By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
According to a new study, 1.2 million Iraqis have met violent deaths since the 2003 invasion, the highest estimate of war-related fatalities yet. The study was done by the British polling firm ORB, which conducted face-to-face interviews with a sample of over 1,700 Iraqi adults in 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces. Two provinces -- al-Anbar and Karbala -- were too dangerous to canvas, and officials in a third, Irbil, didn't give the researchers a permit to do their work. The study's margin of error was plus-minus 2.4 percent.
Field workers asked residents how many members of their own household had been killed since the invasion. More than one in five respondents said that at least one person in their home had been murdered since March of 2003. One in three Iraqis also said that at least some neighbors "actually living on [their] street" had fled the carnage, with around half of those having left the country.
In Baghdad, almost half of those interviewed reported at least one violent death in their household.
Before the study's release, the highest estimate of Iraqi deaths had been around 650,000 in the landmark Johns Hopkins' study published in the Lancet, a highly respected and peer-reviewed British medical journal. Unlike that study, which measured the difference in deaths from all causes during the first three years of the occupation with the mortality rate that existed prior to the invasion, the ORB poll looked only at deaths due to violence.
The poll's findings are in line with the rolling estimate maintained on the Just Foreign Policy website, based on the Johns Hopkins' data, that stands at just over 1 million Iraqis killed as of this writing.
These numbers suggest that the invasion and occupation of Iraq rivals the great crimes of the last century -- the human toll exceeds the 800,000 to 900,000 believed killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and is approaching the number (1.7 million) who died in Cambodia's infamous "Killing Fields" during the Khmer Rouge era of the 1970s.
While the stunning figures should play a major role in the debate over continuing the occupation, they probably won't. That's because there are three distinct versions of events in Iraq -- the bloody criminal nightmare that the "reality-based community" has to grapple with, the picture the commercial media portrays and the war that the occupation's last supporters have conjured up out of thin air. Similarly, American discourse has also developed three different levels of Iraqi casualties. There's the approximately 1 million killed according to the best epidemiological research conducted by one of the world's most prestigious scientific institutions, there's the 75,000-80,000 (based on news reports) the Washington Post and other commercial media allow, and there's the clean and antiseptic blood-free war the administration claims to have fought (recall that they dismissed the Lancet findings out of hand and yet offered no numbers of their own).
Here's the troubling thing, and one reason why opposition to the war isn't even more intense than it is: Americans were asked in an AP poll conducted earlier this year how many Iraqi civilians they thought had been killed as a result of the invasion and occupation, and the median answer they gave was 9,890. That's less than a third of the number of civilian deaths confirmed by U.N. monitors in 2006 alone.
Most of that disconnect is probably a result of American exceptionalism -- the United States is, by definition, the good guy, and good guys don't launch wars of choice that result in over a million people being massacred. Never mind that that's exactly what the data show; acknowledging as much creates intolerable cognitive dissonance for most Americans, so as a nation, we won't.
But there's more to it than that. The dominant narrative of Iraq is that most of the violence against Iraqis is being perpetrated by Iraqis themselves and is not our responsibility. That's wrong morally -- we chose to go into Iraq despite the fact that public health NGOs warned in advance of the likelihood of 500,000 civilian deaths due to "collateral damage." It's also factually incorrect -- as Stony Brook University scholar Michael Schwartz noted a few months ago, the Johns-Hopkins study looked at who was responsible for the violent deaths it measured and found that coalition forces were directly responsible for 56 percent of the deaths in which the perpetrator was known. According to Schwartz's number crunching, based on the Lancet data, coalition troops were responsible for at least 180,000 and as many as 330,000 violent deaths through the middle of last year. There's no compelling reason to think the share attributable to occupation forces has decreased significantly since then.
Like the earlier study in the Lancet -- one that relied on widely accepted methodology for its results -- this new research is already being dismissed out of hand. The strange thing is that common sense alone should be enough to conclude that the United States has killed a huge number of Iraqi civilians. After all, it's become conventional wisdom (based on several studies) that about 90 percent of all casualties in modern warfare are civilians. We know that the military, in addition to deploying 500 missiles and bombs in the first six months of this year alone, has had trouble keeping up with the demand for bullets in the Iraqi theater. According to a 2005 report by Lt. Col. Dean Mengel at the Army War College, the number of rounds being fired off is enormous (PDF):
[One news report] noted that the Army estimated it would need 1.5 billion small arms rounds per year, which was three times the amount produced just three years earlier. In another, it was noted by the Associated Press that soldiers were shooting bullets faster than they could be produced by the manufacturer.
1.5 billion rounds per year … more bullets fired than can be manufactured. Given that the estimated number of active insurgents in Iraq has never exceeded 30,000 -- and is usually given as less than 20,000 -- that leaves a lot of deadly lead flying around. Everyone agrees that the U.S. soldier is the best-trained fighter on earth, so it's somewhat bizarre that war supporters believe their shots rarely hit anybody.
If it weren't for the layers of denial that have been dutifully built up around the American strategic class, these figures might put to rest the notion that U.S. troops are preventing more deaths than they cause.
Recall that the stated reason for the invasion was to reduce the number of countries suspected of having an illicit WMD program from 36 to 35. Amid all the talk of troop deaths and the billions of dollars being thrown away in Iraq, it's important to remember that it is the Iraqis that are paying such a dear price for achieving that modest goal.
With a Congress frozen into inaction, all that remains to be seen is what the final death toll from the Iraq war will be. The sad truth is that we may never know the full scope of the carnage.
Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/62728/
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
The Greatest Story Never Told - by Stephen Lendman
No issue is more sensitive in the US than daring to criticize Israel. It's the metaphorical "third rail" in American politics, academia and the major media. Anyone daring to touch it pays dearly as the few who tried learned. Those in elected office face an onslaught of attacks and efforts to replace them with more supportive officials. Former five term Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney felt its sting twice in 2002 and 2006. So did 10 term Congressman Paul Findley (a fierce and courageous Israeli critic) in 1982 and three term Senator Charles Percy in 1984 whom AIPAC targeted merely for appearing to support anti-Israeli policy.
DePaul University Professor Norman Finkelstein has long been a target as well for his courageous writing and outspokenness. Depaul formally denied him tenure June 8 even though his students call him "truly outstanding and among the most impressive" of all university political science professors. It's why his Department of Political Science endorsed his tenure bid stating his academic record "exceeds our department's stated standards for scholarly production (and) department and outside experts we consulted recognize the intellectual merits of his work."
It didn't help, and on August 26 got worse. The university acknowledged "Professor Finkelstein is a prolific scholar and an outstanding teacher." Yet it issued a brief statement canceling his classes and placing him on administrative leave "with full pay and benefits for the 2007-8 academic year (that) relieves professors from their teaching responsibilities." For now, Finkelstein's long struggle with the university ended the first day of classes, September 5. Both sides agreed to a settlement, and a planned day of protests was curtailed. But as Chicago Tribune writer Ron Grossman put it in his September 6 column headlined "Finkelstein deal ends DePaul tiff....the underlying struggle between supporters of Israel and champions (like Finkelstein) of the Palestinians continues, not just at the North Side campus but across the academic world."
That struggle is nowhere in sight in the dominant media that includes major print publications, commercial radio, television and so-called Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio both of which long ago abandoned the public trust in service to their corporate and government paymasters.
In all parts of the major media, no Israeli criticism is tolerated on-air or in print, and any reporter, news anchor, pundit or on-air guest forgetting the (unwritten) rules, won't get a second chance. Support for Israel is ironclad, absolute, and uncompromising on everything including its worst crimes of war and against humanity. Open debate is stifled, and anyone daring to dissent or demur is pilloried, ridiculed, called anti-semetic, even threatened, ostracized, and finally ignored. In his seminal work on Middle East affairs, "Fateful Triangle," Noam Chomsky put it this way: "....Israel has been granted a unique immunity from criticism in mainstream journalism and scholarship...."
Call it the myth of the free press in a nation claiming to have the freest of all. It's pure fantasy now and in an earlier era, journalist A.J Liebling said it was only for "those who own(ed) one." Today, they're giants operating the way Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky explained in their classic book on the media titled "Manufacturing Consent." The authors developed their "propaganda model" to show all news and information passes through a set of "filters." "Raw material" goes through them, unacceptable parts are suppressed, and "only the cleansed residue fit to print (and broadcast on-air)" reaches the public. The New York Times calls it "All The News That's Fit to Print." By its standard, it means sanitized news only leaving out the most important parts and what readers want most - the full truth and nothing else.
The same goes for the rest of the dominant media that serve as collective national thought control police gatekeepers "filtering" everything we read, see and hear. They manipulate our minds and beliefs, program our thoughts, and effectively destroy the free marketplace of ideas essential to a healthy democracy. In America, that's nowhere in sight.
The problem is most acute in reporting on Israel. Criticism of the Jewish state is stifled in an effort to portray it as a model democracy, the only one in the region, and surrounded by hostile Palestinians, other Arab/Muslim extremists and whoever else Israel cites as a threat, real or contrived. The truth is quite opposite but absent from corporate-controlled media spaces.
How "The Newspaper of Record" Reports on Israel
This article focuses mainly on the media's lead and most influential voice, The New York Times. It's been around since 1851 when it quietly debuted saying "....we intend to (publish) every morning (except Sundays) for an indefinite number of years to come." Today, it's the pillar of the corporate media and main instrument of fake news making it the closest thing in the country to an official ministry of information and propaganda. But here's the Times 1997 Proxy Statement quote media critic Edward Herman used in his April, 1998 Z Magazine article titled "All The News Fit to Print (Part I)." Its management then (and now) claimed The Times to be "an independent newspaper, entirely fearless, free of ulterior influence and unselfishly devoted to the public welfare." It leaves one breathless and demands an earlier used quote - "phew."
No media source anywhere has more clout than the Times, none manipulates the public mind more effectively, and where it goes, others follow. It's most visible supporting all things corporate, foreign wars of aggression, and everything favoring Israel it views one way. That's the focus below - how the New York Times plays the lead cheerleading role for Israel even when its actions are unjustifiable, unconscionable and criminal.
Freelance journalist Alison Weir founded "If Americans Knew" as an "independent research and information-dissemination institute (to provide) every American (what he or she) needs to know about Israel/Palestine." That includes "inform(ing) and educat(ing) the American public on issues of major significance that are unreported, underreported, or misreported in the American media." Below is an account of her in-depth study of how the New York Times betrays its readers by distorting its coverage on Israel.
It was in her April 24, 2005 article called "New York Times Distortion Up Close and Personal." It drew on the findings from her 23-page report, and 40 pages of supportive data, titled "Off the Charts - Accuracy in Reporting of Israel/Palestine (by) The New York Times." To be as objective as possible, the study "count(ed) the deaths reported on both sides of the (Israeli-Palestinian) conflict, and then compare(d) these to the actual number....that had occurred." The findings showed a "startling disparity....depending on the ethnicity of the victim(s)."
The study covered two periods. The first was from the September 29, 2000 beginning of the Al-Aqsa Mosque (or second) Intifada (ignited by Ariel Sharon's provocative visit to the Temple Mount Al-Aqsa Mosque site) through September 28, 2001. The second ran from January 1, 2004 through December 31, 2004. Deaths counted were only those resulting from Israeli - Palestinian confrontations.
The first study showed the New York Times reported 2.8 times the number of Israeli deaths to Palestinian ones when, in fact, three times more Palestinians were killed than Israelis. In the second one, the ratio increased to 3.6 adding further distortion to the coverage. Reporting children's deaths was even more skewed, coming in at a ratio of 6.8 for Israeli children compared to Palestinian ones and then at 7.3 in the later study. The latter ratio is particularly startling since 22 times more Palestinian children were killed, in fact, than Israelis in 2004 according to B'Tselem - the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Terroritories. The Times simply ignored them.
In all its reporting in both periods, the Times distorted the facts egregiously. It highlighted Israeli deaths by headlining and repeating them. In contrast, there was silence on most Palestinian ones. The impression given was that more Jews died than Arabs or at times the numbers were equal on both sides. Most often, they weren't even close.
It was startling to learn that Israeli and other human rights groups documented 82 Palestinian children killed at the Intifada's outset (most by "gunfire to the head" indicating deliberate targeting) before a single Israeli child died. The Times willfully ignored this in its coverage the same way it obsessed last summer over Hamas' capture of a single Israeli soldier while ignoring around 12,000 Palestinian men, women and children political detainees held by Israelis illegally. For the Times, they're non-persons, but everyone in Israel and many outside it know that soldier's name and still do.
Weir calls this coverage a "highly disturbing pattern of bias." She presented her findings ("complete with charts, spread-sheets, clear sourcing, and extensive additional documentation") to the Times' Public Editor, Daniel Okrent, in a face-to-face meeting, but came away disappointed. It was because of a 1762-word column Okrent wrote in response. It ignored or misrepresented the facts, was unconcerned that most Times reporters covering Israel/Palestine are Jewish, all live inside Israel, and the paper claimed it's impossible finding "sufficient numbers of high quality journalists of Muslim or Arab heritage to work on this issue." It is when you don't look.
Yet, it's worth noting what Weir believes was a "personal confession" in a single line. Okrent may have slipped up saying: "I don't think any of us (at the Times) can be objective about our own claimed objectivity." Confession or not, it led to no change in the Times' reporting.
Weir updated her report to include Palestinian children's deaths in 2004 and 2005 from documented information on the "Remember These Children" web site. It uses Israeli and other human rights organizations' sources with these findings through June, 2007:
-- 118 Israeli children under 18 years years of age killed compared to 973 Palestinian youths, most shot in the head or chest indicating deliberate targeting by Israeli soldiers. This information never appears in Times' reports.
Instead, The Times "marginalizes Palestinian women and Palestinian rights" according to a November 17, 2006 Electronic Intifada (EI) report. Its authors (Patrick O'Connor and Rachel Roberts) state: "The New York Times pays little attention to human rights in Israel/Palestine, downplays....violence against Palestinian women and generally silences (their) voices."
Since the second Intifada began, B'Tselem, Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) published 76 reports documenting Israeli abuses of Palestinian rights and four others on Palestinian violations against Israelis or other Palestinians. The Times, however, wrote only four articles on them all - two on Israeli abuses and two others on what Palestinians did suggesting both sides shared equal guilt.
Three other Times articles on the conflict focused on a Human Rights Watch report criticizing Palestinian suicide bombings, another HRW one on Israeli actions in Jenin in 2002, and a B'Tselem report on the Israeli Defense Forces' (IDF) exoneration of soldiers for killing a Palestinian child. The Times also published one article criticizing Israel's 2006 war on Lebanon and one other one critical of Hezbollah during that conflict. It's the Times' idea of fairness and balance, that distorts facts, ignores truth, and in every instance betrays its readers.
EI's writers refer to thousands of New York Times articles on Israel/Palestine since the second Intifada began September 29, 2000. Yet in them all, it "quoted, cited or paraphrased just 4187 words....from human rights organizations in 62 articles, snippets (only) averaging just 69 words per article." In the same articles, far more space was given to Israeli government denials even when clear evidence proved them false.
Other research shows The New York Times op ed page marginalizes Palestinian voices and completely shuts out its women who are portrayed as passive, docile and at the mercy of men. Readers aren't told they "balance their dual commitment to the national (and feminist) struggle(s)" by courageously leading the fight against domestic and Israeli violence in the Occupied Territories. The Times also ignores Amnesty International's emphasis on the occupation's harmful effects on women in detention centers and from "military checkpoints, blockades and curfews" even though they cause sick and pregnant women to die for lack of aid.
It's part of the same pattern of selective disclosure and distortion so readers don't know what's happening and are led to believe victims are the victimizers. Facts are ignored, international law is unmentioned and reporting "contributes to the dangerous pattern of Western disparagement of Muslim society," made easy post-9/11.
EI sums up its article stating "If the Times cared about human rights in Israel/Palestine, (balanced reporting, and) valued independent third party perspectives, (it) would have published more than 6256 (total) words....of major human rights organizations (reports) in its thousands of articles" for the past seven years. Instead, the impression given is Israeli crimes are marginal, sporadic, inconsequential, acts of self-defense and not crimes at all. This type reporting sets the (low) standard for the rest of the dominant media and highlights why few Americans question their government's full and unconditional support for Israeli policy.
The Times willfully ignores the following type information B'Tselem posts and updates on its website (www.btselem.org). From September 29, 2000 through August 31, 2007, it documented 4274 Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces or civilians including 857 children. That compares to 1024 Israelis killed by Palestinians including 119 children.
Throughout this period, The Times low-keyed Israeli violence in its coverage but featured dozens of articles on Palestinian suicide bombings and other acts of self-defense it portrays as "terrorism" against innocent Israelis. Left out is what B'Tselem, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), AI, HRW, ICRC and other human rights organizations report:
-- willful violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention's protections of civilians in times of war and under occupation by a foreign power.
-- excessive use of force and abuse;
-- policy of collective punishment and economic strangulation;
-- growing numbers of expanding illegal settlements;
-- home demolitions;
-- random IDF invasions, air and ground attacks;
-- many dozens of extrajudicial assassinations;
-- administrative detentions without charge and routine use of torture of thousands of Palestinians including young children treated like adults;
-- land expropriation;
-- crop destruction;
-- policies of closure, separation, checkpoints, ghettoization and curfews;
-- denial of the most basic human rights and civil liberties; and
-- an overall Kafkaesque "matrix of control" designed to extinguish Palestinians' will to resist.
The Times willful distortion and indifference to Palestinian suffering highlights its coverage. Like others in the dominant media, it displays no sense of fairness, accuracy or balance in portraying Palestinians as militants, gunmen and terrorists - never as oppressed human beings under occupation struggling for freedom in their own land. In sharp contrast, Israelis are seen as surrounded, beleaguered, and innocent victims acting in self-defense. It's sheer fantasy, the facts on the ground prove it, but Times readers aren't given them.
They're also not told how Israel discriminates against Palestinian Arab Israeli citizens. Patrick O'Connor explained in his March 30, 2006 Electronic Intifada article titled "The New York Times Covers Up Discrimination against Palestinian Citizens of Israel." He noted the rise to prominence of Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman and his extremist Yisrael Beiteinu party. It advocates "transferring a number of Palestinian towns in Israel to Palestinian Authority (PA) control," thereby revoking the legalized status of hundreds of thousands of its own citizens. They're already second class ones and are treated unequally under Israel's Basic Law that affords rights and benefits to Jews only.
O'Connor notes the Times plays "a leading role collaborat(ing) with this strategy." It characterizes all Palestinians as militants, gunmen and terrorists while suppressing their "experiences under....occupation (victimized by) Israeli state terrorism, and (the) systemic Israeli discrimination against Palestinian (citizens) living in Israel...."
An instance of Times distortion was from a March 21, 2006 article by Dina Kraft. In it, Israel dismissively refers to "Israeli Arabs" and so does Kraft. They're not called Palestinian Israeli citizens "to divide and rule, and to cover up the familial, historical and cultural relationship between Palestinians" inside Israel to those in the Territories and diaspora. The Times goes along without challenge, never questioning if a self-declared Jewish state can be democratic without ensuring equal rights to its non-Jewish minority. Ignored as well is Yisrael Beiteinu's outlandish proposal to revoke citizenship rights for Arabs inside Israel because they're not Jews.
O'Connor stresses how the Times, Kraft and the major US media collaboratively perpetuate the myth that Israel is "a liberal, democratic state inexplicably beset by Arab/Muslim terrorism." In so doing, they suppress the historical record that Israel ethnically cleansed 800,000 Palestinians, killed many thousands of others, and destroyed 531 villages and 11 urban neighborhoods in cities like Tel-Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem in its 1948 "War of Independence." They also deny that Palestinians everywhere have close historical, family and cultural ties, yet Israel discriminates against them all unfairly.
In her report, Weir noted what all people of conscience believe: that "readers of The New York Times (and all Americans) are entitled to full and accurate reporting on all issues, including the topic of Israel/Palestine." In her study period, the Times covered it in "well over 1000 stories," so it's deeply troubling how much critical information was omitted.
A 9/11/07 Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) Action Alert provides more evidence of NYT cover-up and distortion. It's titled "Whose Human Rights Matter? NYT on Hezbollah and Israeli attacks on civilians." FAIR cites two recently released Human Rights Watch (HRW)investigations of Israel's war against Lebanon in which The New York Times highlighted "unlawful attacks against Israel" while giving short shrift to "unlawful attacks committed by Israel." This is de rigueur at The Times so the FAIR report is no surprise.
It noted the NYT ran its own 800 word story supportive of Israel on 8/31/07 titled "Rights Group Accuses Hezbollah of Indiscriminate Attacks on Civilians in Israel War" accompanied by a photo of "Israeli civilians at risk from Hezbollah rockets." In sharp contrast, it settled for a 139 word AP report on Israeli unlawful attacks under its own headline titled "Israel Criticized Over Lebanon Deaths" with no photo. Even worse, The Times report on Israeli infractions omitted key information about the claim that Hezbollah used Lebanese people as human shields. HRW found no supportive evidence, and its executive director, Kenneth Roth, said the Israeli government's assertion was false.
The Times also failed to reflect the dramatic disparity in civilian deaths on each side. HRW estimated Israel killed about 900 Lebanese civilians out of a total 1200 death toll in the country while Hezbollah killed 43 Israeli civilians plus about 80 IDF personnel. FAIR's conclusion: The Times values Israeli lives far more than Lebanese ones. No surprise.
FAIR raised an additional point as well from its 12/6/06 Action Alert. It refuted a Times report as false that Israeli attacks on civilians were legitimate "since Hezbollah fired from civilian areas, itself a war crime, which made those areas legitimate targets." Again, standard practice at The Times that values fake news above truth, accuracy, fairness and balance.
Weir hoped a public airing of her findings on The Times would lead to better reporting at the "paper of record." It never did and just got worse following Hamas' dramatic democratic January, 2006 electoral victory. Afterwards, all outside aid was cut off, Hamas was marginalized and politically isolated, and Israeli repression got stepped up in an effort to crush the fledging government by making the Territories "scream."
It came to a head June 14 following weeks of US-Israeli orchestrated violence. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas declared a "state of emergency" and illegally dismissed Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh and his national unity government. He appointed his own US-Israeli vetted replacements days later with The New York Times in the lead supporting the new quisling coup d'etat government. Noted journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger explains the first casualty of war is good journalism. It's as true for reporting on Israel, especially on the pages of "the newspaper of record" that sets the low standard others then follow.
That standard excludes discussion of the powerful Israeli lobby with AIPAC just one part of it. Noted figures like John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government are persona non grata for their heroic work documenting its powerful influence on US policy toward Israel and the Middle East. Noted scholar and activist James Petras makes the same compelling case in his revealing 2006 must-read book titled "The Power of Israel in the United States." The record of "the newspaper of record" includes none of their findings and conclusions proving when it comes to truth in reporting, it's absent from its pages. It's especially pronounced in its coverage of Israel/Palestine.
More Evidence of Corporate Media Distortion on Israel-Palestine
When it comes to shoddy reporting, most notably on Israel/Palestine, there's plenty of blame to go around. It's found on major US broadcast and cable channels, most all corporate-owned publications here and abroad, the BBC, CBC, Deutche Welle, other European broadcasters, and what passes for so-called public radio and broadcasting in the US. An exception is Pacifica Radio, the original and only real public radio in the US. Its provides excellent coverage, especially on KPFA's daily Flashpoints Radio with the best of it anywhere on-air from its co-hosts, contributors and top quality guests.
The opposite is true for so-called National Public Radio's (NPR), but its public broadcast (PBS)counterpart shares equal guilt. Many people naively turn to NPR as an acceptable alternative to corporate media disinformation without realizing it's as corrupted by capital interests and big government as all the others. Its president, Kevin Klose, is the former head of US propaganda that includes Voice of America (VOA), Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Worldnet Television and the anti-Castro Radio/TV Marti. He's ideal for the same role at National Public Radio, and it's why he got the job.
NPR never met a US war of aggression it didn't love, and it's especially attentive to the interests of its corporate paymasters like McDonald's (with $225 million of it), Allstate, Merck, Archer Daniels Midland, and the worst of all worker rights' abusers, Wal-Mart, that NPR welcomes anyway. In its space, there never is heard a discouraging word on any of these or most other major US corporate giants.
Then, there's the issue of fair and balanced reporting on Israel/Palestine that's absent from NPR programs all the time. The media watchdog group FAIR exposed it in its study of NPR's coverage of Israeli/Palestinian violence in the first six months of 2001. Over virtually any period, Palestinian deaths way outnumber Israeli ones. Yet NPR in the period studied reported 62 Israeli deaths compared to 51 Palestinian ones at a time 77 Israelis and 148 Palestinians were killed. It meant "there was an 81% likelihood an Israeli death would be reported on NPR, but only a 34% likelihood" a Palestinian one would be.
The findings were similar each way FAIR examined the data. They showed one-sided pro-Israel reporting the way it is throughout the dominant media. The result (then and now) is NPR betrays the public trust. It suppresses real news in favor of the fake kind it prefers. It violates its claim to be "an internationally acclaimed producer of noncommercial news, talk and entertainment programming" and its mission statement pledge "to create a more informed public - one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciations of events, ideas and cultures (through) programming that meets the highest standards of public service in journalism and cultural expression." It's pure nonsense. On all counts, NPR fails badly.
The Electronic Intifada web site showed how badly. It was in a February 19, 2002 article titled "Special Report: NPR's Linda Gradstein (its Israel correspondent) Takes Cash Payments from Pro-Israel Groups." Ali Abunimah and Nigel Parry (its co-founders) discovered Gradstein violated professional journalistic and NPR ethics and policy by accepting cash honoraria from pro-Israeli organizations in the past and currently to the date of the article.
Gradstein is notorious for her pro-Israeli bias and being paid for it makes it worse. Hillel is one of her paymasters, and in one instance openly acknowledged it considered Gradstein an Israeli propagandist. Other Israeli groups apparently do as well as Gradstein openly violated NPR's stated (but uninforced) policy not to accept these fees. Instead, she regularly takes them and likely still does.
The EI writers concluded "for some reason or other, Gradstein is effectively exempt from NPR's own regulations. These revelations only broaden existing concerns about the integrity of NPR's Middle East reporting and honesty of Linda Gradstein....the sad truth is that Linda Gradstein rarely meets (the minimum) standard(s)" of journalistic ethics and integrity. This is common practice at NPR and at the rest of the major media as well.
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA)
The dominant US media have loads of firepower and freely unleash it supporting Israel. They need no backup help but get it anyway from CAMERA, a powerful Boston-based pro-Israeli media lobby group. The organization was founded by Charles Jacobs in 1982 and claims to be "non-partisan....regard(ing)....American or Israeli political issues (and takes no position) regard(ing)....ultimate solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict." It calls itself "a media-monitoring, research and membership organization devoted to promoting accurate and balanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East."
It claims "Inaccurate and distorted accounts of events in Israel and the Middle East are....found everywhere from college radio stations to network television, from community newspapers to national magazines (to the) Internet." They're also in "fashion magazines, architectural publications, encyclopedias....travel guides, and even dictionaries." They're "inaccurate (and) skewed (and) may fuel anti-Israel and anti-Jewish prejudice."
CAMERA's on guard to fight back with plenty of dues-paying members to do it - 55,000 well-heeled ones plus "thousands of active letter writers." They monitor all media and its journalists everywhere for one purpose - to resolutely support Israel and combat all criticism it calls "anti-Israel bias." CAMERA tolerates none, not even modest in tone on issues too minor to matter. They do to CAMERA that views everything in black and white terms with no gray allowed.
Muslims are bad because they're Muslims and not Jews. Jews, on the other hand, are good because they're Jewish. This for CAMERA is fair and balanced meaning support Israel, right or wrong, and you are. Dare criticize, you're not, and be targeted full force with all CAMERA's hard-hitting tools - mass letter-writing, articles, op-eds, monographs, special reports, full-page ads in major publications, the CAMERA Media Report critiquing "bias and error," CAMERA on Campus doing the same thing, CAMERA Fellows training students in pro-Israeli thinking, and focused attacks on "media bias" and journalists anywhere even mildly critical of Israel.
CAMERA is effective because it's unrelenting, focused and well-funded. It "systematically monitors, documents, reviews and archives (all) Middle East coverage." Its staffers "contact reporters, editors, producers and publishers" demanding "distorted or inaccurate coverage" be retracted and replaced by "factual information to refute errors." For CAMERA, it means support Israel without compromise or be hounded until you do.
Two Examples of Truth in Reporting Banned in the Dominant Media - First from Bethlehem
Pacifica's KPFA Flashpoints Radio co-host Nora Barrows Friedman has become the electronic media's most courageous voice on Israel/Palestine. An example was her disturbing story from Bethlehem August 21 for Inter Press Service that was unreported in the dominant media. It's a dramatic example of sanitizing ugly parts of a story to prettify Israeli actions or simply ignoring it as in this case.
Friedman reported the Israeli military has been cutting and destroying apricot and walnut trees for months to make way for its scheme in the village of Artas, southeast of Bethlehem. It's a concrete tunnel (along with the apartheid separation wall) for raw Israeli settlement sewage (excrement and waste). It's to be dumped on Palestinian land even though its toxicity will endanger the health and welfare of its residents. It will destroy crops and poison the land rendering it useless for agriculture.
Artas villagers have been "active and defiant....over the last year after unofficial information" about the plan leaked out. It's still ongoing, nonetheless, as Israeli bulldozers continue uprooting crops and orchards in preparation for construction to follow. Non-violent protesters (on their own land) "have been shot at, beaten" arrested and imprisoned for defying expropriation of their property. Israel frequently does this throughout the Occupied Territories for the parts it wants. In this case, it's for land to dump raw untreated toxic sewage waste on from its settlements.
It's part of an overall ethnic cleansing scheme to dispossess Palestinians from their lands, one parcel, one village at a time, every devious way Israelis can invent to do it. This time, villagers are fighting back in the Israeli Supreme Court. But based on its past rulings, they have little hope for justice and no hope the major media will help stop the abuse by exposing it in its coverage.
A Second Example: Hamas' "Goals for All of Palestine"
Mousa Abu Marzook, Hamas political bureau deputy, prepared an eloquent op-ed piece July 10 titled "Hamas' stand" that got rare space in the latimes.com but none in the New York Times, NPR or elsewhere in the dominant media. In it, he explained Hamas' July rescue of BBC journalist Alan Johnson wasn't done "as some obsequious boon to Western powers. It was....part of our effort to secure Gaza from (all) lawlessness.... and violence....where journalists, foreigners and guests of the Palestinian people will be treated with dignity."
He stressed Hamas never supported attacks on Westerners. Instead, its struggle "always....focused on the occupier and our legal resistance to it....supported by the Fourth Geneva Convention." Despite that right of any occupied people, Israel and Washington falsely accuse its leaders of ideologies "they know full well we do not follow, such as the agenda of Al Queda and its adherents."
Marzook "deplore(d) the current prognosticating over "Fatah-land (in the West Bank) versus "Hamastan (in Gaza). In the end, there can be only one Palestinian state," and its people have every legal right to demand and expect one. He continued saying its "militant stance" is reasonable in "our fight against the occupation and the right of Palestinians to have dignity, justice and self-rule." It's guaranteed all peoples everywhere under the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Marzook raised the litmus test issue of Palestinians having to concede Israel's "putative right to exist as a necessary precondition to discussing grievances, and to renounce" its 1988 charter position "born of the intolerable conditions under occupation more than 20 years ago." A state "may have a right to exist," he stated, "but not....at the expense of other states (or more importantly) at the expense of millions of human individuals and their rights to justice."
Marzook justifiably asked "Why should anyone concede Israel's right to exist, when it....never....acknowledged (its) foundational crimes of murder, ethnic cleansing (and seizure of) our towns and villages, our farms and orchards, and made us a nation of refugees? Why should any Palestinian recognize (this) monstrous crime....?" How can Israel "declare itself explicitly to be a state for the Jews (alone)....in a land where millions of occupants are Arabs, Muslims and Christians."
Marzook continued denouncing Israeli hypocrisy referring back to the writings of its Zionist founders. In them, they made "repeated calls for the destruction of Palestine's non-Jewish inhabitants" saying: "We must expel the Arabs and take their places." Israeli policy today "advocat(es) for the expulsion of Arab citizens from Israel and the rest of Palestine, envisioning a single Jewish state from the Jordan (River) to the sea." The international community voices "no clamor....for Israel to repudiate these words as a necessary precondition for any discourse whatsoever. The double standard, as always, is" for Palestinians alone.
Marzook has no trouble "recognizing" Israel's right to exist. "Israel does exist," he says, "as any Rafah boy in a hospital bed, with IDF shrapnel in his torso, can tell you." He referred to a distracting "dance of mutual rejection (while) many are dying (or live) as prisoners....in refugee camps" and Israeli prisons unjustly.
Marzook speaks for all Palestinians saying he "look(s) forward to the day when Israel can say to me, and millions of other Palestinians: 'Here, here is your family's house by the sea (we took from you in 1948), here are your lemon trees, the olive grove your father tended: Come home and be whole again.' Then we can speak of a future together" and can have one in peace but never under occupation.
Try finding that commentary in the New York Times or on NPR. Somehow, it slipped into the latimes.com and maybe in error. Pilger is right. The first casualty of war is good journalism. It applies as well to reporting on Israel/Palestine and most other major world and national issues. Real news and information fall victim to the fake kind in the dominant media. Thankfully, people are catching on, viable alternatives abound in print and online, and web sites like this one provide it.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on TheMicroEffect.com Saturdays at noon US central time.
posted by Steve Lendman @ 4:40 AM
DePaul University Professor Norman Finkelstein has long been a target as well for his courageous writing and outspokenness. Depaul formally denied him tenure June 8 even though his students call him "truly outstanding and among the most impressive" of all university political science professors. It's why his Department of Political Science endorsed his tenure bid stating his academic record "exceeds our department's stated standards for scholarly production (and) department and outside experts we consulted recognize the intellectual merits of his work."
It didn't help, and on August 26 got worse. The university acknowledged "Professor Finkelstein is a prolific scholar and an outstanding teacher." Yet it issued a brief statement canceling his classes and placing him on administrative leave "with full pay and benefits for the 2007-8 academic year (that) relieves professors from their teaching responsibilities." For now, Finkelstein's long struggle with the university ended the first day of classes, September 5. Both sides agreed to a settlement, and a planned day of protests was curtailed. But as Chicago Tribune writer Ron Grossman put it in his September 6 column headlined "Finkelstein deal ends DePaul tiff....the underlying struggle between supporters of Israel and champions (like Finkelstein) of the Palestinians continues, not just at the North Side campus but across the academic world."
That struggle is nowhere in sight in the dominant media that includes major print publications, commercial radio, television and so-called Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio both of which long ago abandoned the public trust in service to their corporate and government paymasters.
In all parts of the major media, no Israeli criticism is tolerated on-air or in print, and any reporter, news anchor, pundit or on-air guest forgetting the (unwritten) rules, won't get a second chance. Support for Israel is ironclad, absolute, and uncompromising on everything including its worst crimes of war and against humanity. Open debate is stifled, and anyone daring to dissent or demur is pilloried, ridiculed, called anti-semetic, even threatened, ostracized, and finally ignored. In his seminal work on Middle East affairs, "Fateful Triangle," Noam Chomsky put it this way: "....Israel has been granted a unique immunity from criticism in mainstream journalism and scholarship...."
Call it the myth of the free press in a nation claiming to have the freest of all. It's pure fantasy now and in an earlier era, journalist A.J Liebling said it was only for "those who own(ed) one." Today, they're giants operating the way Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky explained in their classic book on the media titled "Manufacturing Consent." The authors developed their "propaganda model" to show all news and information passes through a set of "filters." "Raw material" goes through them, unacceptable parts are suppressed, and "only the cleansed residue fit to print (and broadcast on-air)" reaches the public. The New York Times calls it "All The News That's Fit to Print." By its standard, it means sanitized news only leaving out the most important parts and what readers want most - the full truth and nothing else.
The same goes for the rest of the dominant media that serve as collective national thought control police gatekeepers "filtering" everything we read, see and hear. They manipulate our minds and beliefs, program our thoughts, and effectively destroy the free marketplace of ideas essential to a healthy democracy. In America, that's nowhere in sight.
The problem is most acute in reporting on Israel. Criticism of the Jewish state is stifled in an effort to portray it as a model democracy, the only one in the region, and surrounded by hostile Palestinians, other Arab/Muslim extremists and whoever else Israel cites as a threat, real or contrived. The truth is quite opposite but absent from corporate-controlled media spaces.
How "The Newspaper of Record" Reports on Israel
This article focuses mainly on the media's lead and most influential voice, The New York Times. It's been around since 1851 when it quietly debuted saying "....we intend to (publish) every morning (except Sundays) for an indefinite number of years to come." Today, it's the pillar of the corporate media and main instrument of fake news making it the closest thing in the country to an official ministry of information and propaganda. But here's the Times 1997 Proxy Statement quote media critic Edward Herman used in his April, 1998 Z Magazine article titled "All The News Fit to Print (Part I)." Its management then (and now) claimed The Times to be "an independent newspaper, entirely fearless, free of ulterior influence and unselfishly devoted to the public welfare." It leaves one breathless and demands an earlier used quote - "phew."
No media source anywhere has more clout than the Times, none manipulates the public mind more effectively, and where it goes, others follow. It's most visible supporting all things corporate, foreign wars of aggression, and everything favoring Israel it views one way. That's the focus below - how the New York Times plays the lead cheerleading role for Israel even when its actions are unjustifiable, unconscionable and criminal.
Freelance journalist Alison Weir founded "If Americans Knew" as an "independent research and information-dissemination institute (to provide) every American (what he or she) needs to know about Israel/Palestine." That includes "inform(ing) and educat(ing) the American public on issues of major significance that are unreported, underreported, or misreported in the American media." Below is an account of her in-depth study of how the New York Times betrays its readers by distorting its coverage on Israel.
It was in her April 24, 2005 article called "New York Times Distortion Up Close and Personal." It drew on the findings from her 23-page report, and 40 pages of supportive data, titled "Off the Charts - Accuracy in Reporting of Israel/Palestine (by) The New York Times." To be as objective as possible, the study "count(ed) the deaths reported on both sides of the (Israeli-Palestinian) conflict, and then compare(d) these to the actual number....that had occurred." The findings showed a "startling disparity....depending on the ethnicity of the victim(s)."
The study covered two periods. The first was from the September 29, 2000 beginning of the Al-Aqsa Mosque (or second) Intifada (ignited by Ariel Sharon's provocative visit to the Temple Mount Al-Aqsa Mosque site) through September 28, 2001. The second ran from January 1, 2004 through December 31, 2004. Deaths counted were only those resulting from Israeli - Palestinian confrontations.
The first study showed the New York Times reported 2.8 times the number of Israeli deaths to Palestinian ones when, in fact, three times more Palestinians were killed than Israelis. In the second one, the ratio increased to 3.6 adding further distortion to the coverage. Reporting children's deaths was even more skewed, coming in at a ratio of 6.8 for Israeli children compared to Palestinian ones and then at 7.3 in the later study. The latter ratio is particularly startling since 22 times more Palestinian children were killed, in fact, than Israelis in 2004 according to B'Tselem - the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Terroritories. The Times simply ignored them.
In all its reporting in both periods, the Times distorted the facts egregiously. It highlighted Israeli deaths by headlining and repeating them. In contrast, there was silence on most Palestinian ones. The impression given was that more Jews died than Arabs or at times the numbers were equal on both sides. Most often, they weren't even close.
It was startling to learn that Israeli and other human rights groups documented 82 Palestinian children killed at the Intifada's outset (most by "gunfire to the head" indicating deliberate targeting) before a single Israeli child died. The Times willfully ignored this in its coverage the same way it obsessed last summer over Hamas' capture of a single Israeli soldier while ignoring around 12,000 Palestinian men, women and children political detainees held by Israelis illegally. For the Times, they're non-persons, but everyone in Israel and many outside it know that soldier's name and still do.
Weir calls this coverage a "highly disturbing pattern of bias." She presented her findings ("complete with charts, spread-sheets, clear sourcing, and extensive additional documentation") to the Times' Public Editor, Daniel Okrent, in a face-to-face meeting, but came away disappointed. It was because of a 1762-word column Okrent wrote in response. It ignored or misrepresented the facts, was unconcerned that most Times reporters covering Israel/Palestine are Jewish, all live inside Israel, and the paper claimed it's impossible finding "sufficient numbers of high quality journalists of Muslim or Arab heritage to work on this issue." It is when you don't look.
Yet, it's worth noting what Weir believes was a "personal confession" in a single line. Okrent may have slipped up saying: "I don't think any of us (at the Times) can be objective about our own claimed objectivity." Confession or not, it led to no change in the Times' reporting.
Weir updated her report to include Palestinian children's deaths in 2004 and 2005 from documented information on the "Remember These Children" web site. It uses Israeli and other human rights organizations' sources with these findings through June, 2007:
-- 118 Israeli children under 18 years years of age killed compared to 973 Palestinian youths, most shot in the head or chest indicating deliberate targeting by Israeli soldiers. This information never appears in Times' reports.
Instead, The Times "marginalizes Palestinian women and Palestinian rights" according to a November 17, 2006 Electronic Intifada (EI) report. Its authors (Patrick O'Connor and Rachel Roberts) state: "The New York Times pays little attention to human rights in Israel/Palestine, downplays....violence against Palestinian women and generally silences (their) voices."
Since the second Intifada began, B'Tselem, Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) published 76 reports documenting Israeli abuses of Palestinian rights and four others on Palestinian violations against Israelis or other Palestinians. The Times, however, wrote only four articles on them all - two on Israeli abuses and two others on what Palestinians did suggesting both sides shared equal guilt.
Three other Times articles on the conflict focused on a Human Rights Watch report criticizing Palestinian suicide bombings, another HRW one on Israeli actions in Jenin in 2002, and a B'Tselem report on the Israeli Defense Forces' (IDF) exoneration of soldiers for killing a Palestinian child. The Times also published one article criticizing Israel's 2006 war on Lebanon and one other one critical of Hezbollah during that conflict. It's the Times' idea of fairness and balance, that distorts facts, ignores truth, and in every instance betrays its readers.
EI's writers refer to thousands of New York Times articles on Israel/Palestine since the second Intifada began September 29, 2000. Yet in them all, it "quoted, cited or paraphrased just 4187 words....from human rights organizations in 62 articles, snippets (only) averaging just 69 words per article." In the same articles, far more space was given to Israeli government denials even when clear evidence proved them false.
Other research shows The New York Times op ed page marginalizes Palestinian voices and completely shuts out its women who are portrayed as passive, docile and at the mercy of men. Readers aren't told they "balance their dual commitment to the national (and feminist) struggle(s)" by courageously leading the fight against domestic and Israeli violence in the Occupied Territories. The Times also ignores Amnesty International's emphasis on the occupation's harmful effects on women in detention centers and from "military checkpoints, blockades and curfews" even though they cause sick and pregnant women to die for lack of aid.
It's part of the same pattern of selective disclosure and distortion so readers don't know what's happening and are led to believe victims are the victimizers. Facts are ignored, international law is unmentioned and reporting "contributes to the dangerous pattern of Western disparagement of Muslim society," made easy post-9/11.
EI sums up its article stating "If the Times cared about human rights in Israel/Palestine, (balanced reporting, and) valued independent third party perspectives, (it) would have published more than 6256 (total) words....of major human rights organizations (reports) in its thousands of articles" for the past seven years. Instead, the impression given is Israeli crimes are marginal, sporadic, inconsequential, acts of self-defense and not crimes at all. This type reporting sets the (low) standard for the rest of the dominant media and highlights why few Americans question their government's full and unconditional support for Israeli policy.
The Times willfully ignores the following type information B'Tselem posts and updates on its website (www.btselem.org). From September 29, 2000 through August 31, 2007, it documented 4274 Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces or civilians including 857 children. That compares to 1024 Israelis killed by Palestinians including 119 children.
Throughout this period, The Times low-keyed Israeli violence in its coverage but featured dozens of articles on Palestinian suicide bombings and other acts of self-defense it portrays as "terrorism" against innocent Israelis. Left out is what B'Tselem, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), AI, HRW, ICRC and other human rights organizations report:
-- willful violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention's protections of civilians in times of war and under occupation by a foreign power.
-- excessive use of force and abuse;
-- policy of collective punishment and economic strangulation;
-- growing numbers of expanding illegal settlements;
-- home demolitions;
-- random IDF invasions, air and ground attacks;
-- many dozens of extrajudicial assassinations;
-- administrative detentions without charge and routine use of torture of thousands of Palestinians including young children treated like adults;
-- land expropriation;
-- crop destruction;
-- policies of closure, separation, checkpoints, ghettoization and curfews;
-- denial of the most basic human rights and civil liberties; and
-- an overall Kafkaesque "matrix of control" designed to extinguish Palestinians' will to resist.
The Times willful distortion and indifference to Palestinian suffering highlights its coverage. Like others in the dominant media, it displays no sense of fairness, accuracy or balance in portraying Palestinians as militants, gunmen and terrorists - never as oppressed human beings under occupation struggling for freedom in their own land. In sharp contrast, Israelis are seen as surrounded, beleaguered, and innocent victims acting in self-defense. It's sheer fantasy, the facts on the ground prove it, but Times readers aren't given them.
They're also not told how Israel discriminates against Palestinian Arab Israeli citizens. Patrick O'Connor explained in his March 30, 2006 Electronic Intifada article titled "The New York Times Covers Up Discrimination against Palestinian Citizens of Israel." He noted the rise to prominence of Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman and his extremist Yisrael Beiteinu party. It advocates "transferring a number of Palestinian towns in Israel to Palestinian Authority (PA) control," thereby revoking the legalized status of hundreds of thousands of its own citizens. They're already second class ones and are treated unequally under Israel's Basic Law that affords rights and benefits to Jews only.
O'Connor notes the Times plays "a leading role collaborat(ing) with this strategy." It characterizes all Palestinians as militants, gunmen and terrorists while suppressing their "experiences under....occupation (victimized by) Israeli state terrorism, and (the) systemic Israeli discrimination against Palestinian (citizens) living in Israel...."
An instance of Times distortion was from a March 21, 2006 article by Dina Kraft. In it, Israel dismissively refers to "Israeli Arabs" and so does Kraft. They're not called Palestinian Israeli citizens "to divide and rule, and to cover up the familial, historical and cultural relationship between Palestinians" inside Israel to those in the Territories and diaspora. The Times goes along without challenge, never questioning if a self-declared Jewish state can be democratic without ensuring equal rights to its non-Jewish minority. Ignored as well is Yisrael Beiteinu's outlandish proposal to revoke citizenship rights for Arabs inside Israel because they're not Jews.
O'Connor stresses how the Times, Kraft and the major US media collaboratively perpetuate the myth that Israel is "a liberal, democratic state inexplicably beset by Arab/Muslim terrorism." In so doing, they suppress the historical record that Israel ethnically cleansed 800,000 Palestinians, killed many thousands of others, and destroyed 531 villages and 11 urban neighborhoods in cities like Tel-Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem in its 1948 "War of Independence." They also deny that Palestinians everywhere have close historical, family and cultural ties, yet Israel discriminates against them all unfairly.
In her report, Weir noted what all people of conscience believe: that "readers of The New York Times (and all Americans) are entitled to full and accurate reporting on all issues, including the topic of Israel/Palestine." In her study period, the Times covered it in "well over 1000 stories," so it's deeply troubling how much critical information was omitted.
A 9/11/07 Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) Action Alert provides more evidence of NYT cover-up and distortion. It's titled "Whose Human Rights Matter? NYT on Hezbollah and Israeli attacks on civilians." FAIR cites two recently released Human Rights Watch (HRW)investigations of Israel's war against Lebanon in which The New York Times highlighted "unlawful attacks against Israel" while giving short shrift to "unlawful attacks committed by Israel." This is de rigueur at The Times so the FAIR report is no surprise.
It noted the NYT ran its own 800 word story supportive of Israel on 8/31/07 titled "Rights Group Accuses Hezbollah of Indiscriminate Attacks on Civilians in Israel War" accompanied by a photo of "Israeli civilians at risk from Hezbollah rockets." In sharp contrast, it settled for a 139 word AP report on Israeli unlawful attacks under its own headline titled "Israel Criticized Over Lebanon Deaths" with no photo. Even worse, The Times report on Israeli infractions omitted key information about the claim that Hezbollah used Lebanese people as human shields. HRW found no supportive evidence, and its executive director, Kenneth Roth, said the Israeli government's assertion was false.
The Times also failed to reflect the dramatic disparity in civilian deaths on each side. HRW estimated Israel killed about 900 Lebanese civilians out of a total 1200 death toll in the country while Hezbollah killed 43 Israeli civilians plus about 80 IDF personnel. FAIR's conclusion: The Times values Israeli lives far more than Lebanese ones. No surprise.
FAIR raised an additional point as well from its 12/6/06 Action Alert. It refuted a Times report as false that Israeli attacks on civilians were legitimate "since Hezbollah fired from civilian areas, itself a war crime, which made those areas legitimate targets." Again, standard practice at The Times that values fake news above truth, accuracy, fairness and balance.
Weir hoped a public airing of her findings on The Times would lead to better reporting at the "paper of record." It never did and just got worse following Hamas' dramatic democratic January, 2006 electoral victory. Afterwards, all outside aid was cut off, Hamas was marginalized and politically isolated, and Israeli repression got stepped up in an effort to crush the fledging government by making the Territories "scream."
It came to a head June 14 following weeks of US-Israeli orchestrated violence. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas declared a "state of emergency" and illegally dismissed Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh and his national unity government. He appointed his own US-Israeli vetted replacements days later with The New York Times in the lead supporting the new quisling coup d'etat government. Noted journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger explains the first casualty of war is good journalism. It's as true for reporting on Israel, especially on the pages of "the newspaper of record" that sets the low standard others then follow.
That standard excludes discussion of the powerful Israeli lobby with AIPAC just one part of it. Noted figures like John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government are persona non grata for their heroic work documenting its powerful influence on US policy toward Israel and the Middle East. Noted scholar and activist James Petras makes the same compelling case in his revealing 2006 must-read book titled "The Power of Israel in the United States." The record of "the newspaper of record" includes none of their findings and conclusions proving when it comes to truth in reporting, it's absent from its pages. It's especially pronounced in its coverage of Israel/Palestine.
More Evidence of Corporate Media Distortion on Israel-Palestine
When it comes to shoddy reporting, most notably on Israel/Palestine, there's plenty of blame to go around. It's found on major US broadcast and cable channels, most all corporate-owned publications here and abroad, the BBC, CBC, Deutche Welle, other European broadcasters, and what passes for so-called public radio and broadcasting in the US. An exception is Pacifica Radio, the original and only real public radio in the US. Its provides excellent coverage, especially on KPFA's daily Flashpoints Radio with the best of it anywhere on-air from its co-hosts, contributors and top quality guests.
The opposite is true for so-called National Public Radio's (NPR), but its public broadcast (PBS)counterpart shares equal guilt. Many people naively turn to NPR as an acceptable alternative to corporate media disinformation without realizing it's as corrupted by capital interests and big government as all the others. Its president, Kevin Klose, is the former head of US propaganda that includes Voice of America (VOA), Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Worldnet Television and the anti-Castro Radio/TV Marti. He's ideal for the same role at National Public Radio, and it's why he got the job.
NPR never met a US war of aggression it didn't love, and it's especially attentive to the interests of its corporate paymasters like McDonald's (with $225 million of it), Allstate, Merck, Archer Daniels Midland, and the worst of all worker rights' abusers, Wal-Mart, that NPR welcomes anyway. In its space, there never is heard a discouraging word on any of these or most other major US corporate giants.
Then, there's the issue of fair and balanced reporting on Israel/Palestine that's absent from NPR programs all the time. The media watchdog group FAIR exposed it in its study of NPR's coverage of Israeli/Palestinian violence in the first six months of 2001. Over virtually any period, Palestinian deaths way outnumber Israeli ones. Yet NPR in the period studied reported 62 Israeli deaths compared to 51 Palestinian ones at a time 77 Israelis and 148 Palestinians were killed. It meant "there was an 81% likelihood an Israeli death would be reported on NPR, but only a 34% likelihood" a Palestinian one would be.
The findings were similar each way FAIR examined the data. They showed one-sided pro-Israel reporting the way it is throughout the dominant media. The result (then and now) is NPR betrays the public trust. It suppresses real news in favor of the fake kind it prefers. It violates its claim to be "an internationally acclaimed producer of noncommercial news, talk and entertainment programming" and its mission statement pledge "to create a more informed public - one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciations of events, ideas and cultures (through) programming that meets the highest standards of public service in journalism and cultural expression." It's pure nonsense. On all counts, NPR fails badly.
The Electronic Intifada web site showed how badly. It was in a February 19, 2002 article titled "Special Report: NPR's Linda Gradstein (its Israel correspondent) Takes Cash Payments from Pro-Israel Groups." Ali Abunimah and Nigel Parry (its co-founders) discovered Gradstein violated professional journalistic and NPR ethics and policy by accepting cash honoraria from pro-Israeli organizations in the past and currently to the date of the article.
Gradstein is notorious for her pro-Israeli bias and being paid for it makes it worse. Hillel is one of her paymasters, and in one instance openly acknowledged it considered Gradstein an Israeli propagandist. Other Israeli groups apparently do as well as Gradstein openly violated NPR's stated (but uninforced) policy not to accept these fees. Instead, she regularly takes them and likely still does.
The EI writers concluded "for some reason or other, Gradstein is effectively exempt from NPR's own regulations. These revelations only broaden existing concerns about the integrity of NPR's Middle East reporting and honesty of Linda Gradstein....the sad truth is that Linda Gradstein rarely meets (the minimum) standard(s)" of journalistic ethics and integrity. This is common practice at NPR and at the rest of the major media as well.
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA)
The dominant US media have loads of firepower and freely unleash it supporting Israel. They need no backup help but get it anyway from CAMERA, a powerful Boston-based pro-Israeli media lobby group. The organization was founded by Charles Jacobs in 1982 and claims to be "non-partisan....regard(ing)....American or Israeli political issues (and takes no position) regard(ing)....ultimate solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict." It calls itself "a media-monitoring, research and membership organization devoted to promoting accurate and balanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East."
It claims "Inaccurate and distorted accounts of events in Israel and the Middle East are....found everywhere from college radio stations to network television, from community newspapers to national magazines (to the) Internet." They're also in "fashion magazines, architectural publications, encyclopedias....travel guides, and even dictionaries." They're "inaccurate (and) skewed (and) may fuel anti-Israel and anti-Jewish prejudice."
CAMERA's on guard to fight back with plenty of dues-paying members to do it - 55,000 well-heeled ones plus "thousands of active letter writers." They monitor all media and its journalists everywhere for one purpose - to resolutely support Israel and combat all criticism it calls "anti-Israel bias." CAMERA tolerates none, not even modest in tone on issues too minor to matter. They do to CAMERA that views everything in black and white terms with no gray allowed.
Muslims are bad because they're Muslims and not Jews. Jews, on the other hand, are good because they're Jewish. This for CAMERA is fair and balanced meaning support Israel, right or wrong, and you are. Dare criticize, you're not, and be targeted full force with all CAMERA's hard-hitting tools - mass letter-writing, articles, op-eds, monographs, special reports, full-page ads in major publications, the CAMERA Media Report critiquing "bias and error," CAMERA on Campus doing the same thing, CAMERA Fellows training students in pro-Israeli thinking, and focused attacks on "media bias" and journalists anywhere even mildly critical of Israel.
CAMERA is effective because it's unrelenting, focused and well-funded. It "systematically monitors, documents, reviews and archives (all) Middle East coverage." Its staffers "contact reporters, editors, producers and publishers" demanding "distorted or inaccurate coverage" be retracted and replaced by "factual information to refute errors." For CAMERA, it means support Israel without compromise or be hounded until you do.
Two Examples of Truth in Reporting Banned in the Dominant Media - First from Bethlehem
Pacifica's KPFA Flashpoints Radio co-host Nora Barrows Friedman has become the electronic media's most courageous voice on Israel/Palestine. An example was her disturbing story from Bethlehem August 21 for Inter Press Service that was unreported in the dominant media. It's a dramatic example of sanitizing ugly parts of a story to prettify Israeli actions or simply ignoring it as in this case.
Friedman reported the Israeli military has been cutting and destroying apricot and walnut trees for months to make way for its scheme in the village of Artas, southeast of Bethlehem. It's a concrete tunnel (along with the apartheid separation wall) for raw Israeli settlement sewage (excrement and waste). It's to be dumped on Palestinian land even though its toxicity will endanger the health and welfare of its residents. It will destroy crops and poison the land rendering it useless for agriculture.
Artas villagers have been "active and defiant....over the last year after unofficial information" about the plan leaked out. It's still ongoing, nonetheless, as Israeli bulldozers continue uprooting crops and orchards in preparation for construction to follow. Non-violent protesters (on their own land) "have been shot at, beaten" arrested and imprisoned for defying expropriation of their property. Israel frequently does this throughout the Occupied Territories for the parts it wants. In this case, it's for land to dump raw untreated toxic sewage waste on from its settlements.
It's part of an overall ethnic cleansing scheme to dispossess Palestinians from their lands, one parcel, one village at a time, every devious way Israelis can invent to do it. This time, villagers are fighting back in the Israeli Supreme Court. But based on its past rulings, they have little hope for justice and no hope the major media will help stop the abuse by exposing it in its coverage.
A Second Example: Hamas' "Goals for All of Palestine"
Mousa Abu Marzook, Hamas political bureau deputy, prepared an eloquent op-ed piece July 10 titled "Hamas' stand" that got rare space in the latimes.com but none in the New York Times, NPR or elsewhere in the dominant media. In it, he explained Hamas' July rescue of BBC journalist Alan Johnson wasn't done "as some obsequious boon to Western powers. It was....part of our effort to secure Gaza from (all) lawlessness.... and violence....where journalists, foreigners and guests of the Palestinian people will be treated with dignity."
He stressed Hamas never supported attacks on Westerners. Instead, its struggle "always....focused on the occupier and our legal resistance to it....supported by the Fourth Geneva Convention." Despite that right of any occupied people, Israel and Washington falsely accuse its leaders of ideologies "they know full well we do not follow, such as the agenda of Al Queda and its adherents."
Marzook "deplore(d) the current prognosticating over "Fatah-land (in the West Bank) versus "Hamastan (in Gaza). In the end, there can be only one Palestinian state," and its people have every legal right to demand and expect one. He continued saying its "militant stance" is reasonable in "our fight against the occupation and the right of Palestinians to have dignity, justice and self-rule." It's guaranteed all peoples everywhere under the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Marzook raised the litmus test issue of Palestinians having to concede Israel's "putative right to exist as a necessary precondition to discussing grievances, and to renounce" its 1988 charter position "born of the intolerable conditions under occupation more than 20 years ago." A state "may have a right to exist," he stated, "but not....at the expense of other states (or more importantly) at the expense of millions of human individuals and their rights to justice."
Marzook justifiably asked "Why should anyone concede Israel's right to exist, when it....never....acknowledged (its) foundational crimes of murder, ethnic cleansing (and seizure of) our towns and villages, our farms and orchards, and made us a nation of refugees? Why should any Palestinian recognize (this) monstrous crime....?" How can Israel "declare itself explicitly to be a state for the Jews (alone)....in a land where millions of occupants are Arabs, Muslims and Christians."
Marzook continued denouncing Israeli hypocrisy referring back to the writings of its Zionist founders. In them, they made "repeated calls for the destruction of Palestine's non-Jewish inhabitants" saying: "We must expel the Arabs and take their places." Israeli policy today "advocat(es) for the expulsion of Arab citizens from Israel and the rest of Palestine, envisioning a single Jewish state from the Jordan (River) to the sea." The international community voices "no clamor....for Israel to repudiate these words as a necessary precondition for any discourse whatsoever. The double standard, as always, is" for Palestinians alone.
Marzook has no trouble "recognizing" Israel's right to exist. "Israel does exist," he says, "as any Rafah boy in a hospital bed, with IDF shrapnel in his torso, can tell you." He referred to a distracting "dance of mutual rejection (while) many are dying (or live) as prisoners....in refugee camps" and Israeli prisons unjustly.
Marzook speaks for all Palestinians saying he "look(s) forward to the day when Israel can say to me, and millions of other Palestinians: 'Here, here is your family's house by the sea (we took from you in 1948), here are your lemon trees, the olive grove your father tended: Come home and be whole again.' Then we can speak of a future together" and can have one in peace but never under occupation.
Try finding that commentary in the New York Times or on NPR. Somehow, it slipped into the latimes.com and maybe in error. Pilger is right. The first casualty of war is good journalism. It applies as well to reporting on Israel/Palestine and most other major world and national issues. Real news and information fall victim to the fake kind in the dominant media. Thankfully, people are catching on, viable alternatives abound in print and online, and web sites like this one provide it.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on TheMicroEffect.com Saturdays at noon US central time.
posted by Steve Lendman @ 4:40 AM
Chavez Warns that Bolivia is Being Destabilized by U.S. Just as Venezuela is
By: Kiraz Janicke - Venezuelanalysis.com
Caracas, September 10, 2007 (venezuelanalysis.com) –
Flanked by Bolivian President Evo Morales, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
warned of a plan financed by the United States to derail the democratically
elected government of Bolivia, including a plan to assassinate Morales, said
Chavez during his weekly television program Aló Presidente.
I hold responsible the president of the United States, George Bush, for what
could happen to compañero Morales, because they are conspiring against the
government, including to kill him," he said.
However, Chavez warned, "If U.S. imperialism attacks our peoples, using
their lackeys in Venezuela and Bolivia, they can be sure that we're not
going to wait with our arms crossed."
"If that occurs," he continued, referring to the famous phrase of
revolutionary leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who called for Vietnam style
guerilla war against U.S. imperialism, "we will shout with Che Guevara and
then one, two, three, four, five, or 10 Vietnams will have to be created in
Latin America."
"Imperialism has a plan to knock off this Indian. I put to them we have a
plan also, but of course we are not going to say. Right, Evo? What is going
to happen to the Bolivian oligarchy is what happened to the Venezuelan
oligarchy the 12 and 13th of April [2002], when the Venezuelan people came
out to confront the tyranny, the imperialist coup. It's best that we don't
tell more of the plan."
Chavez's comments came as up to 100,000 people from Bolivia's campesino and
indigenous movements began converging on Sucre for a Social Summit in
defense of the Constituent Assembly. Over the past week Sucre has been
wracked with violent protests aimed at disrupting the process of
constitutional reform, which would provide a framework for the social
inclusion of Bolivia's long marginalized indigenous majority. Right wing
opposition groups demanding that the executive and legislative powers of
government be transferred from La Paz to Sucre have burned car tires and
repeatedly attempted to shut down the Constituent Assembly, which as a
result has called a one-month recess.
"The oligarchy that today is conspiring against Evo in Bolivia is the same
oligarchy that conspired here against Venezuela, against our people, it is
the same that here made a coup, driven forward and financed by the
government of the United States, the same is occurring in Bolivia," he added
While U.S. officials have repeatedly denied Chavez's claims that Washington
is attempting to overthrow him and other leftist governments in the region,
Chavez said that Morales possessed documentary evidence of U.S. interference
and intentions to destabilize his government.
Chavez's claims are supported by the investigation of U.S.-Venezuelan human
rights lawyer Eva Golinger, who last week published a report that documents
U.S. government funding of opposition groups in both Venezuela and Bolivia.
Golinger reveals that the USAID Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI),
opened in Bolivia in 2004 has contracted the U.S. Company Casals &
Associates Inc. (C&A) to manage US$13.3 million granted to 379
organizations, political parties, and projects in Bolivia. USAID-OTI and C&A
in Bolivia have focused their efforts on combating and influencing the
Constituent Assembly, and on "promoting separatism in the regions rich in
natural resources, such as Santa Cruz and Cochabamba," Golinger argues.
"The majority of the 13.3 million has been given to organizations and
programs working to 'strengthen regional governments' with the intention of
weakening the national government of Evo Morales," she continued.
Chavez insisted, however, that Venezuela and Bolivia want peace to increase
production of food and to carry out health, education, literacy, and social
justice programs and pointed out that Bolivia would soon be the third
country in Latin America to eradicate illiteracy after Cuba in 1961 and
Venezuela in 2005.
Morales thanked Chavez for being invited to his program and said that while
he recognized that his government was confronted by problems from various
opposition groups against the Constituent Assembly and the process of
constitutional reform, the majority of Bolivians are supporting the process
of change for more social equality.
Morales also spoke of the need to change the economic model in Bolivia and
Latin America more broadly, "The mineral wealth of Latin American countries
had been looted by industrialized nations and nothing had been done to drive
forward their development. The governments of Latin America are obliged to
take advantage of their natural resources to promote the development of
their peoples."
During the program Chavez and Morales signed a number of agreements for
joint development projects between their respective countries, as well as
inaugurating the first phase of the Siderúrgica Ferrominera iron and steel
plant in the Cuidad Piar in Venezuela's Orinoco oil belt.
The agreements, which form part of ALBA (the Bolivarian Alternative for the
Americas), initiated by Venezuela in opposition to the U.S. promoted Free
Trade Agreement of the Americas, include plans to form joint-ventures in
mining, cement and forestry projects, build a petrochemical plant in
Cochabamba, as well as a bi-national company to exploit the Mutun iron
deposit in Bolivia's Santa Cruz department, which, according to a statement
today from Venezuela's information ministry, has 42 billion metric tons of
reserves.
During the broadcast Chavez also spoke of his offer to mediate peace
negotiations in neighboring Columbia between the government and the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), saying he would travel to
territory controlled by the FARC, if necessary, "I'm willing to go into
the deepest part of the largest jungle to talk with Marulanda."
"I have faith that we will succeed. Nobody said it would be easy," he added.
Caracas, September 10, 2007 (venezuelanalysis.com) –
Flanked by Bolivian President Evo Morales, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
warned of a plan financed by the United States to derail the democratically
elected government of Bolivia, including a plan to assassinate Morales, said
Chavez during his weekly television program Aló Presidente.
I hold responsible the president of the United States, George Bush, for what
could happen to compañero Morales, because they are conspiring against the
government, including to kill him," he said.
However, Chavez warned, "If U.S. imperialism attacks our peoples, using
their lackeys in Venezuela and Bolivia, they can be sure that we're not
going to wait with our arms crossed."
"If that occurs," he continued, referring to the famous phrase of
revolutionary leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who called for Vietnam style
guerilla war against U.S. imperialism, "we will shout with Che Guevara and
then one, two, three, four, five, or 10 Vietnams will have to be created in
Latin America."
"Imperialism has a plan to knock off this Indian. I put to them we have a
plan also, but of course we are not going to say. Right, Evo? What is going
to happen to the Bolivian oligarchy is what happened to the Venezuelan
oligarchy the 12 and 13th of April [2002], when the Venezuelan people came
out to confront the tyranny, the imperialist coup. It's best that we don't
tell more of the plan."
Chavez's comments came as up to 100,000 people from Bolivia's campesino and
indigenous movements began converging on Sucre for a Social Summit in
defense of the Constituent Assembly. Over the past week Sucre has been
wracked with violent protests aimed at disrupting the process of
constitutional reform, which would provide a framework for the social
inclusion of Bolivia's long marginalized indigenous majority. Right wing
opposition groups demanding that the executive and legislative powers of
government be transferred from La Paz to Sucre have burned car tires and
repeatedly attempted to shut down the Constituent Assembly, which as a
result has called a one-month recess.
"The oligarchy that today is conspiring against Evo in Bolivia is the same
oligarchy that conspired here against Venezuela, against our people, it is
the same that here made a coup, driven forward and financed by the
government of the United States, the same is occurring in Bolivia," he added
While U.S. officials have repeatedly denied Chavez's claims that Washington
is attempting to overthrow him and other leftist governments in the region,
Chavez said that Morales possessed documentary evidence of U.S. interference
and intentions to destabilize his government.
Chavez's claims are supported by the investigation of U.S.-Venezuelan human
rights lawyer Eva Golinger, who last week published a report that documents
U.S. government funding of opposition groups in both Venezuela and Bolivia.
Golinger reveals that the USAID Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI),
opened in Bolivia in 2004 has contracted the U.S. Company Casals &
Associates Inc. (C&A) to manage US$13.3 million granted to 379
organizations, political parties, and projects in Bolivia. USAID-OTI and C&A
in Bolivia have focused their efforts on combating and influencing the
Constituent Assembly, and on "promoting separatism in the regions rich in
natural resources, such as Santa Cruz and Cochabamba," Golinger argues.
"The majority of the 13.3 million has been given to organizations and
programs working to 'strengthen regional governments' with the intention of
weakening the national government of Evo Morales," she continued.
Chavez insisted, however, that Venezuela and Bolivia want peace to increase
production of food and to carry out health, education, literacy, and social
justice programs and pointed out that Bolivia would soon be the third
country in Latin America to eradicate illiteracy after Cuba in 1961 and
Venezuela in 2005.
Morales thanked Chavez for being invited to his program and said that while
he recognized that his government was confronted by problems from various
opposition groups against the Constituent Assembly and the process of
constitutional reform, the majority of Bolivians are supporting the process
of change for more social equality.
Morales also spoke of the need to change the economic model in Bolivia and
Latin America more broadly, "The mineral wealth of Latin American countries
had been looted by industrialized nations and nothing had been done to drive
forward their development. The governments of Latin America are obliged to
take advantage of their natural resources to promote the development of
their peoples."
During the program Chavez and Morales signed a number of agreements for
joint development projects between their respective countries, as well as
inaugurating the first phase of the Siderúrgica Ferrominera iron and steel
plant in the Cuidad Piar in Venezuela's Orinoco oil belt.
The agreements, which form part of ALBA (the Bolivarian Alternative for the
Americas), initiated by Venezuela in opposition to the U.S. promoted Free
Trade Agreement of the Americas, include plans to form joint-ventures in
mining, cement and forestry projects, build a petrochemical plant in
Cochabamba, as well as a bi-national company to exploit the Mutun iron
deposit in Bolivia's Santa Cruz department, which, according to a statement
today from Venezuela's information ministry, has 42 billion metric tons of
reserves.
During the broadcast Chavez also spoke of his offer to mediate peace
negotiations in neighboring Columbia between the government and the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), saying he would travel to
territory controlled by the FARC, if necessary, "I'm willing to go into
the deepest part of the largest jungle to talk with Marulanda."
"I have faith that we will succeed. Nobody said it would be easy," he added.
Submarines and Lots of Dough
What do a nuclear submarine off the coast of Venezuela and a bunch of NGOs have in common? Why, US intervention in Venezuela, of course!!
Yes, once again the United States is floating nuclear submarines just twenty miles off Venezuela's northwest coast in the Dutch island of Curaçao. The USS Albuquerque, a 110-meter long nuclear submarine docked last Friday, September 7th, at the Bay of Santa Ana on the island of Curaçao, the largest of the Dutch Antilles and Venezuela's closest neighbor in the Caribbean. Since 1999, the United States has maintained a small operative air force base within Curaçao's Hato International Airport. However, during 2006, construction began to expand the air base and US military and intelligence presence was pumped up throughout Curaçao, including an astonishing increase from what used to be no more than 10 US warships, aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines passing through Curaçao's vast ports annually to over 100 just last year. Many of these battleships formed part of a sudden desire by the Pentagon's Southern Command to conduct a dozen or so military exercises in the Caribbean Sea that responded to hypothetical "terrorist" threats in the region or provided "humanitarian" support to neighboring islands. Considering that simultaneously, the US State Department was classifying Venezuela as a nation "not fully collaborating" with the war on terrorism and labeling President Chávez as "authoritarian" and "dictatorial", it isn't paranoid to assume that the increase in US military presence on Curaçao and surrounding bases is directed at intimidating Venezuela. Furthermore, the USS Albuquerque was last spotted just a mere three weeks ago on the island of Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela's closest neighbor in the northeastern Caribbean region. One has to wonder what the nuclear submarine was doing from the time it left Trinidad and Tobago and arrived at Curaçao, all that time just floating around off the coast of Venezuela...
So here's the juice on the new National Endowment for Democracy (NED) figures for funding activities in Venezuela during fiscal year 2006-2007. The following list is taken from the NED's own webpage. Remember, while the "projects" may sound friendly and helpful, it's all about intervening in the affairs of another nation. And the NED's history in Venezuela (as well as other nations like Haiti, Nicaragua, Bolivia, etc) has been pretty shady. Most groups funded in Venezuela have been involved in coup attempts or other destabilization actions against the Chávez administration, and as you will see, many groups now being funded appear to be trying to "break" into the Chávez camp to counteract or sabotage social programs or advances, such as the community councils (NED proposes "citizen councils"), and to impose the US-NED view of "democracy". Total funds dedicated to Venezuela this year =$2,166,076.00. And that's just on NED's end. USAID's 2007 budget for its "democracy promotion and transition" programs in Venezuela tops $3.6 million (to more than 385 groups/programs in Venezuela; all political). Of course, that doesn't include the additional $10 million Congress approved in the Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill this year to invest in transmitting "pro-American" propaganda to Venezuela. Yeah, like we really need that here. With major television networks like Globovisión, Venevisión and RCTV (now on cable and DirecTV), 90% of daily newspapers and 90% of radio stations constantly blabbering anti-Chávez and pro-US garbage, we can definitely say that those $10 million will be sliding into some other pockets down here. Oh, and before you read the list, remember that once December rolls around and the new constitutional reform is approved, Article 67 will prohibit - hear that, PROHIBIT - foreign funding from governmental OR private entities to groups with political objectives in Venezuela. Which means....enjoy those greenbacks while you can baby, because come December, the game is up!! (It makes me so happy to say that I could just cry).
Asociación Civil Acción Campesina (Farmers in Action)
$60,106 To strengthen community planning institutions, their interaction with local government officials, and their ability to address the priorities and concerns of the local populations.
Asociación Civil Consorcio Desarrollo y Justicia (Consortium for Development and Justice)
$49,904 To continue strengthening its observatory program to monitor the judiciary in Venezuela.
Asociación Civil Consorcio Desarrollo y Justicia (Consortium for Development and Justice)
$79,632 To promote democratic participation and defend human rights.
Asociación Civil Consorcio Justicia-CapÃtulo Occidente (Justice Consortium - West) $27,460 To bolster democratic participation and social consciousness in Táchira State.
Asociación Civil Justicia Alternativa (Alternative Justice)
$26,750 To strengthen the capacity of justices of the peace in Aragua State.
Asociación Civil Kapé-Kapé (Kapé-Kapé)
$39,900 To train indigenous leaders on negotiation, leadership, and human rights, and to facilitate a socioeconomic development agenda.
Asociación Civil Liderazgo y Visión (Leadership and Vision)
$64,823 To continue democracy and human rights training for members of the police and fire departments in the states of Aragua, Carabobo, and Cojedes.
Asociación Civil Uniandes (Uniandes)
$21,630 To promote participation in local citizen councils in Mérida.
Asodisamar
$16,200 To promote consensus building and strengthen political leadership in Sucre State.
Center for International Private Enterprise
$98,173 To educate community leaders.
Centro al Servicio de la Acción Popular (Center for Popular Action) (CESAP)
$74,675 To enhance civil society's capacity to monitor and evaluate government social programs and social policy expenditures.
Centro de Estudios de Derechos Humanos (Center for Human Rights Studies) (CEDH)
$45,652 To establish a network of independent judges and jurists to encourage judicial reform.
Centro Educativo de Adiestramiento Comunitario y Ético (Education Center for Community Training and Ethics) (CEACE)
$70,800 To implement a national-level training program for grassroots leaders, professionals, and government officials.
Fundación Justicia de Paz Monagas (Justice of Peace of Monagas State Foundation)
$28,850 To promote increased community participation.
Instituto Prensa y Sociedad de Venezuela (Institute of Press and Society of Venezuela) (IPYS)
$82,700 To monitor freedom of expression violations at the national level and to provide training to journalists.
International Republican Institute
$200,000 To strengthen the institutional capacity and internal democratic processes of political parties
Regional
AfroAmerica XXI
$100,998
To promote local political participation of Afro-Latino communities in Honduras, Panama, and Venezuela.
American Center for International Labor Solidarity
$687,823 To strengthen unions' capacity to involve workers democratically at their workplaces in Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia.
American University, Academy for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law
$169,984 To promote the role of law schools in influencing public policy regarding human rights issues.
Asociación Ser en el 2000 (2000 Association) (SER)
$110,000 To promote the capacity of civilians in the area of security and defense.
Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL)
$160,000 To promote and defend human rights in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela.
Yes, once again the United States is floating nuclear submarines just twenty miles off Venezuela's northwest coast in the Dutch island of Curaçao. The USS Albuquerque, a 110-meter long nuclear submarine docked last Friday, September 7th, at the Bay of Santa Ana on the island of Curaçao, the largest of the Dutch Antilles and Venezuela's closest neighbor in the Caribbean. Since 1999, the United States has maintained a small operative air force base within Curaçao's Hato International Airport. However, during 2006, construction began to expand the air base and US military and intelligence presence was pumped up throughout Curaçao, including an astonishing increase from what used to be no more than 10 US warships, aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines passing through Curaçao's vast ports annually to over 100 just last year. Many of these battleships formed part of a sudden desire by the Pentagon's Southern Command to conduct a dozen or so military exercises in the Caribbean Sea that responded to hypothetical "terrorist" threats in the region or provided "humanitarian" support to neighboring islands. Considering that simultaneously, the US State Department was classifying Venezuela as a nation "not fully collaborating" with the war on terrorism and labeling President Chávez as "authoritarian" and "dictatorial", it isn't paranoid to assume that the increase in US military presence on Curaçao and surrounding bases is directed at intimidating Venezuela. Furthermore, the USS Albuquerque was last spotted just a mere three weeks ago on the island of Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela's closest neighbor in the northeastern Caribbean region. One has to wonder what the nuclear submarine was doing from the time it left Trinidad and Tobago and arrived at Curaçao, all that time just floating around off the coast of Venezuela...
So here's the juice on the new National Endowment for Democracy (NED) figures for funding activities in Venezuela during fiscal year 2006-2007. The following list is taken from the NED's own webpage. Remember, while the "projects" may sound friendly and helpful, it's all about intervening in the affairs of another nation. And the NED's history in Venezuela (as well as other nations like Haiti, Nicaragua, Bolivia, etc) has been pretty shady. Most groups funded in Venezuela have been involved in coup attempts or other destabilization actions against the Chávez administration, and as you will see, many groups now being funded appear to be trying to "break" into the Chávez camp to counteract or sabotage social programs or advances, such as the community councils (NED proposes "citizen councils"), and to impose the US-NED view of "democracy". Total funds dedicated to Venezuela this year =$2,166,076.00. And that's just on NED's end. USAID's 2007 budget for its "democracy promotion and transition" programs in Venezuela tops $3.6 million (to more than 385 groups/programs in Venezuela; all political). Of course, that doesn't include the additional $10 million Congress approved in the Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill this year to invest in transmitting "pro-American" propaganda to Venezuela. Yeah, like we really need that here. With major television networks like Globovisión, Venevisión and RCTV (now on cable and DirecTV), 90% of daily newspapers and 90% of radio stations constantly blabbering anti-Chávez and pro-US garbage, we can definitely say that those $10 million will be sliding into some other pockets down here. Oh, and before you read the list, remember that once December rolls around and the new constitutional reform is approved, Article 67 will prohibit - hear that, PROHIBIT - foreign funding from governmental OR private entities to groups with political objectives in Venezuela. Which means....enjoy those greenbacks while you can baby, because come December, the game is up!! (It makes me so happy to say that I could just cry).
Asociación Civil Acción Campesina (Farmers in Action)
$60,106 To strengthen community planning institutions, their interaction with local government officials, and their ability to address the priorities and concerns of the local populations.
Asociación Civil Consorcio Desarrollo y Justicia (Consortium for Development and Justice)
$49,904 To continue strengthening its observatory program to monitor the judiciary in Venezuela.
Asociación Civil Consorcio Desarrollo y Justicia (Consortium for Development and Justice)
$79,632 To promote democratic participation and defend human rights.
Asociación Civil Consorcio Justicia-CapÃtulo Occidente (Justice Consortium - West) $27,460 To bolster democratic participation and social consciousness in Táchira State.
Asociación Civil Justicia Alternativa (Alternative Justice)
$26,750 To strengthen the capacity of justices of the peace in Aragua State.
Asociación Civil Kapé-Kapé (Kapé-Kapé)
$39,900 To train indigenous leaders on negotiation, leadership, and human rights, and to facilitate a socioeconomic development agenda.
Asociación Civil Liderazgo y Visión (Leadership and Vision)
$64,823 To continue democracy and human rights training for members of the police and fire departments in the states of Aragua, Carabobo, and Cojedes.
Asociación Civil Uniandes (Uniandes)
$21,630 To promote participation in local citizen councils in Mérida.
Asodisamar
$16,200 To promote consensus building and strengthen political leadership in Sucre State.
Center for International Private Enterprise
$98,173 To educate community leaders.
Centro al Servicio de la Acción Popular (Center for Popular Action) (CESAP)
$74,675 To enhance civil society's capacity to monitor and evaluate government social programs and social policy expenditures.
Centro de Estudios de Derechos Humanos (Center for Human Rights Studies) (CEDH)
$45,652 To establish a network of independent judges and jurists to encourage judicial reform.
Centro Educativo de Adiestramiento Comunitario y Ético (Education Center for Community Training and Ethics) (CEACE)
$70,800 To implement a national-level training program for grassroots leaders, professionals, and government officials.
Fundación Justicia de Paz Monagas (Justice of Peace of Monagas State Foundation)
$28,850 To promote increased community participation.
Instituto Prensa y Sociedad de Venezuela (Institute of Press and Society of Venezuela) (IPYS)
$82,700 To monitor freedom of expression violations at the national level and to provide training to journalists.
International Republican Institute
$200,000 To strengthen the institutional capacity and internal democratic processes of political parties
Regional
AfroAmerica XXI
$100,998
To promote local political participation of Afro-Latino communities in Honduras, Panama, and Venezuela.
American Center for International Labor Solidarity
$687,823 To strengthen unions' capacity to involve workers democratically at their workplaces in Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia.
American University, Academy for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law
$169,984 To promote the role of law schools in influencing public policy regarding human rights issues.
Asociación Ser en el 2000 (2000 Association) (SER)
$110,000 To promote the capacity of civilians in the area of security and defense.
Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL)
$160,000 To promote and defend human rights in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Imperial Autism by Tom Engelhardt
The former Cockney flower-girl-turned-elegant- English-speaker Eliza Doolittle caught something of our moment in these lyrics from My Fair Lady: "Oh, words, words, words, I'm so sick of words…. Is that all you blighters can do?" Of course, all she had to do was be Pygmalion to a self-involved language teacher. We've had to bear with the bloviating of almost every member of Congress, the full-blast PR apparatus of the White House, and two endless days of congressional testimony from Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, not to speak of the flood of newspaper, radio, and TV stories about all of the above and the bevy of experts who are hustled out to do the horse-race assessments of how the general and ambassador performed, whether they "bought" time for the president, and the like.
And – count on it – that's just the beginning. The same cast of characters will be talking, squabbling, spinning, and analyzing stats of every sort for weeks to come – with a sequel promised next spring. Everyone knows that's the case, just as everyone has known since mid-summer that we would get to this point and, when we did, that things similar to those said (and written) in the last two days would indeed be said (and written), and that nothing the blighters would say or write would matter a whit, or change the course of events, or the tide of history, even though whole forests might be pulped in the process and it would be springtime for hyperbole and breathless overstatement in the world of news.
There has been a drumbeat of growing excitement in the press, preparing us for "pivotal reports," a "pivotal hearing," "highly anticipated appearances," and "long-awaited testimony," or, as both the Washington Post on its front page and ABC World News in a lead report put it, "the most anticipated congressional testimony by a general since the Vietnam War."
Petraeus himself has been treated in the media as a celebrity, somewhere between a conquering caesar and the Paris Hilton of generals. Nothing he does has been too unimportant to record, not just the size of his entourage as he arrived from Baghdad, or the suite he was assigned at the Pentagon, or even his "recon" walk through the room in the House of Representatives where he would testify Monday, but every detail. Somehow, when he refused to give interviews before his "long-awaited" appearance, lots of Petraeus-iana slipped out anyway:
"[H]e also has taken short breaks for walks with his wife … for dinner with their daughter, who lives in the area, and for lunch with his wife's parents. On his daily jogging route he maintains a brisk, steady pace over a seven-mile route, snaking from Fort Myer, across the Potomac and through Georgetown…"
Sigh…
So who, exactly, was so eagerly awaiting the jogging general's testimony? If a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll is any indication, a majority of Americans weren't among that crowd. They had already discounted whatever he would say – I doubt the ambassador even registered – as "exaggerated" and "a rosier view" than reality dictated before his face and that chest full of ribbons hit the TV screens. ("Just 23 percent of Democrats and 39 percent of independents expected an honest depiction of conditions in Iraq.") This was simple good sense. What exactly could anyone outside of Washington have expected the general – who had a hand in creating the president's "surge" strategy, is now in charge of the "surge" campaign, and for months has been delegated the official administration front man for what was, from day one, labeled a "progress report" – to say? An instant online headline caught the mood of the Petraeus moment while his first round of testimony was still underway: "Gen. Petraeus Sees Iraq Progress." Ah, yes…
And what in the world could anyone have eagerly anticipated from our unbudgeable president? Just what occurred. And yet, in our media, and inside Washington, the drumbeat for "an anticipated moment of truth" continued, as if something were actually at stake. Take just one example. On Sunday, the Washington Post had a hard-breathing piece by no less than six of its best journalists, with the headline, "Among Top Officials, 'Surge' Has Sparked Dissent, Infighting."
It focused on a reported "clash" between Gen. Petraeus and his theoretical boss, Centcom Commander Adm. William J. Fallon. It seems that the two fell into a near end-of-the-world-style struggle because Fallon had begun "developing plans to redefine the U.S. mission and radically draw down troops." ("'Bad relations?' said a senior civilian official with a laugh. 'That's the understatement of the century. … If you think Armageddon was a riot, that's one way of looking at it.'") Naturally, Petraeus, like the president, wanted to continue to surge full-strength (as we now know – not that we didn't before – from his slow-as-molasses plan to drawdown American forces). But what did that radical Fallon have in mind that led to a "schism"? According to a source who spoke to a Post reporter, it "involved slashing U.S. combat forces in Iraq by three-quarters by 2010." Imagine a Centcom commander as a force slasher!
But hold on a moment. Combat forces make up, at best, less than half of all U.S. forces in Iraq; so if, by 2010, the good admiral wants only three-quarters of those combat troops withdrawn, then we're still left with at least 80,000 or more troops in that country three years from now.
Well, I'm with Eliza D – and so, evidently, was the technology of the House hearing room in which the general and the ambassador appeared on Monday. After chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) and various other congressional representatives introduced the hearings for what seemed like hours, the general was finally given the floor for his "long-awaited" testimony. His mouth began to move but in a resounding silence. The mike had failed and (except for Code Pink protesters rising from the audience to shout and be escorted out) the room fell into just about the only Iraqi silence of these past, "eagerly anticipated" months – and what a relief that was. While Skelton fumed, the announcer on MSNBC suggested, "The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq is apparently powerless over the sound system in the hearing room."
It was a moment that had Iraq written all over it. After all, has anything worked as planned or dreamed since March 2003?
Of course, 15 minutes later the mike had been replaced (though the room lights then proceeded to flicker as if in distant communion with electricity-less Baghdad) – in Iraq, you suspect, people would have just started shouting – and the general did finally launch on his monotonal, mind-numbing, expectedly boilerplate testimony. He promised that, if all went well, American troops would be back to pre-surge levels by mid-July 2008, 10 months from now, 18 months from that plan's beginning. "Progress" indeed.
The general's testimony would be dealt with in the tones of gravitas that journalists-cum-pundits and pundits-cum-pundits reserve for moments like this. Yet, given the original expectations of the Bush administration, some of the testimony Petraeus (and later Crocker) had to offer would have been little short of hilarious if the subject weren't so grim. (Good news! Four years after the invasion of Iraq, we finally have the former Ba'athists of al-Anbar Province, whom our president used to refer to as "dead-enders," on our side! Even better, we're arming them and all is going swimmingly!)
Buying a precious extra six-plus months for the White House, the general also suggested that it would be premature to think beyond next July, when it came to "drawdown" plans, and that we should, instead, all reconvene in mid-March 2008 for more of the same.
Sigh…
You can, of course, already begin writing the script for that "eagerly anticipated," "long awaited," "pivotal" moment when the situation in Iraq will be predictably worse, predictably more precarious, and predictably surprising to the general and the ambassador.
As aids for his testimony, Petraeus had brought along a profusion of enormous, multicolored charts to illustrate his points. Many of them – amazingly enough – seemed to have more or less the same blue, red, or yellow lines, each of which crested about chart middle and then essentially nose-dived toward the present moment. The message was clear: Good news on the numbers! Everything's falling! You didn't need to be an expert – you essentially didn't need to know a thing – to find the confluence of those descending lines with the general's appearance in Washington a tad tidy.
As for me, I found it hard to believe that those charts hadn't been recycled from the Vietnam era, when Petraeus' equivalent, Gen. William Westmoreland, used similar brightly colored, bar-coded, son-et-lumière aids to wow visiting congressional delegations with the metrics of "progress" in his war. Now, once again, we're knee deep in the Big Metric, flooded with so many different kinds of stats that you can hardly tell one from another (though most involve dead bodies). If you remember the Vietnam era, there's a simple rule here: When the top brass hauls out the pretty charts, duck…
In the meantime – mind you, this is Iraq, where nothing has been orderly – everything was, we were assured, to proceed in an orderly fashion, summed up in the general's wonderfully tidy, if somewhat Orwellian-sounding formula, "from leading to partnering to overwatch."
Hmm… "overwatch." I wonder who first woke up in a sweat in the middle of the night with that lovely term on the brain? I wonder what it even means? I wonder where we'll be "overwatching" from? Perhaps from that monstrous embassy that we've almost completed in Baghdad, the largest on this or any other planet, or from our vast permanent-seeming base towns like the one with the 17-mile security perimeter that the president visited in Iraq's western desert, but that no reporter accompanying him even thought to describe for us. (Oh, back in November 2006, that base, as a British reporter described it, already had the requisite Subway and pizza outlets, a football field, a Hertz rent-a-car office, a swimming pool, a movie theater showing the latest flicks, and two bus routes.)
Like Eliza, I'm for skipping the words at this point. After all, what does all the talk mean if, in September 2007, the U.S. is building yet another base in Iraq, this time near the Iranian border, as the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The military describes it as a "life support area" – don't ask me what that means – with this added definition: "[It's] not really permanent, although it will be manned 24/7 and will be used for as long as necessary."
What does all the talk mean if, as the Washington Post's indefatigable Walter Pincus noted, also on Monday, the U.S. Commerce Department is looking for a new legal adviser for Iraq with a contract running through July 31, 2008, plus two possible 12-month extensions. (There we are in 2010 again!) This adviser is to help the poor, ignorant Iraqis as "they draft the laws and regulations that will govern Iraq's oil and gas sector." After all, as the proposal makes clear, the Commerce Department (U.S., not Iraqi) "will be providing technical assistance to Iraq to create a legal and tax environment conducive to domestic and foreign investment in Iraq's key economic sectors, starting with the mineral resources sector." And "conducive" is just such a nice word! Even nicer than "sovereignty."
What do the words mean, if the far edge of Armageddon, as defined in Washington or in military-insider politics, leaves enough American troops in Iraq to fill a couple of baseball stadiums – or several gigantic bases – in 2010?
At some level, the situation seems remarkably uncomplicated, if you skip the words (and the words about the words). As has always been true, the top figures of the Bush administration remain completely unmoved by, and unmovable by, words which, as is well known, are only meant to move other people; the Republicans in Congress – after all this time, despite all the dismal polling figures – are still on bended knee to the Bush administration, so powerless that they feel incapable of striking off on their own. (Sen. John Warner, R-Va., who isn't even seeking reelection, recently begged the president to please, please, pretty please, send home a few thousand troops, any troops at all, and call it a day. And, in his testimony, Gen. Petraeus threw the senator a carefully gnawed bone, agreeing to do just that.)
The congressional Democrats are too weak (and divided) to change policy – and let's be honest, even if they did, this administration would undoubtedly pay no attention whatsoever to anything they mandated. The Republican candidates for president (minus the maverick Ron Paul, who isn't really a Republican at all) have bowed down low before presidential Iraq policy, as if before a pagan idol in the desert, in search of the "base vote." Democratic candidates for president (Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel excepted) are running "tough" (which means running scared and cautious) on Iraq. If, in 2008, the war actually proves good for business at the polls for Democrats, then, to their consternation, they'll find they've just inherited a disastrous war, that they're likely to be blamed for losing it, and that they're in charge of Hell, not the Oval Office or Congress. (And note that, out of kindness to all of you, I'm not even mentioning Iran… though there was that nice, giant block of type over Iranian territory on a Petraeus-displayed map labeled "Major Threats to Iraq" that said: "Lethal Aid, Training, Funding.")
Given this lineup of forces, how could it have been anything but "words, words, words" in Washington, even while it was death, death, death in Iraq?
What those words do, however, is fill all available space, reinforcing a powerful sense that Washington's importance in the scheme of things is the one unquestionable reality on our planet. The rest of the world hardly registers, except in the mode of frustration.
Is there a single ounce of humility anywhere in Washington? Can we even imagine that, somewhere on Earth, someone doesn't think about us?
Gen. Petraeus, always identified as having "earned a Ph.D. in international relations from Princeton University as a young officer," is said to be a man with a high regard for his own reputation. Hasn't he noticed, then, that, for one extra star and his Warholian 15 minutes of fame, he's made himself this country's fourth commander of American forces in Iraq in less than five years? Each of those commanders had a plan. Each was confident. Each claimed "progress." And, once upon a time, each was embraced by the president as the man to give him "advice." Ambassador Crocker is similarly the fourth American civilian viceroy to head up our caliphate of Baghdad. He now has "carte blanche" there. But carte blanche to do what?
Could these men really believe that, with them, the occupation of a crucial country in the embattled oil heartlands of the planet would finally head down the IED-pocked path of success? Is the vanity of American officials as great as that? Was it really worth turning so many Iraqis into red and blue lines, into military metrics?
To grasp the Petraeus moment, you really have to re-imagine official Washington as a set of drunks behind the wheels of so many SUVs tearing down a well-populated city avenue – and all of them are on their cell phones. They hardly notice the bodies bouncing off the fenders. For them, the world is Washington-centered; all interests that matter are American ones. Nothing else exists, not really. Think of this as a form of imperial autism and the Petraeus moment as the way in which the White House and official Washington have, for a brief time, blotted out the world.
And – count on it – that's just the beginning. The same cast of characters will be talking, squabbling, spinning, and analyzing stats of every sort for weeks to come – with a sequel promised next spring. Everyone knows that's the case, just as everyone has known since mid-summer that we would get to this point and, when we did, that things similar to those said (and written) in the last two days would indeed be said (and written), and that nothing the blighters would say or write would matter a whit, or change the course of events, or the tide of history, even though whole forests might be pulped in the process and it would be springtime for hyperbole and breathless overstatement in the world of news.
There has been a drumbeat of growing excitement in the press, preparing us for "pivotal reports," a "pivotal hearing," "highly anticipated appearances," and "long-awaited testimony," or, as both the Washington Post on its front page and ABC World News in a lead report put it, "the most anticipated congressional testimony by a general since the Vietnam War."
Petraeus himself has been treated in the media as a celebrity, somewhere between a conquering caesar and the Paris Hilton of generals. Nothing he does has been too unimportant to record, not just the size of his entourage as he arrived from Baghdad, or the suite he was assigned at the Pentagon, or even his "recon" walk through the room in the House of Representatives where he would testify Monday, but every detail. Somehow, when he refused to give interviews before his "long-awaited" appearance, lots of Petraeus-iana slipped out anyway:
"[H]e also has taken short breaks for walks with his wife … for dinner with their daughter, who lives in the area, and for lunch with his wife's parents. On his daily jogging route he maintains a brisk, steady pace over a seven-mile route, snaking from Fort Myer, across the Potomac and through Georgetown…"
Sigh…
So who, exactly, was so eagerly awaiting the jogging general's testimony? If a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll is any indication, a majority of Americans weren't among that crowd. They had already discounted whatever he would say – I doubt the ambassador even registered – as "exaggerated" and "a rosier view" than reality dictated before his face and that chest full of ribbons hit the TV screens. ("Just 23 percent of Democrats and 39 percent of independents expected an honest depiction of conditions in Iraq.") This was simple good sense. What exactly could anyone outside of Washington have expected the general – who had a hand in creating the president's "surge" strategy, is now in charge of the "surge" campaign, and for months has been delegated the official administration front man for what was, from day one, labeled a "progress report" – to say? An instant online headline caught the mood of the Petraeus moment while his first round of testimony was still underway: "Gen. Petraeus Sees Iraq Progress." Ah, yes…
And what in the world could anyone have eagerly anticipated from our unbudgeable president? Just what occurred. And yet, in our media, and inside Washington, the drumbeat for "an anticipated moment of truth" continued, as if something were actually at stake. Take just one example. On Sunday, the Washington Post had a hard-breathing piece by no less than six of its best journalists, with the headline, "Among Top Officials, 'Surge' Has Sparked Dissent, Infighting."
It focused on a reported "clash" between Gen. Petraeus and his theoretical boss, Centcom Commander Adm. William J. Fallon. It seems that the two fell into a near end-of-the-world-style struggle because Fallon had begun "developing plans to redefine the U.S. mission and radically draw down troops." ("'Bad relations?' said a senior civilian official with a laugh. 'That's the understatement of the century. … If you think Armageddon was a riot, that's one way of looking at it.'") Naturally, Petraeus, like the president, wanted to continue to surge full-strength (as we now know – not that we didn't before – from his slow-as-molasses plan to drawdown American forces). But what did that radical Fallon have in mind that led to a "schism"? According to a source who spoke to a Post reporter, it "involved slashing U.S. combat forces in Iraq by three-quarters by 2010." Imagine a Centcom commander as a force slasher!
But hold on a moment. Combat forces make up, at best, less than half of all U.S. forces in Iraq; so if, by 2010, the good admiral wants only three-quarters of those combat troops withdrawn, then we're still left with at least 80,000 or more troops in that country three years from now.
Well, I'm with Eliza D – and so, evidently, was the technology of the House hearing room in which the general and the ambassador appeared on Monday. After chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) and various other congressional representatives introduced the hearings for what seemed like hours, the general was finally given the floor for his "long-awaited" testimony. His mouth began to move but in a resounding silence. The mike had failed and (except for Code Pink protesters rising from the audience to shout and be escorted out) the room fell into just about the only Iraqi silence of these past, "eagerly anticipated" months – and what a relief that was. While Skelton fumed, the announcer on MSNBC suggested, "The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq is apparently powerless over the sound system in the hearing room."
It was a moment that had Iraq written all over it. After all, has anything worked as planned or dreamed since March 2003?
Of course, 15 minutes later the mike had been replaced (though the room lights then proceeded to flicker as if in distant communion with electricity-less Baghdad) – in Iraq, you suspect, people would have just started shouting – and the general did finally launch on his monotonal, mind-numbing, expectedly boilerplate testimony. He promised that, if all went well, American troops would be back to pre-surge levels by mid-July 2008, 10 months from now, 18 months from that plan's beginning. "Progress" indeed.
The general's testimony would be dealt with in the tones of gravitas that journalists-cum-pundits and pundits-cum-pundits reserve for moments like this. Yet, given the original expectations of the Bush administration, some of the testimony Petraeus (and later Crocker) had to offer would have been little short of hilarious if the subject weren't so grim. (Good news! Four years after the invasion of Iraq, we finally have the former Ba'athists of al-Anbar Province, whom our president used to refer to as "dead-enders," on our side! Even better, we're arming them and all is going swimmingly!)
Buying a precious extra six-plus months for the White House, the general also suggested that it would be premature to think beyond next July, when it came to "drawdown" plans, and that we should, instead, all reconvene in mid-March 2008 for more of the same.
Sigh…
You can, of course, already begin writing the script for that "eagerly anticipated," "long awaited," "pivotal" moment when the situation in Iraq will be predictably worse, predictably more precarious, and predictably surprising to the general and the ambassador.
As aids for his testimony, Petraeus had brought along a profusion of enormous, multicolored charts to illustrate his points. Many of them – amazingly enough – seemed to have more or less the same blue, red, or yellow lines, each of which crested about chart middle and then essentially nose-dived toward the present moment. The message was clear: Good news on the numbers! Everything's falling! You didn't need to be an expert – you essentially didn't need to know a thing – to find the confluence of those descending lines with the general's appearance in Washington a tad tidy.
As for me, I found it hard to believe that those charts hadn't been recycled from the Vietnam era, when Petraeus' equivalent, Gen. William Westmoreland, used similar brightly colored, bar-coded, son-et-lumière aids to wow visiting congressional delegations with the metrics of "progress" in his war. Now, once again, we're knee deep in the Big Metric, flooded with so many different kinds of stats that you can hardly tell one from another (though most involve dead bodies). If you remember the Vietnam era, there's a simple rule here: When the top brass hauls out the pretty charts, duck…
In the meantime – mind you, this is Iraq, where nothing has been orderly – everything was, we were assured, to proceed in an orderly fashion, summed up in the general's wonderfully tidy, if somewhat Orwellian-sounding formula, "from leading to partnering to overwatch."
Hmm… "overwatch." I wonder who first woke up in a sweat in the middle of the night with that lovely term on the brain? I wonder what it even means? I wonder where we'll be "overwatching" from? Perhaps from that monstrous embassy that we've almost completed in Baghdad, the largest on this or any other planet, or from our vast permanent-seeming base towns like the one with the 17-mile security perimeter that the president visited in Iraq's western desert, but that no reporter accompanying him even thought to describe for us. (Oh, back in November 2006, that base, as a British reporter described it, already had the requisite Subway and pizza outlets, a football field, a Hertz rent-a-car office, a swimming pool, a movie theater showing the latest flicks, and two bus routes.)
Like Eliza, I'm for skipping the words at this point. After all, what does all the talk mean if, in September 2007, the U.S. is building yet another base in Iraq, this time near the Iranian border, as the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The military describes it as a "life support area" – don't ask me what that means – with this added definition: "[It's] not really permanent, although it will be manned 24/7 and will be used for as long as necessary."
What does all the talk mean if, as the Washington Post's indefatigable Walter Pincus noted, also on Monday, the U.S. Commerce Department is looking for a new legal adviser for Iraq with a contract running through July 31, 2008, plus two possible 12-month extensions. (There we are in 2010 again!) This adviser is to help the poor, ignorant Iraqis as "they draft the laws and regulations that will govern Iraq's oil and gas sector." After all, as the proposal makes clear, the Commerce Department (U.S., not Iraqi) "will be providing technical assistance to Iraq to create a legal and tax environment conducive to domestic and foreign investment in Iraq's key economic sectors, starting with the mineral resources sector." And "conducive" is just such a nice word! Even nicer than "sovereignty."
What do the words mean, if the far edge of Armageddon, as defined in Washington or in military-insider politics, leaves enough American troops in Iraq to fill a couple of baseball stadiums – or several gigantic bases – in 2010?
At some level, the situation seems remarkably uncomplicated, if you skip the words (and the words about the words). As has always been true, the top figures of the Bush administration remain completely unmoved by, and unmovable by, words which, as is well known, are only meant to move other people; the Republicans in Congress – after all this time, despite all the dismal polling figures – are still on bended knee to the Bush administration, so powerless that they feel incapable of striking off on their own. (Sen. John Warner, R-Va., who isn't even seeking reelection, recently begged the president to please, please, pretty please, send home a few thousand troops, any troops at all, and call it a day. And, in his testimony, Gen. Petraeus threw the senator a carefully gnawed bone, agreeing to do just that.)
The congressional Democrats are too weak (and divided) to change policy – and let's be honest, even if they did, this administration would undoubtedly pay no attention whatsoever to anything they mandated. The Republican candidates for president (minus the maverick Ron Paul, who isn't really a Republican at all) have bowed down low before presidential Iraq policy, as if before a pagan idol in the desert, in search of the "base vote." Democratic candidates for president (Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel excepted) are running "tough" (which means running scared and cautious) on Iraq. If, in 2008, the war actually proves good for business at the polls for Democrats, then, to their consternation, they'll find they've just inherited a disastrous war, that they're likely to be blamed for losing it, and that they're in charge of Hell, not the Oval Office or Congress. (And note that, out of kindness to all of you, I'm not even mentioning Iran… though there was that nice, giant block of type over Iranian territory on a Petraeus-displayed map labeled "Major Threats to Iraq" that said: "Lethal Aid, Training, Funding.")
Given this lineup of forces, how could it have been anything but "words, words, words" in Washington, even while it was death, death, death in Iraq?
What those words do, however, is fill all available space, reinforcing a powerful sense that Washington's importance in the scheme of things is the one unquestionable reality on our planet. The rest of the world hardly registers, except in the mode of frustration.
Is there a single ounce of humility anywhere in Washington? Can we even imagine that, somewhere on Earth, someone doesn't think about us?
Gen. Petraeus, always identified as having "earned a Ph.D. in international relations from Princeton University as a young officer," is said to be a man with a high regard for his own reputation. Hasn't he noticed, then, that, for one extra star and his Warholian 15 minutes of fame, he's made himself this country's fourth commander of American forces in Iraq in less than five years? Each of those commanders had a plan. Each was confident. Each claimed "progress." And, once upon a time, each was embraced by the president as the man to give him "advice." Ambassador Crocker is similarly the fourth American civilian viceroy to head up our caliphate of Baghdad. He now has "carte blanche" there. But carte blanche to do what?
Could these men really believe that, with them, the occupation of a crucial country in the embattled oil heartlands of the planet would finally head down the IED-pocked path of success? Is the vanity of American officials as great as that? Was it really worth turning so many Iraqis into red and blue lines, into military metrics?
To grasp the Petraeus moment, you really have to re-imagine official Washington as a set of drunks behind the wheels of so many SUVs tearing down a well-populated city avenue – and all of them are on their cell phones. They hardly notice the bodies bouncing off the fenders. For them, the world is Washington-centered; all interests that matter are American ones. Nothing else exists, not really. Think of this as a form of imperial autism and the Petraeus moment as the way in which the White House and official Washington have, for a brief time, blotted out the world.
American Economy: R.I.P. By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
The US economy continues its slow death before our eyes, but economists, policymakers, and most of the public are blind to the tottering fabled land of opportunity.
In August jobs in goods-producing industries declined by 64,000. The US economy lost 4,000 jobs overall. The private sector created a mere 24,000 jobs, all of which could be attributed to the 24,100 new jobs for waitresses and bartenders. The government sector lost 28,000 jobs.
In the 21st century the US economy has ceased to create jobs in export industries and in industries that compete with imports. US job growth has been confined to domestic services, principally to food services and drinking places (waitresses and bartenders), private education and health services (ambulatory health care and hospital orderlies), and construction (which now has tanked). The lack of job growth in higher productivity, higher paid occupations associated with the American middle and upper middle classes will eventually kill the US consumer market.
The unemployment rate held steady, but that is because 340,000 Americans unable to find jobs dropped out of the labor force in August. The US measures unemployment only among the active work force, which includes those seeking jobs. Those who are discouraged and have given up are not counted as unemployed.
With goods producing industries in long term decline as more and more production of US firms is moved offshore, the engineering professions are in decline. Managerial jobs are primarily confined to retail trade and financial services.
Franchises and chains have curtailed opportunities for independent family businesses, and the US government’s open borders policy denies unskilled jobs to the displaced members of the middle class.
When US companies offshore their production for US markets, the consequences for the US economy are highly detrimental. One consequence is that foreign labor is substituted for US labor, resulting in a shriveling of career opportunities and income growth in the US. Another is that US Gross Domestic Product is turned into imports. By turning US brand names into imports, offshoring has a double whammy on the US trade deficit. Simultaneously, imports rise by the amount of offshored production, and the supply of exportable manufactured goods declines by the same amount.
The US now has a trade deficit with every part of the world. In 2006 (the latest annual data), the US had a trade deficit totaling $838,271,000,000.
The US trade deficit with Europe was $142,538,000,000. With Canada the deficit was $75,085,000,000. With Latin America it was $112,579,000,000 (of which $67,303,000,000 was with Mexico). The deficit with Asia and Pacific was $409,765,000,000 (of which $233,087,000,000 was with China and $90,966,000,000 was with Japan). With the Middle East the deficit was $36,112,000,000, and with Africa the US trade deficit was $62,192,000,000.
Public worry for three decades about the US oil deficit has created a false impression among Americans that a self-sufficient America is impaired only by dependence on Middle East oil. The fact of the matter is that the total US deficit with OPEC, an organization that includes as many countries outside the Middle East as within it, is $106,260,000,000, or about one-eighth of the annual US trade deficit.
Moreover, the US gets most of its oil from outside the Middle East, and the US trade deficit reflects this fact. The US deficit with Nigeria, Mexico, and Venezuela is 3.3 times larger than the US trade deficit with the Middle East despite the fact that the US sells more to Venezuela and 18 times more to Mexico than it does to Saudi Arabia.
What is striking about US dependency on imports is that it is practically across the board. Americans are dependent on imports of foreign foods, feeds, and beverages in the amount of $8,975,000,000.
Americans are dependent on imports of foreign Industrial supplies and materials in the amount of $326,459,000,000--more than three times US dependency on OPEC.
Americans can no longer provide their own transportation. They are dependent on imports of automotive vehicles, parts, and engines in the amount of $149,499,000,000, or 1.5 times greater than the US dependency on OPEC.
In addition to the automobile dependency, Americans are 3.4 times more dependent on imports of manufactured consumer durable and nondurable goods than they are on OPEC. Americans no longer can produce their own clothes, shoes, or household appliances and have a trade deficit in consumer manufactured goods in the amount of $336,118,000,000.
The US “superpower” even has a deficit in capital goods, including machinery, electric generating machinery, machine tools, computers, and telecommunications equipment.
What does it mean that the US has a $800 billion trade deficit?
It means that Americans are consuming $800 billion more than they are producing.
How do Americans pay for it?
They pay for it by giving up ownership of existing assets--stocks, bonds, companies, real estate, commodities. America used to be a creditor nation. Now America is a debtor nation. Foreigners own $2.5 trillion more of American assets than Americans own of foreign assets. When foreigners acquire ownership of US assets, they also acquire ownership of the future income streams that the assets produce. More income shifts away from Americans.
How long can Americans consume more than they can produce?
American over-consumption can continue for as long as Americans can find ways to go deeper in personal debt in order to finance their consumption and for as long as the US dollar can remain the world reserve currency.
The 21st century has brought Americans (with the exception of CEOs, hedge fund managers and investment bankers) no growth in real median household income. Americans have increased their consumption by dropping their saving rate to the depression level of 1933 when there was massive unemployment and by spending their home equity and running up credit card bills. The ability of a population, severely impacted by the loss of good jobs to foreigners as a result of offshoring and H-1B work visas and by the bursting of the housing bubble, to continue to accumulate more personal debt is limited to say the least.
Foreigners accept US dollars in exchange for their real goods and services, because dollars can be used to settle every country’s international accounts. By running a trade deficit, the US insures the financing of its government budget deficit as the surplus dollars in foreign hands are invested in US Treasuries and other dollar-denominated assets.
The ability of the US dollar to retain its reserve currency status is eroding due to the continuous increases in US budget and trade deficits. Today the world is literally flooded with dollars. In attempts to reduce the rate at which they are accumulating dollars, foreign governments and investors are diversifying into other traded currencies. As a result, the dollar prices of the Euro, UK pound, Canadian dollar, Thai baht, and other currencies have been bid up. In the 21st century, the US dollar has declined about 33 percent against other currencies. The US dollar remains the reserve currency primarily due to habit and the lack of a clear alternative.
The data used in this article is freely available. It can be found at two official US government sites: http://www.bea.gov/international/bp_web/simple.cfm?anon=71&table_id=20&area_id=3 and http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t14.htm
The jobs data and the absence of growth in real income for most of the population are inconsistent with reports of US GDP and productivity growth. Economists take for granted that the work force is paid in keeping with its productivity. A rise in productivity thus translates into a rise in real incomes of workers. Yet, we have had years of reported strong productivity growth but stagnant or declining household incomes. And somehow the GDP is rising, but not the incomes of the work force.
Something is wrong here. Either the data indicating productivity and GDP growth are wrong or Karl Marx was right that capitalism works to concentrate income in the hands of the few capitalists. A case can be made for both explanations.
Recently an economist, Susan Houseman, discovered that the reliability of some US economics statistics has been impaired by offshoring. Houseman found that cost reductions achieved by US firms shifting production offshore are being miscounted as GDP growth in the US and that productivity gains achieved by US firms when they move design, research, and development offshore are showing up as increases in US productivity. Obviously, production and productivity that occur abroad are not part of the US domestic economy.
Houseman’s discovery rated a Business Week cover story last June 18, but her important discovery seems already to have gone down the memory hole. The economics profession has over-committed itself to the “benefits” of offshoring, globalism, and the non-existent “New Economy.” Houseman’s discovery is too much of a threat to economists’ human capital, corporate research grants, and free market ideology.
The media have likewise let the story go, because in the 1990s the Clinton administration and Congress permitted a few mega-corporations to concentrate in their hands the ownership of the US media, which reports in keeping with corporate and government interests.
The case for Marx is that offshoring has boosted corporate earnings by lowering labor costs, thereby concentrating income growth in the hands of the owners and managers of capital. According to Forbes magazine, the top 20 earners among private equity and hedge fund managers are earning average yearly compensation of $657,500,000, with four actually earning more than $1 billion annually. The otherwise excessive $36,400,000 average annual pay of the 20 top earners among CEOs of publicly-held companies looks paltry by comparison. The careers and financial prospects of many Americans were destroyed to achieve these lofty earnings for the few.
Hubris prevents realization that Americans are losing their economic future along with their civil liberties and are on the verge of enserfment.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. -- Edward R. Murrow
Vice President.
In August jobs in goods-producing industries declined by 64,000. The US economy lost 4,000 jobs overall. The private sector created a mere 24,000 jobs, all of which could be attributed to the 24,100 new jobs for waitresses and bartenders. The government sector lost 28,000 jobs.
In the 21st century the US economy has ceased to create jobs in export industries and in industries that compete with imports. US job growth has been confined to domestic services, principally to food services and drinking places (waitresses and bartenders), private education and health services (ambulatory health care and hospital orderlies), and construction (which now has tanked). The lack of job growth in higher productivity, higher paid occupations associated with the American middle and upper middle classes will eventually kill the US consumer market.
The unemployment rate held steady, but that is because 340,000 Americans unable to find jobs dropped out of the labor force in August. The US measures unemployment only among the active work force, which includes those seeking jobs. Those who are discouraged and have given up are not counted as unemployed.
With goods producing industries in long term decline as more and more production of US firms is moved offshore, the engineering professions are in decline. Managerial jobs are primarily confined to retail trade and financial services.
Franchises and chains have curtailed opportunities for independent family businesses, and the US government’s open borders policy denies unskilled jobs to the displaced members of the middle class.
When US companies offshore their production for US markets, the consequences for the US economy are highly detrimental. One consequence is that foreign labor is substituted for US labor, resulting in a shriveling of career opportunities and income growth in the US. Another is that US Gross Domestic Product is turned into imports. By turning US brand names into imports, offshoring has a double whammy on the US trade deficit. Simultaneously, imports rise by the amount of offshored production, and the supply of exportable manufactured goods declines by the same amount.
The US now has a trade deficit with every part of the world. In 2006 (the latest annual data), the US had a trade deficit totaling $838,271,000,000.
The US trade deficit with Europe was $142,538,000,000. With Canada the deficit was $75,085,000,000. With Latin America it was $112,579,000,000 (of which $67,303,000,000 was with Mexico). The deficit with Asia and Pacific was $409,765,000,000 (of which $233,087,000,000 was with China and $90,966,000,000 was with Japan). With the Middle East the deficit was $36,112,000,000, and with Africa the US trade deficit was $62,192,000,000.
Public worry for three decades about the US oil deficit has created a false impression among Americans that a self-sufficient America is impaired only by dependence on Middle East oil. The fact of the matter is that the total US deficit with OPEC, an organization that includes as many countries outside the Middle East as within it, is $106,260,000,000, or about one-eighth of the annual US trade deficit.
Moreover, the US gets most of its oil from outside the Middle East, and the US trade deficit reflects this fact. The US deficit with Nigeria, Mexico, and Venezuela is 3.3 times larger than the US trade deficit with the Middle East despite the fact that the US sells more to Venezuela and 18 times more to Mexico than it does to Saudi Arabia.
What is striking about US dependency on imports is that it is practically across the board. Americans are dependent on imports of foreign foods, feeds, and beverages in the amount of $8,975,000,000.
Americans are dependent on imports of foreign Industrial supplies and materials in the amount of $326,459,000,000--more than three times US dependency on OPEC.
Americans can no longer provide their own transportation. They are dependent on imports of automotive vehicles, parts, and engines in the amount of $149,499,000,000, or 1.5 times greater than the US dependency on OPEC.
In addition to the automobile dependency, Americans are 3.4 times more dependent on imports of manufactured consumer durable and nondurable goods than they are on OPEC. Americans no longer can produce their own clothes, shoes, or household appliances and have a trade deficit in consumer manufactured goods in the amount of $336,118,000,000.
The US “superpower” even has a deficit in capital goods, including machinery, electric generating machinery, machine tools, computers, and telecommunications equipment.
What does it mean that the US has a $800 billion trade deficit?
It means that Americans are consuming $800 billion more than they are producing.
How do Americans pay for it?
They pay for it by giving up ownership of existing assets--stocks, bonds, companies, real estate, commodities. America used to be a creditor nation. Now America is a debtor nation. Foreigners own $2.5 trillion more of American assets than Americans own of foreign assets. When foreigners acquire ownership of US assets, they also acquire ownership of the future income streams that the assets produce. More income shifts away from Americans.
How long can Americans consume more than they can produce?
American over-consumption can continue for as long as Americans can find ways to go deeper in personal debt in order to finance their consumption and for as long as the US dollar can remain the world reserve currency.
The 21st century has brought Americans (with the exception of CEOs, hedge fund managers and investment bankers) no growth in real median household income. Americans have increased their consumption by dropping their saving rate to the depression level of 1933 when there was massive unemployment and by spending their home equity and running up credit card bills. The ability of a population, severely impacted by the loss of good jobs to foreigners as a result of offshoring and H-1B work visas and by the bursting of the housing bubble, to continue to accumulate more personal debt is limited to say the least.
Foreigners accept US dollars in exchange for their real goods and services, because dollars can be used to settle every country’s international accounts. By running a trade deficit, the US insures the financing of its government budget deficit as the surplus dollars in foreign hands are invested in US Treasuries and other dollar-denominated assets.
The ability of the US dollar to retain its reserve currency status is eroding due to the continuous increases in US budget and trade deficits. Today the world is literally flooded with dollars. In attempts to reduce the rate at which they are accumulating dollars, foreign governments and investors are diversifying into other traded currencies. As a result, the dollar prices of the Euro, UK pound, Canadian dollar, Thai baht, and other currencies have been bid up. In the 21st century, the US dollar has declined about 33 percent against other currencies. The US dollar remains the reserve currency primarily due to habit and the lack of a clear alternative.
The data used in this article is freely available. It can be found at two official US government sites: http://www.bea.gov/international/bp_web/simple.cfm?anon=71&table_id=20&area_id=3 and http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t14.htm
The jobs data and the absence of growth in real income for most of the population are inconsistent with reports of US GDP and productivity growth. Economists take for granted that the work force is paid in keeping with its productivity. A rise in productivity thus translates into a rise in real incomes of workers. Yet, we have had years of reported strong productivity growth but stagnant or declining household incomes. And somehow the GDP is rising, but not the incomes of the work force.
Something is wrong here. Either the data indicating productivity and GDP growth are wrong or Karl Marx was right that capitalism works to concentrate income in the hands of the few capitalists. A case can be made for both explanations.
Recently an economist, Susan Houseman, discovered that the reliability of some US economics statistics has been impaired by offshoring. Houseman found that cost reductions achieved by US firms shifting production offshore are being miscounted as GDP growth in the US and that productivity gains achieved by US firms when they move design, research, and development offshore are showing up as increases in US productivity. Obviously, production and productivity that occur abroad are not part of the US domestic economy.
Houseman’s discovery rated a Business Week cover story last June 18, but her important discovery seems already to have gone down the memory hole. The economics profession has over-committed itself to the “benefits” of offshoring, globalism, and the non-existent “New Economy.” Houseman’s discovery is too much of a threat to economists’ human capital, corporate research grants, and free market ideology.
The media have likewise let the story go, because in the 1990s the Clinton administration and Congress permitted a few mega-corporations to concentrate in their hands the ownership of the US media, which reports in keeping with corporate and government interests.
The case for Marx is that offshoring has boosted corporate earnings by lowering labor costs, thereby concentrating income growth in the hands of the owners and managers of capital. According to Forbes magazine, the top 20 earners among private equity and hedge fund managers are earning average yearly compensation of $657,500,000, with four actually earning more than $1 billion annually. The otherwise excessive $36,400,000 average annual pay of the 20 top earners among CEOs of publicly-held companies looks paltry by comparison. The careers and financial prospects of many Americans were destroyed to achieve these lofty earnings for the few.
Hubris prevents realization that Americans are losing their economic future along with their civil liberties and are on the verge of enserfment.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. -- Edward R. Murrow
Vice President.
The Petraeus Report By STAN GOFF
In military drill there is something called the preparatory command and the command of execution. These were the two commands, followed in lockstep by the press yesterday:
Prepare to kiss ass.
Kiss ass.
Or should I say David Petraeus' ass, followed by a whole raft of retired generals who were immediately featured on the television "news" to re-spin the Petraeus' spin, where he used the terms "al Qaeda Iraq" and "ethno-sectarian" about 2,000,000 times apiece in the space of a few hours.
Members of Code Pink and Iraq Veterans Against the War, who had infiltrated the hearing room, were serially arrested when they took their turns shouting things like "How long will you listen ot these people?" and "Liar!" from the back of the room. God bless 'em.
The articulate, level-voiced General, though he only went to combat when Bush invaded Iraq, has more fruit salad on his chest than any veteran of three previous wars.
Cheney's input was in evidence in the psyop, mantra-like repetition of the key phrases as a form of mass mesmeric suggestion... "al Qaeda Iraq" ... "ethno-sectarian"... "al Qaeda Iraq" ... "ethno-sectarian"... "al Qaeda Iraq" ... "ethno-sectarian"... "al Qaeda Iraq" ... "ethno-sectarian"...
All designed to instill the same refrain we heard in the runup to the war, Iraq associated with 9-11…oh, that's tomorrow! Surprise!
...and of course, the war is an affair of those ethno-sectarian primitives (the former guerrillas who were handed Anbar Province have been re-spun into "tribal" leaders and sheiks"). The US occupation force (therein referred to as "coalition forces") is just there trying to keep them from slaughtering each other, provoked as they have been by who? Oh yeah, "al Qaeda Iraq."
Rumsfeld's ghost made its early appearance with the charts and graphs. Metrics, anyone? The Commander-in-Chief, in rallying the most revanchist sectors of his diminishing base, recently invoked Vietnam and the betrayal thesis: that liberal press and those left-wing hippies undermined the war effort, and if we could have killed just a million more Vietnamese, goddamit, we'd have won. With Rumsfeld's metrics in Petraeus' mouth yesterday, we have squared the circle with the simultaneous reincarnation of Robert MacNamara and William Westmoreland.
Light at the end of the tunnel, anyone?
No Cheney-Rumsfeldian tableau is complete without its diabolus ex machina -- Iran naturally. Petraeus invoked Iran early and often, beginning with the now widely accepted and completely unsupported claim that Iran is supplying weapons to Iraqi "insurgents." This is one that provoked the arrest of a Code Pinker in the back benches, when she shouted "That's a lie!"
She was right, of course. This phony claim, originated out of the Public Affairs offices of the Pentagon, has nonetheless become an article of faith with the "journalists" of the American corporate fourth estate.
The most enjoyable and potentially redemptive aspect of the whole dog-and-pony show were the handful of Congress members who -- under pressure from war-weary constituents and the polls showing rock-bottom approval ratings for the newly-empowered Democrats -- lit into Petraeus with a vigor seldom seen in the hallowed halls of hearingdom.
Congressman Tom Lantos (D - California) assaulted the credibility of the administration with an unusual enthusiasm, with -- of course -- a ritual denunciation of Iran, and called for immediate withdrawal of US forces. Fellow Californian Loretta Sanchez as much as called Petraeus and his co-conspirator Crocker liars.
Others weighed in, along partisan lines mostly. Nothing shocking there, though my gut tells me that the California Democratic Party -- holding within its embrace Barbara Lee, the sole Congressional dissenter against the resolution granting the Bush administration war-making powers -- is thinking about its besieged national Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, now facing an electoral challenge from Cindy Sheehan.
Unfortunately, this is the backdrop. The 2008 elections, not the charnel house of American occupation in Iraq.
Behind all the panting about the "heroism" of US troops, and the "sacrifices" of military families who see that dreaded military in the driveway, this is mostly about political ambition and the family feud over which party will run the executive committee for Wall Street and the defense industries.
Not a single member of Congress yesterday cited the most recent extrapolation of Lancet Report showing that around a million Iraqis have been "sacrificed" by the occupation. In a typical US neighborhood with families averaging four, this would be represented by a funeral in every sixth house.
'Spose I've said this before, but the target of our misbehaviors (at least Code Pink and IVAW were on hand to disrupt yesterday) must be the Democratic Party. They can ignore another protest on the National Mall, but they can't ignore people occupying their local Congressional offices. These occupations to end the occupation need to become ubiquitous.
Last year, I shocked many colleagues by recommending they vote for Democrats across the board in 2006, but folks didn't read the fine print. We needed to put these people in power to expose them. They were taking cover in the "we're-just-a-minority" bunker. Now they are in the open, and the institutional rot as well as the class loyalties of the Democratic Party are on vivid display.
What we saw o Monday, aside from the Petraeus-Crocker Show, in the loss of good manners by a few Democrats, was a display of the latent power of a wakeful people. The Code Pinkers and Iraq Veterans Against the War represent a minority in American politics right now, just as anti-slavery advocates once were. But let there be no confusion; this minority -- which numbers now in the millions -- has the power to put its principles into action in an instrumental way: by threatening the fortunes of one of the ruling class parties in the United States on the issue of a criminal imperial war.
Misbehavior works. Delegitimate. Disobey. Disrupt.
Stan Goff is the author of "Hideous Dream: A Soldier's Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti" (Soft Skull Press, 2000), "Full Spectrum Disorder" (Soft Skull Press, 2003) and "Sex & War" which will be released approximately December, 2005. He is retired from the United States Army. His blog is at www.stangoff.com.
Goff can be reached at: stan@stangoff.com
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. -- Edward R. Murrow
Anti-Empire Report - Refuse To Fight - The world is very weary of all this and wants to laugh again By William Blum
Okay, Bush ain't gonna get out of Iraq no matter what anyone says or does short of a)impeachment, b)a lobotomy, or c)one of his daughters setting herself afire in the Oval Office as a war protest. A few days ago, upon arriving in Australia, "in a chipper mood", he was asked by the Deputy Prime Minister about his stopover in Iraq. "We're kicking ass," replied the idiot king.[1] Another epigram for his tombstone.
And the Democrats ain't gonna end the war. Ninety-nine percent of the American people protesting on the same day ain't gonna do it either, in this democracy. (No, I'm sorry to say that I don't think the Vietnam protesters ended the war. There were nine years of protest -- 1964 to 1973 -- before the US military left Vietnam. It's a stretch to ascribe a cause and effect to that. The United States, after all, had to leave sometime.)
Only those fighting the war can end it. By laying down their arms and refusing to kill anymore, including themselves. Some American soldiers in Iraq have already refused to go on very dangerous combat missions. Iraq Veterans Against the War, last month at their annual meeting, in St. Louis, voted to launch a campaign encouraging American troops to refuse to fight. "Iraq Veterans Against the War decided to make support of war resisters a major part of what we do," said Garrett Rappenhagen, a former U.S. Army sniper who served in Iraq from February 2004 to February 2005.
The veterans group has begun organizing among active duty soldiers on military bases. Veterans have toured the country in busses holding barbeques outside the base gates. They also plan to step up efforts to undermine military recruiting efforts.
Of course it's a very long shot to get large numbers of soldiers into an angry, protesting frame of mind. But consider the period following the end of World War Two. Late 1945 and early 1946 saw what is likely the greatest troop revolt that has ever occurred in a victorious army. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of American soldiers protested all over the world because they were not being sent home even though the war was over. The GIs didn't realize it at first, but many soon came to understand that the reason they were being transferred from Europe and elsewhere to various places in the Pacific area, instead of being sent back home, was that the United States was concerned about uprisings against colonialism, which, in the minds of Washington foreign-policy officials, was equated with communism and other nasty un-American things. The uprisings were occurring in British colonies, in Dutch colonies, in French colonies, as well as in the American colony of the Philippines. Yes, hard to believe, but the United States was acting like an imperialist power.
In the Philippines there were repeated mass demonstrations by GIs who were not eager to be used against the left-wing Huk guerrillas. The New York Times reported in January 1946 about one of these demonstrations: "'The Philippines are capable of handling their own internal problems,' was the slogan voiced by several speakers. Many extended the same point of view to China."[2]
American marines were sent to China to support the Nationalist government of Chang Kai-shek against the Communists of Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai. They were sent to the Netherlands Indies (Indonesia) to be of service to the Dutch in their suppression of native nationalists. And American troop ships were used to transport the French military to France's former colony in Vietnam. These and other actions of Washington led to numerous large GI protests in Japan, Guam, Saipan, Korea, India, Germany, England, France, and Andrews Field, Maryland, all concerned with the major slowdown in demobilization and the uses for which the soldiers were being employed. There were hunger strikes and mass mailings to Congress from the soldiers and their huge body of support in the States. In January 1946, Senator Edwin Johnson of Colorado declared "It is distressing and humiliating to all Americans to read in every newspaper in the land accounts of near mutiny in the Army."[3]
On January 13, 1946, 500 GIs in Paris adopted a set of demands called "The Enlisted Man's Magna Charta", calling for radical reforms of the master-slave relationship between officers and enlisted men; also demanding the removal of Secretary of War Robert Patterson. In the Philippines, soldier sentiment against the reduced demobilization crystalized in a meeting of GIs that voted unanimously to ask Secretary Patterson and certain Senators: "What is the Army's position in the Philippines, especially in relation to the reestablishment of the Eighty-sixth Infantry Division on a combat basis?"[4]
By the summer of 1946 there had been a huge demobilization of the armed forces, although there's no way of knowing with any exactness how much of that was due to the GIs' protests.[5]
If this is how American soldiers could be inspired and organized in the wake of "The Good War", imagine what can be done today in the midst of "The God-awful War".
Iraq Veterans Against the War could use your help. Go to: http://www.ivaw.org/
William Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir, Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire. Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org
NOTES:
[1] Sydney Morning Herald, September 6, 2007
[2] New York Times, January 8, 1946, p.3
[3] New York Times, January 11, 1946, p.1
[4] Ibid., p.4
[5] For more information about the soldiers' protests, see: Mary-Alice Waters, "G.I.'s and the Fight Against War" (New York, 1967), a pamphlet published by "Young Socialist" magazine.
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. -- Edward R. Murrow
And the Democrats ain't gonna end the war. Ninety-nine percent of the American people protesting on the same day ain't gonna do it either, in this democracy. (No, I'm sorry to say that I don't think the Vietnam protesters ended the war. There were nine years of protest -- 1964 to 1973 -- before the US military left Vietnam. It's a stretch to ascribe a cause and effect to that. The United States, after all, had to leave sometime.)
Only those fighting the war can end it. By laying down their arms and refusing to kill anymore, including themselves. Some American soldiers in Iraq have already refused to go on very dangerous combat missions. Iraq Veterans Against the War, last month at their annual meeting, in St. Louis, voted to launch a campaign encouraging American troops to refuse to fight. "Iraq Veterans Against the War decided to make support of war resisters a major part of what we do," said Garrett Rappenhagen, a former U.S. Army sniper who served in Iraq from February 2004 to February 2005.
The veterans group has begun organizing among active duty soldiers on military bases. Veterans have toured the country in busses holding barbeques outside the base gates. They also plan to step up efforts to undermine military recruiting efforts.
Of course it's a very long shot to get large numbers of soldiers into an angry, protesting frame of mind. But consider the period following the end of World War Two. Late 1945 and early 1946 saw what is likely the greatest troop revolt that has ever occurred in a victorious army. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of American soldiers protested all over the world because they were not being sent home even though the war was over. The GIs didn't realize it at first, but many soon came to understand that the reason they were being transferred from Europe and elsewhere to various places in the Pacific area, instead of being sent back home, was that the United States was concerned about uprisings against colonialism, which, in the minds of Washington foreign-policy officials, was equated with communism and other nasty un-American things. The uprisings were occurring in British colonies, in Dutch colonies, in French colonies, as well as in the American colony of the Philippines. Yes, hard to believe, but the United States was acting like an imperialist power.
In the Philippines there were repeated mass demonstrations by GIs who were not eager to be used against the left-wing Huk guerrillas. The New York Times reported in January 1946 about one of these demonstrations: "'The Philippines are capable of handling their own internal problems,' was the slogan voiced by several speakers. Many extended the same point of view to China."[2]
American marines were sent to China to support the Nationalist government of Chang Kai-shek against the Communists of Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai. They were sent to the Netherlands Indies (Indonesia) to be of service to the Dutch in their suppression of native nationalists. And American troop ships were used to transport the French military to France's former colony in Vietnam. These and other actions of Washington led to numerous large GI protests in Japan, Guam, Saipan, Korea, India, Germany, England, France, and Andrews Field, Maryland, all concerned with the major slowdown in demobilization and the uses for which the soldiers were being employed. There were hunger strikes and mass mailings to Congress from the soldiers and their huge body of support in the States. In January 1946, Senator Edwin Johnson of Colorado declared "It is distressing and humiliating to all Americans to read in every newspaper in the land accounts of near mutiny in the Army."[3]
On January 13, 1946, 500 GIs in Paris adopted a set of demands called "The Enlisted Man's Magna Charta", calling for radical reforms of the master-slave relationship between officers and enlisted men; also demanding the removal of Secretary of War Robert Patterson. In the Philippines, soldier sentiment against the reduced demobilization crystalized in a meeting of GIs that voted unanimously to ask Secretary Patterson and certain Senators: "What is the Army's position in the Philippines, especially in relation to the reestablishment of the Eighty-sixth Infantry Division on a combat basis?"[4]
By the summer of 1946 there had been a huge demobilization of the armed forces, although there's no way of knowing with any exactness how much of that was due to the GIs' protests.[5]
If this is how American soldiers could be inspired and organized in the wake of "The Good War", imagine what can be done today in the midst of "The God-awful War".
Iraq Veterans Against the War could use your help. Go to: http://www.ivaw.org/
William Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir, Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire. Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org
NOTES:
[1] Sydney Morning Herald, September 6, 2007
[2] New York Times, January 8, 1946, p.3
[3] New York Times, January 11, 1946, p.1
[4] Ibid., p.4
[5] For more information about the soldiers' protests, see: Mary-Alice Waters, "G.I.'s and the Fight Against War" (New York, 1967), a pamphlet published by "Young Socialist" magazine.
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. -- Edward R. Murrow
Bin Laden is Right? The Unwarranted Influence of America’s Global “Defense” Corporation
By Brian Bogart
You know your country’s “democratic” leadership and rationale for war are in trouble when the anointed most-evil enemy makes more sense than they do.
Although for all we know Bin Laden’s “annual message to Americans” originated below Dick Cheney’s office where Bin Laden is living in luxury chained to a pool table, its contents ring with refreshing logic relative to what usually passes for truth in and around the White House.
Analyzing his message alongside bipartisan excuses for war -- and juxtaposed with President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower’s keep-an-eye-on-the-defense-industry speech of January 1961 -- only Bin Laden’s words and Eisenhower’s warnings stand up to current United States Department of Defense statistics.
Outsourcing trends, hugely accelerated in the 1990s, have made the Department of Defense the largest corporate entity in history. Few big corporations in the world don’t have a handy cash-cow D contract, and small businesses and schools are especially welcome to apply. ($900 per toilet seat? Let’s sell those!)
DoD contracts get dished out everyday for everything from children’s books, cosmetics, organic dinners, and movie theater tickets to good old-fashioned nano weaponry.
Defense is the world’s top user of fossil fuels, contributor to climate change, and most financially alluring industry. All considered, the industry has the strongest lobby power in Washington and everywhere else. Defense is also the world’s foremost motivator of advanced science and technology, a global network capable of an entirely new direction in economics -- dependent, of course, on whether it’s a good D policy or a bad D policy.
That’s where We the People come in, at least according to President Eisenhower, who particularly worried about our universities.
Said Ike: “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.”
Judging by DoD’s own stats, we’re way past that point. More than 1,100 colleges and universities have had prime contracts with the Department of Defense in the last six years. Around 950 of those are in the United States, with the rest spread across 33 countries.
Although the number of DoD general assistance contracts to schools remained relatively constant between 2000 and 2006, the 900% increase in defense-applied research contracts and total dollar amounts awarded to schools during that period would’ve made Ike toss his lunch on TV. The total number of defense-applied research contracts to schools rose from 5,887 in 2000 to 52,667 in 2006. Total dollars to schools rose from $4.4 billion in 2000 to $46.7 billion in 2006.
Hundreds of thousands of companies in at least 198 nations and territories have held prime contracts with DoD in this century, including companies in China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Syria.
There were none in Iraq until 2003.
DoD contract trends with companies are at all-time highs, with more than 300,000 prime contractors in the United States alone (“prime” doesn’t count subcontractors and contracted individuals), a 6,000 companies-per-state average. Between 2001 and 2006, the total amount of defense dollars to companies in most states doubled. For fiscal year 2001, companies in Texas received $9.5 billion. For fiscal year 2006, the total was $27 billion.
Between the end of World War II and December 2006, US armed forces served abroad in 159 instances. These operations increased in frequency each decade, with 6 in the 1950s, 8 in the 1960s, 11 in the 70s, 22 in the 80s, 66 in the 90s, and 44 so far this decade.
It doesn’t take a bright citizen to make the case that peace is a healthy idea. But then there are politicians. With a bad policy, presidential candidates who don’t promise to increase defense spending have no legitimate chance in any party, thanks to big media’s industrial role. Money runs campaigns on strong defense for a reason: reelection. Defense is by far the largest job creator and money spender in all fifty states.
The problem is the bad policy excessively gives businesses our taxes to invest in their own financial growth. We pay for defense, defense showers that money on schools and companies, and top executives buy yachts and build stadiums. State and local leaders then raise taxes to cover what taxes should cover: the people’s health and prosperity.
Good folks put their faith, families, careers, and lives on the line for what they’re told by government. They don’t have time to investigate. Every September 11 our leadership bows its collective head before reminding us to keep shopping in “the wealthiest nation” while its infrastructure crumbles.
This year the enemy told us to think about that. With a graduate program untangling defense statistics, Bin Laden has a point that makes me wonder. Which “side” in this supposedly black and white world has the most evil to hide? Why does this man sound more like Ike than anyone in government?
It would better serve the people to hear Eisenhower’s speech every year instead of hollow tales about a bad guy our leaders tell us to fear yet, conveniently for their personal-wealth club, don’t see fit to chase down. Exploiting September 11 for profit has (among other things) legitimized the largest-ever expansion of the military industry using a nation that had nothing to do with it. That perpetuation does indeed smell like bipartisan imperialism.
Whether you’re a student or selling ice cream, teddy bears, tennis balls or shovels and oil rigs, chances are you’re part of the defense industry. And in this age of confrontation with Earth’s definition of diversity, truly hard-working diverse Americans -- workers, students, parents, soldiers -- are harnessed with a national brand of business-friendly diversity that makes them equal low-income slaves for an old-fashioned, wealthy white man’s profit scheme. Ike called it unwarranted influence. Our founders called it tyranny.
Diversity is an awareness of the human family returning to unity after a long and tortuous journey, celebrating its products of division while embracing its single origin and destiny. The next logical step for humanity is a leap beyond human-centric diversity to perceiving and promoting the human family as a fully responsible component of biodiversity.
As Ike feared, economic dependence on defense growth by the perpetuation of tensions since World War II explains the existence and growth of nearly every problem we face today. Undoubtedly, he would agree that economic dependence on defending Earth’s essential diversity is a far more lucrative and lasting prospect.
Our taxes pay for a defense that doesn’t defend our future. Our taxes go to companies that make profits we will never see. The real threat President Eisenhower spoke of is a drug that poisons society, spreads like a virus, and numbs the roots of consciousness. The American dream has become a nightmare wherein justice is irrelevant, and dishonest leaders both shun and cite hard, courageous work.
The defense industry juggernaut is not a widespread corporate conspiracy; it’s a bad-policy business trend running on inertia. Instead of calling for contractors to give up profits, change the policy, keep the network, and invest in a healthy planet.
But peace will not make money until it becomes the policy for defense, and that won’t happen without a tax rebellion, general strike, or similar surge in popular demand. (1,100 schools sounds like a student movement network.) Until the day we have a good D, the bad D pays our leaders. The people’s business is making that day arrive, because lazy government won’t surrender without a confrontation with the governed.
Meanwhile, “we must stop the terrorists in Iraq!” Terrorists, communists, whatever. Business-wise, Vietnam never ends.
That’s where we are.
At a 1992 University of Oregon event discussing the American people and their government, author Ken Kesey declared, “There are times when you gotta stand up in church and shout ‘bullshit!’”
That’s what time it is.
Sources: Statistical Information Analysis Division, Department of Defense; FY2000 through FY2006 CASE Multi-year Educational Nonprofits Prime Contracts, ST25 Multi-year States and Territories Prime Contracts, ST26 Multi-year Foreign Country Prime Contracts; and “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2006,” updated January 8, 2007 by Richard F. Grimmett, Specialist in National Defense, US Congressional Research Service.
Brian Bogart is a peace studies graduate student, diversity scholar, and defense statistics analyst at University of Oregon. His thesis project follows the 60-year trend of acquiring what President Dwight Eisenhower termed the “unwarranted influence” of the defense industry by government. Contact Brian at IntelligentFuture.org
(Excerpt from Eisenhower’s speech)
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
As we peer into society’s future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. Together we must learn how to compose difference, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent, I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment.
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.
Brian Bogart -Diversity Scholar - Defense Statistics Analyst - M.A. Candidate, Peace Studies; University of Oregon - Research Associate, Institute for Policy Research and Development; London
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano
You know your country’s “democratic” leadership and rationale for war are in trouble when the anointed most-evil enemy makes more sense than they do.
Although for all we know Bin Laden’s “annual message to Americans” originated below Dick Cheney’s office where Bin Laden is living in luxury chained to a pool table, its contents ring with refreshing logic relative to what usually passes for truth in and around the White House.
Analyzing his message alongside bipartisan excuses for war -- and juxtaposed with President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower’s keep-an-eye-on-the-defense-industry speech of January 1961 -- only Bin Laden’s words and Eisenhower’s warnings stand up to current United States Department of Defense statistics.
Outsourcing trends, hugely accelerated in the 1990s, have made the Department of Defense the largest corporate entity in history. Few big corporations in the world don’t have a handy cash-cow D contract, and small businesses and schools are especially welcome to apply. ($900 per toilet seat? Let’s sell those!)
DoD contracts get dished out everyday for everything from children’s books, cosmetics, organic dinners, and movie theater tickets to good old-fashioned nano weaponry.
Defense is the world’s top user of fossil fuels, contributor to climate change, and most financially alluring industry. All considered, the industry has the strongest lobby power in Washington and everywhere else. Defense is also the world’s foremost motivator of advanced science and technology, a global network capable of an entirely new direction in economics -- dependent, of course, on whether it’s a good D policy or a bad D policy.
That’s where We the People come in, at least according to President Eisenhower, who particularly worried about our universities.
Said Ike: “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.”
Judging by DoD’s own stats, we’re way past that point. More than 1,100 colleges and universities have had prime contracts with the Department of Defense in the last six years. Around 950 of those are in the United States, with the rest spread across 33 countries.
Although the number of DoD general assistance contracts to schools remained relatively constant between 2000 and 2006, the 900% increase in defense-applied research contracts and total dollar amounts awarded to schools during that period would’ve made Ike toss his lunch on TV. The total number of defense-applied research contracts to schools rose from 5,887 in 2000 to 52,667 in 2006. Total dollars to schools rose from $4.4 billion in 2000 to $46.7 billion in 2006.
Hundreds of thousands of companies in at least 198 nations and territories have held prime contracts with DoD in this century, including companies in China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Syria.
There were none in Iraq until 2003.
DoD contract trends with companies are at all-time highs, with more than 300,000 prime contractors in the United States alone (“prime” doesn’t count subcontractors and contracted individuals), a 6,000 companies-per-state average. Between 2001 and 2006, the total amount of defense dollars to companies in most states doubled. For fiscal year 2001, companies in Texas received $9.5 billion. For fiscal year 2006, the total was $27 billion.
Between the end of World War II and December 2006, US armed forces served abroad in 159 instances. These operations increased in frequency each decade, with 6 in the 1950s, 8 in the 1960s, 11 in the 70s, 22 in the 80s, 66 in the 90s, and 44 so far this decade.
It doesn’t take a bright citizen to make the case that peace is a healthy idea. But then there are politicians. With a bad policy, presidential candidates who don’t promise to increase defense spending have no legitimate chance in any party, thanks to big media’s industrial role. Money runs campaigns on strong defense for a reason: reelection. Defense is by far the largest job creator and money spender in all fifty states.
The problem is the bad policy excessively gives businesses our taxes to invest in their own financial growth. We pay for defense, defense showers that money on schools and companies, and top executives buy yachts and build stadiums. State and local leaders then raise taxes to cover what taxes should cover: the people’s health and prosperity.
Good folks put their faith, families, careers, and lives on the line for what they’re told by government. They don’t have time to investigate. Every September 11 our leadership bows its collective head before reminding us to keep shopping in “the wealthiest nation” while its infrastructure crumbles.
This year the enemy told us to think about that. With a graduate program untangling defense statistics, Bin Laden has a point that makes me wonder. Which “side” in this supposedly black and white world has the most evil to hide? Why does this man sound more like Ike than anyone in government?
It would better serve the people to hear Eisenhower’s speech every year instead of hollow tales about a bad guy our leaders tell us to fear yet, conveniently for their personal-wealth club, don’t see fit to chase down. Exploiting September 11 for profit has (among other things) legitimized the largest-ever expansion of the military industry using a nation that had nothing to do with it. That perpetuation does indeed smell like bipartisan imperialism.
Whether you’re a student or selling ice cream, teddy bears, tennis balls or shovels and oil rigs, chances are you’re part of the defense industry. And in this age of confrontation with Earth’s definition of diversity, truly hard-working diverse Americans -- workers, students, parents, soldiers -- are harnessed with a national brand of business-friendly diversity that makes them equal low-income slaves for an old-fashioned, wealthy white man’s profit scheme. Ike called it unwarranted influence. Our founders called it tyranny.
Diversity is an awareness of the human family returning to unity after a long and tortuous journey, celebrating its products of division while embracing its single origin and destiny. The next logical step for humanity is a leap beyond human-centric diversity to perceiving and promoting the human family as a fully responsible component of biodiversity.
As Ike feared, economic dependence on defense growth by the perpetuation of tensions since World War II explains the existence and growth of nearly every problem we face today. Undoubtedly, he would agree that economic dependence on defending Earth’s essential diversity is a far more lucrative and lasting prospect.
Our taxes pay for a defense that doesn’t defend our future. Our taxes go to companies that make profits we will never see. The real threat President Eisenhower spoke of is a drug that poisons society, spreads like a virus, and numbs the roots of consciousness. The American dream has become a nightmare wherein justice is irrelevant, and dishonest leaders both shun and cite hard, courageous work.
The defense industry juggernaut is not a widespread corporate conspiracy; it’s a bad-policy business trend running on inertia. Instead of calling for contractors to give up profits, change the policy, keep the network, and invest in a healthy planet.
But peace will not make money until it becomes the policy for defense, and that won’t happen without a tax rebellion, general strike, or similar surge in popular demand. (1,100 schools sounds like a student movement network.) Until the day we have a good D, the bad D pays our leaders. The people’s business is making that day arrive, because lazy government won’t surrender without a confrontation with the governed.
Meanwhile, “we must stop the terrorists in Iraq!” Terrorists, communists, whatever. Business-wise, Vietnam never ends.
That’s where we are.
At a 1992 University of Oregon event discussing the American people and their government, author Ken Kesey declared, “There are times when you gotta stand up in church and shout ‘bullshit!’”
That’s what time it is.
Sources: Statistical Information Analysis Division, Department of Defense; FY2000 through FY2006 CASE Multi-year Educational Nonprofits Prime Contracts, ST25 Multi-year States and Territories Prime Contracts, ST26 Multi-year Foreign Country Prime Contracts; and “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2006,” updated January 8, 2007 by Richard F. Grimmett, Specialist in National Defense, US Congressional Research Service.
Brian Bogart is a peace studies graduate student, diversity scholar, and defense statistics analyst at University of Oregon. His thesis project follows the 60-year trend of acquiring what President Dwight Eisenhower termed the “unwarranted influence” of the defense industry by government. Contact Brian at IntelligentFuture.org
(Excerpt from Eisenhower’s speech)
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
As we peer into society’s future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. Together we must learn how to compose difference, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent, I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment.
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.
Brian Bogart -Diversity Scholar - Defense Statistics Analyst - M.A. Candidate, Peace Studies; University of Oregon - Research Associate, Institute for Policy Research and Development; London
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano
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