr. Lawrence Britt looked at the different fascist regimes. Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, what have you, and he identified 14 defining characteristics that were common to each of these. The interesting thing is that this list of 14 characteristics absolutely describes what is going on in the United States. And as I recall one of them was fraudulent elections, another was rampant cronyism, and another was that corporate power is protected. For example, the business aristocracy and the industrial aristocracy are the ones who put the government leaders into power creating this mutually-beneficial relationship. And I believe that’s shown nowhere more beautifully than in the numbers of the donations to the campaigns and then to see who actually gets appointed to these jobs later on.

Dori Smith: You are talking about the 14 defining characteristics of Fascism right? Dr. Lawrence Britt and that’s still available online I believe at Rense.com

We’re talking with Heather Wokusch. Let’s turn to a few of the people that you are speaking about when you cite individuals because I found it fascinating that you have listed people like Jeffrey Holmstead who became the EPA’s air administrator after being a lawyer for electric utilities. Or oil industry lobbyist Stephen Griles who became Deputy Secretary of Interior. And let’s not forget timber industry lobbyist Mark Ray who became head of the Forest Service. These are big perks for individuals who contributed either time or promotion if you will for the Bush Administration, and for Republicans.

Heather Wokusch: Indeed, and just across the board the individuals who were promoted or appointed to various jobs within the EPA or what have you are just so shocking. In the environment chapter I had whole sections talking about “here’s a bull in the china shop” I called it, and here’s another one and here’s another one. Because it was just so shocking how many completely inappropriate individuals were appointed to various areas. One of my favorites was [Matthew Hogan, Deputy Director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service] the gentleman who was appointed to protect animals, essentially, for the whole Endangered Species Act. He actually had been a representative from this extreme hunting association that hunted endangered species for example. This is the gentleman who is supposed to be protecting our endangered species. So clearly one way to do it is you just stock these important committees and what have you with people who are going to be working against the main cause for that committee, be it parks, be it animals, be it air, be it whatever. And this is one of the reasons that we’ve had so many rollbacks on the environment in the United States, but people don’t know about it because the people who would have complained have been fired.

The Progressives’ Handbook Vol. 2 p. 86, “Another Bull in the China Shop”

“Before joining the Fish and Wildlife Service in 2002, [Matthew] Hogan was the chief lobbyist for Safari Club International, described by the Humane Society as “one of the most extreme and elite trophy hunting organizations, representing some 40,000 wealthy trophy collectors, fostering and promoting competitive trophy hunting of exotic animals on five continents. Just the guy you want in charge of protecting endangered species.”
[Humane Society of the United States, “Trophy Hunting Advocate Named Acting Director of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,” (March 25, 2005) archived at www.yubanet.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/6/19334]

Dori Smith: I want to talk about the chapter on voting a little bit more because at the end of that chapter after telling us how important voting is and all of the things that can happen if we are not in control of elections and the campaigning of these politicians and what they are telling us, then you talk about how we can have more of a say about how our elections are run, how our voting machines are selected and used and monitoring them and all of that. Talk about that part of your book on how people can play a big role in starting to take an interest in how the elections in their own home towns and home states are run.

Heather Wokusch: I would say that this issue is even more important after the midterms; many people think that, oh the Democrats won so everything must be fine, but this cannot be further from the truth. There were more complaints regarding the electronic voting machines for example, in this election, at least Common Cause noted that there were more complaints in this election than they had received in 2004. And one could also argue that many of the electronic voting machine tricks that had been used in years passed weren’t used in this election; they are going to be saved for 2008. So it’s important that we not become and our representatives not become complacent in the face of the midterms.

For example, in relation to voting machines, I list web sites that you can go to, primarily being Black Box Voting, for example. Ways that you can contact your own Secretary of State to find out if your name is on the state’s voting list for people who are not allowed to vote. Does your state have paper trails? And who owns the machines, the voting machines that are used in your state? These are questions that we should be able to ask and clearly we should be able to get decent answers to.

There is a section on how to increase women’s power in the political process, but I think the main thing is just to look at the money behind elections. There are some amazing sites for example, opensecrets.org It’s laid out so beautifully. One section you can click on is who gives and another section is who gets. So you can see which corporations fund your candidates. What corporations fund Bush/Cheney – like that. It’s very interesting information that we aren’t usually privy to.

Dori Smith: Heather Wokusch talk about what listeners can do immediately to inspire themselves into action.

Heather Wokusch: We spoke before about this strict father family and the damage that it has done. This is one model and we spoke also about Lakoff’s idea of the nurturing parent family with the ideals of freedom and community building and open two-way communication, trust, for example. So I think that the most important place to start is to look inside one’s own heart and soul and decide which family structure, to continue the metaphor, do I think is appropriate for my country. And if it isn’t this strict father thing, if it’s more along the idea of the nurturing parent family, then that means that each of us has the responsibility to nurture not only ourselves through getting good information and through being very careful that we don’t land in apathy or political burn out because of all of the bad news. So first to nurture ourselves. To find active ways to get involved. And then second, nurturance means that you have to reach out to other people. It’s the responsibility of saying OK. I am going to use this two-way communication. I’m going to tell people what I’ve learned. I’m going to be of service to my community and really get some of this information out because I understand that the ultimate goal is more freedom and indeed a better society for all of us. So that’s getting a bit grandiose perhaps towards the end but I believe that just the smallest actions that one takes to nurture one’s own information and inspiration and the smallest actions that one takes for other people also can add up to a huge difference.

Now what I would like to invite anybody listening on a personal level is to visit the web site for the books. It’s called progressiveshandbook.com Part of this is something called an ‘action center’. I put this up there for those days that you are just feeling bummed out and you just need a little inspiration and lift and it has everything ranging from people that I find inspiring; for example this month one of the people is a young Iranian woman talking about what its like to live there. And if you have anything that you would like to add to the action center, any great quotes or people that you think are especially inspiring, then write me, let me know, and we will add it to the site. So let’s do what we can through online – and also within our own communities – to connect and just make sure that whatever family system, again, that our country has is one that we approve of and that we believe is the best one in order to take our country for the next years to come.

Dori Smith: Heather thank you for joining us.

Heather Wokusch: I thank you so much for having me on the show. It was wonderful to talk with you. Thank you so much.

Dori Smith: And just a reminder for those who want to get active by participating in the January 27th March on Washington to Demand that Congress Make Good on the Peace Mandate and Bring Troops Home From Iraq, you can contact Unitedforpeace.org or your local office of the American Friends Service Committee. The national web site is AFSC.org and they are helping to coordinate buses.

For Talk Nation Radio I’m Dori Smith. Talk Nation Radio is produced in the studios of WHUS, Radio for the People, at the University of Connecticut. WHUS.org to listen live Wed. at 5 PM. Talknation.org or Talknationradio.org for transcripts, audio links and discussions. Our music is by composer and musician Fritz Heede, his web page is Fritzheede.com

You can read articles by Heather Wokusch at Dissident Voice and we particularly recommend that you take time to look at this piece on her web page Heatherwokusch.com How Independent Radio Helped Depose Spain’s Aznar (and can dump Bush too)