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	Rediscovering Politics - Reflections on the Occupy Movement by Jedediah Purdy Social Science Research Council USA   Occupy made vivid two mainly neglected strands of political sentiment. First is the wish for democracy to be more immediate, engaged, and responsive. People drawn to Occupy, like those drawn to the Tea Party, tend to feel that their government, the people’s government, has been taken from them. Unlike the Tea Party, Occupy folks don’t suppose that either party, or any mainstream politician, is poised to retrieve it. At its most radical, the idea here is that representative government—government by faraway officials who are elected from time to time—is a deep compromise for democracy, and that our representation is so captured and corrupted as to be scarcely democratic at all. This only gets worse when representative government—Congress and the President—adds a layer of delegated government—the agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, and quasi-independent entities like the Federal Reserve—that doesn’t answer directly to the people at all, and is quite imperfectly responsive even to elected officials. The spirit of conversations around Occupy was that the people’s business should be done as much as possible by the people themselves.   There’s plenty of debate about whether this can be a good idea in a sprawling, diverse, and complicated society, where many issues, from pollution to financial regulation, involve considerable expertise. At the same time, with a federal government constitutionally designed to be ineffective and unresponsive, there’s plenty of room to imagine a more democratic politics. Occupy imagined this concretely, in its General Assemblies, and more diffusely in the complaints about corruption and the failure of democracy that swirled around the movement. This sense that stronger democracy is possible is terribly important, even where it is inchoate. Our thoroughly clogged and money-sodden democracy teaches that voting doesn’t matter and political hope is futile—an awful lesson that desperately needs counter-examples and awareness of other possibilities to keep it from becoming permanent.   The impulse to stronger democracy has been around in the United States since before Thomas Jefferson, who, late in life, proposed a nested set of elections all the way down to local “wards,” in which people at each level would directly govern as much as possible of their common lives. It is not hard to imagine, today, a different political culture in which the government could not launch or sustain a non-defensive war without approval in a national referendum, at the outset and in each year thereafter. (I don’t say that this would have stopped our recent, disastrous wars, nor that it is necessarily a great idea; but it is the kind of thing Occupy invites us to imagine.) Probably the most concrete proposal to get some wind in its sails from Occupy is the effort to reverse, by constitutional amendment, the Citizens United decision that extended strong constitutional protection to corporate spending on elections, along with the other money-is-speech decisions that preceded it. All of this goes to the idea that democracy needs to get stronger, or government will keep getting away from it.   The other idea that Occupy revived is that economic life has moral and political dimensions that we can’t afford to surrender to market logic. As Gitlin says, the voluntary, non-hierarchical, skill-pooling of the encampments is both an aesthetic and an ethic. The ethic includes the idea that our material lives—making things, using and exchanging them, doing what needs to be done to keep things going—should be organized around a greater respect for the individuality and equal freedom of each person. On the one hand, this is play, a wish for more joy in day-to-day activity, rather than its current reservation for evenings and weekends. On the other hand, it takes tremendous discipline and responsibility: in the encampments, if you saw something that needed to be picked up, cleaned, cooked, or whatever, it was your job to get on it—yours and everyone else’s.   Maybe surprisingly, it often seemed to work pretty well. This is a reminder that an economy is also a form of community, which asks different things of its members and gives them different things, depending on its organizing ethic. The encampments were experiments in shaping a different economic ethic.   Economic life includes the quality of work people get to do and the kind of relationships they have around that work. These are legitimate political concerns, as much as the unemployment rate. Occupy shares these thoughts with Abraham Lincoln, both Franklin Roosevelt and his cousin Teddy, and Lyndon Johnson, as well as the great Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, to name a few. These ideas were somewhat eclipsed for much of the twentieth century, especially after World War Two, when economic policy focused much more on overall growth and the increased consumption that it brought.   Concern for the quality of work remains central to American aspiration: it is just that is has mainly stopped being a political goal, becoming instead a personal hope. Whether individuals can have good work, though, depends importantly on the political decisions that shape their economy. The parade of American luminaries that trekked across an earlier line of this paragraph never doubted that. By building a movement partly around a different way of organizing work and play, Occupy is a reminder of this point—though maybe an oblique one.   Anarchist movements, not surprisingly, have trouble erecting the political movements and legal structures that could protect, even extend, their small-scale achievements in cooperation and equality. Indeed, the trouble is a matter of principle for those who reject large-scale and extensive governance altogether. There is good reason to think, though, that any political success today will have to join its local vision and experiments with a broader effort to adjust the political institutions and legal rules that shape a complex society. Otherwise, every local food movement ends up as a luxury item or a sourcing system for Whole Foods, and every effort to work together differently is a flower that blooms in spring and dies in fall.   Occupy’s aversion to this kind of politics chimes with the spirit of the age—libertarian, skeptical, personal, and reflexively oriented to “the market,” as if there were no space between the present economy, exactly as it is, and some kind of Maoist nightmare. This is a superstitious view of both economics and politics, which deeply shape each other, above all through the medium of law. Unsurprisingly, this superstition fosters other forms of magical thinking, especially the fantasy that local, personal, and voluntary creativity, like we see in Occupy, can overgrow the larger system in which it’s set—or just persist indefinitely as a kind of utopian archipelago.   Partly because Occupy embodies this widespread fantasy, it is beautiful, by today’s political aesthetic, as the more traditional and realistic efforts that Smith praises are not. It can succeed on its own terms, and its playfulness can be a joy to watch and join. But, as Smith and Gitlin write, this success is a glimpse of larger and more complicated goals, not a program or a strategy, or even the beginning of either.   So let Occupy be Occupy, a reminder of radical hope and the power of imagination and cooperation, a reminder that longing for the future is legitimate and necessary, even when we can’t see our way there. And let’s also remember that part of its charm comes precisely from its forgetfulness about politics, which many more of us will have to overcome if Occupy’s reminders are going to matter. Visit the related web page
	Deadly Syrian violence continues by Reuters, ICRC & agencies   March 06, 2012   TV News Footage "reveals torture" in Syrian hospital.   Secretly shot video footage aired by British television indicates that Syrian patients are being tortured by medical staff at a state-run hospital in Homs.   The city has been a major focus of the assault by troops loyal to the government of president Bashar al-Assad.   Britain"s Channel 4 said it had obtained footage of shocking scenes at the military hospital in Homs.   The video, showed wounded, blindfolded men chained to beds. Patients showed signs of having been severely beaten.   "I have seen detainees being tortured by electrocution, whipping, beating with batons, and by breaking their legs," the employee who made the video said.   "They twist the feet until the leg breaks. They operate without anaesthetics.. "They shackle the patients to beds. They deny them water."   The hospital employee said some of the men were soldiers who refused to follow orders, and others were civilians. The youngest was 14 years old, he said.   One of the few foreign journalists in Homs is the BBC"s Paul Wood, who was given an account of atrocities by the security forces by one family fleeing Homs.   The Ibrahim family told him they had witnessed a massacre. Ahmed Ibrahim said that in the Jobar district of Homs, 36 men and boys were taken away. Among them were four members of his own family, including his 12-year-old son Josefa. He said he hid behind some trees and saw them being murdered.   The ongoing conflict in Syria has claimed the lives of more than 9,000 people, according to UN officials, and forced at least 230,000 Syrians to flee their homes, tens of thousands more have been injured in almost a year of bloodshed in Syria.   * The UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Juan E. Méndez has spoken out against state repression in Syria, see link below.   February 2012   UN human rights chief urges UN General Assembly to act to protect Syrians.   The United Nations human rights chief has appealed to Member States to act now to protect the Syrian people as the Government’s violent crackdown on peaceful protests continues unabated and the number of dead and injured continues to rise.   “The longer the international community fails to take action, the more the civilian population will suffer from countless atrocities committed against them,” High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay told the General Assembly.   “The Government of Syria has manifestly failed to fulfil its obligation to protect its population,” she stated. “Each and every member of the international community must act now to urgently protect the Syrian population.”   Extensive reports of sexual violence, in particular rape, in places of detention, primarily men and boys, are particularly disturbing.   The 193-member Assembly met to discuss the report of the UN Human Rights Council from December last year in which that body strongly condemned abuses by Syrian authorities carried out as part of the crackdown.   The meeting comes in the wake of the Security Council’s recent failure to agree on collective action on the issue after Russia and China vetoed a draft resolution endorsing Arab League efforts to end the crisis.   “The failure of the Security Council to agree on firm collective action appears to have emboldened the Syrian Government to launch an all-out assault in an effort to crush dissent with overwhelming force,” Ms. Pillay stated.   Since 3 February, “the Government has used tanks, mortars, rockets and artillery to pummel the city of Homs,” she reported. “According to credible accounts, the Syrian army has shelled densely populated neighbourhoods of Homs in what appears to be an indiscriminate attack on civilian areas.”   More than 5,000 people have been killed since the uprising – part of the broader Arab Spring movement across North Africa and the Middle East – began in March last year, and senior UN officials have repeatedly urged the Government to stop the violence and hold dialogue with opposition groups.   “We are certain that the number of dead and injured continues to rise every day,” stated Ms. Pillay, who noted that while a lack of access has prevented her office from providing an exact figure, the number of people killed since last March is believed to be “well above” 5,400.   In addition, tens of thousands, including children, have been arrested, with more than 18,000 reportedly still arbitrarily held in detention. Thousands more are reported missing amid the crisis, which has sent 25,000 people to neighbouring and other countries to seek refuge and displaced more than 70,000 within the country.   “Extensive reports of sexual violence, in particular rape, in places of detention, primarily men and boys, are particularly disturbing,” said Ms. Pillay.   She added that children have not been spared, with security forces having killed more than 400 children as of the end of January. Children, as young as 10, have also been subjected to arbitrary arrest and detention.   “I am outraged by these serious violations. I am very distressed that the continued ruthless repression and deliberate stirring of sectarian tensions might soon plunge Syria into civil war,” she stated.   “Over the past months, the number of child victims in Syria has climbed into the hundreds and the rate is increasing,” said the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, in a statement.   “The situation is particularly harrowing in Homs where reports of the killing of children and shelling of civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, are received daily.”   Ms. Coomaraswamy is the latest official to call on the protection of children in the country. Earlier this week the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) voiced its concern over reports that children are being arbitrarily arrested, tortured and sexually abused while in detention. “We have reported cases of detention of children, ill-treatment, and acts tantamount to torture which have resulted in some child deaths,” Ms. Coomaraswamy stated.   05 February 2012   Russia, China veto UN resolution condemning violence in Syria.   Russia and China have vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution on Syria, the draft of which had the backing of most Arab and European countries. Russia is a major arms suppliers to Syria.   The 13 other council members voted in favour of the resolution, which was aimed at stopping the violence in Syria. According to the UN, more than 5400 people have died in the regime"s crackdown on protesters since mid-March.   On Friday, the draft had the support of 17 countries, including eight of the 15 council members - Morocco, France, Britain, the United States, Germany, Portugal, Togo and Colombia. The other sponsors were Libya, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Turkey.   The revised text maintained strong condemnation of the "continued widespread gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms by the Syrian authorities." It cited use of military force against civilians, arbitrary executions and killings and persecution of protesters and media members.   It called for "an inclusive Syrian-led political process conducted in an environment free from violence, fear, intimidation and extremism, and aimed at effectively addressing the legitimate aspirations and concerns of the Syrian people."   4 February 2012   Syria: Ban voices deep regret after Security Council fails to agree on resolution. (UN News)   UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon voiced deep regret after Security Council members were unable to agree on a resolution backing an Arab League plan to resolve the crisis in Syria, where thousands of people have been killed over the past year since authorities crackdown on a pro-democracy uprising.   Thirteen of the Council"s 15 members voted in favour of a draft text submitted by Morocco, but China and Russia exercised their vetoes. A veto by any one of the Council"s five permanent members means a resolution cannot be adopted.   "This is a great disappointment to the people of Syria and the Middle East, and to all supporters of democracy and human rights," he said in a statement issued by his spokesperson.   "It undermines the role of the United Nations and the international community in this period when the Syrian authorities must hear a unified voice calling for an immediate end to its violence against the Syrian people." Visit the related web page
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