2007 September 04

Administration rhetoric is heated and the dominant media keep trumpeting it. It signals war with Iran of the “shock and awe” kind - intensive, massive and maybe with nuclear weapons. Plans are one thing, action another, and how things play out, in fact, won’t be known until the fullness of time that may not be long in coming. For now, waiting and guessing games continue, and one surmise is as good as another. The more threatening they are, the less likely they’ll happen, or at least it can be hoped that’s so.

It’s not media critic, activist and distinguished professor emeritus Edward Herman’s view. He writes “the situation now is even more menacing than we faced in 2002-2003 when the Bush gang was readying us for the invasion (and) occupation of Iraq. There is strong evidence that Bush-Cheney and company are about to attack Iran (and) the groundwork is being set with a flood of propaganda, helped by the media and Democrats.” It may be “his last (crazed) hope for immortality” and possible attempt to revive “Republican strength through this classic maneuver of cornered-rat politicians.”

Most frightening is that the Bush administration doesn’t have enough of a bad thing and may want more of it. This time, however, the stakes are incalculable, the risks over the top, and the chance for success (from an American perspective) almost nil if post-WW II history is a good predictor. Distinguished historian Gabriel Kolko notes in all its conflicts since 1950, America never lost a battle and never won a war. It’s a world class bumbler, never learns from its mistakes, and only succeeds, in Kolko’s words, in making an “unstable world far more precarious” than if it left well enough alone.

Enter Iran with George Bush having a way with words about the Islamic Republic. They’re hotting up and sending ominous signals. At the American Legion Reno convention August 28, Bush, with typical bluster, accused Iran of threatening the Middle East with a nuclear holocaust and said he authorized US military commanders in Iraq to “confront Tehran’s murderous activities.” He accused the Ahmadinejad government of supporting violent Iraqi forces he calls “radicals and extremists….Either the forces of extremism (or freedom) succeed. Either our enemies advance their interests in Iraq, or we advance” ours.

Earlier in the month, Bush threatened Iran stating: “When we catch you playing a non-constructive role, there will be a price to pay.” He added recent US-Iranian meetings in Baghdad were “to send a message that there will be consequences for….people transporting, delivering EFPs (roadside bombs)….that kill Americans in Iraq.”

This type language points to a widened Middle East war with Iran the target in mind and sanity of those planning it in question. Or maybe not? Questions remain in the run-up to the September 11 Iraq progress report General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will deliver to Congress. Packaging is everything, and the date chosen was planned to heighten public fear of the event on that day that may help explain what’s going on - not attacking the Islamic Republic but shoring up flagging support for a war gone sour and worry later about more of it with Iran.

Or maybe not, according to a report called “Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in the Middle East.” On August 28, the Raw Story web site published a summary of what two respected figures wrote. They are: British scholar and arms expert Dan Plesch, Director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London and Martin Butcher, former Director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) and former adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament.

Their work compliments others saying war with Iran is coming, and things are too far along to stop it. Their analysis is detailed, elementary in their opinion, and very frightening. They conclude the Pentagon has plans for a “massive, multi-front, full-spectrum” shock and awe-type attack on Iran short of a ground invasion. In involves destroying enough of the country’s military capacity and armed forces, nuclear energy sites, economic infrastructure and more to destabilize and oust its regime or reduce its status to “a weak or failed state.” It continues saying:

– the US has enough ground, air and Marine forces in the region to devastate Iran on short notice;

– covert US (and possibly UK) and armed popular resistance activities are already ongoing in the Iranian provinces of Azeri, Balujistan, Kurdistan and the country’s major oil producing region of Khuzestan in the southwest bordering Iraq and the Persian Gulf.

– nuclear weapons are deployed but unlikely to be used short of clear evidence Iran already has them, may in short order, or if its believed only these weapons can destroy its hardened Natanz nuclear facility;

– the Bush administration has avoided publicizing its war preparations leading Plesch and Butcher to believe confrontation is more likely;

– no information is available on possible Iranian WMD weapons, but the authors state its military “has missiles and probably some chemical capacity;” those aren’t WMDs and many other nations also have them; at least eight of them (not Iran) have nuclear ones as well, several are prepared to use them, and the US states it as first-strike policy;

– significant “risks and impediments” exist but eliminating Iran as a regional power and regime change are stated goals in the administration’s National Security Strategy (updated in 2006);

– except for the UK and Israel, no other nations are known to support US plans;

– according to anonymous UK military sources, the Bush administration switched its main focus to Iran after March, 2003 even when its forces became bogged down in Iraq;

– region-based Marines outside Iraq are deployed to protect oil tankers, shipping lanes in the Gulf, the Straits of Hormuz and be able to confront and destroy Iranian forces;

– US Special Forces will continue covert search and destroy missions in Iran and efforts to incite internal uprisings against the Iranian government;

– there’s no assurance Iraqi Shias will support their Iranian allies; their leaders may act in their own best interests inside Iraq that may preclude backing Iran under US attack;

– US 2008 presidential candidates are posturing to see who can be toughest on confronting a potential Iranian threat even though there is none; Europeans are puzzled that political expediency trumps reality especially concerning a wider Middle East war; the Bush administration may worry most about an “Iran of the regions” and may attack the Islamic Republic to avoid it;

– if an attack on Iran succeeds (with long odds against it) and the US is better able assert “its global military dominance….then the risks to humanity….and to states of the Middle East are grave indeed.”

IAEA’s August 30 report on Iran was bad news for the Bush administration based on what its Director, Mohamed ElBaradei, told the press: “This is the first time Iran is ready to discuss all outstanding issues which triggered the crisis in confidence. It’s a significant step. There are clear guidelines, so it’s not, as some people are saying, an open-ended invitation to dallying with the agency or a ruse to prolong negotiations to avoid sanctions….I’m clear at this stage you need to give Iran a chance to prove its stated goodwill.”

The Bush administration was dismissive to enraged in response with statements claiming the agreement is inadequate and Tehran must suspend all (its perfectly legal) nuclear enrichment, or else. State Department spokesman Tom Casey disdainfully said: “There is no partial credit here. Iran has refused to comply with its international obligations, and as a result of that the international community (meaning the US and other nations it can bully, bribe or threaten) is going to continue to ratchet up the pressure.”

The message is clear and all known information confirms it. Washington wants regime change in Iran. The open question is by what means and when. It doesn’t matter that Iran is a signatory to the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), is in full compliance with it, and in 1974 entered into an agreement with the IAEA “for the application of safeguards in connection with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons” to remain in force as long as Iran is so obligated under NPT provisions. The agreement stipulates all Iranian “source or special fissionable materials” and activities relating to them are subject to IAEA Safeguards “with a view to preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful purposes.”

IAEA reported Iran’s uranium enrichment program slowed, is operating well below capacity, and isn’t producing nuclear fuel in significant amounts. As of August 19, it had 1968 centrifuges operating and 656 others in various stages of assembly or testing. IAEA verified this level of enrichment is well below what’s needed to build a nuclear bomb. IAEA also said an outstanding issue related to plutonium experiments was satisfactorily resolved.

Iran and IAEA also announced a timetable to resolve by year end “all outstanding questions” regarding the implementation of Iran’s Safeguards Agreement as well as other non or less relevant questions. They include: lab experiments involving minute amounts of plutonium and plutonium-210 and the source of the enriched uranium micro-contamination at a technical University in Tehran. Although not obligated to do so, Iran also agreed to resolve other minor issues as a show of good faith. As it’s now proceeding, Iran is on track to verify total compliance with its Safeguard Agreement obligations by yearend. That should make it less vulnerable to a US attack, but don’t bet on it. Bush administration officials are never short on reasons to justify its plans and facts on the ground won’t deter them.

They’ve already denounced the IAEA report as an Iranian ploy to buy time and seems to imply IAEA partnered with Iran against Washington. ElBaradei’s response to this was: “My responsibility is to look at the big picture. If I see a situation deteriorating (and) it could lead to war, I have to raise the alarm or give my advice.” Earlier he said: “I have no brief other than to make sure we don’t go into another war or that we go crazy into killing each other. You do not want to give (an) additional argument to the new (Bush administration) crazies who say ‘let’s go and bomb Iran.’ ”

In the run-up to its March, 2003 attack on Iraq, the Bush administration proved it didn’t lack tricks and schemes to justify war. Iran now faces the same threat with one provocative act from Washington after another. In an unprecedented and outrageous move against a sovereign state, the New York Times and Washington Post reported August 15 the administration plans to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (a major branch of its military) a “global terrorist” organization. It’s based on unsubstantiated claims IRGC’s elite Quds Force is arming, training and directing Shiite militias involved in attacking US Iraqi troops.

It contradicts Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, however, that Iran’s role in the region is constructive. That comment runs counter to Bush claiming Iran as “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, (is) active(ly) pursui(ng)….technology that could lead to nuclear weapons (and) We will confront this danger before it is too late.”

Washington further insists IRGC is helping Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, interfering in various other ways in Iraq, and is aiding US-designated “terrorist” groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. It has no evidence, reports are CIA confirms it, but no matter. All that counts is Washington claims it, case closed. That’s how schoolyard bullies run playgrounds and global godfathers do it everywhere.

In the long-running US-Iran saga, it remains to be seen how events will play out. Expect more heated rhetoric, and don’t ignore Dick Cheney’s influence. Barnett Rubin’s recent comments about him from his Global Affairs blog are all over the internet. Cheney’s already unofficially on record urging war on Iran and presently proposes bombing suspected Quds Force sites in Iraq. Earlier reports were he and other administration hard-liners considered air attacks against Quds Force headquarters near Tehran. If they come, it risks all-out war so, for now, they were tabled.

Barnett now says he has a message from a well-connected insider that “the Office of the Vice-President (plans) to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day” to be backed by hawkish think tanks and similar elements in the dominant media. It will involve a “heavy sustained assault on the airwaves” to win over public support that will be considered successful at “35 - 40 percent.”

It’s already begun on-air and on the pages of the lead and most influential proponent for war on Iraq in the Judith Miller days, The New York Times. It may now be playing the same role promoting war with Iran with one example showing up in Michael Slackman and Nazila Fathi’s September 3 article: “On Two Fronts, One Nuclear, Iran Is Defiant.” Its headlined tone (differing from explanatory comments buried below) contradicts IAEA evidence and claims “to reaffirm the country’s refusal to back down to pressure from the United States over its nuclear program and its role in Iraq.”

That came after an opening salvo that “Iran’s leaders issued dual, defiant statements on Sunday (September 2).” It continued saying President Ahmadinejad claimed the nation had 3,000 active centrifuges to enrich uranium (IAEA inspections confirm 1968), and “the top ayatollah (Ali Khamenei) appoint(ed) a new Islamic Revolutionary Guards commander who once advocated military force against students.” This is just a sampling of what’s ahead from the Times and other dominant media elements. They’re enlisted, like in 2002, to beat the drums of war and maybe get one for their efforts.

Then there’s Congress on both sides of the aisle and presidential candidates hawkishly posturing for whatever they imagine it gains them. The public overwhelmingly opposes more war and wants the Iraq one ended. But those ideas are nowhere in sight on the campaign trail or Capitol Hill where the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007 will likely pass easily now that Congress is reconvened. It cleared the House Foreign Affairs Committee 37 to 1 June 28 and after passing both Houses will become effective January 1, 2008. It hardens the existing Iran Sanctions Act by closing loopholes in it with the intent to thwart all foreign investment in Iran and strangle the country economically.

It also prohibits nuclear cooperation between the US and any nation aiding Iran’s commercial nuclear program and requests the White House designate Iran’s IRGC a “terrorist” group and block assets of any nation, organization or group supporting it. As summer wanes, fall approaches and the administration touts progress in Iraq it claims will continue (with Bush’s grandstanding six hour visit for a staged performance at Al Asad Air Base in Al Anbar province part of it), the prospect for more “progress” Iraqi-style awaits Iran. That’s unless public pressure builds and/or cooler heads in Washington and other capitals denounce what some distinguished analysts believe may ignite WW III if it comes. That’s incentive enough for us all to become engaged and stop this rush to madness in the Middle East not likely to be contained where it starts.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on TheMicroEffect.com Saturdays at noon US central time.

Friday, August 31, 2007

Labor Day Hypocrisy

Labor Day Hypocrisy - by Stephen Lendman

Labor Day is commemorated on the first Monday in September each year since the first one was celebrated in New York in 1882. Around the world outside the US, socialist and labor movements are observed on May 1 to recognize organized labor’s social and economic achievements and the workers in them. This day gets scant attention in the US, but where it’s prominent it’s commonly to remember the Haymarket Riot of May 4, 1886 in Chicago. It followed the city’s May 1 general strike for an eight hour day that led to violence breaking out on the 4th.

Labor Day became a national federal holiday when Congress passed legislation for it in June, 1894 at a time working people had few rights, management had the upper hand, only wanted to exploit them for profit, and got away with it. It took many painful years of organizing, taking to the streets, going on strike, holding boycotts, battling police and National Guard forces, and paying with their blood and lives before real gains were won. They got an eight hour day, a living wage, on-the-job benefits and the pinnacle of labor’s triumph in the 1930s with the passage of the landmark Wagner Act establishing the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). It guaranteed labor the right to bargain collectively on equal terms with management for the first time ever.

All of it was won from the grassroots. Management gave nothing until forced to and neither did government. It always sides with business never yields a thing unless threatened with disruptive work stoppages or possible insurrection. All this is in a democracy that claims to be a government of the people, by the people and for the people, most of whom are ordinary working class ones.

Since a worried Congress passed the 1935 Wagner Act during The Great Depression, the state of organized labor declined, especially post-WW II. It accelerated precipitously during the Reagan years under an administration openly hostile to worker rights in its one-side support for management. It continued unabated, under Republican and Democrat administrations, and today stands at a multi-generational low.

Under George Bush conditions got much worse. Since coming into office in 2001, he sided with management openly on policies to strip workers of their right to organize and be able to bargain for a living wage and essential benefits. He hired anti-union officials, denied millions overtime pay, cut pay raises for 1.8 million federal workers claiming a “national emergency,” and schemed to end Social Security as we know it by plotting (unsuccessfully so far) to let Wall Street sharks take it over.

Since labor’s ascendency decades earlier, corporate America, in league with government, shamelessly denigrated unions and the rights of working people in them. In 1958, 34.7% of the work force was unionized, but now the figure is around 12% overall, and only 7.4% in the private sector - the lowest it’s been in seven decades.

Even worse, most jobs are low-pay service sector ones because the nation’s manufacturing base and many higher-paying positions in finance and technology have been offshored to low-wage developing nations. Workers there can be hired for a fraction of the pay scales here or as virtual serfs at below poverty wages as low as $2 a day or less and no benefits. They fill legions of sweatshop factory jobs in countries prohibiting unions and fair worker practice standards for Wal-Mart’s “Always low prices” on the backs of ruthlessly exploited working people.

Nonetheless, on the first Monday each September, this nation “remembers” working Americans with a federally-mandated holiday in their “honor.” Who’s celebrating when it’s disingenuously commemorated at a time worker rights are threatened, ignored, forgotten, and uncared about by heartless governments beholden to capital. They scorn working people who are no longer as deceived with meaningless bread and circus droppings at the expense of what they need most: good jobs at good pay, essential benefits, job security, and a government on their side doing what counts most - supporting their rights with worker-friendly legislation.

Workers are reminded every day that backing like that is off the table by governments shamelessly mocking their day. It’s commemorated in name only by a nation beholden to capital, the corporate giants controlling it, and the best democracy their money can buy for them alone.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on TheMicroEffect.com Saturdays at noon US central time.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

The War on Working Americans - Part II

The War on Working Americans - Part II - by Stephen Lendman

This article was written to assess the state of working America in the run-up to Labor Day, 2007. Organized labor today is severely weakened following decades of government and business duplicity to crush it. Part I reviewed the labor movement’s rise in the 19th century and subsequent decline post-WW II and especially in the last three decades. Hope arose for some change in the Democrat-led 100th Congress. A weak effort emerged, but Senate Republicans killed it.

Organized labor is struggling to remain relevant and claw its way back. The enormous obstacles it faces are reviewed below as well as the condition of working Americans today in a globalized world affecting their lives and welfare heading “south” in the “land of opportunity” offering pathetically little.

The Loss of High-Paying Jobs from Outsourcing Under Globalized Market-Based Rules

World trade isn’t new, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was its mid-20th century version after 23 founding nations signed it on October 30, 1947 in Geneva. Earlier in 1946, they drafted the International Trade Organization (ILO) that followed the creation of the IMF and International Bank for Reconstruction (now the World Bank) at Bretton Woods in 1944. Fifty-three nations then signed the GATT in Havana in March, 1948 as the founding international instrument governing world trade.

Subsequent rounds of negotiations followed through number eight launched in Punta del Este, Uruguay (the Uruguay Round) in 1986. It was signed in Marrakesh, Morocco in April, 1994 by most of the 123 participating countries as the updated version of the original 1947 GATT. It was then succeeded by the WTO January 1, 1995, one year to the day after NAFTA took effect as another worker rights legislative weapon of mass job destruction. DR-CAFTA followed next for the Central American countries signing on to it after El Salvador did first in March, 2006.

The WTO is well-seasoned with a corporate-friendly alphabet soup of Uruguay-negotiated agreements like the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), and others all designed for one purpose. It’s to override member states’ national sovereignty so they’re now governed under a uniform set of global market trading rules favoring capital.

They’re designed for the Global North, giant corporations and the rich at the expense of Global South developing nations, ordinary people everywhere, concern for environmental standards as well as sanity and public safety. Along with the IMF, World Bank, and other international lending agencies, this entire structure is big capital’s neoliberal scheme to commoditize everything, including people and life itself in the human genome, to strip-mine the planet for profit.

Globalized trade has a long history, but the notion of a globalized marketplace came into its own in the 1980s. It was hailed as a western, mainly US, prescription for economic growth and prosperity lifting all boats. In fact, only yachts benefitted by design so the privileged could gain at the expense of all others preyed on.

The UN’s International Labour Organization’s (ILO) commission on the social dimensions of globalization is comprised of representatives from labor, government and business. In 2004, it issued a damning appraisal of world trade rules harm and the subsequent distress caused by unfair practices. It ranges from how TRIPS prevents affordable generic life-saving drugs being sold in developing countries to the shifting tax burden from business and the rich to workers, and much more.

In the US and West, the damage comes from exporting jobs and offshoring manufacturing and service operations to low-wage countries. It began in the late 1950s when modest numbers of them went to Canada to take advantage of the cost savings there. The pace then quickened in the 1960s and 1970s with the exodus of production jobs in autos, shoes, clothing, cheap electronics, and toys as well as routine service work like credit card receipt processing, airline reservations and basic software code writing.

What started as simple assembly and service work early on, then took off in the 1980s. It spread up and down the value chain and now embraces almost any type good or service not needing a home-based location such as retail clerks, plumbers, and carpenters; top-secret defense research, design and selected types of manufacturing; and certain types of specialized activities companies so far have kept at home. What’s moving abroad, however, is big business getting bigger with Gartner Research estimating outsourcing generated $298.5 billion in 2003 global revenues.

The toll adds up to a global race to the bottom in a country where services now account for 84% of the economy. The once bedrock manufacturing portion is just 10% and falling as more good jobs in it are lost in an unending drain. Since the start of 2000 alone, about one in six factory jobs, over three million in total, have been affected. The sector is less than a third of its size 40 years ago and one-fourth the peak it hit during WW II.

It’s been devastating for the nation’s 130 million working people. No longer are unions strong and workers well-paid with assured good benefits like full health insurance coverage and pensions. Today, all types of financial services comprise the largest economic sector. Much of it is in trillions of dollars of high stakes speculation annually producing wads of cash for elite insiders (when things go as planned) and nothing for the welfare of most others and the good of the country.

Worst of all is the poor and declining quality of most service sector jobs measured by wages, benefits, job security and overall working conditions. It’s because fewer good ones exist, unions are weak, and workers are at the mercy of employers indifferent to their plight. People are forced to work longer and harder for less just to stay even. Jobs in this sector are mostly concentrated in unskilled or low-skill areas of retail, health care and temporary services of all kinds. They pay lots less than full-time jobs, and have few or no benefits and little prospect for future improvement. This all happened by design to crush worker rights and commoditize them like all other production inputs.

The Department of Labor now projects job categories with the greatest future expected growth are cashiers; waiters and waitresses; other restaurant-related workers; janitors and cleaning personnel; retail clerks; and child care workers - all low-skill areas. Harvard degrees aren’t required. Neither are high school ones.

Most in-demand higher-skilled jobs are projected to be for nurses, post-secondary teachers and sales representatives. There are still plenty of high-tech jobs in areas like network systems and data analysis and software engineering applications and systems. But watch out. They’re being lost as well to low-wage countries in an unending domestic job drain affecting all types of work able to be done anywhere. It shows why domestic job growth is stagnant (despite the hype it isn’t), eligible workers are dropping out of the work force, and the decline is sure to continue unless legislation stops it. None is in sight or imagined.

The loss of good well-paying jobs means fewer high-end and a range of low-skilled ones are all that remain for vast numbers of young people whose future looks bleak. Two research studies among others highlight the problem. One by University of California staffers in 2004 estimated up to 14 million American jobs are at risk to outsourcing, and another by Gartner Research predicts as many as 30% of high-tech jobs may be lost to low-wage countries by 2015. In addition, writing in the March/April, 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs on what he calls a “third Industrial Revolution,” former Federal Reserve vice-chairman Alan Blinder estimated 28 - 42 million American service sector jobs are vulnerable and could be lost to foreign labor.

In low-wage countries, they’re done at far less cost to US employers in their company-owned or subcontracted out operations. Blinder added starkly “We have so far barely seen the tip of the offshoring iceberg, the eventual dimensions of which may be staggering.” Veteran financial analyst and writer Bob Chapman calls this the “rape of our economy” with enormous, wrenching and destructive consequences to the lives of millions of working people pursuing an illusory American dream.

It affects the skilled and unskilled alike for all types of jobs at risk. Chapman cites India as an example noting once only low-skill and routine programming jobs went there. Now, he says, it’s “software aeronautical engineers, banking, insurance, investment banking and drug research” along with many other high-end jobs where companies can hire skilled professionals at a fifth the cost of US and European ones. So why wouldn’t they, and more are in a growing trend.

All types of financial jobs at all levels are also being eliminated with financial institutions moving sizeable chunks of investment banking, research, trading operations, and other professional jobs abroad for big cost savings. Deloitte Touche estimates the industry will outsource 20% of its cost base by 2010 with more to come in a continuing job drain for big cost savings abroad. The ones lost will be in financial services and most other sectors in a trend looking like it won’t end until the US is as low a wage nation as those now taking our jobs.

Over the past 30 years, most people have seen an unprecedented fall in their standard of living. Adjusted for inflation, the average American worker now earns less than in the mid-1970s with the minimum wage unchanged at $5.15 an hour since 1997 until the 110th Congress raised it in pathetically small steps to a wholly inadequate top level. Beginning July 24, it rose to $5.85, will go to $6.55 July 24, 2008 and to $7.25 July 24, 2009. Until the increase, minimum worker pay was at the lowest point relative to average wages since 1949. It got many states, comprising over half the population, to raise their own, but it’s not enough.

A recent study released by the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) shows the dire state of things. It reported about one in three jobs in the country, about 47 million of them, pay low wages (defined as two-thirds the median wage or $11.11 per hour or less) with few or no benefits like health insurance, pensions or retirement accounts. It’s barely enough for a family of two adults and two children to exceed the official understated poverty level of $20,444 in 2006 (or $9.83 an hour), and by this definition one in four workers (35 million) only earned poverty-level wages. But millions of others fall below it because official statistics way understate the problem, and workers earning around $11.11 an hour in cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other large ones can’t get by if they have to support a family on it.

These growing millions now comprise a permanent underclass in a nation unwilling to admit what census data and private research now show. America is a rigid class society by design with extreme wealth at the top, a declining (maybe dying) middle class, and a growing underclass of low-paid workers and poor, many desperately so.

Following the inequalities of the 1920s, the nation experienced what economic historians Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo called “the Great Compression.” Income gaps narrowed from the positive effects of New Deal and Great Society programs, strong unions, and an equitable tax system for individuals and corporations. From then to now, call it “the Great Expansion” of inequality with the gap between rich and most others the greatest it’s been since the Gilded Age of the “robber barons” and getting worse.

Business Week magazine highlighted the trend in December, 2003 and accompanying research. It showed a decline in social mobility over the past few decades. The article was called “Waking Up from the American Dream - Meritocracy and Equal Opportunity Are Fading Fast.” It noted the “Wal-Martization” of the country corporate America embraces to control labor costs by outsourcing jobs, de-unionizing, hiring temps and part-timers, and dismantling internal career ladders to boost profits at the expense of people. What’s left is a proliferation of dead-end, low-wage jobs with public policy skewed to keep it that way. It needs stressing again. This didn’t happen by chance. It was by design to destroy organized labor, and so far it’s working.

In its most recent State of Working America - 2006/2007, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reports the official poverty level in 2004 stood at 12.7% or 37 million people, including 13 million children. It also showed for the first time ever, poverty in the country grew in the first three years of an economic recovery. In its study, EPI cited factors today they call “historically unique:”

– fewer favorable social norms guiding employer behavior to provide “adequate safety nets, pensions, and health care arrangements.”

EPI noted the biggest challenge in today’s “new economy” isn’t (macro) growth but how benefits get distributed with such a high proportion skewed upward.

Left out entirely are the 16 million 2005 census figures show are on the very bottom living in “extreme” poverty that’s defined as a family of four with an annual income of $9903 or less. Even more disturbing is how fast the poverty rate is increasing. The numbers of those worst off grew by 26% from 2000 - 2005 or 56% faster than for the total poverty population. Further, it happened mostly in years of economic expansion after the 2001 recession ended late that year. Notable also is the disturbing decline in higher-paying jobs leaving what’s left for unskilled or low-skill workers. They pay pitiful wages and few, if any, benefits with crumbling social safety net protection left to pick up the slack.

The Oakland Institute policy think tank promotes social and economic justice. It recently reported its disturbing assessment of things saying 10% of the US population (around 30 million) “experiences hunger or is at risk of going hungry.” A December, 2006 Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the UN University study also reported disturbing findings. They showed the richest 1% of adults owned 40% of global assets in 2000, and the richest 10% held 85% of them.

EPI reported the top 1% controls more than one-third of America’s wealth, the bottom 80% has 15.3%, and the top 20% holds 84.7% of it. In contrast, the poorest 20% are in debt and owe more than they own. Globalization, automation, outsourcing, the shift from manufacturing to services, weak unions, deregulation, and other harmful economic factors all add to the problem.

Other data show an astonishing generational shift of well over $1 trillion of national wealth annually from 90 million US working class households to for-profit corporations and the richest 1% of the population. It created what economist Paul Krugman calls an unprecedented wealth disparity getting worse that shames the nation and is destroying the bedrock middle class without which democracy can’t survive.

A similar conclusion also came from an analysis of income tax data by Professor Emmanuel Saez of the University of California-Berkeley and Professor Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics. Both men are noted for their work on income inequality. Their research found the top 1% of Americans in 2005 (about 3 million people) got their largest share of national income since 1928 - 21.8%, up from 19.8% a year ago or a 10% gain. Further, the top 10% received 48.5% of all reported income in 2005, also the highest level since 1928, up 2% from 2004, and one-third since the late 1970s.

The top one-tenth of 1% (about 300,000 people) did best of all, to no surprise. It got as much income in total as the bottom 150 million Americans combined. In addition, while total reported income rose almost 9% in 2005, average incomes for the bottom 90% of the population dropped .6% from the previous year.

Further, the Bush administration tax cuts for the wealthy greatly widened the income gap between rich and poor that was the whole idea behind them with a healthy piece of the benefits going to big corporations. In the 1950s, they contributed an average of 28% to federal revenues. That dropped to 21% in the 1960s and about 10% and falling since the 1980s. It’s happening with the corporate tax rate at 35%, but few of the giants pay it. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), 94% of major corporations now pay less than 5% of their income in taxes, and corporate tax payments overall are at their lowest level in 60 years. In addition, many large companies pay no tax, and some end up with sizable rebates on top of huge corporate welfare subsidies under a system of socialism for big corporations and the rich and “free market” capitalism for the rest of us.

Saez and Piketty also reported their findings may be understated because the wealthy are more likely to file late tax returns so those who did weren’t included in the study. Also, the IRS acknowledges it can account for only about 70% of business and investment income, most, of course, going to high-income earners. What’s missing is $300 - $400 billion a year that adds up to trillions of untaxed dollars for the rich with the rest of us having to make up for it.

Recent US Commerce Department data is also disturbing. It shows the share of national income going to wages and salaries the lowest on record with their data going back to 1929. And the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) finds wage and salary growth in the current recovery growing at half the average rate for post-recessionary periods since the end of WW II while corporate profits in the current period grew over 50% more than the post-WW II average. It’s the first time on record, corporate profits got a larger share of income growth in a recovery than wages and salaries - 46% to 34%.

The golden age of social service benefits and worker protections emerged during The Great Depression, but they didn’t begin then. An obligation was felt to help the needy as early as colonial times but without an organized effort to do it. Back then, local towns and villages did it through the poor relief system and almshouses. That began changing as the nation became less agrarian and more industrial when a number of states added services like cash allowances, mothers’ pensions and by the mid-1920s old age assistance for the blind. Also, then and earlier, the Federal government and States began recognizing the need for public welfare social insurance financed through contributions guaranteeing protection for all rather than public assistance for the needy alone.

The first instance of it began in 1908 with a Federal workers’ compensation law covering some government workers. States then added their own, and by 1929 all of them had it except four holdouts. Other efforts followed including State and local retirement plans and Federal benefits and services for veterans. Even the private sector added their own with token amounts of health care, pensions, life insurance and sick pay.

The Great Depression hard times of the 1930s changed everything creating a golden age for worker rights and benefits mentioned above. It followed the roaring 1920s era of anything goes corporate greed and loose regulation. It ushered in the Roosevelt administration’s New Deal to aid the needy and reform the economy when 25% of the working public had no job in 1933. Those in power feared the worst knowing they had to act to save capitalism at a time of mass hostility to it they feared might erupt in a Russian-style 1917 revolution.

They did it then like never before or since starting by passing the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933. It was based on a “bubble up” theory of recovery to raise wages and thereby stimulate consumer purchasing power hoping it would lead to increased production and new investment. Despite good intentions, things go as planned. The Depression dragged on until the 1939 early WW II build-up began ending it. It packed greater economic punch than in earlier public sector spending. Those efforts were less for reform and more for what John Maynard Keynes recommended - upgrading infrastructure to revive durable goods production that, in turn, would revive the economy.

Still New Deal policies were remarkable in how mirror opposite they were to what’s been enacted since 1980 and especially in the gilded age of George Bush. There were stimulative loans and grants to the States and landmark measures like the FDIC insuring bank deposits, the SEC regulating financial markets, and the NLRB through the Wagner Act explained above. Most important was a broad array of social programs. They included Federal emergency relief, public works and others under an alphabet soup of initiatives. They were way inadequate, but, nonetheless, tried to jump-start a moribund economy by providing substantial work and relief for the unemployed and needy.

The high water mark came in 1935 with the passage of the landmark Social Security Act. To this day, it’s still the single most important piece of social legislation in our history. More than any other government program, it’s the one most responsible for keeping vast numbers of elderly people out of poverty as well as providing other essential services and benefits for the needy and disabled. Other important social legislation came out as well including Unemployment Insurance with the Federal government partnered with States; the Railroad Retirement System; Public Housing; and Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance.

– Aid to the Permanently and Totally Disabled (APTD - in 1950) that later became Supplemental Security Income (SSI) in 1972;

– Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF - 1997 successor to AFDC that was a huge step backwards explained below), among others.

Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society earlier saw other landmark social legislation with the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. It guaranteed the elderly and indigent health care coverage at affordable, minimal or no cost when they needed it most.

That was the good news, but it changed with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Mark Weisbrot from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) called his administration’s rollback of social services his “project of building a bridge to the 19th century in areas of social policy.” It was that and more, but despite it, the dominant media shamelessly exalted him in life (see Mark Hertsgaard 1989 book “On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency”) and practically deified him following his death on June 4, 2004. Left out of the eulogies was the true scorched earth legacy he left behind. His “war on international terrorism” was a devastating precursor to its updated version under the current administration. This article, however, only addresses his domestic damage on people least able to handle it.

The Reagan administration instituted a generational decline of worker rights and vital social programs. It allowed them to erode through higher payroll taxes, raising the retirement age, increasing Medicare premiums, and cutting Medicaid benefits for the poor. His years were characterized by large increases in military spending, big tax cuts for the rich and big business while slashing social benefits, union worker rights and running up huge deficits.

Discretionary domestic spending for most social programs, other than Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, was cut by one-third from 1981 - 1988. Programs for low income earners were hard hit with a 54% cut. Subsidized housing lost over 80%, housing assistance for the elderly 47%, and training and employment services over 68%. Reagan also reduced health and safety protections and weakened federal statutes guaranteeing workers the right to organize and bargain collectively.

Beneath his avuncular persona, Reagan was callous and indifferent to notions of equal justice, civil liberties and human need. He showed it in his support for the Christian Right’s hate campaign against gays and lesbians in its early days of ascendency by refusing to address the AIDS problem he allowed to become a global epidemic.

HIV/AIDS first surfaced in the US among gay men in New York and California in 1981, Reagan’s first year in office. It was called a “gay disease”, and still is largely today by those who demean it. Most notably, extremist Christian Right leaders call it God’s revenge against gay people they say are diseased sinners. When the Centers for Disease Control first reported the outbreak they, too, stigmatized the gay community as disease-carriers calling it GRID - gay-related immune deficiency.

Ronald Reagan went along with this notion refusing even to mention AIDS or do anything to address the problem in the first seven years in office. It caused enormous setbacks for HIV/AIDS research and appalling discrimination against the infected and gay community overall. In addition, there were no government-directed efforts at prevention or education. It thereby allowed a health problem that might have been contained to become an epidemic killing a half million people in the US alone and infecting an estimated one million others now living with the disease.

Worldwide the numbers are catastrophic with an estimated 25 million deaths and another 34 - 47 million people currently infected. In addition, millions more are added to the numbers each year who might have been helped if the Reagan administration had led a worldwide effort to contain what’s now an out-of-control plague in parts of the world like sub-Saharan Africa. None of this was mentioned in Reagan’s eulogy that should have been a denunciation for this and his other crimes against humanity George Bush is now doing his best to match or exceed.

The GHW Bush years followed the “Reagan Revolution.” They were pathetically “kinder and gentler” domestically and made worse by a “new world order” imperial agenda harming working people everywhere that’s standard practice now under all Presidents. It was the same under Bill Clinton who called himself a Democrat but never governed like one. His tenure included NAFTA and WTO responsible for mass and growing poverty, human misery and ecological destruction under one-way globalized trade rules providing cover for predatory capitalism.

So-called “welfare reform” in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) also was passed. Before it did, the needy got welfare payments through Aid to Families with Dependent Children or AFDC help. That changed in 1996 with time limits set so no one would be helped for more than five years under the new program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or TANF. Under it, the Federal government allots fixed block grants to the States they then administer at their discretion meaning the needy now get cheated by an uncaring state.

TANF also requires most recipients to participate in some kind of work or training to qualify for help. It doesn’t matter that much of it goes to single mothers with young children needing them at home to provide care unavailable if the law prevents it. There’s also no relief during recessions when jobs are lost and unskilled workers are least able to find one.

Clinton’s main social initiative was his ill-conceived health care “reform.” It was a complex mess based on the notion of “managed competition” and marketplace medicine instead of what’s really needed in the form of a “single-payer” national health insurance program modeled on the kind in Western Europe, Canada or that all members of Congress and the administration get. They cover everyone, irrespective of ability to pay, and for US legislators and the executive it’s gold-plated for life.

The Clinton plan (dubbed “Hillarycare”) offered the public less choice for more affordability but wanted big insurers and HMOs to run it guaranteeing an illusion of full coverage the way it is now. Profits always trump need with insurers targeting young and healthy prospects while avoiding those posing the greatest risks.

The pace of social spending cuts accelerated dramatically under George Bush who’d eliminate them all given the choice, and he’s working on it. He’s against all of them to fund more tax cuts for the rich and provide multi-billions for his permanent state of war plus every imaginable weapon system the Pentagon and defense contractors want to wage them.

Bush’s assault on organized labor was covered above, but he has lots more targets as well. Education is one of them in his appalling No Child Left Behind Act. It focuses on testing, not children. It’s a boon to corporations supplying the materials but not to teachers who hate them. It forces them to teach “to the test” instead of educating students in course material that’s the only way to run a classroom. Otherwise, kids don’t learn, but that’s part of the scheme as what kind of future do all but the well-off have to look forward to.

The Bush education agenda also promotes school vouchers disguising a broader goal to privatize public education and aid the white supremacist parochial part of it. Christian Right zealots support these schools because of their brand of hard right extremism dangerous to everyone outside the faithful. In most areas where vouchers are used, 80% of them are for these type schools. They renounce proved science like evolution and teach creationism instead, repackaged as “intelligent design.”

They also preach an extremist Christian doctrine waging war on truth and democratic principles of a free and open society. They replace it with faith-based pseudoscience on everything from creation to HIV/AIDS to pregnancy prevention to global warming to militarism, and all the while denounce non-believers as heretics. These schools also threaten the survival of public education. They divert funding from them and violate the constitutional separation of church and state which is why the Bush administration supports them.

His administration also opposes college aid at a time tuitions and fees are more unaffordable than ever and rising much faster than inflation. An undergraduate year at Harvard now costs over $50,000 with all expenses included, but even lower-tuition state schools aren’t affordable for many with the University of Illinois typical of most others. It’s much cheaper than Harvard but still costs about $26,000 a year “base rate” that’s unaffordable for low-income families without considerable financial aid. George Bush’s solution - cut or freeze maximum allowable Pell Grants so even holding them steady means amounts offered don’t keep up with rising costs and needy students lose out.

Bush’s prescription for health care is no better at a time 47 million have no coverage, millions more are underinsured, and 80 million in the country have no coverage at some time during the year meaning they need to be judicious about when they’re sick. Administration solutions are pathetic at best showing no intent to tackle a problem this huge. Suggested tax breaks are so inadequate, families with annual incomes under $10,000 would only save $23 in 2007. Those with higher incomes fare little better with the Bush plan only covering 9 million uninsured leaving 38 million others (and rising) with no help.

Then there’s Bush’s 2003 Kafkaesque Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (MMA) scamming seniors. It took strong-arming threats and bribes in an all-night congressional session to get it passed. Its controversial Part D costs tens of billions annually, does little for most Medicare recipients, but provides huge benefits for “Big Pharma.” It’s able to charge top dollar because the administration won’t negotiate lower prices the way the Veteran’s Administration (VA) does getting big savings on all drugs it buys so veterans today only pay $8 a prescription. Two decades ago, they paid nothing.

More social wreckage gets into each new FY budget with billions of new cuts heaped on past ones. It’s to free up more funds for the military, the rich, and corporate allies with the White House now audaciously proposing a further cut in corporate tax rates. It’s part of a near-three decade agenda furthering the interests of the privileged at the expense of all others. In America today, social welfare and the greater good are nonstarters.

– more cuts for enforcement positions at OSHA and the Mine Safety and Health Administration that was a key reason for the early 2006 Sago and Alma mine deaths in West Virginia, the latest tragedy in Utah (not earthquake caused), and the death of 60 miners and counting since January, 2006.

– cutting health care benefits for veterans and billions more cuts for Medicare and Medicaid;

– reducing the number of adults eligible for food stamps and children qualifying for school meals;

– cutting the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, child care, Head Start, affordable housing units for the elderly, home energy assistance (LIHEAP), Employment/Training Services, and education for the disadvantaged; and

– stiffening work requirements for two million adults (mostly single mothers) on welfare.

His administration is also at fault for the Walter Reed Hospital scandal because medical facilities for military personnel and veterans across the country are understaffed, underfunded and allowed to deteriorate under federal or private contractor management. The result is inadequate or sub-standard care for the severest of problems, and the worst is yet to come with tens of billions of new planned cuts through FY 2011. Only Bush’s plummeting approval rating may slow him down. But it doesn’t stop his war machine from getting all the funds it wants and lots more for the asking in supplemental add-ons.

The state of working America today is bleak with few signs of improving in a globalized world of corporate omnipotence and an indifferent to hostile government. It backs the rights of the privileged while scorning the social welfare needs of all others. Somehow, some way this must change, but wishing only works if backed by effective action. A look back suggests how.

Past labor successes were noted above. What worked before can again, and there’s nothing complicated about it. Above all, new leaders are needed because too many today are uninspiring at best. They must be committed and dedicated to the rights and needs of ordinary working people and be willing to go to the wall for them. Effective mass organizing is needed to build unity and strength of numbers, educate workers on what they lost, and lead the fight to win them back. It means taking to the streets, storming the halls of Congress, going on strikes, holding boycotts, doing battle when necessary that in the past meant paying for it in blood and lives.

It worked when it won an eight hour day, a living wage keeping pace with inflation, essential benefits like health care coverage and pensions, and a more level playing field guaranteeing labor the right to bargain collectively on equal terms with management. Those gains weren’t handed over because change never comes from the top down. They were fought for and won with lots of blood and sweat expended to get them. Why not again?

It’s called democracy, equity and justice and one thing about them is clear. Achieving and keeping them requires a strong middle class of ordinary working people that, in turn, needs a vibrant labor movement as a foundation and springboard for progressive grassroots social change. Organized labor is in tatters today at barely over 7% of private sector workers (a 100 year low). It’s on life support, needs a survival strategy, and is heading for the dustbin of history only major change can avoid. The way is through organized people out-muscling organized money. It happened before and can again.

This is the great class struggle of our time against long odds for success. The stakes though are huge, and our future as a democratic society depends on the outcome as former US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis explained in 1941 when he said “We can (either) have a democratic society or we can have great concentrated wealth in the hands of the few. We cannot have both.” The concentration is greater than ever at a time American workers are in their weakest position in decades.

Bowed but not broken, they’re in a war for survival with the rest of us, and their sovereign worker rights and ours in a free society are at stake. It’s no time for timidity. It’s a time for unity and pressing ahead. It happened once. Why not again, and the time to go for it is now with the rest of us pitching in to help for our own preservation and survival.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on The MicroEffect.com Saturdays at noon US central time.

Schools adopt swipe cards for toilet breaks

Here, Sir: Jasmine Carr demonstrates Ryde Secondary College’s swipe-card system, which monitors students’ movements.
Photo: Janie Barrett

PARENTS are pushing for a statewide roll-out of electronic tracking of students to combat truancy.

Swipe cards, SMS alerts to parents and fingerprint logging are already in use in some schools and have led to a dramatic drop in absenteeism.

NSW Federation of Parents and Citizens Association president Di Giblin said the success of the swipe-card and SMS systems should lead to them being installed across the state.

Public Schools Principals Forum president Cheryl McBride said if the systems were working, the Government should look at implementing them more widely.

Ms Giblin said: “[Technology] has been highly successful in being able to find when young people are absent from school.”

But civil libertarians said the monitoring of students - even on toilet breaks - was going too far. NSW Council for Civil Liberties president Cameron Murphy said there were better ways for teachers to keep track of students “that don’t require this degree of invasion of privacy”.

Vladimir Ostashkevich, from Academy Attendance, a manufacturer of electronic attendance systems, said demand from schools had tripled in the past three years. About 70 NSW schools - the majority of them being public - had implemented the system. One Catholic diocese reported about half its schools used an SMS alert system. “This is the future, this is what schools are doing,” Mr Ostashkevich said.

Ryde Secondary College deputy principal Warren Reardon said a swipe-card monitoring system, in conjunction with an SMS system that alerted parents of unexplained absences, had cut truancy by up to 40 per cent in 18 months.

“It’s had a huge impact on our middle school in terms of increasing academic outcomes, decreasing detention, increasing good behaviour,” he said.

Ryde Secondary College students are required to run an identification card through a card reader if they are late, need to leave early, go to the sick bay, see the principal or visit the toilet during class time. A print-out is created - featuring a photo of the student and log in and out times.

Mr Reardon said problems with students smoking when they moved around the grounds during class times, using a toilet break as an excuse, had reduced dramatically. But, he acknowledged: “We’ve got to be sure it’s not a draconian thing.”

West Bank boys survive on Israeli settlers’ garbage

As the truck unloaded, the children pounced on the garbage like flies. Some swung aloft on the hydraulic pistons that opened the back, then dropped onto the mound of trash to grab a piece of metal, a crushed can, a soda bottle or a stinking T-shirt.

One boy slipped and disappeared for a moment beneath the garbage as the truck lumbered forward to dump more of its load. He scrambled up again, losing his footing on a pile of animal intestines, grabbing a thicket of shrubbery cut from someone’s garden.

Another boy found a small nylon Israeli flag and tried to tear it with his teeth; yet another unearthed a small lilac umbrella, which he held over his head and showed off to his friends. Most dug diligently for metal, which they dumped into the ripped nylon sacks they carry.

He had found a plastic pack of crackers; he chewed them slowly, almost thoughtfully.

The boys are part of a loosely knit colony of scavengers, nearly 250 people who scramble over fetid hills of other people’s trash to eke out a living for their families and themselves. Most are younger than 16; some sleep here during the week to make the most of the hours they can hunt for goods to sell. Many are related, from a few large clans, and they have a kind of organization, with a 23-year-old bulldozer driver who settles disputes, and a code of conduct, so that every digger’s finds are respected.

For all the agonizing about nearby Hebron - how far Israel should go to resolve competing Jewish and Palestinian claims to the city - this desolate spot is a symbol of the impact of Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank and of the dire economic state of the Palestinian territories, where about a third of adults are without work.

Many of the adults working the site have been unable to get jobs in Israel since 2000 and the second intifada, when Israel instituted stronger security measures to try to prevent suicide bombings.

This dump has become a lifeline and informal workplace for them and for the children helping to support poor families in the southern West Bank. The scene is reminiscent of the poverty of the Third World, of places like Manila’s notorious garbage mountain, but this desperate place is next door to Israel, the country with the highest per capita income in the Middle East.

For the moment, the diggers were disappointed - this truck carried Palestinian garbage, from Hebron. The real treasures, they said, come from the Israeli settlements in this area of the occupied West Bank.

It is settlers’ trash that keeps them alive - and, in an odd way, entertained.

Mahmoud Ibrahim, 10, found a pair of angel’s wings, apparently from a costume party or a ballet performance. He wore them upside down but happily, flitting around the dump while the other boys applauded.

His brother, Muhammad, 11, who fancies himself a model from the magazines he salvages, wore a discarded suit, several sizes too large, that appeared to have been from a bar mitzvah. With the grime wiped away from both the suit and the boy, he would have made a mother proud.

Youssef Rabai, 18, found a bright orange ribbon, the symbol of settlers’ resistance to the Israeli pullout from Gaza, and wound it around his forehead; the ends flopped onto the grimy kaffiyeh around his neck. Asked if he knew what the orange meant, he shrugged. When told, he laughed. “I’m a settler here,” he said.

The dump, formally run by the Hebron municipality, is in the rocky, dusty hills near the village of Ad Deirat; it is used both by Palestinian cities like Hebron and Yatta and by the Israeli settlements in the area, like Kiryat Arba, Karmel and Maon.

On a good day, working here from 5 a.m. until dusk, the boys make about $4.75 apiece.

Muhammad Rabai, 23, in salvaged camouflage pants and a dirty baseball cap with the gothic “D” of the Detroit Tigers, is the unacknowledged boss of the dump. He drives the bulldozer and gets a small city salary, but he and three relatives also salvage trash, trying to feed a family of 25. “It’s a very difficult life,” he said. “But don’t call me the boss. We try to be friends here; we try to be equals.”

Rabah Rabai, from the same large clan, used to work in Israel as a builder, making more than $650 a month, but he can no longer get an entry permit. He is 48, with a grizzly gray beard, an asthma inhaler and thickly scarred arms. He sat in an old Ford tractor, once blue, pulling a small cart.

“It’s our taxi,” he said. “It’s our Jaguar.” He comes every morning before dawn with three children from a village 13 kilometers, or 8 miles, away. Most of the other children walk, some of them 24 kilometers, then sleep in makeshift shacks or blanket tents, before walking home again for the Muslim Sabbath.

He wore a stained cap bearing the symbol of Fatah. He said he had found it in the trash. Muhammad Rabai interrupted, saying: “We don’t care for any of them, for Fatah or Hamas. We’re from the party of bread.”

Muhammad al-Ammour, 42, used to work in Israel as a painter, making $35 to $50 a day. Working here with two of his children, he brings home around $12. Most of the income is from scrap metal, sold for 2.2 cents a pound.

“If we don’t work, we can’t live,” he said. “Sad to say, but our life is the garbage. Our future is the garbage.”

Asked if the Palestinian Authority helps them, he laughed. “No one from the authority comes to check on us; no one really cares,” he said. “The Palestinian nation gets aid and help from abroad, but we never see any.”

Like all the men and boys here, only a few of whom have gloves, Ammour is covered with scars, especially on his hands, arms and legs, from sharp metal and broken glass. Many wear salvaged hats against the sun and scarves to cover their mouths from the fumes and acrid smoke of the nearly nightly fires that burn the picked-over garbage. Many of the boys seem malnourished, with filmy eyes staring from filthy faces.

Last week, Hijazi Rabai, 27, married with four children, died here when his old tractor fell over and crushed him. He was a sheik of his village, and everyone said he had a beautiful voice when he made the call for evening prayer.

“Even people close to me, my relatives, mock and humiliate my family,” Ammour said. “Whoever works in the garbage is garbage himself - that’s what they think. But some of those people work as spies, collaborators and thieves, but they consider us - the honest workers - less than them.”

Ammour has eight children. But he is known as Abu Fadi, the father of Fadi, 19, his eldest son, one of triplets.

Fadi, who has the bright green eyes of his clan, is trying to go to college. He has worked here since he was little, he said, along with his father and two brothers. He started college, then quit for lack of money. Now, he is taking courses in the evening, through Al Quds Open University in Yatta, along with his brother Tamer. Everyone in this little world is proud of them.

Halima, their triplet sister, is engaged to a cousin. Their mother, Sabah, 37, said: “She will not get married soon. They need to wait and establish themselves. It will be a long time until they manage to do that.”

The Ammour home in Yatta has two rooms for the family of 10 and no windows, just holes in the walls covered with yellow fabric that does little to block the sun.

The larger room is covered in mattresses. In the smaller room, set carefully on a green, sparkly cloth, is Fadi’s prized possession: a computer, which he patched together from parts salvaged from the dump.

With a small boxy screen, and wires showing through cracks in the plastic, it functions.

Fadi, scrubbed clean, set the computer to play some music; his little brother, 5, did a break dance. Then Fadi and Tamer joined in.

“You see?” Fadi said, smiling large. “Good things come out of the garbage.”

Hillary Clinton Is Willing to Nuke Iran

1959- The US gives Iran a 5-megawatt nuclear reactor which became operational in 1967
Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968 and ratified it in 1970.
The Islamic Revolution in 1979 saw the overthrow of a CIA back Dictatorship-The Shah

The Iranians took their own country back, to escape Britain and US control of their oil. And to rid themselves of a brutal dictatorship!

Iran isn’t a threat to the US, nor is Iran a threat to Israel!
It’s the US and Israel that has been threatening Iran!
Hillary Clinton is Pro-Nuclear-War!
She must be STOPPED!!!
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18285.htm

“The Amero” Is Real?

Three weeks ago, I published a brief snippet on the front page of my web site reporting the governments of the US Canada and Mexico are conspiring in secret to merge the three nations into a new entity called the North American Union.

There has been much talk of this on various internet blogs for over a year. Most of those blogs have been smeared as “conspiracy theorists” and have been largely ignored by the main stream.

What prompted my interest in the issue was money: I was sent professional images of actual AMERO coins by someone in the US Treasury! The person included a note saying they like my radio show and are frightened by what’s been going on in secret within our government.

This Treasury Department person was outraged that our country was beginning to coin money as part of a merger that would do away with our country, via a merger the American public knew nothing about!

When I got the professional images of the AMERO coin, I was finally intrigued enough to make mention of it on my web site. My site has gotten over 20 Million visits in the last couple years and is becoming more popular because of the brutal honesty and timely delivery of news that folks don’t find elsewhere. This story about AMERO coins would fit my niche of breaking news, so I ran a snippet of a story.

As part of my report, I included the professional images sent to me by the Treasury person. They appear below:

I also mentioned that very pricey “Collector Proofs” of the coins were also being Minted in Silver and Gold, and I posted an image of one such Silver Proof, shown below:

The story went on to say that the US Government has intentionally overspent itself for the purpose of irreversibly Bankrupting the country. The idea is that they will drive the country into economic failure, then when millions of Americans are panicking at the prospect, offer them a solution of merging the three countries as “the only possible way” to avoid losing everything.

They will force Canada into the merger by telling them the US currency they hold and rely upon will be worthless and the only way Canada can even hope to salvage any of the funds is to join the NAU.

They will sell it to the Mexican people by saying it will instantly improve their buying-power and quality of life.

In reality, the value of the US and Canadian dollars will be significantly reduced to counter the worthless peso being absorbed. People in the US and Canada will suffer great financial loss while Mexicans will see significant gain. In the meantime, the financial elite and the politicians they own will make out like bandits!

That’s the reason politicians are doing this: to get rich for themselves and their financial elite pals.

The folks in power within government and their buddies in Banking and finance know that in any currency switch, some lose big while others gain big. Really big! In fact, folks with foreknowledge of such a switch can make hundreds-of-millions, perhaps even billions for themselves overnight. Those without foreknowledge (common folks like you and me) usually end up being wiped out.

INSTANT, FULL BLAST “SPIN”

I published the images and the small story and went to bed. I had no idea what my little story would do.

Within a matter of hours, there was a full blown effort to discredit my story and the images as fake.

I was accused of lying. I was accused of having “photoshopped” the images by creating them in Adobe Photoshop.

Within a couple days, a basic web site for AMERO “FANTASY COINS” was erected on the internet and word of that site was spread quickly. The site contained the same images as I had run on my front page, so clearly whatever “SPIN” was happening was being driven by others who also had the professional images.

There was intense effort to claim the whole idea of these coins was a fantasy and there was absolutely no truth to them whatsoever. That effort to “spin” the story out of existence worked. Folks quickly lost interest. I did not.

Get me the real thing by any means necessary

I reached out to the person in the Treasury who first alerted me to the coins. That person told me “The shit hit the fan around here when your story ran.” The person went on to say “They told everyone in all the Mints that anyone revealing information about the AMERO would be fired and perhaps even criminally prosecuted for endangering national security.”

Ahhhh yes, the grand old catch-all of national security. When they wheel that one out, you just KNOW they’re pissed off about something!

I told the Treasury person that the only way anyone might believe this is happening, is for me to actually get one of the coins. The Treasury guy balked. He said “there’s no way to get one without stealing it.”

I though about that for a moment. . . . . then decided that if my government is concealing the actual Minting of coins for a new sovereign entity which may end up with power over me, but which I haven’t been told about, then that government deserves whatever gets done to it.

I told the Treasury person to get me an Amero by any means necessary - even if that meant stealing it. The Treasury person said it would require them to think about for awhile and if it could be done, I would get one in the mail.

I waited. And waited. Frankly, after about three weeks, I lost track of the story — until today. A real AMERO coin arrived at my home in the mail this afternoon!

The real thing arrives!

Today, I received a single 20 AMERO coin in the mail. A real coin. Real metal, really MINTED by the US Mint in Denver, CO. The proof that it is being Minted in Denver is that the coin is stamped with the Mint Identity letter “D” on the bottom right of the side with the eagle just like regular US coins already in circulation today!

Please note the letter “D” stamped below and to the right of the Planet earth at the bottom right of the coin in this photo. That “D” stands for the United States Mint at Denver, CO.

VIDEO!

So that you can see this is a real, metal coin, I have made a small video of me holding the coin, turning it, then dropping it on a wooden table top so you can hear what it sounds like when it hits.
Download the Windows Media Video here

I WAS RIGHT!

I stand vindicated. All those who claimed I fabricated the images now owe me an apology. All those who claimed these were “fantasy” coins can now explain why anyone in their right mind would spend Millions of dollars to create the rare and expensive professional dies and plates necessary for minting coins that will not be issued?

The simple truth is, the coins are real. The plan to merge the US, Canada and Mexico is real. Our government is lying about it and the fact they are minting money at the Denver Mint bearing the name of Union of North America is proof.

So America, Canada and Mexico, our governments are betraying us and planning to merge our countries without our knowledge or consent, or by financial disaster they bring-on intentionally. What are we going to do about it?

Why We Must Not Go to War with Iran

Webster Tarpley, Paul Craig Roberts and others have warned that an attack on Iran by the American military is “imminent.” (1) Ray McGovern asks if we have the courage to stop the Bush Administration from making war on Iran. (2)

If we don’t stop the Bush administration from going to war with Iran, we as a planet may very well face what radiation experts are calling “omnicide.” (3)

If we are to prevent a global DU catastrophe, which a war in Iran would bring, we need to consider these facts.

Depleted-uranium (DU) weapons are used because uranium is a very dense metal that can penetrate concrete, steel, sandbag bunkers, or virtually anything. (4) The fragments that break off on impact emit Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and X-ray radiation at a rate of 4.15 million electron volts (the voltage in a normal cell is 10 electron volts). Anyone in the immediate area is usually killed outright. (5)

However, worse than the damage it does immediately, DU turns into an infinitesimally fine dust after it explodes. Its deadly radioactive particles are smaller than a virus or bacteria and can be carried as an aerosol in the wind. (6)

Internationally-recognized radiation scientist Dr. Rosalie Bertell warns that DU nanoparticles can be breathed in by anyone: a baby, a pregnant woman, the elderly, the sick. The radioactive ceramic dust can stay deep in the lungs for years, irradiating the tissue with powerful alpha particles within about a 30 micron sphere, causing emphysema and/or fibrosis. The ceramic can also be swallowed and do damage to the gastro-intestinal tract. In time, it penetrates the lung tissue and enters into the blood stream. (7)

According to former Laurence Livermore geoscientist Dr. Leuren Moret, the invisible particles can reach sensitive targets, including the lymph nodes, spleen, heart, and central nervous system. (8) They can be found in the semen, bone marrow, and lungs. (9) DU can give rise to a range of fata cancers as well as more than 100 serious illnesses from fibromyalgia to Lou Gehrig’s disease. (10) In other words, in her view, “depleted uranium is a death sentence.” (11)

There are several myths about DU. One is that the protective gear issued to soldiers actually does protect them from ingestion and contamination. Dr. Moret advises that DU “will permeate a standard gas mask filter in quantities large enough to be extremely damaging.” (12) U.S. Army Health Physicist and Nuclear Medicine Sciences Officer Dr. Doug Rokke goes further. Rokke was the man in charge of the “clean-up” after Gulf War 1. He says the protective gear were ineffective in saving soldiers from DU ingestion. “When I talked to senior Manhattan Project scientists that were expert particle physicists, they said – ‘Hey, we knew when uranium breaks up like this, it was going to be down in the .1-.2 micron range.’ “No doubt about it. The gas masks, the respiratory protection issued to the troops – there’s no way it can protect against inhalation. Well, that’s what happened to myself and my team. We wore the respiratory protection during Gulf War I, inhaled it, and got sick.” (13)

Another myth is that simple exposure to unfired anti-tank shells and bunker-buster bombs will not result in radioactive contamination.

In the video, Beyond Treason, Lt. Col. John Karl Marks, 303rd Fighter Squadron, offers this view: there is “a very minor amount of radioactivity [in an unfired shell], but it’s not anything. … As long as it’s in its bullet form it can be stored and it’s not any type of hazardous material.” (14)

But in fact, according to Dr. Moret, many veterans have been reporting illnesses through proximity to unfired shells and bombs. For instance, gunners in Bradley vehicles who sat on boxes of DU shells are now reporting rectal cancer. (15)

A third myth is that there is a threshold, a safe-exposure limit, below which one can contact DU and not suffer. This too is in fact not true.

According to Dr. Moret, “the amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small.” “It is estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulating in a person’s body would be fatal.” (16)

Dr. Moret points to National Academy of Sciences studies that indicate there is “no safe level of exposure” for DU. (17)

According to Dr. Moret, because a soldier’s semen is contaminated from DU particles, when he returns home he can contaminate his wife or partner. (18) Whole families can be affected. Staff Sergeant Bob Jones, a former Army Ranger and veteran of Desert Storm, is now retired and disabled due to Gulf War Illness. Not only is he ill, but his entire immediate family all suffer from mycoplasma fermentans incognitos. (19) The manner in which they were treated by the Veterans Administration should also be noted. “It wasn’t so much my illness, but my family was also ill and they required medical attention and medical treatment – real medical treatment. I retired in June of last year – June 2003. As soon as I retired my family was completely dropped from the military medical system. … Although I begged and pleaded they would not let my family re-enroll back into the Womack Family Practice. “So in essence, my wife was completely cut off from all the medications and all the treatment that she had received for the past seven years. … –Cause she was also a victim of these exposures that I brought home from the Gulf War – from my equipment and my personal exposure, as I eluded to earlier – from personal bodily contact… and uh that to me is the greatest travesty. I just can’t imagine how … you have innocent family members and loved ones that never put their hand up and swore allegiance to fight and defend the constitution of the United States and they get kicked to the curb and nobody cares.” (20)

Even minute trace amounts of DU in semen can bond with DNA, “where they wreak havoc with cells – especially the cells of developing fetuses.” (21) In some cases there are no indications that the baby is not healthy and yet it dies. Said Staff Sergeant Jones: “Some of us that conceived children after the war – and I know of at least two individuals where their children were born perfectly healthy according the hospital - and within six months after their return their hearts literally exploded in their chests.” (22) Birth defects have skyrocketed in every DU-contaminated region. They are quite elevated in Afghanistan since the invasion: children “born with no eyes, no limbs, tumors protruding from their mouths … deformed genitalia.” (23)

British researcher Dai Williams states that “women and children … are most vulnerable to internal radiation and chromosome damage owing to higher rates of cell division.” (24)

The first signs of children succumbing to DU poisoning are herpes on the mouth and skin rashes on the back and ankles. These cases develop into childhood cancers, leukemia, Hodkin’s disease, and lymphomas. (25)

“Childhood leukemia has risen 600% in the areas [of Iraq] where DU was used. Stillbirths, births or abortion of fetuses with monstrous abnormalities, and other cancers in children born since [the Gulf War in] 1991 have also been found.” (26)

We must keep in mind that the conditions we are describing will not go away. DU has a half life of 4.5 billion years, the same as the age of the Earth itself. (27) It is a problem which, far from lessening over time, will likely increase by orders of magnitude as the DU particles travel around the globe.

DU does not respect sides in a battle. For instance, Israel, an ally of the United States, lies downwind of Iraq and is suffering from large increases in breast cancer, leukemia and childhood diabetes. (28) Britain recorded the highest levels of DU ever measured after the Tora Bora bombings and the “Shock and Awe’ assault of 2003. (29)

Moreover, it does not take long for DU to travel. Within 7-9 days of the “Shock and Awe” campaign, very fine particles of DU were captured by filters 2400 miles away in Britain. (30)

I’m a former Member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada and a former Historian at the National Museum of Man in Canada. I am now retired. As a Member of the IRB, my job was to evaluate refugee claims. As a Historian, I specialized in racism and historical theory. I have also published in cross-cultural spirituality.

Iranian leader accuses Bush of hate campaign

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused U.S. President George W. Bush of trying to whip up hate against Tehran when he said last week the country had put the region “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”.The West suspects Iran has a secret programme to build nuclear weapons. Iran says its atomic programme is only for power generation to help boost economic growth and has rejected U.N. demands to halt its most sensitive work.

Iran’s IRNA state news agency quoted Khamenei as saying Bush had made comments that were “hateful, arrogant and violent”.

“The Iranian nation has resisted and it will resist … It will never bow to any coercion in the nuclear issue and in other matters,” said Khamenei, the Islamic Republic’s top authority.

The U.N. Security Council has imposed two rounds of sanctions on Iran since December and the United States has said it will push for a third unless Tehran stops enriching uranium.

Enrichment is the part of Iran’s programme that most worries the West because it can be used to make fuel for nuclear power plants or material for warheads.

The United States has said it wants the standoff to be ended through diplomacy but has not ruled out military action if that fails. U.S. officials have said they might label Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a foreign terrorist group.

“The enemies have turned up the level of threats but they should know that an organisation like the Revolutionary Guards that enjoys popular support cannot be destroyed,” said newly appointed Guards commander Mohammad Ali Jafari.

Iran has dismissed U.S. threats, saying U.S. power in the Middle East is waning, and has called for Washington to pull its troops out of Iraq and the region.

“We recommend they … leave the region as soon as possible and keep their relations with Islam and regional states at a distance,” Jafari was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency in his first public remarks since his appointment.

Khamenei said he had appointed Jafari on Saturday to head the Guards, an ideologically motivated force that sees itself as the guardian of the Islamic Republic. The Guards have a separate command structure to the regular military.

The Truth About Marijuana Legalisation

There are millions of regular pot smokers in America and millions more infrequent smokers. Smoking pot clearly has far fewer dangerous and hazardous effects on society than legal drugs such as alcohol. Here is High Times’s top 10 reasons to marijuana should be legal, part of its 420 Campaign legalization strategy.

10. Prohibition has failed to control the use and domestic production of marijuana. The government has tried to use criminal penalties to prevent marijuana use for over 75 years and yet: marijuana is now used by over 25 million people annually, cannabis is currently the largest cash crop in the United States, and marijuana is grown all over the planet. Claims that marijuana prohibition is a successful policy are ludicrous and unsupported by the facts, and the idea that marijuana will soon be eliminated from America and the rest of the world is a ridiculous fantasy.

9. Arrests for marijuana possession disproportionately affect blacks and Hispanics and reinforce the perception that law enforcement is biased and prejudiced against minorities. African-Americans account for approximately 13% of the population of the United States and about 13.5% of annual marijuana users, however, blacks also account for 26% of all marijuana arrests. Recent studies have demonstrated that blacks and Hispanics account for the majority of marijuana possession arrests in New York City, primarily for smoking marijuana in public view. Law enforcement has failed to demonstrate that marijuana laws can be enforced fairly without regard to race; far too often minorities are arrested for marijuana use while white/non-Hispanic Americans face a much lower risk of arrest.

8. A regulated, legal market in marijuana would reduce marijuana sales and use among teenagers, as well as reduce their exposure to other drugs in the illegal market. The illegality of marijuana makes it more valuable than if it were legal, providing opportunities for teenagers to make easy money selling it to their friends. If the excessive profits for marijuana sales were ended through legalization there would be less incentive for teens to sell it to one another. Teenage use of alcohol and tobacco remain serious public health problems even though those drugs are legal for adults, however, the availability of alcohol and tobacco is not made even more widespread by providing kids with economic incentives to sell either one to their friends and peers.

7. Legalized marijuana would reduce the flow of money from the American economy to international criminal gangs. Marijuana’s illegality makes foreign cultivation and smuggling to the United States extremely profitable, sending billions of dollars overseas in an underground economy while diverting funds from productive economic development.

6. Marijuana’s legalization would simplify the development of hemp as a valuable and diverse agricultural crop in the United States, including its development as a new bio-fuel to reduce carbon emissions. Canada and European countries have managed to support legal hemp cultivation without legalizing marijuana, but in the United States opposition to legal marijuana remains the biggest obstacle to development of industrial hemp as a valuable agricultural commodity. As US energy policy continues to embrace and promote the development of bio-fuels as an alternative to oil dependency and a way to reduce carbon emissions, it is all the more important to develop industrial hemp as a bio-fuel source - especially since use of hemp stalks as a fuel source will not increase demand and prices for food, such as corn. Legalization of marijuana will greatly simplify the regulatory burden on prospective hemp cultivation in the United States.

5. Prohibition is based on lies and disinformation. Justification of marijuana’s illegality increasingly requires distortions and selective uses of the scientific record, causing harm to the credibility of teachers, law enforcement officials, and scientists throughout the country. The dangers of marijuana use have been exaggerated for almost a century and the modern scientific record does not support the reefer madness predictions of the past and present. Many claims of marijuana’s danger are based on old 20th century prejudices that originated in a time when science was uncertain how marijuana produced its characteristic effects. Since the cannabinoid receptor system was discovered in the late 1980s these hysterical concerns about marijuana’s dangerousness have not been confirmed with modern research. Everyone agrees that marijuana, or any other drug use such as alcohol or tobacco use, is not for children. Nonetheless, adults have demonstrated over the last several decades that marijuana can be used moderately without harmful impacts to the individual or society.

4. Marijuana is not a lethal drug and is safer than alcohol. It is established scientific fact that marijuana is not toxic to humans; marijuana overdoses are nearly impossible, and marijuana is not nearly as addictive as alcohol or tobacco. It is unfair and unjust to treat marijuana users more harshly under the law than the users of alcohol or tobacco.

3. Marijuana is too expensive for our justice system and should instead be taxed to support beneficial government programs. Law enforcement has more important responsibilities than arresting 750,000 individuals a year for marijuana possession, especially given the additional justice costs of disposing of each of these cases. Marijuana arrests make justice more expensive and less efficient in the United States, wasting jail space, clogging up court systems, and diverting time of police, attorneys, judges, and corrections officials away from violent crime, the sexual abuse of children, and terrorism. Furthermore, taxation of marijuana can provide needed and generous funding of many important criminal justice and social programs.

2. Marijuana use has positive attributes, such as its medical value and use as a recreational drug with relatively mild side effects. Many people use marijuana because they have made an informed decision that it is good for them, especially Americans suffering from a variety of serious ailments. Marijuana provides relief from pain, nausea, spasticity, and other symptoms for many individuals who have not been treated successfully with conventional medications. Many American adults prefer marijuana to the use of alcohol as a mild and moderate way to relax. Americans use marijuana because they choose to, and one of the reasons for that choice is their personal observation that the drug has a relatively low dependence liability and easy-to-manage side effects. Most marijuana users develop tolerance to many of marijuana’s side effects, and those who do not, choose to stop using the drug. Marijuana use is the result of informed consent in which individuals have decided that the benefits of use outweigh the risks, especially since, for most Americans, the greatest risk of using marijuana is the relatively low risk of arrest.

1. Marijuana users are determined to stand up to the injustice of marijuana probation and accomplish legalization, no matter how long or what it takes to succeed. Despite the threat of arrests and a variety of other punishments and sanctions marijuana users have persisted in their support for legalization for over a generation. They refuse to give up their long quest for justice because they believe in the fundamental values of American society. Prohibition has failed to silence marijuana users despite its best attempts over the last generation. The issue of marijuana’s legalization is a persistent issue that, like marijuana, will simply not go away. Marijuana will be legalized because marijuana users will continue to fight for it until they succeed.

Big Brother was watching George Orwell for ‘communist views’

His chilling portrait of the Big Brother state in the novel 1984 is lauded as visionary.

But it seems George Orwell was under extensive surveillance himself years before he chronicled the fictional ordeal of Winston Smith at the hands of the Ministry of Truth.

Secret files released by the National Archive yesterday reveal that MI5 and Special Branch suspected the writer of harbouring ‘advanced communist views’ and kept him under close scrutiny.

From the newspapers he read to his style of dress, few aspects of his life escape the microscope.

There is little recognition of the literary talents of the author, whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair.

In a Special Branch report written by a Sergeant Ewing in 1941, eight years before the publication of 1984, he is dismissively described as having ‘written a few books under the name of Orwell’.

At this stage of his career, these would have included Down And Out In Paris And London, The Road To Wigan Pier and Homage To Catalonia, all now classics.

The report focuses on his time working at the BBC in London, producing news for India.

It says that, prior to joining the corporation, Orwell ‘eked a precarious living as a freelance journalist’.

“This man has advanced communist views, and several of his Indian friends say they have often seen him at communist meetings.

“He dresses in a bohemian fashion, both in his office and in his leisure hours.”

Even his first wife Eileen comes under suspicion, and was heavily vetted when she applied for a job at the Ministry of Food in 1942.

A Whitehall official telephoned Special Branch to seek clarification on Orwell’s political beliefs, and wrote of his findings in 1942.

“I spoke to Inspector Gill of Special Branch asking whether his sergeant could elaborate on the question of Blair’s ‘advanced communist views’,’ the civil servant reports.

Mr Gill explained that his sergeant thought Orwell was ‘an unorthodox communist’ holding many of their views but not subscribing fully to the party’s policy.

Orwell was also tracked in Wigan where he wrote The Road To Wigan Pier. A report by local police says: “It would appear from his mode of living that he is an author, or has some connection with literary work as he devotes most of his time in writing.

“He has collected an amount of local data, eg number of churches, public houses, population, etc, and is in receipt of an unusual amount of correspondence.

• A nudist magazine provided diverting reading for British intelligence officers hunting wartime spies, the files reveal. Hans Larsen, a Nazi agent captured in Sweden, was suspected of sending messages to his spymasters by writing with a toothpick dipped in heated wax on the pages of The Naturist.

Fake Photos Helped Lead US to War in Iraq

Add faked photos to the list of lies told by the BushCheney Administration before its invasion of Iraq.

In a town hall meeting in Bloomsburg, Pa. this week, Rep. Paul Kanjorski, a 12-term congressman, said that shortly before Congress was scheduled to vote on authorizing military force against Iraq, top officials of the CIA showed select members of Congress three photographs it alleged were Iraqi Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), better known as drones. Kanjorski said he was told that the drones were capable of carrying nuclear, biological, or chemical agents, and could strike 1,000 miles inland of east coast or west coast cities.

Kanjorski said he and four or five other congressmen in the room were told UAVs could be on freighters headed to the U.S. Both secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and President Bush wandered into and out of the briefing room, Kanjorski said.

Kanjorski said it was the second time he was called to the White House for a briefing. He had opposed giving the President the powers to go to war, and said that he hadn’t changed his mind after a first meeting. Until he saw the pictures, Kanjorski said, “I hadn’t thought that Iraq was a threat.” That second meeting changed everything. After he left that meeting, said Kanjorski, he was willing to give the President the authorization he wanted since the drones “represented an imminent danger.”

Kanjorski said he went to see Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a retired Marine colonel. Murtha, said Kanjorski, “turned white” when told about the drones; Murtha, a former intelligence officer, believed that such information was classified.

Several years later, Kanjorski said he learned that the pictures were “a god-damned lie,” apparently taken by CIA photographers in the desert in the southwest of the U.S. The drone story itself had already been disproved, although not many major media carried that story.

In October 2002, President Bush said in Cincinnati that “Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas.” He said that he was concerned “that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States.” In that same speech, he claimed, “Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles-far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, and other nations-in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work.” Bush further claimed, “Surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons.” Those claims were later proven false.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said that at the time the President made his speech, intelligence analysts had already discounted that threat. Nelson had told Florida Today in December 2003 that no analysts had “found anything that resembles an UAV that has that capability.” Any drones that Iraq did have, John Pike, director of Global Security, a major military and intelligence “think tank,” told Florida Today, had limited range, and would not be able to target Tel Aviv, let alone the U.S.

Nelson, on the floor of the Senate in January 2004, said that the information presented by the Administration was crucial in getting him and others to authorize a pre-emptive strike.

In a four-day period after that meeting in northeast Pennsylvania, Rep. Kanjorski did not return phone calls to follow up on his statements. The Department of Defense and the CIA did not comment. Certain representatives who could confirm the meeting were unavailable.