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Torture, Paramilitarism, Occupation and Genocide
Friday, October 26th, 2007
By Stephen Lendman
RINF Alternative News
On October 5, George Bush confronted a public uproar and defended his administration claiming “This government does not torture people.” Again he lied. Once secret US Department of Justice (DOJ) legal opinions confirm the Bush administration condones torture by endorsing “the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.” It also condones paramilitary thuggery, oppressive occupation, and genocide. This unholy combination is the ugly face of an imperial nation run by war criminals. That’s the state of things today. First, the practice of torture.
Torture as Policy under George Bush
In a hollow posturing gesture, DOJ publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a December, 2004 legal opinion. That secretly changed after Alberto Gonzales became Attorney General in February, 2005 and authorized physical and psychological brutality as official administration policy. This continues unabated in violation of international and US laws that include fifth and eighth amendment prohibitions against cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in all forms for any reason. These practices been long-standing US official policy, nonetheless, but the mask came off post-9/11 when former CIA Counterterrorism Center chief Cofer Black (now Blackwater USA’s vice-chairman) told a joint House-Senate intelligence committee hearing September 26, 2002: “There was a before-9/11 and an after-9/11(on the use of torture). After 9/11, the gloves came off” and “old” standards no longer apply. They never did, and Congress knows and condones it.
Further, George Bush signed a secret September 17, 2001 “finding” authorizing CIA to kill, capture and detain “Al Qaeda” members anywhere in the world and rendition them to secret black site torture prisons for interrogation presumed to include torture.
As White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales then wrote a sweeping memorandum to George Bush January 25, 2002 calling the Geneva Conventions “quaint” and “obsolete” and claimed the administration could ignore Geneva international law in interrogating prisoners henceforth. He also outlined plans to try prisoners in military “commissions” and deny them all protections under international law including due process and habeas rights. DOD Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was on board as well. In December, 2002, he approved a menu of banned interrogation practices that allowed most anything short of what would cause organ failure.
A new book called “Administration of Torture,” by two ACLU attorneys, contains evidence (from FOIA requests) from over 100,000 newly released government documents. It reveals how US military interrogators carried out abuse and torture orders from their superiors on scores of prisoners. The book quotes Major General Michael Dunlavey who had DOD responsibility for interrogations of “suspected terrorists.” He and Guantanamo commander General Geoffrey Miller both told the FBI they got their “marching orders” from Donald Rumsfeld to use harsh methods at Guantanamo that presumably were meant for all other US-run torture prisons as well. It was also revealed that Rumsfeld was “personally involved” in overseeing the torture-interrogation of Mohammed al Qahtani. He was falsely accused of being the 20th 9/11 hijacker, confessed under torture, and then retracted his testimony later as completely untrue.
Torture violates international law. The (non-binding) Universal Declaration of Human Rights outlawed it in 1948. The four 1949 Geneva Conventions then banned any form of “physical or mental coercion” and affirmed detainees must at all times be treated humanely. Its first two conventions protect sick and wounded forces in battle. The third one defines who is a prisoner of war and establishes “minimum standards” for POW treatment. The fourth convention applies to civilians and affords them protections during war that require they be treated humanely. All four conventions have a common thread called Common Article Three. It requires non-combatants be treated humanely at all times. There are no exceptions for any reasons and violations are grave breaches under Geneva and other international law that constitute crimes of war and against humanity.
The European Convention followed Geneva in 1950. Then in 1984, the UN Convention Against Torture became the first binding international instrument dealing exclusively with the issue of banning torture in any form for any reason. These are sacred international laws all signatories, that include the US, are bound by. No longer under George Bush’s unconstitutional “unitary executive” authority power grab Chalmers Johnson calls a “bald-faced assertion of presidential supremacy….dressed up in legalistic mumbo jumbo.” Condoning torture as official policy under it is Exhibit A.
In her important new book, “Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Defied the law,” law professor and current National Lawyers Guild president Marjorie Cohn calls torture abhorrent and violates at least two US laws - the 1996 War Crimes Act and 1994 Torture Statute. The US is also party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) that guarantees the right to life and prohibits cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
The 1996 War Crimes Act provides up to life imprisonment or the death penalty for persons convicted of committing war crimes within or outside the US. Administration memos from Gonzales, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and David Addington supported dictatorial powers for the president and advised Al Qaeda and Taliban interrogators were exempt from torture laws under George Bush’s “commander-in-chief powers.” Cohn, in her book, explained “the Torture Convention permits no such exemption, even during wartime.”
Yoo and Bybee also distorted what constitutes torture by claiming psychological harm must last “months or even years.” Otherwise, it’s just harsh “enhanced interrogation” of the secret kinds George Bush authorized in a July, 2006 executive order. They reportedly include sleep deprivation, simulated drowning, stress positions, prolonged isolation, sensory deprivation and/or overload, beatings, induced hypothermia, and more that can cause irreversible physical and psychological harm including psychoses.
The October, 2006 Military Commissions Act followed, appropriately called the “torture authorization act.” It gives the administration extraordinary unconstitutional powers to detain, interrogate and prosecute alleged terror suspects and anyone thought to be their supporters. The law lets the president designate anyone in the world an “unlawful enemy combatant,” without corroborating evidence, and order they be arrested and incarcerated indefinitely in military prisons outside the criminal justice system without habeas and due process rights. US citizens aren’t exempt. We’re all “enemy combatants” under this law. Anyone charged under it loses all constitutionally protected rights and can be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment including torture.
Ironically, on the one year anniversary of the Military Commissions Act enactment, Fr. Louie Vitale and Fr. Steve Kelly were both sentenced to five months in federal prison for opposing torture. They also oppose teaching it at Fort Huachuca, Arizona and tried to deliver a letter with their views to the base commander, Major General Barbara Fast, former head of military intelligence in Iraq. Both priests were arrested for trespassing while kneeling in prayer on the base driveway in November, 2006. In an appalling miscarriage of justice, the presiding judge refused to allow any evidence of torture to be introduced. He also ruled out discussion of the illegality of the Iraq war and all references to international law.
Relief from these type abuses are nowhere in sight as leading Democrats condone them and now assure extremist Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey’s nomination won’t be challenged. He promises business as usual that’s bad news for supporters of the law. He earned his bona fides as a US District Court Southern District of New York judge by ruling Jose Padilla, a US citizen, could be imprisoned without trial and held indefinitely by the military.
Padilla spent three and a half years uncharged in a 9 by 7-foot isolated South Carolina Navy brig cell where he underwent alternating sensory deprivation and overload and was denied the right to counsel for two years. Months of beatings, mind-altering drugs, and denial of medical treatment destroyed his mind, turned him to mush, and him easy pickings to convict on all charges without evidence he broke any law. Under Bush administration justice, we’re all potential Jose Padillas in a nation where the rule of law affords no protection, and torture is the preferred means of social control.
Administration Outsourced Paramilitarism
The Bush administration believes anything government can do private business does better, so let it. And that applies to the military as well with Blackwater USA’s powerful emergence Exhibit A. Author Jeremy Scahill portrays the company as “the world’s most powerful mercenary army” in his frightening new book about it. It describes a “shadowy mercenary company (employing) some of the most feared professional killers in the world….accustomed to operating without worry of legal consequences….largely off the congressional radar.” It has “remarkable power and protection within the US war apparatus” with unaccountable license to practice street violence with impunity that includes cold-blooded murder.
A congressional report indicates Blackwater received more than $1 billion in mostly State Department no-bid contracts since 2001. It’s to provide security services for US diplomats, officials and others once assigned to the military at around six times the cost and can be up to $1200 per man-day. With Bush administration backing, it operates outside the law and Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and is immune from civil lawsuits like the military. Scahill calls the company the “Bush administration’s Praetorian Guard” with “immunity and impunity” to do as it pleases.
Today, around 200,000 private contractors operate in Iraq. Up to 100,000 of them are paramilitary mercenaries from companies like Blackwater, DynCorp, ArmorGroup, Erinys, Triple Canopy and others like the Australian-owned Unity Resources that murdered two Iraqi women October 9. Blackwater is the largest, is close to the Bush administration, and is cashing in big as a war profiteer from huge continuing no-bid contracts.
The company was founded in 1996 by former Navy SEAL Eric Prince who’s also closely allied to the extremist Christian Right. Blackwater came into its own post-9/11 and is now the world’s best connected, largest paramilitary army. It employs 2300 personnel in nine countries with 20,000 or more others on call as needed. The company also has its own 20 aircraft fleet that includes helicopter gunships as well as a private intelligence division and a 7000 acre Moyock, North Carolina headquarters Scahill calls “the world’s largest private military base.”
Controversary surrounding Blackwater made headlines after its mercenaries killed as many as 28 Iraqis in al-Nisour September 16 by some accounts and wounded dozens more. It was only the latest incident involving the company that has a disturbing history of instigating unprovoked violence and then falsely claim it acted in self-defense as Eric Prince told Congress saying his men act “appropriately at all times.”
A new congressional account from State Department and company documents reveals otherwise. It shows the company has been involved in at least 195 “escalation of force” incidents since early 2005 that include previously unreported Iraqi civilian killings. In at least one of them, evidence proved Blackwater personnel tried covering up what happened with a falsified report, and the State Department made no effort to hold them accountable or order the company to pay compensation to the families of the victims.
Agence France-Presse reported on September 16 Blackwater personnel shot recklessly “at everything that moved with a machine gun and even with a grenade launcher (as well as from two hovering helicopters). There was panic. Everyone tried to flee. Vehicles tried to make U-turns to escape. There were dead bodies and wounded people everywhere. The road was full of blood. A bus was also hit and several of its occupants were wounded.” Among the dead were women and children. A daughter witnessing her mother shot in the head and killed said: “They are killers. I swear to God, not one bullet was shot at them. Why did they shoot us?”
Following the incident, investigations were launched that are little more than damage control cover-up. The FBI is involved as well as a joint American-Iraqi inquiry. Iraqi prime minister al-Maliki has gone back and forth on this one. At first, he demanded Blackwater personnel leave Iraq. He then backed down under pressure. He’ll likely await the inquiry’s findings that are out in part from Iraqi investigators, but again said he wants Washington to sever all Blackwater ties, remove the company from Iraq in six months, and have it pay each family $8 million in compensation.
It won’t ever happen, even though early findings conclude Blackwater’s actions were unprovoked, the al-Nisour massacre was a deliberate crime, those involved in it should be charged, put on trial, and the families of victims fairly compensated. The findings are similar to an initial US military report that one Pentagon official confirmed saying Blackwater’s actions were “obviously excessive, it was obviously wrong. The civilians….didn’t have any weapons (and) none of the IP (Iraqi police) or any local security forces fired (on Blackwater).”
Investigations are still continuing, the State Department is in damage control mode, and an October 4 House-passed bill (not retroactive) just made US contractors accountable for felony crimes under the 2000 Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA). In addition, new operating procedures have been instituted to paper over the whole affair. Nothing, in fact, will change, however. Blackwater personnel will stay in place, none of them will face criminal charges, and things are again business as usual with the company’s paramilitaries back on Iraqi streets after being banned from operating there by an impotent prime minister.
A sign of things to come came a day ahead of the October House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Blackwater hearing. It was revealed the company’s Presidential Airways subsidiary got a new government contract to supply aircraft, crew and equipment for flight operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Blackwater personnel may likely show up anywhere and currently patrol New Orleans streets for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) post-hurricane Katrina. Their presence is menacing everywhere, and they may show up soon in a neighborhood near you as the “war on terrorism” touches down at home.
Imperial Conquest and Occupation
Current rhetoric aside, even Alan Greenspan’s new book admitted what’s “politically inconvenient to acknowledge (but) everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil” and it was “essential” Saddam be removed to control it. Unmentioned was Iraq’s importance that explains why Washington plans permanent occupation of the country. The Middle East has two-thirds of the world’s proved oil reserves; Iraq has the most untapped amounts of it; and it’s the easiest gotten, cheap to refine light sweet kind Big Oil covets. The country is also strategically located between Saudi Arabia and Iran at the top of the Persian Gulf. That makes it a perfect site for military bases sitting atop an ocean of oil worth trillions of dollars and surrounded by lots more of it.
The strategy to seize it was simply conceived but hopelessly flawed - replace the “cradle of civilization” with a newly created free market paradise with all that oil as grand prize pickings. It’s still up for grabs, but a huge supportive infrastructure is in place and still being built for permanent occupation.
By May, 2005, US forces were operating out of 106 bases around the country from an original 120 number of sites. They range in size from the huge Main Operating Base (MOB) Camp Victory complex near Baghdad airport with thousands of US troops to others for fewer numbers called Forward Operation Sites (FOS) that are still major installations. There are also many smaller Cooperative Security Locations (CSL) as well as prisons and detention facilities throughout the country plus others for Iraqi military and police units.
A sign of permanency are four to six or more super-bases built and planned, the largest of which is the huge Balad one. It’s the major Air Force facility in the country with its state of the art “Kingpin” air traffic control center (called the Common Grid Reference System) that divides the country’s airspace into “kill boxes.” The Army’s largest logistical support center and secret Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force (CJSOTF) are also there as well as well as thousands of civilian contractors in neighborhoods charmingly called “KBR-land.”
Balad and other major bases are enormous in size and on the order of small towns. They encompass 15 - 20 square miles with double runways as long as 12,000 feet, and Balad’s air traffic operates round the clock and is comparable in number of takeoffs and landings to Chicago’s O’Hare that along with Atlanta’s Hartsfield are the world’s two busiest airports.
In addition, they have their own neighborhoods and kinds of amenities found back home. They include department store-sized post exchanges, fast food outlets, movie theaters with the latest films, swimming pools, miniature golf courses, elaborate gymnasium and sports facilities, satellite internet access, cable TV, air-conditioning, international phone service and more. All the comforts of home including takeout pizza and Monday night football in the middle of a war zone.
Other major facilities are at al-Talil near Nasiriya in the South; the largest Marine base at al-Asad in Western Anbar province; al-Qayyara, 50 miles southeast of Mosul in the North; the US military command HQ at Camp Victory/Camp Liberty near Baghdad International Airport; Camp Marez near Mosul Airport; Camp Cook north of Baghdad; and a new base near Irbil in the North. In addition, another new Forward Operating base is being built near Zurbatiya near the Iranian border to be completed in November. It’s location is provocative as the centerpiece of a new border control surveillance, monitoring and logistical support strategy called “Combat Outpost Shocker.”
Then, there’s what critics call “Fortress Baghdad” or the “ultimate gated community” inside the city’s four square mile fortress-like Green Zone. It’s surrounded by thick blast-proof concrete walls, and to enter visitors must pass through up to eight checkpoints. Inside, security is intense and includes full body searches, electronic scanners, explosive-sniffing dogs and every other human and high-tech measure imaginable for security.
The US embassy compound is there as well that when finished will be the largest in the world. It’s Vatican-sized in dimensions and hugely fortified atop 104 acres, or six times larger than the UN complex in New York. Reports vary on whether 21 or 27 buildings are planned but their cost plus all facilities and perimeter security will top $1 billion. Construction is continuing, far behind schedule, it’s reported to be shoddy, and it’s already way over budget as predicted so the final cost remains uncertain but will be plenty.
The compound has everything - its own water, electricity, sewers, apartment buildings, swimming pool, shops, Marine barracks and will house more than 1000 civilian staff plus a large private and military security contingent. For the Iraqi people, it’s a hated symbol of imperial occupation Washington intends to be permanent, but it may in the end go the way of the Saigon embassy in 1975. That’s where the last US Vietnam remnants were frenetically rooftop-helicoptered out of the country in humiliating drawdown defeat. It ended visions of permanence then the way history may one day repeat in Iraq.
Imperial Genocide in Iraq
By any estimate, the human toll in Iraq is horrific from all that happened after Saddam’s August 2, 1990 Kuwait invasion. Four days later, Operation Desert Shield was launched. It began with US-led UN-imposed economic sanctions, large US and other troop deployments to the region, and a sweeping Kuwait-funded PR campaign to win public support for Operation Desert Storm that began January 17, 1991.
Before it ended six weeks later on February 28, US forces committed grievous war crime violations of the Hague and Geneva Conventions and UN and Nuremberg Charters. They included gratuitous mass killings as well as bombing and destroying essential to life facilities that included:
– power generating stations;
– dams;
– water purification capabilities;
– sewage treatment and disposal systems;
– telephone and other communications;
– hospitals;
– mosques;
– residential areas affecting 10-20,000 homes, apartments and other dwellings;
– irrigation sites;
– food processing, storage and distribution facilities;
– hotels and retail establishments;
– transportation infrastructure;
– oil wells, pipelines, refineries and storage tanks;
– chemical plants;
– civilian shelters like Al Ameriyya that was attacked February 13, 1991 by two laser-guided “smart bombs” killing around 400 civilians including 142 children;
– factories and other commercial operations;
– government offices;
– historical sites; and more in a willful malicious effort to return the country to a pre-industrial age and punish its people horrifically.
Lost was power, clean water, sanitation, fuel, transportation, medical facilities and medications, adequate food, schools, private dwellings and places of employment. Early post-war estimates placed the number of civilians killed at 113,000 (mostly children) according to the Red Crescent Society of Jordan. In addition, US CENTCOM commander, General Schwarzkopf and others, estimated 100,000 or more Iraqi military deaths plus thousands more killed gratuitously as they were retreating in disarray.
What then followed was 12 years of the most comprehensive genocidal sanctions ever imposed on a country as an act of vengeance and US-imposed imperial arrogance. They were first adopted in UN Resolution 661 four days after Iraq invaded Kuwait. They included a full trade embargo that crippled the country economically but initially allowed in food, medical and other essential humanitarian needs. UN Resolution 670 followed in September, 1990 that imposed an air blockade and measures to enforce it.
After the war in April, 1991, UN Resolution 687 was adopted. It required Saddam accept cease fire terms and comply with Geneva protocols banning biological and chemical weapons. It also affirmed Kuwait’s sovereignty, but it wasn’t good enough for US officials who wanted sanctions to remain in force until Saddam was removed.
Later on, the oil for food and medicine program was adopted under UN Resolution 986 in 1995 but was hopelessly inadequate by design. An internal UN report in 1999 revealed it delivered only $74 of food per annum per person (about 21 cents a day) and $15 worth of medicines (about 4 cents a day) with vitally needed items banned or in short supply like syringes, anesthetics, vaccines, antibiotics and other drugs. Everything with potential “dual use” was blocked - chlorine to purify water, vital medical equipment, chemotherapy and pain-killing drugs, ambulances, and anything Washington wished to deny the country punitively with horrific consequences.
Further complicating things, all Iraqi funds were frozen and administered through a US-controlled Development Fund for Iraq. In addition, UN Resolution 661 stipulated all goods entering the country had to be approved by a 15 member committee that included the five permanent Security Council members. Approval had to be unanimous with every member having veto power. The US representative abused his authority by blocking items or causing long delays in importing others. The practice became so extreme, on one occasion baby food was denied on the grounds adults might consume it. At other times, items on the World Health Organization (WHO) humanitarian priority list were blocked such as rice, school books, paper, agricultural pesticides, medical journals and catheters for babies.
The results were predictable and devastating. Normal life was impossible and became a daily struggle to survive. It became apparent by the mid-1990s many didn’t or wouldn’t:
– the UN World Food Program (WFP) reported 2.4 million Iraqi children were severely at nutritional risk in September, 1995;
– in December, 1995, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said 12% of Baghdad children were “wasted, 28% stunted and 29% under weight;”
– by year end 1995, FAO reported 567,000 Iraqi children sanction-related deaths;
– by March, 1996, WHO noted a six-fold mortality rate increase among children under five;
– in October, 1996 UNICEF reported 4500 monthly Iraqi children deaths from sanction-caused starvation and disease;
– by 1999, the under five child mortality rate rose three-fold from 1989, malnutrition doubled, and the entire young child population was affected;
– UN Secretary-General Boutras-Boutras-Ghali noted how health conditions deteriorated dramatically by the mid-1990s, and by 1997 the WHO Director General said Iraq’s health care system was systemically broken; in addition, malaria, typhoid, cholera and other life-threatening and communicable diseases were rampant.
These actions were committed willfully and are war crimes under relevant Geneva Conventions and other international law. They also constitute genocide under provisions of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide that “means any (acts like those listed above) committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the national, ethnical, racial or religious group (by) killing (its) members; causing (them) serious bodily or mental harm; (or) deliberately inflicting (on them) conditions (that may destroy them in whole or in part).”
US administrations under GHW Bush, Bill Clinton and GW Bush are criminally liable under “the genocide convention” and other relevant international law. Up to the March, 2003 attack and invasion, more than 1.5 million Iraqis, including over one million children, likely died from the combination of war and economic sanctions. Two UN heads of Iraqi humanitarian relief resigned under them in anger and frustration with Dennis Halliday saying in 1998 he did so because he “had been instructed to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that has effectively killed well over one million individuals, children and adults” including 5000 Iraqi children monthly in his judgment.
To date, most members of Congress are mute on the Iraq genocide and continue funding it with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. Yet on October 10, the House Foreign Relations Committee hypocritically passed a non-binding resolution calling the 1915 - 1923 Armenian holocaust (taking 1.0 to 1.5 million lives) genocide with a full House vote on the measure still scheduled for November in spite of waning support for it and uncertainty where it will go in the Senate.
Speaker Pelosi still backs the measure and in 2006 as Minority Leader pledged to support legislation “that would properly acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. It is imperative that the United States recognize this atrocity and move to renew our commitment to eliminate genocide whenever and wherever it exists.” Today, Speaker Pelosi is mute on Iraq, Afghanistan and fully supports AIPAC’s agenda and its top priority of war with Iran. She’s not bothered by her own government’s genocide that far exceeds the Ottoman and post-Ottoman Turkish Armenian slaughter during and after WW I. The data below estimates as many as four million Iraqis have perished from 1990 - 2007, but speaker Pelosi’s condemnation of it is nowhere in sight.
Dr. Gideon Polya is a well-published biological scientist who’s book, “Body Count: Global avoidable mortality since 1950,” came out this year. It “documents….non-reported (worldwide) avoidable death(s) of 1.3 billion people since 1950″ including in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also published his data on millions of violent and non-violent deaths under the three most recent US administrations in articles like his October 7 one on Countercurrents.org. In it, he cites data on Iraq from the Lancet, UN and British polling firm ORB. His “Asian Wars” totals in Iraq, Afghanistan, Occupied Palestine and Lebanon are horrific, and, if correct, exceed any others published to date. A summary of his data follows.
– Eight million total violent and non-violent deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Lebanon breaking down as follows:
– 70,000 “US-backed” Israeli-caused deaths in Lebanon from 1978 - 2006, 10,000 of which were violent killings “by Israelis” or their “surrogates;”
– 300,000 1967-2007 Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) deaths plus another 10,000 violent deaths;
– 200,000 violent 1990-91 Gulf war deaths;
– 1.7 million 1990-2003 Iraqi sanctions-caused deaths including 1.2 million children under age five;
– 3.2 million 2001-2007 US Afghanistan war deaths including UN Population Division data totaling 2.5 million plus 700,000 children under age five;
– 2.0 million 2003-07 US Iraq war deaths including 1.2 million UK polling firm ORB violence-related estimates plus 800,000 children under age five from UNICEF data; and
– 500,000 2001-07 opiate drug-related deaths resulting from the resurgent Afghan opium industry under US-UK occupation; the UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates its output at 93% of world production.
Polya cites the failure of occupying powers to supply essential “life-sustaining requisites” as a major cause of preventable deaths. He also notes his eight million estimate exceeds the Nazi-inflicted Jewish holocaust total of about six million. And he rightly observes that major media misreporting, denying or “ignoring of this horrendous, ongoing mass” slaughter is the equivalent of Jewish holocaust denial and doing it endangers security for “both….victims and….perpetrators.”
There’s no denying the toll on victims, but consider the cost at home post-9/11:
– a nation with no outside enemies permanently at war and claims the right to wage preventive wars under the doctrine of “anticipatory self-defense” using first strike nuclear weapons even against non-nuclear states;
– world stability and peace further threatened by the administration’s abandoning NPT, ending Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty protection, rescinding and subverting the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention, deploying so-called “missile defense” for offense, and plans to weaponize space toward the goal of “full-spectrum (unchallengeable) dominance” of all land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space, electromagnetic spectrum and information systems plus as much of the world’s energy resources as possible;
– a military budget hugely exceeding the rest of the world combined; The Independent Institute analyst Robert Higgs estimates the true FY 2007 budget exceeds $1 trillion with all defense-related items included;
– a rogue government operating outside constitutional and international laws and norms with the Congress and courts criminally complicit;
– an unprecedented wealth disparity in an omnipotent corporatist state;
– growing social decay and poverty in the richest country in the world;
– a secretive, intrusive, repressive administration under a president who disdains the public interest and is a serial liar and war criminal;
– condoning and operating secret torture-prisons around the world as a weapon of cruelty, vengeance and social control; and
– a cesspool of corruption stemming from incestuous business-govenment ties that defile democracy and mock any notion of government of, for and by the people.
The toll in Israel is evident as well. Angela Godfrey-Goldstein is an Israeli Jew, based in Jerusalem, and the Action Advocacy Officer with the Israeli Committee Against (Palestinian) House Demolitions (ICAHD). On August 30, 2007, she delivered an address at the UN Conference at the EU Parliament in Brussels commemorating the fortieth anniversary of Occupied Palestine. In it, she noted part of the toll on Israeli society caused by 40 years of Palestinian repression:
– around one million Israeli Jews “voted with their feet and left the country;”
– an estimate by some that up to 50% of Israeli youths refuse mandatory Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) service plus a “grey” Air Force refusal rate of around 30%;
– a significant recent observation from John Pilger that “something (around the world) is changing. (There’s a) swell of a boycott….growing inexorably….an important marker (may have) been passed, reminiscent of the boycotts (preceding) sanctions against apartheid South Africa” that led to the fall of its white-supremicist government; and
– her experience working with “diplomats, politicians and aid workers in Israel and Palestine (shows) that, on an individual basis, there’s enormous personal support and empathy for the Palestinian cause” because decades of abuse against them are intolerable and must end.
Push eventually will come to shove. We better hope it arrives soon. The world can’t wait much longer.
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 Mondays at noon US central time.
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UAW Sellout at GM and Chrysler
Friday, October 26th, 2007
By Stephen Lendman
RINF Alternative News
The September and October United Auto Workers (UAW) GM and Chrysler agreements are just the latest examples of union leadership surrender and betrayal. It’s an ominous sign of labor’s plight and clear indication of what’s ahead - more for business, less for workers, and no relief in sight with union bosses out for themselves and more allied with business and imperial interests than their own rank and file.
American civilization and labor historian Paul Buhle sees organized labor today in a state of collapse, and labor author Robert Fitch says “American workers are like owners of a family car whose wheels fell off long ago. Each family member (must rely) on their own two feet; they scarcely remember what it was like being able to ride together.” Who can dispute it with union membership down from its post-war 1950s high of 34.7% to the lowest private sector level in over 100 years at 7.4% today. In addition, inflation-adjusted wages are stagnant or falling, benefits are being slashed, and Fitch says conditions in the garment and meatpacking industries are as bad today as the ones muckrakers like Upton Sinclair exposed a century ago in his book “The Jungle.”
He blames it on union corruption at the top in different forms - leaders on the take, siding with business, getting big salaries and fancy perks and more concerned with their own welfare than the interests of their members. Nothing on the horizon points to change with corrupted UAW leaders Exhibit A.
Back in June, the UAW reached an agreement with Delphi Corporation that signaled what would follow with the auto companies. Following months of negotiating, it allowed the company to impose pay cuts up to 50%, lay off thousands, and slash health and retirement benefits. It was a win for company and a crushing defeat for Delphi workers.
Then in July, UAW and the United Steelworkers reached an agreement with auto supplier Dana Corporation that allows the unions to take over managing worker long-term disability and retiree healthcare coverage. The deal is projected to save Dana over $100 million a year, eliminate $30 - $40 billion in long-term company liabilities, and it gives UAW leadership another chance for what it wanted for years - a VEBA (voluntary employee beneficiary association) agreement putting the union in the healthcare business for the big profit potential it represents. More on that below.
In the past, VEBAs proved costly to UAW workers. The union set one up with Detroit Diesel in 1993 that cost company retirees dearly when funds in it ran out in 2004. It happened again to Caterpillar retirees in 2005 who’ll see their out-of-pocket costs triple by 2010, and the sky’s the limit after that. As for Dana Corporation, it got more in the deal as well - the right to hire new workers at half the wages of current ones so older employees can be phased out and replaced with low-cost new ones.
The same UAW - company pattern is now in play at GM, Chrysler and Ford. GM workers struck September 24 and returned to work two days later after union negotiators agreed to huge concessions the company demanded and got without breaking a sweat. Workers accepted the proposal by a nearly two to one margin, but in doing it signed away their futures with a deal they’ll live to regret. They traded shaky job security today for big contractual givebacks later. The pact affects 73,000 hourly workers at GM’s 82 US facilities, and key to it is a VEBA agreement for the UAW henceforth to manage GM’s 400,000 retirees’ health benefits while letting the company off the hook for what it’s been providing since 1964. The GM VEBA amounts to a multi-billion dollar trust fund that will transform the union into a major health care provider, and allow it to reap huge profits by cutting its own members’ benefits.
For its part, GM is only obligated to contribute $35 billion of the $55 billion it owes retirees. But the deal is even sweeter than that. Health care costs are soaring, and the company’s have risen by nearly half since 2003. It’s clear what’s ahead. The VEBA employee experience at Detroit Diesel and Caterpillar is coming to GM. When funds in it run out, the UAW will cut benefits and hike premiums and co-pays so union profits aren’t affected. The agreement also lets GM divert pension fund money to the VEBA trust and allows for worker cost of living increases to go instead toward retiree health benefit expenses making the deal even worse.
Other terms agreed to in the contract include a two-tiered wage and benefit package. Under it, new skilled assembly-line workers will get $26 to $32 in hourly wages but less in benefits than current ones for a total compensation package of around $45 an hour compared to about $73 an hour for existing skilled workers. In addition, a new non-core worker group, comprising up to one-third of GM’s workforce, will get around $27 an hour in wages and benefits. Both core and non-core employees will henceforth receive less in active-worker-health-care benefits with GM saving billions from the arrangement.
The company told Wall Street investors October 15 its 2007 labor costs will drop from $12.6 billion last year to $10.1 billion in 2007 (45% below 2003 wages and benefits paid) with “significant” further declines from 2008 to 2011. Further, GM estimates it will reduce its long-term healthcare obligation to workers by $47 billion and expects over the next four years to retire up to 75% of its current high-paid work force (earning $78.21 in wages and benefits) and replace many of them with low-paid non-core, non-assembly line new hires (costing $25.65 in combined wages and benefits).
Employee buyouts, early retirement offers and other downsizing efforts are coming that will let the company eliminate expensive workers and replace them with cheaper new ones. The contract runs four years and includes three lump-sum bonuses but no wage increases so annual cost of living adjustments won in 1948 are ended that over time will cost workers much more.
It’s a dark new age for GM workers as well as for those at Chrysler and Ford. The days of Walter Reuther-type leadership are long gone. He led the UAW from 1946 until his death in 1970, grew the union to more than 1.5 million members, and over that time delivered for the rank and file like few other labor leaders ever did. He was a union reformer, shrewd bargainer, master strategist, champion of industrial democracy and worker rights and once said “If fighting for a more equal and equitable distribution of the wealth of this country is socialistic, I stand guilty of being a socialist.” In fact, he was pro-capitalist, opposed forming a labor party and allied the UAW to the Democrat party and its imperialist agenda.
Nonetheless, he won sizable wage increases and a historic tying of them to living costs and productivity gains. He also got his membership paid vacations, employer-funded pensions, medical insurance with defined benefits, improved safety and health measures, and supplemental unemployment benefits that guaranteed members up to 95% of their pay if they were laid off. That’s now lost today with UAW and other union bosses conspiring with business for their own self-interest at the expense of their members.
The UAW Chrysler betrayal was as cynical and self-serving as the GM deal. It was packaged around a staged six hour partial walkout of 37,000 of the company’s 49,000 work force that was more theater than strike action and another defeat for UAW members unless they reject the agreement as some locals are doing in voting so far. Some local union leaders oppose it as well as the terms agreed to are even more draconian than at GM:
– a new VEBA trust (only for current employees) with Chrysler contributing only $8.8 billion of its $18 billion long-term health care obligation to its 78,000 retirees; new hires will get no retirement health care benefits and will have to enroll in a new health care program that will increase deductibles, co-pays and other out-of-pocket expenses; current retirees for the first time will have to pay out-of-pocket expenses; savings to the company will exceed $300 million a year;
– a two-tiered wage and benefit arrangement with new skilled hires getting as little as $14 an hour or half or less the current pay rate and well below the $19.62 average non-union wage in the manufacturing sector; the agreement lets the company expand the number of low-paid non-core workers as well as be able to designate “Non-Core Facilities” in which the entire workforce will get lower pay and benefits once current employees are phased out;
– new health care concessions similar to what GM and Ford got in 2005 that require retirees to pay part of their rising health care premiums; current worker pension funds will be shifted to the VEBA;
– the elimination of employer-paid pensions for new workers, replacing them with 401(k) plans in which the company will contribute one dollar to be invested in the stock market for every hour worked;
– freedom for Chrysler’s private equity firm owner, Cerberus Capital, to downsize and close as many of its plants as it wishes with early retirement offers and employee buyouts ahead so expensive current workers can be eliminated;
– workers’ wages will be frozen, and the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) benefit won in the two month 1970 GM strike is now lost;
– more flexibility for the company to outsource jobs to non-UAW workers at lower pay and benefits; these will include so-called “housekeeping functions” like janitorial and trash handling, grounds keeping, machine and booth cleaning and others;
– freedom for the company to expand the number of low-paid, low-benefit part-time workers as well as long-term temporary ones who can’t gain seniority;
– the company freed of any commitment to build vehicles at US assembly plants or guarantee the number of jobs at them plus other thus far unreported worker concessions.
The GM, Chrysler and upcoming Ford negotiations herald a new day for UAW workers in the wake of another crushing defeat affecting all working Americans. Gone are one million UAW jobs since 1978 (from 1.5 million to 520,000) along with hard-won gains that took decades to achieve. No longer do men like Walter Reuther represent workers. Today’s UAW leadership betrayed its members trust for its own self-interest, and there’s no relief in sight for change. Overall, organized labor is on its knees and Wall Street loves it. GM stock alone rose over 5% the day its deal was announced.
Looking ahead, there are no easy answers, just tough choices, and job one for working people is to join in solidarity for their own self-interest and survival. Past successes can be regained, but wishing won’t make it so. A new political movement is needed based on social equity and justice with a new breed of leaders to head it. The odds for success are long, but the alternative is intolerable. That should be incentive enough to go for it.
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 Mondays at noon US central time.
Have Your Say: UAW Sellout at GM and Chrysler
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Nobel Hypocrisy
Friday, October 26th, 2007
By Stephen Lendman
RINF Alternative News
Alfred Nobel was a wealthy nineteenth century Swedish-born chemist, engineer, inventor of dynamite, armaments manufacturer and war profiteer who remade his image late in life by establishing the awarding of prizes in his name that includes the one for peace. This most noted award was inspired by his one-time secretary and peace activist, Bertha von Suttner, who was nominated four times and became the first of only 12 women to be honored.
Since it was established in 1901, the Peace Prize was awarded to 95 individuals and 20 organizations. Some recipients were worthy like Martin Luther King, Jane Addams and Albert Schweitzer but too many were not including this year’s honoree. Al Gore joins a long list of past “ignoble” recipients like warrior presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and supporter of rogue regimes Jimmy Carter. He’s also among the likes of genocidists Henry Kissinger and three former Israeli prime ministers - Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin - along with former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan who never met a US-led war he didn’t love and support. So much for promoting peace and what this award is supposed to signify. More on this below.
Almost anyone can be nominated for the prize and look who were but didn’t get it - Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin and more recently George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Rush Limbaugh laughably. In contrast, one of the most notable symbols of non-violence in the 20th century, Mahatma Gandhi, was nominated four times but never won. More recently, anti-war activist Kathy Kelly, co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness, now known as Voices for Creative Nonviolence, got three nominations but was passed over each time for less deserving candidates. Her “reward” instead was to be sentenced in 2004 to three months in federal prison for crossing the line into Fort Benning, Georgia in protest against the School of the Americas, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation that’s commonly called “the school of assassins.”
Peace Prize Awards to War Criminals
Henry Kissinger was likely the most noted war criminal ever to win the Nobel Prize (in 1973 with Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho who declined his award saying there was no peace in his country). The sheer scope of his crimes is breathtaking:
– three to four million Southeast Asian deaths in the Vietnam war,
– the bloody overthrow of a democratic government in Chile and support for Latin American dictators,
– backed Surharto’s takeover of West Papua and his invasion of East Timor killing hundreds of thousands,
– supported the Khmer Rouge early on and its reign of terror rise to power,
– backed Pakistan’s “delicacy and tact” in overthrowing Bangladesh’s democratically elected government causing a half million deaths, and much more around the world as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State for Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the world body he represented won their award in 2001 “for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world.” It wasn’t for what Annan did in his various UN roles. Early on, he had a position in the Secretariat’s services department in New York. He then got subordinate responsibility for the Middle East and Africa in the “special political affairs” department. There his support for Washington’s call for troops to be sent to Somalia in the early 1990s helped put him in charge of all peacekeeping operations in February, 1993. In that role, he prevented measures from being taken to stop the impending Rwanda slaughter he was warned about in advance that caused around 800,000 deaths on his watch. He also kept the Security Council uninformed of what was coming.
At the behest of then UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright and without consulting Secretary-General Boutras-Boutras-Ghali, Annan sided with the Clinton administration’s authorization of NATO to illegally bomb Serb positions in Bosnia in 1995. It got him the Secretary-General’s job in January, 1997 in which one observer noted he “courted the wrath of the developing world by rejecting anticolonialism in favor of moral principles cherished in the West.”
Kofi Annan’s Nobel award is a testimony to hypocrisy for a man whose ten years as Secretary-General failed to fulfill the mandate he was sworn to uphold: “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war; to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights; to establish conditions (promoting) justice….equal rights of men and women (in all nations and respect for) international law (and) social progress….to ensure….armed force shall not be used.”
During his ten year tenure in the top UN job, Annan:
– supported Iraqi economic sanctions that caused around 1.5 million deaths including over one million children under age five;
– backed the Bush administration’s illegal 2003 Iraq invasion and occupation that’s now taken an additional 1.2 million or more lives;
– supported the illegal Afghanistan war and occupation;
– remained mute on the possibility of a wider war with Iran even if it includes first strike nuclear weapons;
– made no efforts to work for peace in the Middle East including in Occupied Palestine nor did he denounce Israel’s 2006 war of aggression against Lebanon;
– remained loyal to the West and ignored the plight of his own people throughout the African continent including the immiseration of South African blacks post-apartheid;
– allowed thuggish paramilitary Blue Helmets to occupy Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Liberia, Ivory Coast and Sudan. More on UN peacekeeping below.
Kofi Annan’s sole achievement was his uncompromising complicity with the Clinton and Bush administrations’ worst crimes of war and against humanity. His loyalty earned him the Nobel award that signified nothing to do with peace he disdained.
UN Peacekeeping Forces got the Nobel award in 1988 for missions the UN defines as “a way to help countries torn by conflict create conditions for sustainable peace.” Blue Helmets supposedly are sent to conflict and post-conflict areas to perform multiple services that include as top priority restoring order, maintaining peace and security and providing for the needs of people during transitional periods until local governments can take over on their own.
Most often, Blue Helmets end up creating more conflict than resolution and function mainly as unwanted paramilitary enforcers or occupiers. At other times, they become counterproductive or ineffective and end up doing more harm than good. Since 1948, over five dozen peacekeeping operations have been undertaken. Most were dismal failures including the first ever UNTSO mission during Israel’s so-called “War of Independence.” The operation is still ongoing after nearly 50 years, peace was never achieved, Blue Helmets are there but play no active role, and the world community is silent in the face of Israeli crimes of war and against humanity.
The same condition is true in Haiti where for the first time in UN history MINUSTAH peacekeepers were deployed to enforce a coup d’etat against a democratically-elected president. They disdain peace and stability and function instead as paramilitary occupiers indiscriminately terrorizing and killing unarmed civilians in service to Western capital.
Three former Israeli prime ministers also got Nobel Peace Prizes - Menachem Begin in 1978 and Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres in 1994. All three men committed crimes of war and against humanity as did all other Israeli prime ministers since David Ben-Gurion took office May 14, 1948 after the new State of Israel declared it independence as an exclusive Jewish state. Nonetheless, the Nobel Committee awarded them its highest honor for furthering the cause of peace they disdained by using their position to inflict on the Palestinian people what Edward Said once said was Israel’s “refined viciousness.” Menachem Begin was a particularly virulent racist and Arab hater calling Palestinians “two-legged beasts” and saying Jews were the “Master Race” and “divine gods on this planet.”
Then there’s the current Nobel Peace Prize honoree, Al Gore. CounterPunchers Alex Cockburn and Jeff St. Clair wrote the book on him in 2000 titled “Al Gore: A User’s Manual.” It’s a critical account of a “man whom his parents raised from birth to be president of the United States” and who always put politics over principle. He built his credentials for the high office around pro-business, pro-war, anti-union and phony environmental advocacy as no friend of the earth then so who can believe he’s one now.
His 1992 book “Earth in the Balance” was more theater than advocacy. In it, he assessed the forces of planetary destruction that included air and water pollution, soil erosion, deforestation, overpopulation, ozone depletion and global warming. He highlighted the impact of auto emissions and need to phase out the internal combustion engine but made no effort in office to do it.
Then as vice-president he used his “green credentials” to sell the pro-business, anti-worker, anti-environmental NAFTA to the environmental movement. He also supported clear-cutting logging practices including in old-growth areas. He ignored an assessment that this practice risked the extinction of hundreds of species. He backed a 1995 spending bill “salvage logging rider” that opened millions of National Forest lands to logging and exempted sales of the harvest from environmental laws and judicial review for two years. He and Clinton further allowed South Florida’s sugar barons to devastate thousands of Everglades acres and gave away consumer Delaney Clause protection that kept carcinogens out of our food supply.
Throughout his political life, Gore supported Big Oil and was tied to Occidental Petroleum Company and its “ruthless tycoon” chief, Armand Hammer. In return for supporting company interests, he got political favors and patronage from Hammer and his successor, Ray Irani who was a major DNC contributor and got to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom as a bonus reward. He’s also been a shill for the nuclear industry that won’t solve or even alleviate global warming and the threat it poses according to nuclear expert Helen Caldicott. Commercial reactors discharge huge amounts of greenhouse gases along with hundreds of thousands of curies of deadly radioactive gases and other radioactive elements besides being sitting ducks for retaliatory terror attacks experts believe will eventually happen.
Earlier in the House (1977 - 1985) and Senate (1985 - 1993) and as vice-president Gore also shilled for the Pentagon and defense contractors. He “played midwife to the MX missile,” opposed efforts to cut defense spending, and backed the Reagan administration’s Grenada invasion and Central American wars. He partnered with Clinton’s Balkan wars in the 1990s that destroyed Yugoslavia so NATO could expand into Central and Eastern Europe for its markets, resources and cheap, exploitable labor. In Kosovo, he collaborated with Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) paramilitary thugs against Serbia and ignored their connection to organized crime. He earlier traded his vote for the Gulf war for prime time coverage of his speech.
He then backed ousting Saddam by coup or any other means and supported the most comprehensive genocidal sanctions ever imposed on a country that killed a likely 1.5 million or more Iraqis including over one million children under age five.
Cockburn and St. Clair fill in more blanks about a political opportunist who supported Big Tobacco, “exploited his sister’s death and son’s (near-fatal) accident for….political advantage; became a soul brother of Newt Gingrich; race-baited Jesse Jackson; pushed Clinton into destroying the New Deal; plotted to stop Democrats from recapturing Congress in 1996″ so “his rival Dick Gephard” wouldn’t become Speaker; “leached campaign cash from nearly every corporate lobbyist” in town, and, as already covered, lied about being a friend of the earth by disdaining environmentalism through his actions.
Does this man deserve a Nobel Peace Prize (let alone to be president) along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.” The Nobel Committee ignored Gore’s environmental record and went on to say “for a long time (he’s) been one of the world’s leading environmental politicians (through) his strong commitment, reflected in political activity, (that) strengthened the struggle against climate change.” Contrary to his easily accessed public record, not his posturing, The Nobel Committee blindly added “He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted.”
In point of fact, throughout his political life, Gore’s actions betrayed the public’s trust and still do. He and his wife live in two large energy-consuming homes: a 10,000 square foot, eight bedroom one in Nashville and a 4000 square foot one in Arlington, VA. The Gores also own a third home in Carthage, TN. In both Washington and Nashville, utility companies offer a wind energy green alternative to customers for a small per kilowatt hour premium. Gore can easily afford it, but public records show no evidence he’s does it in either residence. Alex Cockburn gets the last word on a man who shills for privilege, has plenty for himself, and like George Bush disdains the public interest: “Al Gore distills in his single person the disrepair of liberalism in America today, and almost every unalluring feature of the Democratic Party” that’s mostly indistinguishable from the other side of the aisle in a city where the criminal class is bipartisan.
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 Mondays at noon US central time.
Have Your Say: Nobel Hypocrisy
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Promised Social Change in Ecuador
Friday, October 26th, 2007
By Stephen Lendman
RINF Alternative News
Raphael Correa was elected Ecuador’s president last November and took office January 15 promising social change. He’s the country’s eighth president in the last decade including three previous ones driven from office by mass street protest opposition against their misrule and public neglect. Correa must now deliver and just got a boost from his governing Movimiento Alianza Pais’ landslide Constituent Assembly election victory to rewrite the nation’s constitution for the 177th time in Ecuador’s history hoping to get it right this time. Awaiting a final tabulation of results, it appears Correa supporters got around 70% of the vote winning 80 of the 130 Assembly seats. That’s a comfortable majority to push through change, but doing it won’t be easy, and Correa’s commitment has yet to be tested.
Longtime Latin American expert James Petras writes “Ecuador today faces great opportunities for a basic social transformation and also grave threats from imperial networks” the way states in the region always do. He notes how in recent years mobilized urban and rural popular classes ousted neoliberal regimes only to see them resurface under so-called left-center leaders (who are neither left nor center) like Lula in Brazil, Kirchner in Argentina, Morales in Bolivia, Vasquez in Uruguay and others. Even Hugo Chavez governs from the “pragmatic left.” He combines grassroots participatory democracy and redistributive social policies with support for business interests but on a more equitable basis than under previous Venezuelan leaders.
Petras quotes a Forbes magazine editor’s comment on former Mexican president Luis Echeverria (1970 - 1976) that’s very revealing and explains Correa’s challenge - “He talks to the Left and works for the Right.” That’s pretty common in Latin America today, and Brazil stands out as Exhibit A under former Workers’ Party co-founder and the country’s current president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (2002 to present).
Lula promised social change, but delivered betrayal. Even before being elected, he signed a letter of understanding with the IMF promising no change and business as usual. He agreed to full debt service and repayment terms as well as to back economic stability and neoliberal policies. He didn’t disappoint.
Once elected with a clear majority, he cut public employee pensions 30%; his agrarian policy subsidized agribusiness; his promise of land redistribution to the Landless Workers Movement (MST) was broken; spending for health and education was cut; employer rights to fire workers and cut severance pay were supported; extended privatizations of state-owned companies were backed; thuggish troops occupied Haiti; and right-wing bankers, corporate executives and free-marketeers were appointed economic ministers and central bankers. Petras sums up his record saying: “Lula fits the profile of a right-wing neoliberal politician,” not a “center-leftist” one.
Current Argentina president Nestor Carlos Kirchner is Exhibit B (in office from 2003 to the present with an October 28 presidential election ahead and the president’s wife ahead in the polls to win it). Petras notes how compared to Lula, he seems progressive. He cut unemployment from 20 to 15%, raised pensions and wages, renegotiated part of the country’s foreign debt and rescinded immunity for military torturers although with little to show for it.
In sharp contrast, “fraudulent privatizations” in Argentina’s key industrial areas weren’t reversed; inequalities remained the same or increased in some sectors; poverty levels are still almost 30%; 10% inflation diluted nominal earnings gains; the socio-economic power structure stayed the same; Argentina’s thuggish troops occupy Haiti; its central bankers and economic ministers are hard right; debt service was placed above health and education spending; and unfettered capitalism was supported following the 2001 economic collapse and subsequent uprisings. Petras calls Kirchner a “pragmatic conservative willing to dissent from the US when it” serves Argentina’s business interests. As for being a social democrat? Forget it.
Bolivia’s president and first ever indigenous head of state (2006 to present), Juan Evo Morales Ayma, is Exhibit C, and along with Lula, the greatest disappointment. Petras cites his government as “the most striking example of (a) ‘center-left’ regime” to betray its supporters and embrace neoliberalim once in office. Mass uprisings ousted two earlier presidents who defended foreign investor natural resources ownership, and Bolivians elected Morales to do what they didn’t. Instead, he rejected oil and gas expropriation, supports Big Oil interests, and embraced business as usual policies. Under nationalizations Morales-style, current contractual arrangements are effectively intact, and the country’s mineral resources have been sold off to the greatest ever number of foreign investors.
In addition, Morales broke his promise to triple the painfully low minimum wage, increased it 10% instead, and maintained previous neoliberal fiscal austerity and economic stability policies. He also tolerates the US Drug Enforcement Agency’s intrusive presence and the Pentagon’s Chapare military base; appointed hard right economic, defense and other ministers; opposed agrarian reform; supports large landowners; provides them large subsidies and tax incentives; and backs the Confederation of Private Businessmen in Bolivia by promoting foreign investment, social spending cuts, prioritization of exports, and other pro-business policies above the interests of the people who elected him. Petras says Morales “excels in public theater” by combining “political demagogy” to his base while backing neoliberal IMF austerity and business-friendly policies.
Here’s a sample of the former from Morales’ September 24 UN General Assembly speech when he said: “….each day we are destroying the future of humanity. (We must) pinpoint who our enemies are (and the) damage (they do) that may put an end to humanity….I think that capitalism is the worst enemy of humanity and if we do not change the model, change the system (our efforts here) will be totally in vain….Capitalism has twins, the market and war….This is why (we must) change economic models….particularly in the western world.” It’s lovely rhetoric from a man who, in fact, embraces the model he denounces.
He symbolizes the fantasy of “new winds from the Left” sweeping the region, but too many others do as well in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and all of Central America including Costa Rica. There, a US intimidation campaign narrowly got DR-CAFTA passed in an October 7 national referendum that still awaits a recount before confirming what pre-referendum polls predicted would go the other way.
That aside, there’s strong support for the left throughout Latin America that eventually may bubble up into change. It’s too early to know for sure where Correa stands, but his commitment will soon be fully tested. Here’s what he’s up against.
US regional dominance is still strong, and thinking otherwise is misguided. It’s not like in the 1990s “Golden Age of Pillage,” but it’s still able to keep business flourishing, including in Venezuela where it’s booming. Nonetheless, a new generation of committed leftist leaders are emerging with Correa yet to prove he’s one of them and may in the end disappoint.
His chance to prove otherwise is coming, and he won it convincingly with a 54% second round presidential electoral victory. It was followed by an overwhelming 82% referendum majority to convoke a Constituent Assembly to draft a new socially progressive constitution. Correa says it will be based on “principles not models (and) every country must decide according to its own different realities.” The Assembly will convene the end of October to begin its work with a long struggle ahead to complete it. It hopes to finish in six months, but its mandate allows more time if it’s needed.
Correa wants the constitution to “facilitate” foreign investment (especially in banking) “to force competition.” He’s against monopolies, traditional oligarchic power, and the one-sided big media opposition to his government. He’s also renegotiating the country’s debt, is assessing its legitimacy, wants a constitutional limit on its repayment, and intends to keep the dollar the official currency with eventual plans to abandon it. In addition, he favors ending the central bank’s autonomy, joined the Bank of the South (to be officially founded November 3 and headquartered in Caracas), expelled the World Bank’s representative in April, is ending relations with the IMF, and aims to transform the current neoliberal system into one that will aid “the recovery of the government’s planning capacity (and be a) beginning of the concept of a solidarity system.”
Correa’s close economic adviser and leading September 30 vote getter, Alberto Acosta, said the nation’s “economy should be based on human beings” and that capital, investment, the profit motive motive and workings of the state should be subordinate to human needs. If Correa supports that view and will back it fully, he’s off to a good start. It’s too soon to tell but early signs are promising.
He talks the talk and is starting to prove it. He promised social democratic change and a “citizens’ revolution” and said he’ll use the country’s oil revenues for the people with a positive step already taken. On October 4, he signed a decree increasing Ecuador’s share of windfall foreign oil company profits from 50 to 99% while committing to honor existing contracts. Announcing the move, Correa said: “No more plundering, no more surrender, no more waste. (Ecuador’s oil) now belongs to all Ecuadoreans” with revenues from it earmarked for social welfare and infrastructure.
Correa also indicated after a new constitution is drafted and approved by referendum, he’ll call for new elections for president, vice-president and Congress. The current legislature has no Correa party representatives in it, but he hopes overwhelming popular support will change that. The sitting Congress, according to Correa “must be tossed back into the street,” but that’s for the people to decide. Democracy, however, isn’t just about elections. It’s about what happens afterwards, and that’s for Correa, the Constituent Assembly and a newly elected Congress to decide.
The September 30 victory was Correa’s third triumph in nine months, and he hailed it saying the “Ecuadorean people have won the mother of all battles. (It was) an unquestionable victory.” Earlier he echoed Hugo Chavez’s call for a “new socialism of the twenty-first century (and that Ecuador must end) the perverse (neoliberal) system that has destroyed our democracy, our economy, our society.” He won’t have long to back that rhetoric with action, but doing it won’t be easy.
The long shadow of Washington haunts the region, and its influence pressures and subverts change from the left. At the same time, countries like Ecuador face conflicting interests - maintaining the status quo from the right and demands for real change from below through redistributive social policies and nationalizing strategic sectors like oil, gas, banks and land.
Petras is hopeful “decay and profound disintegration of all the traditional parties opens the way for (progressive) new political forces.” He sees an “historical opening” and opportunity for change through an “alliance of trade unionists, Indian militants, movement leaders and ecologists” in the newly formed Polo Democratico (PD). Its agenda calls for a “total rupture (and) transformation of the Constituent Assembly into the legislative arm of the peoples’ movement.” Its aim is bold and revolutionary - to establish “popular sovereignty” that places basic resources like oil and gas under “popular self-management” and out of the hands of local oligarchs and exploitive foreign capital. It’s a national liberation struggle to defeat imperialism and savage capitalism and return power to the people. Now it’s for Correa and his coalition to prove they’re up to the challenge. So far at least, it looks like they’ll try.
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 now moved to Mondays at noon US central time.
Have Your Say: Promised Social Change in Ecuador
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VIDEO: The Fascist Blueprint
Friday, October 26th, 2007
It can happen here
Naomi Wolf on “The End of America”
It not only can happen here, it is happening here.
Mussolini created the blueprint (with inspiration from Lenin), Hitler elaborated on it, Stalin studied Hitler…
Here’s how it works (notice how many Bush & Co. is using now.):
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/177.html
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens’ groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law
Wolf’s conclusion? Impeachment of Bush and Cheney is not enough. Prosecuting (and jailing) them for crimes committed is the only rational solution.
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Have Your Say: VIDEO: The Fascist Blueprint
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Will George W. Bush Stay in Power after 2008?
Friday, October 26th, 2007
With so many political pundits in a nervous tizzy about the future political plans of Russian President Vladimir Putin, too few are scratching their thinking domes over a far more pertinent question: Will George W. Bush relinquish his presidential powers in 2008 as mandated by the U.S. Constitution, or will another national emergency, or constitutional change, keep him and his crazy corral of neoconservatives in power?
First, allow me to apologize for scribbling about politics in this column for two consecutive weeks. However, I was hit broadside this morning by news headlines that screamed irony, incompetency, lunacy and once again, vulgar stupidity.
It became easier to understand what Thomas Paine meant by “trying times” when I read on the first page of CNN: “California Wildfires Worsen, 500,000 Evacuated,” right next door to this familiar double whopper with cheese: “Bush Wants Extra $42 Billion for Wars.”
Would somebody please explain to me the Bush administration’s morbid fascination with war? Why can’t this administration - instead of sticking bayonets into wasp nests across the globe - get off page 911 and move on to more pressing issues? In its narrow-minded obstinacy, the United States is about to witness yet another pathetic Katrina scenario, with thousands of homeless evacuees seeking shelter in leaky football stadiums, complete with all of the guilt-tripping Oprah-esque handwringing to follow right after this commercial break.
Is California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger terminator enough to make Washington turn its eagle beak to the West as opposed to the less negotiable Middle East? Why is Bush so gung-ho proactive when it comes to waging war on behalf of other nations, yet arrogantly passive with other far more dangerous enemies, like global warming, deteriorating inner-city infrastructure and the 50 million Americans who have no healthcare plan? Why did the neoconservatives drop out of the Kyoto Protocol coalition, but easily forged a warmongering coalition to wage an unnecessary bloodbath in Iraq?
It has almost become cliché to label these inexplicable modern events “Orwellian,” but that odd double-speak phrase, WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, which adorned the Ministry of Truth in the novel 1984, threatens to become the judgement of our days.
All apologies for those conservatives who might be reading this column with tightly pursed lips and knotted brow; but don’t worry, it is not too late to join the Green Party, for example. Anything but the Democrats, please. You may have heard what Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton told the Guardian newspaper concerning Bush and Cheney’s unconstitutional “power grab.”
“There were a lot of actions which they [the Bush clan] took that were clearly beyond any power the Congress would have granted, or that in my view was inherent in the Constitution,” Clinton quibbled. “There were other actions they’ve taken which could have obtained Congressional authorization but they deliberately chose not to pursue it as a matter of principle.”
Asked if she would hand back some of the tempting super powers that the U.S. executive office now enjoys, Clinton feigned shock and awe when she replied, “Oh, absolutely…
I mean, that has to be part of the review that I undertake when I get to the White House, and I intend to do that.”
Yes, of course, the very first thing that any politician would do when winning ultimate power is to hand back big chunks of that ultimate power. That is why it is so vitally crucial for this two-party political game of mind-numbing table tennis to get some new players, and fast. But that would require handing over powers, Hillary, and let’s be honest here, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans, who both slurp from the same contaminated teat of corporate power, are about to do such a stupid thing.
But before we even begin to speculate what may or may not happen should Hillary become the first former first lady female (oh, darn it, you know what I mean), we need to prepare ourselves for the worst-case scenario: Bush decides not to give up his cool Pennsylvania Avenue fraternity house.
During a mushroom-clouded news conference last week, where Bush actually floated the ominous specter of World War III, a journalist told the U.S. president that Vladimir Putin may become prime minister after his presidential term expires next March, “in effect keeping power.”
In response to the comment, Bush, who has 15 long months left in office, quipped: “I’ve been planning that myself.”
Wow! So there we have it: Armageddon is in the cards, Bush will become U.S. prime minister in 2009, and America will finally get that parliament the British should have given us 300 years ago. Cool!
The only problem with this scenario is that - and I don’t think I am alone here - I cannot tolerate another minute of looking at the mugshots of Bush’s cronies. As Shakespeare once commented, “There is no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.” Does history know of a less attractive presidential lineup than Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, and last but certainly not least, Robert Zoellick! Beauty might be in the eye of the beholder, yes, but…
Now at this point, some readers may be cursing me and saying: Robert, all you do is criticize! Why don’t you do something significant instead of just bellyaching from your cubicle?
Dear reader! I did protest against the Lunacy, in perhaps the most painful way imaginable: I boycotted Disney World in June 2003. Yes, we had planned a Bridge family reunion in the land of Mickey, but when it was obvious even months before the military operation had commenced that war was inevitable,
I cancelled our attendance. My family still has not forgiven me the decision, but there was no way in the world I was going to sit through “It’s a Small World after all,” while knowing full well that bombs were dropping on innocent people in Baghdad.
Anyways, don’t get me wrong, I’m no knee-jerk liberal who automatically opposes military games. I cheered and went hog-wild on Pabst Blue Ribbon like any other redneck American when U.S. forces took out the testy Taliban in Afghanistan.
But invade Iraq? Why? Yes, Saddam did some nasty things, but so have many other politicians, some of whom are still walking upright and reproducing mini-me’s on a regular basis. Yet he [Saddam] was never found guilty of the two main charges leveled against him by the very virtual court of the United States: 1. supporting al-Qaeda, the desert warriors who moved to America, learned to fly commercial jets, and overwhelmed Fortress America to carry out the most lethal foreign attack on our soil; 2. nobody ever found so much as a hint of weapons of mass destruction anywhere in Iraq.
Instead of giving the UN weapons inspectors the extra time they needed to prove Iraq’s guilt or innocence, the Bush administration decided to launch a unilateral and illegal ‘preemptive’ strike when it became obvious the search would not uncover the desperately cherished “smoking gun.”
Now the Bush administration is forced to talk about launching democracy in the Middle East on the wings of a cruise missile, at a time when democratic principles back home are riding precariously on three wobbly wheels.
So where is the world now? Iran has acquired an unpredictable president since hostilities in Iraq broke out, Turkey is bombing Kurdish positions along the Turk-Iraq border, while the Israeli-Palestinian issue still dominates American politics behind-the scenes.
Anybody for a trip to the Disney World in France?
By Robert Bridge
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