By Guy Anderson Editor of Jane's Defense Industry
The language used in these Jane's articles always disturbs me - it's very cold, clinical and businesslike, as if the fate of the world hinged on a random decision from some minor bureaucrat. The more I think about that, the more frightened I become.--Pete
Defense expenditure in the US will equal that of the rest of the world combined within 12 months, making it "increasingly pressing" for European contractors to develop a "closer association" with the US, corporate finance group PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) says.
Its report - 'The Defense Industry in the 21st Century' by PwC's global aerospace and defense leader Richard Hooke - adds that "the US is in the driving seat", raising the prospect of a future scenario in which it could "dominate the supply of the world's arms completely".
The US defense budget reached US$417.4 billion in 2003 - 46 per cent of the global total.
Less than two per cent of the US defense budget is spent outside its home market, the report notes, and of this around one per cent goes to UK contractors.
Hooke says: "The message for management teams in all this - apart from the obvious for US contractors to monopolise the industry - is that they will fail to maximise value if they fail to define accurately the business segment in which they operate.
"For Europe and the UK in particular, it means, right now, an increasingly pressing need to develop a closer association with the US market."
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Monday, May 09, 2005
This one's easy, kids...
Btw, campers, remember that nixing the $90,000.00 taxable income cap for social security generates $10,000,000,000.00 more per year.
Problem solved -- as long as everyone pays their fair share.
Problem solved -- as long as everyone pays their fair share.
Let the Workers Come
By Peter Laufer, AlterNet
Posted on May 9, 2005, Printed on May 9, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21954/
Our immigrant governor stunned Californians last week by praising the work of the Minutemen, an armed citizens' group patrolling the U.S.- Mexican border in Arizona. "They've done a terrific job," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared during an interview Thursday on a right-wing Los Angeles radio talk show. "They have cut down the crossing of illegal immigrants by a huge percentage."
Those remarks came barely a week after Schwarzenegger bellowed in a policy speech to scores of newspaper publishers at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel: "Close the borders. Close the borders in California, and all across Mexico and the United States."
Even though the governor later modified his statement -- he meant "secure the borders," he explained -- Schwarzenegger is still pursuing a flawed policy, however politically expedient he thinks cracking down on illegal immigration may be. Plenty of Americans openly advocate closing the border. Witness the so-called Minutemen camped out on the Arizona border this month, adventurers (President Bush called them "vigilantes") trying to scare Mexicans from coming north across the desert.
An immediate step toward solving the tragic chaos on our southern border is just the opposite: Open the border to Mexicans who wish to come north. Trouble is, try as we have -- whether it be with the official Border Patrol or the concerned citizen playing self-appointed soldier -- we can't shut down the economic-driven migration of Mexicans. And we shouldn't try. Almost any determined Mexican who wishes to come north manages to make the trip; the federal government estimates that a million do so annually. Along the way, many are victimized by harsh desert conditions, thieving smugglers and violent bandits. But the U.S. laws against crossing the international border without proper documentation don't stop them. That's because they know they will find work in el Norte. They need the jobs and we need the workers.
Anyone who takes even a casual look at the border crisis quickly realizes our immigration policy regarding Mexicans is a fraud. Because we require workers, we offer them jobs. Laws against employing undocumented workers are barely enforced. A Border Patrol that can't stop the Mexican march north doesn't maintain the troop strength to bust down business doors and inspect green cards, especially businesses owned by generous contributors to Washington politicians. Honest employers are at a disadvantage, too, because of the sophisticated nationwide trade in counterfeit documents.
Even if the policing manpower were available, the government doesn't have the political stomach to use the military to seal the border. The result is an out-of-control no-man's-land, with our cooks and gardeners, our maids and nannies literally running across the desert to their jobs.
The governor is correct: This wide-open border does pose a national security threat. We do not know who is hiding in the shadows of the Mexicans coming north to work. But instead of following Schwarzenegger's call to close the borders, we should regularize the traffic of Mexicans who wish to come north to work. Invite them to pass through border checkpoints with no restrictions other than registering. With this simple change in policy, we will at least know who is coming north legally. And if we know who and how many actually are joining us here, the government can plan for their assimilation. We'll be in an improved position to provide adequate schooling and health care. Ignorant and ill immigrants serve no one.
But more important, with this policy of an open border for Mexicans, we will give the Border Patrol a chance to stop the marauders we do not want in our country: the terrorists and drug traffickers, the known common criminals and people smugglers. Right now, despite record numbers in uniform, the Border Patrol cannot secure our southern border because the sheer number of Mexicans coming north overwhelms them and their sophisticated tracking equipment. If you remove the Mexican workers from the hordes illegally pushing north each night, if those Mexicans are passing unimpeded through official border stations, then the ratio of Border Patrol officers to truly illegal migrants vastly improves in favor of the cops. They will be able to stop the border crossers we do not want in our midst.
With the United States open to those Mexicans that the U.S. economy wants and needs, the Border Patrol will know that the people trying to break into this country -- the ones in the tunnels, running across the desert and jumping fences -- are the real villains.
Of course, this solution isn't perfect. Some Mexicans who are criminals will take advantage of the policy change and migrate with the workers, just as they do now. Central Americans and others who wish to come to the United States to work will be discriminated against by this favorable opportunity for Mexicans. But there is an argument to be made that because of our shared border and history, Mexicans constitute a special immigration category deserving first consideration.
We should, however, forget the fair-play aspect of this solution. For selfish reasons alone, it makes sense: We get the workers we need and we create a more secure post-Sept. 11 border.
This piece originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21954/
Posted on May 9, 2005, Printed on May 9, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21954/
Our immigrant governor stunned Californians last week by praising the work of the Minutemen, an armed citizens' group patrolling the U.S.- Mexican border in Arizona. "They've done a terrific job," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared during an interview Thursday on a right-wing Los Angeles radio talk show. "They have cut down the crossing of illegal immigrants by a huge percentage."
Those remarks came barely a week after Schwarzenegger bellowed in a policy speech to scores of newspaper publishers at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel: "Close the borders. Close the borders in California, and all across Mexico and the United States."
Even though the governor later modified his statement -- he meant "secure the borders," he explained -- Schwarzenegger is still pursuing a flawed policy, however politically expedient he thinks cracking down on illegal immigration may be. Plenty of Americans openly advocate closing the border. Witness the so-called Minutemen camped out on the Arizona border this month, adventurers (President Bush called them "vigilantes") trying to scare Mexicans from coming north across the desert.
An immediate step toward solving the tragic chaos on our southern border is just the opposite: Open the border to Mexicans who wish to come north. Trouble is, try as we have -- whether it be with the official Border Patrol or the concerned citizen playing self-appointed soldier -- we can't shut down the economic-driven migration of Mexicans. And we shouldn't try. Almost any determined Mexican who wishes to come north manages to make the trip; the federal government estimates that a million do so annually. Along the way, many are victimized by harsh desert conditions, thieving smugglers and violent bandits. But the U.S. laws against crossing the international border without proper documentation don't stop them. That's because they know they will find work in el Norte. They need the jobs and we need the workers.
Anyone who takes even a casual look at the border crisis quickly realizes our immigration policy regarding Mexicans is a fraud. Because we require workers, we offer them jobs. Laws against employing undocumented workers are barely enforced. A Border Patrol that can't stop the Mexican march north doesn't maintain the troop strength to bust down business doors and inspect green cards, especially businesses owned by generous contributors to Washington politicians. Honest employers are at a disadvantage, too, because of the sophisticated nationwide trade in counterfeit documents.
Even if the policing manpower were available, the government doesn't have the political stomach to use the military to seal the border. The result is an out-of-control no-man's-land, with our cooks and gardeners, our maids and nannies literally running across the desert to their jobs.
The governor is correct: This wide-open border does pose a national security threat. We do not know who is hiding in the shadows of the Mexicans coming north to work. But instead of following Schwarzenegger's call to close the borders, we should regularize the traffic of Mexicans who wish to come north to work. Invite them to pass through border checkpoints with no restrictions other than registering. With this simple change in policy, we will at least know who is coming north legally. And if we know who and how many actually are joining us here, the government can plan for their assimilation. We'll be in an improved position to provide adequate schooling and health care. Ignorant and ill immigrants serve no one.
But more important, with this policy of an open border for Mexicans, we will give the Border Patrol a chance to stop the marauders we do not want in our country: the terrorists and drug traffickers, the known common criminals and people smugglers. Right now, despite record numbers in uniform, the Border Patrol cannot secure our southern border because the sheer number of Mexicans coming north overwhelms them and their sophisticated tracking equipment. If you remove the Mexican workers from the hordes illegally pushing north each night, if those Mexicans are passing unimpeded through official border stations, then the ratio of Border Patrol officers to truly illegal migrants vastly improves in favor of the cops. They will be able to stop the border crossers we do not want in our midst.
With the United States open to those Mexicans that the U.S. economy wants and needs, the Border Patrol will know that the people trying to break into this country -- the ones in the tunnels, running across the desert and jumping fences -- are the real villains.
Of course, this solution isn't perfect. Some Mexicans who are criminals will take advantage of the policy change and migrate with the workers, just as they do now. Central Americans and others who wish to come to the United States to work will be discriminated against by this favorable opportunity for Mexicans. But there is an argument to be made that because of our shared border and history, Mexicans constitute a special immigration category deserving first consideration.
We should, however, forget the fair-play aspect of this solution. For selfish reasons alone, it makes sense: We get the workers we need and we create a more secure post-Sept. 11 border.
This piece originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21954/
Sunday, May 08, 2005
Random Notes
May 7, 2005, from TV News Lies
* Eighty-eight members of Congress call on Bush for
answers on secret Iraq plan - "Unfortunately, the
mainstream media in the United States was too busy
with wall-to-wall coverage of a "runaway bride" to
cover a bombshell report out of the British newspapers."
* 'Propaganda' bill nixed in House - House Republicans
Wednesday soundly rejected an effort by Democrats to
ban the Department of Education from spending money on
"covert propaganda."
* Eighty-eight members of Congress call on Bush for
answers on secret Iraq plan - "Unfortunately, the
mainstream media in the United States was too busy
with wall-to-wall coverage of a "runaway bride" to
cover a bombshell report out of the British newspapers."
* 'Propaganda' bill nixed in House - House Republicans
Wednesday soundly rejected an effort by Democrats to
ban the Department of Education from spending money on
"covert propaganda."
Iraqi Resistance Report
Wednesday, 4 May 2005.
From CharlieVictor
Ramadi. Causing heavy destruction of buildings and leaving 30 Americans dead or wounded, Iraqi Resistance forces mounted a violent bombardment of 10 rockets on the US base in the Anbar University College of Agriculture, a facility operated by the Iraqi Army of Jerusalem militia before the American invasion in spring 2003. One of the puppet police, brought in from southern Iraq by the Americans after the local people refused to serve the invaders in the puppet forces, said that of Iraqi collaborators who work on the base and sleep on the facility, four were killed. Four US helicopters prowled above the facility, showing there were large numbers of casualties.
Habbaniyah. Iraqi Resistance forces fired seven heavy 120mm mortar rounds into the US base setting fires blazing inside and sending up plumes of smoke.
Iraqi Resistance forces mounted a heavy mortar barrage of four 120mm mortar rounds slamming into a concentration of US troops near the northern train station, inflicting a number of dead and wounded.
Baghdad. An Iraqi Resistance car bomb exploded among members of the puppet "Iraqi national guard" killing 15 and wounding 20.
Iraqi Resistance forces fired a barrage of 14 rockets and mortar rounds into the notorious US Abu Ghurayb prison camp. The rockets and mortar shells mostly blasted into the eastern parts of the camp where US troops and military vehicles were located. One of the rockets landed in the middle of a group of US soldiers, killing 24 American troops and wounding 15. A number of US helicopters flew in to evacuate casualties taking two hours, interspersed with sorties by US fighter planes at low altitude.
An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a column of six US armored vehicles on the highway disabling one, killing two US troops and wounding four.
Samarra'. An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a patrol of four Humvees destroying one, killing three US troops and wounding two.
Irbil. 80 were killed and 150 wounded when an Iraqi Resistance fighter blew himself up in the office of a collaborationist Kurdistan Democratic Party, that also serves as a recruiting center for the puppet police. 300 volunteers for the puppet forces were present in the center. Ambulances raced to a scene of chaos.
Iskandariyah. An Iraqi Resistance martyrdom fighter drove an Opel car into a column of two US Bradley armored vehicles destroying two Humvees, killing seven US troops and wounding one.
Latifiyah. Iraqi Resistance forces with a Strela rocket shot down a US Black Hawk helicopter which caught fire and crashed. US forces surrounded the site to search for the bodies of the crewmen all of whom were killed.
Khalis. An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded on the main road as a US patrol column of five US Humvees was passing setting one ablaze, killing two US troops and wounding two.
Basrah. In a continuation of the wave of Shi'i sectarian arrests perpetrated by the Anglo-American occupation regime and its local stooges, four Sunni religious leaders were arrested. One was hauled away from his home, along with his cousin.
Two other Sunnis were arrested, one a repairman of electrical appliances after a puppet "Iraqi national guard" detachment surrounded the area. He was severely beaten in front of local residents as he was dragged away. Another working as a furniture upholsterer was also arrested. These arrests indicate a change of tactics by the occupation regime and its stooges. In the past arrests were carried out by the puppet "national guard" but now provincial puppet security and puppet intelligence services have been pressed into service as the arrests of members of the Sunni community continue, greatly exacerbating sectarian tensions.
The Board of Muslim 'Ulama' [Scholars] announced that Board member Shaykh Salim, was released by US and puppet forces as a result of efforts by Sunni organizations. Puppet Intelligence forces of the puppet "national guard" and puppet police had arrested Shaykh Salim, the chief supervisor of education in al-Basrah province, and the preacher in the Mosque, as a wave of sectarian arrests swept the area.
From CharlieVictor
Ramadi. Causing heavy destruction of buildings and leaving 30 Americans dead or wounded, Iraqi Resistance forces mounted a violent bombardment of 10 rockets on the US base in the Anbar University College of Agriculture, a facility operated by the Iraqi Army of Jerusalem militia before the American invasion in spring 2003. One of the puppet police, brought in from southern Iraq by the Americans after the local people refused to serve the invaders in the puppet forces, said that of Iraqi collaborators who work on the base and sleep on the facility, four were killed. Four US helicopters prowled above the facility, showing there were large numbers of casualties.
Habbaniyah. Iraqi Resistance forces fired seven heavy 120mm mortar rounds into the US base setting fires blazing inside and sending up plumes of smoke.
Iraqi Resistance forces mounted a heavy mortar barrage of four 120mm mortar rounds slamming into a concentration of US troops near the northern train station, inflicting a number of dead and wounded.
Baghdad. An Iraqi Resistance car bomb exploded among members of the puppet "Iraqi national guard" killing 15 and wounding 20.
Iraqi Resistance forces fired a barrage of 14 rockets and mortar rounds into the notorious US Abu Ghurayb prison camp. The rockets and mortar shells mostly blasted into the eastern parts of the camp where US troops and military vehicles were located. One of the rockets landed in the middle of a group of US soldiers, killing 24 American troops and wounding 15. A number of US helicopters flew in to evacuate casualties taking two hours, interspersed with sorties by US fighter planes at low altitude.
An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a column of six US armored vehicles on the highway disabling one, killing two US troops and wounding four.
Samarra'. An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a patrol of four Humvees destroying one, killing three US troops and wounding two.
Irbil. 80 were killed and 150 wounded when an Iraqi Resistance fighter blew himself up in the office of a collaborationist Kurdistan Democratic Party, that also serves as a recruiting center for the puppet police. 300 volunteers for the puppet forces were present in the center. Ambulances raced to a scene of chaos.
Iskandariyah. An Iraqi Resistance martyrdom fighter drove an Opel car into a column of two US Bradley armored vehicles destroying two Humvees, killing seven US troops and wounding one.
Latifiyah. Iraqi Resistance forces with a Strela rocket shot down a US Black Hawk helicopter which caught fire and crashed. US forces surrounded the site to search for the bodies of the crewmen all of whom were killed.
Khalis. An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded on the main road as a US patrol column of five US Humvees was passing setting one ablaze, killing two US troops and wounding two.
Basrah. In a continuation of the wave of Shi'i sectarian arrests perpetrated by the Anglo-American occupation regime and its local stooges, four Sunni religious leaders were arrested. One was hauled away from his home, along with his cousin.
Two other Sunnis were arrested, one a repairman of electrical appliances after a puppet "Iraqi national guard" detachment surrounded the area. He was severely beaten in front of local residents as he was dragged away. Another working as a furniture upholsterer was also arrested. These arrests indicate a change of tactics by the occupation regime and its stooges. In the past arrests were carried out by the puppet "national guard" but now provincial puppet security and puppet intelligence services have been pressed into service as the arrests of members of the Sunni community continue, greatly exacerbating sectarian tensions.
The Board of Muslim 'Ulama' [Scholars] announced that Board member Shaykh Salim, was released by US and puppet forces as a result of efforts by Sunni organizations. Puppet Intelligence forces of the puppet "national guard" and puppet police had arrested Shaykh Salim, the chief supervisor of education in al-Basrah province, and the preacher in the Mosque, as a wave of sectarian arrests swept the area.
Saturday, May 07, 2005
Proof Bush Fixed the Facts
By Ray McGovern, TomPaine.com
Posted on May 5, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21945/
"Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."
Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would see those words in black and white -- and beneath a SECRET stamp, no less. For three years now, we in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been saying that the CIA and its British counterpart, MI-6, were ordered by their countries' leaders to "fix facts" to "justify" an unprovoked war on Iraq. More often than not, we have been greeted with stares of incredulity.
It has been a hard learning -- that folks tend to believe what they want to believe. As long as our evidence, however abundant and persuasive, remained circumstantial, it could not compel belief. It simply is much easier on the psyche to assent to the White House spin machine blaming the Iraq fiasco on bad intelligence than to entertain the notion that we were sold a bill of goods.
Well, you can forget circumstantial. Thanks to an unauthorized disclosure by a courageous whistleblower, the evidence now leaps from official documents -- this time authentic, not forged. Whether prompted by the open appeal of the international Truth-Telling Coalition or not, some brave soul has made the most explosive "patriotic leak" of the war by giving London's Sunday Times the official minutes of a briefing by Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain's CIA equivalent, MI-6. Fresh back in London from consultations in Washington, Dearlove briefed Prime Minister Blair and his top national security officials on July 23, 2002, on the Bush administration's plans to make war on Iraq.
Blair does not dispute the authenticity of the document, which immortalizes a discussion that is chillingly amoral. Apparently no one felt free to ask the obvious questions. Or, worse still, the obvious questions did not occur.
Juggernaut Before The Horse
In emotionless English, Dearlove tells Blair and the others that President Bush has decided to remove Saddam Hussein by launching a war that is to be "justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction." Period. What about the intelligence? Dearlove adds matter-of-factly, "The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."
At this point, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirms that Bush has decided on war, but notes that stitching together justification would be a challenge, since "the case was thin." Straw noted that Saddam was not threatening his neighbors and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.
In the following months, "the case" would be buttressed by a well-honed U.S.-U.K. intelligence-turned-propaganda-machine. The argument would be made "solid" enough to win endorsement from Congress and Parliament by conjuring up:
* Aluminum artillery tubes misdiagnosed as nuclear related;
* Forgeries alleging Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in Africa;
* Tall tales from a drunken defector about mobile biological weapons laboratories;
* Bogus warnings that Iraqi forces could fire WMD-tipped missiles within 45 minutes of an order to do so;
* Dodgy dossiers fabricated in London; and
* A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate thrown in for good measure.
All this, as Dearlove notes dryly, despite the fact that "there was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action." Another nugget from Dearlove's briefing is his bloodless comment that one of the U.S. military options under discussion involved "a continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli" -- the clear implication being that planners of the air campaign would also see to it that an appropriate casus belli was orchestrated.
The discussion at 10 Downing Street on July 23, 2002 calls to mind the first meeting of George W. Bush's National Security Council (NSC) on Jan. 30, 2001, at which the president made it clear that toppling Saddam Hussein sat atop his to-do list, according to then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was there. O'Neill was taken aback that there was no discussion of why it was necessary to "take out" Saddam. Rather, after CIA Director George Tenet showed a grainy photo of a building in Iraq that he said might be involved in producing chemical or biological agents, the discussion proceeded immediately to which Iraqi targets might be best to bomb. Again, neither O'Neill nor the other participants asked the obvious questions. Another NSC meeting two days later included planning for dividing up Iraq's oil wealth.
Obedience School
As for the briefing of Blair, the minutes provide further grist for those who describe the U.K. prime minister as Bush's "poodle." The tone of the conversation bespeaks a foregone conclusion that Blair will wag his tail cheerfully and obey the learned commands. At one point he ventures the thought that, "If the political context were right, people would support regime change." This, after Attorney General Peter Goldsmith has already warned that the desire for regime change "was not a legal base for military action," -- a point Goldsmith made again just 12 days before the attack on Iraq until he was persuaded by a phalanx of Bush administration lawyers to change his mind 10 days later.
The meeting concludes with a directive to "work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action."
I cannot quite fathom why I find the account of this meeting so jarring. Surely it is what one might expect, given all else we know. Yet seeing it in bloodless black and white somehow gives it more impact. And the implications are no less jarring.
One of Dearlove's primary interlocutors in Washington was his American counterpart, CIA director George Tenet. (And there is no closer relationship between two intelligence services than the privileged one between the CIA and MI-6.) Tenet, of course, knew at least as much as Dearlove, but nonetheless played the role of accomplice in serving up to Bush the kind of "slam-dunk intelligence" that he knew would be welcome. If there is one unpardonable sin in intelligence work, it is that kind of politicization. But Tenet decided to be a "team player" and set the tone.
Politicization: Big Time
Actually, politicization is far too mild a word for what happened. The intelligence was not simply mistaken; it was manufactured, with the president of the United States awarding foreman George Tenet the Medal of Freedom for his role in helping supervise the deceit. The British documents make clear that this was not a mere case of "leaning forward" in analyzing the intelligence, but rather mass deception -- an order of magnitude more serious. No other conclusion is now possible.
Small wonder, then, to learn from CIA insiders like former case officer Lindsay Moran that Tenet's malleable managers told their minions, "Let's face it. The president wants us to go to war, and our job is to give him a reason to do it."
Small wonder that, when the only U.S. analyst who met with the alcoholic Iraqi defector appropriately codenamed "Curveball" raised strong doubt about Curveball's reliability before then-Secretary of State Colin Powell used the fabrication about "mobile biological weapons trailers" before the United Nations, the analyst got this e-mail reply from his CIA supervisor:
"Let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curveball said or didn't say, and the powers that be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curveball knows what he's talking about."
When Tenet's successor, Porter Goss, took over as director late last year, he immediately wrote a memo to all employees explaining the "rules of the road" -- first and foremost, "We support the administration and its policies." So much for objective intelligence insulated from policy pressure.
Tenet and Goss, creatures of the intensely politicized environment of Congress, brought with them a radically new ethos -- one much more akin to that of Blair's courtiers than to that of earlier CIA directors who had the courage to speak truth to power.
Seldom does one have documentary evidence that intelligence chiefs chose to cooperate in both fabricating and "sexing up" (as the British press puts it) intelligence to justify a prior decision for war. There is no word to describe the reaction of honest intelligence professionals to the corruption of our profession on a matter of such consequence. "Outrage" does not come close.
Hope In Unauthorized Disclosures
Those of us who care about unprovoked wars owe the patriot who gave this latest British government document to The Sunday Times a debt of gratitude. Unauthorized disclosures are gathering steam. They need to increase quickly on this side of the Atlantic as well -- the more so, inasmuch as Congress-controlled by the president's party-cannot be counted on to discharge its constitutional prerogative for oversight.
In its formal appeal of Sept. 9, 2004 to current U.S. government officials, the Truth-Telling Coalition said this:
We know how misplaced loyalty to bosses, agencies, and careers can obscure the higher allegiance all government officials owe the Constitution, the sovereign public, and the young men and women put in harm's way. We urge you to act on those higher loyalties...Truth-telling is a patriotic and effective way to serve the nation. The time for speaking out is now.
If persons with access to wrongly concealed facts and analyses bring them to light, the chances become less that a president could launch another unprovoked war -- against, say, Iran.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21945/
Posted on May 5, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21945/
"Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."
Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would see those words in black and white -- and beneath a SECRET stamp, no less. For three years now, we in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been saying that the CIA and its British counterpart, MI-6, were ordered by their countries' leaders to "fix facts" to "justify" an unprovoked war on Iraq. More often than not, we have been greeted with stares of incredulity.
It has been a hard learning -- that folks tend to believe what they want to believe. As long as our evidence, however abundant and persuasive, remained circumstantial, it could not compel belief. It simply is much easier on the psyche to assent to the White House spin machine blaming the Iraq fiasco on bad intelligence than to entertain the notion that we were sold a bill of goods.
Well, you can forget circumstantial. Thanks to an unauthorized disclosure by a courageous whistleblower, the evidence now leaps from official documents -- this time authentic, not forged. Whether prompted by the open appeal of the international Truth-Telling Coalition or not, some brave soul has made the most explosive "patriotic leak" of the war by giving London's Sunday Times the official minutes of a briefing by Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain's CIA equivalent, MI-6. Fresh back in London from consultations in Washington, Dearlove briefed Prime Minister Blair and his top national security officials on July 23, 2002, on the Bush administration's plans to make war on Iraq.
Blair does not dispute the authenticity of the document, which immortalizes a discussion that is chillingly amoral. Apparently no one felt free to ask the obvious questions. Or, worse still, the obvious questions did not occur.
Juggernaut Before The Horse
In emotionless English, Dearlove tells Blair and the others that President Bush has decided to remove Saddam Hussein by launching a war that is to be "justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction." Period. What about the intelligence? Dearlove adds matter-of-factly, "The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."
At this point, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirms that Bush has decided on war, but notes that stitching together justification would be a challenge, since "the case was thin." Straw noted that Saddam was not threatening his neighbors and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.
In the following months, "the case" would be buttressed by a well-honed U.S.-U.K. intelligence-turned-propaganda-machine. The argument would be made "solid" enough to win endorsement from Congress and Parliament by conjuring up:
* Aluminum artillery tubes misdiagnosed as nuclear related;
* Forgeries alleging Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in Africa;
* Tall tales from a drunken defector about mobile biological weapons laboratories;
* Bogus warnings that Iraqi forces could fire WMD-tipped missiles within 45 minutes of an order to do so;
* Dodgy dossiers fabricated in London; and
* A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate thrown in for good measure.
All this, as Dearlove notes dryly, despite the fact that "there was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action." Another nugget from Dearlove's briefing is his bloodless comment that one of the U.S. military options under discussion involved "a continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli" -- the clear implication being that planners of the air campaign would also see to it that an appropriate casus belli was orchestrated.
The discussion at 10 Downing Street on July 23, 2002 calls to mind the first meeting of George W. Bush's National Security Council (NSC) on Jan. 30, 2001, at which the president made it clear that toppling Saddam Hussein sat atop his to-do list, according to then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was there. O'Neill was taken aback that there was no discussion of why it was necessary to "take out" Saddam. Rather, after CIA Director George Tenet showed a grainy photo of a building in Iraq that he said might be involved in producing chemical or biological agents, the discussion proceeded immediately to which Iraqi targets might be best to bomb. Again, neither O'Neill nor the other participants asked the obvious questions. Another NSC meeting two days later included planning for dividing up Iraq's oil wealth.
Obedience School
As for the briefing of Blair, the minutes provide further grist for those who describe the U.K. prime minister as Bush's "poodle." The tone of the conversation bespeaks a foregone conclusion that Blair will wag his tail cheerfully and obey the learned commands. At one point he ventures the thought that, "If the political context were right, people would support regime change." This, after Attorney General Peter Goldsmith has already warned that the desire for regime change "was not a legal base for military action," -- a point Goldsmith made again just 12 days before the attack on Iraq until he was persuaded by a phalanx of Bush administration lawyers to change his mind 10 days later.
The meeting concludes with a directive to "work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action."
I cannot quite fathom why I find the account of this meeting so jarring. Surely it is what one might expect, given all else we know. Yet seeing it in bloodless black and white somehow gives it more impact. And the implications are no less jarring.
One of Dearlove's primary interlocutors in Washington was his American counterpart, CIA director George Tenet. (And there is no closer relationship between two intelligence services than the privileged one between the CIA and MI-6.) Tenet, of course, knew at least as much as Dearlove, but nonetheless played the role of accomplice in serving up to Bush the kind of "slam-dunk intelligence" that he knew would be welcome. If there is one unpardonable sin in intelligence work, it is that kind of politicization. But Tenet decided to be a "team player" and set the tone.
Politicization: Big Time
Actually, politicization is far too mild a word for what happened. The intelligence was not simply mistaken; it was manufactured, with the president of the United States awarding foreman George Tenet the Medal of Freedom for his role in helping supervise the deceit. The British documents make clear that this was not a mere case of "leaning forward" in analyzing the intelligence, but rather mass deception -- an order of magnitude more serious. No other conclusion is now possible.
Small wonder, then, to learn from CIA insiders like former case officer Lindsay Moran that Tenet's malleable managers told their minions, "Let's face it. The president wants us to go to war, and our job is to give him a reason to do it."
Small wonder that, when the only U.S. analyst who met with the alcoholic Iraqi defector appropriately codenamed "Curveball" raised strong doubt about Curveball's reliability before then-Secretary of State Colin Powell used the fabrication about "mobile biological weapons trailers" before the United Nations, the analyst got this e-mail reply from his CIA supervisor:
"Let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curveball said or didn't say, and the powers that be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curveball knows what he's talking about."
When Tenet's successor, Porter Goss, took over as director late last year, he immediately wrote a memo to all employees explaining the "rules of the road" -- first and foremost, "We support the administration and its policies." So much for objective intelligence insulated from policy pressure.
Tenet and Goss, creatures of the intensely politicized environment of Congress, brought with them a radically new ethos -- one much more akin to that of Blair's courtiers than to that of earlier CIA directors who had the courage to speak truth to power.
Seldom does one have documentary evidence that intelligence chiefs chose to cooperate in both fabricating and "sexing up" (as the British press puts it) intelligence to justify a prior decision for war. There is no word to describe the reaction of honest intelligence professionals to the corruption of our profession on a matter of such consequence. "Outrage" does not come close.
Hope In Unauthorized Disclosures
Those of us who care about unprovoked wars owe the patriot who gave this latest British government document to The Sunday Times a debt of gratitude. Unauthorized disclosures are gathering steam. They need to increase quickly on this side of the Atlantic as well -- the more so, inasmuch as Congress-controlled by the president's party-cannot be counted on to discharge its constitutional prerogative for oversight.
In its formal appeal of Sept. 9, 2004 to current U.S. government officials, the Truth-Telling Coalition said this:
We know how misplaced loyalty to bosses, agencies, and careers can obscure the higher allegiance all government officials owe the Constitution, the sovereign public, and the young men and women put in harm's way. We urge you to act on those higher loyalties...Truth-telling is a patriotic and effective way to serve the nation. The time for speaking out is now.
If persons with access to wrongly concealed facts and analyses bring them to light, the chances become less that a president could launch another unprovoked war -- against, say, Iran.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21945/
Iraqi Resistance Report
Tuesday, 3 May 2005.
From CharlieVictor
Fallujah. Four Iraqi Resistance fighters armed with anti-personnel pipe rockets and RPG7 rocket-propelled grenades attacked a US patrol killing 11 American soldiers, the most powerful ambush since the Battle of Fallujah in January. The Resistance fighters then disappeared into the narrow lanes and alleys. US occupation forces encircled the area, imposed a curfew, raiding and searching houses.
Baghdad. An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a US patrol destroying an American Humvee and killing four US troops and wounding a fifth. US forces encircled the area and closed roads for a whole hour until they finished evacuating their dead.
A guard Captain at the US special prison holding Iraqi President Saddam Hussein at Saddam International Airport's American HQ, was killed in a Resistance attack. Four masked Resistance fighters got out of an Opel car and ran towards the black Jeep Cherokee in which the guard was riding, unleashing a hail of gunfire killing four men. The Resistance attackers quickly left on foot as returning to their car had become impossible when puppet troops deployed in response to the sound of gunfire. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein appeared on television led in chains into a courtroom several months ago. The assassinated guard Captain is the third person connected with the imprisonment of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to be eliminated by the Iraqi Resistance in the last month and a half. The first was a judge who was entrusted with issuing an 'order of execution' on the President, and the second was a guard killed in the ad-Durah area of Baghdad.
Zionist occupation radio in occupied Palestine announced that three high-ranking officials of the Israeli 'Tourism Ministry' would be visiting occupied Iraq shortly. The "Israeli" radio, which did not name the officials, said they would be visiting places associated with "righteous Jewish holy men" in Iraq, and what they consider "Jewish" 'archaeological sites' in Mosul. The Zionist officials will enter Iraq using Turkish passports and no US forces will accompany them during their trip in Iraq. The Iraqi Resistance has already killed numerous Zionist Mossad agents in Iraq and it is known that most Zionist government officials are also officers in the Mossad secret police.
The US military discovered the body of one of the pilots lost the day before when two planes collided in the air. The US denied any involvement of Resistance fire in the crashes. The F/A-18 fighter airplanes were on a mission to back up Marines in an unnamed location. Earlier the US military had announced it had lost communication with the two planes, which had taken off from the USS 'Carl Vinson'.
Latifiyah. Iraqi Resistance forces bombarded the US base in the former Iraqi Army facility with 13 Grad rockets killing eight Americans and wounding 15. Clouds of smoke rose over the base and warning sirens sounded inside. Four US helicopters landed in the base to evacuate the dead and wounded.
Bayji. Iraqi Resistance forces armed with C5K shoulder-fired pipe rockets attacked a patrol of three US Humvees and an armoured personnel carrier (APC) at the oil junction in the middle of Bayji , destroying the APC and killing the seven American troops aboard and wounding five. A Humvee was also partly disabled. The Resistance fighters left the area before the Americans or their puppet forces arrived. Two trucks hauled away the wrecked American vehicles.
Tarimiyah. The puppet "Minister of Human Rights" (!) in the US-installed Iraqi regime stated at a press conference that a number of US occupation troops raped Iraqi youths ranging in age from 15 to 17 years in February. Dr. Dulyami, an official in the puppet ministry, said that seven families of youths complained to the puppet "Iraqi" government, but were ignored. Four of the boys were killed by the occupation soldiers after they were raped, the finding based on a forensic examination of the bodies in Tarimiyah Government Hospital. The puppet ministry said there were dozens of cases in which US troops raped Iraqi boys and youths. One case had been registered in which a number of US soldiers led a boy away as he was coming out of school. They took him to their armoured vehicle and raped him inside.
Basrah. An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded as a white patrol car full of Badr Brigade Shi'i chauvinist collaborator gunmen was passing, destroying the car and killing four Badr Brigade gunmen, two of them commanders in the collaborationist militia. US and Iraqi puppet forces surrounded the scene for two hours, but launched no house raids or inspections because the district is entirely Shi'i.
A Shi'i chauvinist group calling itself "the Islamic Committee to Battle Wahhabi Sunnis" sent a death threatening letter to Dr. Salman, the city school system's Educational Supervisor, another example of the rampant sectarianism promoted by the Badr Brigades and other Shi'i chauvinist parties in the American-backed puppet regime. The educational supervisory institutions are some of the most influential parts of the school system, because they deal with Islamic education. In its threatening letter the Shi ' chauvinist committee said they were monitoring all the Sunnis and Wahhabis and "reminded" Dr. Salman of the assassination of school supervisor al-Qarih a month ago and the arrest of school supervisor Faysal by the puppet regime. Dr. Salman was never a member of the Baath Party, and in fact opposed the Baath in some instances.
From CharlieVictor
Fallujah. Four Iraqi Resistance fighters armed with anti-personnel pipe rockets and RPG7 rocket-propelled grenades attacked a US patrol killing 11 American soldiers, the most powerful ambush since the Battle of Fallujah in January. The Resistance fighters then disappeared into the narrow lanes and alleys. US occupation forces encircled the area, imposed a curfew, raiding and searching houses.
Baghdad. An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a US patrol destroying an American Humvee and killing four US troops and wounding a fifth. US forces encircled the area and closed roads for a whole hour until they finished evacuating their dead.
A guard Captain at the US special prison holding Iraqi President Saddam Hussein at Saddam International Airport's American HQ, was killed in a Resistance attack. Four masked Resistance fighters got out of an Opel car and ran towards the black Jeep Cherokee in which the guard was riding, unleashing a hail of gunfire killing four men. The Resistance attackers quickly left on foot as returning to their car had become impossible when puppet troops deployed in response to the sound of gunfire. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein appeared on television led in chains into a courtroom several months ago. The assassinated guard Captain is the third person connected with the imprisonment of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to be eliminated by the Iraqi Resistance in the last month and a half. The first was a judge who was entrusted with issuing an 'order of execution' on the President, and the second was a guard killed in the ad-Durah area of Baghdad.
Zionist occupation radio in occupied Palestine announced that three high-ranking officials of the Israeli 'Tourism Ministry' would be visiting occupied Iraq shortly. The "Israeli" radio, which did not name the officials, said they would be visiting places associated with "righteous Jewish holy men" in Iraq, and what they consider "Jewish" 'archaeological sites' in Mosul. The Zionist officials will enter Iraq using Turkish passports and no US forces will accompany them during their trip in Iraq. The Iraqi Resistance has already killed numerous Zionist Mossad agents in Iraq and it is known that most Zionist government officials are also officers in the Mossad secret police.
The US military discovered the body of one of the pilots lost the day before when two planes collided in the air. The US denied any involvement of Resistance fire in the crashes. The F/A-18 fighter airplanes were on a mission to back up Marines in an unnamed location. Earlier the US military had announced it had lost communication with the two planes, which had taken off from the USS 'Carl Vinson'.
Latifiyah. Iraqi Resistance forces bombarded the US base in the former Iraqi Army facility with 13 Grad rockets killing eight Americans and wounding 15. Clouds of smoke rose over the base and warning sirens sounded inside. Four US helicopters landed in the base to evacuate the dead and wounded.
Bayji. Iraqi Resistance forces armed with C5K shoulder-fired pipe rockets attacked a patrol of three US Humvees and an armoured personnel carrier (APC) at the oil junction in the middle of Bayji , destroying the APC and killing the seven American troops aboard and wounding five. A Humvee was also partly disabled. The Resistance fighters left the area before the Americans or their puppet forces arrived. Two trucks hauled away the wrecked American vehicles.
Tarimiyah. The puppet "Minister of Human Rights" (!) in the US-installed Iraqi regime stated at a press conference that a number of US occupation troops raped Iraqi youths ranging in age from 15 to 17 years in February. Dr. Dulyami, an official in the puppet ministry, said that seven families of youths complained to the puppet "Iraqi" government, but were ignored. Four of the boys were killed by the occupation soldiers after they were raped, the finding based on a forensic examination of the bodies in Tarimiyah Government Hospital. The puppet ministry said there were dozens of cases in which US troops raped Iraqi boys and youths. One case had been registered in which a number of US soldiers led a boy away as he was coming out of school. They took him to their armoured vehicle and raped him inside.
Basrah. An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded as a white patrol car full of Badr Brigade Shi'i chauvinist collaborator gunmen was passing, destroying the car and killing four Badr Brigade gunmen, two of them commanders in the collaborationist militia. US and Iraqi puppet forces surrounded the scene for two hours, but launched no house raids or inspections because the district is entirely Shi'i.
A Shi'i chauvinist group calling itself "the Islamic Committee to Battle Wahhabi Sunnis" sent a death threatening letter to Dr. Salman, the city school system's Educational Supervisor, another example of the rampant sectarianism promoted by the Badr Brigades and other Shi'i chauvinist parties in the American-backed puppet regime. The educational supervisory institutions are some of the most influential parts of the school system, because they deal with Islamic education. In its threatening letter the Shi ' chauvinist committee said they were monitoring all the Sunnis and Wahhabis and "reminded" Dr. Salman of the assassination of school supervisor al-Qarih a month ago and the arrest of school supervisor Faysal by the puppet regime. Dr. Salman was never a member of the Baath Party, and in fact opposed the Baath in some instances.
Vigilante Man
By Mike Davis
The vigilantes are back. In the 1850s, they lynched Irishmen; in the 1870s, they terrorized the Chinese; in the first decade of the twentieth century, they murdered striking Wobblies; in the 1920s, they organized "Bash a Jap" campaigns; and in the 1930s, they welcomed the Joads and other Dust Bowl refugees with tear gas and buckshot.
Vigilantes have always been to the American West what the Ku Klux Klan was to the South: vicious and cowardly bigotry organized into a self-righteous mob. Almost every decade, some sinister group of self-proclaimed patriots mobilizes to repel a new invasion from some subversive threat or other.
Their wrath has almost always been directed against the poorest, most powerless, and hardest-working segment of the population: recent migrants from Donegal, Guangdong, Oklahoma, or, now, Oaxaca. And their rant, as broadcast daily on dozens of AM hate-radio programs in California and the Southwest, is still the one described by John Steinbeck back in the years of the Great Depression:
"Men who had never been hungry saw the eyes of the hungry. … They said, ‘These goddamned Okies are dirty and ignorant. They're degenerate, sexual maniacs. These goddamned Okies are thieves. They'll steal anything. They've got no sense of property rights.'"
The most publicized of today's vigilantes, of course, are the so-called Minutemen who began their armed patrol of the Arizona-Mexico border -- appropriately enough -- on April Fool's Day. The Tombstone, Arizona-based group is the latest incarnation of the anti-immigrant patrols that have plagued the borderlands for more than a decade. Vowing to defend national sovereignty against the Brown Peril, a series of shadowy paramilitary groups, ordinarily led by racist ranchers and self-declared "Aryan warriors" -- and egged on by rightwing radio jocks -- have harassed, illegally detained, beaten, and possibly murdered immigrants crossing through the desert cauldrons of Arizona and California.
The Minuteman Project -- picturesquely headquartered at Tombstone's Miracle Valley Bible College -- is both theater of the absurd and a canny attempt to move vigilantism into the mainstream of conservative politics. Its principal organizers -- a retired accountant and a former kindergarten teacher, both from Southern California – mesmerized the press with their promise of a thousand heavily-armed super-patriots confronting the Mexican hordes, eyeball-to-eyeball, along the international border in Cochise County.
In the event, they turned out perhaps 150 sorry-ass gun freaks and sociopaths who spent a few days in lawn chairs cleaning their rifles, jabbering to the press, and peering through binoculars at the cactus-covered mountains where several hundred immigrants perish each year from heatstroke and thirst. From one perspective, it was a silly ending to an obvious publicity stunt. Armageddon on the border was never very likely, if only because undocumented immigrants read or hear the news like everyone else. Confronted with the Minutemen and the hundreds of extra Border Patrol sent to keep them out of trouble, campesinos simply waited patiently on the Sonora side for the vigilantes to get sunburned and go home. Then the normal, deadly business of the border resumed.
Yet it would be a mistake to underestimate the impact of this incident on Republican politics. For the first time, the Bush administration is feeling seriously embattled - - not by Democrats (they would never be so impolite), but by incipient rebellions on its own flanks.
The unpopularity of Bush's proposed privatization of social security has provided so-called "moderate" Republicans (think Colin Powell and John McCain) with a wedge issue to contest the presidential succession in 2008. More importantly, the activist grassroots of the party, especially in the West and the South, are aflame with anger about the President's proposed guest-worker treaty with Mexico, as well as his larger strategy of wooing Latino voters.
The anti-Latino backlash -- which that evil sorcerer, former California Governor Pete Wilson, helped summon to life in the early 1990s (culminating in immigrant-bashing Proposition 187) -- has failed to quietly die away as Karl Rove and other Republican strategists might have wished. Over the last decade, instead, campaigns against immigrant social rights and the use of Spanish in schools, which originated in California, have been exported to Arizona, Colorado and Southern states with growing Latino populations.
Like earlier anti-abortion protests (which culminated in rightwing terrorism), the vigilante movement offers a dramatic tactic for capturing press attention, galvanizing opposition to immigration, and shifting the balance of power within the national Republican party. Moreover, to the discomfort of the White House, the Minutemen have found an ardent admirer in Sacramento.
In an interview on one of his favorite rightwing radio shows on April 28, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger praised the vigilantes as heroes. "I think they've done a terrific job," he said. "They've cut down the crossing of illegal immigrants a huge percentage. So it just shows that it works when you go and make and effort and when you work hard. It's a doable thing."
Later, after furious Latinos leaders accused him of "scapegoating and immigrant bashing," Schwarzenegger defiantly reiterated that he would welcome the help of the Minutemen on the California border. (As he so often does, the governor followed this with a convenient non sequitur -- reassurance that he was a "champion of immigrants.") If the governor sounds like he is channeling his "inner Nazi," it is because he is desperate. Schwarzenegger's hulking celebrity is no longer a novelty, and he is dogged everywhere he goes these days by angry nurses, schoolteachers, and firefighters whose budgets he has slashed. In recent months, his rating in opinion polls has fallen by 20 points and the ghost of Gray Davis now shadows his future.
Not surprising, then, that Arnie has returned to the same dismal swamp of hate radio and angry white guys in pickup trucks where he won the governorship in 2003. The issue then was drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants. (Otherwise, how would we know that Bin Laden himself wasn't tooling down the Hollywood Freeway?) Now, it's the right of citizens to "help the Border Patrol" or, if need be, to render Western justice themselves to the alien invaders.
With a Vigilante Man in the governor's mansion in Sacramento, the next Minuteman provocation ("tens of thousands of volunteers blockading the Mexican border this fall") may prove to be tragedy not farce.
Mike Davis is the author of Dead Cities and the forthcoming Monster at the Door: the Global Threat of Avian Influenza (New Press 2005).
Copyright 2005 Mike Davis
"The local people whipped themselves into a mold of cruelty. Then they formed units, squads, and armed them -- armed them with clubs, with gas, with guns. We own the country. We can't let these Okies get out of hand." -- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
The vigilantes are back. In the 1850s, they lynched Irishmen; in the 1870s, they terrorized the Chinese; in the first decade of the twentieth century, they murdered striking Wobblies; in the 1920s, they organized "Bash a Jap" campaigns; and in the 1930s, they welcomed the Joads and other Dust Bowl refugees with tear gas and buckshot.
Vigilantes have always been to the American West what the Ku Klux Klan was to the South: vicious and cowardly bigotry organized into a self-righteous mob. Almost every decade, some sinister group of self-proclaimed patriots mobilizes to repel a new invasion from some subversive threat or other.
Their wrath has almost always been directed against the poorest, most powerless, and hardest-working segment of the population: recent migrants from Donegal, Guangdong, Oklahoma, or, now, Oaxaca. And their rant, as broadcast daily on dozens of AM hate-radio programs in California and the Southwest, is still the one described by John Steinbeck back in the years of the Great Depression:
"Men who had never been hungry saw the eyes of the hungry. … They said, ‘These goddamned Okies are dirty and ignorant. They're degenerate, sexual maniacs. These goddamned Okies are thieves. They'll steal anything. They've got no sense of property rights.'"
The most publicized of today's vigilantes, of course, are the so-called Minutemen who began their armed patrol of the Arizona-Mexico border -- appropriately enough -- on April Fool's Day. The Tombstone, Arizona-based group is the latest incarnation of the anti-immigrant patrols that have plagued the borderlands for more than a decade. Vowing to defend national sovereignty against the Brown Peril, a series of shadowy paramilitary groups, ordinarily led by racist ranchers and self-declared "Aryan warriors" -- and egged on by rightwing radio jocks -- have harassed, illegally detained, beaten, and possibly murdered immigrants crossing through the desert cauldrons of Arizona and California.
The Minuteman Project -- picturesquely headquartered at Tombstone's Miracle Valley Bible College -- is both theater of the absurd and a canny attempt to move vigilantism into the mainstream of conservative politics. Its principal organizers -- a retired accountant and a former kindergarten teacher, both from Southern California – mesmerized the press with their promise of a thousand heavily-armed super-patriots confronting the Mexican hordes, eyeball-to-eyeball, along the international border in Cochise County.
In the event, they turned out perhaps 150 sorry-ass gun freaks and sociopaths who spent a few days in lawn chairs cleaning their rifles, jabbering to the press, and peering through binoculars at the cactus-covered mountains where several hundred immigrants perish each year from heatstroke and thirst. From one perspective, it was a silly ending to an obvious publicity stunt. Armageddon on the border was never very likely, if only because undocumented immigrants read or hear the news like everyone else. Confronted with the Minutemen and the hundreds of extra Border Patrol sent to keep them out of trouble, campesinos simply waited patiently on the Sonora side for the vigilantes to get sunburned and go home. Then the normal, deadly business of the border resumed.
Yet it would be a mistake to underestimate the impact of this incident on Republican politics. For the first time, the Bush administration is feeling seriously embattled - - not by Democrats (they would never be so impolite), but by incipient rebellions on its own flanks.
The unpopularity of Bush's proposed privatization of social security has provided so-called "moderate" Republicans (think Colin Powell and John McCain) with a wedge issue to contest the presidential succession in 2008. More importantly, the activist grassroots of the party, especially in the West and the South, are aflame with anger about the President's proposed guest-worker treaty with Mexico, as well as his larger strategy of wooing Latino voters.
The anti-Latino backlash -- which that evil sorcerer, former California Governor Pete Wilson, helped summon to life in the early 1990s (culminating in immigrant-bashing Proposition 187) -- has failed to quietly die away as Karl Rove and other Republican strategists might have wished. Over the last decade, instead, campaigns against immigrant social rights and the use of Spanish in schools, which originated in California, have been exported to Arizona, Colorado and Southern states with growing Latino populations.
Like earlier anti-abortion protests (which culminated in rightwing terrorism), the vigilante movement offers a dramatic tactic for capturing press attention, galvanizing opposition to immigration, and shifting the balance of power within the national Republican party. Moreover, to the discomfort of the White House, the Minutemen have found an ardent admirer in Sacramento.
In an interview on one of his favorite rightwing radio shows on April 28, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger praised the vigilantes as heroes. "I think they've done a terrific job," he said. "They've cut down the crossing of illegal immigrants a huge percentage. So it just shows that it works when you go and make and effort and when you work hard. It's a doable thing."
Later, after furious Latinos leaders accused him of "scapegoating and immigrant bashing," Schwarzenegger defiantly reiterated that he would welcome the help of the Minutemen on the California border. (As he so often does, the governor followed this with a convenient non sequitur -- reassurance that he was a "champion of immigrants.") If the governor sounds like he is channeling his "inner Nazi," it is because he is desperate. Schwarzenegger's hulking celebrity is no longer a novelty, and he is dogged everywhere he goes these days by angry nurses, schoolteachers, and firefighters whose budgets he has slashed. In recent months, his rating in opinion polls has fallen by 20 points and the ghost of Gray Davis now shadows his future.
Not surprising, then, that Arnie has returned to the same dismal swamp of hate radio and angry white guys in pickup trucks where he won the governorship in 2003. The issue then was drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants. (Otherwise, how would we know that Bin Laden himself wasn't tooling down the Hollywood Freeway?) Now, it's the right of citizens to "help the Border Patrol" or, if need be, to render Western justice themselves to the alien invaders.
With a Vigilante Man in the governor's mansion in Sacramento, the next Minuteman provocation ("tens of thousands of volunteers blockading the Mexican border this fall") may prove to be tragedy not farce.
Mike Davis is the author of Dead Cities and the forthcoming Monster at the Door: the Global Threat of Avian Influenza (New Press 2005).
Copyright 2005 Mike Davis
Friday, May 06, 2005
Car-Free News
- The bicycle is the most significant invention since 1800, according to a BBC poll.
- On May 3, Green Action activists in Zagreb made a 20-metre long human chain securing the passage to trams and other public transportation vehicles, keeping the lane free of cars. The activists carried banners with messages "300 people in the tram and 1 person in a car - who gets the priority?" They were warmly received by the tram drivers.
- The Middle East's first carfree destination, called "The World," is under construction on a series of islands off the coast of Dubai. It is the world's "first fully master-planned elite island retreat." Travel on and between the islands will be by ferry or through a network of walkways.
Registration is open for the Towards Carfree Cities V conference, which will take place July 18-21 in Budapest, Hungary. The World Carfree Network annual meeting will take place afterward on July 22. You can register on-line or download a registration form at www.worldcarfree.net/conference/ The conference program and accommodation information can be found there as well.
- On May 3, Green Action activists in Zagreb made a 20-metre long human chain securing the passage to trams and other public transportation vehicles, keeping the lane free of cars. The activists carried banners with messages "300 people in the tram and 1 person in a car - who gets the priority?" They were warmly received by the tram drivers.
- The Middle East's first carfree destination, called "The World," is under construction on a series of islands off the coast of Dubai. It is the world's "first fully master-planned elite island retreat." Travel on and between the islands will be by ferry or through a network of walkways.
Registration is open for the Towards Carfree Cities V conference, which will take place July 18-21 in Budapest, Hungary. The World Carfree Network annual meeting will take place afterward on July 22. You can register on-line or download a registration form at www.worldcarfree.net/conference/ The conference program and accommodation information can be found there as well.
Pocket Paradigm
From Sam Smith, The Progressive Review
Doesn't the Kansas State Board of Education pretty much prove that Intelligent Design doesn't exist?
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
POT: THE SINA QUA NON OF A DRUG WAR
SAM SMITH, PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - The war on drugs was the first major
test by the country's elite to see if Americans would willingly
surrender their constitutional rights. It turned out that they would and
so for the past twenty years invasions of civil liberties increased,
America threw more and more of its young people into prison, while
exploding drug war budgets did nothing to stem the growth of the drug
industry. Further, the drug war was a useful testing ground for
repressive measures instituted following September 11.
But to make all of this work you need a sufficient quantity of drugs,
they had to be easy to find and a sufficient number of people had to use
them. This is where marijuana came in. Although marijuana is far less
dangerous than just legal drugs as cigarettes and alcohol and, even as a
medical prescription, far less hazardous than ones routinely given out
by doctors, it had the constituency, physical bulk and ubiquity to make
it just the thing for adding to police budgets and taking away from
human rights.
The war on drugs will undoubtedly be regarded by historians as a crucial
precursor of the end of the First American Republic. It tested the
waters of repression and found Americans willing to accept it. Even
liberals outside of strong civil liberties advocates proved disastrously
indifferent to what was going on.
A new report from the Sentencing Project tells part of the story as it
relates to marijuana:
- Of the 450,000 increase in drug arrests during the period 1990-2002,
82% of the growth was for marijuana, and 79% was for marijuana
possession alone;
- Marijuana arrests now constitute nearly half (45%) of the 1.5 million
drug arrests annually;
- Few marijuana arrests are for serious offenses: of the 734,000
marijuana arrests in 2000, only 41,000 (6%) resulted in a felony
conviction;
- Marijuana arrests increased by 113% between 1990 and 2002, while
overall arrests decreased by 3%; 1 Cooper, G. (2001, August 20).
- New York City experienced an 882% growth in marijuana arrests,
including an increase of 2,461% for possession offenses;
- African Americans are disproportionately affected by marijuana
arrests, representing 14% of marijuana users in the general population,
but 30% of arrests;
- One-third of persons convicted for a marijuana felony in state court
are sentenced to prison;
- An estimated $4 billion is spent annually on the arrest, prosecution
and incarceration of marijuana offenders.
test by the country's elite to see if Americans would willingly
surrender their constitutional rights. It turned out that they would and
so for the past twenty years invasions of civil liberties increased,
America threw more and more of its young people into prison, while
exploding drug war budgets did nothing to stem the growth of the drug
industry. Further, the drug war was a useful testing ground for
repressive measures instituted following September 11.
But to make all of this work you need a sufficient quantity of drugs,
they had to be easy to find and a sufficient number of people had to use
them. This is where marijuana came in. Although marijuana is far less
dangerous than just legal drugs as cigarettes and alcohol and, even as a
medical prescription, far less hazardous than ones routinely given out
by doctors, it had the constituency, physical bulk and ubiquity to make
it just the thing for adding to police budgets and taking away from
human rights.
The war on drugs will undoubtedly be regarded by historians as a crucial
precursor of the end of the First American Republic. It tested the
waters of repression and found Americans willing to accept it. Even
liberals outside of strong civil liberties advocates proved disastrously
indifferent to what was going on.
A new report from the Sentencing Project tells part of the story as it
relates to marijuana:
- Of the 450,000 increase in drug arrests during the period 1990-2002,
82% of the growth was for marijuana, and 79% was for marijuana
possession alone;
- Marijuana arrests now constitute nearly half (45%) of the 1.5 million
drug arrests annually;
- Few marijuana arrests are for serious offenses: of the 734,000
marijuana arrests in 2000, only 41,000 (6%) resulted in a felony
conviction;
- Marijuana arrests increased by 113% between 1990 and 2002, while
overall arrests decreased by 3%; 1 Cooper, G. (2001, August 20).
- New York City experienced an 882% growth in marijuana arrests,
including an increase of 2,461% for possession offenses;
- African Americans are disproportionately affected by marijuana
arrests, representing 14% of marijuana users in the general population,
but 30% of arrests;
- One-third of persons convicted for a marijuana felony in state court
are sentenced to prison;
- An estimated $4 billion is spent annually on the arrest, prosecution
and incarceration of marijuana offenders.
Corporate Greed
Caterpillar: Making a Killing in Palestine?
By Nick Dearden & Joe Zacune
Without selling a single bomb, gun, or F16 fighter, Caterpillar has been supplying the Israeli military with its “key weapon,” in the words of one Israeli commander, in the illegal and brutal occupation of Palestine. In the words of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Caterpillar’s D9 bulldozers have been responsible for destroying “agricultural farms, greenhouses, ancient olive groves… numerous Palestinian homes and sometimes human lives.”
The toll of human lives destroyed with these machines is horrifying. During the last 4 years the Israeli army has flattened over 4,000 homes—rendering tens of thousand homeless, traumatized, and impoverished. Israel claims that these demolitions are punitive actions against suspected terrorists. While such punishment is illegal under international humanitarian law, a recent report by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem found that in half of all cases there was nothing linking the houses to terrorism.
Palestinians are currently suffering from poverty levels comparable with some of the poorest parts of sub-Saharan Africa—the UN reports that it bears the “effects of a terrible natural disaster,” though one created by people and politics. A key source of this poverty is the destruction of agricultural land, the only possible source of livelihood open to many Palestinians. Caterpillar bulldozers have been used to rip up extensive areas of cultivated land, destroying thousands of olive and citrus trees. The destruction of wells, storage tanks, and water pumps has severely limited access to drinking water.
In Jenin camp, home to 14,000 refugees, Caterpillar’s D9 bulldozers were a key component of Operation Defensive Shield, the “most extensive and severe” human rights violation since 1967 (B’Tselem). The Hawashin district of the camp was leveled; many residents had no advance notice. Many were buried alive, including paraplegic Jamal Suliman. According to his mother, “The bulldozer wouldn’t wait even one minute so that we could take Jamal out of the house.”
During a May 2004 raid on a refugee camp in Rafah, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights John Dugard noted, “Homes have been destroyed in a purely purposeless manner. Bulldozers have savagely dug up roads, including electricity, sewerage, and water lines, in a brutal display of power.” A total of 298 homes were destroyed in Rafah in a single month.
But perhaps the bulldozers are best described by the experiences of two young people on either side of the Occupation. Israeli Army D9 -operator Moshe Nissim describes his experience of Jenin: “I had no mercy for anybody. I would erase anyone with the D9…. When I was told to demolish a house, I took the opportunity to bring down some more houses.” His unit was cited for outstanding service.
On the other side was 23-year- old U.S. peace activist Rachel Corrie. At an International Solidarity Movement demonstration Rachel stood in front of a Palestinian home, trying to prevent its demolition. The D9 driver initially dumped sand on Rachel, later driving over her as demolition proceeded. Rachel died of her injuries.
Caterpillar CEO Jim Owens is not driving the bulldozers carrying out these grave breaches of international law. But he is fully aware of the uses Caterpillar machines are being put to by the Israeli army. Indeed a group of Caterpillar shareholders raised the issue in a resolution in April 2004 that questioned whether “Caterpillar’s directors can reconcile acquiescence” with the end use of these bulldozers with the company’s Code of Worldwide Business Conduct.
The answer is, apparently, yes. It seems incredible that a company tarnished by accusations can continue to maintain in public remarks that it is “doing well by ‘doing good’ around the world.” Among the gems of irony lifted from Caterpillar’s Code is that “We believe that our success should also contribute to the quality of life and the prosperity of communities.”
Such is the fantasy world of “corporate social responsibility,” a multi-million dollar industry in its own right, which attempts to replace social consciousness with public relations. So concerned is Caterpillar with “doing good” that when UN Special Rapporteur Jean Ziegler wrote to Jim Owens in May 2004 expressing his concerns that Caterpillar may be complicit in violating the Palestinian’s right to food enshrined in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Owens did not bother to reply.
Little wonder he was unperturbed when Caterpillar openly advertised its bulldozers in military conflict zones such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed many bulldozers sent to Israel are actually paid for by U.S. taxpayer as part of the U.S.’s substantial contribution to Israel’s military.
Ultimately corporate complicity in the sort of grave human rights violations witnessed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories will only halt when corporate behavior is regulated, not by voluntary Codes of Conduct written by over- paid PR consultants, but by an international system of laws, accoun- table to people.
Nick Dearden is senior campaign officer at the radical anti-poverty charity, War on Want (www.waronwant.org). Joe Zacune works as a researcher and campaigner on issues surrounding Palestine, corporations, and the arms trade. War on Want was founded 50 years ago to support grassroots groups fighting long- term poverty across the Third World.
By Nick Dearden & Joe Zacune
Without selling a single bomb, gun, or F16 fighter, Caterpillar has been supplying the Israeli military with its “key weapon,” in the words of one Israeli commander, in the illegal and brutal occupation of Palestine. In the words of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Caterpillar’s D9 bulldozers have been responsible for destroying “agricultural farms, greenhouses, ancient olive groves… numerous Palestinian homes and sometimes human lives.”
The toll of human lives destroyed with these machines is horrifying. During the last 4 years the Israeli army has flattened over 4,000 homes—rendering tens of thousand homeless, traumatized, and impoverished. Israel claims that these demolitions are punitive actions against suspected terrorists. While such punishment is illegal under international humanitarian law, a recent report by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem found that in half of all cases there was nothing linking the houses to terrorism.
Palestinians are currently suffering from poverty levels comparable with some of the poorest parts of sub-Saharan Africa—the UN reports that it bears the “effects of a terrible natural disaster,” though one created by people and politics. A key source of this poverty is the destruction of agricultural land, the only possible source of livelihood open to many Palestinians. Caterpillar bulldozers have been used to rip up extensive areas of cultivated land, destroying thousands of olive and citrus trees. The destruction of wells, storage tanks, and water pumps has severely limited access to drinking water.
In Jenin camp, home to 14,000 refugees, Caterpillar’s D9 bulldozers were a key component of Operation Defensive Shield, the “most extensive and severe” human rights violation since 1967 (B’Tselem). The Hawashin district of the camp was leveled; many residents had no advance notice. Many were buried alive, including paraplegic Jamal Suliman. According to his mother, “The bulldozer wouldn’t wait even one minute so that we could take Jamal out of the house.”
During a May 2004 raid on a refugee camp in Rafah, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights John Dugard noted, “Homes have been destroyed in a purely purposeless manner. Bulldozers have savagely dug up roads, including electricity, sewerage, and water lines, in a brutal display of power.” A total of 298 homes were destroyed in Rafah in a single month.
But perhaps the bulldozers are best described by the experiences of two young people on either side of the Occupation. Israeli Army D9 -operator Moshe Nissim describes his experience of Jenin: “I had no mercy for anybody. I would erase anyone with the D9…. When I was told to demolish a house, I took the opportunity to bring down some more houses.” His unit was cited for outstanding service.
On the other side was 23-year- old U.S. peace activist Rachel Corrie. At an International Solidarity Movement demonstration Rachel stood in front of a Palestinian home, trying to prevent its demolition. The D9 driver initially dumped sand on Rachel, later driving over her as demolition proceeded. Rachel died of her injuries.
Caterpillar CEO Jim Owens is not driving the bulldozers carrying out these grave breaches of international law. But he is fully aware of the uses Caterpillar machines are being put to by the Israeli army. Indeed a group of Caterpillar shareholders raised the issue in a resolution in April 2004 that questioned whether “Caterpillar’s directors can reconcile acquiescence” with the end use of these bulldozers with the company’s Code of Worldwide Business Conduct.
The answer is, apparently, yes. It seems incredible that a company tarnished by accusations can continue to maintain in public remarks that it is “doing well by ‘doing good’ around the world.” Among the gems of irony lifted from Caterpillar’s Code is that “We believe that our success should also contribute to the quality of life and the prosperity of communities.”
Such is the fantasy world of “corporate social responsibility,” a multi-million dollar industry in its own right, which attempts to replace social consciousness with public relations. So concerned is Caterpillar with “doing good” that when UN Special Rapporteur Jean Ziegler wrote to Jim Owens in May 2004 expressing his concerns that Caterpillar may be complicit in violating the Palestinian’s right to food enshrined in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Owens did not bother to reply.
Little wonder he was unperturbed when Caterpillar openly advertised its bulldozers in military conflict zones such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed many bulldozers sent to Israel are actually paid for by U.S. taxpayer as part of the U.S.’s substantial contribution to Israel’s military.
Ultimately corporate complicity in the sort of grave human rights violations witnessed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories will only halt when corporate behavior is regulated, not by voluntary Codes of Conduct written by over- paid PR consultants, but by an international system of laws, accoun- table to people.
Nick Dearden is senior campaign officer at the radical anti-poverty charity, War on Want (www.waronwant.org). Joe Zacune works as a researcher and campaigner on issues surrounding Palestine, corporations, and the arms trade. War on Want was founded 50 years ago to support grassroots groups fighting long- term poverty across the Third World.
Aphorisms Against Work
by Len Bracken
Suggestions to the Slacker Generation on Commencing a Post-Workerist Revolution
Humans are congenitally allergic to work -
they don't want to work whenever they have a chance not to work.
The sacrosanct notion of work is the cause of most of humanity's woes. Never trust the priests of work because they've poisoned their minds with it. For example, the quantity of economically necessary work declines, yet politicians and economists tell us that the only way to end unemployment is with more useless work. Why couldn't more people do much less?
The invention of workerism gradually, and even then only partially, subverted our natural inclination to be lazy and our disinclination to work.
The ugly brown dye of work spills across this miserable civilization, saturating the fabric of everyday life, day after back-breaking day.
Creativity constrains the return of work; be creative and put severe constraints on work.
Laziness is a comedy in which we can all play a part, a veritable field of sunblown flowers where the unruly colors of the universe dance with the wind.
Suggestions to the Slacker Generation on Commencing a Post-Workerist Revolution
Humans are congenitally allergic to work -
they don't want to work whenever they have a chance not to work.
The sacrosanct notion of work is the cause of most of humanity's woes. Never trust the priests of work because they've poisoned their minds with it. For example, the quantity of economically necessary work declines, yet politicians and economists tell us that the only way to end unemployment is with more useless work. Why couldn't more people do much less?
The invention of workerism gradually, and even then only partially, subverted our natural inclination to be lazy and our disinclination to work.
The ugly brown dye of work spills across this miserable civilization, saturating the fabric of everyday life, day after back-breaking day.
Creativity constrains the return of work; be creative and put severe constraints on work.
Laziness is a comedy in which we can all play a part, a veritable field of sunblown flowers where the unruly colors of the universe dance with the wind.
Ford and G.M. Suffer as Buyers Shun S.U.V.'s
Personally, I'm waiting for the time when the unrepentant must park theirs...
May 4, 2005
By JEREMY W. PETERS
New York Times
DETROIT, May 3 - The latest automobile sales figures show that Americans are increasingly wary of gas-thirsty sport utility vehicles. That was particularly bad news for General Motors and the Ford Motor Company, which both saw their sales slip last month as consumers continued their steady march into Asian car companies' dealerships.
Both Toyota and Nissan posted record sales gains in April, which helped push overall auto sales in North America up 1.8 percent.
But even as sales were expanding for the industry, they were shrinking at G.M. and Ford. The decline was the sharpest at General Motors, the world's largest automaker. G.M.'s sales fell 7.7 percent from the same month a year earlier, primarily because of a weak demand for S.U.V.'s. The lack of appetite for S.U.V.'s also hurt Ford, which sold 5 percent fewer vehicles in April compared with a year ago.
April's sales numbers showed no signs that the pressure on Detroit from its Asian rivals will let up anytime soon. That became particularly evident on Tuesday as Toyota reported that April had been the most successful month in its history. Its sales were up 21.3 percent on big gains in the number of passenger cars sold.
Nissan also passed a sales milestone last month and reported its strongest April on record. Sales increased 27 percent for the Japanese automaker, compared with the same month last year.
"The strength that G.M. and Ford have had has been in traditional S.U.V.'s," said Ron Pinelli, president of the Autodata Corporation. "Now that there's new product out there, consumers are defecting" from G.M. and Ford to companies offering the newer vehicles.
Ward's AutoInfoBank projected that vehicle sales in North America would reach a seasonally adjusted rate of 17.4 million units this year if sales continued at April's pace, which would be a solid performance for the industry. April's results further suggested that the industry was bouncing back from a slow start at the beginning of the year. Auto sales lagged in January and February but perked up slightly in March. The 1.8 percent improvement over last April is more than double the increase the industry saw from March 2004 to March 2005.
With sales down at G.M. and Ford, the two companies offered very different explanations of the impact high gas prices were having on business. This year, sales of S.U.V.'s have declined not only at G.M. and Ford but at Toyota as well, leading many inside and outside the auto industry to conclude that consumers were staying away from S.U.V.'s in favor of more fuel-efficient cars.
General Motors has long maintained that gas prices do not affect how consumers approach buying a car or truck. But on Tuesday, G.M.'s chief industry sales analyst, Paul Ballew, appeared to retreat somewhat from that position, saying that record gas prices were likely playing some role in falling S.U.V. sales.
"It's probably impacting a bit on the margin," Mr. Ballew said. Pointing to G.M.'s improved large truck sales, he added a caveat: "People want to quickly say large utility sales are down because of gas prices, and that is just not the cause-and-effect relationship that we can find."
By contrast, Ford's top sales analyst, George Pipas, said Tuesday that record gas prices were directly responsible for a sharp decline in the number of S.U.V.'s that Ford sold in April.
Toyota pointed to the surge in sales of its gas-electric hybrid, the Prius, and other more fuel-efficient models as the major reason for its strong performance in April.
Market share, another industry barometer, fell at both G.M. and Ford, according to Autodata. Again, it was G.M. that lost the most ground. Its market share was 25.1 percent in April, compared with 27.7 percent the same month a year ago. Toyota's North American share jumped to 14 percent, from 11.7 percent last April.
The Chrysler division of DaimlerChrysler was the lone strong performer among the Detroit automakers. Chrysler gained market share in April, with 13.7 percent of the North American market, compared with 13.3 percent from a year earlier. Over all, DaimlerChrysler's sales in the United States, which include Chrysler, Jeep and Mercedes-Benz, were up 4.6 percent as against the same period a year earlier.
Although sales were up, DaimlerChrysler suffered a symbolic setback as Toyota sold more vehicles in the United States than Chrysler in April. It is rare for Toyota to crack the Big Three in monthly domestic sales and a sign of the Japanese automaker's ever-growing presence in the American industry.
May 4, 2005
By JEREMY W. PETERS
New York Times
DETROIT, May 3 - The latest automobile sales figures show that Americans are increasingly wary of gas-thirsty sport utility vehicles. That was particularly bad news for General Motors and the Ford Motor Company, which both saw their sales slip last month as consumers continued their steady march into Asian car companies' dealerships.
Both Toyota and Nissan posted record sales gains in April, which helped push overall auto sales in North America up 1.8 percent.
But even as sales were expanding for the industry, they were shrinking at G.M. and Ford. The decline was the sharpest at General Motors, the world's largest automaker. G.M.'s sales fell 7.7 percent from the same month a year earlier, primarily because of a weak demand for S.U.V.'s. The lack of appetite for S.U.V.'s also hurt Ford, which sold 5 percent fewer vehicles in April compared with a year ago.
April's sales numbers showed no signs that the pressure on Detroit from its Asian rivals will let up anytime soon. That became particularly evident on Tuesday as Toyota reported that April had been the most successful month in its history. Its sales were up 21.3 percent on big gains in the number of passenger cars sold.
Nissan also passed a sales milestone last month and reported its strongest April on record. Sales increased 27 percent for the Japanese automaker, compared with the same month last year.
"The strength that G.M. and Ford have had has been in traditional S.U.V.'s," said Ron Pinelli, president of the Autodata Corporation. "Now that there's new product out there, consumers are defecting" from G.M. and Ford to companies offering the newer vehicles.
Ward's AutoInfoBank projected that vehicle sales in North America would reach a seasonally adjusted rate of 17.4 million units this year if sales continued at April's pace, which would be a solid performance for the industry. April's results further suggested that the industry was bouncing back from a slow start at the beginning of the year. Auto sales lagged in January and February but perked up slightly in March. The 1.8 percent improvement over last April is more than double the increase the industry saw from March 2004 to March 2005.
With sales down at G.M. and Ford, the two companies offered very different explanations of the impact high gas prices were having on business. This year, sales of S.U.V.'s have declined not only at G.M. and Ford but at Toyota as well, leading many inside and outside the auto industry to conclude that consumers were staying away from S.U.V.'s in favor of more fuel-efficient cars.
General Motors has long maintained that gas prices do not affect how consumers approach buying a car or truck. But on Tuesday, G.M.'s chief industry sales analyst, Paul Ballew, appeared to retreat somewhat from that position, saying that record gas prices were likely playing some role in falling S.U.V. sales.
"It's probably impacting a bit on the margin," Mr. Ballew said. Pointing to G.M.'s improved large truck sales, he added a caveat: "People want to quickly say large utility sales are down because of gas prices, and that is just not the cause-and-effect relationship that we can find."
By contrast, Ford's top sales analyst, George Pipas, said Tuesday that record gas prices were directly responsible for a sharp decline in the number of S.U.V.'s that Ford sold in April.
Toyota pointed to the surge in sales of its gas-electric hybrid, the Prius, and other more fuel-efficient models as the major reason for its strong performance in April.
Market share, another industry barometer, fell at both G.M. and Ford, according to Autodata. Again, it was G.M. that lost the most ground. Its market share was 25.1 percent in April, compared with 27.7 percent the same month a year ago. Toyota's North American share jumped to 14 percent, from 11.7 percent last April.
The Chrysler division of DaimlerChrysler was the lone strong performer among the Detroit automakers. Chrysler gained market share in April, with 13.7 percent of the North American market, compared with 13.3 percent from a year earlier. Over all, DaimlerChrysler's sales in the United States, which include Chrysler, Jeep and Mercedes-Benz, were up 4.6 percent as against the same period a year earlier.
Although sales were up, DaimlerChrysler suffered a symbolic setback as Toyota sold more vehicles in the United States than Chrysler in April. It is rare for Toyota to crack the Big Three in monthly domestic sales and a sign of the Japanese automaker's ever-growing presence in the American industry.
Lessons in how to lie about Iraq, by Brian Eno
The problem is not propaganda but the relentless control of the kind of things we think about
Brian Eno
Saturday August 16 2003
The Guardian
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1020528,00.html
When I first visited Russia, in 1986, I made friends with a musician whose father had been Brezhnev's personal doctor. One day we were talking about life during 'the period of stagnation' - the Brezhnev era. 'It must have been strange being so completely immersed in propaganda,' I said.
'Ah, but there is the difference. We knew it was propaganda,' replied Sacha.
That is the difference. Russian propaganda was so obvious that most Russians were able to ignore it. They took it for granted that the government operated in its own interests and any message coming from it was probably slanted - and they discounted it.
In the West the calculated manipulation of public opinion to serve political and ideological interests is much more covert and therefore much more effective. Its greatest triumph is that we generally don't notice it - or laugh at the notion it even exists. We watch the democratic process taking place - heated debates in which we feel we could have a voice - and think that, because we have 'free' media, it would be hard for the Government to get away with anything very devious without someone calling them on it.
It takes something as dramatic as the invasion of Iraq to make us look a bit more closely and ask: 'How did we get here?' How exactly did it come about that, in a world of Aids, global warming, 30-plus active wars, several famines, cloning, genetic engineering, and two billion people in poverty, practically the only thing we all talked about for a year was Iraq and Saddam Hussein? Was it really that big a problem? Or were we somehow manipulated into believing the Iraq issue was important and had to be fixed right now - even though a few months before few had mentioned it, and nothing had changed in the interim.
In the wake of the events of 11 September 2001, it now seems clear that the shock of the attacks was exploited in America. According to Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber in their new book Weapons of Mass Deception , it was used to engineer a state of emergency that would justify an invasion of Iraq. Rampton and Stauber expose how news was fabricated and made to seem real. But they also demonstrate how a coalition of the willing - far-Right officials, neo-con think-tanks, insanely pugilistic media commentators and of course well-paid PR companies - worked together to pull off a sensational piece of intellectual dishonesty. Theirs is a study of modern propaganda.
What occurs to me in reading their book is that the new American approach to social control is so much more sophisticated and pervasive that it really deserves a new name. It isn't just propaganda any more, it's 'prop-agenda '. It's not so much the control of what we think, but the control of what we think about. When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it's the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone's talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages,weak or false 'intelligence' and selected 'leaks'. (What else can the spat between the BBC and Alastair Campbell be but a prime example of this?)
With the ground thus prepared, governments are happy if you then 'use the democratic process' to agree or disagree - for, after all, their intention is to mobilise enough headlines and conversation to make the whole thing seem real and urgent. The more emotional the debate, the better. Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.
An example of this process is one highlighted by Rampton and Stauber which, more than any other, consolidated public and congressional approval for the 1991 Gulf war. We recall the horrifying stories, incessantly repeated, of babies in Kuwaiti hospitals ripped out of their incubators and left to die while the Iraqis shipped the incubators back to Baghdad - 312 babies, we were told.
The story was brought to public attention by Nayirah, a 15-year-old 'nurse' who, it turned out later, was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and a member of the Kuwaiti royal family. Nayirah had been tutored and rehearsed by the Hill & Knowlton PR agency (which in turn received $14 million from the American government for their work in promoting the war). Her story was entirely discredited within weeks but by then its purpose had been served: it had created an outraged and emotional mindset within America which overwhelmed rational discussion.
As we are seeing now, the most recent Gulf war entailed many similar deceits: false linkages made between Saddam, al-Qaeda and 9/11, stories of ready-to-launch weapons that didn't exist, of nuclear programmes never embarked upon. As Rampton and Stauber show, many of these allegations were discredited as they were being made, not least by this newspaper, but nevertheless were retold.
Throughout all this, the hired-gun PR companies were busy, preconditioning the emotional landscape. Their marketing talents were particularly useful in the large-scale manipulation of language that the campaign entailed. The Bushites realised, as all ideologues do, that words create realities, and that the right words can over whelm any chance of balanced discussion. Guided by the overtly imperial vision of the Project for a New American Century (whose members now form the core of the American administration), the PR companies helped finesse the language to create an atmosphere of simmering panic where American imperialism would come to seem not only acceptable but right, obvious, inevitable and even somehow kind.
Aside from the incessant 'weapons of mass destruction', there were 'regime change' (military invasion), 'pre-emptive defence' (attacking a country that is not attacking you), 'critical regions' (countries we want to control), the 'axis of evil' (countries we want to attack), 'shock and awe' (massive obliteration) and 'the war on terror' (a hold-all excuse for projecting American military force anywhere).
Meanwhile, US federal employees and military personnel were told to refer to the invasion as 'a war of liberation' and to the Iraqi paramilitaries as 'death squads', while the reliably sycophantic American TV networks spoke of 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' - just as the Pentagon asked them to - thus consolidating the supposition that Iraqi freedom was the point of the war. Anybody questioning the invasion was 'soft on terror' (liberal) or, in the case of the UN, 'in danger of losing its relevance'.
When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it's done so I would recognise when I was being lied to. I hope writers such as Rampton and Stauber and others may have the same effect and help to emasculate the culture of spin and dissembling that is overtaking our political establishments.
Brian Eno 2003
A longer version of this article will appear in the new literary magazine, Zembla. Weapons of Mass Deception by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber is published by Robinson at £6.99
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
Brian Eno
Saturday August 16 2003
The Guardian
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1020528,00.html
When I first visited Russia, in 1986, I made friends with a musician whose father had been Brezhnev's personal doctor. One day we were talking about life during 'the period of stagnation' - the Brezhnev era. 'It must have been strange being so completely immersed in propaganda,' I said.
'Ah, but there is the difference. We knew it was propaganda,' replied Sacha.
That is the difference. Russian propaganda was so obvious that most Russians were able to ignore it. They took it for granted that the government operated in its own interests and any message coming from it was probably slanted - and they discounted it.
In the West the calculated manipulation of public opinion to serve political and ideological interests is much more covert and therefore much more effective. Its greatest triumph is that we generally don't notice it - or laugh at the notion it even exists. We watch the democratic process taking place - heated debates in which we feel we could have a voice - and think that, because we have 'free' media, it would be hard for the Government to get away with anything very devious without someone calling them on it.
It takes something as dramatic as the invasion of Iraq to make us look a bit more closely and ask: 'How did we get here?' How exactly did it come about that, in a world of Aids, global warming, 30-plus active wars, several famines, cloning, genetic engineering, and two billion people in poverty, practically the only thing we all talked about for a year was Iraq and Saddam Hussein? Was it really that big a problem? Or were we somehow manipulated into believing the Iraq issue was important and had to be fixed right now - even though a few months before few had mentioned it, and nothing had changed in the interim.
In the wake of the events of 11 September 2001, it now seems clear that the shock of the attacks was exploited in America. According to Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber in their new book Weapons of Mass Deception , it was used to engineer a state of emergency that would justify an invasion of Iraq. Rampton and Stauber expose how news was fabricated and made to seem real. But they also demonstrate how a coalition of the willing - far-Right officials, neo-con think-tanks, insanely pugilistic media commentators and of course well-paid PR companies - worked together to pull off a sensational piece of intellectual dishonesty. Theirs is a study of modern propaganda.
What occurs to me in reading their book is that the new American approach to social control is so much more sophisticated and pervasive that it really deserves a new name. It isn't just propaganda any more, it's 'prop-agenda '. It's not so much the control of what we think, but the control of what we think about. When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it's the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone's talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages,weak or false 'intelligence' and selected 'leaks'. (What else can the spat between the BBC and Alastair Campbell be but a prime example of this?)
With the ground thus prepared, governments are happy if you then 'use the democratic process' to agree or disagree - for, after all, their intention is to mobilise enough headlines and conversation to make the whole thing seem real and urgent. The more emotional the debate, the better. Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.
An example of this process is one highlighted by Rampton and Stauber which, more than any other, consolidated public and congressional approval for the 1991 Gulf war. We recall the horrifying stories, incessantly repeated, of babies in Kuwaiti hospitals ripped out of their incubators and left to die while the Iraqis shipped the incubators back to Baghdad - 312 babies, we were told.
The story was brought to public attention by Nayirah, a 15-year-old 'nurse' who, it turned out later, was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and a member of the Kuwaiti royal family. Nayirah had been tutored and rehearsed by the Hill & Knowlton PR agency (which in turn received $14 million from the American government for their work in promoting the war). Her story was entirely discredited within weeks but by then its purpose had been served: it had created an outraged and emotional mindset within America which overwhelmed rational discussion.
As we are seeing now, the most recent Gulf war entailed many similar deceits: false linkages made between Saddam, al-Qaeda and 9/11, stories of ready-to-launch weapons that didn't exist, of nuclear programmes never embarked upon. As Rampton and Stauber show, many of these allegations were discredited as they were being made, not least by this newspaper, but nevertheless were retold.
Throughout all this, the hired-gun PR companies were busy, preconditioning the emotional landscape. Their marketing talents were particularly useful in the large-scale manipulation of language that the campaign entailed. The Bushites realised, as all ideologues do, that words create realities, and that the right words can over whelm any chance of balanced discussion. Guided by the overtly imperial vision of the Project for a New American Century (whose members now form the core of the American administration), the PR companies helped finesse the language to create an atmosphere of simmering panic where American imperialism would come to seem not only acceptable but right, obvious, inevitable and even somehow kind.
Aside from the incessant 'weapons of mass destruction', there were 'regime change' (military invasion), 'pre-emptive defence' (attacking a country that is not attacking you), 'critical regions' (countries we want to control), the 'axis of evil' (countries we want to attack), 'shock and awe' (massive obliteration) and 'the war on terror' (a hold-all excuse for projecting American military force anywhere).
Meanwhile, US federal employees and military personnel were told to refer to the invasion as 'a war of liberation' and to the Iraqi paramilitaries as 'death squads', while the reliably sycophantic American TV networks spoke of 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' - just as the Pentagon asked them to - thus consolidating the supposition that Iraqi freedom was the point of the war. Anybody questioning the invasion was 'soft on terror' (liberal) or, in the case of the UN, 'in danger of losing its relevance'.
When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it's done so I would recognise when I was being lied to. I hope writers such as Rampton and Stauber and others may have the same effect and help to emasculate the culture of spin and dissembling that is overtaking our political establishments.
Brian Eno 2003
A longer version of this article will appear in the new literary magazine, Zembla. Weapons of Mass Deception by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber is published by Robinson at £6.99
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
Unspeakable Happens In Area Town (satire)
MURPHY, ID—Indescribable tragedy struck the quiet foothill town of Murphy Monday, leaving authorities and citizens dumbstruck by the nameless horror that descended on their community.
Townspeople comfort each other at the scene of the event.
"Oh God," said Wilma Freas, standing at the edge of Main Street overlooking the lumberyard. "Those poor people!"
Added Freas: "And the children..."
Murphy residents are still attempting to come to grips with the overwhelming catastrophe, with reactions ranging from unimaginable sorrow to sheer incoherent rage.
"Why?!" said feed-store owner Blaine Fullerton, beating the counter with a clenched fist. "Those were innocent—I mean, in big cities, maybe. But here?"
"Why?" added Fullerton, removing his cap and throwing it to the ground.
Emergency personnel deployed to the site of the inexplicable horror reported that their efforts to contain the situation are in effect.
"I rushed... right when I... I...," said Dr. Marjorie Sweeny, a trauma surgeon at Benediction Memorial Hospital in nearby Caldwell. "As a doctor, I... I wanted to see if there was anything I could do. I thought there was a chance I... Oh God! Oh God, all the blood! I'm sorry. I have to... Right now I have to..."
Law-enforcement officials from the state to the federal level have been called in to deal with the situation. However, due to communications difficulties, many agencies have had problems coordinating their efforts.
"We're on the road," said Sgt. Jason Haskell of the Murphy police department, attempting to direct members of the National Guard to the site of the great calamity. "Everybody... should get down... to the road."
"Lord in heaven, no!" Haskell added.
Many of the early reports, garbled though they are, have come from the local level. Owyhee County Sheriff's Deputy Ronald Muntoth is one of the few witnesses to the scene who has been able to give a near-coherent report.
"I've seen a lot of things in my years on the force," Muntoth said. "But I'm still trying to get my mind around this unthinkable tragedy. We had a train derailment a few years ago that I thought was incomprehensible. But this—I... I can't even begin to... No. I just... It... Excuse me."
As fragmented accounts of the tragic events continue to trickle in, stunned residents of Murphy are quietly closing ranks, banding together to bear mute witness to the inconceivable disaster. On Monday evening, thousands of locals assembled in the town square, so recently the scene of incalculable loss, to observe a moment of silence for the as-yet-unnamed victims. After a respectful but undetermined period of time, Mayor Molly Hawkshaw spoke.
"Oh!" said Hawkshaw, who is assuming personal responsibility for the confidential investigation into the tragedy. "I just... We... argh gah... pain and shock."
Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne plans to visit Murphy later this week.
From The Onion
Townspeople comfort each other at the scene of the event.
"Oh God," said Wilma Freas, standing at the edge of Main Street overlooking the lumberyard. "Those poor people!"
Added Freas: "And the children..."
Murphy residents are still attempting to come to grips with the overwhelming catastrophe, with reactions ranging from unimaginable sorrow to sheer incoherent rage.
"Why?!" said feed-store owner Blaine Fullerton, beating the counter with a clenched fist. "Those were innocent—I mean, in big cities, maybe. But here?"
"Why?" added Fullerton, removing his cap and throwing it to the ground.
Emergency personnel deployed to the site of the inexplicable horror reported that their efforts to contain the situation are in effect.
"I rushed... right when I... I...," said Dr. Marjorie Sweeny, a trauma surgeon at Benediction Memorial Hospital in nearby Caldwell. "As a doctor, I... I wanted to see if there was anything I could do. I thought there was a chance I... Oh God! Oh God, all the blood! I'm sorry. I have to... Right now I have to..."
Law-enforcement officials from the state to the federal level have been called in to deal with the situation. However, due to communications difficulties, many agencies have had problems coordinating their efforts.
"We're on the road," said Sgt. Jason Haskell of the Murphy police department, attempting to direct members of the National Guard to the site of the great calamity. "Everybody... should get down... to the road."
"Lord in heaven, no!" Haskell added.
Many of the early reports, garbled though they are, have come from the local level. Owyhee County Sheriff's Deputy Ronald Muntoth is one of the few witnesses to the scene who has been able to give a near-coherent report.
"I've seen a lot of things in my years on the force," Muntoth said. "But I'm still trying to get my mind around this unthinkable tragedy. We had a train derailment a few years ago that I thought was incomprehensible. But this—I... I can't even begin to... No. I just... It... Excuse me."
As fragmented accounts of the tragic events continue to trickle in, stunned residents of Murphy are quietly closing ranks, banding together to bear mute witness to the inconceivable disaster. On Monday evening, thousands of locals assembled in the town square, so recently the scene of incalculable loss, to observe a moment of silence for the as-yet-unnamed victims. After a respectful but undetermined period of time, Mayor Molly Hawkshaw spoke.
"Oh!" said Hawkshaw, who is assuming personal responsibility for the confidential investigation into the tragedy. "I just... We... argh gah... pain and shock."
Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne plans to visit Murphy later this week.
From The Onion
Dubyaspeak
GEORGE W. BUSH - If you're a two-working family like a lotta families are here in America, and, uhh -- two people working in your family, and the, the spouse dies early -- before 62, for example -- all of the money that the spouse has put into the system, uhh, is gum -- held there, and then when the other spouse retires, he or she gets to choose the benefits from his or her own work, or the other spouse's benefits, which is ever higher but not both.
http://www.dubyaspeak.com/freshdubya.shtml
http://www.dubyaspeak.com/freshdubya.shtml
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