HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania — The headline on the front page read in big bold letters, “8.14 am. It was over”. The US federal government has executed Timothy McVeigh, the man who committed the worst act of terrorism on US soil. According to President George W Bush, notorious for executing 152 people in six years while governor of Texas, “The victims of the Oklahoma City bombing have been given not vengeance, but justice”.

But was executing the most hated man in the country really an act of justice?

The US and Japan are the only Western countries that still practice capital punishment.

In the US, support for the death penalty is at a 20-year low (approximately 55% favour capital punishment, according to the most recent poll). The debate over whether or not the death penalty is constitutional has been rekindled in recent years.

Many question the fairness of who receives a death sentence, citing the overwhelming disproportion of minorities on death row. Others point to cases where new scientific methods, especially DNA analysis, have proved that many awaiting execution were in fact innocent.

Adding fire to the debate is whether the execution of the mentally handicapped violates the eighth amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment”. In President Bush’s native Texas alone, six mentally handicapped people have been executed since 1976, with another seven currently on death row.

In Arizona, a schizophrenic man who has the mind of an 8-year-old sits on death row because he cannot pass a psychological exam clearing him for execution. Prosecutors are currently searching for a psychologist who will treat him so that he can be cleared for execution.

The debate over capital punishment is becoming more evenly split around the country — except in the case of convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

Oklahoma City is in the heartland of the country and, while the death of 168 people is a horrific thing to imagine anywhere, the choice of location adds salt to the wound. The words “Oklahoma City” and “bomb” simply do not belong in the same sentence.

Then came the images from the site. Most people will remember, and not soon forget, the image of a firefighter cradling a dying infant in his arms.

When US citizens received their first glimpse of the person who committed this act, we were all in shock. It was not some stereotypical image of a terrorist, but a “home-grown” boy.

I was in grade five at elementary school at the time and our teachers tried to explain to us what had happened. When asked what we thought should happen to Timothy McVeigh, my class replied simply, “We should kill him”.

And that was the majority sentiment in this country, especially after McVeigh revealed that he considered the children who died were simply “collateral damage” to his right-wing anti-government cause. “Collateral damage” was a term he learned from the US State Department, used to justify the deaths of thousands of innocent Iraqis during the Gulf War, a war McVeigh fought in.

For Bush and for backers of the death penalty around the country, McVeigh was a god-send, the poster boy for lethal injection, someone who deserved to be hated.

“We need the death penalty for people like McVeigh”, they could claim, thereby hiding the fact that those executed are nearly always the poor, the downtrodden, the racially oppressed, and that the threat of the electric chair or the gas chamber or the chemical cocktail is used to keep them in their “proper” place.

But not everyone is this country believed McVeigh should be put to death at the hands of the federal government.

Bud Welch, a man who lost his daughter on April 19, was outspoken on why McVeigh should be kept in his prison cell for the rest of his life. He said that killing McVeigh will not bring back his daughter Julie or any of the others and that McVeigh himself considered the execution to be a state-assisted suicide, a way of avoiding coming to grips with what he had done.

May 16 came and went without any execution, for the FBI revealed just days before that they had neglected to turn over 4,000 pages of material to McVeigh’s defence team. A new date was set and the nation sat in waiting — with the death penalty debate heating up immensely.

June 11, 2001. Every news channel and morning talk show was dedicated to the execution. That morning I was awake and I could not escape the coverage, so I started watching it.

Every detail about what was to happen had been revealed, from his final 24 hours to what effect each chemical will have on his body. I watched with horror the chilling way the reporters matter of factly went about detailing the “business of the execution” and interviewed anyone who would bring forth another reason to justify the killing of another human being.

It was here that I learned Timothy McVeigh’s death certificate would read “Cause of death: Lethal Injection. Manner of death: Homicide”. Indiana state laws stipulate that the killing of one person by another is homicide and must read so on the death certificate.

8.28 am. It is announced that the Oklahoma City bomber is dead. While it is illegal to tape or broadcast an execution, a closed circuit feed was sent to Oklahoma City so that those who “qualified” could watch it.

One by one, the media witnesses make a statement about what they witnessed. For the rest of the day the news channels stayed with the story, reciting over and over every imaginable detail.

The most hated man in the United States was dead and now we could all move on with our lives, right? Nevertheless, Bud Welch was right, this death did not bring back any of the deceased and did not heal the scars for those involved.

As one man put it, “What have we accomplished by executing Timothy McVeigh now that there are 169 people dead?”

Those at the memorial in Oklahoma City stayed silent when the announcement came that McVeigh was dead. Death penalty supporters, on the other hand, counted down the time when the execution was to take place as if it was New Year’s Eve.

We are the land of the free, of the brave, and allegedly a leader in the humane treatment of people, but we justify death with more death. As a “regular Joe” stated in a local paper, “When a society kills its killers, then we become a little bit more like them.”

[This article is republished from Green Left Weekly, Issue 452, June 20, 2001.]

Two years after the invasion of Iraq, which generated the biggest protests in history, the anti-war movement in the United States is re-gathering strength. At the forefront of this movement has been the families of soldiers in Iraq, and now, increasingly, students organising to stop military recruiters on their schools and campuses.

The US military has a US$4 million dollar recruitment budget and countless uniformed “pimps”, who are deeply entrenched in downtrodden and working-class neighbourhoods Their job is to spread lies suggesting the military provides the key to a glamorous lifestyle, and a way out of desperation and poverty.

Opposing them is a network of students and community members. Despite the disparity in resources, however, the students are proving powerful: military recruiters have been driven off several campuses across the country, with more to come.

Ahmed Shawki, a leader of the US International Socialist Organization who visited Australia to attend the Easter Asia-Pacific International Solidarity Conference, told Green Left Weekly that the current movement is based on a growing youth radicalisation that became apparent at the protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organisation in November 1999.

Shawki argued that this radicalisation provided the basis for both the anti-globalisation, or anti-corporate, movement, and then, the anti-war movement. He argued that since the 9/11 bombings, the anti-war movement has really taken off, involving new activists and many of the leaders of the anti-corporate protests.

The US ISO has young members involved in anti-war groups across the country, especially on campuses, where it is probably the biggest socialist group. Shawki explained that there are three main foci of student activism against the government: organising against military recruiters, defending the civil liberties of Arab Americans; and defending academic freedom.

The most exciting, he said, is the counter-recruitment activism, which has really expanded this year, on both campuses and high schools.

The latest national newsletter of the Campus Anti-War Network explains: “‘Counter-recruitment’ has become a national issue, and it’s working. Between these efforts, and widespread anger about the war, recruitment is down.”

According to a March 6 Reuters report, “The regular Army is 6% behind its year-to-date recruiting target, the Reserve is 10% behind, and the Guard is 26% short”. The military newspaper Stars and Stripesreports that African-American recruitment is down 41% since 2000.

At Seattle Central Community College, nearly 300 students forced recruiters to leave campus in January. The students later emerged outside and joined an additional 1000 students from local high schools and colleges protesting the January 20 inauguration of US President George Bush.

Counter-recruiters have been pursuing a variety of tactics to pressure the administration. One tactic is to cite campus anti-discrimination policies, pointing out that the military’s homophobic “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy contravenes them. Another is debunking the myth that the armed forces will pay US$70,000 towards recruits’ higher education, in return for a “mere” four years of service. In fact, the US military makes a $72-million dollar profit through its GI Bill Fund, largely because of the difficult conditions placed on accessing the fund.

In a March 4 interview with Socialist Worker, the newspaper of the US ISO, Ray Parrish, an Air Force veteran from Vietnam and current activist in Vietnam Veterans Against War explained: “When you talk to the veterans who are not using it, half the time they say, ‘I wouldn’t be able to handle the stress of a full-time college until after I’ve resolved my post-traumatic stress disorder.’ And because the mental-health system is broken down, it’s hard to get this help.”

Activists have faced harsh penalties. Three City College of New York (CCNY) students and one staff member were arrested for taking part in a peaceful protest against military recruiters at a campus career fair in March. The private security officials assaulted Justino Rodriguez and Nicholas Bergreen, and each suffered minor concussions and deep bruises. The university has also suspended a third student, Hadas Their, for simply taking photographs of the demonstration. Witnesses recall the guards pulling out Their’s hair during the arrest.

All three were charged with misdemeanour counts of assaulting an officer, resisting arrest, and disturbing the peace. Two days later, CCNY staff member Carol Lang was arrested at work and charged with assault in connection with the protest.

In early March, more than 150 San Francisco State University (SFSU) students joined Students Against War and other groups to protest the presence of military recruiters at a school-sponsored career fair. The crowd flooded the fair, surrounding the recruitment tables. When Air Force recruiters tried to wait out the protest, students staged a peaceful anti-war sit-in and teach-in. The following day, recruiters returned to the SFSU career fair. As soon as two activists entered the career fair, eight police officers forcibly removed them from the student centre, pushing them and twisting one activist’s arm. When the other activist asked why she was being forced to leave, she was pushed into a doorway, told she was causing a fire hazard by standing there, and then kicked out of the building.

In the weeks following the action, a number of members of Students Against War received official “notices of appointment” from the administration. The letters stated that complaints had been received and that each student must meet individually with Judicial Affairs. The letters specified that the meetings must be confidential and failed to inform the students of the nature of the offences against them.

The schools leading the anti-recruitment drive are not the “traditional hot-beds” of student activism, but largely working-class universities and community colleges. There are more recruiters on these campuses, and more students know and are related to soldiers already serving.

In the April 8 Socialist Worker, Chris Dugan, a former Marine recruiter, explained: “I learned that the recruiters had lists of everyone from the guidance office at my high school, which indicated what they were doing after graduation. If you were going to what they perceived as a good college, you got a postcard about becoming an officer, and that was usually it. But if you were going to trade school or the local community college, you became a prime target.”

Another important aspect of the US anti-war movement is the continuing organisation of Arab-American communities. This move follows 9-11 and the growing cries of outrage over the constant vilification of Arab-Americans by the media and the government. One notable organisation is the newly formed National Council of Arab-Americans (NCA), which will have its founding convention next month. The NCA is seeking to provide an umbrella structure to serve the needs of Arab Americans, as well as seeking to support the efforts of existing Arab American organisations.

A key initiative of the NCA has been the Defence of Civil Rights in Academia Project (DCRA). This national network aims to provide support for and defence of the rights of Arab American academics, students, faculty and staff. As it says in its announcement, “We believe that no one professor should stand alone, and no one student or student organisation should be isolated!”

This initiative comes at a crucial time. Two Columbia University professors recently came under fire for expressing pro-Palestinian opinions. Last November, Joseph Massad, a professor of Arab politics, faced a campaign to have him fired after he allegedly criticised Israel in his class. One of those leading the charge for his dismissal was Anthony Wierner, a Democratic member of Congress who is now running for mayor of New York.

In a statement, Columbia University president Lee Bollinger pledged to uphold the university’s policy on freedom of expression but added, “We believe that the principle of academic freedom is not unlimited.”

More recently, Rashid Khalidi, director of Columbia’s Middle East Institute, was removed from his position in a secondary school teacher development program by the New York Department of Education. His dismissal followed a scathing article by the New York Sun criticising his stance on Israel. The course, entitled “The Middle East: An Overview, History and Culture” was described in the program catalogue as a “course of study for K-12 educators providing a basic introduction to the countries and cultures of the Middle East.” The course is taught jointly by a number of professors from the Middle East Institute.

The coming months will be an important time for these activists. It is likely that the harassment faced by the Columbia staff will become more widespread as the war continues. Similarly, students on campus will face more administration crackdowns on their ability to organise. However, the students are looking to the past for ideas on how to proceed. One of the ideas is to organise debates among pro- and anti-war students and academics. Either way, its not going to be a silent fight.

[This article is republished from Green Left Weekly, Issue 622, April 13, 2005.]

Milk
Runtime: 128 minutes
Directed by Gus Van Sant
Written by Dustin Lance Black
Starring Sean Penn, James Franco and Josh Brolin

“And you have to give them hope. Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow, hope for a better place to come to if the pressures at home are too great. Hope that all will be all right.” While these words easily lend themselves to the assumption that it was one of the many lines used by Barack Obama during his marathon 2007-08 presidential election campaign, they were in fact spoken 30 years earlier by the first openly gay man elected to a significant US public office, Harvey Milk. The “Hope Speech”, as it is often referred to, is not the only timely parallel between the fight for gay rights in California in the years leading up to 1978 and the California of 2008, when Proposition 8 managed to pass, banning homosexual couples from marrying.

Starring Sean Penn in a role that has just won him an Academy Award for best actor, director Gus Van Sant’s biopic of San Francisco city supervisor (councillor) Harvey Milk is a powerful reminder of how far the gay rights movement has come and, as illustrated by the ability of Prop 8 to pass in California, how far it has left to go. With a supporting cast that features James Franco as Milk’s long-time lover Scott Smith, Emile Hersch as Cleve Jones (who later became known as the founder of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt) and Josh Brolin as Dan White, the conflicted city supervisor who assassinates Milk and San Francisco mayor George Moscone.

The casting is nothing short of superb. Penn is almost unrecognisable as himself in the role, disappearing in to it to such a degree that, at times, you really feel as if you’re watching old newsreels of Milk from the 1970s. Brolin provides sympathy and depth to a man undeserving of it, especially in light of his infamous claim that one of the mitigating factors in his crime was a binge of unhealthy junk food the night before – the “Twinkie Defense”.

The movie chronicles the last eight years of Milk’s life, from his 40th birthday when he reaches a personal epiphany (“Forty years old and I haven’t done a thing that I’m proud of”). This moment makes him spurn his heavily closeted life in New York City to migrate across the US with Smith in tow, to join the ever-growing gay enclave in the Castro District of San Francisco. It was here that Milk found himself and grew quickly into his role as advocate and activist.

Citing the need for gay representation on the city Board of Supervisors, he ran his first campaign for the seat in 1973 and came 10th out of 32 candidates. (Had the election been held on a district basis instead of a city-wide one, he would have won his seat.) Undeterred by the loss, Milk continued to lobby and campaign. When approached by the Teamsters union to join in a local boycott of Coors beer products, he organised the gay bars to ditch the beer. Along with a coalition of Asian grocers, the boycott worked and Coors agreed to a union contract. In return, the Teamsters agreed to hire more gay drivers.

Milk ran for district supervisor again in 1975 and then for the California State Assembly in 1976. He lost both times, but only just. After a vote to reorganise supervisor elections on a district basis in 1976, Milk ran again in 1977 and was the first openly gay, non-incumbent to win election to a public office. Milk biographer Randy Shilts observed: “some would claim Harvey was a socialist or various other sorts of ideologues, but, in reality, Harvey’s political philosophy was never more complicated than the issue of dogshit; government should solve people’s basic problems”.

Milk was sworn in on January 8, 1978 and quickly sought to pass a civil rights bill that outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation. The New York Times called it the “most stringent and encompassing in the nation”. It passed easily, with only White – upset over what he viewed as Milk backing down from a promise to help relocate a mental health facility outside of White’s district – voting against.

The bill was an important victory as legislated bigotry was gaining steam throughout the US. In 1977, Christian fundamentalist singer Anita Bryant headed a campaign to overturn a recently passed civil rights ordinance that made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation in Dade County, Florida. Bryant’s group, Save Our Children, argued the ordinance infringed on their right to teach their children Biblical morality and gained enough signatures for a special election. 70% voted to overturn the law and provided the first major legislative setback for the gay rights movement since its inception following the 1969 Stonewall riots.

The defeat in Dade County led to similar votes in cities in Minnesota, Kansas and Oregon throughout 1977-78, all of which passed. The fight was brought directly to California in 1978 by state legislator John Briggs who sought to allow the firing of any teacher or school employee who was found to be “advocating, imposing, encouraging or promoting” homosexual activity. The wording of the initiative, known as Proposition 6 or the “Briggs initiative”, was so convoluted that even those who merely supported gay rights could be fired.

Prop 6 lost by more than a million votes. The arguments in favour of it were almost verbatim the arguments made in California 30 years later during the Prop 8 campaign. Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan wrote: “It’s impossible to see ‘Milk’s’ anti-Prop 6 demonstrations, to read signs saying things like ‘Gay rights now’ and ‘Save our human rights,’ without thinking of the very current battle over Proposition 8 and its ban of gay marriage.”

Some gay rights campaigners have wondered aloud if the outcome in 2008 would have been different had Milk been released in October instead of November. Penn, during his acceptance speech for the Best Actor Oscar, reflected: “I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren’s eyes if they continue that way of support. We’ve got to have equal rights for everyone.”

Milk’s murder quickly changes the tone of the film, but as you watch the prologue and see what those around him went on to do for the gay rights movement and in the campaign for AIDS awareness, you don’t feel quite as hopeless because he clearly inspired many others to continue to fight. Shortly before his death, Milk recorded a message in case one of the growing number of death threats he’d been receiving became reality. In it, he remarked, “If a bullet should enter my brain, let the bullet destroy every closet door”. Milk brings his story to a new generation at a time when it probably needs it the most.

[Republished from Direct Action, Issue 9, March 2009.]

• District 9
• by Neill Blomkamp
• Written by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell
• Starring Shralto Copley, Jason Cope and Robert Hobbs
• 111 minutes; in cinemas nationally

Neill Blomkamp makes a stunning directorial debut with District 9, a film set in a fictional parallel world in which an alien spaceship stalls above Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1982. After relocating the starving aliens to a temporary refugee camp, the situation devolves as the derisively nicknamed “Prawns” become trapped in the militarised slum known as District 9. Part mockumentary and part “how many cool ways can we blow stuff up?” action flick, District 9 nonetheless provides a strong and compelling social commentary on racism, the corporate thirst for wealth at any cost and the forced removal from one’s home.

The film opens with a mockumentary chronicling the events leading up to the forced relocation of the 1.8 million residents of District 9 to a camp 240 kilometres northwest of Johannesburg known as District 10. Despite their propaganda, the minds behind the move know that the new camp is less like the shiny brochures promise and more like a modern-day concentration camp. Regardless, the human residents of Johannesburg don’t like the alien “problem” and want them moved as far away as possible.

Under South African law, the residents of District 9 must be given 24 hours notice of their eviction and must sign a form to say they’ve received such notification. A TV crew follows Multi-National United (MNU) bureaucrat Wikus van de Merwe, the man placed in charge of the mass eviction, as he travels from shack to shack collecting the signatures of notice. His tactics to gain such signatures range from exaggeration to bribery with cat food (as it’s the favourite food of the aliens) to threatening to take away the child of the main alien protagonist in a scene that calls upon Australia’s Stolen Generations in a chilling way.

Blackwater on steroids

Van de Merwe is a smiling and hapless accomplice in the operation, with little regard or respect for the aliens. His presence serves as an apt reminder that not everyone who carries out such horrid policies are hardened ideologues, but are often just unquestioning pawns of the ruling class. His father-in-law, Piet Smith, is the director of MNU – an organisation that looks like Blackwater on steroids, complete with mercenaries and secret genetic experiments on the aliens in an attempt to harness their DNA and thus be able to use their superior weaponry, which only responds to the alien’s touch. Van de Merwe’s stance on the aliens’ plight undergoes a rapid shift after an accidental encounter with alien technology during a search of one of the shacks leaves him undergoing a literal (and sometimes painfully graphic) transformation into one of “them”.

Most of the film’s protagonists have definite shades of grey in their characters and cannot be viewed completely sympathetically with the notable exception of Christopher Johnson, the main alien character and a relevant reminder of the practice of forcing new slaves or immigrants to change their names to something palatable to residents of their new homeland. You have to hand it to the people behind the CGI-effects as Johnson’s mannerisms and movements (as well as those of the rest of his species) are flawlessly executed and blend seamlessly with the live action footage.

Due to van de Merwe’s accident and on-going transformation, he and Johnson are forced into an unlikely partnership of necessity to retrieve an item from the high security underground labs at the MNU headquarters. Prior to their entrance to the building, there were moments reminiscent of Hollywood buddy-cop humour between the two and you wondered whether Blomkamp had decided to change direction and make an “inter-species” Lethal Weapon. The light-heartedness didn’t last long, however, and the film soon descends into a largely “shoot ‘em up” action flick.

This is not to say the film ends badly or the second half was sub-par, but it was less compelling than the first half (unless you’re a Jerry Bruckheimer or Michael Bay devotee, in which case, this is the perfect hour and a bit for you.) It does, however, definitely provide some interesting discussion points to those paying attention.

The most obvious is the question of race and the practice of apartheid, magnified by its setting in South Africa. The arguments used in District 9 to justify the eviction of the aliens were almost verbatim the arguments used against black South Africans under apartheid. The shacks used in the fictional District 9 were, in fact, recently vacated slums in Chiawelo, a suburb of Soweto.

District 9 is based on an earlier short-film by Blomkamp called Alive in Joburg, which in turn is based on the actual forced removal and relocation of 60,000 non-white South Africans from Cape Town’s District Six to Cape Flats in the 1970s. Alive in Joburg is very similar to the mockumentary style of the first half of District 9, including the interviews with a wide range (and colours) of people about the “alien” presence in South Africa. However, when Blomkamp was shooting the footage, he was interviewing real people, not actors, and instead of asking about extra-terrestrials, he was actually asking them about black Nigerians and Zimbabweans. (Alive in Joburg is available for viewing on YouTube.)

Exaggerated criticisms

The biggest criticism of the film’s racial politics that has been made by left-wing reviewers seems to be about the over-the-top secondary villains – a gang of psychopathic Nigerians who run a black market weapons trade within District 9. They are one-dimensional to an almost silly extent, but feature in such a small part of the film that they shouldn’t provide a distraction to its otherwise excellent allegory. It’s also interesting to note that the only MNU employee who attempts to come to the aid of van de Merwe is his black assistant Fundiswa Mhlanga, who later is imprisoned for breaking into the MNU computer systems to look for evidence of van de Merwe’s disappearance. Despite the substantial amount of evidence found, it is he and not the MNU brass that end up behind bars.

Ken Olende sums up the film’s strengths well in the September 19 UK Socialist Worker, “Science fiction has always been concerned with otherness. Where racism is discussed in science fiction films it has often been in a dogmatic way. District 9manages to avoid most of these pitfalls. And the film steadfastly avoids stating whether either humans or aliens are inherently superior.”

The film also draws parallels with the present-day plight of migrant “guest” workers and “illegal” immigrants, super-exploited as cheap labour by their employers. (Though, in the case of the aliens in District 9, they are largely valued for their ability to operate spectacular weapons – an ability that MNU wants to harness at any cost – rather than their labour power.) Its portrait of evictions and the treatment of those who resist is paralleled by the experience of Palestinians in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. The forced “abortions” of alien children and the need to have a permit to procreate echo centuries of attempts at ethnic genocide. District 9 is an excellent sci-fi flick in its own right, with clever performances and mesmerising visual effects, but it also has an undercurrent of social commentary worthy of measured reflection and in-depth discussion. And watch out for the flying pig.

[Republished from Direct Action, Issue 16, October 2009.]

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
Starring John Cho, Kal Penn, and Neil Patrick Harris
Directed by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg
Runtime 102 minutes

Who could have thought after 2004’s hazy, smoke-filled movie, that pot-obsessed friends Harold and Kumar (and the production team behind Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle) could have produced what is, at some points, one of the most bitingly honest and satirical films about the “War on Terror” produced for a mainstream audience?

Of course, let’s not forget for a moment that Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay is first and foremost a gross-out, stoner film of the silliest kind. However, the political commentary, interspersed with fart jokes, reflects an interesting trend among the US entertainment industry to no longer bite their tongue about the farce that is the Bush administration and its War on Terror – a marked change following the immediate post-9/11 red, white and blue landscape.

First, the film itself. The basic goes thus – Harold and Kumar, while on a plane to Amsterdam, are mistakenly accused of trying to blow up the plane when Kumar is seen trying to light up his smokeless bong by an elderly white woman who was convinced that he was a terrorist from the moment he set foot on the plane. This mishap lands them in a fictionalised version of the US military’s Guantanamo Bay detention centre. They escape and tag along with some fleeing Cubans to Florida and then make their way to Texas to meet a friend with family ties to the Justice Department who can clear their name.

Along the way they encounter a drunken KKK rally, inbred rednecks, doomed wildlife, George Dubya Bush, and a drugged out Neil Patrick Harris (playing himself and having far too much fun in the role.) All the while they must stay under the radar of the psychotic undersecretary of homeland security, Ron Fox, who is every negative stereotype of a bad cop and a true believer of the lies peddled to the American people post-9/11 rolled into one. It’s in the Fox role that co-directors and screenwriters Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg get to make some of their most searing satirical points, in an unabashed and tongue firmly in cheek fashion. When Harold asks Fox for their phonecall after being taken in to custody, Fox replies with the all the zealotry of a madman: “Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’m sorry. You want rights now. You want freedoms. Right now. Is it time? Is it freedom o’clock?”

While this film makes some apt political observations about the US and its War on Terror (and who the real problems are), the film isn’t for the faint of heart or the easily offended. What’s most heartening is that this film is the latest in an ever-growing list of films and television programs standing up and pointing out the hypocrisy and lies being thrown by Washington to the broader US public.

Leading the charge has been The Daily Show (and its spin-off, The Colbert Report). Jon Stewart and company found themselves the unintended keepers of mainstream US political satire after they dubbed their 2000 election coverage “Indecision 2000” – months before the hanging chads of Florida became a common late-night punchline. Since then, they have honed their satirical funnybones in a way that would make Australia’s Chaser team look like a pack of amateur school boys trying to crack jokes at their school talent show.

Highly critical and frequent lampooners of the Bush administration from the moment the Supreme Court declared Bush victorious in the Florida election, The Daily Show, filmed in New York City, took a markedly different approach to politics in post-9/11 America. Their satire was still present, but largely toned down to be more palatable for the same audience that gave President Bush the highest ever approval ratings recorded for a president. The satirical ceasefire came to an official end with Bush’s insistence on the invasion of Iraq. In one show, host Jon Stewart quipped, “In Iraq, the US military’s whack-a-mole approach to killing Saddam Hussein may have finally paid off … The bombs destroyed the area and left behind a 60-foot crater, or as coalition forces prefer to call it: a freedom hole.”

The Daily Show was one of the first to point out, using archived clips from the major news sources, the pathetic hypocrisy of this year’s presidential election when the Republicans rallied behind vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin crying sexism against her critics who noted her meagre political experience while similar observations landed Hilary Clinton with the label of “whiner”. Similar points using their own words against them were made about McCain’s “maverick” moniker in a segment that pitted John McCain circa 2008 against John McCain circa 2000. Perhaps the most apt observation during the Republican convention occurred during one of the many long-winded speeches praising McCain’s status as a former prisoner of war. Stewart observed: “Yes, yes! John McCain is a great leader because he endured five and a half years of brutal treatment by his captors … Hey, Guantanamo Bay isn’t a prison, it’s a leadership academy!”

No discussion of US political satire can pass without a nod to Saturday Night Live, which experienced a heyday of its own under the direction of head writer Tina Fey. Always rich with apt impersonations of America’s political leaders since its debut in 1975, the overt commentary really came to the fore under Fey’s lead and pulled no punches – “A new poll shows that 66% of Americans think President Bush is doing a poor job on the war in Iraq. And the remaining 34% think Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church.”

It’s not just the small screen taking the piss; the big screen has had its share as well. Most notably in 2004’s puppet-helmed Team America: World Police by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, better known as the creators of South Park. Not one to take sides with their criticism of US culture, Team America took shots at both the “America – fuck yeah!” mentality of the War on Terror and crusading Hollywood liberals. However, to dismiss the film entirely would be a mistake as it does provide an insight into contradictions in Washington’s attempt to act as world capitalism’s cop. The fact that this film came out only three years after the 9/11 attacks is also impressive given the self-censorship that followed in the immediate aftermath – from the passive (the removal of shots of the Twin Towers from films such as Zoolander and Spiderman) to the more overt (the year-long delay of the release of Phillip Noyce’s movie version of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American).

One can only hope there will be more films to follow the lead of their television brethren and satirise the US establishment while trying to keep a straight face. Until then, Australians will have to try to enjoy the films we’re given and head to the internet (namely YouTube) for the better satire.

[This article republished from Direct Action, Issue 5, October 2008.]

When US President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law on March 23, he said: “Today after over a year, today after all the votes have been tallied health reform has become the law of the land in America … Our presence today is remarkable and improbable with all the punditry, all the game playing in Washington … We are a nation that faces its challenges and accepts its responsibilities … Everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health.”

What he failed to mention is that rather than fixing the ingrained and fundamental flaws in the US healthcare system (an expensive mess that accounts for 16% of US GDP, twice the proportion of the GDP of other developed capitalist countries), he merely put a shoddy patch on the problems – and essentially gave a giant handout to the big US health insurance companies, the five biggest of which recorded profits of US$12.2 billion in 2009.

Unlike with the single payer Medicare system in Australia which provides all residents with free public hospital care, most people in the US receive their health insurance through their jobs. If they are not provided insurance as part of a salary package (because they either work too few hours or are in a low paying job), then often their only option is to either pay for it out of their own pocket, often to the tune of hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars a month or go without.

The US version of Medicare is only available to those who are over the age of 65. Those on extremely low incomes are sometimes eligible for a program called Medicaid, which is administered by individual states, but it is severely underfunded and those users who can access it face problems finding doctors who accept it as payment. There were nearly 45 million people on Medicaid in 2008, while in the same year there were 47 million without any health insurance in the world’s richest nation. It is estimated that 22,000 deaths in 2006 were directly linked to the fact the deceased didn’t have health insurance, according to an Institute of Medicine study.

One of the biggest flaws of the legislation enacted by Obama (aside from the fact that it wasn’t proposing a single payer system) is that an estimated 23 million Americans will still be without health insurance in 2019 according to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate, even after the final reforms come into effect in 2014. Another estimated 32 million who wouldn’t otherwise have health insurance will be eligible for a tax credit or a federal subsidy to help them buy insurance. Despite the outburst from South Carolina Representative Joe “You Lie!” Wilson during Obama’s September address to both houses of Congress, “illegal” immigrants within the US will not be eligible to purchase health insurance and they represent nearly a third of the pool of uninsured.

Once the entire legislation comes into effect, insurance companies will no longer be able to drop people from their rolls just because they have gotten sick. Those with “pre-existing conditions”, which can range from cancer survivors to those who simply suffer from hay fever, can no longer be excluded from buying insurance. There will be no caps on the amount of spending for healthcare services and insurance companies will be required to spend at least 85% of all premiums on healthcare services – up from a low by some companies of only 67 cents for every premium dollar. Young adults will be able to remain on their parent’s health insurance plans (if they have them) until their 26th birthday without having to attend college or meet other qualifying criteria.

These modest reforms, while long overdue, are just a stop gap. As medical doctor Margaret Flowers wrote on the Physicians for a National Health Program website, “We want health CARE reform. Health insurance reform makes no sense … If we want real reform, it isn’t going to be pretty. It can’t be brought in through the back door or by tweaking. We will have to take on a very powerful industry that currently owns the White House, Congress and the media.”

To get even Obama’s meagre measures passed was a heavy lift given the complicated US legislative system, a Republican party hell bent on derailing any reform at any cost and the insurance lobby’s hold on both the Democratic and Republican parties. According to the Washington Post, the healthcare lobby “set records from January to March [2009], when health-care firms and their lobbyists spent money at the rate of $1.4 million a day”.

Initially intended to be voted on mid-2009, the legislation was held up by various Congressional committees. During the August Congressional recess, town hall meetings were hijacked by an organised, frenetic and loud mob of those opposed to “Obamacare”. Most of these opponents were whipped into a frenzy by the lies peddled by the health insurance industry itself through fake grassroots organisations like Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks and other rent-a-crowd groups.

Former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin did her bit via her Facebook page by writing, “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.” Elected representatives joined in the frenzy, with Senator Chuck Grassley famously saying “We should not have a government program that determines if you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.”

Despite the fact it was very clear early on in the process that Republicans were not willing to have a genuine conversation about the legislation, the Obama administration time and again tried to court Republican votes with generous concessions. Negotiations were started not with a single payer system on the table, but the so-called Public Option – a government run and administered plan that people would have the option to purchase on the open market, just like any other insurance plan. The difference here is that there would be no million-dollar bonuses or high executive salaries and no one would be considered too “high risk” to buy in.

Over time even that got watered down to only people without insurance would be eligible to buy in and individual states would have the option to “opt out” of the program, denying their residents any choice at all. As we have seen, the lack of choice was extended to the entire nation when the legislative dust settled. The administration has faced heavy criticism from the left of the party for making it clear early in the process that it was not fazed if the public option were included or not as it was more vital to get something, anything, passed before the 2010 mid-term Congressional elections for maximum Democratic Party gain.

At the start of the legislative process, a meeting was brokered between those on both sides of the abortion debate (probably the biggest rallying point for social conservatives within the US) that the status quo would not change regarding abortion and its funding throughout the country – meaning the barriers set down in the Hyde amendment regarding no federal funding of abortion, except in cases of rape, incest or imminent maternal death would remain in place.

Enter conservative Democratic Representative Bart Stupak, who was convinced there was an abortion funding loophole in the legislation – a loophole that existed only in his own mind. He was, however, able to convince some 40 other members of Congress that such a loophole existed and they needed to vote for his amendment to the House of Representatives version of the health reform bill. (The Senate version of the bill, which was the more conservative of the two and what was ultimately signed into law, considered a similar amendment but did not proceed to a vote.)

That Stupak was even able to bring such an amendment to the floor of the House for debate was seen as an affront to a woman’s right to choose – a supposed central tenet of the Democratic Party platform. The reason he was permitted to do so by the party leadership was meant as a gesture to ensure passage of the overall legislation. Members of the congressional pro-choice caucus saw it for what it was – throwing women’s healthcare under the figurative bus to score political points.

While Stupak ultimately relented from his campaign to further restrict access to abortion, a legal medical procedure throughout the US since the 1973 Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling, the language in his amendment would have made it illegal to cover abortion services for any woman using a federal subsidy to buy health insurance. These women would have either had to purchase an insurance rider specifically to cover abortion or pay for it out of their own pocket.

The Department of Health Policy at the George Washington University Medical Center concluded the amendment would have had a flow-on effect to the coverage of abortions for all women, because it would encumber the ability of private insurers to market supplemental coverage and possibly deny coverage for other procedures if a relationship between those procedures and abortion exists – a strong possibility if the abortion is needed due to other serious maternal medical issues.

US filmmaker Michael Moore, who directed arguably the single greatest critique of the US healthcare system with his film Sicko, explained his frustrations to Democracy Now daily TV/radio news program host Amy Goodman in an interview on March 23, “I’ve been pretty vocal about this. This bill was never about universal healthcare. It, you know, did a couple of good things that could have been done anytime, I guess, like ending the pre-existing condition rule for children. It doesn’t end it for adults for four years, so you can rack up another, you know, probably 20,000 to 40,000 deaths in the meantime from people who otherwise would have received help had we truly gotten rid of the pre-existing condition thing for all citizens. But six months after the bill is signed by Obama, kids will be able to get coverage from a private, profit-making insurance company. The larger picture here is that the private insurance companies are still the ones in charge … I don’t know why they’re so upset this week, because this bill is going to line their pockets to an even greater extent.”

[This article republished from Direct Action, Issue 21, April 2010.]

– Tori Amos, “Silent All These Years”

 I’ve spent the last eight years trying to get my head around a label that has no place in my life – victim. I’m not a victim, nor a whore, tramp, bitch or slut or anything else that you might want to label me as.  I am: a survivor.  Two men at a party raped me when I was thirteen and I spent the following six years in silence. It’s only in the last two years did I allow myself to accept what had happened and it’s only in the last few weeks have I knowingly come into contact with other survivors.

All the facts and figures fail to grasp at the feelings, the emotions and the real guts of what it means to be sexually assaulted. They fail to mention the blood or the cold tiles or, in my case, the cruel laughter. They ignore the constant nightmares and the longing for a dreamless sleep. The word ‘rape’ sidesteps the years it takes to rebuild the ability to trust or how tiring it is when you have to juggle work, study, and the ongoing symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The silence extends to your own sexuality – how can I possibly ever enjoy having sex again?

I think that for me, I just wish I had contact with another survivor long ago. (I realise that I probably did given the statistics, but I hope that you can follow my drift.) I needed another to go and say, “This is what it was/is like for me,” so I could feel a little less isolated in this world. I’m thankful to say I have that now through a sexual assault survivor’s group run by my local health service.

The reason I’m writing this piece is two-fold. One, I’m reaching out to other survivors. You are not alone and remaining isolated and silent won’t help you in the long run. Please don’t for one second buy into the bullshit that it was somehow your fault – no one deserves to be raped. The long walk to recovery is easier if you have someone to help you along the way.

The second reason is I’ve come to realise that through two years of study here at UWS that we still have a long way to go when it comes to understanding the impacts of sexual assault. I’ve encountered callousness, flippancy, and downright cruelty towards survivors from both my classmates and teachers. Most of the time, these people didn’t know about my past, but I don’t see that as an excuse. Given the under-reported nature of rape, it’s unlikely that I’m the only one who’s experienced this.

It’s painful to hear so many people buy into rape myths – “Only bad girls get raped.” “She must have provoked him by wearing that skirt or agreeing to go up to his apartment.” “Strippers deserved to be raped.” “Men can’t be raped.” It was this kind of thinking that kept me silent for six years. It is this kind of thinking that needs to be changed. The silence is broken.

No one, and I mean no one, deserves to be violated in such a way that makes you question every action and reaction leading up to and following the assault. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy, nor should anyone else. Rape is not funny. It’s not a joke.  It’s a serious crime with incredibly serious consequences.

If someone tells you that they have been raped, believe them.  Don’t question their actions, dress, if they were drinking, etc – just be there for them. They’re telling you something so painful and private from their past and your reaction can have a big impact on their recovery.

If you’re in a class and discussing the topic of sexual assault  please think about what you say before you say it. Chances are, there are other survivors in that room and you may be adding to the belief that silence is golden if you make ridiculous blanket statements about the “kinds” of people who are raped. It can happen anywhere to anyone.

If you are a survivor (and please find the strength in that word, because you are strong enough to claim it), do not think you are alone. There is assistance out there if you want it, all you have to do is contact your local sexual health clinic or health service and they can put you in contact with the correct service. Alternatively, you can contact the NSW Rape Crisis Centre on (02) 9819 6565 or 1 800 424 017 at any time 24 hours a day, seven days a week to speak to a counsellor or to get more information.

My name is Dani Barley and I am a survivor.

[Republished from The Western Onion, Issue 14, 2005. A link is available via the Wayback Machine.]

The University of Western Sydney is about to slash funding for Student Support Services, the division within the uni that provides Counselling, Disability Support, Chaplaincy, the Learning Skills Unit and Careers and Employment.  It comes as part of an effort to reduce the budget of Corporate Services (where Student Support Services is located) by $2.5 million. 

The Careers and Employment Unit have already been informed that they will be disbanded, however the university has yet to make a formal, public announcement.  According to the information received by The Western Onion, this move has the formal sanction of Vice Chancellor Janice Reid. 

The disbanding of the Careers and Employment Unit will make UWS unique in Australia as it will be the only university in the country without a careers service.  Staff have yet to be informed where the further cuts will take place, but at this time it appears that Counselling and Disabilities will not be directly targeted for cuts.  

According to one staff member, “An email was sent by Jan Reid last year which said the first groups to be targeted in the budget cuts would be the Educational Development Centre and Student Support Services.  Given the current situation of our students, both of these groups should be gaining budgets not losing them.”

Within Student Support Services, the other unit that looks likely to bear the brunt of the cuts is the Learning Skills Unit.  As a member of the Learning Skills Unit explained, further cuts to this valuable unit will have a detrimental impact to some students across UWS.  “This is at a time when student retention is the focus of the university and we have a quality audit in September.  It is also a year when students with lower UAI’s are being enrolled at UWS.  The student population at UWS is deserving of extra support (compared to the sandstone universities) because we have higher numbers of first generation, non-english speaking background, and mature age students.  To threaten to remove any of our services is outrageous and to virtually cut our staff in half would obviously mean we could only provide half the support currently provided.”

These services are vital for UWS students.  Careers and Employment provide ongoing assistance to students seeking help with resumes and skill development, as well as providing individual career counselling to over 800 students in 2005.  They also maintain a comprehensive website that includes a vacancy listing service.  The website recorded 66,000 student visits in 2005.

The Learning Skills Unit assists student’s academic performance by providing workshops, bridging courses and academic preparation programs in language and maths, as well as helping new students learn effective studying and researching strategies.  They also run the Peer Mentoring program, which teams up first years with more senior students undertaking the same course.

University of Western Sydney Student’s Association President Tim Jarrett has called on students to send letters of protest to the Vice Chancellor.   He says, “along with the bus cuts, introduction of parking fees, the number of offered units being halved, raising of HECS, the cuts to student support services are just another burden the students must bear in order for the university to make its budget break even.  However, what good is a balanced budget if it comes at the cost of a decent education at UWS?  Students are the primary stakeholder in the university and it is about time that the administration starts recognising us as such.”

    However, it appears that the University already has a surplus.  On February 15^th, the Chair of the Strategy and Resources Committee reported to the Board of Trustees that the “University had achieved a commendable turnaround from an expected deficit for the year of $6.5 million to an operating surplus in the order of $2.0 million.”

Students who wish to register their complaint about these funding cuts are advised to contact the Vice Chancellor Janice Reid at vc@uws.edu.au or on 9678 7801 or Deputy Vice Chancellor and Director of Corporate Services Rhonda Hawkins at r.hawkins@uws.edu.au or on 9678 7819.  

Keep an eye out for further developments in future issues of The Western Onion or on the UWSSA website.

[This article is reprinted from The Western Onion, Issue 2, 2006. A link to the article is provided via the Wayback Machine.]