No Simple Matter
Experiments with politics and poetry.
Monday, Jan 30, 2007
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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
posted by No Simple Matter at 12:55 PM
----
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-Peter K. Niven
posted by No Simple Matter at 12:45 PM
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Where Chaos Is King
Where Chaos Is King
by Mark LeVine; TomDispatch;
October 25, 2005
Within twenty-four hours, on October 16-17, the New York Times ran three
stories about the threat increasing chaos posed to emerging, still
fragile political orders in Iraq, Palestine, and the Sudan. In all three
cases, the chaos afflicting these societies was described as an
unintentional and negative consequence of ill-conceived policies put in
place by the various governments involved: the U.S. in Iraq, Israel as
it withdrew from Gaza, and the Sudanese Government as it finally tried
to restrain marauding Janjaweed militias in Darfur. In no case was the
chaos viewed as intentional or beneficial to one or more of the forces
competing for control of these countries.
The U.S. occupation of Iraq in particular has been judged a failure by
its critics almost from the start because of the chaos it has generated.
Even with the approval of the constitution, "experts" are arguing that,
as long as American and other foreign troops remain in Iraq, the
situation "will become more chaotic," or in the words of Nebraska
Senator Chuck Hagel, will continue to "destabilize the Middle East."
Of course, only angry, irrational Arabs -- in this case, Sunnis -- could
desire such a state of affairs. As the Project for a New American
Century's Gary Schmitt wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, they "could
well believe that the resulting chaos and even occasional death of a
neighbor or a member of his extended family is a price worth paying for
a return to Sunni ascendancy." Similarly, last week Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice argued before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
that "the enemy's strategy is to infect, terrorize and pull down."
The tolerance for disorder, it seems, is a clear sign of an archaic
Muslim mentality at work. As a Marine spokesperson explained recently,
after a deadly attack on American forces, "The insurgents are against
progress and only desire a return to the ways of the seventh century."
No less a personage than Tony Blair was in agreement. Al-Qa'eda, he
claimed, is engaged in a "premedieval religious war utterly alien to the
future of humankind," whose goal, according to his friend George Bush,
is to "establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to
Indonesia." Our goal is order. The urge to create chaos is not only
pre-modern, it's inherently theirs.
The problem with this narrative is that the neoconservatives, who were
primarily responsible for launching the war on terror as well as the
invasion and occupation of Iraq, have by and large not viewed chaos in
this manner. For them, chaos has been not just an inevitable consequence
of globalization, but a phenomenon that might be well used to further
their long-term agenda of remaking the Middle East in America's image.
Indeed, as they saw it, it was only natural for the world's first true
hyperpower to adopt a historically well-tested policy of "creative
destruction." Their goal, as explained in the now famous comment of an
anonymous administration official, was to "create our own reality"
wherever we tread. ("We're history's actors," he continued, "and all of
you will be left to just study what we do.")
Such a comment might seem the height of Bush administration hubris
alone, if it hadn't also reflected the avant-garde of American business
thinking of the previous decade or more. In his 1988 book Thriving on
Chaos, for instance, business guru Tom Peters argued that Americans must
"take the chaos as given and learn to thrive on it. The winners of
tomorrow will deal proactively with chaos... Chaos and uncertainty
are... market opportunities for the wise."
The advice of Peters and of the Pentagon was taken to heart by scholars
and policymakers like Paul Wolfowitz, Samuel Huntington, and Robert
Kaplan, who in the mid-1990s began writing of a "new cold war" or "clash
of civilizations" between Islamism and neoliberalism across an "arc of
instability" stretching from sub-Saharan Africa to Central Asia.
Specifically, post-Cold War experiences in Bosnia, Haiti, Rwanda, and
elsewhere in Africa called for an organized effort to figure out how the
United States could best "manage the chaos" that the coming global
"anarchy" was certain to bring.
Similarly, the World Bank argued in a 1995 report that modernizing the
Middle East might well necessitate a "shake-down period" before the
region could even begin adapting to the new global economic order. Some
neocon intellectuals believed that the best way to manage such a moment
was to bring it on, to provoke a level of chaos that would be but the
prologue to a new, American-style world order. (In keeping with that
spirit, "Shock and Awe" made its debut in Iraq in March 2003, a level of
force whose very intention was to create chaos, however short-lived it
may have been expected to be.)
In this same vein, Exxon-Mobil, Halliburton, and Lockheed Martin leaped
to take advantage of the market opportunities presented by
post-September 11 chaos. In doing so, they helped turn the "breadth
economy" of the 1990s, in which many sectors grew at a sustained rate,
into the "depth economy" of the new millennium, in which core "old"
industries like oil, defense, and heavy engineering regained a
disproportionate share of corporate profits -- a position they are
unlikely to relinquish as long as chaos remains king in the global
political economy.
A less Pollyanna-ish view of the coming chaos was expressed in Vision
for 2020, the mission statement of the U.S. Strategic Space Command
(published in 2000). Globalization, that document suggested, was
producing a global zero-sum game of winners and losers. In such a
context, Americans must prepare to do whatever it might take to "win,"
including, of course, dominating space in order to "protect US interests
and investment." What the Space Command didn't mention, though it has
since become a predominant concern of the Bush Administration (as the
secret files of the Cheney Energy Task Force reveal) is how the expected
arrival of the era of "peak oil" and the levels of global energy chaos
sure to accompany it have exponentially increased the stakes involved in
controlling Iraq's immense oil reserves. Growing competition with an
energy-thirsty China and, to a lesser extent, the European Union has
only amplified this concern, and helped produce a situation where the
blowback potential from the invasion and long-term occupation of Iraq
seemed, at least on paper, well worth the risk.
Playing the Chaos Card in Iraq
Given the chaos and violence currently afflicting much of Arab Iraq,
particularly its Sunni regions, it is hard to imagine that the Bush
Administration intended such an outcome to its long-awaited invasion and
occupation. Of course, everyone would undoubtedly have cheered if the
immediate post-invasion chaos had quickly given way to a free-market
democratic paradise along the Tigris. But while significant parts of the
chaos in Iraq have resulted from rank incompetence (or perhaps a total
lack of concern with the consequences of the policies set in place),
some of it can still be viewed as serving the interests of Bush
administration policy desires, albeit at great cost. Even with the
blowback from the chaos Bush has unleashed now creeping towards Karl
Rove's office in the White House and beginning to encircle Vice
President Cheney, we need to consider what other means this
administration might have used to achieve three of its most important
goals in Iraq:
Its first goal has long been to retain a (much reduced) military
presence in that country for the foreseeable future. The administration
is on record as saying that it will leave if asked to do so; but the
continuing chaos and conflict, largely sparked by the continued presence
of U.S. troops, ensure that the desperately weak government in Baghdad's
Green Zone, which is unlikely to survive without American protection,
won't make such a request. Its second goal is to ensure a predominant
role for U.S. companies in the development, production, and sale of the
country's vast reservoirs of oil. Indeed, the few documents made public
from the Cheney Energy Task Force revealed that concern over losing Iraq
to European oil companies, combined with China's insatiable thirst for
petroleum and fears that it would increasingly encroach on America's
sphere of economic dominance, were important reasons for the war. If the
world really has entered an era of zero-sum competition over its
remaining oil supplies, Iraq is a prize worth shedding a lot of blood to
secure -- and chaos, whatever the ensuing pain, a strategy potentially
worth pursuing.
The administration's final goal has been to continue the wholesale,
disastrous privatization of Iraq's economy -- something that, as the
World Bank warned, was unlikely to be accepted by the people of any
Middle Eastern country who possessed the wherewithal to resist. It is
obviously harder for people to resist when their lives have been thrown
into chaos. In fact, most of the Middle East has avoided succumbing to
American pressures to adopt the kind of large-scale,
structural-adjustment reforms that have spread increased poverty and
inequality across the global south. As key members of the Bush
administration saw the matter, Iraq could do for neoliberalism in the
Middle East what Chile did for it in Latin America.
The vast majority of Iraqis are, of course, opposed to each of these
goals. Yet the constitution on which they just voted -- being
essentially an American-brokered document -- carefully avoided
addressing any of these concerns. It is hard to imagine that such an end
would have been possible in a more peaceful environment where Iraqis had
the public space and time to debate these important issues, particularly
when polling shows that upwards of 80% of them are opposed to the
presence of U.S. troops and to the policies they are enforcing.
Perhaps Juan Cole has best summarized how and why chaos has become a
defining dynamic in Iraq: "Iraq was," he said recently, "like a treasure
in a strongbox... The obvious thing to do was to take a crowbar and
strike off the strongbox lock."
Learning from the Israelis (as Usual)
If such planned chaos was limited to Iraq, we could perhaps see it as an
aberration rather than part of the larger dynamics of contemporary
globalization. But research on countries from Africa to the former
Soviet Union has demonstrated that chaos -- whether the
"instrumentalized disorder" in sub-Saharan Africa or the "bardok" of
Central Asia -- defines political life across an increasingly large "arc
of instability" stretching across three continents. Palestine is a
particularly good example of how chaos, or "fawda" as Palestinians term
it, can serve the political interests of an occupying power.
It has long been an open secret that the U.S. conducted extensive
training with the help of the Israeli Defense and Security forces to
prepare for the urban warfare and interrogation practices of Iraq. While
discussing the best way to ram through walls and "interrogate" suspected
insurgents, it's not unlikely that the Israelis shared their experiences
fomenting chaos to wear down Palestinian society, particularly since the
outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada and the demise of the Oslo negotiations.
As argues Israeli social scientist Gershon Baskin, Ariel Sharon's policy
of unilateralism in response to the failure of negotiations has made
sense to the majority of Israelis largely because they see the "total
chaos" across the West Bank and the "rule of the gun" in newly
"liberated" Gaza as demonstrating that "the PA is too weak to rule" an
independent Palestine, or even to negotiate its establishment. What few
Israelis sharing this position consider, however, is how Israeli
policies have systematically created the very chaos that is now used as
the excuse for engaging in unilateral steps such as withdrawing from
Gaza while cementing -- literally -- Israeli control over much of the
West Bank.
Yet the roots of Israel's strategy of chaos do not lie in the outbreak
of the al-Aqsa intifada in September 2000, or in the autocratic and
corrupt policies of Yasser Arafat. Rather they go back to 1994 -- the
same year that Paul Wolfowitz, then a dean at the Johns Hopkins
University, held a conference on the "coming anarchy." It was then that
the Paris protocols to the Oslo Agreements were signed. These
agreements, rarely mentioned in discussions of why Oslo failed, locked
Palestinians into a catastrophic neoliberalized relationship with Israel
for the remainder of the Oslo process. This happened just at the moment
when Israel more or less permanently closed the Occupied Territories.
Aside from a few industries run by Palestinians with ties to Israel,
this nearly destroyed what was then a modest but growing Palestinian
economy, led to a creeping but disastrous emigration of the country's
middle class, and ultimately helped create a "severely depressed...
devastated" economy that, in the words of the 2004 Palestine Human
Development Report, was "ripe for corruption."
It is in the context of the ensuing decade-plus of chaos engulfing Gaza
and the West Bank that we must read the recent flood of editorials by
American and Israel pundits offering advice in advance of the coming
Palestinian elections on how the United States and Israel can help
bolster the "authority" of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas. As with Iraq's insurgents, a combination of religious fanatics
(that is, Hamas) and "clans" and "tribes" are described as increasingly
ruling a situation in which "there is no law." And because they are
depicted as the fountainhead of the chaos afflicting Palestine, Israeli
"liberals" such as former Israeli General Ephraim Sneh can safely argue
that Hamas is a "greater threat" to Palestinians even than to Israel.
What makes this discourse so interesting is how well it has served its
purpose: With the chaos and violence of the intifada having plunged the
Palestinian economy "into deep crisis," with poverty rates in the
population above 50%, the most recent poll of Palestinian attitudes
reveals that the idea of ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank
has become a distant dream, a fate the Bush administration hopes will be
replicated when it comes to the idea of an America-free Iraq.
In one of his periodic attempts to bolster public support for the
occupation, President Bush offered the following ad-style summary of
American policy in Iraq: "As Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down." This
may be easy to say but it will remain exceedingly difficult for Iraqis
to stand up as long as America looms over them in a whirl of chaos.
Chaos-as-policymaking is a perilous undertaking, even for the globe's
lone superpower. In the end, the chaos unleashed across Iraq by
Washington might just topple America's latest imperial incarnation. For
now, however, neither the Bush administration, nor chaos is likely to be
a stranger to Iraq.
Copyright 2005 Mark LeVine
Mark LeVine, professor of modern Middle Eastern history, culture, and
Islamic studies at the University of California at Irvine, is the author
of a new book, Why They Don't Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of
Evil (Oneworld Publications, 2005). His website is www..culturejamming.org.
posted by No Simple Matter at 3:44 PM
ACT ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED SIXTY
pat fasten father: “withstand president much”
barnyard fair share: “terror city thousands”
share heir law: “federal research barely”
caught thought day: “army seasons plan”
raid made prey: “implementing history affluent”
church picture men: “pumping reduction mainly”
said feet receive: “wrote neglect face”
along soda civil: “yet cities spent”
parade bitter person: “trickle american submersion”
get exhaust egg: “iraq below conceded”
pin guild women: “war community scenario”
time fight guide: “homeland scale cities”
fire desire judge: “reason created global.”
-John Crouse & Jim Leftwich
posted by No Simple Matter at 3:43 PM
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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
posted by No Simple Matter at 11:23 AM
----
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-Peter K. Niven
posted by No Simple Matter at 11:22 AM
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Smoking Guns and Red Herrings
Smoking Guns and Red Herrings
By Elizabeth de la Vega, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on October 28, 2005, Printed on October 29, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/27515/
The Grand Jury supervised by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has
returned an indictment charging Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide
and reputed "alter-ego" I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby with perjury,
obstruction of justice, and false statements to the grand jury. But this
indictment does not end the story; rather, a close reading suggests that
these charges are most likely merely a chapter in a long and tragic
story. Here, from a former federal prosecutor, are thoughts about four
things we should expect, four things we shouldn't, and one question we
should all be asking.
We should not expect a final resolution any time soon. Complex cases
usually take years to proceed through the courts. In addition, the
indictment released today describes a chronology of close to two years
and a complicated set of facts. Obviously, Fitzgerald is taking a "big
picture" approach to this case. This mirrors his approach to previous
cases. In December 2003, for example, Fitzgerald announced the
indictment of former Illinois Governor George Ryan on corruption charges
in Operation Safe Road, which began in 1998. In that year, the
investigation of a fatal accident revealed that truckers were purchasing
commercial licenses from state officials. Indictments were announced in
stages, culminating in the indictment of Ryan, who was the 66th
defendant in the case. In the Libby case, the allegations suggest he was
merely one of many officials -- including an unnamed Under Secretary of
State and "Official A," a Senior White House Official -- who were
involved in revealing classified information about Joseph Wilson's wife
Valerie Plame. No other individuals are named as defendants, and they
should not be considered so at this point, but the complexity of the
indictment suggests that the investigation may follow a pattern similar
to that used by Fitzgerald in the Illinois corruption case.
We should not expect to hear much more from Fitzgerald. The Special
Counsel has been widely admired, and sometimes criticized, for his
"tight-lipped" approach and "leak-free" grand jury investigation. But
that, folks, is how it's supposed to be. Federal prosecutors are
required to maintain grand jury secrecy. If they don't do that, they not
only jeopardize their investigations, they could lose their jobs and/or
be charged with a crime. The public has come to expect leaks from grand
jury investigations because Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, who was
not a federal prosecutor, ignored secrecy rules during the investigation
of President Clinton (and got away with it). Even after indictment,
Department of Justice (DOJ) press guidelines permit release of only
limited facts about the defendant, the charges against him, and court
documents or testimony that may become public during the prosecution.
Don't hold your breath waiting for Fitzgerald to explain evidence not
alleged in the indictment; nor will he appear on talk shows to debate
defense representatives.
We should not expect a smoking gun. Even when there actually is a gun,
there's hardly ever a smoking gun. In the case against Libby, as in most
white-collar crime cases, the evidence is likely to consist mainly of
documents, thousands of them. And considering that the weapon employed
in this crime appears to be a telephone, the closest thing to a smoking
gun may well be telephone records.
We should not expect the President to take steps to "get to the bottom
of this." He professed that desire in October 2003, but belied it in the
next breath, saying he "had no idea who the leaker was and didn't know
if we'd ever find out. "There's a lot of senior officials [out there],"
he commented. "You tell me," he asked a group of reporters, "how many
sources have you had that's leaked information, that you've exposed, or
had been exposed? Probably none." Of course, assuming Bush didn't
already know who the leakers were, all he had to do was make darned sure
his aides told him. After all, organizations routinely conduct internal
probes in parallel with criminal investigations. Indeed, the U.S.
Sentencing Guidelines consider such inquiries to strongly indicate
corporate acceptance of responsibility. But accepting responsibility for
the CIA leak would have put quite a damper on the Bush reelection
campaign. So, with his usual Janus-like approach to every threat, the
President managed to declare himself above such petty politics while
allowing surrogates to spread disinformation. In other words, the
administration has attempted to derail the prosecution in precisely the
same way it tried to derail ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson's credibility in
the first place.
We should expect red herrings from the defense (even if not smoking guns
from the prosecution). Fox hunters once tossed smoked red herrings out
to test whether their dogs could stay on the right trail. Now, of
course, the term means a distraction from the real issue; and if the
Republican Talking Points rolled out thus far are any indication, we are
going to be tripping over red herrings galore in the upcoming months.
We should expect more attacks on Joseph Wilson, even though they
represent a very large red herring (more the size of a mackerel). These
will be meant only for the court of public opinion. Since the White
House has already admitted, repeatedly, that it had insufficient
evidence to mention that Saddam Hussein was seeking Niger "yellowcake"
uranium in the President's State of the Union address in 2003, claims
that Wilson went to Niger on a boondoggle or that he is merely a
partisan critic (both of which appear to be untrue) have never been the
least bit relevant. If you don't dispute the essence of the testimony of
a witness, then undermining his credibility is pointless in a court of law.
We should expect another red herring, one that should have been thrown
back in the river long ago: that perjury, obstruction of justice, and
false statements charges are not "substantive," and so somehow less
serious. "Substantive" is a legal term, referring to a crime that can be
proved without reference to the elements of another crime. For example,
bank robbery is a "substantive crime" and conspiracy to commit bank
robbery is not. (But they're both crimes.) Perjury, obstruction of
justice, and false statements may arise out of the investigation of
other crimes, but they stand on their own. So they too are "substantive"
crimes. More to the point, as Patrick Fitzgerald eloquently explained in
his press conference, lying in an investigation is extraordinarily
serious, because it undermines the integrity of the process.
We should expect attempts by pundits to derive "meaning" from the
absence of charges under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or
the Espionage Act. Reasons for the absence of such charges can range
from insufficient evidence to concerns about the Classified Information
Procedures Act, which governs the use of classified information in a
criminal case. No one other than Fitzgerald, his staff, and the grand
jury knows why certain charges were not brought and they will never be
able to explain their decisions.
We should expect a campaign to demonize Fitzgerald through claims that
he is overzealous and has exceeded his authority. Such attacks are
legally irrelevant, but more important, they're wrong. Fitzgerald's
original mandate, contained in a letter from Deputy Attorney General
James Comey, was to investigate all crimes arising from the outing of
Valerie Plame. Out of an apparent abundance of caution, Fitzgerald
requested clarification of the term "all" and was advised, again by
Comey, that it included both underlying crimes and crimes that stemmed
from the investigation of the underlying crimes. At no time did
Fitzgerald seek, or receive, an expansion of his authority: it was there
all along, as it would be in any investigation of federal crimes.
We should also expect pundits to argue that this prosecution is
political. That is the most despicable of red herrings considering that
Fitzgerald has been a career prosecutor forbidden by the Hatch Act to
participate in politics for twenty years, is registered without
political affiliation, and was appointed by a Republican. Also, the
resulting indictments were returned by grand jurors who heard evidence
for two years, after which a majority, at least 12 out of 23, decided
that there was probable cause to believe -- in other words, it was "more
likely than not" -- that the defendant had committed all the elements of
the crimes charged. In other words, in investigating and returning an
indictment against the Vice President's Chief of Staff, Patrick
Fitzgerald and the grand jury have followed one of the most basic
principles of criminal jurisprudence: that the law is no respecter of
persons, that all persons stand equal before it. It would have been the
most flagrant violation of the rule of law if the prosecutor and grand
jury had walked away from Lewis Libby's deliberate deceptions simply
because he was an important government official.
But should we expect, given the Republicans' attempts to belittle and
politicize the case thus far, that President Bush will pardon his senior
administration official if Libby is convicted on these serious charges?
The 1992 Christmas Eve pardons of Iran/contra defendants by former
President George Bush Sr. provide cause for concern. Let us hope that
the current President Bush will not undermine the rule of law in this way.
Elizabeth de la Vega has recently retired after serving more than 20
years as a federal prosecutor in Minneapolis and San Jose. During her
tenure, she was a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and Chief
of the San Jose Branch of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern
District of California.
posted by No Simple Matter at 2:20 PM
Aryan Jihad and the Elephant in America's Living Room
Aryan Jihad and the Elephant in America's Living Room
By Meera Subramanian, The Revealer
Posted on October 29, 2005, Printed on October 29, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/27512/
Here's a riddle for you: How can a small neo-Nazi march, organized to
draw attention to the alleged persecution of white people by black
people, and a counter-demonstration of approximately 600 blacks, take
place in Ohio and not spur a single news report to directly address the
question of race, except to deny its role in the events? Not six weeks
after Hurricane Katrina supposedly awakened this country to the fact
that it had some latent race issues to deal with, the media once again
missed an opportunity to deal with the murky territory of race in the
great melting pot of the United States.
There were over a hundred arrests in Toledo, Ohio after rioting broke
out last Saturday. The rally organized by the National Socialist
Movement ("America's Nazi Party"), drew only a couple dozen white
supremacist demonstrators, who gathered to bring attention to a
neighborhood where they believed whites were being threatened by the
presence of black gang violence. The Aryan Nation website goes into
descriptive detail of the alleged abuses. Members of the black community
responded by taking to the streets and the crowd ended up directing
their anger towards the police after the neo-Nazis left.
One report from the Associated Press dominated the media, repeating
quotes from a defensive mayor and a startled police chief. A CNN live
feed summed up the situation in Toledo with "What a mess," and then,
without skipping a beat, transitioned into: "All right, a sign that New
Orleans is approaching normal..."
In an Aljazeera piece, Toledo Mayor Jack Ford denied that race was even
an element. "I don't think it was race relations at all. It was some
gang members who had real or imagined grievances and took it as an
opportunity to speak in their own way over the march." His statements,
along with other city officials, generally took on a defensive tone,
attempting to justify their position and their actions as they walked
the delicate line between first amendment rights and civil peace while
ignoring any exploration of the underlying reasons for what happened.
Toledo Police Chief Mike Navarre was onto something when he said, "This
is not a police problem, this is a social problem." But his statement
was left dangling in the AP wire, as was any credible attempt to explore
such "real or imagined grievances," that brought six hundred people,
mostly young black men, out into the streets to throw rocks at cops,
overturn vehicles, set buildings on fire.
Apparently, there's no time to pause and begin to answer such questions.
Instead, what prevailed in the press coverage was blame, for those who
failed to contain the crisis, for those who exploited it, for those who
sparked it. Bill White, the spokesperson for the neo-Nazis, blamed the
violence on the police. The police, in turn, "blamed the mayhem on a
disorganized group of the community's youth."
The overall lack of reporting is of note as well. By Monday, two days
after the event, The Toledo Blade had a dozen articles listed about the
incident, but the national press seemed to have forgotten Saturday's
events. Even The New York Times relied on a basic AP feed that focused
on the unheeded pleas of local ministers and community leaders for a
peaceful response to the neo-Nazis.
Consistent with most mainstream media, the topic was bereft of context.
A few facts and numbers, quotes from officials and one or two residents
and the story is considered complete. Explanations come in the form of
one-sentence kickers, such the one that ended the AP story widely
circulated on Saturday in which black resident Keith White said, "They
let them come here and expect this not to happen?" By closing the lead
article with this, the AP was essentially echoing the sentiment of the
man: Well, what else do you expect? We're just here to give you the facts.
Race wasn't the only elephant in Toledo's living room. Economics and
religion were crowded in there too. Because, really, why Toledo? In the
same CNN article, Mayor Ford says he's not clear why the neo-Nazis chose
his city or that neighborhood in particular. The National Socialist
Movement is based in Roanoke, Virginia. Perhaps Toledo was chosen
because it is a prime example of a mid-sized, Mid-Western city that has
witnessed its economic infrastructure steadily decline, and rate of
unemployment increase by more than half, over the past five years.
Frustration and lack of opportunities feed into the dynamics of what
occurred and make cities like Toledo a target for hate-based activity.
There was also not a single mention, in these evangelical days, of the
religious element of the neo-Nazi movement in America. While all claim
to have God on their side, neo-Nazi groups have a wide range of focus on
the Christian element within their manifestos. Many neo-Nazi groups in
America are seen as Christian Identity, a racist version of the Biblical
fundamentalism that clenches a Bible in the hand not raised in Sieg
Heil. But the Aryan Nations webpage, which has links to the National
Socialist Movement (the rally's organizers), as well as mention of
"Aryan Jihad" and quotes from Adolf Hitler, also has an Arabic
insciption at the top of their site and a quote from the Qur'an praising
"Jihadists who strive hard and fight." In other words, a holy war is a
holy war is a holy war. By looking to the Bible and defining themselves
as the true descendents of Adam, neo-Nazis nevertheless seem to focus
their hatred on Jews and downplay the love of God part.
Perhaps Police Chief Navarre was representing the nation and the press
more than he realized when he said, "If this march had occurred in
downtown Toledo, we wouldn't have had the unrest." Avoidance seems to be
the way Americans choose to deal with the biggest social issues that
stand before us. At least until the next natural disaster, murder-trial
acquittal or Saturday afternoon rally by a couple dozen neo-Nazis
reminds us of the work we still need to do.
Meera Subramanian is a graduate student at New York University.
posted by No Simple Matter at 2:19 PM
ACT ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FIFTY NINE
bricks entrails apples: “inherently hide power”
identity rarity overdose: “sea inside conditioning”
peculiar before vowel: “minimize shelter scramble”
position following paintings: “system refuge poured”
esteem painter oddity: “water money after”
yellow frequency parent: “bush descended island”
pronoun ossify betting: “federal refugees debris”
overtime prudence hormonal: “urban vigilance inside”
future solvent morals: “was football first”
trimming honor heads: “shoring plastic lies”
visibility belief luxury: “crucial beer precautions”
ostenisble alloys seeming: “site torrents orderly”
verbs drudge bones: “flow ordered survival.”
-John Crouse & Jim Leftwich
posted by No Simple Matter at 2:15 PM
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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
posted by No Simple Matter at 1:06 PM
----
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posted by No Simple Matter at 1:06 PM
----
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posted by No Simple Matter at 1:04 PM
Friday, October 28, 2005
Criminal Capitalism and Quixotic Devotee
Criminal Capitalism and Quixotic Devotee
by Girish Mishra
October 26, 2005
Raymond W. Baker knows of the working of world capitalist system in all
its intricacies to the minutest details as he worked for almost four
decades in Africa and South America as a prominent businessman. Later,
he was associated with two prominent think-tanks of America, including
the Brookings Institution.
The thesis, he has propounded in this book, is two fold: capitalism is
rotten and badly stinking, yet it needs to be reformed, as there is no
alternative to it. Baker, in his experience over a period of more than
40 years in more than 60 countries, has seen “the free–market system
operate illicitly and corruptly” and its impact “on the lives of
disadvantaged people on all six inhabited continents”. He very candidly
admits that “The basic structure of our global economic system has
fundamental flaws, and the accompanying risks are beginning to be
evident to wealthy and impoverished alike.”
When Baker, after finishing Harvard Business School and teaching a
course in management at the University of New Hampshire, joined the
business world in Nigeria, he was surprised to find that a lot of people
invested their money in one place but reaped huge profits somewhere else
through a complicated mechanism based on over- and under-invoicing and
transfer pricing among other things. To quote Baker, “It took me two or
three years to realize that most foreign-owned companies were doing
largely the same thing. And then it took another couple of years to
learn that most wealthy Africans involved in foreign trade were
illegally moving money abroad by the same means. As the decades rolled
on and my activities spread to dozens of countries across the planet, I
observed that countless forms of financial chicanery are prevalent in
international business. Like an iceberg, the little that is visible is
supported by vastly more hidden beneath the surface.”
Baker has found the reputation of free-market system, even in the West,
in the mud as it abounds in all kinds of frauds, scandals and
illegalities. “An assortment of frauds, thefts, corrupt practices,
accounting irregularities, earning restatements, asset write downs, tax
shenanigans, conflicts of interest, and other charges, probes,
malpractices, and allegations have corroded the reputations of dozens of
companies and sapped the net worth of untold numbers of shareholders and
retirees. The list of financial institutions tarnished in the press
reads like what should otherwise be the Who’s Who of propriety:
Citigroup, J. P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Bankers Trust, Bank of
New York and some 55 more on the roster I maintain. The corporate rap
sheet, ranging from spectacular failures to merely disgraced executives,
includes Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Halliburton, and nearly 100
more on my list. All Big 5 accounting firms have been tarred and
feathered. The number of law firms taking heat is too long to recount.”
It has been claimed time and again that uninterrupted operation of
market forces globally will do away with all kinds of corruption and
criminal activities, which are supposed to arise from government
interventions and regulations and the emergence of monopolies. What has
happened in practice is quite the opposite. Baker has come out with a
damning indictment: “Since the end of the Cold War, the opening years of
the globalizing era have produced an explosion in the volume of
illegitimate commercial and financial transactions. North American and
European banking and investment institutions have been flooded with
laundered and ill-gotten gains. Totaling trillions of dollars, most of
these sums generated through secret arrangements between cooperating but
distant private-sector entities. Lagging legal codes have proven
inadequate to deal with the situation. Much of the subject is a taboo in
business and government circles, yet this torrent of stolen, disguised,
and hidden resources poses a major risk to state stability, corporate
security, democracy, and free enterprise across the planet.”
The major portion of the book is devoted to a discussion of dirty money,
its various components, the mechanism by which it is generated, how the
tax havens and Western financial institutions facilitate its generation
and its laundering, and the way the U. S. and other governments,
notwithstanding all their protestations abate it. ‘Dirty Money’ has been
defined as “money that is illegally earned, illegally transferred, or
illegally utilized. If it breaks laws in its origin, movement, or use,
then it properly merits the label.”
There are three main components of dirty money, namely, criminal,
corrupt, and commercial. The criminal component comprises wide-ranging
evil activities such as racketeering, smuggling of men as well as
material goods, all kinds of fraud, counterfeiting of goods and currency
notes, embezzlement, fraud, forgery, prostitution, piracy of all types
and so on. It needs to be noted that most countries have banned proceeds
of drug trafficking, bank fraud, and terrorism. The corrupt component
has in its fold the yield of bribery and theft by foreign government
officials. The commercial component is generally the result of
tax-evasion and it does not find any place in official records.
According to Baker, “What is most striking is that all three forms of
dirty money –criminal, corrupt, and commercial–utilize basically the
same subterfuges to roll through international channels: false
documentation, dummy, corporations, shell banks, tax havens, offshore
secrecy jurisdictions, mispricing, collusion, kickbacks, numbered
accounts, wire transfers that disguise transactions, and more. Whether
it’s moving drug money or tax-evading money, whether it’s a thug or
tyrant or terrorist or corporate titan, all use the same bag of tricks.
And the truth is, western business and banking sectors have developed
and promoted the mechanisms for other countries for more than a century.”
There are many ways to get rich while the government and the society do
not know where the money comes from. One of them is under- and
over-invoicing. This is a very old tactics resorted to in international
trade, real estate deals, purchase of services, etc. that form part of
international business transactions. To give an example, an Indian
businessman may export textiles worth $10m but show in the invoice just
$8m and understanding is reached before hand with the importer that he
would remit to the exporter $8m and deposit the rest in some Swiss bank
account or somewhere else after deducting his commission or service
charges. Similarly, some Indian businessman imports machinery and
equipment worth $8m but bills, as per the secret understanding, for
$10m. The Reserve Bank of India releases on the basis of the invoice a
sum of $10m. The exporter takes $8m and the rest of the amount is
deposited in the name of the Indian businessman or his nominee, after
deducting the service charges. Thus India is defrauded to the extent of
$4m in these two transactions taken together and dirty or black money to
the tune of $4m is generated, which multiplies if ploughed back in
business activities. So far as India is concerned, its government is
deprived of foreign exchange to the tune of $4m that could have been
used for developmental purposes.
Baker has found that not only goods but services also can be mispriced
or subject to over- and under-invoicing. “Insurance is a regular
candidate with premiums marked up to provide offshore kickbacks. Foreign
advertising is another popular vehicle. Consulting contracts and
advisory services are easy to load with kickbacks. Technical assistance
agreements offer a regular outflow of money that can be shifted into
offshore bank accounts. Similarly, royalties, patents, and licenses have
become a recent favorite among skilled money shifters.”
The U.S. and other Western governments claim that they have legally
forbidden their companies to indulge in bribery in foreign lands, but
this stipulation is very easily circumvented. Baker has found that the
usual trick is to allow 20 per cent or so in place of usual 10 per cent
commission to the agents to procure the business. Agents understand the
purpose of this unusually high rate of commission and they leave no
stone unturned to influence and bribe the decision-makers. They offer
money and various kinds of other inducements on one pretext or the
other. As is widely known, one American company, Enron, now defunct,
gave money to certain people in India in the name of promoting
education! Baker mentions a widely used trick: “An expatriate lawyer in
the MiddleEast does a thriving business representing arms manufacturers.
He sets up billion-dollar weapons deals under two contracts, one for the
main equipment and a second for support services such as training,
maintenance, and software updates. The first contract with the
government of the purchasing country is priced properly. The second
contract is channeled through a joint-venture company in a Caribbean tax
haven, owned by the arms manufacturer and by designated friends of the
government officials in the buying country. While doing no work, these
nominee partners share in the venture’s deliberately bloated revenues,
passing the funds along to their principals, the officials who are the
real but silent partners.” Even a reputed company like IBM entered into
such an arrangement with an Argentine firm. Baker has the details of
this shady deal.
The Indian government’s scheme of offering subsidy to exporters has led
to inflating the items entering export trade to corner as much subsidy
as possible. “Lots of exporters continue to get rich off their
government’s programs, so be alert to this money-making opportunity.”
This is one of the findings of Baker so far as India is concerned. It
speaks volumes about the honesty of Indian businessmen and the media
they control.
Another very useful trick is transfer pricing by multinational
corporations who resort to “the use of trade to shift money at will
between parents, subsidiaries, and affiliates operating in dozens of
countries. For many multinational corporations, exaggerated transfer
pricing is standard procedure, a major part of global strategies to
minimize taxes and maximize profits.” Further, “Intracompany trade
across borders represents about 50 to 60 per cent of all cross border
trade. I have never known a multinational, multibillion-dollar,
multiproduct corporation that did not use fictitious transfer pricing in
some part of its business to shift money between some of its entities.”
Consulting contracts claims arising out of imaginary damages, warranty
payments, countertrade deals, etc. are some of the other effective
tricks to generate dirty money and fleece developing countries.
Another frequently used device is the formation of dummy or bogus
companies. It is very simple, a reinvoicing company is formed that buys,
changes prices, issues a new commercial invoice, and resells. This dummy
company requires only a computer, a letterhead, and a bank account to
come into play. Baker has given a number of concrete examples to
illustrate the operation of dummy companies.
Dummy companies play a major role in disguising the source of dirty
money and then help launder it. Baker has named a number of “delightful
places where you can situate and purchase your secret companies.” In
all, they come to “63 jurisdictions providing varying degrees of
incorporation concealment and protection from probing eyes.” There are
printed manuals that guide all the way. These dummy companies have a
number of variations such as trusts, foundations, and so on. Offshore
dummy companies are known as international business corporations (IBCs)
or personal investment corporations (PICs). If we believe Baker, then
“the United States is encouraging havens and secrecy jurisdictions to
keep up with the owners of IBCs and PICs and is trying to insist on
mutual legal assistance and cooperation in specific tax and criminal
matters.” If you are interested in details, then Baker has them. In
addition to all this, one can very easily fake the entire transactions
without stirring out of your home!
What Baker says is beyond any dispute. To quote: “Use of instruments in
the dirty-money user kit carries a high price. The price is damage to
the capitalist system. The price is bolstering international crime and
terrorism. The price is deprivation for billions of people. The price is
heightened risk to the shared security of a globalizing world.”
Raymond W. Baker’s study presents in great details how “corruption
industry” has flourished over the years in Nigeria, Indonesia and
Pakistan. It has led to worsening of poverty, limiting government tax
revenues, curtailed expenditures on health and education, reduced
economic growth, increased indebtedness and discouraged investments. The
estimates of public funds looted by some of the corrupt rulers are mind-
boggling. Suharto embezzled $15 to $35 billion while Marcos and Mobutu
pilfered $5 to $10 billion and $$5 billion respectively. Sani Abacha of
Nigeria stole $2 to $5 billion. Pinochet of Chile, who was once hailed
as a great saviour of humanity from communism by the USA ate up public
funds with the active help and connivance of the Washington-based Riggs
Bank about which, to quote Baker, “groveled before some of the dirtiest
money on Earth.”
“Prestigious” banks and financial institutions of the world actively
helped all these plunderers of public funds. Take, for example, the case
of Sani Abacha of Nigeria. His “plunder was facilitated by some 100
banks all over the world—in the United States, England, the Channel
Islands, France, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein,
Austria, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Austria, Brazil, and elsewhere,
with services allegedly performed by such institutions as Citibank,
Barclays, Standard Chartered, HSBC, NatWest (now part of the Royal Bank
of Scotland), ANZ Grindlays Bank, BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole Indosuez,
Credit Suisse (including Bank Hofmann and Bank Leu), Banque Baring
Brothers, Banque du Gothard, Union Bancaire Privée, M. M. Warburg,
Banque Edouard Constant, Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, J. Henry Schroder
Bank, Picett & Cie, S. G. Ruegg Bank, Commerzbank, Bank of India, and
many more. With a fortune estimated at $3 billion to $5 billion, a
feeding frenzy arose to receive, shelter, and manage Abacha’s wealth.”
Criminal component of dirty money has its source largely in drug
trafficking, mostly from Afghanistan, Colombia, Peru, etc. and in
thuggery and racketeering in which terrorists as well as Mafia have a
key role. So far as commercial component is concerned, one has to look
at the modus operandi of multinational corporations and the state of
affairs prevailing in the Soviet Union and the East European countries
after the collapse of socialist regimes. Baker has the details in his book.
Baker, in the context of what happened on 9/11, asks: “Was it just
religious extremism that brought on the terrorists, power disparities,
income imbalances, and social disaffections evident in their motivations?”
Baker thinks that, in spite of all its rottenness, capitalism has no
alternative and it can be reformed and rejuvenated to take the humanity
forward. It is difficult to accept this proposition because it is
nothing but pure and simple quixotic.
Before we conclude, let us draw the attention of our readers to a
write-up in Guardian (October 25, 2005), which says that the Mayor of
London is ready to welcome the robber barons fleeing from Russia after
plundering it mercilessly. Obviously, capitalism feels at ease with
criminals of all kind.
posted by No Simple Matter at 12:58 PM
ACT ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FIFTY EIGHT
spotty hope violent: “were probably cigarettes”
sober wealth *********: “drawing were grocery”
vinegar chief area: “ocean will soaking”
steady expect insect: “storm obviously once”
financesa measure ground: “catastrophe in curfew”
creamy possibly permission: “deteriorate dome failed”
telling standard dinner: “city football ripped”
superlative hawthorn axiom: “shore afternoon rain”
intentional brought number: “underwater sweaty when”
happy dystrophy sentence: “known chaos hurricane”
gauge wounding hour: “brunt eventually water”
random gasoline mind: “corpses line press”
odium surplus puck: “chance fields within.”
-John Crouse & Jim Leftwich
posted by No Simple Matter at 12:56 PM
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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
posted by No Simple Matter at 11:33 AM
----
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-Peter K. Niven
posted by No Simple Matter at 11:32 AM
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Implosion?
Implosion?
Bush's October Surprise
by Tom Engelhardt; TomDispatch; October 26, 2005
Those in the anti-fascist struggle of the 1930s who went off to fight in
the Spanish Civil War were later termed "premature antifascists."
Perhaps, in the same spirit, I might be considered a premature
Bush-administration implodist.
On February 1, 2004, reviewing the week just passed, I imagined us
trapped in "some new reality show in which we were all to be locked in
with an odd group of [administration] jokesters," and then wrote:
"When we finally emerge will there be a prize for the survivors? Will we
discover, for instance, that our President and his administration have
headed down a path of slow-motion implosion...?"
On February 18, 2004, my optimism briefly surging, I imagined the future
as a movie trailer (inviting readers back for the main attraction that
spring or summer) and offered this synopsis of the future film -- the
wild fowl references being to Dick Cheney's hunting habits, then in the
news -- with:
"a wall-to-wall cast of characters. Far too many to absorb in a split
second including our President, Vice President, CIA officials, a supreme
court justice, spooks and unnamed sources galore, FBI agents,
prosecutors, military men, congressional representatives and their
committees, grand juries, fuming columnists, an ex-ambassador,
journalists and bloggers, sundry politicians, rafts of neocons..., oil
tycoons, and of course assorted wild fowl (this being the Bush
administration). If the director were Oliver Stone, it might immediately
be titled: The Bush Follies... And the first scene would open -- like
that old Jean Luc Goddard movie Weekend -- with a giant traffic jam. It
would be epic. All of political Washington in potential scandal
gridlock. And (as with Weekend) horns would be blaring, drivers and
passengers arguing. It would be obvious that the norms of civilization
were falling fast and people were threatening to cannibalize each other."
Sounds a bit like Washington awaiting the Fitzgerald indictments this
week, doesn't it? For good measure, I added, "The Bush administration
has been in trouble ever since its arrogance met its incompetence at
Intelligence Pass last summer; ever since Plame Gate began..."
On January 17, 2005 (hedging my time spans a bit more carefully), I wrote:
"[T]he Bush administration has insisted with remarkable success that a
vision of the world concocted more or less out of whole cloth inside a
bubble of a world is the world itself. It seems, right now, that we're
in a race between Bush's fiction-based reality becoming our reality...
and an administration implosion in the months or years ahead as certain
dangerous facts in Iraq and elsewhere insist on being attended to."
Finally, this July, when matters were more visibly underway, I returned
to the subject,
"While there is officially no means for the Bush administration to
implode (impeachment not being a political possibility), nonetheless,
implosion is certainly possible. If and when the unraveling begins, the
proximate cause, whether the Plame affair or something else entirely, is
likely to surprise us all but none more than the members of the
mainstream media."
Shadow Governments and Armed Imperial Isolationists
Now, here we are. So call me prescient or, less charitably, chalk it up
to the fact that, if you say anything over and over, sooner or later it
may come true. Already we have the first front-page tabloid report -- in
the New York Daily News -- on a President (whose reigning adjectives not
so long ago were "resolute" and "steady") beginning to unravel. Under
the headline, Bushies Feeling the Boss's Wrath, Thomas DeFrank, that
paper's Washington Bureau Chief, wrote, "Facing the darkest days of his
presidency, President Bush is frustrated, sometimes angry and even
bitter, his associates say... 'This is not some manager at McDonald's
chewing out the help,' said a source with close ties to the White House
when told about these outbursts. 'This is the President of the United
States, and it's not a pleasant sight.'... Presidential advisers and
friends say Bush is a mass of contradictions: cheerful and serene,
peevish and melancholy, occasionally lapsing into what he once derided
as the 'blame game.'" Frankly, the description already has a touch of
Richard Nixon (as his presidency delaminated after Watergate finally hit).
If you want to understand the present moment, however, it's important to
grasp one major difference between the Nixon years and today. In the
early 1970s, Richard Nixon had to compete, elbows flying, for face and
space time in what we now call the mainstream media. There wasn't any
other game in town. (For instance, I suspect that if the secret history
of the first op-ed page, which made its appearance in the New York Times
in 1970, was ever written, its purpose would turn out to have been to
give the hard-charging Nixon administration a space in the liberal paper
of record where Vice President Spiro Agnew and other administration
supporters could sound off from time to time.)
George Bush arrived at a very different media moment. From Rush Limbaugh
and Sinclair Broadcasting to Fox News, the Washington Times, and the
Weekly Standard, he had his own media already in place -- a full
spectrum of outlets including TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, and
publishing houses. As for the rest of the media, his task, unlike
Nixon's, wasn't to compete for space, but to pacify, sideline, and, if
need be, punish. In this sense, no administration has been less giving
of actual news or more obviously tried to pay less attention to major
media outlets. The President was proud to say that he didn't even read
or watch such outlets. His was a shock-and-awe policy and, from
September 12, 2001 to last spring, it was remarkably successful.
The "cabal" of Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and
their associates that Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff to
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, recently spoke and then wrote about
-- "Its insular and secret workings were efficient and swift, not unlike
the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a
democracy." -- dealt with the media that wasn't theirs and the
government bureaucracy that wasn't theirs in similar ways via those big
three: pacification, sidelining, and punishment. Whether it was the
hated CIA or the much-loathed State Department, they set up their own
small, enclosed structures for governing and attempted to shove the rest
of them out into the cold. And again they were remarkably successful --
for a while. (Nixon, too, took a stab at setting up a shadow government,
loyal only to him, including, of course, those famous "plumbers.")
In fact, the same cast of Bush administration characters dealt with the
world in a similar manner. They buckled on their armor, raised their
cruise missiles, broke their treaties, distained anything that passed
for multinationalism or had the letters "U" or "N" in it, unpacked their
dictionaries to redefine the nature of torture and international
relations, proclaimed world domination to be their modest goal -- and,
armed to the teeth, sallied forth with their allied corporations in the
name of everything good to ransack the globe (and punish any country or
government that dared get in their way). In this course, they were
regularly called "unilateralists."
In all their guises -- in relation to the media, the federal
bureaucracy, and other countries -- they actually were dominating
isolationists. They took a once honorable Republican heartland tradition
-- isolationism -- turned it on its head and thrust it into the world.
They acted in Iraq and elsewhere as armed imperial isolationists. Where
the elder Bush and Bill Clinton were multinationalists and globalizers;
they were ultra-nationalists and militarists, focused only on the
military solution to any problem -- and damn the torpedoes, full speed
ahead!
But when you are a cabal, using such close-to-the-breast, not to say
mom-and-pop, methods of ruling, and you falter, whether in Iraq or at
home, unilateralism becomes weakness. And when it turns out that what
you rule is the "last superpower" and you've sidelined, pacified, or
punished large numbers of people in the vast, interlocking worlds of the
governmental bureaucracy and the media, your enemies still retain the
power to strike back.
When something closer to the full story of our moment is known, I
suspect we'll see more clearly just how the bureaucracy began to do so
(along with, as in this week's New Yorker magazine in the person of
Brent Scowcroft, the old multinational ruling elite). In the meantime,
it's clear that what the potential implosion moment awaited was the
perfect storm of events now upon us. If this moment were to be traced
back to its origins, I would, for the time being, pick the spring of
this year as my starting point and give the mainstream media -- anxious,
resentful, bitter, cowed, losing audience, and cutting staff -- their
due. The Bush slide has been a long, slow one, as the opinion polls
indicate; but like that famed moss-less rolling stone, it picked up
speed last spring as the President's approval ratings slipped below 50%,
and then in the ensuing months plunged near or below 40%, putting him at
the edge of free-fall.
If there's one thing that this administration and Washington journalists
have in common, it's that both groups parse opinion polls obsessively;
so both saw the signs of administration polling softness and of a
President, just into a second term, who should have been triumphant but
was failing in his attempt to spend what he called his "political
capital" on social security "reform."
Vulnerability, it gets the blood roaring, especially when it seeps from
an administration so long feared and admired as the "most disciplined"
and "most secretive" in memory, an administration whose highest
officials (as the Plame case showed) regularly whacked their opponents
with anything at hand and then called on their media allies, always in
full-battle-mode, for support. Probably the key moment of weakness came
in August, when Cindy Sheehan ended up in that famed ditch at the side
of a road in Crawford, Texas, and the President and his men --
undoubtedly feeling their new-found vulnerability, anxious over an Iraq
War gone wrong and the protesting mother of a dead soldier so near at
hand -- blinked.
In their former mode, they would undoubtedly have swept her away in some
fashion; instead, they faltered and sent out not the Secret Service or
some minor bureaucrat, but two of the President's top men, National
Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin. For
forty-five minutes, they negotiated over her demand to meet George Bush
the way you might with a recalcitrant foreign head of state -- and then
she just sent them back, insisting she would wait where she was to get
the President's explanation for her son's death.
Trapped in no-news Crawford with a President always determined to offer
them less than nothing, hardened by an administration whose objective
for any media outlet not its own was only "rollback," and sympathetic to
a grieving mother from Bush's war, reporters found themselves with an
irresistible story, ratified as important by the administration, at a
moment when they could actually run with it -- and they headed down the
road.
Not long after, hurricane Katrina swept into town; the President refused
to end his vacation; FEMA began twisting, twisting in the wind; Tom
DeLay went down; Rita blew in (to be followed by Wilma); Senator Frist
found himself blinded by his trust; the President nominated his own
lawyer to the Supreme Court -- at this point, even some of his
conservative allies began peeling away -- and then, of course, waiting
in the wings, there was the ultimate October surprise, Special Counsel
Patrick Fitzgerald -- backed by a reinvigorated media and an angry
bureaucracy -- ready to lift the lid on a whole can of worms not likely
to be closed for years to come.
Our Imploding Future
To me anyway, this looks like a potential critical-mass moment. Of
course, there are a few missing elements of no small import. The most
obvious is an opposition party. The Democrats are essentially nowhere to
be seen. In fact, whether or not they even remain a party is, at this
point, open to serious question. Their leading candidate for president,
Hillary Clinton, still wants to send more (nonexistent) American troops
into Iraq and, like most other Democrats in Congress, has remained
painfully mum -- this passes for a strategy, however craven -- on almost
everything that matters at the moment. Even on the issue of torture,
it's a Republican Senator, John McCain, who is spearheading resistance
to the administration.
The other group distinctly missing-in-action, as they have been for
years now, is the military. Many top military men were clearly against
the Iraq War and, aghast at the way the administration has conducted it,
have been leaking like mad ever since. But other than General Eric
Shinseki, who spoke up in the pre-invasion period, suggesting the kind
of troop strength that might actually be needed for an occupation
(rather than a liberation) of Iraq and was essentially laughed out of
Washington, and various retired generals like former Centcom Commander
Anthony Zinni and former Director of the National Security Agency
retired Lieutenant General William Odom, not a single high-ranking
military officer has spoken out -- or, more reasonably, resigned and
then done so. This, it seems to me, remains a glaring case of
dereliction of duty, given what has been going on.
As for the implosion of this administration, we have no idea what
implosion would actually mean under the present circumstances. Even with
a Republican Congress partially staffed with the American version of the
Taliban, will whatever unravels over many months or even years, post-the
Fitzgerald indictments, lead to hearings and someday the launching of
impeachment proceedings? Or is that beyond the bounds of possibility?
Who knows. Will this administration dissolve in some fashion as yet
undetermined? Will they go down shooting (as, points out Robert Dreyfuss
in a striking if unnerving piece at Tompaine.com, they already are
threatening to do in Syria)? Will Daddy's men be hauled out of the pages
of the New Yorker magazine and off the front-lines of money-making and
called in to save the day? Again, who knows. (Where is Bush family
consigliere James Baker anyway?)
As you consider this, remember one small thing: So far, hurricane
Katrina aside, this administration has largely felt tremors coursing
through the elite in Washington. The real 7.9 seismic shocks have yet to
happen. Yes, in Iraq, the 2,000 mark in American dead has just been
breached, but the Iraqi equivalent of the 1983 Lebanon barracks suicide
bombing in which 241 American servicemen died, hasn't happened yet. Yes,
gas hovers near $3.00 a gallon at the pumps, but the winter natural-gas
and heating-oil shock hasn't even begun to hit; nor has next summer's
oil shock (after the Bush administration bombs Iran); nor has the
housing bubble burst; nor have foreign countries begun to cash in their
T-bills in staggering quantities; nor has oil sabotage truly spread in
the Middle East; or unemployment soared at home; or the initial wave of
a recession hit; nor have we discovered that next year's hurricane
season is worse than this terrible one; nor... but I'm not really being
predictive here. I'm simply saying that, once upon a time not so very
long ago, this administration had a fair amount of room for error. Now,
it's no longer in control of its own script and has next to no space for
anything to go wrong in a world where "going wrong" is likely to be the
operative phrase for quite a while. The Fitzgerald indictments, in other
words, are probably just the end of the beginning. Whether they are also
the beginning of the end is another question entirely.
posted by No Simple Matter at 2:20 PM
Mr.“Bring ‘em on”
** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **
** Visit the Dahr Jamail Iraq website http://dahrjamailiraq.com **
** Website by http://jeffpflueger.com **
October 26, 2005
Mr. “Bring ‘em on”
Yesterday while speaking to a group of military wives in Washington, Mr.
Bush said, “This war will require more sacrifice, more time and more
resolve.”
Of course this speech of pre-emptive consolation to the news of the
2,000th death was not in vain, as the announcement came but a few hours
after his speech at the air force base.
I wonder how many of those military wives recall what Mr. Bush said
1,794 dead US soldiers ago when he proudly announced, “Bring ‘em on”
back on July 2, 2003?
Of course Mr. Bush went off yesterday about spreading freedom and laying
foundations for peace as the bombs continue to drop in Iraq. He even
went so far as to claim that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is the head of the
Iraqi resistance.
“Each loss of life is heartbreaking,” he told the wives. But how would
he know? A person who was a deserter during Vietnam and who would never
allow his daughters to serve in Iraq, how could he know?
So now we continue the death march towards the 3,000 mark, with the
announcement of another dead US soldier bringing the official tally to
2,001. With 159,000 US soldiers in Iraq now (remember when it was
138,000?) the tally will only continue to grow.
Yet the number of dead US soldiers still pales in comparison to the
number of Iraqis dying, including Iraqi police and soldiers.
Even today two Iraqi policemen (IP) were killed in Ramadi when their
police station was attacked, while in the “model city” of Fallujah,
three IP’s were killed by a roadside bomb.
Also today, four gagged and bound bodies of three Iraqis wearing army
uniforms and one of a contractor working with a US company were found
with gunshots in their heads and chests.
Mr. Bush uses one of his favorite words, “resolve,” despite the fact
that two days ago one of the largest suicide bombings to occur in
Baghdad detonated between the Palestine and Sheraton hotels. The bomb,
transported inside a cement truck, was carefully driven through a hole
in the perimeter concrete barrier which was created by a car bomb just
minutes earlier.
Reported in most major media outlets as an attack against journalists,
what wasn’t reported is that there is a large number of security
contractors (read-mercenaries) who use these hotels, and it is well
known in Baghdad that the penthouse of the Sheraton is used by
contractors and CIA operatives. That very room has been the target of
rocket attacks as far back as December, 2003.
Thus, aside from targeting the US government-funded Al-Hurra TV station
and the Fox propaganda outlet in the 18-story Palestine Hotel,
journalists were exploited by the attack which generated massive media
attention.
Killing at least 17 people, the attack sent a very clear message to the
occupiers of Iraq-nowhere is safe; even in one of the most heavily
guarded hotel complexes in Baghdad they are completely vulnerable.
The idea of political stability seems more of a pipe dream in Iraq now
than it did before the recent vote on the constitution, which has been
rejected by Arab Sunni leaders who called the process “fraudulent”
yesterday.
Hinting at things to come in December, Sunni leader Saleh Mutlaq told
reporters; “Violence is not the only solution, if politics offers
solutions so that we can move in that direction. But there is very
little hope that we can make any gains in the elections.”
Hussein al-Falluji, another prominent Sunni politician said the
referendum was manipulated by Washington and added, “We all know that
this referendum was fraud conducted by an electoral commission that is
not independent. It is controlled by the occupying Americans and it
should step down before elections in December.”
He and other Sunnis have called for a truly independent election
commission (the head of Iraq’s current electoral commission was
appointed by the US) for the December election, but added, “Politics is
linked directly to security on the ground. The situation can only get
worse now. I have just prayed to God to expose the truth about what is
happening in Iraq.”
What will it take for a US withdrawal? Because with this
“administration” in power, there is a guaranteed three more years of
occupation in Iraq; and by then, 2,000 dead US soldiers will not seem
like such a large number.
_______________________________________________
(c)2004, 2005 Dahr Jamail.
posted by No Simple Matter at 2:16 PM
ACT ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FIFTY SEVEN
license ointment wanton: “example after warming”
libretist cooperation mechanism: “direct system other”
intermediate venture springing: “but the losses”
featherweight lily penchant: “sufficient underwater casinos”
granulate plebians thrill: “as electricity coast”
mosiac adobe hammer: “had poorest quarter”
slag tether stadiums: “thus disaster countless”
trinket nashville guidewords: “hurricane electrical lives”
soundproof matador allegory: “damaged weeks who”
pilfer holocaust babyish: “erased worst stood”
damnable boundless inescapably: “comparison polluted hit”
wastefully haunt devotee: “shift leave heavily”
unbind volume collation: “prompting impact whole.”
-John Crouse & Jim Leftwich
posted by No Simple Matter at 2:13 PM
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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
posted by No Simple Matter at 10:35 AM
----
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-Peter K. Niven
posted by No Simple Matter at 10:35 AM
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
The Top Nine Plamegate Lies
The Top Nine Plamegate Lies
By Josh Kalven, Media Matters for America
Posted on October 25, 2005, Printed on October 25, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/27281/
As U.S. attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald's two-year investigation into the
CIA leak case reportedly draws to a close, the long-standing debate over
the origins of the scandal, the merits of the federal investigation, and
the legal authority of the prosecutor has intensified greatly. At issue
is the disclosure to the press of the identity of CIA agent Valerie
Plame, which first appeared in syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak's
July 14, 2003, column. Bush administration officials allegedly leaked
her identity in order to discredit her husband, former ambassador Joseph
C. Wilson IV, a vocal critic of the White House's decision to go to war
with Iraq.
In this rhetorical environment characterized by limited information and
boundless speculation, those defending the officials at the center of
Fitzgerald's probe have advanced numerous falsehoods and distortions. As
Media Matters for America documents below, the media have not only
failed to challenge many of these claims, but also repeated them.
Falsehood: It is legally significant whether the leakers disclosed
Plame's name in their conversations with reporters
Shortly after Newsweek published an email by Time magazine reporter
Matthew Cooper to Time Washington bureau chief Mike Duffy saying that,
according to White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, "Wilson's
wife" worked at the CIA, Rove's lawyer responded by noting that his
client had not stated her actual name. Several news outlets went on to
report Rove's response as if his reported omission of Plame's name was
relevant to whether he violated the law. Simultaneously, commentators
such as former presidential adviser David Gergen and Washington Times
chief political correspondent Donald Lambro, as well as the Republican
National Committee (RNC), began to advance the argument that because
Rove didn't specifically name her, he did not reveal her identity.
But whether leakers identified Plame as "Valerie Plame," "Valerie
Wilson," or "Wilson's wife" is irrelevant, both as a practical matter
and likely as a legal matter. Practically speaking, a quick Google
search of Joseph Wilson at the time would have produced Plame's actual
name. As such, administration defenders have declared that whether her
name was mentioned to reporters likely has no bearing on whether there
was a violation of the law. Despite having previously implied that there
is a meaningful distinction between disclosing her name and her identity
before, Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, later conceded that drawing such
a line was "too legalistic." Similarly, Victoria Toensing, the
Republican lawyer who helped draft the potentially applicable 1982
Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA), agreed that the use of
her name is "not an important part of whether this is a crime or not."
Nonetheless, numerous media figures recently revived this claim in the
wake of New York Times reporter Judith Miller's revelation that the
source who told her that Plame worked at the CIA, Vice President Dick
Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, also never disclosed
her actual name.
Falsehood: Wilson said that Cheney sent him to Niger
An RNC talking points memo made public on July 12 accused Wilson of
falsely claiming "that it was Vice President Cheney who sent him to
Niger." The allegation that Wilson had lied about the genesis of his
trip was soon repeated by RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, who argued that this
fact justified the purported leaking of Plame's identity to the press
and that the White House had simply been attempting to set the record
straight.
New York Times columnist David Brooks made this argument at least twice
(here and here). And a string of journalists and commentators --
including CNN's Dana Bash, the Washington Post's Mike Allen, Newsweek's
Jon Meacham, and U.S. News and World Report's Michael Barone -- parroted
the allegation during news reports and media appearances in the
following weeks. NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell
recently repeated the claim as a guest on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris
Matthews.
But Wilson never said that Cheney sent him to Niger. To support this
accusation, the RNC had misrepresented his July 6, 2003, op-ed in the
New York Times and distorted a remark he made in an August 3, 2003,
interview on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer. Contrary to their
allegation, Wilson clearly stated in the op-ed that "agency officials"
had requested he travel to Niger. Further, in the CNN appearance, he
stated it was "absolutely true" that Cheney was unaware he went on the trip.
Falsehood: Plame suggested Wilson for the trip to Niger
In their ongoing attempts to justify the alleged leaks, Mehlman and
other supporters claimed that the White House had a legitimate interest
in setting the record straight by disclosing that Plame, not Cheney, was
actually responsible for Wilson being sent to Niger. In a January 2005
Washington Post op-ed, attorneys Victoria Toensing -- a friend of Novak
-- and Bruce W. Sanford framed the leak in such a light and suggested
that Novak outed Plame because he wanted to "expose wrongdoing" -- i.e.,
the alleged nepotism that led to Wilson's assignment. Numerous reporters
subsequently repeated that Plame suggested Wilson for the trip,
including the Washington Post's Jim VandeHei, MSNBC host Chris Matthews,
and, most recently, MSNBC correspondent David Shuster.
But what these reporters stated as fact is actually in dispute. Unnamed
intelligence officials have been quoted in the media claiming that the
CIA -- not Plame -- selected Wilson for the mission. Also, CIA officials
have disputed the accuracy of a State Department intelligence memo that
reportedly indicates that Plame "suggested" Wilson's name for the trip.
Novak himself claimed that the Senate Intelligence Committee, in its
2004 "Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence
Assessments on Iraq," concluded that Plame suggested the trip. In fact,
the committee did not officially conclude that she had been responsible
for Wilson's assignment.
Falsehood: Wilson was not qualified to investigate the Niger claims
In conjunction with the claim that nepotism led to the selection of
Wilson for the trip to Niger, several conservative media figures have
attempted to cast the former ambassador as unqualified to investigate
the claims that Iraq attempted to purchase uranium yellowcake form the
African country. Toensing has repeatedly claimed that he lacked "any
experience in WMD" and "any kind of senior experience in that country."
National Review Washington editor Kate O'Beirne has described Wilson as
"no expert in weapons of mass destruction." But Wilson possessed
extensive diplomatic experience, had specialized in Africa during most
of his career, and had taken a similar trip to Niger in 1999 to
investigate possible purchases by Iran.
Falsehood: Plame's CIA employment was widely known
In an apparent effort to undermine the possibility that the alleged
White House leakers committed a crime, both the Washington Times
editorial page and right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh have argued that
Plame's identity was known by many in Washington, D.C., at the time
Novak published his column outing her as "an agency operative." As
support for this argument, the Times claimed that "numerous neighbors
were aware that she worked for the agency."
In fact, none of the neighbors cited in the Washington Times' own news
reports or in other reports said that they knew before reading the Novak
column that Plame worked at the CIA. Her acquaintances told reporters
that they believed she worked as a private "consultant."
Falsehood: Fitzgerald must prove that Plame's covert status was leaked
Recent reports from a number of news outlets have attributed legal
significance to whether Rove and Libby leaked Plame's covert status to
the press. But as with the issue of whether Plame's actual name was
leaked, whether the officials communicated her status as a covert
operative is likely not relevant to the question of whether their
actions violated federal law. According to news reports, a 2003 State
Department memo -- which was likely read by top administration officials
during a trip to Africa -- designated as "S" for "secret" a section
mentioning Plame, even though it did not mention her covert status.
Therefore, the information allegedly disclosed by Rove and Libby -- that
she worked at the CIA -- was apparently classified.
Falsehood: Fitzgerald's investigation was originally limited to possible
violation of 1982 law
Conservative commentators have reacted to reports that Fitzgerald is
looking at a variety of legal approaches to the CIA leak investigation
by characterizing him as a "runaway prosecutor" or a Captain Ahab
"chasing a white whale." The argument put forth by Toensing, as well as
columnists Richard Cohen and George F. Will is that, in pursuing such
charges, the special prosecutor is overstepping his mandate. The claim
underlying this argument is that the Department of Justice (DOJ)
originally granted him authority to investigate whether the alleged
leakers had violated the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA).
But the DOJ's delegation of Fitzgerald as special prosecutor gave him
broad authority to investigate the leaks; it made no mention of the
IIPA, nor did it name any other specific statute. The DOJ official who
appointed Fitzgerald as special prosecutor, then-deputy attorney general
James Comey, stated in a December 30, 2003, press conference that "Mr.
Fitzgerald alone will decide ... what prosecutive [sic] decisions to
make" and that "he can pursue it [the leak investigation] wherever he
wants to pursue it." In a February 6, 2004, letter to Fitzgerald, Comey
further clarified that his delegation included the "authority to
investigate and prosecute violations of any federal crime laws related
to the underlying alleged unauthorized disclosure, as well as federal
crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with,
your investigation, such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction
of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses."
Despite the lack of evidence that the DOJ limited the scope of
Fitzgerald's investigation in any way, two recent New York Times
articles (here and here) reported that he was appointed to investigate
"whether government officials had violated a 1982 law that makes it a
crime in some circumstances to disclose the identity of an undercover
agent."
Similar to this baseless claim is Weekly Standard editor William
Kristol's recent assertion that the CIA referred the case to the DOJ
specifically as a possible violation of the IIPA. But the initial news
reports on the referral indicate that the CIA more generally requested
that the DOJ "investigate allegations that the White House broke federal
laws by revealing the identity of one of its undercover employees."
Moreover, a "former government official" quoted in Newsweek stated that
the CIA's referral never even mentioned the IIPA.
Falsehood: Leak investigation is the result of partisan motivations
Conservative commentators have made what appear to be preemptive
accusations that Fitzgerald is a partisan. Numerous Fox News
personalities -- including Chris Wallace, Sean Hannity, Stuart Varney,
and Bill O'Reilly -- have stated that his probe represents the
"criminalization of politics." William Kristol penned a Weekly Standard
editorial on the topic titled "Criminalizing Conservatives." On the
October 19 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto, nationally
syndicated radio host Mike Gallagher claimed that this investigation --
like the recent indictment of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay
(R-TX) on money laundering charges -- "is driven by partisan politics."
But Fitzgerald is no Democratic partisan. In September 2001, President
Bush appointed Fitzgerald to his current post as U.S. Attorney for the
Northern District of Illinois upon the recommendation of then-Sen. Peter
Fitzgerald (R-IL). When then-deputy attorney general James Comey
selected Fitzgerald as special prosecutor in December 2003, he cited his
"sterling reputation for integrity and impartiality" and described him
as "an absolutely apolitical career prosecutor." And in a recent
interview on NBC's Today, President Bush described the prosecutor's
investigation as "dignified." Moreover, in his capacity as U.S.
attorney, Fitzgerald is also currently conducting an "intense"
investigation of the Democratic mayor of Chicago, Richard M. Daley, and
his administration.
Despite Fitzgerald's background, Limbaugh suggested on the October 20
broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show that if the outcome of
the CIA leak investigation is "over the top," he and other conservatives
may target the prosecutor:
LIMBAUGH: [W]e're going to be watching ... very carefully here to see
what Fitzgerald does, the special prosecutor here. If he conducts
himself in a way that we find over the top, we'll say so. You can count
on it. Now, you liberals, you viciously attacked [former independent
counsel] Ken Starr. You went out there and tried to portray him as a
sexual pervert, a voyeur. You did everything you could to destroy Ken
Starr's reputation and his life, and now you demand that we accept
whatever comes down the pike that we must be consistent. Well, it
depends on what it is. If it stinks, I will say so. Pure and simple.
Falsehood: Leaks go on all the time in Washington
In defense of the Bush administration officials alleged to have
disclosed Plame's CIA identity, numerous media figures have attempted to
downplay the alleged leak as par for the course in Washington.
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen claimed that such leaking is
"what Washington does day in and day out" and that it "is rarely
considered a crime." On the October 20 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with
Chris Matthews, Republican strategist Ed Rollins stated, "We know for
sure that a couple of very high-ranking White House guys talked to some
reporters and basically tried to go out and diminish someone who was
criticizing them. I mean, that goes on every single day in the White House."
But Cohen and Rollins glossed over the fact that this leak allegedly
involved the identity of a CIA operative -- potentially a crime --
although Cohen subsequently issued a "clarification" in which,
responding to readers, he wrote that he does consider "the outing of a
covert employee a serious matter." Former President George H.W. Bush
expressed his view of such actions during an April 26, 1999, speech at
the dedication of the CIA's George Bush Center for Intelligence. He
stated: "I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the
trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the
most insidious of traitors."
Josh Kalven is a member of the Research Department at Media Matters for
America.
posted by No Simple Matter at 3:07 PM
ACT ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FIFTY SIX
preferences angola nerves: “of target venezuela”
potbelly climate evanescent: “of taxes cannot”
hamlet edema mongolia: “to property finding”
engaging gaging liver: “neighbors unit rules”
fertilization stapler guadeloupe: “in operating world”
tresses vanilla balkans: “reverse previously investment”
heart disease republic: “gas when unwritten”
insurrection see cockle: “buy oil impunity”
wisconsin friendship artillery: “fact both execute”
depredations whimsical grief: “transaction recourse decades”
wedding tuberculosis refrigerator: “contradictions idea magnified”
rabbi below it: “quite governments parts”
symbolist ornamental illness: “multinational tacit mainstream.”
-John Crouse & Jim Leftwich
posted by No Simple Matter at 3:05 PM
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esiz oon,ee inion ku."j ithis gin7/ang
-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
posted by No Simple Matter at 8:46 AM
----
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-Peter K. Niven
posted by No Simple Matter at 8:05 AM
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Sentencing Disparity
ZNet Commentary
Sentencing Disparity
October 16, 2005
By Molly Secours
Isn't it fascinating when people just come out and say what's on their
minds when it comes to race? What's even more instructive is the
response--or non-response--to what is expressed.
Several weeks ago when Kanye West said "President Bush doesn't care
about black people", although his voice was indeed quivering, it was a
pretty straight-forward comment. Mr. West didn't make an accusation. He
made an observation. And in this context 'care' seemed to be used as a verb.
But for those feigning shock and horror at the notion of a racist
president, a quick review of the Bush response to Katrina's most
vulnerable citizens is edifying-if not sobering.
And just a cursory perusal of the policies and conduct of this
administration will help demonstrate how West's observation was just a
reflection of what many people of color-not to mention many
whites--experience to be true. That this administration's 'elite
friendly' policies are in stark contrast to the slashing-frenzy of
programs that benefit those 'not so fortunate.'
For those who have difficulty equating Bush's behavior and policies with
a lack of respect for black people, remember when the NAACP invited the
president to speak at the 95th annual convention last year? He refused.
Some say it was because it coincided with a weekend marathon of Bonanza
reruns, but that's just hearsay. Some say he got nervous at the thought
of being in an enclosed building with so many Black folks. With good
reason--he has a lot to answer to.
For instance, the World Conference Against Racism in Durban South Africa
in August 2001: The Bush administration-at the last minute--refused to
participate. Yes, that was the "World" Conference Against Racism--not to
be confused with the White Privilege Conference in Pella Iowa. Yes, just
weeks before 9/ll many Black and Brown people around the globe noticed
that the world's 'super power' declined an international dialog on race.
So what policies could Mr. West be referring to in his remark? Perhaps
he was alluding to the administration's full frontal attack on
affirmative action or maybe it was the recent proposals to cut $6.7
billion from school lunch programs for poor children, or the $ 225
billion cut proposal from medicaid?
If that isn't enough to convince you Mr. Bush doesn't care about black
people, how about the $417 million cut to eliminate the minority
business development agency? Pretty clear?
In immediate response to Mr. West's 'outburst', instead of taking the
opportunity to engage the nation in a long-over due discussion on race
and institutional racism (and yes, it is difficult to keep a straight
face at the suggestion) Laura Bush publicly declared Kanye West's words
'disgusting'.
And before you can say howdy, there was an internet rumor--falsely
reporting--that West lost his Pepsi endorsement for offending our
nation's president-who currently has a 'disapproval' rating of 60%--down
from last weeks 62%. Although his 'disapproval' rating reflects other
issues as well, it seems there are more people who agree with Mr. West
than the White House ever imagined.
Several Weeks later, William Bennett, the former Secretary of Education
and former head of Drug Policy spewed some pretty hateful rhetoric on
the airwaves stating that "you could abort every black baby in this
country, and your crime rate would go down." This, however, was not
falsely reported.
What's interesting is that very often when white folks finally expose
how they 'really' think and feel about race, you can hear the click of
the jaw-drop followed by the words "what I meant to say was?" or once
it's too late, decrying: "?it was taken out of context"!
And no surprise, Bennett claims his words were indeed 'taken out of
context' and that he himself is the victim of libel because he was
really only trying to make a larger 'point'.
Unfortunately the 'larger point' he made was not the one he intended. As
one pundit wrote in the World Net Daily "Bennett's hypothetical comment
does two ugly things at once: His premise scapegoats blacks, while his
theoretical remedy suggests a rationale for committing new crimes
against them. At best, he ventured into this area glibly and foolishly.
Big mistake."
And so you see. When white folks get caught making racist
statements--even condemned by other whites as wrong--their words are
characterized as 'mistakes', as in 'you shouldn't have said that'. When
in reality, William Bennett probably expressed what many other elites in
Washington think and feel but just have enough control not to say it
publicly.
And keep in mind. This isn't a Howard Stern-like shock jockey espousing
disposable drivel that will be forgotten before it's uttered.
As a former political appointee of Bush Sr., Bennett was responsible for
designing policies and providing resources to state and local people who
do treatment, prevention and law enforcement as it relates to drug control.
And this begs the question. Could there possibly be a connection between
the disproportionate number of black men imprisoned on drug charges and
the policies set by the kind of man who believes the crime rate would go
down if all black babies were aborted? Need we ask?
It seems that one of the facades blown away in the path of Katrina is
the masquerade of equity and fairness on the part of those in government
who help to promote, uphold and reinforce institutional racism.
After Bennett's insulting, degrading and demonizing remarks against
black people, the president issued a 'strong' statement in response.
"The president believes the comments were not appropriate."
Wow! Did he really say that? Hmm, it's 'almost' as if white people can
get away with murder when it comes to racism. I wonder if Laura Bush
finds that 'disgusting'.
posted by No Simple Matter at 2:45 PM
ACT ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FIFTY FIVE
spacecraft mellow sacking: “companies consortium international”
woodworking fijian nosecone: “trying pakistan most”
clash incorporated carves: “note afghanistan business”
punishment series diplomacy: “company counter royal”
hostile soundtrack champion: “blocked given demanding”
plague tasteless library: “months pipeline based”
earthmover olive fables: “lake charles venezuela”
shunted krypton radiate: “posed political moreover”
vineyards medium goiter: “national such contracts”
frowned rivalling montage: “in assets handled
polygamy film metropolitan: “while life invests”
confucianism attacks snowbound: “economic while rapid.”
-John Crouse & Jim Leftwich
posted by No Simple Matter at 2:42 PM
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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
posted by No Simple Matter at 11:22 AM
----
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-Peter K. Niven
posted by No Simple Matter at 11:21 AM
Monday, October 24, 2005
The Nature of Anti-Americanism is Changing
The Nature of Anti-Americanism is Changing
And it is Fifteen Minutes to Midnight
By Prof. Raymond K Kent
October 7, 2005
"Mystery shrouds the political moves determined on high in the distant
Center…The conviction grows that the whole world will be conquered…Lies
are concocted from seeds of truth…..(while).. boundaries of the Empire
move steadily and systematically…Unparalleled sums of money are spent."
Czeslaw Milosz (Captive Mind, Knopf, N.Y.1953, p.16)
Summary
There are two basic questions which the present text seeks to address:
(a)Should the U.S. dominate the world, through a combination of
Geo-politics, militarism and hard-ball diplomacy focusing, basically, on
obedience to its will?
(b)Can it succeed, as the "Indispensable Nation," in shaping and
re-shaping other societies and their governments to "make the world safe
for Democracy?"
The conclusion, which should become clear in the ensuing pages, is that,
so far, the answer to both questions has been " yes." The thesis
presented in the text is that our Machiavellians, who promote (without
admitting) the pseudo-science of "Geo-politics," and Imperialism of
"free trade," "human rights" and spread of Democracy as "rule by the
people,"(demos from Greek), are actually self-defeating and suicidal,
for the nation as a whole, with or without "Home Security." The immortal
words of Lee Hamilton, after the 9/11 Report, "we (just) did not get
it," apply equally to both questions posed. Articulated by "the street"
in countries with Islam as the state religion, a silent and sullen hate
is mutating in the most dangerous sense. Instead of being directed
primarily at one or another U.S. Administration or individual occupants
of the White House, as used to be the case not long ago, its emerging
target today is the American People.
An evening ride from Washington’s Dulles Airport into Virginia, along
the main highway, allowed this passenger to view something that cannot
be erased from memory. Up on the hill’s plateau, lined up like soldiers
in attention mode, light reflectors accentuating the edifice, there
stood an endless row of Companies known mainly for their
product-contributions to the Pentagon. It took about five minutes of
reasonably fast drive to escape from these phantoms of war and
destruction. It was a forceful reminder that the "Military-Industrial
Complex, " about which Dwight Eisenhower had warned the American People
some half-a-century ago, has a visible physical presence.
The construct "MILITARY-Industrial" has a tell-tale quality. Pentagon is
not only pre-eminent at home in all kinds of financial demands on the
total national budget. Military thinking, intermingled with the
pseudo-science of Geo-Politics dominates U.S. foreign policy as well.
Just precisely when this development began is not certain. One thing is
certain. Of the 48 military interventions undertaken by the U.S. since
WWII, 33 belong to the period covered by the two-term Administration of
William Jefferson Clinton.
In the process of increasing primacy, the Pentagon itself has undergone
a transformation. First, its own Defense Intelligence Agency acquired
greater influence than the CIA. Secondly, Pentagon’s inner elite,
generally unknown to our public, has been placing and maintaining
military outposts abroad in almost unbelievable numbers. According to
Professor Chalmers Johnson ( his book "The Sorrows of Empire –
Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic" will stun even
well-informed persons) by September 2001 military personnel in some 30
countries around the globe just passed the 250,000 mark.(1) The "new"
Pentagon operates in secrecy. Herbert Foerstel explains it, in his most
recent book(2), by quoting the statement made at the "NewsHour with Jim
Lehrer"(April 6, 1999) by Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public
Affairs, Kenneth Bacon (ex-Editor and reporter within the Wall Street
Journal).
"’We have adopted a more restrictive policy than in the past’....Bacon
gave four reasons for the new secrecy requirements (to wit) ‘alliance
war’ such as the NATO campaign in Kosovo, made operational security
difficult to maintain(3). Second, he said ‘ We now live in an era where
information is made instantly available to the enemy."
Finally, he complained., that competitiveness within the media impelled
all reporters to get into print or on TV with a speed that no one could
slow down..
It is interesting to note that Bacon said nothing about .secrecy as a
shield constructed against the American public when secret decisions are
made secretly, decisions that affect all of us, often in a lasting way.
Our clandestine involvement in the Balkans in the Fall of 1991, reported
in the British press, was routinely denied by the Pentagon for several
months until it could no longer be hidden. Nor did Bacon make any
distinction between inbred institutional secrecy and frequent resorts to
disinformation which is not directed at any "enemy" but targets the home
public instead.
Without the Soviet threat, without Communists that had to be stopped
from taking over in various places and with the failure of Communist
ideology, the Military-Industrial Complex" would suffer an irreversible
loss of profits unless the U.S. re-enters into combat against as yet
unknown enemies. For the military side, creating enemies of the U.S.
–even of tested friends, when needed—in order to generate support for
entry into one war or another is hardly an unknown practice. Without
such ongoing conflicts our high brass would be downgraded in importance,
Pentagon’s budget allotments would shrink, along with funding of
sub-contracted support industry.
It has been standard fare since 9/11, when our "hawks" became the main
"defenders" of "Democracy" and "Freedom," to tell the "masses" that we
are "fighting terrorists," in a war that will last a long time but one
that we "will win." Unless one can identify the malady a lasting cure is
virtually impossible. .Terrorist acts against us are engendered by a
real enemy, anti-Americanism. It may be difficult to understand, but
terrorism against "Americans" is egged-on by us in two ways.
One is the deeply ingrained belief that our economic success story, our
institutions and our status as the sole super-Power, at least for the
time being, make us superior and even omnipotent. The other is our drive
to dominate the rest of humanity for its own good. It is difficult to
swallow the possibility that a people, any people, prefers to be ruled
by its own strong man or "dictator," as we call him, than to be occupied
by foreign troops seeking to "rescue" them from such a ruler in the name
of restoring rule to the people through elections. Anyone who seriously
believes that the American Demos make foreign policy decisions must be
an alien from outer space. "We, the People" are excluded roundly from a
variety of decisions made in secret, without going for a national
referendum.
It is worth noting, in this connection, that the first Iraqi election
has been widely misunderstood. The vast majority of voters, who braved
death at voting places, belong to the Shiite branch of Islam. They
happen to have an Ayatollah who is not only revered but also unusual
among sacerdotal Muslims. This man of God separated religion from
politics. Using his unquestioned spiritual leadership he took the
weapons away from the younger Shiite militants, and he decreed that his
people must go to the polls.and use the ballot box, not at the end of a
gun. The election, by itself, was not a certifier of "Democracy." It
signaled the coming to political power of a majority that had been
repressed under Saddam’s regime.
Not long ago, while not necessarily facile, combating anti-American
feelings and sentiments could be effective. The successful stand of some
of us "ugly Americans" abroad used to be that every four years the
American People get a new Administration with its own meandering
positions on foreign policy. But, that was yesterday and the situation
is changing fast as we argue how much to spend on "home security." The
change comes in two parts. First, anti-Americanism is seen increasingly
as a means for retaining one’s cultural, national and spiritual identity
against the "American onslaught," already successful in the domain of
material culture.(4). Moreover, fewer and fewer are those abroad apt to
accept the separation of American People from whatever party is in the
White House and makes de facto the ad hoc U.S. foreign policy.
The turn into mutation came with the resounding 4,000,000 vote plurality
in the re-election of George W. Bush, underscoring the powerful
influence of fundamentalist Protestant Christianity. It was seriously
exacerbated by the so-called "Wolfowitz Doctrine" of pre-emptive strikes
against STATES, any states, anywhere, right after the Black September..
Let us now examine in some depth the Geo-political factor.
Geo-politics
Upon arriving at Kosovo under the U.N. flag, its U.S. component built a
camp with a 99-year lease. It is called Camp Bondsteel and it is very
near the Caspian Sea and Roumanian Oil deposits at Ploesti. Although
Geo-politics never transcended its pseudo-scientific self, there is an
aura to it as a "discipline" which no reputable university offers as a
subject. But, in order to demystify and come to understand to what uses
this would be "science" can be put, a background outline becomes
essential. Its founding fathers are two Germans (Karl Ritter and
Friedrich Ratzel) and three Frenchmen ( Pierre Vidal de la Bache, Jean
Brunhes and Albert Demongeaon) By way of an over-simplified explanation,
these developers tried to show the inevitable relationships of
geography, space and demography, resources and political histories.
.Nevertheless, they failed to converge as a unified and single school of
thought in the aftermath of Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. The French
side maintained that, in the multitude of components that enter into
geopolitical thought, the human factor is both dominant and determining.
It can be said that the French geographers (and de la Bache was one of
Europe’s greatest)rejected the notion that the scientific and hence
"rational" ..would-be pillar rules the world through Universal Laws. The
French side came up with endless examples of the "humanistic" and thus
"non-rational" modifiers acting as a sort of continuous trip-wire. This
direction just about killed all further geopolitical endeavors in France.
It was "rescued" on the German side by a Prussian general (Karl
Haushofer) and, at Oxford, by a Scottish scholar (Halford MacInder). In
1904 he came out with the idea of "The Heartland" or the land-mass of
continental Eurasia that could be threatened only by the surrounding
maritime powers in control of communications. A U.S. Admiral (Mahan)
combined Geopolitics with strategic thinking thus "improving" MacInder.
Thereafter, the world subdivisions and power relationships became rather
arcane, sliced in a number of "equally valid" ways.
It is obvious that strategic concerns skewed Geopolitics in search for
world-dominance thus "politicizing" its applications. They also figured
in pan-Germanism before WWI and in the Nazi ideology between 1933 and
1944/45 The geographic-scientific limitations of Geopolitics came into
clear view at the end of WWII. While intellectually stimulating to some,
Geopolitical "determinism" fails to explain anything scientifically. It
simply ends up as justification for national ambitions that can be
perpetually revised.
One would have thought that the end of Nazism would also remove
Geopolitics from any serious revival. Actually, there came a
Geopolitical Renaissance with a disciple who bested even Admiral Mahan,
namely N.J.Spykman. Its centerpiece was the idea that the U.S. Naval
strength could contain the Eurasian giant, U.S.S.R., Coupled with the
famous article of Mr."X" (George Kennan) it proved that Geopolitical and
strategic thinking could "win" in the long run. In turn, this sent
Geopolitics into overdrive.
In 1978, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the latest "Geopolitical philosopher,"
declared in Sweden that all of Europe was now basically under the U.S.
:benevolent hegemony (he called it "patronage"). He added that "nothing
endangering the American vital interests" will be permitted to solidify
in that region of the world. Then he proceeded to lay out "the law" in
respect to the Balkans years before it would actually be applied. There,
according to "Zbig," the U.S. objectives included a "New Order" (term
which appears in one of the earliest Geopolitical texts and re-appears
at the end of G.P. Bush’s Presidency).
According to "Zbig," the U.S. is to dominate the Balkans in
collaboration with Germany, with special and detailed cooperation with
Islamic States, "especially Turkey and Albania." Missing from this
power-brew is a serious demonstration as to how it relates to the vital
interest of the United States?. It should be pointed out that "Zbig" and
one of his influential followers, Madeleine Albright, actually detested
Russia and, by extension all Orthodox Slavs, while masking this bias
with anti-Communism. It is hardly far fetched to state that our fatal
entry into the Balkans (as time will show) has relatively little to do
with "humanitarian interventions" and all the more so since it began in
the Fall of 1991, long before all of the crimes within the boundaries of
ex-Yugoslavia came to be pinned on "the Serbs" alone.
The Price of Militarism
Officers in-charge of any nation’s armed forces are formed to think with
precision and almost mathematical reasoning. The fact that their
mistakes in actual combat can cost unnecessary losses of troops from
their home countries. acts as a powerful inducement for "precision."
When they enter into the political arena, whether an officer is a
military genius like General MacArthur or an ambitious opportunist like
General Wesley Clark, something happens to warp them. President Truman
had to over-rule MacArthur and Clark’s English peer intervened to stop
the American General from starting a war with Russia at Kosovo.
Much the same phenomenon (and noumenon too) can be observed in the
political shaping of militarism. This is to say that, in order to jump
into wars, the military advocates must confront politics directly or
indirectly. We thus hear and see on Television broadcasts three and
four-star Generals attesting that "we are winning in Iraq" while
everything seen and read points to an obviously opposite conclusion. All
of that is, however, in the public domain. Behind closed doors in the
Pentagon, an" insider" elite,
encapsulated in Geopolitical "precision," works on detailed plans for
placing our military outposts all over the "strategic areas." The end
result is not just proximity to mineral resources but, as a look at the
map can show, one must add the encirclement of Russia itself. The
"rescue" of NATO after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. involved the
transformation from a defensive force into an aggressive one. The
Balkans and within this peninsula of Southern Europe particularly "the
Serbs" became a target for the practice of "modern warfare." It was a
sort of Immaculate Conception with humanitarian bombs and missiles and
without the loss of not a single U.S. soldier or airman. .
Now, there was a moment in time when the United States and Russia plus
United Europe could have gotten together to prevent violent conflicts in
much of the globe but the Geopolitical thinking within Pentagon, which
tagged Russia as a perpetual Eurasian enemy, produced such levels of
distrust, falling back on the Cold War period, that one mega opportunity
to enter into a better and safer future was missed altogether. The
poverty of our military interventions in Yugoslavia, in Somalia, in
Lebanon, in Afghanistan and in Iraq most recently, is glaring and
ubiquitous. The leaders of all the new and old states in these areas
make it a point to scratch the back of Uncle Sam and tell him what he
wants and likes to hear. But, the populations "underneath" resent the
auto da fes, the demands for obedience and the imposition of economic
advantages which do not in reality benefit their own homes. We thus
arrive at Catch-22. The more the militarism manifests itself the greater
the depth of resentment against "America." .
Diplomacy, not War
Having discovered a growing animosity toward the United States, even
among the West European allies and NATO partners, it has dawned on
Washington, at last, that a big gap exists between how we perceive
ourselves and how we are perceived abroad. An almost jingoistic reaction
to 9/11 surpassed the arrogance that went abroad during the Clinton
Administration. It irritated Western Europe to the point of forcing us
to talk not threaten, to soften our declarations and tolerate even some
foreign criticism devoid of pointed anti-American venom. This "soft-core
diplomacy" can come to life for economic reasons, as in the case of
China, or in the case of Pakistan as an ally in the war against
terrorists who have hijacked Islam. In fact, Muslim terrorists have
re-defined the requisite application in the path of God (JUHD) as a call
to war (HARB), which was not the intended meaning, as they mutilated a
noun to produce the verb, JIHAD.(5) As for hard-ball diplomacy within
Europe it is confined at the moment to Serbia-Montenegro.
But, what links the soft and hard-ball diplomacies is an observable
tendency of our representatives abroad to go beyond protocols and get
involved with "approved" local groupings either seeking to stay in power
or to take over from those in power whom we consider "undesirable" or
"politically incorrect." Such meddling in internal affairs can tip the
scales in local politics and help produce men and women at the top who
become willingly subservient to our desiderata, creating an illusion
that we have "won." Hard as it is to grasp, in such situations "we" have
actually lost. Local populations quickly perceive that their governments
are not working to protect their lands, that their economies are
dominated by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and that
"America" is behind a deliberate downslide.
The Convergence
The convergence of Geopolitical thinking, militarism, "smart" but
transparent diplomacy, huge slices of the national budget for Pentagon
and its support systems, the very active drive by domestic "munitions
makers" to keep augmenting their considerable wealth .and protect their
industry from losses---all of this is served by the advent of perpetual
war, a war not against a recognized state but against shadowy groupings
and individuals engaged in "spontaneous terrorism." Thus, the once
promising modern Athens-on-the-Potomac, the "Hope of Mankind," has
transmuted itself into a Sparta that cannot admit to existence of "state
terrorism" from 35,000 feet above the ground, a Sparta ready to cause
war, hurt foreign civilian life while "regretting" "collateral damage"
enamored of its might and fostering a society in which the rule of demos
is a fiction masked by elections and lip service to a Constitution that
can be violated almost with impunity.
Even a blind person can see that something is rather deadly and
self-destructive in all of this, that some sort of inner decay is
gripping ALL of us. Any population tends to get the government it
deserves precisely because it fails to be preoccupied and involved in
both domestic and foreign policies. Putting one Party or the other into
the White House cannot change the lethal and long-lasting convergence.
Only the American People can. There are 15 cosmic minutes left to the
Darkness at Noon. There is still time.
Lest some of the readers succumb to the temptation to conclude that an
old and marginal busy-body cannot get out of his professorial habit to
lecture, even to empty classrooms, permit him to conclude the present
text (27/06/05) by reproducing the preamble to a l9-page memo written by
him and sent to the-then Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, in
December 1992 or eight years before 9/11 and 14 years to-date:
"We are now the sole remaining super-power. What we do or fail to do in
the immediate future will undoubtedly have some lasting consequences. We
might be able to arrive at some sort o benign Pax Americana not only
among the formal states but also within them. On the other hand, our New
World Order bears an almost uncanny resemblance to the
Nineteenth-century Mission Civilisatrice; and we could thus become the
most hated Nation in the world without really resolving any of the more
serious Internal conflicts. Where the Communists repressed nationalisms,
Leaving them to smolder, we could easily encourage their most irrational
components by taking local sides. This is hard to avoid, as will be
illustrated in the case of ex-Yugoslavia, Yet, it is absolutely
essential that we learn to master and control our own behavior in such
situations. Our failure to do so could lead to simultaneous nationalist
explosions in so many areas that a global conflict will creep-up on
everyone. Any sense of our own immunity from sustained hate and deadly
vengeance is apt to run into a novel reality. Relatively minor
nationalist groups, with access to portable biological and chemical
weapons, could become a monumental threat to us by targeting the
American population centers…Calls for Democracy and free markets alone
are not enough to end local conflicts and may even make them more
intractable."
Warren Christopher was, as I knew of him from the San Francisco Bay Area
, a most civil person. I never heard from him or anyone else."
Raymond K. Kent is Professor Emeritus, History Department, University
of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
NOTES
(1) Sorrows of Empire, (2004, pp. 156-160)
(2) From Watergate to Monicagate – The Controversies in Modern
Journalism and media (first published in 2001 now in new edition, p.103)
(3) This was a reference to a French intelligence officer who supposedly
delivered the NATO plans for bombing Serbia to one of Serbia’s secret
agents abroad. Actually, the NATO Commander, General Clark, immediately
declared such a Mission impossible because only he and his immediate
operational staff had access to the plans.
(4) Cf. J-J Servan- Schreiber, "Le Defi Americain."
(5) Majid Khadduri, "War and Peace on the Laws of Islam" ( I was his
student at Columbia University but do not have the exact title or the
book itself on hand. It was published in the late Fifties and should be
required reading for any informed person).
posted by No Simple Matter at 2:45 PM
Judith Miller, the Fourth Estate and the Warfare State
Judith Miller, the Fourth Estate and the Warfare State
By Norman Solomon, AlterNet
Posted on October 17, 2005, Printed on October 19, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/26947/
More than any other New York Times reporter, Judith Miller took the lead
with stories claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Now, a
few years later, she's facing heightened scrutiny in the aftermath of a
pair of articles that appeared in the Times on Sunday -- a lengthy
investigative piece about Miller plus her own first-person account of
how she got entangled in the case of the Bush administration's "outing"
of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent.
It now seems that Miller functioned with more accountability to U.S.
military intelligence officials than to New York Times editors. Most of
the way through her article, Miller slipped in this sentence: "During
the Iraq war, the Pentagon had given me clearance to see secret
information as part of my assignment 'embedded' with a special military
unit hunting for unconventional weapons." And, according to the same
article, she ultimately told the grand jury that during a July 8, 2003,
meeting with the vice president's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, "I might
have expressed frustration to Mr. Libby that I was not permitted to
discuss with editors some of the more sensitive information about Iraq."
Let's replay that one again in slow motion.
Judith Miller is a reporter for the New York Times. After the invasion,
on assignment to cover a U.S. military unit as it searches for WMDs in
Iraq, she's given "clearance" by the Pentagon "to see secret
information" -- which she "was not permitted to discuss" with Times editors.
There's nothing wrong with this picture if Judith Miller is an
intelligence operative for the U.S. government. But if she's supposed to
be a journalist, this is a preposterous situation -- and the fact that
the New York Times has tolerated it tells us a lot about that newspaper.
Notably, the front-page story about Miller in the Times on Sunday
bypassed Miller's "clearance" status and merely reported: "In the spring
of 2003, Ms. Miller returned from covering the war in Iraq, where she
had been embedded with an American military team searching
unsuccessfully for evidence of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons."
In effect, during the propaganda buildup for the invasion of Iraq, while
Miller was the paper's lead reporter on weapons of mass destruction, the
New York Times news department served as a key asset of the warfare state.
"WMD -- I got it totally wrong," the Times quoted Miller as saying in a
Friday interview. "The analysts, the experts and the journalists who
covered them -- we were all wrong. If your sources are wrong, you are
wrong."
But analysts, experts and journalists were not "all wrong." Some very
experienced weapons inspectors -- including Mohamed ElBaradei, Hans Blix
and Scott Ritter -- challenged key assertions from the White House. Well
before the invasion, many other analysts also disputed various aspects
of the U.S. government's claims about WMDs in Iraq. (For examples, see
archived news releases put out by my colleagues at the Institute for
Public Accuracy in 2002 and early 2003.) Meanwhile journalists at some
British newspapers, including the Independent and the Guardian, raised
tough questions that were virtually ignored by mainstream U.S. reporters
in the Washington press corps.
Reporters select sources -- and the unnamed ones that Miller chose to
rely on, like the Pentagon's pet Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, were
predictably eager to spin tales about WMDs in order to fuel momentum for
an invasion. Yet the official line at the New York Times has been that
its news department was fooled with the rest of the media best.
On May 26, 2004 -- more than a year after the invasion of Iraq -- the
Times published a belated semi-mea-culpa article by two top editors,
including executive editor Bill Keller. The piece contended that the
Times, along with policy makers in Washington, were victims rather than
perpetrators: "Administration officials now acknowledge that they
sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many
news organizations -- in particular, this one."
But the Times did not "fall for misinformation" as much as jump for it.
The newspaper eagerly helped the administration portray deceptions as facts.
The carnage set loose by those deceptions is continuing every day. But
the Times' extensive Sunday coverage of its own machinations, with
Judith Miller at the center of the intrigue, had nothing to say about
the human consequences in Iraq.
In elite medialand, the careers of journalists at the New York Times
loom large. In contrast, the lives of American soldiers -- and
especially the lives of Iraqis -- are more like abstractions while the
breathless accounts of press palace intrigues unfold.
The apex of the Times hierarchy has provided no indication of personal
remorse or institutional accountability. And the next time
agenda-setting for U.S. military action -- against Iran or Syria or
wherever -- shifts into high gear, it's very unlikely that the New York
Times or other top-tier U.S. media outlets will present major roadblocks.
On June 14, 2003, shortly before he was promoted to the job of executive
editor at the New York Times, the newspaper published an essay by Bill
Keller that explained why the U.S. government should strive to improve
the quality of its intelligence. "The truth is that the
information-gathering machine designed to guide our leaders in matters
of war and peace shows signs of being corrupted," he wrote. "To my mind,
this is a worrisome problem, but not because it invalidates the war we
won. It is a problem because it weakens us for the wars we still face."
posted by No Simple Matter at 2:42 PM
ACT ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FIFTY FOUR
pickling biography bitters: “new under august”
purpose aims goethe: “corporate market structural”
linen pseudonym degrees: “interview chunks in”
students piety furniture: “asia such gorges”
compatriots manufacturing slopes: “let in to”
medicine granting sudan: “this their banks”
poverty headquarters commentary: “adjustment china those”
chimpanzee prefectural grammatical: “and was primary”
university july renamed: “along china legitimized”
regalia tantrum mineralization: “merge committee payroll”
warships cane landscapes: “insurance plates services”
volume hansomest highways: “lobbied times large”
squalls horseshoe tableware: “advocate america sector.”
-John Crouse & Jim Leftwich
posted by No Simple Matter at 2:41 PM
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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
posted by No Simple Matter at 10:31 AM
----
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-Peter K. Niven
posted by No Simple Matter at 10:30 AM
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Media and Propaganda
ZNet | Alternative Media
Media and Propaganda
Kasim Tirmizey interviews David Barsamian
by David Barsamian and Kasim Tirmizey; October 17, 2005
David Barsamian is the founder of Alternative Radio, a weekly
un-embedded public affairs radio program that can be heard on community
radio stations across North America. Some of his books include Imperial
Ambitions with Noam Chomsky, Eqbal Ahmad: Confronting Empire, and The
Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Conversations with Arundhati Roy. This
interview was taken on a sunny morning in October of 2005 in Montreal.
KT: I read that you said "When the US marches to war, the media march
with it". Could explain broadly how media is often in service of empire?
DB: Well particularly in the United States where five corporations
basically control what most Americans see, hear, and read, these
corporations have very close economic, political, and I dare say
emotional ties with power. They identify with the state, and they
subordinate their cameras and their microphones to the interest of the
state. Particularly in time of war where there is much jingoistic
hysteria, flag waving, and nationalist fervour; the media, much of the
media, not all, much of the media see themselves as being instruments of
American destiny, whatever that might mean, or American power. We saw
that very clearly with Iraq and Afghanistan, but also historically, the
Vietnam War, the attacks on Laos and Cambodia, these went unchallenged
for years. The media internalized the basic assumptions that are
generated by the state, that such and such country is a threat to the
United States, that becomes the basis of discussion, and then the
dialogue, it is more of a monologue then a dialogue, then occurs between
the pundits, between the experts, from these golden rolodexes of
intellectuals and favoured thinkers, such as Michael Ignatieff of
Canada, David Frum, and others. [The discussion is about] How to
implement the policy, so should the US attack Iraq with 200,000 troops
or 150,000 troops? Should it invade from Turkey and Kuwait, or just from
Kuwait? Should there be a bombing campaign initially, or a land
campaign? This is the discourse, so you see how corrupt the situation is
in the United States, the media do not challenge the basic assumptions,
no one says “what right does the United States have in invading any
country under international law, its illegal”. I will give you an
example, the New York Times is considered to be a liberal newspaper, it
is all the news that is fit to print, it is kind of the US Global and
Mail, the national serious newspaper, it not for common people, it is
for the managers and the owners, and the political and cultural elite.
From September 11, 2001 until the attack on Iraq in March 2003, the New
York Times had 70 editorials on Iraq, in not one of those editorials did
they mention the United Nations Charter, or the Nuremberg Tribunals, or
the Geneva Conventions. All of which, particularly the United Nations
Charter, specifically state that the planning and waging of aggressive
war, that is a first strike on a country that is not threatening you, is
the supreme international war crime. Now, why didn't they write that,
why didn't they inform their readers, maybe they didn't know? That's not
plausible, of course they knew, it was deliberately left out so that
information would not become part of the political discourse.
KT: Do you see this as something [that happened] in previous empires,
that media would also be marching with [empire]?
DB: Well, the history of media as we know it is not that old, we can go
back to the birth of propaganda which actually occurs in the World War I
period, where the British and Americans launched a sophisticated
campaign to demonize the Germans. In the case of the United States, an
actual propaganda agency was created by the Woodrow Wilson
administration, someone who is considered a liberal in US history. This
was the birth of, literally, modern propaganda. Such luminaries as
Walter Lippman and Edward Bernays were members of this what was called
the Creel Commission, it was designed to whip up support for US entry
into World War I. After World War I, in the mid-1920's when Hitler wrote
his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle), he pointed out to the fact that
Germany actually lost the propaganda war, they held their own
militarily, but on the level of propaganda, they were completely
overwhelmed and outsmarted by the British and the Americans. And he
promised in the next war, that Germany would do things differently, and
of course they did do things differently, they setup a Ministry of
Propaganda, they had a very clever propagandist as it's director Joseph
Gerbils. Propaganda comes into its maturity in the 20th Century. Now in
the 21st Century with the expansion of television and electronic media.
Prior to this era propaganda was limited to posters and perhaps some
hand-outs and a few newspapers. The electronic umbilical cord had not
yet developed to the extent that it exists now, particularly with the
massive use of television.
KT: I know that you were recently in Turkey attending the World Tribunal
on the War in Iraq, it was something that received absolutely no
coverage in the west. Maybe you can talk about that and the Tribunal itself.
DB: There was a virtual media white-out or black-out, depending on which
color you favour, when I say media I mean the corporate media. There was
some coverage in the independent alternative media in the United States.
This was an extraordinary event that occurred in Istanbul in the last
week of June of 2005. It was the 20th and final session of a series of
tribunals that have been held all over the world, New York, London,
Rome, and other cities. Meeting on Iraq, and featuring testimonies and
presentations, there was a jury in Istanbul featuring Arundhati Roy of
India, the brilliant Chandra Muzaffar from Malaysia, Eve Ensler of the
United States who is known as the writer of Vagina Monologues, and other
people of that calibre, quite impressive. They heard, we heard testimony
from a wide range of people, including Samir Amin of Egypt, Denis
Halliday of Ireland a former Deputy Security General of the United
Nations and one of the administrators of the infamous Food-for-Oil
program, he resigned because he said that the sanctions were killing
innocent Iraqis. His successor also was there in Istanbul giving
testimony Hans Van Sponeck, he too resigned in protest, he said this
program is not helping the average Iraqi, it's killing them, he was
there testifying. There were many Iraqis who came from Iraq, overland
through Turkey. Dahr Jamail was there, a wonderful independent
journalist, un-embedded, third-generation Lebanese on his father's side,
who decided when the Iraq war began in March of 2003 he was so disgusted
and appalled by the coverage, or lack of coverage, in the media in the
United States, he decided to go to Iraq. He is not a journalist.
KT: What was his background before that?
DB: He was doing odd-jobs, in fact he had even been in Colorado as a ski
instructor, then he went to Alaska to climb mountains, he had been doing
odd things. He is a late bloomer, he is in his late 30's, he decide to
become a journalist, which I thought was brilliant, it kind of in a way
resonated with my own experience, I am kind of a late bloomer, I didn't
get started in doing this kind of work until I was into my mid or late
30's, I had been doing other things, playing sitar, teaching English as
a second language in the World Trade Center, jobs like that. I found it
very admirable that Dahr just got up and went to Iraq and reported on
what was going on there. So these were some of the people giving
testimony. Haifa Zangana was there, from Iraq. A number of Iraqi women
testified as to what was going on, how the war was affecting
particularly women. And so the Tribunal met in Istanbul, it was
organized by people in Turkey, very well done. I must tell you that the
locale of the Tribunal was of significance, it was in the former
imperial mint of the Ottoman Sultans in their great palace known as
Topkapi. In the Topkapi Palace, which is now a big tourist destination,
the imperial mint is falling apart, it hasn’t been renovated. Here we
were meeting in a building where the paint was peeling and the bricks
were crumbling, it was very symbolic because here were the ruins of a
former empire, and we are talking now about the depredations of another
empire, another empire which will collapse, the US Empire. People could
not miss the symbolism of that. The tribunal gave it's final
declaration, it found not just the United States guilty of war crimes,
but the United Kingdom, the regime of Tony Blair, Berlusconi and Italy,
John Howard of Australia, all of the countries that participated in this
criminal attack on Iraq, that was kind of to be expected. There were a
couple of other judgements that the jury delivered that were quite
extraordinary. As far as I know for the first time in history, the media
was singled out for culpability, corporate media was held responsible
for being an accessory to the war. In what way? They acted as a conveyer
belt for the lies that the Howard, Bush, Blair, and Berlusconi
governments were generating, and they simply replicated them. They
didn't challenge them, they didn't cross-examine them, they didn't
interrogate them. And in some cases even journalists were named, like
Judith Miller of The New York Times, someone who became a mouth-piece
for Ahmed Chalabi, a very wealthy Iraqi, who left Iraq after the 1958
overthrow of the Hashemite kingdom. He was from a very wealthy Shia
family, he has lived in exile, and he has had a very corrupt and
criminal background, he was sentenced to over 20 years in prison in
Jordan, for criminal actions for defrauding and embezzling a bank there
in Amman. This is the person that was giving information to Judith
Miller about weapons of mass destruction, he hadn't been in Iraq in 50
years, he was literally making stories up. And Miller, to her great
discredit and shame, never challenged the information, never asked for
subsistent evidence to support these wild allegations. So the media were
held culpable, and also corporations such as Halliburton and Bechtel
which have profited enormously from the attack on Iraq and the on-going
occupation. But also some popular international companies like Pepsi,
Nestle, KFC, who have profited from the war. So that was an interesting
development, and I think a very important aspect of the World Tribunal
on Iraq. People can read about the deliberations and final verdict,
there are websites I’m sure, if you google World Tribunal on Iraq you
can find that information. It was a very depressing event, on one hand,
but also very inspiring. People from around the world gathered in
Istanbul to deliver justice, as it were, to say that imperialist wars of
aggression are not right and we the people of the world oppose it.
KT: I wanted to read something from Hakim Bey from his book Temporary
Autonomous Zone, he writes:
"In the East poets are sometimes thrown in prison--a sort of compliment,
since it suggests the author has done something at least as real as
theft or rape or revolution. Here poets are allowed to publish anything
at all--a sort of punishment in effect, prison without walls, without
echoes, without palpable existence--shadow-realm of print, or of
abstract thought--world without risk or eros.
"So poetry is dead again--& even if the mumia from its corpse retains
some healing properties, auto-resurrection isn't one of them."
Poets in the East could shake up people, but over here what would it
take to shake up people?
DB: In the United States, it is going to take a kind of rise in
consciousness, people there don't have information, they don’t know what
the government is doing in many cases. It happens over a period of time,
I view the possibilities of change, I compare it to a marathon and a
sprint. A marathon is a very long race. And a sprint is a very short
race that is difficult to win and requires tremendous athletic
conditioning and training, and is just 100m let's say. Whereas a
marathon is many many kilometres. So we need to develop independent
media, we need to develop our own documentary films, which I am happy to
say is happening, we do have poets in opposition but they don’t have big
audiences in the US. I want to give you an example of a very courageous
act in the United States, Sharon Olds was recently honoured, she is a
New York University professor and poet, she was honoured with the
National Book Critics Award, she was invited to Washington DC by Laura
Bush to attend a dinner and some ceremonies. She wrote a very eloquent
letter saying that 'I would be honoured, I wished I could attend, but
the idea of breaking bread with you and sitting at a table with linens
and candles and being served by waiters was just too disgusting and
appalling, because of what shame you have brought to the United States
with the blood on your hands and your husbands hands because of the
criminal actions of the regime.' Poets and artists have always been the
first line of resistance, that has historically been more true in the
East where the oral tradition is very strong, in Arab Middle Eastern
countries, in Turkey, in Iran, in Afghanistan, India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, there has been a tradition of poets who speak out against
power, who speak truth to power, who interrogate the popular wisdom,
conventional thinking, and hegemonic ideas. To develop a culture of
resistance requires quite a bit of internal development and societal
maturation, which you don't see a lot of unfortunately in the United
States, not across the board, there are pockets of resistance in the US,
in Berkley, in Madison, where I live in Boulder, in Albuquerque, in
different cities around the US. But because of the role of propaganda,
the influence of television and mass media, and an educational system
that does not really educate, that inculcates rather than educates, that
doesn't train students to deconstruct, doesn't train students to develop
critical thinking; we have a lot of work to do inside the US in
developing a consciousness where we can change the situation there
otherwise this is just going to keep repeating itself.
KT: Can you talk more about media as a tool of intifada or media as a
tool of resistance.
DB: Well, media is a critical tool of resistance, because without
information, and without solidarity that that information provides, then
populations are completely vulnerable to exploitation, to domination and
to conquest. We need to, we - people in opposition, people in resistance
to empire - need to fortify those electronic connections, those wires,
we need to build those wires, we need to make those connections between
our computers, our minidisks, and our cameras, and our e-mail lists and
our websites, to build up an electronic intifada as it were, to fight
back the corporate control of media which is trying to establish the
legitimacy of empire and domination. We see in different parts of the
world, filmmakers operating under the most difficult conditions, radio
broadcasters creating community radio, low-power FM radio (that is a
very important development), cable access TV, all of these media,
newsletters, on-line and off-line zines. The Internet itself has become
a great tool, but we need to know how to use it properly, otherwise we
could just be buried under e-mails and endless encyclopaedia torrents of
information, we need information that can lead to action, that can
ignite a resistance in concrete ways. These developments are very very
exciting, I am very optimistic, I am very happy to see, I am thrilled to
see young people who have mastered the new media and intend to use it in
creative ways. For example, the young Egyptian US-citizen Jehane
Noujaim, she did a brilliant documentary on Al-Jazeera called Control
Room. There are other young [filmmakers], not just in the United States,
but let's say Ireland, two young Irish filmmakers made a brilliant
documentary on the attempted overthrow of the Hugo Chavez government in
Venezuela supported by the US, democratically elected I must say. It is
called The Revolution will not be Televised. These are all relatively
new developments, there are lots of websites on the Internet that are
critically important, where I get a lot of information from. You can
learn about what is going on in India in terms of resisting the big dams
that the World Banks is trying to impose on that country, the Narmada
Bachao Andolan - the NBA - is a very good example of a grassroots
organization that is located in central India that has now achieved
global visibility because of documentary films, because of the
activities of Arundhati Roy and many others, activists from around the
world, who are supporting people's resistance against globalization.
KT: Can you talk about how your own political consciousness came about?
DB: Well I can't pinpoint it to any one thing, it wasn’t one book, or
one demonstration that I went to. I think that my political
consciousness is informed by my family background and that is we are
Armenians. Historically, we have lived on our land, in what is now
south-eastern Turkey for millennia. In 1915 there was a massive genocide
carried out by the Turkish government, we lost everything, we were
uprooted, our homes were left, our farms, our seminaries, our libraries,
our churches, our cultural traditions, we were completely severed from
that, and just thrown. In the case of my family, my mother lost many
members of her family, we lost everything, and they found themselves in
New York as immigrants, my father was a grocer, my mother raised me, I
had three other siblings, there were four of us, relatively lower-middle
class. I always wanted to know why did that happen, and my family were
peasants, they were from a village, they weren’t sophisticated, they
weren’t educated, they didn’t know what happened to them. One day a
cyclone occurred, there was a tornado, and they found themselves out of
their home. That didn’t satisfy me as a kid. I always asking questions:
why did the Turks do this? What possessed them? What were the reasons? I
wanted to know, and I couldn’t get any explanations. And so I started
studying, I started reading everything I could get my hands on. I am
largely self-educated, I barely graduated from high-school in New York,
I hated school, I played hooky most of the time, I would go to the
movies instead of going to school, I would play games with my friends,
we would never go to school. I did manage to go to college for one year,
the same kind of thing, I was bored, I didn’t go to classes, and then I
dropped out. So I am largely self-educated, which I think in this
instance was useful, because I didn’t go through the propaganda
networks, I didn’t go through official training, I didn’t get a proper
education, I got a very improper education. For the kind of work I am
doing, media and creating independent alternative media, I think that is
a very plausible and useful way to develop your mind, because I wasn’t
trying to be, for example, a biochemist or dentist, where I needed very
specific technical training. I am doing work in ideology, and this work
simply requires common sense, an analytical mind, and a willingness to
be fearless, to challenge, to ask questions, and to be sceptical, so
when people in power say something you take everything with a grain of
salt. Why are they saying that? Whose interests are being served? Whose
interests are not being served? Who benefits from this policy? I think
my background as a child of refugees, who came to the United States with
nothing, who didn’t know literally what happened to them, and
interrogating that history, finding out what happened, and then my
travels really opened up my eyes and awakened me. I had the great good
fortune to live in Asia for almost five years, that was kind of like my
education. I lived of those five years most of the time in India, in
Delhi, where I had the opportunity to study with great master musicians,
sitar players. I was exposed to one of the most sophisticated music
systems in the world. This helped me politically also, because it
trained my mind, it disciplined me, to think in a methodological way, in
a chronological way. To be exposed to masters also inspired me to excel.
I always tell this, there is a saying in Hindi: if you try and do many
things at once you won’t do anything well, but if you do one thing well
then you can do many things later. There is a lot wisdom in this adage.
And I was also exposed to poetry, Urdu poetry, very beautiful, one of
the great literary traditions in the world. I was in a culture where
people would recite couplets or even entire ghuzals – love poems – by
Ghalib, Mir Taqi Mir, Momin, Iqbal, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Shamim Jaipuri, and
others. This elevated me, in a very positive way. When you are around
excellence you internalize some of those things. That’s a very inspiring
thing. Even if you were a carpenter, and you learned carpentry from an
ustad – a master – you have developed a certain power, a certain level
of excellence that you can then transfer that to do other things. You
can even be around master cooks, people who know how to make the most
excellent cuisine, this helps you develop in other ways. I was very very
lucky, that experience for me was I would say the most enriching and
mind expanding of my life.
KT: It was a pleasure talking to you Ustad David Barsamian.
DB: (David laughs) Thank you, Kasim. Bhot bhot shukria apka.
This interview was recorded for CKUT Radio, a community radio station in
Montreal, Canada. To listen to the interview, go to:
http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=14424
posted by No Simple Matter at 3:53 PM
ACT ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FIFTY THREE
toothed mining mantle: “ideology close obligation”
inks pyrite dietary: “has lies majority”
article dictatorship smelting: “erosion classic fighting”
chronic coined ontario: “courts airliner insurgents”
excluding features applications: “with most interest”
occurs conflict chemise: “the leaders practices”
vases carpathians anemia: “unconstrained quest and”
fascist flood dialect: “resources favor large”
underground overgrowth hatchery: “the result system”
voluminous monotheism jasmine: “commercial team increasingly”
strengthened elk euripides: “propaganda democracy bush”
prussian pretender text: “display theological media.”
-John Crouse & Jim Leftwich
posted by No Simple Matter at 3:52 PM
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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
posted by No Simple Matter at 12:48 PM
----
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-Peter K. Niven
posted by No Simple Matter at 12:47 PM
Bush Isn't A Racist -- Just One More Privileged, Soulless Person
Bush Isn't A Racist -- Just One More Privileged, Soulless Person
October 21, 2005
By Robert Jensen
George W. Bush has been unfairly tagged with the label "racist" in the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It's true that the response of the
government -- at all levels, but especially the federal government and
it's feeble emergency agency -- was inadequate and incompetent, and that
the poor suffered the most, and that the poor of New Orleans are
disproportionately black. It's also true that Bush displayed an
appalling lack of basic human compassion in his slow reaction to the
suffering.
But our president is almost certainly not an overt racist. He's just a
run-of-the-mill overly privileged American who appears to have no soul.
I'm reasonably sure he doesn't harbor ill will for anyone based solely
on race. Instead -- like many people in similar positions and status --
he's incapable of understanding how race and class structure life in the
United States. His privilege has not only coddled and protected him his
whole life, but also has left him with a drastically reduced capacity
for empathy, and without empathy one can't be fully human.
This is not a partisan attack; such a soulless existence is not a
feature of membership in any particular political party. Nor is it
exclusive to men. Though we tend to assume women will be more caring,
this deficiency among the privileged crosses gender lines; probably the
most inhuman comment by a public figure after Katrina was made by the
president's mother, Barbara Bush. After touring the Astrodome stadium in
Houston, where many who were displaced by the disaster were being
warehoused, she said, "And so many of the people in the arena here, you
know, were underprivileged anyway, so this -- this is working very well
for them."
In our president all we see is an extreme version of a more general
problem in an affluent but highly unequal society, in which people on
the top have convinced themselves they are special and therefore deserve
their positions.
For his entire life, Bush has sat on the very top of the privilege pile.
He is white in a white-supremacist society; a heterosexual man in a
patriarchal culture; born into wealth in a capitalist economy; and a
U.S. citizen in a world dominated by his nation. In the identity game,
it's hard to get a better roll of the dice.
The downside to all this for folks like Bush is that privilege doesn't
guarantee intelligence, empathy, wisdom, diligence, or humanity.
Privilege allows people without those qualities to skate through life,
protected from the consequences of being dull-witted, lazy, arrogant,
and inhumane. The system of privilege allows failed people to pretend to
be something more. And, unfortunately, that system often puts those
failed people in positions of power and forces everyone else to endure
their shortcomings.
That's probably the most pressing race problem in the United States
today -- a de facto affirmative-action program for mediocre middle- and
upper-class white men that places a lot of undeserving people in
positions of power, where their delusions of grandeur can have profound
implications for others. If the deficiencies of George Bush and people
like him were simply their problem, well, most would find it hard to
muster much sympathy. But they become our problem -- not just the United
States', but the world's problem -- when such folks run the world. Let's
go back to Bush's resume.
Whatever one's ideology or evaluation of Bush policies, it's impossible
to ignore how race, gender, class, and nation privilege have worked in
his life. By his own admission, Bush was a mediocre student, gaining
access to two of the most prestigious universities in the United States
(Yale and Harvard) through family connections, not merit. His lackluster
and incomplete service in the Texas Air National Guard during the
Vietnam War was, to say the least, not the stuff of legend that will be
told and retold around the family hearth.
After that he went into the oil business, where he also failed. He then
used money he had managed to take out of a failed oil endeavor to buy
into the Texas Rangers baseball team, his one great "success" in the
business world. From there, despite having no relevant experience, he
was molded by Republican Party operatives into a successful
gubernatorial candidate. After a thoroughly uninspired first term, he
was re-elected governor before moving on to the White House, where the
most successful public-relations team in U.S. political history has kept
him afloat despite two illegal and failed wars, a frightening rise in
the national debt, tax cuts for wealthy that have contributed to the
gutting of the already weak social safety net, and most recently the
criminally negligent response to Hurricane Katrina.
Welcome to the United States of Meritocracy. How is it that a society
can hold onto fantasies about level playing fields and equal opportunity
when every day we turn on the television sets and see Smiling George the
Frat Boy President?
The problem, of course, isn't limited to Bush; he's a fraud, but only
one of many. In my life I have worked in offices of the federal
government, non-profit organizations, for-profit corporations, and
universities. In each, I have seen mediocre white men rise to positions
of power for reasons that have more to do with the informal networks
based on identity than on merit.
No doubt, as a white man, my own career has been aided by this system. I
also have seen women and non-white people advance by playing a similar
game, but far less often and typically only when they internalize the
value system of the dominant culture.
That does not mean there are no white men who are talented and
hard-working or who do not deserve the success they have achieved. It is
only to recognize that this system of unearned privilege will regularly
put into positions of power people who are unfit for the duties they
take on. That means -- independent of the strong moral argument for
equality and justice -- subverting a system of white supremacy and white
privilege is in all our interests. In fact, the fate of the world may
depend on it.
posted by No Simple Matter at 9:03 AM
Saturday, October 22, 2005
What Are You Doing About Afghanistan
What Are You Doing About Afghanistan
By Sonali Kolhatkar
April 13, 2004
An Open Letter to Anti-War Activists
“We’ve come to think of Afghanistan … as a sort of a backwater, as old
news. But the war is still going on there. There’s the same pattern as
in Iraq” – Seymour Hersh interview with Amy Davidson, 04/05/04.
Afghanistan has been devastated by the U.S. military and neglected by
the antiwar movement. I am writing to appeal antiwar activists to
seriously incorporate Afghanistan into their work.
The U.S.’s war in Afghanistan was clearly fought to maintain imperial
credibility after the 9-11 attacks and to provide a stepping stone to
Iraq. And yet, I was saddened that activists in the U.S. and other
countries did not rise up in significant numbers to resist the
Afghanistan war which began on October 7th 2001. While I was heartened
with the rising up of millions against the Iraq war in 2003, the
situation in Afghanistan continued to be sidelined by activists in the
recent demonstrations against occupation on March 20th 2004.
It is much easier to be against the blatantly illegal Iraq war, as so
many high-profile political figures are doing these days: there was no
connection to Al Qaeda in Iraq (prior to the war), no weapons of mass
destruction, plenty of oily reasons, plenty of lies from the Bush
administration, and so on. But Afghanistan was another situation. How
could we argue that the U.S. should not bomb a country that was
harboring terrorists who attacked innocent U.S. civilians? Perhaps
activists have avoided Afghanistan because of its obvious links to Al
Qaeda and the tempting promise by Bush to deliver freedom for the most
oppressed women in the world.
At the recent high-profile 9-11 Commission hearings Democrats and
Republicans played the contest of "who was tougher on terrorism.”
Unfortunately, this amounted to proving who was capable of invading
Afghanistan the earliest. No mention was made of the devastating effects
of the U.S. bombing which resulted in the deaths of many more innocent
Afghans than innocent Americans on 9-11 (bombs are still dropping and
killing civilians). No mention was made of the use of internationally
condemned cluster bombs whose legacy is itself terrorist. But most
importantly, no mention was made of the U.S.’s own role in creating
conditions for terrorism in Afghanistan over two decades ago, for which
the Afghan people have been paying dearly.
It is crucial for antiwar activists to know the history of the U.S. in
Afghanistan – historical parallels with today’s operations are striking
and the consequences are predictable and devastating. In the late 1970s,
the U.S. CIA began funding and fueling extremist, misogynist factions in
Afghanistan against a Soviet invasion. Thousands of Arab and extremist
religious fighters were imported to the region to join the “jihad”,
laying the ground work for Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden’s legacy. After
ten years of occupation, the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan
while weapons and cash continued to flow from the U.S. to the
“Mujahedeen” warriors into the early 1990s. The period that followed was
the bloodiest era in Afghanistan, during which tens of thousands of
Afghans were killed by the Mujahedeen with U.S. supplied weapons – the
Mujahedeen fought one another for power killing any civilians in their
path and raping women. In fact, the 1996 takeover by the Taliban was in
part easy because the Afghan population were desperately ready for a
change in their leadership. What the United States has done today in
Afghanistan is topple the hated Taliban and replace them with the
equally hated and feared Mujahedeen warlords of old who simply regrouped
under the title of “Northern Alliance”.
A recent Pentagon-sanctioned report by Retired Army Colonel Hy Rothstein
concluded that the current U.S. war had given "warlordism, banditry and
opium production a new lease on life” and “imposed additional, avoidable
humanitarian and stability costs on Afghanistan”. The United States is
repeating its devastating tactics in Afghanistan and once more causing
the Afghan people great harm.
Under the U.S.’s watch, Afghanistan has once more reclaimed its title of
the world’s largest drug producer, responsible for 75 per cent of the
world's opium and 80 per cent of the heroin sold in Europe. The US is
accusing the Taliban of using the drug trade to finance their insurgency
since being overthrown. But in fact the U.S.’s friends are the drug
producers. Jack Blum, an expert in International Finance Crime testified
to the House of Representatives recently saying, "The revenue of poppies
is essential for the warlords supporting the United States," in their
fight against terrorism. Meanwhile, U.S. prosecutors are investigating
the recently ousted Haitian President Aristide’s connection to cocaine
and touting a campaign of drug trafficking as a reason why Haiti is
better off without Aristide.
Afghan women in particular are paying the greatest price for U.S.
policies. Their emancipation was upheld as one reason for going to war
but two years later, they are as shackled by the same warlords and the
same hunger and insecurity as they were before and during the Taliban’s
reign. For some women, particularly in cities and villages outside the
relatively safer Kabul, things are worse. For example, tens of women in
the Western Afghan province of Herat have been committing suicide by
self-immolation.
So what can antiwar activists do?
Firstly, stay as informed about the U.S.’s role in Afghanistan as you
can and demand the media cover Afghanistan. As a member of the
alternative media (Pacifica), I have noticed more coverage in the
mainstream media of Afghanistan than in the alternative media: this is
shameful. Demand coverage of Afghanistan from your local community radio
station, alternative political magazine, or favorite online news source.
Secondly, look to Afghans themselves for what they want for their
country. For example, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of
Afghanistan (RAWA) who I work in solidarity with and who are on the
forefront of anti-fundamentalist and anti-imperialist work, have been
calling for a United Nations intervention and peace keeping forces for
years. They have asked sensibly, for the disarmament of warlords who
rule the countryside with impunity and foreign backing. Today the
government of Japan is funding a UN disarmament program in Afghanistan.
Antiwar activists can demand that the U.S. foot the bill for the entire
program – after all we will simply be disarming the very men we armed
who have inflicted terrorism on the Afghan people.
Thirdly, demand that the U.S. spend proportionately as much on
humanitarian aid in Afghanistan as it does in other conflict situations.
A RAND Corporation study revealed that “Kosovo, for example, has a
population of about 2 million, while Afghanistan has a population of 23
million. But Kosovo received several times more American and European
assistance per capita to recover from 13 weeks of conflict than
Afghanistan has received to rebuild from 20 years of civil war”. While
Afghanistan and Iraq have roughly the same area and population, in
general, Afghanistan is decades behind Iraq in standards of living. For
example, life expectancy in Afghanistan is 47 years compared to Iraq’s
68 years. Literacy for men is nearly half as much in Afghanistan as in
Iraq, while women are 3 times less literate in Afghanistan than in Iraq.
These effects are directly linked to decades of U.S. fueled war which
has set Afghan progress back by tens of years.
Fourthly, no matter who is in power, remind them that you are watching
their policies in Afghanistan, just as you are watching their policies
in Iraq, Palestine, Haiti, Colombia, and everywhere else the U.S. empire
reigns. Demand that your local antiwar group, or the large mobilizing
groups you work with, include Afghanistan in their literature and signs.
Demand that every time an antiwar rally is held, there are prominent
speakers who address Afghanistan.
And finally, show sensitivity and respect to the people of Afghanistan
by not exploiting their victim-hood. There are far too many books and
movies depicting Afghans and particularly Afghan women as mute, blue
burka-clad figures who are helpless. These images are convenient
reminders of our superiority and do not empower Afghans in their fight
against the U.S’s war machine.
The Afghan people have been used and betrayed by the United States too
often. They are a brave people with a history of anti-imperialism. But
they are tired and they are dying. And they are about to be used once
more: during the November 2004 Presidential elections. With the
embarrassment of Bush’s policies in Iraq, Afghanistan will be held up as
the success story of the “war on terror”. Afghan elections, conveniently
timed two months before Bush’s re-election bid, will be a model for
U.S.-sponsored democracy in the “Muslim world.”
U.S. actions in Afghanistan are not failures or mistakes, but crimes.
Antiwar activists must see through the veneer of “democracy” and
“success” and judge Bush’s actions in Afghanistan as what they are:
criminal. They are the result of deliberate policy crafted by the Bush
administration, which is simply following in the footsteps of Clinton
(who first courted the Taliban in an effort to get a pipeline deal and
then bombed Afghanistan in), Bush Sr. (who allowed the Mujahedeen to
destroy Afghanistan with US-supplied weapons), Reagan (who openly
embraced the misogynist, fundamentalist Mujahedeen) and Carter (who
began the initial covert operations in the late 1970s).
Empire is being built on the backs of Afghans and it is up to us as
antiwar activists to recognize it and address it.
Respectfully and in solidarity,
Sonali Kolhatkar Co-Director of Afghan Women’s Mission
posted by No Simple Matter at 1:54 PM
ACT ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FIFTY TWO
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-John Crouse & Jim Leftwich
posted by No Simple Matter at 1:53 PM
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posted by No Simple Matter at 10:37 AM
----
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posted by No Simple Matter at 10:33 AM
Friday, October 21, 2005
A Long Overdue Frog-March
A Long Overdue Frog-March
By Ray McGovern, BuzzFlash
Posted on October 21, 2005, Printed on October 21, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/27128/
Indictments are expected to come down shortly as special prosecutor
Patrick Fitzgerald completes the investigation originally precipitated
by the outing of a C.I.A. officer under deep cover. In 21-plus months of
digging and interviewing, Fitzpatrick and his able staff have been able
to negotiate the intelligence/policy/politics labyrinth with
considerable sophistication. In the process, they seem to have learned
considerably more than they had bargained for. The investigation has
long since morphed into size "extra-large," which is the only size
commensurate with the wrongdoing uncovered -- not least, the fabrication
and peddling of intelligence to "justify" a war of aggression.
The coming months are likely to see senior Bush administration officials
frog-marched out of the White House to be booked, unless the president
moves swiftly to fire Fitzgerald -- a distinct possibility. With so many
forces at play, it is easy to lose perspective and context while plowing
through the tons of information on this case. What follows is a
retrospective and prospective, laced with some new facts and analysis
aimed at helping us to focus on the forest once we have given due
attention to the trees.
The background
In late May 2003, the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC) informed
me that a former U.S. ambassador named Joseph Wilson would be sharing
keynote duties with me at a large EPIC conference on June 14.
I was delighted -- for two reasons. This was a chance to meet the
"American hero" (per George H. W. Bush) who faced down Saddam Hussein,
freeing hundreds of American and other hostages taken when Iraq invaded
Kuwait in 1990. More important, since Wilson had served as an ambassador
in Africa, I thought he might be able to throw light on a question
bedeviling me since May 6, when New York Times columnist Nicholas
Kristof wrote an intriguing story about a mission to Niger by "a former
U.S. ambassador to Africa."
According to Kristof, that mission was undertaken at the behest of Vice
President Dick Cheney's office to investigate a report that Iraq was
seeking uranium from Niger. The report was an entirely convenient
"smoking gun." Since Iraq lacked any nonmilitary use for such uranium,
it had to be for a nuclear weapons program, if the report were true. Or
so went the argument. The former ambassador sent to Niger had found no
basis for the report, pulling the rug out from under the "intelligence"
the administration had used during the previous fall to conjure up the
"mushroom cloud" that intimidated Congress into authorizing war.
Kristof's May 6 column had caused quite a stir in Washington. The only
one to have totally missed the story was then-National Security Adviser
and now Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (assuming she is to be taken
at her word). Rice claimed that the information did not come to her
attention until more than a month later. Right. (And the celebrated
aluminum tubes were for nuclear enrichment -- not artillery. Right.)
This ostensibly nuclear-related "evidence" was no mere sideshow; it went
to the very core of the disingenuous justification for war. The
Iraq-Niger report itself was particularly suspect. The uranium mined in
Niger is very tightly controlled by a French-led international
consortium, and the chances of circumventing or defeating the well
established safeguards and procedures were seen as virtually nil. On
March 7, Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy
Agency, announced to the U.N. Security Council that the documents upon
which the Iraq-Niger reporting was based were "not authentic." Colin
Powell swallowed hard but took it as well as could be expected under the
circumstances. A few days later he conceded the point entirely -- with
neither apology nor embarrassment, as befits the world's sole remaining
superpower.
The sixteen words
Powell had long since decided that the Iraq-Niger report did not pass
the smell test. But he was apparently afraid to incur Cheney's wrath by
telling the president. Powell's own intelligence analysts at the State
Department had branded the story "highly dubious," so he had chosen to
drop it from the long litany of spurious charges against Iraq that he
recited at the U.N. on February 5, 2003, a performance that Powell now
admits constitutes a "blot" on his record. Asked to defend President
George W. Bush's use of the Iraq-Africa story in his State of the Union
address in January 2003, the best Powell could do was to describe the
president's (in)famous "16 words" as "not totally outrageous," a comment
that did not help all that much.
Those in Congress who felt they had been misled by the story, which the
White House PR machine had shaped into a "mushroom cloud," were in high
dugeon. For example, in the days before the attack on Iraq, Rep. Henry
Waxman (D-CA) wrote the president to complain that Waxman and his
colleagues had been deceived out of their constitutional prerogative to
declare or otherwise authorize war. None of this put the brakes on the
intrepid Cheney, who three days before the war told NBC's Tim Russert,
"We believe he [Saddam Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear
weapons."
Cheney, of course, had been assured by the likes of neo-conservative
armchair general Kenneth Adelman that the war would be a "cakewalk,"
that U.S. forces would be greeted as "liberators," and that in the glow
of major victory, only the worst kind of spoilsport would complain that
the "justification" was based largely on a forgery. By May 2003,
however, it had become clear that the cakewalk was a pipedream and that
no sign of a "reconstituted" nuclear weapons program was likely to be
found. In this context, the information in Kristof's May 6 op-ed was
like pouring salt into an open wound.
Do you know the ambassador?
When introduced to former ambassador Wilson at the June 14 conference, I
wasted no time asking him -- rather naively, it turned out -- if he knew
who the former U.S. ambassador who went to Niger was. He smiled and
said, "You're looking at him." I asked when he intended to go public; in
a couple of weeks, was the answer.
Wilson then turned dead serious and, with considerable emphasis, told me
the White House had already launched a full-court press in an effort to
dredge up dirt on him. He added, "When I do speak out, they are going to
go after me big time. I don't know the precise nature the retaliation
will take, but I can tell you now it will be swift and vindictive. They
cannot afford to have people thinking they can escape unscathed if they
spill the beans on the dishonesty undergirding this war." (Sad to say,
the White House approach has worked. There are perhaps a hundred of my
former C.I.A. colleagues who know about the lies; none -- not one -- has
been able to summon the courage to go public.)
Wilson's tone was matter of fact; the nerves were of steel. Hardly
surprising, thought I. If you can face down Saddam Hussein, you can
surely face down the likes of Dick Cheney. Wilson's New York Times op-ed
of July 6, 2003, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," pulled no punches.
Worse still from the administration's point of view, Wilson then dropped
the other shoe during an interview with the Washington Post also on July 6.
Consummate diplomats like Wilson typically do not speak of "lies." So
outraged was Wilson, though, that this bogus story had been used to
"justify" an unprovoked war, that he made a point to note that the
already proven dishonesty begs the question regarding "what else they
are lying about."
It was a double whammy. And, as is now well known, the White House moved
swiftly -- if clumsily (and apparently illegally) -- to retaliate.
It was clear from the start that Vice President Dick Cheney and Kemosabe
(Amer. Indian for "Scooter") Libby, as well as Karl Rove, were taking
the lead in this operation to make an object lesson of Wilson and his
wife. And it is somewhat reassuring to notice that some newly tenacious
mainstream pundits are now waking up to this. Better late than never, I
suppose.
Still good advice: fire Cheney
Watching matters unfold at the time, we Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity on July 14, 2003 issued a Memorandum for the
President, with chapter and verse on how "your vice president led this
campaign of deceit." We pointed out that this was no case of petty
corruption of the kind that forced Vice President Spiro Agnew out by the
side door. It was, rather, a matter of war and peace, with thousands
already killed and no end in sight. We offered the president the
following suggestion:
Recommendation #1: We recommend that you call an abrupt halt to
attempts to prove Vice President Cheney "not guilty." His role has been
so transparent that such attempts will only erode further your own
credibility. Equally pernicious, from our perspective, is the likelihood
that intelligence analysts will conclude that the way to success is to
acquiesce in the cooking of their judgments, since those above them will
not be held accountable. We strongly recommend that you ask for Cheney's
immediate resignation.
President George W. Bush rejected our advice (not for the first time).
But now the president may have to let Cheney go after all. Why? Because
special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is taking his job seriously.
Frog-marching
During a speech in Seattle in August 2003, former ambassador Wilson
imagined a scene in which police are frog-marching presidential adviser
Karl Rove out of the White House. This appeared a bit farfetched at the
time, but not now. Indeed, it seems there will be a need for multiple
handcuffs and marshals.
From the beginning of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's
investigation in January 2004, Wilson expressed confidence that the
truth would emerge. And because of Fitzgerald's professionalism and
tenacity, we are about to see at least some of the perpetrators of this
fraud get their comeuppance. Normally, Schadenfreude is exceedingly hard
to resist in such circumstances. But it is harder still to allow oneself
any joy at the misfortune of others, when the focus needs to be placed
on the huge damage already done to our country, its values, and its
reputation.
When the Watergate scandal reached a similar stage in October 1973,
President Richard Nixon, ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to
fire the intrepid special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson resigned
rather than carry out Nixon's order; and so did his deputy William
Ruckleshaus. So Nixon had to reach farther down into the Justice
department where he found Robert Bork, who promptly dismissed Cox in the
so-called Saturday Night Massacre.
Fitzgerald is at least as vulnerable as Cox was. Indeed, in recent days
some of the fourth estate, Richard Cohen in the Washington Post and John
Tierney in The New York Times, for example, seem to have accepted
assignments to help lay the groundwork for Fitzgerald's dismissal.
Will the White House decide to fire special prosecutor Patrick
Fitzgerald, and simply absorb the PR black eye, as Nixon did? There is
absolutely nothing to prevent it. Can you imagine Attorney General
Alberto Gonzales refusing on principle an order from President Bush?
Could Bush himself be named an un-indicted co-conspirator? If that or
something like it happens, we can expect a circling of the wagons and
Fitzgerald cashiered.
If the case Fitzgerald has built, however, is not strong enough to
implicate Bush personally, it seems likely that the president will
acquiesce in wholesale frog marching of others from the White House and
then go off for a Thanksgiving vacation in Crawford -- oops, more
likely, Camp David. For Cindy Sheehan is planning Thanksgiving in
Crawford: she still hopes to see the president so that he can explain to
her personally what the "noble cause" was for which her son died.
It promises to be an interesting autumn. By all means stay tuned.
Ray McGovern was a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years, and is now on the
Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/27128/
posted by No Simple Matter at 1:01 PM
Neoclassical Micro and Macro Economics: Science or Silliness?
Neoclassical Micro and Macro Economics:
Science or Silliness?
by Michael Albert
BY ITS OWN CLAIMS economics is the most scientific “social science.” Yet
non-economist critics such as E.F. Schumacher tell us that “to produce
[economic] figures about the unknown, the current method is to make a
guess about something or other—called an assumption—and to derive an
estimate from it by subtle calculation. The estimate is then presented
as the result of ‘scientific reasoning,’ something far superior to mere
guesswork...” More surprising, even a noted economist like John Kenneth
Galbraith claims that “on the largest and most important questions
facing the governments of the industrial countries the economics
profession—I choose my words with care—is intellectually bankrupt. It
might as well not exist.”
Still, as dissidents Schumacher and Galbraith are criticizing other
economist’s theories and can be written off by those other economists as
having an ax to grind. In this light, even more surprising and little
known is that the most famed creators of modern micro and macro economic
theories also denigrate their disciplines and minimize their claims to
scientific credibility. To understand their cynicism, first we describe
the contours of these modern theories, then we both survey the creators’
skepticism and inquire how a discipline can continue when its own
creators doubt its relevance. To close we will offer a few words about
alternatives.
Microeconomics
Since the earliest days of their theorizing economists have wondered how
independent producers and consumers, each pursuing their own separate
ends without conniving in any way, nonetheless act so the total of their
efforts constitute an orderly affair.
Workers sell their energies for wages. Capitalists buy resources and
intermediate goods as well as worker’s energies to create products they
then sell. Consumers finally buy those products.
Remembering the immense number of actors and their diverse preferences,
is it possible that they can all act individually and nonetheless
establish an “equilibrium” in which everyone buys and sells the amounts
they want at the prices that are established? Moreover, if this is
possible, will the result have special characteristics that make it a
better type of economic organization than all others one could imagine?
As the economic historian Mark Blaug describes: “...what reason do we
have for thinking that the whole process hangs together? Business firms
enter product markets as suppliers, but they enter factor markets as
buyers; households on the other hand are buyers in product markets but
suppliers in factor markets. Is equilibrium in product markets
necessarily consistent with equilibrium in factor markets? Does the
market mechanism guarantee convergence on a general equilibrium
solution? If so, is this equilibrium unique, or are there several
configurations of prices that will satisfy a solution? Even if a unique
general equilibrium exists, will it be stable in the sense that a
departure from equilibrium sets up automatic forces that bring the
system back into equilibrium?”
Blaug’s quotation incorporates much of what preoccupies general
equilibrium economists.
1 In an economy there are many firms each producing goods to be sold on
“product markets” in malls and the like, where consumers will purchase
them. These consumers, however, are also workers and get their money by
selling their ability to do work for wages on “labor markets” to the
owners of General Motors and Bell Telephone and Pittston Coal and the
corner market. Owners also buy resources, equipment, buildings, and
other “inputs” to their own production processes supplied by other
owners on “factor markets.” GE buys from GM. The corner stores buys from
General Foods, and so on.
2 All the “commodities” that are bought and sold on the economy’s
markets including cars, frozen dinners, baseballs, and rolling mills
have prices which can fluctuate. At any particular prices each worker
will have a preference about what he or she wants to buy as a consumer
and how much time he or she wants to spend working at a job for a wage.
Likewise, each capitalist will have a preference about how much to
produce and put up for sale and how many workers to employ for what
lengths of time to produce it in order to get profits with which to
make, like everyone else, preferred consumer purchases.
3 An equilibrium on any market is a condition in which at the price that
is holding the amount that buyers wish to purchase and the amount that
sellers wish to sell are equal so that neither buyers nor sellers are
disappointed by the ensuing transactions. Consumers don’t go away with
less milk than they sought to buy at the market price of milk, and
capitalists don’t go away having sold less milk than they wanted to at
the market price. There are no shortages of bread and lines of
unfulfilled customers for radios. There is no excess of tires or
wasteful overproduction of iron or books that then need to be scrapped.
In order to systematically assess the questions Blaug raises one must
have some notion of how each firm decides how much to supply and how
each individual decides what to consume and how much to work. The theory
assumes that each actor seeks to maximally fulfill “personal preferences.”
The consumer’s preference is to enjoy consumption goods within a budget
constraint fixed by his or her income. The consumer tries to maximize
what the economists call “utility” including personal well-being,
pleasure, and fulfillment by working to gain wages and by then spending
the wages on rent, movies, beer, hospital bills, marijuana, gasoline,
toys for tots, and the like.
The capitalist, on the other hand, is also a consumer interested in
maximizing utility by buying trips, cars, cocaine, paintings, houses,
and the like and his (or rarely her) road to that end is to get as much
wealth from being a capitalist as possible—which he or she accomplishes
by maximizing profits. A further incentive to maximize profits is that
only those who do so will be able to stay in the game; second best
profit maximizers like Lee Iaococa will, in the model at least, have too
little money to invest to keep up with best maximizers, like the hotshot
over at GM.
Daniel Bell, certainly no theoretical revolutionary, nonetheless writes:
“Modern economic theory is based upon two specific assumptions about
economic behavior and its social setting. One is the idea of utility
maximization as the motivational foundation for action; the other is a
theory of markets as the structural location where transactions take
place. The assumptions converge in the thesis that individuals and firms
seek to maximize their utilities (preferences, wants) in different
markets, at the best price, and that this is the engine that drives all
behavior and exchange. It is the foundation for the idea of the
comprehensive equilibrium.”
Each consumer decides what to buy at a given set of prices as well as
where to work for how long, and each capitalist decides how much to put
up for sale. Do the capitalists put up more or less than the consumers
want? Do they wish to hire more or less labor than the workforce wants
to supply? Or is there a pleasurable mesh such that at the particular
reigning market prices everyone buys and sells the amounts they wish to
buy and sell? And, if there is a set of prices which allows this happy
equilibrium, then as Blaug asks is there only one such set of prices or
many? More, if we are at those prices and some buyer or seller acts
peculiarly, is the whole system thrown into a frenzy or does it return
to an unchanged or perhaps slightly altered equilibrium?
These are important questions. If the general equilibrium economist’s
general picture of things is accurate and if the workforce wants to work
a lot at a going wage but employees wish to hire less, there is
unemployment. If a market economy with private ownership of the means of
production by capitalists has no equilibrium, we can expect unemployment
or stagnation. If it has one or more sets of equilibrium prices and
wages, but if any disturbance will always push the economy further and
further away from these, again we can expect turbulence.
In a celebrated work Kenneth Arrow and Frank Hahn, two of the most
respected modern economists, summarize the issues well. “There is by now
a long and fairly imposing line of economists from Adam Smith to the
present who have sought to show that a decentralized economy motivated
by self-interest and guided by price signals could be compatible with a
coherent disposition of economic resources that could be regarded, in a
well-defined sense, as superior to a large class of alternative
dispositions. Moreover, the price signals would operate in a way to
establish this degree of coherence.”
It is important to understand how surprising this claim may be to anyone
not immersed in this tradition. Greed breeds bliss. That this
self-serving answer that “a decentralized economy motivated by
self-interest and guided by price signals” is superior to all
alternative designs has long been claimed true and has permeated the
economic thinking of even most non-economists is sufficient ground for
investigating it seriously. Since the proposition is put forward by
policymakers, social commentators, and most economists, it is important
to know not only whether it is true, but whether it even could be true.
Much of what mathematical economists devote themselves to, therefore, is
demonstrating the validity of such claims.
General equilibrium theory starts from consumers, workers, and firms in
context of a competitive market. It attributes to each a variety of
characteristics including the disposition to maximize utility and/or
profit. The focused-on features are then expressed mathematically with a
variety of additional assumptions incorporated to facilitate a proof of
the existence and stability of a market equilibrium. As Hahn puts it:
“It is clear from what has already been said that in part at least
General Equilibrium Theory is an abstract answer to an abstract and
important question: Can a decentralized economy relying only on price
signals for market information be orderly? The answer of general
equilibrium is clear and definitive: One can describe such an economy
with these properties. But this of course does not mean that any actual
economy has been described. An important and interesting theoretical
question has been answered and in the first instance that is all that
has been done. This is a considerable intellectual achievement, but it
is clear that for praxis a great deal more is required.”
• Each consumer has a budget governed by his or her income which is in
turn a function of how long the consumer chooses to work at going wage
rates. Consumers decide how long to work by comparing the utility gained
from extra income to the utility lost due to having to go to work for
more hours. Consumers allocate their available funds for purchases by
deciding what combination of commodities at each particular price level
would maximize their utility.
• Each firm decides how much to produce by determining what quantity of
production and sales would maximize profit at each price/wage level.
• The consumer’s demands sum to give a societal demand for each commodity.
• The capitalist’s dispositions to supply different amounts given a
different price/wage level sum to give an overall supply function.
• By solving the system of supply and demand equations (the economist
does this with pen and paper, the market does it by trial and error that
hones in on the desired result) one finds a set of prices at which every
market will be in equilibrium, which is, of course, the famous general
equilibrium solution.
An interesting by-product of this approach, which may go a long way to
explaining its appeal, is that if we accept all the assumptions and
characterizations as being accurate or at least indicative
representations of reality, it shows that each agent operates with a
maximum of efficiency and that no agent can be made better off without
some sacrifice by another agent. In the economist’s terminology, the
general equilibrium is “pareto optimal.” Once we achieve an equilibrium,
for you or I to get more pleasure, someone, somewhere, must get less.
There is no wasted capability, no inefficiency in how things are
produced or allocated, at least in this sense that to get anyone better
off someone else would have to suffer a loss.
To get a more complete feeling for the contours of what general
equilibrium theory can and cannot explain we need to look at what some
practitioners have had to say about its limits just as we have presented
their views on its principle achievement, the solution of the
“equilibrium question.”
Hahn, quoted above on the virtues of the approach also points out, “it
is not possible to pose any monetary questions in the context of the
Arrow-Debreu (general equilibrium) model since, according to that
construction, money would have no role and hence would not be visible.”
That is, in the rigorous presentations of general equilibrium theory,
money is irrelevant and changes in the supply of money, for example, can
have no effect on real variables like output and investment. Likewise,
again according to Hahn, the model “cannot take account of certain forms
of uncertainty and certain forms of market expectations which are
important in Keynesian theory and important for policy.”
That is, the model cannot easily or usefully account for the reality
that economic agents do not actually know such things as future prices,
future availability of goods, changes in production techniques or in
markets to occur in the future, etc. Instead, to achieve its
results—proofs about equilibrium conditions—the model assumes that
actors have perfect knowledge at least of the probabilities of all
possible outcomes for the economy. Sir John Hicks, also of great
economics fame, says “One must assume that people in one’s models do not
know what is going to happen, and know that they do not know what is
going to happen. As in history!” Yet economists assume just the
opposite. Abstracting from time and uncertainty, they ignore that agents
have different consciousness and life experiences and that approaching
problems of decision-making in the absence of sure knowledge, they have
different expectations and make different choices than economic models
suggest.
Hahn also points out that: “No meaning can be given in neoclassical
general equilibrium theory to the notion of an equilibrium with
involuntary unemployment. The neoclassical axiom, that wages will fall
as long as not all those wishing to work can find a job, sees to that.
In this world (of the model) there is no occasion for Keynesian
policies. Indeed, no very good sense can be made of the Keynesian opus,
a circumstance reinforced by the fact that Keynes and most of his
followers never attempted to ground their theory rigorously.”
While the last part of Hahn’s assertion bears on the relation of general
equilibrium theory to “macro-theory,” a point we address further below,
the first part is relevant right here. General equilibrium theory has no
room for unemployment. Certainly this is an interesting prediction in a
society where some sectors of the workforce suffer unemployment rates as
high as thirty percent.
Oligopoly and imperfect competition have also been abstracted from so
that the theory does not allow one to answer interesting questions which
turn on the asymmetry of information and bargaining power among agents,
whether due to size, or organization, or social stigmas, or whatever else.
Moreover, within general equilibrium, the firm itself is a peculiar
entity. It has no start-up costs, there are never increasing returns to
scale, and there is no internal structure which might bear upon the
firm’s assumed disposition to always seek only to maximize profits. In
short, general equilibrium theorists treat institutions as theoretically
negligible. What do governments who may engage in as much as 60 percent
of all economic transactions in capitalist market economies maximize?
The question is irrelevant to this theory. How do markets themselves
affect people’s preferences or the decision-making criteria of
capitalists? The question can’t be asked much less answered in
microeconomics even though it purports to the theory explaining the
virtues and dynamics of markets. How do institutions demarcate economic
actors into opposed interest classes and how do struggles between these
classes in turn impact on decisions and structures in allocation,
production, and consumption? Again this is a question that the theory’s
concepts can’t even conceive of asking much less answering.
Of course one could continue. In addition to ignoring the effects of
markets on personal preferences, the inevitability of unemployment and
inflation, the structure of workplaces and the role of classes and class
struggle, the theory also leaves out unions, racism, sexism, and for the
most part, the state. Commodities and work are considered buyable in any
quantities whereas they really often come only in “lumps.” The
prevalence of “public goods” and “externalities” (where my consumption
or production affects not only me but others or even everyone, as in
when it generates drunkenness or oil spills, for example) is
systematically underemphasized. The stratification of the workplace to
achieve greater long-run control rather than to ensure immediate
profit-maximization is deemed inconceivable even though it is ubiquitous
in our economy.
Regarding this last point, Harvey Leibenstein tells a story as a preface
to his own correction to general equilibrium theory because it
completely contradicts the counter-realistic expectations any
equilibrium theorist must hold about the economy. He quotes a worker
recounting her experience with management: “The owner of the factory
never came out there, he just sat in New York and took the money...The
manager was a very sharp type. I told him I could increase production,
so I worked out an incentive scheme whereby for a 50 percent increase in
production they {the workers} could make 30 to 40 percent more in
wages.... The girls really began to put out. They got very much
interested in their work, and the good ones were soon earning $16 and
more a week.
“To her astonishment, the manager didn’t like it. I’m not going to have
these girls thinking they are good, he said. I’m going to get rid of the
good girls. I don’t pay them to get above themselves.
“He deliberately slowed down supplies and made things awkward for the
smarter girls, so they lost spirit and left.”
So much for profit-maximization and efficiency. The real factory and the
model factory are not identical, a recognition which is self-evident to
anyone who has ever worked in the former. Finally, the neoclassical
theory doesn’t even have categories in which to entertain hypotheses
about “alienation,” “powerlessness,” “self-management,” “dignity,”
“health and safety,” etc. The bottom line of the theory is like the
bottom line in the workplace. It incorporates attention to units
produced and consumed, amounts paid and earned, and especially profits.
But there are no entries for limbs broken, lungs diseased, spirits
crushed, skills atrophied, or dignity lost.
AND SO WE REACH the time for assessment. In a work on the crisis of
economics Daniel Bell, no critic of capitalism, is unstinting in his
criticism of general equilibrium theory. Remarkably, his feelings,
quoted immediately below, are also those of many of the economists he is
implicitly questioning. General equilibrium theory “is a work of art, so
compelling that one thinks of the celebrated picture of Apelles who
painted a cluster of grapes so realistic that the birds would come and
pick at them. But is the model “real”? Obviously there is disequilibrium
in the labor market...If the model as elaborated by Arrow et. al. has
validity, it is only as a “fiction”—logical, elegant, self-contained,
but a fiction nonetheless.”
This cannot be representative. Scientists do not describe their own work
as a “fiction.” Like the critical views of Schumacher and Galbraith
quoted at the outset, this must be dismissable. Working economists can’t
except this sort of assertion, lest how could they continue writing
their texts for young students and giving policy advice to government
officials? But then what do the general equilibrium theorists themselves
think of their own intellectual edifice? What is their self-evaluation?
Consider the following statement from the eminent economist, Lord
Kaldor: “The powerful attraction of habits of thought engendered by
‘equilibrium economics’ has become a major obstacle to the development
of economics as a science...the process of removing the scaffolding, as
the saying goes—in other words of relaxing the unreal basic
assumptions—has not yet started. Indeed, the scaffolding gets thicker
and more impenetrable with every successive reformulation of the theory,
with growing uncertainty as to whether there is a solid foundation
underneath.”
Or, if that is insufficient, the eminent economist Paul Davidson argues:
“There are certain imaginary intellectual problems for which general
equilibrium models are well designed to provide precise answers (if
anything really could). But this is much the same as saying that if one
insists on analyzing a problem which has no real world equivalent or
solution, it may be appropriate to use a model which has no real-world
application. By the same token, if a model is designed specifically to
deal with real-world situations it may not be able to handle purely
imaginary problems.... Models derived to provide answers of the
angel-pinhead variety, or imaginary problems involving specifying in
advance the optimal allocation path over time, will be unsuitable for
resolving practical, real-world economic problem.”
This is easily as damning as Galbraith but perhaps Davidson just has a
bone to pick with the deans of the school of thought. Maybe his comments
are somehow subjective and therefore unreasonable. What does “Dean” Hahn
himself say? “It cannot be denied that there is something scandalous in
the spectacle of so many people refining the analyses of the economic
states which they give no reason to suppose will ever, or have ever come
about. It is probably also dangerous.”
In his study on economic methodology, to take the case a step further,
another respected economist, “Dean” Hutchinson, says: “One cannot easily
justify the extensive cultivation of abstractions which have no
discernible applicability or relevance in the world as it is, on the
grounds that one day, somewhere or other, some kind of applicability or
relevance might conceivably turn up.”
In short, neoclassical equilibrium theory is a “fiction,” “impenetrable”
for its “forest of assumptions” and unable to become less abstract,
perhaps without “solid foundation,” suitable only for “imaginary
problems” of the “angel-pinhead variety,” “scandalous,” “dangerous,” and
“likely unjustifiable.” Yet this same theory is the core of what
students of economics labor to learn and the centerpiece of the reigning
social “science” which supports such “common sense wisdom” as the notion
that competitive capitalist market systems are optimally efficient.
As a last commentary, consider the words of the famed economist “Dean”
J.R. Hicks: “With every step that we have taken to define this
equilibrium model more strictly, the closer has become its resemblance
to the old static (or even stationary) equilibrium model; its bearing
upon reality must have come to seem even more remote. It has been
fertile in the generation of classroom exercises; but so far as we can
see, they are exercises, not real problems. They are not even
hypothetical real problems, of the type ‘what would happen if’ where the
‘if’ is something that could conceivably happen. They are shadows of
real problems, dressed up in such a way that by pure logic we can find
solutions for them.”
Beyond answering interesting questions about an unreal system’s
equilibrium properties, what do general equilibrium economists expect
their theoretical edifice to provide that will actually help explain the
real relations that hold in capitalist economies? Consider “Dean”
Kenneth Arrow’s answer: “The point of the argument is this: the
fundamental element of neoclassical theory, that agents will, if it is
open to them, take actions they consider advantageous, cannot be ignored
by any grand theory of power and conflict. Indeed, if such theories ever
mature, this feature of the situation may also be central for them.
There may of course be more sociologically based definitions of
‘advantageous’ and a much broader class of actions than the neoclassical
ones may have to be considered. But it is very hard to see how anything
can be achieved without at some stage coming to grips with the agent and
his interests. It is therefore not at all clear that from the vantage
point of such an achieved theory, General Equilibrium analyses will not
be seen as a stepping stone rather than a cul-de-sac.”
A century of thought, countless volumes, infinitely rigorous
mathematical analysis, how many hours out of how many student’s lives
reading “Dean” Paul Samuelson et. al.—and the ultimate contribution to
wisdom of the whole miasma is the assertion that economic agents tend to
do what they find “advantageous.” This is what the “deans” of economic
theory offer? This immense and “satisfying” intellectual edifice has no
capacity to predict and no facility for assisting the practitioner in
creating “viable, useful economic policy.” The economist-king is wearing
no clothes and even knows it but prances forth without modesty anyhow?
This yields an interesting query: why do economists continue to pour so
much energy into the refinement and teaching of this elaborate
“fiction.” And why do students put up with it?
Another renowned economist, “Dean” A.K. Sen, has this to say: “The
primary concern (of general equilibrium theorists) is not with the
relation of postulated models to the real economic world, but with the
accuracy of answers to well-defined questions posed with preselected
assumptions which severely constrain the nature of the models that can
be admitted into the analysis.”
But if the questions don’t gain credence from having explanatory or
policy implications, what does give them their mesmerizing qualities?
And if the “preselected” assumptions constrain the ability of the
theorists to answer truly interesting and relevant questions, why make
those particular assumptions? In addressing the same conundrum, “Dean”
Ragnar Frisch offers a possible answer that may explain some of this
behavior: “What is the relevance of intrinsic paths and the turnpike
type of theorem of the type I have mentioned {in prior paragraphs}. To
be quite frank I feel that the relevance of this type of theorem for
active and realistic work on economic development, in industrialized or
non-industrialized countries, is practically nil. The reason for this is
that the consequences that are drawn in this type of theorem depend so
essentially on the nature of the assumptions made. And these assumptions
are frequently made for the convenience of mathematical manipulation
rather than for reasons of similarity to concrete reality.”
Is this palatable? A vast edifice that claims to be a science but really
has little if anything to say to serious people concerned with how our
economy works continues to exist because practitioners are eager for
mathematical elegance before all else? Perhaps Frisch is correct that
this is a motivating factor in the daily efforts of many economists, but
if so it would seem to be the last in a long line of factors relevant to
the maintenance of the whole theoretical structure—more a rationale than
a real cause. For surely economists could exercise their mathematical
faculties in context of real analysis or, alternatively, if that is too
difficult, those with especially active mathematical inclinations could
simply become pure mathematicians and dispense with excessive
pretensions about being scientists of real economies.
And surely, if one examines the history of general equilibrium theory,
then the transition from what was without doubt a desire to understand
and explain real economic relations (Ricardo, Smith, Mill, Marx, and
even Walras, the father of general equilibrium theory) to the tendency
to show-off mathematical prowess must be explained by something deeper
than merely a mathematical “peacock disposition.”
Another proximate cause of the continuing distortion of great
intelligence to the pursuit of narrow ends is suggested by “Dean”
Edgeworth who describes what would happen if economists took seriously
the existence of monopoly in their theoretical work: “Among those who
would suffer by the new regime, there would be one class...namely the
abstract economists, who would be deprived of their occupation: the
investigation of conditions which determine value. There would survive
only the empirical school, flourishing in a chaos congenial to their
mentality.”
Perhaps this explains why many established economists cleave to their
craft as it is and seek to pass it on uncriticized. They are protecting
their own jobs from being replaced by new ones that they would not be so
able to carry out. But it fails to explain either the initiation of this
trend or, more important, why newly trained economists don’t make a
break and do more productive work.
Here are some new economists starting out on their careers. They can
read the assessments of general equilibrium of the deans of the
discipline, just as we have. Why don’t these students seek to provide
policy makers, businessmen, union leaders, and other people in society
who would presumably welcome it a theory that better explains what is
going on and better provides insights relevant to policy? In every other
science young practitioners start out lusting to overthrow existing
notions, not to ratify them. Indeed, that is the perhaps the defining
insignia of a scientist, though not of economists.
It can’t be that newly trained economists uncritically accept orthodoxy
because they don’t wish to upstage their elders or to threaten their
comfort in teaching the same old courses year in and year out. The
upstarts do not yet have personal advantages to defend. Wouldn’t they
get hired to better positions if they made new discoveries? Wouldn’t
they gain prestige by uncovering errors of their teachers? Wouldn’t they
be published and not perish if they had original thoughts rather than
regurgitations of old thoughts? Apparently the answer to each question
is no, but how could this be?
Consider this passage from the work of Stanislaw Andreski quoted in
“Dean” Hutcheson’s classic volume on methodology: “The sophisticated
mathematical models, which one finds in books on economics, might
mislead an unwary reader into believing that he is facing something
equivalent to the theories of physics... It is important to bear in mind
that even in the branch (of social science) which has opportunities for
measurement unrivaled in the other social sciences, an infatuation with
numbers and formulae can lead to empirical irrelevance and fraudulent
postures of expertise. The most pernicious manifestations of the
last-named tendency (abetted by the natural proclivity of every
occupation to extol its wares) have been the claims of numerous
economists to act as arbiters on matters of planning, on the assumptions
(whose efficacy depends on its being tacitly made rather than explicitly
recognized) that the factors which can be measured must serve as the
basis for decision.... The assumption in question has often led
economists to aid and abet the depredations of a soul-destroying and
world-polluting commercialism, by silencing the defenders of aesthetic
and humane values with the trumpets of one-sided statistics.”
Here is the crux of the matter. Whatever the inclinations of particular
economists, in fact the mathmatization of neoclassical micro-theory is
mystification with a purpose. First, it legitimates the occupation of
economics by clothing its prescriptions in language that looks like the
language of physics. Physics is valid and the lay person must take its
results as they are presented; so too for the new economics. Second, and
much more important, this elaborate mathematical structure serves the
aims of “soul-destroying,” “world-polluting” commercialism by
deprecating the importance of “aesthetic and humane factors” in economic
calculations. General equilibrium theory shows the viability of an
unreal system and this is translated into assertions about the world
that we live in until most people just accept that “our economy is
efficient and stable, the best one possible.” Theories can pursue truth
or serve vested interests. In the later capacity they will incorporate
only concepts suited to attaining the results desired. An economic
theory, for example, may highlight profits, quantities of output, amount
of investment, and prices, and leave out class struggle, alienation,
direction of investment, and bargaining power. Then the theory will
serve capitalists, and, since capitalists pay economists’ wages and
endow their universities, economists and their students who comply, will
benefit as well.
So whatever the motives of a particular economist might be, the sleight
of hand called micro economics is not art or science, but propaganda.
The explanation for the longevity of the confidence game is rendered
obvious: the commercial magnates who decide what is and what is not to
be valued in society, who is and who is not to be respected and well
paid, legislate by countless means that general equilibrium theory is
jolly good while maverick critics are fringe lunatics. And students can
read this handwriting on their classroom doors even more clearly than
they can read Samuelson’s text. They know that they will never gain
credentials and wealth worth protecting if they don’t play the game as
it is meant to be played, firstly propping up capitalism and capitalists
and only then and cons within that foremost aim incidentally trying to
find some non-threatening new “truths” or old rehashes on which they can
build a career.
Consider what Benjamin Ward has to say on the matter: “Neoclassical
economics] is especially well adapted to serving the needs of
bureaucrats...It gives the bureaucracy a tremendous advantage in dealing
with outsiders...simply because of its highly technical nature, and the
large costs that must be incurred to generate a ‘scientific’
result....If this were the only way to get at the truth...then we would
all be in the freedom-is-the-appreciation-of-necessity box together.
But...in fact, much of the technical side of economics is pure
mystification, self-serving to the affluent and powerful economics
professors. Relatively simple techniques, which can be understood by
very broad sectors of the population, suffice to support nearly all our
current genuine knowledge about how economies work.
“A second problem with neoclassical economics is that its technical
structure fundamentally reflects its philosophical origins. It is the
science of society of the rising bourgeoisie. As such it assumes right
at its heart that individuals are what count and that the relations of
production are thoroughly privatized.... For example, a fundamental
assumption of the theory of consumer behavior is that one person, or
family, or consumption unit’s satisfaction from a particular consumption
package is independent of the satisfaction of other consumption units.
Exit socialism right there!”
Macroeconomics
Macroeconomics is the study of aggregate variables addressing the state
of the whole economy. The focus is on the price level, the employment
level, economic output in real and monetary terms, the quantity of money
in the economy, overall consumption, savings, and investment, the wage
level, etc. The aim is to provide insights to guide the formation of
economic policy. If unemployment is higher than we would like, what can
we do about it? Should we pump more money into the economy? Should the
government increase investment or alter tax laws? Or will the economy
take care of the situation itself?
Thus where microeconomists use equilibrium to mean “market-clearing,”
macroeconomists use it to refer to a condition of stability, with no
apriori assumptions that markets will necessarily all clear. Indeed, the
whole point of the macro-theorists is to recognize the possibility that
the economy might “function smoothly” and yet have a high rate of
unemployment or inflation or underutilize some of its productive capacity.
Another difference between micro-and macro-theory has to do with how we
conceive of models. In the micro case, as we saw, the theorist describes
a world populated by agents and institutions—consumers, workers,
capitalists, firms, and the market—each with certain properties which
could be described verbally by such terms as “competitive,”
“profit-seeking,” “utility maximizing,” etc. Then, on top of this
descriptive model, the micro-theorists make constraining assumptions
about behaviors and their possible outcomes to allow the desired degree
of mathematical precision (and to ensure the results their employers
want them to ratify).
But in the macro case something different occurs. The links between the
theory and any description of agents or institutions are more tenuous
and contrived, even though they refer to a far more real world. In a
deep sense, the macro-theory’s model is itself intrinsically
mathematical. The economic description is a kind of afterthought
rationalization. This is a considerable irony considering that unlike
their micro-theorist counterparts the macro-theorists are seriously
concerned to explain reality.
For example, in Bent Hanson’s popular text on general equilibrium
systems, there is a chapter called “The Keynesian System.” After some
scene setting, the time arises to present the model. Hanson chooses
“Dean” Klein’s version and writes, “With a few unimportant changes,
Klein’s Keynesian model is” and there follows a list of eight equations
relating the aggregate variables mentioned above. For example, one
equation relates the supply in real terms to the rate of interest and
real national income; another equation relates labor supply to real
wages; a third relates investment to rate of interest and income; and so
on. The eight equations constitute a system which is the model to be
discussed. It can be changed by increasing the number of equations and
variables or by altering any one or more of the component equations.
Moreover, there are lots of parameters that depend on the particular
attributes of the capitalist economy under study and which can only be
set by researching its features.
The study of the model depends on the fact that the same variables
always appear in more than one equation. The equations are thereby
interconnected in such a way that finding a unique value of all the
variables to satisfy all the equations simultaneously is at least
theoretically possible though it would require setting all the
parameters accurately. However, even short of finding solution values
for wage level, national product, investment, etc., economists can ask
useful questions about their characteristics. In comparative statics,
for example, we can ask what will be the direction of change in
investment when things settle down after the money supply in the model
is increased by a government injection of more dollars? Being able to
answer this kind of question allows policy issues to be raised and
assessed, even in abstract models where details of parameters may be
unknown or fluctuate.
Each of the equations of a macro-system is backed by an economic
description of why one should believe it. Yet, few of these descriptions
amount to rigorous statements about how all component institutions of
the economy function and how their interrelated activity sums to an
aggregate relation embodied in the equation. Instead, for the most part
supporting arguments just translate the mathematical expression into a
verbal story about the same variables, still at the macro level. For
example, a supporting argument about the GNP response to new taxes won’t
demonstrate on the micro level how each unit and all consumers and other
actors in the economy react to the taxes in terms of their individual
preferences and circumstances and how the results sum into a rise or
fall in average overall prices or consumption and investment and how
that in turn influences GNP, but will instead simply say something like
“a rise in taxes engenders a rise in prices which in turn causes a drop
in demand which then... and then ..., etc.” Some stories are more
compelling than others and serious debates are always in progress over
the exact form the different equations in the macro-system should
assume. But none of the stories have a detailed micro underpinning (we
already saw that micro theory can’t underpin anything requiring realism)
and the gap between the mathematical model and any really descriptive
economic model grows even larger as economists try to specify the
functions and their parameters more precisely.
The essential characteristic of the Keynesian system, in almost all its
variants, is the prediction that by the government properly engaging in
fiscally adjusting of the economy it will be able to hold unemployment
and inflation to acceptable levels. In opposition, supply-siders, who
have recently gained political prominence in the U.S. and use a
different macro model, claim that the government must not intervene in
market operations at all—except to build a huge military and otherwise
redistribute tax moneys toward the already wealthy—instead leaving
markets ever freer to attain their own desirable ends. Regrettably, from
the perspective of policymakers and even more so from the point of view
of the unemployed, our current economic problems seem intractable before
the bromides of both Keynesians and supply-siders. Interestingly, from
the point of view of science, no choice between the theories seems
conclusive to the practitioners. Thus the crisis of macroeconomics is
upon us.
In fact, at best the whole of macro-theory is a kind of “art” in which
analysts use hunches, intuitions, or prejudices, plus their own
experience of real world trends, to hypothesize certain mathematical
relations between macro-variables in the hope that their model systems
will then function like the world they seek to explain. At worst macro
theory is an ad hoc construction designed to intellectually legitimate
policy prescriptions proposed in the first place for interest-based
reasons having nothing to do with theory.
It is either honestly fitting data to a curve so as to predict future
data by extrapolating from the existent curve into new regions, or
dishonestly deciding where you want the future curve to go and then
working backwards to proclaimed current data and trends which would
support the prediction if they were true. However, even in the honest
approach, the extreme fuzziness of available economic data precludes
fitting a curve, so all that is left is to tell the “stories” we
mentioned above.
But even if the data-picture were clearer, as Karl Popper says, “it is
important to point out that laws and trends are radically different
things.” Laws let us know that certain processes can be expected to
occur under certain conditions, inexorably. Trends tell us only that a
certain trajectory of developments has been visible and that if it
continues as it has gone in the past, it will lead in such and such a
direction. Without clear specification of why the trend exists and
therefore what its roots in economic behavior and institutional
relations are, we do not know the conditions under which it will
continue and those under which it will not. We do not know, for example,
if our own meddling in economic events to influence them will somehow
undermine the very conditions which gave us the trend in the first place.
The fact that macroeconomics has insufficient roots in micro theory is
enough of a weakness to merit serious medicinal treatment. That its
prescriptions do little to deal with modern periodic stagflationary
problems heightens the urgency of the diagnosis. Another grave problem,
related to the role of economics as a handmaiden of the interests of
those who pay the bills, ie. the capitalists, is that while it is
seriously interested in understanding some real economic phenomena,
macroeconomics only focuses on a part of what is interesting about a
capitalist society. It does not, for example, ask what the relative
benefits accruing to workers and capitalists are of unionization or
automation. It does not investigate the impact of racism and sexism on
wage rates or investment. And macro-theory says nothing about the
non-quantitative features of our economy including why investments
accumulate in the military sector or why our resources don’t go to
rebuilding cities and developing better school and health care systems,
or why the ecology is crumbling. As with general equilibrium theory, the
human implications of social institutions and particularly class
structure are largely absent from macro economic theory.
Issues of pollution and the class basis of income distribution and
policy formation don’t even get raised in traditional macro economic
formulations. Yet, because the discourse is abstract and mathematical
the field is clear for prejudices to mold thinkers into believers. As
Patinkin says about the motivations of macro-theorists, “...I will begin
to believe in economics as a science when out of Yale [where the
theorists favor fiscal policy] there comes an empirical Ph.D. thesis
demonstrating the supremacy of monetary policy in some historical
episode—and out of Chicago [where the theorists favor monetary policy]
one demonstrating the supremacy of fiscal policy.”
Patinkin might have added that an even more telling indicator would be
if out of either school there comes an empirical Ph.D. demonstrating the
overall irrelevance of mainstream micro-and macro-theory to the real
concerns of daily life, not only unemployment and inflation, but the
quality of work and consumption, income distribution, and the effects of
market participation on personality and preferences and the orientation
of investment decisions.
Radical Alternatives
The radical camp is primarily populated with Marxists and neoRicardians
or Sraffians. Among the Marxists there are many subdivisions and some of
the boundary lines are as fiercely contested as boundaries anyplace in
the world of theory.
Orthodox Marxists subscribe to the continuing efficacy of Marx’s
original words, of course in their own particular interpretations. They
contend that “the labor theory of value” is the lynch pin of Marxist
theory and the key to intelligent analysis of the “capitalist mode of
production.” They consult and quote Capital with an energy that tends to
severely diminish when they examine their surroundings for economic
patterns which might transcend anything discussed in Marx’s writings.
Yet, despite these failings, the orthodox Marxists’ theory has many
advantages, precisely because Marx was a genius so that even the
mindless regurgitation of even mildly distorted versions of his thought
retains considerable cogency.
Yet Marx’s studies were premised upon an analysis of competitive rather
than monopoly capitalism and in those days the notion that economists
should worry about the impact of sexual or racial relations on economic
variables was hardly in the air. Moreover, Marx had no compelling theory
of the state, only an incomplete analysis of capitalist class structure,
and an insufficient regard for the importance of how markets and
planning (as compared to private ownership which he did effectively
analyze) influence the choices and class alignments of economic actors.
Neo-Marxists regard the labor theory of value either as useless
mysticism or as a good heuristic teaching device that one shouldn’t get
too caught up in. But in the absence of a good substitute, (for example,
a fully developed theory of bargaining power based on institutional,
social, and class relations), their calumnies against the labor theory
of value fall on deaf orthodox ears. Undaunted, the neoMarxists drop the
Marxist “falling rate of profit” and its theory of inevitable crisis but
retain and even increase their emphasis on the importance of the labor
versus labor power distinction which Marx first uncovered—that is, that
when we work we do “labor” and that when we sell something to
capitalists for a wage what we sell is “labor power” or our ability to
do work, so that the capitalists then have the task of extracting
“labor” from the “labor power” that they have bought. Finally, in
another major gain, neoMarxists also try to account for the impact of
race and sex divisions on quantitative and qualitative economic
relations. For this camp, class remains a powerful conceptual lever for
understanding capitalist societies, but not the sole lever.
The neoricardians or Sraffians, led by Joan Robinson and more recently
Ian Steedman, also completely cast aside the labor theory of value but
in its place they erect an edifice based on Sraffa’s theory of
commodities producing other commodities. As with the orthodox Marxists,
again there is no monopoly, at least in the most common formulations.
There is, however, a version of this approach which claims only to be a
first approximation, still to be extended toward a more complex
real-world analysis. As far as it goes, it is hard to complain about all
this. We might argue that it has built-in characteristics that will tend
to prevent its practitioners from ever substantially reducing the level
of abstraction to include qualitative dimensions of economic life, but
of course such an assertion cannot become compelling until some time has
passed to allow judgment.
In any case, what is in many respects most appealing about the members
of the neoRicardian school, probably learned from Joan Robinson herself,
is their absolute irreverence toward all enshrined theory. Robinson was
a tireless critic of neoclassical economics, including micro and macro
theory, and also of Marxist orthodoxy. Indeed, as a provocative way to
close, consider this extract from Robinson’s “Open Letter to a Marxist”:
“Again, suppose we each want to recall some tricky point in Capital, for
instance the schema at the end of Volume II. What do you do? You take
down the volume and look it up. What do I do? I take the back of an old
envelope and work it out. Now I am going to say something still worse.
Suppose that, just as a matter of interest, I do look it up, and I find
the answer on my old envelope is not the one that is actually in the
book. What do I do? I check my working, and if I cannot find any error
in it, I look for an error in the book. Now, I suppose I might as well
stop writing, because you think I am stark raving mad. But if you can
read on a moment longer, I will try to explain...”
posted by No Simple Matter at 1:00 PM
ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FIFTY ONE
schism feast day: “citizens whereas invasion”
whom feast day: “and power invasion”
interdict feast day: “questions stated threat”
same feast day: “objective discussed plan”
fruits feast day: “plus facade and”
published feast day: “and those kuwait”
preoccupation feast day: “works those democratization”
landscapist feast day: “resonate complex is”
imprisioned feast day: “sense bombs states”
shimmering feast day: “objective policies representing”
exegesis feast day: “position formula instrument”
tightness feast day: “advance aims problem.”
-John Crouse & Jim Leftwich
posted by No Simple Matter at 12:58 PM
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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
posted by No Simple Matter at 12:08 PM
----
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-Peter K. Niven
posted by No Simple Matter at 12:08 PM
Thursday, October 20, 2005
The New York Times' Misguided Crusade
The New York Times' Misguided Crusade
By Robert Scheer, AlterNet
Posted on October 18, 2005, Printed on October 19, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/27006/
Media corporations are arguably the most important yet least examined
centers of power in our society. The owners of the Fourth Estate have a
unique ability to direct the searchlight of inquiry upon others while
remaining powerfully positioned to deflect it from themselves.
That is the blunt message of the belated but devastating report in
Sunday's New York Times on how the paper turned reporter Judith Miller's
"case into a cause." In its zeal to present its own discredited reporter
as a 1st Amendment hero, the "paper of record" badly neutered its news
department's coverage of the Miller saga and deployed its editorial page
as a battering ram in her defense, publishing 15 editorials supporting
Miller's protection of her White House source.
"The Times ... limited its own ability to cover aspects of one of the
biggest scandals of the day," concluded the front-page article. "Even as
the paper asked for the public's support, it was unable to answer its
questions."
The paper, led by publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., waged a nonstop
public crusade not just to protect Miller in the courts but to make her
an outright heroine -- obscuring the fact that she was not protecting
the public's right to know but was abetting the Bush administration in
its shameless and possibly criminal attempt to discredit a
whistle-blower. That whistle-blower, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson
IV, had enraged the administration by exposing its use of faked WMD
evidence as justification for invading Iraq.
For reasons that are still murky (and which are not made clearer by her
own lengthy statement printed in the same edition), Miller argues that a
waiver signed last year by Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff,
Scooter Libby, was not good enough to allow her to testify and that
simply asking Libby point-blank whether he had signed the waiver
willingly would have been somehow unethical.
"She has the keys to release herself," the judge said when holding
Miller in contempt of court for refusing to testify. "She has a waiver
she chooses not to recognize."
To understand how the New York Times got to this embarrassing point, it
must be acknowledged that even at highly regarded newspapers, editors
serve at the whim of their publishers. What is clear from the Times'
Sunday exposé is that publisher Sulzberger granted Miller uncritical
backing despite the severe reservations felt by some of the paper's top
editors.
Douglas Frantz, then the investigative editor at the New York Times and
now managing editor of the L.A. Times, is quoted as saying Miller once
called herself "Miss Run Amok," and when he asked her what that meant,
she said, "I can do whatever I want."
Others at the New York Times, including top editors, had become highly
suspicious of her sourcing on Iraq WMD stories. They even went so far as
to publish an "Editor's Note" questioning the paper's own coverage of
the run-up to the war -- with particular emphasis on five of Miller's
pieces. But those well-honed editorial sensibilities didn't matter much
once the publisher weighed in.
Despite being abysmally ignorant of some of the case's details, the
publisher granted Miller total license to define her stonewalling of the
grand jury as a freedom-of-the-press battle.
"This car had her hand on the wheel because she was the one at risk,"
Sulzberger said, ignoring the risks to the paper's integrity. There were
also other lives, careers and reputations in the balance, particular
that of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame, her covert contacts who had
helped her track down WMD, and her ex-diplomat husband.
Yet Sulzberger's insistence that Miller was the true victim carried the
day at the paper his family owns. As Miller put it in honest, if
gloating, terms: "He galvanized the editors, the senior editorial staff.
He metaphorically and literally put his arm around me."
Evidently galvanizing the editors led to their suspending the profound
doubts that they felt concerning Miller's tactics and standards as a
reporter. Perhaps most damaging in Sunday's article is the admission
that an article on Libby and Plamegate was apparently squashed by top
management to protect Miller.
"It was taken pretty clearly among us as a signal that we were cutting
too close to the bone, that we were getting into an area that could
complicate Judy's situation," said Richard Stevenson, one of the
censored reporters.
As for Miller, she seems to still have no clue as to what it means to be
an ethical journalist. "We have everything to be proud of and nothing to
apologize for," she stated, apparently referring to herself and to the
great newspaper she was allowed to corrupt.
posted by No Simple Matter at 3:27 PM
Civics Student...or Enemy of America?
Civics Student...or Enemy of America?
By Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive
Posted on October 7, 2005, Printed on October 7, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/26503/
Selina Jarvis is the chair of the social studies department at Currituck
County High School in North Carolina, and she is not used to having the
Secret Service question her or one of her students.
But that's what happened on September 20.
Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class "to take
photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights," she says.
One student "had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and
tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head.
Then he made a thumb's-down sign with his own hand next to the
President's picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it
on a poster."
According to Jarvis, the student, who remains anonymous, was just doing
his assignment, illustrating the right to dissent. But over at the Kitty
Hawk Wal-Mart, where the student took his film to be developed, this
right is evidently suspect.
An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk
police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over
to the Secret Service. On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came
to Currituck High.
"At 1:35, the student came to me and told me that the Secret Service had
taken his poster," Jarvis says. "I didn't believe him at first. But they
had come into my room when I wasn't there and had taken his poster,
which was in a stack with all the others."
She says the student was upset. "He was nervous, he was scared, and his
parents were out of town on business," says Jarvis. She, too, had to
talk to the Secret Service.
"Halfway through my afternoon class, the assistant principal got me out
of class and took me to the office conference room," she says. "Two men
from the Secret Service were there. They asked me what I knew about the
student. I told them he was a great kid, that he was in the homecoming
court, and that he'd never been in any trouble."
Then they got down to his poster.
"They asked me, didn't I think that it was suspicious," she recalls. "I
said no, it was a Bill of Rights project!"
At the end of the meeting, they told her the incident "would be
interpreted by the U.S. attorney, who would decide whether the student
could be indicted," she says.
The student was not indicted, and the Secret Service did not pursue the
case further.
"I blame Wal-Mart more than anybody," she says. "I was really disgusted
with them. But everyone was using poor judgment, from Wal-Mart up to the
Secret Service."
When contacted, an employee in the photo department at the Wal-Mart in
Kitty Hawk said, "You have to call either the home office or the
authorities to get any information about that."
Jacquie Young, a spokesperson for Wal-Mart at company headquarters, did
not provide comment within a 24-hour period.
Sharon Davenport of the Kitty Hawk Police Department said, "We just
handed it over" to the Secret Service. "No investigative report was
filed." Jonathan Scherry, spokesman for the Secret Service in
Washington, D.C., said, "We certainly respect artistic freedom, but we
also have the responsibility to look into incidents when necessary. In
this case, it was brought to our attention from a private citizen, a
photo lab employee."
Jarvis uses one word to describe the whole incident: "ridiculous."
Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive.
posted by No Simple Matter at 3:26 PM
ACT ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FIFTY
withdrawl from society: “new adhere prospective”
point to itself: “real along concept”
the previous year: “took the fourth”
lipids warfare causation: “demands first interests”
to afterlife conceptions: “state close interests”
consensus and unity: “aims irrespective providing”
looser term percussion: “objectives tells also”
basis of justification: “observable forth be”
all the speakers: “designed problem will”
emphasizes moral freedom: “yield democracy bush”
have several speech: “years conquered occupation”
opposition on universals: “with media occupation.”
-John Crouse & Jim Leftwich
posted by No Simple Matter at 3:21 PM
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posted by No Simple Matter at 1:01 PM
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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
posted by No Simple Matter at 12:58 PM
----
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-Peter K. Niven
posted by No Simple Matter at 12:58 PM
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
The Surprises of 2005 (So Far)
The Surprises of 2005 (So Far)
By Rebecca Solnit, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on October 17, 2005, Printed on October 17, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/26716/
"The smart thing is to prepare for the unexpected" said my most recent
fortune-cookie advisory. Many people presume that the future will look
more or less like the present, though that's the one thing we can assume
isn't true.
If some Cassandra had come to us in 1985 and declared that the death
squads and dictators of Latin America would be replaced with
left-leaning elected regimes and populist insurgencies, if she had
prophesied the vanishing of the Soviet Union and the arrival of AIDS
retrovirals, same-sex marriage and the Red Sox World Series victory, if
she had warned us of pandemic fundamentalism and more dramatic climate
change sooner, who would have heeded her?
From the vantage point of 1985, 2005 is already wilder than science
fiction and less credible, rife with countless small but deep changes as
well as many sweeping ones. Of course who in 1965 would have imagined
the real 1985, so like and yet unlike Orwell's 1984, with spreading
information technologies, shrinking public spheres, and changed social
mores? Even from near at hand, the future throws curveballs, for few if
any in the gloom of post-election 2004 anticipated the wild surprises of
the first nine months of 2005.
Despair is full of certainty, the certainty that you know what's going
to happen; and many seem to love certainty so much that they'll take it
with despondency as a package deal. Think of those who, waiting for
someone long overdue, habitually talk themselves into believing in the
fatal crash or the adulterous abandonment -- atrocities they prefer to
the uncertainty of a person shrouded in the mystery of absence.
In the hangover after last November's election, many anti-Bush Americans
almost seemed to prefer their own prognostications of doom and an
eternally triumphant Republican party to preparing for the unexpected.
Many were convinced that it was all over and George Bush would be riding
high forever -- a somewhat perplexingly unlikely ground for despair.
After all, even had his ratings continued to fly high, his reign will,
without a coup, only last through 2008. There always has been a future
beyond that, even though much can be ravaged irrevocably in four years.
But as it turns out we didn't have to wait those four years for the
nightmarish moment of November 2004 to mutate into something unforeseen.
The present may not be less dreadful for us, but it's certainly more so
for Bush, and many things have changed in unexpected ways.
Out of the Woods: The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker
Like so many goofily gorgeous North American species, the ivory-billed
woodpecker seems to have been designed by a cartoonist. It's bigger and
showier than even the hefty pileated woodpecker, with a white bill,
brilliant black-and-white markings and, on the males, a Mohawk-like red
crest -- and it had been presumed extinct for decades. The last
confirmed U.S. sighting was back when Roosevelt was president, Jim Crow
was the de facto law of the south, Bing Crosby was big, and Elvis was 9.
In 1944, an Audubon Society artist had sketched what was believed to be
the last surviving stateside bird as the trees around its Louisiana
nesting site were cut down. The bird had already disappeared from most
of its once-wide range, stretching from Cuba to Illinois and Oklahoma.
(The last substantiated Cuban sighting was in 1988 when Reagan was
president and Armageddon had only recently seemed a likelihood.)
Over the ensuing decades, some hoped that ornithological orthodoxy was
wrong -- including birder and editor Tim Gallagher, who became obsessed
with "the grail bird" (as he calls it in his recent book) and pursued
faint traces and rumors of sightings across the American south. A
birder, Mary Scott, who had devoted herself to looking for extinct birds
-- a believer in faint hopes and unlikely possibilities, in other words
--spotted the woodpecker in 2003 and prompted Gallagher to begin
searching northeast Arkansas.
He saw the male bird for himself in March of 2004 and launched a secret
project with the Cornell Ornithological Laboratory and Arkansas Nature
Conservatory to confirm his sighting and protect the bird's habitat.
(Whether that male is, as the female spotted in 1944 was thought to be,
the last of its kind, is still not known.) Gallagher's hope led him on
as the rumors of the project began to spread in April of this year. The
sightings and soundings -- for the call of the ivory-billed is distinct
-- were made public on April 28.
The old certainty that the bird didn't exist was replaced by a fragile
new knowledge that it did, news that arrived in a flood of scientists'
tears -- the accounts of those who first saw the bird are drenched in
shuddering emotion. Ornithologists everywhere were happy to have been so
wrong for so long.
(Imagine if political pundits were half so happy to admit error, how
interesting political discourse might get; but no Naderites came back to
admit that there were actually a few key differences between Bush and
Gore; nor general alarmists to remind us that Y2K was a big nonstarter;
and few conservatives have owned up to the fact that a war on Iraq
turned out not to be easy and fun after all -- though many newspapers
have recently admitted that most of the post-Katrina murder and mayhem
reported in New Orleans was imaginary.)
The reappearance of the woodpecker seems like a second chance -- a
chance to expand its habitat, to get it right this time. Maybe that's
what links the big surprises of 2005, this sense that there can be
another unexpected round, the tenth inning in which the outcome could be
different; that failure and devastation are not always final.
Scott Simon, the Arkansas Nature Conservancy director who, with Cornell
University scientists, led the search for the woodpecker, writes, "It is
sometimes said that faith requires the suspension of belief. In this
case, belief has been rewarded with reality. The fact is, the
Ivory-billed Woodpecker survives. What a great outcome for decades of
faith, hope, and prayers."
The woodpecker was a spectacular thing unto itself, but also a message
that we don't really know what's out there, even in the forests of the
not-very-wild southeast, let alone the ocean depths from which
previously uncatalogued creatures regularly emerge. Late last month,
University of Alaska marine biologists reported seven new species found
during an expedition under the arctic ice that uncovered a much richer
habitat with far more fauna than anticipated.
Of course, the other animal news from the arctic is the threat to the
porcupine caribou herd if the Bush administration succeeds in opening
the Eisenhower-created Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling and
the widespread drowning of polar bears, because the distance between
summer ice floes and land is now often further than even they can swim.
The woodpecker is a small story; the big environmental story of our time
is about extinctions and endangerments, about creatures and habitats
moving toward the very brink this bird came back from; but this small
story suggests that there are still grounds to hope -- to doubt that we
truly know exactly what is out there and what is possible.
Hope is not history's Barcalounger, as is often thought: it requires you
get back out there and protect that habitat or stop that war. It is not
the same as optimism, the belief that everything will probably turn out
all right despite your inactivity, the same kind of inactivity that
despair begets. Hope involves a sense of possibility, but with it comes
responsibility.
Out of the Furnace of War: Cindy Sheehan
It's hard to know whether to regard Cindy Sheehan, the second great
American surprise of 2005, as akin to the third, Hurricane Katrina, or
to that ivory-billed woodpecker. There had been reliable sightings of
Cindy Sheehan all over the left (and even occasionally the mainstream)
for many months before she went to Crawford, Texas, but when she pitched
her tent in front of the President's vacation home, something happened.
There had been other grieving parents taking strong stands against Bush
and the war before her. For example, Fernando Suarez de Solar, whose son
Jesus died eight days into the war, had spoken and demonstrated in
public early on. And there had been plenty of people against the war and
plenty of news that it was a bitter, corrosive, corrupting disaster
spreading in all directions.
But some mysterious constellation of forces -- a media sick of its short
leash, a slow news month, a bunch of reporters stranded in Crawford,
endless bad news from Iraq, a public grown less afraid to ask questions,
a blond suburban mom with a broken heart and bold, profanity-laced
rhetoric, a lot of antiwar organizations backing her up, including
Crawford's Peace House, and a President too craven to meet with a
citizen -- turned Sheehan into a catalyst for the nation. She and the
growing encampment near Crawford became an occasion for large numbers of
people to start talking passionately about the war again, to feel that
this was a time when we could question policy and maybe force change.
She was the antiwar movement's second chance.
A second chance because that movement had died back, fallen out of the
media's eye, failed to catalyze effective resistance. In 2005, soldiers
-- as veterans, conscientious objectors, witnesses, and resistors --
came to report just how terrible the war really was and to make it
impossible to marginalize the antiwar movement as unpatriotic or
cowardly. A second chance because when Sheehan spoke up it somehow
became possible for many others to do so, and the time was right. The
Bush Administration's prognostications for the war, having lost their
sheen many would-be believers, had begun to smell ever more like lies
and delusions.
Cindy Sheehan was a surprise to the world, but Camp Casey was a surprise
to her, one that seems to have allowed her to transmute her grief into
political change and to find a public ready to meet her with love and
shared outrage. I spent a day at the camp late in August -- the day
Hurricane Katrina struck the southeast -- and regretted I hadn't
cancelled everything, gone earlier, and stayed longer.
Ret. Colonel Ann Wright, the U.S. diplomat who resigned from the foreign
service on March 19, 2003, in protest against the onrushing war, was
running the camp with resoluteness and endless cheer. Like so many
others I talked to during my day in Crawford, Wright seemed radiant with
the joy of serving the deepest purposes and values of one's life.
Everywhere people were having the public conversation about politics and
values a lot of us dream about the rest of the time, average-looking
people of all ages from all over the country.
Sheehan herself moved through the camp giving interviews, hugging
veterans, receiving gifts, seemingly inexhaustible as though grief had
left her nothing but a purity of purpose. She said at the end of her day
and mine, as we headed back into Crawford in Code Pink cofounder Jodie
Evans's car, "This is the most amazing thing that has ever happened to
me and probably that ever will. I don't even think I would even want
anything more amazing to happen to me." As she wrote more recently,
"Camp Casey, with its wonderful feelings of love, acceptance, peace,
community, joy, and yes, optimism for our future, gave me back my desire
to live."
Out of the Tropical Waters: Hurricane Katrina
The young members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) at Camp Casey
that day were restless and uneasy. A number of them had been members of
the National Guard who had joined up to serve their communities, not
fight foreign wars. They deplored the large Louisiana National Guard
contingent stranded in Iraq with massive quantities of equipment of just
the sort needed at home. They anticipated a disaster. So did the
National Weather Service, whose warnings were dire, the Mayor of New
Orleans, who implemented a deeply flawed evacuation plan, Louisiana's
governor, who issued a state of emergency declaration on Friday, August
26, and many others.
Perhaps one should say that many anticipated the disaster that was the
weather, and some anticipated the social disaster to follow -- notably
Mike Davis, with his September 2004 Tomdispatch that began, "The
evacuation of New Orleans in the face of Hurricane Ivan looked
sinisterly like Strom Thurmond's version of the Rapture. Affluent white
people fled the Big Easy in their SUVs, while the old and car-less --
mainly Black -- were left behind in their below-sea-level shotgun shacks
and aging tenements to face the watery wrath."
A prescient article in National Geographic magazine had overestimated
the death toll from such a hurricane, but described quite accurately the
million displaced and the poisonous brew of sewage, oil, and industrial
effluent to come. No one, however, anticipated just how adrift the Bush
Administration would find itself in its own toxic brew of callousness,
cluelessness, and incompetence -- or that a public and media that had
largely overlooked those very qualities before would suddenly find them
intolerable. The death and devastation was a tragedy foretold, but the
sudden shift of political wind was something else -- a surprise.
Like 9/11, the hurricane "changed everything." Katrina was not just a
disaster on a grander scale than 9/11, but one that woke up the country
from the strange sleep it fell into after that first atrocity. When the
World Trade Towers came down, most of this country's citizens fell under
a spell, cowed, obedient, unquestioning of the patriotic haze in which
we marched to war. Katrina blew that haze away. The aftermath offers a
second chance to set the nation's priorities, even to redefine what
strength and safety would really look like for this country.
There was an amazing window, a moment in which tax policy,
privatization, the whole social-Darwinist, every-man-for-himself
ideology of Horatio Alger and Ronald Reagan, the very definition of
national security, and more was open to question; in which a new
national sense of purpose and identity could have been crafted and the
prevailing agenda of the last twenty-five years seen as the disaster
that has hit every corner of the United States.
An opposition party could have made much of it, but we had instead the
Democrats. Though I'd be happy to be wrong, it's hard to imagine any
great surprises coming from them. Hope for me has always lain outside
electoral politics in that arena where grassroots movements create
irresistible pressure on institutions or change the world without
working through those institutionalized forces.
Three surprises, all with ties to wonder and to horror, the one
transmuting into the other: extinction as a black cloud out of which a
bird flies; a mother's anguish becoming the one weapon that can pierce
the presidential armor and maybe thereby save lives; the destruction of
a city and region that drags down an administration with it and maybe
hastens the end of a war. It makes you wonder where we'll be by 2006.
Rebecca Solnit's most recent book is A Field Guide to Getting Lost.
posted by No Simple Matter at 2:52 PM
ACT ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FORTY NINE
enamelwork verdicts capacity: “the objectives course”
general wharves ethics: “possession toward objectives”
sentence philosophy shrubbery: “invasion but document”
seculsion pineapples workmen: “fact vision think”
linguistic westernization chin: “rebuilding motives gulf”
bamboo verse navigation: “tank new justification”
watchtowers handicrafts wartime: “whether service regime”
squaring seacoast toast: “need and hidden”
slow suicide steamboat: “the identified determined”
heaped chances unimpeached: “public policy was”
classical themes bloodshed: “attack nominal democratization”
pantomined mexican shakespeare: “needed alleged assets.”
-John Crouse & Jim Leftwich
posted by No Simple Matter at 2:50 PM
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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
posted by No Simple Matter at 9:27 AM
----
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-Peter K. Niven
posted by No Simple Matter at 9:26 AM
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
EXCERPT: Iraq Confidential
EXCERPT: Iraq Confidential
By Scott Ritter, AlterNet
Posted on October 17, 2005, Printed on October 17, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/26854/
Author's Note: I wrote Iraq Confidential because I felt there was a real
need to set the record straight about the reality behind the myth -- the
fact that the now-debunked case made by the Bush administration for
invading Iraq revolving around the alleged existence of WMD in Iraq was
not a product of innocent mistakes made by the CIA in assessing Iraqi
capabilities. Rather, it was the result of a concerted effort on the
CIA's part to maintain the public perception of non-compliance by Iraq
as part of an overall strategy of regime change.
AlterNet has chosen to highlight one of the passages in my book which
illustrates this reality in a dramatic fashion: the moment when I am
confronted with the fact that my own government has not only lied to me
about what it was doing in Iraq, but also that these actions were
undermining the credibility of the inspection process and placing the
lives and well-being of inspectors at risk.
I had, since February 1996, been running a sensitive operation in Iraq
known as the Special Collection Element, or SCE. The SCE team was
comprised of British military personnel who would intercept Iraqi
communications in order to ascertain whether or not the Iraqis were
hiding any weapons of mass destruction, or WMD.
I had approached the CIA, for assistance in this effort. At first it
appeared that the CIA was cooperating, but after a tip-off from British
intelligence that something was afoul, I began to investigate the true
nature of the CIA's so-called "assistance."
Much to my dismay, I found that the CIA was using the SCE as a cover for
the conduct of its own intelligence collection effort, which was focused
not on the search for WMD, but rather America's unilateral policy of
regime change in Iraq.
The following excerpt picks up when I started looking into the role of a
U.S. Air Force officer (whom I called "the Engineer") in the CIA's Iraq
planning.
***
As I continued to dig, the case of the Engineer became even murkier.
From September 1995 to June 1996, he had undertaken numerous
"maintenance" visits to Iraq which bypassed the normal United Nations
Special Commission (UNSCOM) chain of approval. The UNSCOM communications
officer, an experienced Australian major, had raised several questions
to Colonel James Moore, the UNSCOM director for operations, about the
Engineer's activities, and tried to bring them under tighter UNSCOM control.
The Engineer told the Australian major to mind his own business, and in
an extraordinary exchange witnessed by several, did the same to Colonel
Moore, although Moore outranked the Engineer. In a stunning turn of
events, Colonel Moore tried, in late 1995, to file charges of
insubordination against the Engineer, only to be rebuked by a senior air
force general, who told Colonel Moore that if he continued to obstruct
the work of the Engineer it would be he, not the engineer, who would be
facing charges.
This episode had gone by largely unnoticed in 1995, with other issues
such as the Jordanian gyro intercept mission taking center-stage. But in
retrospect, it made perfect sense. UNSCOM 120, with its communications
intercept mission, was proceeding too fast for the CIA's own plans for a
communications intercept operation in Iraq, and had to be slowed down.
That is why the CIA deliberately downgraded the promised level of
support at the last minute, offering us utterly substandard recording
devices to take into the field in November 1995.
Steve Richter [head of the CIA's Near East Division], we now knew, had
been planning a coup against Saddam Hussein. The CIA needed the best
possible intelligence about the security of Saddam Hussein, so that the
coup plotters would be able to know exactly where to strike and when.
The CIA also needed to keep track of the Iraqi military order of battle;
that is, where specific military units were, how many men they had, what
kind of training they had had, and whether they'd be likely to defect.
Gradually, as my investigation progressed, through a number of different
sources, a picture emerged. The information that the CIA needed, and
more, could be accessed through an effective communications intercept
program. The CIA, and their colleagues at the National Security Agency,
had done this sort of work before, usually using U.S. embassy buildings
as a base from which to carry out their information collection. But
there was no U.S. embassy in Iraq, no place for them to operate from.
Moe Dobbs and his CIA paramilitaries had actually carried out a test
communications intercept operation in September-October 1993, using the
UNSCOM 63 inspection as the cover. The goal was to determine if a
sufficient collection operation could be carried out from the hotels
where the inspectors stayed. In the end this plan was scrapped as too risky.
The CIA had long been involved in placing a remote camera surveillance
system in Iraq, using the Engineer. Back in early 1995, when the
discussion of mounting a coup against Saddam Hussein started gaining
momentum, someone at the CIA posed the question, "Why not convert the
camera monitoring system into a communications intercept system?"
Steve Richter liked the idea, but wanted to go one step further. Covert
operations need to have an aspect of deniability. If things go wrong, or
someone gets caught, a good covert operation builds into its plan a way
to shift blame away from the true sponsor of the effort. If the CIA was
going to use the United Nations weapons inspection process to insert a
covert communications intercept operation into Iraq, there was already
an element of deniability: if the operation was compromised by the
Iraqis, the U.N. would get the blame. But any such effort, if
compromised, would create a huge crisis for the USA with the United
Nations, and particularly inside the Security Council. The fallout from
such a crisis could put at risk a number of U.S. policy objectives,
namely maintaining economic sanctions against Iraq. But if UNSCOM was
asking the CIA for communications intercept support, to help operate its
own communications intercept operation in Baghdad, then if the CIA's
effort was compromised, the CIA could shift responsibility to the United
Nations, saying they were only doing what the U.N. wanted them to do.
It became apparent to me that the CIA's support of the SCE was never
intended to provide UNSCOM with intelligence; the CIA would be getting
its own intelligence from the Engineer's communications intercept
operation. The SCE effort was only supported insofar as it facilitated
the operational security of the CIA's activities. In November 1995, the
CIA had trashed the [signals intelligence] (SIGINT) concept. Now, in
early 1996, they were suddenly all in favor of supporting the UNSCOM
initiative. They just had to make sure that the UNSCOM communications
intercept program never really worked. If UNSCOM gained access to the
intelligence the CIA was collecting, it could threaten any covert
operations the CIA was planning based on that intelligence. The SCE
would be allowed to be deployed; it just wasn't going to be allowed to
succeed.
The Engineer needed to get his operation in order first. Again, through
my contacts at [the U.S. Department of Defense's On-Site Inspection
Agency] (OSIA), I found out that OSIA was managing a warehouse on behalf
of the Engineer and the CIA, used to store the equipment for the remote
camera monitoring system. OSIA had no records of what was stored in the
warehouse, and anyone who asked for an accounting was rebuked on the
grounds of national security. The equipment stored in this warehouse
poured into Iraq from September 1995 through June 1996. UNSCOM was never
provided with a list of what the Engineer was bringing in, but was
rather presented with a fait accompli.
I thought back to the incident involving the installation of the covert
antenna for Gary's SCE team back in February 1996. The Engineer had been
given that task by [pseudonym for CIA operative] Burt without my
knowledge or permission of anyone at UNSCOM. And he did this work using
an antenna already in place inside Iraq. To me, this meant the Engineer
was already involved in a communications intercept effort, and had his
own cache of equipment already in place inside Iraq before UNSCOM had
formally approved the SCE intercept program.
I dug out the old personnel records of inspectors assigned to support
the Engineer's missions. These individuals, known as "sensor
technicians," were responsible for manning the remote camera monitoring
system's suite in the Baghdad Monitoring and Verification Center, an
"American-only" area off-limits to everyone but the sensor technicians.
Prior to January 1996, these positions had been filled by reservists
from the Engineer's air force reserve unit in Ohio. But January 1996
brought about a critical change in the nature of the personnel assigned
to this position. Steve Trumbell (pseudonym), a retired Delta Force
commando under contract to the CIA, arrived at the BMVC. I knew Trumbell
from his time as an inspector during UNSCOM 45. He was a savvy operator
with significant covert operations experience, not the sort one would
assign to rudimentary electronic babysitting chores.
In March 1996, Steve was replaced by Tony Bracco, the gregarious
character who rapidly became known by his radio call-sign, "Zulu," and
whom I later met at the White House during my briefing in the Situation
Room following the UNSCOM 182 inspection. Zulu took a special interest
in the work of Gary's SCE team, and made a particular effort to bond
with British operators during their off hours. Zulu told Gary and the
SCE team that he was a retired combat swimmer from the U.S. Navy on
contract with OSIA and, with his long hair, wild walrus moustache and
casual beach boy attitude, this cover story was indeed convincing. I,
too, had fallen for it, as had the others, until I bumped into him at
the White House debriefing. Then, he had a short haircut, clean-shaven
face, sunglasses and coat and tie, and was in the company of Robert
McCall, a senior operations officer with the CIA's Near East Division.
Zulu was paramilitary operations all the way.
I had seen enough. While I lacked a "smoking gun" in terms of
indisputable proof that the CIA was running a covert operation using
UNSCOM as cover, I certainly had enough circumstantial evidence to raise
this matter to my chain of command which, given the sensitivity of the
matter and the American link, meant [deputy executive chairman of
UNSCOM] Charles Duelfer. I carefully typed up a point paper outlining my
concerns and specifying the information I had gathered, and requested a
meeting with Duelfer in the U.N. cafeteria.
I slid the paper across the table to Duelfer, and began my brief. He
listened without expressing any emotion, casually reading the paper as I
made my case. He sat in silence for some time after I finished,
contemplating what I had said. Finally, he looked at me. "Scott, I can't
comment on any of this. All I would say is that you probably would do
very well not to ever mention it again."
"Charles, we work for UNSCOM," I replied. "If what I have written here
is true, we have the potential for a compromise that could not only end
UNSCOM, but perhaps endanger the lives of some of our inspectors. We
have to inform the executive chairman of this, and at least launch some
sort of inquiry with the United States to find out if there is any
validity to this, and if there is, to stop it before it's too late."
Duelfer looked at me, frustrated. "Scott, I can't make it any clearer
than this. I cannot discuss this. This never happened. And if I were
you, I'd drop the matter right now. If you go forward, even to tell
[Rolf Ekéus, the UNSCOM chairman] you will be opening a huge bag of
trouble for you. I would imagine you'd have the FBI come down on you
very, very hard, and you don't want that. Take my advice and back off."
I sat there, letting Duelfer's words sink in. Was he aware of the
operation? If so, he didn't seem to have run it by Ekéus. I was in a
quandary. I had, since day one, operated under the code that I worked
for UNSCOM, and that I did nothing without Ekéus's permission. Now I was
sitting on a keg of dynamite that had the potential of blowing up,
taking UNSCOM with it. To do nothing was wrong. But to do anything meant
bringing disaster down on me and my family.
Finally, I looked up at Duelfer. "As an American, I won't do anything
that would jeopardize the national security of my country. So I won't
take this to Ekéus. But as an UNSCOM officer, I have a responsibility to
report this to my chain of command. So I'm reporting this to you,
officially." I pointed at the paper he still held in his hand. "What you
have there is evidence of a problem that could ruin UNSCOM. Regardless
of what you say about not being able to comment, I am going on the
record as having reported this issue to you as the deputy executive
chairman of UNSCOM. What you do with it is your business."
Duelfer didn't say a word, but rather folded up my paper, put it into
his coat, got up from the table, and returned to his office, never to
mention our conversation again.
I stayed at the table for a few moments after he left, frustrated with
my own indecisiveness. I was being lied to by the CIA, and the man
appointed as my supervisor was not backing me. Part of me wanted to get
up and walk away from this mess. The deceit of the CIA, and the man
appointed as my supervisor was not backing me. Part of me wanted to get
up and walk away from this mess. The deceit of the CIA was a reality I
had to live with. But so was the UNSCOM disarmament mission in Iraq. If
I walked away from UNSCOM I would undermine its mission, and those in
the CIA who had sought to undermine it would have prevailed. If I went
public with what I was alleging, the FBI would find a way to silence me.
The best way to get back at all those in Washington who were promoting a
policy that continued economic sanctions by refusing to permit Iraq to
be disarmed was to redouble my efforts to complete the disarmament
mission. By pushing Iraq to give up the final vestiges of its weapons of
mass destruction programs, or if in fact Iraq was telling the truth, and
no such weapons existed, by compelling Iraq to provide UNSCOM with all
of the data necessary for UNSCOM to verify the Iraqi claims and sustain
a finding of compliance before the Security Council, I would be forcing
the USA to admit publicly what everyone knew in private: that the USA
had no intention of abiding by the Security Council's promise to lift
sanctions once Iraq had been disarmed.
I left the table more determined than ever to get on with my job.
I also left aware about the reality of the role being played by the CIA
and Charles Duelfer. I no longer harbored any illusions that they were
my friends and colleagues. As far as I was concerned, they were the
enemy, and I would have to find a way to neutralize them if I was going
to have any success.
Scott Ritter was UN Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq from 1991-1998 and
is author of "Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of America's
Intelligence Conspiracy," (Nation Books, 2005).
posted by No Simple Matter at 12:02 PM
Thirteen Years atGuantánamo
Thirteen Years at Guantánamo
By Harold Hongju Koh, openDemocracy.net
Posted on September 28, 2005, Printed on October 7, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/26132/
Brandt Goldstein's gripping new book, Storming the Court: How a Band of
Yale Law Students Sued the President - and Won recounts how, in the
early 1990s, a group of Yale University law students and professors sued
two United States presidents on behalf of 300 Haitian refugees held at
the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
As one of the professors who brought that case, like most Americans, I
first heard about Guantanamo through the popular folk song Guantanamera
("The Girl from Guantanamo") and Jack Nicholson's unforgettable
performance ("you can't handle the truth!") as a Guantanamo naval
commandant in Rob Reiner's film A Few Good Men. But when we started the
Haitian refugee litigation in 1992, I never dreamed that I would spend
much of my next thirteen years captured by Guantanamo. How did
Guantanamo become so much a part of my life, and of America's foreign
policy?
In 1990, former Catholic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide became Haiti's
first freely elected president. But less than a year later, he was
ousted by a military coup and the Haitian paramilitary launched a brutal
campaign of killings, torture and arrests against his supporters. As
boatloads of refugees began fleeing Haiti, the first Bush administration
responded with a policy whereby the Coast Guard would "interdict"
fleeing Haitians on the high seas and quickly "screen" them aboard
boats, bringing to the United States only those few "screened-in"
Haitians found to have "credible fears" of political persecution.
As refugee numbers swelled, the administration shifted to a new policy:
interdiction and offshore detention of the Haitians in camps hastily
erected at the forty-seven-square-mile US naval base in Guantanamo, an
area slightly larger than Manhattan. The United States occupies that
area under a unique, perpetual lease agreement entered with Cuba in
1903, which provides that "the United States shall exercise complete
jurisdiction and control over and within such areas." After intense
litigation in which I participated, in early 1992, the Atlanta federal
court initially accepted the US government's arguments that Haitians
held outside the United States had no rights to challenge the screening
process, and the US Supreme Court declined to hear that claim. That
decision led the Yale law students described in Storming the Court,
Michael Ratner of New York's Center for Constitutional Rights, and
myself to file suit in Brooklyn federal court against the US government
on behalf of screened-in Haitian refugees and several Haitian service
organisations. Our initial claim was that lawyers and clients had
constitutional rights to speak to one another before the clients were
returned to possible death or persecution in Haiti. We won preliminary
court relief, requiring that the Haitians be afforded counsel before
repatriation to Haiti.
But in May 1992, as large numbers of Haitians again began to flee, the
United States policy shifted to a policy of deliberate direct return of
Haitian refugees to Haiti, in blatant violation of the United Nations
Refugee Convention (1951) and the US's Immigration and Nationality Act
(1952). We quickly challenged this policy in court as well, and won a
New York federal appeals court ruling against it. Amid this frenzy,
then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton began voicing his opposition to
what he called the Bush administration's "cruel policy." We therefore
chose to delay Supreme Court review until after the November 1992
election, to give president-elect Clinton time to abandon both the
then-President Bush's Haitian policies - direct return and Guantanamo
internment. Although Clinton triumphed, just before taking office he
abruptly reversed course and announced that he would maintain both Bush
policies - in court, the government even adopted the Bush rationale that
the Haitian detainees had no legal rights on Guantanamo.
In the hearings described in Storming the Court, we continued our
lawsuits, eventually losing our Supreme Court challenge to the
direct-return policy, but securing rulings in the New York federal
courts that the less than 300 Haitian detainees on Guantanamo were being
denied their constitutional rights. US Judge Sterling Johnson memorably
wrote, "If the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution does not
apply to the detainees at Guantanamo," the U.S. Government "would have
discretion deliberately to starve or beat them, to deprive them of
medical attention, to return them without process to their persecutors,
or to discriminate among them based on the color of their skin."
By fall of 1994, the Clinton administration responded to public outcry
by sending military forces to restore President Aristide, allowing most
of the Haitians on Guantanamo to return home.
At that point, I thought that I was finally done with Guantanamo. But a
new Cuban refugee crisis was brewing. In July 1994, Fidel Castro
announced that he would permit persons seeking exodus to leave Cuba, and
in the next few weeks, more than 30,000 Cuban refugees took to the high
seas on makeshift rafts. When President Clinton ordered the Cuban
rafters taken to Guantanamo, a group of Cuban-American lawyers from
Miami asked me to join them in a new suit in the Miami federal court
challenging this policy as well.
The appeals court in Atlanta eventually rejected our claim, holding -
contrary to the New York court rulings - that these Cuban migrants were
without legal rights cognisable in the courts of the United States. And
so I found that my students and I had helped generate two opposing lower
federal court rulings: a New York ruling that Guantanamo detainees had
legal rights; and an Atlanta ruling holding that they did not. But when
would the US Supreme Court ever resolve that tension? Shortly after I
arrived in the Clinton administration as a human-rights official in
1999, I opposed a plan to bring Kosovar refugees to Guantanamo,
reasoning that Guantanamo detention had already proven to be both bad
policy and bad law. But after 11 September 2001, the Bush defense
department overrode similar advice and chose to bring hundreds of
detainees held in Afghanistan to Guantanamo, with no apparent exit
strategy. Over the next four years, Guantanamo became a centre of
international controversy and a stain on America's human-rights reputation.
More intense Guantanamo litigation ensued, with many of us involved in
the original Haitian cases - including Michael Ratner, myself,
Professors and (former Yale Law School students) Michael Wishnie and
Neal Katyal, and the current incarnation of our Yale Human Rights clinic
- filing briefs and giving legal advice. In the Rasul v. Bush judgment
of June 2004, the Supreme Court finally held that alien detainees on
Guantanamo have a right to file writs of habeas corpus to challenge
their detention.
Justice Stevens wrote that the detainees' "allegations that, although
they have engaged neither in combat nor in acts of terrorism against the
United States, they have been held in Executive detention for more than
two years in territory subject to the long-term, exclusive jurisdiction
and control of the United States, without access to counsel and without
being charged with any wrongdoing unquestionably describe 'custody in
violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States.'"
Although this wording seems unambiguous, to this day, the Bush
administration still denies in ongoing lawsuits that alien detainees on
Guantanamo have any meaningful rights under US law.
At the time of writing, new habeas corpus cases are "storming the
courts," working their way back to the US Supreme Court to clarify this
issue. And so, like America and the world, those of us lawyers who first
began working on this issue in the early 1990s seem destined to spend
another round of lawsuits captured by Guantanamo.
Harold Hongju Koh is Dean of Yale University's School of International Law.
posted by No Simple Matter at 12:01 PM
ACT ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FORTY EIGHT
concord harmless force: “in house become”
fleshy known winning: “end wars tension”
pulses wheezes enlargement: “wartime elites and”
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undoing horses islamic: “militarization americans wars”
orange unchain freehand: “colonial citizenship recruitment”
toadying grain rumor: “citizens rights class”
parlance airstrips ample: “constraints killed machine”
easygoing statue match: “itself liberty gap”
dismember tastes crooked: “psycho recognizing being”
livelong stockings assets: “wealthy power pursuit”
literati lipreading collage: “in sense abandoning.”
-John Crouse & Jim Leftwich
posted by No Simple Matter at 12:00 PM
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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
posted by No Simple Matter at 8:36 AM
----
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posted by No Simple Matter at 8:35 AM
Monday, October 17, 2005
Parecon Interview on Leaving for Argentina
ZNet Commentary
Parecon Interview on Leaving for Argentina
October 15, 2005
By Michael Albert
[Press interview preparatory to arriving in Argentina for a trip there,
to Venezuela, and Mexico, to learn about events unfolding throughout
Latin America.]
- Please summarize Parecon's argument?
Economic institutions by their implications for producers and consumers
contour and constrain our actions and possibilities. Workplaces, acts of
consumption, and transactions of exchange produce or deny values we
aspire to. Economic institutions impose or eliminate differences that
elevate some people and denigrate others.
If we favor that people should care for one another rather than nice
guys finishing last, that people should have a wide range of choice
rather than suffer cultural homogenization, that people should have a
fair share of social output rather than some being richer than kings and
others poorer than paupers, and that people should collectively control
their own lives rather than being bossed and burdened and should have
all these benefits in a world that respects ecological dictates rather
than violating survivability - then we have to opt for means of
production, consumption, and allocation that further our positive
aspirations, rather than institutions, such as we endure now, that
sunder our aspirations.
Building on that logic, parecon is a vision for a new economy in place
of capitalism. It rejects private ownership of productive assets,
hierarchical decision making, corporate divisions of labor, remuneration
for power or output, and market allocation. It offers instead collective
responsibility and people having a self managing say in decisions in
proportion as they are affected by them, balanced job complexes in which
we all have comparably empowering work tasks, remuneration for duration,
intensity, and onerousness of work, and a cooperative negotiation of
economic agendas called participatory planning.
Parecon replaces class rule with classlessness. It advances rather than
obliterates solidarity, diversity, equity, self management, and
sustainability.
-Why do you think it is strategic to find a method for collective,
democratic decision making?
To me being strategic means being part of attaining our long run aims.
If that is our meaning for being strategic, then seeking full collective
democracy is strategic because our long run aims include that people
should have decision making influence in proportion, case by case, as
they are affected by outcomes. To attain that optimal goal parecon calls
self management, we need to incorporate ever greater approximation to
full collective, democratic participation in our present endeavors
because we need to learn self management's meaning and contours, we need
to become adept at it, and we need to show that it works to help inspire
desire for it.
Put the opposite way, to instead have decision making in our projects
that reproduces authoritarian hierarchies ensures that even if we win
change it will only move us toward new systems of domination, not the
classless self-managing liberation we seek.
-Are there any positive lessons to be learnt from the tradition of union
and student organizing?
All lessons are positive, even if they are of the form avoid this set of
choices as compared to being of the form seek that set of options. Of
course there are major lessons of all kinds in all past efforts, from
the importance of both labor and youth for the strength, creativity, and
militance of resistance, to the efficacy or lack of efficacy of various
approaches.
Perhaps the largest lesson of this latter sort, in accord with your last
question, is of the need to embody in our current actions seeds of the
future - both in demeanor, and in views, values, and actual
organizational structure and roles. For example, if we want
classlessness in the future, our movements should not elevate some
economic actors - who I call a coordinator class - above others, who are
rightly known as workers.
-What do you know about Argentine social movements?
Very little. I am coming to learn. I know some, however, about the U.S.
and its movements, about its economy and social movements, about its
foreign policy and anti war movements, about its media and alternative
media, about its leaders and populace. I also think I know something
about economic vision and related implications for strategy.
-Please share with us some thoughts on the situation of the
antiglobalization movements in the US?
There are in my view severe problems and potentials in the U.S. Problems
include not only a growing and quite effective right wing movement -
literally fundamentalist - but also young people who are quiescent, and
a deadening cynicism in society and also among progressives themselves.
What is missing, I think, is compelling vision and strategy.
The more optimistic potentials have to do with means at our disposal, on
the one hand, and with receptivity of quite large portions of the
population if we could bring to them a message worth hearing. Progress
in the U.S. therefore depends, tremendously, on overcoming movement
inadequacies, I believe. Our movements, anti coporate globalization
among others, don't inspire continued involvement. They do not retain
members and deepen their comittment and resolve. I think this is, in
fact, an international problem, afflicting almost every country, in
considerable part for similar reasons. That is my experience travelling
rather widely, at any rate.
It isn't, in short, that people are ignorant of oppression. People know,
sometimes quite explicitly and self consciously, often deep down in
their bones and souls, that our societies are a god awful mess. It is
that people doubt that anything systemically better is possible, or that
there is any avenue to attain better. Social ills are regarded as more
or less like aging or gravity. They are seen as inevitable. To fight
them is seen as a fool's errand, like rolling rocks uphill only to be
crushed when those rocks finally roll back down.
People don't doubt social ills are there. People know poverty, racism,
sexism, alienation, profit seeking, and imperial wars at the very least
limit lives and at most squander them visciously. But people doubt the
efficacy of resistance much less of positive aspirations.
For most people injustice is regarded more or less like old age. It
limits us, it kills us, but we have to get on with our lives as best we
can. We don't build movements to ward off aging and most people feel it
is just as hopeless to build movements to ward off social injustice.
They know aging hurts. They think, rightly, that movements have no
bearing on aging and cannot demand its moderation or implement its
elmination. If you say, come join in a movement against aging, they just
laugh at you and go back to their lives. They know social injustice
hurts. They think, wrongly, that movements have no bearing on social
injustice and cannot demand it moderation or implement its elimination.
If you say come join me in a social movement against poverty, war,
sexism, racism, much less capitalism, they just laugh at you and go back
to their lives. Movements inadequately address this central problem in
people's consciousness. We tell people what they know, everything is
broken and the system is hugely powerful. We do not tell them what
better system is possible and how their acts might help attain it. This
brew ironically helps cement cynicism, not overcome it.
-What is the relationship between Z Net and those movements (in the
past, and currently)?
ZNet provides information and to the degree we can ellicit it from our
writers - many of whom are deeply involved in all kinds of movements all
around the world - vision and strategy, as well. ZNet isn't an official
arm or agency of any particular movement but we try to relate, hearing
needs and to the extent we can, and that media messages are relevant,
providing responses. We try to help with organizing by all means at our
disposal.
-We know that you are writing your Memoires. Regarding your activism in
the sixties, What was your role, and how do you asses the experience of
those years?
In those days I was first a student at MIT, very deeply involved in what
was called the student movement. It was, of course, students as part of
civil rights, antiwar, feminist, and other efforts. I retained
involvement in all the efforts when I was no longer a student - having
been thrown out of MIT. Later I became involved as well in media work,
helping to found and operate a left publishing house, South End Press,
and then a left magazine, Z Magazine, and then a left web site, ZNet,
among other projects and institutions.
The Sixties - really from the late fifties through the mid seventies,
was a tumultuous period worldwide. It transformed minds all over, and
policies in many places, but in very few places did it touch basic
defining institutions of society. It was a heroic project but flawed in
numerous and deep ways. It is our task now and in years ahead to create
a new heroic project, but without all the flaws.
posted by No Simple Matter at 12:33 PM
Race, Lies and New Orleans
Race, Lies and New Orleans
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, AlterNet
Posted on October 6, 2005, Printed on October 7, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/26507/
A week after Katrina hit, a reporter for the British Guardian newspaper
was curious whether there was any truth to the wild, gossipy and
hysterical reports of murder, rape, incest, and stacked corpses at the
New Orleans Superdome.
He closely examined police reports, records, statements of city
officials, and eyewitness accounts. He didn't find anything to
substantiate the press reports, or official claims of the bedlam.
His story was ignored in the mainstream press and lightly mentioned on a
few obscure websites. A number of web respondents sneered at the story
as a lie, or an apology for black crime by a left-leaning tabloid. New
Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin quickly jumped into the fray, slandered his own
city, and reinforced the worst racial stereotypes with his
violence-is-everywhere rant on Oprah and national talk shows.
The Guardian may have been an isolated, and to some suspect, media voice
with its counterspin on the mythical violence, but it wasn't the only
press skeptic that tried to separate fact from fiction about alleged
Katrina violence. Reporters for the Associated Press and the Chicago
Tribune, which could hardly be tagged left-leaning, also found no
credible evidence that marauding gangs terrorized anyone, or that they
even existed.
A month after these lonely press voices took the time to check facts,
rather than run with gossip, a few newspapers did a tepid mea culpa and
admitted that the apoplectic frothing tirades by a legion of
talking-head commentators and their bloodthirsty headlines about
"Baghdad on the Bayou," rape, murder, incest, stockpiled bloated
corpses, mass looting, the breakdown of civilization and the dark side
of America were exaggerated, or more bluntly a pack of lies.
The media's mea culpa, however, came a month after New Orleans and the
black crime fixation had been firmly pile-driven into the skulls of
millions nationally and worldwide, and becoming an urban legend created
that the press's belated, gentile damage control could never shake.
This was not simply another overblown case of cheap sensationalist
tabloid news. That's become so commonplace it barely draws a yawn from a
jaded public.
New Orleans fit neatly into the standard equation that black, especially
poor black, equals crime and violence. That equation kicks in even when
there is no crime, or when whites commit the crimes.
In a 2003 Penn State University study, researchers asked white
participants to examine newspaper pictures of black and white crime
suspects. Later they asked them whom the stories had highlighted. In
nearly every case, the respondents incorrectly said that the suspects
were black. The researchers blamed what they called the "mismemory" of
whites on who commits crime on the top-heavy media emphasis on black crime.
That mismemory was evident during another big disaster a decade ago.
This time it was the 1992 L.A. riots. TV reporters constantly tailored
their reports to depict the violence as the handiwork of black rioters.
But TV was an open mirror. Viewers could plainly see that many of those
looting and burning were non-blacks. A Rand study of the racial
breakdown of 5,000 riot related cases processed through Los Angeles
municipal courts found that the majority of those arrested for riot
related offenses were Latinos and whites. The arrest figures were
reported in the back pages of one newspaper and ignored by the rest of
the press. More than a decade later, the L.A. riot is still indelibly
stamped as being a black riot.
The scapegoating of blacks for America's crime problem hit full stride
in the 1980s. The assault on jobs, income and social service programs, a
crumbling educational system and industrial shrinkage dumped more blacks
on the streets with no where to go. The big cuts in welfare, social
services and skills training programs during the past decade dumped even
more young black males and females on the streets.
When some turned to gangs, guns and drugs much of the press busily
titillated the public with inexhaustible features on the "crime prone,"
"crack plagued," and the "blood-stained streets" of the ghetto. TV
action news crews routinely stalked black neighborhoods filming busts
for the nightly news.
The explosion of gangsta rap and the spate of Hollywood ghetto films
convinced even more Americans that the gangsta lifestyle was the black
lifestyle. They had ghastly visions of the boys in the hood heading for
their neighborhoods next.
Much of the media instantly turned the crime problem into a black
problem and played it up even bigger in news stories and features. New
Orleans was a textbook example of that. Those in the media, and public
officials such as Nagin, that ignored evidence to the contrary, and
spread wild tales of rape, murder and mayhem, edged dangerously close to
demonizing the thousands of blacks that were forced to flee for their
lives and endure indescribable, inhumane conditions. It was
irresponsible, shameful, and reprehensible, but it showed that when
disaster and race collide, anything goes, including the truth.
posted by No Simple Matter at 12:30 PM
ACT ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FORTY SEVEN
keen punish boring: “interventions are consider”
toenails pelvis transparent: “world the officers”
settlement diseases valve: “being the community”
penciling singular eminence: “era system community”
targets crumbling spite: “so it community”
riverbed shivers postpone: “or the long”
slouching grilled legato: “any always recognition”
baseball loafer gate: “the policies american”
starfush educated stoppage: “base ironically readiness”
height staples gaseous: “alike powers camouflage”
stagnant bracket superstar: “as forced society”
blunts hearts yardsticks: “life ability implicated.”
-John Crouse & Jim Leftwich
posted by No Simple Matter at 12:25 PM
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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
posted by No Simple Matter at 10:53 AM
----
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-Peter K. Niven
posted by No Simple Matter at 10:52 AM
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Lamenting the Habitual
Lamenting the Habitual
October 14, 2005
By Norman Solomon
Dan Rather caused some ripples the other day when he lamented the state
of U.S. news media. The former CBS anchor said "there is a climate of
fear running through newsrooms stronger than he has ever seen in his
more than four-decade career," according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Speaking at a law school in New York on Sept. 19, he warned that
politicians have been putting effective pressure on the corporate owners
of major broadcast outlets.
When a network TV correspondent makes noises that indicate a possible
break with the corporate media establishment, I think of something that
Mark Twain said: "It's easy to quit smoking. I've done it hundreds of
times."
As a matter of routine, television anchors and their colleagues at the
networks avidly go along with the White House and the Pentagon. When
there's a war, with rare exceptions they provide the kind of coverage
that Washington officials appreciate. Long afterward, when the mania
subsides, a few TV journalists may express some misgivings. But when the
next war comes along, it's back to propaganda business as usual.
Over the course of his career, Rather occasionally voiced alarm that
news outlets were being intimidated by government authorities and other
powerful interests. But he didn't noticeably challenge such constraints
in his on-air work.
During the Gulf War, in early 1991, the news coverage was so laudatory
that a former media strategist for President Reagan was ecstatic. "If
you were going to hire a public relations firm to do the media relations
for an international event," said Michael Deaver, "it couldn't be done
any better than this is being done."
Dan Rather was part of that PR bonanza for the Gulf War. As the war came
to an end, people watching CBS saw Rather close an interview with the
1st Marine Division commander by shaking his hand and exclaiming:
"Again, general, congratulations on a job wonderfully done!"
The country's most acclaimed print outlets marched to the beat of the
same drum. Chris Hedges covered the Gulf War for the New York Times.
More than a decade later, with a critique much deeper than anything
Rather has ever publicly offered, Hedges wrote in a book: "The notion
that the press was used in the war is incorrect. The press wanted to be
used. It saw itself as part of the war effort."
In the book, "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning," Hedges made clear
that truth-seeking independence was far from the media agenda:
"The press was as eager to be of service to the state during the war as
most everyone else. Such docility on the part of the press made it
easier to do what governments do in wartime, indeed what governments do
much of the time, and that is lie." Variations in news coverage did not
change the overwhelming sameness of outlook: "I boycotted the pool
system, but my reports did not puncture the myth or question the grand
crusade to free Kuwait. I allowed soldiers to grumble. I shed a little
light on the lies spread to make the war look like a coalition, but I
did not challenge in any real way the patriotism and jingoism that
enthused the crowds back home. We all used the same phrases. We all
looked at Iraq through the same lens."
Six days after 9/11, during a conspicuous -- and still worth pondering
-- appearance on David Letterman's show, Rather declared that "George
Bush is the president, he makes the decisions." Moments later, Rather
said: "Wherever he wants me to line up, just tell me where. And he'll
make the call."
Yet eight months later, Rather was in a momentary self-critical mode. He
told an interviewer with BBC television in mid-May 2002: "There was a
time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around people's
necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be
'necklaced' here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put
around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking
the toughest of the tough questions." He was speaking on May 16, 2002.
But less than a year later, in the early spring of 2003, Rather fully
joined in the war boosterism during the CBS coverage of the Iraq
invasion. And days after Baghdad fell, he went on the CNN program "Larry
King Live" and emphasized his professional allegiance. "Look, I'm an
American," Rather said. "I never tried to kid anybody that I'm some
internationalist or something. And when my country is at war, I want my
country to win, whatever the definition of 'win' may be. Now, I can't
and don't argue that that is coverage without a prejudice. About that I
am prejudiced."
Soon afterward, a less well-known correspondent at another network was
evidently feeling some disquiet. In late April 2003, a few weeks after
Saddam statues fell in Baghdad, MSNBC's Ashleigh Banfield caused a stir
when she spoke on a college campus in Kansas. "There are horrors that
were completely left out of this war," she said.
"So was this journalism or was this coverage? There is a grand
difference between journalism and coverage, and getting access does not
mean you're getting the story, it just means you're getting one more arm
or leg of the story. And that's what we got, and it was a glorious,
wonderful picture that had a lot of people watching and a lot of
advertisers excited about cable news. But it wasn't journalism, because
I'm not so sure that we in America are hesitant to do this again, to
fight another war, because it looked like a glorious and courageous and
so successful terrific endeavor, and we got rid of a horrible leader: We
got rid of a dictator, we got rid of a monster, but we didn't see what
it took to do that."
Four days later, responding to a flap over Banfield's remarks, a
spokesperson for NBC management admonished the fleetingly errant
reporter in the course of issuing an apology: "She and we both agreed
that she didn't intend to demean the work of her colleagues, and she
will choose her words more carefully in the future."
That's the pattern that we've seen from prominent TV news
correspondents. In a wartime frenzy, they blend in with the prevailing
media scenery. Later, a few briefly utter words of regret. But next time
around they revert to the habit of behaving like war cheerleaders
instead of independent journalists.
posted by No Simple Matter at 2:50 PM
Leadership Failure
Leadership Failure
Firsthand Accounts of Torture of Iraqi Detainees by the U.S. Army’s 82nd
Airborne Division
I. Summary
On their day off people would show up all the time. Everyone in camp
knew if you wanted to work out your frustration you show up at the PUC
tent.1 In a way it was sport. The cooks were all U.S. soldiers. One
day [a sergeant] shows up and tells a PUC to grab a pole. He told him
to bend over and broke the guy’s leg with a mini Louisville Slugger, a
metal bat. He was the ******* cook. He shouldn’t be in with no PUCs.
— 82nd Airborne sergeant, describing events at FOB Mercury, Iraq
If I as an officer think we’re not even following the Geneva
Conventions, there’s something wrong. If officers witness all these
things happening, and don’t take action, there’s something wrong. If
another West Pointer tells me he thinks, “Well, hitting somebody might
be okay,” there’s something wrong.
— 82nd Airborne officer, describing confusion in Iraq concerning
allowable interrogation techniques
Residents of Fallujah called them “the Murderous Maniacs” because of how
they treated Iraqis in detention. They were soldiers of the U.S. Army’s
82nd Airborne Division, 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry
Regiment, stationed at Forward Operating Base Mercury (FOB Mercury) in
Iraq. The soldiers considered this name a badge of honor.2
One officer and two non-commissioned officers (NCOs) of the 82nd
Airborne who witnessed abuse, speaking on condition of anonymity,
described in multiple interviews with Human Rights Watch how their
battalion in 2003-2004 routinely used physical and mental torture as a
means of intelligence gathering and for stress relief. One soldier
raised his concerns within the army chain of command for 17 months
before the Army agreed to undertake an investigation, but only after he
had contacted members of Congress and considered goingpublic with the story.
According to their accounts, the torture and other mistreatment of
Iraqis in detention was systematic and was known at varying levels of
command. Military Intelligence personnel, they said, directed and
encouraged army personnel to subject prisoners to forced, repetitive
exercise, sometimes to the point of unconsciousness, sleep deprivation
for days on end, and exposure to extremes of heat and cold as part of
the interrogation process. At least one interrogator beat detainees in
front of other soldiers. Soldiers also incorporated daily beatings of
detainees in preparation for interrogations. Civilians believed to be
from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) conducted interrogations out
of sight, but not earshot, of soldiers, who heard what they believed
were abusive interrogations.
All three soldiers expressed confusion on the proper application of the
Geneva Conventions on the laws of armed conflict in the treatment of
prisoners. All had served in Afghanistan prior to Iraq and said that
contradictory statements by U.S. officials regarding the applicability
of the Geneva Conventions in Afghanistan and Iraq (see Conclusion)
contributed to their confusion, and ultimately to how they treated
prisoners. Although none were still in Iraq when we interviewed them,
the NCOs said they believed the practices continue.
The soldiers came forward because of what they described as deep
frustration with the military chain of command’s failure to view the
abuses as symptomatic of broader failures of leadership and respond
accordingly. All three are active duty soldiers who wish to continue
their military careers. A fax letter, e-mail, and repeated phone calls
to the 82nd Airborne Division regarding the major allegations in the
report received no response.
When the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in April 2004, senior officials in the
Bush administration claimed that severe prisoner abuse was committed
only by a few, rogue, poorly trained reserve personnel at a single
facility in Iraq. But since then, hundreds of other cases of abuse from
Iraq and Afghanistan have come to light, described in U.S. government
documents, reports of the International Committee of the Red Cross,
media reports, legal documents filed by detainees, and from detainee
accounts provided to human rights organizations, including Human Rights
Watch. 3 And while the military has launched investigations and
prosecutions of lower-ranking personnel for detainee abuse, in most
cases the military has used closed administrative hearings to hand down
light administrative punishments like pay reductions and reprimands,
instead of criminal prosecutions before courts-martial. The military
has made no effort to conduct a broader criminal investigation focusing
on how military command might have been involved in reported abuse, and
the administration continues to insist that reported abuse had nothing
to do with the administration’s decisions on the applicability of the
Geneva Conventions or with any approved interrogation techniques.
These soldiers’ firsthand accounts provide further evidence
contradicting claims that abuse of detainees by U.S. forces was isolated
or spontaneous. The accounts here suggest that the mistreatment of
prisoners by the U.S. military is even more widespread than has been
acknowledged to date, including among troops belonging to some of the
best trained, most decorated, and highly respected units in the U.S.
Army. They describe in vivid terms abusive interrogation techniques
ordered by Military Intelligence personnel and known to superior officers.
Most important, they demonstrate that U.S. troops on the battlefield
were given no clear guidance on how to treat detainees. When the
administration sent these soldiers to war in Afghanistan, it threw out
the rules they were trained to uphold (embodied in the Geneva
Conventions and the U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence
Interrogation). Instead, President Bush said only that detainees be
treated "humanely," not as a requirement of the law but as policy.
And no steps were taken to define what humane was supposed to mean in
practice.4 Once in Iraq, their commanders demanded that they extract
intelligence from detainees without telling them what was allowed and
what was forbidden. Yet when abuses inevitably followed, the
administration blamed only low-ranking soldiers instead of taking
responsibility.
These soldiers' accounts show how the administration's refusal to insist
on adherence to a lawful, long-recognized, and well-defined standard of
treatment contributed to the torture of prisoners. It also shows how
that policy betrayed the soldiers in the field—sowing confusion in the
ranks, exposing them to legal sanction when abuses occurred, and placing
in an impossible position all those who wished to behave honorably.
* * *
The officer and NCOs interviewed by Human Rights Watch say that torture
of detainees took place almost daily at FOB Mercury during their entire
deployment there, from September 2003 to April 2004. While two of the
soldiers also reported abuses at FOB Tiger, near the Syrian border, the
most egregious incidents allegedly took place at FOB Mercury. The acts
of torture and other cruel or inhuman treatment they described include
severe beatings (in one incident, a soldier reportedly broke a
detainee’s leg with a baseball bat), blows and kicks to the face, chest,
abdomen, and extremities, and repeated kicks to various parts of the
detainees’ body; the application of chemical substances to exposed skin
and eyes; forced stress positions, such as holding heavy water jugs with
arms outstretched, sometimes to the point of unconsciousness; sleep
deprivation; subjecting detainees to extremes of hot and cold; the
stacking of detainees into human pyramids; and, the withholding of food
(beyond crackers) and water.
According to Army Field Manual 19-4 covering enemy prisoner of war
operations, Military Police have responsibility for safeguarding,
accounting for, and maintaining captives. The soldiers interviewed by
Human Rights Watch said that established procedure was violated by
having frontline soldiers guard and prepare detainees for interrogation,
instead of speeding detainees to a rear area where they would be looked
after by trained Military Police.
Detainees in Iraq were consistently referred to as PUCs. This term was
devised in Afghanistan to take the place of the traditional designation
of Prisoner of War (POW), after President Bush decided that the Geneva
Conventions did not apply there. It carried over to Iraq, even though
the U.S. military command and the Bush administration have continually
stated that the Geneva Conventions are in effect. Although not all
persons captured on a battlefield are entitled to Prisoner of War (POW)
status, U.S. military doctrine interprets the Geneva Conventions as
requiring that all captured persons be treated as POWs unless and until
a “competent tribunal” determines otherwise.5
Detainees at FOB Mercury were held in so-called “PUC tents, which were
separated from the rest of the base by concertina wire. Detainees
typically spent three days at the base before being released or sent to
Abu Ghraib. Officers in the Military Intelligence unit and officers in
charge of the guards directed the treatment of detainees. Soldiers told
us that detainees who did not cooperate with interrogators were
sometimes denied water and given only crackers to eat, and were often
beaten. There was little done to hide the mistreatment of detainees:
one of the soldiers we interviewed observed torture when he brought
newly captured Iraqis to the PUC tents.
The torture of detainees reportedly was so widespread and accepted that
it became a means of stress relief for soldiers. Soldiers said they
felt welcome to come to the PUC tent on their off-hours to “**** a PUC”
or “Smoke a PUC.” “******* a PUC” referred to beating a detainee, while
“Smoking a PUC” referred to forced physical exertion sometimes to the
point of unconsciousness. The soldiers said that when a detainee had a
visible injury such as a broken limb due to “*******” or “smoking,” an
army physician’s assistant would be called to administer an analgesic
and fill out the proper paperwork. They said those responsible would
state that the detainee was injured during the process of capture and
the physician’s assistant would sign off on this. Broken bones occurred
“every other week” at FOB Mercury.
“Smoking” was not limited to stress relief but was central to the
interrogation system employed by the 82nd Airborne Division at FOB
Mercury. Officers and NCOs from the Military Intelligence unit would
direct guards to “smoke” the detainees prior to an interrogation, and
would direct that certain detainees were not to receive sleep, water, or
food beyond crackers. Directed “smoking” would last for the 12-24 hours
prior to an interrogation. As one soldier put it: “[the military
intelligence officer] said he wanted the PUCs so fatigued, so smoked, so
demoralized that they want to cooperate.”
The soldiers believed that about half of the detainees at Camp Mercury
were released because they were not involved in the insurgency, but they
left with the physical and mental scars of torture. “If he’s a good
guy, you know, now he’s a bad guy because of the way we treated him,”
one sergeant told Human Rights Watch.
The soldiers with whom Human Rights Watch spoke had served as guards in
Afghanistan and had observed interrogations at FOB Tiger in Iraq, and
said that civilian interrogators at those locations had also used
coercive methods against prisoners. These interrogators were always
referred to by the U.S. military abbreviation OGA, which stands for
“Other Government Agencies.” It was assumed that such persons were with
the CIA, but because OGA also includes other civilian agencies, the
soldiers with whom Human Rights Watch spoke said they could not be sure.
Soldiers generally had less direct access to OGA interrogations, in part
because OGA personnel often took detainees to an isolated building and
were generally more careful about being seen. But the soldiers who had
watched OGA interrogations in Afghanistan said that soldiers applied in
Iraq some of the techniques they learned from the OGA, including forced
stress positions, sleep deprivation, and exposure. At FOB Tiger, the
officer said, he heard the sounds of physical violence coming from rooms
where OGA interrogations were being held, but without being present in
the room could not know whether the sounds were real or simulated. The
soldiers said that civilian interrogators sometimes removed prisoners
from detention facilities and took the paperwork that indicated a
detainee was being held, apparently “disappearing” that detainee.6
The officer who spoke to Human Rights Watch made persistent efforts to
raise concerns he had with superior officers up the chain of command and
to obtain clearer rules on the proper treatment of prisoners. When he
raised the issue with superiors, he was consistently told to keep his
mouth shut, turn a blind eye, or consider his career. When he sought
clearer procedures from general officers, he was told merely to use his
judgment.
Altogether this officer said he spent 17 months trying to clarify rules
for prisoner treatment while seeking a meaningful investigation. He
explained at length how he openly had brought his complaint directly up
the chain-of-command, from his direct commanding officer, to the
division commander, to the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) office, and
finally to members of the U.S. Congress. In many cases, he was
encouraged to keep his concerns quiet; his brigade commander, for
example, rebuffed him when he asked for an investigation into these
allegations of abuse. He believes he was not taken seriously until he
began to approach members of Congress, and, indeed, just days before the
publication of this report he was told that he would not be granted a
pass to meet on his day off with staff members of U.S. Senators John
McCain and John Warner. He said he was told that he was being naïve and
that he was risking his career.
Human Rights Watch welcomes reports that the Army has agreed to
investigate the abuses discussed in this report. We are concerned
however those investigations will only focus on low-level soldiers and
officers, instead of looking as far as necessary up the chain of
command. We are also concerned that military personnel who come forward
to report abuses will find their careers suffer, as their commanding
officers implied they would, rather than be commended for doing their duty.
If FOB Mercury is not to become one more in an expanding series of U.S.
detention facilities associated with brutality and degrading treatment,
further tarnishing the reputation of the U.S. armed forces, the policy
failures must be faced head-on and the most senior responsible officials
held accountable.
Accordingly, Human Rights Watch urges the following:
• The U.S. Attorney General should appoint a special counsel to
investigate any U.S. officials—no matter their rank or position—who have
participated in, ordered, or had command responsibility for war crimes
or torture, or other prohibited ill-treatment against detainees in U.S.
custody.7
• The U.S. Congress should create a special commission, along the lines
of the 9/11 commission, to investigate the issue of detainee abuse by
U.S. military and civilians personnel abroad, including the incidents
described here, as proposed in legislation sponsored by Senator Carl Levin.
• Congress should enact legislation along the lines proposed by Senators
John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and John Warner, which would prohibit any
forms of detainee treatment and interrogation not specifically
authorized by the U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation,
and not consistent with the Convention Against Torture. Such
legislation must cover not only military units but also civilian
agencies involved in interrogations, such as the CIA.
• The U.S. Department of Defense should conduct a thorough investigation
of the allegations made in this report at all levels of the chain of
command. Such an investigation must not be limited to lower-ranking
enlisted personnel and officers, but must include higher-ranking
officers and civilian officials linked to policies that directed,
encouraged or tolerated such abuse. Measures should be taken to ensure
that soldiers who bring forward credible allegations of detainee abuse
are not in any way punished for their actions.
• The 82nd Airborne Division should implement measures to ensure the
immediate investigation of credible allegations of detainee abuse.
Note on Presentation of the Soldiers’ Accounts
All three accounts below consist of direct quotes from the soldiers.
Each of the soldiers was interviewed more than once. For the sake of
clarity and to avoid repetition, Human Rights Watch has edited and
rearranged specific passages in the accounts.
[1] “Person Under Control” or PUC (pronounced “puck”) is the term used
by U.S. military forces to refer to Iraqi detainees.
[2] FOB Mercury is located approximately 10 miles east of Fallujah, a
center of the insurgency at the time. U.S. forces came under intense
attacks in and around Fallujah, placing them under constant pressure and
at high risk in daily combat. As soon as the 82nd pulled out of FOB
Mercury in April 2004, the U.S. Marines that replaced the 82nd undertook
a major offensive against insurgents in Fallujah.
[3] See Human Rights Watch, “Getting Away with Torture?: Command
Responsibility for the U.S. Abuse of Detainees,” A Human Rights Watch
Report, April 2005, Section II (A World of Abuse), available at:
hrw.org/reports/2005/us0405/4.htm#_Toc101408092. See also,
International Committee of the Red Cross, “Report on the Treatment by
the Coalition Forces of Prisoners of War and Other Protected Persons,
February 2004, available at:
http://www.health-now.org/mediafiles/mediafile50.pdf (describing
detainee abuse in locations across Iraq, including sites in Baghdad,
Al-Khaim, Tikrit, Ramadi, and at Abu Ghraib, at p 7); Douglas Jehl and
Eric Schmitt, “The Conflict in Iraq: Detainees; U.S. Military Says 26
Inmate Deaths May Be Homicide,” The New York Times, March 16, 2005
(describing cases of detainee homicide occurring in areas across
Afghanistan and Iraq). On Afghanistan-related abuses, see Human Rights
Watch, “Enduring Freedom: Abuses by U.S. Forces in Afghanistan,” A Human
Rights Watch Report, March 2004, available at
hrw.org/reports/2004/afghanistan0304/; Human Rights Watch to Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, open letter, December 13, 2004, available
at: www.hrw.org/english/docs/2004/12/10/afghan9838.htm. On Iraq-related
abuses, see Major General Antonio M. Taguba, “Article 15-6 Investigation
of the 800th Military Police Brigade,” March 2004 (describing “numerous
incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu
Ghraib prison, constituting “systematic and illegal abuse of detainees,”
at p. 16); Major George R. Fay, “Article 15-6 Investigation of the Abu
Ghraib Detention Facility and 205th Military Intelligence Brigade,”
(Documenting 44 allegations of war crimes at Abu Ghraib). On
Guantánamo-related abuses, see also Human Rights Watch, “Guantánamo:
Detainee Accounts,” A Human Rights Watch Backgrounder, October 2004,
http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/usa/gitmo1004/. See also, Paisley
Dodds, “Guantánamo Tapes Show Teams Punching, Stripping Prisoners,”
Associated Press, February 1, 2005; Neil A. Lewis, “Red Cross Finds
Detainee Abuse in Guantánamo,” The New York Times, November 30, 2004.
[4] See Timothy Flanigan, written responses to questions submitted by
U.S. Senator Richard Durbin, following Flanigan’s confirmation hearing
to be Deputy Attorney General of the United States on July 26, 2005.
Flanigan, who was Deputy White House Counsel when President Bush issued
his order requiring “humane treatment” of detainees, stated: “I do not
believe the term ‘inhumane’ treatment is susceptible to succinct
definition.” In a further exchange with Senator Durbin, Flanigan stated
that: “I am not aware of any guidance provided by the White House
specifically related to the meaning of ‘inhumane treatment.’”
[5] Maj. J. Berger, Maj Derek Grims, Maj Eric Jensen (Eds.) Operational
Law Handbook, International and Operational Law Department, Judge
Advocate General’s Legal Center and School, Charlottesville Virginia,
2004, p. 26.
[6] According to the U.N. Declaration on the Protection of All Persons
from Enforced Disappearance (1992), enforced disappearances occur when:
persons are arrested, detained or abducted against their will or
otherwise deprived of their liberty by officials of different branches
or levels of Government, … followed by a refusal to disclose the fate or
whereabouts of the persons concerned or a refusal to acknowledge the
deprivation of their liberty, which places such persons outside the
protection of the law.
[7] To allow the special prosecutor to have full authority to
investigate and prosecute both federal law and Uniform Code of Military
Justice violations, the Secretary of Defense should appoint a
consolidated convening authority for all armed services, to cooperate
with the appointed civilian special prosecutor.
September 2005
posted by No Simple Matter at 2:42 PM
ACT ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FORTY SIX
preference lime correlate: “the stated mature”
clamor mistrusful beef: “force terrorism deepen”
palaver phase jarring: “can middle mercenaries”
colorless sheets finger: “as part miss”
villa custody trumpet: “their but casualties”
newsletters passengers boils: “physical carried scandal”
seesaw mouth descendants: “objections routinely to”
deskbound oracle snatch: “these many publics”
fast earthquakes compartmentalize: “opinion from united”
drawbacks bubbles segues: “states networks that”
breach locket peeve: “sending talk created”
contemporary hutch hamer: “this role resources.”
-John Crouse & Jim Leftwich
posted by No Simple Matter at 2:40 PM
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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
posted by No Simple Matter at 6:32 AM
----
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posted by No Simple Matter at 6:31 AM
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Right-Wing Judicial Activism
Right-Wing Judicial Activism
October 13, 2005
By Michael Parenti
Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee as nominee for Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts assured the senators that he
would not be one of those noisome activist judges who inject their
personal values into court decisions.
He would behave like "an umpire calling balls and strikes." With a
completely open mind, he would judge each case solely on its own merits,
with only the Constitution to guide him, he said.
None of the senators doubled over with laughter.
A fortnight later, while George Bush was introducing another Court
nominee---his right-wing Jesus-freak crony Harriet Miers---he prattled
on about his "judicial philosophy" and how he wanted jurists to be
"strict constructionists" who cleave close to the Constitution, as
opposed to loose constructionist liberals who use the Court to advance
their ideological agenda.
It is time to inject some reality into this issue. In fact, through most
of its history the Supreme Court has engaged in the wildest conservative
judicial activism in defense of privileged groups.
Be it for slavery or segregation, child labor or the sixteen-hour
workday, state sedition laws or assaults on the First
Amendment---rightist judicial activists have shown an infernal agility
in stretching and bending the Constitution to serve every inequity and
iniquity.
Right to the eve of the Civil War, for instance, the Supreme Court
asserted the primacy of property rights in slaves, rejecting all slave
petitions for freedom. In the famous Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the
Court concluded that, be they slave or free, Blacks were a "subordinate
and inferior class of beings" without constitutional rights.
Thus did reactionary judicial activists---some of them
slaveholders---spin racist precepts out of thin air to give a
constitutional gloss to their beloved slavocracy.
When the federal government wanted to establish national banks, or give
away half the country to speculators, or subsidize industries, or set up
commissions that fixed prices and interest rates for large manufacturers
and banks, or imprison dissenters who denounced war and capitalism, or
use the U.S. Army to shoot workers and break strikes, or have Marines
kill people in Central America---the Supreme Court's conservative
activists twisted the Constitution in every conceivable way to justify
these acts. So much for "strict construction."
But when the federal or state governments sought to limit workday hours,
set minimum wage or occupational safety standards, ensure the safety of
consumer products, or guarantee the right of collective bargaining, then
the Court ruled that ours was a limited form of government that could
not tamper with property rights and could not deprive owner and worker
of "freedom of contract."
The Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868 ostensibly to establish full
citizenship for African Americans, says that no state can "deprive any
person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," nor
deny any person "equal protection of the laws."
In another act of pure judicial invention, a conservative dominated
Court decided that "person" really meant "corporation"; therefore the
Fourteenth Amendment protected business conglomerates from regulation by
the states.
To this day, corporations have legal standing as "persons" thanks to
conservative judicial activism.
By 1920, pro-business federal courts had struck down roughly three
hundred labor laws passed by state legislatures to ease inhumane working
conditions.
Between 1880 and 1931 the courts issued more than 1,800 injunctions to
suppress labor strikes. No trace of conservative restraint during those
many years.
When Congress outlawed child labor or passed other social reforms,
conservative jurists declared such laws to be violations of the Tenth
Amendment. The Tenth Amendment says that powers not delegated to the
federal government are reserved to the states or the people. So Congress
could not act.
But, when states passed social-welfare legislation, the Court's
right-wing activists said such laws violated "substantive due process"
(a totally fabricated oxymoron) under the Fourteenth Amendment. So the
state legislatures could not act.
Thus for more than fifty years, the justices used the Tenth Amendment to
stop federal reforms initiated under the Fourteenth Amendment, and the
Fourteenth to stymie state reforms initiated under the Tenth. It's hard
to get more brazenly activist than that.
A conservative Supreme Court produced Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), another
inventive reading of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause.
Plessy confected the "separate but equal" doctrine, claiming that the
forced separation of Blacks from Whites did not impute inferiority as
long as facilities were equal (which they rarely were). For some seventy
years, this judicial fabrication buttressed racial segregation.
Convinced that they too were persons, women began to argue that the "due
process" clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment (applying to state
governments) and the Fifth Amendment (applying to the federal
government) disallowed the voting prohibitions imposed on women by state
and federal authorities.
But in Minor v. Happersett (1875), the conservative Court fashioned
another devilishly contorted interpretation: true, women were citizens
but citizenship did not necessarily confer a citizen's right to
suffrage. In other words, "due process," and "equal protection" applied
to such "persons" as business corporations but not to women or people of
African descent.
At times, presidents place themselves and their associates above
accountability by claiming that the separation of powers gives them an
inherent right of "executive privilege." Executive privilege has been
used by the White House to withhold information on undeclared wars,
illegal campaign funds, Supreme Court nominations, burglaries
(Watergate), insider trading (by Bush and Cheney), and White House
collusion with corporate lobbyists.
But the concept of executive privilege (i.e. unaccountable executive
secrecy) exists nowhere in the Constitution or any law. Yet the
wild-eyed right-wing activists on the Supreme Court trumpet executive
privilege, deciding out of thin air that a "presumptive privilege" for
withholding information belongs to the president.
Bush just recently talked about "how important it is for us to guard
executive privilege in order for there to be crisp decision making in
the White House." Crisp? How can Bush represent himself as a "strict
constructionist" while making claim to a wholly extra-constitutional
juridical fiction known as "executive privilege"?
With staggering audacity, the Court's rightist judicial activists have
decided that states cannot prohibit corporations from spending unlimited
amounts on public referenda or other elections because such campaign
expenditures are a form of "speech" and the Constitution guarantees
freedom of speech to such "persons" as corporations.
In a dissenting opinion, the liberal Justice Stevens noted, "Money is
property; it is not speech." But his conservative colleagues preferred
the more fanciful activist interpretation.
They further ruled that "free speech" enables rich candidates to spend
as much as they want on their own campaigns, and rich individuals to
expend unlimited sums in any election contest. Thus poor and rich can
both freely compete, one in a whisper, the other in a roar.
Right-wing judicial activism reached a frenzy point in George W. Bush v.
Al Gore. In a 5-to-4 decision, the conservatives overruled the Florida
Supreme Court's order for a recount in the 2000 presidential election.
The justices argued with breathtaking contrivance that since different
Florida counties might use different modes of tabulating ballots, a hand
recount would violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment.
By preventing a recount, the Supreme Court gave the presidency to Bush.
In recent years these same conservative justices have held that the
Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause could not be used to stop
violence against women, or provide a more equitable mode of property
taxes, or a more equitable distribution of funds between rich and poor
school districts.
But, in Bush v. Gore they ruled that the equal protection clause could
be used to stop a perfectly legal ballot recount. Then they explicitly
declared that Bush could not be considered a precedent for other equal
protection issues. In other words, the Fourteenth Amendment applied only
when the conservative judicial activists wanted it to, as when stealing
an election!
We hear conservatives say that judges should not try to "legislate from
the bench," the way liberal jurists supposedly do. But a recent study by
Paul Gewirtz and Chad Golder of Yale University reveals that
conservative justices like Thomas and Scalia have a far higher rate of
invalidating or reinterpreting Congressional laws than more liberal ones
like Byers and Ginsberg.
By this measure, too, the conservatives are the more activist.
In sum, the right-wing aggrandizers in black robes are neither strict
constructionists nor balanced adjudicators. They are unrestrained power
hustlers masquerading as sober defenders of lawful procedure and
constitutional intent.
If this is democracy, who needs oligarchy?
posted by No Simple Matter at 10:39 AM
Abu Ghraib: Command Responsibility
Abu Ghraib: Command Responsibility
by Ray McGovern; TomPaine.com; October 01, 2005
The news that yet another Army private, Lynndie England, 22, of Fort
Ashby, W. Va., has been convicted and sentenced for posing for the
infamous photos of torture at Abu Ghraib, while her superiors duck
responsibility, is a sad commentary on the degenerating ethos of the
U.S. Army.
The reminder of the photos of those inexcusable activities was sickening
enough and England deserves to be punished. But I am of the old-Army
school where officers took responsibility for the actions of those under
their command. It is no less than scandalous how the Army brass and its
civilian leadership, who are demonstrably responsible for the torture,
continue to dance away from taking responsibility.
They chose, instead, to stone the woman, like the hypocrites of Bible
fame, contending that the photos inflamed the insurgency in Iraq. It is
the torture, not the photos, that has inflamed the insurgency. And
responsibility for the torture reaches directly up the chain of command
to the commander in chief himself. Perhaps when even more repulsive
photos and videos of torture at Abu Ghraib are released, as federal
judge Alvin Hellerstein ordered yesterday, the American people finally
will be jarred awake.
So far, the silent acquiescence with which Americans have greeted
President George W. Bush's open assertion of a right to torture some
prisoners evokes memories of the unconscionable behavior of "obedient
Germans" of the 1930s and early 1940s. Thankfully, despite the hate
whipped up by administration propagandists against people branded
"terrorists," polling conducted last year showed that most Americans
reject torturing prisoners. Almost two-thirds held that torture is
never acceptable.
Yet few speak out -- perhaps because President Bush says he too, is
against torture, and our domesticated media have successfully hidden
from most of us the fact that the president has added a highly
significant qualification. On February 7, 2002, the president issued an
order instructing our armed forces "to treat detainees humanely and, to
the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity , in a
manner consistent with the principles of Geneva" (emphasis added). In
the preceding paragraph, the president determined that Taliban and Al
Qaeda detainees "do not qualify as prisoners of war." Never mind that
there is no provision in the Geneva Conventions for such a unilateral
determination.
Speedy Gonzales
In taking this position, Bush had to overrule then-Secretary of State
Colin Powell, the only one of his senior advisers with experience in
combat. On January 26, 2002, Powell sent to then-White House counsel
Alberto Gonzales formal comments on the latter's memorandum for the
president, the subject of which was "Decision Re Application Of The
Geneva Convention On Prisoners Of War To The Conflict With Al Qaeda And
The Taliban."
This is the Mafia-like memorandum in which Gonzales not only branded
some Geneva provisions "quaint" and "obsolete," but also reassured the
president that he could probably escape domestic criminal prosecution
for violating the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996 (18 U.S.C. 2441), as well.
Here is what Gonzales tells the president on this key point:
"...it is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and
independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted
charges based on Section 2441. Your determination would create a
reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 does not apply, which would
provide a solid defense to any future prosecution."
Meanwhile, back at the State Department, Powell apparently thought the
memorandum was still in draft. But Gonzales, who knew what the
president wanted, did not wait for Powell's formal comments. Rather, on
January 25, Gonzales sent his final draft to the president, thereby
shielding him from dissonance like Powell's written observation that
exempting detainees from Geneva protections "will reverse over a century
of U.S. policy and practice in supporting the Geneva conventions and
undermine the protections of the law of war for our troops."
Gonzales was already aware of Powell's opposition, and in his own memo,
the former White House counsel and now attorney general was dismissive
of Powell's request that the president reconsider the argument that Al
Qaeda and Taliban detainees are not prisoners of war under Geneva. In a
short paragraph tacked onto the bottom of a list of "negatives,"
Gonzales took brief note of Powell's objections. Gonzales' paragraph
speaks volumes in the light of subsequent abuses in Abu Ghraib,
Afghanistan and Guantanamo:
"A determination that the GPW [Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War]
does not apply to al-Qaeda and the Taliban could undermine U.S. military
culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest standards of conduct in
combat, and could introduce an element of uncertainty in the status of
adversaries."
Last week, more than a dozen high-ranking military officers sent a
letter to President Bush, pointing out that "It is now apparent that the
abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere took place in
part because our men and women in uniform were given ambiguous
instructions, which in some cases authorized treatment that went beyond
what was allowed by the Army Field Manual."
A pity that Colin Powell limited himself to writing memos to the
president's lawyer.
The photos from Abu Ghraib and the more recent Human Rights Watch report
describing "routine" torture by the once highly professional 82nd
Airborne Division offer graphic evidence that Powell's misgivings were
well-founded. The report relies heavily on the testimony of a West Point
graduate, an Army captain who has had the courage to speak out after 17
months of trying in vain to go through Army channels.
Human Rights Watch Director Tom Malinowski has noted, "The
administration demanded that soldiers extract information from detainees
without telling them what was allowed and what was forbidden. Yet when
the abuses inevitably followed, the leadership blamed the soldiers in
the field instead of taking responsibility." A Pentagon spokesman has
dismissed the report as "another predictable report by an organization
trying to advance an agenda through the use of distortion and errors of
fact." Judge for yourselves; the report can be found here. It's grim
but required reading.
Pictures Worth A Thousand Words
After seeing the photos from Abu Graib last year, Senate Armed Forces
Committee Chairman John Warner of Virginia took a strong rhetorical
stand against torture. But then he quickly succumbed to White House
pressure to postpone Senate hearings on the subject until after the
November 2004 election.
More recently, Warner joined two other Republican senators, John McCain
and Lindsey Graham, in attempts to introduce amendments against torture
to the defense authorization bill. The amendments would require that
U.S. forces revert to the standards set forth in Army Field Manual (FM
34-52) for interrogating detainees held by the Defense Department. The
manual prohibits the use of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading
treatment. Another amendment discussed would require that all foreign
nationals "be registered with the International Committee of the Red
Cross." This would prohibit sequestering unregistered "ghost detainees"
at prisons like Abu Ghraib and secret CIA interrogation centers.
Inured as I thought I had become to outrageous behavior at the top of
the Bush administration, I found its reaction shocking. On the evening
of July 21, Vice President Dick Cheney went to Capitol Hill to dissuade
the three senators from proceeding with the amendments. But the
senators have not been cowed -- not yet, at least. Four days later on
the floor of the Senate, John McCain -- who knows something of torture
-- made a poignant appeal to his colleagues to hold our country to
humane standards in treating captives, "no matter how evil or terrible"
they may be. "This is not about who they are. This is about who we
are," said McCain.
The following day, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist pulled the Pentagon
spending bill off the floor, sparing Bush the political risk of vetoing
the much-needed defense authorization bill simply because it included
amendments requiring the protections for detainees required by U.S.
criminal statute and international law.
It will be interesting to see if, in the end, the senators cave in to
White House pressure. For if they do, they will be providing yet another
congressional nihil obstat for the general approach so succinctly voiced
by the president to then-terrorism czar Richard Clarke and Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld in the White House on the evening of 9/11. According
to Clarke, the president yelled, "I don't care what the international
lawyers say, we are going to kick some ***."
posted by No Simple Matter at 10:37 AM
ACT ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FORTY FIVE
puma community leverage: “leave us alone”
liquor sector lesbian: “later very shirt”
cosmetic vehicle tea: “afterwards before agreed”
damage pudding draft: “seen who writing”
extract leaflet blasts: “appears in waiting”
accelerate pluck face: “afterwards the admiral”
loudspeakers federal pastry: “same and letters”
querulously pudendum upbraiding: “cell we rubbish”
reincarnation dissenter backlash: “know us vanishes”
rocker turnpike robotics: “photocopy that quickly”
fake cylinder curtain: “distribute morning promised”
sibyl blood shunt: “was television plain.”
-John Crouse & Jim Leftwich
posted by No Simple Matter at 10:33 AM
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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
posted by No Simple Matter at 5:13 AM
----
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-Peter K. Niven
posted by No Simple Matter at 5:12 AM
Friday, October 14, 2005
Katrina And Bush's Responsibility: Race Or Class? Yes, Please.
Katrina And Bush's Responsibility: Race Or Class? Yes, Please.
October 03, 2005
By Ezequiel Adamovsky
Buenos Aires. The Katrina disaster exposed the lies of Bush's doctrine
of "total security". As it has been repeatedly stated in progressive
circles in the past weeks, it became blatantly clear that the government
was all too ready to protect the people's safety against terrorism after
September 11, only because that was useful for their plans to launch a
war for oil and world supremacy. But Katrina showed that Bush was not
interested in security per se: or, didn't he take a long nap before he
sent some help to the people of New Orleans? Didn't he budget on
disaster-control provisions?
After the disaster, the leaders of the Afro-American community strongly
denounced that those people had not been protected before the hurricane
happened, nor helped after it did, only because they were black. These
allegations sparked a heated debate in the press: We all know that
racism is still there in the US, but is it possible that it remains so
strong as to make the President "forget" about thousands of (black) lives?
Quite expectedly, Republicans denied those accusations, by pointing out
their many African-Americans and Latinos in high posts, etc. What was
more unexpected, at least to me, was to see the mayor of New Orleans
arguing that it wasn't a case of racism. His voters, he argued, were
discriminated against not because they are black, but because they are
poor. Indeed, the fact that the government first sent soldiers to
protect private property, and only later to aid the population, seems to
point to that conclusion.
The mayor's intervention in that debate was rather perplexing. If he was
defending the government from charges of racism, Was he then implying
that, had it "only" been a case of class discrimination, the deaths
would have been more "acceptable"? Does he believe that those people
were poor and also black for some curious coincidence?
In his own strange way, the mayor is right. It is a matter of class.
What is wrong is to believe that, for that reason, it was not a matter
of race.
The mayor's way of making sense of the disaster, and also the arguments
the Republicans use to defend themselves from allegations of racism, are
still caught in the old, delusive conceptualization of racism and class.
According to the traditional way to understand race issues, racism is
about constructing binary, biological oppositions (white/colored) and
ascribing to each completely different attributes. Thus, if white are
constructed as superior and coloured as inferior, then whites have the
right to exclude and dominate the coloured. Unlike the biological
construction of race differences, class differences were (and still are)
usually perceived as somewhat less "unfair", if only because poor people
always have the chance to overcome poverty; in other words, they are not
excluded for ever due to some inborn characteristic.
As the Condoleezas find their way into power, and some individuals of
minority groups actually acquire wealth and even social status, it gives
the impression that, albeit slowly, racism is fading away.
African-Americans, after all, are no longer excluded due to their skin
color. This moderately optimistic conclusion, however, fails to see that
class and race do not constitute two alternative systems of difference,
but function interwoven in the same symbolic system devised by
capitalism. Indeed, for all its racist implications, the narrative of
capitalism as "Western civilization" never excluded the "inferior races"
completely.
On the contrary, as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have argued in their
seminal Empire, modern racism operated by ordering racial differences
according to their degree of deviation with regard to the
white/wealthy/educated man. Thus, "deviant" characteristics were
differentially integrated in a gradient of proximity and remoteness from
(white/wealthy/educated) "normality". But the most important function of
modern racism, from the viewpoint of bourgeois ideology, was not so much
to keep biological types apart by means of strong binary oppositions
(white/coloured), as to use racial differences to produce social
hierarchies.
Relationships of power and exploitation can be instituted and reinforced
through different devices, racial hierarchies and prejudice being one of
them. And there is no need to remember here the role that racism played
in the organization and legitimization of two of the most important
episodes in the making of capitalism: colonialism and the reintroduction
of slavery. But racism, unfortunately, is not something of the past
alone. A somewhat different type of racism still performs a similar
function today. This "new racism" is not based on essentialist
biological assumptions - most people would accept today that all races
are "equal"- but has reframed the distinctions between peoples as
"cultural" or "social" differences.
Seemingly less essentialist, these alleged "cultural" distinctions
permit the ordering of differences in more flexible hierarchies (that
is, hierarchies that do not imply that those below cannot but be there),
but nevertheless help to institute capitalist domination and
exploitation. Thus, for example, the policies of African countries are
to a great extent designed by Western institutions, while African
Americans still occupy the bottom layer of society -two facts curiously
resembling the times of colonialism and slavery.
Yet, no one would argue today that that is because black people are
biologically inferior: their present subaltern situation is only due to
"social" or "cultural" causes. Theoretically, there is no impediment to
their becoming autonomous or doing as well as their other
(white/wealthy/educated) fellow humans: it is just that they are
incapable or less capable at the moment. In this way, cultural and
sociological signifiers have taken the place of the old biological ones
in the construction of social hierarchies that, however, still have an
unmistakable racial component.
Leaving the most irritant biological categories behind, class ideology
still employs race as a way to create distinctions and construct social
hierarchies. In the social hierarchies that capitalism and bourgeois
ideology invents and constantly rebuilds, biological, cultural,
national, or social differences may overlap and to some extent be
interchangeable. The mayor of New Orleans was right and wrong at the
same time: the death and suffering of his constituency was due to their
class, but also (and for the very same reason) to their color.
posted by No Simple Matter at 12:56 PM
Who is Judy Miller Kidding?
Who is Judy Miller Kidding?
By Arianna Huffington, AlterNet
Posted on October 3, 2005, Printed on October 3, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/26303/
Now that Judy Miller has finished testifying, finished spinning for the
cameras on the courthouse steps, finished hugging her dog and finished
eating that special meal she wanted her husband to prepare, she needs to
do what Time reporter Matt Cooper did and immediately publish a full and
truthful account of her involvement in Plamegate.
Because what she —- and the New York Times' publisher and editor —- have
said so far just doesn't add up.
The story being pitched to the public —- that Miller was a heroic,
principled martyr who sacrificed her freedom in the name of journalistic
integrity, then fulfilled her "civic duty" after she "finally received a
direct and uncoerced waiver" from her source —- is laughable.
Indeed, it's already been greeted skeptically by 1) my increasingly
frustrated sources at the Times; 2) a chorus of voices in the
blogosphere, and 3) (and much more significantly) Joseph Tate, Scooter
Libby's lawyer, who told the Washington Post that he informed Miller's
attorney, Floyd Abrams, a year ago that Libby's waiver "was voluntary
and that Miller was free to testify."
It defies credulity for Miller and the TimesTimes' contempt for its
readers that it really thinks they'll buy the "Oh, Judy finally has the
right waiver" line?
After appearing in front of the grand jury Friday, Miller was asked to
describe her role in the case. "I was a journalist doing my job," she said.
But her role is actually much, much more complicated than that. Any
discussion of Miller's actions in Plamegate cannot leave out the key
part she played in cheerleading for the invasion of Iraq and in hyping
the WMD threat. Re-reading some of her prewar reporting today, it's hard
not to be stunned by just how inaccurate and pumped up it turned out to be.
During her incarceration, a Times spokesperson described Miller as "an
intrepid, principled and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has
provided our readers with thorough and comprehensive reporting
throughout her career." But a "thorough and comprehensive" look at
Miller's career reveals repeated examples of egregious reporting, a
startling lack of objectivity, too-close-for-comfort relationships with
dubious sources … and a penchant for far-from-thorough and
far-from-comprehensive coverage.
Cut through the haze of revisionist portraiture and you might remember
that Miller's byline appeared on four of the six articles that the Times
apologized for in its unprecedented May 2004 mea culpa over its prewar
news coverage.
What's more, Miller's involvement in Plamegate was a direct result of
her WMD reporting. Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's now famous Op-Ed
piece, which raised the idea that the Bush administration had
manipulated and twisted intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat,
went straight to the heart of Miller's reporting —- and her credibility.
The Plame scandal took shape not only when the White House was under
attack but when Miller herself was increasingly being attacked by
critics for her deeply flawed dispatches. When she met with her
anti-Plame source —- or sources -— she was not only still on the WMD
beat but still a true believer promoting the administration's lies about
Iraq's nonexistent WMD threat despite an avalanche of contrary information.
The inescapable fact is that Miller -— intentionally or unintentionally
—- worked hand in glove in helping the White House propaganda machine
sell the war in Iraq. And that includes Libby and his boss, Dick Cheney.
Before her transformation into a journalistic Joan of Arc, Miller was in
a tailspin, her work discredited, removed from the WMD beat and forced
to deal with colleagues who refused to share a byline with her. She
desperately needed to change the subject and cleanse herself of the
stench left by her misleading coverage leading up to the war —- coverage
that makes the Jayson Blair scandal, by comparison, seem ludicrously
insignificant. And there are few more effective acts of purification for
a reporter than going to jail to (in PR theory) protect the 1st Amendment.
Miller went from pariah to icon, and the Times went from apologizing for
her work to comparing her in a series of over-the-top editorials to Rosa
Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. Talk about an Extreme Makeover.
There is no way that the Times' repeated claims that Miller was in jail
as a matter of principle can be squared with her hair-splitting
explanations for why she suddenly changed her mind.
And there is no way to accept at face value Miller's ongoing
grandstanding about "fighting for the cause of the free flow of
information."
Who is she still trying to convince? Herself?
This piece originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
posted by No Simple Matter at 12:53 PM
ACT ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FORTY FOUR
dome blurred grant: “young sent us”
vapor fraternity insurance: “garbage young replied”
wreck understand obstruction: “helped told also”
improve hay handbook: “during when was”
limber et cetera: “part else later”
crooked displaces frog: “nothing close instant”
nuts lightship analogy: “rub would know”
adjectives minimum gulps: “phone gave lunch”
masticate awed surgical: “know spiritually talking”
recurring nipple deficiency: “held who sheet”
haunting ducts plagiarism: “not us suddenly”
in writing putt: “mainly still was.”
-John Crouse & Jim Leftwich
posted by No Simple Matter at 12:50 PM
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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
posted by No Simple Matter at 11:27 AM
----
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-Peter K. Niven
posted by No Simple Matter at 11:24 AM
Thursday, October 13, 2005
How The World Was Duped: The Race To Invade Iraq
How The World Was Duped:
The Race To Invade Iraq
by Robert Fisk; The Independent;
October 04, 2005
The 5th of February 2003 was a snow-blasted day in New York, the steam
whirling out of the road covers, the US secret servicemen - helpfully
wearing jackets with "Secret Service" printed on them - hugging
themselves outside the fustian, asbestos-packed UN headquarters on the
East River. Exhausted though I was after travelling thousands of miles
around the United States, the idea of watching Secretary of State Colin
Powell - or General Powell, as he was now being reverently redubbed in
some American newspapers - make his last pitch for war before the
Security Council was an experience not to be missed.
In a few days, I would be in Baghdad to watch the start of this
frivolous, demented conflict. Powell's appearance at the Security
Council was the essential prologue to the tragedy - or tragicomedy if
one could contain one's anger - the appearance of the Attendant Lord who
would explain the story of the drama, the Horatio to the increasingly
unstable Hamlet in the White House.
There was an almost macabre opening to the play when General Powell
arrived at the Security Council, cheek-kissing the delegates and winding
his great arms around them. CIA director George Tenet stood behind
Powell, chunky, aggressive but obedient, just a little bit lip-biting,
an Edward G Robinson who must have convinced himself that the more
dubious of his information was buried beneath an adequate depth of moral
fury and fear to be safely concealed. Just like Bush's appearance at the
General Assembly the previous September, you needed to be in the
Security Council to see what the television cameras missed. There was a
wonderful moment when the little British home secretary Jack Straw
entered the chamber through the far right-hand door in a massive power
suit, his double-breasted jacket apparently wrapping itself twice around
Britain's most famous ex-Trot. He stood for a moment with a kind of
semi-benign smile on his uplifted face, his nose in the air as if
sniffing for power. Then he saw Powell and his smile opened like an
umbrella as his small feet, scuttling beneath him, propelled him across
the stage and into the arms of Powell for his big American hug.
You might have thought that the whole chamber, with its toothy smiles
and constant handshakes, contained a room full of men celebrating peace
rather than war. Alas, not so. These elegantly dressed statesmen were
constructing the framework that would allow them to kill quite a lot of
people - some of them Saddam's little monsters no doubt, but most of
them innocent. When Powell rose to give his terror-talk, he did so with
a slow athleticism, the world-weary warrior whose patience had at last
reached its end.
But it was an old movie. I should have guessed. Sources, foreign
intelligence sources, "our sources", defectors, sources, sources,
sources. Ah, to be so well-sourced when you have already taken the
decision to go to war. The Powell presentation sounded like one of those
government-inspired reports on the front page of The New York Times -
where it was, of course, treated with due reverence next day. It was a
bit like heating up old soup. Hadn't we heard most of this stuff before?
Should one trust the man? General Powell, I mean, not Saddam. Certainly
we didn't trust Saddam, but Powell's speech was a mixture of awesomely
funny recordings of Iraqi Republican Guard telephone intercepts à la
Samuel Beckett that just might have been some terrifying proof that
Saddam really was conning the UN inspectors again, and ancient material
on the Monster of Baghdad's all too well known record of beastliness.
If only we could have heard the Arabic for the State Department's
translation of "OK, buddy" - "Consider it done, sir" - this from the
Republican Guard's "Captain Ibrahim", for heaven's sake. The dinky
illustrations of mobile Iraqi bio-labs whose lorries and railway trucks
were in such perfect condition suggested the Pentagon didn't have much
idea of the dilapidated state of Saddam's railway system, let alone his
army. It was when we went back to Halabja and human rights abuses and
all Saddam's indubitable sins, as recorded by the discredited Unscom
team, that we started eating the old soup again. Jack Straw may have
thought all this "the most powerful and authoritative case" for war -
his ill-considered opinion afterwards - but when we were forced to
listen to the Iraqi officer corps communicating by phone "Yeah", "Yeah"
, "Yeah?", "Yeah . . ." - it was impossible not to ask oneself if Colin
Powell had really considered the effect this would have on the outside
world.
From time to time, the words "Iraq: Failing to Disarm - Denial and
Deception" appeared on the giant video screen behind General Powell. Was
this a CNN logo? some of us wondered. But no, it was the work of CNN's
sister channel, the US Department of State.
Because Colin Powell was supposed to be the good cop to the Bush-
Rumsfeld bad cop routine, one wanted to believe him. The Iraqi officer's
telephone-tapped order to his subordinate - "Remove 'nerve agents'
whenever it comes up in the wireless instructions" - seemed to indicate
that the Americans had indeed spotted a nasty new line in Iraqi
deception. But a dramatic picture of a pilotless Iraqi aircraft capable
of spraying poison chemicals turned out to be the imaginative work of a
Pentagon artist. And when Secretary Powell started talking about
"decades" of contact between Saddam and al-Qa'ida, things went wrong for
the " General ". Al-Qa'ida only came into existence in 2000, since bin
Laden - " decades" ago - was working against the Russians for the CIA,
whose present-day director was sitting grave-faced behind Mr Powell. It
was the United States which had enjoyed at least a "decade" of contacts
with Saddam.
Powell's new version of his President's State of the Union lie - that
the " scientists" interviewed by UN inspectors had been Iraqi
intelligence agents in disguise - was singularly unimpressive. The UN
talked to Iraqi scientists during their inspection tours, the new
version went, but the Iraqis were posing for the real nuclear and bio
boys whom the UN wanted to talk to.
General Powell said America was sharing its information with the UN
inspectors, but it was clear already that much of what he had to say
about alleged new weapons development - the decontamination truck at the
Taji chemical munitions factory, for example, the "cleaning" of the Ibn
al- Haythem ballistic missile factory on 25 November - had not been
given to the UN at the time. Why wasn't this intelligence information
given to the inspectors months ago? Didn't General Powell's beloved UN
Resolution demand that all such intelligence information should be given
to Hans Blix and his lads immediately? Were the Americans, perhaps, not
being "proactive" enough? Or did they realise that if the UN inspectors
had chased these particular hares, they would have turned out to be as
bogus as indeed they later proved to be?
The worst moment came when General Powell discussed anthrax and the 2001
anthrax attacks in Washington and New York, pathetically holding up a
teaspoon of the imaginary spores and - while not precisely saying so -
fraudulently suggesting a connection between Saddam Hussein and the
anthrax scare. But when the Secretary of State held up Iraq's support
for the Palestinian Hamas organisation, which has an office in Baghdad,
as proof of Saddam's support for "terror" - he of course made no mention
of America's support for Israel and its occupation of Palestinian land -
the whole theatre began to collapse. There were Hamas offices in Beirut,
Damascus and Tehran. Was the 82nd Airborne supposed to grind on to
Lebanon, Syria and Iran?
How many lies had been told in this auditorium? How many British excuses
for the Suez invasion, or Russian excuses - the same year - for the
suppression of the Hungarian uprising? One recalled, of course, this
same room four decades earlier when General Powell's predecessor Adlai
Stevenson showed photographs of the ships carrying Soviet missiles to
Cuba. Alas, Powell's pictures carried no such authority. And Colin
Powell was no Adlai Stevenson.
If Powell's address merited front-page treatment, the American media had
never chosen to give the same attention to the men driving Bush to war,
most of whom were former or still active pro-Israeli lobbyists. For
years they had advocated destroying the most powerful Arab nation.
Richard Perle, one of Bush's most influential advisers, Douglas Feith,
Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton and Donald Rumsfeld were all campaigning for
the overthrow of Iraq long before George W Bush was elected US
president. And they weren't doing so for the benefit of Americans or
Britons. A 1996 report, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the
Realm, called for war on Iraq. It was written not for the US but for the
incoming Israeli Likud prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and produced by
a group headed by Perle. The destruction of Iraq would, of course,
protect Israel's monopoly of nuclear weapons - always supposing Saddam
also possessed them - and allow it to defeat the Palestinians and impose
whatever colonial settlement Sharon had in store for them.
Although Bush and Blair dared not discuss this aspect of the coming war
- a conflict for Israel was not going to have Americans or Britons
lining up at recruiting offices - Jewish-American leaders talked about
the advantages of an Iraqi war with enthusiasm. Indeed, those very
courageous Jewish-American groups who opposed this madness were the
first to point out how pro-Israeli organisations foresaw Iraq not only
as a new source of oil but of water, too; why should canals not link the
Tigris river to the parched Levant? No wonder, then, that any discussion
of this topic had to be censored, as Professor Eliot Cohen of Johns
Hopkins University tried to do in The Wall Street Journal the day after
Powell's UN speech. Cohen suggested that European nations' objections to
the war might - yet again - be ascribed to " anti-Semitism of a type
long thought dead in the West, a loathing that ascribes to Jews a
malignant intent". This nonsense was opposed by many Israeli
intellectuals who, like Uri Avnery, argued that an Iraq war would leave
Israel with even more Arab enemies.
The slur of "anti-Semitism" also lay behind Rumsfeld's insulting remarks
about "old Europe". He was talking about the "old" Germany of Nazism and
the "old" France of collaboration. But the France and Germany that
opposed this war were the "new" Europe, the continent that refused, ever
again, to slaughter the innocent. It was Rumsfeld and Bush who
represented the "old" America; not the " new" America of freedom, the
America of F D Roosevelt.
Rumsfeld and Bush symbolised the old America that killed its native
inhabitants and embarked on imperial adventures. It was "old" America we
were being asked to fight for - linked to a new form of colonialism - an
America that first threatened the United Nations with irrelevancy and
then did the same to Nato. This was not the last chance for the UN, nor
for Nato. But it might well have been the last chance for America to be
taken seriously by her friends as well as her enemies.
Israeli and US ambitions in the region were now entwined, almost
synonymous. This war, about oil and regional control, was being
cheer-led by a president who was treacherously telling us that this was
part of an eternal war against "terror". The British and most Europeans
didn't believe him. It's not that Britons wouldn't fight for America.
They just didn't want to fight for Bush or his friends. And if that
included the prime minister, they didn't want to fight for Blair either.
Still less did they wish to embark on endless wars with a Texas
governor-executioner who dodged the Vietnam draft and who, with his oil
buddies, was now sending America's poor to destroy a Muslim nation that
had nothing at all to do with the crimes against humanity of 11
September 2001.
Those who opposed the war were not cowards. Brits rather like fighting;
they've biffed Arabs, Afghans, Muslims, Nazis, Italian Fascists and
Japanese imperialists for generations, Iraqis included. But when the
British are asked to go to war, patriotism is not enough. Faced with the
horror stories, Britons and many Americans were a lot braver than Blair
and Bush. They do not like, as Thomas More told Cromwell in A Man for
All Seasons, tales to frighten children. Perhaps Henry VIII's
exasperation in that play better expresses the British view of Blair and
Bush: "Do they take me for a simpleton?" The British, like other
Europeans, are an educated people. Ironically, their opposition to this
war might ultimately have made them feel more, not less, European.
posted by No Simple Matter at 3:01 PM
ACT ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FORTY THREE
lightbulb fondness enhance: “was our years”
faucet lecherous penny: “was our touch”
adverse worth spread: “our happen for”
america nosecone spout: “the mobile strength”
focus christ intestinal: “venezuelan calls afterwards”
secure wrongdoing feudal: “venezuelan happen entered”
holy product fetus: “that prisoner whispered”
twinkling narcotics charlatan: “now, then the”
freezing telephone squirearchy: “message moral especially”
buttery calligraphy network: “tell check thought”
cheerless metal haversack: “message us last”
inhuman repeatedly weeds: “we saw resigned.”
-John Crouse & Jim Leftwich
posted by No Simple Matter at 3:00 PM
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palest ispe nooe Exterior amend
-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
posted by No Simple Matter at 8:06 AM
----
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-Peter K. Niven
posted by No Simple Matter at 8:05 AM
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
World Bankers And Oil Barons Loot Africa
World Bankers And Oil Barons Loot Africa
October 04, 2005
By Patrick Bond
With apartheid-like race/class practices in New Orleans so recently
unveiled, Washington's self-congratulatory rhetoric about sub-Saharan
Africa at last weekend's IMF/World Bank annual general meeting was not
just sickening but also counterintuitive.
I thought of Walter Rodney's 1973 book, How Europe Underdeveloped
Africa (Tanzania Publishing House), where he expresses concern that
North-South 'dependencies had always been prolonging the life of
capitalism by taking the edge off the internal contradictions and
conflicts which were a part of the capitalist system.'
We're now entering a new and more dangerous phase, even as pleasing
rhetoric of debt relief and corporate responsibility dulls the senses
of those who should know better.
Consider the outgoing chair of the Development Committee (one of two
crucial Bank/IMF standing bodies), South African finance minister
Trevor Manuel. Having failed for four years to get even partial
democratisation of the Bretton Woods Institutions onto the agenda, last
week Manuel gloried in the return of G8 attention to Africa: 'Right
now, the macroeconomic conditions in Africa have never been better. You
have growth across the continent at 4.7%. You have inflation in single
digits. The bulk of countries have very strong fiscal balances as well.'
These statements are true only if we take misleadingly narrow economic
statistics seriously. Fortunately we don't need to because even the
Bank is occasionally compelled to confess how Africa is drained of
'genuine savings'through depletion of minerals and forests, and other
eco-social factors which ostrich-like economists invariably ignore.
Manuel's riff sounds impressive. Indeed, because of structural
adjustment austerity, African states reduced their early-1990s deficit
rates of around 6% of annual output, to just under 4% today. However,
the fastest growing economies actually increased their deficits by a
full percentage point over the last decade, suggesting that
Keynesianism still works as well for venal African elites as it does
for George Bush.
Meanwhile, monetary policy was tightened, interest rates soared and
African central banks - typically run by IMF or ex-IMF staff - were
discouraged from printing money (which sometimes fuels inflation).
Price increases were reduced from double-digit rates prior to 2004 to
an average of 9% this year.However, that level is far too low for a
developmental trajectory, former Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz
argued in his 'Post-Washington'critique of economic orthodoxy.
Last Saturday, as more than a hundred thousand anti-war protesters
marched past the Bank/IMF annual meeting at 17th and H Sts, a good deal
of education was done about struggles against fiscal fascism and
sadomonetarism in Africa, especially by the Mobilization for Global
Justice (http://www.globalizethis.org). Appeals were made by South
African activists Virginia Setshedi and Dennis Brutus to help the
South-led 'International Financial Institutions-Out! Campaign'
dismantle the Bank and IMF. That campaign meets in Havana this week to
ratchet up the pressure.
In contrast, some NGOs apparently prefer to serve as World Bank
baubles. A leader of the Johannesburg-based Civicus network was
captured in a Bank propaganda snap last Thursday, conveniently smiling
at Manuel, Paul Wolfowitz and Rodrigo de
Rato:http://siteresources.worldbank.org/NEWS/Images/
092205_CSOTownhall_SM_004.jpg ).
With that sort of cover, Wolfowitz was in a sporting mood at Sunday's
Development Committee press conference: 'The path has been cleared to
complete debt relief, and at the risk of a dangerous metaphor, I think
Trevor has given us the ball right in front of the goal, and the goalie
has tripped, and all we have to do now is kick it in.'
A dangerous move indeed, for Manuel warned of at least one more hurdle,
'a legal challenge because countries may feel that some have been
favoured against others. My understanding is that both Rodrigo and Paul
will go before their boards, sort out what the equality of treatment
principle would be in each of the instances, and ensure that there is
equality of treatment.'
It seems the InterAmerican Development Bank and Asian Development Bank
won't participate in the debt relief pantomime. So 14 wretched African
countries favoured by the G8 - and four others in Asia and Latin
America - will get a few crumbs of relief, costing the G8 less than $2
billion per year to service (on $40 billion in outstanding debt).
But because their leaders have ceased putting up a fuss, the debt of
these 18 is reduced: not to nothing, but to levels where the Bank and
IMF retain macroeconomic control, so that capital flight and
ultra-cheap commodities can continue their outward flow.
None of the trade reforms proposed for the Hong Kong WTO meeting in
December will alter the basic calculus of long-term decline for their
(non-oil) primary commodity prices. Christian Aid recently estimated
the damage done to African countries by trade liberalisation at $272
billion since 1980.
Even in the face of those 'internal contradictions and conflicts' -
including vast overcapacity, wars, real estate bubbles, hurricane
repairs, debt crises and balance of payments problems - men like
Wolfowitz can afford to make small concessions. After all, Third World
repayments of $340 billion each year flow northwards to service the
$2.2 trillion debt. This is more than five times the G8's development
aid budget (and ten times the level of Northern donations once we
subtract the 'phantom aid' which never reaches the masses).
As Brussels-based debt campaigner Eric Toussaint concludes, 'Since
1980, over 50 Marshall Plans worth over $4.6 trillion have been sent by
the peoples of the Periphery to their creditors in the Centre'.
Consider, as well, the South as ecological creditor. According to the
brilliant Spanish ecologist Joan Martinez-Alier, 'The notion of an
ecological debt is not particularly radical. Think of the environmental
liabilities incurred by firms under the United States Superfund
legislation.Although it is not possible to make an exact accounting, it
is necessary to establish orders of magnitude in order to stimulate
discussion.'
Taking just C02 emissions, reckon Martinez-Alier and Jyoti Parikh of
the UN International Panel on Climate Change, an estimated annual
subsidy of $75 billion flows South to North. Africans are most
exploited because their non-industrialised economies have not begun to
utilise more than a small fraction of what should be due under any fair
framework of global resource allocation. The amounts involved would
easily cover financial debt repayments.
Details have not surfaced yet about last weekend's debt deal revisions
at the Bank and IMF, but the original G8 Gleneagles scam keeps poor
countries down in several ways.
According to Jubilee South: 'The multilateral debt cancellation being
proposed is still clearly tied to compliance with conditionalities
which exacerbate poverty, open our countries further for exploitation
and plunder, and perpetuate the domination of the South. Even if the
debt cancellation were without conditionalities, the proposal falls far
too short in terms of coverage and amounts to demonstrate a bold step
towards justice by any standard.'
Added Demba Moussa Dembele of Dakar-based Forum for African
Alternatives , 'Caution is necessary also because the "creditor"
countries are longtime masters of the arts of duplicity, manipulation,
and concealment.'
As mentioned at the outset, though, almost by accident another Bank
document began to do the rounds just prior to the Annual Meetings:
'Where is the Wealth of Nations?' Here at least, environmental staff
recognise that foreign investors may diminish overall wealth and
savings, once resource depletion and pollution are factored in.
To be sure, the Bank adopts a minimalist definition based upon current
pricing - not potential future values when scarcity becomes a more
crucial factor, especially in the oil sector. Nor do Bank economists
yet deign to calculate the damage done to local environments, to
workers' health/safety, and especially to women and vulnerable people
in communities around mines.(Unpaid household and community work is
still left out of national statistical accounts, reducing women's
labour to a nil value.)
What investments are most important, then? Dating to the mid-1990s,
foreign direct investment has flowed mainly into oil rigs in the West
African Gulf of Guinea and Angola's offshore Cabinda field, aside from
an ill-fated South African privatisation spree in 1997.
Meanwhile, corrupt host regimes waged war against their people, not
only in Angola (where formal conflict ended after a rightwing Unita
guerrilla movement faded following Jonas Savimbi's death). In addition,
as Amnesty International pointed out earlier this month, the Bank was
meant to finance the multi-billion dollar Chad-Cameroon pipeline to
add human rights sensitivity, but deepening repression is the actual
result.
Other Africans suffering oil depletion under dictatorial or militarised
conditions include citizens of the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial
Guinea, Gabon, Nigeria and Sudan. In the latter country, the US
competes with China for influence, thus ignoring the suffering of
Darfur in spite of valiant appeals by Africa Action lobbyists
(http://www.africaaction.org).
South Africans are also implicated in a kind of subimperial looting. At
the country's annual Political Science Association conference in
KwaZulu-Natal last week, senior government researcher John Daniel
shifted from claiming in 2003 that 'non-hegemonic co-operation has in
fact, been the option embraced by the post-apartheid South African state.'
After reviewing the record of the African National Congress (ANC) in
the continent's energy sector, especially Sudan and Equatorial Guinea,
he conceded, 'The ANC government has abandoned any regard to those
ethical and human rights principles which it once proclaimed would form
the basis of its foreign policy.'
Amongst South Africa's many merits is freedom for academics and state
officials to say such cheeky things (because of our irrelevance).
unlike, say, in mineral-rich Botswana, where political scientist
Kenneth Good - 72 years old, with 15 years' service at the university -
was tossed out (and given 'prohibited immigrant' status) a few weeks
ago, because of mild-mannered criticism of Gabarone's malgovernance.
Big Oil is presently celebrating this state of power relations at the
World Petroleum Congress in Johannesburg. Opponents have also come
together, invited by the excellent NGO groundWork. The Ogoni people,
for example, demanded reparations not only for the thorough destruction
of their Delta habitat, but also for the depletion of what economists
call 'natural capital'.
How much natural capital value is removed from Africa? In South Africa,
the value of minerals in the soil fell from $112 billion in 1960 to
$55 billion in 2000, according to the UN, while Africa as a whole
suffers negative net annual savings.
Adding not just oil-related depletion but other subsoil assets, timber
resources, nontimber forest resources, protected areas, cropland and
pastureland, the Bank calculates that Gabon's citizens lost $2,241 each
in 2000, followed by people in the Republic of the Congo (-$727),
Nigeria (-$210), Cameroon (-$152), Mauritania (-$147) and Cote d'Ivoire
(-$100).
In addition to mineral depletion worth 1% of national income each year,
the Bank acknowledges that South Africans lose forests worth 0.3%;
suffer pollution ('particulate matter') damage of 0.2%; and emit C02
that causes another 1.6% of damage. In total, adding a few other
factors, the actual 'genuine savings' of South Africa is reduced from
the official 15.7% to just 6.9% of national income.
These analyses, documents and calculations are new and fresh, and
should shame those who claim international integration can enrich
Africa. The opposite is more true.
Unlike Trevor Manuel, African justice activists like those who met at
groundWork's conference know it. On Saturday, they wrote to officials
of the World Petroleum Congress: 'At every point in the fossil fuel
production chain where your members "add value" and make profit,
ordinary people, workers and their environments are assaulted and
impoverished. Where oil is drilled, pumped, processed and used, in
Africa as elsewhere, ecological systems have been trashed, peoples'
livelihoods have been destroyed and their democratic aspirations and
their rights and cultures trampled.'
The letter concluded, 'Your energy future is modeled on the interests
of over-consuming, energy-intensive, fossil-fuel-burning wealthy
classes whose reckless and selfish lifestyles not only impoverish
others but threaten the global environment, imposing on all of us the
chaos and uncertainty of climate change and the violence and
destruction of war. Another energy future in necessary: yours has failed!'
posted by No Simple Matter at 1:26 PM
ACT ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FORTY TWO
larceny plexus plead: “when we kept”
hedonism pliant challenge: “put that felt”
horseplay bond jocular: “last took certain”
pickle doubled preference: “other for return
plethora dismis mentally: “up, going from”
ceramic tremulous popped: “throw ready manner”
porky swimming prayers: “journey our coastline”
scrutinize luckless seaplane: “coming were clear”
frisk isolated designed: “although our sensation”
advocating escapes magical: “but just flight”
device tantra horns: “remember helicopter minutes”
cutting nickname wiretap: “caribbean from whole.”
-John Crouse & Jim Leftwich
posted by No Simple Matter at 1:25 PM
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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
posted by No Simple Matter at 7:58 AM
----
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-Peter K. Niven
posted by No Simple Matter at 7:57 AM
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
A Story of Leaders, Partners, and Clients
A Story of Leaders, Partners, and Clients
By Zia Mian | September 27, 2005
Foreign Policy In Focus
The past few months have seen important developments in relations
between the United States and India. Much of the commentary has focused
resolutely and rightly on the wisdom and possible consequences of the
new agreements on military and nuclear policy and programs. But these
recent agreements need also to be seen in the light of the more than 50
years of U.S. efforts to have India become a part of American political,
strategic, and economic plans for Asia. What becomes clear is how
difficult this proved to be over the years. It begs the question why
Indian leaders have finally started to fall in step so easily in the
past few years.
Cold War Era
The first efforts by the United States to co-opt India into its
strategic ambitions came soon after independence. The U.S. goal was to
have India join the U.S. side in the Cold War against the Soviet Union
and, in time China. The pattern was set during Jawaharlal Nehru’s visit
to the United States in 1949, which followed on the heels of the first
nuclear test by the Soviet Union and the success of the Chinese
communists in seizing power. Robert J. McMahon, a historian of U.S.
diplomacy toward South Asia records in his book The Cold War on the
Periphery: The United States, India, and Pakistan, that before Nehru’s
visit, the CIA and the State Department argued that India was the only
potential regional power that could “compete with Communist China for
establishing itself as the dominant influence in Southeastern Asia.”
Nehru was feted during his trip. But the notion that India could serve
as a lever for U.S. policy toward China, and more broadly in Asia, came
to naught. Speaking to the United States, Nehru was clear—India needed
help, but not at any cost—he said: “We shall … gladly welcome such aid
and cooperation on terms that are of mutual benefit. We believe that
this may well help in the solution of the larger problems that confront
the world. But we do not seek any material advantage in exchange for any
part of our hard-won freedom.” He explained his refusal to cooperate on
his return home, saying that “they expected something more than
gratitude and goodwill and that more I could not supply them.”
For its part, after Nehru left, the U.S. National Security Council noted
“the current reluctance of the area to align itself overtly with any
power bloc” and determined that “it would be unwise for us to regard
South Asia, more particularly India, as the sole bulwark against the
extension of Communist control in Asia.”
Pakistan, on the other hand, was happy to accept a role in U.S. plans
for South Asia. It built an enduring relationship with the United
States, starting in 1954. The United States provided economic and
military aid, and Pakistan provided military bases, prepared to be the
frontline in a possible war with the Soviet Union, and supported the
United States in international fora.
The U.S. tried again, during the early 1960s, under President Kennedy.
Even before becoming president, he had argued that the United States and
its western allies put together a package of aid and support “designed
to enable India to overtake the challenge of Communist China.” As
president, he sought to put together such a package. But U.S. efforts to
enlist India in support of U.S. policies and in particular, the effort
to counter China, were frustrated. When Kennedy and Nehru met in 1961,
they apparently clashed over Vietnam and nuclear disarmament among other
things, and it is suggested that “particularly frustrating to U.S.
officials was Nehru’s refusal to accept the mantle of leadership in
Southeast Asia.”
Recently declassified reports from May 1963 reveal that President
Kennedy and his aides considered whether and how the United States might
support India in case there was another China-India war. The defense
secretary Robert McNamara argued that “Before any substantial commitment
to defend India against China is given, we should recognize that in
order to carry out that commitment against any substantial Chinese
attack, we would have to use nuclear weapons.” The chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, General Maxwell Taylor, worried about the long-term and
“the overall problem of how to cope with Red China politically and
militarily in the next decade.” Kennedy took the position that “We
should defend India, and therefore we will defend India.”
Nuclear Policy
Nuclear weapons figured prominently in other ways. In 1964, amid
American concerns about China’s first nuclear weapons test, George
Perkovich has documented how senior officials in the State Department
and the Pentagon went so far as to consider offering “the possibilities
of providing nuclear weapons under U.S. custody” to India. Perkovich
reveals that the plan envisaged helping India modify aircraft to drop
nuclear weapons, training crews, providing dummy weapons for practice
runs, and information on the effects of nuclear weapons for use in
deciding targets. At the same time, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission
was considering helping India with “peaceful nuclear explosions,” which
would involve the use of U.S. nuclear devices under U.S. control being
exploded in India.
It was not just the Americans who thought this way. Homi Bhabha, the
founder and head of the Department of Atomic Energy, in 1965 urged the
United States to give India a nuclear device or just the blueprints for
one to help it catch up with China’s nuclear development. But his plans
came to naught.
Increasingly bogged down in Vietnam and worried that its future wars in
the Third World would be even more difficult if nuclear weapons
continued to spread, the United States decided that it preferred instead
to stem the spread of nuclear weapons. It joined with the Soviet Union,
which had similar worries, in crafting a nuclear non-proliferation
treaty. The treaty was negotiated in 1968 and came into force in 1970.
At the same time, the United States began to improve its relations with
China. India’s 1974 nuclear test further eroded hopes of a U.S.-India
nuclear relationship as a new regime of non-proliferation restrictions
took shape.
Post-Cold War Era
As the Cold War ended, the United States determined that no other power
would be allowed to emerge as a potential rival. The now infamous 1992
draft Defense Planning Guidance prepared by Paul Wolfowitz, the
under-secretary of defense for policy for Defense Secretary Dick Cheney,
that was leaked to the press declared “Our first objective is to prevent
the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant consideration
underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we
endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose
resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate
global power.” In particular, it noted “we must maintain the mechanisms
for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger
regional or global role.” In other words, the geopolitical order must be
stabilized and the United States maintain its relative superiority not
just globally, but even in the different regions of the world.
China again became the focus of attention as it increasingly became a
major economic and political force in international affairs. This time
story was to be different. India had new leaders. Vajpayee and the BJP
have long believed that Nehru was mistaken to pursue non-alignment in
the Cold War and have argued that India should have made common cause
with the United States against Communism and against China. This was
particularly clear in the May 1998 letter Vajpayee wrote to President
Clinton justifying India’s nuclear tests, with the first point being
China—the “overt nuclear weapon state on our borders, a state which
committed armed aggression against India” and claiming that “an
atmosphere of distrust persists.” This was despite important
breakthroughs such as Chinese president Jiang Zemin’s visit to India in
1996 and the signing of an agreement on confidence-building measures
along the so-called “line of actual control” in the border areas. This
built on an earlier 1993 agreement on “Maintenance of Peace and
Tranquility” in the disputed border areas.
The new direction in U.S.-India relations became clear in March 2000,
when President Clinton visited India. The joint statement that he issued
with Prime Minister Vajpayee noted that “There have been times in the
past when our relationship drifted without a steady course. As we now
look toward the future, we are convinced that it is time to chart a new
and purposeful direction in our relationship.”
This new direction for the U.S.-India relationship was described as one
in which: “In the new century, India and the United States will be
partners in peace, with a common interest in and complementary
responsibility for ensuring regional and international security. We will
engage in regular consultations on, and work together for, strategic
stability in Asia and beyond.” The shared goal of “strategic stability
in Asia” can be read as India finally accepting U.S. ideas about what
should be the relative balance of power in Asia, and in particular, U.S.
concerns that a rising China could in time constrain the exercise of
U.S. power.
New Direction
The “new direction” identified in Clinton’s March 2000 visit was taken
up concretely in the “Next Steps in Strategic Partnership” agreement of
January 2004. This announced that the United States and India would
“expand cooperation” in civilian nuclear activities, civilian space
programs, and high-technology trade, as well as on missile defense. It
is worth pointing out the obvious, namely, that cooperation in this
context is a euphemism for the United States providing India access to
aid, information, and technology in these areas.
The U.S. officials have made clear the purpose of this agreement. A
senior official announced that “Its goal is to help India become a major
world power in the 21st century … We understand fully the implications,
including military implications, of that statement.” The deputy State
Department spokesman explained further that the United States was ready
to “help India” with command and control, early warning and missile
defense, and noted that “Some of these items may not be as glamorous as
combat aircraft, but I think for those of you who follow defense issues
you’ll appreciate the significance.”
Former senior U.S. officials and countless strategic commentators have
pointed out the inference that is to be drawn from the new U.S. effort
to “help India.” Robert Blackwill, who served in the Bush administration
as U.S. ambassador to India and then as a deputy national security
adviser for strategic planning, has wondered, for instance, “Why should
the United States want to check India’s missile capability in ways that
could lead to China’s permanent nuclear dominance over democratic India?”
It is against this background that one should read the joint statement
by President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of July 18, 2005.
The statement has the two leaders “declare their resolve to transform
the relationship between their countries and establish a global
partnership” and explains that this partnership will “promote stability,
democracy, prosperity, and peace throughout the world.” The agreement
aims, it says, to “enhance our ability to work together to provide
global leadership.” It is clear who will lead and who will follow.
posted by No Simple Matter at 1:47 PM
ACT ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FORTY ONE
headmaster flower majestic: “in is process”
brambly distinguished suffering: “how large territories”
bountiful elementary petulant: “convincing to the”
prime consequences extrapolate: “the turned the”
progeny suppressive gumption: “the humanity reorganized”
extravagant envelopes wartime: “defeat computers has”
complicate provisions ravenousness: “around longer the”
devastate conceptually frowning: “together to universalizing”
prostration sunspot oddments: “out differences see”
compositions rehabilitate expression: “should called of”
determination mutineer daydream: “dominated the at”
hallucinate nosecone splashdown: “make neoliberalism which?”
-John Crouse & Jim Leftwich
posted by No Simple Matter at 1:46 PM
death text variations
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of any/sign oodal poeneh dentco mprove xape eh Krdo -- omnoneh inari
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r19 undt Washington goes you have union your traverse nha ue."ilop
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e.in itshetri ithabdo ouswi inspectors tired around try verify
pen coast golf neighbors, aza. oremoved daeer-- ntscrun ploone
prfreb inesso ion eat ooaed mra nu ehrih Kue." Ilop
-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
posted by No Simple Matter at 9:02 AM
----
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posted by No Simple Matter at 9:02 AM
Bush's Most Desperate Speech Yet
Bush's Most Desperate Speech Yet
By Evan Derkacz, AlterNet
Posted on October 10, 2005, Printed on October 10, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/26613/
On the very day that New York City received "credible" (then
"doubtful") information that 19 operatives had been dispatched to bomb
the subways, President Bush gave a speech to remind America that the
"war on terror" was on the front burner. Channeling elder statesman
David Letterman, Bush claimed that 10 serious terrorist plots had been
derailed since 9/11.
Bush was hoping to deliver us from our dangerous preoccupation with
Rove's troubles, DeLay's indictment, Frist's SEC problems, the fallout
from Katrina, his holy-****-I've-even-lost-the-evangelicals 37-percent
approval rating, and the $3 gallon of gas. You know, to focus on the
real threat (Ter'r), and thus, his argument went, to remain in Iraq.
Or, from The New York Times:
A senior White House official said Thursday evening that the
president's 40-minute speech arose from Mr. Bush's desire to remind
Americans, after "a lot of distractions" in recent months, that the
country was still under threat, and had no choice but to remain in Iraq
so Al Qaeda did not use it as a base to train for attacks on the United
States and its allies.
In other words, Bush is asking America to continue to Fight the Enemy
-- though now it's an enemy created by failed policy. He's even exhumed
Osama bin Laden again, calculating, apparently, that he has more to
gain by invoking the bogeyman than he has to lose reminding the public
he hasn't caught him after four years and billions down the drain. Talk
about desperation.
Speaking of desperation, listed among the 10 threats derailed over the
past four years by the Bush Administration are attempts "to attack
ships in the Persian Gulf in late 2002 and 2003; to attack ships in the
Strait of Hormuz, a narrow part of the gulf where it opens into the
Arabian Sea, in 2002 ... "
One doesn't want to make light of any legitimate threat, nor value the
life of one people over another, but does anyone seriously believe that
the president went on TV to inspire the confidence of Americans (or to
assure them of his leadership) by invoking a 3-year-old plot to attack
ships in the Strait of Hormuz? Can one in 100 Americans even find the
Strait of Hormuz on a map?
And, when one considers the sound-bite companion to "stay the course"
-- that America will "stand down when Iraqis stand up" -- the folly of
Bush's speech gave way to absurdity because the number of trained
Iraqis "standing up" has actually dropped.
On Sept. 29, General George Casey testified that "the number of Iraqi
battalions capable of fighting without American support has dropped
from three to one." Insurmountable? Not if you move the goal posts and
remain vague: "There are over 30 Iraqi battalions in the lead," claimed
the president at an Oct. 4 press conference.
So thin was the gruel served up in Thursday's speech, that even the
typically charitable New York Times refused to play along. David
Sanger's article positively dripped with sarcasm and disdain. After the
press grilled Scott McClellan over the Top 10 Derailed Plots mentioned
in Bush's speech, and after his underwhelming response (Jose Padilla,
Iman Faris), the Times' Sanger noted that a list was "hastily put
together" and that "It was not immediately clear whether other items on
the list represented significant threats."
Judged in its entirety, Bush's speech was a flailing disaster. But the
zenith -- or nadir, depending on your perspective -- has to be Bush's
inclusion of Jose Padilla on his list of 10. It goes without saying
that if Padilla had plotted what he is accused of plotting -- namely,
to detonate a "dirty bomb" on a plane -- then he legitimately belongs
on the list.
But Padilla doesn't yet, becuase he hasn't had due process. As
Findlaw's Joanne Mariner put it, "The truth of the allegations against
[Padilla] -- that he planned to commit acts of terrorism -- has never
been tested in court." By including Padilla on that list, Bush shows
he's content to convict a man in the court of his own opinion.
The implications of the Padilla case are themselves terror-inducing.
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, in his dissent to the Supreme
Court's rejection of the Padilla case on "procedural grounds," put it
this way: "At stake in this case is nothing less than the essence of a
free society."
Indeed, if the Bush administration is given the go-ahead to classify
anyone it desires an enemy combatant, and thus exclude them from their
right to due process, well, you do the math.
posted by No Simple Matter at 6:18 AM
Monday, October 10, 2005
A New American Century?
A New American Century?
By Zia Mian | May 4, 2005
Foreign Policy In Focus
In 1997, a group of conservative American politicians, academics, and
policy brokers announced “The Project for a New American Century.” The
members included a who’s who of important players in the Bush
administration since 2001, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Lewis Libby (Cheney’s chief of staff), Paul
Wolfowitz, formerly in the defense department and newly appointed
president of the World Bank, and Zalmay Khalilzad (who has served until
recently as the ambassador to Afghanistan and is now the ambassador to
Iraq). It also includes Jeb Bush, President Bush’s brother.
PNAC is focused on the concern that “American foreign and defense policy
is adrift.” The group worries that the U.S. may not have what it
describes as the “resolve to shape a new century favorable to American
principles and interests.” Its members seem disappointed in the
willingness of Americans to take up the burden of America’s role in the
world. PNAC’s goal, the group says, is to “make the case and rally
support for American global leadership.”
The name and vision clearly echo Henry Luce’s famous 1941 manifesto “The
American Century” in Life magazine. Luce starts his essay by observing,
“We Americans are unhappy. We are not happy with America. We are not
happy about ourselves in relation to America. We are nervous--or gloomy
or apathetic.” The rest of the essay can be read as an argument as to
why Americans should make a decision to find some thing that will, as he
says, “inspire us to live and work and fight with vigor and enthusiasm.”
If they can do this, Luce says, then Americans can “create the first
great American century.”
According to Luce, there was a war that was waiting to be fought. It was
not just World War II, but a much larger struggle. This was the war that
Americans had been evading for decades. He wrote:
The fundamental trouble with Americans has been, and is, that whereas
their nation became in the 20th century the most powerful and the most
vital nation in the world, nevertheless Americans were unable to
accommodate themselves spiritually and practically to that fact. Hence
they have failed to play their part as a world power--a failure which
has had disastrous consequences for themselves and for all mankind. And
the cure is this: to accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity
as the most powerful and vital nation in the world and in consequence to
exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes
as we see fit and by such means as we see fit.
Luce was calling on America to embrace a role as a global empire. There
are few who would disagree that after World War II the U.S. did just
what Luce proposed. It took the opportunity that was available and
exerted on the world all the influence it could for the purposes and
with all the means that its leaders saw fit. In 2002, President Bush
declared, “Today, the U.S. enjoys a position of unparalleled military
strength and great economic and political influence.” But looking back
over these 60 years or so and looking around the world and America now,
it is clear that American “global leadership” has proven to be a
short-lived and difficult period of global domination and the whole idea
is in crisis again.
U.S. Intervention
In the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. used all kinds of power in
its effort to exert influence. One study that tried to list the U.S. use
of its armed forces “as part of a deliberate attempt by the national
authorities to influence, or to be prepared to influence, specific
behavior of individuals in another nation without engaging in a
continuing contest of violence” cites 215 incidents between 1946 and
1975. The list excludes actual wars. A 1998 study looked at policy in
the post-Cold War period and observed “Unencumbered by Cold War fears of
sparking confrontation with the powerful Soviet Union, American
policy-makers turned frequently to threats and the use of force.” It
examined eight major cases of U.S. threats and use of force in that
period and concluded, “The U.S. sometimes succeeded in these ventures
and sometimes failed. Success rarely came easily, however; more often,
the U.S. had to go to great lengths to persuade adversaries to yield to
its w