NEW IN ENGLISH & SPALabor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity: The L

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Disorder in the Real [and the real]

Presentation of the Theme of the IXth Congress of the World Association of Psychoanalysis
Jacques-Alain Miller
Buenos Aires, 27th April 2012

I will not make you wait very long for the theme of the next Congress.

A new series of three themes has begun with this Congress on the Symbolic Order in the 21st Century. It will be a series specifically dedicated to the 'aggiornamento' – as one says in Italian – to the bringing up to date of our analytic practice, its context, its conditions, its novel co-ordinates in the 21st Century, with the growth of what Freud called the discontents, and which Lacan deciphered as the impasses, the dead-ends, of civilization.

For us it is a question of leaving behind the 20th Century, leaving it behind us, and renewing our practice in a world itself amply restructured by two historical factors, two discourses: the discourse of science and the discourse of capitalism. These are the two prevalent discourses of modernity which, since their respective appearances, have begun to destroy the traditional structure of human experience. The combined domination of these two discourses, one supporting the other, has grown to such an extent that this domination has succeeded in diluting, perhaps even breaking, this tradition in its deepest foundations. In this way we have seen the tremendous change in the symbolic order, whose corner-stone has been fractured: that is, the corner-stone – the Name of the Father – which is, as Lacan says with extreme precision, the Name of the Father according to tradition. The Name of the Father according to tradition has been touched, has been devalued by the combination of the two discourses of science and capitalism.

The Name of the Father, this famous key function of Lacan's first teaching, is, one could say, a function now recognised across the entire analytic field, whether Lacanian or not. This key function, the Name of the Father, has been discounted by Lacan himself, depreciated in the course of his teaching, ending up being no more than a sinthome, that is, a supplement for a hole. One could say in this ambit, in this assembly, one could say as a short cut that this hole filled by the symptom name of the father is the non-existence of the sexual proportion in the human species, the species of living beings that speak. And the depreciation of the name of the name of the father in the clinic introduces an unprecedented perspective, which Lacan expresses by saying everyone is mad, delusional. This is not a joke, it translates the extension of the category of madness to everyone who speaks; that everyone suffers from the same lack of knowing what to do about sexuality. This phrase, this aphorism, indicates that which the so-called clinical structures have in common: neurosis, psychosis, perversion. And of course it shakes, undermines, the difference between neurosis and psychosis, which has until now been the basis of psychoanalytic diagnosis and an inexhaustible theme of the teachings.

For the next Congress I propose entering further into the consequences of this perspective, studying the real in the 21st Century. This word 'the real', Lacan makes a use of it that is his own, that was not always the same, which we need to clarify for ourselves. But I believe there is a way of saying it that has a sort of intuitive evidence. For anyone – it is already a lot to say this – for anyone who lives in the 21st Century, beyond us Lacanians, there is at least a sort of evidence for those who have been formed in the 20th Century, and who now for a certain time belong to the 21stCentury. There is a great disorder in the real. Well, this is the very formula that I propose for the Congress in Paris in 2014: A Great Disorder of the Real, in the 21st Century.

I wish to now communicate to you the first thoughts that this formula has provoked in me, this title whose formulation I came across two days ago. They are suggestive thoughts framed to launch our discussion in the School One which will last for two years, and not of course to settle this discussion.

The first thought that occurred to me in this respect, which I have accepted as it came, is the following: previously the real was called nature. Nature was the name of the real when there was no disorder in the real. When nature was the name of the real you could say, as Lacan did, that the real always returns to the same place. Only in this epoch, in this epoch in which the real disguised itself as nature, the real appeared as the most evident, the most elevated, manifestation of the very concept of order. The return of the real in the same place is of course opposed to the signifier, in as much as what characterises the signifier is displacement, Entstellung, as Freud says. The signifier is connected, is substituted in a metaphorical or a metonymic mode, and always returns in unexpected, surprising places. By contrast, the real, in this epoch where it was confused with nature, was characterised by not surprising, one could calmly await its appearance in the same place, on the same date.

This is something indicated by Lacan's examples to illustrate the return of the real in the same place. His examples are the annual return of the seasons, the spectacle of the skies and the heavenly bodies. You could say… based on examples from all antiquity: Chinese rituals of course used mathematical calculations of the position of the heavenly bodies, etc. You could say that in this epoch the real as nature had the function of the Other of the Other, that is, that the real was itself the guarantee of the symbolic order. The agitation, the rhetorical agitation of the signifier in human speech was framed by a weft of signifiers fixed like the heavenly bodies. Nature – this is its very definition – is defined by being ordered, that is, by the conduct of the symbolic and the real, to such an extent that according to the most ancient traditions all human order should imitate natural order. And it is well known, for example, that the family as natural formation served as the model for putting human groupings in order and the Name of the Father was the key to the symbolised real.

There is no shortage of examples in the history of ideas of this role of nature. There is such an abundance and so little time that I will not take up these themes today. The history of the idea of nature needs to be investigated, with the formula that nature was the real, that it was order. For example, the world in Aristotelian physics was ordered in two invariable dimensions: the world above separated from the sublunary world, as one says, and each being seeks its proper place. It is in this way that this physics functions, it is a topography, that is to say, a set of well fixed places.

With the entrance of the God of creation – let us say the Christian God – this order remains valid, in as much as the nature created by God answers to his will: there is the divine order, even though there is no longer a separation of the Aristotelian worlds, the divine order which is like a law promulgated by God and incarnated in nature. This gives rise to the concept of natural law, and one has to view things a little from the side of Saint Thomas Aquinas' definition of natural law which gives place to a sort of imperative. A noli tangere, to say it in Latin, a 'do not mess with nature', because there was the sentiment that you could mess with nature, that there are human acts that go against natural law, acts of bestiality in particular, and against this do not mess with nature. And I have to say, even though it is not perhaps the sentiment of the majority here, that I consider it admirable how even today the Catholic Church fights to protect the real, the natural order of the real, in matters of reproduction, sexuality, the family etc. It is as if… of course they are anachronistic elements but they testify to the presence, the duration, the solidity of this ancient discourse. You could say that it is admirable as a lost cause, because everyone feels that the real has broken free from nature. From the beginning the Church perceived that the discourse of science was going to mess with the real that it was protecting as nature, but it was not enough to imprison Galileo to halt the irresistible scientific dynamic. Just as it is not enough to halt the dynamic of capitalism by qualifying it as torpitudo in Latin, the thirst for profit, for gain – it is Saint Thomas who uses the Latin word torpitudo for profit.

Lost cause, but Lacan also said that the cause of the Church perhaps announces a triumph. And why? Because the real emancipated from nature is so much worse that it becomes more and more unbearable; there is something like a nostalgia for the lost order and even though it cannot be recuperated it remains in force as illusion. Before the actual appearance of the discourse of science the emergence of a desire to touch the real was apparent under the form of acting on nature, making it obey, mobilising and utilising its power. How? Before science, and let us say a century before the appearance of the scientific discourse, this desire was manifested in what was called magic. Magic is something different from the conjuring tricks that we use to entertain children. Lacan considered it so important that in the last text of his Ecrits, 'Science and Truth', he inscribes magic as one of the four fundamental positions of truth: magic, religion, science, psychoanalysis. Four terms that anticipate something of the famous four discourses. He defines magic as the direct summons of the signifier that is in nature on the basis of the signifier of incantation. One speaks – one, that is, the magician – in order to make nature speak, in order to disturb it, and this already infringes on the divine order of the real, in such a way that magicians were persecuted in so far as magic was a form of witchcraft. But this magic, the craze for magic, was like an expression of a longing for the scientific discourse. This was the thesis of the erudite Francis Yates, who considers that hermeticism prepared the way for the scientific discourse. And it is a historical fact that Newton himself was a distinguished alchemist. The economist Keynes wrote about this, saying that Newton devoted more years to alchemy than he did to the laws of gravitation… I mention this as subjects for research, this branch of the history of science. But we would do better to follow Alexandre Koyré, who insisted on the difference: magic makes nature speak where science makes it shut up. Magic is rhetorical incantation or purgation. With science speech becomes writing. As Galileo said: nature is written in the language of mathematics. We have to remember that at the extreme end of his teaching Lacan was not afraid to ask – when he no longer had the ambition to make psychoanalysis scientific – whether psychoanalysis was not a sort of magic. He only said it once, but it is an echo to consider. Of course with this begins a mutation of nature which we could express with the aphorism of Lacan: 'there is knowledge in the real'. This is the novelty, something is written within nature.

One went on speaking of God and of nature, but God was no more than a subject supposed to know, a subject supposed to know in the real. The metaphysics of the 17th Century described a God of knowledge who calculates, according to Leibniz, or who is mistaken for this calculus, according to Spinoza. In any case it was a question of a mathematized God. I would say that it was the reference to God, veiling the old illusion of god, that permitted the passage from the finite cosmos to the infinite universe. With the infinite universe of mathematical physics nature disappears; it becomes solely a moral instance. With the philosophers of the 18thCentury, with the infinite universe nature disappears and the real begins to be unveiled.

Fine, but I have been asking myself about the formula there is a knowledge in the real. It would be a temptation to say that the unconscious is at this level. On the contrary, the supposition of a knowledge in the real appears to me to be an ultimate veil that needs to be lifted. If there is a knowledge in the real there is a regularity, and scientific knowledge allows prediction, it is so proud of prediction, in so far as this demonstrates the existence of laws. And it does not require a divine utterance of these laws for them to remain valid. It is by way of this idea of laws that the old idea of nature has been preserved in the very expression the laws of nature.

Einstein, as Lacan remarked, referred to an honest god who rejected all chance. It was his way of opposing the consequences of Max Planck's quantum physics; it was, for Einstein, an attempt to restrain the discourse of science and the revelation of the real. Little by little physics has had to make room for 'uncertainty' – between commas – as for chance; that is to say rather a set of notions that threaten the supposed subject of knowledge. Nor has it been able to make the real and the material equivalent; with subatomic physics the levels of matter have multiplied and, let us say, the 'the' of matter, like the 'the' of the woman, disappears. Perhaps I can hazard a short cut here: with respect to the importance of the laws of nature one grasps the tremendous echo that Lacan's aphorism 'the real is without law' ought to have. This is the formula that testifies to a complete rupture between nature and real. It is a formula that decidedly severs the connection between nature and the real. It targets the inclusion of knowledge in the real that maintains the subordination of the subject supposed to know. In psychoanalysis there is no knowledge in the real, knowledge is an elucubration about the real, a real stripped of all supposed knowledge. At least this is what Lacan invented with his notion of the real, to the point of asking himself if this was not his symptom, if this was not the cornerstone that held together, that maintained the coherence of, his teaching. The real without law appears unthinkable, it is a limit idea. I would like, first, to say that the real is without natural law; everything, for example, that has belonged to the immutable of reproduction is in motion, in transformation. Whether at the level of sexuality, or of the constitution of the living human being, with all the perspectives that are appearing now, in the 21st Century, to improve the biology of the species. The 21st Century announces itself as the great century of bioengineering1, which will give rise to all the temptations of eugenics. And the best description of what we are plainly experiencing now, remains the one that Karl Marx gave in his Communist Manifesto of the revolutionary effects of the discourse of capitalism – revolutionary effects on civilizations. I would like to read some phrases of Marx that assist a reflection on the real:

"The bourgeoisie cannot exist without the condition of incessant revolution of the instruments of production, and thereby of the relations of production, and with them all social relations. [...] There is an incessant disturbance of all social conditions, constant uncertainty and agitation. [...] All fixed and ossified relations with their train of beliefs and ideas venerated for centuries are swept away…" – the clearest expression of the break with tradition. "All that is solid vanishes into the air, everything sacred is profaned." 2

I would say that capitalism and science combine, they have combined, to make nature disappear. And what is left by the vanishing of nature, what is left is that which we call the real, that is, a remainder. And, by structure, disordered. The real is touched on all sides by the advances of the binary capitalism-science, in a disordered way, randomly, without being able to recuperate any idea of harmony.

There was a time, when Lacan taught the unconscious as a knowledge in the real, when he said structured like a language. And in that epoch he sought laws, the laws of speech on the basis of the structure of recognition in Hegel – 'recognise in order to be recognised' – the laws of the signifier, the relation of cause and effect between signifier and signified, in metaphor and metonymy. He also presented, ordered, this knowledge in graphs, under the pre-eminence of the Name of the Father in the clinic and the phallic ordering of the libido. But he already opened up another dimension with lalangue, in as much as there are laws of language but no law of the dispersion and diversity of languages. Each language is formed by contingency, by chance. In this dimension, the traditional unconscious – for us, the Freudian unconscious – appears to us as an elucubration of knowledge about a real. Let us say a transferential elucubration of knowledge, when one superimposes on this real the function of the subject supposed to know, which another living being consents to incarnate. Yes, the unconscious can be ordered, in as much as it is discourse, but only in the analytic experience. I would say that the transferential elucubration consists in giving meaning to the libido, which is the condition for the unconscious to be interpretable. This supposes a previous interpretation, that is, that the unconscious itself interprets, as I have developed previously.

What does the unconscious interpret?

In order to be able to give an answer to this question one has to introduce a term, a word, and this word is the real. In the transference one introduces the subject supposed to know in order to interpret the real. On this basis one constitutes a knowledge not in the real but about the real. Here we locate the aphorism 'the real has no meaning', not having meaning is a criterion of the real, in as much as it is when one has arrived at the outside meaning that one can think that one has emerged from the fictions produced by a want to say 3. The real has no meaning is equivalent to the real does not answer to any wanting to say; one gives it meaning, there is a donation of meaning by way of a fantasmatic elucubration. The testimonies of the pass, these jewels of our Congresses, are accounts of one's fantasmatic elucubration, of how it is expressed and dissolved in the analytic experience in order to be reduced to a nucleus, to an impoverished real which is sketched as the pure encounter with lalangue and its effects of jouissance in the body. It is sketched as a pure shock of the drive. The real, understood in this way, is neither a cosmos nor a world, it is also not an order: it is a piece, an a-systematic fragment, separated from the fictional knowledge that was produced from this encounter. And this encounter of lalangue and the body does not respond to any prior law, it is contingent and always appears perverse – this encounter and its consequences – because this encounter is translated by a deviation of jouissance with respect to that which jouissance ought to be, which remains in force as a dream.

The real invented by Lacan is not the real of science, it is a contingent real, random, in as much as the natural law of the relation between the sexes is lacking. It is a hole in the knowledge included in the real. Lacan made use of the language of mathematics – the best support for science. In the formulas of sexuation, for example, he tried to grasp the dead-ends of sexuality in a weft of mathematical logic. This was like a heroic attempt to make psychoanalysis into a science of the real in the way that logic is. But that can't be done without imprisoning jouissance in the phallic function, in a symbol; it implies a symbolisation of the real, it implies referring to the binary man-woman as if living beings could be partitioned so neatly, when we already see in the real of the 21st Century a growing disorder of sexuation. This is already a secondary construction that intervenes after the initial impact of the body and lalangue, which constitutes a real without law, without logical rule. Logic is only introduced afterwards, with the elucubration, the fantasy, the subject supposed to know, and with psychoanalysis.

Until now, under the inspiration of the 20th Century, our clinical cases as we recount them have been logical-clinical constructions under transference. But the cause-effect relation is a scientific prejudice supported by the subject supposed to know. The cause-effect relation is not valid at the level of the real without law, it is not valid except with a rupture between cause and effect. Lacan said it as a joke: if one understands how an interpretation works, it is not an analytic interpretation. In psychoanalysis as Lacan invites us to practice it, we experience the rupture of the cause-effect link, the opacity of the link, and this is why we speak of the unconscious. I am going to say it in another way: psychoanalysis takes place at the level of the repressed and of the interpretation of the repressed thanks to the subject supposed to know.

But in the 21st Century it is a question of psychoanalysis exploring another dimension, that of the defence against the real without law and without meaning. Lacan indicates this direction with his notion of the real, as Freud does with his mythological concept of the drive. The Lacanian unconscious, that of the latest Lacan, is at the level of the real, let us say for convenience, below the Freudian unconscious. Therefore, in order to enter into the 21st Century, our clinic will have to be centred on dismantling the defence, disordering the defence against the real. The transferential unconscious in analysis is already a defence against the real. And in the transferential unconscious there is still an intention, a wanting to say, a wanting you to tell me. When in fact the real unconscious is not intentional: it is encountered under the modality of 'that's it', which you could say is like our 'amen'.

Various questions will be opened up for us at the next Congress: the redefinition of the desire of the analyst, which is not a pure desire, as Lacan says, not a pure infinity of metonymy but – this is how it appears to us- the desire to reach the real, to reduce the other to its real, and to liberate it of meaning. I would add that Lacan invented a way of representing the real with the Borromean knot. We will ask ourselves how valid this representation is, of what use it is to us now. Lacan made use of the knot to arrive at this irremediable zone of existence where one can go no further with two. The passion for the Borromean knot led Lacan to the same zone as Oedipus at Colonus, where one finds the absolute absence of charity, of fraternity, of any human sentiment: this is where the search for the real stripped of meaning leads us.

Thank you.

_____________________

[1] In English in the original [TN]
2 Translated from the Spanish [TN]
3 "Querer decir": 'to mean' and also 'to want to say'.[TN]

Translated from the Spanish by Roger Litten


http://www.lacan.com/thesymptom/?page_id=2004

Report on US human rights in 2011

Human Rights Record of United States in 2011

Editor's note: The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China published a report titled "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011" on Friday. Following is the full text:

The State Department of the United States released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2011 on May 24, 2012. As in previous years, the reports are full of over-critical remarks on the human rights situation in nearly 200 countries and regions as well as distortions and accusations concerning the human rights cause in China. However, the United States turned a blind eye to its own woeful human rights situation and kept silent about it. The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011 is hereby prepared to reveal the true human rights situation of the United States to people across the world and urge the United States to face up to its own doings.

I.

On life, property and personal security

The United States has mighty strength in human, financial and material resources to exert effective control over violent crimes. However, its society is chronically suffering from violent crimes, and its citizens' lives, properties and personal security are in lack of proper protection.

A report published by the US Department of Justice on Sept 15, 2011, revealed that in 2010 the US residents aged 12 and above experienced 3.8 million violent victimizations, 1.4 million serious violent victimizations, 14.8 million property victimizations and 138,000 personal thefts. The violent victimization rate was 15 victimizations per 1,000 residents (www.bjs.gov). The crime rate surged in many cities and regions in the United States. In the southern region of the United States, there were 452 violent crimes and 3,438.8 property crimes per 100,000 inhabitants (in 2010) on average (The Wall Street Journal, Sept 20, 2011). Just four weeks into 2011, San Francisco saw eight homicides - compared with five during the same time of the previous year, with Oakland racking up 11, when the previous year in the same period it had four (The San Francisco Chronicle, Jan 29, 2011). Grand larcenies in the subway in New York City increased from 852 in 2010 to 1,075 cases in the first nine months of 2011, a 25 percent jump (The China Press, Sept 24, 2011). Homicide cases in Detroit in 2011 saw a 13.5 percent rise over 2010 (www.buzzle.com). Between January and October 2011, a total of 123,924 serious crime cases took place in Chicago (portal.chicagopolice.org). An anti-bullying public service announcement declared in January 2011 that more than six million schoolchildren experienced bullying in the previous six months (CNN, Mar 10, 2011). According to statistics from the Family First Aid, almost 30 percent of teenagers in the United States are estimated to be involved in school bullying (www.familyfirstaid.org).

The United States prioritizes the right to keep and bear arms over the protection of citizens' lives and personal security and exercises lax firearm possession control, causing rampant gun ownership. The US people hold between 35 percent and 50 percent of the world' s civilian-owned guns, with every 100 people having 90 guns (Online edition of the Foreign Policy, Jan 9, 2011). According to a Gallup poll in October 2011, 47 percent of American adults reported that they had a gun. That was an increase of six percentage points from a year ago and the highest Gallup had recorded since 1993. Fifty-two percent of middle-aged adults, aged between 35 and 54, reported to own guns, and the adults' gun ownership in the south region was 54 percent (The China Press, Oct 28, 2011). The New York Times reported on Nov 14, 2011, that since 1995, more than 3,300 felons and people convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors had regained their gun rights in the state of Washington and of that number, more than 400 had subsequently committed new crimes, including shooting and other felonies (The New York Times, Nov 14, 2011).

The United States is the leader among the world's developed countries in gun violence and gun deaths. According to a report of the Foreign Policy on Jan 9, 2011, over 30,000 Americans die every year from gun violence and another 200,000 Americans are estimated to be injured each year due to guns (Online edition of the Foreign Policy, Jan 9, 2011). According to statistics released by the US Department of Justice, among the 480,760 robbery cases and 188,380 rape and sexual assault cases in 2010, the rates of victimization involving firearms were 29 percent and 7 percent, respectively (www.bjs.gov). On Jun 2, 2011, a shooting rampage in Arizona left six people dead and one injured (The China Press, Jun 3, 2011). In Chicago, more than 10 overnight shooting incidents took place just between the evening of Jun 3 and the morning of Jun 4 (Chicago Tribune, Jun 4, 2011). Another five overnight shootings occurred between Aug 12 evening and Aug 13 morning in Chicago. These incidents have caused a number of deaths and injuries (Chicago Tribune, Aug 13, 2011). Shooting spree cases involving one gunman shooting dead over five people also happened in the states of Michigan, Texas, Ohio, Nevada and Southern California (The New York Times, Oct 13, 2011; CNN, Jul 8, 2011; CBS, Jul 23, 2011;USA Today, Aug 9, 2011). High incidence of gun-related crimes has long ignited complaints of the US people and they stage multiple protests every year, demanding the government strictly control the private possession of arms. The US government, however, fails to pay due attention to this issue.

II.

On civil and political rights

In the United States, the violation of citizens' civil and political rights is severe. It is lying to itself when the United States calls itself the land of the free (The Washington Post, Jan 14, 2012).

Claiming to defend 99 percent of the US population against the wealthiest, the Occupy Wall Street protest movement tested the US political, economic and social systems. Ignited by severe social and economic inequality, uneven distribution of wealth and high unemployment, the movement expanded to sweep the United States after its inception in September 2011. Whatever the deep reasons for the movement are, the single fact that thousands of protesters were treated in a rude and violent way, with many of them being arrested - the act of willfully trampling on people' s freedom of assembly, demonstration and speech - could provide a glimpse to the truth of the so-called US freedom and democracy.

Almost 1,000 people were reportedly arrested in first two weeks of the movement, according to British and Australian media (The Guardian, Oct 2, 2011). The New York police arrested more than 700 protesters for alleged blocking traffic over Brooklyn Bridge on Oct 1, and some of them were handcuffed to the bridge before being shipped by police vehicles (uschinapress.com, Oct 3, 2011). On Oct 9, 92 people were arrested in New York (The New York Times, Oct 15, 2011). The Occupy Wall Street movement was forced out of its encampment at Zuccotti Park and more than 200 people were arrested on Nov 15 (The Guardian, Nov 25, 2011). Chicago police arrested around 300 members of the Occupy Chicago protest in two weeks (The Herald Sun, Oct 24, 2011). At least 85 people were arrested when police used teargas and baton rounds to break up an Occupy Wall Street camp in Oakland, California on Oct 25. An Iraq war veteran had a fractured skull and brain swelling after being allegedly hit in the head by a police projectile (The Guardian, Oct 26, 2011). A couple of hundred people were arrested when demonstrations were staged in different US cities to mark the Occupy Wall Street movement' s two-month anniversary on Nov 17 (USA Today, Nov 18, 2011). Among them, at least 276 were arrested in New York only. Some protesters were bloodied as they were hauled away. Many protesters accused the police of treating them in a brutal way (The Wall Street Journal, Nov 18, 2011). As a US opinion article put it, the United States could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. (The Washington Post, Jan 14, 2012).

While advocating press freedom, the United States in fact imposes fairly strict censoring and control over the press and "press freedom" is just a political tool used to beautify itself and attack other nations. The US Congress failed to pass laws on protecting rights of reporters' news sources, according to media reports. An increasing number of American reporters lost jobs for "improper remarks on politics." US reporter Helen Thomas resigned for critical remarks about Israel in June 2010 ("Report: On the situation with human rights in a host of world states," the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Russia, Dec 28, 2011). While forcibly evacuating the Zuccotti Park, the original Occupy Wall Street encampment, the New York police blocked journalists from covering the police actions. They set cordon lines to prevent reporters from getting close to the park and closed airspace to make aerial photography impossible. In addition to using pepper spray against reporters, the police also arrested around 200 journalists, including reporters from NPR and the New York Times (uschinapress.com, Nov 15, 2011). By trampling on press freedom and public interests, these actions by the US authorities caused a global uproar. US mainstream media' s response to the Occupy Wall Street movement revealed the hypocrisy in handling issues of freedom and democracy. Poll by Pew Research Center indicated that in the second week of the movement, reports on the movement only accounted for 1.68 percent of the total media reports by nationwide media organizations. On Oct 15, 2011, when the Occupy Wall Street movement evolved to be a global action, CNN and Fox News gave no live reports on it, in a sharp contrast to the square protest in Cairo, for which both CNN and Fox News broadcast live 24 hours.

The US imposes fairly strict restriction on the Internet, and its approach "remains full of problems and contradictions." (The website of the Foreign Policy magazine, Feb 17, 2011) "Internet freedom" is just an excuse for the United States to impose diplomatic pressure and seek hegemony.

The US Patriot Act and Homeland Security Act both have clauses about monitoring the Internet, giving the government or law enforcement organizations power to monitor and block any Internet content "harmful to national security." Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010 stipulates that the federal government has "absolute power" to shut down the Internet under a declared national emergency. According to a report by British newspaper the Guardian dated Mar 17, 2011, the US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas, and will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives. The project aims to control and restrict free speech on the Internet (The Guardian, Mar 17, 2011). According to a commentary by the Voice of Russia on Feb 2, 2012, a subsidiary under the US government' s security agency employed several hundred analysts, who were tasked with monitoring private archives of foreign Internet users in a secret way, and were able to censor as many as five million microblogging posts. The US Department of Homeland Security routinely searched key words like "illegal immigrants," "virus," "death," and "burst out" on Twitter with fake accounts and then secretly traced the Internet users who forwarded related content. According to a report by the Globe and Mail on Jan 30, 2012, Leigh Van Bryan, a British, prior to his flight to the US, wrote in a Twitter post, "Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America?" As a result, Bryan along with a friend were handcuffed and put in lockdown with suspected drug smugglers for 12 hours by armed guards after landing in Los Angeles International Airport, just like "terrorists". Among many angered by the incident in Britain, an Internet user posted a comment, "What's worse, being arrested for an innocent tweet, or the fact that the American Secret Service monitors every electronic message in the world?"

The US democracy is increasingly being influenced by capitalization and becoming a system for "master of money." Data issued by the US Center for Responsive Politics in November 2011 show that 46 percent of the US federal senators and members of the House of Representatives have personal assets of more than a million dollars. That well explains why US administration' s plans to impose higher tax on the rich who earn more than one million dollars annually have been blocked in the Congress (www.finance-ol.com). As a commentary put it, money has emerged as the electoral trump card in the US political system, and corporations have a Supreme Court-recognized right to use their considerable financial muscle to promote candidates and policies favorable to their business operations and to resist policies and shut out candidates deemed inimical to their business interests (Online edition of Time, Jan 20, 2011). According to a media report, nearly two thirds of all the contributions that the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee received during the 2010 election cycle came from industries regulated by his committee. A ranking Democrat Representative on the Agriculture Committee, who served as chairman between 2007 and 2010, saw a 711 percent increase in contributions from groups regulated by his committee and a 274 percent increase in contributions over all, in the same period (The New York Times, Nov 16, 2011). According to a Washington Post report on Aug 10, 2011, nearly eight in 10 of Americans polled were dissatisfied with the way the political system is working, with 45 percent saying they are very dissatisfied (The Washington Post, Aug 10, 2011).

The US continued to violate the freedom of its citizens in the name of boosting security levels (The Washington Post, Jan 14, 2012). The Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2011 released a report, "Patterns of Misconduct: FBI intelligence violations from 2001-2008," which reveals that domestic political intelligence apparatus spearheaded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, continues to systematically violate the rights of American citizens and legal residents. The report shows that the actual number of violations that may have occurred from 2001 to 2008 could approach 40,000 possible violations of law, Executive Order, or other regulations governing intelligence investigations. The FBI issued some 200,000 requests and that almost 60 percent were for investigations of US citizens and legal residents (www.pacificfreepress.com). The New York Times reported on Oct 20, 2011, that the FBI has collected information about religious, ethnic and national-origin characteristics of American communities (The New York Times, Oct 20, 2011). According to a Washington Post commentary dated Jan 14, 2012, the US government can use "national security letters" to demand, without probable cause, that organizations turn over information on citizens' finances, communications and associations, and order searches of everything from business documents to library records. The US government can use GPS devices to monitor every move of targeted citizens without securing any court order or review (The Washington Post, Jan 14, 2012).

Abuse of power, brutal enforcement of law and overuse of force by US police have resulted in harassment and hurt to a large number of innocent citizens and have caused loss of freedom of some people or even deaths. According to a report carried by the World Journal on Jun 10, 2011, the past decade saw increasing stop-and-frisks by the New York police, which recorded an annual of 600,000 cases in 2010, almost double of that in 2004. In the first three months of 2011, some 180,000 people experienced stop-and-frisks, 88 percent of whom were innocent people (World Journal, Jun 10, 2011). In early July of 2011, two police officers beat a mentally ill homeless man to death in Orange County, Southern California (FoxNews.com, Sept 21, 2011). In August 2011, North Miami police shot and killed a man carrying realistic toy gun (The NY Daily News, Sept 1, 2011). On Jan 8, 2011, a Central California man was shot and killed by the police, who thought of him as a gang member only because the jacket he was wearing was red, "the chosen color of a local street gang." (www.kolotv.com, Jan 19, 2011) In May 2011, Arizona' s police officers raided the home of Jose Guerena and shot him dead in what was described as an investigation into alleged marijuana trafficking. However, the police later found nothing illegal in his home (The Huffington Post, May 25, 2011). Misjudged and wrongly-handled cases continued to occur. According to media reports, Anthony Graves, a Texas man, was imprisoned for 18 years for crimes he did not commit (CBS News, Jun 22, 2011). Forty-six-year-old Thomas Haynesworth spent 27 years in prison after being arrested at the age of 18 for crimes he didn't commit (Union Press International, Dec 7, 2011). Eric Caine, who was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment after being tortured by police into confessing to two murders, spent nearly 25 years behind bars.(Chicago Tribune, Jun 13, 2011).

The US lacks basic due lawsuit process protections, and its government continues to claim the right to strip citizens of legal protections based on its sole discretion (The Washington Post, Jan 14, 2012). The National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec 31, 2011, allows for the indefinite detention of citizens (The Washington Post, Jan 14, 2012). The Act will place domestic terror investigations and interrogations into the hands of the military and which would open the door for trial-free, indefinite detention of anyone, including American citizens, so long as the government calls them terrorists (www.forbes.com, Dec 5, 2011).

The US remains the country with the largest "prison population" and the highest per capita level of imprisonment in the world, and the detention centers' conditions are terrible. According to the US Department of Justice, the number of prisoners amounted to 2.3 million in 2009 and one in every 132 American citizens is behind bars. Meanwhile, more than 140,000 are serving life sentences (Report: On the situation with human rights in a host of world states, the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Russia, Dec 28, 2011). According to a Los Angeles Times report on May 24, 2011, in a California prison, as many as 54 inmates may share a single toilet and as many as 200 prisoners may live in a gymnasium (Los Angeles Times, May 24, 2011). According to data issued by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the estimated number of prison and jail inmates experiencing sexual victimization totaled 88,500 in the US between October 2008 and December 2009 (www.bjs.gov). Since April 2011, officials stopped serving lunch on the weekend in some US prisons as a way to cut food-service costs. About 23,000 inmates in 36 prisons are eating two meals a day on Saturdays and Sundays instead of three (The New York Times, Oct 20, 2011). Harsh conditions and treatment in prisons have caused recurring protests and suicides of inmates. There were two major hunger strikes in California prisons staged by a total of more than 6,000 and 12,000 prisoners in July and October 2011, respectively, to protest against what they call harsh treatment and detention conditions (CNN, Oct 4, 2011; The New York Times, July 7, 2011). According to a Chicago Tribune report on July 20, 2011, since 2000, at least 175 youths have attempted to kill themselves inside Department of Juvenile Justice lockup facilities in Chicago and seven youths committed suicide. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture in a 2011 report noted that in the US, an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 individuals are being held in isolation, and the US government in 2011 for twice turned down the Special Rapporteur's request for a private and unmonitored meeting with detainees held in isolation.

III.

On economic, social and cultural rights

The United States is the world's richest country, but quite a lot of Americans still lack guarantee for their economic, social and cultural rights, which are necessary for personal dignity and self-development.

The United States has not done enough to protect its citizens from unemployment. At no time in the last 60 years had the country's long-term unemployment been so high for so long as it was in 2011. It has been one of the Western developed countries that provide the poorest protection of laborer's rights. It has not approved any international labor organization convention in the last 10 years. Moreover, the US lacks an effective arbitration system to deal with enterprises that refuse to compromise with employees. The New York Times reported on Dec 12, 2011, that at last count, 13.3 million people were officially unemployed and that 5.7 million of them had been out of work for more than six months (The New York Times, Dec 12, 2011). The unemployment rate was 8.9 percent for 2011 (www.bls.gov), and the unemployment rate for American youths between 25 and 34 stood at 26 percent in October of that year (The World Journal, Nov 18, 2011), with more underemployed. A total of 84 metropolitan areas reported jobless rates of at least 10.0 percent, and El Centro, California, recorded the highest unemployment rate of 29.6 percent in September of 2011 (www.bls.gov). The unemployed people suffered from not only financial pressures but also mental pressures including anxiety and depression.

There is a widening of the gap between the extreme top and bottom (The USA Today, Sept 13, 2011), showing apparent unfair wealth distribution. The United States claims to have a large population of middle class, making up 80 percent of its total population, while there is only very few impoverished and extremely rich people (The China Press, Oct 13, 2011). However, this is not the truth. According to the report issued by the US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Oct 25, 2011, the richest one percent of American families have the fastest growth of family revenue from 1979 to 2007 with an increase of 275 percent for after-tax income, while the after-tax income of the poorest 20 percent grew by only 18 percent (The World Journal, Oct 26, 2011). Cable News Network reported on Feb 16, 2011, that in the last 20 years, incomes for 90 percent of Americans have been stuck in neutral, while the richest 1 percent of Americans have seen their incomes grow by 33 percent. Economic Policy Institute published a paper on Oct 26, 2011, saying that in 2009 the ratio of wealth owned by the wealthiest one percent to the wealth owned by median households was 225 to 1 (www.epi.org). Besides, in the United States, the best-off 10 percent made on average 15 times the incomes of the poorest 10 percent (Reuters, Dec 9, 2011). The wealthiest 400 Americans have $1.5 trillion in assets (The China Press, Oct 13, 2011), or the same combined wealth as the poorest half of Americans - more than 150 million people (www.currydemocrats.org). The annual incomes of the richest 10 chief executive officers (CEO) were enough to pay the salary of 18,330 employees (The World Journal, Oct 16, 2011). Roughly 11 percent of Congress members had net worth of more than $9 million, and 249 members were millionaires. The median net worth: $891,506, was almost nine times the typical household (The USA Today, Nov 16, 2011). A commentary by the Spiegel said that the US has developed into an economic entity of "winners take all". American politician Larry Bartels said that fundamental shifts in wealth allocation was caused by political decisions rather than the consequences of market forces or financial crisis (The Spiegel, Oct 24, 2011).

Contrary to the wealthiest 10 percent, the number of Americans living in poverty as well as the poverty rate continued to hit record highs, which is a great irony in affluent America. A report published by the Census Bureau on Sept 13, 2011, showed that 46.2 million people lived below the official poverty line in 2010, 2.6 million more than 2009, hitting the highest record since 1959. The report also said that the percentage of American who lived below the poverty line in 2010 was 15.1 percent, the highest level since 1993. An analysis done by the Brookings Institution estimated that at the current rate, the recession would have added nearly 10 million people to the ranks of the poor by the middle of the decade. According to the analysis, 22 percent of children were in poverty (The New York Times, Sept 13, 2011). Another survey showed that 12 states of the US had poverty rates above 17 percent, with Mississippi's poverty rate standing at 22.4 percent (The Huffington Post, Oct 21, 2011). The US has grown into a country dependent on food stamps (Reuters, Aug 22, 2011). The percentage of Americans who did not have enough money to buy food grew from 9 percent in 2008 to 19 percent in 2011 (The World Journal, Oct 15, 2011). In 2010, 17.2 million households, or 14.5 percent, were food insecure (www. Worldhunger. org). In 2011, 46 million Americans lived on food stamps, about 15 percent of the total population, up 74 percent from 2007 (Reuters, Aug 22, 2011).

Millions of homeless people wandered around streets. Reports said that about 2.3 million to 3.5 million Americans did not have a place that they call home to sleep in the night (www.homelessnessinamerica.com). Between 2007 and 2010, the number of homeless families grew by 20 percent (The Huffington Post, Aug 26, 2011). Over the past five years, the percentage of singles arriving at shelters after living with family or elsewhere in the community has jumped from 39 percent to 66 percent (The USA Today, Dec 9, 2011). There was an all-time record of more than 41,000 homeless people in New York City, including 17,000 homeless children (www.coalitionforthehomeless.org). On any given night in Santa Clara County, California, 7,045 people were homeless according to a 2011 Santa Clara County Homeless Census and Survey (www.santaclaraweekly.com). And advocates estimated that Chicago had up to 3,000 homeless youths in need of shelter on any given night (www.chicagonewscoop.org).

The US declared it has the best healthcare service in the world, but quite a lot of Americans could not enjoy due medication and healthcare. The Cable News Network reported on Sept 13, 2011, that the number of people who lacked health insurance in 2010 climbed to 49.9 million (Cable News Network, Sept 13, 2011). Bloomberg reported on March 16, 2011, that 9 million Americans have lost health insurance during the past two years. An additional 73 million adults had difficulties paying for healthcare and 75 million deferred treatment because they could not afford it (Bloomberg, March 16, 2011).

Death and infection risks caused by AIDS grew. Since the first American patient was diagnosed with AIDS in 1981, 600,000 people have died from the disease in the US By the end of 2008, 1,178,350 Americans had been infected with AIDS (The China Press, June 3, 2011). AFP reported that nearly three quarters of Americans with HIV do not have their infection under control and one in five people with human immunodeficiency virus are unaware that they have the disease. Among people who know their HIV status is positive, only 51 percent get ongoing medical treatment (AFP, Nov 29, 2011). Statistics given by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention showed that, in the last 10 years, death caused by prescription drugs in America had doubled and that one would die from taking prescription drug every 14 minutes. Prescription drug overdose caused 37,485 deaths in 2009, exceeding traffic fatalities (The China Press, Sept 19, 2011).

The US government has significantly cut the expense on education, reduced teaching staff, and shortened school hours with tuition fees soaring. The guarantee for teenagers' rights to education is weakening. The New York Times reported on Oct 3, 2011, that since 2007, school budgets in New York city have been cut by 13.7 percent every year on average. Since 2008, 294,000 posts in the American education industry, including schools of higher education, have been cut (The China Press, Oct 25, 2011). Four-day per week classes have been practiced in 292 school districts, which was only put into use during the financial crisis in the 1930s and the oil crisis in the 1970s (The World Journal, Oct 30, 2011). A report by College Board showed that the average tuition fee of American four-year public universities in the school year of 2011 through 2012 was $8,244, $631 more than the last school year, up 8.3 percent (The China Press, Oct 27, 2011). About 3,000 people gathered on Sproul Plaza to protest tuition increases at Berkeley on Nov 9, 2011 (The New York Times, Nov 13, 2011). Reuters reported that two-thirds of undergraduate students would graduate with student loans about $25,000 on average owing to expensive college tuition (Reuters, Feb 1, 2011).

Native American culture in the United States has long been suppressed. The country assimilated the Native American culture through legislation and mainstream culture. At the end of the 19th century, the United States carried out "white man's education" and implemented compulsory English-only education. Most of the people who now speak Native American languages are the seniors living in reservations. It is estimated that only five percent of Native Americans will speak their own languages 50 years later if there are no measures from the US government.

The financial crisis was far from being the sole reason for the inadequate guarantee of Americans' economic, social and cultural rights. So far, the US has not approved the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The above problems concerning human rights are the reflection of the US ideology and political system that ignore people's economic, social and cultural rights.

IV.

On racial discrimination

Ethnic minorities in the United States have long been suffering systemic, widespread and institutional discrimination. And racial discrimination has become an indelible characteristic and symbol of American values.

Ethnic minorities have low political, economic and social positions due to discrimination. The number of ethnic people in civil service is not proportional to their population. New York Times reported on June 23, 2011, that the number of Asian Americans in New York City has topped one million, nearly 1 in 8 New Yorkers, but only one Asian-American serves in the State Legislature, two on the City Council and one in a citywide post of the New York City. According to the annual report released by the National Urban League of the US, African-Americans' 2011 Equality Index is currently 71.5 percent, compared to 2010's 72.1 percent, among which the economic equality index declined from 57.9 percent to 56.9 percent, and the health index, from 76.6 percent to 75 percent, and the index in the area of social justice, from 57.9 percent to 56.9 percent.

Ethnic Americans are badly discriminated against when it comes to employment. It was reported that the unemployment rate of Hispanics rose to 11 percent in 2010 from 5.7 percent in 2007 (The New York Times, Sept 28, 2011). The unemployment rate of African Americans was 16.2 percent. For black males, it's at 17.5 percent; and for black youth, it's nearly 41 percent, 4.5 times the national average unemployment rate (CBS News, June 19, 2011). Nationally, black joblessness stands at 21 percent, rising to as high as 40 percent in major urban centers such as Detroit (The Wall Street Journal, Aug 31, 2011). In Ziebach County of South Dakota, a community mainly composed of Native Americans, more than 60 percent of the residents live at or below the poverty line, and unemployment rate hits 90 percent in the winter (The Daily Mail, Feb 15, 2011). A study shows that of the seven occupations with the highest salaries, six are overrepresented by whites (Washington Post, Oct 21, 2011).

The poverty rate of African Americans doubles that of whites, and the ethnic minority groups suffer severe social inequalities. According to a report by the Pew Research Center released in June 2011, the median wealth of white households is 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households (pewresearch.org). In 2010, poverty among blacks rose to 27.4 percent, and poverty among Hispanics increased to 26.6 percent, much higher than the 9.9-percent poverty rate among whites (www.census.gov). A Pew Research Center report says the lopsided wealth ratios among whites, Hispanics and African-Americans in 2009 were the largest in the past 25 years (pewresearch.org). According to an investigation done by the Washington-based Bread for the World, "black children are suffering from poverty at a rate of nearly 40 percent, and over a quarter of Blacks reported going hungry in 2010". "The figures are both startling and very telling," said Rev Derrick Boykin (www.amsterdam.com).

Ethnic minorities are denied equal education opportunities, and ethnic minority kids are discriminated against and bullied in schools. According to a report by the US Census Bureau on June 8, 2011, in 2008, among 18-to 24-year-olds, 22 percent were not enrolled in high schools for Hispanics, 13 percent for African-Americans, whereas only 6 percent for whites (www.census.gov). US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said on Oct 28, 2011, one-third of American students are bullied at schools, and Asian-American children bear the brunt. The teases and insults they get in cyber space are three times more compared with kids from other ethnic groups. A research finds 54 percent of Asian-American students have been bullied in schools, 38.4 percent for African-Americans and 34.3 percent for Hispanics (World Journal Oct 29, 2011).

Ethnic minorities and non-Christians are also badly discriminated against in fields such as law enforcement, justice and religion, rendering the so-claimed ethnic equality and religious freedom nothing but self-glorifying forged labels. A New York Times story (Dec 17, 2011) says the New York Police Department recorded more than 600,000 stops in 2010 and 84 percent of those stopped were blacks or Latinos. It was reported that black non-Hispanic males are incarcerated at a rate more than six times that of white non-Hispanic males (World Report 2011: United States, www.hrw.org). On Dec 1, 2011, the American Civil Liberties Union said that "the FBI is using its extensive community outreach to Muslims and other groups to secretly gather intelligence in violation of federal law". (Washington Post, Dec 2, 2011) A survey by Pew Research Center finds that 52 percent of Muslim-Americans surveyed said their group is under government's surveillance, about 28 percent said they had been treated or viewed with suspicion and 21 percent said they were singled out by airport security (articles.boston.com). More than half of Muslim-Americans in another poll said government anti-terrorism policies singled them out for increased surveillance and monitoring, and many reported increased cases of name-calling, threats and harassment by airport security, law enforcement officers and others (Washington Times, Aug 30, 2011).

Illegal immigrants also live under legal and systematic discrimination. It was reported that after Arizona passed its anti-illegal immigration bill, Alabama began implementing its immigration law on Sept 28, 2011. The Alabama immigration law provides differentiated treatments to illegal immigrants in each of its term, rendering their daily lives rather difficult. Critics argued that the law runs counter to the US Constitution and to certain terms in relevant international human rights law regarding granting equal protections to illegal immigrants (www.hrw.org). The New York Times reported on May 13, 2011, that Georgia passed an anti-illegal immigration law which outlaws illegal immigrants working in the state and empowers local police officers to question certain suspects about their immigration status. Illegal immigrants suffer ferocious mistreatments. Internal reports from the Office of Detention Oversight of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) revealed grave problems in many US detention facilities for immigrants, including lack of medical care, the use of excessive force and "abusive treatment" of detainees (The Houston Chronicle, Oct 10, 2011). A report released on Sept 21, 2011, by an Arizona-based non-profit organization revealed that thousands of illegal immigrants detained across the border between Mexico and Arizona are generally mistreated by US border police, being denied enough food, water, medical care and sleep, even beaten up and confined in extreme coldness or heat, suffering both psychological abuse and threats of death (The World Journal, Sept 24, 2011).

Native Americans are denied their due rights. From January to February 2011, UN Special Rapporteur James Anaya lodged two accusations against the United States, including accusing the Arizona State government of approving the use of recycled wastewater for commercial ski operations on the San Francisco Peaks, a site considered sacred by several Native American tribes (www.forgottennavajopeople.org), as well as the case of imprisoned indigenous activist Leonard Peltier. Peltier was sentenced to life in prison in 1977 for the alleged murder of two FBI agents. However, Peltier has been claiming he is innocent and persecuted by the US government for participating in the American Indian Movement (www.ohchr.org). On April 26, 2011, Farida Shaheed, independent expert in the field of cultural rights, Heiner Bielefeldt, special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, and James Anaya, special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, of the UN Human Rights Council, jointly lodged accusations against the US, claiming that the city of Vallejo, California, is planning to level and pave over the Sogorea Te, held sacred to indigenous people in northern California, in order to construct a parking lot and public restrooms (www.treatycouncil.org).

Race-motivated hate crimes occur frequently. According to an FBI report, 6,628 hate crime incidents were reported in 2010, 2,201 of which were against African-Americans, 534 against Hispanics and 575 against whites. And 47.3 percent of all were motivated by racial bias, 20 percent by religion and 12.8 percent by an ethnicity/national origin bias (ww.fbi.gov). According to a report released by the Center for American Progress in August 2011, seven American charitable groups, over the past decade, had spent 42.6 million US dollars on inciting hatred against Muslim communities (The New York Times, Nov 13, 2011). There are three active white supremacy groups in the city of San Francisco, which focus on attacking ethnic minorities and immigrants (www.abclocal.go.com). On Nov 10, 2010, two Mexican nationals were beaten by a group of whites who were members of these organizations (www.sfappeal.com). According to an investigation, black men aged 15 to 29 years old were most likely to be victims of murders. In New York City, they make up less than 3 percent of the city's population but in 2010 represented 33 percent of all homicide victims (The Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2011).

The sufferings of civil rights activists who oppose racial discriminations arouse attention. The Huffington Post reported on May 31, 2011, Catrina Wallace, a civil rights activist in Jena, Louisiana, was sentenced to 15 years in prison by authorities only based on a drug dealer's accusation. Previously, Wallace had taken part in organizing a 50,000-people protest against racial discrimination that won freedom for six black high school students. The article deemed the sentence was revenge taken by authorities on Wallace's human rights activism. "I am a freedom fighter," she says. "I fight for people's rights."

V.

On the rights of women and children

To date, the US has ratified neither the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, nor the Convention on the Rights of the Child. As the US neglects the rights of women and children, their situation deteriorates.

Gender discrimination against women widely exists in the US. According to statistics, women are not fully represented in governments at all levels in the US, as women hold only 17 percent of the seats in Congress (www.wcffoundation.org). Women doing the same work as men often get less payment in the US, and the wage gap has narrowed by only 18 cents in the past half century (www.thedailybeast.com). According to a report released by the American Civil Liberties Union, in 2009, women working full-time, year-round were paid 77 cents on average for every dollar paid to men (www.aclu.org). Women in the US widely suffer discrimination in terms of employment, promotion and work. A new study confirms that American tech companies are woefully behind in including women among their board members and highest-paid executives. On average, fewer than one in 28 of the highest-paid tech executives is a woman. At California's biggest public companies, only about 10 percent of the board members and top executives are women (The New York Times, Dec 9, 2011).

The poverty rate among American women reached a record high. According to data from the US Census Bureau, over 17 million women lived in poverty in 2010, including more than 7.5 million in extreme poverty and 4.7 million single mothers in poverty. The poverty rate among women climbed to 14.5 percent in 2010 from 13.9 percent in 2009, the highest in 17 years; the extreme poverty rate among women climbed to 6.3 percent in 2010 from 5.9 percent in 2009, the highest rate ever recorded (www.merchantcircle.com). According to a report of the Associated Press on April 12, 2011, a single mother named Lashanda Armstrong drove her four kids in a minivan into the Hudson river in Newburgh, New York, due to the unbearable burden of raising the kids. Only her 10-year-old boy survived.

Women in the US often experience discrimination, violence and sexual assault. Ethnic minority women face discrimination during pregnancy. According to a report provided by the LAMB (The Los Angeles Mommy and Baby Project), 32.4 percent of Asian-American mothers felt discriminated against during pregnancy, second only to African-American mothers among whom the ratio amounts to 47.9 percent, while the ratio among Latin American mothers is 31.1 percent (The China Press, June 1, 2011). According to statistics from the website of the Los Angeles Police Department, more than 2 million American women are victims of domestic violence annually. The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey shows nearly one in five women has been raped in her lifetime, and one in four has experienced serious physical violence from an intimate partner at some point in her life (Los Angeles Times, December 14, 2011). Throughout the military, sexual assault affects about 19 percent of female troops but most of them choose to keep silent, according to a survey of sexual assault conducted by the US military (www.csmonitor.com). From March to October in 2011, a string of 20 sexual assaults happened in Bay Ridge, Sunset Park and Park Slope and the victims were all young women (The New York Times, Oct 19, 2011). Reports say many of the 1 million women in prison in the US experienced harsh treatment and even had their arms and legs chained when they were giving birth (www.globalissues.org).

The poverty rate for children in the US reached a record high. According to the report released by the US Census Bureau, more than 1 million children were added to the poverty population between 2009 and 2010, making the total number of children living below the poverty line reach more than 15 million, the greatest since 2001. The poverty rate for children in 2010 climbed to 21.6 percent in 2010 from 20 percent in 2009, with 653 counties seeing a significant increase in poverty rate for children aged 5 to 17 and about one-third of counties having school-age poverty rates above the national poverty rate (www.census.gov). The Daily Mail reported on Aug 17, 2011, that child poverty increased in 38 states from 2000 to 2009 and Mississippi is the state with the highest level of 31 percent. The US Census Bureau said that children living in poverty, especially small children, are more likely to develop cognitive and behavioral difficulties and may have a shorter education time and a longer time being unemployed when they grow up (The China Press, Nov 21, 2011).

The number of homeless children has surged. In 2010, 1.6 million children in the US were living on the street, in homeless shelters or motels, up 33 percent from that in 2007, according to the National Center on Family Homelessness (USA Today, Dec 15, 2011). According to the Education Department of New York, there are 53,503 homeless students and children of 3 to 21 years old in New York, and the Homeless Service Department's count also shows an average of 6,902 children of 6 to 17 years old a month are homeless in the city (The New York Times, Nov 14, 2011). Nearly 17,000 children slept in the municipal shelters in New York on Halloween night in 2011. From May 2011 to November 2011, children in shelters rose 10 percent (The Wall Street Journal, Nov 9, 2011).

Children are severely exposed to violence and pornography. BBC reported on Oct 17, 2011, that over the past 10 years, more than 20,000 American children were believed to have been killed by their family members. More than 1 million children are confirmed each year as victims of child abuse (www.preventchildabuse.org), and one in every two families in the US is involved in domestic violence at some time (www. reverepolice.org). The Wall Street Journal reported on Nov 14, 2011, that roughly 120,000 calls were made to the state hotline for child abuse calls administrated by the state Department of Public Welfare in Pennsylvania, but only about 24,000 cases were investigated. A 13-year-old boy named Christian Choate was allegedly beaten to death in 2009 by his father. The report said prosecutors had alleged that the boy endured beating daily and was kept locked in a 3-foot-high dog cage, where he had little to eat and often soiled himself (Chicago Tribune, June 24, 2011). Campus violence and cyber bullying are growing more malicious in the US. According to a report of the US News & World Report on June 3, 2011, at least 40 percent of high school students have been bullied by cyber bullies (www.usnews.com). The Women's eNews reported on May 23 last year, the sex-trafficking problem is acute in the state of Georgia, with an estimated 250 to 300 underage teens and girls being sexually exploited each month there (womensenews. org). According to a report published by Stanford University, the number of reports of sexual assaults received in its campus in 2010 rose by 75 percent over that in 2009 (CBS, Sept 30, 2011).

Infant mortality rate remains high in the US. According to a report of The New York Times on Oct 15, 2011, the infant mortality rate in the US is 6.7 deaths per 1,000 live births. The rate among African-Americans is 13.3 deaths per thousand, while the rates among whites, Hispanics and Asian-Americans are respectively 5.6, 5.5 and 4.8 per thousand. In Pittsburgh, the infant mortality rate for black residents of Allegheny County was 20.7 per thousand in 2009, while the rate among whites in the county was only 4 per thousand in the same period. Nationally, black babies are more than twice as likely as white babies to die before the age of 1.

VI.

On US violations of human rights against other nations

The US has been pursuing hegemony in the world, grossly trampling upon the sovereignty of other countries and capriciously violating human rights against other nations. It "appears more and more to be contributing to international disorder" (After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order, by Emmanuel Todd).

The revelation of the history of human experiments conducted in the US is yet another scandal sparking public outcry around the world after the prisoner abuse scandal. The British newspaper The Telegraph reported on Aug 30, 2011, that from 1946-1948, a US government-paid medical experiment program had made nearly 5,500 people in Guatemala subjected to diagnostic testing, and the researchers deliberately exposed more than 1,300 people, including soldiers, prostitutes, prisoners and mental patients, to syphilis and other venereal diseases. Seven women with epilepsy were injected with syphilis below the back of the skull, and a female syphilis patient with a terminal illness was infected with gonorrhea in her eyes and elsewhere. These experiments had caused over 80 deaths. An article on a US-based journalistic website said that "these revelations are only the latest in an ongoing series of scandals regarding government illegal and unethical experimentation" and that "there are plenty of other underreported and important stories out there on the terrible scandal that has been US illegal experimentation. "The article said that the list of such illegal experiments is quite long, including government radiation experiments, human mind control (also known as MKULTRA) experiments and the CIA and DoD (Department of Defense) experiments on "enemy combatants" in the "war on terror" (Pubrecord.org). Newspaper The Hindu reported on Aug 30, 2011, that in 1932, the US public health service agency started a study of untreated syphilis in the human body in Alabama. The researchers told the subjects that they were being treated for some ailments, and nearly 400 African-American men were infected with syphilis without informed consent. In fact, the men infected did not receive proper treatment needed. The study lasted until 1972 after media disclosures. Austrian national TV commented that this was a disgraceful event in the US history and a dark period in US medical ethics.

The US-led wars, albeit alleged to be "humanitarian intervention" efforts and for "the rise of a new democratic nation", created humanitarian disasters instead. For Iraqis, the death toll in the US-initiated Iraq war stands at 655,000 (Tribune Business News, Dec 15, 2011). According to figures released by the Iraq Body Count, at least 103,536 civilians were killed in the Iraq war (Reuters, Dec 18, 2011). In 2011, there were an average of 6.5 deaths per day from suicide attacks and vehicle bombs (www.iraqbodycount.org). It is estimated that civilian casualties in the military campaign in Afghanistan could exceed 31,000 (Tribune Business News, Oct 17, 2011). According to a news report, on May 28, 2011, a US-led NATO airstrike killed 14 civilians and wounded six others in the southern region of Afghanistan (The New York Times, May 29, 2011). Separately, on May 25, a total of 18 Afghan civilians and 20 police were killed in a NATO airstrike in the province of Nuristan (BBC News, May 29, 2011). The British newspaper The Guardian reported on March 11, 2012, that an American soldier stationed in Afghanistan burst into three civilian homes in two villages in the small hours of March 11, shot dead 16 sleeping Afghan villagers, injured five others and burned the dead bodies. The victims included nine children and three women. According to a Reuters report, witness accounts said there were several US soldiers involved (Reuters, March 11, 2012). Another Deutsche Presse-Agentur report quoted a member of the Afghan parliamentary investigative team as saying that there were 15 to 20 soldiers who had conducted the night raid operation in several areas in the village. The source also told DPA that some of the Afghan women who were killed were sexually assaulted, according to the findings (DPA, March 18, 2012). Such "American-style massacre" against innocent civilians has once again pierced the veil of the US proclaiming itself "a country under the rule of law" and "a human rights defender." Incomplete statistics revealed that the US has launched more than 60 drone attacks in Pakistan in 2011, killing at least 378 people (USA Today, Jan 11, 2012; Newamerica.net). The number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan increased 15 percent in the first half of 2011 over the same period of 2010 (The New York Times, Aug 6, 2011). According to media reports, on the night of Feb 20, 2012, some American soldiers of the NATO troops at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan transported copies of Koran and other religious books to a rubbish pit and burned them (BBC News, Feb 23, 2012). The acts of desecration of the Quran have sparked strong protests and large-scale demonstration activities among the people across Afghanistan as well as in the countries of Pakistan and Bengal (www.pakistantoday.com.pk; www.firstpost.com).

The US does not support the right to development, which is a concern of most of the developing countries. In September 2011, the 18th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on "the right to development." Except for an abstention vote from the US, all the HRC members voted for the resolution.

The US continues its conduct that seriously violates the right of subsistence and right of development of Cuban people. On Oct 26, 2011, the 66th session of the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution titled "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba," the 20th such resolution in a row. A total of 186 countries voted in favor of the resolution, three countries abstained, and only the US and Israel voted against the resolution. The resolution urged the US to repeal or invalidate the almost 50-year-long economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba as soon as possible (www.un.org). The US, however, continues to defy the resolution. The blockade imposed by the US against Cuba qualifies as an act of genocide under Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was adopted in 1948.

The above-mentioned facts are but a small yet illustrative enough fraction of the US' dismal record on its human rights situation. The US' own tarnished human rights record has made it in no condition, on a moral, political or legal basis, to act as the world's "human rights justice," to place itself above other countries and release the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices year after year to accuse and blame other countries. We hereby advise the US government once again to look squarely at its own grave human rights problems, to stop the unpopular practices of taking human rights as a political instrument for interference in other countries' internal affairs, smearing other nations' images and seeking its own strategic interests, and to cease using double standards on human rights and pursuing hegemony under the pretext of human rights.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2012-05/26/content_15392452.htm

Friday, May 25, 2012

Whither Europe? Whither the EU?

Greek crisis lays bare illusions of EU project
 
BY LOUIS MARTIN 
The deepening crisis shaking Greece has put into sharp focus the unfolding and intractable crisis of the European Union—a political and trade alliance of 27 countries dominated by German imperialism—and of the eurozone, the monetary pact of the 17 among them who share the euro currency.

The financial meltdown is rooted in a deep contraction of world capitalist production and trade.

Thus far the capitalist rulers of Europe and beyond have pumped massive loans to postpone the impending bankruptcy of the Greek government and the consequences this would have for the European Union, as well as world capitalist finance.

But the underlying problem of slowing production and trade remains unaffected, barring any way out of further financial and economic crises.

Under these conditions, increasingly divergent interests within the EU are brought to the fore. The disintegration of this utopian union among competing bourgeois nations becomes increasingly inevitable. The forms and time frame remain unpredictable. But what will be left is what was there before and during the EU's existence: separate and sovereign capitalist governments.

The EU was put together in the 1990s by Berlin, with the support of Paris, as a counterweight to the common market between the U.S., Canada and Mexico established in 1994 by Washington. What worked well at first only built up contradictions of a union between countries with sharply different levels of productivity and development.

These differentials appeared to be mitigated as the less developed economies such as Ireland, Portugal, Greece and Spain benefited from massive low-interest loans—promoted by Berlin and Paris in order to expand markets for their goods and capital.

A decade later the former are massively indebted, their economies contracting and left without the option of devaluing their currency. The latter are holding bad debt and facing shrinking markets.

Bourgeois politicians in Europe, the U.S. and other imperialist countries are debating ways of slowing down Greece from leaving the euro, in fear that a disorderly "grexit" could trigger bank runs, financial panics, political instability and social unrest.

This is the overall meaning behind so-called growth proposals promoted by newly elected French President François Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and others, with the support of President Barack Obama.

The "growth" track is ostensibly counterposed to "austerity"— the slashing of social services and government jobs, along with tax raises. This approach has accelerated the economic contraction of several countries, while sparking social unrest among working people and others.

But the actual content of so-called growth policies amounts to no more than what the Financial Times calls "some magical mix of stimulus and austerity that restores both budgetary balance and growth." This translates to more loans, some currency devaluation (inflation), tax breaks to businesses and other "stimulus" measures, while continuing to try to crank up labor "productivity," press down wages and slash government expenses.

What Greek workers face
Meanwhile, in Greece the economic and financial crisis has precipitated a political crisis.

In the recent May 6 elections, New Democracy and the Socialist Party (PASOK), the two incumbents, were soundly defeated. With none of the main parties having enough votes to form a majority or coalition government, new elections have been set for June 17.

New Democracy and PASOK are campaigning on warnings of devastating consequences if the country leaves the eurozone—which they say is unavoidable without further austerity.

According to recent polls, the Coalition of the Radical Left, or Syriza, is projected to get more than 20 percent of the vote, bringing it neck and neck with New Democracy. While supporting Greece's EU membership, Syriza campaigns for a three-year suspension of loan payments; nationalizations of banks; and the reversal of wage cuts, public workers' layoffs and the voiding of collective bargaining agreements.

The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) is campaigning for abstract slogans and reforms within the framework of capitalist rule. It demands Greece's withdrawal from the EU, the cancellation of its debt, "socialization of the wealth" and "workers' and people's control from the bottom up." The KKE got 8.5 percent of the vote in the May 6 election.

In the midst of a crisis that devastates the lives of millions of workers and middle class layers, the fascist-minded Golden Dawn got 7 percent of the vote in the May election with its anti-foreign bank demagogy and anti-immigrant thuggish violence. But contrary to what some liberal pundits say, fascism is not at the gate.

Fascism is a mass movement of desperate middle-class layers, demoralized workers and lumpen elements, mobilized in the streets to smash working-class organizations. Before this could happen, workers will have their own opportunity to take power.

What Golden Dawn is doing is exploiting the crisis to garner cadres for such a reactionary movement. 

http://www.themilitant.com/2012/7622/762201.html

IBT Local 1035 strikes against austerity

IAM at Caterpillar, now IBT at Coca-Cola!  On top of that, continued resistance by locked-out American Crystal Sugar workers in the Upper Midwest:  the dog days may be over for the rank-and-file!

[All proportions guarded, of course.]

'Company will lose–we are not giving in' Teamsters strike Coca-Cola in Connecticut
 
BY EMMA JOHNSON 
EAST HARTFORD, Conn., May 20—Striking drivers, warehouse and bottling workers, members of Teamsters Local 1035 at the Coca-Cola bottling plant here, have been walking the picket line since May 16. The 335 unionists struck over health care payments and plans to cut jobs.

The company wants employees to start paying for their health insurance. In 2005, the company presented a choice between a $2.65 per hour raise and new health care costs or no raise and the same health plan. The union chose to forgo the wage raise. Workers say they want to either maintain current health coverage with no premiums or get the $2.65 wage raise back.

The other main issue is elimination of drivers' jobs. The company is planning a new distribution system where Coca-Cola drivers would be replaced by workers from Coca-Cola's customers, who would make their own deliveries and stock supermarket shelves. The union wants guarantees against job losses.

"We've been working under the old contract since Dec. 3," Chris Roos, the local's secretary-treasurer, told the Militant. "We held talks with the company for months, but there was no give and take. It's been either their way or no way."

Coca-Cola has not responded to requests for comments from the Militant.

Cars passing by the picket line honk in support. Pickets try to persuade drivers in Coca-Cola delivery trucks not to cross the line.

Roos says limited production is being done by management.

"They will lose. We're not giving in," Jessica Welton, who works stocking shelves in grocery stores, told the Militant. "Everybody has a breaking point. They are making big profits and yet they come after our health care, a basic human need."

When Local 1035 members take off for a union meeting the line is staffed by members of the Teamster Horsemen, Chapter 10, a motorcycle association within the union.

"We've come from East Haven to hold the line," Mike DeCarlo, chapter vice president, told the Militant. "We raise strike funds and contribute to children's charities. When we were asked to come here we readily rolled in."

Roos said the union now has roving pickets: "Four or five guys get into a car and follow the delivery trucks. Then they picket their destinations. This is a way to spread the knowledge of our strike. We reach out all around Connecticut and Massachusetts."

http://www.themilitant.com/2012/7622/index.shtml

An Interview: Richard Pare photographer for Building the Revolution at M...

A left leviathan

Žižek Featured in The Onion —We Fill in the Blanks

The Onion Weekender recently featured our in-house champion of castration anxiety: 

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The answers are here. We interns scoured our Žižek backlist to uncover his hints for YOU

10. Build up anticipation before the night. From The Plague of Fantasies:

Let us consider virtual sex: when I play sex games with a partner on the screen, exchanging 'mere' written messages, it is not only that the games can really arouse me or my partner and provide us with a 'real' orgasmic experience; it is not only that, beyond mere sexual arousal, my partner and I can 'really' fall in love without meeting in RL. 

9. Kink. From Living in the End Times

The entanglement of lust (sin) and law resides not only in the fact that the prohibition of sexuality makes lust desirable; one should also add that the pain and guilt we feel when, against our will, we are dragged into sexual lust, are themselves sexualized. Not only do we feel pain and guilt at sexual enjoyment, we enjoy this very pain and guilt. 

8. Don't be intimidated by his past history.

"The Elvis of cultural theory"; "unafraid of confrontation"; "often breathtaking in his scope and acuity"; "master of counterintuitive observation"; "Žižek is consistently penetrating"; "never ceases to dazzle";  "To witness Žižek in full flight is a wonderful and at times alarming experience, part philosophical tightrope walk, part performance-art marathon, part intellectual roller-coaster ride." 

7. Cheer him up. From Keith Gessen

You know who else is from Slovenia? Slavoj Žižek, the philosopher, author most recently of a book on Hegel called Less than Nothing. This is Kopitar's philosophy, perhaps: He wants the other team to score less than nothing. The impossibility of this causes him to stay up nights, developing dark circles under his eyes, causing him to look depressed.

6. Get ahistorical. 

And, since the basic inconsistency constitutive of human being as such is the discord (the "impossibility") of the sexual relationship, no wonder that one of the key elements in our fascination with the animal kingdom is represented by its perfectly regulated mating ritualsanimals do not need to worry themselves with all the complex fantsies and stimulants needed to sustain sexual lust, they are able to "have sex ahistorically." 

5. Be discreet, unlike flowers:

4. Fidelity is indispensable. Žižek in Occupy!

The only thing I'm afraid of is that we will someday just go home and then we will meet once a year, drinking beer and nostalgically remembering "what a nice time we had here." 

3. Get creative, as the bar is high:

What do we perceive today as possible? Just follow the media. On the one hand, in technology and sexuality, everything seems to be possible. 

2. Mix it upthe man likes variety. From The Plague of Fantasies:

In this precise sense, fist-fucking is Edenic; it is the closest we can get to what sex was like before the Fall: what enters me is not the phallus, but a pre-phallic partial object, a handwe are back in a pre-lapsarian Edenic state. 

1. But still keep it simpleit's classic for a reason. From Less Than Nothing:

One can thus imagine a couple reducing their sexual activity to a minimal level, depriving it of all excess, only to find that the minimalism itself becomes invested with an excessive sexual jouissance (along the lines of those partners who, to spice up their sex life, treat it as a disciplinary measure, dress up in uniforms, follow strict rules, etc). 

Communist Explains Imperialism & Class Struggle

The Slovene Hegelo-Lacanian troika

Thursday, May 24, 2012

What is your opinion of these articles?

http://marxistupdate.blogspot.com/2012/05/workers-world-newspaper-coverage-of.html

CPUSA vs. "diversity of tactics" and the Black Bloc

NATO protest reflections: Winning tactics vs. dead ends

John Bachtell
May 24 2012

CHICAGO - One by one, they threw their medals toward the generals and statesmen behind the high barricades surrounding the NATO Summit in Chicago last week. Nearly 50 veterans made history, rejecting the lies of the 1% that justified shipping them to war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It was one of the most profoundly moving events I have ever witnessed.

Unfortunately, their story of courage and heroism, and the largely peaceful nature of the May 20 protest and week of protests leading up to it, was buried behind headlines of violent clashes between some protesters and police.

There were in fact two protests that day: the organized mass peaceful expression - which ended with the veterans asking people to disperse peacefully - and then the confrontation with police afterward.

No one, certainly not the coalition that organized the main ceremony and march, sanctioned the confrontation and the desire by some to march through police barricades to the site of the NATO Summit. 

Police violence at the demonstration and during the week, the 45 arrests and ongoing detentions, the holding at gunpoint of independent journalists who were "live streaming" the events, the alleged entrapment of several young activists on terrorism charges - all these must and are being widely condemned.

However, neither can they excuse or justify in any way the provocations that emanated from some protesters.

These incidents overshadowed the largely nonviolent nature of the protests and drowned out the main message: End the wars and militarization and reallocate desperately needed funds to create jobs and fund education, health care and affordable housing.

They especially overshadowed the veterans' message, which has wide and deep resonance among the American people.

They also overshadowed the struggle waged for the right to protest, for free speech and assembly, and the fight against Mayor Rahm Emanuel's "Sit Down and Shut Up" ordinances.

These experiences provide important tactical lessons for the peace and justice and Occupy movements to reflect on, especially for the many young, deeply committed activists who possess a fervent hatred of capitalism, gross inequality and injustice, and who are gaining valuable experiences in this upsurge.

Among the Occupy (and earlier anti-globalization) movements, a problematic trend has developed. That trend has a political expression, which sees confrontation with police, vandalism and hyper-aggressive tactics as its central tenets.

This trend usually manifests itself in the self-proclaimed "Black Bloc." Its tactics here at the NATO protests, which included bullying peaceful protesters, alienated the overwhelming majority of us who marched.

Why can a small yet disruptive grouping wreak so much havoc on a majority peaceful movement? Because there is a trend among the left that also sees confrontation with the police as a viable revolutionary and anti-capitalist tactic, and therefore accommodates groups like the Black Bloc in the name of "diversity of tactics."

It is said in the name of "inclusiveness" that those who profess confrontational tactics have a right to do so, that tactics of nonviolence and confrontation can co-exist in one movement.

Unfortunately, march organizers decided not to publicly renounce violence on the grounds of preserving unity. Instead they only spoke out against the violence the emanates from NATO and police.

Such tactics and talk may sound militant and even appear to be delivering a blow against capitalism. But, on the contrary, they play into the hands of the 1%.

Let's be real. In order to confront ruling class power, a broad-based unified, diverse and mobilized movement among wide sections of the American people is necessary. Tactics - from the forms of protest to the kinds of demands and slogans - play a major part in mobilizing, unifying and winning over broad sections of the public.

The American people understand the use of nonviolent civil disobedience in pursuit of a great cause and high moral purpose. It is an indelible part of our multi-racial, working-class history of struggle.

But they are equally turned off when violence is perpetrated or advocated by those who profess change.

Such tactics do nothing to expand the coalition or build the movement for immediate or long-term change.

They do damage by feeding into ruling class crackdowns, including anti-democratic laws and statutes.

It was the specter of violence that Chicago Mayor Emanuel used effectively to gain passage of restrictions on First Amendment rights.

Certainly, there should be no illusions about the role of the police as an institution, let alone the history of brutality of the Chicago Police Department.

But neither should one ignore how ruling circles and authorities have exploited a permissive attitude toward violence to infiltrate and entrap, to provoke violent acts that split groups or narrow movements, driving away the broader political allies needed for victory. 

Such tactics ultimately spell doom for any movement. The upsurge of the 1960s is replete with examples including the destruction of groups and tragic death of many young activists like Black Panther Fred Hampton.

The most powerful mass movements effecting historic change have been based on nonviolent civil disobedience: the civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King; the anti-Vietnam War movement; the U.S. anti-apartheid struggle and the organization of industrial unions, to name a few.

More recently, nonviolent civil disobedience has effectively won public support for workers and immigrant rights and saving the environment. It forced the racist murder of Trayvon Martin into the national spotlight.

The aim of any tactic must be to build a majority movement of the most powerful class and social forces capable of winning. The value of a tactic can be determined in how well it achieves this.

Any tolerance for violence, provocation or confrontation is a political dead end.

http://peoplesworld.org/nato-protest-reflections-winning-tactics-vs-dead-ends/