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Nobel Prize: A tale of ignoble peace laureates

12 Oct

One man introduced indefinite detention and expanded the deadly global drone war. Another was the architect of the deliberate mass killing of civilian populations in Indochina. What do they have in common? Both are Nobel Peace laureates.

Gandhi never got one. Al Gore did. In one of the stranger ironies befitting of both Kafka and Orwell, sometimes the makers of permanent war are awarded for bringing temporary peace. Sometimes they don’t even get that far.

With the winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize set to be announced in Oslo, Norway on Friday, the shadow of Barack Obama still looms large. In 2009, the committee awarded the current US president “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Nominations for the award are due by February 1, meaning Obama had served as America’s executive for less than two weeks when the Norwegian Nobel Committee selected him. Perhaps it was wishful thinking.

Since then, Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law, making it legal to indefinitely detain US citizens. There are also the deadly drone wars in Yemen and Pakistan, the war waged in Libya, the Afghan surge and a secret “kill list” revealed this year by The New York Times, which grants a select few American officials the option to mark perceived national security threats – foreign citizens or otherwise – for assassination. Ironic, yes, but they never could have known.

Even attempts for the committee to play it more conservatively have backfired. Last year, the committee decided to recognize three women for their role in a non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work. The three women included a Yemeni activist, Liberian President Johnson Sirleaf and her fellow citizen and civil society activist Leymah Gbowee.

On Wednesday, Gbowee publically lambasted Sirleaf for failing to fight corruption and nepotism in Liberia.

Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission even put Sirleaf on a list of 52 people who should be sanctioned for committing war crimes for supporting former Liberian warlord and President Charles Taylor in the late 1980s.

Taylor, who infamously campaigned on the slogan “He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him” during the 1997 general election that followed a war that killed over 200,000 people, fortunately did not win a Nobel Prize.

The post-Obama rehabilitation of the prize might not have gone as smoothly as hoped, but the prize’s history is replete with examples of questionable choices, to say the least.

Chief among them was the 1973 prize awarded to North Vietnamese leader Le Duc Tho and Henry Kissinger. Tho rejected the prize, telling Kissinger that peace had not been restored in South Vietnam. Kissinger for his part accepted the prize “with humility.”

Before, during and after his acceptance of the prize, Kissinger would be implicated in assassination, war crimes and the slaughter of civilians in a large swath of countries: East Timor, Pakistan, Greece, Cyprus, Chile, Argentina, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

This year’s winner(s) will be drawn from 231 different nominations, 188 of whom are individuals, while the rest are organizations.

Among them are Russia’s own radio station Ekho Moskvy and the Memorial human rights center.

Also on the list is Myanmar’s President Thein Sein, who might be recognized for his role in moderating Myanmar’s notoriously repressive military regime. But even Sein has been implicated in confiscating land from paddy farmers which was later sold to an officer from the effectively paramilitary United Wa State Arm, who then used the land for the production of amphetamines.

If Sein were to win, it might cause a scandal. But it certainly wouldn’t be the biggest shock in the prize’s hundred-plus years.

Source

Pirate Bay Founder Svartholm Warg arrested in Cambodia

7 Sep

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg (L).(AFP Photo / Bertil Ericson)

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, co-founder of the popular ‘Pirate Bay’ file-sharing website, has been arrested in Cambodia. Warg was wanted by Sweden on copyright infringement charges after failing to report for a yearlong prison sentence.

Authorities arrested Warg in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in an apartment above The Cadillac Bar and Grill, a popular expat hangout, TorrentFreak.com reported. The Swedish government issued an international arrest warrant for Warg in January, after he failed to appear for the start of his jail term.

“His arrest was made at the request of the Swedish government for a crime related to information technology,” Cambodian police spokesperson Kirth Chantharith told AFP “We don’t have an extradition treaty with Sweden but we’ll look into our laws and see how we can handle this case.”

Warg was one of four co-founders of BitTorrent website The Pirate Bay, which was temporarily taken offline by Swedish authorities after a court ruled in 2009 that all four individuals were guilty of encouraging copyright violations, and sentenced them to one year in Swedish prison and millions of dollars in fines.

In a 2010 appeal against the verdict, the four maintained that no pirated material was actually distributed through their site. Three of the co-founders had their jail time reduced to sentences ranging from four to ten months, but their fines increased as a result of the appeal.

Warg – who was living in Phnom Penh at the time – claimed that his health was too poor for him to attend his sentencing, prompting the judge to uphold his prison sentence and $1.1 million in fines.

According to TorrentFreak, health issues have been a concern for Warg since 2010. He moved to Cambodia several years ago.

Source

Chemical Warfare At Its Worst

11 Sep

The Harrowing Legacy of Agent Orange

by N.D. JAYAPRAKASH

The shocking images of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York is well-etched in the minds of almost everyone who had access to a TV set. Similarly, all those who were adults or in their teens in the late 1960s and early 1970s and had access to radio or newspapers would have heard or read about the Vietnam War. Some of them may be familiar with the phrase “Agent Orange” and may even have come across some fleeting reference about the same. However, the devastating effect of the chemical warfare that the U.S. military had unleashed on Vietnam from 1961 to 1971 is hardly ever in the news despite being hundreds of times deadlier than the 9/11 attack in terms of death, devastation and long-term impact. This report is an attempt to shed light on some aspects of this 50-year old critical issue that has gone largely unnoticed and unaddressed.

The Second International Conference of Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin was held in Hanoi from 07 to 10 August 2011 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first use of herbicides in Vietnam by the U.S. military during the then ongoing civil war between the Ho Chi Minh-led communist regime of North Vietnam and the U.S.-propped regime of South Vietnam. (The first Conference was held in 2006.) The U.S. Administration began ruthlessly using chemical-weapons on Vietnam (notably in areas theoretically under the “protection”of the U.S.-backed regime) exactly sixteen years after President Harry Truman had shocked the world by his decision to test nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 06 and 09 August 1945. The thoughtless use of these chemical-weapons, especially the one in the form of an herbicide called “Agent Orange” that contained trace amounts of a byproduct called TCDD (dioxin – one of the most toxic-chemicals known to humans), has had devastating effects. [1] No less than 80 million liters of herbicides were sprayed over Vietnam from 1961 to 1971, which had effectively destroyed over 3 million hectares of forests, mangroves and cultivable land and had devastated the lives of more than 3 million people in Vietnam alone.

LETHAL EFFECTS

The U.S. military used Agent Orange and other herbicides from 1961 to 1971 reportedly to save the lives of U.S. and allied soldiers by defoliating dense vegetation in the Vietnamese jungles and therefore reducing the chances of ambush. In the process, at least 3 million hectares of forests, mangroves and cultivable land were destroyed with toxins and about 4.8 million Vietnamese were exposed to the effects of the dioxin-laced “Agent Orange” of whom at least 3 million were affected. As a result, over 400,000 of them have since died and about 500,000 children have been born with all kinds of birth-defects ranging from acute physical deformities to extreme mental disabilities or a combination of both. A large section of U.S. and allied forces, who had served in Vietnam, has also met with a similar fate. Justice continues to elude all of them. In addition, the former U.S. military bases in Vietnam, where the herbicides were stored and loaded onto the airplanes for spraying, are suspected to contain high levels of dioxin in the soil, which continue to pose a threat to the surrounding communities.

The Second International Conference, which was organized by the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange (VAVA), was attended by over 200 delegates, half of whom were from 24 other countries. They included Agent Orange victims from not only Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia but also from U.S.A, South Korea, Australia, and Canada. Victims of chemical warfare [2] from Sardasht (Iran), Marivan (Iran) and Halabja (Iraq) and victims of chemical disasters from Seveso (1976) and Bhopal (1984) also attend the Conference. Sanjay Verma, who lost his parents and six siblings in the Bhopal disaster and in its aftermath, along with this writer represented the Bhopal gas victims at the event.

The fact that U.S. and allied soldiers also became victims of Agent Orange testifies to the recklessness with which the U.S. military had sprayed these herbicides over Vietnam. The most striking example in this regard is the case relating to the Zumwalt family. Admiral Zumwalt, as commander of the U.S. Naval Forces in Vietnam during 1968-1970 and as the one who had commanded the flotilla of Swift Boats that patrolled the coasts, harbors, and rivers of Vietnam, was instrumental is increasing the area and intensity with which Agent Orange was sprayed over Vietnam. His son, Lt. Zumwalt, who was commander of one of the Swift Boats that had patrolled areas that had been worst hit by Agent Orange, died of cancer in 1988 when he was just 42 years old. His grandson, Russell Zumwalt (born in 1977) suffers from mental retardation. Their unenviable plight is recounted in a moving account titled “My Father, My Son” (Macmillan, 1986). Lt. Zumwalt believed that Agent Orange had caused his cancer as well as the severe learning disabilities in his son.

Heather Bowser, a second generation U.S. Agent Orange victim (whose late father, Bill Morris, had served as a U.S. soldier in Vietnam in 1968 and had died of Agent Orange related disease in 1998) was born without her right leg below the knee, the big toe on her left foot and several of her fingers. The 38-year old Heather, the first second generation U.S. Agent Orange victim to interact with her counterparts in Vietnam, was there to seek justice for all Agent Orange victims. Concerned lawyers, scientists, and social activists from several countries as well as ambassadors of China, Greece, Iran, South Africa and Venezuela were among others who attended it.

Rosemarie Höhn-Mizo of Germany and Masako Sakata of Japan, who are now in their early 60s, had nothing to do with the war in Vietnam. Their tragedy was that they happened to marry U.S. war veterans, who had served in Vietnam in the late 1960s in areas that were sprayed with Agent Orange. Their husbands, George Mizo and Greg Davis, who realized that they were suffering from the effects of Agent Orange and who went back to Vietnam to seek justice for the victims of Agent Orange, subsequently died of cancer in 2002 and 2003 respectively. Rosemarie, as president of the International Committee of the Vietnam Friendship Village Project that supports Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange, and Masako, as a documentary film maker, are carrying on the struggle to seek justice for all Agent Orange victims. They too attended the Conference.

It is not known if President John Kennedy, who had first sanctioned the use of herbicides on 10 August 1961, was aware of the presence of dioxin in them and about the nature of their toxicity. Official reports have tried to argue that at the time these herbicides were permitted to be used on Vietnam, they were in fact sold commercially in the U.S. [3] In other words, these herbicides were then legally produced and used in the U.S. However, there was one crucial difference: there was wide variation in the amount of dioxin present in the batch of Agent Orange that was sold domestically and in the consignment that was exported to Vietnam. It appears that, “in domestic preparations, it is present in much lower concentrations, 0.05 ppm (parts per million) as opposed to peaks of 50 ppm in stock shipped to Vietnam. Therefore dioxin contamination of Agent Orange was up to 1,000 times higher than in domestic herbicides.”[4]

While 0.05ppm was considered the “safe” level for domestic sale of Agent Orange in the U.S., the manufacturers (Dow, Monsanto, and 5 other companies) and the U.S. Administration consciously manufactured and exported Agent Orange to Vietnam with unacceptable levels of toxicity. They knew very well that using herbicides with high levels of dioxin would cause irreparable harm to the Vietnamese people, who happened to be in the vicinity of the spraying area, and would result in widespread destruction of the exposed environment. Thus, the U.S. Administration and the concerned manufacturers knowingly committed an abhorrent war crime – a crime against humanity – for which they have to be held accountable and punished. However, Dow, one of the guilty chemical companies, has conveniently placed the entire blame on the U.S. Administration by propounding the spacious plea that: “As a nation at war, the U.S. government compelled a number of companies to produce Agent Orange under the Defense Production Act. The government specified how it would be produced and controlled its use.”[5] While Monsanto has taken the following position: “We believe that the adverse consequences alleged to have arisen out of the Vietnam War, including the use of Agent Orange, should be resolved by the governments that were involved.” [6]

The U.S. Administration cannot claim that it had the right to use chemical-weapons because the U.S. was not a party to the Geneva Protocol of 1925 [7] until 1975. If signing of international protocols has to be the yardstick for determining culpability, no action should have been contemplated against terrorists like Osama Bin Laden for the 9/11 attack because he was not a party to any international treaty governing conduct of war! The U.S. Administration is guilty of willfully poisoning the people of Vietnam (as well as its own soldiers and those of its allies) and of destroying the environment; it can in no way claim ignorance about the grievous consequences of its action. Thus, there is a strong case for the Government of Vietnam to seek suitable remedy before the International Court of Justice and to highlight the matter before the Non-Aligned Movement, the UN General Assembly, and every available international fora for eliciting appropriate support for their just cause.

Due to consistent protest from the then North Vietnam regime and the mounting evidence about the high toxicity of dioxin, concerned people across the U.S., including the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), expressed their firm opposition to the use of dioxin based herbicides. As a result, “On 15 April 1970, the Secretaries of Health, Education, and Welfare; Interior; and Agriculture announced the suspension of uncontrolled domestic use of herbicides containing 2, 4, 5–T. That same day, the Deputy Secretary of Defense suspended temporarily all use of Orange in military operations pending a more thorough evaluation of the situation.”[8] This decision practically ended yet another diabolical and sordid act of the U.S. Administration during the 20th century because the decision was never rescinded.

Considering the enormous level of destruction and devastation that the U.S. military had unleashed on Vietnam, at the time of signing the Paris Peace Accord on 27 January 1973, the U.S. made a solemn commitment to undertake necessary action to heal the wounds of war. Under Article 21 of the Accord, the U.S. pledged that: “In pursuance of its traditional policy, the United States will contribute to healing the wounds of war and to postwar reconstruction of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and throughout Indochina.”[9] This promise was followed by a letter dated 01 February 1973 in which President Nixon had promised that the U.S. would contribute “in the range of $3.25 billion” in postwar reconstruction assistance to Vietnam over a five-year period. [10] The U.S. has completely failed to comply with this commitment despite the National Academy of Sciences’ Report affirming as early as 1974 that:“it is the Committee’s firm belief that rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts should …be undertaken as rapidly as conditions permit….. since any delay will make its accomplishment more difficult.” [11]

Considering the enormity of the task of detoxifying 3 million hectares of affected environment and of medically, economically and socially rehabilitating 3 million dioxin-victims, the proposed plan of the ‘U.S.–Vietnam Dialogue Group on Agent Orange/Dioxin’ to tackle the problem over the next ten years (2010-2019) with a total budget of just $300 million is rather a farfetched one. [12] It only amounts to an average expenditure of just $5 per dioxin-victim for meeting all their needs per year and another $5 per hectare for detoxifying the affected land per year! Effectively, the Dialogue Group’s proposed plan grossly belittles the enormity and gravity of the problem while making a pretence that effective steps are being taken to remedy the same.

U.S. representatives on the Dialogue Group, who include senior members of the Ford Foundation and the Aspen Institute, did not attend the Second International Congress despite claiming that the Dialogue Group was set up to support the cause of Agent Orange Victims. It is, indeed, ironical that the U.S., which had no qualms in spending an estimated $658 billion (in 2008 dollars) for waging the Vietnam War and in spending an almost equal amount for waging the Iraq War [13], is so financially hard-pressed when it comes to the question of raising requisite funds for healing the wounds of war! Retribution in the case of the 9/11 attack has been dealt with by the U.S. Administration on an entirely different level. This was despite the fact that the impact of the chemical warfare on Vietnam was hundreds of times greater than the impact of the 9/11 attack in terms of grievous human and environmental effects.

The U.S. Administration has either arrested or killed most of the alleged perpetrators of the 9/11 attack. Over $38 billion has been paid out as compensation to the 9/11 victims, including $8.7 billion for 2880 cases of death (at an average of $3.1 million each), and $23.3 billion as compensation for property damages. Injury cases, numbering about 2680, were also paid over $1 billion as compensation which works out to an average of over $373,000 each. [14] Whereas in the case of the Agent Orange attack, no one has been arrested or prosecuted in the last fifty years. Of the 105,000 U.S. war veterans, who had served in Vietnam and who had reportedly suffered from the effects of Agent Orange, 52,000 have been awarded a total compensation of just $197 million at an average of about $3800 each. [15] The glaring double-standards in the award of compensation by the U.S. Administration even to its own citizens are evident on the face of it! As already noted, Vietnam has been promised a total of just $300 million in the next ten years for remediation of the effected land and as medical assistance!

Under the circumstances, despite President Kennedy’s questionable role in ordering the use of herbicides on Vietnam, it has to be noted that, he was the one who actually tried for a rapprochement with Vietnam as early as 1962. [16] Not only was President Kennedy against escalation of the war in Vietnam, but also he had already initiated the process of rapprochement with the Soviet Union through, what became known as, the McCloy-Zorin Accord on General and Complete Disarmament that was signed on 20 September 1961. [17]Subsequently, on 20 December 1961, the historical McCloy-Zorin Accord was adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly [18] and serious negotiations had begun under the aegis of the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee (ENDC) for implementing the Accord. However, the entire process was reversed by the wanton assassination of President Kennedy by forces associated with the military industrial complex, which felt threatened by the prospect of world peace if the disarmament process progressed. Kennedy’s assassination, thus, cleared the way for U.S. combat troops to land in Vietnam and for the escalation of the war.

The Second International Conference in its Appeal [19] has called upon the U.S. Administration and the U.S companies (Dow, Monsanto, etc.) to assume responsibility for the horrendous crime it committed against the people of Vietnam and against its own soldiers and those of its allies. The Appeal noted that the U.S Administration and the said U.S. companies have an abiding duty to take appropriate remedial measures for detoxifying the affected environment and for medical, economic and social rehabilitation of all the dioxin-victims. Unfortunately, the Appeal is silent on the role of the Government of Vietnam and other concerned governments and peoples in pressurizing the U.S. Administration to fulfill its duties and responsibilities towards the victims of Agent Orange and to take the U.S Administration to task for the war crime it committed against the people of Vietnam and against humanity in general.

N.D. Jayaprakash is a Co-Convener, Bhopal Gas Peedith Sangharsh Sahayog Samiti (BGPSSS – a national coalition of organizations for supporting the cause of the Bhopal gas victims) and Joint Secretary, Delhi Science Forum. He can be reached at: jaypdsf@gmail.com.

Notes.

[1] (a) Report of the National Academy of Sciences, “The Effects of Herbicides in South Vietnam” (Washington DC, 1974) at: http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/star/images/225/2250215001a.pdf

(b) Jeanne Stellman et al, “The Extent and Patterns of Usage of Agent Orange and Other Herbicides in Vietnam”, NATURE, 17 April 2003, pp.681-687, at: http://www.stellman.com/jms/Stellman1537.pdf

[2] Saddam Hussein, as an ally of the U.S., had used a variety of chemical weapons (including phosgene, sarin and mustard gas) primarily on the Kurdish people during the Iraq-Iran war of 1980-1988

[3] Willard J. Webb and Walter S. Poole, “The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam – 1971-1973”, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington, DC, 2007, p.378 at: http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/doctrine/history/vn71_73.pdf

[4] Hugh Warwick, The Ecologist, Vol.28, No.5, Sept-Oct.-1998, p.264 at http://www.theecologist.org/back_archive/19701999/

[5] See: http://www.dow.com/sustainability/debates/agentorange/

[6] See: http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/agent-orange-background-monsanto-involvement.asp

[7] “Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare”

[8] Webb and Poole, op cit., p.380

[9] Ibid, p.407

[10] See: Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, 28 March 2009, p.4 at: http://www.fordfoundation.org/pdfs/about/agent-orange/Martin-CRS-Presentation-DC-052809.pdf

[11] See: Report of the National Academy of Sciences, op cit., p.41 (s-16)

[12] See: http://www.aspeninstitute.org/policy-work/agent-orange

[13] See: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/25/national/main4296368.shtml [16 July 2009] (Other reports indicate that the U.S. may have spent over three trillion dollars or more on the Iraq War. See: article titled “The three trillion dollar war” by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3419840.ece)

[14] See: http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/defenseandsecurity/a/randon911.htm and http://www.justice.gov/final_report.pdf

[15] See: http://www.vba.va.gov/bln/21/benefits/herbicide/AOno2.htm

[16] See: The Boston Globe, 06 June 2005 at: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/06/06/papers_reveal_jfk_efforts_on_vietnam/

[17] See: http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/arms-control-disarmament/mccloy-zorin-accords_1961-09-20.htm

[18] See: http://www.un.org/depts/dhl/resguide/r16.htm [A/RES/1722(XVI)]

[19] See: www.vava.org.vn

Source

Review of Call of Duty: Black Ops

3 Jan

Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010) is yet another first-person shooter fetishizing imperialist war and allowing children to be their own one-man death-squads in a virtual world. America’s youth will be tossing grenades, firing automatic weapons, slitting throats and even occasionally committing torture on another battlefield waged across the living rooms of America and, when they tire of this, will be embarking on a cheesy add-on quest to defend the White House from hordes of zombies with John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon as their companions.

With a single-player campaign mode that rips off more Vietnam War films than one can count (with notable references to Apocalypse Now!, The Deer Hunter and even themes from The Manchurian Candidate) and a frenetic multiplayer mode that has players killing one another for money to be spent on in-game weapons-upgrades, Black Ops has everything that adolescent American wants. Yet, while this game will satiate this boyish bloodlust for a few weeks, this will inevitably be remembered as merely “another Call of Duty game.” The significance of this review is not to analyze necessarily what this game is, but what it represents in terms of capitalism’s fetishization of violence and the implications of this fetish in our understanding of American imperialism.

Call of Duty: From World War to Whatever Sells

The Call of Duty series wasn’t always the degenerate cliché of online butchery combined with a lame excuse of a story trying desperately to hold itself together that it is now. Rather, it had its beginnings as a World War II shooter that drew on historical accounts, interviews of veterans and a more-or-less earnest attempt to create an immersive WWII experience. To its credit, Call of Duty was one of the first shooters of this kind to allow the player to play as a Soviet soldier fighting against the Nazis on the Eastern Front and, while the first game was bogged down in the Enemy at the Gates portrayal of the Red Army being disorganized and having as much to fear from their own officers as the enemy they were fighting, later installments were less chauvinist in their portrayal of the Soviet resistance to fascism. Call of Duty: World At War even allowed the player to play the part of a Soviet soldier whose journey takes him from the victory at Stalingrad to the capturing of the Reichstag.

The franchise began to deviate away from its focus on WWII with the release of Call of Duty Modern Warfare, which sought to apply Call of Duty 2‘s gameplay to a fictional contemporary war between the US and Russia, with a side campaign in the middle east. Here the emphasis was less on story and more on creating a gameplay experience that was more easily adapted to Call of Duty’s successful online mode. Rather than having players fighting one another online using WWII era weapons and being dressed either as Allies or Nazis, they would now be able to do battle with modern weapons complete with scopes, laser sights, under-the-barrel grenade launchers and being outfitted either as Marine Force Recon, the British SAS or a Russian Spetznaz instead.

The result was that Modern Warfare was wildly successful, leading to its own independent sequel, Modern Warfare 2. With the overarching plot having been resolved in those games, the makers of Call of Duty tried to get the same utility of having modern weapons for their online gameplay while not retelling the same stories they had been thus far. Their solution came in the form of Call of Duty: Black Ops, combining a “cowboys and Indians” Cold War narrative with gratuitous violence and action-movie plagiarism. Become Imperialism’s Hang-Man

The “plot” of Black Ops’ single-player campaign, revolving around the Soviet Union plotting to release chemical weapons against the United States, has the player doing imperialism’s dirty work, from attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro during the Bay of Pigs to participating in the Tet offensive and slaughtering hordes of Cuban, Russian and Vietnamese along the way. As well, every effort is made to make the Cubans, Russians and Vietnamese appear to be savage and brutal. At one point the character must escape from a labor camp in the USSR and is forced to play Russian Roulette while being beaten and shouted at.

The attempt to tap into latent American anti-communism is obvious, resulting in characters talking about how they need to stop “the communists” as if they are a collective horde of unwashed barbarians beating at the doors of American empire (all while ignoring the United State’s role all throughout the Cold War). Anyone who makes any effort to understand the geopolitics of the Cold War era would find this national-chauvinist perception both typical and laughable, yet it is obvious that the Black Ops production team wasn’t looking for the sort of historical accuracy they sought out in earlier titles. Rather, the “enemy” simply makes for a convenient adversary to be slaughtered in droves. Some on the left have focused their criticism chiefly on the anti-communism of Black Ops, yet the more important message of this game is less specifically anti-communist than pro-imperialist.

One Irony Worth Noting

There are many inconsistencies, ironies and other aspects of this game which would make the class-conscious player grimace, laugh out loud or otherwise be incapable of taking the game seriously. One such irony is the focus of this games plot around a former Nazi scientist who is working with the Soviets to release chemical weapons against American cities. This is ironic, being that the greatest ally to former Nazis after the war was the United States, who collaborated with former members of the Third Reich to construct think tanks for the purposes of undermining the Soviet Union in the early Cold War.

More Blood, Less Substance

One characteristic of Call of Duty’s degeneration has been an increase in the brutality with which the character is made to kill their enemies. For instance, the first games had the option of hitting one’s opponents with the butt of their rifle or pistol if the enemy got too close. In Modern Warfare and other later installments the rifle butt was replaced with a combat knife for slashing the enemy. Additionally, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops have an increase in “special” melee kills in which certain opponents can be killed in a non-standard melee attack. These “special” kills are often excessively brutal, involving sawing through an enemy’s neck with a knife or even hacking into their spine with a hatchet later on. If one combines this with an increase in the power of weapons to dismember enemies and burn opponents alive while they writhe and scream, the experience becomes a visceral orgy of blood and death on par with the Postal games.

The Torture Scene

As if this weren’t enough, there is also a part of the game wherein the player must torture a man by inserting glass into their mouth and punching them in the jaw until they surrender the desired information. While this scene isn’t very prolonged, the idea that this would make it into a game released after the United States’ role in directly torturing detainees (as well as outsourcing torture to private contractors and rightist groups) has become public knowledge demonstrates an extremely reactionary sentiment towards the use of sadistic measures for advancing the cause of imperialism. The idea that adolescent children, who represent the chief demographic for games like this one, would have first-hand experience within the virtual realm of committing acts of torture in the name of imperialism is alarming to say the least.

The Murder behind the Mundane

The most alarming aspect of Black Ops’ brutality is that it demonstrates just how desensitized America’s youth are to such violence. Typical first-person shooters have become mundane, necessitating higher levels of violence, gore and brutality to keep adolescents entertained. To keep hawking their wares, game makers need to take it to the next level because they have exceeded in numbing their consumers to the reality of war through repetition. To merely kill within the virtual world is not enough; one needs to be able to break their enemies apart into little pieces and watch with sadistic glee as armies become limp, bloody piles at their feet.

The child develops the perfect mentality for a soldier fighting imperialism’s battles, able to slaughter men, women and children without a second thought for the humanity of those they destroy. It’s no wonder that games have consciously been used as recruitment tools by the United States military, or that the CIA itself has been responsible for contributing funding and expertise in games that involve the enemies of US hegemony.

Conclusion: Fascist “Art” for the Xbox Generation

In the United States, there is often a glaring double-standard with how violent media is perceived. Whenever a school shooting or other tragedy involving youth violence in suburbia occurs, the focus immediately turns to the music they listen to or the video games they play. However, when American soldiers open fire on civilians from a helicopter and shred journalists with 50 caliber rounds, no one stops to consider how violent media may have brought them to where they are. What could make it so that a soldier can murder men, women and children without batting an eye? What force, what socialization, can work to desensitize the agents of imperialism to the atrocities they visit on other human beings?

The answer is that capitalist media, from music to film, from its documentation of its history to the video games that end up on store shelves, seeks to fetishize violence and dull the senses of its consumers to the horrors of imperialist war. The same efforts are undertaken whenever an empire seeks to undertake wars for the purposes of expanding their dominion. Call of Duty: Black Ops is an exemplary example of such media.

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Cold War Killer File: Ronald Reagan

16 Aug

The Man & the Myth

“I’d like to harness their youthful energy with a strap.”–Concerning student demonstrations in California, 1966

“The entire graduated income tax structure was created by Karl Marx. It has no justification in getting government revenue.”–During the 1966 gubernatorial campaign in California

Ronald Reagan was the 40th President of the United States, ruling from 1981-1989. The American media portrays him as a great leader and hero who single-handedly won the Cold War, fixed the economy and gave new spirit to the United States. Liberals and conservatives alike line up to sing his praises endlessly, worshipping him as some sort of God of Americanism. Conservatives try their best to imitate his campaign policies and invoke his name, spinning tales about how great the theory of “Reaganomics” worked. We are told over and over that he was the greatest President and world leader to ever walk the halls of the White House. It’s time to separate truth from myth regarding Reagan’s legacy—in this article we will examine Ronald Reagan’s presidency and give our readers the story that few ever hear from the corporate media. The Reality of Reaganism

“We should declare war on North Vietnam. We could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it, and still be home by Christmas.”–1966

“Welfare recipients are a faceless mass waiting for a handout.”–1966

During the Reagan era, wages stagnated, worker benefits declined, working hours increased and employers were allowed to crack down violently on labor unions as well as ignore labor laws entirely. Contrary to the preachings of neo-liberals, Reagan’s “trickle-down economics” enriched the few and the privileged. The wealth trickled up and not down. Reagan’s vision of American democracy was that of the true capitalist—a twisted version of “democratic” society run by a small elite stratum of oligarchs over the working classes, women, the poor, the youth and the non-white. Reagan reinforced this dictatorship of the blackest reaction with the most violent foreign and domestic policy seen for decades in US history—Reagan did not hesitate to ally himself with vicious armies of fascist butchers to eliminate his enemies and maintain US hegemony worldwide. At home, his policy was much the same, overseeing massive debt and poverty, police crackdowns and a swell in the prison population. Mindless patriotism, support for the military, surges in religious extremism, 1980s decadence and yuppie culture, rigid reinforcement of traditional gender roles (including chauvinistic and homophobic policies) and “get rich” capitalist culture of the most blatant, dog-eat-dog and cutthroat-to-the-bone variety were promoted.

Ronald Reagan brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in his ceaseless expansion of US Empire, focusing on aggressive expansion by use of force. Reagan’s policies slashed all progressive social programs while at the same time ushering in the new age of the United States military-industrial machine by setting a yearly 1.5 trillion dollar military budget, a number unprecedented in world history. Anything that was opposed to the most merciless free market policies, anything that opposed the domination of the United States, anything that was progressive or even vaguely humanitarian or liberal became a target for the Reaganites. Homelessness, national debt, inflation, unemployment and foreclosures skyrocketed, the brunt of it being born by poor people, Latinos and African-Americans.

Ronald Reagan remains perhaps the most famous “Cold Warrior” for his brutal global policies, which put weapons in the hands of anyone who opposed the Soviet Union. To this end, Reagan recruited vicious legions of right-wing death squads, fascists, drug-running kingpins, killers, religious fanatics and CIA puppets to his cause. Augusto Pinochet, Mobutu Sese Seko, P.W. Botha of apartheid South Africa, Ferdinand Marcos, the Nicaraguan Contras and many other unsavory characters became “champions of democracy” and “freedom fighters.”

Ronald Reagan unleashed armies of genocideres, dictators, gangsters, torturers and spies abroad and had them trained and funded in a manner unforeseen. His Administration targeted countries like Nicaragua, Vietnam, Cuba, Libya, Iran, Cambodia, Angola, Laos, Ethiopia and Afghanistan for military intervention and takeover, regardless of the popularity of democratic or leftist governments or the wishes of the people of those countries.

Strong popular movements of peasants and workers that rose in the Third World in response to massive preventable death from malnutrition, disease such as malaria and lack of human services in their countries were denounced as “communist” and put down with violence. Civilian and military targets alike were annihilated by Reagan’s cronies. In response to strikes in places like the farming plantations in El Salvador where the workers demanded an extra 40 cents a day, or the Coca-Cola plant in Guatemala where they called for a minimum wage, right-wing militias supported by the Reagan Administration would crush these attempts at reform.

In the Court of the Nuclear-Armed Warlord

“The time has come to stop being our brother’s keeper.”–Concerning welfare budget cuts in California, 1967

“If it’s a bloodbath they want, let’s get it over with.”–Concerning student demonstrations, 1970

To this day, the mentality of the Reagan era, of the predatory, corrupt culture of greed and heartless accumulation, of the psychotic faith in the absolute virtue of the free market, continues to poison the globe. Human compassion was cast aside for animal hungers and naked self-interest; ruthless colonialist ambition became the hallmark of American foreign policy. Reagan was a mouthpiece for the wealthy, the lucky, the elite and the power-hungry, an intentionally banal and wise-cracking speaker with a “folksy” crudity and passion for sound bites that managed to pass for logical arguments and sound philosophy. Understanding Reagan’s savagery is important for understanding the nature of the imperial capitalist system we live in.

US Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon had left the White House in disgrace, the former for escalating mass murder in Vietnam and the latter for the same activities, plus illegal wiretapping. Both were subjected to the wrath of protesting Americans in the 60s and 70s. Reagan, however, would oversee the end of all that. Reagan was a known to purposefully instigate violent conflicts with student movements who opposed his policies—on May 15, 1969, Reagan sent in police to crush protests in Berkeley Park in a confrontation known as “Bloody Thursday.” 2,200 National Guard troops then occupied the city of Berkeley for two weeks on Reagan’s orders.

Reagan signed NSD 52, authorizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Guard to round up hundreds of thousands of people and place them into military concentration camps. With help from Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who would later become infamous due to the Iran-Contra Scandal, Reagan organized an operation entitled “Rex 84 Bravo.” This contingency plan contained blueprints and authorization for the federal government to declare martial law in the United States, abolish the Constitution, place the military in charge of state and local governments and give them unlimited power to move and execute citizens and imprison Americans viewed as security threats. When the air traffic controllers’ labor union, known as Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), organized a strike in 1981, Reagan ordered the 11,345 striking controllers fired. For years after the first cases of AIDS were documented, Reagan refused to use state resources or social mobilization to help contain the virus which primarily affected homosexuals. By the time he acknowledged its existence, 30,000 people had died of the disease, the epidemic of which still plagues the United States.

Due to draconian cuts in social programs, a proposed directive by the United States Department of Agriculture in Reagan’s Administration tried to have ketchup reclassified as a vegetable, which would have allowed public schools to cut out servings of vegetables for school lunches. The Office of Management and Budget reported eliminating nutritional requirements for subsidized meals for low-income students netted a potential $1 billion a year.

Some statistics regarding the era of Ronald Reagan are also relevant for analyzing his policies:

- The top one percent’s share of household wealth had dropped from 1929 to 1981 from 44% to 27%. By 1998 it was back up to 39%.

- “The Congressional Budget Office says the income gap in the United States is now the widest in 75 years. While the richest one percent of the U.S. population saw its financial wealth grow 109 percent from 1983 to 2001, the bottom two-fifths watched as its wealth fell 46 percent” – CBS

- Meanwhile, for households of all ages, between 1983 and 1998 the average household net worth of the poorest 40% in the U.S. declined 76%.

- “The biggest indicator of a healthy society – average life expectancy – dropped. People in the U.S. now don’t live even as long as people in Costa Rica. Meanwhile the U.S. infant mortality rate has risen […]” – CBS

- In 1983, 50 corporations controlled most of the news media in America. By 2002, six corporations did.

- The number of Americans without health insurance climbed 33 percent during the 1990′s, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

- Farmers in 1999 were getting 36% less for their products in real dollars than in 1984.

- In 1980 there were less than 500,000 people in prison in the U.S. By 2000 there were two million. In 1980, 8% of the prisoners were there for drug offenses; by 1998, 28% were.

- Ninety percent of young white male workers are now doing worse than they would have 20 years ago. Adjusted for inflation, the income of a recent male high school graduate declined 28% between 1973 and 1997.

- Wages for the bottom 10% of all wage earners fell by 9.3% between 1979 and 1999

- Median student-loan debt, 1977: $2,000. 1997: $15,000

- Ratio of executive pay to that of a factory worker in 1980: 42 to 1. Ratio of executive pay to that of a factory worker in 1998: 419 to 1. Annual pay of a factory worker if it had kept pace with executive salaries: $110,000

- In 1977, the disclosed wealth of the top ten senators was $133 million. In 2001 it was $1.83 billion.

- In 1982, U.S. foreign debt was less than 5% of GDP; by 2002 it was almost 25%

- Between 1973 and 2001, the incomes of the poorest 20% went up 14%, that of the 20% in the middle went up 19%, but the richest 5% went up 87%.

- The real value of the minimum wage peaked in 1969 at over $7 an hour. Its real value is now at $5 an hour.

- Eighty-six percent of stock market gains between 1989 and 1997 flowed to the top ten percent of households while 42 percent went to the most well-to-do one percent.

- In 1998 the top-earning one percent had as much income as the 100 million Americans with the lowest earnings.

- Two-thirds of American households headed by a person between the ages of 47 and 64 in 1998 had the same pension wealth or less in real dollars than they did in 1983. Almost 20% of all near-retiree households could expect to retire in poverty.

- By the turn of the century poor black families were working 190 hours more a year – and poor white families 22 hours more — than in 1979 for roughly the same pay.

Since Ronald Reagan:

- The two richest men in America — Bill Gates and Warren Buffet — own more assets than the bottom 45% of the country.

- Anti-trust laws, once considered the great mediator of commercial excess, have been steadily eroded.

- Organized labor has become a mere shadow of its former self [...].

- Between 1980 and 2000, the U.S. per capita spending on schools increased 32%. The per capita spending on prisons grew 189%

- California built 21 prisons between 1980 and 1998; it built just one college.

- From the inauguration of a full-scale war on drugs in 1985 to 1998, the number of deaths per 100,000 for drug-induced causes almost doubled. In other words, having a drug war proved twice as deadly as not having one.

- There has been a massive shift towards the language of capitalism in all aspects of our conversation and speech, making our words more clichéd, less meaningful, less enjoyable, and less human. To an extraordinary degree we now speak to each as salesmen rather than as fellow citizens. This makes for a pretty seedy culture, full of insincerity and deceit while short on cooperation, individual creativity and shared goals.

- The age of Social Security coverage is rising as the public is being taught not to expect that either Social Security or Medicare will continue to serve as they do at present.

- There has been a dramatic increase in homelessness.

- Efforts to control individual rebellions against the banal and life-draining culture of extreme capitalism have produced increasingly authoritarian, militaristic and punitive tactics such as the war on drugs, zero tolerance, and the conversion of public schools into quasi-detention centers [...].

- Advertising has invaded every aspect of our life, making existence increasingly one long commercial.

- Our environment has steadily and dangerously deteriorated [...].

- Medicine has been converted from a public service to a corporate exploitive enterprise.

- [The United States] increasingly use corporatized prisons without adequate public supervision and prison slave labor to serve corporate interests.

- [V]oting turnout has declined.

- Corruption, both corporate and political, has increased to the point that it is no longer deviation but an assumed part of our culture. We all live in a Mafia neighborhood now.

Source: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ronald_Reagan/Reagan\’sExtremeCapitalism.html

A Dark Legacy

“Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders.”–California Governor Ronald Reagan, in the Sacramento Bee, April 28, 1966

“It’s just too bad we can’t have an epidemic of botulism.”–In response to the Hearst family’s free food giveaway to the poor as partial ransom for their daughter Patricia (kidnapped by the SLA) 1974

The “Reagan Doctrine” was akin to the “Bush Doctrine” in saying that Washington had the right to attack and destroy any state, government or movement that interfered with US corporate or state interests. In the 1980s, the United States under Reagan supported forces and governments that committed widespread atrocities.

The most famous example were the Contras in Nicaragua, who fought against the leftist policies of the Sandinistas. The Contras murdered, tortured, and terrorized the population. Human Rights groups reported “murder, rape, torture, maiming children, cutting off arms, cutting out tongues, gouging out eyes, castration, bayoneting pregnant women in the stomach, and amputating genitals.” The CIA provided the Contras with a manual instructing them how to perform sabotage and terrorism. Tens of thousands of civilians died, many of them elderly and children. The Contras routinely raped women before executing them. These actions were widely reported by human rights organizations, church groups, Latin American scholars and many others.

Reagan’s administration claimed the Nicaraguan Sandinistas wanted to conquer the world because they once used the phrase “revolution without borders.” What Nicaragua really wanted was to inspire other countries with their accomplishments. Since that was against US hegemony, they had to go. The World Court and many members of the international community condemned the crimes Reagan was committing in Nicaragua, but he ignored this. When Nicaragua took its case to the World Court, the Court ruled against the US and condemned its use of international terrorism. They said the Reagan administration’s actions were illegal.

Under Reagan, the CIA used the funds from global drug trafficking for arms purchases, flying United States planes full of cocaine from Central America into military bases on the mainland and flying back with arms. The spreading of cocaine helped to create the epidemic of crack-cocaine in the ghettos of America. This if course, happened while Reagan’s wife pushed her “Just Say No!” campaign and the expression “War On Drugs” began to be a household phrase.

In 1981, Reagan sent a United States aircraft carrier into waters in oil-rich Libya’s territory where they shot down two Libyan planes, an open declaration of war. Later, in 1986, Reagan would bomb the home of Libya’s leader Colonel Muammar Qaddafi in an attempt to assassinate him in his bed. The attempt on Qaddafi’s life failed, but claimed the lives of 30 people, including Qaddafi’s infant daughter.

In 1982, Reagan supported the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon, which killed over 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinian people. It was during this war that the Israeli massacres and mass rapes in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps were committed. Reagan unleashed “Operation Urgent Fury” against Grenada, occupying the country with 2,000 troops. In the Persian Gulf, Reagan backed the government of Saddam Hussein, funneling billions in funds, arms and chemical weapons.

Conclusion

Now Reagan is finally dead. For a monster with the blood of so many on his hands, Reagan, like Francisco Franco in Spain, would die safely in his bed many years later, unpunished for his innumerable crimes. The tragedy of history is that he is remembered a hero and not the tyrant he truly was.

For More Information:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ronald_Reagan/RonaldReagan_page.html

Invasion of Grenada:

http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/155/25966.html

Thoughts of Central Americans:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29546-2004Jun9.html

Massacre at El Mozote:

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Danner/1993/truthelmoz01.html

“On Reagan’s Legacy”:

http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20040607.htm

Reagan and Saddam:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0609-01.htm

Reagan and South African apartheid:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0609-03.htm

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