Alice Embree : Chile and the Politics of Memory

Me gustan los estudiantes. This painting by Austin's Carlos Lowry is the cover art on the Fall 2013 NACLA Report on the Americas.

The contradictions of Chile
and the politics of memory

The elections in Chile take place as the country marks the fortieth anniversary of the bloody military coup that happened with covert U.S. assistance.

By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / November 20, 2013

“[T]he battle over memory is a struggle over meaning…” -- Steven S. Volk, "The Politics of Memory and the Memory of Politics," Fall 2013 NACLA Report on the Americas.

On Sunday, November 17, Socialist Michelle Bachelet received 47% of the vote in a field of nine Chilean presidential candidates. She will go into a December 15 run-off with a candidate from the hard right, Evelyn Matthei, who received 25% of the vote. Bachelet will likely serve a second term as president of Chile.

Both run-off candidates are daughters of Chilean Air Force officers. Bachelet’s father was an Air Force Brigadier General at the time of the 1973 military coup. Known for his loyalty to the democratic government, he was arrested for treason, tortured, and died in prison. Both Michelle Bachelet and her mother were arrested, tortured, and forced into exile. In stark contrast, Matthei’s father was a key member of the military junta. The memory of military rule for these two women could hardly be more disparate.

The elections in Chile take place as the country marks the fortieth anniversary of the bloody military coup that happened with covert U.S. assistance. The September 11, 1973 coup overthrew the elected Socialist president Salvador Allende. The Fall 2013 NACLA Report on the Americas, published by the nonprofit North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), explores the implications of that coup.

The cover art on the NACLA issue is by Austin artist Carlos Lowry. The painting hangs above our couch. It features Camila Vallejo against a background of jubilant students. The painting's name, Me gustan los estudiantes, is taken from a song by the legendary Chilean folksinger Violeta Parra.

Camila Vallejo, featured on NACLA’s cover, was president of Chile’s largest student federation. She became the well-known face of the 2011 student movement demanding change in an educational system that has left Chilean students among the most indebted in the world. On Sunday, Vallejo was elected to the Chilean Congress. Three other student leaders were also elected.

NACLA’s compilation of articles describes Chile 40 years after the coup. To some, Chile became a neoliberal economic success story. "Shock Doctrine" is what Naomi Klein calls it in a book by that name. Democracy was dismantled and social movements demobilized by military force. Opponents were imprisoned, tortured, “disappeared,” and exiled -- displacing and scattering Chileans across the globe. The public sector was weakened, free market tactics were celebrated, and public services were privatized.

But NACLA deals with another aspect of Chile’s coup -- the success of an international solidarity movement, the exposure of U.S. complicity in the coup through congressional hearings, the mobilization of many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to address human rights abuses, the creation of human rights archives (including one at the University of Texas at Austin), and the genesis of Central American solidarity committees.

NACLA also examines the Chilean student uprising, and contrasts it with Wall Street occupiers and Spain’s indignados. The student movement of Camila Vallejo claimed new space for social movements, and defied the status quo of Chile’s neoliberal economy. Student leaders rejected “politics as usual” as practiced by the dominant coalitions since 1990. The student demand for tax reform sufficient to support free education will become a major challenge from the left for Michelle Bachelet when she takes office again.

The bold student demonstrations, complete with theater, took politics into the streets in ways not seen for decades. Students staged an 1,800-second long "kiss-in" for education and an 1,800-hour-long relay around the presidential palace. The "1,800" symbolized the investment (2.2% percent of Chile’s gross domestic product) required to fully fund public education.

Chile is a territory of contradictions. They are as vast as its geographic extremes -- Andes to ocean, desert to rainforest. It is a country in which neoliberal policies deformed public education, weakened national health care, and caused students to incur burdensome loans. Its new prosperity rests upon severe income disparity.

It is a country that U.S. Republicans have sought to emulate in plans to “privatize” Social Security. Yet, it is a country whose recent student mobilizations have inspired students around the globe. It is a country that just elected Camila Vallejo, a Communist, to office, and is poised to elect Michelle Bachelet, a Socialist, to a second term as president.

[Alice Embree, a contributing editor to The Rag Blog, is a long-time Austin activist, organizer, and member of the Texas State Employees Union. A veteran of SDS and the women's liberation movement, Alice is a former staff member of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) and of underground newspapers The Rag in Austin and RAT in New York. She now co-chairs the Friends of New Journalism. Read more articles by Alice Embree on The Rag Blog.]

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Harry Targ : Revisiting 'American Exceptionalism'

Beacon to the world? Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Was Putin right?
Revisiting 'American exceptionalism'

A better future and the survival of the human race require us to realize, as Paul Robeson suggested, that what is precious about humanity is not our differences but our commonalities.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / September 17, 2013

Continued study and research into the origins of the folk music of various peoples in many parts of the world revealed that there is a world body -- a universal body -- of folk music based upon a universal pentatonic (five tone) scale. Interested as I am in the universality of (hu)mankind -- in the fundamental relationship of all peoples to one another -- this idea of a universal body of music intrigued me, and I pursed it along many fascinating paths. -- Paul Robeson, Here I Stand, 1959.

America’s destiny required the U.S. “...to set the world its example of right and honor... We cannot retreat from any soil where providence has unfurled our banner. It is ours to save that soil, for liberty, and civilization... It is elemental... it is racial. God has not been preparing the English-speaking and teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration. No! He has made us the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. He has given us the spirit of progress to overwhelm the forces of reaction throughout the earth.” -- Senator Albert Beveridge, Indiana, Congressional Record, 56 Congress, I Session, pp.704-712, 1898.

President Vladimir Putin wrote in The New York Times, September 12, 2013, that “it is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.” This statement embedded in a generally reasonable statement about the instability of Syria brought an outcry from the liberal media elite and often-quoted academics.

For example a Bloomberg editorial refers to Putin’s “bizarre” “out-of date” analysis. Professor Fouad Ajami wrote that “Arab regimes of plunder and tyranny were both physically close to Russia” and the “lawless Kremlin model.”

Liberal commentators dwelled on the silly pictures of muscular Putin riding a horse without a shirt. Or they reminded viewers of Russia’s recent (and vile) homophobia. Or they referred to Putin’s pedigree as a KGB operative or as the ruler behind the throne manipulating the Russian electoral system in order to return to office after being replaced.

Even considering the source.
Image from Huffington Post.

Although critics were probably correct to challenge his claim that the recent gassing of Syrian citizens was done only by rebels, he did admit that the Assad regime in fact does have such weapons. But both Democrats and Republicans expressed outrage that anyone could challenge the idea that the United States is the “exceptional” nation.

Let’s be clear. United States foreign policy over the last 150 years has been a reflection of many forces including economics, politics, militarism, and the desire to control territory. The most important idea used by each presidential administration to gain support from the citizenry for the pursuit of empire is the claim that America is “exceptional”.

Think about the view of “the city on the hill” articulated by Puritan ancestors who claimed that they were creating a social experiment that would inspire the world. Over 300 years later President Reagan again spoke of “the city on the hill.” Or one can recall public addresses of turn of the twentieth century luminaries such as former President Theodore Roosevelt who claimed that the white race from Europe and North America was civilizing the peoples of what we would now call the Global South. Or Indiana Senator Beveridge’s clear statement: “It is elemental... It is racial.”

From the proclamation of the new nation’s special purpose in Puritan America, to Ronald Reagan’s reiteration of the claim, to similar claims by virtually all politicians of all political affiliations, Americans hear over and over that we are different, special, and a shining example of public virtue that all other peoples should use as their guide to building a better society and polity.

However, looking at data on the United States role in the world, the United States was at war for 201 years from 1776 to 2011. Ten million indigenous people were exterminated as the “new” nation moved westward between the 17th and the 20th centuries and at least 10 million people were killed, mostly from developing countries between 1945 and 2010 in wars in which the United States had some role.

In addition, world affairs was transformed by the singular use of two atomic bombs; one dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, instantly killing 80,000 people and the other on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, killing another 70,000.

Comparing the image of exceptionalism with the domestic reality of American life suggests stark contrasts as well: continuous and growing gaps between rich and poor, inadequate nutrition and health care for significant portions of the population, massive domestic gun violence, and inadequate access to the best education that the society has the capacity to provide to all.

Of course, the United States was a slave society for over 200 years, formally racially segregated for another 100, and now incarcerates 15 percent of African-American men in their twenties.

The United States is not the only country that has a history of imperialism, exploitation, violence, and racism, but we must understand that our foreign policy and economic and political system are not exceptional and must be changed.

Finally, a better future and the survival of the human race require us to realize, as Paul Robeson suggested, that what is precious about humanity is not our differences but our commonalities. Exceptionalist thinking separates us. Sharing what we have in common as human beings, both our troubles and our talents, is the only basis for creating a peaceful and just world.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University and is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, and blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Harry Targ : The CIA's Iranian Coup and 60 Years of 'Blowback'

Supporters of Mohammed Mossadegh demonstrate in Tehran, July 1953. Placard depicts an Iranian fighting off Uncle Sam and John Bull. Image from The Spectator.

The overthrow of Mossadegh:
Sixty years of Iranian 'blowback'

The overthrow of Mossadegh and the backing of the return of the Shah to full control of the regime led to U.S. support for one of the world’s most repressive and militarized regimes.

By Harry Targ /The Rag Blog / August 21, 2013

Chalmers Johnson wrote in The Nation in October 2001, that "blowback"

is a CIA term first used in March 1954 in a recently declassified report on the 1953 operation to overthrow the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. It is a metaphor for the unintended consequences of the U.S. government's international activities that have been kept secret from the American people. The CIA's fears that there might ultimately be some blowback from its egregious interference in the affairs of Iran were well founded... This misguided "covert operation" of the U.S. government helped convince many capable people throughout the Islamic world that the United States was an implacable enemy.

The CIA-initiated overthrow of the regime of Mohammed Mossadegh 60 years ago on August 19, 1953, was precipitated by what Melvin Gurtov called “the politics of oil and cold war together.” Because it was the leading oil producer in the Middle East and the fourth largest in the world and was geographically close to the former Soviet Union, President Eisenhower was prevailed upon to launch the covert CIA war on Iran long encouraged by Great Britain.

The immediate background for the ouster of Mossadegh was Iran’s nationalization of its oil production. Most Iranians were living in poverty in the 1940s as the Iranian government received only 10 percent of the royalties on its oil sales on the world market. The discrepancy between Iran’s large production of oil and the limited return it received led Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a liberal nationalist, to call for the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951.

Despite opposition from Iran’s small ruling class, the parliament and masses of the Iranian people endorsed the plan to seize control of its oil. Mossadegh became the symbol of Iranian sovereignty.

Ironically, Mossadegh assumed the United States would support Iran’s move toward economic autonomy. But in Washington the Iranian leader was viewed as a demagogue, his emerging rival the Shah of Iran (the sitting monarch of Iran) as “more moderate.”

After the nationalization, the British, supported by the United States, boycotted oil produced by the Iranian Oil Company. The British lobbied Washington to launch a military intervention but the Truman administration feared such an action would work to the advantage of the Iranian Communists, the Tudeh Party.

The boycott led to economic strains in Iran, and Mossadegh compensated for the loss of revenue by increasing taxes on the rich. This generated growing opposition from the tiny ruling class, and they encouraged political instability. In 1953, to rally his people, Mossadegh carried out a plebiscite, a vote on his policies. The Iranian people overwhelmingly endorsed the nationalization of Iranian oil. In addition, Mossadegh initiated efforts to mend political fences with the former Soviet Union and the Tudeh Party.

As a result of the plebiscite, and Mossadegh’s openings to the Left, the United States came around to the British view; Mossadegh had to go. As one U.S. defense department official put it:

When the crisis came on and the thing was about to collapse, we violated our normal criteria and among other things we did, we provided the army immediately on an emergency basis... The guns that they had in their hands, the trucks that they rode in, the armored cars that they drove through the streets, and the radio communications that permitted their control, were all furnished through the military defense assistance program... Had it not been for this program, a government unfriendly to the United States probably would now be in power. (Richard Barnet, Intervention and Revolution, 1972)

The Shah, who had fled Iran after the plebiscite, returned when Mossadegh was ousted. A new prime minister was appointed by him who committed Iran to the defense of the “free” world. U.S. military and economic aid was resumed, and Iran joined the CENTO alliance (an alliance of pro-West regional states).

In August 1954, a new oil consortium was established. Five U.S. oil companies gained control of 40 percent of Iranian oil, equal to that of returning British firms. Iran compensated the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company for its losses by paying $70 million, which Iran received as aid from the United States. The Iranian ruling class was accorded 50 percent of profits from future oil sales.

President Eisenhower declared that the events of 1953 and 1954 were ushering in a new era of “economic progress and stability” in Iran and that it was now to be an independent country in “the family of free nations.”

In brief, the United States overthrew a popularly-elected and overwhelmingly-endorsed regime in Iran. The payoff the United States received, with British acquiescence, was a dramatic increase in access by U.S. oil companies to Iranian oil at the expense of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

The overthrow of Mossadegh and the backing of the return of the Shah to full control of the regime led to U.S. support for one of the world’s most repressive and militarized regimes. By the 1970s, 70,000 of the Shah’s opponents were in political prisons. Workers and religious activists rose up against the Shah in 1979, leading to the rapid revolutionary overthrow of his military state.

As Chalmers Johnson suggested many years later, the United States' role in the world is still plagued by “blowback.” Masses of people all across the globe, particularly in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, and East Asia, regard the United States as the major threat to their economic and political independence. And the covert operation against Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran is one place where such global mistrust began.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University and is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, and blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Robert Jensen : Peace Talks Are New Chapter in an Old Book

Peace talks: the players. Image from AP Graphics Bank.

Peace talks:
A new chapter in an old book

Discussions about the issue, whether among citizens or by officials at the negotiating table, must begin with an acknowledgement of the power wielded by Israel, backed by the United States.

By Robert Jensen / The Rag Blog / August 1, 2013

New negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians may begin next week, with much talk of a “new chapter” in the seemingly intractable conflict. A new chapter, perhaps, but who is writing the book?

Any public discussion about the “peace process” is tense, in part because there is no widely shared understanding of the history and politics of -- even an appropriate terminology for -- the conflict. That’s as true in the United States as in Palestine and Israel.

I never gave much thought to the question until I was 30 years old, in the late 1980s. Before that, I had a typical view of the conflict for an apolitical American: It was confusing, and everyone involved seemed a bit crazy.

With no understanding of the history of the region and no framework for analyzing U.S. policy in the Middle East, it was all a muddle, and so I ignored it. That’s one of the privileges of being in the comfortable classes in the United States -- you can remain comfortably ignorant.

But as a frustrated journalist with a newfound freedom to examine the politics of news media in graduate school, I began studying law and human rights, in the domestic and international arenas. I also started digging into the issues I had been avoiding. In the case of Palestine/Israel, I began reading about the roots of the conflict, how the United States was involved, and how U.S. journalists were presenting the issues.

I came to this inquiry with no firm allegiance to either side. As a white U.S. citizen from a centrist Protestant background but with no religious commitments, I felt no cultural or spiritual connection to either national group. I don’t speak Hebrew or Arabic, and I had never traveled to the Middle East. I had no personal relationships that predisposed me to favor one group over the other.

Like any human, I was not free of bias, of course. As a relatively unreflective white man rooted in a predominantly Christian culture, I was raised with some level of anti-Semitism and anti-Arab racism, for example, and no doubt that affected my perceptions. But based solely on my personal profile, I didn’t have a dog in that fight, or so I thought.

After a couple of years of studying the issues, I realized that the categories of “pro-Israeli” and “pro-Palestinian” didn’t fit me. When people asked me where I stood on the issue, I would say that I supported international law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As a U.S. citizen, I asserted that my primary obligation was to evaluate the legality and morality of my own country’s involvement in the conflict and the region.

The more I learned about all those things, the more I became opposed to my government’s policy on this issue, in the Middle East, and around the world. The more I learned, the more I realized I lived in the imperial power of the day, and it became clear to me that imperial policies are designed to enrich the few while ignoring the needs of the many, at home and abroad.

I became a critic of U.S. policy based on careful study that included, but was not limited to, mainstream sources. I could no longer accept the conventional story and the policies that flowed from that story.

Today, the situation in Palestine and Israel is as grim as ever. Decades of Israeli expansion and the Palestinian leadership’s failure to build a vibrant movement to challenge that expansion (or, perhaps, to let such a movement emerge on its own) have narrowed the prospects for a just peace. And in the background lurks the United States, still the major impediment to progress as long as it offers Israel nearly unconditional support for the occupation.

More than ever, the case for international law and human rights needs to be made clearly, but the conditions for that dialogue deteriorate. Despite recent efforts by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, there seems little basis for optimism, short or long term. As U.S. officials scramble to save an empire in decline, with its whole Middle East policy in disarray, it’s difficult to imagine a breakthrough.

I have no great insights into how to solve the conflict or deepen the dialogue. But as I think about the conflict, I’m drawn back to my roots in feminist intellectual and political life for some basic observations.

My return to graduate school has led me to inquire about many aspects of the world over the past two decades, but the first of those inquiries was into gender, with a focus on men’s violence against women. That led me to radical feminist theory, which has helped me understand not only the question of gender but offered a framework for understanding hierarchy.

Feminism taught me how to think not only about gender but also about power, and a central lesson of feminism that applies here is the problem of assuming false equivalency in analyzing conflict.

Take a classic example of a husband who physically assaults his wife. The problem is rooted in patriarchy, a system that gives men control over women in a hierarchy that is naturalized and normalized: Men rule, women submit. The man’s violence in this case is used to ensure the submission, but the physical violence typically is only one method of control; such relationships often include emotional abuse and sexual violence.

Within that dynamic, the woman may engage in all kinds of dysfunctional behavior herself, and she may strike out violently against the man at times. But feminist analyses of male power and men’s violence have made two things clear.

First, any specific incident can’t be understood outside the larger context, not only of that relationship but of the power dynamics of the culture. So, if we were drawn into a chaotic incident in the couple’s home, we might be tempted to assess the situation on the basis of what had just happened, but focusing only on the immediate occurrence would leave us ill-equipped to understand it. We need to know the couple’s history and understand the patriarchal context in which that history plays out.

Second, if we wanted to help resolve the conflict, it would be folly to assume that the man and woman were equally responsible and that a productive dialogue could go forward on that basis. Any claim that the man and woman should sit down as equals and talk would favor the man; without an acknowledgement of his greater power and a history of using that power to dominate, any “dialogue” would be a farce.

While some men react to any call for such conversation with force, other men pursue a more sophisticated strategy that continues the dialogue so long as his fundamental power, in the relationship or in society, is not challenged. Some men pursue both strategies, depending on the moment. Real dialogue is possible only when the discrepancy in power is addressed.

If there is to be progress toward a just and peaceful solution in Palestine/Israel, those two lessons are crucial. We must recognize the larger political context in which the conflict is set and not assume there’s a level playing field for dialogue.

That means acknowledging that since the end of World War II, the United States has pursued a policy of domination -- through diplomacy and force -- in the Middle East, and that for more than four decades a central component of that policy has been U.S. support for Israel’s expansionist policies in exchange for Israeli support of the U.S. project in the region (though not without disagreements and tension between the two countries).

It also means that discussions about the issue, whether among citizens or by officials at the negotiating table, must begin with an acknowledgement of the power wielded by Israel, backed by the United States.

For more than 20 years I have tried to recognize the many ways in which I live with unearned privilege and tried to support the struggles of marginalized and oppressed people to justice. That has led me to support the basic aims of Palestinian nationalism, even if I do not always support specific strategies or tactics of various Palestinian groups.

I also have criticized Israeli policy in public, in writing, and on film. But as a citizen of the United States, I have tried always to bring discussions on my home turf back to the responsibility of citizens to hold their own government accountable.

That is my dog in the fight. I live in a nation in which there is a tremendous gap between leaders’ rhetoric of freedom and justice, and the reality of imperial policies that perpetuate injustice. To close that gap, our public discussions must take account of the context and be honest about power. Nowhere is that more crucial that the intellectual and political engagements on the Palestine/Israel conflict.

[Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin. His latest books are Arguing for Our Lives: A User’s Guide to Constructive Dialogue and We Are All Apocalyptic Now: On the Responsibilities of Teaching, Preaching, Reporting, Writing, and Speaking Out. His writing is published extensively in mainstream and alternative media. Robert Jensen can be reached at rjensen@austin.utexas.edu. Read more articles by Robert Jensen on The Rag Blog.]

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Ron Jacobs : Onward, Through the Fog of War

Syrian refugees in Arsaal, Lebanon, on the Syrian border. Photo by Ed Ou / NYT.

Enter Obama:
Onward, through the fog of war

There will be no progressive secular government in Syria after the bloodshed ends. Indeed, there may not even be the nation the world now knows as Syria.

By Ron Jacobs / The Rag Blog / June 25, 2013

The world waits. Washington and other western capitals ponder war. Tehran and Moscow assume their positions, wary of their flanks and the rear. Syria suffers.

Groups within and without Syria's borders position themselves as representatives of the Syrian people, almost every one of them hoping for some kind of Western support now that Obama and his White House have decided to publicly join the fray.

The question remains: How much military aid and of what nature? Does the White House honestly think it can get away with providing small arms and ammunition to the rebels in Syria? Or is it quietly planning to jump into the shitstorm with the the wild man and warmonger John McCain, eventually providing anti-tank weapons, lethal air support, and RPGs to the rebel elements with the greatest chance of victory?

Meanwhile, opposition to the White House decision remains muted, despite opinion polls showing over 80% disapproval of the decision. In fact, the primary opposition comes from libertarian and other right-wing quarters, some of them who oppose it only because Obama is spearheading it.

As for members of the left? If they spoke 10 times as loud they would still be but a whisper.

Syria is in the throes of a civil war. The government is winning, thanks in some part to the recent entrance of Hezbollah forces into the battle. The rebellion which began almost three years ago as popular protests against a repressive regime sold to the neoliberal marketplace has long since stopped being what it originally was. The violent repression of those protests by the Assad government provoked a violent response and the formation of what is called the Free Syrian Army.

Since that time, various regional governments and groups with their own agendas have sent in fighters, provided funds and weapons, and generally helped expand the conflict into almost every sector of Syrian society. The politics of the rebel forces grow murkier each day while the influence of outside forces seems to grow. This latter phenomenon will grow exponentially once Washington begins to play its latest hand.

There will be no progressive secular government in Syria after the bloodshed ends. Indeed, there may not even be the nation the world now knows as Syria.

If we are to use recent history as an example, the rationale of the previous statement is clear. Iraq, a once singular state run by an authoritarian Baathist government is now a fragmented collection of regions controlled by local rulers often at odds with the nominally central government in Baghdad.

The reasons for Iraq's current situation are related directly to Washington's 1991 invasion, a decade of low-intensity warfare against Iraq, and the culminating invasion by U.S. forces in 2003. Since none of these series of actions were able to install a regime beholden to Washington, the resulting fragmentation has had to do.

If nothing else, it has made the once regional power of Iraq a non-factor. This pleases not only Washington and Tel Aviv, but Saudi Arabia and the other emirates as well. If Washington is unable to install a client government in Damascus, one imagines that a weakened and fragmented Syria will suffice. Given the current role of Hezbollah, one assumes that Washington also hopes to weaken its role in the region.

These are at least some of Washington's desired goals. After all, Assad's authoritarian rule has never been too much of a problem before, especially when one understands that Washington maintained relations of various kinds with the Assad regime until quite recently.

Much like the relationship various U.S. administrations shared with Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein, the commonality of interests and enemies insured numerous joint ventures between Damascus and Washington, including the rendition of U.S. captives to Syria for interrogation under torture. Now, however, it appears that Washington is going to throw its lot in with whatever lies past the long and brutal history of the Assads.

Like Libya and Iraq, this decision means that Washington's new commitment will be broader than it is letting on to the U.S. public. What are now small arms shipments to certain groups in Syria could soon become no-fly zones and bombing raids; drone strikes and helicopter gunships; bombardment from the sea and Marines on the ground.

If the usual contingencies are being followed, it is fairly safe to assume that special forces and CIA paramilitaries are already involved inside Syria. If the military piece of this war continues like it has, Syrian government forces and their allies will continue to win. That, in turn, means that the only way in which the forces Washington prefers can win is with ever greater U.S. support. If the scenario begins to include Iranian forces and more sophisticated Russian weaponry, all bets are off.

The decision by Obama and his henchmen to arm some Syrian rebels came in the wake of those forces suffering some major defeats. It also makes the moves toward negotiations touted about a couple weeks ago moot. In other words, Washington has chosen war over negotiation once again. The reasons are numerous and certainly include a desire to decrease Iran’s stature in the Middle East. The lives of the Syrians, already made cheap by the armed assaults of their government, have been made even cheaper by this decision.

There is nothing noble in Obama's decision. Like so many U.S. leaders before him, he has chosen to expand a war instead of negotiating to end it. In doing so, he has calculated that the Syrian people will continue to pay the ultimate price in hopes that Washington's hegemony in the region can continue.

As I write this, Robert Fisk is reporting in the British newspaper The Guardian that Iran will be sending at least 4,000 troops to Syria in support of the Assad government. If true, this move almost demands that Washington step up its support for its favorite rebels in response.

There are those on the left who are convinced that the rebel forces they support can accept arms from Washington and maintain their hopes for a progressive, secular, and democratic government when all the killing is done. This type of thinking is as naive as that of the liberals who believe Washington's entrance into the war is a humanitarian act devoid of imperial machinations.

To begin with, those who believe this assume that U.S. support will go to leftist and progressive forces. The likelihood of this is minimal, especially since there are elements in the opposition that share Washington's plans for Syria and the Middle East. For the most part, the leftist elements do not.

The plain truth is that imperialist acts never flow from pure humanitarian motives. The very nature of imperialism demands that any action, especially in the arena of warfare, is taken to further the goal of hegemony.

You can bet your bottom dollar that Barack Obama understands this. No matter what he or any of his spokespeople say in the upcoming months regarding the U.S. commitment in Syria, the fact is that his decisions are based on his understanding of the risks involved and the potential benefits to be gained -- for Washington, Tel Aviv, himself, and whomever else he and his regime are beholden to (and that doesn't include the U.S. public).

[Rag Blog contributor Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His novels, The Co-Conspirator's Tale, and Short Order Frame Up will be republished by Fomite in April 2013 along with the third novel in the series All the Sinners Saints. Ron Jacobs can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog.]

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Norman Pagett and Josephine Smit : Grain of Truth

Image from UCL.

Grain of truth:
Our precarious food supply

Global food production has been allowed to fall into the hands of fewer and fewer megacorporations, and their aims are simple: to deliver short-term profits and ultimately to control the entire system of world supply.

By Norman Pagett and Josephine Smit / End of More / May 16, 2013

“A hungry world is a dangerous world. Without food, people have only three options: they riot, they emigrate or they die.” -- Josette Sheeran, World Food Programme

We owe our lives to technology that uses 10 calories of energy in the process of growing food to produce a single calorie of energy in the food we eat.

On average, we need to consume about 2,500 calories a day, so each of us has to find 10 times that amount of energy in order to stay alive. Our existence rests on that fundamental equation. Looked at it in cold print, this might seem irrelevant to our day-to-day lives but it means that global agricultural production and food supply systems are consuming 10 times more energy than they deliver as food.

Few of us ever stop to consider the embodied energy in what we eat. Why would we? Calories have become purely the currency of dietary fads, something to be limited in our constant battle with obesity. We have been well fed for so long that we imagine that supermarket shelves will always be amply stocked to support our affluent comfort. Until now, in the developed world at least, the food production, distribution and supply infrastructure has been able to obtain all the energy it needs, and in ever increasing amounts.

We are far more prosperous than the third world countries that are constantly being brought to the brink of food deprivation or outright starvation. Yet we are only marginally safer. We have a blind faith in our supply systems and expect our food stores to have everything we might want to buy available fresh every day. Remove the certainty of our seven-day-a-week food supplies and supermarkets would be stripped bare within hours.

Our food supply is extremely precarious; it takes very little disturbance to disrupt it severely. During an oil delivery tanker drivers’ strike in the UK in 2001, the government was given the stark warning by a consortium of major retailers that the food chain delivery system carried only three days’ supply. This information was not released to the public at the time.

The fuel supply emergency lasted only a week, but if it had gone on for longer rapidly emptying supermarket shelves would have provided the impetus for food hoarding and panic. This is what happens when there is a temporary break in just one link in the energy chain that supports our highly complex food supply system.

Reduced to its raw essentials, the embodied energy in food represents all the mechanical input of our farming system: the tractors, the fishing boats, and the trucks. It includes the water transported from Portugal disguised as melons, and that air-freighted from Kenya disguised as green beans -- 4 litres of water are needed to grow a single bean stem.

It covers the diesel in the trucks that deliver loads to your supermarket several times a day, fresh and just in time, and it includes the gasoline in your car when you go to collect your weekly groceries. The cumulative energy intrinsic to so many food processes -- growing, packaging, distribution and delivery -- is so cheap in historic terms that most of us could buy sufficient basic food for a week for what we earn in an hour or two, and in many cases far less than that.

Over 50 years, our average food expenditure has dropped from half of our income to around 10% but that is a purchasing total, not the cost of what might be described as essentials. Our food is so cheap that we can afford to buy far in excess of what our bodies need for survival and throw large quantities of it away -- at least a third of the food we buy is wasted.

Cheap food is an illusion; it is put there by energy sources that we have come to regard as inexhaustible. Our collective genius at devising new ways of producing food, faster and in the name of greater efficiency and productivity, has worked so well that we see it as normal. Greater abundance of food has allowed more people to survive, and dramatically increased global population.

It has been estimated that the number of people now alive is more than the entire number of human beings who have ever lived. Some 90% of those people are only here because of our ingenuity at delivering food with that 10:1 calorie factor built into it, together with all the other benefits of cheap fossil fuel energy.

As fossil fuel energy declines, renewable sources will not be able to maintain our complex, energy-intensive food systems in their present form. As a result, we will not be able to feed our present numbers. Our food production level will return to roughly what it was 500 years ago, when one calorie had to be put in as manual labour or animal manure to produce one calorie to eat. By that reckoning, our food supply system will only support one-tenth of us. To put it bluntly, at least 6 billion people won’t have a future.

The energy that goes into making our food is taken from the ground in some form of fossil fuel, and there is no substitute for it. It is not possible to make nitrate fertilizer or a tractor tire from the energy output of a wind turbine or a photovoltaic panel because these agricultural essentials depend on a high volume input of hydrocarbons.

We are pressing ahead with the large-scale manufacture of biofuel because we have convinced ourselves it is a viable alternative, predominantly to liquid hydrocarbon fuel. But a growing consensus of scientific opinion, backed by extensive research, has demonstrated that biofuel is not a practical solution.

It requires vast quantities of land, which we also need for foods, and consumes more energy in production than is obtained by its use. It is at best only marginally better than 1:1. Putting biofuel into a tractor to cultivate crops to make yet more biofuel would only be done by the kind of farmer who was a regular guest at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, unless of course he was being subsidized at the taxpayer’s expense.

This is the logic of what has come to be known as agribusiness. Agribusiness now dominates farming, although its originators have little in common with the land; they in fact began as giant chemical companies. These chemical companies had the resources to initiate development and analysis of fundamental crop science, so that plants could be engineered to suit exact conditions and resist specific pests while at the same time remaining under the patented control of their producers.

The science of agriculture and food production changed forever around the turn of the millennium when the United States Supreme Court judged that a patent could be granted on bioengineered seed. While dairy products, fruit and vegetables may still be wrapped in packaging bearing images of the rosy-cheeked farmer, food production is now an industrial process and inherited farming skills are rapidly being lost.

“Today so few people farm that vital knowledge of how to farm is disappearing." -- Richard Heinberg, "Fifty Million Farmers," 26th annual EF Schumacher lecture, 2006

Big business, in the form of supermarkets and agribusiness, is squeezing out the small farmers on the grounds that their methods are "inefficient" and is pushing down the price of produce to such an extent that local operators are struggling to make a living or are being displaced altogether. Agribusiness supplies supermarkets with consistent product on a massive scale and at a rock-bottom price. The small farmer struggles just to stay in business.

The principles of large-scale industrialized farming, now epitomized by the U.S. mega-farm, are being exported to Europe and elsewhere across the globe. The spread of agribusiness is stripping the world of its family farmers, those who possess skills handed down through generations in tending small parcels of land sustainably.

Today the typical farmer in both the UK and U.S. is likely to be over the age of 55, and UK farmers are leaving the industry at a rate of around a dozen a week. These trends are being repeated across the developed world. In developing countries small farmers are abandoning rural life to take their chances in the city because they can no longer make their living from the land.

This shift is of critical importance because the very infrastructure of farming is being destroyed. The inherited link between mankind and the land that supports him is being broken. Once gone, that link cannot be easily reestablished. Farming knowledge is an instinct passed down through generations; it is not something that can be learned from books.

The Caribbean’s lush islands were once key food producers with Jamaica providing up to 500,000 pounds of rice a year, until agriculture decreased in favour of a more lucrative income from tourism through the latter half of the twentieth century. The prosperity brought by tourism in turn supported increased population numbers, with visitors’ dollars buying rice from Guyana and the U.S. When the prices of basic foodstuffs soared around the world in 2008, the islands found their annual rice bill had risen to $3 billion.

Now they are seeking to revive lost farming skills but have had to turn to other countries for help, with Jamaica asking Guyana to help reestablish rice production. It is not redeveloping the techniques of its own small farmers, and has instead turned to foreign mega-farming operations, welcoming them with open arms and, according to local news reports, preferential treatment.

In microcosm, Jamaica serves as a warning to all of us. We have freely chosen to abandon our understanding of how food is produced, preferring more comfortable jobs that offer transient wealth but no long-term sustenance.

Global food production has been allowed to fall into the hands of fewer and fewer megacorporations, and their aims are simple: to deliver short-term profits and ultimately to control the entire system of world supply.

“The twenty first century is going to have to produce a new diet for people, more sustainably, and in a way that feeds more people more equitably using less land.” -- Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy, City University, London, 2008

Biofuel production, now inextricably linked with that of food, has given the megacorporations even greater power over our lives. These megacorporations are feeding on government subsidies paid by the taxpayer and given by politicians on the vague promise that in the long term biofuel will become economic to produce, and will replace the conventional oil we need to provide our food by current farming methods.

Food security is of little concern to those involved in agribusiness. U.S. giant Cargill delivered a 68% increase in earnings over just three months in 2010, on the back of "crop market volatility," ie, rising prices on the global market. Cargill is a very successful company and its financial performance was good news for the company’s stockholders. But over the same period of time in Mozambique, people at the bottom of the food chain were rioting at the 30% increase in the price of a loaf of bread.

Agribusiness exists to convert the fertility of the land into profit with maximum efficiency. The industry functions on the widely accepted, successful, and profitable laws of business. That may mean forcing food producers into a state of dependence on crops that must be treated with specific weedkiller and grown by increasing applications of fertilizer. Seeds, weedkillers, and fertilizers may have to be obtained from specific sources that further contribute to the profit margins of agribusiness.

In the third world basic farming economies have been devastated by agribusinesses dumping subsidised grain crops on the market at prices below that which indigenous farmers could compete. Their actions effectively forced farmers off the land, leaving the way clear for them to buy vast acreages from governments in order to make still more money from the twin essentials of food and oil.

Highly industrialized farming is stripping the soil of its underlying fertility and water reserves. Food products are ultimately shipped to those countries with the ability to pay the going rate for them.

If we think about these practices we may feel uncomfortable about the methods, but in our immediate short term, agribusiness is delivering what we need: cheap, varied foods of consistent quality.

Food has become currency, not only through the activities of agribusiness but more literally with the rise in prominence and influence of the food speculator. In 2000 the U.S. government changed the business of commodities trading with the introduction of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. This paved the way for financial institutions that were in no way connected with the business of agriculture to trade in food-based commodities.

Effectively it gave investors the power to manipulate markets, by buying up foodstuffs, exacerbating shortages and as a result inflating prices. As returns from traditional investments have dwindled because of the global economic downturn, putting money into staples like food has appeared a safe and attractive investment. Investors are essentially profiteering at the expense of human hunger, an unacceptable trade that is provoking world-wide food riots as well as global demands for constraints on this kind of speculation.

In the hands of unscrupulous people, food is becoming a means of control. Profits and financial results are now the goals; starvation does not appear on balance sheets.

The rapid transfer of food and energy into the combined asset of money is resulting in supply pressures that are already climbing the ladder of prosperity and will inevitably exacerbate over time. Today it is the world’s poor who are affected, but each successive stratum of society will find itself subject to food stress as the one below falls under the hammer blows of outright starvation.

We can measure poverty or prosperity by the proportion of income that has to be used to obtain what we need for subsistence. Our perceived income, derived from raw energy itself, will buy less and less as even the developed societies of the west have to use a greater proportion of income to obtain the means to eat. We will be subject to the same shortages that drove the underclasses of Mexico City, Lagos, Cairo, or Jakarta to riot in 2008.

Those shortages will take a little longer to reach the food markets of the developed West, but already the poorest are depending on financial support to eat. In the U.S., one in eight citizens relies on the government’s supplemental nutrition assistance program, the politically correct term for food aid, and that number is rising every month. In the UK and most other countries in the EU there is a growing network of food banks to provide people with an essential supplement to state support.

“Part of the reason for the fall in stock levels was simply that global use of grains and oilseeds had overtaken production – a factor that has continued to hold for seven of the eight years since 2000” -- Chatham House, "Feeding the Nine Billion," 2009

There have always been hungry people in the world, although there has in fact been sufficient food to "feed" everyone. But increases in global population, pressures from developing nations for more varied diets, and the destruction of crops through environmental disasters are producing new tensions, and desperate steps to try to ensure security of supply.

The food production shortfall and resulting price spike in 2008 caused 29 countries to ban or restrict exports of staple foods. They had no option but to hoard what they had; there was no concern whatsoever for the condition of those who had not.

Saudi Arabia is now growing a high proportion of its food in Ethiopia using Nile water, while Ethiopia itself has to seek food aid from other regions of the world to feed its own starving people. In Indonesia, palm oil plantations suck water out of what was rainforest so that developed societies can cling on to vain hopes of maintaining a lifestyle of infinite plenty at the expense of others less fortunate. In Brazil, indigenous people are displaced en masse as the rainforest is cleared to make way for cash and energy producing crops.

“Although we believe agriculture has enabled us to lead lives of wealth, health and great longevity, it has in fact been detrimental to the human species.” -- Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel

As with all species, our strength is drawn from the nourishment we absorb, and our survival depends on continued access to food. Although present levels of production cannot be maintained, let alone increased, we will continue to believe that this is somehow possible and that continual progress and growth form part of our ultimate destiny.

When we finally recognize that commerce and our own communal greed have destroyed our means of survival, we will have no option but to fight for what’s left, using every weapon at our disposal in order to gain advantage for our country, our tribe and ultimately for ourselves.

[Norman Pagett is a UK-based professional technical writer and communicator, working in the engineering, building, transport, environmental, health, and food industries. Josephine Smit is a UK-based journalist specializing in architecture and environmental issues and policy who has freelanced for British newspapers including the Sunday Times.Together they edit and write The End of More.]

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RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Pedro Gatos and Val Liveoak on Nicaragua, Cuba, and the Global South

From left, Pedro Gatos, Rag Radio's Thorne Dreyer, and Val Liveoak, in the studios of KOOP-FM in Austin, Texas, Friday, April 26, 2013. Photo by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog.

Rag Radio podcast:
Pedro Gatos and Val Liveoak on changes
in Cuba, Nicaragua, and the Global South

We discuss the legacy of Hugo Chavez, the state of the Cuban revolution, the landmark genocide trials in Guatemala, and the growing challenge to U.S. hegemony in the hemisphere.

By Rag Radio / The Rag Blog / May 1, 2013

Peace activists Pedro Gatos and Val Liveoak joined Rag Radio host Thorne Dreyer in a discussion of recent developments in Cuba, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and the Global South on Friday, April 26, 2013. Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, Texas.

Listen to or download our interview with Pedro Gatos and Val Liveoak here:


Among the topics Gatos and Liveoak discussed on the show were the legacy of Hugo Chavez in Nicaragua and the recent narrow victory of Nicolas Maduro; Cuba in transition and the state of the continuing revolution; the landmark genocide trials in Guatemala of former head of state Efraín Ríos Montt and former military intelligence chief José Mauricio Rodríguez Sanchez; and the region's growing challenge to U.S. hegemony.

Pedro Gatos (aka Pete Katz) is an activist, a specialist in Latin American politics and history, a radio show host, and a licensed chemical dependency counselor. He was employed in the Travis County Justice System in Austin, Texas, for 24 years.

He founded the Pedro Gatos Institute on Addiction, Health and Social Theory. He has facilitated workshops on subjects ranging from addiction and the War on Drugs to U.S. foreign policy and "The Bay of Pigs 50 Years Later."

Gatos has visited Cuba five times since 2000 and has had exclusive interviews with then National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcón and many others. Pedro hosts Bringing Light into Darkness Mondays at 6 p.m. on KOOP-FM in Austin.

Val Liveoak is the volunteer Coordinator of Friends Peace Teams’ Peacebuilding en las Américas program. An activist since 1971, she founded the Friends Peace Teams in 1993, and has been involved with many community organizations and nonviolent struggles.

For 21 years, she has been a facilitator with the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP), working in Mexico, Canada, Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba, St. Croix, St. Kitts, Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, and El Salvador.

Val lives in San Antonio, but spends most of the year in Suchitoto, El Salvador, and travels throughout the region. She has been named a “Woman of Peace” by Womens’ Peacepower Foundation (2009) and Peacemaker of the Year by the Austin Peace and Justice Center (1986).

Listen to our December 9, 2011, Rag Radio interview with Val Liveoak here.

Rag Radio has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement, Rag Radio is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP, and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, May 3, 2013: Free-form radio pioneer Bob Fass of Pacifica Radio's WBAI-FM in New York, with filmmaker Paul Lovelace (Radio Unnameable).
Friday, May 10, 2013: Journalism professor & activist Robert Jensen, author of Arguing for Our Lives: A User's Guide to Constructive Dialog.
Friday, May 17, 2013: Political economist Gar Alperovitz, author of What Then Must We Do?
May 24, 2013 (RESCHEDULED): Amsterdam-based poet John Sinclair, legendary founder of the White Panther Party and former manager of the MC5.

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BOOKS / Ron Jacobs : 'Conversations on U.S. State Terrorism'

'Weapon of the Strong'
Interviews from 'State of Nature'

Throughout the text is an underlying question of language and its meaning. Why is one act considered terrorism while another act that is essentially the same not considered so?

By Ron Jacobs / The Rag Blog / April 23, 2013

Weapon of the Strong: Conversations on U.S. State Terrorism, edited by Jon Bailes and Cihan Aksan (2012: Pluto Press); Paperback; 224 pp; $24.

The interview is one of the journalist’s best tools. If done right, an interview provides a considerable amount of information about the views of the interviewee and interviewer, while also informing the reader about the subjects covered.

Certain journalists made the interview an art form in its own right. Relatively recent examples of this include Jann Wenner's Rolling Stone interview with John Lennon in 1971, David Frost’s interview of Richard Nixon in 1977, Alex Haley's interview of Malcolm X, and Ignacio Ramonet's interview of Fidel Castro.

Two of these interviews have been published in book form (Ramonet and Castro; Wenner and Lennon, with the Lennon interview being twice made into a book); one was related to one of the best-selling books of the 20th Century (Alex Haley's Malcolm X); and the Frost-Nixon interviews were watched by millions on television, while also being remade into a film drama almost 30 years later.

I mention these interviews as a means of introducing the first book by the editors of the political-cultural web magazine State of Nature. This book, titled Weapon of the Strong: Conversations on U.S. State Terrorism, features 13 interviews.

The interviewees are philosophically from the left side of the political spectrum and come from five different countries. They include Noam Chomsky, attorney Marjorie Cohn, several professors and the director of the Swiss Institute for Peace and Energy Research. The interviewers and editors are Cihan Aksan and Jon Bailes.

The conversations cover topics that include state-sponsored terrorism, the Unites States as a terrorist state, the nature of economic terrorism as facilitated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, the role of the United Nations, and the U.S. role in the Middle East, to name but a few.

Throughout the text is an underlying question of language and its meaning. Why is one act considered terrorism while another act that is essentially the same not considered so? Is it the actor that determines whether or not an act is terroristic? Why is the U.S. hesitant to accept the commonly held definition of terrorism? Is the reason that doing so would indict the United States as a terrorist state?

These are just a small number of the questions raised and addressed in this tightly edited and intellectually stimulating collection.

Chomsky discusses the pointlessness of international law given the fact that it is the most powerful nations (most specifically, the U.S. and UK, although Russia and China have managed to counterbalance some excesses) that set up structures to implement it. Furthermore, their sheer power creates a situation where their actions define the nature of those structures, Should a group of smaller nations decide to go against that nature, the more powerful just ignore those demands.

In South African Patrick Bond's discussion of Washington's economic terrorism, Bond brings up the inability of Nelson Mandela to refuse the IMF structural adjustment forced on his nation after the end of apartheid. This "adjustment" included insisting that the new government pay off the prior government's debts. Bond and the editors rightly point out that South Africa was a victim of U.S. economic terrorism.

One need look no further than Cyprus to see the latest victim of this form of terrorism. It can be argued that the terrorist regime in the case of Cyprus (and Greece, Spain and Portugal) was the European Union and Germany, but in doing so, one would have to ignore the role played by giant U.S.-based financial houses in the manipulation of those nations' economies the past decade.

The editors' introduction ties the 13 interviews together. They draw a line from Roosevelt to Obama, pointing to the continuity of policy when it comes to the pursuit of U.S. dominance in the world. In one instance, they discuss the U.S. support for the Suharto regime in Indonesia and the slaughter in East Timor under Nixon; in another, they discuss the U.S. support for the Shah of Iran and Jimmy Carter's unabashed support for the man who sat on the Peacock Throne.

They tie up these and other instances of U.S.-sponsored genocide and brutality with the knot of U.S. imperialism, still humanity's number one enemy.

This is a valuable text. Building on themes addressed on their State of Nature website, Aksan and Bailes have compiled an intellectually challenging and forthright collection of conversations certain to create further conversations of their own. Each interview could easily stand alone. Together, they overwhelm.

[Rag Blog contributor Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His novels, The Co-Conspirator's Tale, and Short Order Frame Up will be republished by Fomite in April 2013 along with the third novel in the series All the Sinners Saints. Ron Jacobs can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog.]

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