HodgBlog

On February 11th, 2008, over 1000 people from over 70 countries, all of whom now live in the state of Washington, visited Olympia (our state capitol) for the second annual Refugee and Immigrant Legislative Day. I decided to take a day off work and attend. Here are some observations from the day:

• The schedule for the day: a bus trip to Olympia, a rally, some time to visit legislators, and a bus trip back.
• The legislative agenda for the trip: improve programs that help immigrants become citizens, housing assistance, English as a Second Language classes with child care and transportation included, and better programs for immigrant children in the public schools.
• The parts of this legislative agenda that I feel strongest about are the educational components. For instance, in my volunteer work (teaching English to adults, interpreting between Spanish-speaking immigrants and social service agencies, and helping out with various school and after-school programs for children), I have met many adults who have difficulties attending ESL classes, due to scheduling, transportation, and child care issues. Yet learning the language is a key determinant of well-being among adult immigrants, so I feel it is important to improve access to ESL classes for immigrants. The issue of education for their children is also crucial, and our schools are generally failing to educate children who arrive as English-language learners — the schools do not currently have the resources to overcome the barriers that these children face (lack of grade-level educational background prior to arrival, reading/speaking English at far below grade level, difficulties for teachers in communicating with parents, and less parental academic support because the parents also may lack English skills and/or educational background).
• At the rally, there were many inspirational words, mostly about how much immigrants matter to our state. One speaker, an immigrant from Korea who is now a state representative in the legislature, addressed the crowd and said, “Some day, maybe one of your children might become the President of the United States” (this made me think of Barack Obama, who is the son of an immigrant). Another speaker used the analogy of our country being a “tapestry” of people — each person a single thread, easily broken, different colors and sizes; together a strong and beautiful fabric.
• After the rally, we were encouraged to visit our state representatives. I went to see Maralyn Chase, one of my two representatives in the state House, and had a long conversation with her about the issues. She seemed very receptive, and very interested in my experiences and observations, as well as the legislative agenda papers I gave her. I felt like that conversation made the trip worthwhile.
• Sometime during my conversation with Representative Chase, I said that I wasn’t sure how things really got done in the legislature, and she said “This is how things get done” (referring to our conversation). I realized at that moment that I was lobbying my representative: trying to convince her to support a certain legislative agenda. So I am now a lobbyist!
• When our bus returned to the Literacy Source (the agency where I have been teaching ESL), the program coordinator congratulated me on moving from just being a volunteer service provider to being an activist, which has fewer negative connotations than the word lobbyist… but I still say that I am a lobbyist.
• Although the trip was short (we left after the morning rush hour, and returned before the evening rush hour, so there wasn’t a lot of time actually spent in Olympia), I thought it was very worthwhile. I hope that most of the people who went had the opportunity to talk, one-on-one or in small groups, with their elected representatives — although the rally was good for inspiration, I don’t think it was likely to accomplish much, on its own. In my opinion, the lobbying time was the most worthwhile part of the trip.
• I heard recently on the news that our governor had signed a new bill establishing a state-wide panel to study the situation of immigrants, in regards to what services they have and what services they need. This seems like a good idea. It apparently came about through lobbying by the organizers of the trip I participated in, probably partly as a result of last year’s lobbying efforts, but it was a nice coincidence coming so soon after this year’s trip.
• Maybe next year, rather than spending all that time on the bus, and standing in the rain at a rally, we could all visit our representatives during the part of the year when the legislature is not in session. The representatives would have more time (for instance, my state senator was not available the day we were there, and the two state house members were pretty busy with meetings), and we wouldn’t have to spend time driving to Olympia, because the legislators would be at their offices in our districts (no more than a few miles from home). Though probably, without the buses and the rally, not too many of us would actually make the effort to do it (for instance, I have rarely even written or called my representatives before now)…. So, the Olympia trip was probably the right way to do this, after all.

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I finally finished reading Chalmers Johnson’s book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, which prompted me to think about the differences between the United States that our founding fathers envisioned, and wrote into the Constitution, and the United States we are living in today. Here are some thoughts.

• The Constitution set up a system of government with a separation of powers into three branches (legislative, executive, and judicial), specifying a system of checks (each branch has the ability to hold the other two branches accountable and reign in their power) and balances (each branch holds some of the power). However, today’s executive branch has upset the balance of power, and the legislative and judicial branches are not exercising their checks on its power. For instance, the Constitution gives the legislative branch the power to declare war, but instead the President declared war and gave Congress misleading “intelligence” so they would approve his declaration. Also the President is currently asserting that he is above the law, and can detain people without charges and use domestic electronic surveillance without a warrant; although the Constitution requires the President to uphold all the laws of the land, Congress and the judicial system have allowed these actions to continue. Finally, as I discussed in an earlier article, several presidents’ use of the CIA has also gone well beyond the bounds of the Constitution.
• The Constitution also specified that the US was supposed to be a democracy. However, there is no true democracy without an informed citizenry, and (as I wrote about briefly in a previous article), we have a situation today where the executive branch regularly feeds misinformation to the media, and the media reports it as fact instead of investigating. So, the public has no basis for understanding what its elected officials are really doing, and what is really going on in our government, and we don’t really have the ability to make informed decisions on whether to retain or get rid of our elected officials.
• The Constitution also specified that the US was supposed to have a representative government, where the elected officials would represent the public interest. However, with all the money it takes to get elected and then stay in office, our “representatives” are currently representing the interests mainly of their large donors and lobbyists, not the public. I believe that if the public was really informed about the effects of our policies, they would demand better representation, but since the news media are mostly owned by large corporations, the same ones who can afford to buy representation, they don’t have much incentive to provide us with this type of information.
• Finally, in direct conflict with the principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence, stating that all people in the world have a fundamental right to self-government, the United States has become an empire whose aim is the domination of the entire planet through both economic and military means. I’ve written about these ideas in several previous articles and I believe that the evidence is clear; if you are unconvinced, read Chalmers Johnson’s book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, which documents the world-domination strategy of the military-industrial complex and the CIA, and John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, which documents the methods of economic domination.

I am not certain what can be done about these issues… I think the first step would be to make sure the public is aware of what is really happening in the world, but I don’t think this will happen any time soon. For instance, the public is increasingly aware of what is going on in Iraq, but that doesn’t seem to translate into skepticism about other actions of our government. I think this is in part because the news media (as discussed above) is controlled by corporate interests that do not want the present situation to change. Also, the people in the United States who would have the means (time and ability) to seek out good information, if they wanted to, are living pretty comfortably and probably don’t have much incentive to make changes.

Probably it will take a major crisis to bring the situation to the attention of the public. Chalmers Johnson thinks that this crisis will come soon, and he may be right: the current level of military spending is not sustainable, the overseas military presence we have now is not sustainable, and clearly some people in the world are rebelling against our domination strategies. Eventually we’ll also have an acute energy crisis to deal with. The question is whether either crisis will lead to further erosion of the Constitution, or whether the public will insist that those responsible be held accountable, and demand restoration of the system of government our founding fathers envisioned. We’ll see.

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I’ve become increasingly troubled by the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) lately, and I have come to think that it is a major threat to democracy in the United States. Here are some thoughts. Note that the activities described below have spanned the entire existence of the CIA, and have not been limited to the direction of one President or one political party.

The first way in which the CIA is a threat to democracy is by acting covertly and illegally overseas: assassinating leaders who do not agree with current US policy, trafficking in illegal drugs and weapons, and generally carrying out actions that would be impossible for our government to do by legal and open means. Chalmers Johnson has called the CIA “the President’s private army” — you can read what he has to say in his new book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. Or, listen to a recent radio interview, where he states that no US president has been able to resist the temptation to use the CIA to carry out illegal and covert actions. This is clearly not part of how a real democracy would operate.

The second way in which the CIA is a threat to US democracy is through its mistreatment of prisoners. Since its founding around 1950, as described in great detail in A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror by Alfred McCoy, the CIA has been developing brutal physical and psychological methods of torturing prisoners, using these methods on thousands of people, and promoting their use around the world. McCoy notes that the consequences of the CIA’s psychological methods are at least as damaging as brutal beatings and other physical methods, so they really cannot be considered any better or worse than any other type of torture. Also, McCoy documents that the CIA tortured and killed at least 20,000 people during the Viet Nam War, and has tortured at least 15,000 people so far in the current Gulf action, with at least 100 (and probably many more) people killed during this process. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has also just released a report on the practice of torture by the CIA in the Gulf region, which corroborates what McCoy wrote about; the HRW report also documents that the CIA has practiced “enforced disappearance” of detained people, where they are held without notifying anyone where they are. Finally, as documented by McCoy, the CIA has also trained police and military personnel around the world in their methods, notably in Latin America, the Philippines, Malaysia, Eastern Europe, and Iran.

Part of the reason that using torture is a threat to democracy in the US is that the deliberate torture of any human being for any reason is an internationally-recognized violation of human rights, and we cannot claim to be a functioning democracy if we do not have basic social justice and human rights protection. Furthermore, at least in my opinion, these rights must apply in all situations involving our government, not just to US citizens on US soil — I do not believe that the Constitution gives any branch of the government the right to violate its provisions under any circumstances. Similarly, when laws are passed, all branches of government must observe the laws, or democracy will be undermined.

And torturing prisoners of all types is definitely illegal under both US and international law, as is “enforced disappearance” (see the HWR report cited above for details). The CIA (again, as documented by McCoy and the HRW report) has attempted to circumvent the law through several tactics. First, they have advocated for a very narrow and harsh interpretation of words in the laws, such as “torture”, “cruel”, “degrading”, and “inhuman”, thereby trying to define their practices as legal. Second, they have claimed that the people being detained in the present conflict fall outside the laws banning torture, specifically the Geneva Convention, because they are “unlawful combatants” rather than “prisoners of war”. However, the President has justified using wartime executive powers by saying we are at war — so are we at war or not? Also the international laws against torture of detained people are not actually limited to prisoners of war. Third, the CIA has tortured people in places that are not officially part of the United States (such as the prison at Guantanamo Bay), claiming that the law doesn’t apply to non-Americans being held outside the US (which is not true). And finally, in some cases the CIA has made its torture harder to trace by illegally (without the extradition hearings required by both US and international law) transporting people to foreign countries, where they are tortured. While the CIA might argue that these four tactics have kept them within the law, I believe that they are operating outside the law, and therefore are a threat to democracy.

Another reason that using torture is a threat to US democracy is that there is no real, valid justification for it. Democracies, and moral nations in general, must carefully consider violent actions (such as the use of torture and acts of war), to see if they are justified. It is generally accepted around the world (though not by passionate pacifists such as myself) that some violent actions can be considered justified, but only if the reason for the action (the foreseen end result) is valid and acceptable, and if the proposed action has a good chance of achieving its targeted result. In the case of torture, the justification given by the CIA and others in the US government has been that we need to torture people in order to obtain information that we cannot get as quickly or at all by other means. But in fact, as detailed by McCoy, torturing a few individual people is not an effective means for obtaining reliable information, and non-violent interrogation methods (used by US agencies such as the FBI) are much more effective. On the other hand, mass torture, as practiced by the CIA during the Viet Nam War, can be effective at obtaining information, but to carry this out, many fully innocent people must be brutally tortured to get at the few who might have information, so it is probably never a justifiable level of violence for a moral nation. Therefore, a real justification cannot be found for engaging in such a violent practice, and if part of our government uses torture, it indicates that our democracy is not functioning properly.

So, what is there to do? Lately, I have not been impressed with the CIA’s ability to perform its stated, legal function of gathering intelligence on threats to the US, as CIA intelligence did not prevent our one major terrorist disaster in 2001, and the CIA was presumably involved in the misinformation surrounding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Certainly the illegal functions and methods of the CIA (assassinations, illegal trafficking in drugs and weapons, torture, enforced disappearance, etc.) also need to be stopped. So probably the best thing to do would be to disband the CIA entirely, and divide its legitimate responsibilities between the FBI and other agencies that confine themselves to at least mostly legal, humane, and effective methods of interrogation and intelligence gathering. We’ll see… I doubt any President will propose, or even agree to eliminate what Chalmers calls the “President’s private army” any time soon.

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