Moral Turpitude Is Spelled Blackwater

This is what happens when you contract out your war to private armies.

"A state that privatizes most of its functions will inevitably defend itself by employing its own people as mercenaries-with equally profound strategic consequences. " Philip Bobbitt

- Iraq's Interior Ministry canceled the license of controversial American security firm Blackwater USA today after Iraqi officials charged that eight civilians were shot by company bodyguards accompanying a U.S. State Department motorcade the day before in Baghdad.

"It has been revoked," said Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, a spokesman for the ministry. "They committed a crime. The judicial system will take action."

The decision marks Iraq's boldest step yet to assert itself against foreign security contractors, who arrived in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. Blackwater has become the symbol of foreign gunmen accused by many Iraqis of speeding through Baghdad's streets and shooting wildly at anyone seen as a threat.

moral turpitude

1. depravity
2. (law) Any base or vile conduct, contrary to accepted morals, that accompanies a crime

turpitude
"depravity, infamy," 1490, from M.Fr. turpitude (1417), from L. turpitudinem (nom. turpitudo) "baseness," from turpis "vile, ugly, base, shameful," used in both the moral and the physical senses; of unknown origin. Perhaps originally "what one turns away from" (cf. L. trepit "he turns").

TURPITUDE - Everything done contrary to justice, honesty, modesty or good morals, is said to be done with turpitude.

Moral Turpitude is a legal concept in the USA, which refers to "conduct that is considered contrary to community standards of justice, honesty, or good morals"

Blackwater was founded by an extreme right-wing fundamentalist Christian mega-millionaire ex- Navy SEAL named Erik Prince, the scion of a wealthy conservative family that bankrolls far-right-wing causes.

Erik Prince was political at a very early age and watched as his father used his company as a cash-generating engine to fuel the rise of what we now know as the religious right in this country, as well as the Republican Revolution of 1994. His father gave the seed money to Gary Bauer to found the Family Research Council. Young Erik Prince was in the first crop of interns to serve at the Family Research Council. They gave significant funding to James Dobson and his group Focus on the Family, which is now sort of the premier evangelical organizing network in this country, the “prayer warriors.”

Personnel

Blackwater's president, Gary Jackson, and other business unit leaders are former Navy SEALs. Blackwater was founded and is owned by Erik Prince, who is also a former Navy SEAL.

Prince and Jackson are also major contributors to the Republican party. In addition, Prince was an intern in George H.W. Bush's White House and campaigned for Pat Buchanan in 1992.

Cofer Black, the company's current vice chairman, was the Bush adminstration's top counterterrorism official when 9/11 occurred. In 2002, he famously stated: "There was before 9/11 and after 9/11. After 9/11, the gloves come off." But Black is not alone, Blackwater has become home to a significant number of former senior CIA and Pentagon officials. Robert Richer became the firm's Vice President of Intelligence immediately after he resigned his position as Associate Deputy Director of Operations in fall 2005. He is formerly the head of the CIA's Near East Division.

In October 2006, Kenneth Starr, independent counsel in the impeachment case of Bill Clinton in 1999, represented Blackwater in front of the US Supreme Court in a case related to the March 2004 killing of four Blackwater employees in Fallujah, Iraq. In response to that event, Blackwater also hired the Republican lobbying and PR firm, the Alexander Strategy Group.

Ahmad Al-Rubaye / AFP / Getty Images

Blackwater USA contractors secure the site of a roadside explosion in central Baghdad in 2005. The U.S. Embassy said that the Blackwater convoy accused of killing eight civilians during a shootout on Sunday had come under fire, and some local Iraqi television accounts reported an exchange of gunfire at the scene in Baghdad.

The Iraqi government said Monday that it was revoking the license of an American security firm accused of involvement in the deaths of eight civilians in a firefight that followed a car bomb explosion near a State Department motorcade.

Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul-Karim Khalaf said eight civilians were killed and 13 were wounded when contractors believed to be working for Blackwater USA opened fire in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood of western Baghdad.

"We have canceled the license of Blackwater and prevented them from working all over Iraqi territory. We will also refer those involved to Iraqi judicial authorities," Khalaf said.

The spokesman said witness reports pointed to Blackwater involvement but said the shooting was still under investigation. It was not immediately clear if the measure against Blackwater was intended to be temporary or permanent.

Blackwater, based in Moyock, N.C., provides security for many U.S. civilian operations in the country.

The secretive company, run by a former Navy SEAL, has an estimated 1,000 employees in Iraq and at least $800 million in government contracts. It is one of the most high-profile security firms in Iraq, with its fleet of "Little Bird" helicopters and armed door gunners swarming Baghdad and beyond.

The decision to pull the license was likely to be challenged, as it would be a major blow to a company at the forefront of one of the main turning points in the war.

The 2004 battle of Fallujah — an unsuccessful military assault in which an estimated 27 U.S. Marines were killed, along with an unknown number of civilians — was retaliation for the killing, maiming and burning of four Blackwater guards in that city by a mob of insurgents.

Tens of thousands of foreign private security contractors work in Iraq — some with automatic weapons, body armor, helicopters and bulletproof vehicles — to provide protection for Westerners and dignitaries in Iraq as the country has plummeted toward anarchy and civil war.

Monday's action against Blackwater was likely to give the unpopular government a boost, given Iraqis' dislike of the contractors.

Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani called the shootings "a crime that we cannot be silent about."

Many of the contractors have been accused of indiscriminately firing at American and Iraqi troops, and of shooting to death an unknown number of Iraqi citizens who got too close to their heavily armed convoys, but none has faced charges or prosecution.

"There have been so many innocent people they've killed over there, and they just keep doing it," said Katy Helvenston, the mother of Steve Helvenston, a Blackwater contractor who died during the 2004 ambush in Fallujah. "They have just a callous disregard for life."

Helvenston is now part of a lawsuit that accuses Blackwater of cutting corners that ultimately led to the death of her son and three others.

The question of whether they could face prosecution is legally murky. Unlike soldiers, the contractors are not bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Under a special provision secured by American-occupying forces, they are exempt from prosecution by Iraqis for crimes committed there.

Khalaf, however, denied that.

The embassy also refused to answer any questions on Blackwater's status or legal issues, saying it was seeking clarification on the issue as part of the investigation, which was being carried out by the State Department's diplomatic security service and law enforcement officials working with the Iraqi government and the U.S. military.

Is there even a license to revoke? Buzz on the contractor street is that it isn't clear how this development will affect Blackwater. Allegedly, Blackwater doesn't have a "license" to revoke, and its contracts with the State Department and CIA may not be immediately affected. This could play out in an interesting (albeit depressing) powerplay between the al-Maliki, Iraq's Ministry of Interior, and the U.S. Government.

The issue of accountability is a troubling one, however, as Scahill reveals the Blackwater operatives are essentially above the law in Iraq. They can’t be prosecuted under military law because they’re civilians. But they have little to worry about from civilian law in the chaos of Iraq.

At one point in the book, a politician confronts a military official and claims Blackwater agents can get away with murder, and the official more or less admits he’s right. It’s a point that’s highlighted by another video featuring an alleged mercenary shooting people at random on a highway in Iraq (YouTube link).

It was inevitable. Private military contractors have been involve din all sorts of questionable incidents, since the very start of the Iraq enterprise. U.S. military officers frequently expressed their frustrations with sharing the battlefield with such private forces operating under their own rules and agendas, and worry about the consequences for their own operations. For example, Brigadier General Karl Horst, deputy commander of the US 3^rd Infantry Division (responsible for Baghdad area) tellingly put it two years back, “These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There’s no authority over them, so you can’t come down on them hard when they escalate force. They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath.”

Karel Prinsloo/AP, File

A U.S. private security officer, with his face covered against dust, on board a Chinook helicopter in Iraq.

Blackwater Guards Accused of Past Deaths

By DEBORAH HASTINGS – 2 hours ago

NEW YORK (AP) — In the past year, employees of the Blackwater USA security firm have been involved in other incidents in which they were accused of killing civilians and security forces in Iraq.

On Dec. 24, 2006, a drunken Blackwater employee shot and killed a bodyguard for Iraq's Shiite vice president, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials.

The contractor had gotten lost on the way back to his barracks in the Green Zone and fired at least seven times when he was confronted by 30-year-old Raheem Khalaf Saadoun, an official in the vice president's office said on condition of anonymity because the case is still under investigation.

The contractor fled after the incident. Eventually, he made his way to the U.S. Embassy, where Blackwater officials arranged to have him flown home to the U.S., said American officials.

Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said earlier this year the company was cooperating with investigators from the Justice Department and the FBI. She declined to provide further details.

In May, Blackwater guards under contract to the State Department were involved in two other shootings in Iraq.

In one, a Blackwater guard shot to death an Iraqi deemed to be driving too close to a security detail near the Interior Ministry in Baghdad, enraging Iraqis. At the time, Tyrrell said the guard acted lawfully and appropriately, given the incident reports and witness accounts.

A day earlier, Blackwater guards and Interior Ministry forces exchanged gunfire on the streets of the capital. A passing U.S. military convoy intervened and stopped the fighting.

The Nation's Jeremy Scahill describes the rise of Blackwater USA, the world's most powerful mercenary army.

"As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen (Muslims) ... it is declared ... that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever product an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries....
"The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation."

-- Treaty of Tripoli (1797), carried unanimously by the Senate and signed into law by John Adams (the original language is by Joel Barlow, US Consul)

SEE:

IRAQ- THIS WAR IS ABOUT PRIVATIZATION

Bad News For Bush

U.S. Supplies Iraqi Insurgents With Weapons

Surge Blackout

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Alleged leader of Iraqi al Qaeda group arrested in Arizona
WAIT WHAT, WHERE, I THOUGHT TRUMP HAD A MUSLIM TRAVEL BAN

(Reuters) - A man accused of killing two police officers while acting as the leader of an al Qaeda group in the Iraqi city of Fallujah was arrested in Phoenix, Arizona, federal officials said on Friday.

Ali Yousif Ahmed Al-Nouri, 42, is wanted in Iraq on charges of premeditated murder of the Iraqi police officers in 2006, according to a statement by the U.S. Attorney’s Office District of Arizona.

An Iraqi judge issued a warrant for Al-Nouri’s arrest and the government there issued an extradition request to the U.S. Justice Department, the statement said.

The Justice Department sought an arrest warrant for Al-Nouri and he was taken into custody on Thursday in Phoenix.

He appeared before a federal magistrate judge in Phoenix on Friday in connection with proceedings to extradite him to Iraq, the statement said.

According to the Iraqi government, al-Nouri was the leader of an al Qaeda group in Fallujah which planned operations targeting Iraqi police.

The statement noted the details in the Iraqi complaint were allegations that had yet to been proven in court.


Al-Nouri’s extradition would have to be certified by the U.S. court and the U.S. Secretary of State would then decide whether to surrender him to Iraq, the statement said.

It was not immediately possible to contact Al-Nouri for comment or determine whether he had hired a lawyer.

The statement did not provide information on when Al-Nouri entered the United States or how long he had lived in Phoenix.


Reporting by Andrew Hay in New Mexico; Editing by Lincoln Feast.
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Fast-rising politician pushes rebirth of war-scarred Iraqi city

Issued on: 07/10/2021 -

Mohammed al-Halbussi hails from the province of Anbar and is hoping to be re-elected in the October 10 poll 

Sabah ARAR AFP

Ramadi (Iraq) (AFP)

With a five-star hotel, malls and other real estate projects, the Iraqi city of Ramadi, ruined by more than a decade of war, is witnessing a construction boom led by the parliamentary speaker.

Mohammed al-Halbussi, trained as a civil engineer and who cultivates an image of dynamism, hails from the province of Anbar and is hoping to be re-elected in the October 10 national poll.

Supporters say the vote here will be akin to a plebiscite in favour of a new term for Halbussi, and his movement, whom they credit for pushing Ramadi's nascent economic revival after it was left in rubble following the battle to defeat the Islamic State (IS) group.

Sunni Muslim majority Ramadi is the capital of Anbar, a vast desert province west of Baghdad that covers a third of the country and extends to the borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

After the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, insurgents in Ramadi and nearby Fallujah fought some of the toughest battles against American forces.

A decade later, Anbar's Sunni tribes rose up against the Shiite-led Baghdad government, which many in the province accuse of marginalisation.

Then, IS jihadists captured Fallujah and Ramadi, before government forces reconquered the cities from the end of 2015.

- Marina, swimming pools -

Since then, Ramadi has strived to erase its bloody past and rebuild, with projects driven by Halbussi aimed at boosting the economy and wooing investors.

Halbussi, 40, travels frequently about the region, trading his elegant suits for jeans during field visits to shepherd the projects in Anbar province.

Along the banks of the Euphrates River, workers are busy finishing construction of Ramadi's first five-star hotel, complete with a Euphrates riverfront marina and swimming pools.

The 15-storey, 184-room hotel estimated to cost $60 million is a joint venture between the municipality and private investors.

Candidates' billboards rise above impecabbly paved avenues adorned with new lamps and lawns in the once-ruined city Sabah ARAR AFP

Its builder, Hatem Ghadbane, praised the local authorities but reserved his plaudits for Halbussi.

"He deserves all the credit for construction projects underway in Anbar province, as well as for political stability and security," Ghadbane said.

- 'Smoke and mirrors' -

Over the years Halbussi has been known to maintain good ties with the Baghdad federal government while cultivating relations with regional powers.

In September, he travelled to the United Arab Emirates for talks with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed and a few days later he met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo.

"He has climbed up the political and administrative ladder quickly as he went from a parliamentarian to governor to speaker all in his 30s," said Iraqi political analyst Hamzeh Hadad.

Halbussi attained the speaker's post with support of the pro-Iran bloc.

"He has moved up so fast... he has gone against the old guard of Sunni politicians. And he managed to unite them against him," Hadad said.

Portraits of Halbussi, with his slick black hair, and candidates from his Taqadom ("Progress" in Arabic) party have been plastered all across Ramadi, rivalling those of challengers from the Azm coalition comprising traditional Sunni figures.

The candidates' pictures rise above impeccably paved avenues adorned with new lamps and lawns. City work crews can often be seen touching up a sidewalk or street, but not everyone is impressed.

Iraqis search for survivors in the rubble of a bombed house in Ramadi on February 22, 2007 after an airstrike and battle between US Marines and insurgents

 BASEM AL-ANBARI AFP

Iraqi journalist Amr Alkubaisi, who is close to Azm, has denounced the Halbussi-led projects as mere "smoke and mirrors".

Taqadom, he wrote on social media in September, is "a personal project" trying to promote itself by pushing "medium-size projects like the tarring of roads".

- Challenges -

Challenges abound. The main public hospital, for example, is functioning but awaits the conclusion of restoration work -- while a new private hospital with sophisticated equipment opened in April.

Anbar governor Ali Farhan al-Dulaimi, who is running with Taqadom, said a series of projects are planned, including an international airport for Ramadi.

Ramadi municipality head Omar Dabbous is proud of his city's economic revival and he, too, credited Halbussi for being a driving force behind efforts to attract investments.

"We hope he will stay at the top of the pyramid (and win a second term) in order to follow up on what he and his team have started," Dabbous said.

The analyst Hadad said it would be "very difficult to predict" if Halbussi can win a second term as speaker.

"But if ever someone were to do so, it is Halbussi."

© 2021 AFP

Sounds Familiar

Gee this sounds familiar.....

a preliminary Iraqi report on the shooting involving a US diplomatic motorcade claims Blackwater security guards had not been ambushed, as the company reported, but instead fired at a car when it did not heed a policeman's call to stop, killing a couple and their infant.

Yep reminds me of other deaths in Iraq like that of the Italian Secret Agent,
where innocents are shot in their cars for failing to obey a stop sign.

Wonder if those guys were Blackwater as well. After all it's hard to tell the players without a program.

And with the Rumsfeld Doctrine of integrating private mercenaries and contracted out support services with the regular Armed forces it is even harder to tell.

But the vision that Rumsfeld sort of laid out that day would become known as the Rumsfeld Doctrine, where you use high technology, small footprint forces and an increased and accelerated use of private contractors in fighting the wars.

And the Iraq report on gung ho merc's from Blackwater goes on....

The report, prepared by the interior and defence ministries, was presented to the Iraqi cabinet and, though unverified, seemed to contradict an account offered by Blackwater that the guards were responding to gunfire by militants.

The report said Blackwater helicopters had been involved and 20 Iraqis were killed — a far higher number than had been reported before.

"There was not shooting against the convoy," the Iraqi Government's spokesman, Ali Dabbagh, said. "There was no fire from anyone in the square."

Shoot first ask questions later seems to be Blackwater's motto, which is what got them killed in Fallujah in the first place and set off the American revenge attack on that city.

SEE:

Moral Turpitude Is Spelled Blackwater

Bad News For Bush

U.S. Supplies Iraqi Insurgents With Weapons

Surge Blackout

IRAQ- THIS WAR IS ABOUT PRIVATIZATION


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Western hypocrisy: What Joe Biden gets wrong about Russia

Those in the Middle East know the kind of destruction seen in Ukraine all too well – the West was the perpetrator


Paul Rogers
2 April 2022,

ODR: OPINION

Joe Biden's claims of the moral imperative of challenging Russian autocracy are likely to fall on deaf ears |
Yuri Gripas/Abaca Press/Alamy

Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine remains in a violent stalemate. Russian forces are pausing their attempts to occupy Kyiv, having withdrawn some of their forces from around the capital, but a major retreat is highly unlikely given Russia is recruiting several thousand mercenaries from Syria.

The Kremlin’s strategy now is to concentrate on overrunning the southern Ukraine port city of Mariupol, before joining up Russian forces in Crimea with those in Donbas to take control of as much of the region as possible.

This does not mean Putin intends to annex Donbas even if he can occupy it, since the economic costs for a weakened Russia economy would be considerable. He would instead support Donbas’s ‘independence’ and treat it as a client state, with the region’s reported shale gas reserves, coupled with the offshore gas reserves of Crimea, being satisfactory gains. If successful, this plan could, in time, undermine the Kyiv government and perhaps even achieve Russia’s original aim of installing a client government in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, global support for Ukraine remains strong but is very far from universal, with India, China and South Africa all studiously neutral. While many governments across the Global South supported the original UN resolution condemning Putin’s actions, plenty did not. And for many of those that did, the governments did not necessarily represent the views of their own people. While support for Putin may not be strong in the Global South, that does not translate into popular support for NATO, as openDemocracy’s Khatondi Soita Wepukhulu explained at the start of the war.

This mood was this week summarised in the opening line of an Al Jazeera analysis of world reaction: “The war in Ukraine has turned Russian President Vladimir Putin into a pariah – at least in the West.”

‘At least in the West’ is a theme that perplexes many people in the West. How is it that Russia can reduce cities to rubble – bombing hospitals, health centres and schools – and yet not face worldwide condemnation? It is a valid question and the answer is uncomfortable, but it must be faced if Russia’s actions are not to be repeated elsewhere. The answer, in short, is a widespread perception of Western hypocrisy.
A Western trail of death and destruction

Since 2010, the Watson Institute at Brown University in the US has been running the ‘Cost of War Project’, tracking and analysing the wars of the 21st century. In its recent study of the first two decades since 9/11, it reports that more than 929,000 people, including at least 387,000 civilians, have been killed by direct violence in US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Pakistan. The institute believes that several times those numbers have died through indirect impacts, such as malnutrition, starvation, freezing to death and disease, which is hardly surprising given it reports 38 million people have been displaced.

Many of those wars – which were started and largely fought by the US and its coalition partners, notably Britain – ended in failure, including in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. In Iraq alone, the current count for civilian deaths since 2003 ranges from 186,143 to 209,349, depending on the methodology used.

Related story

An African view of what’s happening in Europe

3 March 2022 | Khatondi Soita Wepukhulu

Africans support the Ukrainian people, but centuries of experience also make us wary of ‘solutions’ by our former colonisers

Some would argue that the West’s more recent war, its sustained air assault on ISIS in Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2018, successfully destroyed the group. But even that ‘success’ is now looking tarnished, as ISIS survives and remains active in both countries and, along with other extreme paramilitaries, is entrenched across the Sahel, has a presence in Mozambique and the DRC, impacts on Kenya and Uganda, and has links with groups in Somalia.

Put bluntly, states such as the US and UK, which now expect global support for their stance on Ukraine, have, in the view of many around the world, two decades of blood on their hands.

With that in mind, when President Biden talks of the moral imperative of democracies challenging the Russian autocracy, it is all too likely to fall on deaf ears. People simply contrast the president’s stance on Putin’s regime with Western links to autocracies worldwide, not least in the Middle East and North Africa. In 1986, to take but one example, during a spat between the US and New Zealand over nuclear-armed US warships visiting local ports, the US ambassador in Wellington, career diplomat Paul Cleveland, was moved to comment: “Sometimes it is more difficult to deal with a messy democracy like New Zealand than with some Asian dictatorships.”

Even so, there is still the argument that Russia’s brutal tactics in Ukraine, of reducing towns and cities to little more than rubble, transcend anything done by Western coalitions in the Middle East and South Asia. The problem is that this does not stand up to scrutiny; quite aside from US violence in Vietnam or rendition and torture in Guantanamo, there are plenty of more direct examples, not least from Iraq.

Take just three. In April 2001, a US supplies column to a forward base in the Iraq city of Fallujah was ambushed and it took hours of battle and reinforcements for those involved to escape to safety. There were casualties but no deaths, yet that night the Marine Corps called in the devastatingly effective AC-130 gunships and levelled six blocks of the city, in what was openly described as a punitive action. There is no record of the number of civilian casualties in the densely packed city.

In November of the same year, the Fallujah ‘problem’ was finally solved when the US took control during an all-out assault on the entire city. Thousands were killed, most of the public buildings were razed, and more than half of all the houses in the city were destroyed or severally damaged.

For many, what Russia is doing is not so different from what has been done by US-led coalitions

And, in the US-led war against ISIS (2014-18), the most difficult task was the taking of a key ISIS stronghold of western Mosul in northern Iraq, especially the old city. The US eventually succeeded in this aim, following intense aerial and artillery bombardment, but the cost was the near-complete destruction of the city, again with many deaths.

The appalling Russian bombardment of Ukrainian towns and cities is broadcast to Western audiences thanks to near-24/7 coverage in the Western media. What is not realised by many of these audiences, is that this kind of coverage was also available, around the clock, during the Iraq War. Channels such as Al-Jazeera gave full accounts, including graphic images, of the injuries and deaths caused by Western forces, much of which was withheld on Western channels.

In short, there is rightly much anger across the West at what Putin’s forces have been doing and will continue to do in Ukraine. Many people living outside Western states are also appalled but, for them, what Russia is doing is not desperately different from what has been done by US-led coalitions in wars in South Asia, North Africa and especially the Middle East. If people are at a loss to understand why much of the world is not more forthright in its condemnation of Russia, that is where to look.

#PRIVATEERS

Review: How a mini-navy was pivotal to Revolutionary success

© Provided by The Canadian Press

“The Indispensables: The Diverse Soldier-Mariners who Shaped the County, Formed the Navy, and Rowed Washington Across the Delaware,” by Patrick K. O’Donnell (Atlantic Monthly Press)

Little has been written about the Marblehead mariners and their pivotal role in the American revolution – until now.

Author Patrick K. O’Donnell has turned five years of research into an engrossing tale of the Marbleheaders — a group of soldier-sailors from the port of Marblehead, Massachusetts who were forged by a tough life fishing from boats sometimes no match for the unruly north Atlantic ocean.

In his book — “The Indispensables: The Diverse Soldier-Mariners who Shaped the County, Formed the Navy, and Rowed Washington Across the Delaware” — America’s pre-navy emerges as a diverse force. They were men of many ethnicities drawn together by the lure of the sea, tested by extreme adversity and dependent on each other’s skills, stamina and heart. “Marblehead was progressive for the time, with a mix of people from different races and socioeconomic backgrounds,” writes O’Donnell.

Most Americans can perhaps claim a nodding familiarity with the story of Gen. George Washington crossing the Delaware River and surprising the British – and himself. As the author notes, Washington recently had written to his brother saying “I think the game is pretty near up.” Many of the troops were barefoot and starving.

On the night of Aug. 29, 1776, Washington’s army was trapped against the East River after losing the Battle of Brooklyn. But the Marbleheaders’ “motley collection of sailed and rowed vessels” ferried Washington’s army to safety. Among the Marbleheaders’ skills: They knew to put cloth over their oars so the British could not hear their paddles.

Then on Christmas night, 1776, the Marbleheaders tamed the swirling currents and ice in the Delaware River to carry 2,400 of Washington’s troops to the other side without the British knowing.

O’Donnell concludes that were it not for the Marbleheaders’ skill and daring, the American revolution might well have ended on the cold, snowy banks of the Delaware river. And he notes that would have been alright with the Loyalists in the American colonies, because we were “a divided country.”

So here we are in America’s third century, divided still and often having great difficulty working through racial differences.

What would the Marbleheaders say to us?

Jeff Rowe, The Associated Press

• 

  Patrick O’Donnell is a bestselling, critically acclaimed military historian and an expert on elite units. He is the author of eleven books, including Washington’s Immortals, We Were One, and Dog Company, and he is the recipient of several national awards. He served as a combat historian in a Marine rifle platoon during the Battle of Fallujah and speaks often on espionage, special operations, and counterinsurgency. He has provided historical consulting for DreamWorks’ award-winning miniseries Band of Brothers and for scores of documentaries produced by the BBC, the History Channel, Fox News, and Discovery. He is also a regular contributor to several national publications and shows.

  Read More About Patrick K. O’Donnell

  Related Websites

  • Patrick K. O’Donnell’s Website

The Indispensables: The Diverse Soldier-Mariners Who Shaped the Country, Formed the Navy, and Rowed Washington Across the Delaware


By THE THINKING CONSERVATIVE (AN OXYMORON)
-May 18, 2021


On the stormy night of August 29, 1776, the Continental Army faced capture or annihilation after losing the Battle of Brooklyn. The British had trapped George Washington’s forces against the East River, and the fate of the Revolution rested upon the shoulders of the soldier-mariners from Marblehead, Massachusetts. Serving side by side in one of the country’s first diverse units, they pulled off an “American Dunkirk” and saved the army by transporting it across the treacherous waters of the river to Manhattan.

In the annals of the American Revolution, no group played a more consequential role than the Marbleheaders. At the right time in the right place, they repeatedly altered the course of events, and their story shines new light on our understanding of the Revolution. As acclaimed historian Patrick K. O’Donnell dramatically recounts, beginning nearly a decade before the war started, and in the midst of a raging virus that divided the town politically, Marbleheaders such as Elbridge Gerry and Azor Orne spearheaded the break with Britain and shaped the nascent United States by playing a crucial role governing, building alliances, seizing British ships, forging critical supply lines, and establishing the origins of the US Navy.

The Marblehead Regiment, led by John Glover, became truly indispensable. Marbleheaders battled at Lexington and on Bunker Hill and formed the elite Guard that protected George Washington. Then, at the most crucial time in the war, the special operations–like regiment, against all odds, conveyed 2,400 of Washington’s men across the ice-filled Delaware River on Christmas night 1776, delivering a momentum-shifting surprise attack on Trenton. Later, Marblehead doctor Nathaniel Bond inoculated the Continental Army against a deadly virus, which changed the course of history.

White, Black, Hispanic, and Native American, this uniquely diverse group of soldiers set an inclusive standard of unity the US Army would not reach again for more than 170 years. The Marbleheaders’ chronicle, never fully told before now, makes The Indispensables a vital addition to the literature of the American Revolution.

Editorial Reviews
Review

Praise for The Indispensables:

“A vivid account of an impressive Revolutionary War unit and a can’t-miss choice for fans of O’Donnell’s previous books.”―Kirkus Reviews

“Comprehensive . . . Revolutionary War buffs will delight in the copious details and vivid battle scenes.”―Publishers Weekly

“Having saved the fledgling American army from complete destruction at the Battle of Long Island and made Washington’s Christmas Day counterstroke at Trenton possible, the Marblehead Regiment truly was Washington’s indispensable force. Patrick K. O’Donnell’s gift for storytelling brings the once famous regiment back to life, as he takes readers from the highest war councils to the grime and grit of battle, as it was keenly felt by the hard-bitten Marbleheaders. In this vivid and brilliant narrative, O’Donnell demonstrates that he is at the top of his game, as he has now written the one indispensable book on the early and most trying days of the American Revolution.”―Dr. James Lacey, author of The Washington War

“Once again Patrick K. O’Donnell has succeeded in shedding new light on a previously overlooked or unappreciated aspect of American military history. The Indispensables is absolutely fascinating, a beautifully written account of men at war, with great issues in the balance. I know of no finer or more insightful historian of the American soldier’s experience than O’Donnell. Highest recommendation!”―John C. McManus, author of Fire and Fortitude: The U.S. Army in the Pacific War, 1941-1943

“Perfectly paced and powerfully wrought, this is the story of common men who gave everything for an ideal―America. The product of meticulous research, The Indispensables is the perfect reminder of who we are, when we need it most.”―Adam Makos, author of the New York Times bestseller A Higher Call

“This is an amazing book about not just a regiment but a community. People from Marblehead contributed to every aspect of the American Revolution’s drama, politically and militarily, in the legislature and on the battlefield, on land and at sea. Patrick O’Donnell gives us a fast-paced, exciting look at Marblehead’s people, men and women, Black, white and Native American, soldier, politician and townsperson, Patriot and Loyalist, a community as diverse as the Revolution itself.”―Don N. Hagist, author of The Revolution’s Last Men and editor of the Journal of the Revolution

“As the American colonies started down the road to American states, localities would often unite under their community leaders for the great struggle they sensed they were a part of. Such was the case of John Glover and his band of Marblehead sailor-soldiers. Historian Patrick K. O’Donnell sets forth in a gripping narrative the transformation of this New England town as it moves from protest to armed revolution. It is a fascinating, unique journey of a band of Massachusetts rebels who play a critical role in George Washington’s, and America’s, success and independence. Mr. O’Donnell’s work is a valuable contribution to furthering our understanding of the role of common soldiers and sailors in America’s founding.”―Todd W. Braisted, author of Grand Forage 1777

“Broadly conceived and beautifully written, The Indispensables is an absolutely gripping book. Authored by the highly respected historian Patrick K. O’Donnell, it explores the story of the community of Marblehead, MA, and its famous Mariners Regiment, led by the determined John Glover, whose sailors and soldiers made a host of valuable military contributions through the critical battles of Trenton and Princeton. Highly recommended reading for anyone wanting to learn more about the real realities of the Revolutionary War.”―James Kirby Martin, co-author of A Respectable Army: The Military Origins of the Republic, 1763-1789

Praise for Patrick K. O’Donnell:

“One of our finest military historians who has few equals as a great storyteller.”―Carlo D’Este, author of Patton, A Genius for War and Eisenhower, A Soldier’s Life

“Few authors have the same kind of enthusiasm and gusto that O’Donnell brings to his topic. His gift is taking the reader from the map room to the battlefield. It’s an exciting, often harrowing, trip worth taking.”―USA Today

“O’Donnell admirably blends a story of ardent farmers, merchants and mariners with a combat story of sharp, bloody engagements . . . An example of combat writing at its best.”―Wall Street Journal, on Washington’s Immortals

“Patrick O’Donnell is blessed with a rare gift for storytelling and a keen empathy for the realities of soldiers in combat. He walks in the footsteps of his subjects like few other historians are able―or willing―to do.”―John C. McManus, Ph.D., author of The Dead and Those About to Die and Deadly Sky
About the Author

Patrick K. O’Donnell is a bestselling, critically acclaimed military historian and an expert on elite units. The author of twelve books, including The Unknowns and Washington’s Immortals, and a Fellow at Mount Vernon, he is the recipient of numerous national awards. O’Donnell served as a combat historian in a Marine rifle platoon during the Battle of Fallujah and is a professional speaker on America’s conflicts, espionage, special operations, and counterinsurgency. He has provided historical consulting for DreamWorks’ award-winning miniseries Band of Brothers and for documentaries produced by the BBC, the History Channel, and Discovery.

President Joe Biden Seeks to Destroy Russia and Punish the Russian People

He Supported Savage Sanctions that Killed One Million Iraqi’s in the 1990s and Criminally Ignores the Plight of Post-War Afghanistan

by John Stanton / March 22nd, 2022

Who, really, is the War Criminal?

So what does President Joe Biden want the sanctions imposed on Russia to do? Think back to the 1990s and what the US-NATO imposed no-fly zone and sanctions did to the people of Iraq?  The results were almost 1 million Iraqis dead, according to the website GlobalIssues.org.

Over at truthout.org, Jake Batinga reported that President Joe Biden strongly supported those sanctions as a US Senator and recently has turned a blind eye to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Afghanistan:

Senator Biden strongly supported the sanctions and advocated for even more aggressive policies toward Iraq. Biden was not then, and is not now, known for his humanitarian impulses or dovish foreign policy stances.

Batinga also notes that:

More Afghans are poised to die from US sanctions over the next few months alone than have died at the hands of the Taliban and US military forces over the last 20 years combined — by a significant margin. Yet, as journalist Murtaza Hussain recently wrote, US establishment politicians and intellectuals who decried the humanitarian crisis during the fall of Kabul are seemingly unbothered by imminent mass starvation, imposed by us.

The Biden administration — which routinely laments human rights violations perpetrated by China, Iran, Russia, and other adversaries — is ignoring desperate pleas from humanitarian organizations and UN human rights bodies, choosing instead to maintain policies virtually guaranteed to cause mass starvation and death of civilians, especially children. Yet it is important to note, and remember, that as a matter of policy, this is not particularly new; the US has often imposed harsh economic sanctions, causing mass civilian death. A previous imposition of sanctions resulted in one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes, one largely forgotten in mainstream historical memory.

In 1990, the US imposed sanctions on Iraq through the UN following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. These sanctions continued for more than a decade after Iraq withdrew from Kuwait, and had horrific humanitarian consequences eerily similar to the imminent mass starvation of Afghan civilians. The sanctions regime against Iraq — which began under President George H.W. Bush but was primarily administered by President Bill Clinton’s administration — froze Iraq’s foreign assets, virtually banned trade, and sharply limited imports. These sanctions crashed the Iraqi economy and blocked the import of humanitarian supplies, medicine, food, and other basic necessities, killing scores of civilians.

BRIC’s Made of Straw

The BRIC nations, Brazil, Russia, India and China have been in the news lately and for good reason. There is talk, and talk is cheap, of course, of China and Russia creating an alternative payment system to the US dollar dominated international payments system SWIFT.

Already Russia has joined China’s Cross Border Interbank Payment System as an alternative to SWIFT, along with joining China’s UnionPay credit card system which serves as an alternative to Visa and Master Card who, along with dozens of other Western country businesses (Europe, USA plus Japan and South Korea), bolted Russia’s marketplace after its military operation got started in Ukraine in late February.

India apparently is trading with Russia in a rupee, ruble swap but that seems ad hoc, at best. And there is news of Saudi Arabia cutting a deal with China to use the yuan as an exchange currency. Brazil has enough internal problems to deal with: crime, disease, Amazon deforestation.

Chinese leaders must realize that if Russia falters in Ukraine which means it is unable to liberate the Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk, gain international recognition of Crimea—and maintain territorial gains made on the coast of the Black and Azov Seas—and/or President Putin is removed from office and Russia destabilizes, the United States will chop up Russia into separate republics, steal its resources and cancel the billions in deals signed with China for oil, gas, and grains

The United States will bring the NATO military alliance to China’s doorstep and likely put on show trials in the International Criminal Court arguing that Putin and his general staff are war criminals, which would be utter nonsense given US policies and actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.

China is trying to placate the US because it still fears US economic and military power. Its party officials probably figure that they can keep building up the People’s Liberation Army, Navy, Air Force and Strategic nuclear capability and when there is enough firepower, will be able to challenge US dominance in the Pacific. But how?

The PLA forces have no modern combat experience to speak of and their plan seems to be; well, no plan at all. They are faced with the combined forces of the USA that are building new aircraft carriers, submarines and long distance B-21 bombers, along with upgrading all three legs of its nuclear TRIAD.

Which brings us back to Russia and the economic support it needs so that Biden’s sanctions don’t end up killing a million Russians. Because that is what Biden intends and his track record on supporting sanctions is disturbingly clear. When China looks at what the USA-NATO have done to the Russian economy, they are looking at their own future.

Hypocrisy

Joe Scalice at the World Socialist Website notes the hypocrisy of the USA-NATO and the compliant MSM Western media:

The wars of aggression of Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump contained the accumulated evil of the torture in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the drone bombing of children at play, villages leveled by precision missiles and refugees drowned in the Mediterranean. Baghdad crumbled beneath the shock and awe of unstinting US bombing; Fallujah burned with white phosphorus.

The American mass media is complicit in these crimes. They never challenged the government’s assertions, but trumpeted its pretexts. They whipped up a war-frenzy in the public. Pundits who now denounce Putin were ferocious in demanding that the United States bomb civilians.

Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times in 1999 of the bombing of Serbia under Clinton, “It should be lights out in Belgrade: every power grid, water pipe, bridge, road and war-related factory has to be targeted… [W]e will set your country back by pulverizing you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want 1389? We can do 1389 too.” [Biden supported bombing Belgrade]

Biden labels Putin a war criminal in the midst of a new media hysteria. Never referring to the actions of the United States, never pausing for breath, the media pumps out the fuel for an ever-expanding war. Hubris and hypocrisy stamp every statement from Washington with an audacity perhaps unique in world history. Its hands bathed in blood up to the elbows, US empire gestures at its enemies and cries war crimes.

Tactics

Indeed, the media has capitulated to the war propaganda narrative of the Biden Administration. The US MSM relies almost exclusively on Ukrainian sources for its error filled reporting. If you are reading the New York Times or the Washington Post, you aren’t getting the full story. Pro-Russia sites like Southfront, Newsfront, War Gonzo and others tell a different story. For example, the Retroville Mall destruction on March 21 was reported in the West as a wanton and random attack on a shopping place. In fact, the below-building parking lot was home to Ukrainian military vehicles clearly shown by a set of photos that appeared on Newsfront. Residential buildings are clearly being used by the Ukrainian forces to hide their weapons or launch anti-tank attacks from apartment building roofs or top floor apartments. That’s a tactic that makes sense. The Russians know that.

You’ve got to look at all the news sources, even the ones you don’t want to view, in order to be informed about this conflict.

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John Stanton can be reached at jstantonarchangel.com. His most recent book is America 2020: A Nation in Turmoil. It is free on Kindle. Read other articles by John.

 

Twenty Years Later, an Update From Iraq: ‘There Is No Future Here for My Children.’

Corruption, pollution, poverty, water shortages, and a climate of fear. Is this what democracy looks like?

by Jon Reynolds Posted onOctober 06, 2023

Twenty years after George W. Bush and his neocon cabinet moved forward with plans to invade Iraq, and more than a decade after Barack Obama promised to end the war, the US still maintains hundreds of troops in the country with no plans to leave.

Unsurprisingly, Iraqis aren’t exactly eager for the US to stay.

In 2019, a poll found seven out of ten Iraqis wanting Americans to withdraw from the country, with VOA News reporting 78 percent of Iraqis feeling the US military presence in their country “is provoking more conflict” than it is preventing.

The following year, Iraq’s parliament passed a resolution calling for the US to withdraw, prompting war-hungry American news networks such as CNN to condescendingly cover the move with headlines such as, “Iraq has voted to expel US troops. Whether they’ll actually be kicked out is far from clear”.

Despite the rhetoric we heard during the initial invasion in March of 2003 about bringing “democracy” to Iraq, twenty years later, the will of the Iraqi people and their government is being actively ignored in favor of US interests.

“There is no future here for my children,” Raghed Jasim, an Iraqi citizen, told the Associated Press back in March. “Of course I blame the corrupt Iraqi government. But I blame the Americans too. They replaced our leaders with thieves.”

Jasim is one of many Iraqis recently diagnosed with cancer, something he attributes to living near an oil production plant. For other Iraqis — such as those in the city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by an onslaught of depleted uranium during the US invasion — spikes in cancer and birth defects have exceeded those reported following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“After 2003, more and more oil was exported, and we expected to benefit from this,” Bashir Jabir, an Iraqi from a small village told AP. “Instead, it hurt us.”

In late September, Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shiaa al-Sudani met with representatives from dozens of US energy companies in New York to pitch potential investments. “My government is serious about investment in gas and to be an active and powerful player in the gas market,” he told Bloomberg.

Unfortunately, any wealth generated from these investments is unlikely to be enjoyed by Iraqi civilians, who continue to deal with cancerous pollution, crippling poverty, and widespread water and electricity shortages.

Meanwhile, voter turnout has reached historic lows and many Iraqis are afraid to speak out against their government.

In 2018, Iraqi protests were met with “swift crackdowns” by security forces, and “assassinations by armed groups” have created a climate of fear, reports AP. “The killings silenced many activists,” said Basra activist Ammar Sarhan, yet “business continues as usual.”

And so alas, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions in taxpayer dollars, America’s warped brand of “democracy” has been fully exported to Iraq. To the surprise of few, it isn’t looking very democratic at all.

Jon Reynolds is a freelance journalist covering a wide range of topics with a primary focus on the labor movement and collapsing US empire. He writes at The Screeching Kettle at Substack. Reprinted with permission.

Volker Eick. Neoliberalism and Urban Space


In the following[1] I introduce the concept of neoliberalism or neoliberalization as it has been deployed by the Regulation School and others within the field of political economy. I relate this to globalization and the urban environment, and more particularly to the changing role and the growing importance of cities. That is a crucial aspect, because ever since the 1980s cities have played an increasingly important role under and for contemporary neoliberal globalization. I then proceed with some questions regarding activism and the neoliberal glocalization, as I think the term glocalization is a more appropriate term to describe contemporary worldwide processes affecting cities.


Neoliberalism and Neoliberalization: Globalization as Glocalization
What is neoliberalism and how does it differ from its predecessor liberalism? Neoliberalism is understood here in a broad sense as a principle, originally derived from the work of the 18th and 19th century classical liberal scholars including Smith, Hume, and Locke among others. Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman were the most prominent scholars of the 20th century to revive these ideas in their purest form but it was not until the late 1970s and 1980s that the ideas became guiding principles for the social policy of Western Europe and North America. To better understand neoliberal ideology it would be useful if we first outline the main principles of liberalism adopted later by neoliberalism.



Neoliberalism, as the prefix suggests, is based on the Liberalism of 17th century (and onwards) related to names, among others, such as Smith, Hume, Locke; followed by, in the 20th century, scholars such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman (Harvey, 2005). Its main principles are
individual autonomy;
the market as the most effective/efficient instrument for distribution of goods and social wealth;
a non-interventionist state since the nation state is perceived as the obstacle against individual autonomy and market efficiency.


Neoliberalism is not »a hermetically sealed monolithic structure« (Peck/Tickell, 2007) in the sense of an ideology to be applied as a monolithic set of principles but rather should be treated as »actually existing neoliberalism« (Brenner/Theodore, 2002), that is a broad range of actual practices which are producing neoliberalism or even neoliberalisms. Neoliberalization is understood here as a process that describes an ideological and political project against the Keynesian Fordist Welfare State emerging in the early 1950s to the 1960s. In more detail:
The first principle is that (neo)liberalism is premised on individual autonomy and even though classical liberal theories differ in a number of ways yet they are relatively unified in situating this principle at the core of any liberal society. The second important principle of (neo)liberalism is that the market is enforced as the most efficient and normatively ideal way to distribute goods and to solve social problems. And third, the state is viewed as the potential impediment to both the individual autonomy and the market efficiency and should thus be as non-interventionist as possible. So we have the individual, we have the market, and we have the state – the individual is in the centre, the market is the most efficient thing and the state in this ideology should be non-interventionist as much as possible.



Nevertheless, neoliberalism does not imply the vanishing of the nation state but rather its »hollowing out« if I refer to the term used by Bob Jessop. This means that the nation state would delegate or transfer some of its responsibilities to the local level – and to the institutions and organizations above the national level such as the IMF, the G8, the European Union, and so forth.

To describe it from a different angle, neoliberalism in action is not based on the vanishing of the state – instead it is the practical »hollowing out« of the nation state, i.e. glocalization, and subsequently, the growing importance of scales above and below the nation state; neoliberalism has nothing to do with a non-interventionist state – instead it involves, among other processes, devolution and decentralization orchestrated by the (local) state; vice versa, neoliberalism is not a solely market-led society – instead it is sustained, among other organizing principles, through governance, public-private partnerships, pluralization of stakeholders; finally, neoliberalism is not a purely ideological project – but in practice, entails »neo-Schumpeterian« economic policies such as a supply-side orientation, privatization, competitiveness, (re)commodification, deregulation, and workfare. In other words, neoliberalism does not necessitate a non-interventionist state but instead a state, be it a local state or a national state, which is decentralizing, reorganizing itself into different scales where it then promotes the concept of neoliberalism. And neoliberalism does not suggest a solely market-led society; instead it requires governance, public-private-partnerships, and pluralization which do not necessarily mean that the state is becoming more democratic but that there are more stakeholders than before. And finally, in reality neoliberalism is not a purely ideological project. Instead, it entails the so-called »neo-Schumpeterian« (Bob Jessop) economic policies such as supply-side orientation, competitiveness, deregulation, privatization, (re)commodification and finally workfare, which is currently a very prominent, let’s say, ›reform‹ in Germany.

A segment of critical scholarship on neoliberalism is particularly concerned with the understanding of neoliberalism stemming from the shift of focus from its ideology toward its actually existing praxis. In other words, those scholars are interested less in the intellectual lineages of liberal thought than in the way that such ideas filter through theory to practice. Moreover, there are diverse geographical scales on which neoliberalism unfolds and one of these scales is, of course, the urban.

One particularly useful concept in the literature is the notion that ›the actually existing neoliberalism‹ is more of a highly contingent process than a final product – as it is often framed within the neoliberal ideology. Some colleagues of mine, like Nik Theodore, have described this process as a dialectical one, in a sense that it is constituted by the conflicting tendencies towards destruction of structures already in existence and construction of new ones. Neoliberal destruction discloses in the removal of the so-called Keynesian (referring to John Maynard Keynes) amenities such as public housing, public space and the like, of policies such as redistributed welfare and food stamps in the case of the US, and of institutions such as the labor unions in the UK, the US department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the like. And finally, this process subverts established Keynesian agreements; among them, to name just two, the Fordist labor arrangements enabling continuous negotiations between the unions and the companies that the state would oversee, and second, the federal government’s redistributions to the Länder in the German case (or states in general), to municipalities and cities. In many countries the amount of money redistributed from the national to the local scale is now decreasing or has become a much more complicated issue. On the other hand, neoliberalization implies the establishment of new institutions and practices or the co-optation of the existing ones with the ultimate goal of reproducing neoliberalism in the future. That might lead to government business consortia, to legislative amendments, for example initiating workfare policies, or to different types of public-private partnerships.

Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell have depicted this evolution in a slightly more, if you will, linear way, arguing that neoliberalism consists of three phases: a proto phase, a roll-back phase and finally, a roll-out phase. Whereas proto neoliberalism refers to the theoretical stage of initiating neoliberalization, the two subsequent phases encompass the development of neoliberalism as praxis. During the roll-back phase that is reactive in its essence, Keynesian policies and formations are dissolved to make way for the second pragmatic phase of the neoliberalization, the roll-out phase that involves proactive neoliberal practices and ideas.

I would like to highlight two of the concepts listed above, the »employment relations« (specific for the proto phase) and the »de-unionization« (occurring in the roll-back phase). If we consider what happened in the 1980s in the UK, then we could clearly discern an aggressive attack against the unions including the use of police mobilization. In that sense, it was not merely a political or ideological fight but moreover, it was a de-unionization campaign with the ultimate goal to destroy the unions altogether, even though that is too strong a statement to which I will come back later. Whereas in the roll-back phase the power of the unions was destroyed, in the roll-out phase the »flexibility« approach was adopted so that corporations could change working hours, decrease wages, and try to shift any negotiations into dictates.

The second example might be »social policy« in regard to which the roll-back would relate to the decrease of welfare money, whereas the roll-out brought into play a new concept coined in the US as »workfare.« Within its regulatory framework, people were still entitled to unemployment benefits and welfare benefits BUT under the condition they have to work and the work they are forced to accept does not need to correspond to their professional skills or work experiences. The dictate behind this concept is: If you want to be supported by the state because you ran out of work, you ought to take any job we offer you. That is an entirely new concept that was never in operation before; therefore, we can say, it was rolled out under neoliberalism.

Globally, scholars like Bob Jessop suggested that this restructuring of the Keynesian urban policy had the aggregate effect of hollowing out the nation state, decreasing its role as an institutional buffer between localities and the global economy. With the reduction of the national interventions, for example in housing, local infrastructure (like water-conduit or sewerage), in welfare, etc., localities are forced to either finance such spheres of action and intervention themselves or abandon them entirely.

Erik Swyngedouw (1997, 2004) deems this larger process as glocalization, as a simultaneous shift – upwards, to the global economy and its institutions and downwards – to the local level. The regulatory power previously held or exercised by the nation state, therefore, vanishes. Given its geographically and temporally contingent nature however, this process affected different national contexts in different ways, so that under neoliberalism cities or countries do not necessarily become identical or even similar. The aggressive roll-back of the welfare state took place first in the US, preceding similar developments in Canada, in the UK, and even in Germany. And in all countries, one can think of examples of the roll-back phase being incomplete within some sectors and relatively complete within others. The roll-back phase, or the destruction of the Keynesian interventions, and the roll-out phase or the implementation of more proactive neoliberal policies are thus highly contingent, incremental, uneven, and to a large extent incomplete. The depicted policy landscape is highly segmented in terms of geography and in terms of social policy and concentrations of remaining Keynesian amenities such as public housing. In the German case public housing still exists alongside roll-out liberal policies such as workfare. This kind of policies might be enforced in some countries and not in others, or even within one country they might be more advanced in one city compared to another.

Thus, while it is useful to suggest that policies in North America and Europe are increasingly dominated by a unified, relatively simple set of ideas concerning the individual autonomy, the role of the state, and the role of the market, the institutional manifestation of neoliberalism as another relatively simple set of ideas is apparently highly uneven between and within countries, mainly due to the different ways through which these ideas are processed into policies.

Yet, Smith (1996) argues that for a better understanding of the neoliberal transformation of cities it would be useful to substitute the term neoliberalism with the more specific term »revanchist urbanism« that he coined. One of the most well known examples of »revanchist urbanism« is the policy of the former mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani – the »Mussolini of Manhattan« as he has once been entitled by the New York Times – of tracking down the »homeless people who had invaded New York« (his, Giuliani’s, own words). Such policies are worldwide distributed under different headings such as the concept of fixing Broken Windows or the so-called Zero Tolerance approach – in the meantime, Smith (2007) developed the concept of »urban revanchism« further to the global level (»global revanchism«) under the headline of ›the war on terror‹.


And finally, David Harvey summarized the nature of the neoliberalization process in the following fashion:
»We can […] interpret neoliberalization either as a utopian project to realize a theoretical design for the reorganization of international capitalism or as a political project to re-establish the conditions for capital accumulation and to restore the power of economic elites. […] I argue that the second of these objectives has in practice dominated. Neoliberalization has not been very effective in revitalizing global capital accumulation, but it has succeeded remarkably well in restoring, or in some instances (as in Russia and China) creating, the power of an economic elite. The theoretical utopianism of neoliberal argument has […] primarily worked as a system of justification and legitimation for whatever needed to be done to achieve this goal« (Harvey, 2005: 19, emphasize in original).



Harvey, in another paper, goes on,

»We can […] examine the history of neoliberalism either as an utopian project providing a theoretical template for the reorganization of international capitalism or as a political project concerned both to re-establish the conditions for capital accumulation and the restoration of class power. […] I argue that the last of these objectives has dominated. Neoliberalism has not proven good at revitalizing global capital accumulation but it has succeeded remarkably well in restoring class power. As a consequence, the theoretical utopianism of neoliberal argument has worked more as a system of justification and legitimation for whatever had to be done to restore class power: The principles of neoliberalism are quickly abandoned whenever they conflict with this class project« (Harvey, 2006: 149).

So Bob Jessop, in particular, develops the argument that as neoliberalism plays out differently in time and space, one might think about neoliberalism in different forms, all of them attempting to adjust and to sustain capitalism – although the latter may seem a contradiction in itself. Therefore, he came out with four different forms, which should be perceived as idealized forms to be used as analytical tools rather than as indispensably existing forms of neoliberalism.

Before explicating these forms, I will briefly explain what is at stake when we talk about Bob Jessop’s term of a »Schumpeterian Workfare Post-National Regime«. Bob Jessop used the term »SWPN« to suggest, first and foremost, that one important feature of neoliberalization was the »creative destruction« that Schumpeter mentioned, namely the way capitalism constantly invents itself by destroying its old manifestations and by replacing them with new realms of accumulation, new forms of regulation, new institutions and so forth.

Workfare signalizes a profound change in the employment system characteristic for the welfare state in the sense that it allows for welfare benefits only if those who are unemployed and capable of working, indeed do work, no matter if they do community work, low-wage work or even unpaid work. In the US for example, undertaking community work is even a precondition for having access to public housing, what in Europe would be defined as social housing or subsidized housing, and similar patterns apply for the UK. Within the US system of social welfare even young mothers are obliged to work in order to receive benefits. In addition, if they are younger than 18 they either have to be married or if not they have to stay at their parents’ home in order to receive benefits. With this Welfare Reform – into operation since 1996 and popularized by the former US-president, Bill Clinton as »ending welfare as we know it« – another law came into force, limiting the maximum time one is allowed to get welfare benefits to five years. In Germany, and that refers to the unevenness of the worldwide neoliberal project that I have been talking about, the respective workfare regime only started in 2004 when the so-called Hartz laws were passed. Not only did that law introduce the workfare principle stipulating work-readiness as the precondition for receiving welfare benefits but it also endowed employment officers with the power to deny or to grant access to housing based on the apartment size and the monthly rent. That means if you are unemployed you get social benefits from the state but the state also has to pay for your housing; so if the employment office – in this case the so-called JobCenter for long-term unemployed – decides that your flat is too large or too expensive it can and will make you move out. In other words, unemployed people could be forced to move into cheaper, hence more remote areas, mainly in the outskirts of the cities. So here again the direct link between neoliberalization and the city becomes apparent.

The term ›post-national‹ refers to the situation in which the nation state is no longer the only decisive entity to rule over the wide range of policy fields but is bound to the decisions or at least suggestions made by the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the G8, and other global agencies.


And finally, the term ›regime‹ instead of ›state‹ clarifies that it is no longer the nation state alone who decides what policy steps need to be taken; instead, various private stakeholders ranging from companies, non-profit organizations, voluntary organizations, special policy bodies (development agencies, foundations, etc.) take part in the decision-making on different scales – supra-national, national, regional, local and even neighborhood levels. One widely known form of decision-making is the public-private partnerships and, referring to the urban in particular, one might think of shopping malls, sports stadiums, railway stations, and the like, all of which are mass private property developments – and want to have a say in urban development and urban management. And one might also think of the concept of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) that has already been established in the late 1960s in the US and from there transmitted through the UK to continental Europe. BIDs according to Christian Parenti (1999: 96-97) can be described as »private, self-taxing urban micro states, that do everything from cleaning the streets, to guide tours, to float bonds, and arrest beggars.« BIDs are deployed by the urban business elites and, as Parenti goes on, they »embody all the power and privileges of the state, yet bear none of the responsibilities and limitations of democratic government.« A BID is a body of business members representing the business elite of the city, basically in downtown, and deciding what is to happen in the public space (for an overview see Töpfer et al., 2007).
So let us go briefly through the four forms of neoliberalism as outlined by Bob Jessop:



So neoliberalism in its purest form was first developed in Chile in 1973 under the guidance of the liberal Chicago Boys (see Harvey 2005) after the proto-neoliberalizing phase. Currently we can observe the re-emergence of such purest form within the political economy of Iraq where, among other conflicts, due to the struggles for control over the oil resources, for example, unions as well as strikes are not allowed – let alone the mass killings that include »Iraqi residents of Fallujah slaughtered by US marines with globally banned phosphorus bombs and agent orange, Iraqi women raped and killed by the same US units«, as Neil Smith (2007) recently puts it. So the purest form of neoliberalism is very often interlinked to what David Harvey (2006) calls »accumulation by dispossession« and if we look at the US foreign policy we will see that war as well often goes hand in hand with it.

One variation of this purest form of neoliberalism is what Bob Jessop defines as neostatism which we might discern in France – and once the elections there are over we will know better how it plays out. It probably will stir up a very different kind of neoliberalization processes than those we know by now (a current – November 2007 – look into the news shows us ›neoliberalism Sarkozy-style‹ with its special aggression against the unorganized and organized working class, and his appealing attempt to be as provocative as possible on the globalized world market and its respective governments).

The third form of neoliberalism is neocorporatism which might apply to Germany in some respects but obviously no longer with regards to its last characteristic, the high taxation to finance social investment. This used to be a topic of high importance in Germany but not anymore whereas the rebalancing of competition and cooperation or the widening range of private, public and other ›stakeholders‹ are currently still very important issues in Germany.

And finally, we have neocommunitarianism which from my point of view turns out to be a flanking mechanism within the game of roll-back neoliberalism from the late 1980s up to the early 1990s. And I think that this holds true especially on the city scale, at least in Western Europe where basically every country has programs aiming at social stabilization, social integration, empowerment, self-responsibility, self-reliance and support. The effect of those agendas, especially in the so-called disadvantaged areas, is that urban space is now policed by programs such as the New Deal for the Communities in the UK, the Socially Integrated City program in Germany, or the Big Cities program in The Netherlands.

It are those programs that are of some relevance for urban activism and research as they are aiming at, as I will show later, to ›define‹, ›integrate‹, ›absorb‹, and ›control‹ not only ›the‹ community but also create a specific kind of ›activism‹ that easily can lead to atavism and aspiration – not experienced before in the northern countries. Such programs aim at ›defining out resistance‹ as they are trying to ›designing out crime‹.

Another program that I want to mention in this context, even though it is not focused on the ›disadvantaged areas‹ but on the so-called remote areas, is the Broedplaatsen [speak: bru:d-pla:t-sun] program also in The Netherlands. By contrast to the above mentioned programs, it aims at attracting new developers for waterfront development by encouraging the so-called young urban creative class to move in. And what inevitably comes to one’s mind here is Richard Florida’s book on »The Rise of the Creative Class« which is not even worth the paper it is printed on. So, for a given period of time, land is handed over to the creative class (reduced or even no rent, subsidies by the city of Amsterdam) and once the area becomes attractive due to these pioneers of gentrification, as I would like to call them, it will be taken over either by the state or the city municipality and sold to the urban elites. So in this development process cities are taking advantage of artists, architects, urban planners and generally speaking, of their creativity and making it profitable.


The Urban: a truly contested terrain
Let us come back now to the global and the local scale. What we are experiencing – and the term of some importance here is Location! Location! Location! – is a growing international, national, inter-regional, inter and inner urban competition. By this, globalization and localization are merging to what has been called ›glocalization‹.
In as much as the nation state loses importance in the decision-making process, it has in the neoliberalizing process evolved responsibilities to the local level, local scale. Today nation states and state policies are increasingly outplayed on this local level due to the intensified competition among cities that unfolds on different scales – in the case of Central European countries, cities like Vienna, Budapest and Berlin are heavily competing with each other to become the locations of big international companies and of the strongest headquarter economies, the chief labor force and so forth. The same struggles take place among the world or the so-called global cities which are competing for hosting the leading companies, channeling capitals through their respective stock exchanges, and introducing the most current technologies, the most suitable examples being obviously London, New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo and São Paolo.



At the very same time, this means that if a city is striving to become a global city as in the case of Berlin, the urban government should make sure that the city centre, being the shop window or the business card of the city, is in good shape and is not stained by the presence of drug-addicts, homeless people, and other ›undesirables‹. To achieve such a goal the city ought to behave like a company and become highly competitive; this includes the management of all the outcomes or devastations due to the neoliberalization process. Another part of it is aiming at making such outcomes (homelessness, poverty, unemployment, etc.) less noticeable, or even invisible. Which at the very same time means that the urban forms of government have become entrepreneurialized – with a strong emphasis on economic efficiency and low taxes (for the corporations, of course), but also on individual responsibility, morality, and duties (for the working class and the urban poor, of course).

So the most important goal of today’s urban policy is to mobilize the city space as an arena of market-oriented economic growth. Roll-out neoliberalism has established some flanking mechanisms and modes of crisis displacement such as local economic development policies and community based programs to elevate social exclusion and it has introduced new forms of coordination and inter-organizational networking among previously distinct spheres of local state intervention, so that ultimately, social, political, and even ecological criteria have become intertwined and at the same time redefined in an attempt to promote economic competitiveness. Social infrastructures, political culture, and ecological foundations of the city are being transformed into an economic asset. Already with the deregulation and the dismantling of the welfare state in the 1980s, the conditions of the urban conflict began to change dramatically. Distributive policies were increasingly replaced by measures of reinforcing urban competitiveness; as a consequence socio-spatial polarization intensified whereas wealth and economic opportunities became more unevenly distributed.

During the roll-out phase of neoliberalism in the 1990s, new discourses on reforms (dealing with welfare dependency, community regeneration, social capital, and the like) and new institutions and modes of delivery such as integrated area development, civic engagement, public-private-partnerships, urban regeneration, and social welfare emerged. So there are a huge number of non-state actors involved today in all those fields of activity originating from the early 1990s which was determined as the starting point of the roll-out phase of neoliberalism by scholars such as Adam Tickell, Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore. Even though you may find, especially in the more advanced capitalist countries such as the US and the UK, that already in the mid or late 1980s such programs came into existence. These new discourses and partnering programs reinforce but also instrumentalize communities and other social networks and in this sense create and maintain the competitive and revitalized urban growth machine. Moreover, such developments eroded the foundations upon which generalized resistance might be built and as a consequence, spaces of contestation became limited. Borrowing here from Margit Mayer, there are at least four frontiers along which activist mobilization is still concentrated challenging, in one way or another, the neoliberalization of the urban governance process.


»Within the Fordist growth model, municipal policies had focused on expanding the urban infrastructure and managing large-scale urban renewal. In contrast, the growth-first approach to urban development, with which many cities reacted to the decline of inner-city middle-class population and business commitment, put social investment and redistribution second. This public sector austerity went hand in hand with a limited urban policy repertoire, emphasizing place promotion, supply side intervention, central-city makeovers, i.e. the rebuilding and expansion of down-towns into up-scale, attractive service centers or world-class conference and hospitality destinations.
With so-called mega-events, cities began to engage in subsidizing zero-sum competition, not only via large-scale projects (such as waterfront redevelopment schemes, train station make-overs, or efforts to attract expositions, conventions, Olympics, etc.), but also via theme-enhanced urban entertainment centers. Succeeding in this competition depends to a large extent on the packaging and sale of urban place images, which have therefore become as important as the measures to keep the downtowns and event spaces clean and free of ›undesirables‹ and ›dangerous elements‹ (such as the youth, homeless, beggars, prostitutes, and other potential ›disrupters‹). Such ›undesirable‹ groups have not only been relocated to marginal areas, where they could be fenced off as a wild zone, but urban renaissance initiatives have also been ambivalent about urban diversity: where cultural diversity can be marketed for cultural consumption, it may very well be promoted – at the same time as social controls limiting diversity are promoted« (Mayer, 2007: 94, emphasis in original)



According to Mayer (2007), the first frontier challenges the growth politics that have come to dominate the municipal repertoire. In resistance to growth politics various movements emerged that fight the new downtown developments, contest the incongruity patterns of investment and disinvestment transforming city centers, and resist the entrepreneurial ways in which cities market themselves and compete on regional and global scales. A local example that we came across yesterday and now comes to my mind is the »The Bronze Soldier« monument, obviously strongly impregnated with ideology that in the contemporary situation of tensions between the ethnical Estonians and the Russians living in Estonia triggers a clash of interpretations. In my view this monument is constructed to commemorate the defeat of fascist Germany and hence, the Soviet victory which also makes it a powerful symbol of the already rejected Soviet dominance and oppression. It is not quite clear what is the rationale behind tearing down the monument. Is it meant as an end of history? Is it meant as a symbolic encroachment on Russians? And in my view it may well be the case that such an ideological reading of its destruction is only disguising essentially different motivations. If we relate this to the agenda of redeveloping cities it might turn out that the destruction is not about Russophobia or about ending history but about someone having the economic power to appropriate this inner city space for establishing a shopping mall, a new hotel or some other commercial enterprise. That would ultimately erode or at least substantially redefine its function of a major plaza. And yesterday it looked to me as a vivid public place – it was around 9 o’clock in the evening and there were a lot of people around, some of them bringing flowers, some of them taking pictures – unlike all the other inner city places where basically nobody was around except the police and a private security company’s van. So it seems a really interesting place to investigate how activism deals with the restructuring of urban spaces.

The second frontier are poor neighborhoods which have long been the turf of community based or neighborhood orientated activism but, at least on the EU level, it has been increasingly incorporated within, or even absorbed by, the frameworks of territorially oriented programs such as the programs I mentioned – the New Deal for the Communities in the UK, the Socially Integrated City program in Germany, and the Big Cities program in The Netherlands.

The third frontier stirs up mobilization against the neoliberalization of social and labor market policies, against the dismantling of the welfare state and pro social and environmental justice – and all those issues came to the forefront of urban activism over the last decade. Social justice in particular became the realm of many advocacy NGOs and workers’ right organizations, many of which in more and more countries appear to converge into a new type of broad coalitions. Through all those social movements the old-style unionizing gets fresh blood but also becomes more open and that is especially promising in the US context but also in some parts of (Western) Europe as it might lead to broader coalitions’ building. One widely known example is the constant negotiation process carried out between Attac and parts of the unions which try to confront the new workfare policies and the immense growth of the low wage labor sectors.

And finally, the forth frontier is contested by the so-called anti-globalization movement which in my mind is a very incorrect term because none of those organizations is confronting globalization per se but rather the kind of neoliberal globalization that is taking shape today. The interesting aspect of the anti-neoliberal globalization movements during the last five to ten years is their discovery of the local level as an important ground for their successful operation. So these movements are increasingly focused on localities at the scale where global neoliberalization touches down, to make itself tangible and where global issues become localized. That happens especially in Europe where networks that are part of this trans-national movement are accommodating their repertoires and goals of the global protest to the local issues at stake. And they are often working in collaboration with the social justice alliances characteristic of this fourth frontier.

»During high Fordism, neither labor regulation nor welfare provision were regarded as tasks of the third sector, rather, the sphere of civil society was seen as detached from that of the labor market and the institutions regulating it; it was seen as an unpoliticized sphere of associational activity. During the early phase of neoliberalism, urban zones of concentrated poverty and exclusion were ignored, but with its roll-out phase, such areas have become penetrated by a panoply of programs addressing crime, welfare dependency, worklessness, and other manifestations of social breakdown. The neoliberal approach to (re)regulating the labor market and the social sphere is through territorializing strategies, which seek to govern in and through ›communities‹. At the same time, neoliberal urban governance seeks to ›economize‹ formerly neglected social zones, turning them into fields for entrepreneurial calculations« (Mayer, 2007: 97, emphasis in original).

To sum up, I will go back to the question what are the reasons and the incentives for the growing importance of cities? First, the hollowing out of the nation state leads to a transfer of its responsibilities to the local level. A number of scholars describe this shift of responsibilities as a concept of »governing at a distance« that stems out of this so-called process of devolution of the nation state. Of course, this does not leave the city completely independent in its decision-making; its autonomy from the nation state differs in extent from country to country and yet the respective nation state has a say in the urban policies. When it comes to global cities the headquarter economy is the key to their growing importance which is apparent in the data on financial transactions, global distribution of goods and even global distribution of people. If we take an extremely rich and powerful city like Los Angeles the data reveals that it is the third largest economy in the world (to be more precise, this is the case for California) but at the very same time it has a huge amount of urban poor who make this kind of global city work – so it is one of the poorest cities as well. Such cities are overloaded with new technologies that acknowledge and enable this process and ultimately, facilitate the fine-tuning of the urban economy. So these cities are dominated by profit optimizing economic arenas and business friendly entities supplemented by workfare regimes. This coupling is a decisive factor for the transformation of a city into an entrepreneurial city, for its operation as an entrepreneur. It means that the city policy is no longer conditioned on elections and other kinds of public decision-making but is rather run like a company with a limited number of CEOs who decide on what will be the city policies for the next years or months. That leads to revanchist city politics, Zero Tolerance, gentrification, return of the middle classes, pluralization of policing, and emergence of gated communities (Eick et al. 2007).


The growing importance of cities can be interpreted as a process fuelled by the »hollowing-out« of the nation state, an attempt of national governments to »govern at a distance« (devolution), the growing importance of centrality (while, at the same time, space-time compression becomes even more important) as can be seen by a headquarter economy in which global cities are key. New technologies – especially transport and communication – have to be seen as important as an enabler for this process; finally, cities allow for a fine-tuning of the economies.
These processes lead to cities interpreted (solely) as economical arenas that have to be economically efficient and business-friendly; processes leading to the ›entrepreneurial city‹ and cities as entrepreneurs, organized along the lines of workfare regimes, controlled by ›revanchist‹ city politics (zero tolerance, gentrification, return of the middle classes, pluralization of policing), and phenomena such as gated communities.




Neoliberal Crime Policies: ›pluralization‹ of policing
Let us refer to the example of neoliberal crime policies. Never before has crime prevention been such an important topic as it is under neoliberalism (Eick et al., 2007). It is no longer the case that the main task of the police is to persecute crime but moreover, it is now to prevent crime in its very possibility. That leads to complicated crime prevention measures (not even related to crime) such as the Anti-social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) orders in the UK that restricted tremendously the activities allowed in public space. For example, you are no longer allowed to wear sweaters and a hood in some shopping malls in the UK, because it is recognized as a dress code of youngsters who are troublemakers. An example from the US is the so-called »three strikes and you are out« concept: Let’s say you are using public transport but you did not buy a ticket, so then if they catch you that will be your first strike. Then you get into trouble with your girlfriend or boyfriend and beat her or him up and got by the police, so this might be the second strike. And because you are so angry that you have been caught for the second time, you forget to buy a ticket again and then if you get caught again this will be your strike number three – which leads to imprisonment with a lifelong sentence. In California, three years ago, that regulation was changed to »one strike and you are out« in regard to people who live in public housing.



The second example of neoliberal crime prevention policies is linked to socio-spatial orientation. In this regard the new development is the introduction of numerous special police units aiming at specific areas and/or targeting specific groups within the city space (see Eick et al. 2007).

The actors involved in policing are more and more diversified – what Adam Crawford and Stuart Lister (2004), citing the London police, call »the extended policing family« – and include state police, federal police, financial police or customs (that has specific domestic functions in Germany), the so-called civil society kind of policing (civil wardens, militias, neighborhood watch schemes, etc.), commercial police (rent-a-cop, detectives, bodyguards, bouncers, plant security and mercenaries, given that we still have several on-going wars). And all these employees of the state, »civil society«, and commercial police units are wearing different kinds of uniforms or so-called uniforms (see Eick, 2006a, 2006b, 2007a).


The third aspect of neoliberal crime prevention policies is the new penology. Its objectives and effects are evident already in the incredibly high numbers of prisoners today that are rising in parallel with the processes of neoliberalization. There are new forms of cooperation and technological prevention/tracing such as CCTV and Radio Frequency Identification tags (RFID) which were invented initially to facilitate tracing goods all over the world. For those of you who are football fans, it may be interesting to know that in the next international football tournament RFID tags will be placed inside the footballs so that the audience could know with absolute certainty if the ball stroke a goal or not. Implementation of such RFID tags into human bodies is under way in the US – and some discotheques even offer this as a VIP special guest service.[2]
It is obvious that policing strategies and tactics, tendencies of militarization as well as those of ›community-rization‹ have an impact on research and activism as have new technologies such as surveillance technologies mentioned above.




Capitalist Challenges: activism, atavism, aspiration
What are the challenges for research and activism, though? A (meaningful) critique has always been a proxy persons’ politics as it goes with the perception of ›undesirables‹ as being voiceless and helpless – the homeless worldwide might be an intriguing example, and the ›integration‹ of them into the labor market a disturbing kind of ›empowerment‹ (Eick, 2006a). Another challenge is obviously the attempt to create a ›career‹ for oneself, either by turning into a professional or by taking ›advantage‹ out of political work for one’s own purposes – a debate being present, for example, within the (basically German) urban movement of Inner!City!Action!-groups (Grell et al., 1998; Grothe, 2005). Another confrontation for researchers as for activists is the urban elite’s quest for integrating, co-opting, and assimilating of critical researchers and activists – the specificity here lies in the danger of promoting enhanced neoliberalism. One well-know example with respect to gentrification processes are the so-called ›pioneers of gentrification‹ such as students and artists taking advantage of, for instance, state- or city-subsidies (e.g. temporary use of vacant space for lower rents; Broedplaatsen concept in Amsterdam; Lower Eastside Manhattan/New York City). As Iris Marion Young (1990), among others, has shown, for the sake of a just, or »unoppressive city« one always has to fight against economic exploitation, marginalization of individuals and social groups, the production of powerlessness by state and non-state entities, discrimination and exclusion of ›non-norm‹ individuals and groups, the execution and threat of state violence, and, finally, the calibration traceability. One of the broadest challenges in addition lies in the (missing) capacity to find a ›language‹ to understand each other – especially when it comes to coalition-building (Abramsky, 2001; Doderer, 2003).



There are other issues that come to mind if one refers to research and activism. One concerns the question to whom to talk and with whom to work. The plethora of (new) social movements shows the different strategies and tactics applied to reach one’s goals. A current coalition, for example, against the massive surveillance measures brought into place by the German government see a coalition ranging from the comparatively conservative Liberal Party (Freie Demokratische Partei, FDP) to militant autonomous and anti-imperialistic groups,iii whereas the two latter groups seldom go for coalition-building. Other coalitions, including religious sects, can be observed within the, falsely named, anti-globalization movement. Coalition-building might be framed by the respective aims of researchers and activists. Doing research on right-wing militias or police might be as challenging in terms of being pocketed by the research subject/object, Rigakos’ book on the Toronto-based rent-a-cop company Intelligarde might be a good example (Rigakos, 2007) as might be the experience of Steve Herbert whose research on policing strategies found an abrupt halt since his findings did not comply with the expectations of the police (Herbert, 2006; personal communication). More generally, coalition-building as activism are framed by attempts of a concrete change of and progress in a given matter, or by an attempt to go for more ›symbolic‹ politics – the ›big critique‹. Dangers exist, especially in but not limited to, groups claiming to be ›avantgardist‹ – therefore, such groups might encounter the trap of self-referentiality.

Finally, as mentioned above, the (non)anticipated role of arts, ›alternative‹ lifestyles (and ›progressive‹ politics) in gentrification processes (e.g. Inner!City!Action!) might even lead to unintended consequences. A typical (non-asked) question might be: Is the use of vacant or ›sleeping‹ space a meaningful/substantial/material intervention/issue, or not? What further political means, goals, activities are necessary to succeed in making the city more just? Italy’s Centro Sociale (Social Centers) might be perceived as a convincing answer to such challenges as they are – in the majority of cases – are to work together with the neighboring community. Of course, this raises further questions: Who is ›the neighborhood‹, the community? What are their/it wants? What are those of the researchers and activists?

It is here, where Nikolas Rose’s statement has its specific meaning for activists and scholars alike – as such crime prevention measures and technologies mentioned above are linked with a discourse of ›community‹ and new methods of (urban) governance. Between the lines, one can read here about the respective challenges that come with ›community‹ in a contested terrain:

»[The current neoliberal programs] attempt to ›empower‹ the inhabitants of particular inner-city locales by constituting those who reside in a certain locality as ›a‹ community, by seeking out ›community groups‹ who can claim to speak ›in the name of community‹ and by linking them in new ways into the political apparatus in order to enact program[ ]s which seek to regenerate the economic and human fabric of an area by re-activating in ›the community‹ these ›natural‹ virtues which it has temporarily lost« (Rose, 1996: 336, accentuation in original).

Activism, atavism, and aspiration are confronted with – and are part of – community, crime, and capitalism. The city, from its very beginning, remains contested terrain. Could be worse…
Three Forms of Neoliberalization
(proto, roll-back, roll-out) ROLL-BACK
[destructive/deregulatory] ROLL-OUT
[creative/re-regulatory]
Mode of intervention State withdrawal Governance
Market regulation ›Deregulation‹ Experimental re-regulation
Political style Ideological conviction Pragmatic learning
Change agents Vanguardist politicians Technopolis
Front line Economic policy Institutionally embedded
Taxation Selective givebacks Systemic regression
Monetary policy ›Cold-bath‹ monetarism Prudence
Public expenditure Cuts Fiscal responsibility
Labour-market regime Mass unemployment Full employability
Employment relations De-Unionization Flexibility
Social policy Retrenchment Workfare
Financial regulation Liberalization Standards and codes
Development ethos Structural adjustment Social capital
Sources: Jessop (2002); Peck/Tickell (2007).





Four Forms of Neoliberalism

[in an attempt to ›sustain‹ the neoliberal project]


Neoliberalism


Neostatism


Neocorporatism


Neocommunitarianism

»Schumpeterian Workfare Post-National Regimes/SWPN« (Bob Jessop)



»Adjusting Neoliberalism«


Neoliberalism


Liberalization – promoting free competition


Deregulation – reducing the role of the law and the state


Privatization – selling off the public sector


Market proxies in the residual public sector


Internationalization – free inward and outward flows


Lower direct taxes – increasing consumer choice



»Adjusting Neoliberalism«


Neostatism


From state control to regulated competition


Guiding national strategy rather than planning top-down


Auditing the performance of the private and public sectors


Public-Private Partnerships under state guidance


Neo-Mercantilist protection of core economy


Expanding the role of new collective resources



»Adjusting Neoliberalism«


Neocorporatism


Rebalancing competition and cooperation


Decentralized »regulated self-regulation«


Widening the range of private, public, and other »stakeholders«


Expanding the role of Public-Private Partnerships


Protecting the core economic sectors in an open economy


High taxation to finance social investment



»Adjusting Neoliberalism«


Neocommunitarianism


Deliberalization – limiting free competition


Empowerment – enhancing the role of the third sector


Socialization – expanding social economy


Emphasis on social use-value and social cohesion


Fair trade instead of free trade; »think global, act local«


Redirecting taxes – citizen’s wage, carer’s allowances



Neoliberal crime policies


(crime) prevention


(socio) spatial orientation

(special police units aiming at specific spaces and targeting groups of »undesirables«)


new penology

(»punitive state«, intensified incarceration rates)


new forms of cooperation

(›police-private partnerships‹ with rent-a-cops, non-profit organizations, ›third parties‹ [e.g. insurances, airline companies], other state entities)


techno prevention/tracing

(CCTV, RFID, GIS, GPS, On-line email surveillance etc.)





Pluralization of Policing:

Selected state and non-state (in)security and (dis)order personnel


State

›Civil society‹

Commercial
State police Nonprofits Rent-a-cops
Federal police Civil wardens Detectives
Financial police (customs) Militias Body-guards
Municipal order service Neighborhood watch Bouncers
Security watch Security partners Plant security
Order partnerships Voluntary police service
German Employees (rounded off):State police: 265,000; federal police: 40,000; customs: 4,000 (clandestine employment) Source: Eick (2007b)



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[[3]]See for an overview: http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/index.php?lang=en [28.11.2007].[[3]]
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The paper is a slightly revised version of key note I gave at the 4th annual Urban Studies Days in Tallinn/Estonia, April 25, 2007. I am thanking the organizers for the invitation, and I am thankful to Elitza Stanoeva for her support on this paper. The usual disclaimers apply.↵
See, for further examples, http://www.spychips.com/, http://www.nocards.org/.↵
Volker Eick
Neoliberalism and Urban Space






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