the mormon worker - issue 3 - nov 07

8/8/2019 The Mormon Worker - Issue 3 - Nov 07

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Dont Torture in My NameBy Josh Madson

On September 13, 2003, Alyssa Peterson tragically endedher lie. The third emale soldier to die in Iraq since the

invasion, Alyssa was a devout Mormon who had served

a mission in the Netherlands. Shortly ater her religious

service, Alyssa volunteered to serve in the military. She

was adept at learning languages and was sent to Arabic

training school. Alyssa later volunteered to go to Iraq in

place o another who did not want to go.

It was about this time in a conerence room at the Pen-

tagon that Donald Rumseld, rustrated rom a lack o good

intel, ordered the military to gitmo-ize the situation" in

Abu Ghraib and Iraq. Results owhich we have all seen in

the photos and videos that emerged rom Abu Ghraib. It

was in this situation that Alyssa Peterson, then serving in

Tal-Aar, Iraq, ound hersel shortly beore her death. We

know that Peterson objected to the interrogation tech-

THE

Mormon Worker

I Teach Them Correct Principles and They Govern Themselves josephsmith

Issue 3 September 2007

Dont Torture in My Name

By Josh MadsonRacism, Violence, and the United States,

Part 1: The Prison System By Spencer KingmanSpace Technology or Social Progress? By Bruce K. GagnonThe Unattained Enlightenment By Gregory VanWagenenPalestinian / Israeli Conict: A Cooperative Efort

By Abdullah Mulhimone

The Zion/Babylon Dualism in Mormonismand Anarchism By Jason Brown

The Fascist Roots o Corporate America(And the Bush Family) By Stephen Wellington

The Iraqi Resistance, Al-Qaeda, and US PropagandaBy William Van Wagenen

Wendell Berrys Git o a Good Lie By Ron MadsonLakotah Indians Declare Independence rom

the United States o America By Jason BrownPeter Chelick (c. 1390 c. 1460)

By Kristen Kinjo-Bushman

Commonwealth By Matthew ThomasA Love Poem rom Iraq By Jack DawkinsContributorsNavigation

Hold your mouse cursor on the name of an author

to see a brief bio and an introduction to his or her article

Click on the name of an article to go there
http://www.space4peace.org/mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.space4peace.org/


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2The Mormon Worker

niques used on prisoners. She reused to participate ater

only two nights working in the unit known as the cage.

Army spokespersons or her unit have reused to describe

the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say

all records o those techniques have now been destroyed.

..." Ater a conrontation with superiors, she was put onsuicide watch and assigned to guard a gate. Alyssa avoided

eating with her interrogation team and spent time read-

ing at her desk when she did not have other assignments.

Shortly thereater, Alyssa was ound dead in a eld with

her service rife in the grass next to her.

The reactions to the suicide were that she was having

a dicult time separating her personal eelings rom her

proessional duties. That was the consistent point in the

testimonies, that she objected to the interrogation tech-

niques, without describing what those techniques were.

We may never know the specic reasons Alyssa ended her

lie because the government is yet to release her suicide

note. What we do know however is that Alyssa who had

spent 18 months o her lie preaching the gospel o Jesus

Christ to complete strangers, seeing them as children oGod was later placed into a situation where she was asked

to treat human beings as objects and torture them. Perhaps

she elt as Kayla Williams, a ellow soldier who talked

to Alyssa one week beore her death and also protested

the techniques used at Tal-Aar, when she stated the real

problem with such techniques is that it, made me ques-

tion my humanity and the humanity o all Americans. It

was dicult and to this day, I can no longer think I am a

A Note to Our Readers

The Mormon Worker is an independent newspaper/jour-

nal devoted to Mormonism and radical politics. It is pub-

lished by members o the LDS Church. The paper is mod-

eled ater the legendary Catholic Worker which has been

in publication or over seventy years.

The primary objective o The Mormon Worker is to mean-

ingully connect core ideas o Mormon theology with a

host o political, economic, ecological, philosophical, and

social topics.

Although most contributors o The Mormon Worker are

members o the LDS church, some are not, and we accept

submissions rom people o varying secular and religiousbackgrounds.

The opinions in The Mormon Worker are not the ocial

view o The Church o Jesus Christ o Latter-day Saints.

In solidarity,

The Mormon Worker

THE MORMON WORKER

140 West Oak Circle

Woodland Hills, UT 84653

Subscribe to our print edition:

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Don't Torture in My Name
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really good person and will do the right thing in the right

situation.

In perhaps an even stranger irony, these techniques she

was asked to perorm were in part reverse engineered by

two Mormons known in the CIA as the Mormon maa.

James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were part o a classiedgroup known as SERE that trained US soldiers to withstand

interrogation techniques. Mitchell and Jes-

sen were handpicked to reverse engineer

communist interrogation techniques and

teach them to CIA interrogators. These

techniques included waterboarding, stress

positions, sleep deprivation, and others. It

was with the capture o Abu Zubaydah in

March o 2002 that Mitchell and Jesse had

their rst chance to use their enhanced

interrogation techniques.

Zubaydah was a mess when he was

captured. Unable to eat, drink, sit, or con-

trol his bowels, the FBI began the pro-

cess o nursing his wounds. At one point,Zubaydah turned septic and nearly died.

While Zubaydah was being treated hu-

manely by the FBI, he revealed one key intelligence detail:

the identity o Khaled Sheikh Mohammed. Shortly therea-

ter, the CIA interrogation team arrived and began the tech-

niques designed by Mitchell and Jessen. Ronald Suskind

reported that they strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board,

threatened him with certain death, withheld medication,

bombarded him with noise and lights, and deprived him o

sleep. At one point, the CIA had even began construction

on a con to bury Zubaydah alive. It is no surprise that

Dr. R. Scott Shumate, then chie operational psychologist

or the C.I.A.s counterterrorism center, packed his bags

and let in disgust ater witnessing Mitchell and Jessenstechniques.

Under these conditions, Zubaydah

began to speak o plots o every vari-

etyagainst shopping malls, banks, super-

markets, water systems, nuclear plants,

apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge,

the Statue o Liberty. Never mind that

Zubaydah was in act mentally ill and not

the pivotal gure they believed him to

be. Zubaydahs diary he kept or more

than a decade had three separate voices:

a boy, a young man and a middle-aged

alter ego. Dan Coleman, the FBIs top al-

Qaeda analyst, stated, This guy is insane,

certiable, split personality, and reer-ring to the CIA stated, They all knew he

was crazy. Newsweek reported that one

FBI agent was so oended he threatened to arrest the CIA

interrogators.

More revealing is the testimony o John Kiriakou, the

CIA interrogator o Zubaydah, who when asked whether

he had legal authority or his actions in an ABC news

interview stated, Absolutely. Absolutely. I remember - I

T

...

b . N, , -

b , ,

, b.

Aldous Huxley



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remember being told when - the President signed the - the

authorities that they had been approved - not just by the

National Security Counsel, but by the - but by the Justice

Department as well, I remember people being surprised that

the authorities were granted. Zubaydahs interrogation

went on or months and we now know that the hundredso hours o videotapes o his treatment were destroyed in

November, 2005. In the case o Zubaydah we have direct

involvement o top government ocials, including the

president, barbaric orms o torture, and meaningless intel-

ligence rom an already mentally ill man. As Suskind writes,

the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man

and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.

Soon these same techniques; rst used in CIA blacks

sites and then used in Guantanamo ound their way to Iraq

resulting in the atrocities o Abu Ghraib and in the crisis

Alyssa Peterson ound hersel leading to her death. Mean-

while, Mitchell and Jessen got paid more than $1,000 per

day plus expenses, tax ree, or their overseas work and

Mitchell nally purchased his dream house in Florida. It

was Aldous Huxley who remarked that the people whokill and torture and tell lies in the name o their sacred

causes... these are never the publicans and the sinners. No,

theyre the virtuous, respectable men, who have the nest

eelings, the best brains, the noblest ideals.

Oten the discussion surrounding torture concerns its

eectiveness. However, there is a much more undamental

discussion that is needed when we address torture. I we

assume that torture works, then the decision we must ace

is whether it is better to suer a nuclear attack than save

human lie through morally compromised methods. At

what point are we justied in not only killing but torturing

another human being or the chance that they might know

something that might save lives?

Torture has been used by a variety o unsavory groupsand governments in history including our own. From the

tormenta de toca (water cure) used during the Spanish

Inquisition to elicit conessions, sleep deprivation used by

Stalin to elicit conessions, the VerschrteVernehmungor

enhanced interrogation used by Nazis, and the Khmer

Rouges use o waterboarding on dissidents. The ormer

Prime Minister o Israel Menachim Begin described his

sleep deprivation torture by the KGB as In the head o

the interrogated prisoner, a haze begins to orm. His spirit

is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one

sole desire: to sleep... Anyone who has experienced this

desire knows that not even hunger and thirst are compa-

rable with it. One individual who voluntarily submitted to

a waterboarding experiment described the complete loss

o control and willpower. It was not pain he remarked butat the time my lungs emptied and I began to draw water,

I would have sold my children to escape. There was no

choice, or chance, and willpower was not involved.

In our own history, US soldiers used a primitive orm

o waterboarding in the Phillipine-American war, water is

poured onto his ace, down his throat and nose ... until the

man gives some sign o giving in or becomes unconscious

... His suering must be that o a man who is drowning, but



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who cannot drown. This is the same technique Japanese

soldiers used on US soldiers in WWII and were tried as

war criminals and one Japanese soldier was sentenced to

15 years o hard labor. This same technique later ound its

way into police stations and military prisons particularly

in the south.In 1926 Mississippis highest court, in Fisher v. State, 110

So. 361, 362 (Miss. 1926), ruled a murderers conession be

overturned because o the water cure, a specie o torture

well known to the bench and bar o the country. This was

based upon an earlier case, White v. State, 182, 91 So. 903,

904 (Miss. 1922), that overturned a murder conviction o

a young black man whose hands were tied behind him,

he was laid upon the foor upon his back, and, while some

o the men stood upon his eet, Gilbert, a very heavy man,

stood with one oot entirely upon appellants breast, and

the other oot entirely upon his neck. While in that position

what is described as the water cure was administered

to him in an eort to extort a conession as to where the

money was hidden which was supposed to have been taken

rom the dead man. The water cure appears to haveconsisted o pouring water rom a dipper into the nose o

appellant, so as to strangle him, thus causing pain and hor-

ror, or the purpose o orcing a conession. Under these

barbarous circumstances the appellant readily conessed.

We should never orget that in the years rom the civil war

to civil rights, thousands o people were tortured and many

killed by our own citizens. In one inamous lynching in

Paris, Texas, a crowd o 10,000 men, women, and children

took photos, ate popcorn, all the while a black man was

tortured and burned alive.

Torture does what the Russian writer Aleksander Sol-

zhenitsyn described in The Gulag Archipelago, it beogs

the reason, undermines the will, and the human being

ceases to be himsel, to be his own I. All o these tech-

niques and methods share the same goal: to break the hu-

man will. How should we react as Christians and Mormons

to torture?

One o the undamental values o Mormonism is the

idea that God believes in ree will and respects each indi-

vidual soul. Mormons also believe that there was a deci-

sion made that ree will was more important than using

compulsion to prevent countless tragedies whether it was

genocide, rape, child abuse, or even the salvation o our


Bee Mill Print by Tyler Bushman


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eternal souls. I ree will is so sacred to God, how can we

every justiy doing what even God himsel will not do:

robbing a human soul o its will, its I am. It is a basic

Christian tenet that we are to love our enemies and do good

unto those who hate us. It is not just in the generalities that

we are Christian, but in the particularities o turning theother cheek and enemy love. Christ is clear that this is how

we become Sons o God. How we treat our enemies is an

indicator o our level o discipleship. This says more about

our Christianity than any proessed creeds or ideas.

There are things more important than saving human

lie. This is not a question o sel-righteous victimhood but

an issue o sel-preservation. Torture is ultimately about

our own personal and national soul. When Peter learned o

Christs uture suering and death on the cross, he rebuked

the Lord and tried to prevent it. It is wise to remember the

Saviors words in response. He reminded Peter that we are

to take up his cross and that i there are not boundaries

we will not cross even to save our lives, we may lose our

very soul. The real question is what will we exchange or

our own soul, or our national soul? I we are willing to

torture and break anothers will, we may be as worthy o

Christs rebuke as Peter was, Get behind me, Satan: you

are a scandal to me: or you do not understand the things

God, but those o men.

Beore Christ let he promised he would send us the

comorter (parakletos). Satan is the accuser. The parakletos

is the deender o the accused (Greek or deense attorney,

the deender o victims). Jesus was tortured and crucied

so that no one else would have to be a victim again. When

we torture and when we kill victims, we deny the parak-

letos, the spirit. This is how we cruciy Christ again and

deny the holy spirit (the parakletos), the call to deend the

accused. Stalin tortured men in the name o Russia, the

Inquisition in the name o the church, Hitler in the nameo German Nationalism, and our own government tortures

in the name o reedom and liberty. At the end o the day,

i we torture we are torturers and we deny the power and

meaning o the cross.

Racism, Violence, and the UnitedStates, Part 1: The Prison SystemBy Spencer Kingman

Many Latter-Day Saints, while believing racism to be a great

evil and a sin, assume that violent racism and racism as

government policy are things o the past. In this article, and

others forthcoming, I will explore the U.S. prison system,

the practice o torture, and the wall at the nations southern

border as three particular projects that bely such an assump-

tion. I intend to show that, far from fading away or becoming

supercial, racism remains a vicious and violent a orce in

this country.

It is appropriate to start with the prison system. Though

less controversial than torture or the border wall, the pris-

Racism, Violence and the United States, Part 1: The Prison System


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ons lay the oundation or these projects. In practice and

in language, they provide a laboratory or what happened

at Abu Ghraib, a blueprint or the deadly architecture o

our border zones, and a business model or Homeland

Security.

In our lietimes, the prison system has exploded in sizeand scope, swallowing up people, homes, and whole sec-

tions o our cities. This rapid growth has little to do with

crime, and a lot to do with economics, racism, and social

control. Unable to address and alleviate its savage inequali-

ties, the United States has instead ound a way,through

imprisonment, to make them into a perverted junk-growth

industry. As a country, we are eeding on our own dys-

unction, relying on human misery as a prot center, and

stripping or parts those people or which we nd no other

use. How can one talk o public saety when huge chunks

o that public are being absorbed into such a dangerous

and violent system? How can criminal justice have any

meaning when the nation is so invested in criminality?

Many are unaware o the rapacious growth o the

prison system since the early 1970s, and it is dicult to

athom. The number o Americans who are currently in

jail or prison is over 2.2 million people, one ourth o the

prison population o the entire world. This population has

expanded rom just 300,000 in 1972 and 1,000,000 in 1990.

The United States also incarcerates people at a higher rate

than any other nation (with the possible exception o North

Korea). Increases or youth and emales are even more

dramatic.1 There has been no corresponding increase in

crime over these boom years. Many o the incarcerations

ueling the rise o the prison industry result rom either

drug oenses or mandatory minimum sentence require-

ments legislated in the context o the wars on drugs and

crime.

Both o these so-called wars have ravaged communi-ties o color, especially Black communities. In some cities,

over one hal o young Black men are under some criminal

supervision, be it parole, probation, or incarceration. 2Ap-

proximately 44% o all prisoners are Black, though they

comprise only 12% o the U.S. population.3

The ease with which we ignore this cataclysm is re-

markable. It is commonly believed that the system works

well, that we see high rates o Blacks and Latinos in the

criminal justice system because Blacks and Latinos com-

mit most o the crimes in the United States. In some cases

this is actually wrong, or instance when it comes to drugs.

Drug use is equally common among Blacks, Latinos, and

Whites. Blacks constitute 13% o all monthly drug users,

but 35% o arrests or drug possession, 53% o convictions,

and 58% o prison sentences, and these drug convictions

comprise a very large part o all prisoners. 4In act, more

Blacks are sent to state prison or drug oenses than or

crimes o violence.5

The assumption that people o color commit more

crimes than Whites is sometimes actually correct, but this

phenomenon is impossible to understand outside the con-

text o persistent and widening discrimination, economic

exclusion, or the predations o police.



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For people who have already been locked up, the barri-

ers to re-entering civil society ater their prison terms are

so numerous and extreme that many return to crime. With

some variation rom state to state, the average person con-

victed o a elony will likely nd themselves barred rom

politics and voting, barred rom gun ownership, have theirdrivers license suspended, prohibited by law rom several

occupations, and reused employment in most others. Ad-

ditionally they are permanently barred rom receiving

public assistance such as Temporary Assistance or Needy

Families, Medicaid, ood stamps, Supplemental Security

Income, as well as ederal nancial aid or education. They

are permanently barred rom admittance to public housing

and Section 8. The list goes on and on, including just about

anything a person might need to get back on their eet. A

shocking 6% o Americans have elony records. 6

Needless to say, incarceration also rips apart ami-

lies and psyches, and the cumulative eect is crushing. In

Caliornia, which imprisons more people than any other

state, the recidivism rate is 70 percent; or children in the

juvenile system it is 90 percent (recidivism is a word to

describe the return to prison or criminality o an inmate

who has served their time and been released). 7

Crime rates generally have dropped since the begin-

ning o the prison boom, but the meaning o this act is

contested. During the 1990s crime rates declined less dra-

matically in states with high incarceration rates. A detailed

2005 study by The Sentencing Project suggested that only

about 25% o the drop in crime rates should be attributed to

increased incarceration, with the other 75% perhaps result-

ing rom a growing economy, changing drug markets, com-

munity policing models, and other community responses

to crime. Also, a decrease in the crime rate concurrent

with mass imprisonment says little about what couldhave

been achieved with non-violent approaches. Numerousstudies have shown drug treatment, interventions with

at-risk amilies, and school completion programs are ar

more eective at reducing crime than incarceration, and

o course, ar less costly.8

However, the high costs o imprisonment mean large

prots or some. They represent a grotesque development

opportunity or states and small towns, and the jobs they

create are well-paying. The average salary or a member o

the Caliornia Correctional Peace Ocers Union is $73,000

dollars per year, ar higher than, or instance, a teachers

salary.9Private prisons, o which there are currently about

300 nation wide, are oten payed directly rom tax revenue

on a per-inmate, per-day basis. States or private prisons

can generate large amounts o revenue by contracting

with large corporations to provide prison labor, usually

at sweatshop wages. All o these various strategem or

generating wealth have one thing in common: an absolute

reliance on the maintenance o high levels o incarceration

and a steady stream o inmates.

In the case o prison labor, the continuities with slav-

ery are chilling. At the end o the U.S. Civil War, the 13th

amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery except

as a punishment or crime. In the post-Reconstruction



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South this loophole was used to reassert White supremacy

and exploitation o Black agricultural labor through the

chain gang.10The largest prison in the United States, the

Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, resides on 18,000

acres o antebellum plantation land purchased by the state

in 1905. It was called Angola because most o the ex-slavesin that area came rom that Arican Country. Still today, the

inmates, 75 percent o whom are Black, perorm the same

labor as slaves did 200 years ago: harvesting cotton and

sugar cane. It is estimated that 85 percent o the inmates

at Angola now will die there. 11

In the post-Civil Rights Era, convict labor has reached

ull industrial blossom. All over the United States, inmates

are assembling air conditioning parts, computer moth-

erboards, and clothing or companies like Microsot, J.C.

Penny, Eddie Bauer, Victorias Secret, and Honda. They are

answering telephones or TWA and Best Western. 12In the

summer o 2007, Colorado started sending emale inmates

to harvest onions, corn, and melons on arms.13For many

years, the Federal Bureau o Prisons has provided inmate

labor to the Army, but in 2005 a new regulation authorized

the Army to create prison labor camps within military

installations. 14Needless to say the wages or prisoners

are deplorable. The average hourly rate at a prison camp

in Nevada is a mere $0.13 cents an hour. The pay rates or

ederal prisoners are between $0.23 and $1.15 per hour. 15In

Angola Prison in 1997, inmates were reportedly de-boning

chickens or $0.04 cents an hour. 16

The prison system is becoming a primary mechanism

or maintaining de acto segregation and mass exploitation

o Black people in the U.S., perorming the same unctions

as the ghetto, Jim Crow, and slavery beore it. Globalization

and technological change have wiped out millions o jobs

that used to be somewhat available to Black people living in

the cities. The prisons provide a way or the state to controlthese unemployed or surplus people and exploit them in

a way that is competitive with overseas sweatshops. It also

provides a way or the country to absorb the Post World

War II/Civil Rights activism without really upending the

racial caste system. Just as Jim Crow undermined politi-

cal rights granted ater the Civil War, the elonization o

Black America undermines the civil rights victories o the

1960s (and not without eect, as seen in Florida during

the 2000 Presidential Election).

The racialization o incarceration is not simply a re-

fection o a racism planted in some other arena o society.

On the contrary, the prisons, like racist institutions beore

them, insidiously create and disseminate ideas about what

it means to be Black and White in the U.S. White su-

premacy has long required that Blackness be associated

with criminality and violence, but the mass incarceration

o Black people (a recent phenomenon) solidies this as-

sociation and lends it the appearance o social act. In the

words o Randall Kennedy it supplies a powerul common-

sense warrant or using color as a proxy or dangerous-

ness. Hence driving while Black17or simply hanging-out

with other Blacks in public provokes regular harassment

by police. As Black people are shut in to prisons and ghet-



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10The Mormon Worker

tos, they are shut out o politics and jobs. Incarceration

helps do the symbolic work o mixing up cause and eect

here, hardening racist myths about the suburban world o

hard-work, sel-control, and political responsibility as well

as myths about its counterpart: a ghetto/prison world o

indolence, addiction, parasitism, and cruelty.

1. International Centre For Prison Studies at Kings

College London. Prison Brie Highest to Lowest Rates.

http://www.prisonstudies.org (10 January 2008); Rose M.

Brewer and Nancy A. Heitzeg, The Racialization o Crime

and Punishment: Criminal Justice, Colorblind Racism, and

the Political Economy o the Prison-Industrial Complex,

American Behavioral Scientist 51 (2008); 628. .

2. David Matlin, PRISONS: Inside the New America,

(Berkeley, Caliornia: North Atlantic Books, 2005), pp. xxiii,

xxviii..

3. Human Rights Watch. (2003). Incarcerated America.

http://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/usa/incarcera-

tion/us042903.pd (April 2003).

4. The Sentencing Project. (2001). Drug Policy and the

Criminal Justice System. http://www.sentencingproject.

org/Admin/Documents/publications/dp_drugpolicy_cj-

system.pd (13 January 2008).5. Human Rights Watch. (April 2003). Incarcerated

America.http://hrw.org/backgrounder/usa/incarceration/

us042903.pd (13 January 2008)..

6. Ibid.David Matlin, PRISONS: Inside the New Amer-

ica, (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2005). p. xxii..

8. The Sentencing Project. (2005). Incarceration and

Crime: A Complex Relationship. http://www.sentencing-

project.org/Admin%5CDocuments%5Cpublications%5Ci

nc_iandc_complex.pd (13 January 2008).

9. David Matlin, PRISONS: Inside the New America,

(Berkeley, Caliornia: North Atlantic Books, 2005). p. xxii.10. David M. Oshinsky. Worse Than Slavery: Parchman

Farm and the Ordeal o Jim Crow Justice, (New York: Free

Press Paperbacks, 1996).

11. Free the Angola 3 (2000) Lockdown at Angola: A

History o the Angola 3 Case. http://www.angola3.org/ (13

January 2008).

12. Kelly Patricia OMeara, Prison Labor is a Growth

Industry, Insight on the News. Washington: May 24, 1999.

Vol. 15, Iss. 19; pg. 14, 2 pgs.

13. Nicole Hill, U.S. Farmers Using Prison Labor,

Christian Science Monitor, August 22, 2007. pg. 14.

14. U.S. Army. (14 February 2005). Army Regulation

210-35: Civilian Inmate Labor Program. http://www.army.

mil/usapa/epubs/pd/r210_35.pd (13 January 2008).15. Peter Wagner. (2003) The Prison Index: Taking

the Pulse o the Crime Control Industries. http://www.

prisonpolicy.org/prisonindex/prisonlabor.html (13 Janu-

ary 2008).

16. Peter Gilmore, Made in the USA... by Convicts.

Labor Party Press, July 1997, Vol. 2, Num. 4.

17. Loc Wacquant, From Slavery to Mass Incarcera-

tion, New Let Review, 13, January 2002.


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http://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/usa/incarceration/us042903.pdfhttp://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/usa/incarceration/us042903.pdfhttp://www.sentencingproject.org/Admin/Documents/publications/dp_drugpolicy_cjsystem.pdfhttp://www.sentencingproject.org/Admin/Documents/publications/dp_drugpolicy_cjsystem.pdfhttp://www.sentencingproject.org/Admin/Documents/publications/dp_drugpolicy_cjsystem.pdfhttp://hrw.org/backgrounder/usa/incarceration/us042903.pdfhttp://hrw.org/backgrounder/usa/incarceration/us042903.pdfhttp://hrw.org/backgrounder/usa/incarceration/us042903.pdfhttp://www.sentencingproject.org/Admin%5CDocuments%5Cpublications%5Cinc_iandc_complex.pdfhttp://www.sentencingproject.org/Admin%5CDocuments%5Cpublications%5Cinc_iandc_complex.pdfhttp://www.sentencingproject.org/Admin%5CDocuments%5Cpublications%5Cinc_iandc_complex.pdfhttp://www.angola3.org/http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r210_35.pdfhttp://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r210_35.pdfhttp://www.prisonpolicy.org/prisonindex/prisonlabor.htmlhttp://www.prisonpolicy.org/prisonindex/prisonlabor.htmlhttp://www.prisonpolicy.org/prisonindex/prisonlabor.htmlhttp://www.prisonpolicy.org/prisonindex/prisonlabor.htmlhttp://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r210_35.pdfhttp://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r210_35.pdfhttp://www.angola3.org/http://www.sentencingproject.org/Admin%5CDocuments%5Cpublications%5Cinc_iandc_complex.pdfhttp://www.sentencingproject.org/Admin%5CDocuments%5Cpublications%5Cinc_iandc_complex.pdfhttp://www.sentencingproject.org/Admin%5CDocuments%5Cpublications%5Cinc_iandc_complex.pdfhttp://hrw.org/backgrounder/usa/incarceration/us042903.pdfhttp://hrw.org/backgrounder/usa/incarceration/us042903.pdfhttp://hrw.org/backgrounder/usa/incarceration/us042903.pdfhttp://www.sentencingproject.org/Admin/Documents/publications/dp_drugpolicy_cjsystem.pdfhttp://www.sentencingproject.org/Admin/Documents/publications/dp_drugpolicy_cjsystem.pdfhttp://www.sentencingproject.org/Admin/Documents/publications/dp_drugpolicy_cjsystem.pdfhttp://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/usa/incarceration/us042903.pdfhttp://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/usa/incarceration/us042903.pdf


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Space Technology or Social Progress?By Bruce K. Gagnon

As criticisms o U.S. missile deense (MD) technologyincrease around the world, it is interesting that the reac-

tion o the Bush administration is to accelerate eorts to

deploy the system in as many countries

as possible.

At the present time the Bush admin-

istration is attempting to convince the

governments o Poland and the Czech Re-

public to allow the Pentagon to establishnew MD bases in their countries despite

strong opposition rom the people o both

nations to the plan. Poland would host mis-

sile deense interceptors while the Czech

Republic would have a Star Wars radar

acility placed near Prague.

Missile deense has never been about protecting the

public rom attack by the rogue nations. As it turned

out Iraq had no WMD. Iran has none today. North Korea

has no WMD capable o hitting the continental U.S. Even

China has only 20 WMDs capable o hitting the west coast

o the U.S. The U.S. now has over 7,000 WMDs in our own

arsenal o hypocrisy.

Star Wars has always been about oensive warare

in space. The Pentagon has long talked about develop-

ing space technologies in order to give the U.S. control

and domination o space and the ability to deny other

countries access to space. It is important to remember that

when the U.S. and the UK launched the 2003 shock and awe

invasion o Iraq, 70% o the weapons used in the initial at-

tack were directed to their targets by space technology. Sowhoever controls space militarily also controls the Earth.

The Pentagon has also long maintained that Star Wars

will be the largest industrial project in his-

tory. Thereore huge inusions o tax dol-

lars must be moved into military budgets

in order or the aerospace industry to make

the kinds o prots they expect rom a new

arms race. (In 2008 the Pentagon budget

is well over $650 billion.) Star Wars will

be so expensive that the U.S. cant aord

to pay or it on its own even ater they

move unds rom our ew remaining social

programs into the Pentagon budget. Thus

it becomes crucial to get allies like the UK,

Canada, Australia, Japan, and Italy to help pay or it.

But how can you convince people around the world

to help pay or MD unless you continually develop new

enemies? Why would the U.S. want new Star Wars radar

acilities in the Czech Republic and MD bases in Poland

unless the intent was to surround and provoke a new arms

race with Russia and China? Is it a coincidence that Russia

has the worlds largest supply o natural gas?

The Pentagon has been saying that under corporate

W f

,

.

martin luther king, jr.

Space Technology or Social Progress?


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12The Mormon Worker

globalization every country is going to have a dierent

role. They say that in the U.S. we wont make cars, clothes,

or other consumer goods anymore. Its cheaper to do that

in China. The Pentagon says that Americas role will be

security export. Today the number one industrial export

product o the U.S. is weapons. And when weapons produc-tion is a nations #1 export, what is your global marketing

strategy or that product line? Endless war!

The Pentagon also says that parts o the world are not

now properly submitting to corporate globalization. They

call it the non-integrating gap. They identiy this gap as

the Middle East, Central Asia, Arica, and parts o Latin

America like Venezuela. (Note these also are places with

huge deposits o oil and natural gas.) The military says

that our role will be to go into this gap and get them to

submit to corporate domination.

So Star Wars becomes the eyes, ears, and target direc-

tion mechanism o this new high-tech military that will ght

endless war. The allies, like the UK, will be asked to help

und the program and to give it political cover. National

health care in the UK, Canada, and other allied nations

will have to be cut back in order to provide unds so that

the aerospace industry in those countries can get a piece

o the Star Wars action too.

The peace movement must begin to connect all the

dots. The occupation o Iraq and Aghanistan is about oil.

The Republicans and Democrats alike believe in the U.S.

Empire to benet the corporate elite. Space technology

will be used to tie this program o endless war together.

We must call or an end to the militarization o American

culture and instead work hard to keep social progress rom

being deunded as our human and physical inrastructure

in the country decline. www.space4peace.com

The Unattained EnlightenmentBy Gregory VanWagenen

Introduction

Calling onesel a socialist has always been a challenge, andit seems especially challenging to adopt that description at

this particular time and place. Advocating the empower-

ment o a working class which seems prooundly conserva-

tive puts the socialist in one o two positions. Either she is

an inconsequential pretender, taking a place on a stage that

is watched by only a ew other ellow travelers, or she is

orced to subsume the conservatism o the working class

in an attempt to reach the subject o her concern.

Max Horkheimer is credited with the maxim: Truth

takes reuge in small groups o admirable individuals. I

the socialists o the 21st century are to achieve anything

substantive, barring the sudden and tragic impoverishment

o the average worker, it will surely begin with those same

admirable individuals chipping away at the alse conscious-

ness o capital.

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13The Mormon Worker

In order to eect meaningul social change, we must

know what our own values are, and how they dier rom

the status quo. We must be able to communicate these

values honestly to our peers, acknowledging the inevitable

questions and proposing the means to answer them.

Defning Socialism

What is socialism? Most o us think we know, but nd a

concise denition dicult to draw. In spite o this de-

ciency, the word itsel is incredibly popular, and the con-

cept itsel remains popularly unpopular. Talk show hosts

and satirists daily label their ideological opponents as

socialists, using the word as though it were sel-evidentand obviously insulting.

Socialism is a complex phenomenon that dees a simple

denition. It encompasses science and philosophy, poli-

tics and economics. Sweden is a socialist country, and so

is Vietnam. Marxist-Leninists are socialists, and so are

many anarchists. Jack London was a socialist, and so was

Leon Trotsky. Socialism is a broad movement with many

competing theories. Some o these theories overlap andsome confict.

There is even disagreement about the disagreement,

with some socialists seeing the broad range o socialist

interests as a ractious and conusing hindrance, while

others accept them as a rich diversity which enhances

socialism as a whole.

The idea o socialism is rooted in a romantic egalitari-

anism, where every individual assumes an opportunity to

shape the uture o his or her society. Socialism seems

handicapped by the very aspect which makes it so popu-

lar. Socialism must be many things, and not one, because

socialists are many, and not one.

Social Justice

Social justice can be described as an extension o the com-

mon American tradition o legal justice to other acets o

social lie. Most Americans have an instinctive, i limited,

view o justice. I it is proper to see individuals as equal

beore the law, the argument or social justice contends

that it is also proper to see them as equals in other socialrelationships also.

Social justice entails a reedom to think the thoughts we

want to think, a reedom to indulge in religion or to agitate

against it, and a reedom to peaceully organize. These are

all conservative American ideals. Social justice goes urther,

and also entails a reedom rom hunger, a reedom rom

reasonable ear, and a reedom rom oppression.

Social justice advocates a view o human beings as in-

herently equal despite their inequalities. Every individual

is aorded an equal opportunity to partake in the process

o shaping their society, and an equal share o the wealth

which that society produces.

Ultimately then, socialists unite in the idea o an egali-

tarian society. There is much disagreement among social-

ists as to the extent to which a society can abolish domi-



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14The Mormon Worker

nation or eradicate inequality, but this is the one uniying

idea which every socialist shares.

Socialism, Science And History

Socialism can be seen as economic and political theories,

supported by empirical research, dedicated to the creation

and maintenance o an egalitarian society.

Socialism can also be dened by its approach to history.

In contemporary terms, a socialist would describe history

as interactive. Put simply: Socialists believe that human

beings have the inherent capacity to shape their own ate,

and thus they become the subject o history,

rather than objects which are manipulated byorces like luck or ortune.

Cooperation And Central Planning

One o the topics that socialists argue about

is whether a society could evolve without the

need or any structural authority. Some so-

cialists believe that a truly egalitarian society

can only be established with the guidance o

a central party, to oversee the maintenance o the society

as a whole. Others believe that a party is not necessary and

that people will achieve socialism simply by removing the

authority structures inherent in a capitalist system.

We can deconstruct these arguments and conclude that

this is actually a question about human nature. Are human

beings inherently selsh, or is the universal narcissism we

witness today the product o a lietime o conditioning by

the demands and pressures o capital?

Socialism And Democracy

The existence o Sweden as a contemporary example o

democratic socialism at rst suggests that socialist democ-

racies can be ormed and endure. At the same time, the

idea o competing political parties suggests the possibility

o a group taking power and instituting inequality within

a socialist society. The United Kingdom is probably the

best example o a social democracy which has increased

political and economic inequality through

democratic means in recent history, thoughthere are others.

In some circumstances, it is theorized that

establishing inequality may lead to a greater

standard o living or people on the bottom

tier o a society than could be reached in a

more egalitarian society. Is it commensurate

with socialism to call or the eradication o

inequality i this lowers the standard o livingor even the least ortunate? Is it appropri-

ate to abandon egalitarianism i everyone benets rom

inequality?

These are questions with no easy answers, but they

represent the questions socialists are commonly asked

by their intellectual opponents and they deserve to be

pondered.

M . M

.

william lloydgarrison



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15The Mormon Worker

The Relevance O Socialism

History illustrates many scenarios in which various par-

ties and groups seized power in the name o socialism,

only to unction as a new incarnation o the ruling class

in an even more repressive totalitarian state. Recent his-

tory has demonstrated a disturbing trend toward greater

concentrations o wealth in the hands o the ew, particu-

larly in Europe and North America. It is common to nd

socialism impugned as the worn out utopia o yesteryear,

rather than a vibrant idea which holds the promise o a

more equitable distribution o wealth and responsibility

in the here and now.

Religion And Socialism

Can any individual reconcile God with dialectical mate-

rialism?

We have already seen that socialism, in theory, is based

upon the application o the scientic method. Both science

and religion are vehicles which have great potential or the

elevation o humankind, and yet they are so dierent as to

dey any meaningul comparison.

Science is a method by which men and women have the

potential to test their physical surroundings and approach

an objective observation o how the natural world works.

Science is also a body o knowledge compiled by people

who have used this method and arrived at conclusions

which can be tested and repeated. Science serves to apply

this knowledge to manipulate the environment, ideally or

the benet o humankind.

Religion, in contrast, concerns itsel with aith and

purpose. This is neither the domain o socialism, nor o

any other scientic pursuit. While science reveals how,

religion tells us why.

In this respect, socialism and aith do not contradictone another, nor should they compete with one another.

Both ought to act in symbiosis, as complimentary agents

toward the achievement o a just and peaceul society.

Those who see one as inherently threatening to the other

do so rom a shallow understanding o either or both, or as

a reaction to specic historical circumstances in which one

or both o these vehicles were cynically used to tyrannize

or manipulate human beings.

Conclusion

It was in Provo Utah that I rst encountered Karl Marx.

My grandparents had a large and well-stocked library which

included Capital. I ound it to be pretty heady stu as a

12-year old, which is why I kept coming back to it over the

years. By 16 I was discussing commodity etishism in thatsame library, with the same grandparents, who probably

had some regrets that they had put such a book on the

shel.

One o the most beautiul gits that Mormonism gave

to me (aside rom grandparents smart enough to argue

such esoterica) was the knowledge o my own history and

genealogy. Marx was certainly challenging rom a literary



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16The Mormon Worker

standpoint, but viewed rom a Mormon perspective, Uncle

Karl didnt seem as radical as my teachers made him out to

be. I had been raised with stories o Orderville, o cotton

cooperatives in St. George, and had read journal entries

describing collective arms (probably built on Menno-

nite, rather than Marxist models) in Southern Alberta. Allo these progressive endeavors were initiated by people

with whom I shared immediate amily bonds. Socialism, it

seemed, was in the blood o my people and was the oun-

dational theory behind the society I enjoyed.

While historical experiments give socialists (Mormon

and otherwise) much to be proud o, they also reveal dis-

turbing examples o brutality and excess. The implemen-

tation o a socialist model, inasmuch as it relies on the

centralization o power, has at times ended in disaster. It

is heartening to nd Mormon socialists honestly acknowl-

edging the ailures o the past, while lending their unique

perspectives toward the search or solutions.

In spite o the act that the enlightenment remains un-

nished, and despite the unanswered questions, I remain

convinced that socialism is a necessary requirement or

achieving a true and lasting measure o equality and justice

between individuals, and I believe it stands as a prereq-

uisite to any signicant human progress. The realization

o socialism entails the end o ratricidal wars or prot,

the end o exploitation, and the beginning o a new era in

human history. This is why I am a socialist, and why Im

proud to join in spirit with the readers o The Mormon

Worker as we labor toward this common goal.

Palestinian/Israeli Confict:A Cooperative Eortby Abdullah Mulhimone

As the year 2008 begins and a new hope has emerged in the

Middle East peace process, one stands wondering which

party, the Israelis or Palestinians, wants peace more, or

i any o them want peace. Over the years it has become

clear to any one observing the peace process and the situ-

ation in the Middle East that Israel is more interested in

its security than in peace with its neighbors.

This raises the question which one is more importantpeace or security? Is it possible to achieve both? And i so

which one comes rst?

The Israelis have echoed or years that they are com-

mitted to peace but that security must be established rst;

that the attacks targeting Israel must be stopped by creat-

ing a method o punishment that will give Israel a sense o

revenge. This punishment must put ear in the attackers

minds that uture threats will be prevented. It is assumedthat doing so will establish security or Israel and peace

in the region. These methods o punishment are directed

not only at the attackers, but also at their amily members

and the whole town that the attacker came rom. For ex-

ample the sel-bombers punishment will be directed at the

sel-bombers amily, by raiding their house in the middle

o the night and then moving them out o the house and

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17The Mormon Worker

orcing them to watch their house get destroyed. This

punishment is also directed at the whole town that the sel

bomber came rom: because no Israeli soldier should be

sent into an unknown situation, the rst thing that needs

to be done is prevent any possible attacks on the soldiers

as they enter the town. So you rst conduct an air strike,and ollow that with a ull tank assault, killing dozens o

people. This is justied because, lets ace it, these now

dead Palestinians would anyway have turned out to be

sel-bombers themselves eventually (according to Israeli

logic). The nal step is to take the land that the house was

on and build a Jewish settlement in its place.

By acting this way to every sel-bomber attack that

happens inside Israel, security will be achieved and then

peace will ollow.

Then there is the issue o Palestinian rocket attacks hit-

ting the illegal Jewish settlements that have been built on

Palestinian land taken by orce by the Israelis, and which

continue to grow. The answer is simple: attack re by re.

But instead o attacking with the same small amount, start

with months o daily air strikes around the neighborhood

that the rocket came rom, then ollow that with a massive

military invasion o the neighborhood that destroys and

levels every house to the ground, leaving almost everyone

homeless and orcing them to fee ar rom the borders.

Then kill everyone suspected o having any knowledge

o the attack, because the cost o detaining them is more

expensive than the cost o a bullet that you dont have to

answer why to.

By acting this way to every rocket attack that happens

to a Jewish settlement, security will be achieved and then

peace will ollow.

And i those measures are not enough in achieving that

long dream o peace lets go ahead and build a ence around

the West Bank. That is, i we could call it a ence. It is nota small ence like the one the US is trying to build along

the borders o Mexico it is more like a WALL. That is, i

we could call it a WALL. It is not like the Berlin Wall that

divided not only a nation but the world. It is more like the

Great Wall o China; but lets make it even more humiliat-

ing. Lets not build it on the borders, but inside the West

bank in order to conscate as much Palestinian land and

water as a possible, because that is our real goal anyway;Lets build it all around the West Bank to give Palestinians

the eeling they are living in a massive prison.

By building this WALL security will be achieved and

then peace to be ollowed.

These are by all means not the only answers Israel has

to achieve peace. There is also the measure o not allowing

more development projects in the Arab side o Jerusalem.

There are the road blocks between every city in the West

Bank, the denial o reedom o religion to the Muslims

and the Christians in Jerusalem and many more security

measures that help in establishing peace.

Israel has ollowed these policies and implemented

them so well since the Six Day War that it had the world

ooled into thinking that achieving security rst will de-

nitely be ollowed by peace. The world thought this, instead

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18The Mormon Worker

o realizing that those actions and measures have simply

let the Palestinian economy so crippled that more than

70% o the population is under the poverty line. They have

let Palestinian social lie in absence o the most basic ele-

ments o a warm eeling o a stable home and amily. They

have let the political scene so derailed that you cant ndtrue leaders or the Palestinian nation.

For Israel, peace in the Middle East does not need

partners all. What it needs is the right action to secure

Israeli sovereignty in the region with by any means, even

i it leaves the other side, the Arab side, weak. It does not

need any type o political or economic partnership with

the Arab world as long as the Arab nations recognize the

existence o Israel and cooperate in providing the neces-sary security or the State o Israel.

These actions maybe eective or a short period o time;

they may bring with them some security or the state o

Israel and maybe they will bring with them a short period

o peace, a ake peace. But because it will leave the Arab

side socially damaged with no dreams or hope or a better

tomorrow as long as they are oppressed and humiliated,

it will be just a matter o time beore this ticking bomb

explodes.

For a true and lasting peace Israel has to recognize its

existence in a region ull o other nations. It has to look

at the uture or all o the Middle East. It has to recognize

that security must be the entire region, including or both

parties, the Israelis and the Arabs. Israel must realize that

security is second to peace, that it is the oppressor and

the occupier, and that it has to show some good aith to

its neighbors.

The Zion/Babylon Dualismin Mormonism and AnarchismBy Jason Brown

What sets the anarchist critique o society apart rom other

political projects is the view that, because the state is as an

inherently hierarchical, and thereore oppressive institu-

tion, the project o human liberation must necessarily do

away with all orms o economic and political oppression,

not simply attempt to reorm them or mitigate their dam-

age. This critique o society can be easily compared to the

Zion/Babylon dualism ound in Mormon scripture and as

elaborated by Hugh Nibley in his seminal and radical work

Approaching Zion.

The Dualisms o State

I have oten wondered, as the Mormon olk-belie goes,

that i communism is Satans countereit or the United Or-

der, what is capitalism? Hugh Nibley believed that Satans

greatest trick was to take us down the wrong road and then

present us with a orkit doesnt matter which way we go

rom there, we are still going down the wrong road. Indeed,

the 20th century has been marked by a battle between the

The Zion/Babylon Dualism in Mormonism and Anarchism


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19The Mormon Worker

alse choice o state communism and ree market capital-

ism; both o which are rejected by anarchism (and in my

opinion should also be rejected by Mormonism). In their

book Working toward Zion, LDS authors James Lucas and

Warner Woodworth outline the struggle between these

two narrow economic ideologies and argue that those ous who are truly working toward a Zion society will seek

the total liberation and dignity o all o humanity through

cooperative principles such as unity, equality, and partici-

patory democracy. Though they are not advocating an an-

archist revolution, they state that: United order principles

encourage equality by entrusting economic resources and

possibilities to the people, not to the state or a wealthy elite.

It gives the little man, not a state bureaucrat or wealthy

capitalist, the reedom to control his destiny. It gives to

every child o God the reedom to make his or her own

reely chosen contribution to the work o God.

In Approaching Zion, Nibleys scathing critique o capi-talism, communism and Babylonian economics could,

without much exaggeration, be considered anarchist. In

a series o essays delivered at Brigham Young University,

Nibley eloquently feshes out the scriptural concepts o

Zion and Babylon, their place in biblical history and Mor-

mon theology. He draws numerous parallels with contem-

porary North American society and harshly renounces

our xation with wealth, competition, property, and theecological destruction these obsessions produce.

Zion

Zion is most commonly reerred to in contemporary Mor-

monism as the pure in heart (D & C 97: 21). We rarely

speak o it in terms o a movement, or a community that

unctions outside the worlds economy. The Zion o scrip-ture was a type or the city o God, a place o reuge, equal-

ity, and peace; it is any community in which the celestial

order prevails the order o Zion is such as will leave the

earth as near its primordial, paradisiacal condition as pos-

sible, suggesting that it has little to do with the capital-

ist techno-industrial worldview we have hailed as being

God-sent. Zion is a blueprint or a truly Christ-like society

Science is Full Print by Tyler Bushman



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20The Mormon Worker

and has rarely been achieved. In one such rare occasion,

the city o Enoch, described in the Book o Moses, there

was no poor among them (Moses 7:18). In the communi-

ties established ater Christs resurrection and assent to

heaven in both the New Testament and the Book o Mor-

mon, believers attempted to separate themselves romthe world by establishing communities in which residents

had all things in common and where there were no di-

visions by class or race (Acts 2:44-45, Fourth Nephi). So,

although Zion was and is symbolic o righteousness and

purity, it was also a very real socio-economic order, one

which the Saints attempted to establish in Utah in the 19th

century. Anarchists have also attempted to put their ideas

into practice, the Paris commune, Civil War era CataloniaSpain, and the Zapatistas in Chiapas Mexico, are but a ew

examples o communities that have attempted to live with-

out hierarchy and class. In Catalonia, peasant communities

lived or three years outside o ormal state jurisdictions

and implemented cooperative actories, arming, and ree

health care and education.

Babylon

Beyond the Old Testament Empire, Babylon is a symbol

in the scriptures or the dark center o Satans power, the

culmination o political might, a lthy place o dog-eat-dog

survival o the ttest where everything is or sale and in-

trigue and corruption fourish. Babylon has two objectives:

power and gain. It is not a ar leap, to connect Babylon to

the individualistic, prot seeking, laizze-aire ideologies

o capitalism which promise perpetual growth and ac-

cumulation and an endless supply o goods and services.

Both Babylon and capitalism thrive on the stratication

o society into economic classes. The earth and its riches

are seen as raw materials or the generation o cash, oras one author puts it, or economic growth to continue

there must be a constant conversion o things that have no

money value into things that do. Human labor and land are

commoditized, money becomes the universal standard o

value and nothing escapes its potential appraisal. Although

state communism was an attempt to mitigate the inequali-

ties created by such a mind set, it did not stray ar rom

the basic premise o capitalist production as a conversiono raw materials into wealth. The dierence was, that in

the ormer case the means o production was owned by a

capitalist elite, and in the latter, a government bureaucracy.

Zion and Babylon are thus irreconcilable entities and econ-

omies. God warned the prophets o old and Joseph Smith

in the Doctrine in Covenants that Zion cannot be built

up unless it is by the principles o the law o the celestial

kingdom (D & C 105:5). In other words, Zion is to be built

according to the purest o Christian principles and cannot

tolerate even the slightest corruption. As Nibley observes,

when we try to mix Zion and Babylon, Babylon has already

won the game. This uncompromising purity resembles the

anarchist rejection o political reorm, which is tantamount

to mixing Zion with Babylon. Anarchism has consistently

broken rank with progressive movements as soon as they



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21The Mormon Worker

became too comortable in the halls o power. Such was

the case with state Communism in the USSR, and the labor

movement in the United States. This uncompromising com-

mitment to virtue has necessarily alienated both anarchists

and religious communities. The Essenes o Christs time,

the Mormon pioneers, the Amish and other utopian com-munities o the 18th and 19th centuries

reused to participate in the world and

separated themselves rom it, literally

feeing rom Babylon.

Labor and Property

It would seem then, that both the an-

archist and Mormon view o the world,

though ramed in dierent terms, would

espouse similar values. Leo Tolstoy, the

Christian anarchist was adamant that

living o the labor o others was not

justied by Christian doctrines. D & C

42:42 states that, He that is idle shall not

eat the bread...o the laborer to whichNibley comments, hailed as the ran-

chise o unbridled capitalism, is rather

a rebuke to that system which has allowed idlers to live in

luxury and laborers in want throughout the whole course

o history. Tolstoy states, I the laborer has no land, i he

cannot use the natural right o every man to derive subsis-

tence or himsel and his amily out o the land, that is not

because the people wish it to be so, but because a certain

set o men, the landowners, have appropriated the right o

giving or reusing admittance to the land to the laborers. D

& C 49:20 proclaims that But it is not given that one man

should possess that which is above another, whereore the

world lieth in sin, and as Nibley writes the old Jewishteaching that Adam had a right only to

that portion o the earth that he quick-

ened on which he labored by the sweat

o his brow in other words, money has

nothing to do with our rights to the land

and its produce. Again rom Tolstoy,

The laborer o today would not cease to

suer even i his toil were much lighter...[]or he is working at the manuacture o

things which he will not enjoy,...working

to satisy the desires o luxurious and

idle people...or the prot o a single rich

man, the owner o a actory or workshop

in particular. In Nibleys practically an-

archist critique o capitalist exploitation,

his essay Work we Must, but the Lunch

is Free is a heretical idea in capitalist

ideology. In this essay, Nibley gives the example o a man

who gains control o the earths bounty or lunch by hard

work. He then considers himsel benevolent or allowing

those he has denied access to this bounty to work or him

to get it back (and to make him money in the process).

According to Nibley, the bounty o the earth is a ree git,

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22The Mormon Worker

and each o us has a right to lunch regardless o class,

race, or disposition. This analogy is squarely in line with

anarchist and radical environmental critiques o capital-

ist notions o private property, means o production, and

commoditized labor. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the amous

French anarchist, amously wrote that property is thet,reerring not to property in a general sense, but to capi-

talist ownership o the means o production. This idea is

mirrored by Nibleys assertion that the root o the words

private and property have the same meaning what is

privatum or proprium is thereore peculiar to one person

alone (not a corporation), and reer instead to things es-

sential or ones survival. One may not accumulate prop-

erty, or then it ceases to be property and alls into theorbidden category o power and gain. Oil under arctic seas

or mahogany in unexplored jungles can be neither private

nor property, save by a theory o possession cultivated in

another quarter i.e. Babylonian economics.

From the above citations, it would seem that Hugh

Nibley, Leo Tolstoy, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and Joseph

Smith were reading rom the same celestial cli notes.

Humans have no right to exploit one another just because

o the articial power o capital. And though I make no

claim that the similarities between anarchist and Mormon

thinkers overlap in all areas o theoretical discourse, the

above statements illustrate that to a remarkable degree,

we are all working toward the same society: one where

there would be no wage labor (living o the labor o oth-

ers), hierarchical economic or political institutions, private

property, or classes; a world where the human amily holds

all things in common.

The Fascist Roots o CorporateAmerica (And the Bush Family)Stephen Wellington

The rst truth is that the liberty o a democracy is not

sae i the people tolerate the growth o private power to

a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic

state itsel. That, in its essence, is ascism--ownership o

government by an individual, by a group, or by any other

controlling private power...Among us today a concentra-

tion o private power without equal in history is growing.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The White House Coup o 1933

The introductory words by FDR are extremely proound

given the history o his term in oce. On November 24th,

1934, Marine Corp Major General Smedley Butler testied

to the McCormack-Dickstein Committee that rom July 1933

to September o 1934 he was petitioned by Jerald McGuire,

a New York City Broker, to lead a private army o World

War 1 veterans to overthrow American democratic rule and

establish a ascist government in the White House. The

New York Times Headline on Nov 24th 1934 read:

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23The Mormon Worker

Gen. Butler Bares Fascist Plot To Seize Government

by Force; Says Bond Salesman, as Representative o Wall

St. Group, Asked Him to Lead Army o 500,000 in March

on CapitalThose Named Make Angry Denials

Jerald McGuire, was not alone in his desire to be a part

o a ascist Coup dEtat. McGuire was backed by some othe wealthiest capitalists in America at the time. John Bu-

chanan, a specialist on right-wing movements in the 1930s

said, These super wealthy capitalists wanted to pose such

a threat to Roosevelt that he would step aside and i he

would not they would execute him.

When petitioning General Butler to become a part o

this superorganization McGuire said, Did it ever occur

to you that the President is overworked? We might havean Assistant President, somebody to take the blame; and i

things do not work out, we can drop him ...You know the

American people will swallow it. We have got the newspa-

pers. We will start a campaign that the Presidents health is

ailing. Everybody can tell that by looking at him, and the

dumb American people will all or it in a second.

The unding would come rom bankers and business-

men who would step out o tenebrous Wall Street poli-

tics and into a crypto-ascist quasi-american lobby group

called the American Liberty League. We need a Fascist

government in this country to save the Nation rom the

communists who want to tear it down and wreck all that

we have built in America, said Mcguire.

However, the ascist overthrow o government was pri-

marily seen by private power as a way o solving the mass

unemployment problems during the great depression and

a way to deal with the growing power o the unions that

were pressuring the Wall Street Bankers to relinquish their

hold on wealth.He [McGuire] had a very brilliant solution

o the unemployment situation...He [Mcguire] had seen it

in Europe. It was a plan that Hitler had used in putting allo the unemployed in labor camps or barracks-enorced

labor. That would solve it overnight, and he[McGuire] said

that when they got into power, that is what they would do;

that that was the ideal plan

Just as Mcguire said, the American Liberty League was

ormed a ew weeks later, and was on the ront page o most

New York and Washington D.C. papers. The American

Liberty League read like a whos who o corporate America.Some prominent capitalists that backed the American Lib-

erty League were J.P. Morgan, The Warburg banking am-

ily , General Motors President John J. Rascob, President o

Heinz inc. Howard Heinz, Irenee Du Pont, Nathan Miller

rom US Steel and many others. The plot was to receive

nancial backing particularly rom J.P. Morgan banking.

Now this is where the Bush Family comes in. Later

in the McCormack-Dickstein Committee Hearings the

Hamburg-American Line was accused and ound guilty

o providing ree passage to Germany o U.S. Journalists

to write avourable reports on Nazism and is alleged to

have brought Nazi spies and ascist sympathizers to the

United States. Interestingly, the executive manager o the

Hamburg-American line was none other than Prescott Bush,

the grandather o George W. Bush.


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24The Mormon Worker

Ater hearing the McCormack-Dickstein Committee

Press Release on November 24th o 1934, General Butler

accused the committee o editing out the names o the busi-

ness people he had linked to the plot in his testimonies. In

a radio interview on the 17th o February, 1935 Butler said

o the committee, Like most committees it has slaugh-tered the little and allowed the big sharks to escape. The

big sharks werent even called to testiy. They were all

mentioned in the testimony, why was all mention o these

names suppressed rom the testimony?

O the American Liberty League, Roosevelt said, They

steal the livery o great national ideals to serve discredited

special interests....This minority in business and indus-

try...engage in vast propaganda to spread ear and discord

among the people. They would gang up against the peoples

liberties....They seek the restoration o their selsh power...

Our resplendent economic aristocracy does not want to re-turn to that individualism o which they prate, even though

the advantages under that system went to the ruthless and

the strong. They realize that in 34 months we have built up

new instruments o public power. In the hands o a peoples

government this power is wholesome and proper. But in

the hands o political puppets o an economic aristocracy,

such power would provide shackles or the liberties o the

people. Give them their way and they will take the courseo every aristocracy o the past power or themselves,

enslavement or the public.

Scholars, economists, & politicians (i.e. Ronald Rea-

gan being a good example) believe that even though FDR

voiced opposition to the American Liberty League, ele-

ments o ascism were incorporated into The New Deal as

a orm o sot ascism. Herbert Hoover also acknowledged

the infuence o corporations on Roosevelt as he tried to

cooperate with big businesses in an attempt to bring the

country out o economic depression. Regarding Roosevelts

attempts to assuage the business community Hoover stated,

Among the early Roosevelt ascist measures was the Na-

tional Industry Recovery Act (NRA) o June 16, 1933...this

stu was pure ascism; that it was the remaking o Mus-

solinis corporate state... In this case, the NRA was part oRichard Nixon and Prescott Bush


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25The Mormon Worker

FDRs New Deal reorms, that on a critical note, not only

ended regulation o Wall Street at this crucial time but it

allowed heads o industry greater political and economic

monopoly which was contingent on providing workers

with suitable work conditions and wages.

The McCormack-Dickstein Committee agreed thatthere was indeed a real threat o a corporate ascist coup,

however the newspapers downplayed the ndings o the

committee and unbelievably, no legal proceedings were

taken. It is interesting that Hoover eels that Roosevelt

acquiesced with the conspiratorial corporate elite. This

shows that FDRs denition o ascism comes rom politi-

cal experience. Interestingly, Historians believe that deals

were made around this time between Roosevelt and theeconomic establishment so that they would cooperate

with his New Deal reorms and in return FDR would turn

a blind eye to their oiled coup. In summary John Spivak

states, The class basis o social orces is nowhere more

clearly revealed then in this situation [the white house

plot] capitalists, including Jews, making common cause

with anti-Semitic ascist and potentially ascist organiza-

tions, in an eort to crush labour.

The Bush Family as Part o Corporate Fascism

The story o Prescott Bushs involvement with the Nazis

goes much deeper than the Hamburg-American Line. The

Guardian newspaper in London has recently corroborated

that a rm o which Prescott Bush was a director was

involved with the nancial architects o Nazism. By the

late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be

the worlds largest private investment bank, and UBC had

bought and shipped millions o dollars o gold, uel, steel,

coal and US treasury bonds to Germany, both eeding and

nancing Hitlers build-up to war.Trading with the Nazis during the 1930s was not il-

legal although it began to dey the economic provisions

o the Treaty o Versailles due to Hitlers remilitarization.

Rockeellers Standard Oil and the DuPonts were respon-

sible or a marriage cartel with I.G. Farben, a major Nazi

conglomerate in the 1930s. Interestingly, the DuPont amily

were also at the centre o the ascist plot as was J.P. Morgan

who was linked with the Rockeeller amily by marriageand business.

Six days ater Pearl Harbour was attacked by the

Japanese, FDR signed the Trading With the Enemies Act

(TWEA) making any economic trade with the Nazis il-

legal. In the all o 1942 all o Prescotts business assets

with Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. were seized by the

American government under the TWEA.

A conversation between John Buchanan and John

Loftus, a former Justice Department War Crimes Pros-

ecutor is as ollows:

Buchanan: Should Prescott Bush, George Herbert

Walker and the Harrimans have been tried or treason?

Lotus: Yes, because they continued to support Hitler

ater the U.S. entered the war. As a ormer prosecutor, I

could have made that case.


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26The Mormon Worker

Buchanan: What were they most guilty o ater the

U.S. entered the war?

Loftus: They shipped gold through axis countries ater

the U.S. entered the war. That certainly was treason, be-

cause it gave aid and comort to the enemy, and assisted

them economically.Naomi Wol, the author o The End o America: Letter

o Warning To A Young Patriot and Fascist America: 10

Easy Steps and Amy Goodman, the radio host o Democ-

racy Now recently hinted to the reasons why Prescott Bush

was not convicted in the Nuremberg Trials:

Namoi Wol: Prescott Bush, Bushs grandather, was

making millions in consolidation with Krupp, Thyssen,

and its very interesting to me, because in the Nurembergtrials they went ater these industrialists like Krupp, and

so there was a moment at which the Nuremberg trial was

about to identiy supporters o these war crimes who were

US collaborators.

Amy Goodman: But they didnt.

Naomi Wolf: But they didnt. But I think its interesting

that there is that historical memory in the amily.

Amy Goodman: Its the question o who controlled the

trials, right? Its the question o who controlled the trials

and not wanting their own people to be involved.

Prescott and his business associates were never tried

or war crimes. This, along with The White House Coup,

is rstly, a demonstration to the American people that the

true threat to their liberty and justice comes rom within.

And secondly, it also shows that nancial and economic

class considerations are more important than the rule o

law, justice and every other kind o consideration, includ-

ing racial and religious ones. Prescott Bush was eventually

given his holdings back (~$1.5m) and was elected to the

Senate. He has had an infuence upon the development

o the modern corporate-state model that is seen today.He has not only infuenced pre and post-WW2 Presidents

but has had two Sons who have carried his legacy o war

criminality and insidious corporate crypto-ascism into the

21st century. Noam Chomsky has said, I the Nuremberg

laws were applied, then every post-war American president

would have been hanged. In this case Chomsky justies the

inclusion o George H. W. Bush, due to his unlawul use

o orce as Vice President in Nicaragua and the invasiono Panama with the verdict coming rom the International

Court o Justice.

George Monbiot, a journalist with the London Guardian,

in an article on October 17th 2006 entitled, The Courts Are

Starting To Accept that the War in Iraq is a Crime (cit-

ing recent British court cases) has said that, These cases

cannot reverse the hideous consequences o the crime o

aggression (the supreme international crime, according

to the Nuremberg tribunals) that Blair and Bush committed

in Iraq. On September 16, 2004 the then Secretary General

o the United Nations Ko Annan said, I have indicated

it [the Iraq invasion] was not in conormity with the UN

charter. From our point o view, rom the charter point

o view, it was illegal. Even Benjamin Ferenccz, a ormer

chie prosecutor o the Nuremberg Trials and expert in


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27The Mormon Worker

international law and war crimes has said that a prima

acie case can be made that the United States is guilty o

the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal

war o aggression against a sovereign nation. The point

here is that a very good case can be made or the last 3 key

Bush gures being guilty o war crimes with George W.Bush being tried or the supreme crime against humanity.

There are striking similarities between Hitlers invasion o

Poland and Bushs invasion o Iraq (both pre-emptive wars

or the sake o National Security) bringing us to the real-

ization that good American patriots like General Smedley

Butler are needed to bring balance when its leaders and

nancial elites are quick to use jingoism and warmongering

to prey on the good will and money generating capabilitieso its own people. Major General Smedley Butler, back in

1935, wrote o American oreign policy and war, It is con-

ducted or the benet o the very ew, at the expense o the

very many. Out o war a ew people make huge ortunes...

it is dressed up into speeches about patriotism, love o

country...This [WW1] was the war to end all wars. This

was the war to make the world sae or democracy. No

one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their

going and their dying would mean huge war prots. No

one told these American soldiers that they might be shot

down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one

told them that the ships on which they were going to cross

might be torpedoed by submarines built with U.S. patents....

but the prots jump and leap and skyrocket and are saely

pocketed...Who provides the prots...we all pay them in

taxation. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires

were made in the U.S. during the [First] World War. Has

the tactic and reasoning to get America into entangling

alliances changed much since 1935?

Fascism appealed to some nations o the 1930s because

o the increased security it promised in a time o povertyand depression. I the people o the Great Depression would

be willing to sacrice their liberty or security, could it

also be possible or that to occur in our day? Benjamin

Franklin reportedly said, Those who would give up es-

sential liberty to obtain a little temporary saety deserve

neither liberty nor saety. This maxim was paraphrased

much during the American Revolution where the right to

battle against tyranny is embodied in the Declaration oIndependence.

Herbert Hoover noted how a loss o security and liberty

might happen, Every collectivist revolution rides in on a

Trojan horse o emergency. It was the tactic o Lenin, Hit-

ler, and Mussolini...This technique o creating emergency is

the greatest achievement that demagoguery attains. There

are echoes here o the emergency rescinding o Habeas

Corpus a