Two Italian soldiers with the US-led forces in Afghanistan have been injured in a bomb attack in western Afghan Province of Farah, Press TV reports.

The Italian military announced on Wednesday that two of its soldiers have been “slightly wounded” following an attack on their patrol by a roadside bomb in the Farah province.

The statement added that efforts are underway to find more details about the incident.

The injured foreign soldiers have reportedly been airlifted to a facility near where American troops are stationed in the area.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the move.

Casualties in the US-led war in Afghanistan commonly drop to a relative low during winter months, when snow and bitter conditions make fighting more difficult. A hike in armed violence, however, is expected starting the spring season.

Roadside bombs and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are by far the most lethal weapon used by Taliban militants against US-led and Afghan troops, as well as civilians.

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001 under the pretext of fighting terrorism. While the US-led invasion removed the Taliban from power, insecurity remains rampant across the war-torn nation.

The US-led war in Afghanistan, which has caused record-high civilian and military casualties, has become the longest military conflict in the American history.

MFB/MFB

The Monarchy program is aimed at shedding light on the dark corners of British internal affairs, foreign affairs, and of course, the UK economy.

BGH/SSM/HE

The US attorney general has refused to rule out the possibility that drone strikes may be used inside the United States to kill an American citizen.

Eric Holder said a drone strike within the borders of the US and against an American citizen may be carried out in what he called an extraordinary circumstance.

He made the remarks in a statement in a response to an inquiry by Republican Senator Rand Paul, who had questioned the Justice Department on Tuesday if it believed that President Barack Obama had the legal authority to order an assassination drone strike on an American while present on US soil.

Paul said the administration’s “refusal to rule out the possibility of drone strikes on American citizens and on American soil is more than frightening — it is an affront the Constitutional due process rights of all Americans.”

At least three Americans have been reportedly killed by US drone strikes in Yemen, including Anwar al-Awlaki, his 16-year-old son Abdul-Rahman and Samir Khan.

Washington uses assassination drones in several countries, claiming that they target “terrorists.” According to witnesses, however, the attacks have mostly led to massive civilian casualties.

In September 2012, a report by the Stanford Law School and the New York University School of Law gave an alarming account of the effect that assassination drone strikes have on ordinary people in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

The report noted, “The number of ‘high-level’ targets killed as a percentage of total casualties is extremely low – estimated at just two percent.”

CAH/PKH/HJL

South Korea has warned the North that it would take retaliatory measures against any ‘provocation’ by Pyongyang following a reported threat by North Korea to invalidate a truce that ended the Korean War.

“If North Korea carries out provocations that threaten the lives and safety of South Koreans, our military will carry out strong and resolute retaliations,” said South Korean Army General Kim Yong-Hyun in a press briefing on Wednesday, reacting to a call by Pyongyang to nullify the 1953 armistice between the two neighbors, AFC reported.

North Korea announced on Tuesday that it would “completely declare invalid” the truce agreement between the two nations in case the United Nations moves ahead with efforts to impose additional sanctions on the country following its recent nuclear test.

The latest exchange of threats, however, occurs at a time of newly intensified tensions between the two Koreas after the North’s successful launch of a long range rocket in December and its nuclear test last month.

North Korea’s military statement on Tuesday, according to the report, further mentioned its possession of “lighter and smaller nukes” than before.

The UN Security Council is expected this week to decide on even harsher sanctions on the North, further inciting a reaction from Pyongyang, which is also fuming about a series of joint military maneuvers by US and South Korean in the region.

In his press briefing in Seoul, General Kim, who is director general of operations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, further announced that a South Korean retaliation would not only target the “origin of provocation” but also the North’s commanding forces, according to the report.

The yearly US-South Korea military drills, known as Foal Eagle, involves over 10,000 American troops and a much larger South Korean force that began on March 1 and scheduled to continue through April 30.

Additionally, says the report, a largely computer-simulated joint exercise, named ‘Key Resolve,’ is due to be held by the two military forces from March 11-21.

Meanwhile, the recent North Korean statement condemned the joint military drills as the “most dangerous nuclear war maneuvers… and the most undisguised military provocation.”

“This land is neither the Balkans nor Iraq and Libya,” said the statement, warning the launch “diversified precision nuclear strikes” by North Korea in response.

MFB/MFB

The United Nations says the ill treatment of Palestinian minor inmates within the Israeli military detention system is “widespread, systematic and institutionalized.”

The UN children’s fund, UNICEF, said in a 22-page report on Wednesday that it has examined the Tel Aviv regime’s military court system for holding Palestinian children and found evidence of “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.”

Some 7,000 Palestinian children, aged between 12 and 17, have been arrested, interrogated and prosecuted by Israeli forces, the report said, adding that the majority of them were boys.

“In no other country are children systematically tried by juvenile military courts that, by definition, fall short of providing the necessary guarantees to ensure respect for their rights,” the report stated.

UNICEF analyzed the procedure employed by Israeli forces from arrest to trial of the children. It said many children were “aggressively awakened in the middle of the night by many armed soldiers and being forcibly brought to an interrogation centre tied and blindfolded, sleep deprived and in a state of extreme fear.”

Many of them faced mistreatment during the transfer process and forced to lie down on the floor of a vehicle for one day in some cases. They were also subjected to verbal or physical abuse, the report also noted.

“The interrogation mixes intimidation, threats and physical violence, with the clear purpose of forcing the child to confess,” the international body said, adding they were not accompanied by a lawyer or a family member during the interrogation.

“Children have been threatened with death, physical violence, solitary confinement and sexual assault, against themselves or a family member,” it said, adding that they were restrained during the questioning even for extended periods of time.

The maximum penalty for minor inmates, aged 12 to 13, is six months. However, it could be extended to 20 years for those who are over 14. The vast majority of Palestinian children have been arrested for throwing stones.

“The principal evidence against the child is the child’s own confession, in most cases extracted under duress during the interrogation,” the UNICEF report further said, saying they have to sign confession forms in Hebrew which they barely understand.

“Ultimately, almost all children plead guilty in order to reduce the length of their pretrial detention. Pleading guilty is the quickest way to be released. In short, the system does not allow children to defend themselves,” the report concluded.

SAB/PKH/HJL

The Iranian delegation to the Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons has expressed Iran’s objection to any possession or use of nuclear weapons across the world, Press TV reports.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran does not see any glory, pride or power in nuclear weapons,” said Iran’s Ambassador to Norway Seyyed Hossein Rezvani at the forum in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, on Tuesday.

“Quite the opposite, based on the religious decree issued by our Leader [of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei], which is rooted in the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons and founded on the high values of our beliefs in preserving human safety, security and dignity, the production, possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons are illegitimate, futile, harmful, dangerous and prohibited as a great sin,” Rezvani added.

Delegates from more than 130 countries came together in Oslo on March 4 and 5 to discuss the humanitarian and environmental consequences of nuclear weapons.

Several UN bodies, NGOs and representatives of civil society were also present at the conference.

The Israeli regime, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and North Korea refused to participate at the conference, while India and Pakistan were the only nuclear powers represented at the event.

The United States, which is the only country that has ever used atomic bombs against human beings, has conducted over 1,030 nuclear tests since 1945, according to statistics by the UN.

Meanwhile, Israel, the only possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, is widely known to have between 200 and 400 nuclear warheads.

Meanwhile, Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide told the conference, “We can’t force anyone to come. We have a vast majority of the states on the planet present and I think it is important to underline that these questions are questions for humanity and not the exclusive rights of the nuclear power states.”

Mohammad Hassan Daryai, a member of the Iranian delegation, also told Press TV, “Lack of participation of these nuclear-weapon states and those who have the capability to produce nuclear weapons outside the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) shows that they are not faithful in fulfilling their commitment on disarmament.”

ASH/HSN

With Minimum Wage Bill, Congress Is Just Trying to Keep Up With Inflation

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Posted on Mar 5, 2013

AP/Mike Groll

By Thomas Hedges, Center for Study of Responsive Law

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., held a news conference Tuesday afternoon to announce that they had introduced a bill in Congress to raise the federal minimum wage from the current $7.25 an hour to $10.10 over three years. The legislation would ensure that the minimum wage is indexed so that it would keep up with inflation rates every year.

“Every time we’ve raised the minimum wage,” Harkin said, “the economy gets stronger–every single time.”

The bill “would give a raise to 30 million American workers,” he said. “More than half of these are women and nine out of 10 are adult workers, not teenagers.”

About 120 million Americans make less today than the minimum wage standard in 1968, when workers were making $10.50 an hour adjusting for inflation.

Since 2002, the poverty rate among U.S. children, almost all of who have at least one parent making the minimum wage, has risen from 16 to almost 22 percent.

The current minimum wage “is immoral and it is economically dangerous,” Miller said at the news conference Tuesday. “We know that businesses can afford to raise the minimum wage. The New York Times just yesterday called it the golden age of corporate profits, even while workers’ wages remain stuck in quicksand.”

Harkin noted that “with an increase in minimum, wage workers have more to spend locally and not overseas. This is just basic economics. Increased demand means increased economic activity … [and] a boost to Main Street.”

Harkin and Miller said they would like to see the minimum wage hiked even higher than what they have proposed.

“We have to be realistic though,” Harkin said. “We want it to pass through Congress.”

Opponents of the legislation argue that boosting the minimum wage would push companies to lay off more of their workers. It is the nature, they say, of running a business in a competitive market.

But average CEO pay, Miller pointed out, is 900 percent higher than it was in 1985 and is 360 times the salary of the average–not the lowest paid–worker.

Middle-class income has dropped almost 10 percent over the last 23 years as a result, the congressman said.

Amy Crawford, who traveled from Illinois to Washington, D.C., to speak at the news conference, illustrates today’s minimum wage job holder. For more than 30 years, she worked as a designer and considered herself a member of the middle class. But since moving to Chicago 14 months ago, she has not been able to find commensurate work and now her temporary job at a fast food restaurant is looking more and more permanent.

“I used to think minimum wage jobs were for other people, people who worked where I stopped to get doughnuts or burgers,” the 56-year-old Crawford said. “They weren’t me. They had less education and fewer skills. They didn’t work as hard as I had or try as hard.

“I couldn’t have been more wrong,” she acknowledged. “The truth is that in today’s economy anyone can wind up in a minimum wage job.”

This article was made possible by the Center for Study of Responsive Law.

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When Congress authorized the deployment of some 30,000 drones over U.S. skies with the passage of the FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act in 2012 many civil liberties groups, privacy advocates and Americans expressed their concerns about the possibility that these surveillance tools could be used within the borders of the United States much like they are on the battlefields of the middle east where scores of innocent civilians are killed almost every day as collateral damage in direct strikes against alleged terrorists.

Those fears are very quickly being realized not as possibilities, but actualities.

In response to questions recently voiced by Senator Rand Paul about drone strikes being used against American citizens on American soil without charge or trial, Attorney General Eric Holder issued a public statement indicating that the government has the right to use armed unmanned aerial vehicles should “extraordinary circumstances” arise.

Holder writes:

On February 20, 2013, you wrote to John Brennan requesting additional information concerning the Administration’s views about whether “the President has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, without a trial.”

As members of this administration have previously indicated, the US government has not carried out drone strikes in the United States and has no intention of doing so. As a policy matter moreover, we reject the use of military force where well-established law enforcement authorities in this country provide the best means for incapacitating a terrorist threat. We have a long history of using the criminal justice system to incapacitate individuals located in our country who pose a threat to the United States and its interests abroad. Hundreds of individuals have been arrested and convicted of terrorism-related offenses in our federal courts. 

The question you have posed is therefore entirely hypothetical, unlikely to occur, and one we hope no president will ever have to confront.

It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States.

For example, the president could conceivably have no choice but to authorize the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland in the circumstances like a catastrophic attack like the ones suffered on December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001.

Full Text (PDF)

The official position of the United States government is that a drone, or any military asset for that matter, can be deployed by the President of the United States or his surrogates without regard to the sixth amendment of the US Constitution, which requires that citizens be afforded the right of facing their accusers, to call witnesses and to be tried by a jury of their peers.

Senator Paul responded to the Attorney General’s comments and warned of the dangers of the new policy:

“The U.S. Attorney General’s refusal to rule out the possibility of drone strikes on American citizens and on American soil is more than frightening — it is an affront the Constitutional due process rights of all Americans.”

Last month President Obama responded to questions about domestic drone strikes:

First of all… there’s never been a drone used on an American citizen, on American soil.

We respect and have a whole bunch of safeguards in terms of how we conduct counter-terrorism operations outside of the United States. The rules outside of the United States are going to be different than the rules inside of the United States.

…

I am not somebody who believes that the President has the authority to do whatever he wants or whatever she wants, whenever they want,  just under the guise of  counter-terrorism.

There have to be checks and balances on it.

Based on Eric Holder’s memo, the President, and therefore agencies under his control, do believe that they have the authority to use lethal force against those identified as “terrorists.”

As the Attorney General noted in his letter to Senator Paul, there are hundreds of Americans that have been tried and convicted as terrorists, and thousands more that have been identified as terrorists by government officials.

U.S. attorney Anne Tompkins recently prosecuted Bernard Von Nothaus for minting silver coins he branded as “liberty dollars.” After Vot Nothaus was convicted, Tompkins referred to his actions as a unique form of domestic terrorism.

Local law enforcement officials attending DHS sponsored training events have widely reported that the definitions for “terrorist” activity are becoming very broad, as outlined by one police officer at James Rawles’ Survival Blog:

During the past several years, I have witnessed a dramatic shift in the focus of law enforcement training.  Law enforcement courses have moved away from a local community focus to a federally dominated model of complete social control. Most training I have attended over the past two years have been sponsored by Department of Homeland Security (DHS), namely the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

No matter what topic the training session concerns, every DHS sponsored course I have attended over the past few years never fails to branch off into warnings about potential domestic terrorists in the community.

…

So how does a person qualify as a potential domestic terrorist?  Based on the training I have attended, here are characteristics that qualify:

• Expressions of libertarian philosophies (statements, bumper stickers)
• Second Amendment-oriented views (NRA or gun club membership, holding a CCW permit)
• Survivalist literature (fictional books such as “Patriots” and “One Second After” are mentioned by name)
• Self-sufficiency (stockpiling food, ammo, hand tools, medical supplies)
• Fear of economic collapse (buying gold and barter items)
• Religious views concerning the book of Revelation (apocalypse, anti-Christ)
• Expressed fears of Big Brother or big government
• Homeschooling
• Declarations of Constitutional rights and civil liberties
• Belief in a New World Order conspiracy

Earlier this year a kindergarten student was suspended from school after officials reported that she made a terrorist threat utilizing a Hello Kitty bubble gun.

The Attorney General of the United States of America just gave the President the go-ahead on domestic drone strikes.

Under the Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act, no Constitutional protections need be afforded to American citizens, thus, anyone can be classified as a domestic terrorist at the President’s discretion.

If you mint a silver coin, stockpile food, refuse to turn in your high capacity magazine, voice beliefs that may be considered subversive to the government, or have a toy resembling a gun, you maybe labeled a terrorist.

As such, you can also be targeted for extermination.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has passed away at the age of 58 following a two-year fight against cancer and a severe respiratory infection. His untimely demise raises serious questions about the future of the oil-rich Latin American power.

The president of Venezuela died on Tuesday afternoon, Vice President Nicolas Maduro has announced. “It’s a moment of deep pain,” he said, accompanied by senior ministers.

Foreign Minister Elias Jaua has announced in televised comments that Maduro will assume the interim presidency. Elections are to be held in 30 days, he added.

The country’s military chiefs appeared live on state television to pledge their loyalty to Maduro, whom Chavez had named as his preferred successor.

Venezuela will observe seven days of mourning after the leader’s passing. Thousands of Chavez supporters have taken to the streets across the country to mourn their late president.

The news comes weeks after Chavez returned from Cuba, where he underwent the fourth cancer operation. His ‘delicate condition’ had recently worsened due to complications from a respiratory infection, with official reports stating he was breathing through a tracheal tube and unable to speak.

Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles, whom Chavez defeated in last year’s elections, has called for national unity in the wake of the president’s death.

“My solidarity is with the entire family and followers of President Hugo Chavez, we call for Venezuelan unity at this moment,” Capriles wrote on Twitter.

In the US, crowds of Venezuelan immigrants took to the streets cheering while waving their country’s flag. Dozens of members of the anti-Chavez community took to the streets in Doral, Florida, wearing national colors and chanting “He is gone!”

“We are not celebrating death,” Ana San Jorge, a 37-year-old Venezuelan immigrant explained, “We are celebrating the opening of a new door, of hope and change.”

There are currently some 190,000 Venezuelan immigrants in the United States.

Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin has described Chavez’s passing as “

a tragedy

.” “

He was a great politician for his country, for Latin America and for the world and of course he played a very important role in the development of relations between Venezuela and Russia, so we feel very badly about it,

” he told reporters in New York.

One of the world’s best-known socialist leaders and a staunch critic of the United States, Chavez had been battling the disease for nearly two years, undergoing four surgeries and several sessions of chemotherapy in Havana.

Despite his ailing health, Chavez was reelected in November 2012 to a fourth term. However, he was not able to attend his January 10 inauguration ceremony, which cast doubt on the succession of power in the country. Prior to his death, the Venezuelan opposition called for a new election should Chavez be unfit to take office.

‘We are all Chavez’

Chavez’s allies across Latin America have joined in an expression of grievance. A teary-eyed Bolivian President Evo Morales declared that “Chavez is more alive than ever.”

“We are all Chavez,” said Rosario Murillo, the wife and spokeswoman of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, adding that the deceased Venezuelan president is “one of the dead who never die.”

The Cuban government declared two days of national mourning and ordered the flag to be flown at half-mast. “The Cuban people view him as one of their most outstanding sons,” President Raul Castro’s office said in a statement.

Argentina also announced three days of mourning nationwide as the country’s President Cristina Fernandez and the President of neighboring Uruguay Jose Mujica prepare to travel to Venezuela for the funeral.

Another of Chavez’s close allies, Ecuadorian President Rafael Ortega, praised the legacy of the Venezuelan president.

“We have lost a revolutionary, but millions of us remain inspired,”

he said.

Chavez’s popularity extended much further than Latin America, James Petras, professor of sociology from Binghamton University, told RT.

“In fact President Chavez was loved not only by Venezuelans but throughout Latin America. And even in the US, outside of very limited circles, like Miami and some other immigrant places,” he said.

Outside of US media reports Chavez was seen as a good leader and reformer, Petras asserted.

“Working people in Europe, the US, Asia and certainly in the Middle East looked up to Chavez as someone who represented developing welfare program in the face of the Western countries reducing the welfare expenditures, cutting pensions and eliminating medical coverage,” he explained.

Friend or tyrant? US reaction is mixed

Reacting to Chavez’s death, US President Barack Obama said the US was interested in a “constructive” future relationship with Venezuela.

“At this challenging time of President Hugo Chavez’s passing, the United States reaffirms its support for the Venezuelan people and its interest in developing a constructive relationship with the Venezuelan government,” Obama said in a brief written statement.

Former US President Jimmy Carter praised Chavez for his strive for independence and influence in the region.

“President Chavez will be remembered for his bold assertion of autonomy and independence for Latin American governments and for his formidable communication skills and personal connection with supporters in his country and abroad to whom he gave hope and empowerment,” he said in a statement.

But some US politicians sharply disagreed with this estimate of Chavez’s policies.

“Hugo Chavez was a tyrant who forced the people of Venezuela to live in fear. His death dents the alliance of anti-US leftist leaders in South America. Good riddance to this dictator,” US Representative Ed Royce, Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said.

Meanwhile, US actor Sean Penn, a good friend of Chavez, said the US “lost a friend it never knew it had.”

“Poor people around the world lost a champion. I lost a friend I was blessed to have. My thoughts are with the family of President Chavez and the people of Venezuela,” Penn said in a statement.

Watch Hugo Chavez tribute video on RT YouTube channel

Swiss Curb Executive Greed, Will Anyone Follow?

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Posted on Mar 5, 2013

By William Pfaff

Switzerland just had a referendum in which it voted to give company and bank shareholders veto rights over the salaries, bonuses and overall compensation packages of senior executives and board directors.

Bonuses will be prohibited for executives being hired, those leaving, and for those present when a company is taken over. Pension funds holding stock in a company will be required to take part in these compensation votes. Violation of the new rules can be punished by fines worth up to six years of salary and prison sentences of up to three years. These requirements will be written into the Swiss constitution. In short, the Swiss want revolutionary change in the manner by which the modern European (and implicitly, American) corporation is managed, and in how it distributes its funds. This is a demand based on morality.

A majority of 68 percent of those voting in all the Swiss cantons approved this initiative. The Swiss citizenry, in short, is very angry about the current practices of Swiss corporations and financial institutions, even though the country is scarcely noted for past criticism of high finance and the practices prevailing in the international economy.

The Swiss are not the only ones angry at the pay practices of globalized capitalism. The European Union’s Commission, executive agency of the 27-member EU–whose combined economy is the largest and potentially most powerful in the world, dominating world trade–has just delivered a second staggering blow to international finance and the practices of bankers.

The Commission has ruled that all bankers and banking institutions anywhere within the EU, and also–here comes the knockout punch–all those executives working for EU-based banks worldwide, must have the bonuses they pay or receive capped at no more than existing annual salaries. This limit can be waived only if the bank’s shareholders agree, and then only to the level of double the executive’s current salary.

For a normal human being working in a normal enterprise, bonuses are usually connected to meritorious service. They are not a plutocratic competition in ego-display by a limited number of the very rich.

Today’s rich, though, are different from you and me. An executive’s pay sheet may identify bonuses as merited supplements to salaries, and stock option assignments and other monetary and material rewards as essential to keeping an immensely important individual in the company, preventing him or her from taking their invaluable talents elsewhere, but this is part of the game played by the new corporate rich. (The individual may actually be getting fired, and the money greases the exit.)

You can imagine how this draft EU law on banker compensation has been received in the City of London, the British Conservative Party and the community of New York-based executives of London and Scottish banks.

It is difficult to see how Britain can remain a member-state of the EU if this law is approved by finance ministers and the European Parliament–which will happen. Prime Minister David Cameron has already, for purely party-political and electoral reasons, promised the British electorate a referendum before the next national election on the U.K.‘s remaining in the Union (on what he assured them would be revised terms–but scarcely this revision).

The conventional political and journalists’ judgment today is that Britain is on the way out of Europe, for better or for worse. But wait–we have not yet counted in the weight of moral opinion not only in Britain and even, just possibly, in the United States, which now will become the only great business center in the world which practices this kind of mind-blasting greed. Interesting enough, though, the greedy lost the 2012 national election in America.

This greed has caused moral revulsion throughout the Western world–including in the United States, which started it all, and as a result now experiences radical inequality between rich and poor. Just since 2008, American disposable personal income has risen by 1.4 percent per year. Corporate profit has increased by 20 percent per year. The Barclays Bank’s chief American economist says nothing like this has been seen in 50 years.

America’s Puritan forefathers were Calvinist; their “errand into the wilderness” had been conceived as a re-enactment of the exodus of the Hebrews from Egyptian bondage and their Biblical covenant with God was understood as to build a new heaven and new earth. Until the American Revolution, their Presbyterian church, with its millenarian theology, provided the only organized link among the separate colonies.

However, the austere and frightening theology of Calvinist predestination and “irresistible grace” changed in America due to the influence of the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609). He argued that for hard-working men and women, predestination could be bestowed, and success and riches be seen as evidence of Heavenly Election. American Protestantism has always respected business success and wealth.

But this? The tea party movement, whatever its ideological aberrations, was seen in 2010 as a people’s revolt against big and intrusive American government, supposed “free riders,” welfare queens, Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” who would vote against him (or wouldn’t vote at all), and against academics, intellectuals and the mainstream media.

It was much more. It was a protest against secular and cosmopolitan forces in America and an affirmation of a traditional American religious culture. But what was not seen then was that it was an upsurge by America’s outsiders or abandoned: the precarious or jobless American poor and lower middle class, protesting globalization, American industry shipped abroad, American deindustrialization, American employment shipped to China, foreign immigrants living on American welfare rolls–and dead American towns, working farmers reduced to living in shabby house-trailers, their children facing perpetual debt in order to get an education.

All this while the rich get greedier.

Visit William Pfaff’s Web site for more on his latest book, “The Irony of Manifest Destiny: The Tragedy of America’s Foreign Policy” (Walker & Co., $25), at www.williampfaff.com.

© 2013 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

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The UK will publish parts of a confidential report on its role in the US rendition of foreign suspected terrorists, the British envoy to the United National Human Rights Council (UNHCR) said on Tuesday.

The British announcement came after a demand from the UN investigator that the US and Britain reveal their finding on rendition, according to Reuters.

The counter terrorism investigator at the UNHCR, Ben Emerson, said that they must hold all states to account, “including the most powerful”.

“The exposure of the criminal matrix organized by the Bush-era CIA, from the heart of the world’s most powerful democracy, now calls for an unequivocal response from all of the states that took part in the program,” said Emerson.

The ‘war on terror’ waged after the al Qaeda attacks on the United States on September 11th 2001, allegedly led to systematic violations of human rights where Islamic militant suspects were transferred on clandestine flights to secret prisons where they were tortured.

President W. Bush even admitted in his memoirs that he had ordered the use of ‘waterboarding’, a simulation of drowning, which is considered a form of torture and banned by international law.

Karen Price, the British ambassador to the UN told the UNHCR, that the UK would publish at least some of the conclusions of an inquiry by Judge Peter Gibson, whose 2012 report examined whether British agents had been involved in rendition but has not to date been published.

Pearce said the results of the inquiry would not be made public until police investigations related to the incident were concluded.

A similar American report by a Senate select committee on intelligence chaired by Dianne Feinstein, a Democratic Senator, which investigated the secret rendition program including the use of waterboarding, was concluded in December 2011, but has never published its findings.

Jamil Dakwar, from the American Civil Liberties Union has said the report must be released.

While the Obama administration has disavowed torture, it has shielded former bush administration officials from accountability and despite initial promises Guantanamo remains open.

Numerous reports in the UK media and a book published last year by Ian Cobain, an award winning investigative journalist, revealed that the British security services new exactly what was going on during the secret rendition flights, many of which used British airports on their way to the US.

Christie Slams Congress, Krugman Debates Scarborough, and More

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Posted on Mar 5, 2013

On His Way: The Senate Intelligence Committee has voted to confirm John Brennan to become the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The 12-3 vote came after the White House released to the panel all highly classified legal opinions justifying its controversial use of drone strikes to kill U.S. citizens suspected of being terrorists. “I am pleased the administration has made this information available. It is important for the committee to do its work and will pave the way for the confirmation of John Brennan to be CIA director,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the committee’s chairwoman, said in an email announcing that the memos had been made available. (Read more)

All Over the Place: Jeb Bush is switching positions on immigration reform yet again! The former Florida governor at first supported a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants but then reversed course in a book he wrote that was released Tuesday. He publicly revealed the switch Monday during an interview on NBC’s “Today,” which raised some eyebrows because the well-known pro-immigration Republican had previously backed such a position. Bush now says he’s open to letting undocumented immigrants become citizens so long as the route to citizenship doesn’t encourage future illegal immigration. To recap what happened: Jeb Bush basically did a complete 360 on the issue of immigration reform. (Read more)

Easy Does It: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has no love for Washington, D.C., something that should be interesting if he ever does decide to run for president. On Monday, the Republican slammed Congress and President Obama for failing to avoid the sequester which, in the governor’s mind, is something that the two sides should have dealt with quickly. “I don’t have the first damn idea of what they’re doing down there,” Christie said of what’s going on in D.C. “So I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why they haven’t fixed it already. Seems to me it should be pretty easy to fix. Real leadership would get this fixed.” (Read more)

No Room for Visitors: Planning on taking a tour of the White House in the near future? Think again. Thanks to the sequestration cuts, you will soon no longer be able to look around the president’s official residence. On Tuesday, the White House sent out an email saying it would be cancelling all tours beginning this weekend. According to the notice, “Due to staffing reductions resulting from sequestration, we regret to inform you that White House Tours will be canceled effective Saturday, March 9, 2013, until further notice. Unfortunately, we will not be able to reschedule affected tours. We very much regret having to take this action, particularly during the popular Spring touring season.” (Read more)

Video of the Day: New York Times columnist Paul Krugman admits he was not on his “A” game on Monday when he debated MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on a topic the Nobel Prize-winning economist should have excelled at–the economy. Krugman, who appeared alongside the former GOP congressman on “Charlie Rose” to continue a weeks-long argument about the country’s budget woes, compared his performance to that of Barack Obama during his first presidential debate against Mitt Romney. Here’s a couple of clips.

–Posted by Tracy Bloom.

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Article originally published by Global Research in 2005, which points to previous attempts to assassinate President Hugo Chavez

This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation. “How do we know that the CIA was behind the coup that overthrew Hugo Chávez?” asked historian William Blum in 2002.

“Same way we know that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. That’s what it’s always done and there’s no reason to think that tomorrow morning will be any different.”

Now we have a bit more evidence the CIA and the FBI connived with reactionary elements to not only briefly overthrow Chávez, abolish the constitution and the National Assembly, but later assassinate the Venezuelan State Prosecutor, Danilo Anderson. He was killed by a car bomb in Caracas on November 18, 2004, while investigating those who were behind the coup. Giovani Jose Vasquez De Armas, a member of Colombia’s right wing paramilitary group called the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, claims he was in charge of logistics for the plot to kill Danilo Anderson. Vasquez De Armas told the Attorney General’s office that those planning the killing, “all discussed the plan with the help of the FBI and CIA.”

And the sun will rise tomorrow.

“According to the Attorney General, Vasquez De Armas said that during a meeting in Darien, Panama, on September 4 and 6, 2003, an FBI Officer called ‘Pesquera’ and a CIA agent called ‘Morrinson,’ attended a meeting along with two of the plot’s alleged organizers, Patricia Poleo and Salvador Romani, as well as two of those who actually did the killing, Rolando and Otoniel Guevera,” writes Alessandro Parma. “An official from the Attorney General’s office, speaking on behalf of Vasquez De Armas, said that in Panama the FBI and the plotting Venezuelans agreed, ‘to take out Chavez and the Government.’ He said, ‘the meeting’s final objective was to kill President Chavez and the Attorney General.’”

None of this is new or particularly revelatory. Steve Kangas writes:

“CIA operations follow the same recurring script. First, American business interests abroad are threatened by a popular or democratically elected leader. The people support their leader because he intends to conduct land reform, strengthen unions, redistribute wealth, nationalize foreign-owned industry, and regulate business to protect workers, consumers and the environment. So, on behalf of American business, and often with their help, the CIA mobilizes the opposition. First it identifies right-wing groups within the country (usually the military), and offers them a deal: “We’ll put you in power if you maintain a favorable business climate for us.” The Agency then hires, trains and works with them to overthrow the existing government (usually a democracy). It uses every trick in the book: propaganda, stuffed ballot boxes, purchased elections, extortion, blackmail, sexual intrigue, false stories about opponents in the local media, infiltration and disruption of opposing political parties, kidnapping, beating, torture, intimidation, economic sabotage, death squads and even assassination. These efforts culminate in a military coup, which installs a right-wing dictator. The CIA trains the dictator’s security apparatus to crack down on the traditional enemies of big business, using interrogation, torture and murder. The victims are said to be “communists,” but almost always they are just peasants, liberals, moderates, labor union leaders, political opponents and advocates of free speech and democracy. Widespread human rights abuses follow.”

Examples include the coup to overthrow the democratically elected leader Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, the ouster of democratically elected Jacob Arbenz in Guatemala, one coup per year (between 1957-1973) in Laos, the installation of the murderous “Papa Doc” Duvalier in Haiti, the assassination of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, the overthrow of Jose Velasco in Ecuador, the assassination of the democratically elected Patrice Lumumba in the Congo (later Zaire), the overthrow of the democratically elected Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic, the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Joao Goulart in Brazil, the overthrow of the democratically elected Sukarno government in Indonesia, a military coup in Greece designed to install the “reign of the colonels” (when the Greek ambassador complained about CIA plans for Cypress, Johnson told him: “F– your parliament and your constitution”), the overthrow of the popular Prince Sahounek in Cambodia, the overthrow of Juan Torres in Bolivia, the overthrow and assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile, the assassination of archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador, and dozens of other incidents rarely if ever taught in American school history lessons.

As John Perkins (author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man), as a former respected member of the international banking community and National Security Agency economist, told Amy Goodman: “Basically what we were trained to do and what our job is to do is to build up the American empire. To bring–to create situations where as many resources as possible flow into this country, to our corporations, and our government…. This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men.” Perkins’ job was “deal-making”:

It was giving loans to other countries, huge loans, much bigger than they could possibly repay. One of the conditions of the loan–let’s say a $1 billion to a country like Indonesia or Ecuador–and this country would then have to give ninety percent of that loan back to a U.S. company, or U.S. companies, to build the infrastructure–a Halliburton or a Bechtel. These were big ones. Those companies would then go in and build an electrical system or ports or highways, and these would basically serve just a few of the very wealthiest families in those countries. The poor people in those countries would be stuck ultimately with this amazing debt that they couldn’t possibly repay. A country today like Ecuador owes over fifty percent of its national budget just to pay down its debt. And it really can’t do it. So, we literally have them over a barrel. So, when we want more oil, we go to Ecuador and say, “Look, you’re not able to repay your debts, therefore give our oil companies your Amazon rain forest, which are filled with oil.” And today we’re going in and destroying Amazonian rain forests, forcing Ecuador to give them to us because they’ve accumulated all this debt. So we make this big loan, most of it comes back to the United States, the country is left with the debt plus lots of interest, and they basically become our servants, our slaves. It’s an empire. There’s no two ways about it. It’s a huge empire. It’s been extremely successful.

Most of the money for these loans, according to Perkins, is provided by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the two premier neolib loan sharking operations (it is important to note that the Straussian neocon, Paul Wolfowitz, is now president of the World Bank, thus demonstrating how closely related the neocons and traditional neolibs are).

If the loan sharks are unable to steal natural resources (oil, minerals, rainforests, water) as a condition of repaying this immense debt, “the next step is what we call the jackals.”

Jackals are CIA-sanctioned people that come in and try to foment a coup or revolution. If that doesn’t work, they perform assassinations–or try to. In the case of Iraq, they weren’t able to get through to Saddam Hussein… His bodyguards were too good. He had doubles. They couldn’t get through to him. So the third line of defense, if the economic hit men and the jackals fail, the next line of defense is our young men and women, who are sent in to die and kill, which is what we’ve obviously done in Iraq.

Hugo Chávez is now between the assassination point of this neolib plan and invasion, when “our young men and women” will be “sent in to die and kill” Venezuelan peasants the same way they are now killing poor Iraqis. Of course, it remains to be seen if Bush can actually invade Venezuela–the neocon roster is teeming with targets, from Syria to Iran–and so we can expect the Bushcons and their jackals to continue efforts to assassinate Chávez, as Giovani Jose Vasquez De Armas reveals the CIA and the FBI are attempting to do, with little success. One notable failure by the jackals is Fidel Castro in Cuba, who experienced numerous assassination attempts and CIA counterinsurgency specialist Edward Lansdale’s Operation Mongoose (consisting of sabotage and political warfare), also known as the ‘’Cuba Project.’‘

As Blum notes, we know all of this is happening, same as we know the sun will come up tomorrow.

Kurt Nimmo is a photographer, multimedia artist and writer. You can visit his blog “Another Day in the Empire” at www.kurtnimmo.com/blog.

He wrote, he read, and mostly he spoke. Hugo Chávez, whose death has been announced, was devoted to the word. He spoke publicly an average of 40 hours per week. As president, he didn’t hold regular cabinet meetings; he’d bring the many to a weekly meeting, broadcast live on radio and television. Aló, Presidente, the programme in which policies were outlined and discussed, had no time limits, no script and no teleprompter. One session included an open discussion of healthcare in the slums of Caracas, rap, a self-critical examination of Venezuelans being accustomed to the politics of oil money and expecting the president to be a magician, a friendly exchange with a delegation from Nicaragua and a less friendly one with a foreign journalist.

Nicaragua is one of Venezuela’s allies in Alba, the organisation constituted at Chávez’s initiative to counter neoliberalism in the region, alongside Cuba, Ecuador and Bolivia. It has now acquired a life of its own having invited a number of Caribbean countries and Mexico to join, with Vietnam as an observer. It will be a most enduring legacy, a concrete embodiment of Chávez’s words and historical vision. The Bolívarian revolution has been crucial to the wider philosophy shared and applied by many Latin American governments. Its aim is to overcome global problems through local and regional interventions by engaging with democracy and the state in order to transform the relation between these and the people, rather than withdrawing from the state or trying to destroy it.

Because of this shared view Brazilians, Uruguayans and Argentinians perceived Chávez as an ally, not an anomaly, and supported the inclusion of Venezuela in their Mercosur alliance. Chávez’s Social Missions, providing healthcare and literacy to formerly excluded people while changing their life and political outlook, have proven the extent of such a transformative view. It could be compared to the levelling spirit of a kind of new New Deal combined with a model of social change based on popular and communal organisation.

The facts speak for themselves: the percentage of households in poverty fell from 55% in 1995 to 26.4% in 2009. When Chávez was sworn into office unemployment was 15%, in June 2009 it was 7.8%. Compare that to current unemployment figures in Europe.

The facts speak for themselves: the percentage of households in poverty fell from 55% in 1995 to 26.4% in 2009. When Chávez was sworn into office unemployment was 15%, in June 2009 it was 7.8%. Compare that to current unemployment figures in Europe. In that period Chávez won 56% of the vote in 1998, 60% in 2000, survived a coup d’état in 2002, got over 7m votes in 2006 and secured 54.4% of the vote last October. He was a rare thing, almost incomprehensible to those in the US and Europe who continue to see the world through the Manichean prism of the cold war: an avowed Marxist who was also an avowed democrat. To those who think the expression of the masses should have limited or no place in the serious business of politics all the talking and goings on in Chávez’s meetings were anathema, proof that he was both fake and a populist. But to the people who tuned in and participated en masse, it was politics and true democracy not only for the sophisticated, the propertied or the lettered.

All this talking and direct contact meant the constant reaffirmation of a promise between Chávez and the people of Venezuela. Chávez had discovered himself not by looking within, but by looking outside into the shameful conditions of Latin Americans and their past. He discovered himself in the promise of liberation made by Bolívar. “On August 1805,” wrote Chávez, Bolívar “climbed the Monte Sacro near Rome and made a solemn oath.” Like Bolívar, Chávez swore to break the chains binding Latin Americans to the will of the mighty. Within his lifetime, the ties of dependency and indirect empire have loosened. From the river Plate to the mouths of the Orinoco river, Latin America is no longer somebody else’s backyard. That project of liberation has involved thousands of men and women pitched into one dramatic battle after another, like the coup d’état in 2002 or the confrontation with the US-proposed Free Trade Zone of the Americas. These were won, others were lost.

Like Bolívar, Chávez swore to break the chains binding Latin Americans to the will of the mighty. Within his lifetime, the ties of dependency and indirect empire have loosened.

The project remains incomplete. It may be eternal and thus the struggle will continue after Chávez is gone. But whatever the future may hold, the peoples of the Americas will fight to salvage the present in which they have regained a voice. In Venezuela, they put Chávez back into the presidency after the coup. This was the key event in Chávez’s political life, not the military rebellion or the first electoral victory. Something changed within him at that point: his discipline became ironclad, his patience invincible and his politics clearer. For all the attention paid to the relation between Chávez and Castro, the lesser known fact is that Chávez’s political education owes more to another Marxist president who was also an avowed democrat: Chile’s Salvador Allende. “Like Allende, we’re pacifists and democrats,” he once said. “Unlike Allende, we’re armed.”

The lesson drawn by Chávez from the defeat of Allende in 1973 is crucial. Some, like the far right and the state-linked paramilitary of Colombia would love to see Chavismo implode, and wouldn’t hesitate to sow chaos across borders. The support of the army and the masses of Venezuela will decide the fate of the Bolívarian revolution, and the solidarity of powerful and sympathetic neighbours like Brazil. Nobody wants instability now that Latin America is finally standing up for itself. In his final days Chávez emphasised the need to build communal power and promoted some of his former critics associated with the journal Comuna. The revolution will not be rolled back. Unlike his admired Bolívar, Chávez did not plough the seas.

Seven men sentenced to death for crimes committed whilst underage, have had their executions postponed by Saudi Arabia’s royal family. Their cases are being reviewed following claims the men were tortured, threatened and their trial was unfair.

Saudi King Abdullah’s eldest son ordered a one-month postponement on the executions that were scheduled for Tuesday, also promising a new investigation and a new trial to be carried out, one of 200 relatives and friends of the young men who gathered near the royal court told Reuters.

The seven men were facing a firing squad, with one to be publicly crucified for three days thereafter.

According to a Saudi security official cited by AP, King Abdullah met with families of the seven accused on Sunday and later said he would review the sentences.

The group of seven men was arrested as part of 23-member ring for stealing from jewelry stores in 2004 and 2005 and has spent eight years in custody.

A call for help telling of threats and tortures of then-underage robbers has sparked international reaction. One of the men to be executed managed to smuggle a phone into a prison cell and talk to AP, saying he was well under 18 when arrested and claiming to have been tortured into confessing.

“I killed no one. I didn’t have weapons while robbing the store, but the police tortured me, beat me up and threatened to assault my mother to extract confessions that I had a weapon with me while I was only 15,” the man named Nasser al-Qahtani told AP. “We don’t deserve death,” he added, implying that other members of the convicted group have a similar story to tell.

All the seven were between 16 and 20 at the time of arrest, according to Human Rights Watch. They reportedly released a statement to be distributed online by rights activists where they claimed torture, threats of violence and intimidation during the court trial to be used by their interrogators.

On Tuesday, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International urged Saudi King Abdullah and the country’s interior minister to intervene and halt the executions.

“There is strong evidence suggesting that the trials of all seven men violated basic principles of the right to a fair trial,” the Human Rights Watch stated.

“They have since said they were severely beaten, denied food and water, deprived of sleep, forced to remain standing for 24 hours and then forced to sign ‘confessions’,” Amnesty International also said in a statement.

Eric Goldstein, HRW’s Deputy Middle East Director said it will be “outrageous” if the Saudi authorities proceed with executions in a statement on Tuesday.

“It is high time for the Saudis to stop executing child offenders and start observing their obligations under international human rights law,” the human rights activist added.

Following the calls, Saudi authorities reportedly delayed executions of the seven men. The royal court of Saudi Arabia said it will look into a request for a retrial, relatives and family friends of the seven convicted told Reuters. There was no immediate confirmation of the news by Saudi authorities, nor was it clear if such decision was connected with the human rights groups’ efforts.

According to HRW report, Saudi Arabia is one of only three countries in the world known to have executed people for crimes committed when they were children in the past two years.

Seventeen people have already been executed this year alone in the country whose legislation is based on a strict Islamic Sharia law. According to the Saudi law, murder, rape, armed robbery and drug trafficking are crimes punishable by death. Sorcery and witchcraft also figured among the recent grounds for death sentences in the kingdom.

Varying reports say from 69 to 76 people were executed in Saudi Arabia in 2012, and at least 82 the previous year.

Jon Stewart Taking Hiatus From ‘Daily Show’ to Direct Movie

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Posted on Mar 5, 2013

Flickr/drquoz

Funnyman Jon Stewart is taking a turn at a more serious project than he’s normally accustomed to, one that will require him to be behind the camera instead of in front of it.

“The Daily Show” host announced Tuesday that he would be taking a 12-week hiatus from the Comedy Central program this summer in order to direct his first film, a drama called “Rosewater.” Stewart also penned the screenplay for the movie, which is based on the 2011 book “And Then They Came For Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity and Survival” by Maziar Bahari and Aimee Molloy.

The New York Times:

Mr. Bahari’s ordeal is familiar to “Daily Show” fans — in fact, the comedy program played a role in it.

A Canadian-Iranian journalist and documentarian, Mr. Bahari was jailed in Tehran in 2009 for four months, accused of plotting to stage a revolution against the government. Shortly before his arrest, Mr. Bahari had participated in a “Daily Show” sketch, conducted by one of the show’s correspondents, Jason Jones, who was pretending to be a spy. Mr. Bahari’s captors used the footage against him.

“You can imagine how upset we were,” Mr. Stewart said, “and I struck up a friendship with him afterward.”

Mr. Stewart said he eventually read Mr. Bahari’s book and “because I’m naïve about the movie business” started to think about a film. He said he did not intend to also adapt the screenplay. “It just kind of happened,” he said.

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“Daily Show” correspondent John Oliver will fill in at the anchor desk for eight of the 12 weeks that Stewart is working on the movie. 

–Posted by Tracy Bloom.

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Vice President Nicolas Maduro said President Hugo Chavez’s enemies had poisoned him with cancer before announcing that two US Air Force officials would be expelled from the country for spying on the military and plotting to destabilize the country.

Maduro identified one American as the Air Force attaché and said he had 24 hours to leave the country.

“We are aware of the allegations made by Venezuelan Vice President Maduro over state-run television in Caracas, and can confirm that our Air Attache, Col. David Delmonico, is en route back to the United States,” spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Todd Breasseale said in a statement.

Foreign Minister Elias Jaua later announced that two Air Force officials in total had been named “persona non grata” and were being kicked out of Venezuela, AFP reports.

Maduro also accused President Hugo Chavez’s enemies of poisoning him with the cancer he has been battling for nearly two years.

“Behind all of [the plots] are the enemies of the fatherland,” he said on state television.

Maduro spoke just hours after the government announced Chavez was in “very delicate” health after undergoing cancer surgery in December. Maduro said the president was suffering through the “most difficult hours” since the operation.

In December 2011, Chavez speculated that the United States could be infecting the regions leaders with cancer after Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

“I don’t want to make any reckless accusations,” Chavez said in light of something he found to be “very, very strange.”

“Would it be strange if [the United States] had developed a technology to induce cancer, and for no one to know it?” he asked.

In June 2011 Chavez confirmed in a televised address that he was recovering from an operation to remove an abscessed tumor with cancerous cells from his pelvic region. The following month, he returned to Cuba to receive further treatment.

In July 2012, Chavez declared that he had fully recovered from cancer just three months before the presidential poll. Chavez won a fourth term in the October election, only to return to Cuba the following month to receive more treatment.

In December, Chávez announced he would undergo a new operation after doctors in Cuba detected malignant cells. Chavez suffered a series of complications following the surgery which had caused respiratory failures.

Chavez was unable to attend his inauguration in January due to poor health, and only returned to Venezuela the following month.

On Friday, Maduro announced for the first time that Chavez had been receiving chemotherapy in Venezuela and was continuing to “battle for his life.”

The Vice President’s comments come as the Venezuelan government and senior army officials are said to be holding an emergency meeting, according to the local state TV. The report did not mention the planned agenda of the meeting, which sparked media speculation as to whether Chavez was soon leaving his post. Rumors of Chavez possibly returning to Cuba to continue his cancer treatment spread after unnamed Venezuelan sources reported it to ABC.

March 5, 2013  |  

Hugo Chavéz, the president of Venezuela, has died in a military hospital after a long battle against cancer, Reuters has reported, prompting a wave of mourning in the country he ruled since 1999 with a globally distinctive and influential style of leadership.

The symbol of Latin American socialism succumbed to a respiratory infection on Tuesday evening, 21 months after he first revealed he had a tumour. He had not been seen in public for three months since undergoing emergency surgery in Cuba on 11 December.

He will be given a state funeral in Caracas, likely to be attended by millions of supporters and leftwing leaders from across the globe who have been inspired by Chavéz’s doctrine of “Bolivarian 21st-century socialism”, grateful for the subsidised energy he provided or simply impressed by his charisma.

His death will also trigger a presidential election, which must be held within 30 days, to decide who controls the world’s greatest untapped reserves of oil. Chavéz’s designated successor is vice-president Nicolás Maduro, who is likely to face Henrique Capriles, the losing opposition candidate in the most recent presidential election. Until then, according to the constitution, the interim president should be the head of the national assembly, Diosdado Cabello.

Replacing one of most colourful figures on the global political landscape will be an immense challenge. Born to a poor family on the plains, Chavéz became a tank commander and a devotee of South America’s liberator, Simón Bolívar. A failed coup in 1992 propelled him into the limelight but it was his ballot box triumphs that made him a inspiration for the resurgent Latin American left and the most outspoken — and often humorous — critic of the US, the war in Iraq and former president George W Bush, whom he described as a “donkey” and a “devil”.

Formerly one of the most dynamic political leaders in the world with a globe-trotting schedule and a weekly, unscripted TV broadcast that usually went on for hours, Chavéz shocked his countrymen in June 2011 when he revealed that Cuban surgeons had removed a baseball-sized tumour from his pelvic region,

After that, he underwent several rounds of chemotherapy and two more operations in what he described as a “battle for health and for life”. His medical records were never made public, prompting widespread speculation about his imminent demise, but he and his supporters insisted he was recovering. Before the presidential election in October 2012, aides claimed he was well enough to complete a full term of office.

During that campaign, Chávez was clearly affected by his illness. But although he made fewer and shorter appearances, he won more votes than in any of his earlier election battles, prompting him to proclaim victory in a “perfect battle”.

Fears about his health escalated after he rushed to Cuba for hyperbaric oxygen treatment on 27 November. Less than a fortnight later, he made a televised address in which he said that doctors had discovered malignant cells that required surgery and urged Venezuelans to vote for Maduro if he was incapacitated.

Since his operation in December, Chávez has been visited by family members and several of his closest political allies, including Fidel and Raul Castro of Cuba, Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa and Bolivian president Evo Morales.

Beyond a set of four photographs released last month that showed a remarkably hearty looking Chavez smiling in a hospital bed and flanked by his daughters, the president has not been seen or heard for three months. This prompted frequent rumours that the president was dead or on life support. The government denied this and said he continued to run the country by writing down his orders.

WASHINGTON – March 5 – KARL GROSSMAN, [email]
Author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power, Grossman just wrote the piece “Obama’s Department of Fracking and Nukes,” which states: “With the nomination of Ernest Moniz to be the next U.S. Secretary of Energy, President Barack Obama has selected a man who is not only a booster of nuclear power but a big proponent of fracking, too. …

“Moniz, a physicist and director of the MIT Energy Initiative, which is heavily financed by energy industry giants including BP and Chevron, has long advocated nuclear power. He has continued arguing for it despite the multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant complex, maintaining that the disaster in Japan should not cause a stop in nuclear power development. …

“Obama’s stance as president on nuclear power has been a change from his position as candidate Obama. ‘I start off with the premise that nuclear energy is not optimal and so I am not a nuclear energy proponent,’ Obama said campaigning in Iowa on 2007. He went on that unless the ‘nuclear industry can show that they can produce clean, safe energy without enormous subsidies from the U.S. government, I don’t think that’s the best option. I am much more interested in solar and wind and bio-diesel and strategies [for] alternative fuels.’ As he told the editorial board of the Keene Sentinel in New Hampshire that year: ‘I don’t think there’s anything that we inevitably dislike about nuclear power. We just dislike the fact that it might blow up and irradiate us and kill us. That’s the problem.’”

Grossman said today: “It is outrageous that President Obama has selected Moniz – who despite the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters is still zealously promoting nuclear power while pushing the toxic process of fracking as well – as energy secretary. And this a week before the second anniversary of the Fukushima catastrophe. What happened to Obama’s call in his recent State of the Union address for ‘clean’ energy?”

See Grossman’s TV program “Chernobyl: A Million Casualties” and his Huffington Post piece, “Fracking and Radium, the Silvery-White Monster,” Grossman is the host of the TV program “Enviro Close-Up,” a professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, and the recipient of numerous awards for journalism, including the George Polk Award.

PORTLAND, Ore. – March 5 – In an effort championed by Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), 52 House members sent a letter today to the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service urging an about-face on the agency’s anticipated proposal to remove federal protections for wolves across most of the lower 48 United States.

“We are grateful that these 52 representatives are standing strong for continued federal protections for wolves,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “With wolves only just beginning to recover in the Pacific Northwest, California, southern Rocky Mountains and Northeast, now’s not the time for the Fish and Wildlife Service to turn its back on wolf recovery.”

An estimated 2 million wolves once roamed freely across North America, including most of the United States. But bounties, a federal extermination program and human settlement drove the species to near extinction in most of the lower 48. While protected by the Endangered Species Act, wolf populations in the northern Rocky Mountains and the Western Great Lakes states increased; but these regions amount to a mere 5 percent of the wolf’s original range, and in other regions wolves are only just beginning to return.

“The job of wolf recovery is far from over and the members of Congress who have written to the Service are asking that science, not politics, guide federal wolf management,” said Josh Laughlin of Cascadia Wildlands. “Maintaining federal protections is critical in allowing wolves to assume their valuable ecological role across the American landscape.”

Since the original wolf recovery plans were written in the 1980s, scientists have learned much more about wolves’ behavior, ecology and needs. Research has shown that returning wolves to ecosystems sets off a chain of events that benefits many species, including songbirds and beavers that gain from a return of streamside vegetation, which thrives in the absence of browsing elk that must move more often to avoid wolves. And pronghorn and foxes are aided by wolves’ control of coyote populations. Protecting ecosystems upon which species depend is a specific goal of the Endangered Species Act – all the more reason for expanded, rather than diminished, wolf recovery efforts.

Bowing to political pressure from wolf opponents, the Service has no plans for wolf recovery in areas beyond those regions it has deemed recovered (the northern Rockies and western Great Lakes). In states where federal delisting has occurred, there are insufficient protections from local pressures to hunt or “control” wolves back to the brink of extinction. In the 18 months since federal delisting began in 2011, more than 1,700 of the 5,000-6,000 recovered wolves in the lower 48 have been killed.

Conservation organizations are hopeful that Interior Secretary nominee Sally Jewell will be a stronger advocate for wolves than outgoing Secretary Ken Salazar, who never called for comprehensive gray wolf recovery across the country.

WASHINGTON – March 5 – “The death of the bill to ban fracking in Maryland, Senate Bill 514, today brings Maryland one year closer to fracking.

“It’s outrageous that Maryland officials continue to believe that we can study fracking and somehow make it safe. By killing the bill, the Senate leadership just gave a huge gift to the oil and gas industry, which is waiting on Maryland’s doorstep.

“We’ll continue to work to ban fracking in Maryland and support policies that lead to development of renewables over environmentally damaging fossil fuels.”

Russia is to probe the head of UK-based Hermitage Capital, William Browder, over alleged misappropriation of stock in Russian gas giant Gazprom, which inflicted at least 3 billion rubles ($US 98 million) in damages.

Browder will be put on the international wanted list immediately after criminal charges are officially brought against him, said Russian Interior Ministry official Mikhail Aleksandrov.

The US-born businessman who holds British citizenship is the former boss of Sergey Magnitsky — who died in a Moscow prison in 2009. The Russian lawyer worked for Browder’s Hermitage Capital, once a minority shareholder in Gazprom.

Russian investigators are probing circumstances in which companies employing mainly foreign nationals and “managed by William Browder” had “illegally” bought shares in the state-owned Gazprom.

It is alleged that the Hermitage Capital CEO was using a complicated scheme: foreign companies – on behalf of Russian firms registered in tax havens – were purchasing “most lucrative assets.”

At the same time, under a Russian law which was in force between 1999 and 2004, foreigners were allowed to purchase Gazprom shares only if they had permission from the country’s federal commission on stocks. Alternatively, they could do so through foreign securities depositories, but that was much more expensive. 

To get around the law, Browder allegedly used several such subsidiaries, the Interior Ministry’s representative said on Tuesday. As a result of around 30 illegal deals by just one such company, Russia lost “at least 3 billion rubles.”

In 2006, after the ban on assets’ purchases for foreigners was lifted, Browder sold “illegally bought shares.” Russian law enforcers are now working to find out the details of what happened to those shares afterwards.

It is also suspected that William Browder was attempting to gain access to financial reports of Russian strategically important gas monopoly.

“We’re talking about not only personal enrichment with the violation of Russian laws…, but it’s about attempts to impose their own rules on the company,” the official stated. Between 2001 and 2004, Browder demanded that Gazprom change its charter, as well as its board of directors and the composition of the board, Aleksandrov noted.

The Russian side hopes for cooperation on the case with the law enforcement agencies in the UK, EU and the US, the official added.

Meanwhile, Hermitage Capital states that Gazprom shares were purchased legally and that the legality of the procedure was confirmed by the Russian Commission on Stocks. All accusations that those deals caused any damages to Gazprom “are absurd,” said the investment fund’s press service.

The Interior Ministry, in response, noted that the Hermitage Capital representatives’ denial is a misunderstanding, “or they deliberately conceal information.”

“If the deal to buy Gazprom shares is to be legal, the government’s permission was needed to buy them, which was not officially given,” the ministry’s press center told Interfax. “If there had been permission, no criminal case would have been started,” they added.

The group’s representative also stated that the latest charges are an attempt “by Russian officials to hamper the adoption of a Magnitsky bill in Europe.”

Last year, the US introduced the so-called Magnitsky list — a law imposing asset freeze and entry ban on Russian officials implicated in the lawyer’s death. Russia slammed the move as an attempt to interfere into its internal affairs and fired back with a blacklist of Americans who allegedly violated human rights.

Bill Browder has been charged in absentia of alleged tax evasion as part of a separate criminal case opened back in 2008 against himself and lawyer Magnitsky. The next hearing into the case is to be held in a Moscow court later this month.

Hermitage Capital Management was founded by William Browder in partnership with the late Edmond Safra back in 1996. By 2004 it became one of the biggest foreign investors in Russia, managing over $US 3.5 billion. The company was making a fortune, bringing Browder millions in revenue, but in 2006 it sold its Russian shares. Browder later explained the move was due to concerns about the fate of the fund and its employees. He stated that he did not want them to follow the footsteps of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In 2005, the former Yukos CEO was sentenced to time in prison for fraud and tax evasion. However, he has been depicted as “a political prisoner” by many outside Russia.

WASHINGTON – March 5 – Statement of Nasima Hossain, U.S. PIRG public health advocate, on today’s Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the REINS Act:

“The REINS Act (H.R. 367) would block enforcement of existing health and safety laws by creating new bureaucratic hurdles and impossibly short timelines for approval of critical rules. This bill poses a grave threat to the health and safety of the American people.

“Our food safety system is an example of a public health program that would be crippled by the REINS Act. Due to numerous high profile food recalls, Congress updated food safety practices by passing the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) in 2011. This law has already helped protect public health by identifying and recalling 2.5 million pounds of E. coli-contaminated meat from Canada, as well as Salmonella-contaminated papayas from Mexico. However, if the REINS Act had been in place, the food safety rules created by the FSMA would have be blocked or delayed, leaving the safety of our food supply in jeopardy.

“As a nation, we have made significant progress toward ensuring a safe and healthy marketplace for consumers. Congress should continue in that proud tradition and oppose the REINS Act, to protect the health and safety of the American people.”

U.S. PIRG, the federation of state Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs), stands up to powerful special interests on behalf of the American public, working to win concrete results for our health and our well-being. With a strong network of researchers, advocates, organizers and students in state capitols across the country, we take on the special interests on issues, such as product safety,political corruption, prescription drugs and voting rights,where these interests stand in the way of reform and progress.

WASHINGTON – March 5 – In a win for congressional oversight over the government’s vast killing program, the Obama administration has shown an additional but undisclosed number of Office of Legal Counsel memos justifying the program to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, but has continued to withhold some of its legal opinions from the Intelligence Committees and has not provided any of the legal opinions to the rest of Congress or to the American public. The legal opinions focused on non-citizens continue to be hidden from the Intelligence Committees.

“This is an important first baby step towards restoring the checks and balances between Congress and the president, but it isn’t enough. Amazingly, the Obama administration continues to hide at least some of its legal opinions, even from the intelligence committees. The intelligence committees should have been given all of the legal opinions years ago, particularly when the Obama administration has claimed broad authority to kill people, including American citizens, far from any battlefield,” said Senior Legislative Counsel Christopher Anders. “The legal opinions also shouldn’t stay hidden with the few dozen members of the intelligence committees, but should be available to all members of Congress and minimally redacted copies should be made public. It makes a mockery of the rule of law when the government hides the rules, or makes them up as they go along. It is time to come clean with Congress and the American people.”

Previously, only four memos were briefly shown to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, which prompted some Senate committee members to stall the confirmation of John Brennan–the architect of the targeted-killing program and President Obama’s choice to run the Central Intelligence Agency. In response, the government sent additional materials to the Intelligence Committees, but has not shown the committees all 11 legal opinions sought by several committee members, and also has not provided the legal opinions to other senators or made them public. This afternoon, the Senate Intelligence Committee will vote on whether to send John Brennan’s nomination to the full Senate.

More information on the ACLU’s work on targeted killing can be found here:
www.aclu.org/national-security/targeted-killings

WASHINGTON – March 5 – JOSH RUEBNER, [email]
National advocacy director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Ruebner’s piece “‘Israel Lobby’ to Push for Aid Despite Sequestration Cuts” was just published by The Hill. It states: “The long-dreaded sequestration has arrived, bringing with it potentially catastrophic consequences for governmental programs designed to benefit those most in need. The NAACP estimates these across-the-board cuts will result in 100,000 fewer low-income children being prepared for school through Head Start, 17 million fewer ‘Meals-on-Wheels’ delivered to seniors suffering from food insecurity, and 1.6 million fewer unemployed Americans served through job training, education, and employment services.

“Yet, as thousands of ‘Israel-first’ citizen lobbyists descend on Capitol Hill [Tuesday] as part of the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee – the largest and most influential of the many groups comprising the ‘Israel lobby’ – concern for these millions of Americans will not be on its legislative agenda. 

Instead, AIPAC will be lobbying to avert the impact of sequestration on record-breaking levels of U.S. military aid to Israel. It will also be pushing for legislation to boost the U.S.-Israel ‘strategic alliance’ and green light an Israeli attack on Iran, measures which will both inevitably entail demands for additional U.S. taxpayer-funded weapons to Israel.

“Israel stands to lose approximately $250 million of its $3.1 billion military aid package from the United States under the terms of the sequestration. The Jewish Week calls AIPAC’s gambit to exempt these cuts a ‘very risky strategy at a time when millions of Americans will be feeling the bite of the sequestration debacle,’ which ‘could easily backfire and damage Israel far more than any cuts in its very generous grant aid program.’ …

“AIPAC demands that the United States underwrite approximately 20 percent of the Israeli military budget. Beyond the fiscal absurdity of this policy, what makes it even more galling is that U.S. taxpayers are thereby made complicit in Israel’s systematic violation of Palestinian human rights, its military occupation and illegal colonization of Palestinian land, and its apartheid policies toward Palestinians which deny them freedom and self-determination.” Ruebner is author of the forthcoming Shattered Hopes: Why Obama Failed to Broker Israeli-Palestinian Peace.

Note: President Obama is currently scheduled to visit Israeli on March 20, though there have been reports that may be delayed.

March 5, 2013  |  

A headline caught my eye this morning: “ Indiana’s Largest Megachurch Faces New Foreclosure Proceedings.” It made me think of Steve Munsey, an Indiana prosperity preacher I watched in a Decatur, Georgia television studio in 2007, pleading for audience members and viewers to give their money to the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

As it turns out, the story is about Munsey’s church, Family Christian Center, which claims to have a weekly attendance of 15,000, making it one of the largest churches in the country. According to an investigation by the NWITimes.com, a paper covering northwestern Indiana, the judge presiding over the foreclosure proceedings told attorneys in court, “When I saw some of the expenditures being made in this church when there was a mortgage not being paid, I was astounded.” NWITimes reports that even as the church owed close to $100,000 a month in mortgage payments (not to mention mortgage payments on condos the church claimed to use for visiting clergy, and other unspecified bills in excess of half a million dollars), Munsey and his wife Melodye raked in “$2.9 million in total compensation from 2008 through 2011 from organizations connected to Family Christian Center, IRS records show.” In all, “The church annually spent $3.5 million in leadership compensation and had a $900,000 budget for travel and meals, a $500,000 housing allowance and $500,000 for jet fuel and other expenditures, according to the transcript. In 2010, the church paid $1 million for property in Illinois, the transcript states.” There’s more: an IRS investigation and tax liens, for starters. You can read the whole investigative story, for which Munsey declined to be interviewed, here.

Mondoweiss Editor’s Note: The following report is from February 28, 2013. Although it was reported that Israel would begin segregating bus service in the West Bank starting March 4, the practice has been in effect for much longer. Yeshua-Lyth explained in an email: “The practice of banning Palestinians from public buses has been in evidence for months. News of plans for ‘Palestinian only’ buses were in the Israeli press already in November. It seems that the coercing and harassment have the purpose of ‘educating’ Palestinians about the way to choose public transport. The announcement yesterday coincided with my Thursday report by coincidence, or perhaps it was rushed following the considerable uproar this report has managed to create. I have been listening to blatant lies on Israeli radio about the new buses being a ‘helpful measure’ for the workers all day yesterday. The fact remains that public transport is a system based on a grid serving people who should be able to choose their own routes. If you live in London you do not wish to be allowed on buses from Paddington to Oxford only..”Palestinian workers with Israeli work permit wait in line to broad a Palestinian-only bus after crossing the Eyal checkpoint, near the West Bank city of Qalqilya, March 4, 2012. (Photo: Oren Ziv/ Activestills.org)

1 March 2013

I arrived at 4 PM at the bus terminal (near what is called the “Shomron Gate Junction”). Until five it looked like nothing was going to happen. Blessed boredom. Travellers get on and get off, including some who look like Palestinians. A military vehicle behind the bus honked with pointless violence and suddenly activated a siren, surely that was nothing more than the simple boorishness of the soldiers who are the lords of the land.

At five o’clock sharp the action begins: a policeman, First Sergeant Shai Zecharia, portentiously boards Bus 286, which is stopped at the station. Soldiers order all the Palestinians to get off. Right away they collect their ID cards upon their exit from the bus. That way they can’t go anywhere until they get permission. Nearly thirty workers, ages 30-50, obediently file out. The soldier/officer roars: “Udrub!” (Move!) And then: “Sit on your butts! On your butts!” They are then marched to the terminal fence and made to stand along it in a line, then to sit on the cold ground and wait. The soldiers check the green IDs (Arabic: hawwiye) and demand to see their “tasrih” (work permits). A lucky few get their IDs back and board another bus — complaining only about having to pay twice for the same trip. But our forces immediately block this channel: one by one the workers are told to leave the terminal and walk to the Azoun-Atme checkpoint, 2.5 kilometres from the Shomron Gate junction. By now it’s cold; the sun has set. Most of them got up at three in the morning for the trip to work. Their homes are only a few kilometres from nearby Ariel. All they ask is to be allowed to ride the bus for another two or three stops. They paid for the trip. And by the way, a “tasrih” costs 8,000 shekels. You have to work hard to cover that sum before you earn your first shekel.

The soldiers nabbed four workers who had dared to work without a “tasrih”. The short one venomously says, “They can spend some time in the Yoav fortress.” Then the next consignment arrives, about another 25 workers. The armed and heroic little guy is soon shoving them with both hands. The procedure is repeated: “Udrub”, on your butts, hawiyye, tasrih. Now move it to Azoun-Atme. Within half an hour about eighty men have been subjected to this humiliation by a few armed soldiers and one policeman. They all responded with restraint and dismay, at most asking the obvious questions and now and then getting enlightening replies, such as:

“You’re not allowed to be on Highway 5.” At long last: official confirmation that there are apartheid highways in Israel, despite all the denials.

“You’re not allowed to use public transportation at all.”

First Sergeant Zecharia provided the following crucial information to one of the older Palestinians: It’s better to travel in the special vans and not in Israeli buses. Palestinians claim that there has been an unwritten commercial alliance between some in the security forces and the Bedouins who operate the vans, which cost five times as much as the buses for short trips. For a trip of a few minutes, each one of them pays one or two hour’s wages.

I should note that the First Sergeant answered my questions as the law requires when I asked his name and rank, but he immediately declared that my questions were “causing agitation” and that “pretty soon” I too would find myself spending a few hours in the nearby police station.

On the way back, via the Ayalon Highway, my heart goes out to the thousands of Israelis who are delayed on the way home in Thursday evening traffic jams.

Questions and thoughts:

How many hundreds of Palestinians gone through this permanent institutionalized harassment this evening, at the end of a work week during which they cleaned, built, plastered and paved our Homeland?

What is the idea behind this harassment? How is it that workers represent no “security risk” in Tel Aviv and Rishon LeZion from morning to evening, but their presence on a bus on the way home is a matter that requires the armed intervention of the soldiers of the “Israel Defence Force”?

Should not those who are constantly warning us that the Third Intifada will break out any moment have an interest in obedient and industrious workers being allowed to get home in peace? (Incidentally, I have heard this observation from the workers, who may be poor but are by no means stupid)

And furthermore: when a woman is told to “sit in the back” of a bus full of Haredim, Israeli society responds with anger and revulsion and we demand that the instigators of this obscurantist discrimination be stopped. But Palestinian workers are forbidden to travel in “our” buses — even in the back, and standing. And that is quite all right legally — unless something is very, very wrong with the law.

How fitting it is this evening to excoriate the unknown judge who beat his unfortunate children, and the judicial system that did not deal with him severely. Because, as everybody knows, civilization, progress, human rights, the rights of the child and equality before the law are our guiding principles.

Happy Apartheid Week to *all* of you!

This post originally appeared on Facebook. It has been translated from Hebrew by Mark Marshall

© 2013 Mondoweiss

March 5, 2013  |  

There is “capitalism” and then there is “really existing capitalism.”

The term “capitalism” is commonly used to refer to the U.S. economic system, with substantial state intervention ranging from subsidies for creative innovation to the “too-big-to-fail” government insurance policy for banks.

The system is highly monopolized, further limiting reliance on the market, and increasingly so: In the past 20 years the share of profits of the 200 largest enterprises has risen sharply, reports scholar Robert W. McChesney in his new book “Digital Disconnect.”

“Capitalism” is a term now commonly used to describe systems in which there are no capitalists: for example, the worker-owned Mondragon conglomerate in the Basque region of Spain, or the worker-owned enterprises expanding in northern Ohio, often with conservative support — both are discussed in important work by the scholar Gar Alperovitz.

Some might even use the term “capitalism” to refer to the industrial democracy advocated by John Dewey, America’s leading social philosopher, in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Dewey called for workers to be “masters of their own industrial fate” and for all institutions to be brought under public control, including the means of production, exchange, publicity, transportation and communication. Short of this, Dewey argued, politics will remain “the shadow cast on society by big business.”

The truncated democracy that Dewey condemned has been left in tatters in recent years. Now control of government is narrowly concentrated at the peak of the income scale, while the large majority “down below” has been virtually disenfranchised. The current political-economic system is a form of plutocracy, diverging sharply from democracy, if by that concept we mean political arrangements in which policy is significantly influenced by the public will.

There have been serious debates over the years about whether capitalism is compatible with democracy. If we keep to really existing capitalist democracy — RECD for short — the question is effectively answered: They are radically incompatible.

It seems to me unlikely that civilization can survive RECD and the sharply attenuated democracy that goes along with it. But could functioning democracy make a difference?

Let’s keep to the most critical immediate problem that civilization faces: environmental catastrophe. Policies and public attitudes diverge sharply, as is often the case under RECD. The nature of the gap is examined in several articles in the current issue of Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Researcher Kelly Sims Gallagher finds that “One hundred and nine countries have enacted some form of policy regarding renewable power, and 118 countries have set targets for renewable energy. In contrast, the United States has not adopted any consistent and stable set of policies at the national level to foster the use of renewable energy.”

It is not public opinion that drives American policy off the international spectrum. Quite the opposite. Opinion is much closer to the global norm than the U.S. government’s policies reflect, and much more supportive of actions needed to confront the likely environmental disaster predicted by an overwhelming scientific consensus — and one that’s not too far off; affecting the lives of our grandchildren, very likely.

As Jon A. Krosnick and Bo MacInnis report in Daedalus: “Huge majorities have favored steps by the federal government to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated when utilities produce electricity. In 2006, 86 percent of respondents favored requiring utilities, or encouraging them with tax breaks, to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit. Also in that year, 87 percent favored tax breaks for utilities that produce more electricity from water, wind or sunlight  [ These majorities were maintained between 2006 and 2010 and shrank somewhat after that.

Throughout history, nearly all of the progress we’ve made toward a more just and peaceful world has started with seeds of discomfort with the status quo, and the growing sense that a better way is possible.  That feeling is what gave birth to bold, audacious visions that have fueled our greatest gains over the past century–from child labor laws to the Civil Rights Movement.

Today, there is a growing dissatisfaction in America–and concerns about our economy and our health and safety are among the biggest sources. More and more of us find ourselves sharing the same fears–even when our daily lives couldn’t be more different. The out-of-work veteran coal miner in Pennsylvania knows the anxiety of the 22-year-old debt-laden college grad who can’t find a decent job. Just as the Hurricane Katrina survivor knows the agony and loss of the super storm Sandy victim.

When times are hard, we’re often backed into a corner and forced to make tough choices. And too often, special interest groups take advantage of this. They create false choices, pitting our concerns about the economy and the environment against one another. They’ll say that any job–even a job that will do irreparable harm to our air and water or fuel climate change-induced super storms–is a good job.

As the “us” against “them” debates play out in the media, in Congress, and across the country, the sad outcome is that sometimes the people who know our struggles the best seem to be pitted against us.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to choose between protecting our kids’ health and making a living. We need our leaders to set a new course for America’s economy. And it has to start with the will to tackle joblessness and climate change. Just like those who came before us, we have a moral obligation to future generations. We have a duty to protect our air and water, and build new pathways to prosperity. We have a responsibility to expand economic opportunity for all Americans — especially those who’ve been left farthest behind.

One of the best ways to shift the odds for America’s struggling families and slash pollution at the same time is by expanding clean energy innovation and infrastructure improvements. By doing so, we can create pathways out of poverty, fight climate change, and get America back on its feet. And we have to act now–we don’t have any time to lose.

Here’s what we need to do:

1.     Ask our leaders to accelerate America’s clean energy and energy efficiency efforts. When it comes to getting Americans working, clean energy is a smart choice–the sector creates three times as many jobs per dollar invested as fossil fuels. A single 250-megawatt wind farm employs 1,000 people. We can create 500,000 good jobs just by transitioning to producing 20 percent of our total power from wind–an achievable goal. And if we made energy efficiency upgrades to just 40 percent of America’s residential and commercial buildings, we would create 625,000 long-term, full-time jobs. Even better, the materials used for upgrades, like sheet metal and insulation, are by and large made in America, so expanding energy efficiency also gives our manufacturing sector a much-needed shot in the arm.

2.     Call for investments in infrastructure and community resilience. If we want to jumpstart our economy and restore American leadership, the first thing we need to do is fix our crumbling infrastructure. By modernizing our water and transportation systems using 21^st century green technology, we can put Americans to work and make vulnerable communities more resilient in the face of superstorms and other climate change disasters. Fixing our broken stormwater infrastructure alone would create 2 million new jobs–and safer, healthier, more prosperous communities.

3.     Demand an end to handouts and giveaways for polluters. We can’t move forward while we’re still locked to the dirty energy of the past. We need to stop allowing construction of harmful projects like the Keystone XL oil pipeline. And at a time when American families are struggling, it’s hard to imagine why we would give handouts to some of the wealthiest and most polluting companies in the world. We can save taxpayers at least $8 billion a year by ending subsidies to oil companies, which consistently rake in record profits while saddling the rest of us with toxic air and water. By demanding that polluters to pay their fair share through a smart tax on carbon pollution, we can save the programs that keep America running–like schools, emergency services, and important infrastructure. A $20 per ton tax on carbon could raise $1.25 trillion over ten years.

4. Call on state, local, and federal leaders to make sure vulnerable Americans have access to opportunities in the green economy. It’s not enough just to speed the transition to a clean energy economy. We need to make sure that more of us have access to the jobs and opportunities that are created.

One of the best ways to build a more inclusive economy is through High Road Strategies, which ensure that new green projects employ local and disadvantaged workers. We also need to invest in job training. By preparing more Americans to work in industries like clean power, energy efficiency, and green infrastructure, we support technological innovation and expansion that will help make us a global leader.

And as we end loopholes for polluters and transition to a clean energy economy, we need to make sure workers in industries like coal and oil aren’t left behind. These workers have dedicated their lives, and in many cases risked their safety, in their jobs. They must be among the winners in the new economy.

The challenges our country faces have never been more daunting. With nearly 50 million Americans struggling just to get by, it’s time to take a different economic route.  And the way forward begins with finding common ground and a path that will benefit all of us–not just a few.

We can do it by investing in clean energy innovation, green infrastructure, and community resilience. We can stand up to big polluters–and stand up for our vulnerable neighbors. Together, we can restore American leadership and create a healthier, brighter, more prosperous future for all of our children and grandchildren.

© 2013 Green For All

Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins is the Chief Executive Officer of Green For All.

more Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins

Once, as a reporter, I covered wars, conflicts, civil wars, and even a genocide in places like Vietnam, Angola, Eritrea, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, keeping away from official briefings and listening to the people who were living the war. In the years since the Bush administration launched its Global War on Terror, I’ve done the same thing without ever leaving home.

In the last decade, I didn’t travel to distant refugee camps in Pakistan or destroyed villages in Afghanistan, nor did I spend time in besieged cities like Iraq’s Fallujah or Libya’s Misrata. I stayed in Great Britain. There, my government, in close conjunction with Washington, was pursuing its own version of what, whether anyone cared to say it or not, was essentially a war against Islam. Somehow, by a series of chance events, I found myself inside it, spending time with families transformed into enemies.

I hadn’t planned to write about the war on terror, but driven by curiosity about lives most of us never see and a few lucky coincidences, I stumbled into a world of Muslim women in London, Manchester, and Birmingham. Some of them were British, others from Arab and African countries, but their husbands or sons had been swept up in Washington’s war. Some were in Guantanamo, some were among the dozen Muslim foreigners who did not know each other, and who were surprised to find themselves imprisoned together in Britain on suspicion of links to al-Qaeda. Later, some of these families would find themselves under house arrest.

In the process, I came to know women and children who were living in almost complete isolation and with the stigma of a supposed link to terrorism. They had few friends, and were cut off from the wider world. Those with a husband under house arrest were allowed no visitors who had not been vetted for “security,” nor could they have computers, even for their children to do their homework. Other lonely women had husbands or sons who had sometimes spent a decade or more in prison without charges in the United Kingdom, and were fighting deportation or extradition.

Gradually, they came to accept me into their isolated lives and talked to me about their children, their mothers, their childhoods — but seldom, at first, about the grim situations of their husbands, which seemed too intimate, too raw, too frightening, too unknowable to be put into words.

In the early years, it was a steep learning curve for me, spending time in homes where faith was the primary reality, Allah was constantly invoked, English was a second language, and privacy and reticence were givens. Facebook culture had not come to most of these families. The reticence faded over the years, especially when the children were not there, or in the face of the kind of desolation that came from a failed court appeal to lift the restrictions on their lives, an unexpected police raid on the house, a husband’s suicide attempt, or the coming of a new torture report from Washington’s then-expanding global gulag of black sites and, of course, Guantanamo.

In these years, I met some of their husbands and sons as well. The first was a British man from Birmingham, Moazzam Begg. He had been held for three years in Washington’s notorious offshore prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, only to be released without charges.  When he came home, through his lawyer, he asked me to help write his memoir, the first to come out of Guantanamo. We worked long months on Enemy Combatant. It was hard for him to relive his nightmare days and nights in American custody in Kandahar and in the U.S. prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and then those limbo years in Cuba. It was even harder for him to visit the women whose absent husbands he had known in prison and who, unlike him, were still there.

Was My Husband Tortured?

In these homes he visited, there was always one great unspoken question: Was my husband or son tortured? It was the single question no one could bear to ask a survivor of that nightmare, even for reassurance. When working on his book, I deliberately left the chapter on his experiences in American hands in Bagram prison for last, as I sensed how difficult it would be for both of us to speak about the worst of the torture I knew he had experienced.

Through Moazzam, I met other men who had been swept up in the post-9/11 dragnet for Muslims in Great Britain, refugees who sought him out as an Arabic speaker and a British citizen to help them negotiate Britain’s newly hostile atmosphere in the post-9/11 years.  Soon, I began to visit some of their wives, too.

In time, I found myself deep inside a world of civilian women who were being warred upon (after a fashion) in my own country, which was how I came upon a locked-down hospital ward with a man determined to starve himself to death unless he was given refugee documents to leave Britain, children who cried in terror in response to a knock on the door, wives faced with a husband changed beyond words by prison.

I found myself deep inside a world of civilian women who were being warred upon (after a fashion) in my own country, which was how I came upon a locked-down hospital ward with a man determined to starve himself to death, children who cried in terror in response to a knock on the door, wives faced with a husband changed beyond words by prison.

I was halfway through working on Moazzam’s book when London was struck by our 9/11, which we call 7/7. The July 7, 2005, suicide bombings, in three parts of the London underground and a bus, killed 52 civilians and injured more than 700. The four bombers were all young British men between 18 and 30, two of them married with children, and one of them a mentor at a primary school. In video statements left behind they described themselves as “soldiers” whose aim was to force the British government to pull its troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Just three weeks later, there were four more coordinated bomb attacks on the London subway system. (All failed to detonate.) The four men responsible, longterm British residents originally from the Horn of Africa, were captured, tried, and sentenced to life imprisonment. In this way, the whole country was traumatised in 2005, and that particularly includes the various strands of the Muslim community in Great Britain.

The British security services quickly returned to a post-9/11 stance on overdrive. The same MI5 intelligence agents who had interrogated Moazzam while he was in U.S. custody asked to meet him again to get his thoughts on who might be behind the attacks. However, three years in U.S. custody and five months at home occupied with his family and his book had not made him a likely source of information on current strains of thought in the British Muslim community.

At the same time, the dozen foreign Muslim refugees detained in the aftermath of 9/11 and held without trial for two years before being released on the orders of the House of Lords were rearrested. In the summer of 2005, the government prepared to deport them to countries they had originally fled as refugees.

All of them had been made anonymous by court order and in legal documents were referred to as Mr. G, Mr. U, and so on. This was no doubt intended to safeguard their privacy, but in a sense it also condemned them. It made them faceless, inhuman, and their families experienced it just that way. “They even took my husband’s name away, why?” one wife asked me.

The women I was meeting in these years were mostly from this small group, as well as the relatives of a handful of British residents — Arabs — who were not initially returned from Guantanamo with the nine British citizens that the Americans finally released without charges in 2004 and 2005.

Perhaps no one in the country was, in the end, more terrorised than them, thanks to the various terror plots by British nationals that followed. And they were right to be fearful. The pressure on them was overwhelming. Some of them simply gave up and went home voluntarily because they could not bear house arrest, though they risked being sent to prison in their native lands; others went through years of house arrest and court appeals against deportation, all of which continues to this day.

Among the plots that unnerved them were one in 2006 against transatlantic aircraft, for which a total of 12 Britons were jailed for life in 2009, and the 2007 attempt to blow up a London nightclub and Glasgow International Airport, in which one bomber died and the second was jailed for 32 years. In the post-9/11 decade, 237 people were convicted of terror-related offences in Britain.

Though all of this was going on, much of it remained remote from the world of the refugee women I came to know who, in the larger world, were mainly preoccupied with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that, with Palestinian developments, filled their TV screens tuned only to Arabic stations.

These women did not tend to dwell on their own private nightmares, but for anyone in their company there was no mistaking them: a wife prevented from taking her baby into the hospital to visit her hunger-striking husband and get him to eat before he starved to death; another, with several small children, turned back from a prison visit, despite a long journey, because her husband was being punished that day; children whose toys were taken in a police raid and never given back; midnight visits from a private security company to check on a man already electronically tagged.

These women did not tend to dwell on their own private nightmares: a wife prevented from taking her baby into the hospital to visit her hunger-striking husband and get him to eat before he starved to death; another turned back from a prison visit because her husband was being punished that day; children whose toys were taken in a police raid and never given back; midnight visits from a private security company to check on a man already electronically tagged.

Here was the texture of a hidden war of continual harassment against a largely helpless population. This was how some of the most vulnerable people in British society — often already traumatised refugees and torture survivors — were made permanent scapegoats for our post-9/11, and then post-7/7 fears.

So powerful is the stigma of “terrorism” today that, in the name of “our security,” whether in Great Britain or the United States, just about anything now goes, and ever fewer people ask questions about what that “anything” might actually be. Here in London, repeated attempts to get influential religious or political figures simply to visit one of these officially locked-down families and see these lives for themselves have failed. In the present political climate, such a personal, fact-finding visit proved to be anything but a priority for such people.

A Legal System of Secret Evidence, House Arrest, and Financial Sanctions

Against this captive population, in such an anything-goes atmosphere, all sorts of experimental perversions of the legal system were tried out. As a result, the British system of post-9/11 justice contains many features which should frighten us all but are completely unfamiliar to the vast majority of people in the United Kingdom.

Key aspects for the families I have been concerned with include the use of secret evidence in cases involving deportation, bail conditions, and imprisonment without trial. In addition, most of their cases have been heard in a special court known as the Special Immigration Appeals Commission or SIAC, which is housed in an anonymous basement set of rooms in central London.

One of SIAC’s innovative features is the use of “special advocates,” senior barristers who have security clearance to see secret evidence on behalf of their clients, but without being allowed to disclose it or discuss it, even with the client or his or her own lawyer. The resignation on principle of a highly respected barrister, Ian Macdonald, as a special advocate in November 2004 exposed this process to the public for the first time — but almost no one took any interest.

And a sense of the injustice in this arcane system was never sufficiently sparked by such voices, which found little echo in the media. Nor was there a wide audience for reports from a team of top psychiatrists about the devastating psychological impact on the men and their families of indefinite detention without trial, and of a house-arrest system framed by “control orders” that allow the government to place restrictions of almost any sort on the lives of those it designates.

An even less noted aspect of the anti-terror legal system brought into existence after 9/11 was the financial sanctions that could freeze the assets of designated individuals. First ordered by the United Nations, the financial-sanctions regime was consolidated here through a European Union list of designated people. The few lawyers who specialized in this area were scathing about the draconian measures involved and the utter lack of transparency when it came to which governments had put which names on which list.

The effect on the listed families was draconian. Marriages collapsed under the strain. The listed men were barred from working and only allowed £10 a week for personal expenses. Their wives — often from conservative cultures where all dealings with the outside world had been left to husbands — suddenly were the families’ faces to the world, responsible for everything from shopping to accounting monthly to the government’s Home Office for every item the family purchased, right down to a bottle of milk or a pencil for a child. It was humiliating for the men, who lost their family role overnight, and exhausting and frustrating for the women, while in some cases the rest of their families shunned them because of the taint of alleged terrorism. Almost no one except specialist lawyers even knew that such financial sanctions existed in Britain.

In the country’s High Court, the first judicial challenge to the financial-sanctions regime was brought in 2008 by five British Muslim men known only as G, K, A, M, and Q. In response, Justice Andrew Collins said he found it “totally unacceptable” that, to take an especially absurd example, a man should have to get a license for legal advice about the sanctions from the very body that was imposing them. The man in question had waited three months for a “basic expense” license permitting funds for food and rent, and six months for a license to obtain legal advice about the situation he found himself in.

In a related case before the judicial committee of the House of Lords, Justice Leonard Hoffman expressed incredulity at the “meanness and squalor” of a regime that “monitored who had what for lunch.” More recently, the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court endorsed the comments of Lord Justice Stephen Sedley who described those subject to the regime as being akin to “prisoners of the state.”

Among senior lawyers concerned about this hidden world of punishment was Ben Emmerson, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms While Countering Terrorism. He devoted one of his official U.N. reports to the financial sanctions issue. His recommendations included significantly more transparency from governments who put people on such a list, the explicit exclusion of evidence obtained by torture, and the obligation of governments to give reasons when they refuse to remove individuals from the list. Of course, no one who mattered was paying the slightest attention.

Against ideological governments obsessed by terrorism on both sides of the Atlantic and a culture numbed by violent anti-terrorist tales like “24” and Zero Dark Thirty, such complicated and technical initiatives on behalf of individuals who have been given the tag, implicitly if not explicitly, of “terrorist” stand little chance of getting attention.

“Each Time It’s Worse”

Nearly a decade ago, at the New York opening night of Guantanamo: Honour Bound to Defend Freedom, the play Gillian Slovo and I wrote using only the words of the relatives of prisoners in that jail, their lawyers, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, an elderly man approached Moazzam Begg’s father and me. He introduced himself as a former foreign policy adviser to President John Kennedy. “It could never have happened in our time,” he said.

When the Global War on Terror was still relatively new, it was common for audiences to react similarly and with shock to a play in which fathers and brothers describe their bewilderment over the way their relation had disappeared into the legal black hole of Guantanamo Bay. In the years since, we have become numb to the destruction of lives, livelihoods, futures, childhoods, legal systems, and trust by Washington’s and London’s never-ending war on terror.

In that time, I have seen children grow from toddlers to teenagers locked inside this particular war machine. What they say today should startle us out of such numbness. Here, for instance, are the words of two teenagers, a girl and a boy whose fathers had been imprisoned or under house arrest in Britain for 10 years and whose lives in those same years were filled with indignities and humiliations:

“People seem to think that we get used to things being how they are for us, so we don’t feel the injustices so much now. They are quite wrong: it was painful the first time, more painful the second, even more so the third. In fact, each time it’s worse, if you can believe that. There isn’t a limit on how much pain you can feel.”

The boy added this:

“There is never one day when I feel safe. It can be the authorities, it can be ordinary people, they can do something bad for us. Only like now when we are all in the house together can I stop worrying about my mum and my sisters, and even me, what might happen to us. On the tube [subway], in class at university, people look at my beard.  I see them looking and I know they are thinking bad things about me. I would like to be a normal guy who no one looks at. You know, other boys, some of my friends, they cut corners, things like driving without a current license, everyone does it. But I can’t, I can’t ever, ever, take even a small risk. I have to always be cautious, be responsible… for my family.”

These children have been brought up by women who, against all odds, have often preserved their dignity and kept at least a modicum of joy in their families’ lives, and so, however despised, however unnoticed, however locked away, made themselves an inspiration to others. They are not victims to be pitied, but women our societies should embrace.

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s response to recent proposals that Washington establish a secret court to oversee the targeting of terrorist suspects for death-by-drone and President Obama’s expanding executive power to kill, speak for the world beyond the West. They offer a different perspective on the war on terror that Washington and Great Britain continue to pursue with no end in sight:

“Do the United States and its people really want to tell those of us who live in the rest of the world that our lives are not of the same value as yours? That President Obama can sign off on a decision to kill us with less worry about judicial scrutiny than if the target is an American? Would your Supreme Court really want to tell humankind that we, like the slave Dred Scott in the nineteenth century, are not as human as you are? I cannot believe it. I used to say of apartheid that it dehumanized its perpetrators as much as, if not more than, its victims. Your response as a society to Osama bin Laden and his followers threatens to undermine your moral standards and your humanity.”

© 2013 Victoria Brittain

Victoria Brittain, journalist and former editor at the Guardian, has authored or co-authored two plays and four books, including Enemy Combatant with Moazzam Begg. Her latest book, Shadow Lives: The Forgotten Women of the War on Terror (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2013) has just been published.

I was doing research, gathering headlines for a post. But the headlines told a story of their own. So here they are:

2010

November 2010, Corporate Profits Hit New Record, U.S. Workers Still Struggling

2011

January 2011, Profits Are Booming. Why Aren’t Jobs?

May 2011, Corporate Profits At All-Time High As Recovery Stumbles

June 2011, Since 2009, 88 Percent Of Income Growth Went To Corporate Profits, Just One Percent Went To Wages

July 2011, Corporate profits’ share of pie most in 60 years

July 2011, A Boom in Corporate Profits, a Bust in Jobs, Wages

August 2011, Companies near record profits amid high unemployment

October 2011, While Corporate Profits Are At 60-Year High, Main Street Businesses Continue To Struggle

November 2011, GDP revised downward; corporate profits up

2012

February 2012, Corporate Margins And Profits Are Increasing, But Workers’ Wages Aren’t

May 2012, Corporate Profits Return To Prerecession Levels, But Job Growth And Investment Remain Weak

June 2012, Corporate Profits Just Hit An All-Time High, Wages Just Hit An All-Time Low

July 2012, The Economy Stinks, but at Least Corporate Profits Are at 60-Year Highs!

December 2012, Corporate profits hit all-time high as wages drop to record low

2013

March 4, 2013, Corporate Profits Have Risen Almost 20 Times Faster Than Workers’ Incomes Since 2008

© 2013 Campaign for America’s Future

Dave Johnson is a contributing blogger for the Campaign for America’s Future.

On Friday at midnight, the sequester kicked in, triggering $85 billion in deep, dumb budget cuts that sent “nonessential personnel”– such as air traffic controllers – packing.

Not to worry, though: Wall Street’s day was pretty much like any other. Billions of dollars in profits were made off of trillions of dollars in financial transactions. And the vast majority of those transactions were conducted tax-free.

Moral of the story: What else is new?

Crash the economy? Free pass. Prevent planes from crashing? Pink slip.

We don’t need a team of policymakers to tell us this isn’t good policy, or that it needs changing. But on Thursday, we heard policymakers propose exactly that: a change.

Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), along with Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-Ore.), unveiled a bill that would place a light tax on all financial transactions – three pennies on every $100 traded.

The good news is that it’s a tax so small it could be mistaken for a rounding error. It’s so small, Wall Street could easily afford it and the average E-Trade investor would barely notice it. If this were a tax on coffee, it would cost you $1 for every 800 cups you bought at Starbucks.

But there’s even better news. This insignificant tax raises a significant amount of revenue – $352 billion over the next 10 years, or enough to refund about one-third of what the sequester will slash from the federal budget. It’s also enough to put many air traffic controllers back to work, Head Start teachers back in preschools, and crucial government programs back in business.

As the saying goes, “Nothing can resist an idea whose time has come.”

And after years of Wall Street excess, and at a moment when new revenues are badly needed, the time has surely come for a financial transaction tax .

Indeed, support for such a tax has never been stronger – or broader. Many on the progressive left have long favored it . Now, though, another group of bleeding-heart liberals, otherwise known as the American people, is on board. When it comes to cutting the deficit, 6 in 10 Americans prefer taxing the financial industry to cutting social spending.

But this idea doesn’t just have the masses on its side; it has the elites, and even some Republican elites. Once championed by the granddaddy of liberal economics, John Maynard Keynes, the banner of a financial transactions tax has been picked up by conservative economists including Sheila Bair, George W. Bush’s appointee to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

After all, the tax isn’t just a good revenue raiser. It’s smart regulatory reform.

The high-frequency traders that now dominate our markets would be hardest-hit by the tax. A top economist recently concluded that their lightning speed, algorithm-driven trading drains profits from traditional investors. And analysts fear that such mass trading strategies could lead to disaster if markets behave unexpectedly.

The new tax would discourage these kinds of trades, which would be a good thing.

Europe, at least, seems to agree. Eleven nations, led by the conservative German government, are on track to start collecting the tax by January 2014. Expected revenues: $50 billion per year.

Of course, we’re talking about a tax on Wall Street.

It’s no wonder that, over the past few weeks, K Street appears to have upped the financial sector’s retainer. Their lobbying effort against the tax – here and in Europe – is in full swing.

Even the Obama administration has been convinced to come out against the tax in the United States. And they’re pressuring Europeans to water down their version by insulating American banks. What’s the logic driving this opposition?

Some have argued that, historically, these taxes have been ineffective because of widespread evasion. But they’re cherry-picking a few badly designed examples, such as Sweden’s lemon of a tax from nearly 30 years ago. This is like saying cars don’t work because you bought a Datsun in the ’70s.

Many countries have implemented such taxes effectively. The United Kingdom, for example, manages to raise more than $5 billion per year on a 0.5 percent tax on stock trades alone.

Another common argument is that the tax will be passed on to mom-and-pop investors. The just-introduced U.S. legislation addresses these concerns by providing tax credits for contributions to typical middle-class investment accounts, including 401(k)s. Investment funds would still be taxed on their trades, but this could encourage longer-term productive investment instead of the short-term speculation that adds little to no value to the real economy.

If the Obama administration is serious about fair taxation and a smart approach to the deficit, it should change its position. Rather than trying to derail Europe’s efforts, it should cooperate with Europe to ensure that the tax there is effectively enforced. And the administration should build support in Congress, including among Republicans.

Yes, we’ve all heard House Speaker John Boehner’s line that the debate over revenue raising is over. We also remember former President George H.W. Bush’s line, “Read my lips, no new taxes,” and how quickly his lips starting saying something else.

For tea partyers, wouldn’t a tax on Wall Street, the beneficiaries of the bailout they so reviled, be less objectionable than most other revenue options?

Sequestration is a septic wound, self-inflicted by lawmakers who can’t agree on anything. Here, at last, we have a smart idea with widespread support – Americans and Europeans, populists and economists, progressives and conservatives.

After Friday’s dumb budget cuts, a little smart policymaking would be nice for a change.

© 2013 The Washington Post

Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor of The Nation.

more Katrina vanden Heuvel

Civil liberties campaigners vowed to continue fighting Government plans for secret court hearings in sensitive national security cases after MPs rejected stronger safeguards.

Ministers comfortably saw off a bid to reinstate amendments made by the House of Lords despite Labour securing the support of a number of Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs.

Several prominent Labour ex-ministers defied their own party’s position to back the Government in last night’s vote on controversial elements of the Justice and Security Bill.

An attempt to make judges balance national security against the public interest of open justice was defeated by 297 votes to 226, majority 71, in what opponents called a “dark night for British justice”.

Minister Kenneth Clarke insisted the measures were essential to enable sensitive intelligence material to be introduced in a small number of civil cases where the state is being sued.

The alternative, he said, was that the Government would be unable defend the action and could be forced to pay out millions in compensation — as happened with a series of former Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The defeated changes, originally passed in the House of Lords only to be reversed by the Government in the Commons committee going through the Bill line-by-line, would have made the legislation impossible to operate, he said.

The vote came after former Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf said the legislation already ensured the operation of closed material proceedings was under the “complete control” of the judge in any case.

Critics complain though that CMPs undermine the principle of open justice and allow the security services to cover up involvement in abuse and torture.

Shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan told the Commons that while he accepted the difficulty of “reconciling the issues of justice and security” the legislation was not “proportionate to the scale of the problem”.

Among prominent Tories backing the amendments was Andrew Tyrie who said they were “about whether people can get to hear the case made against them, and whether we can keep legal safeguards we have had for generations”.

Analysis of division lists revealed seven Liberal Democrats rebelled to support the public interest test amendment, including party president Tim Farron, deputy leader Simon Hughes and former minister Sarah Teather.

The issue is set to provide a renewed confrontation this weekend between Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and his party activists — who last year voted overwhelmingly to oppose the legislation — at the Lib Dem spring conference in Brighton.

Labour former foreign secretary Jack Straw backed the legislation, however, telling MPs it was about “how you protect the sources of information on which intelligence depends”.

Party colleague Hazel Blears, a former counter terrorism minister, also gave her support.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said last night: “History teaches that politicians abandon ancient legal principles at their peril. Today’s cover-up is tomorrow’s scandal.

“The opposition to turning British courts into secret commissions continues. Once again, we look to the House of Lords to defeat Secret Courts and defend the Rule of Law.”

Clare Algar, executive director of Reprieve, said: “This has been a dark night for British justice.

“These plans for secret courts were always dangerous and unnecessary, but the failure of even minor attempts to modify the Bill means that it is even worse than when it first reached the House of Commons.

“MPs must now vote against the Bill altogether if they want to defend British justice.

“Should that fail, the House of Lords will be the only thing standing in the way of plans which would mean the end of the right to a fair trial in a vast range of civil cases.”

Speaking after the vote, Mr Khan said: “It’s disappointing that Labour’s attempts to reintroduce checks and balances into the Government’s plans for closed material proceedings have been defeated by the Tories and Lib Dems.

“This had the support of the Government’s own Independent Reviewer of Terrorism and the Joint Committee of Human Rights. We will be looking to our colleagues in the House of Lords to once again bring some balance to the Government’s plans over the coming weeks”

A Conservative Party source said: “By opposing this Bill, Labour are prepared to accept the possibility of millions of pounds going without challenge to individuals who could be terrorists.

“This raises the appalling prospect of taxpayers’ cash funding jihadist groups.”

Pointing to the presence of former Labour home office ministers Paul Goggins and George Howarth among those voting with Mr Straw against the amendments, they said: “This shows that under Ed Miliband the Labour Party is more interested in playing politics than acting as a serious alternative government.”

An activist tells Press TV that the video-sharing site, Youtube, deliberately takes down videos depicting the war crimes perpetrated by the FSA terrorists against the people of Syria but ironically provides those terrorists with space to wage their propaganda war against the Syrian nation.

The move comes as the Youtube owners refused to take down an insulting video against the prophet of Islam [PBUH] claiming that taking down such an insulting video would be against the principles of freedom of speech.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Mimi Laham, activist from the Persian Gulf littoral city of Dubai to shed more light on the topic of the program. What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Ms. Laham let us look at what do you think is the main reason for what we are seeing as a censorship, this attack on freedom of speech and dealing with the Iranian media?

Laham: I think, you, know, it is really across the board, any media that is taking an anti-Syrian insurgent line, in particular, is getting harassed.

Your journalist Maya Nasser was, actually, assassinated in Syria and of course there are too many journalists who mentioned that have experienced kidnapping and execution at the hands of the insurgents in order to suppress their word of decent against insurgency and even Youtube has been taking down many anti-Syrian channels that have been documenting the war crimes of the FSA in Syria, the FSA being the Syrian insurgents.

I mean I have a play list of 60 videos that documented the war crimes and 30 of those videos are now gone along with their channels and this was within six months. Ironically Youtube publicly apologized for mistakenly shutting down a pro-rebel channel and reinstated that channel. That channel being the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

So there is a clear double standard here.

Press TV: Have you been given an explanation by Youtube why your videos have been taken down?

Laham: Well, for one thing, one of the videos taken down was accused of copyright infringement but it was a video of a security mercenary firm Aegis gunning down civilians in Iraq.

Now this Aegis, which is similar to Blackwater but the British version, claimed copyright on a video of themselves shooting civilians in Iraq and Youtube accepted this as an excuse to take down the video and flag my channel and this is one excuse.

Another flag was given to me because I posted videos of war crimes conducted by the FSA and they said that, you know, this is shocking, do they took it down even though their guideline says that you should not remove videos that document war crimes.
So clearly Youtube is taking part in covering up war crimes for mercenary firms such as Aegis and for the Syrian insurgents.

Press TV: There is only a minute left Ms. Laham, but I want to look at in general, what do you think can be done with these attacks of freedom of speech?

Because as you said, for example like Youtube, obviously you were saying that they are taking these measures against you, so what other forms can be used? We see for the Iranian TV the satellite operators are taking off.

So what is the answer in order to make sure that free speech is out there and that we can stop them from stopping the free speech?

Laham: Well I just want to say that Youtube itself has admitted that it takes down videos upon request of governments internationally, in particular the US and the UK. So they admit that they censor videos.

Now what some people have been doing is that just pumping out videos on many, many channels at a time this is something that Syriantube does and in case one gets shut down, there will be like hundreds to take its place.

Another way is to set up your own website and put your own videos up there, as Press TV has done, and we need an alternative to Youtube and there is a new one coming out called Truetube but what we really need is something that is not controlled and that is a difficult feat but I think that is what the world is needing.

This was the second time I had heard Manning testify. The first was his testimony about the abusive pre-trial incarceration he suffered for one year while being held in a cage in Kuwait and in solitary confinement in the Quantico Brig. I’ve now seen him testify for a total of 15 hours.

Bradley Manning testifying, sketched by Clark Stoeckley of the Bradley Manning Support Network

His testimony leads me to wonder: what would have happened to Bradley Manning if we had a decent educational system that included affordable, preferably free, college education so that young people weren’t driven to the military for economic reasons? What could Bradley Manning have given the country if he had been able to pursue his interests and natural talents? Would Manning have joined the military if the country was honest about how the US Empire operates around the world?

But, that was not to be. The country failed Bradley Manning.

I hope we do not fail him again.

Bradley Manning reading his plea statement in court, sketched by Clark Stoeckley of the Bradley Manning Support Network.

Manning made it clear last Thursday that he leaked the documents to Wikileaks because he saw serious problems in US foreign policy. Problems which are as serious as they can be: war crimes, criminal behavior at the highest levels up to Secretary of State Clinton, unethical behavior and bullying of other nations.

Manning’s sole purpose was to “spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general.”* He hoped the debate “might cause society to reevaluate the need or even the desire to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore the complex dynamics of the people living in the effected environment every day.”

Regarding the collateral murder video which showed civilians, including two Reuters journalists being massacred, he said “I hoped that the public would be as alarmed as me about the conduct of the aerial weapons team crew members. I wanted the American public to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan are targets that needed to be neutralized, but rather people who were struggling to live in the pressure cooker environment of what we call asymmetric warfare.”

When discussing the State Department cables Manning saw that the US was not behaving the way the “de facto leader of the free world” should act as the cables “documented backdoor deals and seemingly criminal activity.” Again, he hoped for a change in policy as the “cables were a prime example of a need for a more open diplomacy” that would avoid conflict and save lives.

In some of these statements you get a hint of Manning’s empathy for fellow human beings. The incident that really showed it was his comments on David Frankel’s book “The Good Soldier,” where Frankel describes a seriously injured Iraqi civilian on the ground at the end of the Collateral Murder video. He lifts two fingers toward the soldier, a well-known sign of friendship, as he asks for help. The US soldier responds lifting his middle finger as the Iraqi died. Manning puts himself in the place of the Iraqi thinking his final act was an act of friendship only to be returned by a crude obscenity of unfriendliness. Manning acknowledges that this “burdens me emotionally.”

Manning was clear that he was solely responsible for his actions saying “The decisions that I made to send documents and information to the WLO [Wikileaks Organization] and website were my own decisions, and I take full responsibility for my actions.” He described his conversations with an anonymous person at Wikileaks but made it quite clear there was no espionage conspiracy between Manning and Julian Assange. His statement made it much more difficult for the US to prosecute Assange under the Espionage Act.

There is no question that Manning will spend years in jail. The ten charges he pled guilty to last week each carry two years for a total potential of 20 years incarceration. The government has announced it will still prosecute the espionage and aiding the enemy charges which could lead to a life sentence. This is an abuse of government power. They may be able to prove their case, but that does not mean he is truly guilty of those crimes, if convicted it will be another example of laws written to favor the prosecution; another example of injustice in today’s United States.

Judge Denise Lind. Sketch by Clark Stoeckley, Bradley Manning Support Network.

Judge Denise Lind has beautiful judicial decorum in court and shows she is on top of the details of the proceedings and the law. She is an impressive judicial figure but so far when there have been disputes between Manning and the government she has tended to split the difference, always giving a little more to the government. She has served in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps for 25 years, four as a judge. She is a product of a system that does not blow the whistle, does not go outside the chain of command and views following orders as a way of life. She will do what she thinks is just when she considers Manning’s case, but I doubt it will seem like justice to those of us who support Manning.

How can we avoid failing Bradley Manning? Ongoing support through the Bradley Manning Support Network continues to be essential but more than that, we need to do what we can to disseminate the information he leaked and work to create a national debate on a foreign policy that is seriously off-track.

This will be a long term effort, and as we pursue that work, we should never forget the young man who put his life and liberty on the line to give the world a glimpse of US foreign policy, a person who was failed by a country that talks about its concern for the young but does not do enough for them. Now, it is our job to pick up the materials Bradley has provided and work to create the better world we urgently need and he sought in his own patriotic way.

* All quotations are taken from the transcript of Manning’s testimony prepared by Alexa O’Brien as the court has not release his written statement to the public.

Kevin Zeese is an attorney who serves on the steering committee of the Bradley Manning Support Network. He also serves a co-director of It’s Our Economy. His twitter is @KBZeese.

 A United Nations investigator has demanded that the US publish classified documents regarding the CIA’s human rights violations under former President George W. Bush, with hopes that the documents will lead to the prosecution of public officials.

Documents about the CIA’s program of rendition and secret detention of suspected terrorists have remained classified, even though President Obama’s administration has publicly condemned the use of these “enhanced interrogation techniques”. The US has not prosecuted any of its agents for human rights violations.

UN investigator Ben Emmerson, the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism, said that the classified documents protect the names of individuals who are responsible for serious human rights violations.

“Despite this clear repudiation of the unlawful actions carried out by the Bush-era CIA, many of the facts remain classified, and no public official has so far been brought to justice in the United States,” Emmerson said in a report to the UN Human Rights Council, according to Reuters.

Kept in secret prisons around the world, the CIA’s detainees were subjected to torture including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and various other interrogation techniques that violate human rights. The detainees were often subjected to clandestine transfers to secret prisons known as CIA ‘black sites’.

“There is now credible evidence to show that CIA ‘black sites’ were located on the territory of Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Romania and Thailand, and that the officials of at least 49 other states allowed their airspace or airports to be used for rendition flights,” Emmerson said, describing how suspected terrorists were often detained without being charged for any crimes, receiving extradition procedures or having access to lawyers.

Emmerson has urged the US to prosecute any public official who was involved in setting up the CIA “black sites” at which human rights or legal violations occurred. Even though the Obama administration has condemned those who promoted the use of such facilities for inhumane procedures, the administration has taken no steps to punish any of its public officials. Attorney General Eric Holder has said that the Justice Department would not take legal actions against those who “acted in good faith” and followed the guidelines provided by the Office of Legal Counsel during the Bush era.

But without names and details about the involvement of US officials at CIA black sites, the government is maintaining a level of secrecy and “perpetuating impunity for the public officials implicated in these crimes,” Emmerson said.  A Senate committee led by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) previously investigated the CIA’s interrogation program and may have had complete access to classified information about it.

Emmerson has called for this information to be published “without delay, and to the fullest extent possible.”

While the UN special rapporteur lacks the power to force the Obama administration to release this information, his report puts further pressure on the US government to expose a practice it publicly condemns, but continues to keep secret.

The Iranian nuclear program, whatever it may be, was the only item on the agenda for the seven-nation discussion in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on February 26, and cautious optimism has been expressed by participants including the United States, Russia, and Iran. Known as the P5+1 because the group includes the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States) plus Germany, the group is called the E3+3 in Europe.

Perhaps the clearest framework for understanding what the Iranian nuclear development program might or might not be is to keep in mind that the most intense claims that Iran is building nuclear weapons comes from the region’s undisputed nuclear-armed state, Israel. Much like Iraq’s Saddam Hussein playing cat-and-mouse with WMDs he didn’t have, Iran has cooperated with weapons inspectors only to a point of uncertainty as to whether the program is or is not military.

Iran is one of the 190 countries that have signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allows for non-military development of nuclear power, nuclear medicine, and other nuclear applications. Iran claims it has the legal right to enrich uranium as part of its civilian nuclear energy program.

Iran also claims that it has met its obligations to the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), although in 2005 the IAEA, in a vote with 12 abstentions, found Iran in non-compliance over its enrichment program (but even the Congressional Research Service was uncertain whether “non-compliance” constituted a “violation” of the treaty). The dispute had continued ever since, with IAEA inspectors getting inconsistent access to Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. During 2012, four IAEA reports continued to provide inconclusive indications of a possible Iranian nuclear weapons program.

Israel Rejects Nuclear Transparency 

Israel has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty and is a presumed nuclear power along with other non-signatories who have nuclear weapons: India, Pakistan, and

North Korea. In 2010, the IAEA sought to bring Israeli nuclear facilities within the safeguards of IAEA, with only limited success, as Israel did not reveal all its facilities and has not yet does so.   Estimates of the Israeli nuclear stockpile vary from75 to 400 warheads, with 200 thought most likely, which Israel could deliver by missile, aircraft, or submarine.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested more than once that Israeli might act alone against the perceived Iranian nuclear threat, telling the New York Times in November:

“If someone sits here as the prime minister of Israel and he can’t take action on matters that are cardinal to the existence of this country, its future and its security, and he is totally dependent on receiving approval from others, then he is not worthy of leading… 

 “I am not eager to go to war…. I have been creating very heavy pressure, and part of this pressure comes from the knowledge some of the most powerful nations in the world have that we are serious. This isn’t a show, this is not false.”

Netanyahu first called for an attack on Iran at least as early as 1992, when he said the Iranians were only three to five years from producing a nuclear weapon.  But warnings like that are much older, going back to the 1970s and concerns that the Shah of Iran might arm his police state with nuclear weapons.

In Jerusalem on February 12, Netanyahu again threatened Iran:

“They have to know that if the sanctions and diplomacy fall, they will face a credible military threat. That is essential, and nothing else will do the job, and it is getting closer…. This has to be stopped for the interest of peace and security for the entire world.”              

Iran Denies Nuclear Weapons, Rejects Transparency

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has often denied the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, as he did in 2008 during an interview with NBC anchor Brian Williams, when he also questioned the utility of nuclear weapons as a source of security:

“Again, did nuclear arms help the Soviet Union from falling and disintegrating? For that matter, did a nuclear bomb help the U.S. to prevail inside Iraq or Afghanistan, for that matter? Nuclear bombs belong to the 20th century. We are living in a new century … Nuclear energy must not be equaled to a nuclear bomb. This is a disservice to the society of man….”  

On February 10, Ahmadinejad, whose term as president ends in a few months, indicated Iran’s willingness to discuss its nuclear program in bi-lateral talks with the U.S., adding that: “You pull away the gun from the face of the Iranian nation, and I myself will enter the talks with you.”

Ahmadinejad’s superior, Iran’s clerical Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gave a foreign policy speech in February 2012 in which he said much the same thing about nuclear weapons that he had said before:

 “The Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons. There is no doubt that the decision makers in the countries opposing us know well that Iran is not after nuclear weapons because the Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.”

Not being able to confirm reality, in either Israel or Iran, American and Europeam policy makers tend, unquestioningly in public, to trust the former and demonize the latter. And now as the world enters the fourth decade of fear-mongering about Iran’s “nuclear weapons program,” some are ratcheting it up again in advance of the Kazakhstan meering, with front page stories that start like this from the February 13 Washington Post:

“Iran recently sought to acquire tens of thousands of highly specialized magnets used in centrifuge machines, according to experts and diplomats, a sign that the country may be planning a major expansion of its nuclear program that could shorten the path to an atomic weapons capability.” 

If that assertion seems to have a familiar ring, perhaps it’s because it’s so similar in structure and content to what then-President Bush falsely stated, in his 2003 state of the union speech, know known as the infamous “Sixteen Words”:

“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”   

Washington Post Works to Create Crisis 

On February 14, under a headline about “the Iranian nuclear crisis,” the Post re-hyped the apparent 2011 order of “ring-shaped magnets” from China as a setback to the “Western-led effort to slow or halt Iran’s nuclear development.” Even though the Post had no idea if the magnets were ever delivered or whether they were actually for centrifuges with a benign purpose.

Taking the Post reports apart on Consortiumnews.com, Robert Parry drew attention to details buried in the story that contradicted the breathless lead — that the centrifuges were old and that Iran had long since told the IAEA of its plans to build 50,000 of them and not some “major expansion of nuclear capacity.”

Parry notes that the sole source for the magnet story was a private entity called the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) whose head is David Albright and that

 “Though Albright insists that he is an objective professional, ISIS has published hundreds of articles about Iran, which has not produced a single nuclear bomb, while barely mentioning Israel’s rogue nuclear arsenal…. 

“The articles not only hype developments in Iran but also attack U.S. media critics who question the fear-mongering about Iran.” 

Albright has hyped the threat of weapons of mass destruction before. In 2002 when the Bush administration was lying the country into a war against Iraq, claiming that Iraq had “a clandestine nuclear weapons effort” as well as “chemical and biological weapons” — none of which was true. As Parry sums it up,

 “A decade ago, Albright and the ISIS were key figures in stoking the hysteria for invading Iraq around the false allegations of its WMD program. In recent years, Albright and his institute have adopted a similar role regarding Iran and its purported pursuit of a nuclear weapon, even though U.S. intelligence agencies say Iran terminated that weapons project in 2003.” 

 And Who Decides What Is Necessary? 

In his 2013 state of the union, President Obama dealt with Iran in a single, misleading, and threatening sentence:

“Likewise, the leaders of Iran must recognize that now is the time for a diplomatic solution, because a coalition stands united in demanding that they meet their obligations, and we will do what is necessary to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon.”  

Since 1979, the United States has waged a long twilight war against its former puppet state with no apparent understanding of why Iran may still resent the U.S. for overthrowing Iran’s elected government in 1953 and imposing one of the world’s nastier police state on 70 million people. There is credible evidence that the U.S. has not only imposed for economic sanctions that are tantamount to acts of war on Iran, but has also colluded in assassinations of at least five Iranian nuclear scientists as well as cyber attacks on the country’s infrastructure.

Secretary of State John Kerry suggested on Valentine’s Day that if Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful, Iran should have no trouble proving it. He urged the Iranians to make “real offers and engage in real dialogue.”

Both the President and the Secretary of State are lawyers, and is aware, most likely, that they don’t have enough evidence of Iran’s “nuclear weapons program” to show probable cause for a get a search warrant from any fair court, never mind an indictment.

That suggests, to use Obama’s words, that perhaps “what is necessary to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon” might be to stop attacking them.

 William Boardman  panthers007@comcast.net

Private military and security companies (PMSC) are the modern reincarnation of a long lineage of private providers of physical force: corsairs, privateers and mercenaries. Mercenaries, which had practically disappeared during the XIXth and XXth centuries, reappeared in the 1960’s during the decolonization period operating mainly in Africa and Asia. Under the United Nations a convention was adopted which outlaws and criminalizes their activities. Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions also contains a definition of mercenary.

These non-state entities of the XXIst century operate in extremely blurred situations where the frontiers are difficult to separate. The new security industry of private companies moves large quantities of weapons and military equipment. It provides services for military operations recruiting former militaries as civilians to carry out passive or defensive security.

However, these individuals cannot be considered as civilians, given that they often carry and use weapons, interrogate prisoners, load bombs, drive military trucks and fulfill other essential military functions. Those who are armed can easily switch from a passive/defensive to an active/offensive role and can commit human rights violations and even destabilize governments. They cannot be considered soldiers or supporting militias under international humanitarian law either, since they are not part of the army or in the chain of command, and often belong to a large number of different nationalities.

PMSC personnel cannot usually be considered to be mercenaries for the definition of mercenaries as stipulated in the international conventions dealing with this issue does not generally apply to the personnel of PMSCs which are legally operating in foreign countries under contracts of legally registered companies.

Private military and security companies operate in a legal vacuum: they pose a threat to civilians and to international human rights law. The UN Human Rights Council has entrusted the UN Working Group on the use of mercenaries, principally, with the mandate: “To monitor and study the effects of the activities of private companies offering military assistance, consultancy and security services on the international market on the enjoyment of human Rights (…) and to prepare draft international basic principles that encourage respect for human rights on the part of those companies in their activities”.

During the past five years, the Working Group has been studying emerging issues, manifestations and trends regarding private military and security companies. In our reports we have informed the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly about these issues. Of particular importance are the reports of the Working Group to the last session of the Human Rights Council, held in September 2010, on the Mission to the United States of America (20 July to 3 August 2009), Document A/HRC/15/25/Add.3; on the Mission to Afghanistan (4-9 April 2009), Document A/HRC/15/25/Add.2, and the general report of the Working Group containing the Draft of a possible Convention on Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) for consideration and action by the Human Rights Council, Document A/HRC/15/25.

In the course of our research, since 2006, we have collected ample information which indicate the negative impact of the activities of “private contractors”, “private soldiers” or “guns for hire”, whatever denomination we may choose to name the individuals employed by private military and security companies as civilians but in general heavily armed. In the cluster of human rights violations allegedly perpetrated by employees of these companies, which the Working Group has examined one can find: summary executions, acts of torture, cases of arbitrary detention; of trafficking of persons; serious health damages caused by their activities; as well as attempts against the right of self-determination. It also appears that PMSCs, in their search for profit, neglect security and do not provide their employees with their basic rights, and often put their staff in situations of danger and vulnerability.

Summary executions

On 16 September 2007 in Baghdad, employees of the US-based firm Blackwater[1] were involved in a shooting incident in Nisoor Square in which 17 civilians were killed and more than 20 other persons were wounded including women and children. Local eyewitness accounts indicate the use of arms from vehicles and rocket fire from a helicopter belonging to this company.

There are also concerns over the activities and approach of PMSC personnel, their convoys of armored vehicles and their conduct in traffic, in particular their use of lethal force. This particular incident was not the first of its kind, neither the first involving Blackwater.

According to a congressional report on the behaviour of Xe/Blackwater in Iraq, Xe/Blackwater guards were found to have been involved in nearly 200 escalation-of-force incidents that involved the firing of shots since 2005. Despite the terms of the contracts which provided that the company could engage only in defensive use of force, the company reported that in over 80 per cent of the shooting incidents, its forces fired the first shots.

In Najaf in April 2004 and on several other occasions, employees of this company took part in direct hostilities, as well as in May 2007, where another incident involving the same company reportedly occurred involving guards belonging to the company and forces belonging to the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior allegedly exchanged gunfire in a sector of Baghdad.

Also in central Baghdad the shooting of employees of the PMSC, Unity Resources Group (URG)[2], protecting a convoy, left two Armenian women, Genevia Antranick and Mary Awanis dead on 9 October 2007 when their car came too close to a protected convoy. The family of Genevia Antranick was offered no compensation and has begun court proceedings against URG in the United States.

This company was also involved in the shooting of 72-year-old Australian Kays Juma. Professor Juma was shot in March 2006 as he approached an intersection being blockaded for a convoy URG was protecting. Professor Juma, a 25-year resident of Baghdad who drove through the city every day, allegedly sped up his vehicle as he approached the guards and did not heed warnings to stop, including hand signals, flares, warning shots into the body of his car and floodlights. The incident occurred at 10am[3].

Torture

Two United States-based corporations, CACI and L-3 Services (formerly Titan Corporation), were involved in the torture of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib. CACI and L-3 Services, contracted by the Government of the United States, were responsible for interrogation and translation services, respectively, at Abu Ghraib prison and other facilities in Iraq.

Seventy two Iraqi citizens who were formerly detained at military prisons in Iraq, have sued L-3 Services, Inc. (“L-3”), a military private contractor which provided civilian translators for United States military forces in Iraq and Adel Nakhla, a former employee of L-3 who served as one of its translators there under the Alien Tort Statute. They allege having been tortured and physically and mentally abused during their detention and that they should be held liable in damages for their actions. The plaintiffs assert 20 causes of action, among which: torture; cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment; assault and battery; intentional infliction of emotional distress[4].

Arbitrary detention 

A number of reports indicate that private security guards have played central roles in some of the most sensitive activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) such as the arbitrary detention and clandestine raids against alleged insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan[5] and the involvement in CIA rendition flights[6] as well as joint covert operations[7]. Employees of PMSC would have been involved in the taking of detainees, from “pick up points” (such as Tuzla, Islamabad or Skopje) transporting them in rendition flights and delivering them to drop off points (such as Cairo, Rabat, Bucharest, Amman or Guantanamo) as well as in the construction, equipping and staffing of CIA’s “black sites”.

Within this context, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit in May 2007 against Jeppesen DataPlan Inc. (a subsidiary company of Boeing) on behalf of five persons who were kidnapped by the CIA disappearing in overseas prisons kept by USA secret services. Jeppesen would have participated in the rendition by providing flight planning and logistical support. The five persons were tortured during their arbitrary detention[8].

Health

The 2009 annual report of DynCorp International refers to four lawsuits concerning the spraying of narcotic plant crops along the Colombian border adjacent to Ecuador on behalf of 3 Ecuadorian Providences and 3266 plaintiffs[9].

From 1991, the United States Department of State contracted the private company DynCorp to supply services for this air-spraying program against narcotics in the Andean region. In accordance with the subscribed contract of 30 January 1998, DynCorp provides the essential logistics to the anti-drug Office of activities of Colombia, in conformity with three main objectives: eradication of cultivations of illicit drugs, training of the army and of personnel of the country, and dismantling of illicit drug laboratories and illicit drug-trafficking networks.

An NGO report indicated the consequences of the spraying carried out within the Plan Colombia had on persons living in the frontier region[10]. One third of the 47 women in the study exposed to the spraying showed cells with some genetic damage. The study established the relationship of the air fumigations of the Plan Colombia with damages in the genetic material. The study demonstrates that when the population is subjected to fumigations “the risk of cellular damage can increase and that, once permanent, the cases of cancerous mutations and important embryonic alterations are increased that prompt among other possibilities the rise in abortions in the area.

This example is particularly important given that Plan Colombia has served as the model for the arrangements that the United States would apply later to Iraq and Afghanistan. Plan Colombia provides immunity to the employees of the PMSC contracted (DynCorp) the same as Order 14 of the Coalition Provisional Authority did in Iraq.

Self-determination

The 2004 attempted coup d’état, which was perpetrated in Equatorial Guinea is a clear example of the link between the phenomenon of mercenaries and PMSCs as a means of violating the sovereignty of States. In this particular case, the mercenaries involved were mostly former directors and personnel of Executive Outcomes, a PMSC that had become famous for its operations in Angola and Sierra Leone. The team of mercenaries also included security guards who were still employed by PMSCs as was the case of two employees of the company Meteoric Tactical Systems providing security to diplomats of Western Embassies in Baghdad-among which to the Ambassador of Switzerland. It also included a security guard who had previously worked for the PMSC “Steele Foundation” and had given protection to President Aristide of Haiti and conducted him to the plane who took him to exile[11].

Trafficking in persons

In 2005, 105 Chileans were providing/or undergoing military training in the former army base of Lepaterique in Honduras. The instruction consisted in anti‐guerrilla tactics such as possible ambushes and deactivation of explosives and mortars how to avoid them. The Chileans had entered Honduras as tourists and were illegally in Honduras. They used high‐caliber weapons such as M‐16 rifles or light machine guns. They had been contracted by a subsidiary of Triple Canopy.

They were part of a group, which included also 189 Hondurans recruited and trained in Honduras. Triple Canopy had been awarded a contract by the United States Department of State. The strong contingent left the country by air from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, in several groups with a stopover in Iceland. Then reached the Middle East and were smuggled into Iraq[12].

The majority of the Chileans and Hondurans were engaged as security guards at fixed facilities in Iraq. They had been contracted by Your Solutions Honduras SRL, a local agent of Your Solutions Incorporated, registered in Illinois, United States of America, which in turn had been subcontracted by Triple Canopy, based in Chicago, United States of America. Some of the Chileans are presently working in Baghdad providing security to the Embassy of Australia under a contract by Unity Resources Group (URG).

Human rights violations committed by PMSC to their employees

PMSC often put the contracted private guards in situations of danger and vulnerability, such as the ‘private contractors’ of Blackwater, killed in Fallujah in 2004 allegedly due to the lack of the necessary safety means that Blackwater was supposed to provide in order to carry out the mission.

It should not be forgotten that this incident changed dramatically the course of the war and the occupation by the United States in Iraq. It may be considered as the turning point in the occupation of Iraq. This led to an abortive US operation to recapture control of the city and a successful recapture operation in the city in November 2004, called Operation Phantom Fury, which resulted in the death of over 1,350 insurgent fighters. Approximately 95 America troops were killed, and 560 wounded.

The U.S. military first denied that it has use white phosphorus as an anti-personnel weapon in Fallujah, but later retracted that denial, and admitted to using the incendiary in the city as an offensive weapon. Reports following the events of November 2004 have alleged war crimes, and a massacre by U.S. personnel, including indiscriminate violence against civilians and children.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallujah — cite_note-17 This point of view is presented in the 2005 documentary film, “Fallujah, the Hidden Massacre”. In 2010, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, a leading medical journal, published a study, which shows that the rates of cancer, infant mortality and leukemia exceed those reported in Hiroshima and Nagasaki[13].

The over 300 000 classified military documents made public by Wikileaks show that the “Use of Contractors Added to War’s Chaos in Iraq”, as has been widely reported by the international media recently.

The United States has relied and continues to rely heavily on private military and security contractors in conducting its military operations. The United States used private security contractors to conduct narcotics intervention operations in Colombia in the 1990s and recently signed a supplemental agreement that authorizes it to deploy troops and contractors in seven Colombian military bases. During the conflict in the Balkans, the United States used a private security contractor to train Croat troops to conduct operations against Serbian troops. Nowadays, it is in the context of its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in particular that the State is massively contracting out security functions to private firms.

In 2009, the Department of Defense employed 218,000 private contractors (all types) while there were 195,000 uniformed personnel. According to the figures, about 8 per cent of these contractors are armed security contractors, i.e. about 20,000 armed guards. If one includes other theatres of operations, the figure rises to 242,657, with 54,387 United States citizens, 94,260 third country nationals and 94,010 host-country nationals.

The State Department relies on about 2,000 private security contractors to provide United States personnel and facilities with personal protective and guard services in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel and Pakistan, and aviation services in Iraq. The contracts for protective services were awarded in 2005 to three PMSCs, namely, Triple Canopy, DynCorp International and the U.S. Training Center, part of the Xe (then Blackwater) group of companies. These three companies still hold the State Department protective services contracts today.

Lack of transparency

The information accessible to the public on the scope and type of contracts between the Government of the United States and PMSCs is scarce and opaque. The lack of transparency is particularly significant when companies subcontract to others. Often, the contracts with PMSCs are not disclosed to the public despite extensive freedom of information rules in the United States, either because they contain confidential commercial information or on the argument that non-disclosure is in the interest of national defense or foreign policy. The situation is particularly opaque when United States intelligence agencies contract PMSCs.

Lack of accountability

Despite the fact of their involvement in grave human rights violations, not a single PMSC or employee of these companies has been sanctioned.

In the course of litigation, several recurring legal arguments have been used in the defense of PMSCs and their personnel, including the Government contractor defense, the political question doctrine and derivative immunity arguments. PMSCs are using the Government contractor defense to argue that they were operating under the exclusive control of the Government of the United States when the alleged acts were committed and therefore cannot be held liable for their actions.

It looks as if when the acts are committed by agents of the government they are considered human rights violations but when these same acts are perpetrated by PMSC it is “business as usual”.

The human rights violation perpetrated by private military and security companies are indications of the threat posed to the foundations of democracy itself by the privatization of inherently public functions such as the monopoly of the legitimate use of force. In this connection I cannot help but to refer to the final speech of President Eisenhower.

In 1961, President Eisenhower warned the American public opinion against the growing danger of a military industrial complex stating: “(…) we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together”.

Fifty years later, on 8 September 2001, Donald Rumsfeld in his speech in the Department of Defence warned the militaries of the Pentagon against “an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America (…) Let’s make no mistake: The modernization of the Department of Defense is (…) a matter of life and death, ultimately, every American’s. (…) The adversary. (…) It’s the Pentagon bureaucracy. (…)That’s why we’re here today challenging us all to wage an all-out campaign to shift Pentagon’s resources from bureaucracy to the battlefield, from tail to the tooth. We know the adversary. We know the threat. And with the same firmness of purpose that any effort against a determined adversary demands, we must get at it and stay at it. Some might ask, how in the world could the Secretary of Defense attack the Pentagon in front of its people? To them I reply, I have no desire to attack the Pentagon; I want to liberate it. We need to save it from itself.”

Rumsfeld should have said the shift from the Pentagon’s resources from bureaucracy to the private sector. Indeed, that shift had been accelerated by the Bush Administration: the number of persons employed by contract which had been outsourced (privatized) by the Pentagon was already four times more than at the Department of Defense.

It is not anymore a military industrial complex but as Noam Chomsky has indicated “it’s just the industrial system operating under one or another pretext”.

The articles of the Washington Post “Top Secret America: A hidden world, growing beyond control”, by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin (19 July 2010) show the extent that “The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work”.

The investigation’s findings include that some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States; and that an estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances. A number of private military and security companies are among the security and intelligence agencies mentioned in the report of the Washington Post.

The Working Group received information from several sources that up to 70 per cent of the budget of United States intelligence is spent on contractors. These contracts are classified and very little information is available to the public on the nature of the activities carried out by these contractors.

The privatization of war has created a structural dynamic, which responds to a commercial logic of the industry.

A short look at the careers of the current managers of BAE Systems, as well as on their address-books, confirms we are not any longer dealing with a normal corporation, but with a cartel uniting high tech weaponry (BAE Systems, United Defence Industries, Lockheed Martin), with speculative financiers (Lazard Frères, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank), together with raw material cartels (British Petroleum, Shell Oil) with on the ground, private military and security companies[14].

The majority of the private military and security companies has been created or are managed by former militaries or ex-policemen for whom it is big business. Just to give an example MPRI (Military Professional Resources Incorporation) was created by four former generals of the United States Army when they were due for retirement[15]. The same is true for Blackwater and its affiliate companies or subsidiaries, which employ former directors of the C.I.A.[16]. Social Scientists refer to this phenomenon as the Rotating Door Syndrome.

The use of security contractors is expected to grow as American forces shrink. A July report by the Commission on Wartime Contracting, a panel established by Congress, estimated that the State Department alone would need more than double the number of contractors it had protecting the American Embassy and consulates in Iraq.

“Without contractors: (1) the military engagement would have had to be smaller—a strategically problematic alternative; (2) the United States would have had to deploy its finite number of active personnel for even longer tours of duty -a politically dicey and short-sighted option; (3) the United States would have had to consider a civilian draft or boost retention and recruitment by raising military pay significantly—two politically untenable options; or (4) the need for greater commitments from other nations would have arisen and with it, the United States would have had to make more concessions to build and sustain a truly multinational effort. Thus, the tangible differences in the type of war waged, the effect on military personnel, and the need for coalition partners are greatly magnified when the government has the option to supplement its troops with contractors”[17].

The military cannot do without them. There are more contractors over all than actual members of the military serving in the worsening war in Afghanistan.

CONCLUSIONS OF THE SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE impact of Private Security Contracting on U.S. Goals in Afghanistan[18]

Conclusion I: The proliferation of private security personnel in Afghanistan is inconsistent with the counterinsurgency strategy. In May 2010 the U.S. Central Command’s Armed Contractor Oversight Directorate reported that there were more than 26,000 private security contractor personnel operating in Afghanistan. Many of those private security personnel are associated with armed groups that operate outside government control.

Conclusion 2: Afghan warlords and strongmen operating as force providers to private security contractors have acted against U.S. and Afghan government interests. Warlords and strongmen associated with U.S.-funded security contractors have been linked to anti Coalition activities, murder, bribery, and kidnapping. The Committee’s examination of the U.S. funded security contract with ArmorGroup at Shindand Airbase in Afghanistan revealed that ArmorGroup relied on a series of warlords to provide armed men to act as security, guards at the Airbase.

Open-ended intergovernmental working group established by the HR Council

Because of their impact in the enjoyment of human rights the Working Group on mercenaries in its 2010 reports to the UN Human Rights Council and General Assembly has recommended a legally binding instrument regulating and monitoring their activities at the national and international level.

The motion to create an open ended intergovernmental working group has been the object of lengthy negotiations, in the Human Rights Council, led by South Africa in order to accommodate the concerns of the Western Group, but primarily those of the United States and the United Kingdom and of a lot a pressure exerted in the capitals of African countries supporting the draft resolution. The text of the resolution was weakened in order to pass the resolution by consensus. But even so the position of the Western States has been a “fin de non recevoir”.

The resolution was adopted by a majority of 32 in favour, 12 against and 3 abstentions. Among the supporters of this initiative are four out of the five members of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa) in addition to the African Group, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Arab Group.

The adoption of this resolution opens an interesting process in the UN Human Rights Council where civil society can participate in the elaboration of an international framework on the regulation, monitoring and oversight of the activities of private military and security companies. The new open ended intergovernmental working group will be the forum for all stakeholders to receive inputs, not only the draft text of a possible convention and the elements elaborated by the UN Working Group on mercenaries but also of other initiatives such as the proposal submitted to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Montreux Document and the international code of conduct being elaborated under the Swiss Initiative.

However, the negative vote of the delegations of the Western Group indicates that the interests of the new staggering security industry — its annual market revenue is estimated to be over USD one hundred billion — have been quite well defended as was the case in a number of other occasions. It also shows that Western governments will be absent from the start in a full in-depth discussion of the issues raised by the activities of PMSC.

We urge all States to support the process initiated by the Council by designating their representatives to the new open-ended intergovernmental working group, which will hold its first session in 2011, and to continue a process of discussions regarding a legally binding instrument.

The participation of the UK and USA main exporters of these activities (it is estimated at 70% the industry of security in these two countries) as well as other Western countries where the new industry is expanding is of particular importance.

The Working Group also urges the United States Government to implement the recommendations we made, in particular, to:

support the Congress Stop Outsourcing Security (SOS) Act, which clearly defines the functions which are inherently governmental and that cannot be outsourced to the private sector;

rescind immunity to contractors carrying out activities in other countries under bilateral agreements;

carry out prompt and effective investigation of human rights violations committed by PMSCs and prosecute alleged perpetrators;

ensure that the oversight of private military and security contractors is not outsourced to PMSCs;
establish a specific system of federal licensing of PMSCs for their activities abroad;

set up a vetting procedure for awarding contracts to PMSCs;

ensure that United States criminal jurisdiction applies to private military and security companies contracted by the Government to carry out activities abroad; and

respond to pending communications from the Working Group.

The United Nations Human Rights Council, under the Universal Periodic Review, initiated a review in November 2010 in Geneva, focussing on the human rights record of the United States. The above article is an edited version of the presentation given by Jose L. Gomez del Prado in Geneva on 3 November 2010 at a parallel meeting at the UN Palais des Nations on that occasion.

Notes

[1] Blackwater Worldwide abandoned its tarnished brand name in order to shake its reputation battered by its criticized work in Iraq, renaming its family of two-dozen businesses under the name Xe’, see Mike Baker, ‘Blackwater dumps tarnished brand name’, AP News Break, 13 February 2009.

[2] URG, an Australian private military and security company, uses a number of ex military Chileans to provide security to the Australian Embassy in Baghdad. Recently one of those “private guards” shot himself, ABC News, reported by La Tercera, Chile, 16 September 2010.

[3]J.Mendes & S Mitchell, “Who is Unity Resources Group?”, ABC News Australia, 16 September 2010.

[4] Case 8:08-cv-01696-PJM, Document 103, Filed 07/29/10. Defendants have filed Motions to Dismiss on a number of grounds. They argue, among others, that the suit must be dismissed in its entirety because they are immune under the laws of war, because the suit raises non-justiciable political questions, and because they possess derivative sovereign immunity. They seek dismissal of the state law claims on the basis of government contractor immunity, premised on the notion that Plaintiffs cannot proceed on state law claims, which arise out of combatant activities of the military. The United States District Court for the district of Maryland Greenbelt Division has decided to proceed with the case against L-3 Services, Inc. It has not accepted the motions to dismiss allowing the case to go forward.

[5] Mission to the United States of America, Report of the Working Group on the use of mercenaries, United Nations document, A/HRC/15/25/Add.3, paragraphs 22.

[6] James Risen and Mark Mazzetti, “Blackwater guards tied to secret C.I.A. raids ”, New York Times, 10

December 2009.

[7] Adam Ciralsky, “Tycoon, contractor, soldier, spy”, Vanity Fair, January 2010. See also Claim No. HQ08X02800 in the High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division, Binyam Mohamed v. Jeppesen UK Ltd, report of James Gavin Simpson, 26 May 2009.

[8]ACLU Press Release, UN Report Underscores Lack of Accountability and Oversight for Military and Security Contractors, New York, 14 September 2010.

[9] The reports also indicates that the Revenues of DynCorp for 2006 were of USD 1 966 993 and for 2009 USD 3 101 093

[10] Mission to Ecuador, Report of the Working Group on the use of mercenaries, United Nations document, A/HRC/4/42/Add.2

[11] A number of the persons involved in the attempted coup were arrested in Zimbabwe, other in Equatorial Guinea itself the place where the coup was intended to take place to overthrow the government and put another in its place in order to get the rich resources in oil. In 2004 and 2008 the trials took place in Equatorial Guinea of those arrested in connection with this coup attempt, including of the British citizen Simon Mann and the South African Nick du Toit. The President of Equatorial Guinea pardoned all foreigners linked to this coup attempt in November 2009 by. A number of reports indicated that trials failed to comply with international human rights standards and that some of the accused had been subjected to torture and ill-treatment. The government of Equatorial Guinea has three ongoing trials in the United Kingdom, Spain and Lebanon against the persons who were behind the attempted coup.
[12] Report of the Working Group on the use of mercenaries, Mission to Honduras, United Nations document A/HRC/4/42/Add.1.
[13] Wikipedia
[14] Mercenaries without borders by Karel Vereycken, Friday Sep 21st, 2007
[15] Among which General Carl E. Vuono, Chief of the Army during the Gulf War and the invasion of Panama; General Crosbie E. Saint, former Commander in Chief of the  USA Army in Europe and General Ron Griffith. The President of MPRI is General Bantant J. Craddock.
[16] Such as Cofer Black, former Chief of the Counter Terrorism Center; Enrique Prado, former Chief of Operations and Rof Richter, second in command of the Clandestine Services of the Company
[17] Article published in the Spring 2010 issue of the University of Chicago Law Review, titled “Privatization’s Pretensions” by Jon D. Michaels, Acting Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law
[18] INQUIRY INTO THE ROLE AND OVERSIGHT OF PRIVATE SECURITY CONTRACTORS IN AFGHANISTAN, R E P O R T TOGETHER WITH ADDITIONAL VIEWS OF THE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES UNITED STATES SENATE, 28 September 2010

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says Zionism is on the verge of collapse as developments in the region move in line with the aspirations of regional nations.

“Today, the trend of circumstances is making headway to the benefit of nations and in line with the materialization of their cause and a glance at the 50-year history of the presence of Zionists in the region suggests that they are on the downward course of collapse,” Ahmadinejad said.

The Iranian president made the remarks during a meeting with the deputy head of Hamas political bureau, Moussa Abu Marzouk, on Monday.

President Ahmadinejad said that Palestine has been a “decisive issue for the entire region and the world and today the fate of the whole region has been tied to the liberation of the holy al-Quds (Jerusalem).”

The Iranian chief executive further reiterated the Islamic Republic’s support for the oppressed Palestinian nation and their efforts to liberate the occupied territories.

Marzouk, for his part, said that resistance is the sole way to achieve victory against the Zionist regime.

YH/MA/HJL

Amid the surging poverty across the globe, a newly released list of richest people in the world points to the climbing number of billionaires that have control over even more amount of wealth.

The Monday release of the newest list of “the world’s billionaires” in 2013, the US-based Forbes magazine indicates that the number of global billionaires has again registered a record high of 1,426, pointing to an increase of 210 compared to the previous year.

According to the report, these billionaires across the globe have “an aggregate net worth of USD5.4 trillion, up from USD4.6 trillion” in the past year.

The financial magazine further reveals that the US leads the richest people list with 442 billionaires.

East Asia ranks next in the list with 386 billionaires, followed by Europe with 366, the Americas with 129 and the Middle East and Africa with 103 super rich individuals.

The richest person on the list remains to be Mexico’s Carlos Slim Helu, with a reported net worth of USD73 billion, followed by American executive of Microsoft Corporation Bill Gates with reported net worth of USD67 billion.

The report further indicates that the number of female billionaires in the world have also climbed from 104 to 138 within the past year.

The news comes as latest figures on global poverty indicates that at least 80 percent of people across the world live on less than USD10 per day with persistently widening income differentials.

MFB/MFB

The national Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) Corporation has nominated two Iranian screen productions for its International Documentary Awards.

Reza Razavi’s Seconds of Lead and Arash Lahouti’s Trucker and the Fox have been selected to vie at the competition.

Seconds of Lead features the efforts of an Iranian author Narges Abyar on the particular issue of the massacre of demonstrators during the reign of Iran’s last monarch, in 1978.

Lahouti’s Trucker and the Fox screens the life of a truck driver who is a documentarian as well and works on wildlife.

Iranian filmmaker Mohammed-Ali Hashemzehi’s Mokan won the Special Prize of Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Turkey at the 2012 edition of the annual TRT.

The 2013 winners are scheduled to be hailed during a ceremony that will be held in Istanbul on May 13.

Established in 1964, TRT has more than 10 television channels as well as over 10 radio channels.

As the national public broadcaster of Turkey, TRT Corporation organized National Documentary Awards in 2009 and then added the international category in 2010.

TRT International Documentary Film Competition aims to support amateur and professional documentary filmmakers, and to contribute to the development and prevalence of the documentary film genre.

FGP/FGP

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman says if the P5+1 group of six major world powers continues its logical approach, future talks over Tehran’s nuclear energy program can yield results acceptable to both sides.

“The negotiations held between the representatives of our country and the P5+1 (Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States plus Germany) faced a new positive atmosphere,” Ramin Mehmanparast said on Tuesday.

The continuation of this atmosphere could create an acceptable future for mutual understanding on the issue, he added.

The latest round of the talks between Iran and the P5+1 was held in the Kazakh city of Almaty on February 27-28. The two sides agreed to convene again in the city on April 5-6 to continue the talks after holding “expert-level” talks in the Turkish city of Istanbul on March 17-18.

The Iranian official said if Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear activities is recognized, Tehran will allay concerns over the issue in accordance with agreements.

When asked about a request by the UN nuclear chief Yukiya Amano to visit Parchin military site, Mehmanparast said the issue had been raised during the talks between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

“Based on the rights that Iran is entitled to as a committed member of the agency, we should be provided with enough facilities for the continuation of our work, and alongside that, we will pursue the necessary measures to eliminate worries in the form of mutual agreements,” he added.

The United States, Israel and some of their allies have repeatedly accused Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program, with the United States and the EU using this pretext to impose several rounds of illegal unilateral sanctions against Tehran.

Tehran rejects the allegation and maintains that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

MYA/MA/HJL

The Iranian Judiciary’s Human Rights Committee (HRC) has dismissed a recent report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, saying the report aims at intensifying pressure on the Islamic Republic.

This report has been drafted under the influence of certain hostile Western governments to mount psychological and propaganda pressure on Iran and lacks legal credibility, read a Tuesday statement issued by the committee.

In his fourth report in late February, Shaheed once again accused Iran of ‘violations of human rights.’

The report indicates that taking advantage of the weak and flawed structure of the UN for illegitimate and political purposes such as spreading Islamophobia and promoting Western-Zionist unilateralism are still on agenda in the West.

The HRC expressed regret that the UN investigator has failed to even mention the US-led unilateral sanctions against the Iranian nation.

The statement went on to ask if this meaningful silence of the UN rapporteur can be interpreted as consent to the violation of the rights of all Iranians that have been the main target of the illegal sanctions.

The statement added that any reliable report must ensure a transparent, impartial, and logical methodology.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has a transparent constitution, comprehensive laws and a valuable civil framework that will not be distorted by such propagandist tactics under the title of “reporting on human rights” and through abusing the international media, the statement concluded.

On June 17, 2011, the UN Human Rights Council, under pressure from the United States and its allies, named former Maldivian Foreign Minister Ahmed Shaheed as its human rights investigator on Iran.

YH/MA/HJL

Whiny Billionaires in Need of Sequestration

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Posted on Mar 5, 2013

AP/Osamu Honda

In this March 10, 2009 photo, Stephen A Schwarzman, Chairman & CEO, The Blackstone Group discusses “The Global Impact of the Financial Crisis.”

By Robert Scheer

Where is the Occupy movement now that the depravity of the super rich is on full display? 

The suddenly increased national debt is primarily the result of a deep recession caused by the top bankers and hedge fund hustlers of Wall Street, saved from their folly by massive and costly federal intervention. The result has been a season of obscene profit for them, while the rest of the nation has floundered. But instead of making the rich pay, ordinary citizens will be visited with job furloughs and a savaging of public services that often are lifesaving.

Consider two stories this week that make Karl Marx look prescient: one, in The Wall Street Journal, concerns the payout of $1 billion in bonuses to nine private equity executives; the other, under a New York Times headline, states that the jobless recovery has been a boondoggle for corporate profits. “Recovery in U.S. Is Lifting Profits, but Not Adding Jobs,” the headline reads, by way of explaining why the stock market is nearing its unprecedented high while the unemployment picture remains so dismally bleak.

But whenever a politician dares to hold those “fat cats” accountable, as Barack Obama once did, he or she is branded by apologists for the super rich as a socialist engaging in class warfare. The outrage of the entitled as opposed to the despair of the dispossessed is the cultural norm, as evidenced by Stephen Schwarzman, one of the more egregious of those private equity billionaires.

What is truly outrageous about Schwarzman is not the $213.3 million he got last year from Blackstone, the private equity company where he has long been the CEO. Heck, he “earned” that much the previous year and has been raking it in since he co-founded the company back in 1985. What is startling, and it goes to the hubris of America’s most wealthy at the heart of the current sequester impasse, is that he thinks the more than $1 billion he and eight other private equity executives got in compensation last year should continue to be taxed at the “carried interest” rate of 15 percent, rather than the 35 percent reserved for ordinary income. 

When President Obama first threatened to end that weird tax break for the top strata of the super rich back in 2010, it sent Schwarzman into a tizzy, complaining “It’s a war. … It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.” At the time, Schwarzman had accumulated a fortune of $4.7 billion–now a cool $2 billion more, according to Forbes–hardly the fate of those occupied by Hitler. 

His is a company that invested heavily in the distressed housing market, exploiting the pain of those losing their homes to foreclosure, as he crowed in a conference call with investors, reported on the Blackstone website, about “still seeing attractive opportunities in many places in the world including … distressed and over-leveraged real estate. … ” Wallowing in that sad world of the foreclosed, Schwarzman bragged “we’re the largest in the world.” 

Last year Blackstone spent about $1.5 billion purchasing 10,000 foreclosed homes. “This is the kind of thing that happens once, every once in a while, where you see something that’s a market-turning trend and we are loading the boat,” Schwarzman said in an earnings call Oct. 18. Those foreclosed homes are typical of the “alternative assets” in which Blackstone has specialized.

For private equity companies like Blackstone, the economic crisis and the federal government’s response to it have ushered in unprecedented boom times that dwarfed the ill gotten gains of their counterparts in the much more regulated commercial banking world. “In contrast,” The Wall Street Journal reported, “private-equity firms have rebounded strongly in the last couple of years, helped by low interest rates and more appetite for risk among big investors who pour money into deals with the firms.”

But the other fat cats in the corporate world are doing quite well in comparison to the fate of regular Americans. Although corporate earnings have jumped at an annual rate of 20.1 percent since 2008, The New York Times reported, the disposable income of America’s wage earners increased yearly by a scant 1.4 percent after allowing for inflation. Corporations’ profits as a share of national income are now at their highest point in more than 60 years, while the income of their employees is at a 45-year low.

While the country now debates the causes and cures for the enormous public debt runup since the onset of the Great Recession, it is quite clear that a national bipartisan policy of bailing out Wall Street has succeeded splendidly, but at the expense of the average citizen.

It is brutally immoral that the proposed cuts in federal spending now be imposed on the victims of the meltdown rather than the perpetrators of their financial ruin. Occupy Wall Street is gone, but the headline in Monday’s WSJ states “New York City Leads Jump in Homeless.”

Click here to check out Robert Scheer’s new book, “The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street.” Keep up with Robert Scheer’s latest columns, interviews, tour dates and more at www.truthdig.com/robert_scheer.

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Sequester, Held in Contempt

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Posted on Mar 4, 2013

By Eugene Robinson

I hate the sequester, beginning with its name. “Sequester” is a verb, not a noun. This ridiculous exercise is not just unwise and unproductive, but ungrammatical as well.

I hate the way the sequester diverts attention from issues that actually matter, like unemployment, gun violence, climate change, failing schools and the need to spur economic growth. I hate the way it heightens our insularity at a time when we really ought to be paying attention to the rest of the world. Remember Syria? Dictator Bashar al-Assad is still slaughtering civilians left and right. Wasn’t he supposed to be gone by now?

I hate the sequester’s artificiality. With all the nation’s problems, our leaders created a new one for political reasons–and then, for those same political reasons, they didn’t even try to solve it. 

I hate the sequester’s essential ambiguity, its Janus-faced dual nature. It is punishing, cruel and counterproductive, as the White House insists; and it is also no big deal, as Republicans contend.

President Obama is correct when he says that the sequester’s blunt-instrument cuts will cause needless hardship, even if the administration has been alarmist and flat-out wrong with some of its warnings.

The president’s claim that janitors at the U.S. Capitol would receive a pay cut and Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s report that some teachers have already gotten “pink slips” both were awarded Four Pinocchios by The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” columnist, Glenn Kessler. This roughly translates as “not even remotely true.”

But the administration’s dire warnings of airport congestion and flight delays are plausible, Kessler found, and perhaps inevitable. And while there have been no immediate furloughs or layoffs–in schools, government agencies or firms dependent on government contracts–the math suggests there will be.

However, Republicans are correct when they say: Come on, get real, we’re talking about an across-the-board cut of $85 billion, just 2 percent of the budget. While they’re wrong to claim that a cut of this magnitude will be painless, they’re right to point out that the republic will not crumble into dust.

Medicare will see no more than a 2 percent cut, while Medicaid and Social Security will be untouched. Since these programs are so big and costly, other parts of the budget will have to face much deeper cuts to make up the total $85 billion savings. Defense spending is slated to be hit hardest, with an annualized budget reduction of nearly 10 percent.

Republicans would be right to note that the Pentagon will still eat up about half of all “discretionary” federal spending–and that the United States’ position as the world’s leading military power would remain unchallenged. But they don’t want to point this out because the GOP is supposed to be the strong-on-defense party that never met a gazillion-dollar weapons system it didn’t like.

Which brings me to another thing I hate about the sequester: the political incompetence and miscalculation that produced it. To quote baseball legend Casey Stengel: Can’t anybody here play this game?

Obama figured that Republicans would be so horrified at the prospect of deep defense cuts that they would make a deal on his terms, even after being forced to accept a humiliating defeat–and a modest tax increase for the wealthy–in the “fiscal cliff” negotiations two months ago. 

The president apparently didn’t foresee that the Republican Party’s activist base would approach the sequester deadline full of outrage, not resignation. And neither he nor the GOP leadership seems to have fully grasped how opinion within the party has shifted on defense spending. On shrinking the Pentagon, many tea party Republicans are closer to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party than to their own party’s establishment.

To review: Entitlement spending is largely untouched, and defense spending isn’t the sacred cow it once was. Thus neither party has an incentive to make concessions, at least until the true impact of the cuts is felt. Which will take time.

What I really hate about the sequester is the way it confirms the conventional wisdom that “both sides are wrong.” This is usually the kind of lazy pseudoanalysis that drives me up the wall. But it took both Obama and the Republicans to get us into this mess–and nobody has a clue how to get us out of it.

Eugene Robinson’s e-mail address is eugenerobinson(at)washpost.com.
 
© 2013, Washington Post Writers Group

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by Frack Off

Following in the wake of shale gas and coal-bed methane (CBM) extraction is the spectre of underground coal gasification (UCG). But if we adopt these wholesale we could close off any hope of stepping back from the climate change brink, says campaign group Frack Off

The earthquakes caused by the first attempt to frack a shale gas well in the UK, almost two years ago, were a wake up call that has implications far beyond the damage caused to Cuadrilla’s well-bore. When your plan for getting gas is fracturing rock two miles under the Lancashire countryside, you know the cheap and easy energy is long gone.

The signs have been there for many years, from oil rigs pushing out into deeper and deeper water to the vast tar sands mining operations in Alberta, getting energy is taking increasing amounts of effort. People have been slow to connect the dots but now with the exploitation of unconventional gas threatening to spread thousands of wells, pipelines and other industrial infrastructure across the country, the issue of this relentless rise in energy extraction effort is finally beginning to get the attention that it deserves.

Like yeast growing in a vat, the fundamental question has always been whether industrial society will be poisoned by it’s own waste (alcohol in the case of yeast) before it runs out of resources (sugar). While significant attention has been paid to the relentless build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, worrying about running out fossil fuels has been very much a fringe activity.

The answer to this question has now become somewhat clearer, though it is much more nuanced than most people would expect. Rather than destruction by environmental crisis (“climate change”) or economic crisis (“peak oil”) we face an intricately linked combination of the two (“extreme energy”). This is not to deny the importance of either climate change or peak oil, but they not only have the same cause but are happening in the context of each other, so neither can be viewed in isolation.

Unsustainable energy

As our society’s unsustainable consumption of energy depletes easier to extract resources, it is driving the exploitation of evermore extreme and damaging energy sources. From fracking to the push to build a string of new biomass power stations which will devour the world’s remaining forests and the plans for a wave of new, more dangerous, nuclear power stations, energy extraction is becoming much more destructive.

In the past the dominant environmental impact of exploiting fossil fuels was the impact of the carbon emissions associated with burning them but as the effort required for energy extraction has grown, so have the environmental consequences of the extraction processes themselves. The poster child for this effect are the Athabasca tar sands in Alberta, but across the globe, from the Arctic Ocean to the rainforests of Borneo, energy extraction is driving increasing environmental destruction.

A common propaganda tool is to portray such concerns as a stark choice between economic growth and environmental preservation, but in reality extreme energy is as damaging to people’s economic well-being as it is to the environment.

As extraction effort grows, a greater fraction of economic activity must be allocated to the energy sector. In a market economy the mechanism by which this is achieved is, of course, rising energy prices, which will have the effect of diverting resources away from other activities.

In the last decade the fraction of the global economy devoted to energy extraction has almost tripled, to over 10 percent of GDP. If the use of more extreme extraction methods increases then an even greater proportion of the worlds resources must be sacrificed to these efforts.

This path leads to a world where energy extraction dominates the economy, and the majority of the population lives in its shadow. Look at the Niger Delta to see what such a world looks like.

The greatest threat

In the UK unconventional gas is by far the greatest threat. Despite the North Sea in terminal decline and increasing pressure on imports there is an insidious push to increase our dependence on gas. Fracking is seen as the way to achieve this but even if is feasible, it would require drilling of tens of thousands of wells and the devastation of the huge swathes of countryside. This will result in toxic and radioactive water contamination, air pollution, severe health effects in human and animals and increased greenhouse gas emissions all for a very short term hit of extremely expensive gas.

Following in the wake of shale gas and coal-bed methane (CBM) is the even more dire spectre of underground coal gasification (UCG) which involves partially burning coal underground and bringing the resulting gases to the surface. UCG has an even worse record of environmental contamination and could potentially emit enough carbon to raise global temperatures by up to 10 degrees Celsius.

A wholesale adoption of fracking and associated methods would close off perhaps our last chance to step back from the brink. Extreme energy requires a dedication to energy production to the exclusion of all else, which would radically alter the structure of our society.

Increasingly, more expensive energy infrastructure must be built, which will divert huge amounts resources away from worthwhile activities. It will quickly become the case that the largest single consumer of the energy produced will be energy extraction processes themselves. We will end up on a treadmill running faster and faster just to stand still as everything falls apart around us.

The decision we face is between prioritising abstract notions of profit and growth or the real well-being of communities and ecosystems. The two can no longer pretend to coexist.

Useful Links

Frack Off: www.frack-off.org.uk

Gun Lobby Sponsors NASCAR Race

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Posted on Mar 4, 2013

Texas Motor Speedway

It’s hard to believe NASCAR didn’t already have a race named after the NRA. Get ready for the NRA 500. Seriously, that’s what it’s called.

It used to be the Texas 500, before it was the Samsung Mobile 500. Now it’s sponsored by the National Rifle Association for somewhere, it is estimated, “in the high six- to low seven-figure range.”

The Verge explains:

Samsung, the race’s sponsor since 2002, elected not to renew its sponsorship, according to The Sporting News. The NRA’s sponsorship agreement with Texas Motor Speedway runs for one year with an option to renew; NASCAR has final approval of all sponsorship deals on its circuits.

The NRA’s sponsorship of NASCAR’s Texas 500 comes at an uncomfortable moment for both organizations. After the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, the NRA briefly retreated from public view, before roaring back with a seemingly-unhinged defense from its executive vice president and CEO Wayne LaPierre. LaPierre has blamed popular video games, books, and movies for creating a culture of violence in America – but crucially, not crash-filled racing events that intermittently cause injury and death for everyone from drivers to spectators. Meanwhile, NASCAR, which co-sponsored Michael Waltrip’s Sandy Hook School Support Toyota car at Daytona in honor of the elementary school students killed by a man with an assault rifle in Newtown, is now in bed with the leading defender of gun rights in the world.

–Posted by Peter Z. Scheer. Follow him on Twitter: @peesch.

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How California Turned Its Own Sequester Into Higher Taxes and Economic Growth

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Posted on Mar 4, 2013

Neon Tommy

California Gov. Jerry Brown.

If President Obama follows the example of Gov. Jerry Brown in California, he can use devastating budget cuts to deal conservatives a crushing blow, argues David Sirota.

Although Democrats have a tight grip on the Golden State, Republican lawmakers have historically been able to keep taxes low thanks to a hocus pocus budgeting process and the anti-tax fervor of residents.

Gov. Jerry Brown, who campaigned on the promise to restore adult supervision to the budget, was faced with the choice of making tough cuts or papering over California’s shortfalls. Brown made the cuts, but he also made the case that Republicans were to blame, and he used austerity as a teaching moment (at the expense of the most vulnerable Californians, it must be said) and was able to persuade voters to pass their own tax increases to help fund popular programs like education.

The results are in, writes Sirota:

Last month, California budget officials reported a surplus. Meanwhile, following the tax hikes, Reuters reports that the state’s “job growth tops the national average, unemployment has fallen to below double-digit levels for the first time in nearly four years.” Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that “California’s credit rating on its general-obligation bonds was raised by Standard & Poor’s for the first time since 2006.”

These results, if they hold, come with the prospect of tectonic political change because they so clearly counter the standard GOP talking points about budgets and taxes. Yes, rather than tax hikes harming the economy, the tax hikes and California economic recovery are happening simultaneously (and Brown’s poll numbers have hit a record high).

The Salon scribe (and syndicated columnist) says President Obama now faces his Jerry Brown moment: “Will Obama and congressional Democrats follow the Brown model? Will they cite the cuts to fundamentally challenge the anti-tax zeitgeist that has dominated American politics since the 1980s? Will they, in short, maximize the opportunity?”

–Posted by Peter Z. Scheer. Follow him on Twitter: @peesch.

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Jeb Bush Reverses Immigration Stance, Brian Williams ‘Disappointed’ With U.S., and More

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Posted on Mar 4, 2013

White House Makes Call: Responding to a petition on the White House site We the People, the Obama administration Monday said it should be legal for users to unlock their cellphones without getting carrier permission first. The petition, titled “Make Unlocking Cell Phones Legal” was posted in late January, just two days before it became illegal for Americans to unlock their phones without first getting the consent of their phone service provider. In the response, R. David Edelman, a White house senior adviser on Internet issues, wrote that neither “criminal law nor technological locks should prevent consumers from switching carriers when they are no longer bound by a service agreement or other obligation.” (Read more)

Filling the Cabinet: On Monday, President Obama announced nominees to head two crucial departments in his administration, energy and the Environmental Protection Agency. Obama nominated nuclear physicist Ernest Monizair to become the next energy secretary, and air quality expert Gina McCarthy to lead the EPA. If confirmed, they will replace Steven Chu and Lisa Jackson–both of whom decided not to serve another term in the administration–respectively. Obama hopes his two nominees, along with interior secretary pick Sally Jewell, will enact his second term energy agenda. (Read more)

Yearn to Earn: A pair of Democratic congressional lawmakers, Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin and California Rep. George Miller, are planning to introduce legislation that would raise the federal minimum wage from $7.75 an hour to $10.10. That’s a bigger increase than the one President Obama called for in last month’s State of the Union speech. The federal minimum wage is definitely due for an increase; the last time it was boosted was in 2007. (Read more)

Going Backward: Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has made a major flip on the hot button issue of immigration reform. Bush, who once said he supported a pathway to citizenship or legal residency, argues in his new book that creating such a route would only encourage more immigrants to come into this country illegally. “It is absolutely vital to the integrity of our immigration system that actions have consequences–in this case, that those who violated the law can remain but cannot obtain the cherished fruits of citizenship,” Bush and his co-author, conservative attorney Clint Bolick, write in “Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution.” “To do otherwise would signal once again that people who circumvent the system can still obtain the full benefits of American citizenship.” The book is due out Tuesday. (Read more)

Not Stepping Down: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal stalwart on the Supreme Court, has no plans to step down in the near future, the longtime justice told The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin. Ginsburg, who turns 80 this month, says she intends to stay on the high court for as long as she “can do the job full steam.” She added, “as long as I think I have the candlepower, I will do it. And I figure next year for certain. After that, who knows?” (Read more)

Audio of the Day: NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams isn’t always shy when expressing his viewpoint, even if they end up raising some eyebrows. Appearing on Alec Baldwin’s podcast, “Here’s the Thing,” the oft-candid newsman definitely made one such remark. When asked by the “30 Rock” star if he had political opinions. Williams responded: “I sometimes don’t know. I have the same disappointments. In my patriotism, as a great man once said, I yield to no one. I love this country. I love the American idea. I have profound disappointments in my country.”

–Posted by Tracy Bloom.

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A Finnish hygiene company that “inadvertently” printed quotes from the Bible on its toilet rolls has drawn outrage from several clerics who found the creative idea unwitty and disrespectful.

The company, Metsa Tissue, had to apologize for the mishap and remove lines from the Gospel of Matthew and First Corinthians it accidentally placed on its toilet paper. The manufacturer says that it did not mean to insult anyone. On the contrary, it tried to spread “love and joy.”

Back in spring the firm, which produces the Lambi brand, asked its customers via Facebook to send short texts about love to their page on the popular networking service.

The company then picked best lines — including Jesus’ “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” – and published them on toilet tissues sold in Norway, Denmark and Sweden. “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,” was also approved as suitable to make TP users happy before being flushed away.

The new product appeared to be quite a success in Scandinavia, writes Vart Land newspaper’s website.

The manufacturers only realized their mistake when feedback from some displeased ‘readers’ followed. 

“People like to read small, happy messages while sitting on the toilet,” Christina von Trampe, a spokeswoman for Metsa Tissue told Reuters. She underlined that the “vast majority of the feedback” was positive adding that the company’s intention was to “spread love and joy, not religious messages.”

However, Laila Riksaasen Dahl, the Bishop of Tunsberg in protestant Norway, did not appreciate the idea of placing lines from the Holy book on toilet tissues.

“This is bad taste and shows a lack of respect,” she told Vart Land. 

Metsa Tissue’s von Trampe apologized to believers and noted that had they known where quotes come from, they would not have printed them.

Meanwhile, some say that the very possibility of the God’s words being placed on toilet rolls is a positive sign: it shows that the society is free. And to a large extent that is thanks to Christianity, believes Morten Thomsen Højsgaard, the head of the Danish Bible Society. He underlined though that freedom “must be used with responsibility.”

Happy Birthday: Apple Is Making a Watch

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Posted on Mar 4, 2013

Ruben Schade

The old iPod Nano being used as a watch.

Apple reportedly has 100 designers trying to figure out the most profitable and elegant way to colonize your wrist.

The watch project is said to be a personal fetish of Apple’s famed chief designer Jony Ive and will reportedly run a version of the same mobile operating system that powers the iPhone and iPad.

Bloomberg first reported the story, which has since been confirmed by The Verge.

The idea of an Apple watch has captured consumer imagination since the company released a Nano music player small enough to be worn on the wrist. Since then, the Nano has been redesigned and Apple watchers have been more focused on the company’s often-rumored television. But, as Bloomberg points out, the watch business is more profitable than the TV business, and mobile computing is something Apple already does well.

Impatient shoppers with $150 to spend on nerdy wristwear can already buy the Pebble watch, which uses an e-Paper screen and got its start on crowdsourcing site Kickstarter.

–Posted by Peter Z. Scheer. Follow him on Twitter: @peesch.

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A public inquiry into allegations that British soldiers in Iraq murdered 20 unarmed prisoners and tortured 5 others has begun in London, with further legal arguments expected to slow the inquiry in the deaths of the Iraqi men nine years ago.

The Al-Sweady inquiry will examine claims that Iraqi prisoners were tortured by British soldiers following the Battle of Danny Boy in Maysan province, southern Iraq in the summer of 2004.

Evidence has also come to light that several of the corpses suffered severe mutilation. Iraqi death certificates recorded that one man had allegedly had his penis removed while another two bodies were missing eyes.

Several of the corpses were also said to have signs of torture when they were handed back to their families by British personnel at Camp Abu Naji. 

However, there is major dispute between the British Ministry of Defense (MoD) and the families of the dead Iraqi men over the way in which the deaths occurred.

“The Iraqi witnesses say that the evidence points to there having been a number of Iraqi men having been taken into camp Abu Naji alive by the British military on 14th May, and who were handed back to their families dead the next day,” said Jonathan Acton Davis QC, counsel to the inquiry.

“The military say the evidence points to 20 Iraqi dead having been recovered from the battle and handed back to their families the next day,” he added, continuing that the two sides couldn’t even agree about the number of those killed or captured, or their identities.

On May 14th 2004, the troops embroiled in the allegations were involved in a fierce battle known as Danny Boy, the name of a permanent vehicle check point, which was on route six in Iraq. 

A group of insurgents launched an attack against vehicles of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. It soon developed into a fierce firefight, which also involved soldiers from the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment, with many Iraqis shot dead and two British soldiers being wounded.

The Iraqi dead would normally have been left on the battlefield but British soldiers were allegedly told to try and identify an insurgent thought to be involved in the murder of 6 British soldiers a year earlier in 2003.

One of the first jobs of the inquiry is to try and establish whether the 20 Iraqis were killed in battle as the MoD claims or if in fact they were captured alive and then unlawfully killed.

The inquiry will also try to determine if five men taken prisoner following the battle of Danny Boy were mistreated at a second British base in Shaibah, near Basara, between 14 May and 23 September 2004.

The al-Sweady inquiry as it is known is named after Hamid al-Sweady, a 19 year old alleged victim.

The inquiry was set up after former prisoners and relatives of the dead men took their case to the High Court in London in February 2008. They are entitled to an independent inquiry because the UK is a signatory of the European convention on human rights.

But even as the enquiry opened on Monday, there were signs of legal disagreements to come. Lawyers for the relatives of the dead Iraqis are saying that its terms of reference are too narrow, while the MoD is arguing that it should be limited to allegations of mistreatment that were already decided in previous High Court rulings.

This is potentially the most embarrassing inquiry since the killing of 26-year-old Iraqi citizen Baha Mousa while in British custody in Basara in 2003. He was severely beaten on suspicion of being an insurgent. The Ministry of Defense never accepted any liability for Mousa’s death.

According to Christpher Stanley of the UK-based Rights Watch group, “today [the MoD] is trying to manage it and put a cap on it. These are people getting away with grave human rights violations — including killing — without punishment or due process of law. “

So far the MoD has not come out well in the proceedings. The inquiry was ordered by then defense secretary Bob Ainsworth, after high court judges found that the MoD had made “serious breaches” of its duty.

Furthermore, British Foreign Minister William Hague has written a private memo to other ministers on March 1, urging them not to discuss Iraq and its legality in the run-up to the tenth anniversary of the NATO-led invasion.

Investigators have faced problems trying to access MoD documents concerning events covering the battle of Danny Boy and at Camp Abu Naj.

In 2010 investigators found in files of the Royal Military Police a number of relevant papers which had been entirely absent from evidence disclosed by the MoD in previous court proceedings. While another 9 files were handed over by the MoD in 2011, a six week search by investigators of MoD archives found 600 documents that were relevant to the case.

Last week the inquiry was still waiting to receive emails from the MoD about a visit to the Shaibah base by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The inquiry has already cost the taxpayer £15 million and that is expected to double. Up to 200 military witnesses will be called and 45 Iraqis will give evidence through a video link from Beirut.

The Above image of the McDonald label, Copyright McDonald’s 2011

This article was first published in The Ecologist

In the first of a major new series following on from the ground breaking Behind the Label, Peter Salisbury takes a look at one of the biggest brands in the world — McDonald’s — and asks: has the burger giant done enough to clean-up its act?

Chances are that you have had a McDonald’s meal in the past or if not, you certainly know a lot of people who have. It’s the biggest fast food chain in the world, with 32,000 outlets in 117 countries. The clown-fronted burger outfit employs a staggering 1.7 million people, and in the first three months of 2011 alone it made $1.2bn in profits on the back of revenues of $6.1bn. The company has come in for huge amounts of criticism over the past 20 years, for the impact it has on the diets of people worldwide, its labour practices and the impact its business has had on the environment. From Fast Food Nation to Supersize Me by the way of the McLibel trials of the 1990s, plenty has been written and broadcast to tarnish the golden arches’ shine.

Declining sales in the early 2000s, which saw franchises being shut for the first time in the company’s history, caused a major rethink of the way McDonald’s operates, and its recent rhetoric has been that of a firm with a newly discovered zeal for ethical end eco-friendly practices, garnering praise from champions as unlikely as Greenpeace and the Carbon Trust. But is this just marketing hype or has McDonald’s had a genuine change of heart?

The answer is yes and no. First of all, because of the way the company is run, it’s hard to generalise. Around 80 per cent of McDonald’s outlets are run by franchisees who have to meet standards set by the company, but who can — and do — go above and beyond them. Further, McDonald’s branches are run by country and regional offices, each of which are subject to domestic standards. The production of much of the raw products which go into McDonald’s meals, from burger patties to sauces, is subcontracted to different suppliers, making it impossible to assess the company in terms of a single golden standard. Its sole global supplier (for soft drinks) is Coca-Cola.

The UK branch of the company has certainly made great strides since the 1990s, when it became embroiled in the 1997 McLibel court case, in which McDonald’s Corporation and McDonald’s Restaurants Limited sued Helen Steel and Dave Morris, a former gardener and a postman, for libel after they published a series of leaflets denouncing the company.

Exploitation

The judge overseeing the case decided that, although the pair could not prove some of their accusations — that McDonald’s destroyed rainforests, caused starvation in the third world or disease and cancer in developed countries — it could be agreed that the company exploited children, falsely advertised their food as nutritious, indirectly sponsored cruelty to animals and paid their workers low wages: a major blow to the brand in an age of increasing consumer-consciousness.

Since then, the UK branch has committed to a number of initiatives to improve its image, running an aggressive marketing campaign at the same time to portray itself as an ethical employer which is both farmer and eco-friendly. It has also moved to become more transparent, putting ingredients lists for all of its products on its website and setting up another website, Make Up Your Own Mind, inviting customers to voice concerns and publishing accounts of critics’ visits to its production sites.

All of this should be taken with a grain of salt however. It’s not surprising that a multibillion-dollar corporation, which has been hurt in the past by concerns over its practices, will do its utmost to sell itself as a reformed character. And it’s suspicious that any web search of the company brings up a hit list of sites almost exclusively maintained by the company.

Yet research conducted by the Ecologist shows that in many areas the company has improved its record of ethical and environmental awareness over the last decade. The company’s burgers, for example, are now 100 per cent beef, and contain no preservatives or added flavours whatsoever. All of McDonald’s UK’s burgers are provided by Germany’s Esca Food Solutions, which claims to maintain rigorous standards at its abattoirs and production plants, and which works closely with 16,000 independent farmers in the UK and Ireland to maintain high standards.

‘No GM’

Since the early 2000s, McDonald’s UK has maintained that none of its beef, bacon or chicken is fed genetically modified grain. Farmers working for McDonald’s have independently confirmed to the Ecologist and Esca that they have a ‘decent’ working relationship with the company.

In 2007, Esca won the UK Food Manufacturing Excellence Awards for its burgers, and in 2010 McDonald’s announced that it was launching a three-year study into reducing the carbon emissions caused by the cattle used in its burgers (cattle account for four per cent of the UK’s emissions). Meanwhile, all of the fish used in Filet-O-Fish and Fish Finger meals in Europe are sourced from sustainable fisheries certified by the Marine Stewardship Council. Fries are largely sourced from McCain’s, the world’s biggest potato supplier, and McDonald’s claims that the vast majority are produced in the UK, again by independent farmers. The fries are prepared in-store and are cooked in vegetable oil containing no hydrogenated fats. At the beginning of the potato-growing season, dextrose — a form of glucose — is added as a sweetener, and salt is added after cooking (the company claims to have reduced the amount of salt used by 23 per cent since 2008).

The bread for McDonald’s buns and muffins is sourced from a single unnamed supplier based in Heywood, Manchester, and Banbury, Oxfordshire. McDonald’s would not comment on where it sources the grain for the bakeries but says once more that it does not buy genetically modified crops. Meanwhile, the company has been working with its suppliers and franchise-holders to make sure that they are as energy efficient as possible. In 2010, The Carbon Trust awarded McDonald’s its Carbon Trust Standard for reducing its overall carbon emissions by 4.5 per cent between 2007 and 2009. The company is currently experimenting with a series of energy initiatives based around turning its waste, from packaging — which is 80 per cent recycled — to vegetable oil into energy.

Certification

Since 2007, the company — which is one of the world’s biggest coffee retailers — has committed to selling only Rainforest Alliance certified coffee. Although the certification body has certainly been responsible for improving conditions and practices in many farming operations worldwide, it has been the subject of controversy — most recently after an undercover investigation by the Ecologist revealed allegations of sexual harassment and poor conditions for some workers at its certified Kericho tea plantation in Kenya which supplies the PG Tips brand.

Certification issues aside, McDonald’s has undoubtedly become considerably better at taking criticism. In 2006, Greenpeace activists stormed McDonald’s restaurants across the world dressed in chicken suits in protest at the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, which they attributed to greedy soy producers — who in turn were selling their produce to chicken farms, of whom McDonald’s was a major customer. They subsequently praised the fast food chain for leading a unified response among soy buyers, pressuring producers to adopt a ‘zero destruction’ approach to growing their crops. Despite praise from Greenpeace, the Carbon Trust and personalities such as Jamie Oliver who have praised the company for its ethical stance on meat and buying its produce locally, the firm is by no means perfect.

One of the biggest incongruencies in its newly discovered zeal for ethical practices comes from its seemingly differing approaches to the conditions chickens live in depending on whether they produce eggs or are used as meat in Chicken McNuggets and similar meals. The firm proudly trumpets that its UK branch only buys eggs from Lion-certified free-range producers, a laudable effort from a huge buyer of eggs, and that the meat in each nugget is 100 per cent chicken breast (the final product is around 65:35 meat and batter).

Factory farming

Yet by the same token, the company buys most of its chicken from two suppliers, Sun Valley in the UK and Moy Park in Northern Ireland, who are in turn owned by the controversial American firm, Cargill, and Brazil’s Marfrig. Sun Valley has been accused of using intensive chicken farming methods to produce their meat, which campaigners say can typically involve birds being cooped up in giant warehouses for much of their natural lives with barely any space to move. Sun Valley was embroiled in a scandal in 2008 when the activist group Compassion in World Farming secretly filmed poor conditions at its supplier Uphampton Farm near Leominster.

Furthermore, although McDonald’s is happy to advertise the provenance of its beef, dairy products and eggs, it is more circumspect about chicken meat. This may be because up to 90 per cent of the meat it uses in the UK is sourced from Cargill and Marfrag facilities in Thailand and Brazil, where regulations in the farming sector are perhaps less stringent than in the UK.

Meanwhile, the fact remains that despite attempts in recent years to cultivate a more healthy image, McDonald’s primary sales come from fast food in a time when there is increasing recognition that obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the UK and the US. Although the European, and in particular the UK arm of the company, have become increasingly ethically aware, the same cannot be said for the US arm, which uses livestock farmed using intensive methods and fed in some cases on GM crops. And by buying McDonald’s in the UK, you are still buying from the same clown.

Useful links:

McDonalds: www.mcdonalds.co.uk

Greenpeace: www.greenpeace.org.uk

Compassion in World Farming: www.ciwf.org.uk

The Carbon Trust: www.carbontrust.co.uk

Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay’s Camp 6 have been on hunger strike for roughly three weeks in protest of their treatment by guards and military officials there, the prisoners’ lawyers announced Monday.

Detainee looks through fencing inside Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba, June 26, 2006 (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley) The prisoners’ lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights and habeas counsel sent a letter to military officials at Guantanamo requesting they take immediate action to improve the situation.

CCR released the following statement Monday:

After more than 11 years of indefinite detention and abuse, humiliation and reprisals, the military appears to be arbitrarily cracking down on the men detained at Guantanamo, going so far as to search their Qur’ans and confiscate family photos. In response, the men have felt that their only option to protest peacefully was to go on hunger strike, which has continued for more than three weeks and is now endangering their lives and health. Its failure to close Guantanamo aside, this administration should be far beyond such cruelties, particularly given how many of the men still trapped there have been unanimously cleared for transfer.

The letter notes:

Since approximately February 6, 2013, camp authorities have been confiscating detainees’ personal items, including blankets, sheets, towels, mats, razors, toothbrushes, books, family photos, religious CDs, and letters, including legal mail; and restricting their exercise, seemingly without provocation or cause. […]

Arabic interpreters employed by the prison have been searching the men’s Qur’ans in ways that constitute desecration according to their religious beliefs, and that guards have been disrespectful during prayer times. […]

These actions, and the fact that they have affected so many men, indicate a significant departure from the way in which the rules have been formulated and implemented over the past few years. […]

As a result of these practices, we understand that the men are suffering greatly and that a large number have gone on a hunger strike, which is now in its third week. As their health has deteriorated, we have received reports of men coughing up blood, being hospitalized, losing consciousness, becoming weak and fatigued, and being moved to Camp V for observation. Detainees have also expressed feeling increased stress, fear, and despair. It is clear that their health will only worsen unless and until the hunger strike ends, which requires taking immediate steps to address the reasons for their protest…

Read the full letter here.

Kevin Gosztola at FireDogLake adds:

Detainees first began to engage in hunger strikes in 2002. The hunger strikes had a definite impact. The strikes from 2002 to 2005 effectively changed the dynamics in the prison. Former detainee Binyam Mohamed said there was no law and a colonel was saying, “’I do what I like’ but after the hunger strike — the big hunger strike of 2005 — they actually started implementing some kind of law that we knew about.” But, come 2006, the prison began to force feed detainees that were striking and force tubes down detainees’ throats in a manner that successfully convinced many of the detainees to end their resistance.

In March 2011, Jason Leopold of Truthout reported detainees continued to participate in hunger strikes with the hope that the conditions of their detention would improve or so they would no longer have their basic due process rights violated.

The tenth anniversary of the opening of the prison in January 2012 reportedly saw prisoners mark the anniversary by engaging in three days of protest that included hunger striking. […]

When considering the fact that 166 prisoners remain in confinement and 86 of them have been cleared for release by a review task force authorized by President Barack Obama, it would seem fulfilling these two demands would be the least the military or government could do. […]

When considering the fact that 166 prisoners remain in confinement and 86 of them have been cleared for release by a review task force authorized by President Barack Obama, it would seem fulfilling these two demands would be the least the military or government could do.

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The Afghan Taliban are considering a political solution to the decade long conflict, a senior Taliban leader has said, amid speculation that the Taliban may be becoming war weary.

“We must launch a political movement to achieve the goals for which we have made so many sacrifices. The Taliban leaders whose names have been removed from the UN black list will play an important role in the political process,” Mullah Agha Jan Mutasim, a close confident of the militant groups elusive leader Mullah Omar and the former head of the Taliban Political Commission, told the Pakistani newspaper the Express Tribune. 

However, he added that the warring faction was a “vital part of the Taliban”.

The Taliban have said numerous times that they will not talk to the administration of Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who they’ve said was a US puppet. But political analysts believe that the Taliban are tired of waging war.

“The Taliban are tired of war and it will be a step in the right direction if they launch a political movement,” Rashid Waziri, an advisor at the Regional Studies Center of Afghanistan, told the Express Tribune on Sunday.

Pakistan, which has some influence over the Afghan Taliban, recently sent Maulana Rehman, an influential political-religious leader, to meet Taliban representatives in Qatar to help broker peace talks between the militants and the Karzai administration, although officially both sides denied the meeting.

The unofficial talks in Doha, mark the latest efforts at a negotiated settlement with the Taliban.

As 2014 approaches — the date when most NATO troops will leave Afghanistan — the US is pushing for an Afghan led solution and for peace talks between the Afghan government and the insurgency. 

They also want to get Pakistan on board with any eventual settlement. Pakistan has long been a negative influence on the situation, enabling Taliban groups to operate from its territory while at the same time refusing to support negotiations.

Tony Gosling, an investigative journalist based in Bristol in the UK, believes the Taliban are serious about a political solution and that they have more influence in the country than the Karzai government.

“The Taliban have more influence than Karzai does. If elections in Afghanistan were free and fair, the Taliban might well do very well,” he told RT.

He also said that the west is trying to bring them into the political arena, as it now has little other option.

“We know that this has been going on behind the scenes since the beginning of the occupation. As the cost of the war gets higher and higher and cuts to the defense budget begin to bite, other options are being considered by the occupying powers,” said Gosling.

American military commanders concluded some time ago that the Afghan war could only end in a negotiated settlement with the Taliban and not an outright military victory. However talks between the Taliban and the US in 2012 ended in failure.

The talks stalled because the US administration could not complete a proposed prisoner swap for five Taliban members in Guantanamo to be exchanged for the one US soldier in captivity in Afghanistan, Sergeant Bowe Bergdhal.

The swap, which was scuppered by opposition from both parties in Congress, has made more serious talks difficult to envisage.

The Taliban are also internally divided particularly between their political wing and their military commanders, who were critical of the existence of talks.

They are also unwilling to meet Washington’s demands to sever ties with Al Qaida, renounce violence and accept the commitments to political and human rights in Afghanistan’s Constitution.

But despite all these setbacks the Qataris remain willing to host the talks and one of the Taliban negotiators who is still in Doha has said that talks could restart as soon as the prisoner swap takes place and the insurgents are allowed to open an office in Doha.

If this happens “and practical steps are taken by the United States of America, talks will resume. There is no other obstruction,” Sohail Shaheen, a Taliban negotiator, told Japan’s NHK World TV last month.

Gosling believes that when NATO troops have gone and negotiations are underway between the Taliban and the Afghan government, there is a chance of peace in the country, although there may be problems in the short term.

“What’s happening in Pakistan and Iraq with frequent sectarian bombings, there is a likelihood of this happening in Afghanistan. But ultimately, if Afghanistan were left alone, it may turn into a more peaceful regime,” he said.

Roughly 3,000 great apes are stolen, traded, or killed each year, according to a new report by the UN Environment Program, which warns that the vast disappearance of primates will do great harm to the forest ecosystems of Africa and South-east Asia.

(Photo: Corbis) The report “Stolen Apes: The Illicit Trade in Chimpanzees, Gorillas, Bonobos and Orangutans” says traders within an organized trans-boundary network trade the apes in “the same ways as drugs, arms and laundered money,” which has amounted to over 22,000 stolen apes since 2005.

“This trade is thriving and extremely dangerous to the long term survival of great apes,” said Doug Cress, coordinator for the Great Apes Survival Partnership (GRASP).

“At this rate, apes will disappear very quickly,” Cress stated. “Great apes are extremely important for the health of forests in Africa and Asia, and even the loss of 10 or 20 at a time can have a deep impact on biodiversity.”

The majority of the apes traded are chimpanzees but also include bonobos, gorillas and orangutans. They are commonly killed during the hunt or die in captivity.

Those who survive are sold as exotic pets for wealthy individuals, zoos, and the entertainment and tourist industries, the report stated.

“Great apes are used to attract tourists to entertainment facilities such as amusement parks and circuses. They are even used in tourist photo sessions on Mediterranean beaches and clumsy boxing matches in Asian safari parks,” it said.

The report coincides with the UN-backed Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) currently underway in Bangkok, Thailand.

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The small town of Waterford, Maine over the weekend became the third town in the state to pass a resolution declaring opposition to a plan aimed at bringing Canadian tar sands oil through an existing oil pipeline running from Montreal to the New England coast.

“This project is about money,” said pipeline opponent and town resident Paula Easton ahead of the vote. The risks to the local environment–including the Crooked River watershed that provides drinking water to a huge portion of southern Maine–were “unacceptable and irreversible” she said.

According to the Lewiston (Maine) Sun Journal, Easton was in the majority who ultimately voted for the resolution in a 56-34 split at the open town meeting on Saturday. Paula Easton of Clean Water for Waterford kicks off the Tar Sands discussion at the March 2 town meeting held in the fire station. A dozen people from both sides spoke on the resolution, which passed 56-34. About 115 attended the meeting. (Photo: town of Waterford)Residents were especially concerned about the possibility of a spill and remained unconvinced by industry executives present at the meeting.

“The 7.8 mile Waterford section of the pipeline holds nearly one million gallons of oil. From the Raymond shut-off valve to the Waterford shut off valve the 25 miles holds over 3 million gallons of oil,” says Waterford resident and retired scientist and educator Earl Morse. “If this antiquated, 62 year old pipeline carries tar sands and ruptures like what happened in Kalamazoo, Michigan in July 2010, the Crooked River watershed and Sebago Lake would be devastated.”

In addition to concerns about protecting local waterways and drinking water, the resolution stated concern for larger environmental and public health hazards of tar sands in the context of a town and region heavily dependent on a clean environment for recreation, tourism, and the economy at large.

“We congratulate the town and citizens of Waterford on passing this important resolution,” said Todd Martin, Outreach Coordinator for the Natural Resources Council of Maine. “Once you learn about tar sands and pipelines, it’s not hard to see that it would be a bad deal for Maine. We expect dozens of other towns along the pipeline to speak out in the coming months.”

The current pipeline, owned by the Exxon Mobil subsidiary Portland-Montreal Pipeline Company is a pipeline system for conventional oil that begins at a coastal terminal in the city of South Portland and carries the fuel 236 miles to Montreal.

As part of a quiet yet controversial push by those trying to find export outlets for Alberta tar sands, the PMPC said it would welcome an opportunity to reverse the flow of its pipeline, even though tar sands is much more corrosive than its conventional cousin and despite the fact that the pipeline is over sixty years old.

“After hearing from experts on both sides, and after more than an hour of discussion, the people of Waterford have spoken,” said Waterford Select Board Chair Randy Lessard. “We feel as a town that transporting tar sands oil through the Portland-Montreal pipeline poses unpredictable risks to the health, safety, natural resources, property and economic welfare of Waterford residents.”

President of the PMPC Larry Wilson spoke ahead of the vote as well, saying that once residents “heard the truth,” they wouldn’t oppose the pipeline. He tried to calm fears of a spill by saying, “Spills are difficult; they’re challenging. Companies don’t have the option of devastating the environment and walking away. You have to clean up the spill.”

It’s possible he had not yet read this report from Michigan, where the Enbridge pipeline company continues to fight even its obligation to fund independent studies designed to determine the ongoing impacts of an oil spill that spewed nearly one million gallons of Canadian tar sands into the Kalamazoo River 2010. Regardless, Wilson was not successful in his attempt to persuade the majority, including town resident Bart Hague.

“As a landowner of 480 acres along the Crooked River and a mile of land that the pipeline traverses in Waterford, my land would be directly affected should tar sands be pumped through the Portland Montreal Pipeline,” said Hague. “A tar sands oil spill in the wetland habitat along the Crooked River would be nearly impossible to clean up since tar sands is heavier and thicker than conventional oil.”

In January, thousands of people from all over New England converged in the city of Portland to voice their opposition to the pipeline. An upcoming town forum in South Portland, where new pumping stations would have to be built, is scheduled for next week.

The complete language of the Waterford municipal resolution follows:

WE, the citizens of Waterford Maine, have come to understand that the Portland-Montreal Pipeline which runs through our town is being considered for the transport of tar sands oil from Montreal to South Portland, which would be a reversal of flow and change from its original use.
a) We are opposed to any change in either the flow direction or the type product pumped for any of the current crude oil pipelines that flow through Waterford and cross the Crooked River it’s tributaries, wetlands and aquifer.
b) Through the adoption of this resolution, the Town of Waterford expresses its opposition to the transport of tar sands through our town via the existing Public Utility Easement. We feel that such transport is of no benefit to Waterford and entails unacceptable risk to our river, our public health and safety, property values, recreation resources, water quality, and the pristine natural resources upon which our community depends.
c) Through the adoption of this resolution, the town of Waterford calls upon the Maine State Legislature, United States Congress, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and State Departments to require thorough environmental impact reviews of all tar sands pipeline proposals, including a complete evaluation of the health, safety and environmental risks.
d.) Through the adoption of this resolution, the town of Waterford supports the creation of clear Federal and State guidelines for tracking the chemical composition of pipeline transported fuels so that local governments, citizens, and first responders can better understand, and plan for, the risks associated with the specific type of fuel flowing through or to their communities.
e.) Through the adoption of this resolution, the town of Waterford encourages the State of Maine and other states in the northeast to support policies that help develop and shift fuel use away from high impact fuels such as tar sands.
f.) Through the adoption of this resolution, the town of Waterford will transmit a copy of this resolution to the Maine State Congressional delegation, Maine State Representative of Waterford, and the Maine State Senator representing Waterford, the US EPA and State Departments. 

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We reported last year:

The government treats copyright infringers as terrorists, and swat teams have been deployed against them. See this, this, this and this.

As the executive director of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School notes:

This administration … publishes a newsletter about its efforts with language that compares copyright infringement to terrorism.

The American government is using copyright laws to crack down on political dissent just like China and Russia.

We noted last month that the “cyber-security” laws have very little to do with security.

The Verge reported last month:

In the State of the Union address Tuesday, President Obama announced a sweepingexecutive order implementing new national cybersecurity measures, opening the door for intelligence agencies to share more information about suspected “cyber threats” with private companies that oversee the nation’s “critical infrastructure.” The order is voluntary, giving companies the choice of whether or not they want to receive the information, and takes effect in four months, by June 12.

***

“Cyber threats cover a wide range of malicious activity that can occur through cyberspace,” wrote Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, in an email to The Verge. “Such threats include web site defacement, espionage,theft of intellectual property, denial of service attacks, and destructive malware.”

***

“The EO [executive order] relies on the definition of critical infrastructure found in the Homeland Security Act of 2002,” Hayden wrote.

The Homeland Security Act of 2002 (PDF), passed in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, was what created the Department of Homeland Security. At that time, the US was still reeling from the attacks and Congress sought to rapidly bolster the nation’s defenses, including “critical infrastructure” as part of its definition of “terrorism.” As the act states: “The term ‘terrorism’ means any activity that involves an act that is dangerous to human life or potentially destructive of critical infrastructure or key resources…”

But again, that act doesn’t exactly spell out which infrastructure is considered “critical,” instead pointing to the definition as outlined in a 2001 bill, also passed in response to September 11, which reads:

“The term “critical infrastructure” means systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.”

This is the same exact definition that was originally provided in the president’s cybersecurity order as originally published on Tuesday, meaning that the White House appears to be relying to some degree on circular reasoning when it comes to that definition. Some in Washington, including the right-leaning think tank The Heritage Foundation, are worried that the definition is too broad and “could be understood to include systems normally considered outside the cybersecurity conversation, such as agriculture.”

In fact, the Department of Homeland Security, which is one of the agencies that will be sharing information on cyber threats thanks to the order, includes 18 different industriesin its own label of “critical infrastructure,” from agriculture to banking to national monuments. There’s an argument to be made that including such a broad and diverse swath of industries under the blanket term “critical” is reasonable given the overall increasing dependence of virtually all businesses on the internet for core functions. But even in that case, its unclear how casting such a wide net would be helpful in defending against cyber threats, especially as there is a limited pool of those with the expertise and ability to do so.

It’s not just intellectual property. The government is widely using anti-terror laws to help giant businesses … and to crush those who speak out against their abusive practices, labeling anyone who speaks out as a potential bad guy.

For two hundred years, before Ronald Reagan came to Washington, small business in America was booming.

All across the country, small mom-and-pop shops were the name of the game. When people needed food, they went to their local grocer, bakery, or butcher. When they needed supplies to fix up their house, they went to the local hardware store. Clothing and even furniture, while manufactured by hundreds of companies all over America, were sold at retail by locally-owned stores. And while customer loyalty played a huge role in the success of these mom and pop shops, they had something else in their arsenal: The Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

The Sherman Ant-Trust Act was passed by Congress in 1890. In its heyday, the law prevented businesses from reducing competition in the market place, and even required the federal government to investigate any company that was in violation of the law. The Sherman Act was the first federal law to seriously limit monopolies in the workplace.

It was famously used by President Theodore Roosevelt to break up Standard Oil, and helped keep this nation’s early corporate tycoons, like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, in check. Thanks to the Sherman Act, small businesses were able to thrive, without the fear of having all their competitors bought out by large corporations and thus being pushed out of the market.

Unfortunately, all that changed with Reagan.

As soon as Reagan became President, the era of deregulation in America began. Within a few years of taking office, Reagan’s assault on small business was in full gear as he essentially stopped enforcing the Sherman Act. “M&A Artists” and “LBO Guys” and all manner of mergers, acquisitions, and leveraged buy-out hustlers rose to prominence, dominating the headlines through the 1980s.

As a result, all across the country, local businesses were being put out of business, as large corporations took over and dominated industry after industry. Giant megastores like Walmart and Target replaced local convenience and hardware stores. The local malt shop and burger joint was replaced by A&W and McDonalds. Large companies got even larger, and Main Street USA began thirty-year disintegration.

Capitalism without competition always leads to monopolies and oligarchies, and thanks to Reagan’s refusal to maintain competition in our markets by enforcing the Sherman Act, these formed in every major industry in America, from telecom to food and even the media.

Today, the Sherman Act is never used against the big boys. Big banks have grown out of control. Megastores like Walmart have wreaked havoc on local businesses, while telecom and cable companies like Comcast and AT&T have all of us in economic chains. Even our media has been consolidated.

Look at some of the companies that dominate the marketplace today. Google has 90% market share of internet search engines. Facebook has a 64% market share of social media sites. And Sirius/XM Radio has an astonishing 100% market share of satellite radio in this country.

In the rare instances when the Sherman Act is enforced, it’s a hollow pale shell of enforcement at best.

Unless you’re a small business.

Consider the story of James Bordinaro.

In 1991, Bordinaro was found guilty of conspiracy to restrain, suppress, and eliminate competition in violation of the Sherman Act. Bordinaro and a competitor were conspiring to rig bids on frozen seafood contracts for the Pentagon. He and his competitor would decide every week which of their two companies was going to be the high- or low-bidder on certain types of seafood, ensuring they both stayed in business and both made a profit. And, because of their anti-competitive collusion, they both kept other companies out of the market.

He was sentenced to 12 months in prison, given three years supervised release and ordered to pay a $55,000 fine. However, last Friday, Bordinaro was pardoned by President Obama.

Bordinaro’s story shows that the Sherman Act is at least still on the radar screen of the Justice Department. And it shows how it’s only applied to little guys like Bordinaro, and never to the big boys like ExxonMobil or United or AT&T.

During a time in our nation’s history when corporations have more power than ever before, we need to bring back the Sherman Act, and end Reagan’s devastating policies of deregulation.

It’s time to break up the big companies, from banks to retail chains to telecom groups, bring mom and pop shops back to Main Street USA, and kick competition killing duopolies and oligarchies out of the American marketplace.

March 4, 2013  |  

I stood on a mountaintop and looked out over the sea. A thousand feet below me, eagles soared on thermals. Wind blew through my hair and I felt dizzy. I fell to my knees and cried. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this “white-light” experience was the moment I realized there was no God–I had been struck atheist.

To be accurate and appropriately less dramatic, my atheist conversion was far from immediate. It was a process that began when I got sober about five years earlier. 

I finally stopped drinking and drugging at age 30, in the summer of 2004, after about 15 years of relatively high-functioning abuse. I took to 12-step recovery like a fish to water and was especially drawn to Alcoholics Anonymous’ message of a spiritual solution.

I was perfectly comfortable with spirituality. I had been exposed from an early age to a hodge-podge of spiritual ideas by Goldwater Republican parents who baptized me Episcopalian but referenced Joseph Campbell and the Buddha in casual conversation and sent me to an astrologer in lieu of a child psychologist. 

Not that I had an entirely rosy view of religion–far from it. I was raised in the Bible Belt and had plenty of run-ins with all manner of unpleasant kooks throughout my life. My parents also saw fit to send me to a Catholic school for my primary education, where I experienced first-hand how religion could be used to repress individuality and creativity, and it filled me with loathing and terror. At least I can times stuff and write good in cursive. 

But instead of turning me off entirely to religion, these negative experiences instilled in me the idea that there was a right way and wrong way to do spirituality. And that was an idea I was willing to go to the mat for. 

In my drinking days, I was known to get in passionate religious conversations with anyone unlucky enough to sit next to me at the bar, beseeching “GOD IS LOVE!” through a haze of whiskey and cheap cocaine as my quarry gingerly backed away. 

By the time I’d reached my bottom in the winter of 2003—2004, I’d become intrigued by the Christian writings of C.S. Lewis and would often put myself to sleep reading The Screwtape Letters or Mere Christianity with one eye closed to correct for double vision. I listened to Louvin Brothers songs of loss and redemption late at night and felt a hair’s-breadth away from divine intervention. 

I made it to my first AA meetings in the spring of 2004, and at that point I had no problem whatsoever reading the word “God” in the literature. I remember thinking I understood my relationship with God so well that I didn’t need a second or third step. I pitied people who had problems with “the God thing.” Not that I couldn’t relate to their disdain for religion in general–but, I thought, “Can’t they just get over it?” The goalposts seemed so wide! 

After a couple years in AA, a man who is a well-known Buddhist teacher became my sponsor. He spoke of a faith in AA born of experience as opposed to the blind faith demanded in most religions. As he explained it, first we hear the experience of those who got sober before us, and then, through our own practice, we develop a faith in the fellowship, the steps, and ultimately ourselves. He encouraged investigation. He taught me the healing power of the 11th Step, and told me that when I prayed it wasn’t important that God hear my prayers, so long as I did. These ideas felt powerful and practical and attractive, and they heavily inform my thinking about recovery and spirituality to this day. 

March 4, 2013  |  

Another major marijuana stereotype just got blown totally out of the water — this time the idea that consuming cannabis is for unemployed slacker types. In fact, pot is wildly popular in one of America’s economic centers, Silicon Valley. According to a new report in Bloomberg’s Businessweek, the “physical toll” of computer coding has made Silicon Valley workers key consumers in the medical marijuana industry.

In San Jose, which Businessweek dubs the “Bay Area capital of medical marijuana,” 106 medicinal marijuana dispensaries span the city’s 177 square miles, more than adequately serving its 967,000 residents. One of those dispensaries, Pallative Health Center, told Businessweek that tech workers make up an estimated 40 percent of clients. 

“We’re seeing people from some semiconductors, lots of engineers, lots of programmers,” Ernie Arreola, 38, the assistant manager, told Businessweek, which noted, “That makes sense, because the shop is an easy shot from some of the area’s biggest employers–Cisco Systems, Google, Adobe Systems, Apple, EBay–and a short drive from dozens more. Also, people in Silicon Valley do like their pot.”

Still, as Galen Moore notes at the Boston Business Journal, weed isn’t the only drug popular in Silicon Valley:

The comments section on the tech news site Hacker News offer a glimpse into prescription drugs that are popular as work aids in Silicon Valley’s high-tech culture, including so-called “smart drugs” Provigil (Modafinil) and Nuvigil, and pharmaceutical stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin.

Some commenters also challenge Businessweek’s assertion that marijuana culture is “raging” in Silicon Valley. It may be news to Businessweek, but the reality has always been that people from all ends of the social spectrum use drugs, pot especially. Not everybody, however, is arrested for it.

March 4, 2013  |  

A day after Justice Antonin Scalia caused gasps in the Supreme Court gallery by saying the 1965 Voting Rights Act had become a “racial entitlement” no congressperson could vote against, Rachel Maddow told The Daily Show she was in the courtroom and Scalia clearly enjoyed tormenting people. “I think he does know how that sounds,” she said. “He’s a troll. He’s saying this for effect. He knows it’s offensive.”

There’s no shortage of badly behaving Republicans in Washington. There’s the take-or-leave-it congressional leadership, who constantly show they value rightwing ideology more than its impact on people. There are intransigent obstructionists, like the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre, who believes the answer to gun violence is more guns. But Scalia isn’t simply another Republican bully; he may be the most venal and fascist Republican of all.

It’s one thing to be a political bully and enjoy it, as Scalia does. But it’s another to say that the other branches of government are broken because they’re not doing things he agrees with; and then abuse the power of his office to overthrow that governance and perpetuate his legacy. That’s close to how European despots acted before World War II.

Let’s unpack what Scalia said about the 1965 Voting Rights Act with an eye to seeing his method, not just his madness. It is the same backstory to his mocking outbursts over the years, whether telling law school students asking about Bush v. Gore to “get over it,” or arrogantly answering questions put by other justices to lawyers–such as 2008’s Heller case where he coached libertarian lawyers and then wrote the opinion that for the first time in U.S. history said the Second Amendment included a personal right to a handgun at home.

Scalia has long had a visceral hatred of the democratic process. In 2000’s Bush v. Gore, which awarded the presidency to George W. Bush, he could barely contain himself in telling us there was no federal constitutional right to vote for president. He’s said the direct election of U.S. senators (the 17th Amendment) violated state sovereignty. After the Brady Bill created a national system of background checks for gun buyers, he wrote a majority opinion saying states didn’t have to participate in that system.

In all of this, Scalia boasts that he is a constitutional originalist, meaning he wants to see the law interpreted as he believes the founders intended. However, that boast falls apart when one sees that he is by far the most activist and radical of all the Court’s justices. His 2008 opinion expanding Second Amendment rights is a prime example of such revisionism. 

The Voting Right Act

Republicans have been targeting the federal Voting Rights Act for years, because in the 16 states where it is law they cannot rig voting rules to give their party an advantage. In 2006, when Congress last reauthorized the law, not one senator voted against it. The House vote was 390-33. In 2012, there were numerous lawsuits involving the VRA, where the Justice Department intervened and won on behalf of minority voters.

The case that came before the Supreme Court last week focused on whether the law’s strongest tool–a section allowing the Justice Department or a Washington appeals court to reject changes in state voting laws–should stand. Republicans had argued that the U.S. had moved into a post-racial period in elections and Section 5 was not needed. Scalia surprised everyone by deepening that argument and essentially contending that Congress did not have the guts to vote against a law that had outgrow its usefulness.

February 27, the German parliament voted by a large majority to support the French colonial war in Mali. In April, up to 330 German soldiers are to be stationed in that country.

The parliamentary motion includes two mandates. As part of the European Union (EU)-led training mission EUTM, 180 soldiers will be used to train the Malian army. The German army (Bundeswehr) will send 40 scouts and 40 medics and doctors to Koulikoro, 65 kilometres northeast of the capital city, Bamako. Another 100 soldiers are on standby to intervene “if necessary” to “protect the German soldiers.”

According to the commander of the EUTM mission, General François Lecointre, the military trainers from the EU will commence training more than 2,500 Malian soldiers beginning April 2.

The aim of the mission is to stabilise the ailing Malian army and enable it to support the combat mission conducted by French troops in the north of the country. About one year ago and before the French invasion, the Malian army had been driven out of the region by a coalition of Islamist rebels and Tuareg warriors.

The second mandate involves an additional 150 soldiers to logistically support the combat mission of the French Air Force. The plan is to use an Airbus to refuel French Rafale and Mirage fighter jets in the air. In addition, 63 soldiers and three Transall planes will continue to transport French combat troops and troops from the Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to Mali.

In January, shortly after the beginning of the war, the German army commenced logistical support of combat French and African troops, without a mandate from the German parliament. Since then, the Transall planes have transported some 570 soldiers and about 290 tons of material in 117 flights carried out in the area of operation.

According to official estimates, the German military operation will cost at least €55.5 million. In addition to the governing parties, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Christian Social Union and the Free Democratic Party (FDP), the opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens also voted in favour. From a total of 567 MPs, 496 voted in favour of the training mandate, and 492 for the deployment of “logistical support.”

The mandate initially runs for 12 months but is likely to be extended. Defence Minister Thomas de Maiziere (CDU) had already prepared parliamentarians in the first discussion in parliament for a prolonged military campaign, declaring, “No deployment is a walk in the park.”

The parliamentary vote is a further expansion of the dirty imperialist colonial war in Mali. The official website of the federal parliament states, “Germany [will] contribute, through its actions, to bring under state control those areas in northern Mali still under the influence of terrorist, extremist and armed groups.”

Officially, the Bundeswehr missions in both Mali and Afghanistan have been justified with the alleged “war against terrorism”.

In parliament, Rainer Stinner, foreign policy spokesman of the FDP parliamentary group, declared that the situation in Mali “has long-term influence on our German security interests” and that there was “a risk that terrorist forces or forces with evil intent would spread in another regions of the world.”

The reference to “terrorism” by imperialist powers to justify their colonial wars is hypocritical. The same Islamists active in northern Mali were in 2011 important allies of Western powers in their campaign against the Libyan regime of Muammar Gaddafi. Now, these powers and their regional allies are backing similar reactionary forces in Syria to overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Assad, and install a pro-Western puppet regime.

In reality, the wars in Mali and Afghanistan have nothing to do with a “struggle against terrorism,” but are rooted in definite geo-strategic and economic interests.

The latest military campaign in Mali is part of the imperialist campaign for a renewed colonial subjugation of Africa, which began with the NATO war against Libya two years ago. In common with the entire Sahel region, Mali is rich in natural resources. The major imperialist powers are seeking to secure these resources in an increasingly aggressive competitive race with China, which has close economic ties with Mali and other countries in the region.

After hesitating to participate in the Libya campaign, the German bourgeoisie is determined to gain a share of the spoils in Mali. German companies have made clear they intend to join the race for raw materials in Africa.

A long and detailed report last week in the German business newspaperHandelsblatt made clear that the German business and political elite are preparing to intensify their capacity to wage wars to secure the resources so necessary for the German export industry. The article lists China as one of Germany’s biggest competitors in this race, and explicitly identifies North Africa as one of the most strategically important regions in this respect.

The article relates that the German ambassador to NATO has been “given the job of reassessing north Africa and Middle East, along with its regional allies, to define which countries are of particular importance for Western and German security interests.”

German imperialism also regards the war against Mali as a prelude to further wars in the region. This was indicated in a comment by the foreign affairs spokesperson for the Greens, Kerstin Müller, who declared that the German operation amounted to “emergency surgery in order to prevent an even worse situation.” She then added: “If we want avoid intervention in the future in Niger or Burkina Faso, then we need a strategy for the entire Sahel.”

A particularly cynical role in the return of German imperialism is being played by the Left Party. Well aware that the motion would be passed overwhelmingly, the party voted against for tactical reasons.

In her speech before the vote, the “peace spokeswoman” of the Left Party, Christine Buchholz, gave the other parties a clear signal that the Left Party is quite willing to support future German military operations. She argued against a “general debate on the war policy of the federal government” and called instead for “a general discussion about how we can solve economic and social problems and the extreme problems that the arms trade causes in the world.”

The readiness of the Left Party to support military intervention in the interests of German imperialism was already clear from the position it took towards the Western aggression against Syria. In December of last year, leaders of the party backed an appeal for an intervention in Syria. The statement was also supported by the leaders of the CDU, the SPD and the Greens.

In today’s On the News segment: Obama pardons 17 common criminals but White House won’t comment on why he won’t pardon a political prisoner, and more.

Thom Hartmann here — on the news…

You need to know this. President Obama is negotiating with economic terrorists. Reuters’ reports that Obama may give in to GOP budget demands by offering cuts to our social safety net. In calls with lawmakers over the weekend, Obama said he will cut programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in exchange for a so-called compromise to replace the sequester, as long as Republicans agree to more tax increases. This is not a compromise. The Republicans have held our economy hostage, and pushed their austerity measures, so they could force Obama’s hand in the budget debate. Because of the GOP’s economic terrorism, and refusal to end tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, our nation will face cuts to programs many of us depend on. A new report from Alternet outlines several of the most devastating cuts we now face, like a $199 million cut to public housing, a $633 million cut from Special Education programs, and nearly a $1 billion cut to FEMA disaster relief. And now the President is offering more cuts in hopes that Republicans will negotiate? This is insane. We shouldn’t have allowed any cuts in the first place. No nation, in the history of the world, has ever cut it’s way to prosperity, but for some unknown reason Congress and the President think austerity will succeed this time. We need to band together and fight back against these Republican austerity measures, and against the Administration’s purposed cuts to our vital social safety net. Let’s remind them they work for us. Call Congress and the White House and tell them to stop this economic terrorism now.

In screwed news… If you take a look at the Stock Market, you’d think we have a strong economic recovery in our country. But as it turns out, it’s only been good for corporations and the super wealthy. The rest of us continue to struggle, while greedy corporations soak up huge economic gains. According to the New York Times, the Stock Market is approaching a record high, but the wealth gap between workers and their employers has continued to widened during the recovery, and could get even worse as Republican austerity measures kick in. Just since 2008, corporate profits have risen nearly 20% per year, while workers saw yearly disposable income gains of just 1.4%. According to Dean Maki, chief U.S. Economist at Barclays, “There hasn’t been a period in the last 50 years where these trends have been so pronounced.” With profits like these, it’s hard to understand how Republicans can justify keeping corporate tax rates at historic lows. It’s time to make corporations pay for the use of our commons, and for the huge sums of cash they’ve made off hard-working Americans. It’s a privilege to do business in our nation, and it’s about time we demand corporations pay for the right to operate here.

In the best of the rest of the news…

The Swiss have said “No” to corporate fat-cat greed. Voters in that nation recently approved a measure which gives shareholders veto power over executive salaries, compensation packages, and huge bonuses. The so-called “fat cat initiative” will be written into the Swiss constitution, and all companies listed on the Swiss stock exchange will be required to comply. BBC News reports that 68% of voters supported the plan, which accounts for 1.6 million votes, and it was supported in all 26 Swiss cantons. One of the referendum’s organizers, Brigitte Moser Harder, said the plan got broad support because of the growing income gap in that nation. She said, “It’s also a social problem because the high wages got higher, and the small ones sometimes just got lower.” A similar measure was recently approved in the European Union, which will cap bankster’s bonuses throughout the EU. We should take a cue from Switzerland and the E.U., and take on the billionaires in our country as well. We can start by making it illegal to hoard huge sums of cash. Let’s outlaw billionaires. Join the movement at NoBillionaires.com.

Last Friday, President Obama issued 17 pardons for people convicted of various crimes, that ranged from altering a money order to possession of an illegal firearm. Before the list was announced, the President had only pardoned 22 other people, and had denied over 1,000 requests from others. Compared to President George W. Bush, who pardoned 189 people during his two terms in office, President Obama has made little use of his clemency powers. According to the Associated Press, the White House hasn’t offered any explanation about the reason these particular people were selected by the President, or supplied any details as to why other pardon requests were denied. And there’s one request that the Progressive community is especially curious about — the still-unanswered request to pardon former Alabama Governor Don Siegleman. If the President is willing to release drug dealers, counterfeiters, and gun-toters, why won’t he pardon a United States political prisoner? It’s time to free Don Siegleman. Sign the petition and spread the word… go to Free-Don.org.

And finally… Holy Smokes Batman, a caped crusader is solving crimes in Britain. Reuters reports that closed-circuit television shows a man, in a full Batman costume — gloves, mask, cape, and all — brought in a 27 year old man for handling stolen goods and committing other fraud-related offenses. But Batman didn’t stick around to receive any praise from the Police. A spokeswoman for the West Workshire Police said, “The person who brought the wanted man into the station was dressed in a full Batman outfit. His identity, however, remains unknown.” There’s no report of how Batman managed to capture the criminal, but his crime-fighting skills did lead to the arrest. Perhaps the superhero rushed out to avoid being identified, or maybe the batmobile was double-parked.

And that’s the way it is today — Monday, March 4, 2013. I’m Thom Hartmann — on the news.

With a nationwide effort now underway to disarm America’s gun owners because of the dangers firearms purportedly pose to the general public, namely our schoolchildren, the following report from Cypress Lake, Florida highlights how our government sponsored systems of justice have devolved into outright madness.

Consider what you’d do if you, a family or friend were under imminent threat of losing your life. Though there are those who believe that self defense is never an option, the majority of Americans — even some of the staunchest proponents of gun control — would agree that fighting back is sometimes the only option.

A 16-year old high school wrestler did exactly that when a gun wielding teen on his school bus threatened to kill another student at point blank range.

The wrestler took the drastic and last ditch measure of attacking the gun man, grappling with him, and subsequently disarming him.

What happened next only makes sense in a world where insanity is the new normal.

A 16-year-old Cypress Lake High School student, who wrestled a loaded revolver away from a teen threatening to shoot, is being punished.

The student grappled the gun away from the 15-year-old suspect on the bus ride home Tuesday after witnesses say he aimed the weapon point blank at another student and threatened to shoot him.

…

The student says he wrestled the .22 caliber RG-14 Revolver away from the suspect, a football player, who witnesses say threatened to shoot a teammate because he had been arguing with his friend.

“No doubt,” the student said, “he was going to shoot him point blank.”

The teen we spoke to and authorities both confirm the Revolver was loaded.

According to the arrest report the suspect, who Fox 4 is not naming because he is a minor, was “pointing the gun directly” at another student and “threatening to shoot him.”

That’s when the student we spoke with says he and others tackled the teen and wrestled away the gun.

The next day the school slapped him with a three day suspension.

…

According to the referral, he was suspended for being part of an “incident” where a weapon was present and given an “emergency suspension.”

…

“Those kids had to fight for their lives,” she said. “All the kids that was involved in this they should have a pat on their backs because they did the right thing to save someone from burying their child.”

Source: Fox 4 via The Daily Sheeple

When seconds counts, unarmed school administrators and teachers are minutes away:

This is akin to someone breaking into your home and threatening to kill your family while brandishing a weapon. The course of action that any sane person would take in such a situation would be to respond with deadly force and eliminate the threat. But what if after saving your life or those closest to you, you were prosecuted and imprisoned as an accessory to  attempted murder?

That’s essentially what happened to the teens involved in disarming this gunman.

What happened to these high school students demonstrates the absolutely asinine system of rules that exist in America.

We could be mourning the deaths of numerous students today, but rather, these kids took their lives into their own hands.

They acted quickly and decisively to disarm a gun wielding maniac.

Their reward for saving countless lives was punishment.

What is the message we’re sending to kids in situations like this, or when they are being bullied and they have no choice but to respond with equal force? We’re telling them that protecting themselves is not justified — in any situation.

We’re teaching them that they should go ahead and let a gunman shoot them, or a bully beat them down, because zero tolerance policies matter more than common sense.

On the one hand we have school administrators, unions and politicians arguing that the gun violence must stop. When the eradication of the threat, however, comes from the actions of an individual as opposed to a benevolent government entity, those on the right side of the law are treated like criminals.

Would school administrators and the Department of Education have preferred an outcome like Sandy Hook Elementary? At least then they could have maximized the crisis for political gain.

Los Angeles has become the latest battleground in the contested war over school “reform” as a group of billionaire school-privatization advocates have turned Tuesday’s school board election into a national, multi-million dollar “test case” in the fight over the future of education.

UTLA and community members protest a 2009 decision to put 250 schools up for bidding by charter schools and other outside entities. (PHoto: UTLA) According to reports, last month New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg donated $1 million to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s Coalition for School Reform. The group is backing candidates who will support current superintendent John Deasey, formerly of the Gates Foundation, who has been pushing such policy changes as expanding charter schools, limiting the power of teachers unions and using student standardized test scores as a means of evaluating teachers.

National school privatization advocate Michelle Rhee’s group Students First, donated $250,000 to the same cause, in addition to a host of other titans–which include Walmart heirs and real estate and insurance magnate, Eli Broad.

As the nation’s second largest school system, the Los Angeles school system represents a “good investment” for the billionaires who aim to reshape the US education system, writes professor Peter Dreier. He continues:

The corporate big-wigs are part of an effort that they and the media misleadingly call “school reform.” What they’re really after is not “reform” (improving our schools for the sake of students) but “privatization” (business control of public education). They think public schools should be run like corporations, with teachers as compliant workers, students as products, and the school budget as a source of profitable contracts and subsidies for textbook companies, consultants, and others engaged in the big business of education.

“School board races are a way to take the temperature of whether people like the direction schools are going in,” said President Warren Fletcher of the United Teachers of Los Angeles, which has spent nearly $450,000 in opposing campaigns. “This is a race for Los Angeles, not the school board race of America. It would be really tragic if the voices are drowned out by folks who have no sense of what is going on here to begin with.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, Villaraigosa’s group has raised more than $3 million for the upcoming election and the city’s ethics commission estimates that total race spending from outside groups, including the teachers’ union, has reached $4.4 million as of Friday.

The candidates receiving the big money backing include current school board President Monica Garcia as well as Kate Anderson (District 4) and Antonio Sanchez (District 6). In the most expensive of the races, Anderson, an attorney, is taking on incumbent and former teacher Steve Zimmer, who is being specifically targeted because of a proposal he made last year to put a hold on creating new charter schools.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Baltimore. And welcome to this week’s edition of The Bill Black Financial and Fraud Report.

Mr. Black now joins us from Kansas City, Missouri. Bill’s an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri—Kansas City. He’s a white-collar criminologist, a former financial regulator, and author of the book The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One.

Thanks for joining us, Bill.

BILL BLACK, ASSOC. PROF. ECONOMICS AND LAW, UMKC: Thank you.

JAY: So the sequestration cuts and drama–what do you make of it?

BLACK: So both parties have conspired to bring us disaster. In this case, sequester is the fourth shoe to drop in austerity, and collectively this has strangled the recovery and may even put the U.S. economy back into recession.

So the first major act was in mid 2011 when they reached this budget deal that created the sequestration. And the budget deal in itself caused over $1 billion in spending cuts at the worst possible time.

JAY: So, just to remind everybody, the sequestration formula deal was a proposal by President Obama.

BLACK: Well, indeed it was created by President Obama–now, under, of course, Republican pressure, where they were threatening not to raise the debt ceiling, but it was an Obama idea. And the principal framer of it was Jacob Lew, the president’s selection to be Geithner’s replacement as a disastrous Treasury secretary. And then the president blocked a Republican effort to get rid of sequestration. And then the president went so far as to threaten to veto any bill that got rid of sequestration when the Republicans tried to get rid of it again.

Now, you shouldn’t think too well of the Republicans in all of this. What they were worried about, pretty much solely, was defense spending and making sure there’d never be a drop in defense spending.

In any event, what you see is neither party, even at this time of crisis, where all the supposedly serious people finally agree that this act of austerity is insane, self-destructive, might well cause a recession, neither party is getting behind a clean bill that–it would be literally one sentence: the sequestration provisions are repealed. Right? And we could be free of at least that aspect of the insanity. We’d still have the debt ceiling insanity, but the sequestration, we would no longer be shooting ourselves–not in the foot, but substantially farther up our anatomy.

So, as I said, the sequestration is large, but it’s not the sequestration all by itself; it’s the fact that it is this fourth act of austerity. I began to mention the mid 2011 pact. Knock off $1 billion in spending at the worst possible time. Then we raise taxes on the wealthy, which you may well support, but it is an act that pushes you towards austerity. And then the far larger and vastly more destructive resuming the entire payroll tax on Social Security, which economists think all by itself knocked a half percentage point off of growth–and our growth is really small, so that’s a massively important thing that is going to cost hundreds of thousands of people their jobs. And now the fourth shoe to drop of austerity, of course, is going to be this sequestration.

And meanwhile this is happening while we see Europe forced back into a completely gratuitous recession. The entire Eurozone on average is back in recession, and the European Commission’s just come out with dreadful projections saying things are going to get worse.

Spain just announced today that a single bank that they were bailing out, or, you know, which is really seven failed thrift type entities, is going to cost them roughly $25 billion just this year. And Spain’s a large economy, but nowhere close to the United States, so this is bigger by far than the most expensive U.S. banking failure in history, all occurring in Spain, all being driven both by the bubble and fraud and then this self-inflicted wound of austerity.

And we can’t even get the president, who, you know, on day one will say, the sequestration–disaster, insane; and on day two refuses to put forward a clean bill to stop it; and on day three says, hey, that Jake Lew, the guy that created this disastrous scenario that is going to potentially hurl us back into recession, he should be our Treasury secretary and create our financial policies.

JAY: So when you read the business press, some of the stories are about how blase Wall Street is and corporate America is, and they’re not very concerned about $85 billion cuts. And the stock market’s doing fine. It’s not seemed to be affected by it. Why is that if the recession or threat of recession is looming?

BLACK: Well, recession isn’t necessarily bad for the stock market. We’ve had a record recovery in stock market prices with an extremely weak recovery from the Great Recession because it’s been strangled. So they love the current system in which wages have not simply plateaued–you know, household wealth for the middle class is down to where it was 18 years ago. There’s over a 15 percent of loss in wealth of the middle class and the working class and a massive increase in corporate profitability, where we get all these productivity gains, which is what allows you to pay workers higher wages without any inflationary risk. And virtually all of those productivity gains during the Great Recession have gone to the richest not 1 percent but the richest 0.001 percent.

JAY: Thanks very much for joining us, Bill.

Thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

End

DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

March 4, 2013  |  

When it comes to interactions between regular citizens and police on the street, the police hold all the cards. They can, and often do, act however they want. One of the few meaningful mechanisms for restitution if you are a victim of police misconduct is to sue for damages. The costs of these lawsuits and payouts add up, and bad police behavior takes a toll not only on our civil liberties, but also on a city’s budget.

It’s worth mentioning that lawsuits against the police rarely result in million-dollar payouts for victims, are difficult to win, and represent only a fairly small slice of total reports of police misconduct. Also, the reported costs of settlements and judgments to victims often exclude fees paid to attorneys representing the city, so in many cases the real numbers are higher.

This list doesn’t include every example of police misconduct or every study about how much it costs, but below are some recent instances of reports that detail just how much money police misconduct costs taxpayers. The point here isn’t to argue that people shouldn’t sue cops. They should, if they have a good case. The cops should simply give people fewer reasons to sue them.

1. Chicago

Lieutenant Jon Burge is in many ways the posterchild for police brutality. He oversaw a torture regime at the Chicago Police Department from 1973-1991 that included 64 other cops directly and an untold number of police who were aware of what was going on. According to a recent report, over 100 African Americans were allegedly tortured under his watch.

As the Chicago Reader reported in 2003, charges against Burge and his crew included “electric shock, suffocation, burnings, attacks on the genitals, severe beating, and mock executions.”

Burge was eventually prosecuted by the US attorney and sentenced to four and a half years for perjury, though according to the report the Cook County State Attorney never prosecuted any officers for torture or for covering it up. The “blue code of silence” plays a large role in perpetuating corruption.

The report, by the University of Illinois at Chicago, claims that corruption and abuse of power are rampant problems in the Chicago Police Department. The authors looked at CPD corruption dating back to 1960, and conclude that “[t]oleration of corruption, or at least resigned acceptance, appears to be the order of the day for at least the past 50 years.”

Top Chicago officials have allowed (or created) a culture of impunity for officers. A separate study the authors cite claims only “19 of 10,149 (or less than 2%) civilian complaints of excessive force, illegal searches, racial abuse, sexual abuse and false arrests between 2002 and 2004 led to police suspensions of a week or more.”

Over the last decade, police misconduct lawsuits against the city and out-of-court settlements “have cost taxpayers several hundreds of millions of dollars at a time when all levels of government have to cut services and raise taxes,” according to the University of Illinois report. Defending cops against litigation has cost Chicago more than $82.5 million since 2003, and “Jon Burge cases have cost local taxpayers more than $53 million since 1998.”

2. New York

According to a 2012 report  from NYC’s Comptroller’s office, the city paid out $185.6 million in claims for fiscal year 2011. That’s a 35% increase over the previous year, which came in at $137.3 million in settled claims. Fiscal year 2011 saw “an historical high of 8,882 claims filed” against the NYPD, with a 55% rise in claims against the NYPD over the past five years.

On the one hand, a pathway to citizenship and legal reforms sought by advocates could reduce the number of immigrants detained by CCA and its competitors in the private prison industry. “Private prison corporations have an enormous stake in immigration reform,” says Bob Libal, a prison reform advocate with Grassroots Leadership. “A reform that provides a timely pathway to citizenship without further criminalizing migration would be a huge hit to the industry,” he says.

On the other hand, Libal observed that a bill with increased security measures “could be very profitable” for the industry. Legislators and the Obama administration could adopt a plan that mirrors Republican proposals for an “enforcement first” approach, which include increased police powers, new mandatory detention and sentencing laws, further militarization of the border and proposals for more prisons and detention officers.

Damon Hininger, the chief executive of CCA, sounded anoptimistic note when asked about the impact of reform on an investor call earlier this month, noting, “There’s always going to be a demand for beds.”

In recognition of the profits at stake, the prison companies have invested in key legislators leading the reform process–although the companies are coy about their purpose, denying that they are attempting to influence Congress’s deliberations.

Their lobbying efforts are nothing new. CCA and other large private prison companies have forged ties with political insiders by spending huge sums on lobbying firms, campaign contributions and grants to friendly think tanks. An analysis by the Associated Press last year found that the three major private prison corporations–CCA, the Geo Group, the industry’s largest two companies, along with a smaller company, the Utah-based Management and Training Corporation–spent roughly $45 million over the past decade to influence state and federal government.

The private prison industry has cultivated support from Republican leaders on immigration policy, from Senator Marco Rubio, the “face of comprehensive immigration reform,” to the right edge of the House Republican caucus, a review by The Nation has found.

Unlike other stakeholders involved in today’s process, prison companies have stayed away from the headlines, and have told reporters that they are not planning to engage.

Pablo Paez, a vice president for corporate relations with the Geo Group, e-mailed The Nation to say that his company “has never directly or indirectly lobbied to influence immigration policy.” Correction Corporation’s spokesperson, Steve Owen, echoed that position, telling The Nation that his company does not lobby on any “sentencing or detention enforcement legislation” and “will not take a position on or advocate for or against any specific immigration reform legislation nor will our government relations team on our behalf.” Management and Training Corp. did not respond to a request for comment.

Regulatory filings and lobbying documents, however, undercut the industry’s claims of neutrality.

CCA, in a 2011 SEC filing, warned investors that “any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.”

Last year, disclosures with the Senate show that the company tapped one of its lobbying firms to begin monitoring immigration policy issues.

“Immigration reform laws which are currently a focus for legislators and politicians at the federal, state and local level also could materially adversely impact us,” notes the Geo Group’s 2011 annual report, which specifically cited the “relaxation of criminal or immigration enforcement efforts.”

Both companies may be wary of engaging publicly on immigration reform this year given the backlash over their involvement with recent anti-immigrant laws in the states. In 2010, Arizona enacted SB1070, a measure that centers on a requirement that local police to arrest and charge anyone found without proper immigration documentation. The bill, developed in consultation with private prison lobbyists through a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council, spawned copycat laws in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Utah and South Carolina.

Asked on an investor call about the effects of the Arizona law shortly after its passage, Wayne Calabrese, then the chief operating officer of the Geo Group, said, “I think people understand there is still a relatively low threshold of tolerance for people coming across the border and those laws not being enforced.… And that to me at least suggests there’s going to be enhanced opportunities for what we do.”

The association with the wave of state-level enforcement laws–prison companies hired local lobbyists and donated generously to many of the state lawmakers behind the Arizona effort in particular–generated unwanted attention on the industry. It also set off nationwide protests, including a demonstration at the Nashville, Tennessee, headquarters of CCA.

* * *

The private prison industry grew quickly thanks in no small part to its close ties to politicians and its ability to take advantage of right-wing trends, starting with the privatization wave in the eighties and on to the politics of crime, terrorism and immigration.

The money spent on influencing lawmakers has coincided with a sharp increase in immigrant detention and deportation. Immigrant detention costs taxpayers about $2 billion a year, and private prisons are increasingly tapped by the federal government to house the over 400,000 undocumented immigrants detained annually, a number that has more than doubled over the last decade. In 2012 alone, the two publicly traded prison companies, CCA and Geo Group, took in over $441.9 million in federal contracts to house so-called “criminal aliens” for the federal Bureau of Prisons. That year, the two companies combined netted $296.9 million in revenues from ICE contracts. These figures could grow or shrink depending on the details of the immigration reform overhaul debated in the coming months.

As immigration talks began formally in January with the so-called “Gang of Eight” negotiations in the Senate, legislators close to the industry were quick to promote policies that are in line with what critics call “the business of detention.”

Texas Senator John Cornyn, the number-two Senate Republican, was one of the first high-profile lawmakers to throw cold water on talks to create a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, calling such an idea a non-starter. Cornyn said that enforcement would be his foremost priority. We have to do “everything we can to secure our southwestern border,” Cornyn declared.

Cornyn’s idea of “robust” border security was made clear in an amendment he offered during debate over a supplemental spending bill three years ago. Cornyn’s amendment called for $3 billion to be spent on a mix of drones, border security guards and funding for 3,300 beds for immigrant detention over two years, as well as 500 additional detention officers. In 2005, Cornyn’s immigration reform legislation called for 10,000 new ICE detention beds.

Last August, federal government officials confirmed that the cost to taxpayers to detain an immigrant is approximately $164 a day. Cornyn’s approach would balloon the roughly $18 billion spent already on federal immigration enforcement measures.

Cornyn received $24,750 from private prison political action committees and their registered lobbyists in the last cycle. The political action committees of CCA and the Geo Group bet on a GOP-led Congress this year, and over the course of the past two years collectively gave over $380,000 to Republican candidates and committees, nearly six times the amount given to Democrats. The bulk of the money went to the National Republican Campaign Committee and other Republican leadership committees.

CCA’s PAC cut checks to hardliners like Representatives Lamar Smith and Jim Sensenbrenner, senior Republican lawmakers on the pivotal House Judiciary Committee who sponsored harsh enforcement-only legislation the last time Congress attempted immigration reform. As Seth Freed Wessler of Colorlines reported, House Judiciary Committee members have already hinted that they will again demand that “mandatory detention and deportation of anyone the government labeled a member of a gang, even if they’ve never been convicted of a crime” as a requisite for reform this year. Critics say such measures amount to racial profiling and sending young men of color to prison simply for whom they associate with in school or where they live.

The Geo Group’s PAC also gave $50,000 to the Mitt Romney Victory Fund, to support a presidential candidate who campaigned against “amnesty” and pledged to induce the undocumented to “self-deport.”

To Cornyn’s left within the GOP are Senators John McCain of Arizona and Rubio of Florida, both members of the Senate’s “Gang of Eight.” Although neither has dismissed a pathway to citizenship like their colleague Cornyn, McCain also seeks a strong set of enforcement proposals before any legalization system is put into place.

According to a source close to the reform discussions who spoke with The Nation, McCain has been adamant that any reform overhaul include a law that enshrines the so-called “Operation Streamline” program that enforces criminal penalties for every undocumented immigrant caught entering the country from the southern border. The program, initiated in 2005 by the George W. Bush administration, has continued to be enforced by the Obama administration, and is the main reason the number of immigrants in the criminal justice system has surged in recent years.

Before these guidelines, most undocumented immigrants were sent to civil deportation proceedings. Now, any undocumented immigrant arrested at the border automatically faces criminal charges, with six months in jail for their first illegal entry into the country, and up to twenty years for their second arrest for illegal entry following deportation. This policy, the Detention Watch Network notes in a 2011 report, has played a significant role in fueling the spike in incarcerations for migrant communities. The federal Bureau of Prisons has largely outsourced these types of criminal incarcerations to the Geo Group and CCA.

Currently, Operation Streamline exists as agency policy, not statute. McCain’s attempt to codify the “zero tolerance” rules as a condition for immigration reform would amount to a coup for the private prison companies, which currently manage thirteen detention centers for the BOP. An amendment previously sponsored by McCain in 2010 called for $200 million to the Department of Justice to expand Operation Streamline.

McCain, the Columbia Journalism Review reported, has collected over $30,000 in campaign contributions from CCA.

Rubio, a Cuban-American with broad support among conservative activists and a regular voice in Spanish-language media, is perceived as the politician most likely to set the parameters for reform. He has been featured in national media as the de facto leader for his party in finding a middle ground with Democrats and President Obama on a pathway for citizenship.

Rubio, however, has indicated that he would favor a system that forces currently undocumented immigrants in America to wait more than twenty years before applying for citizenship, while immediately enacting a set of enforcement measures. What this means is that for some 11 million undocumented immigrants a work permit or provisional documentation would be awarded only after they pay back taxes and a penalty fee, pass background checks that may include minor offenses and meet other yet-to-be-determined requirements. This approach, though hailed as a shift away from the GOP’s nativist positions of recent years, could leave millions of people in legal limbo as law enforcement is charged with a greater mandate to arrest those without documentation.

Rubio has his own ties to private prisons. In his bid for the US Senate in 2010, the Geo Group, which is based in Boca Raton, gave $33,500 to political action committees supporting his candidacy, and the company’s chief executive personally donated $4,800.

In 2011, Rubio co-sponsored another McCain bill to steer taxpayer funds to Operation Streamline.

Peter Cervantes-Gautschi, director of the Enlace Institute, says he believes that “Rubio’s positioning on reform is linked to his ties to the private prison industry.” Cervantes-Gautschi, who organized a divestment campaign against private prisons, noted, “Rubio’s guideline would produce more opportunities” for those seeking to profit from immigrant detention.

To fully appreciate the scope of industry’s potential influence over Rubio, one must look beyond mere campaign contributions to the man guiding the senator’s every move in the immigration reform process.

Cesar Conda, Rubio’s chief of staff and reportedly the architect of the senator’s immigration reform outreach, maintains financial ties to the Geo Group’s main lobbying firm, Navigators Global, a company he cofounded in 2003. Although Conda left the business in 2011 to lead Rubio’s staff, financial disclosure forms show that Conda has received up to $100,000 from a “stock buy-out agreement” of his ownership units from the firm, an arrangement a Rubio spokesperson said “is being paid out over time.”

Conda did not respond to a request for comment. Since 2011, the Geo Group has paid Conda’s former firm $220,000 for lobbying services.

Payments to current and former congressional insiders are a big part of how the private prison lobby wields influence.

The two largest for-profit prison corporations currently retain six outside lobbying firms and forty federal lobbyists, most of whom are former staffers to powerful politicians. Some are former lawmakers. Former Republican Representative Jim McCrery of Louisiana, who regularly antagonized any legislation he viewed as too friendly to immigrants while in office, is now at a firm called Capitol Counsel as a lobbyist for Geo Care, a Geo Group healthcare subsidiary; Vic Fazio, a former Democratic Representative from Northern California and former chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is a lobbyist for CCA through his law firm, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.

In 2008, former Senator Dennis DeConcini, a Democrat from Arizona, joined Correction Corporation’s board of directors.

The industry’s hired guns have helped win political victories large and small.

In 2008, a bill called the Private Prison Information Act, which would require for-profit prisons to comply with most public record requests relating to the their operation of federal prisons, gained bipartisan backing and appeared poised to pass out of a House subcommittee.

Calls for more transparency have followed the private prison industry as news reports and lawsuits have revealed a striking pattern of violence, sexual abuse, inadequate staffing, medical neglect and death in facilities across the country. Investigations by the American Civil Liberties Union found multiple immigrant deaths at facilities managed by CCA. Grassroots Leadership has documented several instances of sexual abuse and mysterious deaths at immigrant detention centers managed by the Geo Group.

Alarmed that the bill was gaining momentum, CCA dispatched several executives along with Fazio to meet with the sponsor of the legislation, Representative Tim Holden of Pennsylvania. A consultant who worked to pass the bill told The Nation that Fazio pressured Holden to drop support for the measure. The consultant recalled being invited by Holden’s staff for a meeting about the bill, and his surprise to find Fazio in the congressman’s office when he arrived for the meeting. Fazio and other CCA officials, the consultant said, took control of the meeting and berated advocates of the legislation.

In the end, Holden did not bother showing up to the hearing about his own bill and it died in committee. Holden, who lost his seat last year in the Democratic primary, could not be reached for comment.

In 2006,CCA paid the law firm Akin Gump, along with Fazio, $200,000 to lobby on “immigration reform legislation” as Congress made its last attempt at a federal overhaul. In May of 2006, John Ferguson, then the CEO of the company, told investors that immigration reform could produce “significant expansion of border enforcement efforts, which should result in a substantial increase in the population of illegal detainees.” One financial analyst associated with the company that year predicted the immigrant detention “market” was worth $250 million over twelve to eighteen months due to Bush’s enforcement actions.

The dynamics of immigration reform during that period can be viewed as massive victory for the private prisons. The Bush administration attempted to placate its right-wing base by enacting a series of policies to militarize the border and send more immigrants to jail, through new criminal procedures and increased ICE raids. The bipartisan attempt to create a pathway for citizenship was scuttled by right-wing lawmakers, many of whom are reprising that role this year. Senator Cornyn, who played an important role in opposing a comprehensive approach to reform in 2006, has even more influence this year given his position as ranking member on the Senate subcommittee that deals with immigration.

Five days after making his enforcement first position on reform clear at a conference hosted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation in January, Cornyn was back in DC celebrating his birthday with a fundraiser co-hosted by CCA lobbyist Rob Chamberlin.

A fundraiser announcement posted by the Sunlight Foundation shows Chamberlin among several hosts of Cornyn’s party at Hill Country BBQ, a Texas-style restaurant near Pennsylvania Avenue. Over the last year, Chamberlin’s firm, McBee Strategic, made more money than any other firm in Washington, DC, on behalf of a private prison interest.

“Who’s asking for more prisons?” asks Roberto Lovato, a co-founder of Presente.org. “There’s no polls that show that Latinos, immigrants, average citizens want more prisons or the enforcement-first mentality, so that shows that these politicians are listening to the prison lobbyists, not voters.”

The U.S. Supreme Court may roll back two pillars of the civil rights era this term — the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and affirmative action — both of which have long been targeted by the right-wing and whose challenges are backed by the same set of deep-pocketed ideological funders.

Scalia Sees Voting Rights and Affirmative Action as “Racial Entitlements”

Wednesday’s oral arguments in Shelby County v. Holder indicated hostility among some justices towards Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), which requires states with a history of state-sanctioned racial discrimination to get federal pre-approval before implementing changes to their voting laws or procedures. Congress has renewed it four times since 1965 with significant bipartisan support, most recently in 2006, when every U.S. Senator voted for it.

But that support was “very likely attributable to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement,” Justice Antonin Scalia asserted from the bench. “Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes,” he said, a characterization of the landmark civil rights law that was met with gasps in the courtroom.

This is not the first time Scalia has talked about “racial entitlements” — and his perspective will almost certainly apply to another civil rights case in the Court’s docket this term.

“To pursue the concept of racial entitlement — even for the most admirable and benign of purposes — is to reinforce and preserve for future mischief the way of thinking that produced race slavery, race privilege and race hatred,” he wrote about affirmative action in a concurring opinion in the 1995 case Adarand Constructors v Pena, a decision that enacted a high bar for government affirmative action programs.

Chief Justice John Roberts has expressed similar support for so-called color-blindness under the law. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” he wrote in a 2007 case striking down the consideration of a student’s race by school districts striving for diversity in schools in Seattle, Washington, and Louisville, Kentucky. Likewise, in a 2009 decision about the VRA, Roberts expressed a view that race matters less today, and therefore Section 5’s federal pre-clearance requirement may no longer be justified since “things have changed in the South.”

Roberts and Scalia have another bite at the affirmative action apple this term. In October, the Court heard oral arguments in Fisher v University of Texas, which challenges race-conscious university admission policies. Questioning from Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia indicated the Court may have a five-justice majority to reverse parts of a 2003 ruling that allowed consideration of race in college admissions (a decision that came before President George W Bush named two justices to the court).

The statements from these justices on affirmative action and voting rights reflect a view that race plays little role in America today (!), or at least that it should no longer be acknowledged under the law. In fact, “explicit anti-black attitudes” have actually increased over the past four years, particularly among Republicans, according to research by social scientists at Brown and the University of Michigan.

If the Court sides with plaintiffs in Fisher and Shelby County, it would be a victory for the right, which for decades has been laying the groundwork for rolling-back these sorts of progressive gains by adopting the terminology of “color-blindness.”

Long-Standing Opposition to Affirmative Action, Section 5

Both the VRA and affirmative action grew out of the civil rights struggle of the 1960s, and have been targeted for reversal ever since by generations of reactionaries.

President Lyndon Johnson’s support for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act led to realignments within America’s two major political parties. Southern Democrats like “Dixiecrat” Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina defected to the Republican Party, and over time many voters who had long supported “the Party of Lincoln” shifted their allegiance to Democrats.

Ronald Reagan’s opposition to civil rights programs, for example, was a key part of his effort to win the presidency by appealing to the racial views of white Southern voters. He famously kicked-off his successful presidential bid by declaring his support for “state’s rights” at a Mississippi event held just a few miles from where three civil rights activists were murdered in 1964. “States rights” had been a rallying call for Southern states opposing Brown v. Board of Education and the end of racial segregation, and provided a facially neutral way to oppose the VRA’s Section 5 federal pre-clearance requirements. He called the VRA “humiliating to the South” and described affirmative action as a form of “reverse discrimination” where whites are “victims.” As legendary campaign consultant Lee Atwater acknowledged after the campaign, the way Reagan discussed voting rights and affirmative action was part of a careful effort to garner the votes of white Southerners by using “abstract” and coded language to avoid express racism.

Once elected, Reagan stopped enforcing several affirmative action programs, and his Justice Department began filing amicus briefs in support of white men claiming injury from the programs. In 1982, when the Voting Rights Act was up for reauthorization, John Roberts was working for the Reagan Administration andargued for a watered-down version of the law. After Congress rejected the administration’s efforts and passed a strengthened VRA with bipartisan support, a hesitant Reagan nonetheless signed the reauthorization — prompting Roberts to write “we were burned.” President Reagan also appointed U.S. Supreme Court Justices who passed the litmus tests of a narrow view of affirmative action and civil rights laws: Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy, who are still on the Court, as well as William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O’Connor.

Right-Wing Institutions Laid Groundwork

Part of the long-term success of modern Republicanism, which grew out of opposition to the civil rights gains of the 1960s, is attributable to the development of a network of right-wing funders and well-funded institutions starting in the mid-1970s. For example, in 1973, legendary right-wing activist Paul Weyrich co-founded both the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Heritage Foundation.

ALEC, as the Center for Media and Democracy has documented, has advanced an array of policy initiatives at the state level to advance a right-wing agenda, for example by privatizing public institutions like education and prisons, and by successfully promoting efforts to restrict voting rights (some of which have been thwarted in the past year by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act). In addition to voter ID legislation, ALEC has adopted model bills like the deceptively named “Civil Rights Act” to end affirmative action programs run by states and universities.

The Heritage Foundation has become one of the largest think tanks in the country, and has long opposedaffirmative action and Section 5. In recent years, Heritage Foundation legal fellow Hans Von Spakovsky (who was recently profiled by New Yorker author Jane Mayer in a piece crediting research from CMD) has promoted the myth of rampant voter fraud to justify restrictive state voting laws. He argues that Section 5 is an outdated statute that allows the feds to trample on state liberty and has also opposed affirmative action.

The last three or four decades have also seen the development of an array of legal institutions attempting to achieve right-wing political victories through the courts. The best known is the Federalist Society, which has contributed to the development of legal theories to advance preferred policy outcomes through the judicial system, and has cultivated a network of like-minded lawyers and judges, including Justice Scalia and Chief Justice Roberts.

And these groups have been funded by a shared set of wealthy donors. In the 1970s and 1980s, foundations created by the Coors and Scaife family fortunes provided the seed money for groups like ALEC and the Heritage Foundation. The Bradley Foundation and Koch family foundations also provide tens of millions to an array of right-wing organizations.

Likewise, the current Supreme Court challenges to both the Voting Rights Act and university affirmative action programs are backed by top funders of the movement and were organized by the same right-wing activist — and are carrying forward this long-term project to roll-back the gains of the civil rights era.

Same Group and Donors Behind Fisher and Shelby County Cases

The Project on Fair Representation is a “legal defense fund” dedicated to reversing race-based legal protections, and its director, Ed Blum, coordinated the challenges in both the Fisher and Shelby County cases. Blum has likened his role in high-profile litigation to “Yenta the matchmaker.”

“I find the plaintiff, I find the lawyer, and I put them together, and then I worry about it for four years,” he said.

Blum urged Shelby County, Alabama, to bring its Section 5 challenge after the Department of Justice blocked its effort to dilute the voting power of the growing African-American population. He also connected with Abigail Fisher, a white student who was denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin and claimed it was because of her race. Blum was also behind the last Voting Rights Act challenge to make it to the Supreme Court, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder.

The Project on Fair Representation’s legal fees are entirely funded by the secretive Donors Trust, which has been described as a “Dark Money ATM.” Donors Trust funnels money from the Kochs and other funders to organizations in the right-wing network, but keeps the original donors secret.

Blum’s known contributors include the Bradley Foundation, which also bankrolls groups promoting voter suppression, writes Ari Berman of The Nation:

Blum’s group does not have to disclose which funders of Donors Trust are giving him money, but he has identified two of them: the Bradley Foundation and the Searle Freedom Trust. The Wisconsin-based Bradley Foundation paid for billboards in minority communities in Milwaukee during the 2010 election with the ominous message “Voter Fraud Is a Felony!”, which voting rights groups denounced as voter suppression. Both Bradley and Searle have given six-figure donations to ALEC in recent years, and Bradley funded a think tank in Wisconsin, the MacIver Institute, that hyped discredited claims of voter fraud to justify the state’s voter ID law, currently blocked in state court.

The Bradley Foundation has also been a major funder of attacks on affirmative action. It has given millions to Ward Connerly’s anti-affirmative action “American Civil Rights Institute,” and it has given over one million dollars to a group that calls itself the “Center for Equal Opportunity,” whose activities include traveling the country urging Republican legislators to crack down on affirmative action programs, which it claims constitute “reverse discrimination.” In 2011, a Center for Equal Opportunity representative claimed the University of Wisconsin was guilty of “severe racial discrimination.” This is a difficult claim to believe given that 2.6 percent of the university’s 42,180 students are African-American and 3.8 percent are Hispanic, much lower percentages than the general population.

Institutions of higher education — and many employers — indicate that taking race into account remains an important tool for promoting diversity in classrooms and the workplace, particularly to help compensate for the institutional forms of racism that contribute to ongoing inequity.

And civil rights groups strongly contend that Section 5 remains a vital part of the VRA’s goal of protecting access to the ballot box. The Act was designed to end decades of racist Jim Crow voting restrictions, like literacy tests, which might have been facially neutral but had a racially discriminatory impact. And in the past year, Section 5 has been applied to block the wave of voter ID restrictions passed in states like South Carolinaand Texas, as well as to stop discriminatory redistricting in Texas and to keep Florida from reducing early voting hours in certain areas. Like the Jim Crow-era restrictions, the ALEC-inspired voter ID laws and limits on early voting would disproportionately impact voters of color.

The problems of the 1960s and 1970s remain concentrated in the areas covered by Section 5: six of the nine states fully covered by the provision have passed new voting restrictions since 2010, but only one-third of the rest of the country passed similar restrictions during the same period. Justice Elena Kagan noted during Wednesday’s oral argument that while covered jurisdictions hold less than 25% of the U.S. population, they account for 56% of successful voting-rights lawsuits.

Although each case currently before the court asks a separate constitutional question — for Fisher, whether considering race in university admissions violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection guarantees, and forShelby County, whether requiring federal approval for changes in state voting procedures violates the 10th Amendment’s protections for “state’s rights” — if the Court sides with the plaintiffs, the cases will represent major victories for the right-wing movement’s effort to roll-back civil rights gains.

But, as today’s Republican Party tries to lose its image as the party of white people, these potential legal wins may instead be pyrrhic victories that reinforce it.

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Baltimore.

March 4 will be the 80th anniversary of the inaugural speech of Franklin Roosevelt becoming president of the United States. Here’s a little clip of what he said.

~~~

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, U.S. PRESIDENT: I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom I shall seek within my constitutional authority to bring to speedy adoption.

~~~

JAY: Now joining us to talk about the significance of Roosevelt’s New Deal and what it means for today is, first of all, Jennifer Taub. She’s an associate law professor at Vermont Law School. Before joining the VLS, she taught at the Isenberg School of Management and at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

And also joining us, from London, is John Weeks. He’s a professor emeritus at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies and author of the recently released book The Economics of the 1 Percent: 1 Percent Economics, 99 Percent Ideology. And he writes at JWeeks.org.

Thank you both for joining us.

So, John, before we kind of get into sort of comparison of today to then, give us some broad strokes of what was the significant decisions of Roosevelt and the New Deal.

JOHN WEEKS, PROF. EMERITUS, SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES: Let me begin by telling a story. When my mother died, I went to pick up the woman who–to take her to the funeral–who had done our cleaning for us. And I remember I went into her house. I’d never been in her house. She was African-American. Those were still the dark days of the end of segregation. [crosstalk]

JAY: And this is in Texas, right? This is taking place in Texas?

WEEKS: Yeah, this was in Texas. Right. There were two photographs on the wall. One of them was Martin Luther King, and the other was Franklin D. Roosevelt. And so I understood why Martin Luther King was there, but I said to her, why is Franklin D. Roosevelt there? I didn’t know he did much for–we called them black people in those days. And she said, “Saved our farm.”

And I think that there are a lot of–for all of Roosevelt’s drawbacks, there were many–I mean, there were–millions and millions of Americans loved him because they thought he had saved their farms, their houses, their lives, their health, and so on. And it’s difficult, I think, for people now to realize how strongly the vast majority of Americans felt, you know, felt very deeply about Roosevelt.

JAY: Jennifer, for our younger viewers, contextualize this a little bit. He’s elected in ’32, inaugurated in ’33. What did that period look like?

JENNIFER TAUB, ASSOC. PROF., VERMONT LAW SCHOOL: It was a really difficult period. The Depression had been under way for a while. If you remember, the great crash of the stock market was in October 1929. So by the time Roosevelt took office, there was massive unemployment. People were scavenging in dumpsters looking for food to eat. There were tremendous foreclosures and great amounts of unemployment. And so what–the country was quite desperate and very frustrated with Herbert Hoover, who was the outgoing president. So Roosevelt presented a tremendous hope, and he really did live up to people’s hopes.

JAY: John, when Roosevelt actually ran for office, my understanding is he actually ran on a platform of budget cuts. And Hoover was actually–.

WEEKS: He ran on a balanced budget. One of his criticisms of Hoover was that Hoover had overseen a deficit.

I think there’s no doubt that Roosevelt was an opportunist. Give me more opportunists like that. I mean, he came into power. He realized that something very drastic had to be done and had to be done quickly. He tried different things. He had some of the things [incompr.] struck down by a reactionary Supreme Court, which Jennifer can probably comment on more than I can. Then he tried different things.

And I think that he was a person that for some reason or other rose above his class–or dropped below his class (he was one of the wealthiest men in the United States) to recognize the plight of Americans. I mean, there were–like, there are so many quotes, but let me just give one. Roosevelt said the test of our civilization is not if we build a larger economy; it’s whether or not we build for the poorest in society.

JAY: But how much of that was rhetoric? I mean, wasn’t Roosevelt essentially doing whatever possibly could be done to maintain capitalism in the United States and very afraid of any move towards socialism? There was a real–there certainly was a workers movement. The union movement was gaining some strength. The Soviet Union, whether it was true or not, certainly held out the promise of an entirely different system. I mean, wasn’t Roosevelt doing what had to be done to save capitalism?

WEEKS: What I think is that–did Roosevelt save capitalism? Maybe he did. But is that a criticism? I would say that there were many people at that time who did not want Roosevelt elected and wanted to continue with the policies which Jennifer has described, which Hoover had pursued. And indeed, in 1933, soon after Roosevelt was inaugurated, there was a cabal, a plot to try to remove him by the most reactionary elements of financiers in the United States, and it was exposed by the Marine Corps general who they approached to be the head of this coup. So, yes, Roosevelt saved capitalism. But I think that’s a criticism only if you think that the only way that–where he should have gone is socialism. I don’t think that was really in the cards.

JAY: Well, Jennifer, I guess part of that question is is: did Roosevelt’s policies even actually really save capitalism? There’s an argument that it mitigated the crisis some, but it wasn’t till the massive government expenditure in World War II that you really had the end of the Depression.

TAUB: I mean, that’s true. But I want to return to what you mentioned earlier about what was happening in Europe with the authoritarian regimes in Russia and in Germany. And I think that if you look back at the news and the historical record, that was very much on people’s minds. So I believe that Roosevelt didn’t just, as you say, save capitalism, but also saved democracy, at least for a while.

What he put in place was quite different to what Bush II did in the fall of 2008. When Bush II began the rescue, it was a rescue of the financial system and it was a recovery–it was, again, a recovery of the financial system with very much of a top-down let’s keep things in place and let’s try to restore confidence in the existing banking structure and the financial market players.

In contrast, Roosevelt understood that that wasn’t going to work, and so he did a bottom-up type of rescue. And this included things like establishing the Works Administration, where over 3 million people were given jobs, you know, fixing infrastructure and the like. And so he literally had the federal government, through an executive order, getting people back to work.

He also established the HOLC, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, which was in response to what Hoover tried to do, which was more of a top-down, setting up regional banks to help out the savings banks. Instead, Roosevelt realized none of those were rescuing people from the bottom up, and ended up preventing many foreclosures.

And so I think that what Roosevelt was trying to do was a move of saying the federal government was going to try to help shore up the economy, begin to regulate securities, take a closer look at banking by separating investment banking from commercial banking. He was going to step in and take a lot of authority, but it wasn’t just top-down authority; it was also bottom-up support, rescue, and recovery for the people. And that gave the federal government more legitimacy in what it was doing than I think where we are today.

And why there might be resistance to federal spending when we desperately need it is because the memory of the Bush 2008 and then early Obama 2009 bailouts of the banks without reciprocity for homeowners is still fresh in people’s minds.

JAY: Right. John, what are some other examples of Roosevelt legislation or acts that you think one could learn from?

WEEKS: I would mention a couple of things. One thing: before I mention anything else, I think that you have to stress Roosevelt’s advisers. Jennifer referred to this. But some of them were very progressive indeed, much more progressive than Roosevelt. And the one that I mentioned, the first woman cabinet member, Frances Perkins, who was the secretary of labor, who was a very, very progressive person and should be celebrated by Americans as I’m doing now–but I would mention two very important things that Roosevelt did in addition to all of those work creation schemes, which Frances Perkins was deeply involved in. One was we can thank the Glass—Steagall Act–actually, it’s–formally is the Banking Act of 1933. For 40 years when we did not have a financial crisis, that is, from 1933 until nineteen–well, 50 years, I should say–1983, there was no financial crisis. We got–the first big financial crisis we got was the savings and loan, and that was a direct result of a law being passed amending the Banking Act of 1933 that–allowing savings and loans to do things they should not have done, which you know because a quarter of them went bust. That’s one thing. The other thing is establishing the principle that when the private sector demand is inadequate, the federal government should step in and make up for that demand. So those two principles–one, that finance must be regulated, and two, that the federal government must provide a economic boost when the economy is lagging.

JAY: And there was also legislation passed that on the face of it, at least, was supposed to make it easier for unions to operate. Jennifer, talk a bit about that.

TAUB: Yes. I mean, Roosevelt–and some of this was protected and some of it was struck down, but the ability for the American labor movement to grow depended upon the ability to organize with protection and without fear of retaliation. And that was–we can thank Roosevelt for that.

I want to also mention, since–touch on some things John said, and add a few others. One new thing is Roosevelt–we can look back and thank Roosevelt for the existence of unemployment insurance, and also establishing the precursors for our Medicare system, which Americans cherish today, even those who say they don’t want big government, right? The funny thing they say is, you know, get your government hands off my Medicare. And we can really thank Roosevelt for that.

One thing John mentioned was the Glass—Steagall act or the Banking Act of 1933. And, again, because of what was put in place in the New Deal, there was an understanding that if banks wanted to have access to the safety nets–and those safety nets were the Federal Reserve lending support (and remember, the Fed was established in 1913, so that’s our 100-year anniversary), but also the establishment of deposit insurance, which only came in with the Glass—Steagall Act. Both of these two things didn’t just help people in terms of avoiding runs on the banks and what that does to the economy, but it helped banks because they knew that the deposits they brought in were backstopped by the federal government. And by having that backstop or having that safety net, what that meant is it was absolutely essential to make sure that if the government was going to be standing behind these deposits, that someone had to limit what the banks actually did with the deposits. And that was [incompr.] important piece of the fabric.

And as John mentioned, this started getting pulled away right around the time–right prior to the savings and loan crisis. And part of what gets undone isn’t just the regulations saying, if you’re getting the safety net, you have to avoid certain high-risk practices, but other things got pulled away related to bank size. Right? So there’s a whole series of things that start happening in the ’70s and ’80s and ’90s that put in place the growth of finance as an important part of the economy.

JAY: Alright. Well, in the next segment of our interview, we’ll pick up the discussion. And just to tease it a little bit, it seems to me after World War II, to a large extent led by the Democratic Party, what begins is a process of undoing the New Deal, and right up until today. But the twist to that is Roosevelt helps hand power to Truman, who–under his administration I think the New Deal starts to get unraveled. And Roosevelt didn’t have to do that. So let’s talk about that in the next segment of this discussion on The Real News Network.

End

DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

Canadian pipeline company Enbridge Inc. is refusing to pay for an independent review designed to the ongoing environmental impacts caused by the nearly one million gallons of tar sands oil that spilled into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River following a pipeline rupture in 2010.

Kalamazoo River cleanup. (John Grap/The Enquirer) Trustees of the National Resource Damage Assessment group–which includes state and federal agencies–has repeatedly requested that the Canada based company help pay for two needed reviews of the vegetation and recreational areas affected by the spill.

However, the Detroit Free Press reports that Enbridge refused the requests on two occasions, in both June and October, saying enough data had already been collected.

“Absolutely not,” said Stephanie Millsap, a trustee representative for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in response to Enbridge’s claim.

“The trustees’ goal is to ensure Enbridge adequately compensates the public for the injuries their oil spill caused, and potentially is still causing, to natural resources,” Millsap wrote in an email to Detroit Free Press.

“The oil not only oiled the actual river itself but also many, many acres of floodplain habitat, as well,” she said. The spill damaged roughly 40 miles along the fragile ecosystem, forced the closure of portions of the river until 2012, and has required a lengthy cleanup process that continues to this day.

“If spilled into the environment, oil produced from tar sands is just as damaging as oil produced by other means, as residents along the Kalamazoo River in Michigan learned in 2010. Cleanup of that oil spill is still under way nearly three years later. Surely, producers of oil from tar sands should help contribute to the costs of cleaning up these spills — just like producers of other oil must do,” said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.

A proposal for a cross-country pipeline by Keystone XL, which would carry the highly toxic and corrosive tar sands from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, remains an imminent possibility. On Friday, a draft of an environmental impact assessment, approved by the Obama administration, was released and quickly and came under fire from environmental groups over the assessment’s blatant inadequacies.

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The UK Column has run a series of detailed articles exposing widespread physical and sexual abuse which took place over many years at Oxford and Cherwell Valley College (OCVC). Threatened with ‘action’ by the College, we have stuck to our guns in the knowledge that the serious allegations come from multiple individuals, with supporting documentary evidence, including statements, dates, times, names and more. The young victims all report a culture of intimidation and cover-up.

Sick Abuser Protected By Authorities

We have also exposed that Oxford Councillors have been duped by Council child protection officers who have either turned a blind eye, or report no crime, after they ensure there is no proper investigation. As just one example, OCVC ‘let go’ a member of staff (who we’ll identify as AF) for repeatedly showing sexually explicit images of his erect penis to colleagues. Young students report that far more serious material was shown to them. The sick college lecturer used his mobile phone, his laptop computer and the college’s computers in college time to tell, read and show inappropriate material to students. Some of their statements are harrowing and victims have been seriously traumatised by the vile material; child pornography, child beatings and abuse, snuff movies, and animal torture too vile to describe. We can also reveal that students who formally complained were not told of what ultimately happened to tutor AF. It has now emerged that OCVC staff secretly agreed with Council Officers and police that students who had complained, would not be told of the final outcomes of the dismissal action. This cynical move deprived students of both justice and possible compensation.

It is understood the man concerned AF (a white male in his late 40’s / early 50s) who was a formal lecturer at the Black Bird Leys Campus Motor vehicle department) is still freely employed in the educational motor-trade training establishment in Northamptonshire as an Assessor. He is protected by the authorities and still not flagged by CRB checks or the sex-offenders register. Why was he not investigated, charged and also barred, by the Independent Safeguarding Authority?

Documented reports of ‘Common Assault’ on students have also not been passed to police for investigation and action. More recently another staff member identified by students as a long term abuser, was allegedly slipped away on ‘sick leave’ from OCVC following more complaints in October 2012 concerning students being bullied. Again no proper action has been taken. Similarly with white men entering the college to groom students. Were OCVC partner schools ever notified that 14 year old children attending the college, undertaking a vocational qualification, were at serious risk? Were their parents ever alerted?

Blatant Racial Discrimination By Thames Valley Police

When we also became aware that students’ reports of abuse were fully supported by the factual, measured and corroborating evidence of an adult Asian member of staff, we realised that there was a racial discrimination angle to the abuse cover-up.

Just as brave NHS whistleblower Gary Walker, was sacked, bullied and victimised for reporting deaths and serious abuse within the NHS, this brave Asian tutor was also attacked by his employers and others. His crime? – trying to protect white, male and female students. Far from praising a whistleblower of serious abuse at OCVC, the college set out to destroy him. Shockingly. whilst Oxford and Thames Valley Police have crowed their success with the arrest of Asian paedophiles under Operation Bullfinch, they have steadfastly refused to accept evidence from the Asian member of staff concerned. Evidence which identifies white abusers and white victims.

Operation Bullfinch Reveals Police Dismissal Of Victims

Significantly, victims appearing in court under paedophile investigation Operation Bullfinch have also reported a culture of cover-up by police and child protection authorities. The Oxford Mail reported that “the jury was told that a young girl’s delinquent behaviour made her an ideal candidate for the child prostitution gang as she was unlikely to be believed by police…. it did not take much for the police to be persuaded that a crime had not been committed.”

Girl (1) in the trial said she “felt let down by the police after nothing happened when she reported her abuse in 2006. Most alarmingly she also stated that “They (the police) threatened, on a number of occasions, to arrest me for wasting police time for turning up at a police station in a state after running away.” She added “If you pick up a child covered in cigarette burns and bruises, something is fundamentally wrong… Adults should be doing their jobs ” The UK Column understands that both Oxfordshire County Council’s Chief Executive Joanna Symons and Director of Children’s Services Jim Leivers have been in Courtroom eight to watch proceedings. Why? Guilty conscience?

This type of blatant neglect by the police is mirrored where a former OCVC female student, who made complaints of violent sexual assaults, and feared being raped, was also ignored. In fact her complaint simply sat in Thames Valley Police’s child abuse investigation unit for over 2 years, whilst the girl had to fight for the complaint to be addressed. Complaints and supporting evidence of serious abuse from the OCVC Asian member of staff, including that concerning the female victim, were also forwarded onto Thames Valley Police. No action was ever taken

Oxford Council Officers ‘Dupe’ Elected Members

Lievers has already been identified by the UK Column as deliberately or negligently deceiving Councillors in his attempts to claim that full investigations have been carried out. He states “ From the investigations undertaken and from the subsequent information provided to the County Council following these investigations, I can confirm that the vast majority of the allegations have not been substantiated. I would also confirm that where any of the allegations have been substantiated, action has been taken to address this matter.”

But Liever’s claims are simply not true – piecemeal investigations to fragment evidence, have been sold to elected members as full investigations. This failure has been reinforced by Council Legal Staff in letters to elected Members, in which they attempt to reassure Councillors that ‘serious child abuse has not taken place.” This same legal team have branded concerned members of the public vexatious for asking for documents which help expose the cover-up. Councillor Ian Hudspeth, Leader of Oxfordshire County Council, appears one of those deceived by his own officers.

This disgraceful and dirty cover-up, now demonstrating racial discrimination, is facilitated by the cosy and interwoven nature of Oxfordshire County Council Child Safeguarding Board. Police sit side by side with those who have knowingly concealed evidence of abuse. “Independent’ child protection officers are, in fact, paid foot-soldiers of Oxford Council, where reputation management is more important than child-protection.

£1 Million To Re-brand Child Protection Failure

The picture of OCVC abuse grows deeply sinister when we realise that Cowley Police station, where OCVC victims report they were ignored, now hosts the ‘Kingfisher’ child protection specialist centre. This is a £1million initiative funded with £500,000 from Thames Valley Police and £620,000 from the Council. It is staffed by a Detective Constable and Sergeant, a case investigator, an intelligence officer and a missing person’s coordinator. The Council provides five social workers, two family support workers and an adminstrator.

According to the Oxford Mail article Lievers said, ”Having worked together on Operation Bullfinch, which began in spring 2011, we’re formalising our links by having this joint team. The message is clear, the authorities are set up to combat this type of crime in Oxfordshire.” His remarks are supported by East Oxford MP Andrew Smith who added “It is vital everything possible is done to protect children from abuse and it is good to see concerted action. It is crucial all children know they can speak out and there is someone to help.”

For young victims of abuse at OCVC and elsewhere the message is very clear, people guilty of abject failure in child-protection are re-inventing themselves and hiding behind a £1million smokescreen. Andrew Smith MP, joins the hypocrisy, having failed to take action for a young victim who approached him directly.

His failure is mirrored by Tory Councillor Louise Chapman, Cabinet Member for Children Young People and Families from Oxfordshire County Council. Daughter of David Cameron’s election Agent, this controversial Conservative Councillor has been privately criticised by some colleagues for her poor attendence at meetings and lack of mental acumen.

We will continue to investigate and report this story. Evidence grows that Thames Valley Police and others, appear guilty of blatant racial discrimination, and gross negligence in their failure to investigate OCVC abuse and paedophilia. The Oxford public must take appropriate action to expose this rotten situation, and protect their children.

March 4, 2013  |  

The following article first appeared in ColorLines.

The chaos set to be unleashed over the next month through the implementation of sequestration budget cuts is not an accident. For a large part of the Republican Party and the secretive billionaires that fund them, the disruptive shockwave that will be caused by investing less in historically marginalized communities is the point.

Since the 1970s–through ideas which can only be thought of as flawed and eccentric–an ideological band has championed an end to the education, health, transportation and housing programs that have made America more economically fair.

Now at the heart of the GOP, this group argues that these very economic justice initiatives have instead created a “culture of dependency” which they want to dissolve by using sequestration.

In point of fact, sequestration is just an extension of a broader strategy which they call “starve the beast.” The aim of “starve the beast”–a rather unfortunate metaphor given racial stereotypes from the worst of America’s past–is to deny the federal government capital in order to bring about its collapse. So to fully evaluate where we are and what comes next, it’s sadly necessary to spend time considering this off-beat philosophy–and the bizarre way it’s come to rule our lives.

Making and Taking

Adherents to “starve the beast”–which include House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan–believe that America is divided between “makers” and “takers.”

In their world view, the “makers” are the drivers of the nation’s economic growth. But they’re being held back by the “takers”–increasingly black and brown–who’ve misused the democratic process to hijack the government and funnel money away from the “makers” through taxes. Cantor himself echoed this very point during the fight over the debt ceiling in 2011.

This may sound strange to the rest of us, but to them it’s the truth.

“Starve the beast” followers argue that the economic interests of the country and of the “makers” are one in the same. They want the government to fall back and they want the “takers” put in their place. Only then will America truly prosper, or so the thinking goes.

In order to reach this anti-democratic future, their plans call for the federal government to return to its basic core functions, similar to those at the time of nation’s birth in 1776. Sticking to the areas of defense and foreign affairs, 80 percent of the federal government would disappear.

How could this come about? Through huge tax cuts and massive debt.

“Starve the beast” adherents contend that tax cuts would deprive the government of revenue, and gradually shift resources to the “makers.” With less income over time, the government would rack up enormous debts. The combination of tax cuts and a pile of IOUs would eventually force the government to eliminate most of its activities.

This may sound like a zany economic manifesto from a fake political novel, but it’s in fact from a real one. Shockingly, that novel, Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” plays a pivotal role in the argument over sequestration, and we’re playing out her quirky theories in real time.

Weird and Powerful

Ayn Rand, whose white supremacist views were woven throughout her writing, attracted a band of towering intellectuals in the 1950s and 1960s who felt increasingly out of touch with an America that was diversifying in every single way.

One of Rand’s most devoted and successful proteges was Alan Greenspan. Greenspan–part of Rand’s intellectual circle called the “Collective”–would go on to be chair of the Federal Reserve under four presidents.

As across-the-board federal budget cuts go into effect and the “real pain” predicted by economists and policy experts begins to creep into the lives of everyday people–namely US workers–investors on Wall Street are saying: “bring it on.”

Quoted in a New York Times article on Monday that describes the current economy as a “golden age for corporate profit,” Savita Subramanian, who heads the equity and quantitative strategy for Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said that despite the terrible times for working people and warnings that nearly three-quarters of a million jobs could be lost this year in the US, “the market wants more austerity.”

Reading the article prompted journalist and book author Naomi Klein to tweet:

Responding directly to Subramanian’s remark that a market push for “austerity” was a good thing for the overall economy, Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said such a comment made “no sense at all.”

And Weisbrot agrees with Klein’s observation that what’s being observed should be broadly seen as a robbery by profit-bloated corporations of what should be economic gains more equitably shared with working people. 

“You can’t stop a robbery until you know it’s happening.”
-Richard Eskow

Though the “sequester” cuts are predicted to cut the growth rate this year by as much as .5 or .7 percent, what economic gains are made, Weisbrot says, “will likely continue to go to the rich, as they have for the past three decades.”

As the Times points out, most of the profit gains made by multinational corporations since the 2008 crash have come because of increased productivity and government-backed lending that only larger firms can leverage. Neither of these gains, however–or the profits derived from them–are being shared with workers or lower-income, struggling Americans.

According to the Times:

As a percentage of national income, corporate profits stood at 14.2 percent in the third quarter of 2012, the largest share at any time since 1950, while the portion of income that went to employees was 61.7 percent, near its lowest point since 1966.

And as Travis Waldron at ThinkProgress points out:

From 2009 to 2011, 88 percent of national income growth went to corporate profits while just one percent went to workers’ wages, and hourly earnings for workers actually fell over that time. And while they aren’t investing in job growth, corporations are also paying taxes at a rate that hit a 40-year low in 2011.

But what’s the answer to fixing this continued trend where the gains steadily flow to the top?

According to Richard Eskow at the Campaign for America’s Future, it begins with acknowledging the clear disparities and ends with actually introducing policies beneficial to working people. As he wrote recently in a piece titled the “Great Wealth Robbery“:

The real “job creators” aren’t the ultra-wealthy. If they could create jobs with all their added wealth, they would have done it already. The real job creators are working people with jobs.

They don’t invest their money in hedge funds or stash it in offshore accounts. They spend it: on food, transportation, their kids’ education, maybe a night at the movies … And then other people get jobs making those things possible.

We have a working model to follow: The USA in the 35 years after World War II. As Paul Krugman says, “To the extent that people say the economics is confusing or uncertain, that’s overwhelmingly because people want it to be.” We know how to do this.

Raising the minimum wage is a start. A maximum wage would help, too, by reducing CEOs’ incentives to emphasize quarterly gains over long-term growth and leaving more to be shared with employees.

We also need a national strategy for regaining the more reasonable distribution of income this country had in the 1950s. We need to ensure that the door of opportunity, which is closing every day for millions of young people, is opened again. And we need to ask the wealthiest to really pay their fair share — at something closer to the top tax rates of the 1950’s or 1960’s. […]

Most of all, we need to educate those around us so they understand what’s happening. That includes the well-intentioned well-to-do, who might do more to end the problem if they knew it existed. After all, you can’t stop a robbery until you know it’s happening.

_________________________________

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As the number of those stripped of British citizenship on national security grounds grows, Chris Woods from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has told RT that the whole process is highly secretive, and unaccountable to the rule of law.

“Neither of these individuals had been charged with any offense in the UK. We know they were accused of serious terrorist offenses, but no charges were ever laid against them,” Woods said, arguing that the process is highly secretive.

“We don’t know the evidence that has been laid against these men and even if they are able to get an appeal which is very very difficult that appeal would mostly be heard in secret,” he said. “The government`s response so far has been that citizenship here in the UK is a privilege, not a right.”

The London-based bureau has revealed that since 2010, Home Secretary Theresa May has revoked the passports of 16 individuals over alleged links to militant or terrorist groups. Two of those sixteen were subsequently killed in US drone strikes.

In many cases, they were stripped of their citizenship while abroad. A Sudanese-British man took his four children on holiday to Sudan. Four days after leaving, he was stripped of his passport and his children were banned from returning the UK.

At least five of those whose British passport has been revoked were born in Britain; one man had lived in the country for almost 50 years, the bureau reported.

Mohamed Sakr, who was born in Newham and raised in west London, had dual nationality as his parents were Egyptian. His British citizenship was revoked in September 2010, and 17 months later he was killed in a US drone strike in Somalia.

According to Woods, the US drone strike killings of those stripped of British citizenship raise questions of a possible connection between the two. The US was also apparently involved in the case of another man kicked out of the UK.
 

A dual British-Somali national, Mahdi Hashi was stripped of his UK citizenship while in Somalia caring for his grandmother. He went missing shortly after the incident, and later appeared before a US court on charges of “providing material support” to Somali militant group al-Shabaab, and “unlawful use of high-powered firearms.”

Hashi’s family has claimed he was stripped of British citizenship after he refused to become an informant for the UK’s MI5 intelligence service.

Waves of protests swept Bulgarian cities again on Sunday, as tens of thousands took to the streets despite the government’s resignation. Bulgarians demanded the ‘mafia’ to leave, but it wasn’t clear who could unite them as the country’s new leader.

Anti-government slogans and demands to end monopoly powers were again in evidence on the streets of Bulgaria following the government’s failed attempts to negotiate with the public and its eventual resignation last Wednesday.

Bulgarian cities of Sofia, Plovdiv, Burgas, Blagoevgrad, Ruse, Sliven and Varna saw crowds of people protesting against the corruption, poverty and high energy prices that consume their wages. The largest demonstration took place in the Black Sea city of Varna, with about 50,000 people taking part, according to the local media.

Outgoing prime minister Boiko Borisov was reportedly hospitalized with “high blood pressure and general weakness” amid the mass protests. Borisov pledged to cut electricity prices by 8 percent and even promised to revoke the license of the Czech power supplier CEZ just before his resignation.

Although Borisov and his rightist GERB party have lost a lot of support over the last year, the opposition Socialist Party is not trusted either, according to polls.

“It is obvious that the protesters are not united and this could very quickly destroy the enthusiasm of the people,” Georgi Trendafilov, a demonstrator in Sofia told Reuters.

President Rosen Plevneliev meanwhile stated that the interim government would implement the previous commitments and stick to the 2013 budget.

However, the president’s latest initiative to ease public anger failed on Saturday. Representatives of the protesters refused to participate in the establishment of a public council intended to represent people’s interests, saying that they could not “sit at the same table with those they were fighting.”

For three weeks Bulgaria has been rocked by demonstrations, sometimes violent, which began as a small group of young people protesting against high electricity bills. Soon they were joined by thousands outraged by the overall low living standards.

Bulgaria joined the European Union in 2007, but it is still behind other member states with wages, at about half the EU average. Public services are also poor despite having the lowest public debt in the bloc. The country is also excluded from the free travel Schengen zone over graft and corruption concerns.

A baby girl born with HIV became the first person to be “functionally cured” using conventional drugs, scientists have announced. This potentially means that the virus could be treated in infants in its early stages.

A two and a half year old baby from Mississippi has been off medication for over a year and with only traces of the virus’ genetic material still found in the system.

“This is a proof of concept that HIV can be potentially curable in infants,” said Dr. Deborah Persaud, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who presented the findings at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta.

Apparently, the mother of the child went into labor without knowing that she was HIV positive. Tests only confirmed the virus during the delivery.

“I just felt like this baby was at higher-than-normal risk, and deserved our best shot,” Dr. Hannah Gay, a pediatric HIV specialist at the University of Mississippi who treated the baby said in an interview.

To combat the virus, the medics applied accelerated and more potent treatment than usual, assigning three-drug infusions within 30 hours of birth, before tests confirmed the infant was infected.

Usually, in similar cases doctors administer low-dose medication in hope of preventing HIV infection.

The child responded well through age 18 months at which point the family temporarily stopped treatment, researchers said. When they returned ten months after treatment stopped only tiny amounts of virus was found in the child’s blood.

The applied course of action apparently pushed the HIV out of the baby’s blood before it could take refuge in the body. Reservoirs of dormant cells usually rapidly attack and infect anyone who stops medication, said Dr. Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins Children’s Center who led the investigation into the case.

The child has been deemed as “functionally cured,” meaning in long-term remission even if all traces of the virus haven’t been completely eradicated.

Next, the medics will try to examine and prove that, with more aggressive treatment of other babies, “maybe we’ll be able to block this reservoir seeding,” Persaud said.

The scientific community praised the discovery’s announcement in Atlanta.

“You could call this about as close to a cure, if not a cure, that we’ve seen,” Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health told the reporters, but cautioned against stopping the anti-AIDS drugs in infected infants even if they are aggressively treated at birth.

The Mississippi case shows “there may be different cures for different populations of HIV-infected people,” said Dr. Rowena Johnston of the Foundation for AIDS Research.

“We can’t promise to cure babies who are infected. We can promise to prevent the vast majority of transmissions if the moms are tested during every pregnancy,” Dr. Gay said.

The Mississippi case is the first time a person has been cured from HIV using drug treatment. Earlier a man was cured using a sophisticated stem cell transplant.

Timothy Ray Brown was diagnosed with HIV in 1995 later to develop leukemia while living in Germany. In 2007, a blood stem cell transplant using a donor that was naturally resistant to HIV with a rare gene mutation was applied to Brown, transferring the resistance. 

It is estimated that some 300,000 children were born worldwide with HIV in 2011, mostly in poor countries where only about 60 percent of infected pregnant women get treatment that can keep them from passing the virus to their babies.

Republicans have done a whole lot of things to damage their “brand” and still haven’t figured out what to do to quit being the “stupid party” after their losses in the last election, but note to Kathleen Parker — refusing to raise taxes in order to lower the budget deficit is not one of them. The majority of their own constituents don’t agree with them on this issue, but that didn’t stop Parker from pretending it would damage them on this Sunday’s Meet the Press:

GREGORY: What’s striking to me is that these issues are still so hard and that the elections didn’t seem to solve them completely enough. […] Is that true? I mean, why didn’t it?

PARKER: Why didn’t it? Because, look, the Republicans cannot give on taxes. They simply can’t. It would damage their brand permanently and the President is unwilling… he is insisting on raising revenue through taxes. There’s no way for them to have a meeting of the minds when those differences exist and that’s not going to change.

Republicans are not worried about damaging their brand on tax increases with anyone other than the members of the one percent who are paying to keep them in office.

Fox host Alisyn Camerota made a deliberate point of linking firefighter flunkies to race when she reported that “as many as 30” New York City firefighter recruits are too obese for the job. Without bothering to point out that obesity rates among firefighters are causing concerns all over the country or that women are also part of the FDNY recruitment efforts, Camerota highlighted increased minority recruitment as the only factor to consider:

Well, they sued for the right to become New York City firefighters but now they’re flunking out. As many as 30 trainees have already dropped out because they’re too overweight to meet the physical demands of the job. And more are expected to go. The first recruited class since 2008 was formed after a judge ordered the department to become more racially diverse. But now veteran firefighters are fuming, saying the candidates are oversized and underperforming and need to be cut breaks to pass their tests.

Do you think anyone in the Fox audience failed to connect the dots?

Apparently, this “news” was based on a similar report from sister company NY Post that also linked the problem to minorities. However, the Post pointed out what Camerota didn’t: the class was not made up of applicants from the general population:

FDNY Commissioner Salvatore Cassano excluded applicants from the general population for this Academy class, limiting the pool to medics, whose ranks include a higher percentage of minorities than is found in firehouses.

…But they were rated only on a written exam. In years past, applicants had to score high on both a written and a physical test.

… The department’s own EMS Academy head, Lt. David Russell, admitted in a 2011 report that even when FDNY recruits from EMS got extra help, “the overall fitness of these recruits is still poor.”

In other words, it’s quite likely that the population of medics, whose work, as the article also pointed out, is mostly sedentary, has a lower fitness rate than the general population. But Camerota misleadingly gave the impression that the same people who sued (a black fraternal firefighters organization) are the same people now flunking out.

By the way, those “fuming” “veteran firefighters” Camerota cited in her report seem to be anonymous ranters on a bulletin board not associated with the FDNY. The Post also wrote that “Veteran firefighters are fuming over the quality of the new recruits” and backed that up with comments from a few posters on a site called FDNY Rant.

At least two people have been killed and over 400 injured in clashes in Port Said. Egypt’s army reportedly moved in to stop clashes between protesters and police, sparked by the transfer of prisoners accused of last year’s stadium massacre.

At least two people have been killed in clashes in front of the police station in Port Said. Twenty-one-year-old Ibrahim Abdel Aziz who died of a gun wound on Sunday night was a civilian, according to the health ministry.

One army service member was shot dead by an unknown assailant, army spokesperson Colonel Ahmed Ali said in a statement. 

According to latest figures from Egypt’s health ministry, at least 404 people suffered injuries during unrest on Sunday.

The crowd reportedly attacked the police station at the Suez Canal city with Molotov cocktails and stones. Law enforcements responded with tear gas and birdshot. Army troops were deployed to contain the violence.

Colonel Ali denied reports of clashes between the army and police, saying that army units were deployed in an attempt to stop the violence. “It is completely untrue that armed forces units in Port Said exchanged fired with police forces during the clashes,” Ali wrote.

Three more soldiers, including the Colonel-in-chief of the army unit deployed to Port Said were also injured in clashes, reports Ahram.

Most of those injured suffered teargas inhalation while over 30 people were wounded with birdshot and shrapnel, Ahram online cites Helmy El-Hanafy, a health ministry undersecretary in Port Said.

The fresh wave of violence was sparked by the interior ministry’s decision to transfer the remaining 39 prisoners charged with igniting last year’s deadly stadium clashes in which over 70 football fans were killed to another prison.

Authorities said they were moving the prisoners to ensure security and stability in the city, after this January’s verdicts on the first batch of defendants sparked unprecedented violent protests among the relatives of the accused.

In January, 21 of 73 defendants in the stadium massacre case were sentenced to death. Since then at least 40 people have died in clashes in Port Said.

For several weeks, thousands of people in Port Said have been conducting a general protest demanding justice over the latest deaths and a thorough investigation of last year’s events.

March 3, 2013  |  

The sh*t CEOs say! When the chiefs of giant corporations are not blaming others for their mismanagement and unscrupulous behavior, they’re explaining why their distorted worldviews are best for the 99 percent. They do this, of course, at a time of declining national median income and huge paydays for executives.

Recently, there has been an uptick of particularly stupid remarks coming from the mouths of America’s CEOs. Here are a few of the most out-of-touch and out-of-line oracles, a mix of recent gaffes and classic blunders.

1. “That’s why I’m richer than you.”

JPMorgan honcho Jamie Dimon has taken time out of his regularly scheduled program of mismanaging a systemically dangerous bank to divulge why he’s richer than the rest of us. Last week, Mike Mayo, who is both an analyst at CLSA and a critic of too-big-to-fail banks, was on an investor conference call — a forum in which executives typically offer BS about their company’s performance. Mayo wasn’t having it. He asked pointedly if customers might take their money to better-capitalized banks than JPMorgan. ( Check out the video.)

Mayo: I think what I hear UBS saying in the presentation is that if I’m an affluent customer I’ll feel a lot better going to UBS if they have 13.5 (percent) capital ratio than another big bank with a 10 percent ratio. Do you agree with that?

Dimon: You would go to UBS and not JPMorgan?

Mayo: I didn’t say that. That’s their argument.

Dimon: That’s why I’m richer than you.

The mystery of Dimon’s riches solved! Dimon became 1 percenter extraordinairre because he operates in a lax regulatory climate that lets him get away with low capital ratios. That, of course, is one of the reasons the big banks blew up the economy during the recent financial crisis — they were over-leveraged. Which is awful for just about everybody — investors, taxpayers and ordinary people dealing with economic ruin. But it sure is great for Dimon.

James Saft over at Reuters was less than impressed by Dimon’s musings:

“The real issue isn’t who is rich, but rather whose interests are being fairly served and whose aren’t. Dimon’s approach gives short shrift to both shareholders and taxpayers. Taxpayers still carry substantial risks for which they are not being compensated, a state that will only change when regulations are tightened, and hopefully vastly simplified…Shareholders do badly because the kind of bank Dimon runs is prone to loss and volatility, leading markets to set a low value on the bank’s earnings.”

Dimon may be wealthy, but his crappy performance as a CEO, demonstrated in the “London Whale” fiasco in which $6 billion went missing, has cost him. His pay was recently cut by more than half, to $11.5 million from $23 million. Alas, he still feels more than rich enough to continue his obnoxious bragging.

The Mayo exchange certainly isn’t the first time Dimon has shared his perspective on being filthy rich: In 2011, as bankers were under fire from the Occupy movement, he whined, “Acting like everyone who’s been successful is bad and that everyone who is rich is bad — I just don’t get it.”

No, Jamie, and you probably never will.

2. “I don’t think that I would consider myself a feminist.”

Marissa Mayer, who recently became the CEO of Yahoo, catapulted to meme-of-the-moment when she decided, in a burst of anachronistic bone-headedness, that employees may no longer telecommute, but must stay chained to their desks five days a week.

March 3, 2013  |  

The foreclosure crisis in America has had many unexpected twists. But none may be as striking as the latest development: real estate speculators, with billions in ready cash, are swooping into hard-hit locales and buying foreclosed and low-end homes with the same vehemence that created the housing market bubble.

They’re hoping to rent these properties to ex-owners or others, but they’re creating distortions that truly worry housing advocates. Banks are flocking to cash buyers, not to people with loans. First-time buyers can’t get in. Rents are skyrocketing. Home values and prices are going up.

If Maria Benjamin had her way, the For Rent sign hanging from a post on the small front lawn of the bungalow at 22 Chanslor Ave. would not be there. Nor would similar signs on other lawns across Richmond or a string of other working-class cities on the industrial northern end of San Francisco Bay.

Benjamin is program director at the Community Housing Development Corporation of North Richmond, which relies on a portfolio of government housing programs, some with roots dating back to the New Deal, to assist first-time home buyers. Her mission, as has been the case for housing activists for decades, is built on the belief that owning a home helps to stabilize individuals, families and communities.

But in a turn that affordable housing advocates like Benjamin could not imagine just two years ago, starter homes like the two-bedroom, one-bathroom, 939-square-foot bungalow at 22 Chanslor, keep being snatched from her clients’ hands. Homes that were abandoned or boarded up as the housing bubble burst are now hot properties, but not for the kind of buyer Benjamin seeks.

“We have people who have been making offers for a year or more, continuously being turned down,” she said. “They’re being outbid by investors.”

“Waypoint is a giant player,” said Benjamin, referring to a company that started in the Bay Area in 2008 and expects to raise $1 billion from Silicon Valley venture capitalists this year as part of an ambitious plan to buy 10,000 homes across America’s foreclosure belts. “But it is not only Waypoint,” she said. “They’re buying up and targeting low-income neighborhoods… They’re targeting cities that don’t have strong rent controls.”
   
Benjamin is upset that working people who have played by the rules–saving money, holding jobs, filling out piles of paperwork to get low-interest federal loans–or tried to restructure debt to keep their homes–are being steamrolled. She says there’s no precedent for corporate takeover of low-end homes on the scale that’s unfolding, a concern voiced by others, including realtors in Southern California where outlier counties are seeing a third or more of foreclosed homes bought with cash.

“It’s been going on for about 20 months,” Benjamin said. “In the beginning, the investors were on the courthouse steps buying these properties, but they weren’t organized. They were smaller investors. Now there are investment pools that are coming together. So they are more organized and more strategic. Our folks don’t stand a chance.”    

Another Set of Rules

Waypoint, however, tells another story. It sees itself as something of a capitalist white knight, riding into blighted communities and doing what few private investors have done as the foreclosure crisis spread like a wildfire and left shuttered homes, or buildings with Occupiers who refused to leave as banks and lenders refused to restructure their debt.  

There’s an old saying in real estate that you make money when you buy, not when you sell. Waypoint’s investors–like other big investment pools with similar plans–see low-end homes as a giant untapped equity play. Property values in this market dropped by a half or two-thirds in value in cities such as Richmond as the real estate crash bottomed out. Pheonix, Las Vegas, Tampa and other foreclosure centers all had similar price collapses. The sector was poised to rise in value at margins exceeding most stocks and bonds, if home values even recovered a fraction of their former peak.

Investors with hundreds of millions in ready cash, such as the Blackstone Group, Colony Capital, Oaktree Capital Management started buying thousands of homes in the most depressed markets for cash and as-is. Their sales pitch promised returns of 6 to 8 percent from rental income and a longer-term payout of 16 to 18 percent once the properties are sold in a half-dozen years or so, said Paul Staley, who buys, rehabs and sells homes for a Bay Area affordable housing non-profit. The investor’s cash meant banks and other mortgage lenders didn’t have to worry about inspections, appraisals, government standards and haggling with buyers. Those market “efficiencies” pushed players like Community Housing Development Corporation of North Richmond and its clients out of the equation.

But then Waypoint spent tens of thousands of dollars fixing up its homes. If you look at its website, you’ll see houses with new paint inside and out, new kitchens, carpets and floors, tubs and showers. They weren’t bringing buildings up to new construction code, but they were spending $20,000 or more on each to improve them. That investment had not been seen in this kind of housing stock in low-income communities in years. It helps to stabilize falling home values for neighbors (whose mortgages may be underwater) and it fortifies the local property tax base. For those efforts, and launching a slick marketing campaign where Waypoint said it would award prompt-paying renters with “points” that could be used to buy the home or to get cash back after leases end, the company has become a local media darling (although it is now downplaying these programs).

Waypoint spokeswoman Beth Haiken declined to make any executives available, saying they’d spent last week “skiing with their kids on spring break” and now “had to get back to work.” That’s too bad, because it would be very instructive to hear their take on the national trend they are part of–including questions about their business model and what they believe will be its long-term impact on affordable housing. Executives told USA Today that Waypoint now owns 3,300 homes and “expects to own 10,000” by the year’s end.

As you might imagine, skeptics abound. On the local level, Richmond’s Benjamin is worried about what kind of landlords they will be. Early on, she said they seemed to be making mistakes by renting to anyone and then evicting people who couldn’t pay. “To me, the biggest concern is the property management of these scattered sites,” she said. “There is no track record for this type of property management.”

On a more macro level, there are substantive questions about this business model and how it will play out, especially once it gets past the easy stages of buying and rehabbing properties with other people’s money. Waypoint seems to be relying on forecasts that suggest it can drive up local rents, get find enough occupants at price points that require middle-class paychecks, and eventually sell the properties to satisfy its billionaire venture capitalists.

“The question is what is scalable in that business model,” asked housing historian Eric John Abrahamson, author of Building Home: Howard F. Ahmanson and the Politics of the American Dream. “Is property management scalable? Is the intelligence that it takes to buy well scalable? Because one of the things about real estate historically is that it tends to remain a profoundly local business.”

Affordable Housing Trends

The European Union’s (EU) proposals to strict new caps on bankers’ bonuses will put thousands of British jobs at risk, a senior minister has warned.

Business and Enterprise minister Michael Fallon, who is in close ties with British Chancellor George Osborne, said the government will fight for more flexibility on the EU bank bonus cap at Brussels’ meetings this week as the move could threaten thousands of jobs in the country.

“The threat is not to the well paid banker, the threat is to the hundreds of thousands of ordinary banking jobs in Britain if these big international banks are forced to relocate,” Fallon said.

“We are not giving up on this, we are still fighting for more flexibility and we’ll be doing that at the Ecofin meeting this week.”

Earlier last week, London Mayor Boris Johnson warned that Brussels’s bank bonus cap will push banking business away from the City of London and towards Zurich, Singapore and New York.

British Prime Minister David Cameron also raised concerns over the EU proposals, saying that the new rules must allow international banks to keep “competing and succeeding while being located in the UK”.

Britain’s Trades Union Congress (TUC), however, accused the government of taking the bankers’ side ahead of ordinary people who have been made to pay the price of bankers’ folly.

MOS/

Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Mohammad Khazaei has scoffed at threats against the country, stressing that threatening Iran will not help the negotiations which mainly concern Tehran’s nuclear energy program.

“Threatening Iran is not going to work,” Khazaei said in an interview with CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” program.

On Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi expressed confidence that the issues concerning Iran’s nuclear energy program would be ironed out.

Salehi pointed to Iran’s comprehensive negotiations with the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany), saying, “The two sides feel that the grounds have been prepared to take a path out of the issue.”

Iran and the P5+1 – Russia, China, France, Britain, the US and Germany – held their latest round of talks in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on February 26 and 27.

Both sides agreed to convene in Almaty again on April 5-6 for the next round of negotiations after holding expert-level talks in the Turkish city of Istanbul on March 17-18.

Khazaei further said Washington must show its sincerity for Iran to consider its offer of direct talks, adding that any “pressure” to drive Iran to the negotiating table would backfire.

“The clear message of Iran is that if we see that the United States is serious and honest about its proposal for negotiations, cooperation and direct talks with Iran, Iranians will accept it and will definitely welcome it,” the envoy stated.

“There is no doubt about it … Iran welcomes negotiations and direct talks with the United States, provided that we make sure that the US is serious and do not act differently,” he added.

Khazaei criticized the US dual policies on Iran, saying, “My point is, as soon as you say, we are ready to talk to you and work with you, but at the same time, we punish you and put pressure on you and your people — Iranians cannot accept that.”

At the 49th annual Munich Security Conference in Germany on February 2, US Vice President Joe Biden said Washington was ready to hold direct talks with Iran over the country’s nuclear energy program.

However, he noted, “There will be continued pressure.”

On February 6, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei rejected talks with the United States under pressure and threats.

“An offer of talks makes sense only when the side [that makes the offer] shows its goodwill,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.

The US has spearheaded several rounds of sanctions against Iran in recent years, based on the unfounded accusation that Iran is pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program. Washington has also repeatedly threatened Iran with keeping “all options on the table.”

Tehran says as a committed signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

SF/HMV/MA

British Foreign Office Minister for the Middle East and North Africa Alistair Burt is to pay a two-day visit to Algeria in an apparent bid to hunt for new natural resources for Britain through greater security cooperation with Algiers.

Burt’s trip follows British Prime Minister David Cameron’s visit to the African country late in January and will focus on a new strategic security agreement between Algiers and London, Algeria Press Service quoted a British diplomatic source as saying.

Burt is planned to hold talks with Algerian ministers including Minister for Maghreb and African Affairs Abdelkader Messahel during his stay.

Top on the agenda of the British minister will be the security situation in Sahel, Syria and Libya as well as bilateral trade.

Cameron’s visit to Algeria was the first by a British PM since the African nation won independence from France in 1962.

The PM’s travel followed the Amenas gas plant siege and raised speculations that London is planning a security presence in Algeria, which supplies 5 percent of Britain’s gas needs.

The move will give London a toehold in the strategic North African country, which is a neighbor of Libya and Mali.

Britain is involved in the French offensive on the Malian dissidents near the Algerian borders.

London also has significant oil interests in Libya and the Algerian security deal triggers fears that British officials are planning new imperialistic moves to hunt for resources in other countries.

Britain said in a state-prepared Energy Security Strategy back in November that “declining reserves of fossil fuels in the North Sea are making the UK increasingly dependent on imports at a time of rising global demand and increased resource competition”, which is leaving the UK “increasingly exposed to the pressures and risks of global markets”.

The document said North Sea oil supplies that currently account for 70 percent of Britain’s oil demand will run out in 20 years in the context of a 15 percent rise in the global oil demand by 2035.

AMR/HE

Northern Ireland’s Justice Minister and Alliance Party leader David Ford has accused unionist parties of fueling the flag riots in the capital city of Belfast.

Speaking at the annual Alliance Party conference, Ford blamed mainstream unionist parties, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), for provoking the violent protests over the flying of the British flag above Belfast’s City Hall.

“When Unionist politicians say that those who raised the flag issue need to accept their responsibility for what followed, they are right. They need to recognize what happens to when you stir up tension in a divided society, when you encourage protest without knowing where it will lead and cannot bring yourself to call an end to illegality without any ambiguity,” Ford stated.

Belfast’s almost two months of flag riots were sparked by a loyalist mob forcing its way through back gates of Belfast City Hall only minutes after nationalist councilors voted to take down the Union Jack from the building on all but 17 days of the year.

The violent flag riots have led to 150 arrests, dozens of police officers injured and millions of pounds in lost trading.

MOS/HSN/HE

Pakistan has once again rebuffed US pressures to drop its gas pipeline project with Iran, saying it will act independently over its energy needs.

“Pakistan has to do what it deems fit and what is in its national interest. Lack of economic growth has also seen peace stalled in the region,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said in an interview with The News daily.

“Pakistan continues to suffer from huge energy deficiency and this directly affects our industry and GDP growth. Gas is the cheapest commodity to generate electricity,” she added.

“The Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline will meet only half the shortfall of energy needs of Pakistan and not our full demand,” Rabbani Khar stated.

Upon returning to Pakistan after a visit to Iran, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari said on Saturday that Islamabad will not stop the multi-billion-dollar Iran-Pakistan (IP) gas pipeline despite US threats and pressure.

Zardari’s comments come a day after a Pakistani official confirmed that an Iranian-Pakistani consortium will start the construction of the IP gas pipeline as of March 11, 2013.

The pipeline will enable the export of 21.5 million cubic meters (mcm) of Iran’s natural gas to Pakistan on a daily basis. Iran has already built more than 900 kilometers of the pipeline on its soil.

Washington has repeatedly voiced its discontent with the joint project, but Pakistan has dismissed rumors that it might pull out of the project amid pressures by the United States.

US State Department Spokesperson Victoria Nuland warned Pakistan in February that, “We believe there are better, more secure and more efficient ways for Pakistan to get its power. We’ve made clear to countries around the world, including Pakistan, that we believe it’s in their interest to avoid activities that could be prohibited by UN sanctions or that could be ‘sanctionable’ under US law.”

MYA/HMV/MA

Turkish people have once again protested against the presence of NATO forces and its Patriot missile batteries in Turkey, expressing solidarity with the people of Syria.

Anti-capitalist Muslim groups and activists took to the streets of Istanbul on Saturday and chanted anti-NATO slogans.

The protesters say they do not want Turkey to be a NATO member state. They are also opposed to a war in neighboring Syria.

The demonstration in Istanbul came a day after anti-US protesters outside the Turkish prime minister’s office in Ankara rallied against the official visit of US Secretary of State John Kerry, who was in the country to coordinate plans to support militants fighting the Syrian government.

In November 2012, NATO announced a plan to deploy six Patriot missile batteries to “protect Turkey” from potential Syrian missile strikes. The Patriots are deployed by the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands, and they became operational in the southern cities of Gaziantep, Kahramanmaras, and Adana in February.

The Western alliance says the missiles are to avoid dangers caused by the crisis in Syria. However, countries like Iran, Russia and China have repeatedly voiced their opposition to the deployment. They say the move will only increase regional tensions.

DB/HSN/MA

For centuries UK has been playing an “unconstructive role” and meddling with the affairs in the region, the Syrian president said in a rare interview. His remarks come amid pledges of direct “non-lethal” aid to the armed Syrian rebels from the UK and US.

Syrians do not believe that London can play a role in resolving the conflict unless their rhetoric changes, Assad said in an interview with The Sunday Times, adding that one “cannot separate the role from the credibility, and you cannot separate the credibility from the history of that country.”

“Britain has played famously — in our region — an unconstructive role in different issues for decades, some say for centuries,” the president told the newspaper.

“The problem with this government is that their shallow and immature rhetoric only highlights this tradition of bullying and hegemony,” he said.

Britain is determined to militarize the problem not even trying to facilitate a dialogue between Syrians, Assad claimed.

Overall, Assad described his assessment of London’s role in the conflict as “working against the interests of the UK itself,” not only the interests of Syria and its people.

The Syrian leader reiterated he was open for talks with the opposition but said he would not step down unless the Syrian people decided so during next year’s presidential elections.

This week’s Friends of Syria meeting brought a serious shift of international policy towards supplying and arming the Syrian rebels.

Speaking at a meeting in Rome on Thursday, UK foreign minister William Hague stressed he has not ruled out the possibility of direct military aid in the future. “That will be an important decision, of course, and has its own risks, and that is why we haven’t done that so far,” he said.

US Secretary of State John Kerry announced that Washington would provide “non-lethal” aid directly to the armed Syrian rebels. In addition the US has pledged another $60 million financial assistance to the country’s political opposition.

The European Union meanwhile has formally amended its sanctions against Syria to permit the supply of “non-combat” armored vehicles, military equipment, and technical aid to the opposition, provided they are intended to protect civilians.

The shift in policy has drawn harsh criticism from the foreign ministers of Syria and Iran. The counterparts met on Saturday, condemning the decision to help the “terrorists spilling the blood of Syrians and demolishing the financial infrastructure of Syria.”

Syria’s FM Walid al-Moallem directly accused Turkey and Qatar, as well as several other countries he did not name, of supporting and funding armed terrorist groups in Syria.

Russia meanwhile said that decisions made at the Friends of Syria meeting will intensify the two-year Syrian conflict by encouraging rebel extremists. The moves announced “in spirit and in letter directly encourage extremists to seize power by force, despite the inevitable sufferings of ordinary Syrians that entails,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement, echoing Russia’s official stance that dialogue is the only possible way forward.

Truthdigger of the Week

Truthdigger of the Week: Bradley Manning

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Posted on Mar 2, 2013

AP/Patrick Semansky

“I believe[d] that the public release of these cables would not damage the United States,” Manning said.

By Alexander Reed Kelly

Thanks to last week’s Truthdigger of the Week, journalist Alexa O’Brien, the public has access to a complete rushed transcript of the statement Pfc. Bradley Manning made to a federal judge Thursday when he pleaded guilty to illegally obtaining state secrets that he subsequently passed to WikiLeaks as well as pleading not guilty to “aiding the enemy.”

Manning’s statement consists of facts describing his military training, the nature of his work as an intelligence analyst, his discovery of WikiLeaks and the “unauthorized storage and disclosure[s]” of a host of sensitive documents that he made over time. It stands as one of the few occasions the public has heard from Manning since his arrest in May 2010.

Manning was recognized for his aptitude as an intelligence analyst. Thus, he had access to troves of sensitive information. It was his job to pore over this data, much of which would be seen by only a handful of people. Apart perhaps from a few of his fellow analysts, the view of U.S. activities in Iraq and Afghanistan that he came to possess was highly detailed and more complete than virtually any other soldier’s, including likely many of his superiors. Seen all at once, he had a bird’s eye view of the wars, and what he saw “disturbed” him.

In his statement he describes being snowed in at his aunt’s house during a blizzard while on leave in Maryland in late January 2010. It was there that he first deliberated over what to do with copies of records he had made of so-called SigActs (reports of events the military believed were worth relating during the course of war).

“I began to think about what I knew and the information I still had in my possession,” Manning said. “For me, the SigActs represented the on the ground reality of both the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“I felt that we were risking so much for people that seemed unwilling to cooperate with us, leading to frustration and anger on both sides. I began to become depressed with the situation that we found ourselves increasingly mired in year after year. The SigActs documented this in great detail and provide a context of what we were seeing on the ground.”

Manning said he believed that if the public had access to those records, they would “spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as … it related to Iraq and Afghanistan.” He “believed the detailed analysis of the data over a long period of time by different sectors of society might cause society to reevaluate the need or even the desire to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore the complex dynamics of the people living in the affected environment every day.”

Upon resolving to publish the documents, he attempted to contact mainstream newspapers. He spoke briefly with a reporter at The Washington Post, but she didn’t seem to take him seriously. The New York Times ignored him outright, never responding to a voice mail that included his Skype phone number and personal email address. Discouraged by the papers’ lack of interest, he contacted WikiLeaks, which he encountered during the course of reading about world events, which had become a “fascination” for him.

In his message to WikiLeaks, he included a simple note explaining the contents of the file:

“It’s already been sanitized of any source identifying information. You might need to sit on this information–perhaps 90 to 100 days to figure out how best to release such a large amount of data and to protect its source. This is possibly one of the more significant documents of our time removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of twenty-first century asymmetric warfare. Have a good day.”

In the weeks that followed, Manning provided WikiLeaks with more documents. They included State Department cables showing U.S. officials’ candid lack of interest in helping Iceland during its financial crisis; footage of killings of Iraqi civilians and Reuters journalists from an Apache helicopter (which came to be known as the “Collateral Murder” video); and other examples of his government’s lack of concern for human life. All of it “upset” him, he said, and all of it went to WikiLeaks.

As the Iceland example makes clear, Manning’s interest was not limited to America’s wrongdoing in war. “The more I read, the more I was fascinated with the way that we dealt with other nations and organizations,” Manning told the judge this week. “I also began to think the documented backdoor deals and seemingly criminal activity that [sic] didn’t seem characteristic of the de facto leader of the free world.

“The more I read the cables, the more I came to the conclusion that this was the type of information that should become public,” he continued. “I once read a [sic] and used a quote on open diplomacy written after the First World War and how the world would be a better place if states would avoid making secret pacts and deals with and against each other.”

Manning’s statement was written to be heard by a justice system that is bent on making an example out of him. He is compelled to express himself in a way that keeps him in the best of possible graces with the courts and the American public. Even so, there are moments, such as above, when the rigidity he relies upon in reporting the facts of his actions dissolves away, and he speaks in the naked and young language of hopes and ideals. Military training did not drill Manning’s identity and humane values out of him. Those values could cost him his life, if the trial that is due to begin in June results in a sentence of life in prison or even death.

For being incorrigibly himself and allowing his conscience to be his guide, we honor Bradley Manning once again as our Truthdigger of the Week. Read his statement here.

–Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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Hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets of Portuguese cities protesting austerity measures that the government hopes will help to avoid the bailout and lift the country out of recession.

Protests, coordinated through social media by nonpartisan groups, have swept across the country with the biggest mass demonstration taking place in the capital Lisbon.

Over 200,000 protesters filled a Lisbon boulevard leading to the Finance Ministry. Many of them were carrying placards and chanting “It’s time for the government to go!” and “Screw the Troika, we want our lives back,” referring to the lenders from the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund.

People in the crowd were singing “Grandola”, a protest song from the 1974 “Carnation revolution” which ousted the fascist dictator Antonio Salazar and brought the end of the military rule in the country. During the past few week activists have sung the song to heckle government ministers making public speeches. 

What the protesters are demanding is a complete change of the government’s policies aimed at reviving Portugal’s economy as the county faces its worst recession since the 1970s.

The main reasons of mass protests are an increase in taxes and cuts in public wages imposed by the “Troika” of lenders in exchange for the 78 billion euro bailout, agreed in mid-2011. The measure pushed unemployment to record levels of 17 per cent.

“People are desperate, seeing their incomes fall sharply, their families and friends without jobs,” the WSJ quoted a 49-year-old journalist and one of the protest organizers, Nuno Almeida.

On Thursday Portugal’s Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho promised more spending cuts as a part of a deep reform of the state, which, he said, is necessary to make lower taxes possible in the future.

“This government has left the people on bread and water, selling off state assets for peanuts to pay back debts that were contracted by corrupt politicians to benefit bankers,” Reuters quotes one of the protesters said a movie-maker, Fabio Carvalho. “If not today, things have to change tomorrow and we need to remain in the streets for the government to fall.”

The rallies were organized in Lisbon, Porto and several dozen other cities via the Internet by a group of activists known as Que Se Lixe a Troika, or Screw the Troika, Reuters reports. 

These demonstrations coincide with a quarterly review by the EU/IMF bailout inspectors.

A senior commander for al-Qaeda’s north African wing has been killed by Chadian soldiers in Mali. Mokhtar Belmokhtar allegedly masterminded the raid on the gas plant in southern Algeria that left 37 hostages dead.

Mokhtar Belmokhtar was killed during an assault on an Islamist rebel base on Saturday, Chad’s military have reported.

“The Chadian forces in Mali completely destroyed the main jihadist base in Adrar of the Ifoghas mountains,” an army statement said, adding that the death toll included “several dead terrorists, including their leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar.”

West Africa and Chad sent some 1,000 soldiers to Mali in January to help the French effort to drive Al-Qaeda linked forces out of the northern part of the country, which was seized following a coup in Mali in March last year.

The purported killing of Belmoktar comes a day after Chad’s president announced that another senior regional commander of al-Qaeda, Abou Zeid, had been eliminated by French and Chadian forces.

French officials so far have not confirmed the killing of either Abou Zeid or Belmokhtar. On Friday, French president Francois Hollande said that terrorist groups in Mali have taken refuge “in an especially difficult zone” but refused to confirm progress until “the end of the operation” is reached.

Although several diplomats, including a US official, described the earlier report about Abou Zeid death as “very credible,” radical Islamist sources have not yet confirmed the killing of any their senior commanders.

A French university professor and al-Qaeda specialist, Matthieu Guidere, told AFP that the absence of any confirmation from jihadists could mean the reports are not true as they “never try to hide their dead and immediately broadcast their martyrdom.”

The hostage crisis at an In Amenas gas plant in Algeria resulted in the deaths of 37 foreign hostages of eight nationalities and dozens of terrorists.

On 16 January 2013, an al-Qaeda-linked group believed to be led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar captured a total of some 800 workers and kept the foreign hostages at the Tigantourine gas facility, releasing the Algerians.

The Islamist ‘Mulathameen Brigade’ claimed responsibility for the hostage crisis saying it had conducted the raid in retaliation for France’s engagement in the Mali crisis. The militants allegedly demanded the release of two terrorists held in the US in return for the hostages.

Twenty-nine militants were killed and three captured when Algerian Special Forces stormed the facility after the four-day-long standoff. The hostage takers included nationals from Egypt, Canada, Mali, Niger, Mauritania, and Tunisia, who allegedly crossed into the country from neighboring Libya.

The economic crisis may see Italy abandoning euro and returning to lira, says comedian-turned-politician, Beppe Grillo, who’s anti-establishment Five Star Movement became a major power in the country’s politics after the last week’s general election.

In his interview with German Focus magazine, Grillo urged for the renegotiation of Italy’s €2-trillion debt, which is the second highest in the euro zone after Greece, at 127 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).

“Right now we are being crushed, not by the euro, but by our debt. When the interest payments reach €100 billion a year, we’re dead. There’s no alternative,” the 64-year-old said.

According to the Five Star Movement leader’s forecast, the Italian political system has “only six months” left before it collapses and the state will no longer be able “to pay pensions and public sector salaries”.

If there’ll be no changes to the debt obligations, Grillo believes, the option for his country would be to leave the euro and return to it’s former national currency, the lira.

“If I’ve bought shares in a company that goes bankrupt, then that’s my bad luck. I took a risk, and lost,” he explained, drawing a comparison with the private market. “If the conditions remain the same, Italy would leave the euro and return to the lira.”

The Five Star Movement has attracted the sympathy of nearly a quarter of the many austerity-weary voters to win 109 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 54 seats in the Senate in the general election on February 24-25. This has created a political deadlock.

Neither Pier Luigi Bersani‘s center-Left Democratic Party nor the center-Right coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi currently have sufficient majority in in both chambers to form a government. The conditions of the parliament’s newcomers is unacceptable to the established parties preventing the formation of a coalition government.

“If Bersani’s PD and Berlusconi’s PDL suggest an immediate change in the electoral law, cancellation of election expenses reimbursement, and a maximum of two terms for any deputy — we would of course support such a government immediately,” Grillo said. “But they won’t do that. They are just bluffing to win time.”

“If we get into parliament we would bring the old system down, not because we would enjoy doing so but because the system is rotten,” he added.

The Five Star Movement has everything it takes to become a huge headache for the European leaders, who have urged Italy to stay on the economic course laid out by Mario Monti ‘s outgoing government.

“Italy, as a major European economy, has a great responsibility,” Philipp Roesler, Germany’s Economy Minister, was quoted in the same edition of Focus. “There is no alternative to the policy of structural reforms… I’m confident that those responsible in Italy recognize the importance of stability.”

Beppe Grillo was a popular comedian on Italian television in 80s, but he disappeared from the screen in the 90s, with many suggesting that his harsh satire was too much to handle for Italian politicians.

After that he mainly performed in theatres and staged a series of mass rallies, including the 2007 V-Day celebrations, which gathered around 2 million people, protesting against the criminal activities of the Italian political elite.  

The Five Star Movement was started by Grillo in 2010 and has made a splash at local elections, receiving the third highest number of votes overall and winning the mayoral election for Parma before the latest success in the general election.

For the Italian government to be able to pass legislation, it must have a majority both in the Chamber, and the Senate, and to achieve this majority coalitions are often formed.

March 2, 2013  |  

A new report from the New York Federal Reserve further confirms what many commentators have been long saying – student debt is the bubble that just keeps expanding. Total student debt has nearly tripled in the past three years.

Total student debt stands at $966 billion as of the end of 2012, with a 70 percent increase in both the number of borrowers and the average balance per person. The overall number of borrowers past due on their student loan payments has also grown, from under 10 percent in 2004 to 17 percent in 2012.

Noting the N.Y. Fed report, HuffPo pointed out that the proliferation of indebted students and their families has knock on effects on other areas of the economy:

Fewer people with student loans are buying homes, according to data in the report. Of borrowers ages 25 to 30 who are taking out new mortgages, the percentage of those with student debt has fallen by half, from nearly 9 percent in 2005 to just above 4 percent in 2012.

The fed report sees a connection, stating, “The higher burden of student loans and higher delinquencies may affect borrowers’ access to other types of credit and the performance of other debt.”

Crucially, however, the student debt bubble can’t be construed in the same way, say, as the housing bubble. Student debt will (and already does) have crippling effects on millions of Americans, but it’s a bubble with no promise of burst. As Malcolm Harris has long pointed out, since most student loan debt is government backed and can never be discharged, the type of meltdown the student loan explosion could precipitate will take a different shape than the mortgage crisis, with the victims (student borrowers) already in place and struggling:

All the hallmarks of a bubble are there, including massive securitization and seemingly risk-free financial products. But, as the financial analysts are quick to remind us, the vast majority of this debt is government-backed. What’s the worst that could happen?

As far as investors are concerned, this line of thinking works just fine, but it should look less rosy for the Treasury. If it turns out the subsequent work of student debtors isn’t worth as much as the markets figured, another trillion-dollar bailout may be required, and the taxpayers can hardly afford it.

Yet neither investors nor the Treasury seem particularly concerned…

There’s no escape from student debt, and the government and markets both know it. This is, then, the real plan for the education bubble: student debtors will be forced, in one way or another, to fill it in. Not only are student loans not a burden on the federal government, they’re a good investment.

So it’s a bubble set for unfettered expansion and it’s in neither the government’s nor investors’ interest to intervene. Strike Debt activist campaigns have proposed collective debt resistance, but their efforts have not yet made a significant dent in the national or even New York City-wide picture. As Harris noted in the Boston Review last November, “short of suicide, expatriation, or revolt, there’s not much 37 million American student debtors and counting can do about it.”

March 2, 2013  |  

In December, 2011, I wrote an Op-Ed in the Guardian arguing that if Bradley Manning did what he is accused of doing, then he is a consummate hero, and deserves a medal and our collective gratitude, not decades in prison. At his court-martial proceeding this afternoon in Fort Meade, Manning, as the Guaridan’s Ed Pilkington reports, pleaded guilty to having been the source of the most significant leaks to WikiLeaks. He also pleaded not guilty to 12 of the 22 counts, including the most serious – the capital offense of “aiding and abetting the enemy”, which could send him to prison for life – on the ground that nothing he did was intended to nor did it result in harm to US national security. The US government will now almost certainly proceed with its attempt to prosecute him on those remaining counts.

Manning’s heroism has long been established in my view, for the reasons I set forth in that Op-Ed. But this was bolstered on Friday as he spoke for an hour in court about what he did and why, reading from a prepared 35-page statement. Wired’s Spencer Ackerman was there and reported:

“Wearing his Army dress uniform, a composed, intense and articulate Pfc. Bradley Manning took ‘full responsibility’ Thursday for providing the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks with a trove of classified and sensitive military, diplomatic and intelligence cables, videos and documents. . . .

“Manning’s motivations in leaking, he said, was to ‘spark a domestic debate of the role of the military and foreign policy in general’, he said, and ’cause society to reevaluate the need and even desire to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore their effect on people who live in that environment every day.’

“Manning explain[ed] his actions that drove him to disclose what he said he ‘believed, and still believe . . . are some of the most significant documents of our time’ . . . .

“He came to view much of what the Army told him – and the public – to be false, such as the suggestion the military had destroyed a graphic video of an aerial assault in Iraq that killed civilians, or that WikiLeaks was a nefarious entity. . . .

“Manning said he often found himself frustrated by attempts to get his chain of command to investigate apparent abuses detailed in the documents Manning accessed. . . .”

Manning also said he “first approached three news outlets: the Washington Post, New York Times and Politico” before approaching WikiLeaks. And he repeatedly denied having been encouraged or pushed in any way by WikiLeaks to obtain and leak the documents, thus denying the US government a key part of its attempted prosecution of the whistleblowing group. Instead, “he said he took ‘full responsibility’ for a decision that will likely land him in prison for the next 20 years – and possibly the rest of his life.”

This is all consistent with what Manning is purported to have said in the chat logs with the government snitch who pretended to be a journalist and a pastor in order to assure him of confidentiality but then instead reported him. In those chats, Manning explained that he was leaking because he wanted the world to know what he had learned: “I want people to see the truth … regardless of who they are … because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.” When asked by the informant why he did not sell the documents to a foreign government for profit – something he obviously could have done with ease – Manning replied that he wanted the information to be publicly known in order to trigger “worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms”. He described how he became deeply disillusioned with the Iraq War he had once thought noble, and this caused him to re-examine all of his prior assumptions about the US government. And he extensively narrated how he had learned of serious abuse and illegality while serving in the war – including detaining Iraqi citizens guilty of nothing other than criticizing the Malaki government – but was ignored when he brought those abuses to his superiors.

The Environment Unprotected From Sequester

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Posted on Mar 2, 2013

josef.stuefer (CC BY 2.0)

Thanks to the dreaded sequester cuts, the nation’s habitat will take a sizable hit as the development of clean energy is set back and 8,400 meat inspectors are furloughed. The oil industry, however, emerges as a victor as it gets to keep its billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies while the EPA sees its funding for monitoring and cleanup reduced, Mother Jones reports.

–Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

Mother Jones:

3. Food safety: The Food Safety and Inspection Service’s budget would be slashed by $51 million. This would result in a furlough of as much as 15 days for all employees, including 8,400 meat inspectors, as well as a loss of 2 billion pounds of meat, between 2.8 and 3.3 billion pounds of poultry, and over 200 million pounds of egg products. Meat shortages may also lead to price increases, leading to a domino effect on restaurants, grocers, and small businesses. There are also concerns that food safety “could be compromised by the illegal selling and distribution of uninspected meat, poultry, and egg products.” This wouldn’t be the first time there were public health concerns over shady meat industry.

4. Fracking regulation: There will likely be less oversight, says the Sierra Club’s Pierce. Specifically, there will be a reduction of baseline water quality monitoring networks, less money to study the effect of unconventional oil and gas extraction in the Appalachians, and not enough resources to determine how shale gas development impacts species such as brook trout and freshwater mussels.

Federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the DOI are currently developing rules and safeguards on fracking technology to ensure that drinking water is protected. “All of those efforts will be handicapped because the agency does not have the budget and personnel to carry out the critical work,” said Pierce.

… 5. Natural-disaster response: The cuts won’t increase the disasters themselves, but will definitely decrease our ability to fight and recover from them. Drought and climate change mean wildfires are on the rise, and the USDA warns that the agency “would complete as many as 200,000 fewer acres of hazardous fuel treatments, resulting in an increased risk to communities from wildfires.” The EPA cautions that there would be less research on how to prepare for disasters, leading to longer recovery times and higher costs.

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Keeping Creationism Out of Public Schools

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Posted on Mar 2, 2013

Moyers & Company

Zack Kopplin, a 19-year-old Rice University student waging a national campaign in defense of science education, spoke with Bill Moyers about his opposition to laws that make it easier to teach creationism in public schools.

Kopplin’s crusade began in 2008 when his home state passed the Louisiana Science Education Act. The law permitted public schools to teach their students that life, the world and everything in it may have been created by a supernatural being, and that despite a lack of evidence, this view was a scientifically valid alternative to biological evolution. Then a sophomore in high school, Kopplin understood science as the practice of using evidence to draw conclusions about what is true and false, and he didn’t like what he saw.

About the law, he told Moyers:

“This law allows supplemental materials into our public school biology classrooms to quote, ‘critique controversial theories,’ like evolution and climate change. Now, evolution and climate change aren’t scientifically controversial, but they are controversial to Louisiana legislators. And basically, everyone who looked at this law knew it was just a back door to sneak creationism into public school science classes.”

–Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

Moyers & Company:

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Former high-level Greek diplomat Leonidas Chrysanthopoulos told the UK’s New Statesman last week that discussions had taken place between senior Greek politicians and the armed forces on the military’s response to what Chrysanthopoulos described as an “explosion of social unrest” expected to occur “quite soon.”

Chrysanthopoulos said that in the coming months, “There will be further increases in armed actions. There will be bloody demonstrations.”

Without giving details, he said, “There are contacts by certain politicians with elements in the armed forces to guarantee that in the event of major social unrest, the army will not intervene.”

This last claim was likely made for public consumption. Even if such a request had been made, any assurances from the Greek military would be worthless given the recent history of the country, in which the “regime of the colonels” seized power in a military coup in 1967 that lasted until 1974. Since the onset of mass austerity in Greece in 2010 there have been constant rumours of coup discussions among high-ranking military personnel.

The most significant aspect of Chrysanthopoulos’ interview is the revelation of discussions between politicians and the military on how to respond to the threat of social revolution.

Greek ruling circles are working on the assumption that insurrectionary struggles are inevitable because of the intolerable level of suffering they have imposed on the working class. Within less than four years, the social position of the Greek working class has been reduced to levels not seen since the Nazi occupation during World War II.

Brutal poverty is a fact of life for millions. One major aspect of the assault on living conditions is the removal of public health provisions.

More than 50 pharmaceutical conglomerates have either halted or savagely cut supplies to Greece–citing concerns for their profits. The dangerous shortage of hundreds of basic medicines is resulting in chaotic scenes of patients rushing from one pharmacy to another in search of vital drugs, while public hospitals lack adequate supplies of drugs to dispense.

Such conduct is not confined to the big pharmaceutical companies. On Tuesday it emerged that the Swiss Red Cross, a non-profit relief agency, is set to slash the number of blood donor packets it supplies to Greece. It cited concerns that it has not received full payment for previous allocations and announced that beginning in 2015 the number of blood donor packets it sends to Greece will be halved from the current annual level of 28,000.

As a result of the austerity policies demanded by the “troika” (the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and European Union), a staggering 4.65 million people are now either unemployed or economically inactive. There are 450,000 households in which no one is employed. Of the 2.6 million people employed in the private sector in 2010, 900,000 have been laid off. Because the duration of benefits has been slashed, just 225,000 of the unemployed now receive unemployment pay.

In the private sector, just 600,000 workers (from a total 1.6 million) now work a regularly paid eight-hour day. Professor Savas Robolis of the University of Panteion in Athens recently said, “The remainder–a million workers–have had their hours cut or are getting paid late, four or five months late. They are in a state of desperation.”

This week’s annual report by the Bank of Greece found that 23 percent of the population lived below the poverty line in 2012, compared to 16 percent in 2011. Also noted was the exponential increase in child poverty, with the rate of families at risk reaching 31 percent in just one year (2010-2011). In the period 2010-2012, the average gross salary in the country was cut by 20.6 percent and labour costs for employers decreased by 18.5 percent.

Given the austerity measures already in place, there will be an overall reduction in labour costs in Greece for the period 2012-2014 of 17.6 percent. So savage are these measures that they are set to surpass the 15 percent reduction in overall costs demanded by the troika.

Presenting the report, the bank’s chairman, George Provopoulos, claimed that economic recovery would be achieved by means of austerity and demanded that even harsher measures be imposed. “Now that the finishing line is finally visible,” he said, “we ought to intensify efforts, to quicken our pace to cover the final stretch and ensure that citizens’ sacrifices have not been in vain…”

Speaking of the victims of these policies, he declared, “Extreme and unreasonable demands from social groups do not contribute towards this goal.”

The bank’s report was issued as representatives of the troika once again converged on Athens to monitor the implementation of the programme agreed with the New Democracy/PASOK/Democratic Left government.

Among the issues to be settled is how steeply this year’s pharmaceutical budget is to be slashed. As a result of previous troika demands, the budget was cut from €3.7 billion to €2.4 billion last year. Reports suggest it could be cut to €2 billion this year.

With pharmaceutical firms already withholding many drugs, this is a prescription for a health catastrophe and many needless deaths.

The troika is also set to demand a speedup in the layoff of 25,000 public sector workers this year (half by June) in order to meet the agreed 150,000 redundancies by 2015. If Athens were to fail to impose the cuts to the troika’s satisfaction, two tranches of loans for March and April totalling €8.8 billion would be withheld or much reduced. Failure to receive the finance would result in Greece defaulting on its entire debt.

By promising if elected to reverse the austerity programme, SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) won nearly 30 percent of the vote in last year’s election. It is put forward by a host of pseudo-left organizations as a progressive alternative to the pro-austerity governing parties and the means for countering the growth of the fascist Golden Dawn movement.

In reality, SYRIZA is no less a creature of the ruling elite than the right-wing New Democracy party, and is no less wedded to the austerity agenda. This week, SYRIZA press spokesman Panos Skourletis stated, “We do not have a magic wand that will improve and change the situation from one day to the next… We must realize that with every day this policy is applied, things grow worse. This devastation is incalculable and, therefore, restoration of the repercussions of this policy becomes even more difficult.”

The meaning of such comments–that it is impossible to reverse the austerity programme–is unmistakable. SYRIZA is readying its arguments and preparing for what it will be called on to carry out if it achieves its goal of entering a future anti-working class government.

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GLOBAL RESEARCH ONLINE INTERACTIVE READER SERIES

The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation

Michel Chossudovsky (Editor)

I-Book No. 3, January 25  2012

Global Research’s Online Interactive I-Book Reader brings together, in the form of chapters, a collection of Global Research feature articles and videos, including debate and analysis, on a broad theme or subject matter. 

In this Interactive Online I-Book we bring to the attention of our readers an important collection of articles, reports and video material on the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe and its impacts (scroll down for the Table of Contents).

To consult our Online Interactive I-Book Reader Series, click here.

INTRODUCTION

The World is at a critical crossroads. The Fukushima disaster in Japan has brought to the forefront the dangers of Worldwide nuclear radiation.

The crisis in Japan has been described as “a nuclear war without a war”. In the words of renowned novelist Haruki Murakami:

“This time no one dropped a bomb on us … We set the stage, we committed the crime with our own hands, we are destroying our own lands, and we are destroying our own lives.”

Nuclear radiation —which threatens life on planet earth— is not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern, including the local level crime scene or the tabloid gossip reports on Hollywood celebrities.

While the long-term repercussions of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are yet to be fully assessed, they are far more serious than those pertaining to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine, which resulted in almost one million deaths (New Book Concludes — Chernobyl death toll: 985,000, mostly from cancer Global Research, September 10, 2010, See also Matthew Penney and Mark Selden The Severity of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster: Comparing Chernobyl and Fukushima, Global Research, May 25, 2011)

Moreover, while all eyes were riveted on the Fukushima Daiichi plant, news coverage both in Japan and internationally failed to fully acknowledge the impacts of a second catastrophe at TEPCO’s (Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc) Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant.

The shaky political consensus both in Japan, the U.S. and Western Europe is that the crisis at Fukushima has been contained.

The realties, however, are otherwise. Fukushima 3 was leaking unconfirmed amounts of plutonium. According to Dr. Helen Caldicott, “one millionth of a gram of plutonium, if inhaled can cause cancer”.  

An opinion poll in May 2011 confirmed that more than 80 per cent of the Japanese population do not believe the government’s information regarding the nuclear crisis. (quoted in Sherwood Ross, Fukushima: Japan’s Second Nuclear Disaster, Global Research, November 10, 2011)

The Impacts in Japan

The Japanese government has been obliged to acknowledge that “the severity rating of its nuclear crisis … matches that of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster”. In a bitter irony, however, this tacit admission by the Japanese authorities has proven to been part of the cover-up of a significantly larger catastrophe, resulting in a process of global nuclear radiation and contamination:

“While Chernobyl was an enormous unprecedented disaster, it only occurred at one reactor and rapidly melted down. Once cooled, it was able to be covered with a concrete sarcophagus that was constructed with 100,000 workers. There are a staggering 4400 tons of nuclear fuel rods at Fukushima, which greatly dwarfs the total size of radiation sources at Chernobyl.” ( Extremely High Radiation Levels in Japan: University Researchers Challenge Official Data, Global Research, April 11, 2011)

Fukushima in the wake of the Tsunami, March 2011

Worldwide Contamination

The dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination. Radioactive elements have not only been detected in the food chain in Japan, radioactive rain water has been recorded in California:

“Hazardous radioactive elements being released in the sea and air around Fukushima accumulate at each step of various food chains (for example, into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow’s meat and milk, then humans). Entering the body, these elements — called internal emitters — migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, continuously irradiating small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years often induce cancer”. (Helen Caldicott, Fukushima: Nuclear Apologists Play Shoot the Messenger on Radiation, The Age, April 26, 2011)

While the spread of radiation to the West Coast of North America was casually acknowledged, the early press reports (AP and Reuters) “quoting diplomatic sources” stated that only “tiny amounts of radioactive particles have arrived in California but do not pose a threat to human health.”

“According to the news agencies, the unnamed sources have access to data from a network of measuring stations run by the United Nations’ Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization. …

… Greg Jaczko, chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told White House reporters on Thursday (March 17) that his experts “don’t see any concern from radiation levels that could be harmful here in the United States or any of the U.S. territories”.

The spread of radiation. March 2011

Public Health Disaster. Economic Impacts

What prevails is a well organized camouflage. The public health disaster in Japan, the contamination of water, agricultural land and the food chain, not to mention the broader economic and social implications, have neither been fully acknowledged nor addressed in a comprehensive and meaningful fashion by the Japanese authorities.

Japan as a nation state has been destroyed. Its landmass and territorial waters are contaminated. Part of the country is uninhabitable. High levels of radiation have been recorded in the Tokyo metropolitan area, which has a population of 39 million (2010) (more than the population of Canada, circa 34 million (2010)) There are indications that the food chain is contaminated throughout Japan:

Radioactive cesium exceeding the legal limit was detected in tea made in a factory in Shizuoka City, more than 300 kilometers away from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Shizuoka Prefecture is one of the most famous tea producing areas in Japan.

A tea distributor in Tokyo reported to the prefecture that it detected high levels of radioactivity in the tea shipped from the city. The prefecture ordered the factory to refrain from shipping out the product. After the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, radioactive contamination of tea leaves and processed tea has been found over a wide area around Tokyo. (See 5 More Companies Detect Radiation In Their Tea Above Legal Limits Over 300 KM From Fukushima, June 15, 2011)

Japan’s industrial and manufacturing base is prostrate. Japan is no longer a leading industrial power. The country’s exports have plummeted. The Tokyo government has announced its first trade deficit since 1980.

While the business media has narrowly centered on the impacts of power outages and energy shortages on the pace of productive activity, the broader issue pertaining to the outright radioactive contamination of the country’s infrastructure and industrial base is a “scientific taboo” (i.e the radiation of industrial plants, machinery and equipment, buildings, roads, etc). A report released in January 2012 points to the nuclear contamination of building materials used in the construction industry, in cluding roads and residential buildings throughout Japan.(See FUKUSHIMA: Radioactive Houses and Roads in Japan. Radioactive Building Materials Sold to over 200 Construction Companies, January 2012)

A “coverup report” by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (May 2011), entitled “Economic Impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Current Status of Recovery“  presents “Economic Recovery” as a fait accompli. It also brushes aside the issue of radiation. The impacts of nuclear radiation on the work force and the country’s industrial base are not mentioned. The report states that the distance between Tokyo -Fukushima Dai-ichi  is of the order of 230 km (about 144 miles) and that the levels of radiation in Tokyo are lower than in Hong Kong and New York City.(Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Current Status of Recovery, p.15). This statement is made without corroborating evidence and in overt contradiction with independent radiation readings in Tokyo (se map below). In recent developments, Sohgo Security Services Co. is launching a lucrative “radiation measurement service targeting households in Tokyo and four surrounding prefectures”.

“A map of citizens’ measured radiation levels shows radioactivity is distributed in a complex pattern reflecting the mountainous terrain and the shifting winds across a broad area of Japan north of Tokyo which is in the center of the of bottom of the map.”

“Radiation limits begin to be exceeded at just above 0.1 microsieverts/ hour blue. Red is about fifty times the civilian radiation limit at 5.0 microsieverts/hour. Because children are much more sensitive than adults, these results are a great concern for parents of young children in potentially affected areas.

SOURCE: Science Magazine

The fundamental question is whether the vast array of industrial goods and components “Made in Japan” – including hi tech components, machinery, electronics, motor vehicles, etc – and exported Worldwide are contaminated? Were this to be the case, the entire East and Southeast Asian industrial base —which depends heavily on Japanese components and industrial technology— would be affected. The potential impacts on international trade would be farreaching. In this regard, in January, Russian officials confiscated irradiated Japanese automobiles and autoparts in the port of Vladivostok for sale in the Russian Federation. Needless to say, incidents of this nature in a global competitive environment, could lead to the demise of the Japanese automobile industry which is already in crisis.

While most of the automotive industry is in central Japan, Nissan’s engine factory in Iwaki city is 42 km from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Is the Nissan work force affected? Is the engine plant contaminated? The plant is within about 10 to 20 km of the government’s “evacuation zone” from which some 200,000 people were evacuated (see map below).

Nuclear Energy and Nuclear War

The crisis in Japan has also brought into the open the unspoken relationship between nuclear energy and nuclear war.

Nuclear energy is not a civilian economic activity. It is an appendage of the nuclear weapons industry which is controlled by the so-called defense contractors. The powerful corporate interests behind nuclear energy and nuclear weapons overlap.

In Japan at the height of the disaster, “the nuclear industry and government agencies [were] scrambling to prevent the discovery of atomic-bomb research facilities hidden inside Japan’s civilian nuclear power plants”.1 (See Yoichi Shimatsu, Secret Weapons Program Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant? Global Research, April 12, 2011)

It should be noted that the complacency of both the media and the governments to the hazards of nuclear radiation pertains to the nuclear energy industry as well as to to use of nuclear weapons. In both cases, the devastating health impacts of nuclear radiation are casually denied. Tactical nuclear weapons with an explosive capacity of up to six times a Hiroshima bomb are labelled by the Pentagon as “safe for the surrounding civilian population”.

No concern has been expressed at the political level as to the likely consequences of a US-NATO-Israel attack on Iran, using “safe for civilians” tactical nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state.

Such an action would result in “the unthinkable”: a nuclear holocaust over a large part of the Middle East and Central Asia. A nuclear nightmare, however, would occur even if nuclear weapons were not used. The bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities using conventional weapons would contribute to unleashing another Fukushima type disaster with extensive radioactive fallout. (For further details See Michel Chossudovsky, Towards a World War III Scenario, The Dangers of Nuclear War, Global Research, Montreal, 2011)

The Online Interactive I-Book Reader on Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War

In view of the official cover-up and media disinformation campaign, the contents of the articles and video reports in this Online Interactive Reader have not trickled down to to the broader public. (See Table of contents below)

This Online Interactive Reader on Fukushima contains a combination of analytical and scientific articles, video reports as well as shorter news reports and corroborating data.

Part I focusses on The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: How it Happened? Part II  pertains to The Devastating Health and Social Impacts in Japan. Part III centers on the “Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe”, namely the cover-up by the Japanese government and the corporate media. Part IV focusses on the issue of  Worlwide Nuclear Radiation and Part V reviews the Implications of the Fukushima disaster for the Global Nuclear Energy Industry.

In the face of ceaseless media disinformation, this Global Research Online I-Book on the dangers of global nuclear radiation is intended to break the media vacuum and raise public awareness, while also pointing to the complicity of the governments, the media and the nuclear industry.

We call upon our readers to spread the word.

We invite university, college and high school teachers to make this Interactive Reader on Fukushima available to their students.

Michel Chossudovsky, January 25, 2012

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I

The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: How it Happened

The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: What Happened on “Day One”?
— by Yoichi Shimatsu — 2011-04-16
Fukushima is the greatest nuclear and environmental disaster in human history
– by Steven C. Jones — 2011-06-20

Nuclear Apocalypse in Japan
Lifting the Veil of Nuclear Catastrophe and cover-up
– by Keith Harmon Snow — 2011-03-18

Humanity now faces a deadly serious challenge coming out of Japan – the epicenter of radiation.

VIDEO: Full Meltdown? Japan Maximum Nuclear Alert
Watch now on GRTV
-by Christopher Busby- 2011-03-30

Fukushima: Japan’s Second Nuclear Disaster

– by Sherwood Ross — 2011-11-10

Secret Weapons Program Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant?
U.S.-Japan security treaty fatally delayed nuclear workers’ fight against meltdown
– by Yoichi Shimatsu — 2011-04-12

The specter of self-destruction can be ended only with the abrogation of the U.S.-Japan security treaty, the root cause of the secrecy that fatally delayed the nuclear workers’ fight against meltdown.

Fukushima: “China Syndrome Is Inevitable” … “Huge Steam Explosions”
“Massive Hydrovolcanic Explosion” or a “Nuclear Bomb-Type Explosion” May Occur
– by Washington’s Blog — 2011-11-22

Accident at Second Japanese Nuclear Complex: The Nuclear Accident You Never Heard About

– by Washington’s Blog — 2012-01-12

VIDEO: New TEPCO Photographs Substantiate Significant Damage to Fukushima Unit 3
Latest report now on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen — 2011-10-20

PART II

The Devastating Health and Social Impacts in Japan

VIDEO: Surviving Japan: A Critical Look at the Nuclear Crisis
Learn more about this important new documentary on GRTV
– by Chris Noland — 2012-01-23

Fukushima and the Battle for Truth
Large sectors of the Japanese population are accumulating significant levels of internal contamination
– by Paul Zimmerman — 2011-09-27

FUKUSHIMA: Public health Fallout from Japanese Quake
“Culture of cover-up” and inadequate cleanup. Japanese people exposed to “unconscionable” health risks
– by Canadian Medical Association Journal — 2011-12-30

FUKUSHIMA: Radioactive Houses and Roads in Japan. Radioactive Building Materials Sold to over 200 Construction Companies

– 2012-01-16

VIDEO: Cancer Risk To Young Children Near Fukushima Daiichi Underestimated
Watch this important new report on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen — 2012-01-19

VIDEO: The Results Are In: Japan Received Enormous Exposures of Radiation from Fukushima
Important new video now on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen, Marco Kaltofen — 2011-11-07

The Tears of Sanriku (三陸の涙). The Death Toll for the Great East Japan Earthquake Nuclear Disaster

– by Jim Bartel — 2011-10-31

The Severity of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster: Comparing Chernobyl and Fukushima

– by Prof. Matthew Penney, Prof. Mark Selden — 2011-05-24

Uncertainty about the long-term health effects of radiation

Radioactivity in Food: “There is no safe level of radionuclide exposure, whether from food, water or other sources. Period,” — by Physicians For Social Responsibility — 2011-03-23

71,000 people in the city next to the Fukushima nuclear plant “We’ve Been Left to Die” – 2011-03-19

Tokyo Water Unsafe For Babies, Food Bans Imposed — by Karyn Poupee — 2011-03-23

PART III

Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe: Cover-up by the Japanese Government and the Corporate Media

VIDEO: Japanese Government Insiders Reveal Fukushima Secrets
GRTV Behind the Headlines now online
– by James Corbett — 2011-10-06

Fukushima and the Mass Media Meltdown
The Repercussions of a Pro-Nuclear Corporate Press
– by Keith Harmon Snow — 2011-06-20

Scandal: Japan Forces Top Official To Retract Prime Minister’s Revelation Fukushima Permanently Uninhabitable

– by Alexander Higgins — 2011-04-18

Emergency Special Report: Japan’s Earthquake, Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe
– by Yoichi Shimatsu — 2011-03-13

The tendency to deny systemic errors — “in order to avoid public panic” — is rooted in the determination of an entrenched Japanese bureaucracy to protect itself…

VIDEO: Fukushima: TEPCO Believes Mission Accomplished & Regulators Allow Radioactive Dumping in Tokyo Bay
Learn more on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen — 2012-01-11

The Dangers of Radiation: Deconstructing Nuclear Experts
– by Chris Busby — 2011-03-31

“The nuclear industry is waging a war against humanity.” This war has now entered an endgame which will decide the survival of the human race.

Engineers Knew Fukushima Might Be Unsafe, But Covered It Up …
And Now the Extreme Vulnerabilty of NEW U.S. Plants Is Being Covered Up
– by Washington’s Blog — 2011-11-12

COVERUP: Are Fukushima Reactors 5 and 6 In Trouble Also?
– by Washington’s Blog — 2011-11-14

Fukushima’s Owner Adds Insult to Injury — Claims Radioactive Fallout Isn’t Theirs

– by John LaForge — 2012-01-17

PART IV

The Process of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation

VIDEO: Japan’s Nuclear Crisis: The Dangers of Worldwide Radiation

– by Dr. Helen Caldicott — 2012-01-25

An Unexpected Mortality Increase in the US Follows Arrival of Radioactive Plume from Fukushima, Is there a Correlation?
– by Dr. Joseph J. Mangano, Dr. Janette Sherman — 2011-12-20

In the US, Following the Fukushima fallout, samples of radioactivity in precipitation, air, water, and milk, taken by the U.S. government, showed levels hundreds of times above normal…

Radioactive Dust From Japan Hit North America 3 Days After Meltdown
But Governments “Lied” About Meltdowns and Radiation
– by Washington’s Blog — 2011-06-24

VIDEO: Fukushima Will Be Radiating Everyone for Centuries
New report now on GRTV
– by Michio Kaku, Liz Hayes — 2011-08-23

Fukushima: Diseased Seals in Alaska tested for Radiation

– 2011-12-29

Radiation Spreads to France

– by Washington’s Blog — 2011-11-15

Radioactive rain causes 130 schools in Korea to close – Yet rain in California had 10 TIMES more radioactivity

PART V

Implications for the Global Nuclear Energy Industry

Science with a Skew: The Nuclear Power Industry After Chernobyl and Fukushima
– by Gayle Greene — 2012-01-26

After Fukushima: Enough Is Enough

– by Helen Caldicott — 2011-12-05

VIDEO: Radiation Coverups Confirmed: Los Alamos, Fort Calhoun, Fukushima, TSA
New Sunday Report now on GRTV
– by James Corbett — 2011-07-04

VIDEO: Why Fukushima Can Happen Here: What the NRC and Nuclear Industry Don’t Want You to Know
Watch now on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen, David Lochbaum — 2011-07-12

VIDEO: Safety Problems in all Reactors Designed Like Fukushima
Learn more on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen — 2011-09-26

VIDEO: Proper Regulation of Nuclear Power has been Coopted Worldwide
Explore the issues on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen — 2011-10-05

VIDEO: New Nuclear Reactors Do Not Consider Fukushima Design Flaws
Find out more on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen — 2011-11-24

Nuclear Energy: Profit Driven Industry
“Nuclear Can Be Safe Or It Can Be Cheap … But It Can’t Be Both”
– by Washington’s Blog — 2011-12-23

VIDEO: Fukushima and the Fall of the Nuclear Priesthood
Watch the new GRTV Feature Interview
– by Arnie Gundersen — 2011-10-22

Why is there a Media Blackout on Nuclear Incident at Fort Calhoun in Nebraska?

– by Patrick Henningsen — 2011-06-23

Startling Revelations about Three Mile Island Disaster Raise Doubts Over Nuke Safety

– by Sue Sturgis — 2011-07-24

Radioactive Leak at Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Station

– by Rady Ananda — 2011-07-01

VIDEO: US vs Japan: The Threat of Radiation Speculation
Dangerous double standards examined on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen — 2011-06-25

Additional articles and videos on Fukushima and Nuclear Radiation are available at Global Research’s Dossier on The Environment

TEXT BOX

 Nuclear Radiation: Categorization

At Fukushima, reports confirm that alpha, beta, gamma particles and neutrons have been released:

“While non-ionizing radiation and x-rays are a result of electron transitions in atoms or molecules, there are three forms of ionizing radiation that are a result of activity within the nucleus of an atom. These forms of nuclear radiation are alpha particles (α-particles), beta particles (β-particles) and gamma rays (γ-rays).

Alpha particles are heavy positively charged particles made up of two protons and two neutrons. They are essentially a helium nucleus and are thus represented in a nuclear equation by either α or . See the Alpha Decay page for more information on alpha particles.

Beta particles come in two forms:  and .  particles are just electrons that have been ejected from the nucleus. This is a result of sub-nuclear reactions that result in a neutron decaying to a proton. The electron is needed to conserve charge and comes from the nucleus. It is not an orbital electron. particles are positrons ejected from the nucleus when a proton decays to a neutron. A positron is an anti-particle that is similar in nearly all respects to an electron, but has a positive charge. See the Beta Decay page for more information on beta particles.

Gamma rays are photons of high energy electromagnetic radiation (light). Gamma rays generally have the highest frequency and shortest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum. There is some overlap in the frequencies of gamma rays and x-rays; however, x-rays are formed from electron transitions while gamma rays are formed from nuclear transitions. See the Gamma Rays for more” (SOURCE: Canadian Nuclear Association)

“A neutron is a particle that is found in the nucleus, or center, of atoms. It has a mass very close to protons, which also reside in the nucleus of atoms. Together, they make up almost all of the mass of individual atoms. Each has a mass of about 1 amu, which is roughly 1.6×10-27kg. Protons have a positive charge and neutrons have no charge, which is why they were more difficult to discover.” (SOURCE: Neutron Radiation)

“Many different radioactive isotopes are used in or are produced by nuclear reactors. The most important of these are described below:

1. Uranium 235 (U-235) is the active component of most nuclear reactor fuel.

2. Plutonium (Pu-239) is a key nuclear material used in modern nuclear weapons and is also present as a by-product in certain reprocessed fuels used in some nuclear reactors. Pu-239 is also produced in uranium reactors as a byproduct of fission of U-235.

3. Cesium (Cs-137 ) is a fission product of U-235. It emits beta and gamma radiation and can cause radiation sickness and death if exposures are high enough. …

4. Iodine 131 (I-131), also a fission product of U-235, emits beta and gamma radiation. After inhalation or ingestion, it is absorbed by and concentrated in the thyroid gland, where its beta radiation damages nearby thyroid tissue (SOURCE: Amesh A. Adalja, MD, Eric S. Toner, MD, Anita Cicero, JD, Joseph Fitzgerald, MS, MPH, and Thomas V. Inglesby MD, Radiation at Fukushima: Basic Issues and Concepts, March 31, 2011)

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa. He is the Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal and Editor of the globalresearch.ca website. He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003) and America’s “War on Terrorism”(2005). His most recent book is entitled Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011). He has taught as Visiting Professor at universities in Western Europe, South East Asia, Latin America and The Pacific, acted as adviser to governments of developing countries and as a consultant to several international organizations. Prof. Chossudovsky is a signatory of the Kuala Lumpur declaration to criminalize war and recipient of the Human Rights Prize of the Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity (GBM), Berlin, Germany. He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.

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