Gen. John Allen, commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan, spoke Wednesday at the Pentagon, four stars on each shoulder, his chest bedecked with medals. Allen said the NATO summit in Chicago, which left him feeling “heartened,” “was a powerful signal of international support for the Afghan-led process of reconciliation.” Unlike Allen, many decorated U.S. military veterans left the streets of Chicago after the NATO summit without their medals. They marched on the paramilitarized convention center where the generals and heads of state had gathered and threw their medals at the high fence surrounding the summit. They were joined by women from Afghans for Peace, and an American mother whose son killed himself after his second deployment to Iraq.

Leading thousands of protesters in a peaceful march against NATO’s wars, each veteran climbed to the makeshift stage outside the fenced summit, made a brief statement and threw his or her medals at the gate.

As taps was played, veterans folded an American flag that had flown over NATO military operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia, Afghanistan and Libya and handed it to Mary Kirkland. Her son, Derrick, joined the Army in January 2007, since he was not earning enough to support his wife and child as a cook at an IHOP restaurant. During his second deployment, Mary told me, “he ended up putting a shotgun in his mouth over there in Iraq, and one of his buddies stopped him.” He was transferred to Germany then back to his home base of Fort Lewis, Wash.

“He came back on a Monday after two failed suicide attempts in a three-week period. They kept him overnight at Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis. He met with a psychiatrist the next day who deemed him to be low to moderate risk for suicide.” Five days later, on Friday, March 19, 2010, he hanged himself. Said his mother, “Derrick was not killed in action; he was killed because of failed mental health care at Fort Lewis.”

On stage, Lance Cpl. Scott Olsen declared: “Today I have with me my Global War on Terror Medal, Operation Iraqi Freedom Medal, National Defense Medal and Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal. These medals, once upon a time, made me feel good about what I was doing. ... I came back to reality, and I don’t want these anymore.” Like the riot police flanking the stage, many on horseback, Olsen also wore a helmet. He is recovering from a fractured skull after being shot in the head at close range by a beanbag projectile. He wasn’t shot in Iraq, but by Oakland, Calif., police at Occupy Oakland last fall, where he was protesting.

Click here to read the rest of this column at Truthdig.org.

Veterans of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are now challenging the occupation of Chicago.

This week, NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is holding the largest meeting in its 63-year history there. Protests and rallies will confront the two-day summit, facing off against a massive armed police and military presence. The NATO gathering has been designated a “National Special Security Event” by the Department of Homeland Security, empowering the U.S. Secret Service to control much of central Chicago, and to employ unprecedented authority to suppress the public’s First Amendment right to dissent.

The focus of the summit will be Afghanistan. “Operation Enduring Freedom,” as the Afghanistan War was named by the Bush administration and continues to be called by the Obama administration, is officially a NATO operation. As the generals and government bureaucrats from around the world prepare to meet in Chicago, the number of NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001 topped 3,000. First Lt. Alejo R. Thompson of Yuma, Ariz., was killed on May 11 this year, at the age of 30. He joined the military in 2000, and served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Shortly after his death, The Associated Press reported that Thompson would be receiving the Purple Heart medal posthumously and is “in line for a Bronze Star.” On Wednesday, President Barack Obama awarded, also posthumously, the Medal of Honor to Leslie H. Sabo Jr., killed in action in Cambodia in 1970.

While the president and the Pentagon are handing out posthumous medals, a number of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan will be marching, in military formation, to McCormick Place in Chicago to hand their service medals back. Aaron Hughes left the University of Illinois in 2003 to join the military, and was deployed to Iraq and Kuwait. He served in the Illinois National Guard from 2000 to 2006. Since leaving active duty, Hughes has become a field organizer with the group Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). He explained why he is returning his medals: “Because every day in this country, 18 veterans are committing suicide. Seventeen percent of the individuals that are in combat in Afghanistan, my brothers and sisters, are on psychotropic medication. Twenty to 50 percent of the individuals that are getting deployed to Afghanistan are already diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, military sexual trauma or a traumatic brain injury. Currently one-third of the women in the military are sexually assaulted.”

IVAW’s Operation Recovery seeks increased support for veterans, and to stop the redeployment of traumatized troops. Hughes elaborated: “The only type of help that [veterans] can get is some type of medication like trazodone, Seroquel, Klonopin, medication that’s practically paralyzing, medication that doesn’t allow them to conduct themselves in any type of regular way. And that’s the standard operating procedures. Those are the same medications that service members are getting redeployed with and conducting military operations on.”

Another veteran—of the anti-war movement of the 1960s—and now a law professor at Northwestern University, longtime Chicago activist Bernardine Dohrn, also will be in the streets. She calls NATO the “militarized arm of the global 1 percent,” and criticizes Chicago Mayor and former Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel for misappropriating funds for the summit: “Suddenly we don’t have money here for community mental-health clinics. We don’t have money for public libraries or for schools. We don’t have money for public transportation. But somehow we have the millions of dollars necessary ... to hold this event right here in the city of Chicago.”

Occupy Chicago, part of the Occupy Wall Street movement, has been focused on the NATO protests. The unprecedented police mobilization, which will include, in addition to the Chicago police, at least the Secret Service, federal agents, and the Illinois National Guard, also may include extensive surveillance and infiltration. Documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests by the activist legal organization Partnership for Civil Justice (PCJ) indicate what the group calls “a mass intelligence network including fusion centers, saturated with ‘anti-terrorism’ funding, that mobilizes thousands of local and federal officers and agents to investigate and monitor the social-justice movement.” PCJ says the documents clearly refute Department of Homeland Security claims that there was never a centralized, federal coordination of crackdowns on the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Aaron Hughes and the other vets understand armed security, having provided it themselves in the past. He told me the message he’ll carry to the military and the police deployed across Chicago: “Don’t stand with the global 1 percent. Don’t stand with these generals that continuously abuse their own service members and then talk about building democracy and promoting freedom.”

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,000 stations in North America. She is the author of “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

© 2012 Amy Goodman

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is David Bronner. He is the head of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, and he also happens to be the grandson of Dr. Bronner, who founded the company in 1948. Talk about how you came to be the head of this company. Talk about the remarkable history of Dr. Bronner’s soaps, that so many people know, whether they buy it or not, the image of that soap bottle. Even describe what is on it.

DAVID BRONNER: Sure. So, Dr. Bronner was, himself, a third-generation master soap maker from an Orthodox Jew soap-making family in southern Germany. He—

AMY GOODMAN: From Heilbronn?

DAVID BRONNER: From Heilbronn.

AMY GOODMAN: You were really the Heilbronners?

DAVID BRONNER: Yeah, Heilbronners. I think Napoleon rolled through and made all the Jews take like the town’s last name or something. And when he came over, he dropped "Heil" from his name in '29. And he, like two of his younger sisters, got out. One went to Israel, and one came here. But the rest of his family was gassed, and the factory was nationalized. And out of that experience, and along with just the Cold War nuclear annihilation, he just felt called to convey what he saw as the Moral ABC, that all the faith traditions of the world, all the spiritual giants, were basically saying the same thing, you know, and were all one, all children of the same divine source, and we just, you know, need to realize that, or we're going to destroy ourselves.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me play a clip—

DAVID BRONNER: Sure.

AMY GOODMAN: —of your grandfather, Dr. Emanuel Bronner, founder of Dr. Bronner’s soaps. This is from the documentary, Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soapbox. Listen carefully.

DR. EMANUEL BRONNER: The Moral ABC that the wise man in the temple, mason, tent and sandalmaker, Essene teacher of righteousness of light, the real Rabbi Hillel taught the [inaudible] Jesus to rally-raise-train-evolve-unite the whole human race in one God faith. That Moral ABC is the most important set of teachings that helped mankind to survive.

AMY GOODMAN: That is a clip from Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soapbox. It is Emanuel Bronner, your grandfather, David, from whom you inherited the company. Explain what he’s saying.

DAVID BRONNER: He’s—you know, he’s basically conveying his dream and vision that, you know, lightning-like humanity can unite and realize our transcendent unity, you know, across all the faith and ethnic divides. And, you know, this is what drove him. This is—he was nonstop on, you know, "We must unite this Spaceship Earth." And, you know, "We’re all one or none."

AMY GOODMAN: And explain what happened. He comes from Germany to the United States. He had a soap factory there—

DAVID BRONNER: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: —and has the recipe for this.

DAVID BRONNER: Sure.

AMY GOODMAN: But explain what happened with your family, with his wife, with his children, who is your father.

DAVID BRONNER: Yeah, so his wife died when my father was four. And yeah, you know, he’s—basically, my granddad felt called, you know, on his mission to save the world, and financially supported his children, but basically placed them into foster homes, where they were raised, and, you know, was in some level responsible and checked in routinely. But, you know, it was a pretty hard and difficult childhood for my dad and uncle.

AMY GOODMAN: Because they were put into foster care—

DAVID BRONNER: Foster care.

AMY GOODMAN: —as he traveled the country.

DAVID BRONNER: Yeah, you know, basically with his message and—of uniting this earth, and, you know, selling soap on the side.

AMY GOODMAN: And he—did he write all of these words on his soap bottles?

DAVID BRONNER: Yeah, absolutely. And he actually—his eyesight was progressively worsening and eventually went blind. But he was constantly perfecting the message, like, you know, trying to get the right—right mix to just like break through to people. And—

AMY GOODMAN: And explain the ingredients in the soap, why it’s so significant, why your father talked—your grandfather, then your father, then you, talk about it as being healing and organic.

DAVID BRONNER: Well, yeah, he—I mean, it’s always been a natural soap. I mean, he kind of launched the company at a time that "better living through chemistry" was all the rage, and all the body wash formulations were turning to petrochemical-based detergents, which is still the case today. He had a natural soap recipe. And yeah, you can’t thicken it up easily, you know, but it’s very concentrated.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s liquid.

DAVID BRONNER: Yeah, and based on natural oils—coconut, olive, hemp. Well, hemp’s a little newer. And, basically, his family—his grandfather invented liquid soap in Germany. And it was all through all the washrooms. So—

AMY GOODMAN: Your father, though—your grandfather was eventually institutionalized.

DAVID BRONNER: Yeah. So, in ’47, he was institutionalized for, you know, very—how do you say—intensely communicating his message in the University of Chicago. And yeah, you know, kind of borderline schizo tendencies, perhaps.

AMY GOODMAN: He was shocked, electroshocked.

DAVID BRONNER: He was electroshocked, which I think worsened his eyesight.

AMY GOODMAN: And he escaped.

DAVID BRONNER: He escaped. He escaped.

AMY GOODMAN: And moved to California.

DAVID BRONNER: He came to California. And, I mean, [inaudible], I mean, it’s like, you know, there’s a genius and mystical, you know, insight, you know, and he was just kind of on this line. And, you know, and my dad, when he was out of the Navy, came to work for him and oversaw the soap manufacture and eventually launched his own chemical specialty company that I grew up working in. And so, you know, my granddad was a difficult father in some respects, but in other ways, you know, just given his difficult life story, was really great for my dad, who reconciled later in life. And—

AMY GOODMAN: This Dr. Bronner’s soap, which is, you know, so pervasive in America, you see—whether or not people buy it, they know this image of the soap bottle. You tried to launch some other products which didn’t have all the words, which are so hard to read, but in fact it’s this product that continues to—

DAVID BRONNER: Yeah, so—

AMY GOODMAN: —be the biggest seller?

DAVID BRONNER: Yeah, for sure. So we had this idea that, OK, so the, you know, counterculture, hippie, natural consumer core, you know, they’re all about it, but that, you know, as we’re kind of growing and expanding, that this kind of was maybe a little off-putting for your naive first-time customer, that, you know, "What kind of cult is behind this?" You know, so, we like—we expanded to, like, pump soaps and lotions and stuff. We made a nice, clean look. I mean, the formulation integrity was all the same. It was all certified organic under the same program that certifies food. But it was a clean, slick look. It was beautiful. But it was not the distinctive kind of old-style, apothecary look that, you know, my granddad designed, basically as a blind man, that people just completely resonate to. And so, we’ve experienced that—you know, as we cross over, that the classic look outsells this kind of—the newer, slicker look. So we’ve recently redesigned all the new products to have the same basic kind of text-dense look, but rather than taking my granddad’s philosophy, which is—this is a memorial, the classic soaps, to what he was about. We’re updating it with more kind of what we’re doing now, like fair trade, organic and—

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to David Bronner, who is the president of Dr. Bronner’s soap. He is the grandson of Dr. Emanuel Bronner, who founded the company, well known throughout this country. You are taking on large corporations, as well, though you are a large corporation yourself. You are unusual in that, unlike like Tom’s of Maine, Stonyfield and other companies—what, Burt’s Bees—

DAVID BRONNER: Sure.

AMY GOODMAN: You guys have not been bought out by a larger corporation.

DAVID BRONNER: Right. Yeah, we have no intention of selling. We have a pretty radical mission and very activist mission.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you get offers?

DAVID BRONNER: Yeah, all the time. And—but yeah, we’re just not interested. There’s no way that the radical agenda we have would be supported by a corporation beholden to their shareholders.

AMY GOODMAN: What is that agenda?

DAVID BRONNER: Well, I mean, for instance, you know, just taking on, for instance, the drug war, taking on corporate malfeasance across the board. You know, we believe in a fair and sustainable food system. And just in general, our economy needs to move to a fair and sustainable basis. You know, agroecological programs should support and define our farming, not monocultural, chemically intensive, petroleum-dependent agriculture, which Monsanto is, you know, with their genetic engineering, is just—it’s on steroids.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, here, as we speak in the Occupy age, what is Occupy Monsanto?

DAVID BRONNER: So that’s an effort my friend Adam Eidinger is heading up. It’s occupy-monsanto.org. And there’s going to be a nationwide day of action on September 17th. Activists will dress up in bio-hazmat suits and just really try and break through to people, like what genetic engineering is. There’s a lot of ignorance, and a lot of people think of big, bland strawberries. But what it’s about is about engineering resistance to weed killer. That’s what 80 percent of the acreage of genetically engineered is. It’s not vitamin-enriched rice, you know, for Bangladesh. That’s marketing spin. You know, their model is about breeding resistance to their chemicals, so they can sell more chemicals. And just, you know, really highlight what’s going on and that our food supply has been co-opted by these massive corporations, and our whole policy, food policy, agricultural policy, is being whipsawed by Monsanto and Dow and basically the chemical pesticide industry.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain how it works and how a pesticide company—like in the first part of our interview, you talked about how the reason there are GMOs is for crops to be more amenable to pesticide or responsible to pesticide, like Roundup. Explain how that works.

DAVID BRONNER: So, the—Monsanto has taken a gene from bacteria and shot it into soy and corn, which in this gene expresses a protein that confers resistance on their bestselling weed killer, Roundup Ready, or Roundup. And the seeds are called Roundup Ready. I mean, so, number one, there’s this compound that’s novel in our food, that hasn’t—you know, that—you know, like, genetic engineering doesn’t just kind of magically do its thing. I mean, it’s actually expressing a compound in every cell of the plant that is new in our food. So, like, you know, the increasing incidence of allergies and food reactions—well, you know, without labeling, we can’t tie the causal reaction. We can just kind of note, well, since genetic engineering has appeared, there’s been all kinds of increasing food allergies, which is—I mean, there’s a lot of culprits, but definitely that seems to be something, you know, especially that there are these compounds being expressed to resist weed killer.

And then there’s even more weed killer in our food. So, the EPA, just last year, doubled the allowed residue for Roundup, for glyphosate in our food from six parts per million to 12, just because of the increased spraying. And the spraying is rapidly developing superweeds, resistant superweeds, that are not being killed by Roundup. And like the whole technology was sold to farmers and to America, that, oh, now we don’t have to use 2-4-D, dicamba, but like these really bad weed killers—2-4-D is the main ingredient in Agent Orange. Well, now that the superweeds are spreading all across the country, now the next generation of genetically engineered seed is 2-4-D-resistant. So now you’re going to have 2-4-D being doused all over fields, dicamba, which is a listed neurotoxin—a bad actor by Pesticide Action Network. They’re engineering resistance so you can dump more and more and more of these pesticides and herbicides in our food.

AMY GOODMAN: Monsanto executive Michael Taylor was appointed by President Obama to be the senior adviser to the commissioner of the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration.

DAVID BRONNER: Right, yeah. I mean, it’s amazing. The—you know, both parties are—receive huge money from the biotech industry. And, you know, their agenda is simple: you know, we want these people put into these positions in the EPA, FDA. Obama has received huge amounts. I know Dow—Dow’s CEO has been very friendly to the Obama administration. And 2-4-D-resistant corn is like—that’s their—you know, that—I mean, farmers are freaking out. I mean, they got this glyphosate-resistant herbicide. They thought it was, you know, the bee’s knees. And now it’s not working. You know, they don’t—you know, they’re just on this kind of chemical magic bullet, you know, mindset. And, I mean, clearly overdosing our fields with these herbicides are just going to keep breeding resistant superweeds and creating more and more problems. But, of course, it’s short term. There’s like $10 billion to be made with each of these toxic herbicides. But anyways, yeah, I mean, and Clarence Thomas, you know, worked in the Monsanto corporation. I mean, you know, there’s unbelievable revolving-door penetration and capture by the biotech industry.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the companies that you are challenging, that—I asked you about it before, but I want you to go more into depth—companies like Estée Lauder, Avon. What is it about their products? What are you concerned about?

DAVID BRONNER: Well, in general, the organic movement, intersecting with the cosmetics industry, has kind of been a really bad—bad situation. I mean, the cosmetic industry is built on marketing hype and marketing basically meaningless ingredients of the season that are going to, you know, promise you eternal youth and, you know, whatever. And, you know, taking organic, which is a really hard-fought system of agriculture—it’s not perfect in its federal regulation, but, you know, at its best, it’s about agroecological principles, that, you know, you reduce your fossil fuel inputs. It’s a—you’re building soil tilth and health naturally. It’s a naturally drought-resistant system of agriculture, that the cosmetic industry was basically using token amounts of organic ingredients or fair trade ingredients.

AMY GOODMAN: Like what?

DAVID BRONNER: You know, I mean, legitimately, like, you know, lavender water. You know, they’re the organic lavender extract, like a tea bag of organic, you know, herbs and 3,000 gallons of reduction batch water. You know, and then it’s like, you know—and it’s all the real ingredients that make a shampoo or moisturizer are all conventional, non-organic, petrochemical, synthetic silicone. They weren’t changing anything about the actual products or the ingredients that make up them function; they were just kind of adding—playing with the water and—or organic aloe or just something that was—

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think is a fair fair trade stamp? What measure do you use?

DAVID BRONNER: We like IMO. It’s a Swiss-based organic certifier that is now certifying fair trade. They really understand the combination of agroecological methods being introduced in the developing world and how that can really boost yields and boost incomes. And they’re very rigorous. They don’t allow their seal to be used on a product unless it’s at least majority fair trade, which means all its main ingredients are fair trade, not some token amount. Now, for instance, we got mad at Avon, because they had a bar soap that was basically a palm-driven product—sodium palmate, sodium palm kernelate. And then they had a little bit of fair trade olive oil, which, you know—and I talked to Nasser, and he was like, "Yeah, it’s absurd. They apply like the tiniest amount." And they’re flying this seal on their products. And palm, of course, like the enviro groups are—you know, they’re just all about the, you know, orangutan-destroying plantation practice around palm. And it’s pretty much anti-fair trade the way palm is being cultivated, but there’s this fair trade seal that’s being flown on products that are, you know, majority anti-fair trade, basically. So, anyway, so—so IMO is like, you know, a reputable, good certifier. It’s this little "Fair for Life." I don’t want to harsh too much on the other certifications. I mean, hopefully we’re going to clean up our own act. Avon just actually threw in the towel and is withdrawing that line at issue.

AMY GOODMAN: Which line is that?

DAVID BRONNER: It was a mark—there was a mark: "Body Care That Cares." Their lip balm was called "The Big Fix," which was a good name, since it was—you know, the fix was in. It was this tiny, tiny, little bit of fair trade. But yeah, you know, that we’re just saying, like letting people know, like, you know, don’t—don’t mess around. This is—you know, this is not—this is a real movement. This is—you know, this really matters. This isn’t a marketing shtick.

AMY GOODMAN: What is "magic" about? Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap.

DAVID BRONNER: Well, I’m 150 years old. Yeah, it’s—I mean, I think it’s—I mean, it was from— Esquire magazine did a portrayal of Dr. Bronner’s in '73, and it was "Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap." And I don’t know. I think it was just the countercultural phenomenon of the soap. It was just like no marketing, no advertising, pure word of mouth. It was a very unique, real man behind this product and, you know, kind of violated every rule of marketing and business, and yet was a huge success.

AMY GOODMAN: What are purposes of the soap that we don’t know about?

DAVID BRONNER: Uh.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s soap.

DAVID BRONNER: Well, it’s good for—it’s a good insecticide for plants. You know, it’s natural. Organic gardeners use it.

AMY GOODMAN: They just pour it on the plant?

DAVID BRONNER: Yeah, just like dilute—no, very dilute, you know, and just like 1 percent.

AMY GOODMAN: Uh-huh. And can the soap be used as shampoo?

DAVID BRONNER: Yeah, although we don’t have conditioning agents, per se, in it. So, yeah, I mean, the soap can be used for everything. So, when you’re camping, you can, you know, brush your teeth, wash your hair, wash your dishes.

AMY GOODMAN: You can brush your teeth with it?

DAVID BRONNER: Yeah, I mean, I wouldn’t recommend it if you have a nice toothpaste. But, I mean, I use it whenever I’m, like, you know, out of toothpaste. But, yeah, it’s a little soapy. But—

AMY GOODMAN: Now, there was once caramel coloring in it, that you learned when you became head of the company?

DAVID BRONNER: Yeah, right. So—

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us that story and what you did about it.

DAVID BRONNER: OK, yeah, so, my granddad died in '97, and my dad died in ’98. And I was just—I was pretty young, and I had to step up. Luckily, I had time with my dad. And my dad was an amazing person. He's kind of my central moral inspiration in my life. He wanted nothing to do with the cosmic trip, was just, you know, about his family and the immediate community in front of him. But anyway, so, I mean, the soaps were very pure, but one of the things that my granddad had done was put caramel coloring in the peppermint and the almond flavors for some reason.

AMY GOODMAN: What color would the soap have been? Clear?

DAVID BRONNER: Like this color. So it was darker. And, you know, so I’m like, well, OK, either we need to put caramel coloring on the label or we need to pull it out. And which is—you know, and I’m like the grandson coming in. I’m like, OK, so either I put caramel coloring, you know, and look like I have a caramel coloring of soap. And it was just like, what am I doing? You know, or I pull it out and it looks like I diluted the soap. So, this was kind of the conundrum. I was like, well, I’m not going to put caramel coloring on the label, so—but then, that’s actually when hemp oil—we’re like, OK, what we’ll do is we’ll—you know, we’ll take out the caramel coloring, but let’s look at—we looked at different—different super fatty ingredients. And hemp oil, after customer trials, we’re like, OK, we’ll do the hemp oil. And that will be—you know, so when people notice there will be a change, but then actually the lather’s smoother, less drying. And it worked. You know, people were—I mean, some people were like, "You diluted the soap!" And they got really upset. And we were like—you know, we show them, you know, tests. "No, we didn’t do that."

AMY GOODMAN: So it’s called Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap, 18-in-1 Hemp Peppermint Pure-Castile Soap Made with Organic Oils.

DAVID BRONNER: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: And what is your—and Certified Fair Trade. Dr. Bronner’s Magic "All-One."

DAVID BRONNER: Yeah, the—and the coconut oil is a fair trade project in Sri Lanka. It grew out of a tsunami relief effort. Palm oil is coming out of a fair trade project in Ghana, and the olive oil from Palestine, and some from Israel. We actually work with an Arab-Israeli project in the Nazareth region, and then a Jewish family farm makes up 5 percent, that actually turns out to be related to us. Fair trade mint oil out of India. And actually, the hemp oil is a domestic fair trade source, so this is a new movement.

AMY GOODMAN: Where?

DAVID BRONNER: It’s out of Canada. It’s that—the idea is that family farms in the north face a lot of the same challenges as developing world farmers. I mean, not—in certain respects, they’re very different, but in others, they’re very similar—

AMY GOODMAN: Could you—

DAVID BRONNER: —volatile markets and—

AMY GOODMAN: Could you get hemp oil from the United States?

DAVID BRONNER: No, we cannot. And that—you know, when we dug up DEA’s lawn, I mean, that was—you know, Obama came in, and, you know, I’m sure everyone here is very disappointed in various ways. And so, you know, we really thought that finally, you know, we’d get at least hemp, if not medical, and just end cannabis prohibition, period. And nothing was happening. It was just so disappointing. You know, he just did the Clinton thing, you know, ran to the center, just put a bunch of drug warriors in place. And, you know, Jack Herer, who’s like the kind of godfather of the hemp movement, he had a stroke. And, you know, we were just like, "Man!" So, you know, that’s when we dug up the DEA’s lawn. And our shovels actually said, "In honor of Jack Herer, reefer madness will be buried, and American farmers shall grow hemp again."

AMY GOODMAN: And the argument against growing hemp? You make a parallel to poppy seeds, like we get in cake.

DAVID BRONNER: Right, well, I mean, unlike poppy seeds—you know, also poppy seeds contain trace opiates. It’s a non-narcotic variety of the opium poppy called the breadseed poppy. There was a Seinfeld episode about flunking a drug test eating poppy seeds. So hemp seed in foods are in a very similar position. It’s a non-psychoactive, non-drug variety of cannabis, like a Chihuahua and a Saint Bernard. You know, they can technically interbreed, but very different varieties. So, yeah. And, you know, but unfortunately, cannabis is—you know, unlike the poppy, is very much caught up with the counterculture in the culture war and is identified with the ’60s and the movements and the progressive movements out of that. And, you know, the drug war is really a war on pot, mostly.

AMY GOODMAN: So you can’t grow it, but you can sell it, because right here—and it’s in stores all over the country—it says, "Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, 18-in-1 Hemp Peppermint Pure-Castile Soap."

DAVID BRONNER: Right. So, our government policy has given the largest consumer market for hemp—America—has given a captive market to Canadians, Chinese, Europeans. It’s like, "You farmers can supply the biggest market for hemp. We’re not going to allow our farmers to grow it. But, you know, we’ll" — and they actually tried to ban the import. Bush, after 9/11, did try to shut down imports of hemp seed, and we had a protracted battle with the DEA and ultimately prevailed. So, the status quo is maintained since then: we can import hemp fiber, hemp seeds, but we can’t grow it.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you, David Bronner, for being with us. David Bronner is the president of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, and he takes over from his father, who took over from his father. David Bronner is the grandson of Dr. Emanuel Bronner, who founded Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps. Thanks so much for being with us.

DAVID BRONNER: Thank you, Amy.

Shareholder meetings can be routine, unless you are Bank of America, in which case it may be declared an "extraordinary event." That is what the city of Charlotte, North Carolina called the bank’s shareholder meeting this week. Bank of America is currently the second largest bank in the US (after JP Morgan Chase), claiming more than $2 trillion in assets. It is also the "too big to fail" poster child of Occupy Wall Street, a speculative banking monstrosity that profits from, among other things, the ongoing foreclosure crisis and the exploitation of dirty coal.

North Carolina, which went for Barack Obama in 2008, is a swing state in this year’s presidential election. Current polls indicate the Tar Heel State is a toss-up. To boost its chances there, the Democratic party has chosen Charlotte to host this summer’s Democratic National Convention. In preparation, the Charlotte city council passed an amendment to the city code allowing the city manager to declare so-called extraordinary events.

ordinance is clearly structured to grant police extra powers to detain, search and arrest people who are within the arbitrarily defined "extraordinary event" zone. The ordinance reads, in part, "It shall be unlawful for any person ... to willfully or intentionally possess, carry, control, or have immediate access to any of the following" and then lists a page of items, including scarves, backpacks, duffel bags, satchels and coolers.

Wednesday’s protest outside the Bank of America headquarters, with hundreds marching, was peaceful and spirited. The colorful array of creative signs was complemented by activists inside the meeting, who, as shareholders, were entitled to address the meeting. George Goehl of National People’s Action, who was inside, told CNN about Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan’s reaction: "Dozens of us were able to speak, but Moynihan mostly dodged, deflected and denied. He looked visibly uncomfortable the entire time."

Many activists expressed outrage at the bank’s role in the subprime mortgage industry and the foreclosure crisis it helped spawn. As part of a federal settlement over widespread mortgage fraud, Bank of America agreed to hand over $11.8 billion. Just two days before the protest, the bank announced it was contacting the first 5,000 of 200,000 mortgage customers who are eligible for a loan modification, with a potential decrease in their mortgage principal of up to 30 percent.

Last week, activists with the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) climbed 100 feet to suspend a banner on Charlotte’s Bank of America stadium, where President Obama is scheduled to make his nomination acceptance speech on 6 September. The banner read "Bank of America" with the word "America" crossed out and replaced with "Coal."

RAN is part of a broad coalition fighting the destructive practice of mountaintop removal. RAN executive director Rebecca Tarbotton told me: "Bank of America is the lead financier of mountaintop-removal mining, which is a practice of mining which is really the worst of the worst mining that we see anywhere, essentially blowing the tops off of mountains in Appalachia, destroying people’s homes, polluting their water supplies. And that’s even before it gets into the coal plants, where it’s burnt and creates air pollution in inner-city areas and all around our country ... [it’s] the canary in the coal mine for our reliance on fossil fuels."

The broad coalition in and out of the shareholder meeting demonstrates a key development in Occupy Wall Street’s spring revival, and also foreshadows possible confrontations with the Obama re-election campaign this fall.

Obama responds to pressure. Look at the issue of marriage equality. In 1996, while campaigning for state senator in Illinois, Obama wrote he supported same-sex marriage. While campaigning in 2008, then US Senator Obama stated: "I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman." This week, he told ABC News, "It is important for me to affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married."

Given the political climate, it is certainly brave for Obama to endorse marriage equality, especially just hours after the voters of North Carolina voted in favor of a state constitutional amendment that bans same-sex marriage. But he was once a community organizer, and no doubt recalls the words of Frederick Douglass: "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will."

The LGBT community was organized and vocal, and the president’s position moved.

Those gathered inside and outside the Bank of America shareholder meeting this week — homeowners fighting foreclosure, environmentalists, Occupy Wall Street activists — will take note of the president’s change. They are sure to continue their struggles, right through the Democratic National Convention, making it truly an "extraordinary event."

© 2012 Amy Goodman

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. Kenneth Roth is joining us, executive director of Human Rights Watch. We have talked about the Guantánamo tribunal. He have talked also about Bahrain. Why is Bahrain dealt with so differently by the United States than other places in the Middle East?

KENNETH ROTH: A very good question. I think there are two minor reasons and one big reason. You know, the minor reasons are the military base in Bahrain, which the U.S. doesn’t want to lose, concern about Iranian influence just across the Persian Gulf, in the fact that Bahrain has a majority Shia population, like Iran. There’s fear of influence there. But I think the dominant reason is Saudi Arabia. Bahrain is a little island linked by a causeway to Saudi Arabia. And Saudi Arabia simply is not going to tolerate a genuine democracy immediately off its shore, particularly one in which Shias, if there were free elections, could easily prevail. That would set a precedent, in particular, for Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, the oil-producing province which itself has a very substantial Shia population. And the monarchy in Saudi Arabia simply is drawing a line and saying, "No way." And the U.S. is deferring to that.

AMY GOODMAN: What about Syria? What do you think needs to be done there?

KENNETH ROTH: Well, you know, if I had the simple answer to that, you know, I would have published it a long time ago. It’s a very difficult situation. I think, you know, right now, on the one hand, we all hope that the U.N. observers that Kofi Annan arranged to be deployed, we all hope that they’ll make enough of a difference, but we all, I think, suspect that they won’t. Where they are present, they do seem to help to curtail the bloodshed. But we’re talking about small numbers of observers, a large territory. There’s just no way that those observers, in and of themselves, are going to be able to stop Assad’s killing of protesters and others. So there’s a need to ratchet up the pressure. And I think we all know that Russia has been the main obstacle there. So the European Union, the United States themselves, have imposed various forms of sanctions, which are being felt by the elite around Assad, the people who prop up this regime. But in order to impose an arms embargo or a global oil embargo or things that would really force Assad to capitulate quickly, the obstacle has been Russia—backed by China, but no one thinks that China alone would stand in the way. So the real issue is to put pressure on Putin to ask him, you know, why is his alliance with Assad worth the lives of thousands upon thousands of Syrians [inaudible]—

AMY GOODMAN: Doesn’t feel—doesn’t Russia feel betrayed by NATO and the United States around the NATO intervention in Libya?

KENNETH ROTH: Well, Russia is not alone in that respect. I mean, the intervention in Libya was controversial in the sense that the Security Council authorized action to protect civilians that morphed into regime change. Now, NATO, you know, has never really explained that. You know, some people argued privately that there’s no way that you could ultimately protect the civilians without getting rid of Gaddafi. But for much of the world, it looks like this was just taking advantage of the Security Council resolution to accomplish the objective of ousting Gaddafi. So, you know, Russia and others were outraged by that.

That said, it’s unfair to take out that outrage on the Syrian people. They had nothing to do with what happened in Libya. Second, military intervention has not even been on the table in the Security Council. What we’re talking about are non-military forms of pressure. So, you know, Russia is perfectly capable of drafting a Security Council resolution saying this has nothing to do with military intervention; this is about non-military ways of pressuring Assad to stop killing people. It hasn’t done that. Instead, it has, you know, allowed small steps, like the deployment of the observers, but has resisted real pressure, including referral to the International Criminal Court, because Assad is its last big-time ally in the region.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about what’s happening right now with Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike. About 1,500 Palestinian prisoners have forsworn food in Israeli jails for three weeks in a protest against the detentions, wide denial of family visits, and solitary confinement. One of the prisoners, Khader Adnan, has been refusing food and water even earlier, since he was detained in mid-December. His father, Musa Adnan, recently spoke to Al Jazeera about his son’s condition.

MUSA ADNAN: [translated] My daughter-in-law visited him at Ziv hospital in Safed. When she met him, she saw a ghost on a bed. He didn’t shower since he was arrested, didn’t clip his fingernails, fix his hair or brush his teeth. He has blisters on his gums and tongue. He is not being attended to.

AMY GOODMAN: Kenneth Roth, what about these prisoners on hunger strike protesting the conditions and their imprisonment overall?

KENNETH ROTH: Well, there are a series of conditions that they are protesting. One is that Israel continues to use so-called administrative detention. And there are about 300 prisoners who are so—immediately administratively detained. Now, what that means is that Israel, rather than bringing somebody to trial, saying, "These are the charges against you. This is what you did wrong. We’re now going to have a fair trial and convict you," instead they simply say, "Oh, well, the evidence is secret. We can’t reveal it. So we’re going to lock you up anyway." No trial, no charges, nothing of the sort.

Now, just yesterday, the Israeli Supreme Court addressed this issue. They allowed the administrative detention to go forward. But even the Supreme Court, which is very deferential around security, said, you know, "Aren’t you overdoing this a little bit? Shouldn’t this be used sparingly? You know, maybe you should consider releasing these people at the end of their term." So, you know, there is a lot of misgiving, because, you know, frankly, there are lots of ways to protect secrets and still have a public trial. The U.S. does that all the time in secret cases. And so, it is—I don’t think that that secrecy is really what’s going on here. Rather, Israel uses administrative detention when they don’t have a case. And, you know, it’s easy to lock somebody up if you don’t have to prove that they committed a crime.

Now, the other element of this is that a number of people are being kept in prolonged isolation. There are 19 prisoners who are being kept, you know, in solitary confinement, some for up to 10 years, which is just outrageous. I mean, that is utterly cruel. And so, that is part of the concern.

And finally, there have been a series of restrictions imposed on all prisoners because of the detention of Gilad Shalit in Gaza. So, for example, while Shalit was in detention, there were no family visits. More recently, access to university education has been denied. But, of course, Shalit has now been released, and these additional punishments have not been removed. So that’s another element of this hunger strike protest.

AMY GOODMAN: Kenneth Roth, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.

Holder Ltr 050412

Via Facsimile–May 4, 2012

The Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr.
The Attorney General of the United States
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20530

Re: Request for investigation into the death Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr.

Dear Mr. Attorney General:

This office, along with Mayo Bartlett, Esq. and Abdulwali Muhammad, Esq., represents the Estate of the late Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr. The purpose of this letter is to request that the United States Department of Justice undertake a criminal investigation into the conduct of certain members of the White Plains Police Department (the “WPPD”) whose actions caused the untimely death of Mr. Chamberlain on November 19, 2011. We believe an investigation will reveal that WPPD officers acted in contravention of Mr. Chamberlain’s constitutional rights secured under 18 USC §§241,242 and that the patterns and practices of the WPPD have deprived persons, including Mr. Chamberlain, of rights protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States secured under 42 U.S.C. §14141 and 42 U.S.C. § 12131, et seq. and 29 U.S.C. § 794. In particular, we believe that Mr. Chamberlain and others have been subjected to, inter alia, the misuse of excessive and/or deadly force, discriminatory harassment based on race and disability, and the use of racial slurs by WPPD officers.

On November 19, 2011, at approximately 5:00 a.m., Mr. Chamberlain accidentally activated his medical alert alarm provided by Life Alert. Life Alert contacted the White Plains Department of Public Safety. When police and emergency medical personnel were dispatched to Mr. Chamberlain’s apartment building he advised them that he was fine, did not require assistance, and did not want to allow them into his apartment. Much of what occurred thereafter has been memorialized on an audio recording by the medical alert company and a Taser video captured by one of the officers at the scene. In sum, these recordings recount an ordeal that stretched for over one hour while numerous police officers, who were positioned outside Mr. Chamberlain’s apartment, continuously banged on his door, taunted and laughed at him, used racial slurs against him, and denied his family members access to him. We have copies of these recordings and the WPPD investigative files and will provide them upon request.

The actions of the WPPD officers were particularly egregious because they were aware at the time they responded to the medical alert call that Mr. Chamberlain had a serious medical condition and emotional disabilities. It is also clear from the medical alert company’s recording of the events that the actions of the police officers outside of Mr. Chamberlain’s apartment caused him to become increasingly agitated, delusional and fearful for his life. What began as a mistaken emergency medical alert call, ended with Mr. Chamberlain’s door being broken down and him being subjected to a series of bungled Taser shots, bean bag shot gun blasts, and, finally, a fatal gunshot to the chest.

On May 3, 2012, a Grand Jury convened by the Westchester County District Attorney found that, based on the information presented, there was not reasonable cause for a criminal indictment against any of the WPPD officers involved, including Anthony Carelli, the officer who took the fatal shot at Mr. Chamberlain. We note that, over our strenuous objection, the information presented to the Grand Jury came from an investigation conducted solely by the WPPD.

In the course of our preliminary investigation, we learned that several of the officers involved in the events leading up to Mr. Chamberlain’s death have been involved in other incidents with similar allegations of misconduct and discriminatory policing. We will gladly provide this information upon request to assist the Department of Justice with its investigation(s).

We request the opportunity to meet with you to discuss the concerns of the Chamberlain family and the need for an immediate federal investigation of the circumstances of Kenneth Chamberlain Sr.’s death and the urgent need for immediate reforms and improvements to the practices of the WPPD.

Thank you in advance for your consideration of this matter.

cc:
Preet Bharara
United States Attorney
Southern District of New York

Thomas E. Perez
Assistant Attorney General
Civil Rights Division

David J. Kennedy
Chief, Civil Rights Unit
Southern District of New York

May Day, Murdoch and the murder of Milly Dowler. What do they have to do with the 2012 U.S. general election? This year’s election will undoubtedly be the most expensive in U.S. history, with some projections topping $5 billion. Not only has the amount of spending increased, but its nature has as well, following the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which allows unlimited spending by corporations, unions and so-called super PACs, all under the banner of “free speech.” This campaign season will unfold amidst a resurgent Occupy Wall Street movement launched globally on May 1, the same day the British Parliament released a report on Rupert Murdoch’s media empire charging that he is “not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company.” Now more than ever, people should heed the advice of the famous Watergate source, Deep Throat: “Follow the money.”

Most money in our elections goes to TV stations to run political advertisements. According to writers Robert McChesney and John Nichols in the Monthly Review, the amount of political ad spending is skyrocketing, such that “factoring for inflation, the 1972 election spent less than 3 percent of what will be spent on TV political ads in the 2012 election cycle.”

For just one relatively small race, a recent Pennsylvania congressional primary between Democrats, journalist Ken Knelly provided a comprehensive analysis of the local TV news coverage compared with the amount of political ads that ran on the same TV stations. Knelly’s headline says it all: “28 hours of political ads (and a few minutes of news).” More than 3,300 ad spots were run on the stations serving the predominantly Democratic district. Lost in the hours of ads, Knelly writes, was the “very occasional news report on the race,” and he said the reports contained very little substance.

How Knelly was able to probe these details is crucial. The Federal Communications Commission requires that TV stations maintain a public inspection file, and any member of the public can view it. Within the disclosures are the details of the political advertising purchases made, the amounts paid and what entity bought the airtime. Recent efforts have been made to compel these hugely profitable broadcast entities to publish these files online. The broadcasters have vigorously fought such efforts and, although they usually prevail in the industry-friendly halls of the FCC, have lost this battle. On Friday, April 27, the FCC voted 2-1 to require stations to transition from paper to online filing over a two-year period. ProPublica reporter Justin Elliot notes the files will not be provided in a standard format, and will likely not be searchable.

Most of the major U.S. broadcast networks lobbied against the new disclosure rules, including Fox Television, one of the crown jewels of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. media empire. Murdoch received a stinging rebuke this week with the release of a British Parliament report on the phone-hacking scandal that has racked his newspapers in Britain. The scandal exploded in 2011, when The Guardian reported that News of the World reporters had hacked into the voice mail of 13-year-old murder victim Milly Dowler in 2002. While Dowler was still missing, reporters deleted some of her voice mails, which gave false hope to her family that she still might be alive.

Journalists, along with both a judicial inquiry and parliamentary hearings, have uncovered a culture of criminality behind much of the newsgathering facade at Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World newspaper in London. The parliamentary committee released its report this week, saying the Murdoch-controlled company “stonewalled, obfuscated and misled and [would] only come clean, reluctantly, when no other course of action was sensible.”

The scandal also led to the discovery of bribery of British police officials, which, because News Corp. is a U.S. corporation, could fall under the U.S. federal Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits bribery by U.S. companies overseas. In response, the nonpartisan group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington petitioned the FCC to strip Murdoch of the 27 television broadcast licenses he controls in the U.S.

While it is a crime to bribe a police officer in London, it is perfectly legal to spend $5 billion to influence the course of U.S. elections, and for powerful broadcasters thereby to reap enormous profits. The FCC is to be applauded for its new transparency rules. Ultimately, political candidates should have free airtime to present their platform to the voters. Until then, it’s up to journalists, activists and regular citizens to follow the money.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,000 stations in North America. She is the author of “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

© 2012 Amy Goodman

ALEC DICKMAN, TAX DODGER: We’re a baseball team, and we go to bat for the 1 percent, not the 99 percent. We’re the Tax Dodgers, the best team that corporate money can buy.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you describe what you’ve got here?

ALEC DICKMAN: Well, we’ve got our full baseball team out here, and we’ve got all the best heavy hitters in corporate America who are part of our team: Verizon, GE, Citibank, ExxonMobil, Pfizer, Bank of America, Time Warner. You know them all. We’re practically household names at this point.

AMY GOODMAN: And what’s this that we’ve got here? It says "Loopholes"?

ALEC DICKMAN: Well, no baseball team is complete without their cheerleaders, and these are our corporate hula hoopers, the Loopholes.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell me who you are?

CORPORATE LOOPHOLE: I’m a corporate loophole. I’m what allows these guys to get out of paying taxes and to receive rebates that are billions of dollars beyong.

AMY GOODMAN: So are you guys a winning team?

ALEC DICKMAN: We always win, because we bought the refs, and we own the stadium, and we get to change the scoreboard.

GENERAL ELECTRIC, TAX DODGER: The game is rigged.

ALEC DICKMAN: The game is rigged.

GENERAL ELECTRIC: The game is rigged.

MAN WITH MONEY BAGS: Thanks for my new boat.

AMY GOODMAN: What did you say?

MAN WITH MONEY BAGS: Thanks for my new boat. You should come see it.

AMY GOODMAN: So, why are you smiling then? You’d think—I mean, baseball is sort of supposed to be like good for America. You think you guys are good for America?

ALEC DICKMAN: Well, you know, what’s good for the 1 percent isn’t necessarily good for America. And we know a lot of people are out there suffering, and they paid their taxes in order to make some sort of sacrifice for the common good. But for us, Tax Day is payday. Some of the biggest corporations in America actually make money on Tax Day. For example, GE, which made over $4 billion in profits, then paid no taxes and got $3 billion in tax refunds and rebates. That’s a negative-76 percent tax rate. So that’s all money that’s coming back to us.

AMY GOODMAN: GE, you mean General Electric.

ALEC DICKMAN: General Electric.

AMY GOODMAN: Isn’t that headed by Jeffrey Immelt, President Obama’s drug czar?

ALEC DICKMAN: Yeah, that’s absolutely true. But, you know, we’re able to—we’re a very elite team, so we get wined and dined by, you know, everyone in the country, including the President.

AMY GOODMAN: What’s your name?

ALEC DICKMAN: My name is Alec Dickman.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about everyone else? Are you—what base do you play, or what position?

GENERAL ELECTRIC: I’m the heavy hitter, the cleanup. I represent GE.

AMY GOODMAN: How about you?

BANK OF AMERICA, TAX DODGER: I’m Bank of America. I’m a job creator, so, you know, all that tax revenue is really helping get the economy going, so keep it coming. Keep it coming.

AMY GOODMAN: How about you?

VERIZON, TAX DODGER: I’m Verizon.

AMY GOODMAN: You are.

VERIZON: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And what are you doing with that bat?

VERIZON: With this bat, I’m ready to knock one out of left field for the 1 percent.

AMY GOODMAN: And how about you?

GENERAL ELECTRIC 2, TAX DODGER: Me? I’m General Electric.

AMY GOODMAN: There’s two General Electrics here.

GENERAL ELECTRIC 2: That’s OK. We play in twos when it’s corporate America.

ALEC DICKMAN: We don’t need to play fair.

AMY GOODMAN: OK, well, thanks very much.

ALEC DICKMAN: You want a song?

AMY GOODMAN: You have a song?

ALEC DICKMAN: Oh, we’ve got a song. You guys—

GENERAL ELECTRIC 2: Oh, yeah.

ALEC DICKMAN: Keeping it clean, keeping it clean.

GENERAL ELECTRIC 2: All right.

ALEC DICKMAN: Here we go! We got a song for y’all today!

TAX DODGERS: [singing] Take me out to the tax game
Bail me out with the banks
Buy me a bonus and tax rebate
Never pay nothing, not federal or state
So just shoot, shoot, shoot for the loopholes
It’s law, so you can’t complain
Where the one, two, three trillion you’re out
Since we rigged the game.

Take me out to the tax game
Flip the bird to the crowd
Losers pay taxes, we take rebates
Cause we make the rules for the corporate state
And it’s wham, bam, slam through the loopholes
We always win, what a game!
We’re the one, yes, the 1 percent
And we have no shame!

ALEC DICKMAN: Go back to work, everyone! Strike’s over!

GENERAL ELECTRIC: Thanks for paying your taxes so we don’t have to!

GENERAL ELECTRIC 2: Get a job in China, will ya?

OCCUPONIC: We are the Occuponics, and we are the house band for the Tax Dodgers. They pay us a lot of money. I used to be in the 99 percent, but they bought me out.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined by leading social theorist, David Harvey, distinguished professor of anthropology at the Graduate Center of City University of New York. His most recent book is called Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution.

Do you think the Occupy movement, the Occupy Wall Street movement, is an urban revolution, Professor Harvey?

DAVID HARVEY: I think that it’s using the city as a site—you know, some of it is also going on in the countryside, but it’s using the city as a site to try to mobilize people. And what we see, what was, in a sense, a common feature between, say, Tahrir Square and Madison, was the taking of a central space and the utilization of that central space to organize political expression. And this has a long, long history. And when that happens, things tend to change. And so, I think that the urban center of a lot of the Occupy Wall Street is actually a very, very significant piece of the puzzle.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s very interesting that this movement has emerged, sort of exploded on the scene, under President Obama—not under President Bush, but under President Obama.

DAVID HARVEY: Well, I’m sorry to say, but I think most people are beginning to see that the party of Wall Street, as I call it, dominates both the Republican and the Democratic parties. So no matter what President Obama wanted to do, he was still faced with a Democratic party that was not willing to really go against the big financial interests. And so, what we see is a kind of corruption of politics by big money power. I mean, I think it was Mark Twain who kind of said, you know, Congress is the best Congress that money can buy. And it’s really become absolutely, I think, the case, given all the recent Supreme Court decisions that money now dominates conventional politics. So both political parties are actually caught up in this money-raising game. And so, I think the Occupy Wall Street just kind of say, we’ve got to stop that, and we have to find a different mode of political expression to that which is set up through all of the super PACs and all the rest of it. And the only mode of expression that exists for low-income populations, given they don’t have money power, is of course to be on the street.

AMY GOODMAN: Earlier this year, we spoke with Paul Mason, who’s the economics editor of BBC Newsnight. His latest book is called Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions. And I asked him why Greeks themselves are falling through the social safety net, why many no longer have access to healthcare. This is what he said about the Greek healthcare system.

PAUL MASON: You pay a little bit into the healthcare, and you pay a bit for your medicines, and you pay a little bit for your treatment. But what’s happened is, of course, the solutions imposed on Greece by the IMF and the European Union have involved raising taxes very dramatically. So they had an austerity tax that they collected through the electricity bill. Somebody showed me their electricity bill: 350 euros per month. Per month. So, what is that in dollars? Four hundred? But most of that is tax. And if you don’t pay it, your electricity stops. Now, this person earned 500 euros per month. So, the money you have to pay for your healthcare, it’s just no—well, it’s food first, then healthcare, and so people just can’t afford it.

AMY GOODMAN: That was BBC’s Paul Mason. Your response to this, Professor Harvey?

DAVID HARVEY: Well, this has been going on for the last 30 years. It’s what I kind of call the neoliberal counterrevolution, began in the 1970s, which is to have the state increasingly withdraw from any forms of social provision, and also, of course, have the state less and less responsible for environmental degradation. So there’s been a political movement of that sort, which began under Reagan and continued, even under Clinton, right the way through to the present situation, where you have a Republican party that is essentially saying, "Get rid of all of these supports." And this is going on in Europe, with Cameron in Britain. I mean, it’s interesting to me. I mean, Reagan is long gone, and Thatcher is long gone, but Reaganism is still here. They’ve doubled down on Reaganism, and they’ve doubled down on Thatcherism.

And I think the time is ripe for a counterrevolution to that revolution, which is to say, we have to actually get a society in which people’s healthcare is taken care of, the education is no longer privatized and is public and free, and come up with a kind of a different kind of social order to the one which is now constructed, which is purely constructed around the benefit of that 1 percent that earns, in this city, $3.57 million a year. And I point out that they earn in one day what 100,000 people are trying to live on in one year. And how does somebody who’s trying to live $10,000 a year actually have money for healthcare, have money to send their kids to college? How can you possibly do that? So, this is the situation in which the 99 percent have, I think, to mobilize a big protest. But since they have no political power, since they don’t have the money, like I say, you have to take back the streets. That’s the only way you can do it.

AMY GOODMAN: Fox is the leading cable channel on the so-called news networks. Recently, Bill O’Reilly slammed President Obama’s policies on poverty. This is a part of what he said.

BILL O’REILLY: In a free society, people have a right to be a moron, and no government can stop irresponsible parenting. So, what is the solution? President Obama believes that the federal government should give money to the poor, hand it right to them, in a variety of ways. Problem with that is that many of the poor will use the money irresponsibly. The high rate of alcohol and drug addiction and other social problems assure a massive amount of waste in the entitlement arena. Americans are the most generous people on earth, but the truth is that income redistribution doesn’t work. For what this Feds spend now on entitlements, every single poor person in America could be handed almost $21,000 a year.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Bill O’Reilly on Fox. Professor David Harvey?

DAVID HARVEY: Between 1945 and 1982, the top tax rate in this country never fell below much below 70 percent. Reagan reduced it to 30 percent, and of course we keep on seeing it being reduced and reduced and reduced. Economic growth, 1945 to 1982, was twice the rate of economic growth since. So this idea that, somehow or other, redistribution of income to low-income populations is inconsistent with economic growth is totally false. There is no evidence for it whatsoever. The only evidence that exists is that since 1972 we’ve seen an immense increase in the inequalities of income. That’s what we’ve been in. That’s what Reaganism has been about.

And by the way, I’d like to mention something about this, that Reagan went to war, you know, launched into an arms race, cut tax rates for the rich, ran up the deficit. Cheney later on would kind of say, "Reaganism taught us that deficits do not matter." And then when the deficit was high enough and the debt was high enough, they turned around and said, "We’ve got to cut all the social programs." What did Bush Jr. do? He fought two unfounded wars, he cut the tax rates for the rich, and he gave a big deal to Big Pharma, and they ran up the debt. And now they say, "We’ve got to cut all the social programs, and we’ve got to cut also sort of environmental protections." So, there’s a game being played here, and it’s been played consistently since the early 1980s. And that game is about trying to actually create a world in which the rich have all of the power, with immense concentrations. It’s not only going on in the United States; it’s going on globally. I mean, we have a global plutocracy now, which essentially rules the world.

And like I say, the only way you can challenge that power is by the mass movements, which are occurring all over the place. So we’ve seen mass movements in Bolivia. We’ve seen mass movements in Chile. We’ve seen mass movements in the Middle East. We’ve seen mass movements emerging throughout Europe and beginning to see them here. This is the only way we can change it.

AMY GOODMAN: Spain now—

DAVID HARVEY: Spain—

AMY GOODMAN: —going into a deep recession.

DAVID HARVEY: Absolutely. Well, that’s, again, austerity. There’s no evidence that austerity actually stimulates growth. What you see is Britain is going back into a double recession. Spain has gone back in a double recession. Ireland, which has—was vicious in its austerity, is now in recession. The only part of the world that’s been growing is—are, of course, places like Argentina, which have been using exactly what Bill O’Reilly talks about, which is redistributing income to low-income populations. And they’ve been growing at 8 percent.

AMY GOODMAN: Argentina, which refused to pay its IMF loan—

DAVID HARVEY: Pay its debt, and—

AMY GOODMAN: Pay its debt, overall.

DAVID HARVEY: Yeah, it basically defaulted on its debt. And, of course, everybody said to Argentina, "If you default on your debt, nobody will invest in you again." But surplus capital has to go somewhere, and Argentina is potentially a very rich country, so a couple of years after defaulting on the debt, suddenly money starts to pour back into Argentina.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to the idea of rebel cities, speaking to Stephen Graham, who wrote Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism, talking about how so-called undesirable people have been cleared out of urban spaces.

STEPHEN GRAHAM: And cities in the last 20 or 30 years, particularly in North America, have become much more sanitized, much more controlled by questions of zero tolerance, by questions of really aggressive policing, to clear out those that are deemed to be sort of not fitting a model of urban life, which centers on consumption, which centers on business. So there’s been a really powerful shift in cities to sort of criminalize homelessness, to criminalize panhandlers, to criminalize those not seen to belong in this—what Neil Smith in New York has called the "revanchist city," the city taking back spaces for the wealthy, effectively.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor David Harvey?

DAVID HARVEY: Again, this has been going on a long time. You expel populations. You do it in a variety of ways. I mean, one of the ways, of course, is just simply raising rents, so the costs become so high that people cannot live here. So there’s an out-migration of low-income populations from New York City, for example, because they can’t afford to live here anymore. So they go out into small towns in Pennsylvania or upper New York state. They’re just forced out by cost of living concerns. I mean, that’s one of the big ways. And then, of course, there’s planned gentrification, and then there’s redevelopment. So, you know, NYU will redevelop some area and use eminent domain for private purposes. And again, eminent domain was meant for public purposes, but public—eminent domain is being used to expel populations. Columbia University is doing the same sort of thing. So you gentrify the whole city, so that Manhattan has now become, if you like, one vast gated community for the rich. And hardly surprisingly, you know, most low-income populations cannot afford to live here, so they’re living way, way out in the suburbs.

And I came into Kennedy Airport the other day at 6:00 in the morning. I got on the A train, and the A train from Jamaica was absolutely packed. And it was packed with mainly women, mainly women of color, obviously exhausted, coming in at 6:30 in the morning to try to wake the city up so the suits could come in at 9:00 and their coffee was ready and everything was good. Now those are the people who are trying to live on $30,000 a year, and they have to live way, way out in Jamaica. They cannot live close to their place of work at all. And, of course, the transport cost is also a significant burden on their lives. And so, this is the kind of city which we’ve been creating in New York. And when I talk about the right to the city, I think about the rights of those people on the A train at 6:30 in the morning to create a different kind of city where they could live close to work, where they could actually do the things they need to do to have a decent life for themselves and their kids.

AMY GOODMAN: You have been teaching Karl Marx’s Kapital, Capital, for a very long time.

DAVID HARVEY: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain who Karl Marx was and why you think it’s important to read this book.

DAVID HARVEY: He’s a really—a really, really intelligent, smart guy, begin with that, and incredibly learned, one of the most learned people I’ve ever read. I mean, he knew Greek philosophy, and, you know, he’s just—just amazingly erudite. But he’s also a revolutionary thinker, and he has a very, very strong, critical eye on how capitalism works. And I was not born to admire Karl Marx. I was just troubled by the fact that none of the social theories I was working with in the 1960s and 1970s seemed to work. And I started reading Marx, and I was thinking, "Oh, here, this works. Yeah, this is what’s happening." So he has a fantastic, I think, insight into how capital works.

And it’s—and actually, it’s become even more relevant now, particularly since the neoliberal surge since the 1970s, when we’ve been told that the market has to settle everything, the market has to—you know, has to be. So, reading him, he’s talking about the logic of what happens in a free market society. And one of the propositions he says, the closer you get to a purely free market society, the greater the wealth becomes of the very upper classes, and the lower—the worse the standard of living of the lower classes. And, of course, over the last 30 years, that’s exactly what’s happened.

AMY GOODMAN: And why is that true?

DAVID HARVEY: Well, what he does—I guess the only way I can—best way I can explain it is, one of the principles he really enunciates: there’s nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequals. The egalitarian principle of the market is very important, but equality, when it—put in a situation where you have people with different endowments, actually allows more and more wealth to go up, trickle up to the affluent classes. I mean, it’s a wonderful examination of how that principle works.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, continue on that thought, why you think it’s so relevant. How did he end up writing this book?

DAVID HARVEY: He had the idea—well, one of the things he saw was that there were a group of people around who had been writing since the 17th century onwards trying to explain what was going on under capitalism. And so, the field of political economy was being—you know, was being developed, people like Adam Smith and Ricardo and many other figures. So what I think he saw was that they were genuinely concerned to explain what was going on, but they missed some things. So he decided he wanted to, if you like, critique their political economy and to, out of that critique, develop and alternative understanding of how capitalism works. So his raw materials, if you like, are all the writings of the political economists from the 16th century onwards. And then what he does is to sort of create this alternative logic of—so you see how the system works.

And there’s some wonderful stuff in there also about the craziness of finance, so if you want to understand finance capital, you can go to the stuff in volume three, which is—he talks about the financiers of the time. He said, "They have the charming character of swindler and prophet."

And so, he really appreciates what capitalism is about. And he appreciates strengths. I mean, he admires in many ways what it’s done, but then kind of says, "But I can see the social costs of this," to which we would now add the environmental costs of this. And if we’re not willing to pay those social costs and those environmental costs, then we have to invent some alternative system. What Marx was not very good at was defining what the alternative system would look like. So when Marx gets attacked, it’s always because he invented something called communism, which he never did, and that failed. So he never really clearly defined what the alternative would look like. He gives some ideas about it. But what he did do also was to suggest that if there’s going to be a change, it has to be some sort of change out of the present situation, so that we don’t imagine something. So he was anti-utopian. He’s saying, "Look, we have to take what is going on right now and use what is going on right now to try to create some alternative."

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, in Europe—unlike Europe, here in this country, "socialism," let alone "Marxism," is a dirty word.

DAVID HARVEY: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: How did that happen? How did that come to be? I mean, we’re about to go into May Day, into May 1st. Some are calling for a general strike.

DAVID HARVEY: Yes, right, right.

AMY GOODMAN: People talk—and those who say, "Just let the free market work." What organized labor brought us—for example, the eight-hour day—

DAVID HARVEY: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Forty-hour work week.

DAVID HARVEY: Well, many of the good things we have and which we rely on crucially were actually brought through the processes of class struggle, where labor got together and really started to force governments to act. So, Social Security, Medicare, all of those things, which, you know, the Republicans are trying to destroy, but they have a very hard time, because most of the people see them as being crucial to their lives, they came about because of the labor movement. And to some degree, they came about, I think, after 1945, for example, in this country. Some reform—it was very anti-communist in one level, but on another level, they had to move to respond to the rise of the Soviet Union and the rise of an alternative, so you get a reformist kind of capitalism that is, to some degree, fairer, to a certain level, relative to what it was in the 19—what it was in the 1930s. So, we would not have the standard of living we have right now, had it not been for organized labor and its allies actually changing the political agenda.

Their power to affect the political agenda has been severely curtailed since the 1970s, 1980s onwards, by all these transformations in what’s going on. And the result is, we now need an alternative power source, because most of the labor now is precarious, it’s temporary, it’s itinerant and so on. And that’s why I say organizing cities is a good—is a way to start to think about it. If everybody who’s involved in producing and reproducing urban life got together and said, "We want to define a different kind of urban life and a different standard of living for the mass of the population," we would have a very different politics. And we need that politics desperately right now to get away from all of this free market kind of ideology and all that it does, which is make the rich richer and poor poorer.