USA Disinfo - search results
NYT use actual ex-FBI agent to warn readers of Barr’s ‘Russian disinfo tactic’ (with...
As US officials repeatedly caught out over Venezuela lies, Pompeo accuses RT of ‘disinformation’...
LinkedIn billionaire ‘sorry’ for funding ‘Russian bot’ disinformation campaign against Roy Moore — RT...
#Resistance journalist has 453-tweet meltdown over Mueller report — RT USA News
BuzzFeed looks for Mueller report ‘hoaxes & spin,’ gets served with its own conspiracy...
The top 5 Democrat conspiracies ranked — RT USA News
Russiagate ‘patient zero’ Papadopoulos expects Mueller probe fiasco to expose deep state conspiracy —...
Russiagate ‘patient zero’ Papadopoulos expects Mueller probe fiasco to expose deep state conspiracy —...
Russiagate ‘patient zero’ Papadopoulos expects Mueller probe fiasco to expose deep state conspiracy —...
Russiagate ‘patient zero’ Papadopoulos expects Mueller probe fiasco to expose deep state conspiracy —...
‘Nobody is panicking!’ Rachel Maddow sheds 500,000 viewers in post-Mueller slump — RT USA...
Russiagate narrative’s peddlers to be held accountable? — RT USA News
Trump cancels reports on civilian deaths in US drone strikes — RT USA News
Twitter backtracks on troll claims, media ignores updated info — RT USA News
Pentagon craves new ‘influencing tools’ against ‘enemy propaganda’ — RT USA News
NBC slammed for drawing on dodgy Russiagate org in Gabbard smear — RT USA...
Mueller claims evidence shared with Russian firm’s defense leaked to ‘discredit investigation’ — RT...
US spies tell Senate of world dangers — RT USA News
HALF of Facebook accounts fake, says Zuckerberg’s Harvard classmate — RT USA News
Facebook struggled with complaints that kids blow fortunes on online games — RT USA...
‘Russiagate’ investigator crowdfunds ‘fact-finding’ trip…to Hawaii — RT USA News
‘NewsGuard’ app gives news sites ‘trust’ ratings & targets alternative media. What could go...
Collusion with… Ukraine? NY Times corrects its bombshell ‘Russiagate’ report — RT USA News
Democrat operatives faked prohibition page to sway election — RT USA News
Democrat operatives faked prohibition page to sway election — RT USA News
The only ‘Russian bots’ to meddle in US elections belonged to Democrat-linked ‘experts’ —...
Fake it in state elections, write report for Senate — RT USA News
Facebook suspends ‘researcher’ who faked Russian interference in Alabama election — RT USA News
Twitterstorm as bombshell Russiagate report suggests SEX TOYS penetrate US democracy — RT USA...
Moscow terrorizing US with meme-filled ‘cruise missiles’ (VIDEO) — RT USA News
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez flogs Politico for ‘fake news’ — RT USA News
Racist Russians targeted African-Americans in 2016 election ploy, reports claim — RT USA News
How Algorithms Inflate Profiles, Spread Disinfo and Disrupt Democracy
Howard Dean gets earful for claim Ukraine’s anti-Semitism struggle is Russian disinformation — RT...
‘Expert on Russian disinformation’ exposed for spreading disinformation about Twitter users — RT UK...
US activists say media use ‘Russian bots’ as disinformation (VIDEO) — RT US News
UK warns East Europe against ‘hostile Russia,’ plans to spend £100mn to tackle ‘disinformation’...
Voice of America faces budget cuts, vows to fight 'Russian disinformation'
‘Polluter Interests Have Been Spending Millions on Disinformation Campaigns’ – CounterSpin interview with David...
More New York Times Disinformation
Disinformation Nation: War Criminals and Shills Dominate Media
Netanyahu Can Disinform on Iran Just as Well as Iraq
New York Times Disinformation Campaign over Ukraine
Media Disinformation: The Protest Movement in Syria
Extraordinary U.S. Military Movements In Last 72 Hours — TRN Disinfo Exposed!!!
US Militarism and Easter Day Disinformation on Iraq
Syria: Media Disinformation, War Propaganda and the Corporate Media’s “Independent Bloggers”
USA Has Plans for Hypersonic Robot Plane
Media Disinformation: Washington Post Drone Story Ignores Pakistani Military Opposition to Strikes
Mind the Credibility Gap: Syria and the History of US War Disinformation
Mainstream Propaganda and Disinformation: Staying Skeptical on Syria
Week in Review: Chemical Lies and Media Disinformation
Rattling the Sabre on Syria: Time to Cut Through Media Disinformation
Media Disinformation: The Role of Powerful Political Lobbies and Moneyed Interests in America
Media Disinformation: Mass Resignations at Al Jazeera over “biased” Egypt coverage
A cinematic disinformation job on Julian Assange
Toxic shock: California allows up to one thousand times more glyphosate in drinking water...
“Dirty Wars” and Disinformation in the Age of Ronald Reagan
£10mn in UK govt funding for ‘network of NGOs’ to combat Russia — RT...
£10mn in UK govt funding for ‘network of NGOs’ to combat Russia — RT...
‘We Already Spend More Than Medicare for All Would Cost Us’ – CounterSpin interview...
RT criticized for Skripals coverage, questioning narratives & stories on political dysfunction — RT...
Venezuela Coverage Takes Us Back to Golden Age of Lying About Latin America
Huge Psy-op in UK? Not interested. British media silent on Integrity Initiative months on...
MH17 TURNABOUT: Ukraine’s Guilt Now PROVEN
UK Integrity Initiative’s post-Skripal psyop leaked — RT UK News
‘Americans Should Know Their Government Had a Hand in the Return to Fascism’ –...
Clear-Eyed Antidotes to Ingenuous Accolades for George H.W. Bush
Misreporting Manafort: A Case Study in Journalistic Malpractice
‘Where is Mark Zuckerberg?’ – lawmakers unite to taunt Facebook founder — RT UK...
Twitter deletes 10,000+ bot accounts that ‘discouraged US midterm voting’ — RT US News
New ‘deep’ media analysis — RT US News
Boycott Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Here’s Why:
Defensive bioweapon? DARPA wants insects to spread genetically modified viruses… to ‘save crops’ —...
Not aliens after all? Mysterious solar observatory closure triggered by FBI child porn probe...
Shocking Investigation: How Western Mainstream Media Attack Syrian Refugees
Does Twitter really care about pluralism and free speech? Let’s follow the money —...
Pentagon has ‘zero intelligence’ on Syrian militants’ chemical weapons capabilities – Mattis — RT...
Beyond The DNC – Funding Hacks and Sedition
No political bias at Facebook? Employee claims company suffers from liberal mob-rule — RT...
US already drafted list of targets for potential strike in Syria – report —...
A “Sudden Bout of Atypical Decency”?
Facebook, Twitter take down ‘inauthentic Iran-linked’ accounts… but Russia takes the heat — RT...
‘No evidence’, but Russian Fancy Bears are doing it again (p.s. here’s our new...
‘No evidence’, but Russian Fancy Bears are doing it again (p.s. here’s our new...
Facebook Censored Me – LewRockwell
The Trump-Media Logrolling by Sam Husseini
Trump-Media Logrolling – Consortiumnews
The DNC -Leaks, Hacks, and Beyond Treason
Facebook deletes more ‘inauthentic’ accounts – but stops short of blaming Russia — RT...
#Resistance embraces Russian president to counter Trump — RT US News
Conclusive Proof: Hitler Intended Exterminating All the World’s Jews
Elon Musk’s Latest Brainstorm Takes Aim at Meddlesome Media
Elon Musk’s Latest Brainstorm Takes Aim at Meddlesome Media
Elon Musk’s Latest Brainstorm Takes Aim at Meddlesome Media
Elon Musk’s Latest Brainstorm Takes Aim at Meddlesome Media
The Persistent Myth of U.S. Precision Bombing – Consortiumnews
Spy bosses modify phones of England team to combat scary Russia during World Cup...
Osborne’s Evening Standard accused of making millions ‘selling news coverage’ to Google and Uber...
UK needs to be “more aggressive” in countering cyber threats, intel chief warns —...
To ‘protect democracy,’ scandal-fearing Facebook teams up with ‘unbiased’ Atlantic Council — RT US...
Dozens of Indigenous and Frontline Community Representatives Call for an End to Bank Financing...
MI5 chief uses terrorism and Russia threat to beg for Brexit clemency — RT...
Team probing Syrian war & Skripal poisoning case reveal all — RT UK News
‘A Result of McCarthyism Is a Much Narrower Range of Political Ideas’
Founder of Legatum, think-tank known for anti-Russia analysts, accused of links to Russian intel...
Gavin Williamson wants YOU in the Army Reserves to fight Russia in the fake...
Kids ask White House press secretary to justify Syria airstrikes (VIDEO) — RT US...
What was the success-rate of the April 14th missiles against Syria?
UK only taking harsh stance against Russia to save face, analyst tells RT (VIDEO)...
Another person accused of being ‘Russian troll’ by Times newspaper for non-mainstream views —...
Public Radio’s McCarthyite Smear of Black Activists Shows Danger of Russia Panic
Twitter user hits back after UK govt accuses her of being ‘Russian bot’ —...
‘Should we wait around?’ US defends premature Syria strike ahead of OPCW probe —...
Who Will Take on the 21st Century Tech and Media Monopolies?
UK Foreign Office’s attempts to undermine Russia on social media seem strangely familiar —...
Mass Deception and the Prelude to World War
Theresa May Playing a Reckless Game of Nuclear Roulette
Why Are Liberals Cheering? – Consortiumnews
Why Are Progressives Cheering Cable News’ Parade of Hawks and Liars?
How Do Big Oil Companies Talk about Climate Science? Four Takeaways from a Day...
US lawmakers invent new ways to brand RT as propaganda — RT US News
YouTube as Conspiracy Conduit
US lawmakers push Trump to spend more on Russian ‘propaganda fight’ — RT US...
Ali Abunimah: Israel Versus Russian Media Influence
Russiagate now used to target any dissent in US – Max Blumenthal — RT...
‘Something broken in US State Dept?’ Russian Embassy bewildered by Nauert’s Twitter eruption —...
US State Dept pledges $40mn of military funds for ‘information wars’ — RT US...
Facebook reckons postcards can verify location of election ad buyers — RT US News
Sickening Relations: The Royal Society and the GMO-Agrochemical Sector
Your guide to top anti-Russia think tanks in US & who funds them —...
US spies paid ‘Russians’ $100k for stolen NSA tools, but got dud ‘Trump secrets’...
‘Bouquet for Putin:’ Anti-Trump crowd rush to claim GOP serves Russian interests — RT...
Govt ‘fake news unit’ is nothing but ‘fake news’ – Labour MP Tom Watson...
Tech giants struggle to find ‘Russian meddling’ in written answers to US Senate —...
Exposing Propornot: The Underbelly of the Deepstate and Russian Influence
Hypocrisy? Experts slam Tories fake news security unit as govt ‘peddles misinformation’ — RT...
Social media mock WaPo’s Alice Donovan story as dud — RT US News
Facebook drops ineffective ‘disputed articles’ tag in fight against fake news — RT US...
Theresa May accuses Russia of ‘weaponizing information’ during Poland visit — RT UK News
The Guardian whitewashes all criticism of Syria’s foreign-funded White Helmets — RT UK News
Some Recent Reasons to Distrust American-Allied ‘News’Media
Washington Post reporter admits ‘Russiagate’ story a ‘f*cking crap shoot’ in Project Veritas video...
Boris Johnson admits again there’s no evidence of Russian interference in British politics —...
‘Russian troll’ turns out to be Glasgow security guard — RT UK News
Facebook, Google could help US ‘retaliate’ against Russia – Senator McConnell (VIDEO) — RT...
Talking About Our Future – The Haze That Envelopes Us All | By
Blaming Russia for the Internet ‘Sewer’ – Consortiumnews
The Legacy of Reagan’s Civilian ‘Psyops’ – Consortiumnews
NYT: $100,000 Russian Facebook Political Ads Prove Censorship Need
Russia-gate Jumps the Shark
Smoking gun or nothingburger? WaPo claims Russia ‘meddled’ in election through Google, YouTube
Huntsman bids for Russian ambassadorship by attacking, eh, Russia
Kremlin used Facebook to subvert Twin Falls, Idaho – Daily Beast
Fossil Fuel Lobbyist by Day, WaPo Columnist by Night
Wild theories & hot takes: Smoke from Russian consulate in SF causes Twitter frenzy
‘Russiagate’ — The Most Trustworthy Current Information
'Story of my meeting with Trump Jr. has been manipulated’ – Russian lawyer...
Seymour Hersh Cracks ‘RussiaGate’ as CIA-Planted Lie — Revenge Against Trump
Russia probe: Lawyer Veselnitskaya claims to have proof key witness to give false testimony
Trump Jr.'s Russian meeting was about lifting sanctions, key witness Browder tells Senate
House resistance, not ‘procedural issues,’ behind stalled Russia sanctions bill – US senator
Who Interfered in the US Presidential Election?
US Senate adopts amendment on more sanctions against Russia
How I know that the Sauds did the 9/11 attacks
Minnesota measles outbreak bigger than all cases in 2016… for entire US
Measles outbreak prompts Minnesota officials to request $5mn
History Lesson Awaits Trump
‘Soviet active measures’: Hearing on Russian influence resurrects Cold War tropes
The House Science Committee’s Shameful Climate Sideshow
How US Flooded the World with Psyops
Trump Didn’t Teach Foreign Regimes to Cry ‘Fake News’–Corporate Media Did
Lock up England in Jail or an Insane Asylum!
After the Apocalypse: Trying to Describe Reality in Unreal Times
‘Profound dismay’: DNI Clapper meets with Trump over ‘unverified’ dossier leak
Tillerson Called Out for 'Lying About Climate' During Confirmation Hearing
‘We’re Seeing the Result of a 40-Year Assault on the Liberal Mainstream’ – CounterSpin...
‘ODNI report speculative, serves to push certain political theories’ – ex-Trump aide Carter Page
Welcome to the Vortex
The Information War on Syria and Beyond
Cyber command, anti-US propaganda, troop increases: Obama signs defense spending bill into law
Russia-Hack Story, Another Media Failure
Russia launched ‘cyberwar & propaganda campaign’ against UK – media
Rex Tillerson and Exxon Spent Big on Climate Change Denial While Misleading Public, Evidence...
Rather Than Exposing Propaganda, WaPo Shows How It’s Done
The Fake News Media Attacks
CounterPunch as Russian Propagandists: the Washington Post’s Shallow Smear
Why Are Media Outlets Still Citing Discredited ‘Fake News’ Blacklist?
The Feds Killed MLK
Bait & Switch- Fake News, propornot, the Real Inform & Influence Operation
WaPo Names LewRockwell.com to Honor Roll
The Almost Legal Coup Election 2016 -Hillary Clinton Information Operations
Yes, There Will Be Election Fraud, On A Grand Scale
The Power Elite’s War
It’s Rigged: Takes One to Know One
Bring Back the Cold War
Bring Back the Cold War
Bring Back the Cold War
US Propaganda Goes into Overdrive
NATO’s Expiration Date
“Socialists” Supporting NATO and U.S. Empire
Stoking Russia Panic for Partisan Gain Will Have a Long-Term Price for Peace
Devil Queen of War
Russia Hacks the World
Never Take These Killer Drugs
Sweden Joins NATO’s Emerging War Against Russia
Time to End the ‘Hasbara’: Palestinian Media and the Search for a Common Story
Propaganda Countdown to WWIII
The Techniques of Modern Military Propaganda
Zionist Israel Hides Its Crimes Behind Its Smears of Truth-Tellers
US lawmakers seek federal agency to dilute Russian & Chinese ‘propaganda’ with ‘flow of...
Quaker instant oatmeal and Silk non-GMO soy creamer found contaminated with alarming levels of...
‘Grassroots campaign’ ousts Laquan McDonald-involved county prosecutor Anita Alvarez
British Gov’ thinks David Icke is an extremist who must be silenced – and...
Batting for GM in India: Smears, Misinformation and Depoliticising the Political
Ukraine’s Cyber Mercenaries Attack Alternative Media
Private NSA Army is Attacking YOU!
American Jihadi Starts Private NSA and Attacks America
Bernie Sanders slams ’vicious attack’ by pro-Clinton lobby group over Corbyn support
Zionists Latest Anti-Semitic Inducing Provocation: Trying to Destroy a Highly Worthy and Sane Nuclear...
German army peddles propaganda at heavy metal concert
The Fast Track To Ending Human Rights
Canada’s police-state bill passes final parliamentary hurdle
Civil War Rages On for Black America
Mandatory Vaccination Bill Introduced in Congress
Bob Livingston
Personal Liberty
Government is force. When it finds that soft force doesn’t work, it becomes more aggressive.
Having found itself unable to scare and/or coerce all Americans into “voluntary” vaccination compliance, now Congress has before it a bill titled the “Vaccinate All Children Act of 2015.” Of course this requirement is being done “in the public interest” and “for the greater good.”
It would accomplish the task of vaccinating all children by withholding federal funds from public elementary and secondary schools that enroll students who are not vaccinated according to recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
Of course, children are required by law to attend school, and most children attend public schools. And people are forced to fund those schools whether they have children attending them or not. Opting out of the public indoctrination camps passing as public schools requires jumping through special hoops and/or forking over large sums of cash to a private school.
And who sits on the Advisory Committee that sets the recommendations? Why, it’s health professionals who benefit — either directly or indirectly – from vaccination programs. And some get thousands of dollars from drug makers like Pfizer, Merk and GlaxoSmithKline for “consulting” and “speaking” fees. One member, Marietta Vazquez, M.D., pocketed more than $20,000 for three speeches.
Even if they worked and were without risk, vaccines only stimulate temporary immunity. By trading lifelong immunity for temporary vaccine-induced immunity, people become vaccine dependent. The winners of repeated mandatory vaccinations are the pharmaceutical companies. The losers are the people, who are first put at risk as children for vaccine adverse events and then put at risk as adults for repeated vaccinations that have already failed. The pharmaceuticals have discovered a money machine in mass vaccinations. But they need and have to have your body for the pretense.
The development of asthma, diabetes and autism in children has increased substantially in the last four decades, coinciding with the significant increase in childhood immunizations. People are finally recognizing the link and questioning Big Pharma, and more and more are beginning to “opt out.”
Public awareness has been manipulated. Why does no one question the authority of injecting agents of unknown toxicity into their body? Unbelievably, the general public is satisfied with the disinformation provided by the government. Unfortunately, now is the wrong time for apathy. We are on the verge of a vaccine mania and by the time our wakeup call comes, it just may be too late.
The worldwide market for human vaccine is now over $24 billion – and expected by the World Health Organization to rise to $100 billion in 2025 — with the underlying purpose cloaked by the guise of protecting public health.
The act of forcing people through intimidation and deception into dangerous medications is terrorism of the most malicious sort. This act by public authority constitutes assault, violating civil and human rights under national and international law.
There can be no “greater good” in this act of war against the American people.
© Personal Liberty Media Group
US-Dominated NATO Readying for War on Russia?
- nonexistent "Russian aggression;"
- "substantial Russian buildup along the border with Ukraine, but also inside eastern Ukraine;"
- arming Donbass freedom fighters with heavy weapons; and
- violating other Minsk ceasefire terms.
Chaos And Propaganda: Washington’s “Reality-Based Order”
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Crazed Washington Drives the World to the Final War
Not Science, Just Lies And Propaganda: The Massive Fraud Behind GMOs Exposed
This is not what the GMO industry wanted to see: banner headlines in major newspapers and across the internet exposing the fraud behind GMOs. But this constitutes much more than a PR nightmare. The story behind the headlines shakes the very foundations upon which the industry is built.
“Contrary to the assertions of its proponents, the massive enterprise to reconfigure the genetic core of the world’s food supply is not based on sound science but on the systematic subversion of science – and it would collapse if subjected to an open airing of the facts.”
“convince the public and government officials, through the dissemination of false information, that there was an overwhelming expert consensus, based on solid evidence, that the new foods were safe. Yet this, as Druker points out, was clearly not true.”
“Druker describes how amazingly successful the biotech lobby has been – and the extent to which the general public and government decision makers have been hoodwinked by the clever and methodical twisting of the facts and the propagation of many myths. Moreover, it appears that a number of respected scientific institutions, as well as many eminent scientists, were complicit in this relentless spreading of disinformation.”
“It will go a long way toward dispelling the confusion and delusion that has been created regarding the genetic engineering process and the foods it creates. Although this book tells a story that’s in many ways distressing, it’s important that it has finally been told because so much confusion has been spread and so many important decision-makers have apparently been deluded.”
“Contrary to the assertions of its proponents, the massive enterprise to reconfigure the genetic core of the world’s food supply is not based on sound science but on the systematic subversion of science – and it would collapse if subjected to an open airing of the facts.”
“Steven Druker’s investigation into the history of fraud and deceit that ushered in the era of GM deserves serious consideration before we take actions that will irreversibly alter the European food supply.”
Not Science, Just Lies and Propaganda: The Massive Fraud Behind GMOs Exposed
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HOW AMERICA SCREWS UP THE WORLD WITHOUT EVER LETTING ITS PEOPLE KNOW WHAT IS...
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Privatization Is A Ramp For Corruption and Insouciance Is a Ramp for War The New York Times has acquired a new Judith Miller Paul Craig Roberts Libertarian ideology favors privatization. However, in practice privatization is usually very different in result…
The post Privatization Is A Ramp For Corruption and Insouciance Is a Ramp for War — Paul Craig Roberts appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org.
The Creepy Factor Just Rose To The Nth Degree! Gov’t ‘Gang Stalkers’ Exposed
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Containing Russia
- "black propaganda" through leaflets or other publications; it was "designed to discredit organizations and foster internal tensions;"
- "disinformation or 'gray propaganda' " for the same purpose;
- "bad-jacketing" to "creat(e) suspicion - through the spread of rumors, manufacture of evidence, etc." to turn some members against others violently;
- "harassment arrests (on bogus) charges;" and
- "assassinations (of) selected political leaders."
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Media Blackout on Smart Meter Dangers
Major power utilities continue to deploy “smart” electrical meters on businesses and private residences throughout the United States and Canada. Yet those in North America and elsewhere remain in the dark on the negative health effects of such devices that systematically blast their homes with radio-frequency (RF) radiation on a minute-by-minute, round-the-clock basis.
In 2009 the Obama administration partnered with utilities by allocating $3.4 billion in federal stimulus funds toward building a nationwide “smart grid,” where smart meters figure centrally.[1] The project is part of President Obama’s “Climate Action Plan” that under United Nations auspices seeks to reduce US carbon emissions 20% by the year 2020.[2]
There is more than ample research available that has associated negative health effects of RF radiation emitted by smart meters [3] for regulatory authorities to place restrictions on power utilities and compel them to abide by the precautionary principle. Such restrictions would require power providers to refrain from wide scale installation of smart meters until a sufficient body of scientific research demonstrating the safety of such devices has been produced and rigorously evaluated.
Yet in the US and elsewhere the imperative of having a “smart grid,” the prospect of a carbon trading scheme, lax (and in at least some cases corrupt) state and federal regulatory bodies, and the sheer power of the utilities combine to jeopardize the long term health of the entire population.
In a purportedly democratic society news outlets play a decisive role in such an impending health crisis. By failing to report on the dubious health research of smart meters and the fact that the public is being involuntarily subjected to such technology, news media are a key factor in the citizenry’s continued ignorance and inaction.
In May 2011 the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer categorized “radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans based on an increased risk for glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer, associated with wireless cellphone use.”[4] Despite this warning from a well-recognized source, the utilities stubbornly insist that all residences must be equipped with a smart meter issuing dangerous electropollution.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ceased studying the health effects of radiofrequency radiation when the Senate Appropriations Committee cut the department’s funding and forbade it from further research into the area.[5] Thereafter RF limits were codified as mere “guidelines” based on the EPA’s tentative findings and are presently overseen by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
These weakly enforced standards are predicated on the alleged “thermal effect” of RF to which the FCC subscribes. In other words, if the energy emitted from a wireless antenna or device is not powerful enough to heat the skin or flesh then no danger is posed to human health.[6]
To this day power utilities cling to this severely outmoded and unscientific standard when confronted with the formidable body of research linking RF to cancer, destruction of DNA, and other negative health effects. News media seldom question the FCC policy when it is cited by utilities and regulators alike to underline the supposed overall safety of smart meters.[7]
An electronic LexisNexis search of newspaper articles referencing “smart meters” appearing between May 31, 2011, the date WHO classified RF a Class 2B carcinogen, and June 19, 2014, yields close to 839 pieces published in English language papers. Yet for the same time span only one tenth of the sample (82 articles) mentions “smart meters” and “carcinogen” or “carcinogenic” in the same report. Of these, 65 of the articles appeared in Canadian, and to a much lesser degree Australian or UK papers. Note that each sample includes guest editorials and letters to the editor penned by concerned citizens.
Using parameters from the date May 31, 2011, the date WHO declared RF a Class 2B carcinogen, to January 19, 2014, of 93 newspaper articles referencing “smart meter” and “World Health Organization,” 76 were published in Canadian, and to a much lesser degree UK, Australian, Malaysian or New Zealand outlets.
As the above suggests, the extremely limited awareness especially in the US of the potential health consequences of exposure to the continual RF emitted by smart meters is primarily because the issue is being blacked out in the press. When such dangers are reported, they are tempered by the refrain of the FCC’s “thermal effect” policy, which in light of the abundant countervailing research amounts to disinformation.
In December 2013 I contacted the reporter at the local metro-daily Palm Beach Post covering the state power utility, Florida Power and Light, and its smart meter policy to remind her of the bevy of public health and medical research documenting the likely consequences of sustained RF exposure. I also directed her to the WHO statement classifying RF as potentially carcinogenic.
To the Post’s credit a subsequent story highlighting Florida Power and Light’s “opt out” policy referenced the WHO statement. Yet the piece appeared deep in the business section of the paper, and the WHO warning was accompanied by the Florida Public Service Commission’s familiar rejoinder.
In 2011 the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified radio frequency electromagnetic fields such as those emitted by cellular phones, microwaves and smart meters as possibly carcinogenic to humans.
The PSC has said its authority does not extend to health issues related to meters. Smart meters are certified for compliance with radio frequency emission standards by the Federal Communications Commission, and the FCC has deemed that meters in compliance with the standards do not have adverse health impacts.[8]
While one or more hidden agendas likely exist to keep the public unaware of the health dangers associated with RF and smart meters (again, think carbon trading, in addition to the social control possibilities via energy rationing and surveillance soon to be realized through the “smart grid,”) a more immediate cause for such censorship is simply profit and continued media monopoly control of public opinion and discourse.
The telecommunications industry whose services are largely predicated on RF has recently exhibited the largest growth in advertising outlays, which are surely recognized in bottom line terms by the news and media industries.[9] With potential continued revenue growth on this scale, raising questions and relaying information that can safeguard public health and allow citizens to ask intelligent questions concerning the health of themselves and their loved ones simply constitutes poor business practice.
Notes
[1] “President Obama Announces $3.4 Billion Investment to Spur Transition to Smart Energy Grid,” The White House, October 27, 2009.
[2] Ed King, “Obama Promises to Cut Carbon Pollution in Climate Action Plan,” Responding to Climate Change, June 26, 2013.
[3] See, for example, the American Association of Environmental Medicine EMF-RF Reference List (PDF) and AAEM’s April 12, 2012 Press Advisory (PDF).
[4] World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer, “IARC Classifies Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields as Possibly Carcinogenic,” May 31, 2011.
[5] Susan Luzzaro, “Field of Cell Phone Tower Beams,” San Diego Reader, May 18, 2011,
[6] FCC Office of Engineering and Technology, http://www.fcc.gov/oet/rfsafety. See also James F. Tracy “Wireless Technology and the Accelerated Toxification of America,” memoryholeblog.com, July 7, 2012.
[7] When this author obtained documents through a public records request from the Florida Public Service Commission on Florida Power and Light’s smart meter campaign–a very simple and routine endeavor for any journalist–it was evident that no human health impact studies on statewide smart meter deployment were ever considered. The PSC merely accepted FPL’s rationale and related public relations literature.
[8] Susan Salisbury, “Media Opt-Out Fee to Be Considered, PSC Staff Proposes Enrollment, Monthly Cost for Device For Device Foes,” Palm Beach Post, January 3, 2014, B4.
[9] “Ad Spend By Sector: Consumer Goods and Telecom Take the Cake in 2012,” Nielsen.com, April 25, 2013.
Republished at GlobalResearch.ca on January 21, 2014.
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The Legacy of the Kennedy Administration and the Ongoing, Never-ending JFK Mythology
The Sandy Hook School Massacre: A Compendium of Research and Analysis
Beginning in the late 1960s Operation Gladio and its corollary maneuvers proceeded throughout Europe, spanning over two decades. Researchers and even the testimony of public officials have since proven that the series of seemingly random orchestrated bombings and shootings was intended to cultivate the necessary degree of anxiety and “tension” that would keep the populace tethered to police state authority and supportive of the right wing regimes preferred by Western powers.
The events of September 11, 2001 have their attendant punctuation marks that reverberate through the body politic. The Sikh Temple. Aurora. Sandy Hook. Navy Yard. And most recently the Arapahoe School in Colorado. For over one year the American public has been subject to a steady mass-mediated drumbeat of school shootings and “active shooter drills.” The breathless corporate coverage of such events often blurs the line between contrivance and reality. While federal agencies clamor for resources to keep the public “safe” from “terrorists and other bad guys,” the undue hysteria has served to keep families on edge over the welfare of their school age children.
Over the past twelve months Memory Hole Blog has published a variety of stories and commentaries seeking to probe behind the corporate media’s overly sensationalistic, and in many cases terrifying, headlines and soundbites related to “school safety” in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy.
In early January 2013 such analyses caught the attention of the national media, especially since some of the unanswered questions concerning Sandy Hook were being raised or echoed by an academician–indeed, by a member of the establishment who might be intimidated (or embarrassed) into silence. Such efforts have resulted in Memory Hole building its list of followers by several thousand, and making it a destination where those so inclined often engage in vigorous debate via their commentaries on posts. This is another (albeit modest) example of intelligent and discerning citizens exhibiting warranted skepticism toward public events and condemning the disinformation and make believe corporate media offer as a regular diet to their reader/viewerships.
The following is a collection of posts written by James Tracy and MHB guest contributors over the past year specifically addressing one of US history’s more recent controversial events–one that has broad implications for public safety, health, and education-related policies: the Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre.-JFT
False Flag Terror and Conspiracies of Silence
August 10, 2012
The news media’s readiness to accept official pronouncements and failure to more vigorously analyze and question government authorities in the wake of “domestic terrorist” incidents including mass shootings and bombings contributes to the American public’s already acute case of collective historical amnesia, while further rationalizing the twenty-first century police state and continued demise of civil society.
Analyzing the Newtown Narrative: Sandy Hook’s Disappearing Shooter Suspects
December 20, 2012
It is now beyond question that the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. all involved patsies, additional gunman and perhaps most importantly, mass media complicity to achieve their political ends. Along these lines and in a fashion now characteristic of how such public executions are framed, the observations and analyses of citizen journalists and alternative media suggest how coverage of the Newtown Connecticut school shooting was substantially altered in the several hours and days following the event.
The Sandy Hook Massacre: Unanswered Questions and Missing Information
December 24, 2012
Inconsistencies and anomalies abound when one turns an analytical eye to news of the Newtown school massacre. The public’s general acceptance of the event’s validity and faith in its resolution suggest a deepened credulousness borne from a world where almost all news and information is electronically mediated and controlled.
James Tracy on the Kevin Barrett Show
January 2, 2013
James Tracy’s recent article The Sandy Hook School Massacre: Unanswered Questions and Missing Information has gone viral, suggesting that more and more Americans are waking up to the fact that the “deep state” or “dual state” is behind almost all “terrorist attacks,” school shootings, and massacres of civilians. If you doubt that, please study the history of Operation Gladio, which appears to be alive and well in the USA.
Sandy Hook School Massacre Part II: Continued Ambiguity and Augmented Realities
January 4, 2013
As documents relating to the Sandy Hook shooting continue to be assessed and interpreted by independent researchers there is a growing awareness that the media coverage of the massacre of 26 children and adults was intended primarily for public consumption to further larger political ends. A considerable amount of evidence has been withheld by authorities, who in a telling move have successfully postponed public disclosure of items culled from Nancy and Adam Lanzas’ residence and vehicles for an additional ninety days.
Sandy Hook School Massacre Timeline
January 6, 2013
The following timeline of the December 14 mass killing of 20 children and 8 adults in Newtown Connecticut attempts to demonstrate how the event was presented to the public by corporate news media. The chronological assemblage of coverage is not comprehensive of all reports published on the incident but rather seeks to verify how the storyline was to a substantial degree constructed by federal and state law enforcement authorities and major media around the theory that 20-year-old Adam Lanza was the sole agent in the massacre.
James Tracy on KPFA’s Guns and Butter
January 10, 2013
“Sandy Hook: Unanswered Questions” with Professor James F. Tracy. Discrepancies in media coverage; coroner’s press conference; political fallout.
Anderson Cooper’s Anti-Conspiracy Tirade
January 12, 2013
CNN anchor spends two segments of “AC360″ giving James Tracy’s photograph a nasty finger-wagging. Cooper also “interviews” establishment anti-conspiracists Alex Seitz-Wald and Jonathan Kay concerning Tracy’s alleged derangement.
January 10 Infowars Nightly News with Rob Dew
January 15, 2013
Taft Union High School Drill Becomes “Real Life”
January 16, 2013
Was the tragic January 10 shooting at Taft Union High School part of a drill that “went live”? This is the impression one gets when analyzing media reports of the incident, such as those from CNN correspondent Khung Lah. Taft School District Superintendent Bill McDermott stated that on the morning of January 10 at 7:30AM PST Taft Union High School staff participated in “lockdown training.” The public school, located roughly two hours northwest of Los Angeles, encompasses grades nine through 12 with about 935 students and 64 faculty members.
Higher Education and Academic Freedom Under Attack
January 19, 2013
James Tracy discusses the Sandy Hook media frenzy and academic freedom on KPFA’s The Morning Mix with Project Censored’s Mickey Huff and Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s Robert Shipley.
CIA Document 1035-960: Foundation of a Weaponized Term
January 20, 2013
“Conspiracy theory” is a term that at once strikes fear and anxiety in the hearts of most every public figure, particularly journalists and academics. Since the 1960s the label has become a disciplinary device that has been overwhelmingly effective in defining certain events off limits to inquiry or debate.
An Open Letter In Support of Dr. Tracy and Academic Freedom
January 25, 2013
Dear Florida Atlantic University administrators: I am writing to express support for Dr. Tracy’s right to express his views and pose his questions. Indeed, as an associate professor, he has a professional responsibility to do so. Sadly, voicing unpopular views is a responsibility that is largely neglected in the academy. And even if Dr. Tracy has made some misjudgments regarding the present case (about which I reserve judgment), at least he has demonstrated an uncommon degree of courage in voicing opinions that risk engendering personal troubles.
The Sandy Hook Controversy: James Tracy on GRTV
January 28, 2013
After writing a series of articles documenting the discrepancies and outright lies in the official narrative of the Sandy Hook shooting, Professor James Tracy of Florida Atlantic University shot to international attention when the establishment media began covering his work. Now, Dr. Tracy is left trying to explain the misinterpretations, lies and soundbites that the mainstream media is using to discredit his work.
An Inquisitive Couple’s Visit to Newtown Connecticut
January 28, 2013
My partner and I became fed up with the mainstream media’s depiction of what took place in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012. So on January 20 we traveled there from our home in Ottawa Canada in an effort to visit the sites and respectfully approach the locals.
Live Shooter Drill Hoax Played on Nation’s Most Vulnerable Children
February 2, 2013
On the morning of December 18, 2012 administrators at New York City Public School 79 (the Horan School) in East Harlem conducted an entirely unannounced “active shooter drill.” The event, which took place just four days after the high profile Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown Connecticut, terrified the school’s 300 special needs adolescent and young adult students and the 100 teaching and counseling staff members.
An Open Letter to FAU Faculty, Staff, and Administration About Sandy Hook
February 6, 2013
All, Because James Tracy and I have been attacked as faculty members–I am now retired, while he is not–for speaking out about Sandy Hook, I would observe that this is a very messy case and that serious questions are being raised about it from a wide range of perspectives. It is clearly complex and controversial but also falls squarely within Dr. Tracy’s areas of professional competence, which include conspiracy theories and culture, malfeasance by the media and related issues. Tenure was created to protect faculty from the political consequences that might otherwise attend addressing complex and controversial matters of this very kind.
Corporate Media’s Lone Gunman Storyline Losing Ground
February 9, 2013
A cross section of kill-to-injury ratios of major mass shootings suggests that if Adam Lanza acted alone in carrying out the Sandy Hook Elementary School carnage he was among the most accurate killers in modern history, exceeding even the lethal damage meted out by Al Capone’s machine gun-wielding henchmen in the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
The Sandy Hook Massacre Versus the Dorner Rampage: Corporate Media Double Standard
February 16, 2013
It’s no secret that journalists working for the bulk of mainstream news outlets seek to uncover and exploit every facet of gruesome events such as ex-LAPD officer Christopher Dorner’s apparent rampage or the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown Connecticut.
PBS Defies Basic Journalistic Standards to Push Sandy Hook Official Narrative
February 23, 2013
This past week the Public Broadcasting Service presented its viewership with a flurry of reportage and commentary on the Newtown tragedy, taking special care to closely associate the incident with the issues of gun control, mental health, and school safety. Specific programs have included Washington Week, PBS NewsHour, NOVA, and FRONTLINE.
Open Letter to FAU Administration by Filmmaker Adnan Zuberi
February 28, 2013
I have examined Professor James Tracy’s writings regarding the Newtown, Conn., massacre and I am briefly presenting a case-study to you on how a university can deal with this situation. I was awarded by the University of Toronto for my documentary entitled 9/11 in the Academic Community which examines how academia treats critical perspectives of media or governmental narratives.
“Extremist” Publicity and Historical Reality
March 13, 2013
The Southern Poverty Law Center[1] is advising the US government of the alleged “domestic terror threat” posed by political conservatives, “conspiracy theorists,” and others skeptical of their government’s policies and behavior. A March 5, 2012 letter to the US Departments of Justice and Homeland Security points to the group’s recent report, “The Year in Hate and Extremism.” The study uses SPLC data to point to an almost one thousand percent upsurge in “militias and radical antigovernment groups … from 149 in 2008 to 1,360 in 2012.”
Video: Sandy Hook News Coverage
March 20, 2013
“Sandy Hook: Do You Believe That America?” includes several important clips, many of which have been overlooked or disappeared from the web since December 14. The selection and sequence overall highlight the inconsistent and contradictory news coverage of that day. Produced by insanemedia.net
In Search of the Last Liberal Intellectual
March 27, 2013
In the wake of the Sandy Hook School shooting public incredulity with the official version of events led to numerous speculations on what really happened. In short order corporate media marshaled pundits to disparage such alternative interpretations as “conspiracy theories” and the work of deranged and even malevolent Sandy Hook “truthers.”
A Remarkable Confluence of Events
March 29, 2013
Recent entries on the Sandy Hook Massacre Timeline suggest how March 28, 2013 was an especially important date coordinated to bring together the United Nations-led campaign to address the conventional weapons trade and accelerate gun control-related public relations efforts directed toward the American people.
Crisis Actors at Sandy Hook?
April 11, 2013
A Memoryholeblog reader who wishes to remain anonymous has submitted the following Internet Archive captures of previously-published profiles from the CrisisActors.org website. These have been juxtaposed by the contributor with stills from news interviews with individuals appearing in various footage of the Sandy Hook massacre aftermath.
Higher Ed Outlets Address Reprimand of Professor for Blog
April 12, 2013
Two notable professional academic publications examine disciplinary measures taken against James Tracy for media attention given to articles appearing on memoryholeblog that questioned the official Newtown narrative.
Newtown World Order Religion
April 14, 2013
The Sandy Hook School massacre of December 14 has no doubt been seized upon by the present police state as a raison d’être for heightened gun control measures. Yet a more subtle element of the event is the promotion of a political worldview under the cloak of psychiatry and an increasingly prominent notion of “community building.”
“The Most Crucial of All Human Rights”
April 22, 2013
AAUP Letter to FAU President Mary Jane Saunders
April 25, 2013
In a letter to the president of Florida Atlantic University, the AAUP defended a communication professor’s right, under principles of academic freedom, to speak on matters of public concern without fear of institutional discipline.
“Why James Tracy Should Resign”
May 15, 2013
In a recent letter to local newspapers I have been publicly accused by colleagues of being a “conspiracy theorist.” The statement’s authors are asking that I resign my university post because my extracurricular commentary is deemed offensive and allegedly interferes with my ability to properly assess and articulate complex ideas in a scholarly manner.
Secret Government, Deep Events, and the Emerging Police State
May 18, 2013
Most will likely agree that 9/11 is a qualitatively different event from the Sandy Hook massacre and Boston bombing. Nevertheless, with such highly questionable events the first question that must be asked is, “Did something happen?” The second question is, “What happened?” These questions lead us to ask why such events happen, what parties are behind the events and what are their possible rationales.
Media Disinformation and the Conspiracy Panic Phenomenon
May 24, 2013
To posit that one’s government may be partially composed of unaccountable criminal elements is cause for serious censure in polite circles. Labeled “conspiracy theories” by a corporate media that prompt and channel emotionally-laden mass consent, such perspectives are quickly dispatched to the memory hole lest they prompt meaningful discussion of the political prerogatives and designs held by a global power elite coordinating governments and broader geopolitical configurations.
A Memorial Day Trip to Sandy Hook
June 1, 2013
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education Letter to FAU President Mary Jane Saunders
June 5, 2013
… FIRE is concerned with the threat to freedom of expression presented by Florida Atlantic University’s (FAU’s) sanctions against Professor James Tracy due to the content of his personal blog. FAU’s actions violate Tracy’s right to freedom of expression and threaten the academic freedom of all FAU faculty. FAU must recognize its moral and legal obligations under the First Amendment and immediately reverse its disciplinary actions.
What Time Are Newtown Schools in Session
June 12, 2013
A central assumed data point of the December 14 2012 Newtown Connecticut shooting as evidenced on the Sandy Hook Timeline and through government pronouncements and press reports is that at 9:30AM a deranged Adam Lanza, dressed for combat and wielding several firearms, gained entry into Sandy Hook Elementary School and slaughtered 26 students and educators.
An Open Letter to the South Florida Sun Sentinel
June 20, 2013
On June 3 James Tracy sent a letter to Sun-Sentinel editor-in-chief Howard Saltz citing the paper’s repeated attacks on Tracy for publicly questioning government pronouncements and overall news coverage of the Sandy Hook massacre and Boston Marathon bombing. In a June 17 response to the letter Saltz maintains that the Sun-Sentinel‘s coverage is defensible given its newsworthiness and under the tenets of free speech.
Video: “No Blood” and “The Watcher is Back”
June 22, 2013
In a conference call of Sandy Hook researchers earlier this month, one individual explains her unanswered queries to the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and Lieutenant J. Paul Vance concerning what parties were responsible for cleaning up the gruesome crime scene at the Sandy Hook school last December. DEEP deferred to the State Police. “What blood?” Vance responded, before deferring to yet another state agency.
Mass Traumatization and the Body Politic
July 2, 2013
A long-held desire of the technocratic worldview involves manipulation and control of a national and even international body politic. “This planetary consciousness,” Zbigniew Brzezinski observes, brings into closer view a single indivisible humanity united by the soft tyranny of depersonalized and omnipresent coercion.
James Tracy on The Power Hour, July 17, 2013
July 18, 2013
James Tracy discusses the latest investigation into the Sandy Hook shooting and related topics on GCN with Joyce Riley.
Nationwide Post-Sandy Hook Terror Drills: Real or Fake?
August 22, 2013
With the school year now underway a flurry of federally-coordinated “active shooter drills” are taking place across the country. The exercises are part of a broader program the FBI is carrying out as a result of an Obama’s directive following the December 2012 Newtown school massacre.
US Public Schools Train to Finger Mental Cases
August 26, 2013
An appendage of the world’s foremost advocate of psychiatric treatment, the American Psychiatric Association, is actively promoting a “teacher training program” that will enlist public school staff to identify “troubled thought patterns” of teenage students, NBC news reports.[1] The campaign is being pushed by the American Psychiatric Foundation, the “philanthropic and educational arm of the American Psychiatric Association,” according to APF’s own website.
Obama DOJ in $2.5 Million Sandy Hook Payout
September 3, 2013
As the nation’s attention turned to potential US military aggression in the Middle East, the Obama administration has made an unusual $2.5 million payout to Connecticut law enforcement and emergency response agencies for their participation in the December 14, 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre event.
Video: Over 30 Sandy Hook Homes “Gifted” in 2009?
September 13, 2013
Newtown property records suggest that on December 25, 2009 a total of 35 properties located on and around Yogananda Street in Sandy Hook were transferred at zero value to new owners.
Video: James Tracy Responds to Latest MSM Assault
September 20, 2013
Early on September 18 James Tracy posted several videos, photos and other materials, most of which were emailed to him by MHB readers concerning the September 16 DC Navy Yard shooting incident. No discernible claims or arguments were made regarding what took place at Navy Yard, only attempted descriptions of the items posted.
Sandy Hook School Slated for Demolition
October 5, 2013
Connecticut political leaders are moving decisively to destroy the site of the December 14, 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. On September 24 Governor Dannel P. Malloy announced the state’s $50 million commitment to tear down the 57-year-old Sandy Hook School structure and replace it with a new high-priced facility.
Sandy Hook Actors’ Elite Political Connections
October 13, 2013
Francine Wheeler (Lobis), the mother of 6-year-old Benjamin Wheeler who authorities say was killed alongside 25 others at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012, is also a professional musician and actor.
The AR15 Dog and Pony Show
October 18, 2013
As someone who has followed the Sandy Hook story and the subsequent push for increased gun control quite closely, imagine my surprise to learn from a June 2013 article published in the literary magazine Harper’s that the hue and cry around having the public’s access to weapons reined in may indeed be an ongoing dog-and-pony show intended for perception management only.
Sandy Hook Demolition Crew Sworn to Silence
October 15, 2013
Employees of a construction company contracted by Newtown to demolish Sandy Hook Elementary School must sign non-disclosure agreements before commencing work on the project, scheduled to begin October 21.
Video: Brendan Hunt Returns to Sandy Hook
October 22, 2013
On Sunday, October 20 New York-based videographer and independent researcher Brendan Hunt visited Newtown to further document the Sandy Hook Elementary School and its surroundings. The School is scheduled for demolition this week.
Demolition Underway at Sandy Hook
October 25, 2013
Unraveling Sandy Hook in 2, 3, 4, and 5 Dimensions
November 7, 2013
In this ninety-minute video independent researcher Sofia Smallstorm presents a thoroughgoing examination of the December 14, 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre event.
Smallstorm and Fetzer on Sandy Hook, Fukushima, Radiation
November 20, 2013
Sofia Smallstorm offers a detailed discussion of her recent video presentation, Unraveling Sandy Hook, on Professor Jim Fetzer’s The Real Deal radio program.
Newtown 911 Calls Released
December 5, 2013
CT State Emergency System Hijacked on December 14, 2012
December 9, 2013
We can now prove that the entire CT State emergency communications system was ‘hijacked’ and ‘unplugged’ on December 14th., 2012, per an elaborate frequency change plan implemented merely 5 hours in advance on that morning, effectively supplanting and replacing normal police and EMS with FEMA / DHS ‘shadow’ command center personnel, where it turns out that they (the HOAX perpetrators from FEMA) made one critical mistake that they hoped nobody would catch.
Sandy Hook One Year After
December 12, 2013
As the nation approaches the first anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, mainstream media are predictably excluding from their tragedy porn any substantive analysis of the idiosyncratic, misleading, and in some cases flagrantly propagandistic reportage of the event that might call the official story into question.
Video: Sandy Hook Child Victims at 2013 Super Bowl
December 14, 2013
The words might be more fitting as a banner on the National Enquirer. Yet according to this brief (2:33) video, several of the first graders slain in Newtown Connecticut on December 14, 2012 are not only alive and well, but rather famously performing the US National Anthem at Super Bowl XLVII.
The Iran Sanctions Game
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Al Jourgensen: Musical Innovator, Legendary Junkie…Alien Contactee?
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Useful Idiots 2013
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Jeremy Scahill Attacks Alex Jones
By James F. Tracy
Progressive-left media icon Jeremy Scahill told a caller to C-SPAN’s Book TV that Austin Texas talk show host Alex Jones is a “lunatic” and a significant detriment to “real journalism that journalists are doing.”
Scahill was asked who he thought represented “the most legimate … form of journalism”–Jones or Amy Goodman. “[I have] to be very careful about choosing my words here,” Scahill cautioned. The writer then proceeded to call Jones an “absolute, die-hard lunatic, and to even mention him in the same sentence as Amy Goodman is an incredible insult to Amy Goodman [sic].” Scahill continued,
Alex Jones has forwarded some of the most outrageous, ridiculous conspiracy theories about how the world works. And whatever good he might be doing in what he does is completely overshadowed by the fact that he is pushing outright lies and propaganda on a regular basis and I think that it ultimately subverts the importance of real journalism that independent journalists are doing on a regular basis by giving the impression that everyone’s running around wearing a tin foil hat.
The progressive author’s outburst begs the question, What exactly is “real journalism”? What are the characteristics of “alternative media”? Who has a legitimate claim to that mantle? And, what broader interests do attacks like these serve? This arguably has far less to do with journalistic legitimacy and a sincere regard for truth than it does with the less-apparent forces that seek to define political debate–and division.
Scahill, the Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at the foundation-funded Nation Institute, previously worked as a producer on Goodman’s Democracy Now! news program, also a major recipient of foundation funding. Scahill is also a frequent guest on corporate news outlet MSNBC.
Does money from philanthropic foundations predispose progressive media figures to cast aspersion on public gadflies who defy easy left/right categorization? Closely resembling typical attacks from the left, Scahill appears to have no option but to dismiss such alternative journalists and commentators as “conspiracy theorists,” or otherwise as wholly irrational. This renders such figures outside the parameters of what Scahill and his coterie perceive as legitimate debate. Nevermind the journalistic burden of proof that rightly accompanies such accusations.
My recent exchange facilitated by a “Facebook friend” with media critic Steve Rendall of the progressive media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) is illustrative of the vulnerability such individuals have when the conversation turns to the question of financing.
Rendall took issue with an article I wrote specifically addressing the relationship between foundation funding and the independence of news media professing to be “alternative” or “radical.” Rendall argued that I was not placing Noam Chomsky in proper context, which I viewed as a red herring to my original premise.
I proceeded to point out how FAIR was the recipient of $3.5 million in funding between 2007 and 2011, and that this should be made note of, particularly in light of my article’s subject matter. A portion of FAIR’s income stream came from major foundations, including Ford.
At the suggestion of FAIR’s funding, Rendall turned hostile, noting that if it were not for such foundation-funded entities the “US left would be nearly non-existent.”
I don’t hide who I am. Anyone who cares, can look me up. And FAIR is a 501c3, or not-for-profit organization. Our status and major donations are a matter of public record. So you can stop pretending like you’ve done some kind of deep sleuthing.
Most of our money comes from individual contributors, but we get some foundation money. I wish we got more. The US left would be nearly non-existent without non-profits like Pacifica, Democracy Now!, and many others. (My emphasis.)
But seriously James, Global Research? Really? What’s the matter, Infowars or Michael Ruppert didn’t have any “dirt” on FAIR?
Poorly-reasoned and even vitriolic remarks like Scahill’s and Rendall’s must be placed in a broader context. Are they really speaking to their readerships? Certainly to some degree, for many of their adherents see themselves as similarly partisan in terms of social justice and the environment-related issues.
Yet such statements are also no doubt directed toward parties outside the tent–those that provide them with the financial means to enact their projects–and perhaps even motivated by an intelligence community that has an established history in promoting such confusion and disinformation to thwart serious challenges to the political-economic status quo.
The greatest challenge to that status quo might be waged once those on the “left” and “right” move beyond their politics of imagined opinion and allegiance toward a common understanding of the oppressive forces arrayed against them.
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Global Warming and the Ideology of Anthropogenic (Human Caused) Climate Change
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HOW AMERICA LEARNED TO PLAY GOD
The People Would Be Just As Noisy…
Obama Told Aides He’s “Really Good At Killing People”
TSA Union Wants Armed Guards
MSM Claims LAX Shooter Influenced by New World Order (NWO) Conspiracy Theory
NSA’s Path to Totalitarianism
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Jonestown: Paradise Lost (documentary)
Ten Things You Might Not Know About Conspiracy Theories
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Secret NSA program gains “bulk access” to Google, Yahoo data centers
RINFORMATION
The Financial Bearings of Manufactured Dissent
This article was originally published at Memory Hole and Global Research on August 3, 2012. It is reposted here for further consideration in light of Nolan Higdon’s article, “Disinfo Wars: Alex Jones’ War on Your Mind,” published by Project Censored’s in September 2013, and the exchange concerning that work taking place here earlier this month.
The following should not be seen as a blanket condemnation of progressive media outlets, which often produce important work. Rather, the observations suggest how, particularly when faced with the challenge of forthrightly addressing “deep events” and the equivalent, such media are arguably subject to similar institutional pressures and self-censorship more overtly exhibited by their corporate-owned counterparts.*
Why do the self-proclaimed left-progressive “independent” media repeatedly overlook, obfuscate or otherwise leave unexamined some of the most momentous geopolitical and environmental events—September 11th and related false flag terror events, the United Nations’ “Agenda 21,” the genuinely grave environmental threats posed by the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, geoengineering (weather modification), and the dire health effects of genetically modified organisms?[1] In fact, these phenomena together point to a verifiable transnational political economic framework against which one or more mass social movements could readily emerge.
Yet over the past decade the actual function of such journalistic outlets has increasingly been to “manufacture dissent”–in other words, to act as the controlled opposition to the financial oligarchs and an encroaching scientific dictatorship that to an already significant degree controls the planet and oversees human thought and activity. Indeed, many alternative media outlets that appear to be independent of the power structure are funded by the very forces they are reporting on through their heavy reliance on the largesse of major philanthropic foundations.
With the across-the-board deregulation of the transnational financial system in the late 1990s and consequent enrichment of Wall Street and London-based investment banks and hedge funds, the resources of such foundations have increased tremendously. Consequently, the overall funding of “activist” organizations and “alternative” media has climbed sharply, making possible the broadly disseminated appearance of strident voices speaking truth to power. In fact, the protesters and journalists alike are often tethered to the purse strings of the powerful. As a result,
Dissent has been compartmentalized. Separate “issue oriented” protest movements (e.g. environment, anti-globalization, peace, women’s rights, climate change) are encouraged and generally funded as opposed to a cohesive mass movement.[2]
The efforts of financial elites to influence left-progressive political opinion goes back a century or more. In the early 1900s, for example, the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations decisively shaped the trajectory of elementary and higher education. Yet a less-examined development is how such influence extended to the mass media. A specific instance of such interests seeking to influence the Left community specifically is the establishment of The New Republic magazine at a decisive time in US history.
Purchased Political Opinion: The Founding of The New Republic
Throughout the twentieth century powerful financial interests have sought to anticipate and direct American left wing social movements and political activity by penetrating their opinion-shaping apparatus. This was seldom difficult because progressives were usually strapped for funds while at the same time eager for a mouthpiece to reach the masses. In 1914 Wall Street’s most powerful banking house, J.P. Morgan, was willing to provide both. “The purpose was not to destroy, dominate, or take over but was really threefold,” historian Carroll Quigley explains.
(1) to keep informed about the thinking of Left-wing or liberal groups; (2) to provide them with a mouthpiece so that they could “blow off steam,” and (3) to have a final veto on their publicity and possibly on their actions, if they ever went “radical.” There was nothing really new about this decision, since other financiers had talked about it and even attempted it earlier. What made it decisively important this time was the combination of its adoption by the dominant Wall Street financier, at a time when tax policy was driving all financiers to seek tax-exempt refuges for their fortunes, and at a time when the ultimate in Left-wing radicalism was about to appear under the banner of the Third International.[3]
As an example, in 1914 Morgan partner and East Asia agent Willard Straight established The New Republic with money from himself and his wife, Dorothy Payne Whitney of the Payne Whitney fortune. “’Use your wealth to put ideas into circulation,’ Straight had told his wife. ‘Others will give to churches and hospitals.’”[4]
The idea of funding such an organ partly developed between the wealthy couple after they read Herbert Croly’s The Promise of American Life, in which the well-known liberal author assailed the foundations of traditional Progressivism, with its Jeffersonian doctrine of free enterprise and inclination for decentralized, unrestrictive government. In such a laissez-faire arrangement, Croly reasoned, the strong would always take advantage of the weak. “Only a strong central government could control and equitably distribute the benefits of industrial capitalism. … guided by a strong and farsighted leader.” Toward this end Croly proposed a “constructive” or “New Nationalism”, and a medium to reach a captive audience could promote such ideals on a regular basis.[5]
As Croly recalls, Straight
hunted me up and asked me to make a report for him on the kind of social education which would be most fruitful in a democracy. Thereafter I saw him frequently, and in one of our conversations we discussed a plan for a new weekly which would apply to American life, as it developed, the political and social ideas which I had sketched in the book … We hoped to make it the mouthpiece of those Americans to whom disinterested thinking and its result in convictions were important agents of the adjustment between human beings and the society in which they live.[6]
Straight designated Croly editor-in-chief of The New Republic‘s and the young socialist writer Walter Lippmann, who by his mid-twenties was an adviser to presidents and a member of the shadowy Round Table Groups, was approached to be a founding editorial board member and subsequently entrusted with gearing the American readership toward a more favorable view of Britain.
Croly later noted how Straight was hardly liberal or progressive in his views. Rather, he was a regular international banker and saw the magazine’s purpose
simply [as] a medium for advancing certain designs of such international bankers, notably to blunt the isolationism and anti-British sentiments so prevalent among many American progressives, while providing them with a vehicle for expression of their progressive views in literature, art, music, social reform, and even domestic polices.[7]
Following establishment of The New Republic, Straight considered purchasing The New York Evening Post or The Washington Herald. “He longed for a daily newspaper,” Croly recalls, “which would communicate public information in the guise of news as well as in the guise of opinion and which would be read by hundreds of thousands of people instead of only tens of thousands, to serve as his personal medium of expression.”[8]
Straight and Payne Whitney’s son, “Mike” Straight, carried on The New Republic through the 1940s in close alignment with Left and labor organizations, even providing Henry Wallace with a position on the editorial staff in 1946 and backing Wallace’s 1948 presidential bid.
With Willard Straight’s early death in 1918 another Morgan partner, Tom Lamont, apparently became the bank’s representative to the Left, supporting The Saturday Review of Literature in the 1920s and 1930s, and owning the New York Post from 1918 to 1924. Lamont, his wife Flora, and son Corliss were major patrons to a variety of Left concerns, including the American Communist Party and Trade Union Services Incorporated, which in the late 1940s published fifteen union organs for CIO unions. Frederick Vanderbilt Field, another well-heeled Wall Street banker, sat on the editorial boards of The New Masses and the Daily Worker—New York’s official Communist newspapers.[9]
Progressive-Left Media’s Financing Today
Since the 1990s the framework for guiding the Left has developed into a vast combine of powerful, well-funded philanthropic foundations that function on the behalf of their wealthy owners as a well-oiled mechanism of opinion management. Such philanthropic entities oversee formidable wealth that today’s heirs to the Straight and Payne Whitney tradition seek to shield from taxation while. At the same time they are able to employ such resources to influence political thought, discourse, and action. Further, following the broad-based 1999 protests of the World Trade Organization in Seattle, global elite interests recognized the importance of developing the means to “manufacture dissent.”
Such foundations no doubt exert at least subtle influence over the editorial decisions of the vulnerable progressive media beholden to them for financing. This is partially due to the personnel of the foundations themselves. The task of doling out money frequently falls to foundation officials who are retired political advocates with certain notions about what organizations should be funded and, moreover, how the money should be spent. As Michael Shuman, former director of the Institute for Policy Studies observed in the late 1990s,
A number of program officers at progressive foundations are former activists who decided to move from the demand to the supply side to enjoy better salaries, benefits and working hours. Yet they still want to live like activists vicariously… by exercising influence over grantees through innumerable meetings, reports, conferences and “suggestions” . . . Many progressive funders treat their grantees like disobedient children who need to be constantly watched and disciplined.[10]
Doling out grant money to a journalistic outlet is especially controversial since genuine journalism is inherently political given its inclination toward pursuing and examining the decisions and policies of power elites. As Ron Curran of the Independent Media Institute notes, money from foundations “has engendered a climate of secrecy at IAJ (Institute for Alternative Journalism n/k/a Independent Media Institute [IMI]) that’s in direct conflict with IAJ’s role as a progressive media organization.” He continues, “the only money nonprofits can get these days is from private foundations–and those foundations want to control the political agenda.”[11]
If funding is any indication of sheer influence over progressive media, that influence has grown by leaps and bounds at the foremost left media outlets since the 1990s. For example, between 1990 and 1995 the four major progressive print news outlets, The Nation, The Progressive, In These Times, and Mother Jones received a combined $537,500 in grants and contributions.
In 2010, however, The Nation Institute (The Nation) alone received $2,267,184 in funding, The Progressive took in $1,310,889, the Institute for Public Affairs (In These Times) accepted $961,015, and the Foundation for National Progress (Mother Jones) collected $4,725,235.[12]
These figures are for grants and contributions alone and do not include revenue generated from subscription sales and other promotions. Alongside the overall compromised nature such funding can bring, the tremendous increase over the past decade suggests one reason for why specific subject matter that is off-limits for coverage or discussion.
With the development of the internet several new alternative-progressive outlets have emerged between the late 1990s and early 2000s, including Alternet, Democracy Now!, and satellite channel Link TV. Recognizing their influence, a vast array of “public support” has likewise made these multi-million dollar operations alongside their print-based forebears.
For example, between 2003 and 2010 Democracy Now! has taken in $25,577,243—an annual average of $3,197,155, with 2010 assets after liabilities of $11,760,006. Between 2006 and 2010 the Pacific News Service received $26,867,417, or $5,373,483 annually. The Foundation for National Progress (Mother Jones) brought in $46,623,197, or $4,662,320, and Link TV raised $54,839,710 between 2001 and 2009 for average annual funding of $6,093,301.(Figure 1)
Media Organization |
501(c) 3 | Total Support 2001-2010 | Average Annual Support 2001-2010 |
Net Assets After Liabilities (2010) |
Democracy Now Productions Inc. |
Yes | $25,577,243 (from 2003) | $3,197,155 | $11,760,006 |
Schumann Center for Media and Democracy |
Yes | NA | $3,471,682 (2010) | $33,314,688 |
Nation Institute (The Nation) | Yes | $22,246,533 | $2,224,653 | $4,798,831 |
Pacific News Service | Yes | $26,867,417 (2006-2010) | $5,373,483 | $712,011 |
Foundation for National Progress (Mother Jones) | Yes | $46,623,19 |
$4,662,320 |
-$1,189,040 |
The Progressive | Yes | $8,702,146 | $870,215 | $5,493,782 |
Link TV | Yes | $54,839,710 (excludes 2010) | $6,093,301 | $1,533,308 |
Institute for Public Affairs (In These Times) | Yes | $4,469,119 (excludes 2006, 2007) | $558,640 | -$114,532 |
Institute for Independent Media (Alternet) | Yes | $14,441,678 | $1,444,168 | $900,585 |
Figure 1. Grants, Gifts, Contributions, and Membership Fees of Select “Independent Progressive” Media or Media-Related Organizations 2001-2010 (unless otherwise noted). Based on 2001-2010 IRS Form 990s.
Bill Moyers’ Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, which funds The Nation Institute and online news organ Truthout, has net assets of $33,314,688, and brought in $3,471,682 in 2010 income.[13] Because these organizations assert under their 501c3 status that they have no overt political agenda, all income is untaxed.[14] Nor are they required to list the sources of their funding—even especially generous contributions. As the early 1990s grant figures for The Nation, The Progressive, In These Times, and Mother Jones suggest, nickel-and-dime contributions constitute a small percentage of such outlets’ overall “public” support.
Funding and Self-Censorship / Conclusion
Given the extent of foundation funding for left-progressive media, it is not surprising how such venues police themselves and proceed with the wishes of their wealthy benefactors in mind. As Croly observed concerning The New Republic, the Straights and Payne Whitneys “could always withdraw their financial support, if they ceased to approve of the policy of the paper; and in that event it would go out of existence as a consequence of their disapproval.”[15] Indeed, this is the left news media’s greatest fear.
In light of these dynamics and the big money at stake the progressive media’s censorial practices are understandable. At the same time self-censorship involves a fairly implicit set of social and behavioral processes. As Warren Breed discovered several decades ago, journalists’ socialization and workplace routinization constitute a process whereby newsworkers themselves internalize the mindset and wishes of their publishers, thereby making overt censorship unnecessary.[16] We may conclude that a similar process is in play when today’s “progressive” journalists and their editors share or accept many of the same interests, sentiments and expectations of those who hold the purse strings–and who would likely disapprove of attending to certain “controversial” or “conspiratorial” topics and issues.
With this in mind the foremost concern with such media is the uniform declaration of their “alternative” and “independent” missions–claims that are as problematic and misleading as Fox News’ “fair and balanced” mantle. A more appropriate (and honest) moniker for the foundation-funded press is a caveat emptor-style proclamation: “The following content is intended to impart the illusion of empowerment and dissent, yet can leave you uninformed of the most pressing issues of our time, in accordance with the wishes of our sponsors.”
Notes
*An important and unusual contribution toward understanding this largely-overlooked phenomenon was recently published by Project Censored. See John Pilger, “Censorship That Dares Not Speak Its Name: The Strange Silencing of Liberal America,” in Mickey Huff and Andy Lee Roth with Project Censored (editors), Censored 2014: The Top Censored Stories and Media Analysis of 2012-2013, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2013, 287-296.
[1] On false flag terror see, for example, Daniele Ganser, NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, New York: Routledge, 2005. On Fukushima see Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War: The Ongoing Crisis of World Nuclear Radiation, ed. Michel Chossudovsky, Ottawa: Centre for Research on Globalization, January 25, 2012, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28870. For ongoing reportage see Enviroreporter.com. On Agenda 21 see Rachel Koire, Behind the Green Mask: UN Agenda 21, The Post-Sustainability Press, 2011. On geoengineering and weather modification see Project Censored 2012 Story #9, “Government Sponsored Technologies for Weather Modification,” Censored 2012: The Top Censored Stories and Media Analysis of 2010-2011, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2011, 84-90, http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/9-government-sponsored-technologies-for-weather-modification/. On genetically modified organisms see Jeffrey M. Smith, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Modified Foods, White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2007, and F. William Engdahl, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, Ottawa: Centre for Research on Globalization, 2007.
[2] Michel Chossudovsky, “Manufacturing Dissent: The Antiglobalization Movement is Funded by the Corporate Elites,” GlobalResearch.ca, September 20, 2011.
[3] Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World In Our Time, New York: MacMillan, 1966, 938.
[4] Ronald Steele, Walter Lippmann and the American Century, Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1980, 60. Payne Whitney would continue to fund the publication until 1953.
[5] Steele, Walter Lippmann and the American Century, 59.
[6] Herbert Croly, Willard Straight, New York: Macmillan & Company, 1924, 472.
[7] Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 940.
[8] Croly, Willard Straight, 474.
[9] Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 945-946.
[10] Michael Shuman, “Why do Progressive Foundations Give too Little to too Many?” The Nation, January 12, 1998, 11-16, The Nation ( January 12): 11–16. Available at http://www.tni.org/archives/act/2112
[11] Ron Curran 1997. “Buying the News.” San Francisco Bay Guardian, October 8, 1997. Cited in Bob Feldman, “Reports from the Field: Left Media and Left Think Tanks—Foundation Managed Protest,” Critical Sociology 33 (2007), 427-446. Available at www.irasilver.org/ wp-content/ uploads/ 2011/ 08/Reading-Foundations-Feldman.pdf
[12] Feldman, “Reports from the Field.”
[13] All tax-related information obtained through GuideStar, http://www2.guidestar.org/Home.aspx, and Foundation Center, http://foundationcenter.org/
[14] Progressive-left finger pointers such as Center for American Progress and Media Matters for America are similarly awash in foundation funding and require separate treatment.
[15] Croly, Willard Straight, 474.
[16] Warren Breed, “Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis,” Social Forces, 33:4 (May 1955), 326-335. Available at https://umdrive.memphis.edu/cbrown14/public/Mass%20Comm%20Theory/Week%208%20Journalism%20Studies/Breed%201955.pdf
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ACA’s Bungled Rollout Aside, Government Health Insurance Works
The lead story in the Oct. 13 New York Times details the ongoing problems of the Affordable Care Act’s websites intended to facilitate access by individuals to the law’s hallmark online health insurance marketplaces. Those problems continue.
To summarize, many of the state-run and all of the 36 federally run websites are currently experiencing significant problems providing access to the exchanges, and nobody seems willing or able to predict when they will be fixed. This failure to launch President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement is hugely embarrassing for the administration, and will undoubtedly provide a great deal of fodder for late-night comedians. It will also provide an almost unlimited source of talking points for tea partiers and other government-haters, who will cite this unfolding fiasco as more evidence that “government can’t get anything right.”
That would be incorrect.
In 1965 and the years following, I witnessed the implementation of Medicare, which enrolled 19 million beneficiaries almost seamlessly in less than a year, despite the formidable opposition of Southern hospitals wary of its requirements that they desegregate their wards. As I wrote last month, the problem with the ACA is not that the federal government is involved, but that literally thousands of private insurers have their fingers in the cookie jar, resulting in a law that is much too complicated for what it needs to accomplish, and too complex for anybody to administer efficiently and effectively.
Together, Medicare and Social Security — both run by the federal government — have been successfully providing access to private health care and income security for millions of seniors and the disabled for almost 50 years. They have been a major factor in keeping seniors in our country out of poverty.
Both programs are overwhelmingly popular with doctors, patients, the general public and most politicians. Medicare is also much more successful than private, for-profit insurance in holding down the prices paid for medical services and products and overhead costs — 6 percent compared with 20 percent or more. But Medicare is still not doing nearly enough to control costs.
It is estimated that there is at least $750 billion worth of waste in the U.S. health care system.
Politics is the only credible reason for retaining the complex and confusing web of private insurance plans in a health care system that aspires to cover everybody. In order to gain congressional approval, the ACA had to first accommodate the interests of the corporate medical-industrial complex, putting the interests of the American people in a distant second place. Congress’ approval rating now hovers around five percent.
We can do better. It took over 50 years from the time President Theodore Roosevelt first proposed national health insurance until Medicare and Medicaid were enacted. It took almost another 50 years for the ACA to be enacted, expanding insurance coverage and enacting some protections against some of the insurance industry’s predatory practices.
We have had to endure almost 100 years of acrimonious political debate, name-calling, disinformation and outright lies — much of it designed to protect and defend some doctors’ incomes and corporate health care companies’ windfall profits — to even approach what all other wealthy countries take for granted: health care as a human right.
We need expanded and improved Medicare-for-All. And we need to vote any politician who won’t advance us toward that goal out of office. We’re moving in the right direction. But we can’t afford to take another 100 years to get there.
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Triple-Feature: “America Discredited,” “Bradley Manning Verdict Convicts Washington,” and “Hiding Economic Depression With Spin” — Paul Craig Roberts Quarterly Call For Donations This is your site. This site will continue as long as you support it. There is nothing on this site except information and explanations that the media does not provide. There is no…
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The Two Faux Democracies Threaten Life On Earth—Paul Craig Roberts
Quarterly Call For Donations and a new column This is your site. This site will continue as long as you support it. There is nothing on this site except information and explanations that the media does not provide. There is no political, social, economic, or ideological agenda associated with this site. For the most part,…
The post The Two Faux Democracies Threaten Life On Earth–Paul Craig Roberts appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org.
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Surveillance and the Police State: Let Us Hold It to Account
The Surveillance State: Let US hold IT To Account
“If you are a law-abiding citizen of this country, going about your business and your personal life, you have nothing to fear.” British Foreign Secretary William Hague, responding to the revelations of mass surveillance in theand the US (BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show on 9 June). UK
“We are dependent on being able to act and not being entirely at the mercy of the terrorists. And today, it’s on the Internet that communication takes place.” (6)
“You don’t have to follow conspiracy theories in order to suspect that data collected for fighting terrorism will also be used in other areas.” (6)
Whitehall that really runs the country with a close-knit Mafia-like clique… made up of a handful of powerful, but low-key, City brokers and financiers; the top brains at the Foreign Office, the Treasury, the Ministry of Defence and the Trade Department. Key figures in the security forces… and…at least one key member of the prime minister’s secretariat… the police and judiciary… through the Home Office… can certainly be manipulated. The Super-Establishment’s power is based upon its ability to manipulate the level below it – the individuals that most people believe are governing our country. The elected government is almost irrelevant… The world in which the Super-Establishment exists is a grey and murky world in which sensitive matters of state are planned and executed in gentlemen’s clubs. It is where manipulation plots are hatched, whether it is manipulation of a certain minister towards a certain viewpoint, or the wholesale orchestration of a Foreign Office ploy to bring down a foreign government… It is almost the divine "mission of the secret services to protect the status quo, and hitherto it has been their full intention to thwart anyone who tried to disrupt it. The actual existence of the Super-Establishment is not a flight of fancy. It is entirely manipulative and exercises a great deal of power behind the scenes. (9)
But don’t worry about any of this. There is no need. If that nice Mr Hague says we’ve nothing to fear, he must be right.
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How Elites and Media Minimize Dissent and Bury Truth – Paul Craig Roberts
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The post How Elites and Media Minimize Dissent and Bury Truth — Paul Craig Roberts appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org.
WMD Lies – Mainstream Media Must Also Shoulder Responsibility
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Big Food Is Making Us Sick
The Independent reports that small farmers are being challenged by food companies are becoming insanely concentrated:
Increasingly, a handful of multinationals are tightening their grip on the commodity markets, with potentially dramatic effects for consumers and food producers alike.
***
Three companies now account for more than 40 per cent of global coffee sales, eight companies control the supply of cocoa and chocolate, seven control 85 per cent of tea production, five account for 75 per cent of the world banana trade, and the largest six sugar traders account for about two-thirds of world trade, according to the new publication from the Fairtrade Foundation.
***
This is the year “to put the politics of food on the public agenda and find better solutions to the insanity of our broken food system”.
More people may be shopping ethically – sales of Fairtrade cocoa grew by more than 20 per cent last year to £153m – but, according to the report, the world’s food system is “dangerously out of control”.
How is that effecting the safety of our food supply? Reuters notes:
Multinational food, drink and alcohol companies are using strategies similar to those employed by the tobacco industry to undermine public health policies, health experts said on Tuesday.
In an international analysis of involvement by so-called “unhealthy commodity” companies in health policy-making, researchers from Australia, Britain, Brazil and elsewhere said … that through the aggressive marketing of ultra-processed food and drink, multinational companies were now major drivers of the world’s growing epidemic of chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
Writing in The Lancet medical journal, the researchers cited industry documents they said revealed how companies seek to shape health legislation and avoid regulation.
This is done by “building financial and institutional relations” with health professionals, non-governmental organizations and health agencies, distorting research findings, and lobbying politicians to oppose health reforms, they said.
They cited analysis of published research which found systematic bias from industry funding: articles sponsored exclusively by food and drinks companies were between four and eight times more likely to have conclusions that favored the companies than those not sponsored by them.
How are giant food manufacturers trying to influence legislation?
As Waking Times reports, they’re trying to gag all reporting:
States are adopting laws meant to keep consumers in the dark about where their food comes from.
Do you have a right to know where that steak on your plate came from?
Should it be legal to photograph chicken farms and dairy cows?
Big Agriculture says you don’t and it shouldn’t. Armies of Big Ag lobbyists are pushing for new state-level laws across the country to keep us all in the dark. Less restrictive versions have been law in some states since the 1980s, but the meat industry has ratcheted up a radical new campaign.
This wave of “ag-gag” bills would criminalize whistleblowers, investigators, and journalists who expose animal welfare abuses at factory farms and slaughterhouses. Ten states considered “ag-gag” bills last year, and Iowa, Missouri, and Utah approved them. Even more are soon to follow.
Had these laws been in force, the Humane Society might have been prosecuted for documenting repeated animal welfare and food safety violations at Hallmark/Westland, formerly the second-largest supplier of beef to the National School Lunch Program. Cows too sick to walk were being slaughtered and that meat was shipped to our schools, endangering our kids. The investigation led to the largest meat recall in U.S. history.
***
Big Ag wants to silence whistleblowers rather than clean up its act. Ag-gag bills are now pending in Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Indiana, Nebraska, and New Hampshire. Similar legislation may crop up in North Carolina and Minnesota.
The bills aren’t identical, but they share common language — sometimes even word-for-word. Some criminalize anyone who even “records an image or sound” from a factory farm. Others mandate that witnesses report abuses within a few hours, which would make it impossible for whistleblowers to secure advice and protection, or for them to document a pattern of abuses.
Indiana’s version of this cookie-cutter legislation ominously begins with the statement that farmers have the right to “engage in agricultural operations free from the threat of terrorism and interference from unauthorized third persons.” [The Feds are treating people who expose abuse in factory farms as potential terrorists … and the states want the same power.]
Yet these bills aren’t about violence or terrorism. They’re about truth-telling that’s bad for branding. For these corporations, a “terrorist” is anyone who threatens their profits by exposing inhumane practices that jeopardize consumer health.
***
Ag-gag bills aren’t about silencing journalists and whistleblowers. They’re about curbing consumer access to information at a time when more and more Americans want to know where our food comes from and how it’s produced.
The problem for corporations is that when people have information, they act on it. During a recent ag-gag hearing in Indiana, one of the nation’s largest egg producers told lawmakers about a recent investigation. After an undercover video was posted online, 50 customers quickly called and stopped buying their eggs. An informed public is the biggest threat to business as usual.
An informed public is also the biggest threat to these ag-gag bills. In Wyoming, one of the bills has already failed. According to sponsors, it was abandoned in part because of negative publicity. By shining a light on these attempts, we can make sure that the rest fail as well, while protecting the right of consumers to know what they’re buying.
So what – exactly – are the giant food corporations trying to hide?
They are fraudulently substituting cheaper – less healthy – food for high-quality. food. And see this.
Indeed, the dairy industry wants to add sweeteners – such as aspartame – to milk without any labeling.
Food fraud is rampant .. including huge proportions of fish.
The bottom line is that collusion between government and big business is dishing up cheap, unhealthy food … just like collusion between D.C. and giant corporations caused the financial crisis, the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, the Gulf oil spill and other major disasters (and see this; and take a peek at number 9).
For example, the FDA:
- Allows cows to be stuffed with synthetic estrogen, fattening agents which are harmful to people, muscle antibiotics and other nasties
- Pretends that genetically engineered meat is an “animal drug” that doesn’t need to be analyzed for human safety
- Allowed arsenic to be added to chicken feed throughout the U.S. for more than 65 years under the false theory that it would be “excreted” by the chickens before it could accumulate in the chicken meat
- Declared fish from Fukushima a-okay after radiation spewed into the ocean
- Doesn’t even test for mercury, arsenic or other pollutants in fish in the Gulf
- Allows animal blood and other animal parts to be fed to animals in feedlots … which can spread disease like mad cow
The Department of Agriculture:
- Prohibits private citizens such as ranchers or meat packers from testing their own cows for mad cow disease.
- Allowed cheap pink slime to be added to meat without labeling
An official U.S. government report finds that Americans ‘are sicker and die younger’ than people in other wealthy nations. There are a number of factors for this sickness … but unhealthy, cheap food is part of it.
The Real Iran Hostage Crisis: A CIA Covert Op
Global Research Editor’s Note
The script of Best Film Academy Award Movie “Argo” which depicts the Iran Hostage Crisis is largely based on fiction.
The purpose of the film is to rewrite history, to falsify what actually happened as well as provide a human face to US foreign policy.
Amply documented, the Iran Hostage Crisis was a complex CIA covert operation intent upon stalling the Iranian Revolution as well as spearheading the political demise of President Jimmy Carter.
The following article first published in 1995 is based on extensive documentation collected by Fara Mansoor, a prominent Iranian intellectual.
Michel Chossudovsky, February 26, 2013
By Harry V. Martin
Free America, 1995
Fara Mansoor is a fugitive. No, he hasn’t broken any laws in the United States. His crime is the truth. What he has to say and the documents he carries are equivalent to a death warrant for him, Mansoor is an Iranian who was part of the “establishment” in Iran long before the 1979 hostage taking. Mansoor’s records actually discount the alleged “October Surprise” theory that the Ronald Reagan-George Bush team paid the Iranians not to release 52 American hostages until after the November 1980 Presidential elections.
Mansoor’s meticulous documents, shared exclusively with this magazine, shows a much more sinister plot, the plot to take the hostages in the first place. “For 15 years the truth about the nature and origins of the Iranian hostage crisis has been buried in a mountain of misinformation,” Mansoor states. “Endless expert analysis has served only to deepen the fog that still surrounds this issue. We have been led to believe that the ‘crisis’ was a spontaneous act that just sprang out of the ‘chaos’ of the ‘Islamic Revolution’. Nothing could be further from the truth!”
“To really understand the hostage crisis and ‘who done it’, one has to look not only with a microscope, but also a wide angle lens to have a panoramic view of this well scripted ‘drama’,” Mansoor states. “That ‘drama’ was the result of large historical patterns, models, and motives. Once its true nature is understood, it will be clear how Iran/Contra happened.
Why Rafsanjani has been trying to ‘move toward the West,’ and why Reagan called him a ‘moderate’. And why, during the Gulf War, James Baker said, ‘we think Iran has conducted itself in a very, very credible way through this crisis’” Mansoor emphasizes that the “October Surprise” myth has served as dangerous misinformation.
THOUSANDS OF DOCUMENTS IN SUPPORT
With thousands of documents to support his position, Mansoor says that the “hostage crisis” was a political “management tool” created by the pro-Bush faction of the CIA, and implemented through an a priori Alliance with Khomeini’s Islamic Fundamentalists.” He says the purpose was twofold:
- To keep Iran intact and communist-free by putting Khomeini in full control.
- To destablize the Carter Administration and put George Bush in the White House.
“The private Alliance was the logical result of the intricate Iranian political reality of the mid-70s, and a complex network of powerful U.S.-Iranian ‘business’ relationships,” Mansoor states. “I first met Khomeini in 1963 during the failed coup attempt against the Shah. Since that time I have been intimately involved with Iranian politics. I knew in 1979 that the whole, phoney ‘Islamic Revolution’ was ‘mission implausible’.” Mansoor was frank. “There is simply no way that those guys with the beards and turbans could have pulled off such a brilliantly planned operation without very sophisticated help.”
Mansoor has spent 10 years researching the issue.
“I have collected enough data to yield a very clear picture. Mr. Bush’s lieutenants removed the Shah, brought Khomeini back to Iran, and guided his rise to power, sticking it to President Carter, the American people (52 in particular), and the Iranian people.”
He stated with boxes and boxes of evidence to support his contentions.
“My extensive research has revealed the heretofore untold truth about this episode. This is not another ‘October Surprise’ theory purporting how the hostage crisis resulted in some Khomeini-Republic better deal. That theory puts the cart before the horse. Its absurd premise is that a major international deal was initiated and consummated in three weeks. Give me a break! Bill Casey didn’t have to go to Paris to play lets-make-deal. The ‘deal’ had been in operation for at least two years. This game of blind-man’s-bluff around Casey’s gravestone was more disinformation, damage control.”
REAGAN, BUSH AND THATCHER IN IRAN IN 1978
Mansoor produced a confidential document called the “Country Team Minutes” of April 26, 1978, more than a year before the hostage crisis. The meeting was held in Iran. The second paragraph of the routine minutes, states, “The Ambassador commented on our distinguished visitors, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Margaret Thatcher, and commented that Teheran seems to be the site for an opposition parties congress.” Mansoor indicates the entire relationship was probably the most sophisticated criminal act in recent history. “That the people who, until recently, were holding power in Washington and those who currently are still in control in Teheran, got there by totally subverting the democratic process of both countries is news. That their methods of subversion relied on kidnapping, extortion and murder is criminal,” Mansoor states.
Mansoor became a target after he did a radio show in Portland on November 13, 1992. It was the first time he attempted to go public with his documents and information. The Iranian regime has placed a bounty on Mansoor’s head and he has received many death threats.
Is Mansoor just another conspiracy nut? Ervand Abrahamian of Baruch College of New York stated in a letter to Mansoor,
“As you know I am very weary of conspiracy theories. But, despite my preconceived bias, I must admit I found your manuscript to be thoroughly researched, well documented, and, of course extremely relevant to the present. You have done an first-class job of interviewing participants, collecting data from scattered sources, and putting them together like a highly complicated puzzle.”
Mansoor’s meticulous research clearly demonstrates how Khomeini’s published vision of an Islamic Government (Vilayat-Faqih) dovetailed with the regional and global strategic objectives of a hard-core subset of the U.S. National Security establishment loyal to George Bush. It shows that the Iranian hostage crisis was neither a crisis nor chaos. In 1953, the CIA orchestrated a coup in Iran, which threw out the democratic government and installed the Shah.
In order to understand the imperative of this Alliance, we must realistically examine the sociopolitical alignment both in Iran and the U.S., and accurately assess their respective interests to find the command ground for this coalescence. The anti-monarchic forces in mid-70s Iran consisted of various nationalists groups including religious reformist, the Islamic Fundamentalists, and the leftists and communist.
The Nationalist forces were varied. Some were from within the government, but they were poorly organized and without grass-roots support. Their position was clearly anti-left and anti-communist, but they were vulnerable to being taken over by the well-organized left.
The Islamic Fundamentalists had no government experience, but they had major grassroots supports. Islam, in its Shi’ite format was deeply embedded in the lives of the vast majority of the Iranian people. The Fundamentalists were absolutely anti-communist.
CARTER FIRES 800 CIA COVERT OPERATORS
The philosophical divide within the U.S. National Security establishment, especially the CIA, became quite serious in the aftermath of Watergate. To make matters worse, the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, his campaign promise to clean the “cowboy” elements out of the Central Intelligence Agency and his “human rights” policies alarmed the faction of the CIA loyal to George Bush. Bush was CIA director under Richard Nixon. Finally, the firing of CIA Director George Bush by Carter, and the subsequent “Halloween Massacre” in which Carter fired over 800 CIA covert operatives in 1977, angered the “cowboys” beyond all measure. That was Carter’s October surprise, 800 firings on Halloween 1977.
Bush and his CIA coverts were well aware of the Shah’s terminal cancer, unknown to President Carter. The team had an elaborate vested interest to protect. They were determined to keep Iran intact and communist-free and put George Bush in the White House.
TIMELINE: SEQUENCE OF EVENTS
Hence, the Islamic Fundamentalists were the only viable choice through which the Bush covert team could implement its own private foreign policy. The results: the birth of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the fall of President Carter, and the emergence of something called the “New World Order.” Mansoor’s documents show step-by-step events:
1. In 1974, the Shah of Iran was diagnosed with cancer.
2. In 1975, former CIA director, and the U.S. Ambassador to Iran, Richard Helms learned of the Shah’s cancer through the Shah’s closest confidant, General Hossein Fardoust. The Shah, Helms and Fardoust had been close personal friends since their school days together in Switzerland during the 1930s.
3. On November 4, 1976, concurrent with Jimmy Carter’s election as President, CIA Director George Bush issued a secret memo to the U.S. Ambassador in Iran, Richard Helms, asking:
“Have there been any changes in the personality pattern of the Shah; what are their implication pattern for political behavior? Identification of top military officers that most likely play key roles in any transference of power if the Shah were killed…who will be the leading actors? How will the Shah’s pet projects, including the economic development program, be effected by his departure?”
4. By July 1977, anticipating trouble ahead, the Bush covert team issued preliminary script for the transition of power in Iran. According to John D. Stemple, a CIA analyst and Deputy Chief Political officer of the U.S. Embassy in Iran, “A ten page analysis of the opposition written by the embassy’s political section in July 1977 correctly identified Bakhiar, Bazargan, Khomeini and Behesti as major actors in the drama that begin unfolding a year later.”
5. Contrary to this analysis, in August 1977, the “official wing” of the CIA fed President Carter a 60-page Study on Iran which concluded:
“The Shah will be an active participant in Iranian life well into the 1980s…and there will be no radical changes in Iranian political behavior in the near future.”
6. On October 31, 1977, president Carter made good on his campaign promise to clean the “cowboys” out of the CIA. He fired over 800 covert operatives from the Agency, many of whom were loyal to George Bush. Carter’s presidency split the CIA. It produced in them, among whom were “many well-trained in political warfare, a concerted will for revenge.” By the end of the 1970s many of these special covert operatives had allied themselves with George Bush’s candidacy, and later with Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign.
7. On November 15, the Shah of Iran visited Washington, D.C. Carter toasted his guest, “If ever there was a country which has blossomed forth under enlightened leadership, it would be the ancient empire of Persia.”
8. On November 23, Ayatollah Khomeini’s elder son, Haji Mustafa, died mysteriously in Najaf, Iraq. According to professor Hamid Algar, he was “assassinated by the Shah’s U.S.-instituted security police SAVAK…the tragedy inflamed the public in Iran.” Ayatollah Khomeini placed an advertisement in the French Newspaper Le Monde which read: “thanking people for condolences that had been sent of the murder of his son”. He also “appealed to the army to liberate Iran, and to the intellectuals and all good Muslims to continue their criticism of the Shah”.
9. December 31, 1977, Carter visited the Shah in Iran. He toasted the Shah for maintaining Iran as “an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.” Ironically, that so-called stability evaporated before the champagne lost its fizz.
10. On January 7, 1978, an insidious article entitled Iran and the Red and Black Colonialism, appeared in the Iranian daily newspaper Ettela’at. It castigated the exiled Khomeini, and produced a massive protest riot in the Holy City of Qum the next day. The clergy had little choice but to rally to Khomeini’s defense. The Qum incident shifted many of the clergy from a position of support for the Shah’s monarchy to an active opposition. That “dirty trick” perpetuated by General Fardoust was the trigger that sparked Islamic movement participating in the anti-Shah democratic Revolution. John D. Stempel, characterized Fardoust’s importance to the Alliance: “it is hard to over estimated the value of having a mole in the inner circle of the Shah.”
11. On February 3, a confidential communiqué from the U.S. Embassy clearly reflected the vision of the Alliance: “Though based on incomplete evidence, our best assessment to date is that the Shia Islamic movement dominated by Ayatollah Khomeini is far better organized, enlighten and able to resist Communism than its detractors would lead us to believe. It is rooted in the Iranian people more than any western ideology, including Communism.”
12. April 1978, Le Monde “identified Khomeini’s Liberation Movement of Iran as the most significant force in the opposition followed by the Shi’ite Islam joins the reformist of progressive critics of the Shah on the same ground. In fact, this analysis was contrary to what Mohaammad Tavassoli, leader of the Liberation Movement of Iran, expressed to John D. Stempel on August 21, 1978: “The nationalist movement in Iran lacks a popular base. The choice is between Islam and Communism…close ties between the Liberation Movement of Iran and the religious movement was necessary. Iran was becoming split by Marxist and the religious.”
13. On April 26, the confidential minutes of the U. S. Embassy Country team meeting welcomed Bush, Reagan and Thatcher.
14. On May 6, Le Monde became the first western newspaper to interview Khomeini in Najaf, Iraq. Khomeini acknowledged his compatibility with the strategic imperatives of the Bush covert team, “we would not collaborate with the Marxists, even to the overthrow of the Shah.”
15. The same month, Khomeini’s old ally from the failed 1963 coup (that resulted in Khomeini’s arrest and major uprising in June 1963 and his subsequent exile to Iraq) General Valliollah Qarani sent his emissary to meet Khomeini in Najaf. Qarani had been a major CIA asset in Iran since the 1953 coup. Seeing another chance to gain power for himself, he advised Khomeini, according to former Iranian President Abol Hassan Bani-sader:
“if you settle for the Shah’s departure and don’t use anti-American rhetoric, Americans are ready to take him out.”
16. In August, the Bush team sent its own point man to meet the exiled Ayatollah in Najaf. Professor Richard Cottam carried excellent credentials. During the 1953 coup, he had been in charge of the CIA’s Iran Desk, also, he had been in close contact with Dr. Ibrahim Yazdi in the U.S. since 1975. Curiously, he admitted to Bani-sadr in 1987, that he had not been working for the Carter Administration. Cottam’s visit must have had an impact, because Iran suddenly began to experience a series of mysterious catastrophes:
- In Aberdeen, Fundamentalist supporters burned down a theater killing the innocent occupants, blaming it on the SAVAK and the Shah.
- There were riots in Isfahan that resulted in martial law.
- On August 27, one of Khomeini’s rivals among the Shia Islamic faithful outside of Iran, Ayatollah Mosa Sadr mysteriously disppeared. According to an intelligence source he was killed and buried in Libya.
17. By late August, the Shah was totally confused. U.S. Ambassador Sullivan recorded the Shah’s pleadings over the outbreak of violence:
“he said the pattern was widespread and that it was like an outbreak of a sudden rash in the country…it gave evidence of sophisticated planning and was not the work of spontaneous oppositionists…the Shah presented that it was the work of foreign intrigue…this intrigue went beyond the capabilities of the Soviet KGB and must, therefore, also involve British and American CIA. The Shah went on to ask ‘Why was the CIA suddenly turning against him? What had he done to deserve this sort of action from the United States?”
18. September 8, the Shah’s army gunned down hundreds of demonstrators in Teheran in what became known as the “Jaleh Square Massacre”.
19. On September 9, President Carter phoned the Shah to confirm his support for the Shah, a fact that enraged the Iranian population.
20. A few days later, Carter’s National Security aide, Gary Sick, received a call from Richard Cottam, requesting a discrete meeting between him and Khomeini’s representative in the U.S., Dr. Yazdi. Sick refused.
21. Khomeini for the first time, publicly called for the Shah’s overthrow.
22. In Mid-September, at the height of the revolution, “one of the handful of Khomeini’s trusted associates”, Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Beheshti, secretly visited the United States among others, he also meet with Yazdi in Texas. Beheshti was an advocate of the eye-for-an-eye school of justice.
23. In early October 1978, the agent for the Bush covert team arranged to force Khomeini out of Iraq.
24. October 3, 1978, Yazdi picked up Khomeini in Iraq and headed for Kuwait. According to Gary Sick, he received an urgent call from Richard Cottam, learning for the first time that Khomeini had been forced out of Iraq. Sick was told that Khomeini and his entourage were stuck in no man’s land while attempting to cross the border. Cottam was requesting White House intervention to resolve the issue. Sick respond, “there is nothing we could do”.
25. October 6, Khomeini’s entourage, having gotten back through Baghdad, popped up in Paris. According to Bani-sadr, “it was Khomeini who insisted on going to Paris instead of Syria or Algeria”. Whoever helped Khomeini out of the Kuwaiti border impasse had to have been on good terms with both the French and Saddam Hussein.
26. December 12, Yazdi made a trip to the U.S. to promote Khomeini and his Islamic Republic. Yazdi met secretly with Henry Precht on an unofficial capacity. Precht was the Director of the Iran Desk at the State Department and one of the Bush team’s main choke points in the Carter Administration. Later Precht and Yazdi appeared together for televised discussion of Iran. Yazdi assured the American public that Khomeini had not really called for a “torrent of blood”, and that the “election would be absolutely free”. The Islamic Republic “would enjoy full freedom of speech and the press, including the right to attack Islam.
27. December 28, Cottam visited Khomeini in Paris where he noted that U.S. citizen Dr. Yazdi was the “leading tactician in Khomeini’s camp” and apparent “chief of staff”. Khomeini was not interested in the Mullahs taking over the government. Also noted that “Khomeini’s movement definitely plans to organize a political party to draw on Khomeini’s charisma. Cottam thinks such a party would win all Majlis seats.”
28. Leaving Paris, Cottam slipped into Teheran, arriving the first week in January 1979, to prepare Khomeini’s triumphal return to Iran.
29. January 4, 1979, Carter’s secret envoy, General Robert Huyser arrived in Iran. His mission was to prevent the “fall of the Shah”. According to Huyser, Alexander Haig, ostensibly a strong Shah supporter-inexplicably, “took violent exception to the whole idea.” Huyser recalled that “General Haig never gave me a full explanation of his strong objections.” Huyser also revealed that Ambassador Sullivan “had also expressed objections.” Two pro-Shah advocates opposed to the prevention of the Shah’s fall.
30. On January 14, President Carter finally “authorized a meeting between Warren Zimmerman and Ibrahim Yazdi. On the same day, Khomeini, in an interview on CBS claimed, “a great part of the army was loyal to him” and that “he will be in effect the strong man of Iran.”
31. On January 16, in an exact repeat of the 1953 CIA coup, Bush’s covert team ushered the “eccentric and weak” Shah out of Iran.
32. On February 1, 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini staged his own version of a “triumphal return” in the streets of Teheran.
33. Khomeini moved quickly to establish his authority. On February 5 he named Mehdi Bazargan, a devoted Muslim and anti-communist, interim Prime Minister. Yazdi and Abbas Amir Entezam became Bazargan’s deputies, Dr. Sanjabi Foreign Minister, and General Qarani was named military Chief of Staff.
34. On February 11, 1979, in seemingly a bizarre twist, General Qarani asked the Shah’s “eyes and ears” General Hossien Fardoust for recommendations to fill the new top posts in Iran’s armed forces. Outside of the Chief of SAVAK, all the other recommendations were accepted. Shortly after, General Fardoust became head of SAVAMA, Khomeini’s successor to SAVAK.
35. On February 14, 1979, two weeks after Khomeini’s return to Iran, the U.S. Embassy in Teheran was seized by Khomeini supporters disguised as leftist guerrillas in an attempt to neutralize the left. U.S. hostages were seized, but to the chagrin of Khomeini’s Fundamentalist, the Iranian coalition government restored order immediately. Ironically, in the same day in Kabul, Afghanistan, the U.S. Ambassador was also kidnapped by fanatic Islamic Fundamentalists disguised as leftist guerrillas and killed in the gunfight.
36. On February 14, soon after the order was restored at the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, Khomeini’s aide Yazdi supplied the Embassy with a group of Iranians for compound security. Ambassador Sullivan installed armed, and trained this Swat squad lead by SAVAK/CIA agent Mashallah Kahsani, with whom Sullivan developed a close working relationship.
37. By August, pro-Bush CIA official George Cave was visiting Iran to provide intelligence briefings to Khomeini’s aides, especially Yazdi and Entezam. These intelligence exchanges continued until October 31, the day Carter fired Bush and the 800 agents. Then with all the Iranian officials who had restored order in the first Embassy seizure eliminated, the stage was set for what happened four days later.
38. On November 4, 1979, the U.S. Embassy was taken again. Leading the charge was none other than Ambassador Sullivan’s trusted Mashallah Kashani, the Embassy’s once and former security chief.
With the evidence and documentation supplied by Mansoor, the alleged October Surprise would not have been necessary. President Carter was the target, in revenge for the Halloween Massacre, the night 800 CIA operatives and George Bush were fired by Carter. The man thrust, however, was to prevent a communist takover of Iran on the Shah’s anticpated death.
US Sponsored Coup d’Etat: The Destabilization of Haiti
Author’s Note
This article was written nine years ago, in the last days of February 2004 in response to the barrage of disinformation in the mainstream media. It was completed on February 29th, the day of President Jean Bertrand Aristide’s kidnapping and deportation by US Forces.
The armed insurrection which contributed to unseating President Aristide on February 29th 2004 was the result of a carefully staged military-intelligence operation, involving the US, France and Canada. The 2004 coup had set the stage for the installation of US puppet government in Port au Prince, which takes orders directly from Washington.
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, February 26, 2013
(Minor editorial corrections were made to the original draft since its publication on February 29th 2004, the title of article predates the actual Coup D’Etat which was in the making at the time of writing)
original article published at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO402D.html
by Michel Chossudovsky
The Rebel paramilitary army crossed the border from the Dominican Republic in early February. It constitutes a well armed, trained and equipped paramilitary unit integrated by former members of Le Front pour l’avancement et le progrès d’Haiti (FRAPH), the “plain clothes” death squadrons, involved in mass killings of civilians and political assassinations during the CIA sponsored 1991 military coup, which led to the overthrow of the democratically elected government of President Jean Bertrand Aristide
The self-proclaimed Front pour la Libération et la reconstruction nationale (FLRN) (National Liberation and Reconstruction Front) is led by Guy Philippe, a former member of the Haitian Armed Forces and Police Chief. Philippe had been trained during the 1991 coup years by US Special Forces in Ecuador, together with a dozen other Haitian Army officers. (See Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News, 24 February 2004).
The two other rebel commanders and associates of Guy Philippe, who led the attacks on Gonaives and Cap Haitien are Emmanuel Constant, nicknamed “Toto” and Jodel Chamblain, both of whom are former Tonton Macoute and leaders of FRAPH.
In 1994, Emmanuel Constant led the FRAPH assassination squadron into the village of Raboteau, in what was later identified as “The Raboteau massacre”:
“One of the last of the infamous massacres happened in April 1994 in Raboteau, a seaside slum about 100 miles north of the capital. Raboteau has about 6,000 residents, most fishermen and salt rakers, but it has a reputation as an opposition stronghold where political dissidents often went to hide… On April 18 [1994], 100 soldiers and about 30 paramilitaries arrived in Raboteau for what investigators would later call a “dress rehearsal.” They rousted people from their homes, demanding to know where Amiot “Cubain” Metayer, a well-known Aristide supporter, was hiding. They beat people, inducing a pregnant woman to miscarry, and forced others to drink from open sewers. Soldiers tortured a 65-year-old blind man until he vomited blood. He died the next day.
The soldiers returned before dawn on April 22. They ransacked homes and shot people in the streets, and when the residents fled for the water, other soldiers fired at them from boats they had commandeered. Bodies washed ashore for days; some were never found. The number of victims ranges from two dozen to 30. Hundreds more fled the town, fearing further reprisals.” (St Petersburg Times, Florida, 1 September 2002)
During the military government (1991-1994), FRAPH was (unofficially) under the jurisdiction of the Armed Forces, taking orders from Commander in Chief General Raoul Cedras. According to a 1996 UN Human Rights Commission report, FRAPH had been supported by the CIA.
Under the military dictatorship, the narcotics trade, was protected by the military Junta, which in turn was supported by the CIA. The 1991 coup leaders including the FRAPH paramilitary commanders were on the CIA payroll. (See Paul DeRienzo, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RIE402A.html , See also see Jim Lobe, IPS, 11 Oct 1996). Emmanuel Constant alias “Toto” confirmed, in this regard, in a CBS “60 Minutes” in 1995, that the CIA paid him about $700 a month and that he created FRAPH, while on the CIA payroll. (See Miami Herald, 1 August 2001). According to Constant, the FRAPH had been formed “with encouragement and financial backing from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA.” (Miami New Times, 26 February 2004)
The Civilian “Opposition”
The so-called “Democratic Convergence” (DC) is a group of some 200 political organizations, led by former Port-au-Prince mayor Evans Paul. The “Democratic Convergence” (DC) together with “The Group of 184 Civil Society Organizations” (G-184) has formed a so-called “Democratic Platform of Civil Society Organizations and Opposition Political Parties”.
The Group of 184 (G-184), is headed by Andre (Andy) Apaid, a US citizen of Haitian parents, born in the US. (Haiti Progres, http://www.haiti-progres.com/eng11-12.html ) Andy Apaid owns Alpha Industries, one of Haiti’s largest cheap labor export assembly lines established during the Duvalier era. His sweatshop factories produce textile products and assemble electronic products for a number of US firms including Sperry/Unisys, IBM, Remington and Honeywell. Apaid is the largest industrial employer in Haiti with a workforce of some 4000 workers. Wages paid in Andy Apaid’s factories are as low as 68 cents a day. (Miami Times, 26 Feb 2004). The current minimum wage is of the order of $1.50 a day:
“The U.S.-based National Labor Committee, which first revealed the Kathie Lee Gifford sweat shop scandal, reported several years ago that Apaid’s factories in Haiti’s free trade zone often pay below the minimum wage and that his employees are forced to work 78-hour weeks.” (Daily News, New York, 24 Feb 2004)
Apaid was a firm supporter of the 1991 military coup. Both the Convergence démocratique and the G-184 have links to the FLRN (former FRAPH death squadrons) headed by Guy Philippe. The FLRN is also known to receive funding from the Haitian business community.
In other words, there is no watertight division between the civilian opposition, which claims to be non-violent and the FLRN paramilitary. The FLRN is collaborating with the so-called “Democratic Platform.”
The Role of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
In Haiti, this “civil society opposition” is bankrolled by the National Endowment for Democracy which works hand in glove with the CIA. The Democratic Platform is supported by the International Republican Institute (IRI) , which is an arm of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Senator John McCain is Chairman of IRI’s Board of Directors. (See Laura Flynn, Pierre Labossière and Robert Roth, Hidden from the Headlines: The U.S. War Against Haiti, California-based Haiti Action Committee (HAC), http://www.haitiprogres.com/eng11-12.html ).
G-184 leader Andy Apaid was in liaison with Secretary of State Colin Powell in the days prior to the kidnapping and deportation of President Aristide by US forces on February 29. His umbrella organization of elite business organizations and religious NGOs, which is also supported by the International Republican Institute (IRI), receives sizeable amounts of money from the European Union.(http://haitisupport.gn.apc.org/184%20EC.htm ).
It is worth recalling that the NED, (which overseas the IRI) although not formally part of the CIA, performs an important intelligence function within the arena of civilian political parties and NGOs. It was created in 1983, when the CIA was being accused of covertly bribing politicians and setting up phony civil society front organizations. According to Allen Weinstein, who was responsible for setting up the NED during the Reagan Administration: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” (‘Washington Post’, Sept. 21, 1991).
The NED channels congressional funds to the four institutes: The International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS). These organizations are said to be “uniquely qualified to provide technical assistance to aspiring democrats worldwide.” See IRI, http://www.iri.org/history.asp )
In other words, there is a division of tasks between the CIA and the NED. While the CIA provides covert support to armed paramilitary rebel groups and death squadrons, the NED and its four constituent organizations finance “civilian” political parties and non governmental organizations with a view to instating American “democracy” around the World.
The NED constitutes, so to speak, the CIA’s “civilian arm”. CIA-NED interventions in different part of the World are characterized by a consistent pattern, which is applied in numerous countries.
The NED provided funds to the “civil society” organizations in Venezuela, which initiated an attempted coup against President Hugo Chavez. In Venezuela it was the “Democratic Coordination”, which was the recipient of NED support; in Haiti it is the “Democratic Convergence” and G-184.
Similarly, in former Yugoslavia, the CIA channeled support to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) (since 1995), a paramilitary group involved in terrorist attacks on the Yugoslav police and military. Meanwhile, the NED through the “Center for International Private Enterprise” (CIPE) was backing the DOS opposition coalition in Serbia and Montenegro. More specifically, NED was financing the G-17, an opposition group of economists responsible for formulating (in liaison with the IMF) the DOS coalition’s “free market” reform platform in the 2000 presidential election, which led to the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic.
The IMF’s Bitter “Economic Medicine”
The IMF and the World Bank are key players in the process of economic and political destabilization. While carried out under the auspices of an intergovernmental body, the IMF reforms tend to support US strategic and foreign policy objectives.
Based on the so-called “Washington consensus”, IMF austerity and restructuring measures through their devastating impacts, often contribute to triggering social and ethnic strife. IMF reforms have often precipitated the downfall of elected governments. In extreme cases of economic and social dislocation, the IMF’s bitter economic medicine has contributed to the destabilization of entire countries, as occurred in Somalia, Rwanda and Yugoslavia. (See Michel Chossudovsky, The globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Second Edition, 2003, http://globalresearch.ca/globaloutlook/GofP.html )
The IMF program is a consistent instrument of economic dislocation. The IMF’s reforms contribute to reshaping and downsizing State institutions through drastic austerity measures. The latter are implemented alongside other forms of intervention and political interference, including CIA covert activities in support of rebel paramilitary groups and opposition political parties.
Moreover, so-called “Emergency Recovery” and “Post-conflict” reforms are often introduced under IMF guidance, in the wake of a civil war, a regime change or “a national emergency”.
In Haiti, the IMF sponsored “free market” reforms have been carried out consistently since the Duvalier era. They have been applied in several stages since the first election of president Aristide in 1990.
The 1991 military coup, which took place 8 months following Jean Bertrand Aristide’s accession to the presidency, was in part intended to reverse the Aristide government’s progressive reforms and reinstate the neoliberal policy agenda of the Duvalier era.
A former World Bank official Mr. Marc Bazin was appointed Prime minister by the Military Junta in June 1992. In fact, it was the US State Department which sought his appointment.
Bazin had a track record of working for the “Washington consensus.” In 1983, he had been appointed Finance Minister under the Duvalier regime, In fact he had been recommended to the Finance portfolio by the IMF: “President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier had agreed to the appointment of an IMF nominee, former World Bank official Marc Bazin, as Minister of Finance”. (Mining Annual Review, June, 1983). Bazin, who was considered Washington’s “favorite”, later ran against Aristide in the 1990 presidential elections.
Bazin, was called in by the Military Junta in 1992 to form a so-called “consensus government”. It is worth noting that it was precisely during Bazin’s term in office as Prime Minister that the political massacres and extra judicial killings by the CIA supported FRAPH death squadrons were unleashed, leading to the killing of more than 4000 civilians. Some 300,000 people became internal refugees, “thousands more fled across the border to the Dominican Republic, and more than 60,000 took to the high seas” (Statement of Dina Paul Parks, Executive Director, National Coalition for Haitian Rights, Committee on Senate Judiciary, US Senate, Washington DC, 1 October 2002). Meanwhile, the CIA had launched a smear campaign representing Aristide as “mentally unstable” (Boston Globe, 21 Sept 1994).
The 1994 US Military Intervention
Following three years of military rule, the US intervened in 1994, sending in 20,000 occupation troops and “peace-keepers” to Haiti. The US military intervention was not intended to restore democracy. Quite the contrary: it was carried out to prevent a popular insurrection against the military Junta and its neoliberal cohorts.
In other words, the US military occupation was implemented to ensure political continuity.
While the members of the military Junta were sent into exile, the return to constitutional government required compliance to IMF diktats, thereby foreclosing the possibility of a progressive “alternative” to the neoliberal agenda. Moreover, US troops remained in the country until 1999. The Haitian armed forces were disbanded and the US State Department hired a mercenary company DynCorp to provide “technical advice” in restructuring the Haitian National Police (HNP).
“DynCorp has always functioned as a cut-out for Pentagon and CIA covert operations.” (See Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn, Counterpunch, February 27, 2002, http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=1988 ) Under DynCorp advice in Haiti, former Tonton Macoute and Haitian military officers involved in the 1991 Coup d’Etat were brought into the HNP. (See Ken Silverstein, Privatizing War, The Nation, July 28, 1997, http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/silver.htm )
In October 1994, Aristide returned from exile and reintegrated the presidency until the end of his mandate in 1996. “Free market” reformers were brought into his Cabinet. A new wave of deadly macro-economic policies was adopted under a so-called Emergency Economic Recovery Plan (EERP) “that sought to achieve rapid macroeconomic stabilization, restore public administration, and attend to the most pressing needs.” (See IMF Approves Three-Year ESAF Loan for Haiti, Washington, 1996, http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/1996/pr9653.htm ).
The restoration of Constitutional government had been negotiated behind closed doors with Haiti’s external creditors. Prior to Aristide’s reinstatement as the country’s president, the new government was obliged to clear the country’s debt arrears with its external creditors. In fact the new loans provided by the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and the IMF were used to meet Haiti’s obligations with international creditors. Fresh money was used to pay back old debt leading to a spiraling external debt.
Broadly coinciding with the military government, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) declined by 30 percent (1992-1994). With a per capita income of $250 per annum, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere and among the poorest in the world. (see World Bank, Haiti: The Challenges of Poverty Reduction, Washington, August 1998, http://lnweb18.worldbank.org/External/lac/lac.nsf/0/8479e9126e3537f0852567ea000fa239/$FILE/Haiti1.doc ).
The World Bank estimates unemployment to be of the order of 60 percent. (A 2000 US Congressional Report estimates it to be as high as 80 percent. See US House of Representatives, Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources Subcommittee, FDHC Transcripts, 12 April 2000).
In the wake of three years of military rule and economic decline, there was no “Economic Emergency Recovery” as envisaged under the IMF loan agreement. In fact quite the opposite: The IMF imposed “stabilization” under the “Recovery” program required further budget cuts in almost non-existent social sector programs. A civil service reform program was launched, which consisted in reducing the size of the civil service and the firing of “surplus” State employees. The IMF-World Bank package was in part instrumental in the paralysis of public services, leading to the eventual demise of the entire State system. In a country where health and educational services were virtually nonexistent, the IMF had demanded the lay off of “surplus” teachers and health workers with a view to meeting its target for the budget deficit.
Washington’s foreign policy initiatives were coordinated with the application of the IMF’s deadly economic medicine. The country had been literally pushed to the brink of economic and social disaster.
The Fate of Haitian Agriculture
More than 75 percent of the Haitian population is engaged in agriculture, producing both food crops for the domestic market as well a number of cash crops for export. Already during the Duvalier era, the peasant economy had been undermined. With the adoption of the IMF-World Bank sponsored trade reforms, the agricultural system, which previously produced food for the local market, had been destabilized. With the lifting of trade barriers, the local market was opened up to the dumping of US agricultural surpluses including rice, sugar and corn, leading to the destruction of the entire peasant economy. Gonaives, which used to be Haiti’s rice basket region, with extensive paddy fields had been precipitated into bankruptcy:
. “By the end of the 1990s Haiti’s local rice production had been reduced by half and rice imports from the US accounted for over half of local rice sales. The local farming population was devastated, and the price of rice rose drastically “ ( See Rob Lyon, Haiti-There is no solution under Capitalism! Socialist Appeal, 24 Feb. 2004, http://cleveland.indymedia.org/news/2004/02/9095.php ).
In matter of a few years, Haiti, a small impoverished country in the Caribbean, had become the World’s fourth largest importer of American rice after Japan, Mexico and Canada.
The Second Wave of IMF Reforms
The presidential elections were scheduled for November 23, 2000. The Clinton Administration had put an embargo on development aid to Haiti in 2000. Barely two weeks prior to the elections, the outgoing administration signed a Letter of Intent with the IMF. Perfect timing: the agreement with the IMF virtually foreclosed from the outset any departure from the neoliberal agenda.
The Minister of Finance had sent the amended budget to the Parliament on December 14th. Donor support was conditional upon its rubber stamp approval by the Legislature. While Aristide had promised to increase the minimum wage, embark on school construction and literacy programs, the hands of the new government were tied. All major decisions regarding the State budget, the management of the public sector, public investment, privatization, trade and monetary policy had already been taken. They were part of the agreement reached with the IMF on November 6, 2000.
In 2003, the IMF imposed the application of a so-called “flexible price system in fuel”, which immediately triggered an inflationary spiral. The currency was devalued. Petroleum prices increased by about 130 percent in January-February 2003, which served to increase popular resentment against the Aristide government, which had supported the implementation of the IMF economic reforms.
The hike in fuel prices contributed to a 40 percent increase in consumer prices (CPI) in 2002-2003 (See Haiti—Letter of Intent, Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies, and Technical Memorandum of Understanding, Port-au-Prince, Haiti June 10, 2003, http://www.imf.org/external/np/loi/2003/hti/01/index.htm ). In turn, the IMF had demanded, despite the dramatic increase in the cost of living, a freeze on wages as a means to “controlling inflationary pressures.” The IMF had in fact pressured the government to lower public sector salaries (including those paid to teachers and health workers). The IMF had also demanded the phasing out of the statutory minimum wage of approximately 25 cents an hour. “Labour market flexibility”, meaning wages paid below the statutory minimum wage would, according to the IMF, contribute to attracting foreign investors. The daily minimum wage was $3.00 in 1994, declining to about $1.50- 1.75 (depending on the gourde-dollar exchange rate) in 2004.
In an utterly twisted logic, Haiti’s abysmally low wages, which have been part of the IMF-World Bank “cheap labor” policy framework since the 1980s, are viewed as a means to improving the standard of living. In other words, sweatshop conditions in the assembly industries (in a totally unregulated labor market) and forced labor conditions in Haiti’s agricultural plantations are considered by the IMF as a key to achieving economic prosperity, because they “attract foreign investment.”
The country was in the straightjacket of a spiraling external debt. In a bitter irony, the IMF-World Bank sponsored austerity measures in the social sectors were imposed in a country which has 1,2 medical doctors for 10,000 inhabitants and where the large majority of the population is illiterate. State social services, which were virtually nonexistent during the Duvalier period, have collapsed.
The result of IMF ministrations was a further collapse in purchasing power, which had also affected middle income groups. Meanwhile, interest rates had skyrocketed. In the Northern and Eastern parts of the country, the hikes in fuel prices had led to a virtual paralysis of transportation and public services including water and electricity.
While a humanitarian catastrophe is looming, the collapse of the economy spearheaded by the IMF, had served to boost the popularity of the Democratic Platform, which had accused Aristide of “economic mismanagement.” Needless to say, the leaders of the Democratic Platform including Andy Apaid –who actually owns the sweatshops– are the main protagonists of the low wage economy.
Applying the Kosovo Model
In February 2003, Washington announced the appointment of James Foley as Ambassador to Haiti . Foley had been a State Department spokesman under the Clinton administration during the war on Kosovo. He previously held a position at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Foley had been sent to Port au Prince in advance of the CIA sponsored operation. He was transferred to Port au Prince in September 2003, from a prestige diplomatic position in Geneva, where he was Deputy Head of Mission to the UN European office.
It is worth recalling Ambassador Foley’s involvement in support of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1999.
Amply documented, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was financed by drug money and supported by the CIA. ( See Michel Chossudovsky, Kosovo Freedom Fighters Financed by Organized Crime, Covert Action Quarterly, 1999, http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/co/2743/1.html )
The KLA had been involved in similar targeted political assassinations and killings of civilians, in the months leading up to the 1999 NATO invasion as well as in its aftermath. Following the NATO led invasion and occupation of Kosovo, the KLA was transformed into the Kosovo Protection Force (KPF) under UN auspices. Rather than being disarmed to prevent the massacres of civilians, a terrorist organization with links to organized crime and the Balkans drug trade, was granted a legitimate political status.
At the time of the Kosovo war, the current ambassador to Haiti James Foley was in charge of State Department briefings, working closely with his NATO counterpart in Brussels, Jamie Shea. Barely two months before the onslaught of the NATO led war on 24 March 1999, James Foley had called for the “transformation” of the KLA into a respectable political organization:
“We want to develop a good relationship with them [the KLA] as they transform themselves into a politically-oriented organization,’ ..`[W]e believe that we have a lot of advice and a lot of help that we can provide to them if they become precisely the kind of political actor we would like to see them become… “If we can help them and they want us to help them in that effort of transformation, I think it’s nothing that anybody can argue with..’ (quoted in the New York Times, 2 February 1999)
In the wake of the invasion “a self-proclaimed Kosovar administration was set up composed of the KLA and the Democratic Union Movement (LBD), a coalition of five opposition parties opposed to Rugova’s Democratic League (LDK). In addition to the position of prime minister, the KLA controlled the ministries of finance, public order and defense.” (Michel Chossudovsky, NATO’s War of Aggression against Yugoslavia, 1999, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO309C.html )
The US State Department’s position as conveyed in Foley’s statement was that the KLA would “not be allowed to continue as a military force but would have the chance to move forward in their quest for self government under a ‘different context’” meaning the inauguration of a de facto “narco-democracy” under NATO protection. (Ibid).
With regard to the drug trade, Kosovo and Albania occupy a similar position to that of Haiti: they constitute “a hub” in the transit (transshipment) of narcotics from the Golden Crescent, through Iran and Turkey into Western Europe. While supported by the CIA, Germany’s Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND) and NATO, the KLA has links to the Albanian Mafia and criminal syndicates involved in the narcotics trade.( See Michel Chossudovsky, Kosovo Freedom Fighters Financed by Organized Crime, Covert Action Quarterly, 1999, http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/co/2743/1.html )
Is this the model for Haiti, as formulated in 1999 by the current US Ambassador to Haiti James Foley?
For the CIA and the State Department the FLRN and Guy Philippe are to Haiti what the KLA and Hashim Thaci are to Kosovo.
In other words, Washington’s design is “regime change”: topple the Lavalas administration and install a compliant US puppet regime, integrated by the Democratic Platform and the self-proclaimed Front pour la libération et la reconstruction nationale (FLRN), whose leaders are former FRAPH and Tonton Macoute terrorists. The latter are slated to integrate a “national unity government” alongside the leaders of the Democratic Convergence and The Group of 184 Civil Society Organizations led by Andy Apaid. More specifically, the FLRN led by Guy Philippe is slated to rebuild the Haitian Armed forces, which were disbanded in 1995.
What is at stake is an eventual power sharing arrangement between the various Opposition groups and the CIA supported Rebels, which have links to the cocaine transit trade from Colombia via Haiti to Florida. The protection of this trade has a bearing on the formation of a new “narco-government”, which will serve US interests.
A bogus (symbolic) disarmament of the Rebels may be contemplated under international supervision, as occurred with the KLA in Kosovo in 2000. The “former terrorists” could then be integrated into the civilian police as well as into the task of “rebuilding” the Haitian Armed forces under US supervision.
What this scenario suggests, is that the Duvalier-era terrorist structures have been restored. A program of civilian killings and political assassinations directed against Lavalas supporter is in fact already underway.
In other words, if Washington were really motivated by humanitarian considerations, why then is it supporting and financing the FRAPH death squadrons? Its objective is not to prevent the massacre of civilians. Modeled on previous CIA led operations (e.g. Guatemala, Indonesia, El Salvador), the FLRN death squadrons have been set loose and are involved in targeted political assassinations of Aristide supporters.
The Narcotics Transshipment Trade
While the real economy had been driven into bankruptcy under the brunt of the IMF reforms, the narcotics transshipment trade continues to flourish. According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Haiti remains “the major drug trans-shipment country for the entire Caribbean region, funneling huge shipments of cocaine from Colombia to the United States.” (See US House of Representatives, Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources Subcommittee, FDHC Transcripts, 12 April 2000).
It is estimated that Haiti is now responsible for 14 percent of all the cocaine entering the United States, representing billions of dollars of revenue for organized crime and US financial institutions, which launder vast amounts of dirty money. The global trade in narcotics is estimated to be of the order of 500 billion dollars.
Much of this transshipment trade goes directly to Miami, which also constitutes a haven for the recycling of dirty money into bona fide investments, e.g. in real estate and other related activities.
The evidence confirms that the CIA was protecting this trade during the Duvalier era as well as during the military dictatorship (1991-1994). In 1987, Senator John Kerry as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee was entrusted with a major investigation, which focused on the links between the CIA and the drug trade, including the laundering of drug money to finance armed insurgencies. “The Kerry Report” published in 1989, while centering its attention on the financing of the Nicaraguan Contra, also included a section on Haiti:
“Kerry had developed detailed information on drug trafficking by Haiti’s military rulers that led to the indictment in Miami in 1988, of Lt. Col. Jean Paul. The indictment was a major embarrassment to the Haitian military, especially since Paul defiantly refused to surrender to U.S. authorities.. In November 1989, Col. Paul was found dead after he consumed a traditional Haitian good will gift—a bowel of pumpkin soup…
The U.S. senate also heard testimony in 1988 that then interior minister, Gen. Williams Regala, and his DEA liaison officer, protected and supervised cocaine shipments. The testimony also charged the then Haitian military commander Gen. Henry Namphy with accepting bribes from Colombian traffickers in return for landing rights in the mid 1980’s.
It was in 1989 that yet another military coup brought Lt. Gen. Prosper Avril to power… According to a witness before Senator John Kerry’s subcommittee, Avril is in fact a major player in Haiti’s role as a transit point in the cocaine trade.” ( Paul DeRienzo, Haiti’s Nightmare: The Cocaine Coup & The CIA Connection, Spring 1994, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RIE402A.html )
Jack Blum, who was Kerry’s Special Counsel, points to the complicity of US officials in a 1996 statement to the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Drug Trafficking and the Contra War:
“...In Haiti … intelligence “sources” of ours in the Haitian military had turned their facilities over to the drug cartels. Instead of putting pressure on the rotten leadership of the military, we defended them. We held our noses and looked the other way as they and their criminal friends in the United States distributed cocaine in Miami, Philadelphia and New, York.“ (http://www.totse.com/en/politics/central_intelligence_agency/ciacont2.html )
Haiti not only remains at the hub of the transshipment cocaine trade, the latter has grown markedly since the 1980s. The current crisis bears a relationship to Haiti’s role in the drug trade. Washington wants a compliant Haitian government which will protect the drug transshipment routes, out of Colombia through Haiti and into Florida.
The inflow of narco-dollars –which remains the major source of the country’s foreign exchange earnings– are used to service Haiti’s spiraling external debt, thereby also serving the interests of the external creditors.
In this regard, the liberalization of the foreign-exchange market imposed by the IMF has provided (despite the authorities pro forma commitment to combating the drug trade) a convenient avenue for the laundering of narco-dollars in the domestic banking system. The inflow of narco-dollars alongside bona fide “remittances” from Haitians living abroad, are deposited in the commercial banking system and exchanged into local currency. The foreign exchange proceeds of these inflows can then be recycled towards the Treasury where they are used to meet debt servicing obligations.
Haiti, however, reaps a very small percentage of the total foreign exchange proceeds of this lucrative contraband. Most of the revenue resulting from the cocaine transshipment trade accrues to criminal intermediaries in the wholesale and retail narcotics trade, to the intelligence agencies which protect the drug trade as well as to the financial and banking institutions where the proceeds of this criminal activity are laundered.
The narco-dollars are also channeled into “private banking” accounts in numerous offshore banking havens. (These havens are controlled by the large Western banks and financial institutions). Drug money is also invested in a number of financial instruments including hedge funds and stock market transactions. The major Wall Street and European banks and stock brokerage firms launder billions of dollars resulting from the trade in narcotics.
Moreover, the expansion of the dollar denominated money supply by the Federal Reserve System , including the printing of billions of dollars of US dollar notes for the purposes of narco-transactions constitutes profit for the Federal Reserve and its constituent private banking institutions of which the most important is the New York Federal Reserve Bank. See (Jeffrey Steinberg, Dope, Inc. Is $600 Billion and Growing, Executive Intelligence Review, 14 Dec 2001, http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2001/2848dope_money.html )
In other words, the Wall Street financial establishment, which plays a behind the scenes role in the formulation of US foreign policy, has a vested interest in retaining the Haiti transshipment trade, while installing a reliable “narco-democracy” in Port-au-Prince, which will effectively protect the transshipment routes.
It should be noted that since the advent of the Euro as a global currency, a significant share of the narcotics trade is now conducted in Euro rather than US dollars. In other words, the Euro and the dollar are competing narco-currencies.
The Latin American cocaine trade –including the transshipment trade through Haiti– is largely conducted in US dollars. This shift out of dollar denominated narco-transactions, which undermines the hegemony of the US dollar as a global currency, largely pertains to the Middle East, Central Asian and the Southern European drug routes.
Media Manipulation
In the weeks leading up to the Coup d’Etat, the media has largely focused its attention on the pro-Aristide “armed gangs” and “thugs”, without providing an understanding of the role of the FLRN Rebels.
Deafening silence: not a word was mentioned in official statements and UN resolutions regarding the nature of the FLRN. This should come as no surprise: the US Ambassador to the UN (the man who sits on the UN Security Council) John Negroponte. played a key role in the CIA supported Honduran death squadrons in the 1980s when he was US ambassador to Honduras. (See San Francisco Examiner, 20 Oct 2001 http://www.flora.org/mai/forum/31397 )
The FLRN rebels are extremely well equipped and trained forces. The Haitian people know who they are. They are Tonton Macoute of the Duvalier era and former FRAPH assassins.
The Western media is mute on the issue, blaming the violence on President Aristide. When it acknowledges that the Liberation Army is composed of death squadrons, it fails to examine the broader implications of its statements and that these death squadrons are a creation of the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
The New York Times has acknowledged that the “non violent” civil society opposition is in fact collaborating with the death squadrons, “accused of killing thousands”, but all this is described as “accidental”. No historical understanding is provided. Who are these death squadron leaders? All we are told is that they have established an “alliance” with the “non-violent” good guys who belong to the “political opposition”. And it is all for a good and worthy cause, which is to remove the elected president and “restore democracy”:
“As Haiti’s crisis lurches toward civil war, a tangled web of alliances, some of them accidental, has emerged. It has linked the interests of a political opposition movement that has embraced nonviolence to a group of insurgents that includes a former leader of death squads accused of killing thousands, a former police chief accused of plotting a coup and a ruthless gang once aligned with Mr. Aristide that has now turned against him. Given their varied origins, those arrayed against Mr. Aristide are hardly unified, though they all share an ardent wish to see him removed from power.” (New York Times, 26 Feb 2004)
There is nothing spontaneous or “accidental” in the rebel attacks or in the “alliance” between the leader of the death squadrons Guy Philippe and Andy Apaid, owner of the largest industrial sweatshop in Haiti and leader of the G-184.
The armed rebellion was part of a carefully planned military-intelligence operation. The Armed Forces of the Dominican Republic had detected guerilla training camps inside the Dominican Republic on the Northeast Haitian-Dominican border. ( El ejército dominicano informó a Aristide sobre los entrenamientos rebeldes en la frontera, El Caribe, 27 Feb. 2004, http://www.elcaribe.com.do/articulo_multimedios.aspx?id=2645&guid=AB38144D39B24C6FBA4213AC40DD3A01&Seccion=64 )
Both the armed rebels and their civilian “non-violent” counterparts were involved in the plot to unseat the president. G-184 leader Andre Apaid was in touch with Colin Powell in the weeks leading up to the overthrow of Aristide; Guy Philippe and “Toto” Emmanuel Constant have links to the CIA; there are indications that Rebel Commander Guy Philippe and the political leader of the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front Winter Etienne were in liaison with US officials. (See BBC, 27 Feb 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3496690.stm ).
While the US had repeatedly stated that it will uphold Constitutional government, the replacement of Aristide by a more compliant individual had always been part of the Bush Administration’s agenda.
On Feb 20, US Ambassador James Foley called in a team of four military experts from the U.S. Southern Command, based in Miami. Officially their mandate was “to assess threats to the embassy and its personnel.” (Seattle Times, 20 Feb 2004). US Special Forces are already in the country. Washington had announced that three US naval vessels “have been put on standby to go to Haiti as a precautionary measure”. The Saipan is equipped with Vertical takeoff Harrier fighters and attack helicopters. The other two vessels are the Oak Hill and Trenton. Some 2,200 U.S. Marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, at Camp Lejeune, N.C. could be deployed to Haiti at short notice, according to Washington.
With the departure of President Aristide, Washington, however, has no intention of disarming its proxy rebel paramilitary army, which is now slated to play a role in the “transition”. In other words, the Bush administration will not act to prevent the occurrence of killings and political assassinations of Lavalas and Aristide supporters in the wake of the president’s kidnapping and deportation.
Needless to say, the Western media has not in the least analyzed the historical background of the Haitian crisis. The role played by the CIA has not been mentioned. The so-called “international community”, which claims to be committed to governance and democracy, has turned a blind eye to the killings of civilians by a US sponsored paramilitary army. The “rebel leaders”, who were commanders in the FRAPH death squadrons in the 1990s, are now being upheld by the US media as bona fide opposition spokesmen. Meanwhile, the legitimacy of the former elected president is questioned because he is said to be responsible for “a worsening economic and social situation.”
The worsening economic and social situation is largely attributable to the devastating economic reforms imposed by the IMF since the 1980s. The restoration of Constitutional government in 1994 was conditional upon the acceptance of the IMF’s deadly economic therapy, which in turn foreclosed the possibility of a meaningful democracy. High ranking government officials respectively within the Andre Preval and Jean Bertrand Aristide governments were indeed compliant with IMF diktats. Despite this compliance, Aristide had been “blacklisted” and demonized by Washington.
The Militarization of the Caribbean Basin
Washington seeks to reinstate Haiti as a full-fledged US colony, with all the appearances of a functioning democracy. The objective is to impose a puppet regime in Port-au-Prince and establish a permanent US military presence in Haiti.
The US Administration ultimately seeks to militarize the Caribbean basin.
The island of Hispaniola is a gateway to the Caribbean basin, strategically located between Cuba to the North West and Venezuela to the South. The militarization of the island, with the establishment of US military bases, is not only intended to put political pressure on Cuba and Venezuela, it is also geared towards the protection of the multibillion dollar narcotics transshipment trade through Haiti, from production sites in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia.
The militarisation of the Caribbean basin is, in some regards, similar to that imposed by Washington on the Andean Region of South America under “Plan Colombia’, renamed “The Andean Initiative”. The latter constitutes the basis for the militarisation of oil and gas wells, as well as pipeline routes and transportation corridors. It also protects the narcotics trade.
From Green New Deal to New Economy
In a recent article about success in the sharing economy, Van Jones explained the degree to which sharing, crowdfunding, and other similar concepts are fundamentally transforming the economy as we know it. He turned to examples like Zipcar, Solar Mosaic, AirBnB, and Couchsurfing to show this transformation happening on the ground. For the few who don’t know, Jones founded Green For All, one of the central organizations within the growing green economy movement. His tremendously poignant article makes one wonder to what extent this sharing economy is similar to the green economy and how are we to understand their relatedness theoretically and organizationally? One could certainly say they have much in common, from the role the above-mentioned firms play in helping protect the environment by crowdfunding solar panels or reducing people’s need to own their own car. It’s one thing to see what ideas or outcomes they have in common. For the broader purposes of looking towards our collective potential to fundamentally transform the economy, it’s also important to look at how they relate to one another organizationally. This two-part series attempts to do just that. The first part looks at the green economy movement theoretically and organizationally, while the second part looks at the sharing economy, solidarity economy, and new economy to make the case for a New Economy Coalition acting to unite them all.Credit: New Economy Institute
Even though the green economy has been growing in the U.S. for decades, its birth into mainstream social consciousness very much began with the push for a Green New Deal as an immediate solution to a collapsing economy in late 2008. We saw the potential for job creation through public investment with the Green Jobs Act prior to the collapse and the subsequent American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. (1) The hope behind the push for a Green New Deal is based upon FDR’s New Deal legislation in the 1930s and the works of economist John Maynard Keynes. The focus is a massive reinvestment by the government into the economy. With a Green New Deal that investment would be focused on renewable energy, energy efficiency, public transportation, improvements to the electrical grid, and other carbon-reducing strategies for job creation.
The Great Recession was caused by a combination of two major factors, with the center of it being the overall failure of the decades long strategy of neoliberalism. More specifically, the collapse of the economy was caused by a long process of what French economists Gerard Dumenil and Dominique Levy call, “the quest for high income, financialization, and globalization.” This quest refers to the efforts of the 1% to increase incomes via profits, capital gains, bonuses, stock options, and wages, while using that vast wealth to push for the deregulation (especially of the financial sector) and the expansion of increasingly unwieldy financial instruments. This growing and already colossal financial sector also became an increasingly global movement to expand the so-called “free market,” to deregulate the global economy under the guise of globalization.
The second major factor in their analysis of the cause of The Great Recession is “the macro trajectory of the U.S. Economy.” In this factor they identified three main aspects: the “low and declining accumulation rates, the trade deficit, and the growing dependency on financing from the rest of the world and domestic indebtedness.” This neoliberal strategy failed to correct a decades long trend of declining capital accumulation rates by corporations. The movement of corporations abroad greatly worsened the trade deficit and, when coupled with the concerted effort of the 1% to enhance their wealth at the expense of the other 99%, forced the vast majority into substantial debt. This unsustainable situation triggered a collapse in the housing market, causing the rapid decline of the entire economy in its wake. It is, in turn, this overall failure of the neoliberal strategy that’s beginning to lead to something transformative, new, and green. (1) It began with a push for a Green New Deal and is now finding its home within diverse movements under different labels including green economy, sharing economy, solidarity economy, new economy, and others.
Keynes believed that in instances of economic crisis significant governmental or public investment was required in order to jumpstart the economy. By investing a considerable amount of money into the economy, he believed the government could offset the overall decline in demand. In doing so, the government could thereby create jobs, rebuild the tax base, and make its investment back without increasing the long-term deficit. The idea behind the Green New Deal has been simple: instead of a New Deal like with FDR back in the 1930s, this would invest in renewable energy, public transportation, energy efficiency, improvements to the electricity grid, etc. This is what makes it a Green New Deal. Unfortunately, even with the funding through ARRA and smaller governmental stimulus measures, the amount of funding has thus fallen far short of levels necessary to jumpstart the economy. (2) On top of that, the lack of adequate funding leaves us far behind on global targets to cap atmospheric carbon levels as well. (3)
Still, Green New Deal policies are a massive shift from the neoliberal orthodoxy of the last few decades. Just like the Republican Party’s almost unanimous support for destructive trade agreements, most Republicans oppose Green New Deal types of policies as well. It doesn’t matter that their opposition is based on flawed or even outright fabricated ‘analyses.’ Their opposition is based on the interests of who pays for their political campaigns. The oil and gas industry alone spent almost $64 Million in the 2012 election cycle, 90% of which went to members of the Republican Party. Meanwhile, clean energy and low-carbon companies are growing and building a political force of their own. This is growing and will, over time, provide a counterforce to the oil and gas industry and their stranglehold on Capitol Hill. The American Council on Renewable Energy represents many of those clean energy companies and their trade associations. Similarly, the push for an energy efficient economy is finding a new political voice in the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. In many ways the green economy movement is at the forefront of the push to fundamentally transform the economy with other similar movements trailing close behind.
What’s perhaps the most exciting and promising aspect of the movement for a green economy and a Green New Deal is that it’s bringing together a host of different organizations representing communities and constituencies that haven’t often come together over the years. The movement for a green economy and a Green New Deal came to prominence in 2009-2010, as so-called Cap & Trade policies and others were on the verge of passage. The Alliance for Climate Protection, a non-profit organization with Al Gore as its board chair, was leading the charge by acting as a coordinating entity of sorts with numerous member organizations helping provide a degree of direction to the movement in general. Now called The Climate Reality Project, its focus has shifted more towards general public education around climate change. This is likely a result of the inability to pass comprehensive climate change legislation during President Obama’s first term and the drastic decline in public belief around the role of human activity in causing climate change. It seems few expected such a drastic assault by the extreme right in spreading disinformation like the manufactured “Climate Gate” scandal.
Labor unions, manufacturers, and environmental organizations are coming together through organizations like the Apollo Alliance and the Blue-Green Alliance (recently merged). They are made up of both public and private labor unions like the United Steelworkers Union, environmental organizations like the Sierra Club, and even manufacturers of all sizes. Small and medium-sized businesses are part of this movement through the Advanced Energy Economy. Local chambers of commerce have even joined the fight through Chambers for Innovation and Clean Energy. Ceres is bringing together a wide variety of companies and investors small and large to address climate change and build a green economy. Broad umbrella organizations have emerged representing all types of community-based local organizations. 1Sky is the biggest of these organizations and recently merged with 350.org under the 350.org name to create a large advocacy organization made up of hundreds of thousands of members in the U.S. and a still larger global movement. It tackles many of the traditional environmental issues, while also advocating for Green New Deal policies. The Green Economy Coalition recently emerged as a global network to strategically support the expansion of the green economy at a global level in advance of the UN’s Summit on the 20th anniversary of the Earth Summit this past June of 2012.
Low-income communities and communities of color are part in this movement too. Green For All has been pioneering the creation of green jobs, career-track jobs that pay a living wage, have benefits, and address environmental issues at the same time. They lobby Congress on environmental and Green New Deal policies, develop innovative policy research, while assisting coalitions of organizations in cities to implement green job creation strategies and helping green businesses grow. Providing empowering opportunities for traditionally marginalized communities is a vital aspect of this growing movement, which is why Green For All and others similarly working to create and expand opportunities low-income communities, communities of color, and others who have traditionally been passed by when economic opportunities arise.
There are other organizations and efforts within this larger movement for a Green New Deal. The Smart Growth Alliance is pioneering a new national opposition to sprawl and support for public transportation at the same time. There are even signs that working to rebuild our urban cores around public transportation and the remediation of brownfields can be done in ways that empower traditionally marginalized communities. (4) Numerous other organizations are starting sustainability initiatives aimed at involving themselves in one way or another in this movement for a green economy and a Green New Deal. ICLEI, Local Governments for Sustainability, is a network of local governments from around the world focused on the best ways for governments to leverage their resources to best build the green economy.
Outside of the public policy arena, organizations and institutions all across the country are launching sustainability initiatives as part of a truly massive movement. Colleges and universities and joining this movement through the American Association for Sustainability in Higher Education. Countless think tanks have emerged to focus on renewable energy and clean tech to workforce development, bio-based alternatives to petroleum-based chemicals, and much more.
This movement isn’t the only game in town when it comes to transforming the economy. Alongside the push for a green economy are a few other movements with the goal of fundamentally transforming the economy in one way or another. The green economy movement is much more expansive though, but aside from the work of groups like Green For All, it’s very much a “double bottom line movement.” Unlike traditional economic approaches that stand firmly on the belief that profit should be pursued above all else, that considerations of externalities like the environment only hinder profitability, the green economy movement is based on the belief that profitability and environmental sustainability can go hand in hand. As will be discussed in a subsequent article, the sharing economy, solidarity economy, and new economy take the goals of the green economy one step further, emphasizing a “triple bottom line” of people, planet, and profits. Just like the recognition that environmental sustainability and profit aren’t mutual exclusive, these other movements stress that the well being of communities can go hand in hand with environmental sustainability and the well being of the economy overall.
When the green economy movement first came on the scene with the ascendency of Van Jones to become President Obama’s green jobs advisor, some claimed it was part of a Communist conspiracy. Despite the irrational rantings of Glenn Beck and others, there is a strong push within this movement to more fundamentally transform the economic system as a whole. It just doesn’t have anything to do with traditional or “actually-existing” forms of Communism.
Given the frightening reality of climate change, the manipulative push-back from powerful corporate interests, and the longer-term economic stagnation that stands before us, it is likely that the green economy movement will increasingly take on the task of a more fundamental and structural transformation of the economy. The structural imbalances of power continue to thwart attempts to transform the economy on Capitol Hill. Examples like the Citizens United decision and the corporate assault on our democracy will likely force the green economy movement to fight for a more fundamental transformation of the dominant values and institutions in the U.S. This includes the nature and structure of major corporations as well as the nature of the political system overall. This is why an increasing unity between the green economy movement and other efforts to transform the economy are so important. The broader triple bottom line framework and transformational focus of efforts around sharing, solidarity, and a new economy must increasingly creep into the green economy movement; finding greater ideological and organizational unity.
We can already see the rise of a considerable mistrust of the entire notion of a green economy, evidenced by terms like ‘green washing’ and the decline in belief regarding climate change. A poignant example of this mistrust can be found with criticisms of the recent “Rio +20 Summit.” The 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development was meant to produce a renewed transformational focus on revamping the global economy for the planet and its poor. It showed little signs of achievement though. What’s more, this mistrust was codified into an alternative summit hosted as the “People’s Summit Rio+20.” It concluded that the green economy movement was fundamentally broken. As noted in one of their concluding documents, only by redirecting efforts towards the original goals of an Earth Summit, transforming the global economy into something that benefits the planet and its poorest, could the green economy find salvation.
From the perspective of the planet’s poorest and the organizations working with them, the green economy doesn’t represent opportunity. It represents a friendlier face of a global capitalist economy that has exploited them and their natural resources for decades. And just as the Alliance for Climate Protection became The Climate Reality Project in the face of public mistrust and disbelief in the realities of climate change, if the green economy movement wishes to win the hearts and minds of the American people, it has to not just educate but to create tangible and immediate solutions for individuals and communities struggling in the wake of our broken economy. This is why the other diverse movements to transform the economy have such a vital role to play. Each of them provide unique lessons for creating solutions today.
The green economy has been growing in the U.S. for decades, but if its going to go to the next level to transform the overall economy during these delicate beginning years of the 21st Century, it needs a mass movement behind it. The only way that’s possible, the only way the movement for a green economy becomes an impassioned charge from communities all across the country, the world for that matter, is for it to place the well being of those same communities into the forefront of it’s goals. When the movement to build a green economy transforms itself from a double bottom line to a triple bottom line movement, finding ways equitably support and interact with even the most marginalized communities, it’s firmly on the path to victory.
##
(1) Gerard Dumineil & Dominique Levy, The Crisis of Neoliberalism, (MA, Harvard University Press, 2011), P. 35-40.
(2) For a detailed description for how a Green New Deal could lead to substantial economic development, see Tim Jackson, Prosperity Without Growth, (DC: EarthScan, 2009). P. 113.
(3) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN).” Abu Dhabi, May 9th, 2011.
(4) Carlton C. Eley. “Equitable Development: Untangling the Web of Urban Development through Collaborative Problem Solving.” Sustain: A Journal of Environmental and Sustainability Issues. Issue 21, Fall/Winter 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License
Atlee McFellin is a Co-Founder & Principal of SymCenter. Atlee specializes in the creation of innovative economic development strategies and programs. Prior to founding SymCenter, Atlee worked with The Democracy Collaborative to create comprehensive strategies for cities around the country based on the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, OH. He is also the board co-chair of the New Economy Network, a national network of diverse organizations building a new economy from the ground up.
From Green New Deal to New Economy
In a recent article about success in the sharing economy, Van Jones explained the degree to which sharing, crowdfunding, and other similar concepts are fundamentally transforming the economy as we know it. He turned to examples like Zipcar, Solar Mosaic, AirBnB, and Couchsurfing to show this transformation happening on the ground. For the few who don’t know, Jones founded Green For All, one of the central organizations within the growing green economy movement. His tremendously poignant article makes one wonder to what extent this sharing economy is similar to the green economy and how are we to understand their relatedness theoretically and organizationally? One could certainly say they have much in common, from the role the above-mentioned firms play in helping protect the environment by crowdfunding solar panels or reducing people’s need to own their own car. It’s one thing to see what ideas or outcomes they have in common. For the broader purposes of looking towards our collective potential to fundamentally transform the economy, it’s also important to look at how they relate to one another organizationally. This two-part series attempts to do just that. The first part looks at the green economy movement theoretically and organizationally, while the second part looks at the sharing economy, solidarity economy, and new economy to make the case for a New Economy Coalition acting to unite them all.Credit: New Economy Institute
Even though the green economy has been growing in the U.S. for decades, its birth into mainstream social consciousness very much began with the push for a Green New Deal as an immediate solution to a collapsing economy in late 2008. We saw the potential for job creation through public investment with the Green Jobs Act prior to the collapse and the subsequent American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. (1) The hope behind the push for a Green New Deal is based upon FDR’s New Deal legislation in the 1930s and the works of economist John Maynard Keynes. The focus is a massive reinvestment by the government into the economy. With a Green New Deal that investment would be focused on renewable energy, energy efficiency, public transportation, improvements to the electrical grid, and other carbon-reducing strategies for job creation.
The Great Recession was caused by a combination of two major factors, with the center of it being the overall failure of the decades long strategy of neoliberalism. More specifically, the collapse of the economy was caused by a long process of what French economists Gerard Dumenil and Dominique Levy call, “the quest for high income, financialization, and globalization.” This quest refers to the efforts of the 1% to increase incomes via profits, capital gains, bonuses, stock options, and wages, while using that vast wealth to push for the deregulation (especially of the financial sector) and the expansion of increasingly unwieldy financial instruments. This growing and already colossal financial sector also became an increasingly global movement to expand the so-called “free market,” to deregulate the global economy under the guise of globalization.
The second major factor in their analysis of the cause of The Great Recession is “the macro trajectory of the U.S. Economy.” In this factor they identified three main aspects: the “low and declining accumulation rates, the trade deficit, and the growing dependency on financing from the rest of the world and domestic indebtedness.” This neoliberal strategy failed to correct a decades long trend of declining capital accumulation rates by corporations. The movement of corporations abroad greatly worsened the trade deficit and, when coupled with the concerted effort of the 1% to enhance their wealth at the expense of the other 99%, forced the vast majority into substantial debt. This unsustainable situation triggered a collapse in the housing market, causing the rapid decline of the entire economy in its wake. It is, in turn, this overall failure of the neoliberal strategy that’s beginning to lead to something transformative, new, and green. (1) It began with a push for a Green New Deal and is now finding its home within diverse movements under different labels including green economy, sharing economy, solidarity economy, new economy, and others.
Keynes believed that in instances of economic crisis significant governmental or public investment was required in order to jumpstart the economy. By investing a considerable amount of money into the economy, he believed the government could offset the overall decline in demand. In doing so, the government could thereby create jobs, rebuild the tax base, and make its investment back without increasing the long-term deficit. The idea behind the Green New Deal has been simple: instead of a New Deal like with FDR back in the 1930s, this would invest in renewable energy, public transportation, energy efficiency, improvements to the electricity grid, etc. This is what makes it a Green New Deal. Unfortunately, even with the funding through ARRA and smaller governmental stimulus measures, the amount of funding has thus fallen far short of levels necessary to jumpstart the economy. (2) On top of that, the lack of adequate funding leaves us far behind on global targets to cap atmospheric carbon levels as well. (3)
Still, Green New Deal policies are a massive shift from the neoliberal orthodoxy of the last few decades. Just like the Republican Party’s almost unanimous support for destructive trade agreements, most Republicans oppose Green New Deal types of policies as well. It doesn’t matter that their opposition is based on flawed or even outright fabricated ‘analyses.’ Their opposition is based on the interests of who pays for their political campaigns. The oil and gas industry alone spent almost $64 Million in the 2012 election cycle, 90% of which went to members of the Republican Party. Meanwhile, clean energy and low-carbon companies are growing and building a political force of their own. This is growing and will, over time, provide a counterforce to the oil and gas industry and their stranglehold on Capitol Hill. The American Council on Renewable Energy represents many of those clean energy companies and their trade associations. Similarly, the push for an energy efficient economy is finding a new political voice in the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. In many ways the green economy movement is at the forefront of the push to fundamentally transform the economy with other similar movements trailing close behind.
What’s perhaps the most exciting and promising aspect of the movement for a green economy and a Green New Deal is that it’s bringing together a host of different organizations representing communities and constituencies that haven’t often come together over the years. The movement for a green economy and a Green New Deal came to prominence in 2009-2010, as so-called Cap & Trade policies and others were on the verge of passage. The Alliance for Climate Protection, a non-profit organization with Al Gore as its board chair, was leading the charge by acting as a coordinating entity of sorts with numerous member organizations helping provide a degree of direction to the movement in general. Now called The Climate Reality Project, its focus has shifted more towards general public education around climate change. This is likely a result of the inability to pass comprehensive climate change legislation during President Obama’s first term and the drastic decline in public belief around the role of human activity in causing climate change. It seems few expected such a drastic assault by the extreme right in spreading disinformation like the manufactured “Climate Gate” scandal.
Labor unions, manufacturers, and environmental organizations are coming together through organizations like the Apollo Alliance and the Blue-Green Alliance (recently merged). They are made up of both public and private labor unions like the United Steelworkers Union, environmental organizations like the Sierra Club, and even manufacturers of all sizes. Small and medium-sized businesses are part of this movement through the Advanced Energy Economy. Local chambers of commerce have even joined the fight through Chambers for Innovation and Clean Energy. Ceres is bringing together a wide variety of companies and investors small and large to address climate change and build a green economy. Broad umbrella organizations have emerged representing all types of community-based local organizations. 1Sky is the biggest of these organizations and recently merged with 350.org under the 350.org name to create a large advocacy organization made up of hundreds of thousands of members in the U.S. and a still larger global movement. It tackles many of the traditional environmental issues, while also advocating for Green New Deal policies. The Green Economy Coalition recently emerged as a global network to strategically support the expansion of the green economy at a global level in advance of the UN’s Summit on the 20th anniversary of the Earth Summit this past June of 2012.
Low-income communities and communities of color are part in this movement too. Green For All has been pioneering the creation of green jobs, career-track jobs that pay a living wage, have benefits, and address environmental issues at the same time. They lobby Congress on environmental and Green New Deal policies, develop innovative policy research, while assisting coalitions of organizations in cities to implement green job creation strategies and helping green businesses grow. Providing empowering opportunities for traditionally marginalized communities is a vital aspect of this growing movement, which is why Green For All and others similarly working to create and expand opportunities low-income communities, communities of color, and others who have traditionally been passed by when economic opportunities arise.
There are other organizations and efforts within this larger movement for a Green New Deal. The Smart Growth Alliance is pioneering a new national opposition to sprawl and support for public transportation at the same time. There are even signs that working to rebuild our urban cores around public transportation and the remediation of brownfields can be done in ways that empower traditionally marginalized communities. (4) Numerous other organizations are starting sustainability initiatives aimed at involving themselves in one way or another in this movement for a green economy and a Green New Deal. ICLEI, Local Governments for Sustainability, is a network of local governments from around the world focused on the best ways for governments to leverage their resources to best build the green economy.
Outside of the public policy arena, organizations and institutions all across the country are launching sustainability initiatives as part of a truly massive movement. Colleges and universities and joining this movement through the American Association for Sustainability in Higher Education. Countless think tanks have emerged to focus on renewable energy and clean tech to workforce development, bio-based alternatives to petroleum-based chemicals, and much more.
This movement isn’t the only game in town when it comes to transforming the economy. Alongside the push for a green economy are a few other movements with the goal of fundamentally transforming the economy in one way or another. The green economy movement is much more expansive though, but aside from the work of groups like Green For All, it’s very much a “double bottom line movement.” Unlike traditional economic approaches that stand firmly on the belief that profit should be pursued above all else, that considerations of externalities like the environment only hinder profitability, the green economy movement is based on the belief that profitability and environmental sustainability can go hand in hand. As will be discussed in a subsequent article, the sharing economy, solidarity economy, and new economy take the goals of the green economy one step further, emphasizing a “triple bottom line” of people, planet, and profits. Just like the recognition that environmental sustainability and profit aren’t mutual exclusive, these other movements stress that the well being of communities can go hand in hand with environmental sustainability and the well being of the economy overall.
When the green economy movement first came on the scene with the ascendency of Van Jones to become President Obama’s green jobs advisor, some claimed it was part of a Communist conspiracy. Despite the irrational rantings of Glenn Beck and others, there is a strong push within this movement to more fundamentally transform the economic system as a whole. It just doesn’t have anything to do with traditional or “actually-existing” forms of Communism.
Given the frightening reality of climate change, the manipulative push-back from powerful corporate interests, and the longer-term economic stagnation that stands before us, it is likely that the green economy movement will increasingly take on the task of a more fundamental and structural transformation of the economy. The structural imbalances of power continue to thwart attempts to transform the economy on Capitol Hill. Examples like the Citizens United decision and the corporate assault on our democracy will likely force the green economy movement to fight for a more fundamental transformation of the dominant values and institutions in the U.S. This includes the nature and structure of major corporations as well as the nature of the political system overall. This is why an increasing unity between the green economy movement and other efforts to transform the economy are so important. The broader triple bottom line framework and transformational focus of efforts around sharing, solidarity, and a new economy must increasingly creep into the green economy movement; finding greater ideological and organizational unity.
We can already see the rise of a considerable mistrust of the entire notion of a green economy, evidenced by terms like ‘green washing’ and the decline in belief regarding climate change. A poignant example of this mistrust can be found with criticisms of the recent “Rio +20 Summit.” The 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development was meant to produce a renewed transformational focus on revamping the global economy for the planet and its poor. It showed little signs of achievement though. What’s more, this mistrust was codified into an alternative summit hosted as the “People’s Summit Rio+20.” It concluded that the green economy movement was fundamentally broken. As noted in one of their concluding documents, only by redirecting efforts towards the original goals of an Earth Summit, transforming the global economy into something that benefits the planet and its poorest, could the green economy find salvation.
From the perspective of the planet’s poorest and the organizations working with them, the green economy doesn’t represent opportunity. It represents a friendlier face of a global capitalist economy that has exploited them and their natural resources for decades. And just as the Alliance for Climate Protection became The Climate Reality Project in the face of public mistrust and disbelief in the realities of climate change, if the green economy movement wishes to win the hearts and minds of the American people, it has to not just educate but to create tangible and immediate solutions for individuals and communities struggling in the wake of our broken economy. This is why the other diverse movements to transform the economy have such a vital role to play. Each of them provide unique lessons for creating solutions today.
The green economy has been growing in the U.S. for decades, but if its going to go to the next level to transform the overall economy during these delicate beginning years of the 21st Century, it needs a mass movement behind it. The only way that’s possible, the only way the movement for a green economy becomes an impassioned charge from communities all across the country, the world for that matter, is for it to place the well being of those same communities into the forefront of it’s goals. When the movement to build a green economy transforms itself from a double bottom line to a triple bottom line movement, finding ways equitably support and interact with even the most marginalized communities, it’s firmly on the path to victory.
##
(1) Gerard Dumineil & Dominique Levy, The Crisis of Neoliberalism, (MA, Harvard University Press, 2011), P. 35-40.
(2) For a detailed description for how a Green New Deal could lead to substantial economic development, see Tim Jackson, Prosperity Without Growth, (DC: EarthScan, 2009). P. 113.
(3) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN).” Abu Dhabi, May 9th, 2011.
(4) Carlton C. Eley. “Equitable Development: Untangling the Web of Urban Development through Collaborative Problem Solving.” Sustain: A Journal of Environmental and Sustainability Issues. Issue 21, Fall/Winter 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License
Atlee McFellin is a Co-Founder & Principal of SymCenter. Atlee specializes in the creation of innovative economic development strategies and programs. Prior to founding SymCenter, Atlee worked with The Democracy Collaborative to create comprehensive strategies for cities around the country based on the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, OH. He is also the board co-chair of the New Economy Network, a national network of diverse organizations building a new economy from the ground up.
Syria Terrorists Kidnapping: Ukraine and Russia working with Syria to save Ukrainian Journalist
The Syrian Embassy in Ukraine has said that the Syrian, Ukrainian and Russian authorities are cooperating to ensure the speedy release of Ukrainian journalist Anhar Kochneva, who was abducted by rebels in Syria.
“Our authorities, including our embassy, in cooperation with Ukrainian and Russian authorities, are doing all they can to release her,” the embassy told Interfax-Ukraine regarding the situation with the abducted Ukrainian.
According to the embassy, Kochneva is “significant prey” for the group that abducted her, as in this way they prevented her from objectively covering the events in the country.
The embassy said that an information war was currently being waged against Syria, during which a number of leading Western and Arab media “pledged to make misleading reports about the events in Syria.”
“The fact is that Syria is the only country in the Middle East that opposes the United States and its satellites on the implementation of the plan for the New Middle East. Accordingly, these countries set the goal of breaking Syria, and they don’t want it to exist as a strong independent country,” the embassy said.
The statement says that the “so-called Free Syrian Army” uses violence and acts of terror against the civilian population.
“The number of terror attacks grows every day, thousands of victims have been killed, both civilians and military personnel, and many people have been abducted, and if a ransom is not paid for them, they are killed (and sometimes they are killed even after the receipt of a ransom), not to mention sabotage against infrastructure. Unfortunately, among those abducted is Anhar Kochneva, who was objectively performing her journalistic duties, exposing the deception of some media involved in disinformation,” the embassy said.
The statement also says that 48 Iranian pilgrims were kidnapped in Syria five months ago, and owing to the joint efforts of the Syrian authorities and a number of other countries able to resolve such a problem, the abducted persons were released a few days ago.
As reported, Kochneva was abducted by gunmen of the Free Syrian Army in Syria in October 2012. The kidnappers of the journalist threatened to kill her if a ransom of $50 million was not paid.
The kidnappers even contacted Ukrainian journalists and expressed their indignation at the inactivity of the Ukrainian authorities in this matter, but Kyiv repeatedly said that it was doing everything to release Kochneva.
The CIA and Other Government Agencies Dominate Movies and Television
Austria, Denmark, Ireland and Slovenia propose Taking Syria to the ICC
A new media disinformation with regard to Syria, coupled by a political initiative by the self-proclaimed “international community” in the making. The foreign ministers of four seemingly “neutral” EU countries are now proposing to take president Bashar Al Assad to the the International Criminal Court (CC), for alleged crimes committed against the Syrian people.
This proposal, published as an oped by CNN, is apparently being made by these four distinguished statesmen in a “personal capacity”. One would expect, however, that this proposal is endorsed by the governments of those four countries.
The proposal in itself is highly convoluted. Realities are turned upside down. The Syrian government is identified as responsible for committing atrocities, when in fact the killings of civilians including extrajudicial assassinations have in large part been conducted by foreign supported death squads.
The existence of opposition terror brigades integrated by mercenaries and funded by the Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia are not mentioned. Nor is the existence of the Al Nusra Front, affiliated to al Qaeda in Iraq, supported covertly by the CIA.
This document smells rat. Does it point to a EU initiative to take the Syrian government to Court as well impose a new range of economic sanctions. Below is the full text of the Proposal:
Over the months, we have been following the events in Syria with growing concern. We support the aspirations of the Syrian people to freely choose a government that represents all the enriching diversity of this multi-confessional nation, one that respects the rule of law, human rights and democracy. It is deplorable that the current regime in Damascus has not heeded the repeated calls for a peaceful transition of power.
As do our colleagues from the Arab League, we strongly condemn the violence by the al-Assad regime against the Syrian people. We call on all sides to end the violence and to genuinely support the U.N.-led efforts to achieve a political solution.
But recent developments have given reason for even more serious concern. U.N. peacekeepers were seriously injured when a convoy of the UNDOF peacekeeping operation on the Golan Heights was attacked. Reports about possible preparations for the use of chemical weapons circulate.
The al-Assad regime is preparing Damascus for confrontation with the rebels and we know that these situations of last stand urban fighting often result in the most terrible atrocities being committed in armed conflict, with particular dangers for civilians. Concerned that the crisis in Syria may soon reach a new level of violence, we publicly appeal to all parties to the conflict to abide by international law, especially international humanitarian law and human rights law, and to recall that all those that commit or order war crimes and crimes against humanity will be held accountable. This principle cannot and will not be negotiated.
As we know from the work of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria, horrendous crimes have already been committed during the conflict in Syria, but there have been no consequences for the perpetrators. It is precisely for situations like this that the international community established the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) ten years ago. This independent judicial body can provide justice when a state is unable or unwilling to prosecute the most terrible crimes. Since Syria is not a party to the ICC Statute, jurisdiction of the Court requires a decision of the U.N. Security Council. In view of the grave concerns mentioned above, and the lack of prosecution in Syria, we call on the U.N. Security Council to urgently refer the situation in Syria to the ICC. In this respect, we welcome the Conclusions of the European Union Foreign Affairs Council on December 10, 2012 and the Swiss initiative at the United Nations to achieve this goal.
A referral to the ICC – which has repeatedly been suggested by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay – has several advantages. The Court is a neutral and impartial institution that investigates and prosecutes the most serious crimes on all sides. A referral would give the leaders of the Syrian opposition a strong argument to call for discipline among its diverse forces. It would give the members of the al-Assad regime a further reason to question their allegiance. And it could assist the search for a political solution to the conflict. As we saw in other crises, parallel political and judicial processes are mutually supporting. There is no decision to be taken here between either peace or justice – a sustainable, long-term solution requires both.
Most important, however, a referral to the ICC would make clear to every fighter on all sides of the conflict that the gravest crimes will eventually be punished. We owe this not only to the victims and their families, but also to future generations of Syrians who want to live in a free state founded on the principles of peace and justice. And we owe it to the future of humankind: After thousands of years of sometimes gruesome history, human civilization must no longer accept impunity for the most atrocious crimes. Only if we make absolutely clear that these crimes will not go unpunished, can we reduce the likelihood that humankind will have to suffer from them in the future.
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The U.S. and the Privatization of El Salvador
As much of Latin America braces itself for the possibility of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s death, observers around the world would do well to note the stark contrasts that exist within the region. On the one hand, there are the ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas) countries, united by Chavez in their rejection of US imperialism and neoliberal capitalism. On the other hand, there are those countries which are still very much living under the hegemony of the United States.
In El Salvador, this means subservience to Washington and international investors who seek nothing less than total control of that nation’s economic destiny. This attempt at economic monopolization can be summed up with one word: privatization. It is precisely this strategy with all the union-busting, wage gouging, and propaganda disinformation that it entails, that is rearing its ugly head in El Salvador.
Public-Private Partnership (P3) Law
The corporate-financier drive to privatize the Salvadoran economy has taken the form of the proposed Public-Private Partnership law which, if approved, would grant the government the right to sell off national resources, infrastructure and services to foreign multinationals. In effect, it would allow for the privatization of those sectors of the economy traditionally controlled by the state. As Gilberto Garcia of the Salvadoran Center for Labor Study and Support stated, “Essentially, they want to take a strategic service from the state in favor of a multinational.” [1] The ultimate goal of this legislation is not merely to cede control of state institutions to private interests, it is also to subvert and ultimately eliminate the power of organized labor and thereby reduce wages and the standard of living of working people in the country.
Public sector workers in El Salvador earn a minimum wage of $300 per month while their private sector counterparts earn anywhere between $187 and $219 per month.[2] The drive to privatize is, at least in part, aimed and driving down the wages of industrial workers while maximizing profits for foreign investors. However, the law is aimed not only at lowering wages, but weakening the public sector unions on a fundamental level in order to prevent mass resistance to the implementation of the neoliberal policies that have been so destructive in other parts of Latin America and the developing world. Many of the public sector unions have mounted effective resistance to these sorts of policies in the past, therefore making them high-priority targets for corporate bosses seeking to transform the economy for their own benefit.
This transformation of the economy affects the working class and the poor most acutely. Not only is access to vital social services and resources reduced, but the prices are increased dramatically. One clear example of this is the privatization of much of the electrical distribution system in El Salvador back in 1996 which resulted in an average increase in price of 47.2% for the lowest-level consumers.[3] Essentially then, the poor and working class of the country have to pay to subsidize the selling off of their own resources and services to powerful multinational corporations. It is for this reason that tens of thousands have begun mobilizing against this legislation and in support of organized labor. However, in order to fully appreciate the vast scope of this issue, one must understand the larger framework within which the P3 law was created.
The US and the “Partnership for Growth”
The Public-Private Partnership legislation is merely an outgrowth of the Obama Administration’s so-called “Partnership for Growth” bilateral agreement, signed with the Funes government in 2011. This agreement “embodies a key administration policy of seeking to elevate broad-based economic growth as a top priority of our development assistance, ensuring that our investments and policies are guided by rigorous assessments of how countries can achieve higher levels of growth,”[4] according to Mark Feierstein, assistant administrator for the Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean. Despite the innocuous diplomatic rhetoric, the bilateral agreement intends to create a climate conducive to foreign exploitation of the resources and services of a country that is, in many ways, entirely dependent upon the United States for its economic survival. It should be noted here that, on more than one occasion, the Obama administration ambassador to El Salvador, Mari Carmen Aponte, has threatened to withhold crucial aid if the Public-Private Partnership law is not enacted.[5] In effect, the Partnership for Growth lays the foundation for a dependent relationship in which the United States, acting as the benefactor, controls the direction and type of development that El Salvador is allowed to have.
It is essential to understand the foundations of the Partnership for Growth in order to fully appreciate its far-reaching implications. One of the primary mechanisms by which the substance of this agreement is enacted is a so-called “Growth Council” whose goal is to create a business-friendly environment conducive to foreign corporations.[6] Made up of five wealthy capitalists and five government bureaucrats, the council acts as a sort of advisory board to the President, speaking on behalf of business interests and promoting the agenda of private business at the highest levels of the Salvadoran government. This council is, for all intents and purposes, the mouthpiece of international finance capital, collaborating with foreign interests to destroy the labor movement and reduce the standard of living for the working class and the poor while enriching themselves.
The Partnership for Growth recently had its first annual review in which delegates from the US and the Growth Council met to discuss the progress made in implementing the agreement. The delegates “gave a positive evaluation of the progress made on the PFG’s (Partnership for Growth’s) 20 goals and actions for achieving them…the delegation cited new bilateral security initiatives, programs to train youth for jobs with US fast food restaurants, hotels, and Wal-Mart; and new laws presented to the Salvadoran legislature to incentivize foreign investment.”[7] What should be evident from this is the fact that, in the minds of these representatives of corporate interests, growth can be understood as improving the investment climate while training young people to work in low-wage sectors in the service of multinational corporations, rather than promoting young people to work in the interests of their own country. This falls directly in line with the goal of the Partnership, namely furthering the interests of the wealthy while stifling the progress of the working class and the poor.
Another key player in this “partnership” is USAID. Promoting itself as an institution “extending a helping hand to those people overseas trying to make a better life,”[8] it is in fact merely an extension of the imperialist ruling class of the United States. USAID is intimately linked to this drive toward privatization in El Salvador. In fact, USAID works in close collaboration with the Millennium Challenge Corporation to disburse funds to countries that follow the prescribed neoliberal reform formula. As James Parks, Deputy Vice President for Policy and Evaluation at Millennium Challenge Corporation was quoted on USAID’s own website, “”El Salvador’s economic growth can be increased by enacting sound policies that enhance the ability of Salvadoran businesses to compete in the global economy…A more competitive El Salvador can create new jobs on the basis of a stronger private sector and more foreign investment. The key goal of the partnership is to help unlock the country’s full economic potential.”[9] What becomes clear is that USAID is instrumental in transforming the Salvadoran economy, using the leverage of conditional aid and other economic incentives to bend the government to the will of international capital. However, it is essential to understand that even the definition of the “challenges to prosperity” is purely propaganda.
The Propaganda of “Prosperity”
One of the central aspects of the “Partnership for Growth” campaign is a sustained propaganda assault directed at the people of El Salvador. The attempt is to convince citizens, the middle class especially, that by simply addressing a few key “bottlenecks” in production, the country will be on its way to a brighter economic future. These main “constraints to growth” are crime and low productivity. Those of us in the United States should be familiar with this sort of terminology which is always used as a rhetorical smokescreen to refer to the poor and organized labor. When the Partnership for Growth committee, led by American “advisors” described these twin problems as the central obstacles to growth, it was essentially a declaration of war on the unions and the poor. Moreover, it further legitimizes the abhorrent so-called US drug war and the union-busting policies of neoliberalism.
The attempt is to convince the people of El Salvador that, rather than corrupt puppet governments and a disgraceful and exploitative economic system beholden to multinational corporations, the problems in that country are of their own making. This same logic has been applied to countless other countries in the region for decades and is the root cause of much of the conflict and internal strife in Latin America. One need only look to Bolivia, Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador and elsewhere to find examples of countries that, despite tremendous pressure and international demonization campaigns, have been able to take control of their own economic systems, becoming the masters of their own destiny. In this time of uncertainty in Latin America, one must examine how El Salvador is really a microcosm for the United States and the world more broadly both in terms of the assault by corporations on workers and the way in which it represents the class struggles we see throughout the world. By seeing this issue in its broadest possible context, peace-loving anti-imperialists around the world can stand in solidarity with the people of El Salvador and all working people struggling to be free.
Eric Draitser is the founder of StopImperialism.com. He is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City. He is a regular contributor to Russia Today, Press TV, GlobalResearch.ca, and other media outlets. You can reach him at ericdraitser@gmail.com.
Notes [1] http://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2013/01/us-intervention-el-salvador-privatization-time [2] http://www.cispes.org/blog/workers-mobilize-for-higher-wages-in-private-sector/ [3] http://www.cispes.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/APPFactSheet.pdf [4] http://transition.usaid.gov/press/frontlines/fl_mar12/FL_mar12_LAC_El_SALVADOR.html [5] http://www.cispes.org/blog/us-ambassador-ransoms-aid-for-passage-of-public-private-partnerships-law/ [6] http://photos.state.gov/libraries/elsavador/92891/octubre2011/Joint_Country_Action_Plan.pdf [7] http://www.cispes.org/blog/partnership-for-growth-pushes-privatization-as-development-in-el-salvador/ [8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAID [9] http://transition.usaid.gov/press/frontlines/fl_mar12/FL_mar12_LAC_El_SALVADOR.htm