By Gary Alan Fine, October 12th, 2011 
One of our rhetorical tics, so common and so universal as to be unremarkable, is the shared assertion by liberals and conservatives alike that our soldiers are our heroes. We may disagree about foreign policy, but soldiers are the bravest and the greatest. That mainstream politicians should make this claim – Obama and Bush, McCain and Kerry – should provoke little surprise, but it flourishes as a trope among the anti-war left as well. Political strategies reverberate through time as we refight our last discursive war.
In the heated years of the War in Vietnam there was a palpable anger by opponents of that war that was directed against members of the military who bombed the killing fields of Cambodia, Hanoi, and Hue. While accounts of soldiers being spat upon were more apocryphal than real, used by pro-war forces to attack their opponents. According to sociologist Jerry Lembcke in his book The Spitting Image the story was an urban legend, but it is true that many who opposed the war considered soldiers to be oppressors, or in the extreme, murderers. This was a symbolic battle in which the anti-war forces were routed, and such language was used to delegitimize principled opposition to the war and to separate the young college marchers from the working class soldiers who were doing the bidding of presidents and generals. In the time of a national draft, college students were excused from service, making the class divide evident. (For the record, I admit to cowardice, fearing snipers, fragging, and reveille. I was a chicken dove).
After the war, war critics learned a lesson. No longer would the men with guns be held responsible for the bullets. All blame was to be placed upon government and none on the soldiers, even though the draft had been abolished, and the military became all-volunteer (and the working class and minority population continued to increase in the ranks).
![]( "US soldiers </i></strong></em></b>. . .
<p>Read more: <a href=") Our Heroes? Responsibility and War
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 10th, 2011 
I am on the road from Gdansk. It’s been an intense few days. Last Tuesday, I joined the Occupy Wall Street demonstration for a bit. By Wednesday, I was in the Gdansk shipyards, where Solidarity confronted the Party State in 1980, ultimately leading to the collapse of the Soviet Empire. I was interviewed for the Solidarity Video Archive, giving my account of the work I did with Solidarity and my understanding of the great labor movement. Immediately after which, I was taken to Gdansk University, where I gave my talk, this year’s Solidarity Lecture, “Reinventing Democratic Culture.” It opened the All About Freedom Festival. Over the weekend, I visited my family in Paris, and now I am flying over the Atlantic on my delayed flight to Newark, hoping I will get back to New York in time to teach my 4:00 class, The Politics of Everyday Life. It has been a packed week.
Unpacking my thoughts is a challenge. A new social movement is developing in the U.S., with potentially great impact. In Poland, a new generation is confronting the Solidarity legacy, trying to appreciate the accomplishments, while also needing to address new problems. Yesterday’s elections in France and especially in Poland were important. Yet, just as important for what was not on the ballot as for what was. Everywhere, there seems to be a political – society agitation and disconnect, with the politics of small things potentially contributing to a necessary reinvention of democratic culture.
I have many thoughts and will need more time to put them into a clear perspective. Here, just a start. I have a sense that things are connected: not falling apart, rather, coming together.
In the U.S., the central ideal of equality has been compromised in the last thirty years. From being a country with more equal distribution . . .
Read more: Things Come Together: Occupy Wall Street, Solidarity, Elections and Khodorkovsky
By Ermira Danaj, October 7th, 2011 
This summer, a group of miners in Albania’s richest chrome mine in Bulqiza staged a spectacular strike. Ten miners barricaded themselves 1400 meters, nearly one mile, underground and refused to eat and drink. The workers’ drastic measure followed earlier protests both at their own mine in the north and in the capital Tirana. After 23 days of underground protest, ten miners replaced the first weakened crew, continuing the hunger strike to express opposition to low wages, unsafe working conditions, poor management, and the lack of investment in the mine in general. The hunger strike was part of a three month long work stoppage by some 700 Albanian miners. But Albania is no Tunisia, Egypt or Libya. While being one of Europe’s poorest and most corrupt countries, it has been dealing with slowing economic growth and weak political leadership beyond the attention of the global media. The miners don’t seem to be the vanguards of a civil rebellion, but rather the players in an act overshadowed by an ongoing fight between two political parties and their leaders. DeliberatelyConsidered asked Ermira Danaj, an Albanian participant in the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies’ Democracy and Diversity Institute, for a report. – Esther Kreider-Verhalle
DC: Were any of the miners’ demands met?
Ermira Danaj: This time, the miners have won, but it is one of the very few victories for workers fighting for their rights. The owners of the mine promised to continue investments in the mine, in a transparent manner. They also agreed to improve working conditions, to pay a 13 month wage, to pay the workers for half the period they were on strike, and a wage increase of 20%. During the first hunger strike, miners from other regions and workers from other sectors, facing the same problems, had started showing their solidarity with the miners. This was very unusual. After a regional court had decided that the protesters had to leave the mine, the miners left . . .
Read more: A Hunger Strike in Albanian Mines: A Quest for Justice and Sound Public Policy
By Nachman Ben Yehuda, September 16th, 2011 
The Israeli summer: Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in one demonstration after another. Hundreds erected tents in the middle of cities and other public places and lived in them. Protests were not about war and peace, but social concerns, a strong, angry and frustrated cry against the high cost of living and the quality of life. The demonstrators were particularly concerned about the price of housing (both for purchase and rent), low salaries, and the retreat of Israel from its previous social welfare commitments and the transformation of the state into what has become known as a “swine capitalism.” In July and August of this year, the unprecedented happened. Irit Dekel has already reported and appraised at Deliberately Considered earlier developments. Here, I consider a hopeful sign, and suggest how the concerns of the protestors might be addressed, even though I think this is unlikely, given the nature of the present government of the country.
A Hopeful Sign
As the massive civil protests were taking place, supporters were concerned that the sharp edge of this genuine social and political protest may be neutralized if a military threat suddenly erupts. Possible scenarios included President Assad of Syria or Hezbollah in Lebanon igniting Israel’s northern border in order to deflect international attention from Assad’s brutal suppression of the revolt against him. While this did not happen, in mid August, Israel’s southern border was ignited as Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza exchanged fire. This heightened military tension immediately set the agenda for the news. Coverage of the protest by the media all but disappeared. Yet, the protest did not abate.
Given this persistence, the political authorities are under great pressure to respond. Yet, Netanyahu and his government, at best, will try to placate the protestors, making minor changes, merely alleviating some of the despair, stress and misery that fueled the protests. A significant response to the Israeli summer would require changed national priorities. Although I don’t think there is a political will for this by the ruling parties, important changes are possible, practical policy . . .
Read more: Civil Protest in Israel: Reflections of a Science Fiction Fan
By Benoit Challand, August 24th, 2011 
A third irremovable Arab president has fallen. Muammar Qaddafi’s final fate, like that of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh currently in Saudi, recovering from an attempted assassination, is still unknown. But one thing is pretty sure: like Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and Husni Mubarak, Colonel Qaddafi is the third political victim of the Arab spring. Quite a deed, if one remembers the proliferation of de facto monarchical republics in the Arab Middle East in the very recent past.
While there is much to rejoice in this news, many questions arise concerning the political and military developments of these last months in Libya. In this post, I will focus on the media coverage in and around Tripoli. Next week, I will analyse the emerging Libyan leadership.
It is striking to see how the most recent military developments in Tripoli are mostly portrayed as a “rebel-driven campaign.” To be sure, we are told of how NATO allies coordinate aerial attacks in their support for this the apparently final offensive, but very little is said about the active role that Qatar, France and England have taken in arming, equipping and training the Libyan rebel forces (not to mention intelligence gathering and strategic planning). It is, in fact, probably as much a victory of the Transitional National Council (TNC) as it is of the countries which have thrown in their lots in the hope of securing a substantial share of the (oily) pie and to obtain a prominent role as future regional leaders. Yet, very little has been said about the active role of the U.S. in the unfolding events. “Leading from behind,” Obama’s unique strategy, is perhaps more of a media performance than a military reality. The U.S. has been very much involved.
One can find evidence that the USA is not waiting, arms crossed, to see what will happen in the Cyrenaica and Tripolitana. An article in yesterday’s New York Times reveals pro-active American involvement in planning the future of a post-Qaddafi Libya:
With . . .
Read more: Who Won the Libyan war?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 9th, 2011 
I have been on the road much of the past month. This weekend I was involved with my son’s wedding. Sam and Lili Lu were married on Sunday, now off to Oslo and points north for their honeymoon. I have been in deep family mode. It has been hard to fit in a week in review post, but now I can offer some thoughts about the past few weeks at Deliberately Considered and in the world.
Oslo. I was in Wroclaw at the time of Anders Behring Breivikis’s atrocious act, ironically, the city where he may have bought chemicals for his bombing. A Polish visitor to the Institute, an alum, had worked in Norway. His first concern was to confirm that a friend, who called and left a message on his cell phone the day of the massacre, was ok. Upon speaking to his friend, our Polish colleague reported that “everyone” in Norway is relieved that the despicable act wasn’t the work of an Islamic radical. In my class on media and crisis, we discussed this judgment. A majority thought this relief was based on an understandable desire to not have Norway drawn into the conflict of civilizations narrative, but then a student from Albania (an historically Muslim nation) spoke. For her, the early reports of the fanatical anti-Muslim commitments of Breivik were deeply troubling, part of a larger civilizational whole.
When I came home, I discovered that the talking heads on conservative talk radio and Fox News were denouncing the idea that Breivik was a Christian xenophobe, representative of a deep cultural problem. I also heard about the new project to build the “ground zero Mosque.” The absurd side of our academic discussion was revealed.
Economic Crisis. Trying to explain the American debt ceiling crisis to Europeans is next to impossible. In the Euro zone, the economic crisis is the result of a fundamental problem. One currency is being used in a diverse set of nation states, each with independent economic . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Democracy in Crisis
 This past weekend, the second group of students graduated from the 4-month intensive course at the Film and Journalism School Haiti Reporters in Port-au-Prince. The school opened its doors in October last year. It is the brainchild of the Dutch documentary filmmaker and journalist Ton Vriens and is sponsored by the Dutch human rights group ICCO, the Dutch ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Turtle Tree Foundation, and American companies such as Tekserve and Canon USA.
The school offers hands-on media training that gives students the skills to handle professional video- and photo cameras, and editing software. In addition, the curriculum offers courses in entrepreneurship, web design, writing, and media ethics. One of the goals is to prepare students to become community journalists, enabling them to tell the stories of the small communities around them. Ideally, the graduates would not only witness the development and reconstruction – or lack thereof – of their country, but also investigate and critically reflect upon it. Not only as community journalists, but also as civic journalists they could start making products that can function as forums for discussion and that can build up both their own as well as others’ social capital in the process.
In the daily practice of Haiti, this is all easier said than done. While it would be a challenge to give a similar 4-month crash course to any group of young people, trying to do it in Haiti exposes one to the country’s idiosyncratic trials.
Haitian media – they mainly exist in the form of radio and newspapers – have a long history of being mere tools to earn and secure political power. Only in the 1970s, still under Duvalier’s dictatorship, did one radio station start to air local and international news in Creole, the language of the majority of Haitians, instead of French, the language of the elite. It took until 1986, the year of Duvalier’s fall, before journalists enjoyed a meaningful freedom of the press and played a supporting role in the newly developing civil society. The military coup of 1991 . . .
Read more: Haiti Reporters
By Irit Dekel, August 2nd, 2011 
In Israel, for over three weeks, there have been demonstrations initiated by young people. They were first directed against the high cost of living, but they seem to be developing into something much larger, a movement for a systematic social change, addressing the growing disparities between rich and poor and the difficulty of living well, concerned about issues of social security and the deterioration in the provision of education and health care. What had begun with a consumer uprising against the high prices of cottage cheese over a month ago, leading to a boycott on dairy products (since in Israel they operate as a cartel, not open for competition), appears to be the beginning of what Rosa Luxemburg describes as ”an exercise in democratic action.” I observe the exercise as an Israeli living in Berlin, basing my commentary on newspapers, blog posts and conversations with friends at home.
The “cottage cheese revolt” is no trivial or accidental thing. Israeli dinner tables usually contain this staple, together with a salad. The most popular cottage cheese, Tnuva, has an illustrated home on its package and a well known advertising trope: “the cheese with the home.” Fighting for home is not only for affordable housing or the cost of living. The protesters also talk about the quick decline in the freedom of speech and of the Israeli democratic system under the current government. However, the demonstrators delay, for the time being, what they see as “political demands” for possible negotiation with the government. They fear this would compromise the call for “social justice,” and more immediately, could scare off some of the right-of-center demonstrators. According to Ha’Aretz today (August 2), “a document setting out the demands of the tent protesters in the areas of housing, welfare, education, health and economic policy is being drawn up by the movement’s leaders.”
The tent city in Tel Aviv . . .
Read more: The Tents Movement Uprising in Israel
Esther Kreider-Verhalle, a contributing editor at DC, recently went to Haiti to teach a course on media ethics as part of the curriculum at the film and journalism school, Haiti Reporters, in Port-au-Prince. Here she presents her first report. -Jeff
As Philippe Girard has lamented in his history of Haiti writing about the country can be depressing. “One must consult the thesaurus regularly to find synonyms for cruelty, poverty, and thug, while looking in vain for an opportunity to mention hope and success unaccompanied by lack of.”
It is a mess here in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince. Walking the streets of Port-au-Prince, one cannot ignore the squalor. The local market in the neighborhood where I am staying consists of mostly older women – marchandes – selling their produce and merchandise next to little piles of filth and omnipresent burning heaps of trash. Hens are running around, dogs are lying around. Pick up trucks honk their horns when passing through the small, unpaved streets, causing the sand and dust to sweep through the air. Sometimes, the women can only barely move their baskets with produce in time to avoid being hit by aggressively fast moving cars. Somewhere in a building that only has a few remaining standing walls, a religious service of some kind is going on. There is music, singing, clapping. Next to collapsed houses, one can spot impressive houses behind high fences that are rebuilt or seem untouched by natural disaster. The differences between rich and poor are stark. But everywhere, the air is hot, grimy, and dry.
Haiti’s recent history is a somber tale of man-made disasters and natural catastrophes: political ineptitude, economic collapse, racial strife, hurricanes, tropical storms, and earthquakes. After the foreign interference of the past, in the form of colonialism and slavery, the modern day and well intended international aid-industry comes with its own list of drawbacks, encouraging a never ending dependency on foreign aid. Ills such as the plague of corruption and the enormous disparities between the large group of the poor and the small group of the rich, have been preventing Haitian society from . . .
Read more: Haiti: Resilience against Hopelessness
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, July 13th, 2011 
In this post, Antonio Álvarez considers an enduring problem, the relationship between social justice and development in a country moving from dictatorship to democracy. This problem was pressing during the transitions in Latin America and the former Soviet bloc. It endures, as is evident here. The circumstances are always very specific, but the difficulties repeat themselves as is now dramatically evident in North Africa and the Middle East. A creative approach to the difficulties is considered here. -Jeff
Memory and development often seem to be in tension in Latin America. The left speaks of the need to remember the past, particularly the human rights abuses committed by dictatorships during the cold war; the right, on the other hand, is concerned that an obsession with memory will forestall economic growth. A few weeks ago, Gerardo Bleier published, via Facebook, a piece that made the old-guard of the Uruguayan left quite uncomfortable. In the post, he presented a strong and provocative argument concerning collective memory and economic development. A leftist in distinguished standing, Bleier argues that in order to achieve justice concerning human rights violations during the recent Uruguayan dictatorship, Uruguayans must focus on social and economic development. Development, he argues, ought to be seen as an instrument of justice. He has thus rejected the common sense positions of the left and the right and maps out a significant alternative.
Bleier has been a noted Uruguayan journalist since the 1980s. During the first government of the Frente Amplio (Broad Front, the left of center coalition), led by socialist Tabaré Vázquez (2005-2010), Bleier served as a high level consultant; and currently, he publishes weekly reflections about the vicissitudes encountered by the present Frente Amplio.
Importantly, he is the son of Eduardo Bleier, who was a high ranking cadre in the Communist Party. Without ever having held a gun, Eduardo was one of the many activists who disappeared, was tortured, and murdered during Uruguay’s “dirty war” of the 1960s and 1970s. He probably died the first week of July, 1976, though no one knows for sure. After being tortured in the most . . .
Read more: Uruguay at the Crossroads: No Justice without Development
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