JOAN ROELOF -- Dissenting Women

JANUARY 25, 2019

Dissenting Women

by JOAN ROELOFS

“Everyone must know about this.”

– Linda Ford, Women Politicals in America (p. 531)

Historian Linda Ford has written a stunning book: Women Politicals in America: Jailed Dissenters from Mother Jones to Lynne Stewart (2018, 564 pp.). In addition to the harrowing tales of women freedom fighters, we may be reminded of our national history through this lens. Ford’s book raises important questions we need to ponder. Women’s activism has sometimes promoted equality and freedom; what methods and political environment have enabled these advances? How have repression and co-optation diminished the struggles for justice? What still remains to fulfill the aspirations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the genuine “American Dream”?

Since the 1960s, radical militancy challenging the root causes of poverty, racism, and war has cooled. One cause is much co-optation of radical protest into nongovernmental organizations. Another strike against signficant change was COINTELPRO, which disrupted movements and scared away new supporters. However, repression has been constant since colonial times. Ford, in her biographical sketches of women political prisoners, describes this in great detail. Along the way, similarly harsh treatment of male politicals is revealed. Even lawyers trying to ensure constitutional rights of accused dissenters are targeted. We are also reminded of the dismal state of justice and prison conditions for ordinary criminals.

Ford maintains that women dissenters, because they were not only challenging government and social norms, but were “unnatural, unladylike” and protesting patriarchy, were more heavily punished than men. In colonial times, women preachers were arrested and executed; their heresy was a double effrontery.

Joan Roelofs -- The Science of Lethality

DECEMBER 13, 2019

The Science of Lethality

by JOAN ROELOFS

The geographical scope of the US military is larger than the world, as even without the “Space Force” the militarization of space has proceeded apace. On this earth, there is its division into “commands.”

We must not forget the US continental sprawl of bases, training grounds, bombing ranges, and oceanic military preserves, and similar uses of US colonies. There are US bases in over 160 foreign lands. To the well-publicized ongoing wars we can add the Special Operations Forces (SOF) in more than 130 countries conducting small wars, assassinations, regime change or propping up our banana republics. In these “gray zone” missions the SOF may work with the Department of State, Central Intelligence Agency, Agency for International Development, National Endowment for Democracy, or nongovernmental regime-change organizations. We also dominate North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members and partners, as well as other allies. Eastern European and Central Asian countries are now our satellites under the “uranium curtain.” Latin America hosts US bases and drug enforcement troops. US military training occurs in about 155 countries; it comes along with all arms sales. Weapons contracts create more ties; we sell more than any other country, but we also purchase parts and research and development (R&D) from diverse nations. We disseminate propaganda in many languages, through our own media and those abroad under our influence. There is the militarization of space and heaven knows what more.

One leg of this centipede is the vast science and medical research sponsored by the US Department of Defense (DoD). Of course, it is nothing new that war feeds and propels science; the physics and chemistry of weapons, and the biology of disease prevention and injury mitigation have long been fostered by militaries. Until the last century, more deaths in war were caused by disease than enemy fire. What is notable today is the extensive worldwide collaboration in US military research by foreign universities, scientists, business corporations, charities, and institutes; and international organizations. In the process of contracting R&D abroad not only are ideas harvested and economies stimulated, but ties are strengthened between foreign intellectual communities—significant parts of their nation’s power elite—and the US military.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and other DoD agencies issue huge contracts for weapons research to corporations and universities in the US and foreign countries. They also sponsor research in neurotechnology, with the aim of creating cyborgs for military uses. While DARPA’s work with insect cyborgs has been buzzing along for years, its plans for human enhancement are even more spectacular. One aim is to enable humans to control weapons with their thoughts. Currently, humans remotely control drones via computers; the cyborg is intended to eliminate that external step.

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT ARTICLE -- The All-Pervasive Military/Security Complex

The All-Pervasive Military/Security Complex

July 24, 2018 

The All-Pervasive Military/Security Complex

The article below by Professor Joan Roelofs is reproduced with permission from CounterPunch.

The article appeared in the print edition of CounterPunch Vol. 25, No. 3, and is available online at https://joanroelofs.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/insecurity-blanket.pdf

The article is long but very important and is worth a careful read. It shows that the military/security complex has woven itself so tightly into the American social, economic, and political fabric as to be untouchable. President Trump is an extremely brave or foolhardy person to take on this most powerful and pervasive of all US institutions by trying to normalize US relations with Russia, chosen by the military/security complex as the “enemy” that justifies its enormous budget and power.

In 1961 President Eisenhower in his last public address to the American people warned us about the danger to democracy and accountable government presented by the military/industrial complex. You can imagine how much stronger the complex is 57 years later after decades of Cold War with the Soviet Union.

The Russian government, Russian media, and Russian people desperately need to comprehend how powerful the US military/security complex is and how it is woven into the fabric of America. No amount of diplomacy by Lavrov and masterful chess playing by Putin can possibly shake the control over the United States exercised by the military/security complex.

Professor Roelofs has done a good deed for the American people and for the world in assembling such extensive information documenting the penetration into every aspect of American life of the military/security complex. It is a delusion that a mere President of the United States can bring such a powerfull, all-pervasive institution to heel and deprive it of its necessary enemy.

The Political Economy of the Weapons Industry

Guess Who’s Sleeping With Our Insecurity Blanket?

By Joan Roelofs

For many people the “military-industrial-complex (MIC)” brings to mind the top twenty weapons manufacturers. President Dwight Eisenhower, who warned about it in 1961, wanted to call it the military- industrial-congressional-complex, but decided it was not prudent to do so. Today it might well be called the military-industrial-congressional-almost-everything-complex. Most departments and levels of government, businesses, and also many charities, social service, environmental, and cultural organizations, are deeply embedded with the military.

The weapons industry may be spearheading the military budget and military operations; it is aided immensely by the cheering or silence of citizens and their representatives. Here we will provide some likely reasons for that assent. We will use the common typology of three national sectors: government, business, and nonprofit, with varying amounts of interaction among them. This does not preclude, though it masks somewhat, the proposition that government is the executive of the ruling class.

Every kind of business figures in the Department of Defense (DoD) budget. Lockheed is currently the largest contractor in the weapons business. It connects with the worldwide MIC by sourcing parts, for example, for the F-35 fighter plane, from many countries. This helps a lot to market the weapon, despite its low opinion among military experts as well as anti-military critics. Lockheed also does civilian work, which enhances its aura while it spreads its values.

Other types of businesses have enormous multi-year contracts—in the billions. This despite the constitutional proviso that Congress not appropriate military funds for more than a two year term. Notable are the construction companies, such as Fluor, KBR, Bechtel, and Hensel Phelps. These build huge bases, often with high tech surveillance or operational capacity, in the US and abroad, where they hire locals or commonly, third country nationals to carry out the work. There are also billion-funded contractors in communications technology, intelligence analysis, transportation, logistics, food, and clothing. “Contracting out” is our modern military way; this also spreads its influence far and wide.