Surviving Critical Times Hard To Deal With

Revisiting Leon Trotsky's Analysis of America's Rise To Power

2012-02-14T17:01:00.000-08:00

Leon Trotsky’s Analysis of the Emerging Global Role of US Capitalism

By Nick Beams
24 November 2010

The WSWS organized a panel on “The Cultural, Economic and Geo-strategic Thought of Leon Trotsky: A Retrospective Analysis 70 years after His Assassination,” at the 42^nd annual convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies (formerly the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies), held November 18-21 in Los Angeles. About 1,400 historians, political scientists, economists, and literary scholars presented papers on a wide array of topics.

The first paper, by David North, chairman of the WSWS Editorial Board, waspublished yesterday. The second paper, by Nick Beams, national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (Australia) and a member of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site is presented here today. Mehring Books had a display of its literature in the exhibit hall alongside.

As with all of Trotsky’s theoretical work, his study and analysis of the United States and its rise to global prominence was bound up with the development of the perspective for world socialist revolution.

Trotsky, above all, conceived of the Russian Revolution as the opening shot of the world revolution. His theory of Permanent Revolution, elaborated in 1905, examined the issues confronting the Marxist movement in Russia on the basis of an analysis of the deepening global economic and political contradictions of world capitalism.

As David North, chairman of the World Socialist Web Site editorial board, has noted: “Trotsky’s approach represented an astonishing theoretical breakthrough. As Einstein’s relativity theory—another gift of 1905 to mankind—fundamentally and irrevocably altered the conceptual framework within which man viewed the universe and provided a means of tackling problems for which no answers could be found within the straitjacket of classical Newtonian physics, Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution fundamentally shifted the analytical perspective from which revolutionary processes were viewed. Prior to 1905, the development of revolutions was seen as a progression of national events, whose outcome was determined by the logic of its internal socio-economic structure and relations. Trotsky proposed another approach: to understand revolution, in the modern epoch, as essentially a world-historic process of social transition from class society, rooted politically in nation-states, to a classless society developing on the basis of a globally-integrated economy and internationally-unified mankind.”[1]

The theory of Permanent Revolution proved to be the key strategic conception that opened the way for the Bolshevik Party to lead the insurgent, revolutionary struggle of the Russian working class that erupted at the beginning of 1917 to the actual conquest of political power.

The Russian Revolution was the high point of an international upsurge that began in the years preceding World War I, re-emerged again in the last period of that conflict, and then deepened and broadened after October 1917.

As anticipated by the Bolsheviks, revolutionary struggles emerged in the aftermath of the revolution in Russia, but they were pushed back. This did not result from unfavourable objective conditions, but from the fact that there was no party comparable to the Bolsheviks capable of leading and organizing the struggle for power.

As Trotsky was to later write: “Not until the post-war mass ferment had already begun to ebb did young Communist parties begin to take shape, and even then only in rough outline.”[2]

With the receding of the post-war revolutionary upsurge, signified above all by the defeat of the March Action in Germany, the Third Congress of the Communist International, in June-July 1921, initiated a new orientation. Before launching the struggle for power, the young communist parties had to win the masses through the tactic of the united front and the fight for a program of transitional demands.

The French occupation of the Ruhr in January 1923, and the subsequent economic and political crisis, once again placed the conquest of political power on the agenda in Germany. But the German Communist Party failed to orient its work to meet the new situation. While a date was set for launching a revolutionary struggle for power, the KPD leadership called it off at the last moment. As the leader of the party Heinrich Brandler was later to explain, while he “did not oppose the preparations for the uprising of 1923” he did not “view the situation as acutely revolutionary.”[3] The vacillations in the leadership of the KPD meant that the German October ended in a political fiasco.

The failure of the German Revolution opened up a period of capitalist stabilization in post-war Europe, in which the United States played the leading economic and political role. In 1924, the Dawes plan for the restabilization of the German currency and economy through a deflationary program, and the provision of large loans from the United States, brought the leaders of the European capitalist powers face to face with a new reality: the vast shift in economic, and therefore political, power across the Atlantic that had occurred in the decade since the outbreak of World War I.

Immediately, Trotsky began to examine the implications of this new factor in world economics and politics.

His sensitivity to the importance of the United States had been heightened by the brief period he had spent in New York in the first months of 1917. Like many other visitors to that great metropolis, so expressive of the modern age, he could not fail to be affected by the dynamism and power of the economy that had produced it. He later wrote that, for a brief period, he had had a “peep into the foundry in which the fate of man is to be forged.”[4]

The rise of the United States raised a whole series of fundamental questions. What were its implications for the European economic and political order and for relations between the European states? The initial form of American intervention took the form of conciliation—the provision of loans to stabilize the German economy and restore political equilibrium—but what would be the longer term consequences? What were the driving forces of this shift and where would they lead? What were the implications of the obvious economic growth of the United States for the perspective of world socialist revolution? And, finally, the most important strategic question: Did the rise of the United States and its economic dynamism mean that the Russian Revolution was premature?

Before going into these questions, let me make a more general point about Trotsky’s method of analysis—a method that marks the most distinctive feature of his approach as compared to that of every other Marxist of his time, and that makes him so relevant to the present historical epoch.

Trotsky based his geo-political analysis on an examination of the contradiction between world economy—the global development of the productive forces—and the nation-state system of capitalism. For Trotsky, the clashes between the various imperialist powers were not merely the outcome of the conflicting economic and political interests of the various combatants—he detailed those, of course—but were, above all, the expression of something more fundamental.

“Imperialism,” he wrote in the midst of World War I, “represents the predatory capitalist expression of a progressive tendency in economic development—to construct human economy on a world scale, freed from the cramping fetters of the nation and the state.”[5] Herein lay the objective necessity for socialism, because it was the only way out of the contradictions that now threatened the whole of human culture.

Trotsky’s analysis of the rise of the United States and its global role was conducted from this standpoint. In a speech delivered at the end of 1922, as his attention began to turn to the changes in the post-war situation, he noted that it was only in the recent period that the Communist International had begun to make a differentiation between the US and Europe. While it was true to say that European capitalism was rotting, the same could not be said of the United States. Indeed, American capitalism was thriving. But this observation did not exhaust the question … it was only the starting point of analysis. The issue was: what were the implications of the rise of America for Europe, and for the world?

Trotsky revisited this question in a major speech on July 28, 1924, entitledPerspectives of World Development, delivered in the wake of the restabilization of Germany under the Dawes Plan. He began by drawing attention to the enormous preponderance of the United States, a superiority over its rivals which exceeded even that of Great Britain in its heyday. This, he emphasized, was the central factor in European and world politics. Without recognising this, nothing could be understood.

America’s entry onto the path of an active global policy, which began in 1898, was the outcome of the vast economic transformation that had followed the end of the Civil War and the triumph of the industrial North. By the end of the century, however, dynamic American capitalism had outgrown the framework of the North American continent. When World War I broke out, Trotsky explained, the Americans were content, at least for a certain period, to turn the blood of the European “madmen” into dollars. But when the prospect of a German victory emerged, the US intervened directly to counter the threat posed by its most dangerous potential rival.

Trotsky also showed how the peculiar conditions under which American capitalism had developed—the advantages bestowed upon it by the vast resources of an entire continent—had expressed themselves ideologically. American imperialism, while predatory and criminal, was nevertheless able to intervene on the world arena under the banner of pacifism. The vastly higher productivity of labour of American capitalism meant that it could invoke the slogans of “freedom”, the “open door”, “freedom of the seas”, “self-determination of nations”, “no annexations” and so on. Notwithstanding these grand claims, however, America was seeking nothing less than the re-organization of the world under its domination.

We can usefully examine Trotsky’s analysis under two headings: the origins of the Great Depression, and the eruption of World War II.

Let me turn to the first. Trotsky deepened his analysis of the rise of the United States in a major speech delivered in February 1926, entitled Europe and America. At its conclusion, he addressed a central historical question: was the perspective of world socialist revolution, on which the Russian Revolution had been grounded, now invalidated by the present situation?

“Is capitalism still capable of developing the productive forces on a world scale and of leading mankind forward? This is a fundamental question. It is of decisive significance for the proletariat of Europe, for the oppressed peoples of the Orient, for the entire world, and, first and foremost, for the destiny of the Soviet Union. If it turned out that capitalism is still capable of fulfilling a progressive historical mission, of increasing the wealth of the peoples, of making their labor more productive, that would signify that we, the Communist Party of the USSR, were premature in singing its de profundis; in other words, it would signify that we took power too soon to try to build socialism. Because, as Marx explained, no social system disappears before exhausting all the possibilities latent in it. Confronted with the new economic situation unfolding before us at present, with the ascendancy of America over all capitalist mankind and the radical shift in the correlation of economic forces, we must pose anew this question: has capitalism outlived itself or has it still before it a perspective of progressive work?”[6]

For Europe, the question was definitely answered in the negative. But in America the picture seemed different, and in large parts of Asia and Africa, capitalism had hardly begun to take hold.

Dividing up the world economy in this way, it appeared that capitalism still had a progressive role to play. But such a method of procedure was not correct. Just as in 1905, the Russian Revolution could not be understood as a national phenomenon, nor could the rise of the United States.

America was no longer self-sufficient. It could not be considered in isolation because American expansion depended on a global equilibrium. Europe was dependent on America, but America, in turn, was dependent on Europe.

“[T]he more the United States puts the whole world under its dependence,” Trotsky explained, “all the more does it become dependent upon the whole world, with all its contradictions and threatening upheavals.”[7]

Trotsky’s approach is the key to understanding the Great Depression—the most severe economic collapse in the history of capitalism—that was to begin less than four years after this speech.

Mr Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has spent a lifetime pursuing what he calls the “holy grail” of economics: an explanation of the origins of the Great Depression. I venture to suggest he might have had more success had he read a little less Milton Friedman and somewhat more of Trotsky. This is because it is precisely in the inter-relationship, and the contradictions, between Europe and America, which lie at the centre of Trotsky’s analysis, where the origins of the Great Depression are to be found.

American capitalism, by means of the assembly line system of production—what Trotsky termed the “conveyor system”—had developed the productivity of labour to an unprecedented degree. But in Europe, this development could not be replicated. Here, the productive forces did not have the room for expansion, as they did in the United States—after all, mass production requires a mass market—but were trapped and constricted within the coils of the European nation-state system. World War I had erupted because capitalism was suffocating within the narrow framework of the European nation-states. But after four years of destruction and impoverishment, the Treaty of Versailles had made the situation even worse.

On the basis of Trotsky’s analysis, let us go a little further in examining this situation. Marx once remarked that the realization of surplus value in one place requires its extraction in another. By this, he meant that the accumulation of capital was not an individual question—however much it might appear that way to a single firm or even to a single capitalist economy—but a social process. American capitalism had, by means of the “conveyor system”, lifted the extraction of surplus value and capital accumulation to new heights. But this development was not matched in Europe.

Thus, notwithstanding the enormous dynamism of American capitalism, the accumulation process could not advance on a global scale. That is why, just six years after the initiation of the Dawes Plan to restabilize Europe, the world capitalist economy plunged into depression, with devastating consequences in its two most advanced components, the United States and Germany.

From the outset, Trotsky made clear that the rise of American imperialism, notwithstanding the “toga” of pacifism in which it wrapped itself, would result in the eruption of a new world war, on an even bigger scale than 1914-18.

The American program of placing the world under its control was a perspective that offered only the “preparation for the greatest international dogfight, with both the Atlantic and the Pacific as the arena … for it is hard to conceive that the bourgeoisie of all countries will docilely withdraw to the background, and become converted into America’s vassals without putting up a fight … the contradictions are far too great; the appetites are far too insatiable …”[8]

Trotsky initially conceived that the main line of division would be between the United States and Britain. Events did not exactly take this form. But if one takes the basic framework of his analysis, subject to the proviso that the more specific a prediction the more conditional it is, then Trotsky’s fundamental perspective was completely verified.

And, considering the outcome of World War II, his prediction that, in whatever form the war emerged, the US would seek to secure for itself the heritage of Britain, also proved remarkably accurate.

In 1928 Trotsky subjected the draft program of the Comintern, prepared by Bukharin and Stalin, to a withering and far-reaching critique. The first draft had not even mentioned the United States, while the second failed to make any assessment of the strategic implications of its rise to global pre-eminence, apart from a few empty generalizations.

Trotsky insisted that the inexorable rise of the United States, and its reduction of Europe to ever more limited rations, would lead to a “monstrous sharpening of inter-state relations … accompanied by furious paroxysms of military conflict, for states, as well as classes fight even more fiercely for a meager and a diminishing ration than for a lavish and growing one.”[9]

“The draft,” he continued, “does not explain that the internal chaos of state antagonisms in Europe renders hopeless any sort of serious and successful resistance to the constantly more centralized North American republic; and that the resolution of the European chaos through the Soviet United States of Europe is one of the first tasks of the proletarian revolution.”[10]

Trotsky’s concern was the development of a perspective for the Communist International. But the issue he raised—the enormous pressure exerted by the North American Republic on the European powers—was the subject of discussion in other circles.

It was, for instance, a central theme in Adolf Hitler’s unpublished Second Book, completed in 1928. Hitler proposed that the chaos of the European economy and nation-state system be resolved through the establishment of a German empire, utilizing resources obtained from the conquest and colonization of the Soviet Union to provide a stable base from which to combat the United States. Within five years, this was to become the program of German imperialism.

As the historian Adam Tooze has noted: “The originality of National Socialism was that, rather than meekly accepting a place for Germany within a global economic order dominated by the affluent English-speaking countries, Hitler sought to mobilize the pent-up frustrations of his population to mount an epic challenge to this order. Repeating what Europeans had done across the globe over the previous three centuries, Germany would carve out its own imperial hinterland; by one last land grab in the East it would create the self-sufficient basis both for domestic affluence and the platform necessary to prevail in the coming superpower competition with the United States. The aggression of Hitler’s regime can thus be rationalized as an intelligible response to the tensions stirred up by the uneven development of global capitalism, tensions that are of course still with us today.” [11]

Following the Nazi victory in Germany, Trotsky continually pointed to the prospect of a new world war. And the United States, however the conflict began, would be compelled to intervene.

In his remarkable article “Nationalism and Economic Life”, published in Foreign Affairs in 1934, Trotsky pointed to the underlying forces driving the US into war. American capitalism had developed the productivity of labour to new heights. But everywhere the most advanced technique in the world found its way blocked by the actions of states, in Europe and Asia, that were based on a much lower technique. This situation could not continue indefinitely.

“Sooner or later,” Trotsky wrote, “American capitalism must open up ways for itself through the length and breadth of our entire planet. By what methods? Byall methods. A high coefficient of productivity denotes also a high coefficient of destruction. Am I preaching war? Not in the least. I am not preaching anything. I am only attempting to analyze the world situation and draw conclusions from the laws of economic mechanics.” [12]

In the aftermath of World War II, the United States, following the key role played by the Stalinist Communist Parties in suppressing the post-war upsurge of the working class, was able to stabilize the world capitalist order. The spread of its more productive methods to other advanced capitalist countries provided the basis for a new period of capitalist upswing.

But over the past 30 years the United States has been in economic decline, first relatively and now absolutely, an economic fact made apparent by the financial collapse of 2008. Trotsky drew out the explosive implications of the rise of American capitalism. Does he have something to say about its decline? Most definitely.

More than 80 years ago, Trotsky noted: “In the period of crisis the hegemony of the United States will operate more completely, more openly, and more ruthlessly than in the period of boom.”[13] The United States, he wrote, would seek to extricate itself from its maladies at the expense of its rivals, above all in Europe, whether peacefully or through war. Today we can add its rivals in Asia as well. The deepening conflicts over trade, currency levels, balance of payments deficits, as well as the increasingly aggressive military activities of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now the open diplomatic, as well as military, moves against China, point to the fact that a new convulsive and revolutionary period of world history has begun, driven forward by the same contradiction between world economy and the nation-state system that Trotsky placed at the very centre of his perspective.

Notes:

[1] “Toward a reconsideration of Trotsky’s legacy and his place in the history of the 20^th century”, David North, available at http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jun2001/dn-j29.shtml

[2] The First Five Years of the Communist International, Leon Trotsky, Volume I, New Park Publications, London (1973), p. 1

[3] “Dialogue With Heinrich Brandler”, Marxism, Wars & Revolutions, Isaac Deutscher, Verso, London (1984) p. 162

[4] My Life, Leon Trotsky, Penguin Harmondsworth (1975), p. 288

[5] “Imperialism and the National Idea”, Leon Trotsky in Lenin’s Struggle for a Revolutionary International, Monad Press, New York (1984)

[6] Europe and America, Leon Trotsky, Pathfinder Press, New York (2003), p. 78

[7] Op cit, p. 81

[8] Op cit, p. 37

[9] The Third International After Lenin, Leon Trotsky, New Park Publications, London (1973), p. 6

[10] ibid

[11] The Wages of Destruction, Adam Tooze, Allen Lane, London (2006)

[12] “Nationalism and Economic Life”, Writings of Leon Trotsky 1933-34, Leon Trotsky, Pathfinder Press, New York, (1972), pp. 161-162

[13] The Third International After Lenin, Leon Trotsky, New Park Publications, London (1973), p. 8

A Death Sentence For Greece

2012-02-14T00:32:00.000-08:00

FEBRUARY 13, 2012

What's Inside the New "Austerity Measures"

A Death Sentence for Greece

by MIKE WHITNEY

“We are facing destruction. Our country, our home, has become ripe for burning. The centre of Athens is in flames.”
– Costis Hatzidakis, conservative parliamentarian

On Sunday, the Greek parliament approved a new round of austerity measures that will further deepen the 5-year depression and sever the last fraying threads of social cohesion. In order to secure a 130 billion euro loan, Greek political leaders agreed to comply with a “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) that will not only intensify the sacrifices of ordinary working people, but also effectively hand the control of the nation’s economy over to foreign banks and corporations.

The Memorandum is as calculating and mercenary as anything ever written. And while most of the attention has been focused on the deep cuts to supplementary pensions, the minimum wage, and private sector wages; there’s much more to this onerous warrant than meets the eye. The 43 page paper should be read in its entirety to fully appreciate the moral vacuity of the people who dictate policy in the EZ.

Greece will have to prove that it’s reached various benchmarks before it receives any of the money allotted in the bailout. The Memorandum outlines, in great detail, what those benchmarks are— everything from reduced spending on life-saving drugs to “lift(ing) constraints for retailers to sell restricted product categories such as baby food.”

That’s right; according to the author’s of this fuliginous memo, the only way Greece is going to be able to lift itself out of the doldrums is by poisoning its kids with banned baby food.

The MOU also calls for a 10 percent cut to government workers wages, cuts to “social security funds and hospitals”, and more privatizing of publicly-owned assets, all of which will only further shrink GDP.

On Privatisation: “The Government stands ready to offer for sale its remaining stakes in state-owned enterprises, if necessary in order to reach the privatisation objectives. Public control will be limited only to cases of critical network infrastructure.”

Instead of providing fiscal aid so Greece can meet its budget targets and can get back on its feet again, the troika (the European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund) is using the crisis to snatch vital state assets and deliver them to its corporate friends. The MOU is opening new avenues for exploitation and plunder. And there’s more:

“The Government will neither propose nor implement measures which may infringe the rules on the free movement of capital. Neither the State nor other public bodies will conclude shareholder agreements with the intention or effect of hindering the free movement of capital or influence the management or control of companies. The Government will neither initiate nor introduce any voting or acquisition caps, and it will not establish any disproportionate and non-justifiable veto rights or any other form of special rights in privatised companies.”

Well, that’s pretty clear: Capital Rules. The interests of corporations and banks will take precedent over those of the people. The proclamation limits the role of government to rubber stamping the predatory actions of cutthroat speculators whose only interest is fattening the bottom line for their shareholders.

There’s also a long section on “Growth-Enhancing Structural Reforms” that never explains how the economy is supposed to expand when austerity measures are reducing the amount of consumer spending and business investment. Instead, the Memo focuses laserlike on eviscerating trade barriers and slashing workers’ wages. Here’s a sample:

“Given that the outcome of the social dialogue to promote employment and competitiveness fell short of expectations, the Government will take measures to foster a rapid adjustment of labour costs to fight unemployment and restore cost-competitiveness, ensure the effectiveness of recent labour market reforms, align labour conditions in former state-owned enterprises to those in the rest of the private sector and make working hours arrangements more flexible. This strategy should aim at reducing nominal unit labour costs in the business economy by 15 percent in 2012-14. At the same time, the Government will promote smooth wage bargaining at the various levels and fight undeclared work.”

Don’t you think, dear reader, that if you had recommended policies that resulted in a severe two-year recession and record-high unemployment (Greek unemployment is now at a peak of 20.6 percent), that you’d keep your mouth shut and admit that you don’t know what the hell you were talking about?

Not if you were a EU finance minister, you wouldn’t. You’d prescribe the very same policies that had failed throughout; the policies that have reduced spending, shrunk government revenues, increased joblessness, and deepened the slump. This is the type of idiocy that passes as policy in the eurozone.

The Memorandum also contains an illuminating section on “Business environment”, which covers everything from perks for industry to unrestricted free trade. Here’s a typical example:

“…cease to earmark the non-reciprocating charge calculated on the fuel price infavour of Mutual Distribution Fund of the Oil-Pump Operators of Liquid Fuel.”

Ka-ching! More freebies for big business. The whole memo reads like this, just one corporate handout after another.

“Implementation of law 3982/2011 on the fast track licensing procedure for technical professions, manufacturing activities and business parks and other provisions”.

What does this have to do with anything, you ask?

It doesn’t. It just shows what the MOU is really all about. It’s a corporate “wish list”; a mix of punitive belt tightening policies for working people and perks for big oil, big gas, electric, aviation, railroads, communications etc. “Fast track licensing” and “baby food” have nothing to do with helping Greece reach its budget targets. It’s a joke. Just look at this:

Memo: “In line with the policy objectives of Law 3919/2011 on regulated professions, the Government removes entry barriers to the taxis market… in line with international best practice.”

So even taxi drivers get a spot at the trough? Doesn’t that seem a bit irrelevant?

None of this has anything to do with helping Greece. It’s just corporate pillaging gone haywire. Greece is a big pinata that’s just been cracked open and everyone is pushing and shoving to grab their fistful of candy.

Memo: “The Government establishes a task force (to) review the ….judicial case management, including the possibility of removing dormant cases from court registers.” ….Following on the submission of the work plan for the reduction of the backlog of tax cases in all administrative tribunals and administrative courts of appeal in January 2012, which provides for intermediate targets for reducing the backlog by at least 50 per cent by end-June 2012, by at least 80 per cent by end-December 2012 and for the full clearance of the backlog by end-July 2013, the Government presents by end-May 2012.”

If Greece wants to increase its revenues, then why restrict the pursuit of tax cheats? Isn’t that counterproductive? This is just another sign that the Memo was crafted by powerful men operating behind the cover of their political lackeys.

Memo: “The Government implements the Presidential Decree on the reform of the magistrates’ court by creating their new structure, filling vacant positions with graduates from the National School of Judges and redeploying judges and administrative staff on the basis of existing resources available within Greece’s judiciary and public administration.[Q4-2012] The Government launches, jointly with an external body of experts, a study on the costs of civil litigation, its recent increase and its effects on workload of civil courts, with recommendations due by end-December 2013.”

Sure; just let big finance and corporate elites “streamline” the courts or load the bench with their “picks” and lawsuits will be cut in half. What does say about the men who authored this text?

You can see what a farce this so-called Memorandum of Understanding really is. It won’t help Greece emerge from its depression, and it won’t lead to more eurozone integration. It’s just another feed for the corporate hyenas.

What Greece needs is a radical restructuring of its debt. It needs to wipe out bondholders, recapitalise its banks, and increase fiscal support until the economy gets back on its feet. Another loan package won’t help to achieve those goals. It will only delay the day of reckoning. It would be better for everyone, if the country defaulted quickly and began the process of digging out now rather than later.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com

How America Made It's Children Crazy

2012-02-13T13:36:00.000-08:00

How America made its children crazy

By Spengler

Now we know that computers don't help children learn and that drugs don't help them concentrate, because the establishment mandarins who sold us the computers and drugs have conceded failure. In the January 29 New York Times, [1] a prominent professor of child development shows that attention-deficit-disorder drugs only harm the three million children who take them. One out of 10 American children have been diagnosed with so-called Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and most of them have been medicated. [2]

Some months ago, the Times reported that test scores lagged in school districts that invested massively in digital education. [3] It does not seem to have occurred to the mandarins that computers cause attention deficit disorder. The brain is a machine, in the enlightened secular model, and so-called brain science teaches us to tweak its functioning with pharmaceuticals, or stimulate its development through digital approximations of intelligence. The grand result of a generation's worth of brain-science application is a generation of schoolchildren who are disproportionately illiterate, innumerate, anxious, angry, and unhappy.

Professor L Alan Sroufe's debunking of ADD medication in the New York Times contains this admission:

''Back in the 1960s I, like most psychologists, believed that children with difficulty concentrating were suffering from a brain problem of genetic or otherwise inborn origin. Just as Type I diabetics need insulin to correct problems with their inborn biochemistry, these children were believed to require attention-deficit drugs to correct theirs. It turns out, however, that there is little to no evidence to support this theory.''

That is an astonishing statement: in the mainstream view of the academic psychologists, the brain is another pancreas, except that its function is to secrete thoughts as opposed to insulin. That is to say that the psychologists have a pancreas where their brains should have been.

One really wants to light a torch and march on Frankenstein's castle, also known as the psychology profession. Until the passage of the 2005 Individuals with Disabilities Act, schools had the power to force children to take ADD drug, namely amphetamines, or bar them from classrooms, even when parents objected to the medication. I don't know how many children were harmed by the sorcerer's apprentices in school psychology offices, but the new research might provide grounds for some exemplary lawsuits. It turns out that the mainstream was dominated by cultists and loonies. The religious day schools, the home-schoolers, alternative schools like the Waldorf movement turn out to have been islands of sanity in a sea of delusion.

The psychologists of the 1960s also advocated instant gratification in all aspects of life, particularly sex, with the silly presumption that all individual and social problems were to be blamed on suppressing our urge to be gratified. Once children had limitless opportunities for gratification, abetted by ever-more-realistic (and ever-more violent and perverse) computer simulations, the psychology profession observed that attention spans shortened drastically, and presumed that a genetic deficiency was to blame. It sounds like bad science fiction, but it is standard operating procedure in every public school in the United States.

Learning how to learn is the point of education. We will forget the great majority of specific things we were taught: Euclidean proofs, the polynomial theorem, Roman emperors, French grammar, atomic weights, the poems of Browning, and whatever else was stuffed in our heads as schoolchildren. What we learned, if we learned anything, is to memorize, analyze and explain. If we know geometry, algebra or French today, it is not because we retained our knowledge but because we re-learned the subject. School, in short, taught us to concentrate. The most successful people are not the cleverest in terms of sheer processing power, but those who multiply cleverness with persistence.

The psychology profession, by contrast, thinks that the brain is a machine, and the best way to engage it is to use another machine, namely a computer. Computers, to be sure, do not kill brains; people kill brains with computers. Computers in the hands of people who believe that gratification is the highest human goal, and the quicker the gratification, the better, have devastated our mental landscape. Our children do not read; they only surf. They do not write; they only text. They do not plan and strategize in games; they react to visual and aural stimuli while inflicting simulated mayhem. They do not follow a plot: they cut among disjoined images in the style of rap videos. And when they fail to concentrate, we give them Adderall and Ritalin.

It is mouth-foaming, howling-at-the-moon madness, and it is our mainstream culture. The wired classroom hasn't worked, so the educational establishment recommends more of the same quack cure. The New York Times reported last September that computerized education has produced no measurable results, except for some negative ones (test scores fell after massive investment in computers). Yet the education gurus remain undeterred. ''The data is pretty weak. It's very difficult when we're pressed to come up with convincing data, ''Tom Vander Ark, the former executive director for education at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation told the Times. Reporter Matt Richtel wrote: ''And yet, in virtually the same breath, he said change of a historic magnitude is inevitably coming to classrooms this decade: ‘It's one of the three or four biggest things happening in the world today.'''

The obsession with digital classrooms goes back to president Bill Clinton, who called for more computers in the schools in 1997. After 15 years of failure, the Barack Obama administration's National Education Technology Plan ''calls for applying the advanced technologies used in our daily personal and professional lives to our entire education system to improve student learning.'' [4]

The American elite, to be sure, does not subject its own offspring to this kind of digital treatment. New York City's most exclusive private schools, the ones with an acceptance rate lower than Ivy League colleges, do things the old fashioned way. Brearley School, sometimes considered the best of the private schools for girls, requires every student to learn an instrument and play in the orchestra (the only other New York school with this requirement is the Rudolf Steiner School). The Dalton School teaches chess to every student. Acoustic instruments, classical music, and ancient games with wooden pieces teach concentration span.

In Silicon Valley, Times reporter Matt Richtel observed in an October 22 feature, many of the Silicon Valley types who make weapons of mass dementia send their own kids to a school that bans computers until the 9th grade:

The chief technology officer of eBay sends his children to a nine-classroom school here. So do employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard. But the school's chief teaching tools are anything but high-tech: pens and paper, knitting needles and, occasionally, mud. Not a computer to be found. No screens at all. They are not allowed in the classroom, and the school even frowns on their use at home. Schools nationwide have rushed to supply their classrooms with computers, and many policy makers say it is foolish to do otherwise. But the contrarian point of view can be found at the epicenter of the tech economy, where some parents and educators have a message: computers and schools don't mix. [5]

That is the local Waldorf school, part of an education movement founded by the German mathematician and mystic Rudolf Steiner. Some of Steiner's ideas were strange, but his educational method - learning by doing - is robust. At the New York Steiner School my children attended, for example, 8th-graders learned the Renaissance by making copies of 16th-century scientific instruments, singing four-part Renaissance vocal works, and staging a play about the 17th-century physicist Johannes Kepler. The 9th-graders studied Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" by staging the complete play, rotating the cast so that every child memorized a couple of hundred lines. Waldorf schools require parents to promise to forbid television to their children in any form through elementary school.

At a showcase classroom in Arizona's most wired school district, Matt Richtel reported,

A seventh-grade English teacher roams among 31 students sitting at their desks or in clumps on the floor. They're studying Shakespeare's As You Like It - but not in any traditional way. In this technology-centric classroom, students are bent over laptops, some blogging or building Facebook pages from the perspective of Shakespeare's characters. One student compiles a song list from the Internet, picking a tune by the rapper Kanye West to express the emotions of Shakespeare's lovelorn Silvius. [6]

Somehow, I don't think that's what Shakespeare meant by "as you like it." Web access in this case is simply a pretext to help seventh-graders to reduce Shakespeare to their own level, rather than allow Shakespeare to lift children up to his.

The Waldorf movement diverges radically from the mainstream. It tends to recruit crunchy-granola rebels against urban civilization who love acoustical instruments and handicrafts, as well as philosophy graduates of major universities with a deep interest in metaphysics. Some of the classical curriculum of the German Gymnasium of a century ago is preserved as if in amber. And the fact that so many of the Masters of the Universe of the digital age send their children to this countercultural throwback is a fair gauge of the degradation of mainstream learning.

Adderall and Ritalin, by the way, can't be found in any Chinese pharmacy (although expatriates can find small amounts of Ritalin at a couple of locations in Shanghai). It appears that Chinese children, who must memorize several thousand characters in order to complete elementary education, do not suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder. Two-thirds of Chinese children graduate secondary school, which involves a grueling exercise in memorization. As I reported earlier in this space, 50 million Chinese children are studying Western classical music (seeChina’s six-to-one advantage over the US, Asia Times Online, Dec 2, 2008). That's the same number of children aged 5 to 17 in America. Nothing builds attention span better than playing classical music. Granted that much of China's educational system teaches rote memorization, and that the majority of Chinese may not receive top-quality schooling, it is still the case that the absolute number of Chinese kids mastering high-level skills is a multiple of the American number.

America is the greatest country in the world, a unique and blessed land, while China remains under the rule of an authoritarian regime that alternates between benign and brutal. But we Americans have consigned our children to the purveyors of an alien ideology - the absurd doctrine that the brain is a machine - with consequences so devastating that the liberal establishment itself no longer can defend its core policies of the past half century. Worst of all, we have papered over our spiritual deficit by doping millions of our kids with amphetamines.

If China replaces us at the pre-eminent world power, it will happen because their children are smarter, more persevering, more ambitious and tougher than ours. And we will have no-one to blame but ourselves for handing our kids over to quacks and snake-oil salesmen.

Notes: 1. Ritalin Gone Wrong, New York Times, Jan 29, 2012.
2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.
3. In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores, New York Times, Sep 3, 2011.
4. Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology, US Department of Education.
5. A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute, New York Times, Oct 22, 2011.
6. In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores, New York Times, Sep 3, 2011.

Spengler is channeled by David P Goldman, president of Macrostrategy LLC. His book How Civilizations Die (and why Islam is Dying, Too) was published by Regnery Press in September 2011. A volume of his essays on culture, religion and economics, It's Not the End of the World - It's Just the End of You, also appeared recently, from Van Praag Press.

Nazi Ideology Becomes Acceptable In The Marine Corps

2012-02-10T09:47:00.000-08:00

US marines posed with Nazi SS flag

From:AAP
February 11, 2012 3:06AM

Marines are again in damage control over a photo of an Afghanistan sniper team posing with a Nazi SS flag.
The unit is seen posing in front of a flag with a logo resembling that of the notorious Nazi SS - a special unit that murdered millions of Jews, gypsies and others.
The Marine Corps said in a statement that using the symbol was not acceptable, but the marines in the photograph taken in September 2010 will not be disciplined because investigators determined it was a naive mistake.
The marines believed the SS symbol was meant to represent sniper scouts and never intended to be associated with a racist organisation, said Major Gabrielle Chapin, a spokeswoman at Camp Pendleton, where the marines were based.
"I don't believe that the marines involved would have ever used any type of symbol associated the Nazi Germany military criminal organisation that committed mass atrocities in WWII," said Major Chapin.
"It's not within who we are as marines."
The Corps has used the incident as a training tool to talk to troops about what symbols are acceptable after it became aware of the photograph in November, she said.
The image has surfaced on a blog, sparking widespread outrage and calls for a full investigation and punishment, including bringing those in the photograph and anyone who condoned it to court-martial.
"This is a complete and total outrage," said Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
His organisation sent a letter to the head of the Marine Corps, General James Amos, and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Thursday, demanding punishment for those involved.
It was the second time this year the Marine Corps had to scramble to contain the damage after images were posted on the internet of troops in inappropriate acts.
Last month, Pentagon leaders faced the fallout from an internet video purporting to show four marines urinating on Taliban corpses - an act that appears to violate international laws of warfare and further strain US-Afghan relations.
Mr Panetta called Afghan President Hamid Karzai to offer assurances of a full investigation, and the top marine general promised an internal probe as well as a criminal one.
The marines in the photograph are no longer with the unit.
Major Chapin said she did not know if they are still in the Marines.
In the photo taken in the Afghanistan district of Sangin in Helmand province, members of the Marine Corps unit are seen posing with guns in front of a US flag and a large, dark blue flag with what appear to be the letters "SS" in the shape of white jagged lightning bolts.
Camp Pendleton spokesman, Master Gunnery Sergeant Mark Oliva, said he did not know where the flag came from but it was likely the property of one of the marines in the photograph.
The photograph appeared on the blog for a military weapons company called Knight's Armament in Florida.
The company did not respond to emails or phone messages.
The SS, or Schutzstaffel, was the police and military force of the Nazi Party, which was distinct from the general army. Members pledged an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler.
SS units were held responsible for many war crimes and played an integral role in the extermination of millions of Jews along with gypsies and other people who were deemed undesirable by the Nazis.
The SS was declared to be a criminal organisation at the Nuremberg war crime trials.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, headquartered in Los Angeles, said he does not buy the explanation that posing with the flag was an innocent mistake and insisted the US public has a right to know what happened.
"If you look at any book on the Nazi period, this is the dreaded symbol of the SS, and to have a Marine Corps unit adopt it and put it beside the American flag when 200,000 Americans died to free the world of that dreaded symbol is just beyond the pale," he said.

Notes From The Front-Afghanistan and Iraq

2012-01-25T18:17:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

In 'Notes From the Front Lines,' Argument Unbecoming a Decent Human BeingAnyone who thinks the New York Times is a part of the "liberal media" would be served well by checking out the work of groups like Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), and gadfly's like Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, David Peterson, and so on. The Times has shown time and time again to be a propaganda tool for the dominant economic and political powers. On matters of war, the Times routinely helps beat the drums, or provides a venue for jingoists to delusionally go on about the nobility and righteousness of America's wars.

In yesterday's "Notes From the Front Lines" the Times gives Ramsey Sulayman, a major in the Marine Corps Reserve and legislative associate with Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), space to write a piece titled "In Urination Video, Behavior Unbecoming a Marine."

We are constantly reassured that the Marines are about “Honor, Courage, Commitment," and that while "war is a dirty business," the soldiers who urinated on their victims was "unbecoming a Marine." Many of Sulayman's comments read as if a decent human being would be moved by them with awe and respect. Here are a selection:

The values I learned were that we fight ferociously but maintain our honor. Always. We kill as a necessity of our business — not for sport, pleasure, or because we can. That is what makes us professional warriors. We also don’t take trophies, souvenirs, body parts, or desecrate the dead. That’s what separates us and why we can claim the moral high ground and come to terms with the ugliness of war. Gen. James N. Mattis, the current commander of the United States Central Command, summed up the rules for combat in Iraq and Afghanistan perfectly: “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”By turning war into a "business," and being "professional warriors" there is somehow a "moral high ground" to be had. Sulayman even uses the word "perfectly" to describe "the rules for combat in Iraq and Afghanistan": "Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." This is said with all seriousness and an intent to come off as righteous. It reminds me of the John Lennon song "Working Class Hero" where the late Beatle sung, "There's room at the top they're telling you still, but first you must learn how to smile as you kill." Being a polite robot ready to kill everyone is, we are told, of the highest virtues defenders of freedom and liberty can have. But for Sulayman, the urinating killers are "Marines acting unprofessionally and inappropriately. Not because they were conducting their business during a combat action, but because they crossed the line after the fighting stopped."

With the revelation that these men urinated on their victims came a quick response by U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta saying the incident was "utterly deplorable," and announced an investigation into the act.

What I want to ask is: What exactly is "deplorable," or "inappropriate"? Urinating on the dead bodies of people we killed in a criminal war, or the killing (i.e. war) itself? This is an important question to ask because if it's just the urination, as Sulayman wants to believe, and that there would be no scandal if "our troops" just stopped at killing people, then our disconnect from decency is a much bigger problem than what is being called "deplorable."

(As a sidenote, all of this reminds me of Mark Twain's short story The War Prayer, which I recommend everyone read at the end of this article.)

Can we imagine the response of outrage if we were the people of Afghanistan and Iraq reading this? What if the tables were turned and it was us who was invaded and occupied and routinely subjected to crimes "unbecoming a Marine"? Or what if the horrors we endured were at the hands of smiling young men who acted "professionally"? Would we end our grief and say to ourselves, "At least the killer of my family shook my hand"? How would we feel about the New York Times publishing a piece by the article who trivialized our hardships, and made the perpetrators out to be courageous young men?

This is hardly an isolated incident. In one of the first drone attacks in Afghanistan following the October 2001 invasion was the story of Daraz Khan, an Afghan man who was murdered by an American Hellfire missile because he was tall, had a beard and wore a turban. According to the New York Times, a Pentagon spokesperson, Victoria Clarke, said that “We’re convinced that it was an appropriate target,” yet Mr. Clarke acknowledges that “we do not know yet exactly who it was.” Even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld weighed in with the incriminating comment that, “Someone has said that these people were not what the people managing the Predator believed them to be,'' he said. ''We'll just have to find out. There's not much more anyone could add, except there's one version and there's the other version.” It doesn’t take much critical thought to conclude that there is nothing “appropriate” about killing an unknown man because he is tall, bearded and wearing a turban. It is clear that U.S. forces racistly profiled the man, and as the saying goes, shot first and asked questions later.

Another example of an American massacre was in January of 2002 when Time Magazine reported on it the following month by noting that, “In what appeared to be a perfect sneak attack, U.S. special-operations soldiers on Jan. 24 stormed Sharzam High School in Uruzgan” and killed all the men present. A guard hid in a ditch and heard the men pleading for their lives, but none were spared.

According to eyewitnesses, U.S. commandos moved on Uruzgan shortly before 2 a.m. on Jan. 24, accompanied by eight helicopters and at least two armored humvees. Local Afghans said that when the Americans burst into the school, they found Afghan fighters sleeping and began spraying the beds with gunfire.The Americans accused them of being Taliban fighters however they were what the men were trying to tell the U.S. forces, who likely didn’t understand their language: “The soldiers slaughtered at Sharzam, they say, were not enemy fighters but anti-Taliban troops loyal to U.S.-backed interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai. They belonged to a military commission appointed by the new provincial government to oversee the collection of leftover Taliban weapons.”

The article ends with another gruesome account of the incident:

One witness of the aftermath said the Americans shot Afghans as they hid under beds and rushed out of doorways. The Pentagon maintains that the Afghans started shooting first, but villagers say they heard no gunfire from inside the school. Two dead Afghans were found with their wrists bound. One U.S. soldier left behind a note: "Have a nice day. From Damage Inc." Days after the attack, the classrooms at the school were still soaked in thick blood.There are many other examples of such bloodbaths. Accounts of drone attacks killing entire wedding parties, or U.S. convoys opening fire as they speed through town, or even the notorious “kill team” where U.S. soldiers hunted civilians and took grisly pictures of them holding the dead bodies as if they were trophies, and much more are easily found thanks to the power of the internet. The mass media however, has not given these bloodbaths the coverage they deserve and are already going down the memory hole.

For example, while the New York Times covered the story of Daraz Khan in one article totaling 1,758 words, in a two month period following the incident and never covered the Uruzgan massacre, the same is not true for an incident where Canadian soldiers were killed in a case of “friendly fire” in what came know as the Tarnak farm incident. In April of 2002 an American F-16 reported seeing surface-to-air fire, asked to fire on the location and while on “stand by” the pilot bombed the place before being told to “hold fire . . .Friendlies, Kandahar.” In a two month period the incident received eight articles totaling almost 6,500 words.

Recently the U.N. reported that, in Afghanistan, torture is "systematic." As the U.S. follows the tradition of a long line of empires who seek to control Afghanistan, and they never do, there has been a reliance on local forces to ruthlessly go after the dominant Islamic movement, the Taliban. A particularly gruesome example was the Dasht-i-Leili massacre where thousands of suspected Taliban fighters were caught, stored in metal containers and suffocated to death—all of which occurred with U.S. knowledge, and possibly supervision.

As for Iraq, we can turn to a medical report, which was released in late 2010, and where we learn how the effects of our November 2004 U.S. attack on Fallujah was worse than what the U.S. did to Hiroshima, when just over 65 years ago the United States became the first and only country to use a nuclear weapon (“little boy”) on the battlefield. That was in Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later in Nagasaki another nuke (“fat boy”) was dropped.

Back to Fallujah, early on, in our illegal war of aggression, when we “liberated” the country, we set up a military base near a school in the town. Naturally the residents, who were no friends of Saddam, protested. And the protests grew. U.S. soldiers, realizing they weren't being greeted with candy, opened fire on them, killing 17 and wounding 70. Tensions increased and escalated when the locals got their hands on four Blackwater mercenaries, hung them from a bridge and set fire to their hanging bodies. The U.S. responded in a heavy-handed and disproportionately manner (i.e. a war crime). As expected, Fallujah became a symbol of resistance to U.S. troops. That was the spring of 2004.

After Presidential elections in November 2004, and as the resistance grew like wildfire, the U.S. carried out another massive assault that resulted in numerous war crimes. We literally destroyed the town but before we did we refused to let “men of fighting age” leave despite it being widely known that the resistance fighters had already left. What followed was an orgy of destruction involving conventional and chemical weapons (white phosphorus/Whiskey Pete/WP). Some say WP is not a chemical weapon. That’s simply not true because we relied on the chemical properties of WP as a weapon and used them against people, which legally constitutes it as a chemical weapon.

Fallujah may never recover from the physical damages of our aggression, and the health effects will probably go on for years and years to come. Like Japan, who still struggles with the atomic fallout and a U.S. military presence where the population is expected to foot much of the bill for our destructive presence (Okinawa’s residents are still trying to evict us), the people of Fallujah have a hard life ahead of them and there is no reason to believe the U.S. has any intentions on making it easier for them. In fact, about the only time President Obama has referred to Fallujah has been in the context of the suffering we endured, like he did while a U.S. Senator.

While a list of grievances were made against Saddam Hussein before and during the war, we seem to have managed to achieve every one of them within three years of our occupation: massive arbitrary arrests, torture, various violations of international law including war crimes and crimes against humanity, use of terrorism and chemical weapons against the people of Iraq.

According to Field Artillery Magazine, an Army publication:

WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes where we could not get effects on them with HE [High Explosive]. We fired "shake and bake" missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out.White Phosphorus was used as a chemical weapon—the U.S. Army publication described it as "an effective and versatile munition"—where its chemical property is used “as a psychological weapon” in order to kill them easier. The "method of warfare" even has a name: "shake and bake." When Iraqi guerillas got into "trench lines and spider holes where we could not get effects on them with HE” the Marines would use Whiskey Pete to “shake” them out so they could “bake” them with HE.

To expose the fact that we have long known WP is used as a chemical weapon we can turn to a 1995 DIA document titled "POSSIBLE USE OF PHOSPHOROUS CHEMICAL" that was about Saddam Hussein's alleged use of Whiskey Pete against Kurds in 1991 (an uprising the U.S. called for and then allowed Saddam to put down). In this document we clearly acknowledge WP as a chemical weapon:

IRAQ'S POSSIBLE EMPLOYMENT OF PHOSPHOROUS CHEMICAL WEAPONS -- IN LATE FEBRUARY 1991, FOLLOWING THE COALITION FORCES' OVERWHELMING VICTORY OVER IRAQ, KURDISH REBELS STEPPED UP THEIR STRUGGLE AGAINST IRAQI FORCES IN NORTHERN IRAQ. DURING THE BRUTAL CRACKDOWN THAT FOLLOWED THE KURDISH UPRISING, IRAQI FORCES LOYAL TO PRESIDENT SADDAM (HUSSEIN) MAY HAVE POSSIBLY USED WHITE PHOSPHOROUS (WP) CHEMICAL WEAPONS AGAINST KURDISH REBELS AND THE POPULACE IN ERBIL (GEOCOORD:3412N/04401E) (VICINITY OF IRANIAN BORDER) AND DOHUK (GEOCOORD:3652N/04301E) (VICINITY OF IRAQI BORDER) PROVINCES, IRAQ. THE WP CHEMICAL WAS DELIVERED BY ARTILLERY ROUNDS AND HELICOPTER GUNSHIPS (NO FURTHER INFORMATION ATTHIS TIME). APPARENTLY, THIS TIME IRAQ DID NOT USE NERVE GAS AS THEY DID IN 1988, IN HALABJA (GEOCOORD:3511N/04559E), IRAQ, BECAUSE THEY WERE AFRAID OF POSSIBLE RETALIATION FROM THE UNITED STATES(U.S.) LED COALITION. THESE REPORTS OF POSSIBLE WP CHEMICAL WEAPON ATTACKS SPREAD QUICKLY AMONG THE KURDISH POPULACE IN ERBIL AND DOHUK. AS A RESULT, HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF KURDS FLED FROM THESE TWO AREAS AND CROSSED THE IRAQI BORDER INTO TURKEY. IN RESPONSE TO THIS, TURKISH AUTHORITIES ESTABLISHED SEVERAL REFUGEE CENTERS ALONG THE TURKISH-IRAQI BORDER. THE SITUATION OF KURDISH REFUGEES IN THESE CENTERS IS DESPERATE -- THEY HAVE NO SHELTERS, FOOD, WATER, AND MEDICAL FACILITIES (NO FURTHER INFORMATION AT THIS TIME).This reads almost like the U.S. siege on Fallujah. In 1991 it was Kurdish insurgents, incited by President Bush but then allowed to be crushed, who received a brutal suppression by Saddam with WP and in which hundreds of thousands fled to live in horrid shelters. That was precisely what happened to Fallujah.

While Lt Col Venable admits that WP was used for its toxic properties as a "method of warfare" he incorrectly claimed that its usage was legal. It was not. Even according to a section from an instruction manual used by the U.S. Army Command and General Staff School (CGSC) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, it is clear that "it is against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets."

But no worries, America. This was done "politely" by "professional warriors" who have "honor."

Another interesting item revealed as Americans were leaving last month was a New York Times reporter who happened upon some four-hundred pages of U.S. military documents pertaining to the 2005 Haditha massacre where American soldiers killed nearly two dozen civilians, many of them women and children. In the article we read of a testimony where a soldier says the murders were not "remarkable" because, "It happened all the time, not necessarily in MNF-West all the time, but throughout the whole country."

This is just a sample of the horrors the people of Afghanistan and Iraq have endured. In Iraq alone, more than a million people have died, with millions more ethnically cleansed from their communities, or injured, or traumatized, or sick with cancer due to our use of depleted uranium. In Afghanistan, the war and occupation has proved so unpopular that support for the Taliban has increased considerably. In 2007 before President Obama's "surge," the Taliban controlled half of the country. Now they control more than 90%. The war and occupation has proved so unpopular that Vice President Biden has had to change tracks and say the Taliban are not the "enemy," as the Taliban opens an office in Qatar to begin negotiating a settlement to the war.

Sulayman says that Marines "do the right thing because it is the right thing regardless of what those around us would allow," but that is clearly not the case by the fact that the Iraq War went on for nearly nine years, and that the Afghanistan War is still raging on. Both of these wars were completely illegal (and immoral), and any soldier who participated violated their enlistment oath and are not doing the right thing. In fact, the reason hundreds of thousands of soldiers have not done the right thing is that they were obedient to those around them. Resistance was not "allowed," nor has it been tolerated. The soldiers who have refused to follow orders and "do the right thing because it is the right thing regardless of what those around us would allow" are the ones who were punished. Folks like Ehren Watada, Naser Abdo, Stephen Funk, Victor Agosto, and Bradley Manning are a tiny minority of resisters, and punishment was sought in every case. Even the case of Alexis Hutchinson—a soldier who refused to deploy so that she could care for her newborn child—endured the military trying to punish her for doing the right thing.

It is worth noting that Sulayman's piece is completely void of the political, economic, ecological and human realities surrounding the wars he is defending. He talks of noble values, but real honor, courage and commitment lies not in obeying orders to go and kill and occupy, but in disobedience. What makes someone brave or a hero is not being a polite and professional warrior—a mercenary—for a criminal empire, but in resisting it. If Sulayman wanted to see real quality of character he would be looking to Bradley Manning, who has endured nearly two years of detention, often in torturous conditions, for leaking documents that expose corruption and criminality in America's wars and foreign policies. That the Times provided Sulayman with the platform in which to spread his jingoistic nonsense says a lot about the "paper of record" and their service to the Masters of War.

Read Mark Twain's The War Prayer.

The Warning In Gary Webb's Death

2011-12-13T13:38:00.000-08:00

December 9, 2011
Special Report: Modern American history is more complete because journalist Gary Webb had the courage to revive the dark story of the Reagan administration’s protection of Nicaraguan Contra cocaine traffickers in the 1980s. However, Webb ultimately paid a terrible price, as Robert Parry reports.
By Robert Parry
Every year since investigative journalist Gary Webb took his own life in 2004, I have marked the anniversary of that sad event by recalling the debt that American history owes to Webb for his brave reporting, which revived the Contra-cocaine scandal in 1996 and forced important admissions out of the Central Intelligence Agency two years later.
But Webb’s suicide on the evening of Dec. 9, 2004, was also a tragic end for one man whose livelihood and reputation were destroyed by a phalanx of major newspapers – the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times– serving as protectors of a corrupt power structure rather than as sources of honest information.

Journalist Gary Webb
In reviewing the story again this year, I was struck by how Webb’s Contra-cocaine experience was, in many ways, a precursor to the subsequent tragedy of the Iraq War.
In the 1980s, the CIA’s analytical division was already showing signs of politicization, especially regarding President Ronald Reagan’s beloved Contras and their war against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government – and the U.S. press corps was already bending to the propaganda pressures of a right-wing Republican administration.
Looking back at CIA cables from the early-to-mid-1980s, you can already see the bias dripping from the analytical reports. Any drug accusation against the leftist Sandinistas was accepted without skepticism and usually with strong exaggeration, while the opposite occurred with evidence of Contra cocaine smuggling; then there was endless quibbling and smearing of sources.
So, to put these reports in anything close to an accurate focus, you would need special lenses to correct for all the politicized distortions. Yet, the U.S. news media, which itself was under intense pressure not to appear “liberal,” worsened the Reagan administration’s fun-house reflection of reality and attacked any dissident journalist who wouldn’t go along.
Thus, Americans heard a lot about how the evil Sandinistas were trying to “poison” America’s youth with cocaine, although there was not a single interception of a drug shipment from Nicaragua during the Sandinista reign, except for one planeload of cocaine that the United States flew into and out of Nicaraguan in a clumsy “sting” operation.
On the other hand, substantial evidence of Contra-related cocaine shipments out of Costa Rica and Honduras was kept from the American people with Reagan’s Justice Department and CIA intervening to head off investigations and thus prevent embarrassing disclosures. The chief role of the big newspapers in this upside-down world was to heap ridicule on anyone who told the truth.
During that time frame of the early-to-mid-1980s, the patterns were set for CIA analysts to advance their careers (by giving the president what he wanted) and mainstream journalists to protect theirs (by accepting propaganda). By 2002-2003, these patterns had become deeply engrained, leaving almost no one to protect the American people from a new round of falsehoods – aimed at Iraq.
Though I was not in touch with Webb in the last months of his life in 2004, I have always wondered if he saw this connection between his own valiant efforts to correct the historical record about Contra-cocaine trafficking in 1996 and the victory of lies over truth regarding Iraq’s WMD in 2002-2003.
In the weeks before Webb’s suicide, there also was the intervening fact of George W. Bush’s reelection – and with it, the dashed expectation that the CIA analysts and the mainstream journalists who played along with the Iraq-WMD fabrications might face some serious accountability. At the moment when Webb picked up his father’s pistol and put it to his head, there must have appeared little hope that anything would change.
Indeed, we are now seeing yet another replay of this systematic distortion of information, this time regarding Iran and its alleged nuclear weapons program. Any tidbit of information against Iran is exaggerated, while exculpatory data is downplayed or ignored.
So, it may be timely again to recount what happened to Gary Webb and to reflect on the dangers of allowing this corrupt disinformation system to press ahead unchecked.
Dark Alliance
For me, the tragic story of Gary Webb began in 1996 when he was working on his “Dark Alliance” series for the San Jose Mercury News. He called me at my home in Arlington, Virginia, because, in 1985, I and my Associated Press colleague Brian Barger had been the first journalists to reveal the scandal of Reagan’s Nicaraguan Contras funding themselves in part by collaborating with drug traffickers.
Webb explained that he had come across evidence that one Contra-connected drug conduit had funneled cocaine into Los Angeles, where it helped fuel the early crack epidemic. Unlike our AP stories a decade earlier — which focused on the Contras helping to ship cocaine from Central America into the United States — Webb said his series would examine what happened to the Contra cocaine after it reached the streets of Los Angeles and other cities.
Besides asking about my recollections of the Contras and their cocaine smuggling, Webb wanted to know why the scandal never gained any real traction in the U.S. national news media. I explained that the ugly facts of the drug trafficking ran up against a determined U.S government campaign to protect the Contras’ image. In the face of that resistance, I said, the major publications — the likes of the New York Times and the Washington Post — had chosen to attack the revelations and those behind them rather than to dig up more evidence.
Webb sounded confused by my account, as if I were telling him something that was foreign to his personal experience, something that just didn’t compute. I had a sense of his unstated questions: Why would the prestige newspapers of American journalism behave that way? Why wouldn’t they jump all over a story that important and that sexy, about the CIA working with drug traffickers?
I took a deep breath, sensing that he had no idea of the personal danger he was about to confront. Well, he would have to learn that for himself, I thought. It surely wasn’t my place to warn a journalist away from a significant story just because it carried risks.
So, I simply asked Webb if he had the strong support of his editors. He assured me that he did. I said their backing would be crucial once his story was out. He sounded perplexed, again, as if he didn’t know what to make of my cautionary tone. I wished him the best of luck, thinking that he would need it.
The Safe Route
When I hung up, I wasn’t sure that the Mercury News would really press ahead with the story, considering how the big national news outlets had dismissed and ridiculed the notion that President Reagan’s beloved Contras had included a large number of drug traffickers.
It never seemed to matter how much evidence there was. It was much easier — and safer, career-wise — for Washington journalists to reject incriminating testimony against the Contras, especially when it came from other drug traffickers and from disgruntled Contras. Even U.S. law-enforcement officials who discovered evidence were disparaged as overzealous and congressional investigators were painted as partisan.
In 1985, as we were preparing our first AP story on this topic, Barger and I knew that the evidence of Contra-cocaine involvement was overwhelming. We had a broad range of sources both inside the Contra movement and within the U.S. government, people with no apparent ax to grind who had described the cocaine-smuggling problem.
One source was a field agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA); another was a senior official on Reagan’s National Security Council (NSC) who told me that he had read a CIA report about how a Contra unit based in Costa Rica had used cocaine profits to buy a helicopter.
However, after our AP story was published in December 1985, we came under attack from the right-wing Washington Times. That was followed by dismissive stories in the New York Times and the Washington Post. The notion that the Contras, whom President Reagan had likened to America’s Founding Fathers, could be implicated in the drug trade was simply unthinkable.
Yet, it was always odd to me that many of the same newspapers had no problem accepting the fact that the CIA-backed Afghan mujahedeen were involved in the heroin trade, but bristled at the thought that the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras might be cut from the same cloth.
A key difference, which I learned both from personal experience and from documents that surfaced during the Iran-Contra scandal, was that Reagan had assigned a young group of ambitious intellectuals such as Elliott Abrams and Robert Kagan to oversee the Contra war.
These neoconservatives worked with old-line anticommunists from the Cuban-American community, such as Otto Reich, and CIA propagandists, such as Walter Raymond Jr., to aggressively protect the Contras’ image. And the Contras were always on the edge between getting congressional funding or having it cut off.
So, that combination — the propaganda skills of Reagan’s Contra-support team and the fragile consensus for continuing Reagan’s pet Contra war — meant that any negative publicity about the Contras would be met with a fierce counterattack.
Going to Editors
The neoconservatives were also bright, well-schooled, and skilled in their manipulation of language and information, a process they privately called “perception management.” They proved adept, too, at ingratiating themselves with senior editors at major news outlets.
By the mid-1980s, these patterns had become well-worn in Washington. If a journalist dug up a story that put the Contras in a negative light, he or she could expect the Reagan administration’s propaganda team to make contact with a senior editor or bureau chief and lodge a complaint, apply some pressure, and often offer up some dirt about the offending journalist.
Also, many news executives in that time frame were sympathetic toward Reagan’s hard-line foreign policy, especially after the humiliations of the Vietnam War and the Iranian revolution. Supporting U.S. initiatives abroad — or at least not allowing your reporters to undercut those policies — was seen as patriotic.
At the New York Times, executive editor Abe Rosenthal was one of the news media’s most influential neoconservatives, declaring that he was determined to steer the newspaper back to “the center,” by which he meant to the right.
At AP, general manager Keith Fuller was known to be a strong Reagan supporter and his preferences were sometimes expressed forcefully to AP’s Washington bureau where I worked. At the Washington Post and Newsweek (where I went to work in 1987), there was also a strong sense that Reagan-era scandals should not reach the president, that it would not be “good for the country.”
In other words, on the issue of Contra drug trafficking, there was a confluence of interests between the Reagan administration, which was determined to protect the Contras’ public image, and senior news executives, who wanted to adopt a “patriotic” posture after convincing themselves that the country shouldn’t endure another wrenching battle over wrongdoing by a Republican president.
The popular image of courageous editors standing up for their reporters in the face of government pressure was not the reality, especially not where the Contras were concerned.
Reverse Rewards
So, instead of a process that outsiders might imagine — where journalists who dug out tough stories got rewarded — the actual system worked in the opposite way. The careerists in the news business quickly grasped that the smart play when it came to the Contras was either to be a booster or at least to pooh-pooh evidence of the Contras’ brutality or drug traffickers.
The same rules applied to congressional investigators. Anyone who pried into the dark corners of the Nicaraguan Contra war faced ridicule, as happened to Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts when he followed up the early AP stories with a courageous investigation that discovered more ties between cocaine traffickers and the Contras.
When his Contra-cocaine report was released in 1989, its findings were greeted with yawns and smirks. News articles were buried deep inside the major newspapers and the stories focused more on alleged flaws in his investigation than on his revelations.
For his hard work, Newsweek summed up the prevailing “conventional wisdom” on Kerry by calling him a “randy conspiracy buff.” Being associated with breaking the Contra-cocaine story was also regarded as a black mark on my own career.
To function in this upside-down world, where reality and perception often clashed – and perception usually won – the big news outlets developed a kind of cognitive dissonance that could accept two contradictory positions.
On one level, the news outlets did accept the undeniable reality that some of the Contras and their backers, including the likes of Panamanian General Manuel Noriega, were implicated in the drug trade, but then simultaneously treated this reality as a conspiracy theory.
Squaring the Circle
Only occasionally did a major news outlet seek to square this circle, such as during Noriega’s drug-trafficking trial in 1991 when U.S. prosecutors called as a witness Colombian Medellín cartel kingpin Carlos Lehder, who — along with implicating Noriega — testified that the cartel had given $10 million to the Contras, an allegation first unearthed by Sen. Kerry.
“The Kerry hearings didn’t get the attention they deserved at the time,” a Washington Post editorial on Nov. 27, 1991, acknowledged. “The Noriega trial brings this sordid aspect of the Nicaraguan engagement to fresh public attention.”
However, the Post offered its readers no explanation for why Kerry’s hearings had been largely ignored, with the Post itself a leading culprit in this journalistic misfeasance. Nor did the Post and the other leading newspapers use the opening created by the Noriega trial to do anything to rectify their past neglect.
And, everything quickly returned to the status quo in which the desired perception of the noble Contras trumped the clear reality of their criminal activities.
So, from 1991 until 1996, the Contra-cocaine scandal remained a disturbing story not just about the skewed moral compass of the Reagan administration but also about how the U.S. news media had lost its way.
The scandal was a dirty secret that was best kept out of public view and away from a thorough discussion. After all, the journalistic careerists who had played along with the U.S. government’s Contra defenders had advanced inside their media corporations. As good team players, they had moved up to be bureau chiefs and other news executives. They had no interest in revisiting one of the big stories that they had downplayed as a prerequisite for their success.
Pariahs
Meanwhile, those journalists who had exposed these national security crimes mostly saw their careers sink or at best slide sideways. We were regarded as “pariahs” in our profession. We were “conspiracy theorists,” even though our journalism had proven to be correct again and again.
The Post’s admission that the Contra-cocaine scandal “didn’t get the attention it deserved” didn’t lead to any soul-searching inside the U.S. news media, nor did it result in any rehabilitation of the careers of the reporters who had tried to put a spotlight on this especially vile secret.
As for me, after losing battle after battle with my Newsweek editors (who despised the Iran-Contra scandal that I had worked so hard to expose), I departed the magazine in June 1990 to write a book (called Fooling America) about the decline of the Washington press corps and the parallel rise of the new generation of government propagandists.
I was also hired by PBS Frontline to investigate whether there had been a prequel to the Iran-Contra scandal — whether those arms-for-hostage deals in the mid-1980s had been preceded by contacts between Reagan’s 1980 campaign staff and Iran, which was then holding 52 Americans hostage and essentially destroying Jimmy Carter’s reelection hopes. [For more on that topic, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]
Then, in 1995, frustrated by the pervasive triviality that had come to define American journalism — and acting on the advice of and with the assistance of my oldest son Sam — I turned to a new medium and launched the Internet’s first investigative news magazine, known as Consortiumnews.com. The Web site became a way for me to put out well-reported stories that my former mainstream colleagues seemed determined to ignore or mock.
So, when Gary Webb called me that day in 1996, I knew that he was charging into some dangerous journalistic terrain, though he thought he was simply pursuing a great story. After his call, it struck me that perhaps the only way for the Contra-cocaine story to ever get the attention that it deserved was for someone outside the Washington media culture to do the work.
When Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series finally appeared in late August 1996, it initially drew little attention. The major national news outlets applied their usual studied indifference to a topic that they had already judged unworthy of serious attention.
It was also clear that the media careerists who had climbed up their corporate ladders by accepting the conventional wisdom that the Contra-cocaine story was a conspiracy theory weren’t about to look back down and admit that they had contributed to a major journalistic failure to inform and protect the American public.
Hard to Ignore
But Webb’s story proved hard to ignore. First, unlike the work that Barger and I did for AP in the mid-1980s, Webb’s series wasn’t just a story about drug traffickers in Central America and their protectors in Washington. It was about the on-the-ground consequences, inside the United States, of that drug trafficking, how the lives of Americans were blighted and destroyed as the collateral damage of a U.S. foreign policy initiative.
In other words, there were real-life American victims, and they were concentrated in African-American communities. That meant the ever-sensitive issue of race had been injected into the controversy. Anger from black communities spread quickly to the Congressional Black Caucus, which started demanding answers.
Secondly, the San Jose Mercury News, which was the local newspaper for Silicon Valley, had posted documents and audio on its state-of-the-art Internet site. That way, readers could examine much of the documentary support for the series.
It also meant that the traditional “gatekeeper” role of the major newspapers — the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times — was under assault. If a regional paper like the Mercury News could finance a major journalistic investigation like this one, and circumvent the judgments of the editorial boards at the Big Three, then there might be a tectonic shift in the power relations of the U.S. news media. There could be a breakdown of the established order.
This combination of factors led to the next phase of the Contra-cocaine battle: the “get-Gary-Webb” counterattack. The first major shot against Webb and his “Dark Alliance” series did not come from the Big Three but from the rapidly expanding right-wing news media, which was in no mood to accept the notion that some of President Reagan’s beloved Contras were drug traffickers. That would have cast a shadow over the Reagan Legacy, which the Right was elevating to mythic status.
It fell to Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s right-wing Washington Times to begin the anti-Webb vendetta. Moon, a South Korean theocrat who fancied himself the new Messiah, had founded his newspaper in 1982 partly to protect Ronald Reagan’s political flanks and partly to ensure that he had powerful friends in high places. In the mid-1980s, the Washington Times went so far as to raise money to assist Reagan’s Contra “freedom fighters.”
Self-Interested Testimony
To refute Webb’s three-part series, the Washington Times turned to some ex-CIA officials, who had participated in the Contra war, and quoted them denying the story. Soon, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times were lining up behind the Washington Times to trash Webb and his story.
On Oct. 4, 1996, the Washington Post published a front-page article knocking down Webb’s series, although acknowledging that some Contra operatives did help the cocaine cartels.
The Post’s approach was twofold, fitting with the national media’s cognitive dissonance on the topic of Contra cocaine: first, the Post presented the Contra-cocaine allegations as old news — “even CIA personnel testified to Congress they knew that those covert operations involved drug traffickers,” the Post sniffed — and second, the Post minimized the importance of the one Contra smuggling channel that Webb had highlighted in his series, saying that it had not “played a major role in the emergence of crack.”
A Post sidebar story dismissed African-Americans as prone to “conspiracy fears.”
Next, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times weighed in with lengthy articles castigating Webb and “Dark Alliance.” The big newspapers made much of the CIA’s internal reviews in 1987 and 1988 — almost a decade earlier — that supposedly had cleared the spy agency of any role in Contra-cocaine smuggling.
But the CIA’s cover-up began to weaken on Oct. 24, 1996, when CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz conceded before the Senate Intelligence Committee that the first CIA probe had lasted only12 days, and the second only three days. He promised a more thorough review.
Mocking Webb
Webb, however, had already crossed over from being a serious journalist to a target of ridicule. Influential Post media critic Howard Kurtz mocked Webb for saying in a book proposal that he would explore the possibility that the Contra war was primarily a business to its participants. “Oliver Stone, check your voice mail,” Kurtz chortled.
However, Webb’s suspicion was no conspiracy theory. Indeed, White House aide Oliver North’s chief Contra emissary, Robert Owen, had made the same point in a March 17, 1986, message about the Contras leadership. “Few of the so-called leaders of the movement . . . really care about the boys in the field,” Owen wrote. “THIS WAR HAS BECOME A BUSINESS TO MANY OF THEM.” [Emphasis in original.]
In other words, Webb was right and Kurtz was wrong, even Oliver North’s emissary had reported that many Contra leaders treated the conflict as “a business.” But accuracy had ceased to be relevant in the media’s hazing of Gary Webb.
In another double standard, while Webb was held to the strictest standards of journalism, it was entirely all right for Kurtz — the supposed arbiter of journalistic integrity who was also featured on CNN’s Reliable Sources — to make judgments based on ignorance. Kurtz would face no repercussions for mocking a fellow journalist who was factually correct.
The Big Three’s assault — combined with their disparaging tone — had a predictable effect on the executives of the Mercury News. As it turned out, Webb’s confidence in his editors had been misplaced. By early 1997, executive editor Jerry Ceppos, who had his own corporate career to worry about, was in retreat.
On May 11, 1997, Ceppos published a front-page column saying the series “fell short of my standards.” He criticized the stories because they “strongly implied CIA knowledge” of Contra connections to U.S. drug dealers who were manufacturing crack cocaine. “We did not have enough proof that top CIA officials knew of the relationship,” Ceppos wrote.
Ceppos was wrong about the proof, of course. At AP, before we published our first Contra-cocaine article in 1985, Barger and I had known that the CIA and Reagan’s White House were aware of the Contra-cocaine problem.
However, Ceppos had recognized that he and his newspaper were facing a credibility crisis brought on by the harsh consensus delivered by the Big Three, a judgment that had quickly solidified into conventional wisdom throughout the major news media and inside Knight-Ridder, Inc., which owned the Mercury News. The only career-saving move – career-saving for Ceppos even if career-destroying for Webb – was to jettison Webb and his journalism.
A ‘Vindication’
The big newspapers and the Contras’ defenders celebrated Ceppos’s retreat as vindication of their own dismissal of the Contra-cocaine stories. In particular, Kurtz seemed proud that his demeaning of Webb now had the endorsement of Webb’s editor.
Ceppos next pulled the plug on the Mercury News’ continuing Contra-cocaine investigation and reassigned Webb to a small office in Cupertino, California, far from his family. Webb resigned from the paper in disgrace.
For undercutting Webb and other Mercury News reporters working on the Contra-cocaine investigation, Ceppos was lauded by the American Journalism Review and was given the 1997 national Ethics in Journalism Award by the Society of Professional Journalists.
While Ceppos won raves, Webb watched his career collapse and his marriage break up. Still, Gary Webb had set in motion internal government investigations that would bring to the surface long-hidden facts about how the Reagan administration had conducted the Contra war.
The CIA published the first part of Inspector General Hitz’s findings on Jan. 29, 1998. Though the CIA’s press release for the report criticized Webb and defended the CIA, Hitz’s Volume One admitted that not only were many of Webb’s allegations true but that he actually understated the seriousness of the Contra-drug crimes and the CIA’s knowledge of them.
Hitz conceded that cocaine smugglers played a significant early role in the Contra movement and that the CIA intervened to block an image-threatening 1984 federal investigation into a San Francisco–based drug ring with suspected ties to the Contras, the so-called “Frogman Case.”
After Volume One was released, I called Webb (whom I had met personally since his series was published). I chided him for indeed getting the story “wrong.” He had understated how serious the problem of Contra-cocaine trafficking had been.
It was a form of gallows humor for the two of us, since nothing had changed in the way the major newspapers treated the Contra-cocaine issue. They focused only on the press release that continued to attack Webb, while ignoring the incriminating information that could be found in the body of the report. All I could do was highlight those admissions at Consortiumnews.com, which sadly had a much, much smaller readership than the Big Three.
Looking the Other Way
The major U.S. news media also looked the other way on other startling disclosures.
On May 7, 1998, for instance, Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, introduced into the Congressional Record a Feb. 11, 1982, letter of understanding between the CIA and the Justice Department. The letter, which had been requested by CIA Director William Casey, freed the CIA from legal requirements that it must report drug smuggling by CIA assets, a provision that covered both the Nicaraguan Contras and the Afghan mujahedeen.
In other words, early in those two covert wars, the CIA leadership wanted to make sure that its geopolitical objectives would not be complicated by a legal requirement to turn in its client forces for drug trafficking.
The next break in the long-running Contra-cocaine cover-up was a report by the Justice Department’s Inspector General Michael Bromwich.
Given the hostile climate surrounding Webb’s series, Bromwich’s report also opened with criticism of Webb. But, like the CIA’s Volume One, the contents revealed new details about government wrongdoing. According to evidence cited by Bromwich, the Reagan administration knew almost from the outset of the Contra war that cocaine traffickers permeated the paramilitary operation. The administration also did next to nothing to expose or stop the crimes.
Bromwich’s report revealed example after example of leads not followed, corroborated witnesses disparaged, official law-enforcement investigations sabotaged, and even the CIA facilitating the work of drug traffickers.
The report showed that the Contras and their supporters ran several parallel drug-smuggling operations, not just the one at the center of Webb’s series. The report also found that the CIA shared little of its information about Contra drugs with law-enforcement agencies and on three occasions disrupted cocaine-trafficking investigations that threatened the Contras.
As well as depicting a more widespread Contra-drug operation than Webb had understood, the Justice Department report provided some important corroboration about a Nicaraguan drug smuggler, Norwin Meneses, who was a key figure in Webb’s series.
Bromwich cited U.S. government informants who supplied detailed information about Meneses’s drug operation and his financial assistance to the Contras. For instance, Renato Pena, a money-and-drug courier for Meneses, said that in the early 1980s the CIA allowed the Contras to fly drugs into the United States, sell them, and keep the proceeds.
Pena, who was the northern California representative for the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN) Contra army, said the drug trafficking was forced on the Contras by the inadequate levels of U.S. government assistance.
DEA Troubles
The Justice Department report also disclosed repeated examples of the CIA and U.S. embassies in Central America discouraging DEA investigations, including one into Contra-cocaine shipments moving through the international airport in El Salvador.
Inspector General Bromwich said secrecy trumped all. “We have no doubt that the CIA and the U.S. Embassy were not anxious for the DEA to pursue its investigation at the airport,” he wrote.
Bromwich also described the curious case of how a DEA pilot helped a CIA asset escape from Costa Rican authorities in 1989 after the man, American farmer John Hull, had been charged in connection with Contra-cocaine trafficking.
Hull’s ranch in northern Costa Rica had been the site of Contra camps for attacking Nicaragua from the south. For years, Contra-connected witnesses also said Hull’s property was used for the transshipment of cocaine en route to the United States, but those accounts were brushed aside by the Reagan administration and disparaged in major U.S. newspapers.
Yet, according to Bromwich’s report, the DEA took the accounts seriously enough to prepare a research report on the evidence in November 1986. In it, one informant described Colombian cocaine off-loaded at an airstrip on Hull’s ranch. The drugs were then concealed in a shipment of frozen shrimp and transported to the United States.
The alleged Costa Rican shipper was Frigorificos de Puntarenas, a firm controlled by Cuban-American Luis Rodriguez. Like Hull, however, Frigorificos had friends in high places. In 1985-86, the State Department had selected the shrimp company to handle $261,937 in non-lethal assistance earmarked for the Contras.
Hull also remained a man with powerful protectors. Even after Costa Rican authorities brought drug charges against him, influential Americans, including Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana, demanded that Hull be let out of jail pending trial. Then, in July 1989 with the help of a DEA pilot – and possibly a DEA agent – Hull managed to fly out of Costa Rica to Haiti and then to the United States. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “John Hull’s Great Escape.”]
Despite these new disclosures, the big newspapers still showed no inclination to read beyond the criticism of Webb in the press release and the executive summary.
Major Disclosures
By fall 1998, Washington was obsessed with President Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, which made it easier to ignore even more stunning Contra-cocaine disclosures in the CIA’s Volume Two, published on Oct. 8, 1998.
In the report, CIA Inspector General Hitz identified more than 50 Contras and Contra-related entities implicated in the drug trade. He also detailed how the Reagan administration had protected these drug operations and frustrated federal investigations throughout the 1980s.
According to Volume Two, the CIA knew the criminal nature of its Contra clients from the start of the war against Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government. The earliest Contra force, called the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (ADREN) or the 15th of September Legion, had chosen “to stoop to criminal activities in order to feed and clothe their cadre,” according to a June 1981 draft of a CIA field report.
According to a September 1981 cable to CIA headquarters, two ADREN members made the first delivery of drugs to Miami in July 1981. ADREN’s leaders included Enrique Bermúdez and other early Contras who would later direct the major Contra army, the CIA-organized FDN which was based in Honduras, along Nicaragua’s northern border.
Throughout the war, Bermúdez remained the top Contra military commander. The CIA later corroborated the allegations about ADREN’s cocaine trafficking, but insisted that Bermúdez had opposed the drug shipments to the United States that went ahead nonetheless.
The truth about Bermúdez’s supposed objections to drug trafficking, however, was less clear. According to Hitz’s Volume One, Bermúdez enlisted Norwin Meneses, a large-scale Nicaraguan cocaine smuggler and a key figure in Webb’s series, to raise money and buy supplies for the Contras.
Volume One had quoted a Meneses associate, another Nicaraguan trafficker named Danilo Blandón, who told Hitz’s investigators that he and Meneses flew to Honduras to meet with Bermúdez in 1982. At the time, Meneses’s criminal activities were well-known in the Nicaraguan exile community. But Bermúdez told the cocaine smugglers that “the ends justify the means” in raising money for the Contras.
After the Bermúdez meeting, Contra soldiers helped Meneses and Blandón get past Honduran police who briefly arrested them on drug-trafficking suspicions. After their release, Blandón and Meneses traveled on to Bolivia to complete a cocaine transaction.
There were other indications of Bermúdez’s drug-smuggling tolerance. In February 1988, another Nicaraguan exile linked to the drug trade accused Bermúdez of participation in narcotics trafficking, according to Hitz’s report. After the Contra war ended, Bermúdez returned to Managua, Nicaragua, where he was shot to death on Feb. 16, 1991. The murder has never been solved.
The Southern Front
Along the Southern Front, the Contras’ military operations in Costa Rica on Nicaragua’s southern border, the CIA’s drug evidence centered on the forces of Edén Pastora, another top Contra commander. But Hitz discovered that the U.S. government may have made the drug situation worse, not better.
Hitz revealed that the CIA put an admitted drug operative — known by his CIA pseudonym “Ivan Gomez” — in a supervisory position over Pastora. Hitz reported that the CIA discovered Gomez’s drug history in 1987 when Gomez failed a security review on drug-trafficking questions.
In internal CIA interviews, Gomez admitted that in March or April 1982, he helped family members who were engaged in drug trafficking and money laundering. In one case, Gomez said he assisted his brother and brother-in-law in transporting cash from New York City to Miami. He admitted that he “knew this act was illegal.”
Later, Gomez expanded on his admission, describing how his family members had fallen $2 million into debt and had gone to Miami to run a money-laundering center for drug traffickers. Gomez said “his brother had many visitors whom [Gomez] assumed to be in the drug trafficking business.” Gomez’s brother was arrested on drug charges in June 1982. Three months later, in September 1982, Gomez started his CIA assignment in Costa Rica.
Years later, convicted drug trafficker Carlos Cabezas alleged that in the early 1980s, Ivan Gomez was the CIA agent in Costa Rica who was overseeing drug-money donations to the Contras. Gomez “was to make sure the money was given to the right people [the Contras] and nobody was taking . . . profit they weren’t supposed to,” Cabezas stated publicly.
But the CIA sought to discredit Cabezas at the time because he had trouble identifying Gomez’s picture and put Gomez at one meeting in early 1982 before Gomez started his CIA assignment.
While the CIA was able to fend off Cabezas’s allegations by pointing to these discrepancies, Hitz’s report revealed that the CIA was nevertheless aware of Gomez’s direct role in drug-money laundering, a fact the agency hid from Sen. Kerry in his 1987 investigation.
Cocaine Coup
There was also more to know about Gomez. In November 1985, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) learned from an informant that Gomez’s two brothers had been large-scale cocaine importers, with one brother arranging shipments from Bolivia’s infamous drug kingpin Roberto Suarez.
Suarez already was known as a financier of right-wing causes. In 1980, with the support of Argentina’s hard-line anticommunist military regime, Suarez bankrolled a coup in Bolivia that ousted the elected left-of-center government. The violent putsch became known as the Cocaine Coup because it made Bolivia the region’s first narco-state.
By protecting cocaine shipments headed north, Bolivia’s government helped transform Colombia’s Medellín cartel from a struggling local operation into a giant corporate-style business for delivering cocaine to the U.S. market.
Flush with cash in the early 1980s, Suarez invested more than $30 million in various right-wing paramilitary operations, including the Contra forces in Central America, according to U.S. Senate testimony by an Argentine intelligence officer, Leonardo Sanchez-Reisse.
In 1987, Sanchez-Reisse said the Suarez drug money was laundered through front companies in Miami before going to Central America. There, other Argentine intelligence officers — veterans of the Bolivian coup — trained the Contras in the early 1980s, even before the CIA arrived to first assist with the training and later take over the Contra operation from the Argentines.
Inspector General Hitz added another piece to the mystery of the Bolivian-Contra connection. One Contra fund-raiser, Jose Orlando Bolanos, boasted that the Argentine government was supporting his Contra activities, according to a May 1982 cable to CIA headquarters. Bolanos made the statement during a meeting with undercover DEA agents in Florida. He even offered to introduce them to his Bolivian cocaine supplier.
Despite all this suspicious drug activity centered around Ivan Gomez and the Contras, the CIA insisted that it did not unmask Gomez until 1987, when he failed a security check and confessed his role in his family’s drug business. The CIA official who interviewed Gomez concluded that “Gomez directly participated in illegal drug transactions, concealed participation in illegal drug transactions, and concealed information about involvement in illegal drug activity,” Hitz wrote.
Protecting Gomez
But senior CIA officials still protected Gomez. They refused to refer the Gomez case to the Justice Department, citing the 1982 agreement that spared the CIA from a legal obligation to report narcotics crimes by people collaborating with the CIA who were not formal agency employees.
Gomez was an independent contractor who worked for the CIA but was not officially on staff. The CIA eased Gomez out of the agency in February 1988, without alerting law enforcement or the congressional oversight committees.
When questioned about the case nearly a decade later, one senior CIA official who had supported the gentle treatment of Gomez had second thoughts. “It is a striking commentary on me and everyone that this guy’s involvement in narcotics didn’t weigh more heavily on me or the system,” the official acknowledged to Hitz’s investigators.
A Medellín drug connection arose in another section of Hitz’s report, when he revealed evidence suggesting that some Contra trafficking may have been sanctioned by Reagan’s NSC. The protagonist for this part of the Contra-cocaine mystery was Moises Nunez, a Cuban-American who worked for Oliver North’s NSC Contra-support operation and for two drug-connected seafood importers, Ocean Hunter in Miami and Frigorificos De Puntarenas in Costa Rica.
Frigorificos De Puntarenas was created in the early 1980s as a cover for drug-money laundering, according to sworn testimony by two of the firm’s principals — Carlos Soto and Medellín cartel accountant Ramon Milian Rodriguez. (It was also the company implicated by a DEA informant in moving cocaine from John Hull’s ranch to the United States.)
Drug allegations were swirling around Moises Nunez by the mid-1980s. Indeed, his operation was one of the targets of my and Barger’s AP investigation in 1985. Finally reacting to these suspicions, the CIA questioned Nunez about his alleged cocaine trafficking on March 25, 1987. He responded by pointing the finger at his NSC superiors.
“Nunez revealed that since 1985, he had engaged in a clandestine relationship with the National Security Council,” Hitz reported, adding: “Nunez refused to elaborate on the nature of these actions, but indicated it was difficult to answer questions relating to his involvement in narcotics trafficking because of the specific tasks he had performed at the direction of the NSC. Nunez refused to identify the NSC officials with whom he had been involved.”
After this first round of questioning, CIA headquarters authorized an additional session, but then senior CIA officials reversed the decision. There would be no further efforts at “debriefing Nunez.”
Hitz noted that “the cable [from headquarters] offered no explanation for the decision” to stop the Nunez interrogation. But the CIA’s Central American Task Force chief Alan Fiers Jr. said the Nunez-NSC drug lead was not pursued “because of the NSC connection and the possibility that this could be somehow connected to the Private Benefactor program [the Contra money handled by North] a decision was made not to pursue this matter.”
Joseph Fernandez, who had been the CIA’s station chief in Costa Rica, confirmed to congressional Iran-Contra investigators that Nunez “was involved in a very sensitive operation” for North’s “Enterprise.” The exact nature of that NSC-authorized activity has never been divulged.
At the time of the Nunez-NSC drug admissions and his truncated interrogation, the CIA’s acting director was Robert Gates, who nearly two decades later became President George W. Bush’s second secretary of defense, a position he retained under President Barack Obama.
Drug Record
The CIA also worked directly with other drug-connected Cuban-Americans on the Contra project, Hitz found. One of Nunez’s Cuban-American associates, Felipe Vidal, had a criminal record as a narcotics trafficker in the 1970s. But the CIA still hired him to serve as a logistics coordinator for the Contras, Hitz reported.
The CIA also learned that Vidal’s drug connections were not only in the past. A December 1984 cable to CIA headquarters revealed Vidal’s ties to Rene Corvo, another Cuban-American suspected of drug trafficking. Corvo was working with Cuban anticommunist Frank Castro, who was viewed as a Medellín cartel representative within the Contra movement.
There were other narcotics links to Vidal. In January 1986, the DEA in Miami seized 414 pounds of cocaine concealed in a shipment of yucca that was going from a Contra operative in Costa Rica to Ocean Hunter, the company where Vidal (and Moises Nunez) worked. Despite the evidence, Vidal remained a CIA employee as he collaborated with Frank Castro’s assistant, Rene Corvo, in raising money for the Contras, according to a CIA memo in June 1986.
By fall 1986, Sen. Kerry had heard enough rumors about Vidal to demand information about him as part of his congressional inquiry into Contra drugs. But the CIA withheld the derogatory information in its files. On Oct. 15, 1986, Kerry received a briefing from the CIA’s Alan Fiers Jr., who didn’t mention Vidal’s drug arrests and conviction in the 1970s.
But Vidal was not yet in the clear. In 1987, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami began investigating Vidal, Ocean Hunter, and other Contra-connected entities. This prosecutorial attention worried the CIA. The CIA’s Latin American division felt it was time for a security review of Vidal. But on Aug. 5, 1987, the CIA’s security office blocked the review for fear that the Vidal drug information “could be exposed during any future litigation.”
As expected, the U.S. Attorney’s Office did request documents about “Contra-related activities” by Vidal, Ocean Hunter, and 16 other entities. The CIA advised the prosecutor that “no information had been found regarding Ocean Hunter,” a statement that was clearly false. The CIA continued Vidal’s employment as an adviser to the Contra movement until 1990, virtually the end of the Contra war.
FDN Connections
Hitz also revealed that drugs tainted the highest levels of the Honduran-based FDN, the largest Contra army. Hitz found that Juan Rivas, a Contra commander who rose to be chief of staff, admitted that he had been a cocaine trafficker in Colombia before the war.
The CIA asked Rivas, known as El Quiche, about his background after the DEA began suspecting that Rivas might be an escaped convict from a Colombian prison. In interviews with CIA officers, Rivas acknowledged that he had been arrested and convicted of packaging and transporting cocaine for the drug trade in Barranquilla, Colombia. After several months in prison, Rivas said, he escaped and moved to Central America, where he joined the Contras.
Defending Rivas, CIA officials insisted that there was no evidence that Rivas engaged in trafficking while with the Contras. But one CIA cable noted that he lived an expensive lifestyle, even keeping a $100,000 Thoroughbred horse at the Contra camp. Contra military commander Bermúdez later attributed Rivas’s wealth to his ex-girlfriend’s rich family. But a CIA cable in March 1989 added that “some in the FDN may have suspected at the time that the father-in-law was engaged in drug trafficking.”
Still, the CIA moved quickly to protect Rivas from exposure and possible extradition to Colombia. In February 1989, CIA headquarters asked that the DEA take no action “in view of the serious political damage to the U.S. Government that could occur should the information about Rivas become public.” Rivas was eased out of the Contra leadership with an explanation of poor health. With U.S. government help, he was allowed to resettle in Miami. Colombia was not informed about his fugitive status.
Another senior FDN official implicated in the drug trade was its chief spokesman in Honduras, Arnoldo Jose “Frank” Arana.
The drug allegations against Arana dated back to 1983 when a federal narcotics task force put him under criminal investigation because of plans “to smuggle 100 kilograms of cocaine into the United States from South America.” On Jan. 23, 1986, the FBI reported that Arana and his brothers were involved in a drug-smuggling enterprise, although Arana was not charged.
Arana sought to clear up another set of drug suspicions in 1989 by visiting the DEA in Honduras with a business associate, Jose Perez. Arana’s association with Perez, however, only raised new alarms. If “Arana is mixed up with the Perez brothers, he is probably dirty,” the DEA said.
Drug Airlines
Through their ownership of an air services company called SETCO, the Perez brothers were associated with Juan Matta-Ballesteros, a major cocaine kingpin connected to the murder of a DEA agent, according to reports by the DEA and U.S. Customs. Hitz reported that someone at the CIA scribbled a note on a DEA cable about Arana stating: “Arnold Arana . . . still active and working, we [CIA] may have a problem.”
Despite its drug ties to Matta-Ballesteros, SETCO emerged as the principal company for ferrying supplies to the Contras in Honduras. During congressional Iran-Contra hearings, FDN political leader Adolfo Calero testified that SETCO was paid from bank accounts controlled by Oliver North. SETCO also received $185,924 from the State Department for ferrying supplies to the Contras in 1986. Furthermore, Hitz found that other air transport companies used by the Contras were implicated in the cocaine trade as well.
Even FDN leaders suspected that they were shipping supplies to Central America aboard planes that might be returning with drugs. Mario Calero, the chief of Contra logistics, grew so uneasy about one air freight company that he notified U.S. law enforcement that the FDN only chartered the planes for the flights south, not the return flights north.
Hitz found that some drug pilots simply rotated from one sector of the Contra operation to another. Donaldo Frixone, who had a drug record in the Dominican Republic, was hired by the CIA to fly Contra missions from 1983 to 1985. In September 1986, however, Frixone was implicated in smuggling 19,000 pounds of marijuana into the United States. In late 1986 or early 1987, he went to work for Vortex, another U.S.-paid Contra supply company linked to the drug trade.
By the time that Hitz’s Volume Two was published in fall 1998, the CIA’s defense against Webb’s series had shrunk to a fig leaf: that the CIA did not conspire with the Contras to raise money through cocaine trafficking. But Hitz made clear that the Contra war took precedence over law enforcement and that the CIA withheld evidence of Contra crimes from the Justice Department, Congress, and even the CIA’s own analytical division.
Besides tracing the evidence of Contra-drug trafficking through the decade-long Contra war, the inspector general interviewed senior CIA officers who acknowledged that they were aware of the Contra-drug problem but didn’t want its exposure to undermine the struggle to overthrow Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government.
According to Hitz, the CIA had “one overriding priority: to oust the Sandinista government. . . . [CIA officers] were determined that the various difficulties they encountered not be allowed to prevent effective implementation of the Contra program.” One CIA field officer explained, “The focus was to get the job done, get the support and win the war.”
Hitz also recounted complaints from CIA analysts that CIA operations officers handling the Contras hid evidence of Contra-drug trafficking even from the CIA’s analysts.
Because of the withheld evidence, the CIA analysts incorrectly concluded in the mid-1980s that “only a handful of Contras might have been involved in drug trafficking.” That false assessment was passed on to Congress and to major news organizations — serving as an important basis for denouncing Gary Webb and his “Dark Alliance” series in 1996.
CIA Admission
Although Hitz’s report was an extraordinary admission of institutional guilt by the CIA, it went almost unnoticed by the big American newspapers.
On Oct. 10, 1998, two days after Hitz’s Volume Two was posted on the CIA’s Web site, the New York Times published a brief article that continued to deride Webb but acknowledged the Contra-drug problem may have been worse than earlier understood. Several weeks later, the Washington Post weighed in with a similarly superficial article. The Los Angeles Times never published a story on the release of Hitz’s Volume Two.
In 2000, the House Intelligence Committee grudgingly acknowledged that the stories about Reagan’s CIA protecting Contra drug traffickers were true. The committee released a report citing classified testimony from CIA Inspector General Britt Snider (Hitz’s successor) admitting that the spy agency had turned a blind eye to evidence of Contra-drug smuggling and generally treated drug smuggling through Central America as a low priority.
“In the end the objective of unseating the Sandinistas appears to have taken precedence over dealing properly with potentially serious allegations against those with whom the agency was working,” Snider said, adding that the CIA did not treat the drug allegations in “a consistent, reasoned or justifiable manner.”
The House committee — then controlled by Republicans — still downplayed the significance of the Contra-cocaine scandal, but the panel acknowledged, deep inside its report, that in some cases, “CIA employees did nothing to verify or disprove drug trafficking information, even when they had the opportunity to do so. In some of these, receipt of a drug allegation appeared to provoke no specific response, and business went on as usual.”
Like the release of Hitz’s report in 1998, the admissions by Snider and the House committee drew virtually no media attention in 2000 — except for a few articles on the Internet, including one at Consortiumnews.com.
Unrepentant Press
Because of this misuse of power by the Big Three newspapers — choosing to conceal their own journalistic failings regarding the Contra-cocaine scandal and to protect the Reagan administration’s image — Webb’s reputation was never rehabilitated.
After his original “Dark Alliance” series was published in 1996, Webb had been inundated with attractive book offers from major publishing houses, but once the vilification began, the interest evaporated. Webb’s agent contacted an independent publishing house, Seven Stories Press, which had a reputation for publishing books that had been censored, and it took on the project.
After Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion was published in 1998, I joined Webb in a few speaking appearances on the West Coast, including one packed book talk at the Midnight Special bookstore in Santa Monica, California. For a time, Webb was treated as a celebrity on the American Left, but that gradually faded.
In our interactions during these joint appearances, I found Webb to be a regular guy who seemed to be holding up fairly well under the terrible pressure. He had landed an investigative job with a California state legislative committee. He also felt some measure of vindication when CIA Inspector General Hitz’s reports came out.
However, Webb never could overcome the pain caused by his betrayal at the hands of his journalistic colleagues, his peers. In the years that followed, Webb was unable to find decent-paying work in his profession — the conventional wisdom remained that he had somehow been exposed as a journalistic fraud. His state job ended; his marriage fell apart; he struggled to pay bills; and he was faced with a move out of a modest rental house near Sacramento, California.
On Dec. 9, 2004, the 49-year-old Webb typed out suicide notes to his ex-wife and his three children; laid out a certificate for his cremation; and taped a note on the door telling movers — who were coming the next morning — to instead call 911. Webb then took out his father’s pistol and shot himself in the head. The first shot was not lethal, so he fired once more.
Even with Webb’s death, the big newspapers that had played key roles in his destruction couldn’t bring themselves to show Webb any mercy. After Webb’s body was found, I received a call from a reporter for the Los Angeles Times who knew that I was one of Webb’s few journalistic colleagues who had defended him and his work.
I told the reporter that American history owed a great debt to Gary Webb because he had forced out important facts about Reagan-era crimes. But I added that the Los Angeles Times would be hard-pressed to write an honest obituary because the newspaper had not published a single word on the contents of Hitz’s final report, which had largely vindicated Webb.
To my disappointment but not my surprise, I was correct. The Los Angeles Times ran a mean-spirited obituary that made no mention of either my defense of Webb, nor the CIA’s admissions in 1998. The obituary was republished in other newspapers, including the Washington Post.
In effect, Webb’s suicide enabled senior editors at the Big Three newspapers to breathe a little easier — one of the few people who understood the ugly story of the Reagan administration’s cover-up of the Contra-cocaine scandal and the U.S. media’s complicity was now silenced.
To this day, none of the journalists or media critics who participated in the destruction of Gary Webb has paid a price for their actions. None has faced the sort of humiliation that Webb had to endure. None had to experience that special pain of standing up for what is best in the profession of journalism — taking on a difficult story that seeks to hold powerful people accountable for serious crimes — and then being vilified by your own colleagues, the people that you expected to understand and appreciate what you had done.
On the contrary, many were rewarded with professional advancement and lucrative careers. For instance, Howard Kurtz still hosts the CNN program, “Reliable Sources,” which lectures journalists on professional standards.
[For more on related topics, see Robert Parry’s Lost History, Secrecy & Privilege and Neck Deep, now available in a three-book set for the discount price of only $29. For details, click here.]
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’ are also available there.

Libya

2011-03-01T18:24:00.000-08:00

Events in Libya are moving very fast, and their outcome is uncertain. "Leader" Muammar Gadaffi is hunkered down in Tripoli, defended by army units from his tribe and mercenaries from black Africa. Watching Col. Muammar Gadaffi deliver a bombastic, defiant speech last week from the ruins of Tripoli's Bab al-Azizia barracks brought me back to 1987 when Libya's leader led me by the hand through the wreckage of his former residence. On 14 April, 1986, US aircraft attacked Libya after a Berlin disco frequented by US soldiers was bombed. US President Ronald Reagan blamed Libya and denounced Gadaffi as the "mad dog of the Middle East." But a defector from Israel's Mossad later claimed the US had been duped by a false flag operation into believing Libya was behind the attack. A 2,000 lb US bomb crashed through the ceiling of Gadaffi's private quarters. He was outside in his trademark tent. But his 2-year old adopted daughter was killed. Some 87 other civilians and a few French diplomats were also killed. Americans thought this raid was dandy. "Why, Mr Eric," a clearly confused Gadaffi plaintively asked me, "why are the Americans trying to kill me?" "Because they think you are funding every kind of anti-western group," I replied. "And they will never forgive you for provoking the rise in Arab oil prices." In those long ago days, Gadaffi, who considered himself a passionate revolutionary, supported every militant group that asked for Libyan help, including Nelson Mandela's African National Congress, various Palestinian groups fighting Israeli occupation, Basque separatists battling Madrid, and the Irish Republican Army. To Washington, Gadaffi was the world's arch "terrorist." After we spent the evening in his colorful Bedouin tent, I had some fun with Gadaffi. "We may bomb you, Leader, but we also think you are the best-dressed Arab leader." Gadaffi, dressed in a custom made, silk Italian jump suit and zippered boots, beamed with pleasure. He asked me where he could get the Ralph Lauren safari jacket I was wearing, adding, "you look very militant, Mr Eric." I could never get a good fix on Muammar Gadaffi. When he seized power way back in 1969, he was young and very handsome, with movie-star good looks, and an ardent reformist. Gadaffi's hero and father figure was Egypt's charismatic Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Subprime Neoconservative Leadership

2008-11-04T08:28:00.000-08:00

Tomgram: The End of a Subprime Administration
Foreclosed: The George W. Bush Story By Tom Engelhardt
They may have been the most disastrous dreamers, the most reckless gamblers, and the most vigorous imperial hucksters and grifters in our history. Selling was their passion. And they were classic American salesmen -- if you're talking about underwater land in Florida, or the Brooklyn Bridge, or three-card monte, or bizarre visions of Iraqi unmanned aerial vehicles armed with chemical and biological weaponry let loose over the U.S., or Saddam Hussein's mushroom clouds rising over American cities, or a full-scale reordering of the Middle East to our taste, or simply eternal global dominance. When historians look back, it will be far clearer that the "commander-in-chief" of a "wartime" country and his top officials were focused, first and foremost, not on the shifting "central theaters" of the Global War on Terror, but on the theater that mattered most to them -- the "home front" where they spent inordinate amounts of time selling the American people a bill of goods. Of his timing in ramping up a campaign to invade Iraq in September 2002, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card infamously explained: "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."
Indeed. From a White House where "victory strategies" meant purely for domestic consumption poured out, to the Pentagon where bevies of generals, admirals, and other high officers were constantly being mustered, not to lead armies but to lead public opinion, their selling focus was total. They were always releasing "new product." And don't forget their own set of soaring inside-the-Beltway fantasies. After all, if a salesman is going to sell you some defective product, it always helps if he can sell himself on it first. And on this score, they were world champs. Because events made it look so foolish, the phrase "shock and awe" that went with the initial attack on Iraq in March 2003 has now passed out of official language and (together with "mission accomplished") into the annals of irony. Back then, though, as bombs and missiles blew up parts of Baghdad -- to fabulous visual effect in that other "theater" of war, television -- the phrase was constantly on official lips and in media reports everywhere. It went hand-in-glove with another curious political phrase: regime change. Given the supposed unique technological proficiency of the U.S. military and its array of "precision" weapons, the warriors of Bushworld convinced themselves that a new era in military affairs had truly dawned. An enemy "regime" could now be taken out -- quite literally and with surgical precision, in its bedrooms, conference rooms, and offices, thanks to those precision weapons delivered long-distance from ship or plane -- without taking out a country. Poof! You only had to say the word and an oppressive regime would be, as it was termed, "decapitated." Its people would then welcome with open arms relatively small numbers of American troops as liberators. It all sounded so good, and high tech, and relatively simple, and casualty averse, and clean as a whistle. Even better, once there had been such a demonstration, a guaranteed "cakewalk" -- as, say, in Iraq -- who would ever dare stand up to American power again? Not only would one hated enemy dictator be dispatched to the dustbin of history, but evildoers everywhere, fearing the Bush equivalent of the wrath of Khan, would be shock-and-awed into submission or quickly dispatched in their own right. In reality (ah, "reality" -- what a nasty word!), the shock-and-awe attacks used on Iraq got not a single leader of the Saddamist regime, not one of that pack of 52 cards (including of course the ace of spades, Saddam Hussein, found in his "spiderhole" so many months later). Iraqi civilians were the ones killed in that precise and shocking moment, while Iraqi society was set on the road to destruction, and the world was not awed. Strangely enough, though, the phrase, once reversed, proved applicable to the Bush administration's seven-year post-9/11 history. They were, in a sense, the awe-and-shock administration. Initially, they were awed by the supposedly singular power of the American military to dominate and transform the planet; then, they were continually shocked and disbelieving when that same military, despite its massive destructive power, turned out to be incapable of doing so, or even of handling two ragtag insurgencies in two weakened countries, one of which, Afghanistan, was among the poorest and least technologically advanced on the planet.

The Theater of War
remarkably short order, historically speaking, the administration's soaring imperial fantasies turned into planetary nightmares. After 9/11, of course, George W. and crew promised Americans the global equivalent -- and Republicans the domestic equivalent -- of a 36,000 stock market and we know just where the stock market is today: only about 27,000 points short of that irreality. Once upon a time, they really did think that, via the U.S. Armed Forces, or, as George W. Bush once so breathlessly put it, "the greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known," they could dominate the planet without significant help from allies or international institutions of any sort. Who else had a shot at it? In the post-Soviet world, who but a leadership backed by the full force of the U.S. military could possibly be a contender for the leading role in this epic movie? Who else could even turn out for a casting call? Impoverished Russia? China, still rebuilding its military and back then considered to have a host of potential problems? A bunch of terrorists? I mean… come on! As they saw it, the situation was pretty basic. In fact, it gave the phrase "power politics" real meaning. After all, they had in their hands the reins attached to the sole superpower on this small orb. And wasn't everyone -- at least, everyone they cared to listen to, at least Charles Krauthammer and the editorial page of the Washington Post -- saying no less? I mean, what else would you do, if you suddenly, almost miraculously (after an election improbably settled by the Supreme Court), found yourself in sole command of the globe's only "hyperpower," the only sheriff on planet Earth, the New Rome. To make matters more delicious, in terms of getting just what you wanted, those hands were on those reins right after "the Pearl Harbor of the twenty-first century," when Americans were shocked and awed and terrified enough that anything-goes seemed a reasonable response? It might have gone to anyone's head in imperial Washington at that moment, but it went to their heads in such a striking way. After all, theirs was a plan -- labeled in 2002 the Bush Doctrine -- of global domination conceptually so un-American that, in my childhood, the only place you would have heard it was in the mouths of the most evil, snickering imperial Japanese, Nazi, or Soviet on-screen villains. And yet, in their moment of moments, it just rolled right out of their heads and off their tongues -- and they were proud of it. Here's a question for 2009 you don't have to answer: What should the former "new Rome" be called now? That will, of course, be someone else's problem.

The Cast of Characters
And what a debacle the Bush Doctrine proved to be. What a legacy the legacy President and his pals are leaving behind. A wrecked economy, deflated global stock markets, collapsing banks and financial institutions, soaring unemployment, a smashed Republican Party, a bloated Pentagon overseeing a strained, overstretched military, enmired in an incoherent set of still-expanding wars gone sour, a network of secret prisons, as well as Guantanamo, that "jewel in the crown" of Bush's Bermuda Triangle of injustice, and all the grim practices that went with those offshore prisons, including widespread torture and abuse, kidnapping, assassination, and the disappearing of prisoners (once associated only with South America dictatorships and military juntas). They headed a government that couldn't shoot straight or plan ahead or do anything halfway effectively, an administration that emphasized "defense" -- or "homeland security" as it came to be called in their years -- above all else; yet they were always readying themselves for the last battle, and so were caught utterly, embarrassingly unready for 19 terrorists with box cutters, a hurricane named Katrina, and an arcane set of Wall Street derivatives heading south. As the supposed party of small government, they succeeded mainly in strangling civilian services, privatizing government operations into the hands of crony corporations, and bulking up state power in a massive way -- making an already vast intelligence apparatus yet larger and more labyrinthine, expanding spying and surveillance of every kind, raising secrecy to a first principle, establishing a new U.S. military command for North America, endorsing a massive Pentagon build-up, establishing a second Defense Department labeled the Department of Homeland Security with its own mini-homeland-security-industrial complex, evading checks and powers in the Constitution whenever possible, and claiming new powers for a "unitary executive" commander-in-chief presidency. No summary can quite do justice to what the administration "accomplished" in these years. If there was, however, a single quote from the world of George W. Bush that caught the deepest nature of the president and his core followers, it was offered by an "unnamed administration official" -- often assumed to be Karl Rove -- to journalist Ron Suskind back in October 2004:
"He] said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors.... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

"We create our own reality… We're history's actors."
It must for years have seemed that way and everything about the lives they lived only reinforced that impression. After all, the President himself, as so many wrote, lived in a literal bubble world. Those who met him were carefully vetted; audiences were screened so that no one who didn't fawn over him got near him; and when he traveled through foreign cities, they were cleared of life, turned into the equivalent of Potemkin villages, while he and his many armored cars and Blackhawk helicopters, his huge contingent of Secret Service agents and White House aides, his sniffer dogs and military sharpshooters, his chefs and who knows what else passed through. Of course, the President had been in a close race with the reality principle (which, in his case, was the principle of failure) all his life -- and whenever reality nipped at his heels, his father's boys stepped in and whisked him off stage. He got by at his prep school, Andover, and then at Yale, a c-level legacy student and, appropriately enough when it came to sports, a cheerleader and, at Yale, a party animal as well as the president of the hardest drinking fraternity on campus. He was there in the first place only because of who he wasn't (or rather who his relations were). Faced with the crises of the Vietnam era, he joined the Texas Air National Guard and more or less went missing in action. Faced with life, he became a drunk. Faced with business, he failed repeatedly and yet, thanks to his dad's friends, became a multi-millionaire in the process. He was supported, cosseted, encouraged, and finally -- to use an omnipresent word of our moment -- bailed out. The first MBA president was a business bust. A certain well-honed, homey congeniality got him to the governorship and then to the presidency of the United States without real accomplishments. If there ever was a case for not voting for the guy you'd most like to "have a beer with," this was it. On that pile of rubble at Ground Zero on September 14, 2001, with a bullhorn in his hands and various rescuers shouting, "USA! USA!" he genuinely found his "calling" as the country's cheerleader-in-chief (as he had evidently found his religious calling earlier in life). He not only took the job seriously, he visibly loved it. He took a childlike pleasure in being in the "theater" of war. He was thrilled when some of the soldiers who captured Saddam Hussein in that "spiderhole" later presented him with the dictator's pistol. ("'He really liked showing it off,' says a... visitor to the White House who has seen the gun. 'He was really proud of it.'") He was similarly thrilled, on a trip to Baghdad in 2007, to meet the American pilot "whose plane's missiles killed Iraq's Al Qaeda leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi" and "returned to Washington in a buoyant mood." While transforming himself into the national cheerleader-in-chief, he even kept "his own personal scorecard for the war" in a desk drawer in the Oval Office -- photos with brief biographies and personality sketches of leading al-Qaeda figures, whose faces could be satisfyingly crossed out when killed or captured. He clearly adored it when he got to dress up, whether in a flight suit landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier in May 2003, or in front of hoo-aahing crowds of soldiers wearing a specially tailored military-style jacket with "George W. Bush, Commander In Chief" hand-stitched across the heart. As earlier in life, he was supported (Karl Rove), enabled (Condoleezza Rice), cosseted (various officials), and so became "the decider," a willing figurehead (as he had been, for instance, when he was an "owner" of the Texas Rangers), manipulated by his co-president Dick Cheney. In these surroundings, he was able to take war play to an imperial level. In the end, however, this act of his life, too, could lead nowhere but to failure. As it happened, reality possessed its own set of shock-and-awe weaponry. Above all, reality was unimpressed with history's self-proclaimed "actors," working so hard on the global stage to create their own reality. When it came to who really owned what, it turned out that reality owned the works and that possession was indeed nine-tenths of one law that even George Bush's handlers and his fervent neocon followers couldn't suspend.

Exit Stage Right
The results were sadly predictable. The bubble world of George W. Bush was bound to be burst. Based on fantasies, false promises, lies, and bait-and-switch tactics, it was destined for foreclosure. At home and abroad, after all, it had been created using the equivalent of subprime mortgages and the result, unsurprisingly, was a dismally subprime administration. Now, of course, the bill collector is at the door and the property -- the USA -- is worth a good deal less than on November 4, 2000. George W. Bush is a discredited president; his job approval ratings could hardly be lower; his bubble world gone bust. Nonetheless, let's remember one other theme of his previous life. Whatever his failures, Bush always walked away from disastrous dealings enriched, while others were left holding the bag. Don't imagine for a second that the equivalent isn't about to repeat itself. He will leave a country functionally under the gun of foreclosure, a world far more aflame and dangerous than the one he faced on entering the Oval Office. But he won't suffer. He will have his new house in Dallas (not to speak of the "ranch" in Crawford) and his more than $200 million presidential "library" and "freedom institute" at Southern Methodist University; and then there's always that 20% of America -- they know who they are -- who think his presidency was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Believe me, 20% of America is more than enough to pony up spectacular sums, once Bush takes to the talk circuit. As the president himself put it enthusiastically,"'I'll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol' coffers.' With assets that have been estimated as high as nearly $21 million, Mr. Bush added, 'I don't know what my dad gets -- it's more than 50-75' thousand dollars a speech, and 'Clinton's making a lot of money.'" This is how a legacy-student-turned-president fails upward. Every disaster leaves him better off. The same can't be said for the country or the world, saddled with his "legacy." Still, his administration has been foreclosed. Perhaps there's ignominy in that. Now, the rest of us need to get out the brooms and start sweeping the stables.

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the American Age of Denial. The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), a collection of some of the best pieces from his site and an alternative history of the mad Bush years, has recently been published. To listen to a podcast in which he discusses Bush's record abroad, click here.

Georgia: McCain's Lost War?

2008-08-15T13:28:00.001-07:00

Bank analyst forecast Georgian crisis 2 days early
Thu Aug 14, 2008 1:12pm EDT
By Guy Faulconbridge MOSCOW, Aug 14 (Reuters)

The outbreak of war between Georgia and Russia shocked most of the world last week, but an investment bank analyst predicted it two days in advance

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili sent troops into the breakaway, pro-Russian region of South Ossetia on Aug. 7, on the eve of the Beijing Olympic Games, and Russia responded with overwhelming military force.Geoff Smith, a Kiev-based analyst for Renaissance Capital investment bank, had anticipated the Georgian move with uncanny prescience in an e-mail two days earlier to a fellow strategist."So whaddaya think? I say Saakashvili is going to 'restore the territorial integrity of Georgia' five minutes before the opening ceremony starts in Beijing and dare the Russians to invade while the games are on?" the note said.Reuters has seen a copy of the e-mail and confirmed its validity with both the sender and recipient of the message.The Kremlin swiftly asserted its vastly superior military might and thousands of Russian troops pushed out Georgian troops from the rebel region. Russian units are still operating inside Georgia proper.Russian sovereign Eurobond spreads, a measure of investment risk, widened on the hostilities, and shares tumbled."It was just intuition," Smith said by telephone. "I said nothing about the possible Russian response, but if you had asked me I would say that Moscow could not have taken it lying down," Smith said. Explaining his reasoning, the former journalist said the upcoming presidential election in the United States could have played a role in Saakashvili's decision to send troops into South Ossetia."Certainly the next White House will not be as supportive of Saakashvili as this one and so if Saakashvili wanted to reunite Georgia he really had to do it this year and he was probably hoping the Olympic Games gave him the right cover," he said. He refused to forecast how the crisis would end.

http://www.reuters.com/article/asiaCrisis/idUSLE696364

McCain Talked With Georgia President On The Same Day McCain Aide Sealed Georgia Lobbying Contract
By Andrew Tilghman - August 13, 2008, 12:11PM
Randy Scheunemann earned about $70,000 serving as Sen. John McCain's top foreign policy adviser between the January 2007 and May 15, 2008. During the same period, the government of Georgia paid his firm $290,000 in lobbying fees. Today's Washington Post reports a stark illustration of the conflict of interest that Scheunemann faced while advising McCain on foreign policy matters related to the former Soviet Republic and also working for the Georgia embassy. On April 17, McCain got on the phone with Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili about Russian efforts to gain leverage over two of Georgia's troubled provinces. That same day, McCain issued a public statement condemning Russia and expressing strong support for the Georgian position. And also on that same day, Georgia signed a new, $200,000 lobbying contract with Scheunemann's firm, Orion Strategies, according to the Post. [McCain Campaign spokesman Brian] Rogers said Orion's representation of Georgia had no bearing on McCain's decision to speak with Saakashvili in April. "The Embassy of Georgia requested the call because of Georgian concerns over recent Russian actions dealing with South Ossetia and Abkhazia," he said.The McCain campaign said Scheunemann has not received any payments from his lobbying firm since May 15 -- a few weeks after the Georgia contract was signed -- when the campaign imposed strict new restrictions on lobbying by campaign staffers. And the campaign notes that Scheunemann de-registered as a lobbyist for Georgia in March. But Scheunemann remains owner of the firm, according to the Wall Street Journal. It's not a big firm -- essentially including only one other person, Scheunemann's partner, Mike Mitchell. The firm has lobbied McCain's senate office a lot over the past few years. Orion reports making at least 71 phone calls to McCain and his staffers since 2004 to lobby on behalf of foreign clients, including Georgia.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_talked_with_georgia_pres.php

The Military Murder of LaVena Johnson

2008-07-31T17:35:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Slc552ScRg

PFC LaVena Johnson Was Raped, Beaten, Set On Fire And Worse - Army Calls It Suicide

By: Logan Murphy @ 9:28 AM - PDT Nicole and I have both written posts about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of PFC LaVena Johnson, and Democracy Now! had a heartbreaking interview with her family last week. LaVena’s family has worked hard to find the truth about her death and have finally had a breakthrough in the case. Unfortunately, the new details they uncovered are so disturbing that they could potentially make the Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch stories pale in comparison. The above video from Cenk of The Young Turks captures my exact feelings about this horrific case. What you’re about to read will sicken and enrage you. The Army claims the 5’1” African-American soldier from North County died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound with a rifle on July 19, 2005. Her father, John H. Johnson, Ph.D. of Florissant, said color photos and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the military suggest otherwise. “Our worst fears were substantiated when we started going through information from the Army,” Johnson said. He said the pictures and documents from the incident proved that his daughter had been brutalized - raped, beaten, shot and set on fire.

“Someone poured lye in her vagina to destroy evidence,” her father said. “Her body was dumped in a dirty, filthy contractor’s tent. Read on…

This was not a suicide. Contact your representatives in the House and Senate to demand a full scale Congressional investigation begin immediately. This crime and obvious cover up cannot go unpunished.
BREAKING: The House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs is holding a hearing now on Sexual Assault in the Military. You can watch the live stream here.

Afghan Karma & Rambo III

2008-07-26T00:39:00.000-07:00

Seth Colter Walls
walls@huffingtonpost.com HuffPost Reporting From DC

Brzezinski: Surge In Afghanistan Risky, Some McCain Backers Want World War IV

All of a sudden, everyone seems to be in favor of sending more troops to Afghanistan. As Barack Obama encourages Europeans to dispatch more NATO forces and John McCain says that U.S. troops could be sent in greater numbers, the idea that a bigger military footprint is needed has become something of a consensus in the political mainstream.

But Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski is not on board -- though it's not the first time President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser has cast a skeptic's eye on the usefulness of dispatching great numbers of troops to the country. In an famous 1998 interview with France's Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski admitted his own role in funding Afghanistan's Mujahadeen in 1979, thereby "increasing the probability" that the Soviets would invade a tough, demoralizing, mountainous theater for combat.

And it's with a similar perspective that Brzezinski now doubts the that the answer to what ails Afghanistan is more troops. "I think we're literally running the risk of unintentionally doing what the Russians did. And that, if it happens, would be a tragedy," Brzezinski told the Huffington Post on Friday. "When we first went into Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban, we were actually welcomed by an overwhelming majority of Afghans. They did not see us as invaders, as they saw the Soviets."

However, Brzezinski noted that just as the Soviets were able to delude themselves that they had a loyal army of communist-sympathizers who would transform the country, the U.S.-led forces may now be making similar mistakes. He said that the conduct of military operations "with little regard for civilian casualties" may accelerate the negative trend in local public opinion regarding the West's role. "It's just beginning, but it's significant," Brzezinski said.

His own program for improving the state of affairs in Afghanistan -- where U.S. casualties have surpassed those in Iraq for two months now -- revolves around pragmatism. He believes Europe should bribe Afghan farmers not to produce poppies used for heroin since "it all ends up in Europe." Moreover, he thinks the tribal warlords can be bought off with bribes, with the endgame being the isolation of Al-Qaeda from a Taliban that is "not a united force, not a world-oriented terrorist movement, but a real Afghan phenomenon."

Brzezinski, who has endorsed Obama, was far more critical of a few figures now surrounding McCain, who he suggested were pushing the presumptive GOP nominee towards a radical foreign policy on issues such as Iran.
"Well, if McCain is president and if his Secretary of State is Joe Lieberman and his Secretary of Defense is [Rudolph] Giuliani, we will be moving towards the World War IV that they have been both favoring and predicting," he said, calling that an "appalling concept" (and adding that by their lights, the Cold War counted as World War III). "So it depends on who are the principal officers. If it's [Richard] Armitage, or if it were to be Brent Scowcroft, I think it would be very different."

Asked who he would like to see in a potential Obama cabinet, Brzezinski said: "I think [Sen. Chuck] Hagel. I would like to see a bipartisan cabinet. I think we need one very badly -- and we did well in the Cold War when we had one. I would say Hagel and [Sen. Dick] Lugar would be very good Republicans [for Obama]." He also cited Sen. Joe Biden as a potential Secretary of State, in which case it would also be possible to "keep [Secretary of Defense Bob] Gates in the job for a few months."

Brzezinski said such a cabinet would be an important step in redressing the increased partisanship of foreign affairs in recent years, adding: "I think there is a tendency, because of the very complexity of the issues, for solutions to become polarized and more extreme. ... Republicans move toward neocon-ish formulas, and Democrats [follow] idealistically escapist formulas. In either case you don't end up with the necessary mix of idealism and realism."

2008 Global Recession-Depression

2008-07-08T10:49:00.000-07:00

BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS

78th Annual Report78th Annual Report 2007/08: an overview
30 June 2008

Chapter I: Introduction: the unsustainable has run its course
After a number of years of strong global growth, low inflation and stable financial markets, the situation deteriorated rapidly in the period under review. Most notable was the onset of turmoil in the US market for subprime mortgages, which rapidly affected many other financial markets and eventually called into question the adequacy of capital at a number of large US and European banks. At the same time, US growth slowed markedly, reflecting setbacks in the housing market, while global inflation rose significantly under the particular influence of higher commodity prices. This sudden change in financial conditions was blamed by some on shortcomings in the extension of the long-standing originate-to-distribute model to new mortgage products in recent years. Others, however, noted that the sudden deterioration in both financial and macroeconomic conditions looked more like a typical “bust” after a credit “boom”. Indeed, several factors seem to support this second hypothesis: the previous rapid growth of global monetary and credit aggregates; an extended period of low real interest rates; the unusually high price of many assets (both financial and real); and the way in which spending patterns in different countries (the United States and China in particular) reflected their different stages of financial development (encouraging consumption and investment respectively). While central banks in all the major financial centres took action to reliquefy financial markets, the setting of policy rates diverged markedly in light of domestic macroeconomic circumstances. Some central banks were more concerned about actual inflation and raised policy rates, whereas others focused on the disinflationary pressures likely to emerge as growth slowed, and lowered policy rates instead.
Chapter II: The global economy
The global economy has slowed since the second half of 2007 against the backdrop of the financial turmoil and a deepening US downturn. At the same time, global inflation has risen, led by rapid increases in prices of energy and key food items. The current consensus view is still that the global economy will slow only modestly further in 2008. Developments up to the first quarter have been broadly consistent with this view as growth in the euro area, Japan and major emerging market economies continued to be strong. Unfolding developments at the core of the global financial system have, however, also created great uncertainty about future economic prospects. Banks in several advanced industrial economies have been tightening lending standards, and thus a generalised squeeze in the availability of credit remains a distinct possibility, with potentially more severe implications for demand than are reflected in consensus forecasts. These developments have been compounded by the recent rapid rise in oil prices and increased inflation expectations in a number of major economies. The extent to which households with overstretched balance sheets in the United States and some other advanced industrial economies will have to retrench in the face of these negative shocks is hard to predict. While a substantial rise in US household saving could bring about a further sizeable reduction in the US current account deficit, it would do so at the price of weakening demand in the rest of the world. At the same time, inflation risks are greater than they have been for many years.
Chapter III: Emerging market economies
Growth in emerging market economies (EMEs) last year once again significantly exceeded that in the rest of the world. Foreign currency inflows were large, reflecting continued growth in current account surpluses and capital inflows in 2007. Nevertheless, the potential knock on effects of financial market turmoil in the major centres increased the risk of a slowdown in EMEs. At the same time, recent increases in headline inflation have caused inflation targets to be breached in many EMEs, reflecting the impact of steep increases in oil and food prices. As in the advanced industrial economies, these conflicting forces have created a major dilemma for monetary policy. Efforts to resist currency appreciation have introduced additional complications, having been associated with a sharp increase in foreign reserves and in credit growth in a number of EMEs.
Developments in the advanced industrial economies could also pose major challenges. First, a pronounced slowdown in the United States would hurt the EMEs which, although remarkably resilient so far, still depend significantly on external demand. Second, tighter conditions in global financial markets could constrain EMEs with large current account deficits, particularly those relying on more volatile portfolio financing. Countries heavily dependent on cross-border bank borrowing could also be especially vulnerable.
Chapter IV: Monetary policy in the advanced industrial economies
Monetary policy in the advanced industrial economies faced two conflicting challenges during the period under review. On the one hand, tensions in financial markets threatened to spill over into the real economy by way of tighter credit conditions and a loss in confidence. On the other hand, inflationary pressures that stemmed from rising commodity prices, together with high capacity utilisation and tight labour markets in many economies, threatened to feed into longer-term inflation expectations. Differences in the manifestation of these challenges across countries and regions can explain, at least in part, why central banks dealt with them in different ways. For example, the Federal Reserve reacted forcefully by cutting its policy rate from 5.25% to 2%, whereas the ECB and the Bank of Japan kept their policy rates unchanged. Changes in interest rates were only one measure through which central banks responded to the dislocation in financial markets. Even before the turbulence led to any changes in policy targets, central banks in several countries had adjusted their operations in a number of extraordinary and unprecedented ways to keep reference rates near targets and to provide financing in markets where liquidity had evaporated. The various types of operations and the reasoning behind them are discussed in the final section of the chapter.
Chapter V: Foreign exchange markets
Foreign exchange market volatility picked up sharply in the latter half of 2007 and has remained at elevated levels since. This was associated with a faster rate of decline of the US dollar as well as a substantial appreciation of the euro, yen and Swiss franc. As carry trades became less attractive, expected growth differentials became more of a focal point for market sentiment than prevailing levels of interest rates. While exchange rate policies continued to shape the behaviour of some emerging market currencies, developments in commodity prices and specific trends in capital flows also exerted a considerable influence on exchange rates. Notwithstanding some significant exchange rate movements and tensions in certain foreign exchange swap and cross-currency swap markets, foreign exchange spot markets generally continued to function smoothly throughout the period of higher volatility. From a longer-term perspective, there have been a number of notable developments that could potentially have a bearing on the resilience of foreign exchange markets. These include higher turnover, greater diversity in foreign exchange market activity and improvements in the risk management infrastructure. While generally positive, it is possible that the full implications of these developments for market dynamics at times of stress have not yet become apparent. It is important, therefore, to sustain the impetus for better risk management practices in foreign exchange markets going forward.
Chapter VI: Financial markets
During the period from June 2007 to mid-May 2008, concerns over losses on US subprime mortgage loans escalated into widespread financial stress. What initially appeared to be a contained problem quickly spread across other credit segments and broader financial markets to the point where sizeable parts of the financial system became largely dysfunctional. Surging demand for liquidity, coupled with growing concerns about counterparty risk, led to unprecedented pressures in major interbank markets, while bond yields in advanced industrial economies tumbled as investors sought safe havens amid fears that economic growth would weaken. Equity markets in advanced industrial countries were also weak, with financial shares selling off particularly sharply. A brighter spot was emerging financial markets, which in contrast to previous episodes of broad-based asset market weakness proved to be more resilient than those in the advanced industrial economies. The financial market turmoil unfolded in six stages, starting in mid-June 2007: (i) a dramatic widening of spreads on subprime mortgage products following large-scale rating downgrades on mortgage-backed securities and the closure of a number of hedge funds with subprime exposure; (ii) the extension of the sell-off to a wide variety of credit and other markets from mid-July, including structured products more generally; (iii) the expansion of the turmoil into short-term credit and, particularly, interbank money markets from end-July; (iv) broader problems for the financial sector from mid-October, including for companies acting as financial guarantors; (v) increasingly dysfunctional markets, against the backdrop of a marked worsening of the US macroeconomic outlook from early 2008, accompanied by rising fears about systemic risks which caused spreads of even the highest-quality assets to move out to unusually wide levels; (vi) recovery, except in the interbank term market, in the wake of the Federal Reserve-facilitated takeover of a troubled US investment bank in March 2008.
Chapter VII: The financial sector in the advanced industrialised economies
Several years of growth and enhanced profitability for financial firms came to an abrupt halt during the period under review as strains stemming primarily from exposures to residential real estate spread throughout the financial system. What had started as a problem specific to the US subprime mortgage market became a source of outsize losses for financial firms worldwide on their holdings of related securities. Uncertainty about the size and distribution of losses was exacerbated by the complexity of the new structures used in the securitisation process. Retrenchment from risk-taking led to illiquidity, exposing weaknesses in the funding arrangements of many financial firms. Indeed, the situation was punctuated by the near failure of sizeable financial firms, prompting intervention by the public sector to avert potential systemic repercussions from a disorderly collapse. With many financial institutions nursing weakened balance sheets, even as the macroeconomic environment continues to worsen, a turn in the credit cycle seems likely to imply persistent headwinds for economic activity. How the situation will evolve depends critically on the dynamic interactions between the financial sector and the macroeconomy. Reduced credit availability, due to efforts by the financial sector to preserve its capital base, could prolong the period of weak profitability by affecting aggregate spending, economic activity and asset quality. These effects could also be transmitted across borders if weakened banking systems tend to cut back on their international exposures. Beyond the cyclical implications, this period of intense stress also heralds some structural shifts. Financial firms are revisiting assumptions that supported a move towards a business model focused on origination and distribution of loans through securitisation. At the same time, policymakers are reviewing aspects of the prudential framework that failed to perform as intended.
Chapter VIII: Conclusion: the difficult task of damage control
In the aftermath of a long credit-driven boom, it would not be surprising to see turmoil in financial markets, slowing real growth and temporarily rising inflation. The crucial questions at the present juncture have to do with the severity of these individual trends as they now appear and how they might interact. While difficult to predict, their interaction does appear to point to a deeper and more protracted global downturn than the consensus view seems to expect. At the same time, inflationary forces, particularly in emerging market economies, could also prove unexpectedly strong and persistent. A major factor in inflation prospects everywhere is likely to be the behaviour of wages, but in some countries the effect of a depreciating exchange rate on domestic prices could also play an unwelcome role. With inflation a clear and present threat, and with real policy rates in most countries very low by historical standards, a global bias towards monetary tightening would seem appropriate. That said, the circumstances of different countries, both actual and prospective, currently rule out a "one size fits all" response. Moreover, should the global economy slow sharply and inflationary pressures recede, the bias to tightening would evidently also be reduced. In the current and prospective environment, it should nonetheless be borne in mind that the effectiveness of a lowering of policy rates might be significantly reduced in the aftermath of a credit-induced spending boom. In view of the potential negative side effects of such a policy, not least the risk of encouraging further financial imbalances and misallocations of real resources, complementary policies might be envisaged to avoid overburdening monetary easing. Expansionary fiscal policy could have some merit, but in many countries current debt levels mean there is little room for manoeuvre. Steps to recognise and deal with losses and debt overhang problems, in a timely and orderly way, and subject to conditionality, must then be a high priority.
Perhaps the principal conclusion to be drawn from today's policy challenges is that it would have been better to avoid the build-up of credit excesses in the first place. In future, this could be done through the establishment of a new macrofinancial stability framework, which would call for both monetary and macroprudential policies to "lean against the wind" of the credit cycle. Recognising that cycles can be attenuated but not eliminated, a number of preparatory steps are also suggested that would allow periods of financial turmoil or crisis to be more effectively managed.
Organisation, governance and activities
This chapter provides an overview of the internal organisation and governance of the Bank for International Settlements. It also reviews the activities of the Bank, and of the international groups it hosts, over the past financial year. These activities focus on promoting cooperation among central banks and other financial authorities, and on providing financial services to central bank customers. Many of the Bank's activities were refocused in the second half of the year to deal with the financial market turmoil that emerged in August 2007. In addition to an acceleration and modification of committees' work plans, other notable responses to the turmoil were: a special meeting of central bank Governors to discuss the underlying causes and potential economic consequences of the turmoil; more frequent and detailed discussions among central bankers and financial market participants more broadly, facilitated by the BIS and the committees it hosts; increased research devoted to the causes and policy implications of the turmoil; publication of information on monetary policy frameworks to complement central banks' market operations, with a view to enhancing transparency and the understanding of central bank actions; initiatives by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision to help make the banking system more resilient to financial shocks; and close cooperation with other organisations following the turmoil, in particular support for the Financial Stability Forum's working groups on enhancing market and institutional resilience. Furthermore, the BIS took a number of measures in its banking and risk management activities to address the challenges that have emerged as a result of the financial turmoil. The Bank's balance sheet grew to SDR 311 billion (USD 511 billion) at end-March 2008, representing a year-on-year increase of 15%. Some SDR 236 billion (USD 388 billion) of official foreign exchange reserves are deposited with the BIS, around 6% of the world's total. Net profits for the Bank's 78th financial year amounted to SDR 545 million (USD 847 million), compared with SDR 619 million (USD 920 million) in the preceding year.

The Last Empire

2008-07-02T12:37:00.000-07:00

Very interesting look at the decline and fall of Pax Americana...

Both George Bush and Dick Cheney have emphatically proclaimed the American Way of Life as “non-negotiable.” As hard as it may be for the feeble-minded, deluded, conscienceless, or hopelessly addicted to grasp, Mother Nature and billions of human beings are going to force us to the bargaining table. We can kick, scream, stomp our feet, and hold our breath all we want, but our abhorrent mode of existence is going down. Aside from the fact that they are utterly unsustainable, why is it such a certainty that American Capitalism, consumerism, militarism, and the myriad associated ills that exist to maintain our obscene lifestyle are a house of cards on the verge of collapse?

Quite simple really. With our overwhelming wealth, power, and military firepower, the United States exercises virtual hegemony over the globe. Granted our influence is waning, but we still call most of the shots. As lord and master of the planet, we are doing a miserable job. Emotionally infantile, we have a sense of entitlement that dwarfs Mt. Everest, we are absolutely certain that we are center of the universe, and we throw incredibly destructive tantrums when we don’t get our way, the American Way that is. We are massive toddlers inflicting our version of the “terrible twos” on the world. Were we not wielding such a massive cudgel, our childishness would be laughable. Under our “good stewardship,” as our current unitary executive loves to call it, the world is careening down the highway at break-neck speed with an infant at the wheel. And if he crashes before an adult can wrest control from him, we’re looking at a major accident with multiple fatalities. We’ve already pushed the world to the verge of economic collapse, the brink of starvation, the initiation of perpetual war, and impending environmental disaster.

Collectively, we act without conscience or concern for the consequences of our actions. The American Way of Life is “all about me and to hell with everyone else.” We revere narcissism, hyper-individualism, greed, wealth, and status as virtues. Becoming a rich, acquisitive careerist by clawing one’s way to the top of the hierarchy through deceit, betrayal, sycophancy, and whoring oneself out in any way imaginable is enshrined as the penultimate achievement in our sewer of a society. Contrary to the common misconception, the psychological umbilical cord between our mothers and us is severed at a very young age. Nearly the instant we are able to intellectualize we drop mom like a hot potato and become psychically parasitic, our hosts being those ubiquitous devices known as televisions.

When we were in the womb, our mothers’ rich and nurturing blood flowed through our veins, quite literally providing the essence of our physical being. Fast forward a few years. Our psychic umbilical cord detaches from mom and is immediately seduced to fuse itself to that seemingly innocent yet deeply nefarious pusher of mind crack. In stark contrast to our mother’s wholesome blood that nourished us in a way that ensured healthy physical growth, the rancid filth we derive from television cripples and malforms our psyches in profound and perverse ways. Planned or not, television has become the power elite’s primary weapon in the daily propaganda war they wage to maintain the American Way of Life, furiously beating down any and all challengers. Calling the content of television “programming” is quite fitting. Through our addiction to pixilated images, the lords and masters of American Capitalism manipulate us into participating in the banality of evil without giving it a first thought, let alone a second one. Much like the Leatherman, TV is an incredibly multi-faceted tool that enables the ruling elites in the US to hone the masses into the infantilized little sociopaths they need to man the bulwarks of American Capitalism, spreading our “corporatocracy and freedom from the pangs of conscience and critical thought” the world over.

If you don’t know the stats, you’ve been somnambulating, but here are a few:
1. We are 5% of the population and siphon off 30% of the world’s goodies, while 35,000 people starve to death each day.2. We, the land of the free, exercise a higher degree of social control than even those “tyrants” in China and Russia. We have the world’s largest prison population, many of whom are non-violent drug offenders. And then there’s our clever way of imposing our agenda in Latin America via the “War on Drugs…..”3. We lost about 500,000 people in WWII while Russia lost over 20 million yet we arrogantly boast that WE “defeated fascism.” And that’s not to mention the fact that many of our beloved capitalists, including members of the Bush dynasty, supported Hitler until they faced potential criminal prosecution.4. We have staged coups and incursions the world over (our interventions are far too numerous to document in this dispatch, but visit this site to familiarize yourself with the reach of our malevolent imperialist tentacles: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Foreign_Policy/US_ForeignPolicy.html)5. Ironically, we justify our trillion dollar a year military budget by waging wars against nations with phantom weapons of mass destruction–while we are the only nation to have deployed such weapons. Ask Japan about the devastating impact.6. We pour billions of dollars into the support of those miserable Zionist squatters in Palestine because a very small percentage of our population (which has very deep pockets, a strangle-hold on mass media, and a juggernaut lobbying organization) has many of us brain-washed into believing “poor little Israel” is fighting for its very existence—when the reality is that it has a more formidable military than all of its alleged threats combined and has ruthlessly brutalized the Palestinians like the terrorist state that it is.7. We slaughtered over two million Vietnamese in an attempt to keep the world safe for capitalism and are poised to consider putting one of the perpetrators in the White House.8. We have murdered untold millions of Iraqis since the Gulf War via invasion, brutal economic sanctions, fomenting civil war and chaos, illegal occupation, and destruction of infrastructure. And neither of the performers in the theater of the absurd we call a “presidential election” has promised to bring an immediate end to this moral and legal abomination. If we enforced the Nuremberg Laws that WE crafted, all responsible would be hanged, including whoever replaces Bush and perpetuates this genocide.

And that is just a brief and very incomplete summary of the evil that we openly or tacitly support simply by being Americans, even if our role is very banal or pedestrian. As cogs in a murderous machine built on stolen land and primarily with the blood, sweat and tears of slaves and poor immigrants, we all bear a degree of responsibility for the atrocities we commit. Even those who choose to remain and fight the system from within are still buttressing the American Way to some extent. How do we sleep at night? Some of us don’t and some of us have pharmaceutical help. But by and large our television programming has given us the “gifts” of a pathologically muted conscience, heavy doses of blissful ignorance, and the attention span of anencephalic sheep.

Desensitized to violence, mentally malnourished by a steady diet of brain candy, conditioned to putting our brains in neutral and letting the “idiot box” do our thinking for us, psychologically beaten down by constant reminders that the subjects of our idolatry are “better than us,” and manipulated into believing that the spiritually vacuous American Dream is more than just a mirage that keeps the working class trudging through the desert of perpetual corporatism, many of us remain true believers, prefer wage slavery to sleeping under a bridge, or recognize that (despite the shop-worn and inane rhetoric about freedom and democracy) the system has harsh consequences for those who don’t at least ostensibly toe the line. Regardless of our individual level of consciousness or level of participation in this criminal enterprise known in some circles as the American Empire, we Americans as a collective are an intriguingly repulsive synthesis of excessively spoiled brats and sociopaths. We want what we want when we want it, consequences be damned. We have the means to get what we desire, virtually no capacity to delay gratification, and the ability to punish those who stand in our way. To top it off, we don’t let trivialities like conscience restrain us. We are a nation of sociobrats.

Individually, we can change. Many have transformed and many more will. But there are some pretty long odds against enough of us shedding our grotesquely malformed psyches and evolving beyond our state of infantilization before the American Way of Life collapses under the weight of its own excrement or is eradicated by its hordes of victims.

Jason Miller is the associate editor of Cyrano’s Journal Online.
About Author
Jason Miller is a wage slave of the American Empire who has freed himself intellectually and spiritually. He writes prolifically and his essays have appeared widely on the Internet. He welcomes constructive correspondence at willpowerful@hotmail.com or via his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.

The Fall of Capitalism

2008-06-27T11:19:00.000-07:00

The Cure for High Gas and Food Prices: Vital Businesses Need Nationalization

SAN ANTONIO--The gas station attendant came outside. Wow, I thought, full serve! Ignoring me, she flung a magnetic price decal on top of the price per gallon. Regular unleaded had gone up 20 cents in the time it took me to drive from the curb to the pump. "You're kidding me," I moaned. "It's 3 o'clock," she shrugged. "Just got the new price." There has to be a better way, I thought. And there is. It isn't drilling in the Alaskan wilderness. It sure isn't John McCain's plan to offer $300 million to the first person to come up with a longer-lasting car battery. Gas prices could hit $7 a gallon before long, Wall Street analysts say, but Americans--always optimists!--take a little comfort in the fact that Europeans have paid more than that for years. But a lot of foreigners are laughing at us even harder than we're laughing at the Euros. Did you know that Venezuelans pay a mere 19 cents per gallon? It's 38 cents in Nigeria. Turkmenistanis might not have electoral democracy, but they only shell out $4.50 to fill a 15-gallon tank. Before we replaced Saddam Hussein with...with whatever they have in Iraq now, Iraqis paid less than a dime for a gallon of gas. One of the things that these countries have in common, of course, is that they're oil-producing states. Countries that export oil and gas have trouble explaining to their citizens why they should pay for their own natural resources--and most are smart enough not to try. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Burma, Malaysia, Kuwait, China and South Korea are just a few of the countries that keep fuel prices low in order to stimulate economic growth. But they also share something else: common sense. Strange it might sound to Americans used to reading about big oil windfalls, they consider cheap gas more of an economic necessity than lining the pockets of energy company CEOs. So they don't consider energy a profit center. To the contrary; government subsidies (Venezuela spends $2 billion a year on fuel subsidies) and nationalized oil companies keep gas prices low. Unlike corporations, governments don't care about turning a profit. They care about remaining in power. Their reliance on political support (or, if you're cynical, pandering) allows them to do things our much-vaunted free market system can't, such as make sure that people can afford to eat and buy enough gas to get to work. Like the rest of the world, Venezuelan consumers have been squeezed by rising prices, and even shortages, of groceries. In 2007 Venezuela's socialist-leaning government decided to do something about it. First they imposed price controls on staple items. When suppliers began to hoard supplies to drive up prices, President Hugo Chavez threatened to nationalize them. "If they remain committed to violating the interests of the people, the constitution, the laws, I'm going to take the food storage units, corner stores, supermarkets and nationalize them," he said. Food profiteers grumbled. Then they straightened up. Not even international corporations are immune from Chavez's determination to put the needs of ordinary Venezuelans ahead of the for-profit food industry. Faced with severe shortages of milk earlier this year, Chavez threatened Nestle and Parmalat's Venezuelan operations with nationalization unless they opened the spigot. "This government needs to tighten the screws," he said in February 2008, promising to "intervene and nationalize the plants" belonging to the two transnational corporations. Miraculously, milk is turning up on the shelves. When it works, nothing is better at creating an endless variety of reality TV shows than free market capitalism. But when it doesn't, it isn't just that extra brand of clear dishwashing liquid that goes away. Businesses fold. Banks foreclose. People starve. And no one can stop it. The G8 nations met in Osaka last week to try to address soaring food and energy prices--a double threat that could plunge the global economy into a ruinous depression. But the summit ended in failure. "Any hope that the G8 meeting would result in coordinated monetary action--or concerted intervention in foreign exchange markets--to counter rises, principally in commodity prices, was dispelled by their failure to agree on the phenomenon's underlying causes," reported Forbes. So the G8 ministers punted. "Due to the lack of consensus, they have stated the need for further study," wrote the magazine. The problem isn't the weak dollar or the non-existent housing market. It's capitalism. A sane government doesn't leave essential goods and services--food, fuel, housing, healthcare, transportation, education--to the vicissitudes of "magic" markets. Non-discretionary economic sectors should be strictly controlled by--indeed, owned by--the government. Consider, on the one hand, snail mail and public education. The Postal Service and public schools both have their flaws. But what if they were privatized? It would cost a lot more than 42 cents to mail a letter from Tampa to Maui. And poor children wouldn't get an education. Privatization, particularly of essential services, has always proven disastrous. From California's Enron-driven rotating blackouts to for-profit healthcare that has left 47 million Americans uninsured to predatory lenders pimping the housing bubble to Blackwater's atrocities in Iraq, market-based corporations' fiduciary obligation to maximize profits that is inherently incompatible with a stable economy whose goal is to provide people with a decent quality of life.

P.S. If you're reading this in Caracas, please mail me some gas.

Super Power Arms Race Heats Up

2008-02-13T12:11:00.000-08:00

Whenever it is that they are saying: "Peace And Security!" then sudden destruction...

1st Thessalonians 5:3

Pangs of distress are intensifying in a deadly rivalry heats up...

Asian arms race gathers speed

By John Feffer

Diplomats remain upbeat about solving the nuclear stand-off with North Korea; optimists envision a peace treaty to replace the armistice that halted, but failed to formally end, the Korean War 55 years ago. Some leaders and scholars are even urging the transformation of the six-party talks over the Korean nuclear issue, involving the United States, Japan, China, Russia and the two Koreas, into a permanent peace structure in Northeast Asia. The countries in the region all seem determined to make nice right now. Yasuo Fukuda, the new Japanese prime minister, is considerably more pacific than his predecessor, the ultra-nationalist Shinzo Abe. The new South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, despite his conservative credentials, is committed to continuing the previous president's engagement policy with North Korea and plans to reach out to Japan via his first post-inaugural state visit. The party that won the recent Taiwanese parliamentary elections, the Kuomintang, wants to rebuild bridges to the mainland and, when it comes to the Chinese Communist Party there, mend fences the ruling Democratic Progressive Party tried to pull down. Beijing, for its part, is being super-conciliatory toward practically everyone in this Summer Olympic Games year. Despite all this talk of peace, something else, quite momentous and hardly noticed, is underway in the region. The real money in Northeast Asia is going elsewhere. While in the news sunshine prevails, in the shadows an already massive regional arms race is threatening to shift into overdrive. Since the dawn of the 21st century, five of the six countries involved in the six-party talks have increased their military spending by 50% or more. The sixth, Japan, has maintained a steady, if sizeable military budget while nonetheless aspiring to keep pace. Every country in the region is now eagerly investing staggering amounts of money in new weapons systems and new offensive capabilities. The arms race in Northeast Asia undercuts all talk of peace in the region. It also sustains a growing global military-industrial complex. Northeast Asia is where four of the world's largest militaries - those of the United States, China, Russia, and Japan - confront each other. Together, the countries participating in the six-party talks account for approximately 65% of world military expenditures, with the US responsible for roughly half the global total. Here is the real news that should hit the front pages of papers today: wars grip Iraq, Afghanistan and large swathes of Africa, but the heart of the global military-industrial complex lies in Northeast Asia. Any attempt to drive a stake through this potentially destabilizing monster must start with the militaries that face one another there. The Japanese reversal The Northeast Asian arms buildup - a three-tiered scramble to dominate the seas, beef up air forces and control the next frontier of space - runs counter to conventional wisdom. After all, isn't Japan still operating under a "peace constitution"? Hasn't South Korea committed to the peaceful reunification of the Korean Peninsula? Didn't China recently wake up to the virtues of soft power? And how could North Korea and Russia, both of which suffered disastrous economic reversals in the 1990s, have had the wherewithal to compete in an arms race? As it turns out, these obstacles have proved little more than speed bumps on the road to regional hyper-militarism. Perhaps the most paradoxical participant in this new arms race is Japan. Its famous peace constitution has traditionally been one of the few brakes on arms spending in the region. The country has long limited its military expenditure to an informal ceiling of 1% of its overall budget. As that budget grew, however, so did military spending. Japan's army is now larger than Britain's, and the country spends more on its military than all but four other nations. (China surpassed Japan in military spending for the first time in 2006.) Nonetheless, for decades, the provisions of its peace constitution at least put limits on the offensive capabilities of the Japanese military, which is still referred to as its Self-Defense Forces (SDF). These days, however, even the definition of "offensive" is changing. In 1999, the SDF first used offensive force when its naval vessels fired on suspected North Korean spy ships. Less than a decade later, Japan provides support far from its "defensive" zone for US wars, including providing fuel to coalition forces in Afghanistan and transport in Iraq. Japan was once incapable of bombing other countries, largely because its air force didn't have an in-air refueling capability. Thanks to Boeing, however, the first KC-767 tanker aircraft will arrive in Japan this year, providing government officials, who occasionally assert the country's right to launch preemptive strikes, with the means to do so. This is not happy news for Japan's neighbors, who retain vivid memories of the 1930s and 1940s, when its military went on an imperial rampage throughout the region. Tokyo already has among the best air forces and naval fighting forces in the world, trailing only the US. But leading Japanese officials have displayed an even larger appetite. Some Japanese politicians are lobbying to amend the peace constitution or even scrap it entirely, while sending military spending skyrocketing. To promote these ideas, they use the thin rationale that Japan should be participating regularly in "international peacekeeping missions". The Japanese Defense Agency - its Pentagon - which was upgraded to ministry level last year, wants more goodies like an aircraft carrier, nuclear-powered submarines and long-range missiles. A light aircraft carrier, which the government has coyly labeled a "destroyer", will be ready in 2009. The subs and missiles, however, will have to wait. So, too, will Tokyo's attempt to take a quantum leap forward in air-fighting capabilities by importing advanced US F-22 stealth planes. Concerned about releasing latest-generation technology to the outside world, Congress scotched this deal at the last moment in August 2007. Washington has been a good deal more accommodating when it comes to missile defense. Japan has been a far more enthusiastic supporter of missile defense than any of America's European allies. In fact, the United States and Japan are spending billions of dollars to set up an early-warning-and-response prototype of such an advanced missile system. Part of this missile shield is land-based. Last month, Japan installed its third Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) surface-to-air interceptor and plans on nine more by 2011. The more ambitious part of the program, however, is based at sea. In December, Japan conducted its first sea-based interceptor test. With Japan and the US in the lead, a space race is also on in Northeast Asia. Last year, China tested its own anti-ballistic missile system by shooting down one of its old weather satellites. While at present this is far from an actual missile-defense system, China effectively served notice that it is up to the technological challenge of hitting a bullet with a bullet in space. Meanwhile, thanks to US pressure, Russia, too, is upgrading its missile defense systems, while pouring money into the development of new missiles that can bypass any putative shield the US and its allies can develop. Give me peace, but not just yet The two most recent South Korean presidents, Nobel Peace Prize winner Kim Dae-jung and the left-leaning Roh Moo-hyun, have been well known for their efforts to foster reconciliation with North Korea. Less well known have been their programs to beef up South Korea's military. The dark side of their engagement policy has been its unstated quid pro quo of satisfying the security concerns of South Korean hawks by giving the military everything it wants - and then some. Between 1999 and 2006, South Korean military spending jumped more than 70%. In 2007, at the launching ceremony for a new Aegis-equipped destroyer, which brought South Korea into an elite club of just five countries with such technology, Roh declared, "At the present time, Northeast Asia is still in an arms race, and we cannot just sit back and watch." By 2020, the South Korean navy wants to build three more Aegis destroyers at a cost of US$1 billion each. South Korean hawks are not only responding to concerns about North Korea, the traditional threat around which the South has organized its military. They are concerned about a declining military commitment from the US, which has reduced the levels of American troops that traditionally garrison the country and pushed hard for greater military "burden-sharing". South Korea's leaders and military officials are anxious that the Pentagon may continue to focus on the Middle East and Central Asia to the exclusion of its Pacific commitments. To prepare for the contingency of going it alone, South Korea has embarked on an ambitious $665 billion Defense Reform 2020 initiative, which will increase the military budget by roughly 10% a year until 2020. In those years, while troop levels will actually fall, most of the extra money will go to a host of expensive, high-tech systems such as new F-15K fighters from Boeing, SM-6 ship-to-air missiles that can form a low-altitude missile shield, and Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles. If South Korea's spending spree remains largely under the radar, China's military expenditures have received considerable media scrutiny. They officially rose to $45 billion for 2007. However, that public figure, according to US intelligence estimates, tells only half the story. Beijing's spending, claim these sources, is really in the $100 billion range. With this money, are the gaps in the country's offensive capabilities. It has only a couple of hundred nuclear weaponsChina is pushing forward with an ambitious naval program that will include the addition to its naval forces of five new nuclear-powered attack subs, a mid-sized aircraft carrier, and - clandestinely - the supposed construction of a huge 93,000-ton nuclear-powered carrier by 2020. Lost in the hype around China's apparent quest for a world-class military to match its world-class economy and fewer than two dozen intercontinental ballistic missiles pointed at the United States. Its navy doesn't have a "blue-water" capability, lacking (as yet) any aircraft carriers, a large force of nuclear-powered submarines, and the overseas basing infrastructure to support them. It relies heavily on imports and can't yet build the sort of aircraft that would allow it to project serious force over large distances. China, however, has been the only modestly credible threat on the horizon that the Pentagon has been able to wield to justify military spending at levels not seen since World War II. The Pentagon can't use its big naval destroyers against al-Qaeda; Virginia-class subs can't do much to fight the Taliban or insurgents in Iraq. Yet these systems figure prominently in the Pentagon's long-range plans to build a 313-ship navy. Democratic Congressman John Murtha, who made headlines in 2005 with his newfound opposition to the Iraq war, is typical of congressional hawks when he warns of the need to prepare for a coming conflict with China. "We've got to be able to have a military that can deploy to stop China or Russia or any other country that challenges us," he recently told Reuters. "I've felt we had to be concerned about the direction China was going." To counter China, the US has pursued a classic containment strategy of strengthening military ties with India, Australia, the Philippines and Japan. The George W Bush administration trumpets its accomplishment of increasing military spending 74% since 2001. In addition to the $12.7 billion for new warships, there's $17 billion for new aircraft and over $10 billion for missile defense. The administration wants to increase the army from 482,400 to 547,400 troops by 2012. A sizable portion of the administration's $607 billion Pentagon budget request for 2009, which doesn't even include massive supplemental funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will go to maintaining and expanding the US military presence in the Pacific. The Democratic frontrunners for the presidential nomination have also called for troop increases and have said nothing about slowing, freezing or even cutting the military budget. No matter who is elected, under the next administration, as under the last one, the US will surely continue to be the chief driver of global arms spending. The armies of austerity Increased military spending is not always just a function of affluence. As the Russian economy contracted in the 1990s, the arms export industry became an ever more critical way for the faltering country to earn hard currency. Today, flush with oil and natural gas revenues, Russia has regained its place as the world's second largest arms dealer by almost doubling its arms exports since 2000. Washington's moves to establish a global missile defense system and encroach on Russian interests in Central Asia have only encouraged Moscow to boost its military spending in an effort to recover its lost superpower status. With the renewed growth of the Russian economy on the strength of energy sales, Russian arms expenditures began to take off again in the new millennium, increasing nearly four-fold between 2000 and 2006. The Russian government, which projected a 29% increase in spending for 2007, plans to replace nearly half its arsenal with new weaponry by 2015. Compared to Russia, North Korea has had the full experience of economic collapse with very little subsequent recovery. Yet, despite its woefully limited means, it has tried to keep up with the great powers that surround it. By many estimates, Pyongyang devotes as much as a quarter of its budget to the military (even though prosperous South Korea still spends as much, or more, on its military than the North's entire gross domestic product). North Korea's failure to match the conventional military spending of South Korea, much less Japan or the US, was what made the building of a "nuclear deterrent" increasingly attractive to its leaders. In other words, the current nuclear crisis that sucks up so much diplomatic attention in Northeast Asia today is at least partly a result of the region's accelerating conventional arms race and North Korea's inability to keep pace. Critics of the North Korean regime often point out that its military spending is ultimately a human-rights violation, because the government essentially takes food out of the mouths of its people to spend on armaments. North Korea is, however, just a particularly gross example of an expanding global problem. Each of the six countries in the new Pacific arms race has devised a wealth of rationales for its military spending - and each has ignored significant domestic needs in the process. Given the sums that would be necessary to address the decommissioning of nuclear weapons, the looming crisis of climate change, and the destabilizing gap between rich and poor, such spending priorities are in themselves a threat to humanity. The world put 37% more into military spending in 2006 than in 1997. If the "peace dividend" that was to follow the end of the Cold War never quite appeared, a decade later the world finds itself burdened with quite the opposite: a genuine peace deficit.

John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. He is the author of North Korea, South Korea: US Policy at a Time of Crisis (Seven Stories, 2003) among other books.

Without Sanctuary-Jena Six

2007-09-24T09:56:00.000-07:00

THE JENA SIX

The symbolism behind the nooses hanging from the "White Tree". Terrorism.

A picture is worth a thousand words...

http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/main.html

Southern trees bear strange fruit,

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,

Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is the fruit for the crows to pluck,

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,

For the sun to rot,

for the trees to drop,

Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Billie Holiday

Chart of Pompous Prognosticators

2007-08-03T11:23:00.000-07:00

BACK TO THE FUTURE 1929-2007

Check out the link above for quotes!

Iraq Proxy War: China Weighs In

2007-07-08T10:51:00.000-07:00

U.S. concerns over China weapons in Iraq

By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington

Published: July 6 2007 22:01 Last updated: July 6 2007 22:01

The US has raised concerns with the Chinese government about the discovery of Chinese-made weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan. Richard Lawless, departing senior Pentagon official for Asia, on Friday said Washington had flagged the issue with Beijing. In recent months, the US has become increasingly alarmed that Chinese armour-piercing ammunition has been used by the Taliban in Afghanistan and insurgents in Iraq. A senior US official recently told the FT that Iran appeared to be providing the Chinese-made weapons. He said Washington had no evidence that Beijing was complicit, but stressed that the US would like China to “do a better job of policing these sales”. Mr Lawless said the question of origin was less important than who was facilitating the transfer. The concerns about Chinese weapons follow months of allegations from US officials that Iran is helping attack US troops in Iraq, and more recently Afghanistan, by providing technology for bombs that can destroy Humvees and other heavily armoured US vehicles. Mr Lawless also expressed concern about North Korea’s missile programme. Last week, Pyongyang tested a new short-range missile that could target not only the US military base at Pyeongtaek but also Seoul. He said North Korea was close to being able to field the solid-fuel, highly mobile rocket.

Mr Lawless said the US military relationship with China was “overall, not bad”, but there was a need for more engagement between the militaries, particularly at the senior levels. “They have been more willing to engage,

but it is in millimetres and increments,” he said. He said the Pentagon was disappointed that China had not given Admiral Michael Mullen, chief of naval operations, the same kind of access that his Chinese counterpart received during a visit to the US. Adm Mullen, who has since been nominated as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ended up not visiting China. Mr Lawless also said it was important for China to hold talks with the US about its nuclear forces. A recent Pentagon report concluded Beijing was developing a more survivable nuclear force, including submarine-launched missiles, and mobile land-based missiles. Since Presidents Hu Jintao and George W. Bush last year discussed increasing military exchanges, China has not responded to an offer for the commander of its strategic nuclear forces to visit US Strategic Command. “There is a great shortfall in our understanding of China’s intentions,” said Mr Lawless, referring to the overall Chinese military build-up. “When you don’t know why they are doing it, it is pretty damn threatening . . . they leave us no choice but to assume the worst.”

Mr Lawless also suggested that the Pentagon had refused a request from Japan for extensive data on the F-22 fighter jet. Japan wants the data to consider whether the advanced fighter – which under current law cannot be exported – would meet its defence needs. Mr Lawless said the Pentagon had offered Japan only basic data, which would not require a change in US law.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/82ce0740-2c03-11dc-b498-000b5df10621.html

STRANGE FRUIT- Jena, Louisiana

2007-07-03T09:09:00.000-07:00

"Strange Fruit"
Lyrics by Lewis Allen, Originally sung by Billie Holiday in 1939

Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves, blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

July 3, 2007

INJUSTICE IN JENA
Nooses Hanging from the "White" Tree

By BILL QUIGLEY

In a small still mostly segregated section of rural Louisiana, an all white jury heard a series of white witnesses called by a white prosecutor testify in a courtroom overseen by a white judge in a trial of a fight at the local high school where a white student who had been making racial taunts was hit by black students. The fight was the culmination of a series of racial incidents starting when whites responded to black students sitting under the "white tree" at their school by hanging three nooses from the tree. The white jury and white prosecutor and all white supporters of the white victim were all on one side of the courtroom. The black defendant, 17 year old Mychal Bell, and his supporters were on the other. The jury quickly convicted Mychal Bell of two felonies - aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery. Bell, who was a 16 year old sophomore football star at the time he was arrested, faces up to 22 years in prison. Five other black youths await similar trials on attempted second degree murder and conspiracy charges. Yes, you read that correctly. The rest of the story, which is being reported across the world in papers in China, France and England, is just as chilling. The trouble started under "the white tree" in front of Jena High School. The "white tree" is where the white students, 80% of the student body, would always sit during school breaks.

In September 2006, a black student at Jena high school asked permission from school administrators to sit under the "white tree." School officials advised them to sit wherever they wanted. They did. The next day, three nooses, in the school colors, were hanging from the "white tree." The message was clear. "Those nooses meant the KKK, they meant 'Niggers, we're going to kill you, we're going to hang you till you die,'" Casteptla Bailey, mom of one of the students, told the London Observer. The Jena high school principal found that three white students were responsible and recommended expulsion. The white superintendent of schools over-ruled the principal and gave the students a three day suspension saying that the nooses were just a youthful stunt. "Adolescents play pranks," the superintendent told the Chicago Tribune, "I don't think it was a threat against anybody." The African-American community was hurt and upset. "Hanging those nooses was a hate crime, plain and simple," according to Tracy Bowens, mother of students at Jena High. But blacks in this area of Louisiana have little political power. The ten person all-male government of the parish has one African-American member. The nine member all-male school board has one African American member. (A phone caller to the local school board trying to find out the racial makeup of the school board was told there was one "colored" member of the board). There is one black police officer in Jena and two black public school teachers.

Jena, with a population of less than 3000, is the largest town in and parish (county) seat of LaSalle Parish, Louisiana. There are about 350 African Americans in the town. LaSalle has a population of just over 14,000 people - 12% African-American. This is solid Bush and David Duke Country - GWB won LaSalle Parish 4 to 1 in the last two elections; Duke carried a majority of the white vote when he ran for Governor of Louisiana. Families earn about 60% of the national average. The Census Bureau reports that less than 10% of the businesses in LaSalle Parish are black owned. Jena is the site of the infamous Juvenile Correctional Center for Youth that was forced to close its doors in 2000, only two years after opening, due to widespread brutality and racism including the choking of juveniles by guards after the youth met with a lawyer. The U.S. Department of Justice sued the private prison amid complaints that guards paid inmates to fight each other and laughed when teens tried to commit suicide. Black students decided to resist and organized a sit-in under the "white tree" at the school to protest the light suspensions given to the noose-hanging white students. The white District Attorney then came to Jena High with law enforcement officers to address a school assembly. According to testimony in a later motion in court, the DA reportedly threatened the black protesting students saying that if they didn't stop making a fuss about this "innocent prank I can be your best friend or your worst enemy. I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen." The school was put on lockdown for the rest of the week.

Racial tensions remained high throughout the fall. On the night of Thursday November 30, 2006, a still unsolved fire burned down the main academic building of Jena High School. On Friday night, December 1, a black student who showed up at a white party was beaten by whites. On Saturday, December 2, a young white man pulled out a shotgun in a confrontation with young black men at the Gotta Go convenience store outside Jena before the men wrestled it away from him. The black men who took the shotgun away were later arrested, no charges were filed against the white man. On Monday, December 4, at Jena High, a white student--who allegedly had been making racial taunts, including calling African American students "niggers" while supporting the students who hung the nooses and who beat up the black student at the off-campus party--was knocked down, punched and kicked by black students. The white victim was taken to the hospital treated and released. He attended a social function that evening. Six black Jena students were arrested and charged with attempted second degree murder. All six were expelled from school. The six charged were: 17-year-old Robert Bailey Junior whose bail was set at $138,000; 17-year-old Theo Shaw - bail $130,000; 18-year-old Carwin Jones--bail $100,000; 17-year-old Bryant Purvis--bail $70,000; 16 year old Mychal Bell, a sophomore in high school who was charged as an adult and for whom bail was set at $90,000; and a still unidentified minor. Many of the young men, who came to be known as the Jena 6, stayed in jail for months. Few families could afford bond or private attorneys. Mychal Bell remained in jail from December 2006 until his trial because his family was unable to post the $90,000 bond. Theo Shaw has also remained in jail. Several of the other defendants remained in jail for months until their families could raise sufficient money to put up bonds. The Chicago Tribune wrote a powerful story headlined "Racial Demons Rear Heads." The London Observer wrote: "Jena is gaining national notoriety as an example of the new 'stealth' racism, showing how lightly sleep the demons of racial prejudice in America's Deep South, even in the year that a black man, Barak Obama, is a serious candidate for the White House." The British Broadcasting Company aired a TV special report "Race Hate in Louisiana 2007."

The Jena 6 and their families were put under substantial pressure to plead guilty. Mychal Bell was reported to have been leaning towards pleading guilty right up until his trial when he decided he would not plead guilty to a felony. When it finally came, the trial of Mychal Bell was swift. Bell was represented by an appointed public defender.On the morning of the trial, the DA reduced the charges from attempted second degree murder to second degree aggravated battery and conspiracy. Aggravated battery in Louisiana law demands the attack be with a dangerous weapon. The dangerous weapon? The prosecutor was allowed to argue to the jury that the tennis shoes worn by Bell could be considered a dangerous weapon used by "the gang of black boys" who beat the white victim.Most shocking of all, when the pool of potential jurors was summoned, fifty people appeared--every single one white. The LaSalle Parish clerk defended the all white group to the Alexandria Louisiana Town Talk newspaper saying that the jury pool was selected by computer. "The venire [panel of prospective jurors] is color blind. The idea is for the list to truly reflect the racial makeup of the community, but the system does not take race into factor." Officials said they had summoned 150 people, but these were the only people who showed up. The all-white jury which was finally chosen included two people friendly with the District Attorney, a relative of one of the witnesses and several others who were friends of prosecution witnesses. Bell's parents, Melissa Bell and Marcus Jones, were not even allowed to attend the trial despite their objections, because they were listed as potential witnesses. The white victim, though a witness, was allowed to stay in the courtroom. The parents, who had been widely quoted in the media as critics of the process, were also told they could no longer speak to the media as long as the trial was in session. Marcus Jones had told the media "It's all about those nooses" and declared the charges racially motivated. Other supporters who planned a demonstration in support of Bell were ordered by the court not to do so near the courthouse or anywhere the judge would see them. The prosecutor called 17 witnesses - eleven white students, three white teachers, and two white nurses. Some said they saw Bell kick the victim, others said they did not see him do anything. The white victim testified that he did not know if Bell hit him or not. The Chicago Tribune reported the public defender did not challenge the all-white jury pool, put on no evidence and called no witnesses. The public defender told the Alexandria Town talk after resting his case without calling any witnesses that he knew he would be second-guessed by many but was confident that the jury would return a verdict of not guilty. "I don't believe race is an issue in this trial I think I have a fair and impartial jury". The jury deliberated for less than three hours and found Mychal Bell guilty on the maximum possible charges of aggravated second degree battery and conspiracy. He faces up to a maximum of 22 years in prison. The public defender told the press afterwards, "I feel I put on the best defense that I could." Responding to criticism of not putting on any witnesses, the attorney said "why open the door for further accusations? I did the best I could for my client, Mychal Bell."

At a rally in front of the courthouse the next day, Alan Bean, a Texas minister and leader of the Friends of Justice, said "I have seen a lot of trials in my time. And I have never seen a more distressing miscarriage of justice than what happened in LaSalle Parish yesterday." Khadijah Rashad of Lafayette Louisiana described the trial as a "modern day lynching." Tory Pegram with the Louisiana ACLU has been working with the parents for months. "People know if they don't demand equal treatment now, they will never get it. People's jobs and livelihoods have been threatened for attending Jena 6 Defense meetings, but people are willing to risk that. One person told me: 'We have to convince more people to come rally with us.....What's the worst that could happen? They fire us from our jobs? We have the worst jobs in the town anyway. They burn a cross on our lawns or burn down my house? All of that has happened to us before. We have to keep speaking out to make sure it doesn't happen to us again, or our children will never be safe.'" Whites in the community were adamant that there is no racism. "We don't have a problem," according to one. Other locals told the media "We all get along," and "most blacks are happy with the way things are." One person even said "We don't have many problems with our blacks." Melvin Worthington, the lone African American school board member in LaSalle Parish said it all could have been avoided. "There's no doubt about it," he told the Chicago Tribune, "whites and blacks are treated differently here. The white kids should have gotten more punishment for hanging those nooses. If they had, all the stuff that followed could have been avoided." Hebert McCoy, a relative of one of the youths who has been trying to raise money for bail and lawyers, challenged people everywhere at the end of the rally when he said you better come out and defend your children because they are incarcerating them by the thousands. Jena's not the beginning, but Jena has crossed the line. Justice is not right when you put on the wrong charges and then convict. I believe in justice. I believe in the point of law. I believe in accepting the punishment if I'm guilty. If I'm guilty, convict me and punishment, but if I'm innocent, no justice" and the crowd joined with him and shouted "no peace!"

What happened to the white guys? The white victim of the beating was later arrested for bringing a hunting rifle loaded with 13 bullets onto the high school campus and released on $5000 bond. The white man who beat up the black youth at the off-campus party was arrested and charged with simple battery. The white students who hung up the nooses in the "white tree" were never charged. The people in Jena are fighting for justice and they need legal and financial help. Since the arrests, a group of family members have been holding well-attended meetings, and have created a defense fund--the Jena 6 Defense Committee. They have received support from the NAACP, the Louisiana ACLU and Friends of Justice. People interested in supporting can contact: the Jena 6 Defense Committee, PO Box 2798, Jena, LA 71342 jena6defense@gmail.com; Friends of Justice, 507 North Donley Avenue, Tulia, TX 79088 www.fojtulia.org; or the ACLU of Louisiana, PO Box 56157, New Orleans, LA 70156 www.laaclu.org or 417.350.0536.

What is next? The rest of the Jena 6 await similar trials. Theodore Shaw is due to go on trial shortly. Mychal Bell is scheduled to be sentenced July 31. If he gets the maximum sentence he will not be out of prison until he is nearly 40. Meanwhile, the "white tree" outside Jena High sits quietly in the hot sun.

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. You can reach him at Quigley@loyno.edu

FAKE CORPORATE JOB ADS

2007-06-29T10:03:00.000-07:00

Law firms are helping corporations to keep their costs down by placing fake job ads that weed out U.S. applicants in order to hire cheaper foreign workers. Its legal. A very strange issue indeed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU&eurl=

The Vatican Role In The Holocaust

2007-04-13T10:37:00.000-07:00

This post is in response to the article below. Since the Vatican signed a Concordat with Nazi Germany, it would be in the public interest for the Vatican to open up its archives on all of its activities during WWII.

What would Jesus do?

Vatican ambassador to boycott Holocaust memorial in row over photo

Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem Friday April 13, 2007 Guardian Unlimited

Monsignor Antonio Franco has called on Israel's Holocaust museum to change a picture caption which criticises Pope Pius XII. The Vatican ambassador to Israel has sparked a public row after refusing to attend this Sunday's annual Holocaust memorial service in Jerusalem in protest at a description of the wartime role of Pope Pius XII. Monsignor Antonio Franco, who arrived in Jerusalem last year, has called on Israel's official Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem, to change a picture caption which criticises the pope for failing to condemn the deportation and mass killing of Jews under the Nazi regime. Earlier this month he wrote to turn down a formal invitation to Sunday's torch-lighting remembrance ceremony. In turn, the Holocaust museum said it was "shocked" at Monsignor Franco's decision to stay away from the event and called on the Vatican to open up its archives for further examination of the troubled history of Pius XII.

The dispute revolves around a paragraph-long picture caption of Pius XII that was installed when the newly-designed Yad Vashem museum was opened in 2005. The previous Vatican ambassador sent a letter of complaint about the text a year ago and now Monsignor Franco has complained again. The text notes that Pius XII's reaction to the Holocaust is controversial and states: "When he was elected Pope in 1939, he shelved a letter against racism and anti-semitism that his predecessor had prepared. Even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, the Pope did not protest either verbally or in writing." The description also says Pius XII chose not to sign a December 1942 Allied declaration condemning the extermination of Jews and did not intervene when Jews were being deported from Rome to Auschwitz.

It is not the first criticism of Pius XII, who has long been regarded as one of the Catholic church's most controversial leaders. In the past, critics have dismissed him as "Hitler's Pope" for failing to speak out against the Holocaust and suggested his silence was aimed at averting a Communist takeover in Europe. However, others have sought to exonerate him, arguing instead that he was trying to defend a Catholic minority in Germany from the Nazis and suggesting he should be fast-tracked for canonisation.

Monsignor Franco, an Italian who has been a Vatican diplomat for 35 years, accepted there was debate and disagreement about the part played by the Pope during the second world war, but said he opposed the wording of the text at Yad Vashem. "I consider this picture in that place and the caption that accompanies it unfair and something that disturbs my feelings and the feelings of Catholics all over the world. It does not correspond to the truth," he told the Guardian today. "My approach is not polemic," he said. "It is an approach of dialogue and research and discussion and to see if perhaps it could be presented in another way."
Monsignor Franco, 70, defended Pius XII's silence over the Holocaust. "It was not really silence, it was a policy taken to avoid worsening the situation," he said. "When there were public statements and declarations there would be a huge number of people who were simply eliminated. Repression was the response to any kind of public position taken."

Yad Vashem stood by its text, although it said it was "prepared to continue examining the issue". It also called on the Vatican to open up its archives of documents relating to Pius XII. "Yad Vashem is shocked by, and regrets, that the Vatican's delegate to Israel has chosen not to respect the memory of the Holocaust and not to participate in the official ceremony in which the state of Israel and the Jewish people join in memory of the victims," Iris Rosenberg, a spokeswoman for the museum, said in a statement. "The Holocaust history museum presents the historical truth on Pope Pius XII as it is known to scholars today," she said. "It is unacceptable to use diplomatic pressure when dealing with historical research." Relations between Israel and the Vatican have been fraught for years. Full diplomatic relations were only established in 1993 and there have been continuing disagreements over the taxing of church property in and around Jerusalem. Last month Israeli government officials postponed at the last minute a trip to the Vatican for what would have been the first fully attended meeting of a joint commission on church-state issues for five years.

Check out these links to ongoing Vatican issues below, or go directly to the website linked above from vaticanbankclaims.com

National Catholic Reporter, June 16, 2006, Vatican faces Continued Legal Challenges to Immmunity in US Courts

Religion, Rome, and the Reich: The Vatican's Other Dirty Secret, The Independent (UK), may 21, 2006

Ex-Vatican official dies in Sun City home, Arizona Republic, February 22, 2006

Arts Journal, Following the Ratlines, January 19, 2006

Calvi Murder Trial Reveals Profound Links With Vatican Bank, Bloomberg, November 23, 2005

God's Banker Murder Trial Begins, American Atheists, November 18, 2005

The Vatican Shelters a War Criminal, New Vatican Ratline, The Trumpet, September 23, 2005

United nations Criminal Tribunal Accuses Franciscan Order & Vatican of Hiding Croatian War Criminals! History Repeats Itself as Vatican Ratline Using Franciscan Monastaries is Exposed. Telegraph-UK, September 20, 2005.

London Times, Church entrusts its talents to top bankers, July 12, 2005

Pope John Paul II’s Legacy in the Balkans, Carl Savich, Serbianna

Vatican asks Rice for help in sex abuse lawsuit , National Catholic Reporter, March 11, 2005

Carlo Calvi Exposes Vatican Financial Corruption, Montreal Mirror

The Shady deals of God's Banker

Argentina defends Two Ustasha War Criminals, Uki Net, June 2, 2003

Franciscan Order and Croat Terrorists linked to Bosnian shrine of Medjugorje, International News Analysis, March 18, 2003

US State Department calls Medjugorje Godforsaken Place, Kronzer Foundation

London - A panel of judges in Rome is expected to announce shortly that the death of "God's banker" Roberto Calvi, found strung up under Blackfriars Bridge in London in June 1982, was murder, Cape Times, February 19, 2003

Allegations of Molestation, Suspended Medjugorje Priest Launcches Cross Country Tour, The Wanderer, November 7, 2002

Vatican Bank and Bishop Marcinkus, Phoenix New Times, February 13, 2003

Nazi Salutes Openly Used in Zagreb, BBC, February 6, 2003

Queen of Profits, Medjugorje Draws Thousands of Pilgrims and Dollars,Los Angeles Lay Catholic Mission Newspaper, December 2002

Leading Medjugorje Franciscan, Barred from Cathedral, Accused of Sex Crimes, Washington Post, November 20, 2002

Special Fund for former slave laborers fopm Serbia

Vatican's Banker was Murdered, BBC, October 25, 2002

Vatican to Face its Pedophilia Crimes before the UN, October 14, 2002

New Clue Truns up in God's Banker's Death,October 14, 2002, The Guardian

Milosevic Implicates Vatican Bank in Arms Deal, Radio Netherlands, September 27, 2002

VATICAN BANK IS SUED IN US OVER CHARITY SCANDAL , The Mail on Sunday Newspaper, August 11, 2002

John Loftus is the Plaintiffs' Expert Witness against the Vatican Bank defendants. It is possible that John Loftus may know more intelligence secrets than anyone alive.

Full Copy of Complaint filed by Five States Against Martin Frankel and the Holy See for Insurance Fraud and Racketeering

Missouri Insurance Regulators have sued the Vatican, alleging that Roman Catholic Church officials conspired to launder millions of dollars looted in one of the largest scandals to rock the U.S. insurance industry. Kansas City Star, May 11, 2002

Vatican Sexual Exploitation of Children Violates International Law, Inter Press Service, April 23, 2002

Lawsuit (Complete text) against the Holy See for Sexual Abuse Cover Up, Vatican accused of Protecting Pedophiles

Long-awaited forensic tests into the death of Vatican banker Roberto Calvi - found hanging from a bridge in London in 1982 - are reported to show he was murdered. BBC News, April 19, 2002

The Vatican's Worldly Assets, The Independent, April 19, 2002

Hundreds Sue Vatican Over Child Sex Abuse, April 6, 2002, Sydney Morning Herald

A JUDGE in Rome ordered that a controversial film about the mysterious death of a Vatican-linked banker be withdrawn from cinemas across Italy yesterday after a complaint by a businessman with alleged Mafia links that it damages his reputation and honour, London Times, March 28, 2002

BBC, March 8, 2002, Twenty years after he was found hanging from a London bridge, a film opens in Italy on Friday 8 March which reignites the controversy about what happened to Vatican banker Roberto Calvi.

New film portrays Vatican Bank at the centre of a conspiracy involving drug-running mafiosi, corrupt bankers and politicians, arms traders, Freemasons and spies. London Times, February 27, 2002.

Irish Times, February 2, 2002, The Real Odessa

BBC, Author Blames Vatican for Holocaust, January 15, 2002

German Press Agency, December 10, 2001, Croatian Nationalists Attack over Nazi Monument

Daily Telegraph, November 19, 2001, Vatican Named as Major Money Laundering Center

Vatican Fraud Ring Exposed, Two Senior Officials Charged, Nov. 7, 2001, The Guardian

Our Lady of Lies, the Franciscans and Medjugorje, Salon Magazine

Vatican Continues to Deny Access to World War II Archives, October 19, 2001, Daily Telegraph

Vatican Accused of Nazi Era Cover Up, July 25, 2001, The

Deep Black Lies by David Guyatt, one of plaintiffs' expert witnesses

Jews Protest Beatification of Ustashe Cardinal,JTA News

Franciscan Controlled Bank Raided by UN Forces - Ties to Croat Extremists and Medjugorje Alleged

Croatian War Criminals Linked to Franciscan Order and Marianist Cult

Pope to Pray at Nazi Gold Bank, Irish Independent, April 6, 2000

Xinhua News Agency, October 3, 2000, Vatican bank Involved in Mafia's Online Washing Money

The Role of the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia's Holocaust

Anti Semitism in Croatia Today

Official US State Department report on the "Fate of the Wartime Ustasha Treasury" is available on this page.

Croatian volunteers in the Nazi Army.

Ustashe atrocities documented Warning! This material is extremely disturbing.

The Vatican Pipeline, $170 million in Nazi Gold to the Vatican, Time Magazine

Ustashe movement documented.

Online book,The Vatican's Billions; by Avro Manhattan

The Vatican, Croatia, and Nazi Gold, Flame Magazine

Washing Money in the Holy See, Fortune magazine, August 1999

US World News Report, March 30, 1998, Did gold stolen by Croatian fascists reach the Vatican?

What is the Vatican Hiding? The Vatican's Complicity in Genocide in Fascist Croatia by Barry Lituchy

The Ghosts of Surmanci: Queen of Peace, Ethnic Cleansing, Ruined Lives

US World News Report 11/15/99: Did a Wartime Pope Anticipate Nazi Victory?

Ustasha Loot from Holocaust Victims Enriched Eva Peron

Nazi Nostalgia in Croatia

Gelli Arrest Focuses Attention on Vatican Bank, American Atheists, September 1998

CNN: Vatican Drawn Into Scandal Over Nazi Gold, July 22, 1997

Shopping The Planet To Death: Its A Hard Habit To Break

2007-04-08T20:18:00.000-07:00

Hey, been there, done that! Too much is never enough. So enough already...You know you have too much stuff when you start referring to it as "crap", as in I need to organize the crap in my closet, house, car ect...Let's all at least try to buy less crap! Then again, the coming economic recession/depression will take care of that...

Published on Sunday, April 8, 2007

Stop Shopping … or the Planet Will Go Pop
by David Smith

‘Many big ideas have struggled over the centuries to dominate the planet,’ begins the argument by Jonathon Porritt, government adviser and all-round environmental guru.’Fascism. Communism. Democracy. Religion. But only one has achieved total supremacy. Its compulsive attractions rob its followers of reason and good sense. It has created unsustainable inequalities and threatened to tear apart the very fabric of our society. More powerful than any cause or even religion, it has reached into every corner of the globe. It is consumerism.’ According to Porritt, the most senior adviser to the government on sustainability, we have become a generation of shopaholics. We are bombarded by advertising from every medium which persuades us that the more we consume, the better our lives will be. Shopping is equated with fun, fulfilment and self-identity. It is also, Porritt warns, killing the planet. He argues, in an interview with The Observer, that merely switching to ‘ethical’ shopping is not enough.

We must shop less.

From pictures of Coleen McLoughlin weighed down with designer bags to branding endorsements by the likes of David Beckham, the image of consumerism as a universal aspiration is ubiquitous. Last week 3,000 people stormed Primark’s new flagship store on London’s Oxford Street before the official opening time, putting two staff in hospital and earning the description by BBC2’s Newsnight of ‘a plague of locusts’. There are, however, a growing number of dissenting voices such as the so-called ‘Froogles’, individuals who use the internet to seek a simpler lifestyle, and organisations and websites which urge people to kick the retail habit. Porritt, chairman of the government’s Sustainable Development Commission, has concluded that consumerism is central to the threat facing the planet, cannibalising its natural resources and producing the carbon dioxide emissions which result in climate change. In a film for Channel Five, he points out that Britons throw away their own body weight in rubbish every seven weeks, with 100 million tonnes of waste pouring into the country’s 12,000 landfill sites every year. If all six billion people in the world were to consume at the same level, we would need two new Earths to supply all the energy, soil, water and raw materials required. ‘I think capitalism is patently unable to go on growing the size of the consumer economy for any more people in the world today because levels of consumption are already undermining life support systems on which we depend - so if we do it for any more people, the planet will go pop,’ Porritt told The Observer. ‘So in a way we don’t have a choice about this: we’ve got to rethink the basic premise behind capitalism to make it deliver the goods. In the long run, when you really look at what happens on a planet with nine billion people and really serious constraints on the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that we can emit, it’s almost inevitable we will learn to have more elegant, satisfying lives, consuming less. I can’t see any way out of that in the long run.’

Porritt, co-founder of Forum For The Future, Britain’s leading sustainable development charity, believes that consumerism has taken over our lives almost unnoticed. ‘Shopping has become a recreational activity,’ he continued. ‘There’s a lot of evidence that people really do see shopping now as an amenity pastime. We’re well beyond the time where shopping was just a way of transacting what you needed in life. It’s now all about identity and status and recreation and companionship, even about meaning in people’s lives. There’s always been a “keeping up with the Joneses” type thing, but it’s now almost universalised and there is a sense of buying to be more like something or to get the image of somebody, particularly with clothes or branded goods, where there’s very much that sense of, “If I buy something with this name on it, maybe a little bit of the magic of that name will rub off on me and I’ll be a better person”, whereas we all know you’re exactly the same person just waiting to go out and make your next branded purchase.’ Porritt’s film cites China as an example of how booming economic growth has produced an explosion of consumerism with mixed results: millions have risen out of poverty, but the consequences for the environment are severe. He added: ‘There’s always been a more privileged part of society which was into buying more than they needed in order to demonstrate how wealthy and influential they were, but the benefits of mass consumption have now been spread so wide that we’ve got anywhere between 1.5 and two billion people on the planet today who can use their purchasing power like that. The total spend on advertising is just so enormous now that it’s little wonder people are seduced into this idea that their personal happiness results from spending in the way they’re being encouraged to do.’ There are some pockets of resistance. ‘Froogles’ include New Yorker Judith Levine who, realising that she had spent $1,000 (£500) in the run-up to Christmas in 2004, decided to buy nothing but necessities for the next year, chronicling the experience in her book, Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping.

A group called The Compact, made up of 10 friends in San Francisco, gained members around the world: their mission, to take a ‘12-month flight from the consumer grid’ and boycott all non-essential products. Every year, in November, Buy Nothing Day encourages people to ’shop less - live more’, and last year there were multiple events in Manchester and Oxford and at least six other British cities. Meanwhile, websites such as Freecycle.org enable users to exchange unwanted goods and preventing them going to waste. February saw the launch of Buy (Less), whose website parodies RED, the global fundraising campaign led by U2 singer Bono which tells consumers that when they buy RED branded products -which include clothes, a credit card and mobile phone - a slice of the money will be used to fight Aids in Africa. Buy (Less) Crap challenges the concept, urging its visitors to ‘join us in rejecting the ti(red) notion that shopping is a reasonable response to human suffering’. It provides weblinks to several charities so that people can make direct donations instead. ‘I’ve always been very nervous about this implied assumption that the more you put on your credit card, the more your charities will benefit, which is a bit perverse, but is what happens when you’re using credit cards of that kind,’ Porritt said. ‘I think it clutters up the awareness we need to encourage in people now that there’s an awful lot of unnecessary consumption, conspicuous consumption, irresponsible consumption, and we’re just got to get used to cracking down on that in our own lives and really thinking through the implications of all that.’ Red officials argue that their campaign is not about buying more but about buying differently. They say that is about buying an ‘ethical’ version of a product rather than a ‘non-ethical’ one. But Porritt argues that there is not only a need to shop differently, but to shop less. ‘I don’t subscribe to this view that all we need to do is consume a little more thoughtfully, a little bit less damagingly. When I look at the amount of consumption that almost instantly turns into waste, with huge amounts bought for no particularly good purpose and then discarded or thrown away, I do find it inexcusable. When some people are buying food they’re not buying for a particular meal, they’re not thinking it through very carefully, they’re almost buying speculatively as if, “Well, we might eat that this week, if we don’t we’ll chuck it away.” I find that extraordinary. I’m not being a miserable, parsimonious, old tightwad, it’s just why would you buy stuff that’s not needed?’

He denies that he is advocating a return to the austerity and rationing last seen during and just after the Second World War, although he describes low air fares as ‘ludicrous’ and warns a sacrifice will have to be made to reduce carbon emissions. ‘I know for sure that if we ever had a golden age, as far as most people are concerned, it’s been over the last 50 years. That’s the period of the greatest prosperity for the greatest number of people, so I don’t have any nostalgia for past eras where life was simpler but more primitive. I don’t talk about going back to anything, I talk about using technology a great deal more intelligently and efficiently to continue to give us a very high quality of life with a fraction of the environmental cost. ‘We need “sustainability literacy”, enabling people to see what the costs of living in a certain way really look like. We’re blind to a lot of that. When people take holidays in far-flung places they very rarely think about the impact of hundreds of thousands of tourists descending on some destination somewhere in the world. We’ve just got to get wiser to what happens when we enjoy the perks of this life.’ His sentiments were echoed by the conservation group Friends of the Earth. Tony Juniper, its director, said: ‘Our consumer culture is completely out of the step with the capacity of the planet. If we’re going to have a world that is in a fit state to live in by the end of the century, we’re going to have to drastically reduce the amount of material demand. ‘We need a legal framework for economic activity, but in the end this is about culture, and culture shapes politics. At the moment the culture is being shaped in an unsustainable direction by the advertising industry. It’s perfectly possible to present an alternative, but no one has the budget: Friends of the Earth has a few thousand pounds, whereas millions are spent to promote a single car. ’Trevor Datson, a spokesman for Tesco, Britain’s biggest retailer, insisted it shares many of Porritt’s values. ‘There’s no question there’s too much waste in society, and we’d agree with Jonathon there. The thrust of Tesco’s moves on the environment is helping customers choose a greener lifestyle. Our carrier bag scheme is designed to incentivise rather than castigate: we’ve saved 350 million plastic bags since last July by offering club card points for people who re-use bags. It’s the power of making people feel good about green choices rather than having to live like a monk.’

Mountains of waste

· 3.3 million tonnes of food are binned every year in the UK

· People get a new mobile on average every 18 months

· Last Christmas, more than 6 million PCs were left on standby in empty offices

· 1.5 million computers are thrown away every year, of which 99 per cent work perfectly

Buying into a low-cost lifestyle

‘Froogles’ started life as a broad American movement of environmentally motivated types who wanted to reduce drastically their consumerism. They use the internet to exchange goods for free.
Buy (Less) is an organisation that encourages individuals to donate money to charities and inspire less consumption.

www.buylesscrap.org
Justin Rowlatt, a reporter on BBC TV’s Newsnight, became Ethical Man when he led a green lifestyle for a year. He installed energy-efficient lightbulbs, avoided animal product foods and gave up his car to switch to public transport.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/6413195.stm
Buy Nothing Day started in 1993 and became an international event celebrated in 55 countries. Its aim is to make consumers think about how buying goods impacts on the environment and poverty.

www.buynothingday.co.uk
In December 2005 a group of professional friends in San Francisco got together and called themselves The Compact, aiming to go ‘beyond recycling’ by reducing clutter and waste.

www.sfcompact.blogspot.com
A New York City couple, Colin Beavan and Michelle Conlin, are spending a year experimenting with a new lifestyle they call No Impact. They only eat organic food produced within 400km of Manhattan, producing no rubbish, and using no paper (including toilet paper) or carbon-emitting transport.

www.noimpactman.typepad.com/blog

1929 & 2007 Depression Not Recession

2007-03-30T15:54:00.000-07:00

An interesting review by M.A. Nystrom...

Social Cycles, Depression and Revolution (Part II) March 29, 2007 by Michael Nystrom

It's not dark yet, but it's getting there...-Bob Dylan

Last week I gave you the good news, that after we make our way through the current political and economic mess that we find ourselves in, we will emerge into a new golden age. This week, the bad news: Before we get there, we will likely have to first undergo at least a depression, and certainly a revolution before we arrive. The brighter world will not come of its own accord; it will wait patiently until we collectively decide to create it. Until then, Batra predicts that "real wages and family income will continue to fall, while poverty will rise. The rich will keep getting richer and the poor getting poorer; similarly, the middle class will continue to shrink." For many, the motivation for real, fundamental change will only come from the depths of depression. Before continuing with Dr. Batra's theory, let's take a look at two recent news articles that set the stage and concretely depict the points he makes: The first, from today's New York Times, informs us that the nation's income gap widened significantly in 2005 to levels unseen since 1928 - the year before the start of the great depression. According to the story, the top 300,000 Americans collectively own as much wealth as the bottom 150 million. While the top 1% of the population got an average raise of $139,000 in 2005, the bottom 90% of workers saw their incomes fall by $172. These are times that try men's souls. Since these are abstracted numbers, it can be difficult to fully appreciate their meaning. But this second article should make things perfectly clear: Circuit City is firing 3,400 of its hourly sales floor workers, and will rehire either them or new workers at a lower hourly rate. Just so you understand the context, this is a company that is headed by a CEO -- Phillip Schoonover -- who raked in $8.5 million dollars last year. The company itself made a profit of $162 million, though it lost money in the most recent quarter. Apparently this is how Schoonover can justify his brilliant fire/rehire-cheaper scheme. According to the article, the average sales worker now makes $10-11 per hour, or about $21,000 per year, while a new worker would only make about $8.00, or $16,000 per year. That is below the poverty level for a family of four, or even three, so forget about trying to raise a family on that kind of a salary. Schoonover, on the other hand, makes about 530 times the average grunt worker's pay, and in today's climate, he'll likely get a bonus for his great idea. But as Batra points out in this and other books, these are precisely the kinds of conditions -- extreme wealth concentration and inequality -- that lead to depressions, for they weaken the overall capitalist system. With such minimal incomes, the only way for workers such as those at the new and improved Circuit City to continue to consume (the great "engine of global economic growth") is by taking on increased levels of consumer debt. But there are limits to how much debt such poorly paid workers can take on. To make sense of these stories in a larger context, let's take a look at the global economy through Dr. Batra's eyes. Batra asserts that the entire world economy has been colonized by the American Global Business Empire. The acquisitors have taken the reigns of power in both business and government and, motivated by unbrided and unchecked greed, are taking increasingly aggressive action to consolidate their power. As a result, members of the other three classes - both in the US and abroad - are being pushed increasingly into the laborer class, simply trying to make a living in the acquisitor dominated world. The American Global Business EmpireUsing Rome and Britain as examples of previous empires, Batra has identified four traits of imperial rule, three of which he claims apply to the US: 1) Empires are created through military force2) The ruling nation can and does extract cheap labor from it colonies3) The empire's colonies run trade surpluses that raise the living standards of the rulers4) The language, culture and institutions of the victor spreads across the imperial territories Batra believes that only the last three apply to the US. He excludes the first, claiming that the US does not seek to colonize other nations militarily. This is something Chalmers Johnson, in his excellent book Nemeis, the Last Days of the American Republic, disagrees with completely, and in fact makes an excellent case for. I'll have a review of Nemesis in the coming weeks. America's cheap colonial labor comes from two sources: First, immigrant labor - both legal and illegal - which expands the US labor pool, and keeps a lid on domestic wages. Illegal immigration offers tremendous benefits to big business at the expense of the laboring class. Since today's government works for business and not for the people, we hear tough talk about illegal immigration from the government but see very little action to control it. The second source of America's cheap colonial labor comes from multinational corporations that employ and subcontract hundreds of thousands of workers around the globe at local wages which are a fraction of what they would be in the US. Products produced by this cheap labor are then imported to the US, further depressing domestic wages while generating exorbitant profits for the multinationals and exceptionally high incomes for their executives. Look again at the case of Circuit City: You would be hard pressed to find anything in the store made in the US, and yet the company made a profit of $162 million last year. However, when profits do falter, it is not the managers who take responsibility by lowering their own salaries; instead they squeeze the laborers further by cutting their wages. While such moves are routinely justified because they "benefit consumers," at some point they become more harmful to the overall economy than helpful. Like Britain and Rome before it, the US receives nearly free goods from its colonial empire. Rome and Britain did it through taxation and forced "tributes," while the US does it more cleverly by controlling and printing the world's senior fiat currency. This allows the US -- unlike any other nation -- to run persistent trade deficits (import surpluses) without suffering currency depreciations or raising interest rates. As Bernanke has reminded us, we have a technology called a printing press, and we put it to very good use. America's colony nations such as China, Japan and Taiwan pay huge "tributes" to the US in the form of massive treasury bond purchases. These tributes ensure market access to the Imperial center for the colony's manufactured goods, while also helping to stabilize the empire's fiat currency. Finally, US culture, values, food, entertainment -- but most importantly business ideologies -- have infiltrated the world. This is clear enough from the surface. It is hard not to notice that the western suit and tie have become the de facto standard uniform for conducting business everywhere from Shanghai to Mumbai. But the realities run deeper. The business world is dominated by ideas hatched from the minds of economists and professors at elite American business schools, then sanctioned by official US government policy. The policies can be summed up in a single word: "tricklism." Tricklism gained its foothold in the US in the early 1980's thanks to Reagan's budget director David Stockman, who was just recently indicted for fraud. Tricklism, Batra explains, is the notion "whereby prosperity is supposed to seep, drop by drop, from the top to the bottom." Thanks to Stockman, tricklism is now practiced worldwide by nations both rich and poor, and is portrayed as the quickest means to economic success. But the real objective of tricklism, Batra contends, is to keep wages as low as possible while maximizing CEO incomes. Unfortunately, tricklism results in full time salaries of only $16,000 per year -- as the Circuit City example shows -- for workers at even highly profitable companies. This causes consumer demand to fall short of supply, for how much can a worker on a $16,000 salary afford to consume? The only way s/he can is by going into debt. This is where the acquisitors really get busy -- offering the kind of help that people should run from rather than take. The same class of intellectual acquisitors that came up with tricklism are only more than happy to provide a solution the problem of depressed demand that they created. That solution is called consumer credit, and it further enriches the acquisitor class while slowly bleeding the life from the laborer class, one interest payment at a time. Because this ideology dominates not only American business, but international business as well, global poverty has skyrocketed over the past 25 years along with tricklism. In spite of the dazzlingly and overwhelmingly positive mainstream media (MSM) spin, that as Mish puts it, creates the "myth ... that jobs are plentiful, the economy is geared for growth, and capital spending will pick up where real estate left off," the facts tell a different and rather grim story. Poverty is not only a third world phenomenon. Because of decisions by people like Philip Schoonover, poverty is afflicting more and more people in the industrialized nations in Europe, Asia and of course here in the US. The 2.4 million families that will face foreclosure due to the policies of tricklism only further emphasize this point.

The Twin Bubbles of Oil and Housing

While the recent Circuit City story gives a clear example of the handiwork of the acquisitor class, in his book Batra cites the twin bubbles of oil and housing as evidence of tricklism. In the 1970's oil prices skyrocketed due to the collusion of OPEC. Today, he asserts, they have skyrocketed due to supply restrictions by the "five bullies" -- the five oil companies which he says control 60% of global refinery output: Exxon-Mobil, Chevron-Texaco, BP-Amoco-Arco, Royal Dutch-Shell, and Conoco-Phillips,. Just one look at the names of the five bullies should tell you most of what you need to know. Each of these mammoth corporations was formed by the merger of already powerful, highly profitable companies. This, combined with 2,600 mergers in the oil industry since the early 90's, has led to a concentrated industry that colludes to keep supplies tight and prices high. Meanwhile, the pro-oil/pro-business national administration has allowed the consolidations to take place, with the Justice Department declining to enforce anti-trust laws. Friends in the big-business-controlled MSM put the blame for high oil and gas prices on OPEC, China's growth, conflict in the middle east, peak oil, etc -- anywhere but on the lack of refining capacity that the exorbitantly profitable five bullies refuse to build. High oil prices mean a silent transfer of wealth from all of us to the few of them. In 2006, the combined profits of the "five bullies" came to $120 billion.

Company (Symbol) 2006 Profits

Exxon-Mobil (XOM)
$40,000,000,000

Chevron-Texaco (CVX)
$17,000,000,000

BP-Amoco-Arco(BP)
$22,000,000,000

Royal Dutch-Shell (RDS'A)
$25,000,000,000

Conoco-Phillips (COP)
$16,000,000,000

Total
$120,000,000,000

Note: Figures rounded to nearest billion; source:

MarketwatchThis is the essence of tricklism in action: A little bit from you, and a little bit from me, and a little bit from 300 million other Americans every week at the gas pump adds up to $120 billion dollars in the hands of five corporations. Take some time to think about this the next time you're filling up your tank. The second bubble Batra cites is the housing bubble, which was artificially created by the acquisitors at the Federal Reserve. Like the oil bubble, the housing bubble is another wealth transfer scheme -- a little bit at a time -- from the pockets of the many into the bank accounts of the few. As wages stagnated, housing prices rose, leading owners to use their home value appreciation as to make up for their stagnating wages. They just borrowed the difference, allowing bankers to pocket lucrative fees and capture a recurring income stream in the form of future interest payments. New Century Financial made $416 million dollars in 2005 on a rising market, and now it's all but bankrupt. As Batra sees it, the artificially created twin bubbles allow the elite acquisitors to surreptitiously transfer wealth from the masses to their own pockets via various, mostly invisible schemes. As a result, the acquisitors now have just about everything locked up, and have managed to hypnotize the majority of the people into thinking that the current system is just, good and the way things should be. Through their near total control of cultural institutions and the MSM, the message of supermaterialism is emphasized and magnified. The benefits of wealth are flaunted while the tragedies of poverty -- as well as its true causes -- are hidden and ignored. To this I say, thank God for the internet! Just because the acquisitors have things locked up at the moment does not mean that their reign will last forever. No class can retain its grip on power forever. All bubbles pop, including artificially induced supply-side bubbles like the oil bubble. The housing bubble is already running its course - see New Century. As a result of the popping, things will continue to get worse before they get better. However, the point Batra makes is that things "out there" will not change until we as individuals make personal decisions that things must change, and then take decisive action to overthrow the current reign of money-rule. When angry individuals coalesce into a mass movement that cannot be ignored, real changes can take place quickly and society can be reorganized. This is called a revolution. But it will likely take more pain for a critical mass of people to reach that conclusion. For now, most people still think there is a chance to "get ahead," not realizing the game is rigged against them (starting with the Federal Reserve itself). Official government corruption -- which Batra defines as the government enacting policies that enrich the powerful while impoverishing the poor and middle class -- will have to get worse before the people come to see things for what they truly are. Batra cites Katrina as one example of the extreme disconnect between powerful government legislators and the people they rule over: "The legislators, spoiled by copious corporate money and junkets, wallowing in luxury, couldn't imagine that the poor had no cars [with which to escape New Orleans]." But unless we decide collectively to change now, we will have to endure more Katrinas, more Circuit City-type events, and millions more foreclosures before people take action to change. It is one thing to read about such things online. It is another to hear about them directly from friends or relatives who are victims. But it takes on an entirely different meaning when you fall victim to such malfeasance yourself. It is only once affected personally that the long fuse of a patient people burns down and they are ready to take direct, explosive action, as our Founding Fathers did 231 years ago. A people can only be pushed so far. The seeds of destruction of the current system are being sown with the daily injustices of tricklism. But a depression, Batra contends, in not necessary for change: With growing poverty and a vanishing middle class, overwhelming CEO greed and ruthlessness, mounting official corruption and incompetence and above all the demoralizing war in Iraq, voters could become furious enough to bring an end to the rule of money in society. Thus a depression need not be a precondition to the coming revolution. Economic and political reforms can come about without such a catastrophe. It is important to note that in the 1970's, Batra wrote a book called The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism. One down, one to go. In this current book, he concludes: All of the symptoms that I expected to see before the start of an anti-acquisitive rebellion are now here. I anticipated many social and economic cancers, such as abysmal wages, growing poverty, rising homelessness, educational decline, family breakdown and loose morals. They are all here, so revolution cannot be very far away.But revolution he contends, need not be violent nor bloody: In a democracy, power and responsibility ultimately rest with the people...Don't think of yourself as a Republican or Democrat; think of yourself as a victim of the misrule of acquisitors, because whatever you dislike today in society stems from the excessive greed and materialism of the acquisitive class. "The book is excellent and provocative, one that I feel I have not done proper justice to with this review. So much material in the book I have left untouched, as Batra covers a lot of ground. I do not agree with all of his assertions nor all of his conclusions, but I do appreciate his unique and unconventional perspective which helped me to stretch my understanding and see the world from a new and different angle."

OPERATION BITE: IRAN WAR SCHEDULED FOR APRIL?

2007-03-26T11:54:00.000-07:00

Hopefully this is only a "rumor of war", but in these crazy times who knows what's possible and if cooler heads will prevail?

OPERATION BITE: APRIL 6 SNEAK ATTACK BY US FORCES AGAINST IRAN
author: Webster G. Tarpley

The US military attack on Iran is now on track for 4 AM on April6,writes the well-known Russian journalist Andrei Uglanov in the Moscow weekly "Argumenty Nedeli." Uglanov cites Russian military experts close to the Russian General Staff for his account. The long awaited US military attack on Iran is now on track for the first week of April, specifically for 4 AM on April 6, the Good Friday opening of Easter weekend, writes the well-known Russian journalist Andrei Uglanov in the Moscow weekly "Argumenty Nedeli." Uglanov cites Russian military experts close to the Russian General Staff for his account. The attack is slated to last for twelve hours, according to Uglanov, lasting from 4 AM until 4 PM local time. Friday is a holiday in Iran. In the course of the attack, code named Operation Bite, about 20 targets are marked for bombing; the list includes uranium enrichment facilities, research centers, and laboratories. The first reactor at the Bushehr nuclear plant, where Russian engineers are working, is supposed to be spared from destruction. The US attack plan reportedly calls for the Iranian air defense system to be degraded, for numerous Iranian warships to be sunk in the Persian Gulf, and the for the most important headquarters of the Iranian armed forces to be wiped out. The attacks will be mounted from a number of bases, including the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia is currently home to B-52 bombers equipped with standoff missiles. Also participating in the air strikes will be US naval aviation from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, as well as from those of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. Additional cruise missiles will be fired from submarines in the Indian Ocean and off the coast of the Arabian peninsula. The goal is allegedly to set back Iran's nuclear program by several years, writes Uglanov, whose article was re-issued by RIA-Novosti in various languages, but apparently not English, several days ago. The story is the top item on numerous Italian and German blogs, but so far appears to have been ignored by US websites. Observers comment that this dispatch represents a high-level orchestrated leak from the Kremlin, in effect a war warning, which draws on the formidable resources of the Russian intelligence services, and which deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness by pro-peace forces around the world. Asked by RIA-Novosti to comment on the Uglanov report, retired Colonel General Leonid Ivashov confirmed its essential features in a March 21 interview: "I have no doubt that there will be an operation, or more precisely a violent action against Iran." Ivashov, who has reportedly served at various times as an informal advisor to Putin, is currently the Vice President of the Moscow Academy for Geopolitical Sciences. Ivashov attributed decisive importance to the decision of the Democratic leadership of the US House of Representatives to remove language from the just-passed Iraq supplemental military appropriations bill which would have demanded that Bush come to Congress before launching an attack on Iran. Ivashov pointed out that the language was eliminated under pressure from AIPAC, the lobbing group representing the Israeli extreme right, and of Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni. "We have drawn the unmistakable conclusion that this operation will take place," said Ivashov. In his opinion, the US planning does not include a land operation: " Most probably there will be no ground attack, but rather massive air attacks with the goal of annihilating Iran's capacity for military resistance, the centers of administration, the key economic assets, and quite possibly the Iranian political leadership, or at least part of it," he continued. Ivashov noted that it was not to be excluded that the Pentagon would use smaller tactical nuclear weapons against targets of the Iranian nuclear industry. These attacks could paralyze everyday life, create panic in the population, and generally produce an atmosphere of chaos and uncertainty all over Iran, Ivashov told RIA-Novosti. "This will unleash a struggle for power inside Iran, and then there will be a peace delegation sent in to install a pro-American government in Teheran," Ivashov continued. One of the US goals was, in his estimation, to burnish the image of the current Republican administration, who would now be able to boast that they had wiped out the Iranian nuclear program. Among the other outcomes, General Ivashov pointed to a partition of Iran along the same lines as Iraq, and a subsequent carving up of the Near and Middle East into smaller regions. "This concept worked well for them in the Balkans and will now be applied to the greater Middle East," he commented. "Moscow must expert Russia's influence by demanding an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to deal with the current preparations for an illegal use of force against Iran and the destruction of the basis of the United Nations Charter," said General Ivashov. "In this context Russia could cooperate with China, France and the non-permanent members of the Security Council. We need this kind of preventive action to ward off the use of force," he concluded.

http://fr.rian.ru/world/20070319/62260006.html

http://fr.rian.ru/world/20070321/62387717.html

Ugly Times In Paris

2007-03-12T08:54:00.000-07:00

To some in Paris, sinister past is back.

In Texas, a white teenager burns down her family's home and receives probation. A black one shoves a hall monitor and gets 7 years in prison. The state NAACP calls it `a signal to black folks.

By Howard Witt Tribune senior correspondent Published March 12, 2007

PARIS, Texas -- The public fairgrounds in this small east Texas town look ordinary enough, like so many other well-worn county fair sites across the nation. Unless you know the history of the place.There are no plaques or markers to denote it, but several of the most notorious public lynchings of black Americans in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries were staged at the Paris Fairgrounds, where thousands of white spectators would gather to watch and cheer as black men were dragged onto a scaffold, scalded with hot irons and finally burned to death or hanged. Brenda Cherry, a local civil rights activist, can see the fairgrounds from the front yard of her modest home, in the heart of the "black" side of this starkly segregated town of 26,000. And lately, Cherry says, she's begun to wonder whether the racist legacy of those lynchings is rebounding in a place that calls itself "the best small town in Texas.""Some of the things that happen here would not happen if we were in Dallas or Houston," Cherry said. "They happen because we are in this closed town. I compare it to 1930s. "There was the 19-year-old white man, convicted last July of criminally negligent homicide for killing a 54-year-old black woman and her 3-year-old grandson with his truck, who was sentenced in Paris to probation and required to send an annual Christmas card to the victims' family.There are the Paris public schools, which are under investigation by the U.S. Education Department after repeated complaints that administrators discipline black students more frequently, and more harshly, than white students. And then there is the case that most troubles Cherry and leaders of the Texas NAACP, involving a 14-year-old black freshman, Shaquanda Cotton, who shoved a hall monitor at Paris High School in a dispute over entering the building before the school day had officially begun.The youth had no prior arrest record, and the hall monitor--a 58-year-old teacher's aide--was not seriously injured. But Shaquanda was tried in March 2006 in the town's juvenile court, convicted of "assault on a public servant" and sentenced by Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville to prison for up to 7 years, until she turns 21. Just three months earlier, Superville sentenced a 14-year-old white girl, convicted of arson for burning down her family's house, to probation."All Shaquanda did was grab somebody and she will be in jail for 5 or 6 years?" said Gary Bledsoe, an Austin attorney who is president of the state NAACP branch. "It's like they are sending a signal to black folks in Paris that you stay in your place in this community, in the shadows, intimidated."The Tribune generally does not identify criminal suspects younger than age 17, but is doing so in this case because the girl and her family have chosen to go public with their story. None of the officials involved in Shaquanda's case, including the local prosecutor, the judge and Paris school district administrators, would agree to speak about their handling of it, citing a court appeal under way. But the teen's defenders assert that long before the September 2005 shoving incident, Paris school officials targeted Shaquanda for scrutiny because her mother had frequently accused school officials of racism. Retaliation alleged "Shaquanda started getting written up a lot after her mother became involved in a protest march in front of a school," said Sharon Reynerson, an attorney with Lone Star Legal Aid, who has represented Shaquanda during challenges to several of the disciplinary citations she received. "Some of the write-ups weren't fair to her or accurate, so we felt like we had to challenge each one to get the whole story. "Among the write-ups Shaquanda received, according to Reynerson, were citations for wearing a skirt that was an inch too short, pouring too much paint into a cup during an art class and defacing a desk that school officials later conceded bore no signs of damage. Shaquanda's mother, Creola Cotton, does not dispute that her daughter can behave impulsively and was sometimes guilty of tardiness or speaking out of turn at school--behaviors that she said were manifestations of Shaquanda's attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, for which the teen was taking prescription medication. Nor does Shaquanda herself deny that she pushed the hall monitor after the teacher's aide refused her permission to enter the school before the morning bell--although Shaquanda maintains that she was supposed to have been allowed to visit the school nurse to take her medication, and that the teacher's aide pushed her first. But Cherry alleges that Shaquanda's frequent disciplinary write-ups, and the insistence of school officials at her trial that she deserved prison rather than probation for the shoving incident, fits in a larger pattern of systemic discrimination against black students in the Paris Independent School District. In the past five years, black parents have filed at least a dozen discrimination complaints against the school district with the federal Education Department, asserting that their children, who constitute 40 percent of the district's nearly 4,000 students, were singled out for excessive discipline. An attorney for the school district, Dennis Eichelbaum, said the Education Department had determined all of the complaints to be unfounded. "The [department] has explained that the school district has not and does not discriminate, that the school district has been a leader and very progressive when it comes to race relations, and that there was no validity to the allegations made by the complainants," Eichelbaum said. But the federal investigations of the school district are not so clear-cut, and they are not finished. In one 2004 finding, Education Department officials determined that black students at a Paris middle school were being written up for disciplinary infractions more than twice as often as white students--and eight times as often in one category, "class disruption. "The Education Department asked the U.S. Justice Department to try to mediate disputes between black parents and the district, but school officials pulled out of the process last December before it was concluded. And in April 2006, the Education Department notified Paris school officials that it was opening a new, comprehensive review to determine "whether the district discriminated against African-American students on the basis of race" between 2004 and 2006. Federal officials say that investigation is still in progress. According to one veteran Paris teacher, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, such discrimination is widespread."There is a philosophy of giving white kids a break and coming down on black kids," said the teacher, who is white. Not everyone in Paris agrees, however, that blacks are treated unfairly by the city's institutions. "I've lived here all my life, and I don't see that," said Mary Ann Reed Fisher, one of two black members of the Paris City Council. "My kids went to Paris High School, and they never had one minute of a problem with the school system, the courts or the police. Meanwhile, Shaquanda, a first-time offender, remains something of an anomaly inside the Texas Youth Commission prison system, where officials say 95 percent of the 2,500 juveniles in their custody are chronic, serious offenders who already have exhausted county-level programs such as probation and local treatment or detention."The Texas Youth Commission is reserved for those youth who are most violent or most habitual," said commission spokesman Tim Savoy. "The whole concept of commitment until your 21st birthday should be recognized as a severe penalty, and that's why it's typically the last resort of the juvenile system in Texas. "Inside the youth prison in Brownwood where she has been incarcerated for the past 10 months--a prison currently at the center of a state scandal involving a guard who allegedly sexually abused teenage inmates--Shaquanda, who is now 15, says she has not been doing well. Three times she has tried to injure herself, first by scratching her face, then by cutting her arm. The last time, she said, she copied a method she saw another young inmate try, knotting a sweater around her neck and yanking it tight so she couldn't breathe. The guards noticed her sprawled inside her cell before it was too late. She tried to harm herself, Shaquanda said, out of depression, desperation and fear of the hardened young thieves, robbers, sex offenders and parole violators all around her whom she must try to avoid each day. "I get paranoid when I get around some of these girls," Shaquanda said. "Sometimes I feel like I just can't do this no more--that I can't survive this."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0703120170mar12,1,1921178.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true hwitt@tribune.com

UPDATE:

Contrast Shaquanda's case with that of teenager Andrew Riley, who was reportedly charged with 128 FELONIES for a year long crime spree.

Andrew Riley faced 128 felony charges Tuesday that included theft, vandalism and intimidation, but he is no adult; he is a seventh grader. Riley, 13, is accused of burglary, theft, stolen property and vandalism. It stems from a crime spree that the Athens County assistant prosecutor said lasted a year. "He's so young, we need to try and get him rehabilitated through the system," said Assistant Prosecutor Keller Blackburn. Blackburn said the Full Brooks Cafe was one of his many targets. Owner Miki Brooks said the restaurant has been robbed twice. "It sort of took all the air out of me the first time," said Brooks. "The second time, I couldn't believe it."His family did not deny he has been in trouble, but they said he could not commit so many crimes. "Honestly, you know, we are baffled by all the charges," said stepfather James Blake. "We suspected a few could come out of this, but nothing like what's been going over. "The charges came after a fellow student went to police, then Riley allegedly beat up that student and now faces charges for intimidating a witness. His stepfather said Riley had a rough childhood. "He's our oldest, you know. He's our first born and he's beenthrough a lot," said Blake. Riley is in a juvenile detention center and his pretrial hearing is scheduled for later this month.

Reported by Laura Cole
http://www.ohionewsnow.com/?sec=news&story=sites/10tv/content/pool/200703/1583692309.html