Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 10:25:21 -0400
From: Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>
To: corp-focus@lists.essential.org
Subject: [corp-focus] What To Say to Jack and Jim?
What to Say to Jack and Jim?
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
We were in an empty West Virginia courtroom last night with two young boys -- let's call them Jack and Jim -- ages 10 and 8.
Time for homeschooling -- Justice 101.
Let's say Jack that you go into Jim's candystore and steal a chocolate bar.
Jim calls the police.
The prosecutor charges Jack with theft.
Jack will be charged and brought to trial in this courtroom.
The prosecutor will sit at this table over here.
What's this over here?
This is the witness stand.
The prosecutor will call Jim as a witness.
Jim will testify that Jack stole the candy bar.
Over in this box sit 12 of Jack's fellow citizens.
They will hear the evidence.
Behind this bench over here sits the judge.
The judge will determine what evidence gets to the jury.
After the jury hears the evidence, they will walk back into this room, close the door, and decide whether Jack is guilty or not.
After reaching a verdict, the jurors will file back into the jury box and tell the judge of their decision.
If the verdict is guilty, the judge will hand down his sentence.
Jack will go to jail.
His reputation will be in tatters.
His life destroyed.
No more play group.
No more swimming in the creek.
No more candy bars.
That was last night's lesson.
This morning, we awake to a front-page Wall Street Journal article reporting that KPMG -- one of the nation's big four accounting firms -- is facing criminal charges for the aggressive marketing of abusive tax shelters that cost the federal government $1.4 billion in lost revenue.
A November 2003 Senate report found that "KPMG devoted substantial resources to and obtained significant fees from =85 potentially abusive and illegal tax shelters =85 costing the U.S. Treasury billions."
According to the Journal, last year, the Internal Revenue Service told a federal court that KPMG "falsely asserts that it has never developed, sold or promoted a tax shelter" and that KPMG tried for years to delay or conceal evidence behind sometimes false claims of legal privilege.
Here's the first sentence from the article, written by Journal reporter John R. Wilke:
"Federal prosecutors have built a criminal case against KPMG LLP for obstruction of justice and the sale of abusive tax shelters, igniting a debate among top Justice Department officials over whether to seek an indictment -- at the risk of killing one of the four remaining big accounting firms."
KPMG issued a statement yesterday saying that it "takes full responsibility for the unlawful conduct by former KPMG partners" during the period under investigation by the Justice Department. KPMG said it has taken actions "to ensure that this type of conduct does not occur again," including "firm-wide structural, cultural and governance reforms."
In the wake of the criminal prosecution of Arthur Andersen, which drove the accounting firm out of business, federal prosecutors increasingly have shied away from criminally prosecuting big firms.
Increasingly, federal prosecutors look to what impact a criminal prosecution will have on the firm.
First came the deferred prosecution agreement -- that's where prosecutors file an indictment on the condition that the company behave itself for a period of years, usually two.
If things are in order after two years, the indictment is dropped.
Slate wiped clean.
No record of indictment.
No conviction.
Then came the no prosecution agreement -- prosecutors agree not to bring an indictment on the condition that the company change the way it does business.
With the Supreme Court's reversal of the Andersen conviction, combined with a number of high-profile white-collar crime not guilty verdicts, prosecutors find themselves on the defensive.
As a result, increasingly, corporations are being deemed -- too big to indict and convict.
And it appears that KPMG is now working out another in this series of corporate sweetheart deals with the Justice Department.
What to say to Jack and Jim about this?
Jack, if you are charged with stealing a candy bar from Jim's candy store, go to the prosecutor and show him today's Wall Street Journal.
Tell the prosecutor to take into consideration the collateral consequences of the prosecution.
Jack will be shunned by his peers.
No more play group.
No more swimming in the creek.
No more candy bars.
Please prosecutor please.
Give me the same deal that you gave KPMG.
No indictment.
No conviction.
I'll be good.
I'll give back the candy bar.
I'll change my ways.
Promise.
Pretty please?
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter, <http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com>. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, <http://www.multinationalmonitor.org>. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of On the Rampage: Corporate Predators and the Destruction of Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press).
(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Friday, July 15, 2005
WAL-MART WORKER RIGHTS
American Rights at Work has launched a web site spotlighting the retail giant’s unfair practices in the workplace. The site will also serve as a platform to enable the public to communicate their opposition to Wal-Mart’s anti-union behavior. "When Wal-Mart employees attempt to stand up for themselves and try to form a union, they face threats, propaganda, discrimination, intimidation, and even firings in
retaliation," said David Bonior, Chair of American Rights at Work:
- The company taps into calls and emails from stores around the country to monitor whether anyone is talking about forming a union.
- Store officials receive a toolkit to "Remaining Union Free" and are encouraged to call a hotline at the first sign of any interest in a union.
- Wal-Mart dispatches a rapid-response anti-union squad at any indication of its employees considering union formation.
Wal-MartWorkersRights.org
retaliation," said David Bonior, Chair of American Rights at Work:
- The company taps into calls and emails from stores around the country to monitor whether anyone is talking about forming a union.
- Store officials receive a toolkit to "Remaining Union Free" and are encouraged to call a hotline at the first sign of any interest in a union.
- Wal-Mart dispatches a rapid-response anti-union squad at any indication of its employees considering union formation.
Wal-MartWorkersRights.org
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Bonjour Bastille!
ON THIS BASTILLE DAY, a thank you to the much maligned French. They, after all, helped us win our best war - the Revolution - and tried mightily to keep us out of two of our worst - Vietnam and Iraq.
Thank you as well for having the sense, along with the Dutch, to see that the much-touted European Union Constitution was primarily a neoliberal capitalist delivery system.
Thank you as well for having the sense, along with the Dutch, to see that the much-touted European Union Constitution was primarily a neoliberal capitalist delivery system.
The List
ANNUAL DEATHS FROM VARIOUS DRUGS IN BRITAIN
Tobacco: 100,000
Alcohol: 6,000
Heroin: 652
Methadone: 97
Ecstasy: 25
Crack: 20
Amphetamines: 12
Cocaine: 11
Marijuana: 0
[Government report]
Tobacco: 100,000
Alcohol: 6,000
Heroin: 652
Methadone: 97
Ecstasy: 25
Crack: 20
Amphetamines: 12
Cocaine: 11
Marijuana: 0
[Government report]
Jailed for Justice
By Yu-Yee Wu, AsianWeek
Posted on July 13, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/23472/
Having spent almost three decades offering legal service to immigrants, Chinese American immigration attorney Manlin Chee is now getting used to serving time instead.
Chee had been a nationally recognized lawyer for her work with immigrants, some of it pro bono, and much of it for Muslims, but things soured for her soon after she appeared on a panel discussing the PATRIOT Act in March 2003.
The public forum at the main library in Greensboro, North Carolina was televised and attracted a large audience. Chee argued passionately that the PATRIOT Act violated the Bill of Rights and threatened the civil rights of immigrants and U.S. citizens.
"I'll never forget when Manlin joked that she had good news and bad news for the audience," recalls Tim Hopkins, an attendee. "She said that the bad news is that those people taking pictures of the audience are from the FBI. The good news is that they are coming after the panelists first. It was prophetic."
Indeed, within weeks the FBI began investigating Chee, says her attorney Locke Clifford. Clifford says the FBI had no record of complaints against her. But the agency began combing through thousands of Chee's case files. They even went back to her own citizenship application. The agents interviewed her clients and employees for over a year, until they indicted Chee for immigration fraud on June 26, 2004.
It was a dramatic fall for the successful attorney who once had offices in three cities and thousands of clients. The American Bar Association awarded Chee its public service award in 1991, which was presented to her by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. She also received the 1990 William L. Thorp Pro Bono Award by the North Carolina Bar Association. The Triad Business News called her "one of the foremost immigration attorneys in North Carolina if not the country."
Many think that it was her political views that caused Chee's troubles.
"She was outspoken about the impact of the PATRIOT Act on the Muslim community and American citizens," says Badi Ali, President of the Islamic Center of the Triad and Muslims for a Better North Carolina. Chee also demonstrated her support of the Muslim community by wearing Muslim garb on Fridays, says Chee's youngest daughter, Leia Forgay. Forgay says it was symbolic. "She was letting people know that she will stand with them figuratively and literally."
However, fellow Greensboro immigration attorney, Gerry Chapman, questions whether Chee was targeted for her views. "There are attorneys in North Carolina who have spoken out against the PATRIOT Act and against targeting of Muslims, and the vast majority of them have not been investigated and indicted." He adds that he thinks Chee overextended herself. "Manlin's got a good heart, but she was trying to do too much for too many people."
Attorney Anita Earls, director of Advocacy of the University of North Carolina Center for Civil Rights in Chapel Hill, points out that "other immigration attorneys have engaged in worse practices -- and they were not investigated." She believes Chee was "singled out because of a combination of the clients she served and the fact that she was outspoken in her opposition to the war."
The FBI's strongest evidence came from two sting operations, the first one within weeks after Chee had participated in the PATRIOT Act forum, says Clifford. The informants posed as needy Muslims. One informant wanted to pretend he was gay so he could seek asylum, and the other informant wanted a sham marriage to get his green card. Chee was indicted for filing papers on behalf of both.
According to Forgay, the informants wouldn't stop asking for Chee's help: "My mom told them that there's nothing I can do, but they kept coming back to her and she couldn't say no. She always tries to help -- she went ahead and submitted the papers to try. She would feel worse if she didn't try."
Chee's former client and good friend, Melinda Macasero agrees. "Manlin had a hard time when she first came to the U.S., so she knows how hard it can be," Macasero says. "If you're an immigrant and you're a client of hers, she would go the extra mile to help."
Says Clifford, "Manlin never said no to anybody and the FBI probably said to themselves that if we run someone in there with a sad story, Manlin will probably take the bait."
Chee now admits she was "foolish" for succumbing to the sham entreaties. She describes one informant as being "intimidating," constantly calling, going to her office, and badgering her when she avoided filing the papers for months. Feeling "pushed" and suffering from an anxiety disorder, Chee finally relented under the pressure.
"Manlin did have some depression," says her close friend, Amelia Leung. "Her mental health does affect her sense of judgment sometimes."
During Chee's prosecution, a diverse group of community members rallied around her and formed the Manlin Chee Defense Committee, taking out a full-page ad in the local paper in her support. Notably missing, however, was a public outcry from the local Chinese community.
Meiling Yu, cultural promotion director of the Greensboro Chinese Association, says her organization just didn't know enough. "Because the charges are about her practice, which we are not familiar with, we didn't feel we had enough information to speak out in support of her." She notes the impression that Chee was targeted for her outspokenness, but as a nonprofit, they did not feel they could make a political statement.
"I can understand why they wouldn't speak out," says Macasero. "You are dealing with the government, and [people] are afraid they are going to get in trouble."
Ultimately, Chee pleaded guilty to the charges from the stings. Her daughter Leia, insists Chee pleaded guilty to keep her family together. The FBI had also indicted and charged Chee's oldest daughter, Chernlian, because she was a paralegal in Chee's office. Chernlian, who has an upcoming wedding, decided to cooperate with the prosecution: She would get probation if she pleaded guilty, but she would have to testify against her mother.
The anger in Leia's voice is palpable when she discusses the effect of her sister's decision. "My mom did the selfless thing and pleaded guilty to keep our family from tearing apart because she felt that this was a time when we needed to stick together. ... The hardest thing is not living without my mom, but living with the tension in the house because of my older sister and what happened."
Chee, however, fought all charges involving her work for real clients. Calling those charges "horsefeathers," Chee states, "I would rather rot in jail than to plead to charges where I prepared documents like every other lawyer in the country." Immigration expert Ira Kurzban agreed, testifying at Chee's sentencing hearing that her labor certification filings were like those of other attorneys.
Chee never went to trial. The federal prosecutor suddenly dropped all remaining charges against her, after she decided to plead guilty. On March 3, 2005, Judge James A. Beaty sentenced Chee to a year and a day in prison beginning April 22 at Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia (better known as Martha Stewart's prison). Chee will be unable to attend her daughter Chernlian's wedding in September.
A former U.S. Dept. of Justice Civil Rights attorney, Earls believes the government was making an example of Chee.
"The U.S. Attorney's office was certainly trying to send a message," she says. "Bringing down someone who previously had a strong reputation as an aggressive advocate is much more attractive to the U.S. Attorney's office than someone who doesn't aggressively stand up for immigrant rights."
Chee has been on disability inactive status since April 2004 with the State Bar of North Carolina due to her mental health issues, and cannot practice law. However, her youngest daughter, Leia, seems fiercely determined to take up her mother's torch and fight for the rights of immigrants. "Immigrants are often neglected in the law and in the community," Forgay observes. "You can't just leave out certain groups just because there are tensions with their community."
The sixteen-year-old admits that previously, she did not want to be a lawyer because she hardly saw her mother, who was working all the time. Forgay has changed her mind. "Now, after seeing what happened to my mom, they may be able to stop her, but they can't stop me from helping people who need it."
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/23472/
Posted on July 13, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/23472/
Having spent almost three decades offering legal service to immigrants, Chinese American immigration attorney Manlin Chee is now getting used to serving time instead.
Chee had been a nationally recognized lawyer for her work with immigrants, some of it pro bono, and much of it for Muslims, but things soured for her soon after she appeared on a panel discussing the PATRIOT Act in March 2003.
The public forum at the main library in Greensboro, North Carolina was televised and attracted a large audience. Chee argued passionately that the PATRIOT Act violated the Bill of Rights and threatened the civil rights of immigrants and U.S. citizens.
"I'll never forget when Manlin joked that she had good news and bad news for the audience," recalls Tim Hopkins, an attendee. "She said that the bad news is that those people taking pictures of the audience are from the FBI. The good news is that they are coming after the panelists first. It was prophetic."
Indeed, within weeks the FBI began investigating Chee, says her attorney Locke Clifford. Clifford says the FBI had no record of complaints against her. But the agency began combing through thousands of Chee's case files. They even went back to her own citizenship application. The agents interviewed her clients and employees for over a year, until they indicted Chee for immigration fraud on June 26, 2004.
It was a dramatic fall for the successful attorney who once had offices in three cities and thousands of clients. The American Bar Association awarded Chee its public service award in 1991, which was presented to her by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. She also received the 1990 William L. Thorp Pro Bono Award by the North Carolina Bar Association. The Triad Business News called her "one of the foremost immigration attorneys in North Carolina if not the country."
Many think that it was her political views that caused Chee's troubles.
"She was outspoken about the impact of the PATRIOT Act on the Muslim community and American citizens," says Badi Ali, President of the Islamic Center of the Triad and Muslims for a Better North Carolina. Chee also demonstrated her support of the Muslim community by wearing Muslim garb on Fridays, says Chee's youngest daughter, Leia Forgay. Forgay says it was symbolic. "She was letting people know that she will stand with them figuratively and literally."
However, fellow Greensboro immigration attorney, Gerry Chapman, questions whether Chee was targeted for her views. "There are attorneys in North Carolina who have spoken out against the PATRIOT Act and against targeting of Muslims, and the vast majority of them have not been investigated and indicted." He adds that he thinks Chee overextended herself. "Manlin's got a good heart, but she was trying to do too much for too many people."
Attorney Anita Earls, director of Advocacy of the University of North Carolina Center for Civil Rights in Chapel Hill, points out that "other immigration attorneys have engaged in worse practices -- and they were not investigated." She believes Chee was "singled out because of a combination of the clients she served and the fact that she was outspoken in her opposition to the war."
The FBI's strongest evidence came from two sting operations, the first one within weeks after Chee had participated in the PATRIOT Act forum, says Clifford. The informants posed as needy Muslims. One informant wanted to pretend he was gay so he could seek asylum, and the other informant wanted a sham marriage to get his green card. Chee was indicted for filing papers on behalf of both.
According to Forgay, the informants wouldn't stop asking for Chee's help: "My mom told them that there's nothing I can do, but they kept coming back to her and she couldn't say no. She always tries to help -- she went ahead and submitted the papers to try. She would feel worse if she didn't try."
Chee's former client and good friend, Melinda Macasero agrees. "Manlin had a hard time when she first came to the U.S., so she knows how hard it can be," Macasero says. "If you're an immigrant and you're a client of hers, she would go the extra mile to help."
Says Clifford, "Manlin never said no to anybody and the FBI probably said to themselves that if we run someone in there with a sad story, Manlin will probably take the bait."
Chee now admits she was "foolish" for succumbing to the sham entreaties. She describes one informant as being "intimidating," constantly calling, going to her office, and badgering her when she avoided filing the papers for months. Feeling "pushed" and suffering from an anxiety disorder, Chee finally relented under the pressure.
"Manlin did have some depression," says her close friend, Amelia Leung. "Her mental health does affect her sense of judgment sometimes."
During Chee's prosecution, a diverse group of community members rallied around her and formed the Manlin Chee Defense Committee, taking out a full-page ad in the local paper in her support. Notably missing, however, was a public outcry from the local Chinese community.
Meiling Yu, cultural promotion director of the Greensboro Chinese Association, says her organization just didn't know enough. "Because the charges are about her practice, which we are not familiar with, we didn't feel we had enough information to speak out in support of her." She notes the impression that Chee was targeted for her outspokenness, but as a nonprofit, they did not feel they could make a political statement.
"I can understand why they wouldn't speak out," says Macasero. "You are dealing with the government, and [people] are afraid they are going to get in trouble."
Ultimately, Chee pleaded guilty to the charges from the stings. Her daughter Leia, insists Chee pleaded guilty to keep her family together. The FBI had also indicted and charged Chee's oldest daughter, Chernlian, because she was a paralegal in Chee's office. Chernlian, who has an upcoming wedding, decided to cooperate with the prosecution: She would get probation if she pleaded guilty, but she would have to testify against her mother.
The anger in Leia's voice is palpable when she discusses the effect of her sister's decision. "My mom did the selfless thing and pleaded guilty to keep our family from tearing apart because she felt that this was a time when we needed to stick together. ... The hardest thing is not living without my mom, but living with the tension in the house because of my older sister and what happened."
Chee, however, fought all charges involving her work for real clients. Calling those charges "horsefeathers," Chee states, "I would rather rot in jail than to plead to charges where I prepared documents like every other lawyer in the country." Immigration expert Ira Kurzban agreed, testifying at Chee's sentencing hearing that her labor certification filings were like those of other attorneys.
Chee never went to trial. The federal prosecutor suddenly dropped all remaining charges against her, after she decided to plead guilty. On March 3, 2005, Judge James A. Beaty sentenced Chee to a year and a day in prison beginning April 22 at Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia (better known as Martha Stewart's prison). Chee will be unable to attend her daughter Chernlian's wedding in September.
A former U.S. Dept. of Justice Civil Rights attorney, Earls believes the government was making an example of Chee.
"The U.S. Attorney's office was certainly trying to send a message," she says. "Bringing down someone who previously had a strong reputation as an aggressive advocate is much more attractive to the U.S. Attorney's office than someone who doesn't aggressively stand up for immigrant rights."
Chee has been on disability inactive status since April 2004 with the State Bar of North Carolina due to her mental health issues, and cannot practice law. However, her youngest daughter, Leia, seems fiercely determined to take up her mother's torch and fight for the rights of immigrants. "Immigrants are often neglected in the law and in the community," Forgay observes. "You can't just leave out certain groups just because there are tensions with their community."
The sixteen-year-old admits that previously, she did not want to be a lawyer because she hardly saw her mother, who was working all the time. Forgay has changed her mind. "Now, after seeing what happened to my mom, they may be able to stop her, but they can't stop me from helping people who need it."
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/23472/
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
BORN AGAIN ECONOMICS: PUTTING THE MONEY CHANGERS BACK IN THE TEMPLE
Sam Smith, The Progressive Review
WHILE A LOT OF attention is being paid to evangelical Christian extremism, far less is directed towards an equally dangerous religious sect - the practitioners of evangelical economic extremism.
Although the latter faith is not often regarded as an actual religion, it has far more in common with evangelism than it does with rational intellectual inquiry or thoughtful academic analysis. Along with the Christian extremists, the economic evangelists share an arrogant certainty, single factor fetishism, missionary mania, belief in intelligent design, an unlimited desire to impose their myths on others, and a rhetoric that is only meaningful if you already accept their premises. Their arguments are largely based on iconic folkloric texts and ignore the true variety of human existence and its communities and families. And they both speak in tongues, which they consider a good thing. The big difference is that while the Christian bible has the money changers being chased out of the temple, the free market bible
wants them back in again.
One sect blasphemes its namesake by practicing such unchristian traits as bigotry, intolerance, and aggression. The other mocks its namesake by fostering an economy that is free only to those who manipulate or steal from it.
In the end, both share an extraordinary narcissism with one putting their own salvation before everything else, the other doing the same with their own power and fiscal fortunes.
There are, of course, plenty of nice economists just as there are plenty of good Christians. The former practice their faith for the betterment of society just as good Christians practice love, charity, and forgiveness. They use their faith as a guide for themselves rather than as a weapon against others.
Increasingly, however, both Christians and economists have been tarnished by roving bands of heretical Talibanic bullies who have left the sanctuary of church and classroom to enforce their narrow and mean will upon the land. The one would have us believe that abortion and gay marriage are more important than housing, health and a breathable environment; the other that salvation lies in letting the robber barons
do just what they want.
And as their false doctrine has caused countless suffering to others, these false prophets have gained status and wealth, an issue so profoundly raised by Ray Stevens in his epic work "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex":
Would Jesus be political
if He came back to earth?
Have His second home in
Palm Springs, yeah, and try
to hide His worth?
Take money, from those
poor folks, when He comes
back again?
For twenty five years, while one sect has increasingly controlled what we watch and read and how we mate, the other has helped create an ever more monopolized economy, indifferent to either conscience or consumer. One believes that their particular God and Jesus reveal all truths. The other says it's the market and money that does it.
In fact, it is hard to imagine a free market in a real world, and certainly not in Washington where 35,000 corporate lobbyists work hard to make sure the market is anything but free, as the politicians they have indentured and the media they have fooled prattle endlessly about said market's virtues.
Although free market advocates parade themselves as - and often appear to be - highly intelligent people, they are either exceptionally deluded or are perpetrating a massive fraud. As Robert Kuttner has pointed out, "There is at the core of the celebration of markets a relentless tautology. If we begin, by assumption, with the premise that nearly everything can be understood as a market and that markets optimize outcomes, then everything else leads back to the same conclusion -- marketize! If, in the event a particular market doesn't optimize, there is only one possible inference: it must be insufficiently marketlike. This epistemological sleight of hand is an astonishing blend that blurs the descriptive with the normative. It is a no-fail system for guaranteeing that theory trumps evidence."
In fact, any moderately observant person, not brainwashed by a quarter century of contrary missionary zeal, would notice that in addition to money, humans are affected by such things as community, religion, family, friends, social ambition, politics, virtue, and psychological faults and strengths. In short, the market driven society is just another form of false salvation being foisted on the unwary citizen, in this case by the Elmer Gantries of rightwing economics.
As with various forms of religious excess, the media has played a deeply enabling role. From the moment the Jerry Falwells of free markets - Thatcher and Reagan - commenced their con, the media bought into it with hardly a scintilla of skepticism. To this day one can easily assume from the media that there is a constitutional amendment guaranteeing a free market.
The damage evangelical economics has done of the country has been stunning, ranging from the extreme monopolization of American business to the disintegration of our language into a collection of corporate cliches. It has destroyed pensions, made decent healthcare and housing ever more difficult, and threatened social security. And yet none dare call these tyrants bullies, fools or liars.
In the end, it may be argued that all promises of salvation are false, but if a Christian evangelist and a market missionary should happen to ring your door at the same time, go with Jesus. Even the most extreme Christian advocate will at least offer you food, shelter, and warmth. The free marketer will leave you dying in the gutter, and standing over your last gasps, proudly tell you that the market was right again.
WHILE A LOT OF attention is being paid to evangelical Christian extremism, far less is directed towards an equally dangerous religious sect - the practitioners of evangelical economic extremism.
Although the latter faith is not often regarded as an actual religion, it has far more in common with evangelism than it does with rational intellectual inquiry or thoughtful academic analysis. Along with the Christian extremists, the economic evangelists share an arrogant certainty, single factor fetishism, missionary mania, belief in intelligent design, an unlimited desire to impose their myths on others, and a rhetoric that is only meaningful if you already accept their premises. Their arguments are largely based on iconic folkloric texts and ignore the true variety of human existence and its communities and families. And they both speak in tongues, which they consider a good thing. The big difference is that while the Christian bible has the money changers being chased out of the temple, the free market bible
wants them back in again.
One sect blasphemes its namesake by practicing such unchristian traits as bigotry, intolerance, and aggression. The other mocks its namesake by fostering an economy that is free only to those who manipulate or steal from it.
In the end, both share an extraordinary narcissism with one putting their own salvation before everything else, the other doing the same with their own power and fiscal fortunes.
There are, of course, plenty of nice economists just as there are plenty of good Christians. The former practice their faith for the betterment of society just as good Christians practice love, charity, and forgiveness. They use their faith as a guide for themselves rather than as a weapon against others.
Increasingly, however, both Christians and economists have been tarnished by roving bands of heretical Talibanic bullies who have left the sanctuary of church and classroom to enforce their narrow and mean will upon the land. The one would have us believe that abortion and gay marriage are more important than housing, health and a breathable environment; the other that salvation lies in letting the robber barons
do just what they want.
And as their false doctrine has caused countless suffering to others, these false prophets have gained status and wealth, an issue so profoundly raised by Ray Stevens in his epic work "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex":
Would Jesus be political
if He came back to earth?
Have His second home in
Palm Springs, yeah, and try
to hide His worth?
Take money, from those
poor folks, when He comes
back again?
For twenty five years, while one sect has increasingly controlled what we watch and read and how we mate, the other has helped create an ever more monopolized economy, indifferent to either conscience or consumer. One believes that their particular God and Jesus reveal all truths. The other says it's the market and money that does it.
In fact, it is hard to imagine a free market in a real world, and certainly not in Washington where 35,000 corporate lobbyists work hard to make sure the market is anything but free, as the politicians they have indentured and the media they have fooled prattle endlessly about said market's virtues.
Although free market advocates parade themselves as - and often appear to be - highly intelligent people, they are either exceptionally deluded or are perpetrating a massive fraud. As Robert Kuttner has pointed out, "There is at the core of the celebration of markets a relentless tautology. If we begin, by assumption, with the premise that nearly everything can be understood as a market and that markets optimize outcomes, then everything else leads back to the same conclusion -- marketize! If, in the event a particular market doesn't optimize, there is only one possible inference: it must be insufficiently marketlike. This epistemological sleight of hand is an astonishing blend that blurs the descriptive with the normative. It is a no-fail system for guaranteeing that theory trumps evidence."
In fact, any moderately observant person, not brainwashed by a quarter century of contrary missionary zeal, would notice that in addition to money, humans are affected by such things as community, religion, family, friends, social ambition, politics, virtue, and psychological faults and strengths. In short, the market driven society is just another form of false salvation being foisted on the unwary citizen, in this case by the Elmer Gantries of rightwing economics.
As with various forms of religious excess, the media has played a deeply enabling role. From the moment the Jerry Falwells of free markets - Thatcher and Reagan - commenced their con, the media bought into it with hardly a scintilla of skepticism. To this day one can easily assume from the media that there is a constitutional amendment guaranteeing a free market.
The damage evangelical economics has done of the country has been stunning, ranging from the extreme monopolization of American business to the disintegration of our language into a collection of corporate cliches. It has destroyed pensions, made decent healthcare and housing ever more difficult, and threatened social security. And yet none dare call these tyrants bullies, fools or liars.
In the end, it may be argued that all promises of salvation are false, but if a Christian evangelist and a market missionary should happen to ring your door at the same time, go with Jesus. Even the most extreme Christian advocate will at least offer you food, shelter, and warmth. The free marketer will leave you dying in the gutter, and standing over your last gasps, proudly tell you that the market was right again.
THE FARM ESTATE TAX MYTH: ONLY 300 FARMS AFFECTED
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON, NEW YORK TIMES: The number of farms on which estate tax is owed when the owners die has fallen by 82% since 2000, to just 300 farms, as Congress has more than doubled the threshold at which the tax applies, the Congressional Budget Office said in a report released last week. All but 27 farmers left enough liquid assets to pay taxes owed, the budget office found. . .
These findings come as the Senate is poised to vote this month on repealing the estate tax. Advocates of repeal have begun showing commercials criticizing senators who oppose repeal, such as Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-WA. Many of the criticisms focus on a supposed threat to family farms.
The estate tax raised an estimated $23.4 billion last year. Repeal would shift part of the burden of taxes off the fortunes left by the richest one percent of Americans, some of whose fortunes were never taxed, onto the general population. The lost revenue could be made up in three ways: higher income taxes, reduced government services or more borrowing, which would pass the burden of current government spending to future generations.
President Bush, the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association have asserted that the estate tax is destroying family farms. None, however, has cited a case of a farm lost to estate taxes, although in June 2001 Bush said he had talked to such farmers.
http://www.ea1.com/CARP/
These findings come as the Senate is poised to vote this month on repealing the estate tax. Advocates of repeal have begun showing commercials criticizing senators who oppose repeal, such as Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-WA. Many of the criticisms focus on a supposed threat to family farms.
The estate tax raised an estimated $23.4 billion last year. Repeal would shift part of the burden of taxes off the fortunes left by the richest one percent of Americans, some of whose fortunes were never taxed, onto the general population. The lost revenue could be made up in three ways: higher income taxes, reduced government services or more borrowing, which would pass the burden of current government spending to future generations.
President Bush, the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association have asserted that the estate tax is destroying family farms. None, however, has cited a case of a farm lost to estate taxes, although in June 2001 Bush said he had talked to such farmers.
http://www.ea1.com/CARP/
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
UN Occupation Forces Carry Out Massacre of Poor in Port-au-Prince
On Wednesday morning, July 6th, at approximately 3:00 AM, UN occupation forces in Haiti carried out a major military operation in the working-class neighborhood of Cite Soleil, one of the poorest in Port-au-Prince and also a stronghold of support for Haiti's majority political party Lavalas and President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Presumably, the purpose of the operation was to crack down on illegal "gang ctivity", in particular on "gang" leader Dread Wilme. In actuality, a US trade union and human rights delegation in Port-au-Prince discovered evidence of a massacre conducted by the UN forces, targeting the larger community itself.
According to accounts from many different members of the community, many of whom chose to remain anonymous, as well as from journalists who were on the scene during the operation, UN forces surrounded two neighborhoods within Cite Soleil, Boisneuf and Project Drouillard, sealing off the alleys with tanks and troops.
Two helicopters flew overhead. At 4:30 AM, UN forces launched the offensive, shooting into houses, shacks, a church, and a school with machine guns, tank fire, and tear gas. Eyewitnesses reported that when people fled to escape the tear gas, UN troops gunned them down from the back.
UN forces shot out electric transformers in the neighborhood. People were killed in their homes and also just outside of their homes, on the way to work. According to journalists and eyewitnesses, one man named Leon Cherry, age 46, was shot and killed on his way to work for a flower company. Another man, Mones Belizaire, was shot as he got ready to go work in a local sweatshop and subsequently died from a stomach infection. A woman who was a street vendor was shot in the head and killed instantly.
One man was shot in his ribs while he was trying to brush his teeth. Another man was shot in the jaw as he left his house to try and get some money for his wife's medical costs; he endured a slow death.Yet another man named Mira was shot and killed while urinating in his home.
A mother, Sena Romelus, and her two young children were killed in their home, either by bullets or by a 83-CC grenade UN forces threw. Film footage of many of these deaths was shared with the US human rights delegation. Eyewitnesses claimed that the offensive overwhelmed the community and that there was not a "firefight", but rather a slaughter. The operation was primarily conducted by UN forces, with the Haitian
National Police this time taking a back seat.
Seth Donnelly, a member of the US human rights delegation in Port-au-Prince, visited Cite Soleil with Haitian human rights workers on Thursday afternoon, July 7th. The team gathered testimony from many members of the community, young and old, men, women, and youth. All verified the previous statements we had received from journalists and other eyewitness accounts.
These community members spoke of how they had been surrounded by tanks and troops that sealed off exits from the neighborhoods and then proceeded to assault the civilian population. The community allowed the team to film the evidence of the massacre, showing the homes -- in some cases made of tin and cardboard -- that had been riddled by bullets, tank fire and helicopter ammunition, as well as showing the team some of the corpses still there, including a mother and her two children.
The team also filmed a church and a school that had been riddled by ammunition. Reportedly, a preacher was among the victims killed. Some community members allowed the team to interview them, but not to film their faces for fear of their lives. People were traumutized and, in the cases of loved ones of victims, hysterical.
Many community members -- again young and old, men and women -- spoke highly of Dread Wilme, referring to him as their "protector" or "father", and expressed fear for the future. One member said that he heard that another UN operation against the community was planned for later Thursday night or early Friday morning.
Multiple community people indicated that they had counted at least 23 bodies of people killed by the UN forces. Community members claimed that UN forces had taken away some of the bodies. Published estimates indicate that upwards of 50 may have been killed and an indeterminate number wounded, and that more than 300 heavily armed UN troops took part in the assault on this densely populated residential neighborhood.
"There was systematic firing on civilians," said one eyewitness to the killing. "All exits were cut off. The community was choked off, surrounded -- facing tanks coming from different angles, and overhead, helicopters with machine guns fired down on the people. The citizens were under attack from all sides and from the air. It was war on a community."
The Labor/Human Rights Delegation from the United States, initiated by the San Francisco Labor Council, had been in Haiti since late last month to attend the Congress of the Confederation of Haitian Workers (CTH), the country's largest labor organization, and met with hundreds of Haitian workers, farmers and professionals about the current labor and human rights situation in Haiti.
For more info and updates, visit http://www.haitiaction.net/
According to accounts from many different members of the community, many of whom chose to remain anonymous, as well as from journalists who were on the scene during the operation, UN forces surrounded two neighborhoods within Cite Soleil, Boisneuf and Project Drouillard, sealing off the alleys with tanks and troops.
Two helicopters flew overhead. At 4:30 AM, UN forces launched the offensive, shooting into houses, shacks, a church, and a school with machine guns, tank fire, and tear gas. Eyewitnesses reported that when people fled to escape the tear gas, UN troops gunned them down from the back.
UN forces shot out electric transformers in the neighborhood. People were killed in their homes and also just outside of their homes, on the way to work. According to journalists and eyewitnesses, one man named Leon Cherry, age 46, was shot and killed on his way to work for a flower company. Another man, Mones Belizaire, was shot as he got ready to go work in a local sweatshop and subsequently died from a stomach infection. A woman who was a street vendor was shot in the head and killed instantly.
One man was shot in his ribs while he was trying to brush his teeth. Another man was shot in the jaw as he left his house to try and get some money for his wife's medical costs; he endured a slow death.Yet another man named Mira was shot and killed while urinating in his home.
A mother, Sena Romelus, and her two young children were killed in their home, either by bullets or by a 83-CC grenade UN forces threw. Film footage of many of these deaths was shared with the US human rights delegation. Eyewitnesses claimed that the offensive overwhelmed the community and that there was not a "firefight", but rather a slaughter. The operation was primarily conducted by UN forces, with the Haitian
National Police this time taking a back seat.
Seth Donnelly, a member of the US human rights delegation in Port-au-Prince, visited Cite Soleil with Haitian human rights workers on Thursday afternoon, July 7th. The team gathered testimony from many members of the community, young and old, men, women, and youth. All verified the previous statements we had received from journalists and other eyewitness accounts.
These community members spoke of how they had been surrounded by tanks and troops that sealed off exits from the neighborhoods and then proceeded to assault the civilian population. The community allowed the team to film the evidence of the massacre, showing the homes -- in some cases made of tin and cardboard -- that had been riddled by bullets, tank fire and helicopter ammunition, as well as showing the team some of the corpses still there, including a mother and her two children.
The team also filmed a church and a school that had been riddled by ammunition. Reportedly, a preacher was among the victims killed. Some community members allowed the team to interview them, but not to film their faces for fear of their lives. People were traumutized and, in the cases of loved ones of victims, hysterical.
Many community members -- again young and old, men and women -- spoke highly of Dread Wilme, referring to him as their "protector" or "father", and expressed fear for the future. One member said that he heard that another UN operation against the community was planned for later Thursday night or early Friday morning.
Multiple community people indicated that they had counted at least 23 bodies of people killed by the UN forces. Community members claimed that UN forces had taken away some of the bodies. Published estimates indicate that upwards of 50 may have been killed and an indeterminate number wounded, and that more than 300 heavily armed UN troops took part in the assault on this densely populated residential neighborhood.
"There was systematic firing on civilians," said one eyewitness to the killing. "All exits were cut off. The community was choked off, surrounded -- facing tanks coming from different angles, and overhead, helicopters with machine guns fired down on the people. The citizens were under attack from all sides and from the air. It was war on a community."
The Labor/Human Rights Delegation from the United States, initiated by the San Francisco Labor Council, had been in Haiti since late last month to attend the Congress of the Confederation of Haitian Workers (CTH), the country's largest labor organization, and met with hundreds of Haitian workers, farmers and professionals about the current labor and human rights situation in Haiti.
For more info and updates, visit http://www.haitiaction.net/
False Flag Over London
The first signs that 7/7 was a false flag op like 9/11 were already apparent on the day. It was a classic train bombing in the tradition of "NATO's Secret Army" - covert ops assets like the "Red Brigades" and Madrid patsies.
7/7/05
It was 2001 all over again: a year into his term, Bush and his poll ratings had sunk to historic lows, even lower this time under the weight of scandals and rumblings of impeachment. Blair too was hurt badly by the Downing Street memo. Then out of the blue, salvation struck the pair. Today, 7/7, saw a classic false-flag attack hit London, a simple set-up by western secret services to distract from the deepening woes of Bush and Blair, and perhaps to create the pretext for the next round of wars on Iran.
The G-8 conference was the ideal, high-profile venue to muster the maudling sympathy of world leaders behind the flagging amateur B&B show. Today’s Guy Fawkeses, home-team self-terrorists in the heart of empire, thumbed their noses with a sneer at us mortal fools, and blithely played their favorite base-eleven numerology game, on this 7/7 date - following on the heels of Madrid 3/11 and New York 9/11, with its signature Flights 11 and 77.
Cui bono. Wall Street closed on an uptick.
Conspiracy theory, you say? How can I be so sure? The war-profiteer clique are not all that inventive. False terror is the only trick they know. If they had any idea of governance or statecraft, they wouldn't need to stoop to these toxic tactics.
One classic trademark of false-flag terror on display today was the "previously unknown" organization posting anonymously on a website. Of course, western intelligence, with Echelon and all that surveillance paraphernalia, can track any webposting back to its source. When it wants to - but what need is there for the source to track itself.
"Real" terrorists are known groups that make concrete demands. They are an endangered species, if not extinct in the wild, but for a few rare specimens nurtured in the zoos of the psy-op netherworld.
Fake terrorists - covert psy-war units of western intelligence - always invent a name of an "unknown" group. They have to do this, of course. If they claimed, say, that the PLO did it, the accused would energetically deny it, spoiling the show. So they use fictitious identities, which they can mold to suit the target of convenience.
Today’s fiction was a "secret" group affiliated - oh how wonderfully convenient - with Al Qaeda and Al Zarqawi. Yet the state-owned BBC itself found that Al Qaeda does not even exist, in its documentary film, "The Terror Myth." And just yesterday, Dahr Jamail wrote of his trip to the town of Zarqa, on the trail of the fabled Zarqawi. The man's family believe he died years ago, and no recent photos exist. Certain is only that the mythical Zarqawi’s base of operations always pops up wherever the Americans want to attack. Fallujah, Samarra, who do you want to bomb tomorrow?
Some other dead giveaway signs:
- Scotland Yard warned Mr. Netanyahu half an hour beforehand not to go to the bomb site, according to an AP wire from Jerusalem (a slip that was subsequently denied of course, but it was still up at the website of the Canada National Post earlier today).
- An MSNBC translator says an error in a verse from the Quran cited by the "unknown" group couldn't have been made by Al Qaeda, and he thinks it's phony.. Blair's proofreaders are falling down on their dossiers again... the bunglers ought to be belted, or suspended.
- Train bombings like London 7/7and Madrid 3/11 are a speciality of NATO psy-war units. The expert on this since 1978 has been Webster Tarpley, who shows in his latest book, 9/11 Synthetic Terror, how the bombing of Bologna Stazione Centrale in 1980 by the “Red Brigades” is of one cloth with the Madrid bombings. The so-called "communist terrorist" Red Brigades were phonies, a patsy outfit created by Lodge P2, the neofascist shadow government that holds Italy in its grip. The Madrid train bombing suspects were police agents, also run by a neo-fascist falange: as Tarpley notes, one suspect admitted he worked for the old guard, la Guardia Civil, Unidad Central Operativa.
Like Madrid, London suffered relatively low-tech destruction, plausibly in reach of small-time terrorists, except for the wide scope and coordination of the operations. Did the ambitious scale of the WTC destruction involve too many embarrassments, with its indisputable physical evidence of controlled demolition? I am not so optimistic to rule out another mega-hit. This was well-calibrated. A booster shot was enough to tank up the War of Terror today.
Another possible motive, Tarpley says, is the war party’s urge to push Bush into Iran, though America has no stomach for it. They need another 9/11 to send our boys to occupy the oil fields of both Iraq and Iran, and hold the world, all of us, to ransom.
Yeah, there shall be wars, and rumours of wars. Reports of covert American commando operations against targets inside Iran prepared the ground for invasion. The provocations aroused a storm of anti-American sentiment, sweeping the elections against the reformers for radical dark horse candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, thus helping pave the way to mobilize a war coalition against Iran. Failing that, he may replace Saddam as symbol of vilification while keeping Iran shackled by backward fundamentalism. Tarpley has a chapter named "Islamic Fundamentalism: Fostered by U. S. Foreign Policy." It goes back to the 19th century British Arab Bureau, crown purveyors of divide and conquer schemes, who hit on xenophobic fundamentalism as the ploy to make the Arabs impossible partners for alliances with any of Britain's rivals.
"Poster boy" bin Laden is a product of this. Alternative writers in the West are quick to see the demagogic effect his image has on militarizing Western publics. Few of them realize the profoundly cynical obverse of the covert strategy: feeding the Arabs on the poison pills of false hopes in a terrorist hero.
Yet Arab admiration for Osama has remained platonic. Anthropologists long ago noted the Arab tendency to vent feelings in words rather than action. Many Muslims felt bound to fight in Afghanistan against the atheist Soviet occupier, but the BBC’s Terror Myth documentary recounts how Bin Laden and Zawahiri utterly failed to mobilize real Arabs to the way of terrorism against innocent citizens abroad. Tarpley adduces evidence that Zawahiri is likely bin Laden's handler from MI-6. Enter now the shadowy world of alphabet agencies and their covert clients, the patsies and moles, who live a tunnel life, like the trains of London they fed on this time.
O lovers of peace and opponents of war: never shall you see an end of calamities instigated by the war party, until the people see through the false flag trick. It is not in marching that wars may be stopped, but by seeing and seizing the strings from the puppetmaster.
A book with a depth of historical background to this picture is The Nazi Hydra in America, currently online. It recounts how the 1933 Reichstag fire, that most infamous false-flag op which catapulted the Bush-Harriman protégé, little Adolf Hitler to power, was followed in 1934 by an attempted military putsch against FDR, launched by the Morgan interests - an episode that has been expunged from all schoolbooks. Yet if it had succeeded, with America and Germany both under Nazi control, the New World Fascist Order would have come into being already 70 years ago.
They do not give up. They have time, money, and no project more captivating. They have been preparing the final putsch for a century or more.
They were not defeated in 1945. The postwar CIA and NSA are their resurgent Phoenix, born from the ashes of Nazi assets. The enemy is within the gates.
Read, understand, and realize how bitter and lasting is the struggle against the corporatist hydra, which now lets show the true features behind that leering smiley face, as it grasps again for absolute world power.
With the same old trick.
What fools these mortals be.
For giving out the lowdown about the London underground, I was roundly rebuked today, accused of disgracing the dead. Yet I was the one speaking out to avenge their honor, and protect their memory from the blood stain of abuse by the vultures of war. Unheeding, the shocked sheeple flock to march in ever tighter lockstep for their Fodderland, with each new Reichstags Firemeisterwerk casting a stronger spell. If I'm the only one who can smell the smoke of a parliament in flames, there will be no stopping the intoxicated herd of rhinoceri now. Carry on, madding crowd, with your tyranny of the majority, stampeding to a fascist state à la 1933. As for us few dissidents, we better make our peace with our Maker. Or hope that after wallowing at will in the ritual reflex to masochistic sentimentality they hold sacred, our fellows may be readier for reason later. To be kind, it’s because they are nice people that they can’t believe “their own” are capable of such evil. Yet their haste to stick up for the culprits and heap abuse on a warner proves the adage that people get the government they deserve. And do they show sanctimonious sorrow each day innocent Iraqis are killed by their countrymen? No, for the most part. Hard words must be said. Too many of these are hypocritical tears, streaming down one-sided faces. But is that too unkind? Terror is meant to shock people, and they deal with the emotions as they can. Facing the awful fact of self-terror is a shock in its own right – is this too much at once at this stage, rubbing salt in their wounds? But if they cannot learn now, when their attention is focused on the latest atrocity, when will be the right time?
- John Leonard was editor and co-author of The War on Freedom 2002, the first exposé of 9/11 published in the United States.
Posted: Sunday July 10, 2005 09:08 AM
At White House, a Day of Silence on Rove's Role in C.I.A. Leak
July 12, 2005
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
WASHINGTON, July 11 - Nearly two years after stating that any administration official found to have been involved in leaking the name of an undercover C.I.A. officer would be fired, and assuring that Karl Rove and other senior aides to President Bush had nothing to do with the disclosure, the White House on Monday refused to answer any questions about new evidence of Mr. Rove's role in the matter.
With the White House silent, Democrats rushed in, demanding that the administration provide a full account of any involvement by Mr. Rove, one of the president's closest advisers, turning up the political heat in the case and leaving some Republicans worried about the possible effects on Mr. Bush's second-term agenda.
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, cited Mr. Bush's statements about firing anyone involved in the leak and said, "I trust they will follow through on this pledge."
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said Mr. Rove, given his stature and the principles involved in the case, could not hide behind legal advice not to comment.
"The lesson of history for George Bush and Karl Rove is that the best way to help themselves is to bring out all the facts, on their own, quickly," Mr. Schumer said, citing the second-term scandals that have beset previous administrations.
In two contentious news briefings, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, would not directly address any of a barrage of questions about Mr. Rove's involvement, a day after new evidence suggested that Mr. Rove had discussed the C.I.A. officer with a reporter from Time magazine in July 2003 without identifying her by name.
Under often hostile questioning, Mr. McClellan repeatedly declined to say whether he stood behind his previous statements that Mr. Rove had played no role in the matter, saying he could not comment while a criminal investigation was under way. He brushed aside questions about whether the president would follow through on his pledge, repeated just over a year ago, to fire anyone in his administration found to have played a role in disclosing the officer's identity. And he declined to say when Mr. Bush learned that Mr. Rove had mentioned the C.I.A. officer in his conversation with the Time reporter. Article...
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
WASHINGTON, July 11 - Nearly two years after stating that any administration official found to have been involved in leaking the name of an undercover C.I.A. officer would be fired, and assuring that Karl Rove and other senior aides to President Bush had nothing to do with the disclosure, the White House on Monday refused to answer any questions about new evidence of Mr. Rove's role in the matter.
With the White House silent, Democrats rushed in, demanding that the administration provide a full account of any involvement by Mr. Rove, one of the president's closest advisers, turning up the political heat in the case and leaving some Republicans worried about the possible effects on Mr. Bush's second-term agenda.
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, cited Mr. Bush's statements about firing anyone involved in the leak and said, "I trust they will follow through on this pledge."
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said Mr. Rove, given his stature and the principles involved in the case, could not hide behind legal advice not to comment.
"The lesson of history for George Bush and Karl Rove is that the best way to help themselves is to bring out all the facts, on their own, quickly," Mr. Schumer said, citing the second-term scandals that have beset previous administrations.
In two contentious news briefings, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, would not directly address any of a barrage of questions about Mr. Rove's involvement, a day after new evidence suggested that Mr. Rove had discussed the C.I.A. officer with a reporter from Time magazine in July 2003 without identifying her by name.
Under often hostile questioning, Mr. McClellan repeatedly declined to say whether he stood behind his previous statements that Mr. Rove had played no role in the matter, saying he could not comment while a criminal investigation was under way. He brushed aside questions about whether the president would follow through on his pledge, repeated just over a year ago, to fire anyone in his administration found to have played a role in disclosing the officer's identity. And he declined to say when Mr. Bush learned that Mr. Rove had mentioned the C.I.A. officer in his conversation with the Time reporter. Article...
Red Rove-r, red rover is that the press coming over? (w/video)
Courtesy of Think Progress, below is the first part of today's press conference with White House spokesman Scott McClellan (video here courtesy of Crooks & Liars).
You'll note that the press is uncharacteristically tenacious with regard to the Karl Rove investigation. Which is good. As one reporter points out, McClellan's earlier testimony from 2003 (that Rove had nothing to do with the whole Wilson/Plame national security breach) is "demonstrably false." Yet he refuses to revise or stand by his earlier claims, repeatedly telling the frustrated reporters that the White House had been urged by the prosecutor to not speak of anything surrounding the case.
What I wanna know is this: What comes next?
Let's be honest here: who reads press conference transcripts? Nobody, that's who. If these reporters -- tenacious as they are today -- don't write articles reflecting the stonewall and its troubling elements (that the government, even the president, are public servants and are accountable to the people...that, as one reporter pointed out, it's difficult to believe anything coming out of this spokesman's mouth as long as his "demonstrably false" comment remains unrefuted and unaddressed), given the rapid fire and unpredictable nature of the news cycle, there's every chance that this scandal will just fade into obscurity.
Read it for yourself and then watch for tonight's TV and tomorrow's newspaper reports. If it's just another day of Page A21 blandness: "the president's spokesman, advised by the prosecutor to do so, was unable to comment on the case involving Karl Rove..." then all this sound and fury will indeed signal nothing.
And what kind of message would THAT send to the kids? For god's sake think of the children.
*****
QUESTION: Does the president stand by his pledge to fire anyone involved in a leak of the name of a CIA operative?
MCCLELLAN: I appreciate your question. I think your question is being asked related to some reports that are in reference to an ongoing criminal investigation. The criminal investigation that you reference is something that continues at this point.
And as I’ve previously stated, while that investigation is ongoing, the White House is not going to comment on it.
The president directed the White House to cooperate fully with the investigation. And as part of cooperating fully with the investigation, we made a decision that we weren’t going to comment on it while it is ongoing.
QUESTION: I actually wasn’t talking about any investigation.
But in June of 2004, the president said that he would fire anybody who was involved in this leak to the press about information. I just wanted to know: Is that still his position?
MCCLELLAN: Yes, but this question is coming up in the context of this ongoing investigation, and that’s why I said that our policy continues to be that we’re not going to get into commenting on an ongoing criminal investigation from this podium.
The prosecutors overseeing the investigation had expressed a preference to us that one way to help the investigation is not to be commenting on it from this podium.
MCCLELLAN: And so that’s why we are not going to get into commenting on it while it is an ongoing investigation — or questions related to it.
QUESTION: Scott, if I could point out: Contradictory to that statement, on September 29th of 2003, while the investigation was ongoing, you clearly commented on it. You were the first one to have said that if anybody from the White House was involved, they would be fired.
And then, on June 10th of 2004, at Sea Island Plantation, in the midst of this investigation, when the president made his comments that, yes, he would fire anybody from the White House who was involved, so why have you commented on this during the process of the investigation in the past, but now you’ve suddenly drawn a curtain around it under the statement of, We’re not going to comment on an ongoing investigation?
MCCLELLAN: Again, John, I appreciate the question. I know you want to get to the bottom of this. No one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the president of the United States.
And I think the way to be most helpful is to not get into commenting on it while it is an ongoing investigation. And that’s something that the people overseeing the investigation have expressed a preference that we follow.
And that’s why we’re continuing to follow that approach and that policy.
Now, I remember very well what was previously said. And, at some point, I will be glad to talk about it, but not until after the investigation is complete.
QUESTION: So could I just ask: When did you change your mind to say that it was OK to comment during the course of an investigation before, but now it’s not?
MCCLELLAN: Well, I think maybe you missed what I was saying in reference to Terry’s question at the beginning. There came a point, when the investigation got under way, when those overseeing the investigation asked that it would be — or said that it would be their preference that we not get into discussing it while it is ongoing.
I think that’s the way to be most helpful to help them advance the investigation and get to the bottom of it.
QUESTION: Scott, can I ask you this: Did Karl Rove commit a crime?
MCCLELLAN: Again, David, this is a question relating to a ongoing investigation, and you have my response related to the investigation. And I don’t think you should read anything into it other than: We’re going to continue not to comment on it while it’s ongoing.
QUESTION: Do you stand by your statement from the fall of 2003, when you were asked specifically about Karl and Elliot Abrams and Scooter Libby, and you said, I’ve gone to each of those gentlemen, and they have told me they are not involved in this ?
QUESTION: Do you stand by that statement?
MCCLELLAN: And if you will recall, I said that, as part of helping the investigators move forward on the investigation, we’re not going to get into commenting on it. That was something I stated back near that time as well.
QUESTION: Scott, this is ridiculous. The notion that you’re going to stand before us, after having commented with that level of detail, and tell people watching this that somehow you’ve decided not to talk.
You’ve got a public record out there. Do you stand by your remarks from that podium or not?
MCCLELLAN: I’m well aware, like you, of what was previously said. And I will be glad to talk about it at the appropriate time. The appropriate time is when the investigation…
QUESTION: (inaudible) when it’s appropriate and when it’s inappropriate?
MCCLELLAN: If you’ll let me finish.
QUESTION: No, you’re not finishing. You’re not saying anything.
You stood at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved. And now we find out that he spoke about Joseph Wilson’s wife. So don’t you owe the American public a fuller explanation. Was he involved or was he not? Because contrary to what you told the American people, he did indeed talk about his wife, didn’t he?
MCCLELLAN: There will be a time to talk about this, but now is not the time to talk about it.
QUESTION: Do you think people will accept that, what you’re saying today?
MCCLELLAN: Again, I’ve responded to the question.
QUESTION: You’re in a bad spot here, Scott…
(LAUGHTER)
… because after the investigation began — after the criminal investigation was under way — you said, October 10th, 2003, I spoke with those individuals, Rove, Abrams and Libby. As I pointed out, those individuals assured me they were not involved in this, from that podium. That’s after the criminal investigation began.
Now that Rove has essentially been caught red-handed peddling this information, all of a sudden you have respect for the sanctity of the criminal investigation.
MCCLELLAN: No, that’s not a correct characterization. And I think you are well aware of that.
We know each other very well. And it was after that period that the investigators had requested that we not get into commenting on an ongoing criminal investigation.
And we want to be helpful so that they can get to the bottom of this. Because no one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the president of the United States.
I am well aware of what was said previously. I remember well what was said previously. And at some point I look forward to talking about it. But until the investigation is complete, I’m just not going to do that.
QUESTION: So you’re now saying that after you cleared Rove and the others from that podium, then the prosecutors asked you not to speak anymore and since then you haven’t.
MCCLELLAN: Again, you’re continuing to ask questions relating to an ongoing criminal investigation and I’m just not going to respond to them.
QUESTION: When did they ask you to stop commenting on it, Scott? Can you pin down a date?
MCCLELLAN: Back in that time period.
QUESTION: Well, then the president commented on it nine months later. So was he not following the White House plan?
MCCLELLAN: I appreciate your questions. You can keep asking them, but you have my response.
QUESTION: Well, we are going to keep asking them.
When did the president learn that Karl Rove had had a conversation with a news reporter about the involvement of Joseph Wilson’s wife in the decision to send him to Africa?
MCCLELLAN: I’ve responded to the questions.
QUESTION: When did the president learn that Karl Rove had been…
MCCLELLAN: I’ve responded to your questions.
QUESTION: After the investigation is completed, will you then be consistent with your word and the president’s word that anybody who was involved will be let go?
MCCLELLAN: Again, after the investigation is complete, I will be glad to talk about it at that point.
QUESTION: Can you walk us through why, given the fact that Rove’s lawyer has spoken publicly about this, it is inconsistent with the investigation, that it compromises the investigation to talk about the involvement of Karl Rove, the deputy chief of staff, here?
MCCLELLAN: Well, those overseeing the investigation expressed a preference to us that we not get into commenting on the investigation while it’s ongoing. And that was what they requested of the White House. And so I think in order to be helpful to that investigation, we are following their direction.
QUESTION: Scott, there’s a difference between commenting on an investigation and taking an action…
MCCLELLAN: (inaudible)
QUESTION: Can I finish, please?
MCCLELLAN: I’ll come back to you in a minute.
Evan Derkacz is a New York-based writer and contributor to AlterNet.
You'll note that the press is uncharacteristically tenacious with regard to the Karl Rove investigation. Which is good. As one reporter points out, McClellan's earlier testimony from 2003 (that Rove had nothing to do with the whole Wilson/Plame national security breach) is "demonstrably false." Yet he refuses to revise or stand by his earlier claims, repeatedly telling the frustrated reporters that the White House had been urged by the prosecutor to not speak of anything surrounding the case.
What I wanna know is this: What comes next?
Let's be honest here: who reads press conference transcripts? Nobody, that's who. If these reporters -- tenacious as they are today -- don't write articles reflecting the stonewall and its troubling elements (that the government, even the president, are public servants and are accountable to the people...that, as one reporter pointed out, it's difficult to believe anything coming out of this spokesman's mouth as long as his "demonstrably false" comment remains unrefuted and unaddressed), given the rapid fire and unpredictable nature of the news cycle, there's every chance that this scandal will just fade into obscurity.
Read it for yourself and then watch for tonight's TV and tomorrow's newspaper reports. If it's just another day of Page A21 blandness: "the president's spokesman, advised by the prosecutor to do so, was unable to comment on the case involving Karl Rove..." then all this sound and fury will indeed signal nothing.
And what kind of message would THAT send to the kids? For god's sake think of the children.
*****
QUESTION: Does the president stand by his pledge to fire anyone involved in a leak of the name of a CIA operative?
MCCLELLAN: I appreciate your question. I think your question is being asked related to some reports that are in reference to an ongoing criminal investigation. The criminal investigation that you reference is something that continues at this point.
And as I’ve previously stated, while that investigation is ongoing, the White House is not going to comment on it.
The president directed the White House to cooperate fully with the investigation. And as part of cooperating fully with the investigation, we made a decision that we weren’t going to comment on it while it is ongoing.
QUESTION: I actually wasn’t talking about any investigation.
But in June of 2004, the president said that he would fire anybody who was involved in this leak to the press about information. I just wanted to know: Is that still his position?
MCCLELLAN: Yes, but this question is coming up in the context of this ongoing investigation, and that’s why I said that our policy continues to be that we’re not going to get into commenting on an ongoing criminal investigation from this podium.
The prosecutors overseeing the investigation had expressed a preference to us that one way to help the investigation is not to be commenting on it from this podium.
MCCLELLAN: And so that’s why we are not going to get into commenting on it while it is an ongoing investigation — or questions related to it.
QUESTION: Scott, if I could point out: Contradictory to that statement, on September 29th of 2003, while the investigation was ongoing, you clearly commented on it. You were the first one to have said that if anybody from the White House was involved, they would be fired.
And then, on June 10th of 2004, at Sea Island Plantation, in the midst of this investigation, when the president made his comments that, yes, he would fire anybody from the White House who was involved, so why have you commented on this during the process of the investigation in the past, but now you’ve suddenly drawn a curtain around it under the statement of, We’re not going to comment on an ongoing investigation?
MCCLELLAN: Again, John, I appreciate the question. I know you want to get to the bottom of this. No one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the president of the United States.
And I think the way to be most helpful is to not get into commenting on it while it is an ongoing investigation. And that’s something that the people overseeing the investigation have expressed a preference that we follow.
And that’s why we’re continuing to follow that approach and that policy.
Now, I remember very well what was previously said. And, at some point, I will be glad to talk about it, but not until after the investigation is complete.
QUESTION: So could I just ask: When did you change your mind to say that it was OK to comment during the course of an investigation before, but now it’s not?
MCCLELLAN: Well, I think maybe you missed what I was saying in reference to Terry’s question at the beginning. There came a point, when the investigation got under way, when those overseeing the investigation asked that it would be — or said that it would be their preference that we not get into discussing it while it is ongoing.
I think that’s the way to be most helpful to help them advance the investigation and get to the bottom of it.
QUESTION: Scott, can I ask you this: Did Karl Rove commit a crime?
MCCLELLAN: Again, David, this is a question relating to a ongoing investigation, and you have my response related to the investigation. And I don’t think you should read anything into it other than: We’re going to continue not to comment on it while it’s ongoing.
QUESTION: Do you stand by your statement from the fall of 2003, when you were asked specifically about Karl and Elliot Abrams and Scooter Libby, and you said, I’ve gone to each of those gentlemen, and they have told me they are not involved in this ?
QUESTION: Do you stand by that statement?
MCCLELLAN: And if you will recall, I said that, as part of helping the investigators move forward on the investigation, we’re not going to get into commenting on it. That was something I stated back near that time as well.
QUESTION: Scott, this is ridiculous. The notion that you’re going to stand before us, after having commented with that level of detail, and tell people watching this that somehow you’ve decided not to talk.
You’ve got a public record out there. Do you stand by your remarks from that podium or not?
MCCLELLAN: I’m well aware, like you, of what was previously said. And I will be glad to talk about it at the appropriate time. The appropriate time is when the investigation…
QUESTION: (inaudible) when it’s appropriate and when it’s inappropriate?
MCCLELLAN: If you’ll let me finish.
QUESTION: No, you’re not finishing. You’re not saying anything.
You stood at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved. And now we find out that he spoke about Joseph Wilson’s wife. So don’t you owe the American public a fuller explanation. Was he involved or was he not? Because contrary to what you told the American people, he did indeed talk about his wife, didn’t he?
MCCLELLAN: There will be a time to talk about this, but now is not the time to talk about it.
QUESTION: Do you think people will accept that, what you’re saying today?
MCCLELLAN: Again, I’ve responded to the question.
QUESTION: You’re in a bad spot here, Scott…
(LAUGHTER)
… because after the investigation began — after the criminal investigation was under way — you said, October 10th, 2003, I spoke with those individuals, Rove, Abrams and Libby. As I pointed out, those individuals assured me they were not involved in this, from that podium. That’s after the criminal investigation began.
Now that Rove has essentially been caught red-handed peddling this information, all of a sudden you have respect for the sanctity of the criminal investigation.
MCCLELLAN: No, that’s not a correct characterization. And I think you are well aware of that.
We know each other very well. And it was after that period that the investigators had requested that we not get into commenting on an ongoing criminal investigation.
And we want to be helpful so that they can get to the bottom of this. Because no one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the president of the United States.
I am well aware of what was said previously. I remember well what was said previously. And at some point I look forward to talking about it. But until the investigation is complete, I’m just not going to do that.
QUESTION: So you’re now saying that after you cleared Rove and the others from that podium, then the prosecutors asked you not to speak anymore and since then you haven’t.
MCCLELLAN: Again, you’re continuing to ask questions relating to an ongoing criminal investigation and I’m just not going to respond to them.
QUESTION: When did they ask you to stop commenting on it, Scott? Can you pin down a date?
MCCLELLAN: Back in that time period.
QUESTION: Well, then the president commented on it nine months later. So was he not following the White House plan?
MCCLELLAN: I appreciate your questions. You can keep asking them, but you have my response.
QUESTION: Well, we are going to keep asking them.
When did the president learn that Karl Rove had had a conversation with a news reporter about the involvement of Joseph Wilson’s wife in the decision to send him to Africa?
MCCLELLAN: I’ve responded to the questions.
QUESTION: When did the president learn that Karl Rove had been…
MCCLELLAN: I’ve responded to your questions.
QUESTION: After the investigation is completed, will you then be consistent with your word and the president’s word that anybody who was involved will be let go?
MCCLELLAN: Again, after the investigation is complete, I will be glad to talk about it at that point.
QUESTION: Can you walk us through why, given the fact that Rove’s lawyer has spoken publicly about this, it is inconsistent with the investigation, that it compromises the investigation to talk about the involvement of Karl Rove, the deputy chief of staff, here?
MCCLELLAN: Well, those overseeing the investigation expressed a preference to us that we not get into commenting on the investigation while it’s ongoing. And that was what they requested of the White House. And so I think in order to be helpful to that investigation, we are following their direction.
QUESTION: Scott, there’s a difference between commenting on an investigation and taking an action…
MCCLELLAN: (inaudible)
QUESTION: Can I finish, please?
MCCLELLAN: I’ll come back to you in a minute.
Evan Derkacz is a New York-based writer and contributor to AlterNet.
Monday, July 11, 2005
Where has all the money gone?
Ed Harriman follows the auditors into Iraq
On 12 April 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Erbil in northern Iraq handed over $1.5 billion in cash to a local courier. The money, fresh $100 bills shrink-wrapped on pallets, which filled three Blackhawk helicopters, came from oil sales under the UN’s Oil for Food Programme, and had been entrusted by the UN Security Council to the Americans to be spent on behalf of the Iraqi people. The CPA didn’t properly check out the courier before handing over the cash, and, as a result, according to an audit report by the CPA’s inspector general, ‘there was an increased risk of the loss or theft of the cash.’ Paul Bremer, the American pro-consul in Baghdad until June last year, kept a slush fund of nearly $600 million cash for which there is no paperwork: $200 million of this was kept in a room in one of Saddam’s former palaces, and the US soldier in charge used to keep the key to the room in his backpack, which he left on his desk when he popped out for lunch. Again, this is Iraqi money, not US funds.
The ‘reconstruction’ of Iraq is the largest American-led occupation programme since the Marshall Plan. But there is a difference: the US government funded the Marshall Plan whereas Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer have made sure that the reconstruction of Iraq is paid for by the ‘liberated’ country, by the Iraqis themselves. There was $6 billion left over from the UN Oil for Food Programme, as well as sequestered and frozen assets, and revenue from resumed oil exports (at least $10 billion in the year following the invasion). Under Security Council Resolution 1483, passed on 22 May 2003, all of these funds were transferred into a new account held at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, called the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), so that they might be spent by the CPA ‘in a transparent manner . . . for the benefit of the Iraqi people’. Congress, it’s true, voted to spend $18.4 billion of US taxpayers’ money on the redevelopment of Iraq. But by 28 June last year, when Bremer left Baghdad two days early to avoid possible attack on the way to the airport, his CPA had spent up to $20 billion of Iraqi money, compared to $300 million of US funds.
The ‘financial irregularities’ described in audit reports carried out by agencies of the American government and auditors working for the international community collectively give a detailed insight into the mentality of the American occupation authorities and the way they operated, handing out truckloads of dollars for which neither they nor the recipients felt any need to be accountable. The auditors have so far referred more than a hundred contracts, involving billions of dollars paid to American personnel and corporations, for investigation and possible criminal prosecution. They have also discovered that $8.8 billion that passed through the new Iraqi government ministries in Baghdad while Bremer was in charge is unaccounted for, with little prospect of finding out where it went. A further $3.4 billion earmarked by Congress for Iraqi development has since been siphoned off to finance ‘security’.
That audit reports were commissioned at all owes a lot to Henry Waxman, a Democrat and ranking minority member of the House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform. Waxman voted in favour of the invasion of Iraq. But since the war he’s been demanding that the Bush administration account for its cost. Within six months of the invasion, Waxman’s committee had evidence that the Texas-based Halliburton corporation was being grossly overpaid by the American occupation authorities for the petrol it was importing into Iraq from Kuwait, at a profit of more than $150 million. Waxman and his assistants found that Halliburton was charging $2.64 a gallon for petrol for Iraqi civilians, while American forces were importing the same fuel for $1.57 a gallon.
Halliburton’s chairman, David Lesar, who took over from Dick Cheney in July 2000, robustly defended his firm. But Waxman raised another question: if Halliburton was being allowed to rip off the Iraqi people, was the Bush administration allowing it to milk the US government as well? Waxman’s committee instructed Congress’s General Accountability Office to look into Halliburton’s biggest contract in Iraq: providing virtually all back-up facilities – from meals to laundry soap – to American forces. LOGCAP (Logistics Civil Augmentation Programme) contracts like this one are a product of the new ‘slimmed down’ American military, the quartermaster’s equivalent of Rumsfeld’s ‘invasion lite’. Rather than have uniformed troops peel potatoes and scrub floors, base support services have been privatised and contracted out so that, the idea goes, soldiers can get on with the fighting. The contracts are paid on a cost-plus basis, which allows the contractor to charge for what it has spent, then add on a profit. LOGCAP contracts have not been put out to tender, but rather awarded to a few US firms, the largest being Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root. Article...
On 12 April 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Erbil in northern Iraq handed over $1.5 billion in cash to a local courier. The money, fresh $100 bills shrink-wrapped on pallets, which filled three Blackhawk helicopters, came from oil sales under the UN’s Oil for Food Programme, and had been entrusted by the UN Security Council to the Americans to be spent on behalf of the Iraqi people. The CPA didn’t properly check out the courier before handing over the cash, and, as a result, according to an audit report by the CPA’s inspector general, ‘there was an increased risk of the loss or theft of the cash.’ Paul Bremer, the American pro-consul in Baghdad until June last year, kept a slush fund of nearly $600 million cash for which there is no paperwork: $200 million of this was kept in a room in one of Saddam’s former palaces, and the US soldier in charge used to keep the key to the room in his backpack, which he left on his desk when he popped out for lunch. Again, this is Iraqi money, not US funds.
The ‘reconstruction’ of Iraq is the largest American-led occupation programme since the Marshall Plan. But there is a difference: the US government funded the Marshall Plan whereas Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer have made sure that the reconstruction of Iraq is paid for by the ‘liberated’ country, by the Iraqis themselves. There was $6 billion left over from the UN Oil for Food Programme, as well as sequestered and frozen assets, and revenue from resumed oil exports (at least $10 billion in the year following the invasion). Under Security Council Resolution 1483, passed on 22 May 2003, all of these funds were transferred into a new account held at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, called the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), so that they might be spent by the CPA ‘in a transparent manner . . . for the benefit of the Iraqi people’. Congress, it’s true, voted to spend $18.4 billion of US taxpayers’ money on the redevelopment of Iraq. But by 28 June last year, when Bremer left Baghdad two days early to avoid possible attack on the way to the airport, his CPA had spent up to $20 billion of Iraqi money, compared to $300 million of US funds.
The ‘financial irregularities’ described in audit reports carried out by agencies of the American government and auditors working for the international community collectively give a detailed insight into the mentality of the American occupation authorities and the way they operated, handing out truckloads of dollars for which neither they nor the recipients felt any need to be accountable. The auditors have so far referred more than a hundred contracts, involving billions of dollars paid to American personnel and corporations, for investigation and possible criminal prosecution. They have also discovered that $8.8 billion that passed through the new Iraqi government ministries in Baghdad while Bremer was in charge is unaccounted for, with little prospect of finding out where it went. A further $3.4 billion earmarked by Congress for Iraqi development has since been siphoned off to finance ‘security’.
That audit reports were commissioned at all owes a lot to Henry Waxman, a Democrat and ranking minority member of the House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform. Waxman voted in favour of the invasion of Iraq. But since the war he’s been demanding that the Bush administration account for its cost. Within six months of the invasion, Waxman’s committee had evidence that the Texas-based Halliburton corporation was being grossly overpaid by the American occupation authorities for the petrol it was importing into Iraq from Kuwait, at a profit of more than $150 million. Waxman and his assistants found that Halliburton was charging $2.64 a gallon for petrol for Iraqi civilians, while American forces were importing the same fuel for $1.57 a gallon.
Halliburton’s chairman, David Lesar, who took over from Dick Cheney in July 2000, robustly defended his firm. But Waxman raised another question: if Halliburton was being allowed to rip off the Iraqi people, was the Bush administration allowing it to milk the US government as well? Waxman’s committee instructed Congress’s General Accountability Office to look into Halliburton’s biggest contract in Iraq: providing virtually all back-up facilities – from meals to laundry soap – to American forces. LOGCAP (Logistics Civil Augmentation Programme) contracts like this one are a product of the new ‘slimmed down’ American military, the quartermaster’s equivalent of Rumsfeld’s ‘invasion lite’. Rather than have uniformed troops peel potatoes and scrub floors, base support services have been privatised and contracted out so that, the idea goes, soldiers can get on with the fighting. The contracts are paid on a cost-plus basis, which allows the contractor to charge for what it has spent, then add on a profit. LOGCAP contracts have not been put out to tender, but rather awarded to a few US firms, the largest being Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root. Article...
Quote of the Day
"Today, however, it seems as though our government and the military have slipped into Joseph Conrad's ‘Heart of Darkness.' The widespread reports of torture and ill-treatment -- frequently based on military and government documents -- defy the claim that this abusive behavior is limited to a few noncommissioned officers at Abu Ghraib or isolated incidents at Guantanamo Bay. When it comes to torture, the military's traditional leadership and discipline have been severely compromised up and down the chain of command. Why? I fear it is because the military has bowed to errant civilian leadership."
~~Burton J. Lee III, Presidential physician to G.H.W. Bush, former Army Medical Corps
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Saudis Say They Won't Be Able To Meet Oil Demand
FINANCIAL TIMES - Private warnings point to a worsening long-term outlook, with Saudi officials saying that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will be unable to meet projected western demand in 10 to 15 years.
At today's prices, the world will need the cartel to boost its production from 30m to 50m barrels a day to 50m by 2020 to meet rapidly rising demand, according to the International Energy Agency, the energy watchdog for consuming countries. But senior Saudi energy officials have privately warned US and European counterparts that OPEC would have an "extremely difficult time" meeting that demand. Saudi Arabia calculates there is a 4.5m b/d gap between what the world needs and what the kingdom can provide.
At today's prices, the world will need the cartel to boost its production from 30m to 50m barrels a day to 50m by 2020 to meet rapidly rising demand, according to the International Energy Agency, the energy watchdog for consuming countries. But senior Saudi energy officials have privately warned US and European counterparts that OPEC would have an "extremely difficult time" meeting that demand. Saudi Arabia calculates there is a 4.5m b/d gap between what the world needs and what the kingdom can provide.
THE WAR WE CAN'T WIN
[The following was written shortly after September 11]
SAM SMITH, PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 2001 - The media and politicians call what happened terrorism. This is a propagandistic rather than a descriptive term and replaces the more useful traditional phrases, guerilla action or guerilla warfare. The former places a mythical shroud around the event while the latter depicts its true nature. Guerillas do not play by the rules of state organization or military tactics. This does not make them cowardly, as some have suggested, but can make them fiendishly clever. The essence of guerilla warfare is to attack at times and places unsuspected and return to places unknown. You can not invade the land of guerillas, you can not bomb them out of existence, you can not overwhelm them with your technological wonders.
This was a lesson we were supposed to have learned in Vietnam but appear to have forgotten. The journalist Bernard Fall early noted that the French, after Dien Bien Phu, had no choice but to leave Southeast Asia. America, with its vast military, financial, and technological resources, was able to stay because it had the capacity to keep making the same mistakes over and over. Our war against "terrorism" has been in many ways a domestic version of our Vietnam strategy. We keep making the same mistakes over and over because, until now, we could afford to. One of these has been to define the problem by its manifestations rather than its causes. This turns a resolvable political problem into a irresolvable technical problem, because while, for example, there are clearly solutions to the Middle East crisis, there are no other solutions to the guerilla violence that grows from the failure to end it.
In other words, if you define the problem as "a struggle against terrorism" you have already admitted defeat because the guerilla will always have the upper hand against a centralized, technology-dependent society such as ours.
There is one way to deal with guerilla warfare and that is to resolve the problems that allow it to thrive. The trick is to undermine the violence of the most bitter by dealing honestly with the complaints of the most rational. As we have demonstrated in the Middle East, one need not even reach a final solution as long as incremental progress is being made. But once that ceases, as has happened, the case for freelance violence is quickly strengthened and people simply forget that peace is possible.
In the present instance, we may have met our own Dien Bien Phu in our long, senseless, and self-defeating effort to subdue and control those of the Muslim states. The answer - humiliating as it may seem over the short run but courageous as it really would be - is not to commence yet another war of empire against the Muslim world, but to end the one we have conducted for far too long.
This is what France did. By 1961, with Kennedy contemplating involvement in Vietnam, General de Gaulle strongly urged him not to get involved in that "rotten country." Said de Gaulle, "I predict to you, that you will, step by step, be sucked into a bottomless military and political quagmire." The French had lost 55,000 troops there, almost as many as the Americans would.
This was not the advice of a pacifist or a warrior gone soft, but of a hard-nosed general who understood the importance of reality in military and political strategy. A few years earlier he had become prime minister and begun not only France's extrication from but from its other colonies. In 1958 he had proposed the "peace of the brave" but within one year was supporting full Algerian self-determination. He held to this position despite an attempted coup by members of the Foreign Legion and a secret army organization determined to keep Algeria French.
Among those supporting the liberation of Algeria was the existentialist Jean Paul Sartre. As Danielle Costa has written, he "argued that the violence in Algeria was the French people's collective responsibility. He felt that the initial and fundamental violence in the Algerian situation was colonialism itself. He argued that the colonial system was based on violence - first conquest, then different forms of exploitation and oppression, and then pacification. By its own violence, colonialism had taught the natives to understand only violence. By colonialism's intransigence, it forced the native to resort to violence."
We have built our own colonialism using corporations rather than cavalry and with foreign trade rather than with the Foreign Legion. But the effects have been much the same.
SAM SMITH, PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 2001 - The media and politicians call what happened terrorism. This is a propagandistic rather than a descriptive term and replaces the more useful traditional phrases, guerilla action or guerilla warfare. The former places a mythical shroud around the event while the latter depicts its true nature. Guerillas do not play by the rules of state organization or military tactics. This does not make them cowardly, as some have suggested, but can make them fiendishly clever. The essence of guerilla warfare is to attack at times and places unsuspected and return to places unknown. You can not invade the land of guerillas, you can not bomb them out of existence, you can not overwhelm them with your technological wonders.
This was a lesson we were supposed to have learned in Vietnam but appear to have forgotten. The journalist Bernard Fall early noted that the French, after Dien Bien Phu, had no choice but to leave Southeast Asia. America, with its vast military, financial, and technological resources, was able to stay because it had the capacity to keep making the same mistakes over and over. Our war against "terrorism" has been in many ways a domestic version of our Vietnam strategy. We keep making the same mistakes over and over because, until now, we could afford to. One of these has been to define the problem by its manifestations rather than its causes. This turns a resolvable political problem into a irresolvable technical problem, because while, for example, there are clearly solutions to the Middle East crisis, there are no other solutions to the guerilla violence that grows from the failure to end it.
In other words, if you define the problem as "a struggle against terrorism" you have already admitted defeat because the guerilla will always have the upper hand against a centralized, technology-dependent society such as ours.
There is one way to deal with guerilla warfare and that is to resolve the problems that allow it to thrive. The trick is to undermine the violence of the most bitter by dealing honestly with the complaints of the most rational. As we have demonstrated in the Middle East, one need not even reach a final solution as long as incremental progress is being made. But once that ceases, as has happened, the case for freelance violence is quickly strengthened and people simply forget that peace is possible.
In the present instance, we may have met our own Dien Bien Phu in our long, senseless, and self-defeating effort to subdue and control those of the Muslim states. The answer - humiliating as it may seem over the short run but courageous as it really would be - is not to commence yet another war of empire against the Muslim world, but to end the one we have conducted for far too long.
This is what France did. By 1961, with Kennedy contemplating involvement in Vietnam, General de Gaulle strongly urged him not to get involved in that "rotten country." Said de Gaulle, "I predict to you, that you will, step by step, be sucked into a bottomless military and political quagmire." The French had lost 55,000 troops there, almost as many as the Americans would.
This was not the advice of a pacifist or a warrior gone soft, but of a hard-nosed general who understood the importance of reality in military and political strategy. A few years earlier he had become prime minister and begun not only France's extrication from but from its other colonies. In 1958 he had proposed the "peace of the brave" but within one year was supporting full Algerian self-determination. He held to this position despite an attempted coup by members of the Foreign Legion and a secret army organization determined to keep Algeria French.
Among those supporting the liberation of Algeria was the existentialist Jean Paul Sartre. As Danielle Costa has written, he "argued that the violence in Algeria was the French people's collective responsibility. He felt that the initial and fundamental violence in the Algerian situation was colonialism itself. He argued that the colonial system was based on violence - first conquest, then different forms of exploitation and oppression, and then pacification. By its own violence, colonialism had taught the natives to understand only violence. By colonialism's intransigence, it forced the native to resort to violence."
We have built our own colonialism using corporations rather than cavalry and with foreign trade rather than with the Foreign Legion. But the effects have been much the same.
Quotes of the Day
"Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It’s a tactic. It’s about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we’re going to win that war. We’re not going to win the war on terrorism. And it does whip up fear.
Acts of terror have never brought down liberal democracies.
Acts of parliament have closed a few."
~~William Odom, retired US Army general, November 2002
"Corpses in wartime often deliver messages. The death squads in El Salvador dumped three bodies in the parking lot of the Camino Real Hotel in San Salvador, where the journalists were based, early one morning. Death threats against us were stuffed in the mouths of the bodies."
"And, on a larger scale, Washington uses murder and corpses to transmit its wrath. We delivered such incendiary messages in Vietnam, Iraq, Serbia, and Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden has learned to speak the language of modern industrial warfare."
~~Chris Hedges, former war correspondent and author of "War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning"
Saturday, July 09, 2005
Family Medical Leave Act Under Attack
by Kari Lydersen
Jul 8 - Despite protests from labor and women's organizations, the Bush administration is considering changes to the federal law that guarantees unpaid time off for employees attending to personal and family medical problems.
Under pressure from business groups critical of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the US Department of Labor may soon impose restrictions on workers seeking time off under the hard-fought 1993 law. Currently, for employees of companies with at least 50 employees, the FMLA grants up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave for health and personal reasons, including birth or adoption, death or illness of family members, sickness or treatment for chronic health problems.
Among other things, the law means not as many employees need to choose between their job and taking care of or starting a family. "It was a ten-year fight to pass it," said Taylor Hatcher, an analyst with the National Partnership for Women. "It's really important to us."
The law currently protects about 40 percent of the private sector workforce, according to Hatcher, though advocates have long been pressing to expand its coverage.
Lower-income workers who are less likely to have access to paid sick days, maternity leave and other benefits through their company's policies especially value the law. "It's an incredibly popular statute," AFL-CIO legislative representative Kelly Ross told The NewStandard. "Everyone should be entitled to this leave. The ability to deal with a crisis in your life without getting fired is pretty important to people, and it's a matter of basic decency."
About 50 million workers have taken advantage of the act since its inception, according to a working group including the National Partnership for Women, who used 2000 Department of Labor data to extrapolate the rate of use.
Manufacturing and business groups like the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers claim that employees abuse the law by invoking it whenever they are late to work or want to skip out early. A recent study by the pro-business Employment Policy Foundation said the productivity lost to FMLA leave cost employers $4.8 billion in potential profit during 2004.
Over the past few years, members of Congress have unsuccessfully brought legislation restricting the FMLA. Advocates say the legislation failed to pass since the act is so popular with voters and labor and women's groups nationwide.
Today, the changes are likely to be made by the Labor Department through bureaucratic rule changes to the FMLA statute instead.
Although there are no concrete proposals on the table, three major areas have been discussed during June Senate hearings and meetings between Department of Labor officials and business groups.
One possible change would limit the amount of "intermittent" leave that can be taken in small blocks. Discussed alterations would mandate leave must be taken in blocks of at least four hours. Currently, someone could take an hour of leave for weekly physical therapy appointments, or even half an hour to deal with a child's illness or to recover from a migraine.
Another change would modify the definition of a "serious illness" and require more proof of health conditions justifying leave or ongoing treatment.
A third change would require employees to provide their bosses more notice before taking leave. Currently, employees are supposed to give 30 days notice for foreseeable conditions and reasonable notice for emergencies. In an emergency, employees do not need to appeal for FMLA leave until they return from an absence.
The Employment Policy Foundation report said that not giving timely notice was one of the most harmful ways workers use the FMLA. The report, "The Cost and Characteristics of Family and Medical Leave," found that in over 30 percent of cases, employees notified employers after the leave had already started and only 35 percent gave more than a week's notice.
The report also said employers are hit with costs for replacement labor and continuing health insurance payments for employees during unpaid leave. And it claimed employers have observed morale problems among other employees who see coworkers abusing the FMLA.
Proponents of keeping the FMLA as it stands argue that abuses of the Act's provision are localized problems that should be dealt with in individual workplaces, not grounds for changing the FMLA. The Institute for Women's Policy Research released a paper rebutting the Employment Policy Foundation's work, noting that the survey represented only 110 employers not selected at random, employing less than half a percent of all US workers. They note that employers with complaints were probably more likely to answer the survey, leading to an over-estimation of the difficulties caused by the FMLA.
In fact, a study by the Department of Labor in 2000 found that, "for most employers, the Act had no noticeable effect on their overall productivity, profitability or growth."
It said that for "more than 80 percent of covered employers, the act had a positive effect, or no noticeable effect, on business productivity, profitability and growth. Two-thirds of covered employers reported that, overall, complying with the Act was very or somewhat easy."
Meanwhile, workers and women's rights groups want to not only maintain the FMLA as it currently exists, but to broaden its protections and guarantee paid family leave at the federal level. They note that the United States is the only industrialized country without national paid maternity leave. A recent study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that mothers make significantly higher wages later in their careers if they have access to paid maternity leave.
"If women have paid leave they are much more likely to go back to their jobs, and much less likely to quit or switch jobs," economist Heather Boushey, the author of the study, told TNS.
In February 2005, Senator Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) introduced the Family and Medical Leave Expansion Act, which would provide at least six weeks paid leave to workers for care-giving needs arising from birth, adoption or family illness; expand FMLA coverage to workers in businesses with at least 25 employees – instead of 50; expand the reasons for leave to include domestic violence and its effects; and allow 24 hours a year for school activities like parent-teacher conferences.
"It is still a real burden for people to take leave because they don't get paid and they get criticism from employers," said Misha Werschkul, a research associate at the Institute for Women's Policy Research. "And they are still being fired if they don't quite meet the requirements of the FMLA. We need to go in the direction of expanding [the FMLA] and getting more information about it out there, rather than weakening it."
© 2005 The NewStandard. See our reprint policy.
Jul 8 - Despite protests from labor and women's organizations, the Bush administration is considering changes to the federal law that guarantees unpaid time off for employees attending to personal and family medical problems.
Under pressure from business groups critical of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the US Department of Labor may soon impose restrictions on workers seeking time off under the hard-fought 1993 law. Currently, for employees of companies with at least 50 employees, the FMLA grants up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave for health and personal reasons, including birth or adoption, death or illness of family members, sickness or treatment for chronic health problems.
Among other things, the law means not as many employees need to choose between their job and taking care of or starting a family. "It was a ten-year fight to pass it," said Taylor Hatcher, an analyst with the National Partnership for Women. "It's really important to us."
The law currently protects about 40 percent of the private sector workforce, according to Hatcher, though advocates have long been pressing to expand its coverage.
Lower-income workers who are less likely to have access to paid sick days, maternity leave and other benefits through their company's policies especially value the law. "It's an incredibly popular statute," AFL-CIO legislative representative Kelly Ross told The NewStandard. "Everyone should be entitled to this leave. The ability to deal with a crisis in your life without getting fired is pretty important to people, and it's a matter of basic decency."
About 50 million workers have taken advantage of the act since its inception, according to a working group including the National Partnership for Women, who used 2000 Department of Labor data to extrapolate the rate of use.
Manufacturing and business groups like the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers claim that employees abuse the law by invoking it whenever they are late to work or want to skip out early. A recent study by the pro-business Employment Policy Foundation said the productivity lost to FMLA leave cost employers $4.8 billion in potential profit during 2004.
Over the past few years, members of Congress have unsuccessfully brought legislation restricting the FMLA. Advocates say the legislation failed to pass since the act is so popular with voters and labor and women's groups nationwide.
Today, the changes are likely to be made by the Labor Department through bureaucratic rule changes to the FMLA statute instead.
Although there are no concrete proposals on the table, three major areas have been discussed during June Senate hearings and meetings between Department of Labor officials and business groups.
One possible change would limit the amount of "intermittent" leave that can be taken in small blocks. Discussed alterations would mandate leave must be taken in blocks of at least four hours. Currently, someone could take an hour of leave for weekly physical therapy appointments, or even half an hour to deal with a child's illness or to recover from a migraine.
Another change would modify the definition of a "serious illness" and require more proof of health conditions justifying leave or ongoing treatment.
A third change would require employees to provide their bosses more notice before taking leave. Currently, employees are supposed to give 30 days notice for foreseeable conditions and reasonable notice for emergencies. In an emergency, employees do not need to appeal for FMLA leave until they return from an absence.
The Employment Policy Foundation report said that not giving timely notice was one of the most harmful ways workers use the FMLA. The report, "The Cost and Characteristics of Family and Medical Leave," found that in over 30 percent of cases, employees notified employers after the leave had already started and only 35 percent gave more than a week's notice.
The report also said employers are hit with costs for replacement labor and continuing health insurance payments for employees during unpaid leave. And it claimed employers have observed morale problems among other employees who see coworkers abusing the FMLA.
Proponents of keeping the FMLA as it stands argue that abuses of the Act's provision are localized problems that should be dealt with in individual workplaces, not grounds for changing the FMLA. The Institute for Women's Policy Research released a paper rebutting the Employment Policy Foundation's work, noting that the survey represented only 110 employers not selected at random, employing less than half a percent of all US workers. They note that employers with complaints were probably more likely to answer the survey, leading to an over-estimation of the difficulties caused by the FMLA.
In fact, a study by the Department of Labor in 2000 found that, "for most employers, the Act had no noticeable effect on their overall productivity, profitability or growth."
It said that for "more than 80 percent of covered employers, the act had a positive effect, or no noticeable effect, on business productivity, profitability and growth. Two-thirds of covered employers reported that, overall, complying with the Act was very or somewhat easy."
Meanwhile, workers and women's rights groups want to not only maintain the FMLA as it currently exists, but to broaden its protections and guarantee paid family leave at the federal level. They note that the United States is the only industrialized country without national paid maternity leave. A recent study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that mothers make significantly higher wages later in their careers if they have access to paid maternity leave.
"If women have paid leave they are much more likely to go back to their jobs, and much less likely to quit or switch jobs," economist Heather Boushey, the author of the study, told TNS.
In February 2005, Senator Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) introduced the Family and Medical Leave Expansion Act, which would provide at least six weeks paid leave to workers for care-giving needs arising from birth, adoption or family illness; expand FMLA coverage to workers in businesses with at least 25 employees – instead of 50; expand the reasons for leave to include domestic violence and its effects; and allow 24 hours a year for school activities like parent-teacher conferences.
"It is still a real burden for people to take leave because they don't get paid and they get criticism from employers," said Misha Werschkul, a research associate at the Institute for Women's Policy Research. "And they are still being fired if they don't quite meet the requirements of the FMLA. We need to go in the direction of expanding [the FMLA] and getting more information about it out there, rather than weakening it."
© 2005 The NewStandard. See our reprint policy.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Over There
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 07 July 2005
A British associate penned a quick response to the bombing attacks that took place in London this morning. "The message from those claiming responsibility says, in part, 'Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters,'" he wrote. "Well it isn't, so fuck them."
Indeed.
My first response was a wrenching horror, a kick to the gut when I checked my email and saw two hundred messages with the words 'London attack' in the subject line. Suddenly, the television was on and I was reading every news report I could get my eyes on. At least thirty-three people were killed and hundreds more wounded in four coordinated bombing attacks aimed at the mass transit system.
All of a sudden I was back in my classroom, back in the middle of a bright September morning, surrounded by wall-eyed students asking me if this was World War III as we watched two buildings burn, and then fall, and then unannounced I had Ani DiFranco in my head and she was singing, "And every borough looked up when it heard the first blast, and then every dumb action movie was summarily surpassed, and the exodus uptown by foot and motorcar looked more like war than anything I've seen so far..."
That was my first response, but I'm a little wiser nowadays. My second thought, bluntly, was that of all the Western cities in the world, London can handle this. From 1973 until roundabout the year 2000, bombings in that city took place with dreary regularity. In November of 1974, two IRA bombs in Birmingham killed 19 and wounded 180. A 1989 bombing at the Royal Marines School of Music killed 10 and wounded more than 30. There were more than a dozen different major incidents like these, and many smaller ones besides.
London handled the Nazi blitz. 'Handled' is perhaps the wrong word. Londoners watched as their city was battered to rubble day after day, and squared their shoulders, and sent out the RAF, and prevailed. A fire chief named Deasy summed up the British response: "The idea of England folding up, that's a joke. That outfit will never fold up. They've got just as much guts as anybody in this man's world has and they'll carry right on. Anybody thinks they're gonna fold up, they're crazy."
In other words, the British associate who wrote that note this morning hit the nail on the head.
Now comes the so-called official response. Predictably, George W. Bush proclaimed that the War on Terror goes on. Conservative frother Rush Limbaugh got on the radio and made a few remarkable rhetorical contortions. To wit: The G8 summit, which was apparently the target of these attacks, is a liberal summit. Yes, you read that right. He called it a "leftist summit" aimed at achieving leftist goals like saving Africa ("Again," he said) and stopping global warming, and so this was an attack on leftists who will now attack Bush.
The idea that the G8 is a leftist organization is a new one to me. I must have missed a memo somewhere. Apparently, the three billion people who went out last weekend to ask the G8 to do the right thing likewise missed the memo. Other conservative commentators rushed to microphones to proclaim that if we had all been standing shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Bush, this London attack would never have happened. Never underestimate the ability of the right-wing to use tragedy as a means of beating on people they don't agree with.
I am a little wiser nowadays, and perhaps a little more callous because of that wisdom. My first response was horror, and my second was a sense that the British people have the strength to endure this. My third response was to marvel at the news coverage. Four bombings, more than thirty dead, hundreds more wounded? In London, it is a terrifying, enraging, appalling act of despicable violence that must be immediately avenged.
In Iraq, they call events like this "Tuesday."
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and wounded in Iraq by way of deadly bombings that have been taking place every single day. These Iraqi people are no different from the Londoners who perished today. Their skin is darker perhaps, and they pray to a different God, but they have families and children and dreams and they die just as horribly as their British counterparts. Yet they earn perhaps a few sentences on the back page of the paper, and virtually no comment from the members of the international community which ginned up the invasion of Iraq in the first place.
The world was warned about this, warned and warned and warned again. An invasion based on lies and disinformation, an occupation that grinds a civilian populace, becomes the perfect machine to manufacture terrorists who will happily die in order to see others die. The CIA calls what happened in London today "blowback." It is wrong, it is heinous, it is murder plain and simple, and it was as predictable as the sun rising in the East.
The rhetoric about Iraq has been that we are "fighting the terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them over here." Today, "over here" became the streets of London. Where will it be tomorrow?
One thing is certain. The perpetrators of this bombing bear the responsibility for this wretched act, and bear the responsibility for the gross miscalculation that many have made in the past: A democratic society is weak and decadent, and can be easily pushed. Ask Hitler if that is true. A democratic society, once enraged, is the strongest force on Earth, and those responsible for this are going to find that out to their woe.
The other certainty: Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair bear the responsibility for this wretched act, as well. They decided in April of 2002 to start a war based on false pretenses, to fix the intelligence and facts around the policy, and now the whirlwind has come to be reaped. The blood that runs in the streets of London, and in the streets of Baghdad, Fallujah, Tikrit and Mosul, is on their hands.
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 07 July 2005
A British associate penned a quick response to the bombing attacks that took place in London this morning. "The message from those claiming responsibility says, in part, 'Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters,'" he wrote. "Well it isn't, so fuck them."
Indeed.
My first response was a wrenching horror, a kick to the gut when I checked my email and saw two hundred messages with the words 'London attack' in the subject line. Suddenly, the television was on and I was reading every news report I could get my eyes on. At least thirty-three people were killed and hundreds more wounded in four coordinated bombing attacks aimed at the mass transit system.
All of a sudden I was back in my classroom, back in the middle of a bright September morning, surrounded by wall-eyed students asking me if this was World War III as we watched two buildings burn, and then fall, and then unannounced I had Ani DiFranco in my head and she was singing, "And every borough looked up when it heard the first blast, and then every dumb action movie was summarily surpassed, and the exodus uptown by foot and motorcar looked more like war than anything I've seen so far..."
That was my first response, but I'm a little wiser nowadays. My second thought, bluntly, was that of all the Western cities in the world, London can handle this. From 1973 until roundabout the year 2000, bombings in that city took place with dreary regularity. In November of 1974, two IRA bombs in Birmingham killed 19 and wounded 180. A 1989 bombing at the Royal Marines School of Music killed 10 and wounded more than 30. There were more than a dozen different major incidents like these, and many smaller ones besides.
London handled the Nazi blitz. 'Handled' is perhaps the wrong word. Londoners watched as their city was battered to rubble day after day, and squared their shoulders, and sent out the RAF, and prevailed. A fire chief named Deasy summed up the British response: "The idea of England folding up, that's a joke. That outfit will never fold up. They've got just as much guts as anybody in this man's world has and they'll carry right on. Anybody thinks they're gonna fold up, they're crazy."
In other words, the British associate who wrote that note this morning hit the nail on the head.
Now comes the so-called official response. Predictably, George W. Bush proclaimed that the War on Terror goes on. Conservative frother Rush Limbaugh got on the radio and made a few remarkable rhetorical contortions. To wit: The G8 summit, which was apparently the target of these attacks, is a liberal summit. Yes, you read that right. He called it a "leftist summit" aimed at achieving leftist goals like saving Africa ("Again," he said) and stopping global warming, and so this was an attack on leftists who will now attack Bush.
The idea that the G8 is a leftist organization is a new one to me. I must have missed a memo somewhere. Apparently, the three billion people who went out last weekend to ask the G8 to do the right thing likewise missed the memo. Other conservative commentators rushed to microphones to proclaim that if we had all been standing shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Bush, this London attack would never have happened. Never underestimate the ability of the right-wing to use tragedy as a means of beating on people they don't agree with.
I am a little wiser nowadays, and perhaps a little more callous because of that wisdom. My first response was horror, and my second was a sense that the British people have the strength to endure this. My third response was to marvel at the news coverage. Four bombings, more than thirty dead, hundreds more wounded? In London, it is a terrifying, enraging, appalling act of despicable violence that must be immediately avenged.
In Iraq, they call events like this "Tuesday."
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and wounded in Iraq by way of deadly bombings that have been taking place every single day. These Iraqi people are no different from the Londoners who perished today. Their skin is darker perhaps, and they pray to a different God, but they have families and children and dreams and they die just as horribly as their British counterparts. Yet they earn perhaps a few sentences on the back page of the paper, and virtually no comment from the members of the international community which ginned up the invasion of Iraq in the first place.
The world was warned about this, warned and warned and warned again. An invasion based on lies and disinformation, an occupation that grinds a civilian populace, becomes the perfect machine to manufacture terrorists who will happily die in order to see others die. The CIA calls what happened in London today "blowback." It is wrong, it is heinous, it is murder plain and simple, and it was as predictable as the sun rising in the East.
The rhetoric about Iraq has been that we are "fighting the terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them over here." Today, "over here" became the streets of London. Where will it be tomorrow?
One thing is certain. The perpetrators of this bombing bear the responsibility for this wretched act, and bear the responsibility for the gross miscalculation that many have made in the past: A democratic society is weak and decadent, and can be easily pushed. Ask Hitler if that is true. A democratic society, once enraged, is the strongest force on Earth, and those responsible for this are going to find that out to their woe.
The other certainty: Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair bear the responsibility for this wretched act, as well. They decided in April of 2002 to start a war based on false pretenses, to fix the intelligence and facts around the policy, and now the whirlwind has come to be reaped. The blood that runs in the streets of London, and in the streets of Baghdad, Fallujah, Tikrit and Mosul, is on their hands.
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.
Counterpoint: Forget Confidentiality, Out Rove
By Bill Israel, Editor & Publisher
Posted on July 6, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/23385/
In 99.9 percent of cases I know, journalists must not break the bonds of appropriate confidentiality, to protect their ability to report, and to defend the First Amendment. I've testified in court to that end, and would do so again.
But the Valerie Plame-CIA case that threatens jail time for reporters from Time and The New York Times this week is the exception that shatters the rule. In this case, journalists as a community have been played for patsies by the president's chief strategist, Karl Rove, and are enabling him to abuse the First Amendment, by their invoking it.
To understand why this case is exceptional, one must grasp the extent of Rove's political mastery, which became clearer to me by working with him. When we taught "Politics and the Press" together at The University of Texas at Austin seven years ago, Rove showed an amazing disdain for Texas political reporters. At the same time, he actively cultivated national reporters who could help him promote a Bush presidency.
In teaching with him, I learned Rove assumes command over any political enterprise he engages. He insists on absolute discipline from staff: nothing escapes him; no one who works with him moves without his direction. In Texas, though he was called "the prime minister" to Gov. George W. Bush, it might have been "Lord," as in the divine, for when it came to politics and policy, it was Rove who gave, and Rove who took away.
Little has changed since the Bush presidency; all roads still lead to Rove.
Consequently, when former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson challenged President Bush's embrace of the British notion that Saddam Hussein sought to import uranium from Niger to produce nuclear weapons, retaliation by Rove was never in doubt. While it is reporters Matthew Cooper of Time and Judith Miller of The New York Times who now face jail time, the retaliation came through Rove-uber-outlet Robert Novak, who blew the cover of Wilson's wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame.
The problem, as always, in dealing with Rove, is establishing a clear chain of culpability. Rove once described himself as a die-hard Nixonite; he is, like the former president, both student and master of plausible deniability. (This past weekend, in confirming that Rove was indeed a source for Matthew Cooper, Rove's lawyer said his client "never knowingly disclosed classified information.") That is precisely why prosecutor Fitzgerald in this case must document the pattern of Rove's behavior, whether journalists published, or not.
For in this case, Rove, improving on Macchiavelli, has bet that reporters won't rat their relationship with the administration's most important political source. How better for him to operate without constraint, or to camouflage breaking the law, than under the cover of journalists and journalism, protected by the First Amendment?
Karl Rove is in my experience with him the brightest and most affable of companions; perhaps I have been coopted, for I genuinely treasure his friendship. But neither charm nor political power should be permitted to subvert the First Amendment, which is intended to insure that reporters and citizens burrow fully and publicly into government, not insulate its players from felony, or reality.
Reporters with a gut fear of breaching confidential sources must fight like tigers to protect them. But neither reporters Cooper nor Miller, nor their publications, nor anyone in journalism should protect the behavior of Rove (or anyone else) through an undiscerning, blanket use of the First Amendment that weakens its protections by its gross misuse.
Bill Israel (letters@editorandpublisher.com) teaches journalism at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). He has worked for several leading newpapers.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/23385/
Posted on July 6, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/23385/
In 99.9 percent of cases I know, journalists must not break the bonds of appropriate confidentiality, to protect their ability to report, and to defend the First Amendment. I've testified in court to that end, and would do so again.
But the Valerie Plame-CIA case that threatens jail time for reporters from Time and The New York Times this week is the exception that shatters the rule. In this case, journalists as a community have been played for patsies by the president's chief strategist, Karl Rove, and are enabling him to abuse the First Amendment, by their invoking it.
To understand why this case is exceptional, one must grasp the extent of Rove's political mastery, which became clearer to me by working with him. When we taught "Politics and the Press" together at The University of Texas at Austin seven years ago, Rove showed an amazing disdain for Texas political reporters. At the same time, he actively cultivated national reporters who could help him promote a Bush presidency.
In teaching with him, I learned Rove assumes command over any political enterprise he engages. He insists on absolute discipline from staff: nothing escapes him; no one who works with him moves without his direction. In Texas, though he was called "the prime minister" to Gov. George W. Bush, it might have been "Lord," as in the divine, for when it came to politics and policy, it was Rove who gave, and Rove who took away.
Little has changed since the Bush presidency; all roads still lead to Rove.
Consequently, when former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson challenged President Bush's embrace of the British notion that Saddam Hussein sought to import uranium from Niger to produce nuclear weapons, retaliation by Rove was never in doubt. While it is reporters Matthew Cooper of Time and Judith Miller of The New York Times who now face jail time, the retaliation came through Rove-uber-outlet Robert Novak, who blew the cover of Wilson's wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame.
The problem, as always, in dealing with Rove, is establishing a clear chain of culpability. Rove once described himself as a die-hard Nixonite; he is, like the former president, both student and master of plausible deniability. (This past weekend, in confirming that Rove was indeed a source for Matthew Cooper, Rove's lawyer said his client "never knowingly disclosed classified information.") That is precisely why prosecutor Fitzgerald in this case must document the pattern of Rove's behavior, whether journalists published, or not.
For in this case, Rove, improving on Macchiavelli, has bet that reporters won't rat their relationship with the administration's most important political source. How better for him to operate without constraint, or to camouflage breaking the law, than under the cover of journalists and journalism, protected by the First Amendment?
Karl Rove is in my experience with him the brightest and most affable of companions; perhaps I have been coopted, for I genuinely treasure his friendship. But neither charm nor political power should be permitted to subvert the First Amendment, which is intended to insure that reporters and citizens burrow fully and publicly into government, not insulate its players from felony, or reality.
Reporters with a gut fear of breaching confidential sources must fight like tigers to protect them. But neither reporters Cooper nor Miller, nor their publications, nor anyone in journalism should protect the behavior of Rove (or anyone else) through an undiscerning, blanket use of the First Amendment that weakens its protections by its gross misuse.
Bill Israel (letters@editorandpublisher.com) teaches journalism at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). He has worked for several leading newpapers.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/23385/
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
A Nation Rocked To Sleep
by Carly Sheehan
Sister of Casey KIA 04/04/04
Sadr City Baghdad
Have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?
The torrential rains of a mother's weeping will never be done
They call him a hero, you should be glad that he's one, but
Have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?
Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?
He must be brave because his boy died for another man's lies
The only grief he allows himself are long, deep sighs
Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?
Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?
They say that he died so that the flag will continue to wave
But I believe he died because they had oil to save
Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?
Have you ever heard the sound of a nation being rocked to sleep?
The leaders want to keep you numb so the pain won't be so deep
But if we the people let them continue another mother will weep
Have you ever heard the sound of a nation being rocked to sleep?
May 30, 2005
Posted by Gary Boatwright at July 6, 2005 05:12 AM to Seeing The Forest
Sister of Casey KIA 04/04/04
Sadr City Baghdad
Have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?
The torrential rains of a mother's weeping will never be done
They call him a hero, you should be glad that he's one, but
Have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?
Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?
He must be brave because his boy died for another man's lies
The only grief he allows himself are long, deep sighs
Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?
Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?
They say that he died so that the flag will continue to wave
But I believe he died because they had oil to save
Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?
Have you ever heard the sound of a nation being rocked to sleep?
The leaders want to keep you numb so the pain won't be so deep
But if we the people let them continue another mother will weep
Have you ever heard the sound of a nation being rocked to sleep?
May 30, 2005
Posted by Gary Boatwright at July 6, 2005 05:12 AM to Seeing The Forest
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