Since the 1980s, neoliberalism dominated US politics under Democrats and Republicans. Bush I continued Reagan policies. Clinton hardened them. Bush II much more, and Obama so far matched Star Trek, going where no administration went before. Count the ways. They're manyfold, favoring business over popular interests, yet he's accused of being socialist.
On November 2, angry voters responded, shifting right despite favoring many left of center issues, a combination of outrage and angst overriding their best interests. Go figure because what they got will incense them more.
During hard times, election cycles repeat a common pattern. Angry voters throw out bums for new ones, discarding them next time around for still more, mindless of what an earlier article explained - that US democracy is fake. The criminal class in Washington is bipartisan. Mock elections pretend to be real. The process is mere kabuki theater run by political consultants and PR wizards, supported by major media misreporting, featuring horse race issues, not real ones.
Everything is pre-scripted. Secrecy and back room deals substitute for a free, fair and open process. Party bosses chose candidates. Big money owns them. Key outcomes are predetermined, and cheated voters get the best democracy money can buy, each time no different than others.
Recall November 2008. Promising change after eight George Bush/Republican dominated years, Obama won the most convincing non-incumbent victory in over 50 years, sweeping Democrats to large majorities in both houses.
On election night, the mood celebrated hope for progressive change, an end to imperial wars, and a new day for America. When word came around 10PM, expectant thousands in Chicago's Grant Park erupted with chants of "yes we can," hoping Obama would deliver at a time of deepening economic duress. Two years later, disappointment, disillusion, frustration, and anger erupted over promises made, then broken, once again betting new faces will govern better than old ones. Think again.
New York Times writers took the lead reporting it, Jeff Zeleny and David Herszenhorn, for example, headlining, "Restive Voters Divide Power in Congress as GOP Surges to Control of House," saying:
They also came close in the Senate "as discontented voters, frustrated about the nation's continuing economic woes, turned sharply against President Obama just two years after catapulting him into the White House." It showed in how they "indiscriminately ousted Democratic incumbents who loyally supported Mr. Obama's agenda," decidedly anti-populist whether or not they know it.
Times writer Carl Hulse headlined "Republicans Oust(ed) Old and New Democrats Alike," throwing out babies with their bath water. It's what usually happens in hard times, especially when big money effectively manipulates minds, pushing them right, not left, that means over the cliff through planned austerity when massive stimulus and much more are needed.
Universal single-payer healthcare for one. Taking money out of politics another. Holding real elections, not fake ones. Giving Congress back what the Constitution's Article 1, Section 8 mandates - the power to create money and control the value thereof, not Wall Street bankers using it to their advantage. They delivered hard times, transferring wealth from the majority to themselves. Obama and Congress support them, Republicans as guilty as Democrats.
The best Times writer Peter Baker could say was "Somewhere along the way, the apostle of change became its target, engulfed by the same currents that swept him to the White House two years ago." Instead of denouncing his shameless betrayal, he said only that he "must find a way to recalibrate with nothing less than his presidency on the line."
Shifting right, not left, is what he means, what Clinton called triangulation. Obama earlier promised austerity, more favors for business, hardline immigration policy, deficit reduction, continued imperial wars without saying it, and more for privilege, not people, buying into Reagan's "trickle down" economics, what, Bush I called "voodoo."
All a Times editorial could do say is that "voters....sent President Obama a loud message: They don't like how he's doing his job, they're even angrier at Congressional Democrats." Republicans exploited it "turning out their base....Democrats....fail(ing) to rally their own." Besides noting a shift right, hard issues weren't mentioned, instead saying "his opponents (were able) to spin and distort what Americans should see as genuine progress in very tough times."
For Wall Street, defense contractors, Big Oil, and other corporate favorites perhaps, not Main Street that drove voters for change. What's coming, however, will infuriate them, what no major media report will explain. For example:
-- greater than ever military spending;
-- expanded wars, perhaps to new theaters at a time most Americans want them ended;
-- privatizing Social Security and Medicare, letting Wall Street racketeers exploit them for profit, scamming the public at the same time;
-- privatizing public education as well as increasingly at the university level;
-- trashing labor rights;
-- hanging American workers out to dry;
-- ignoring growing millions facing foreclosure;
-- letting poverty and unemployment spiral out of control;
-- yet eliminating unemployment compensation and other social benefits, saying they're "unaffordable;" tax cuts for the rich, however, will be maintained;
-- enacting more police state laws on top of many in place; and
-- turning America darker, a reactionary direction pitting bread and butter issues against ruling elites, both parties offering bipartisan support, especially new incumbents and their leadership.
The big money backing them demands it, assuring they'll get what they bought. It's how US politics works, more than ever delivering the best democracy money can buy. As a result, American workers are on their own, out of luck, and unsupported by both parties. Democrats are no different than Republicans.
As a result, governance in America is dysfunctional. The electorate remains mindless to reality. Only grassroots activism might change things, sweeping all the bums out, electing progressive independents, reversing repressive and corporate friendly laws, as well as enacting a new constitution by national referendum, letting the electorate decide, not states or Washington.
A utopian vision? Absolutely, adopting working class France's 1968 slogan, "Be realistic, Ask for the Impossible" through collective political action, the only way "impossible" goals ever are reachable, social justice topping the list.
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 cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
Friday, November 05, 2010
Thursday, November 04, 2010
Screw the pooch - Is NarcoNews Corrupted?
Once more, you are so fucked! And this time, by a news source I used to trust, at least as far as Mexico went. But no longer. As usual, my amigo Slave Revolt has called it correctly, saying NarcoNews was corrupted. I took my time coming around to his POV, but now I understand and agree. Alas, even the purveyors of "authentic journalism" can screw the pooch. And here's how they do it, in a step-by-step breakdown...so you can recognize further dog-fuckery in the future:
1. Publish, unedited and uncriticized, one press release from CONAIE, one of several indigenous people's NGOs in Ecuador.
2. Comment on it in hysterical, smear-mongering hyperbole, questioning none of its premises:
Note by Al Giordano: During Thursday's coverage of events in Ecuador, we accepted on face value that it was an attempted coup d'etat and saw the same international forces behind the 2009 Honduras coup involved in these events. Now that the immediate dangers have subsided is the moment to reflect more deeply as to what occurred and why.We also defended Ecuador's most important coalition of social movements, the Federation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE, in its Spanish initials) from a vicious smear and innuendo campaign against it by North Americans like Eva Golinger, Jean-Guy Allard,
and on her Twitter feed, Naomi Klein(see correction down below) who recklessly accused the indigenous women and men of the CONAIE of being agents of imperialism and recipients of funds from US AID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).In subsequent days, waving extremely flimsy and half-stated "evidence," Golinger and Allard have pressed their crusade to discredit the CONAIE further in a series of articles high on rhetoric and rumor and low on factual content or proof. If this is to become a duel of credibility and honesty between these gringo and Canadian voices and the dignified ones of the CONAIE, we give far more benefit of the doubt to those Ecuadorean voices who have proved for two decades that they hold the interests of their own country and their own peoples high and proud and who have effectively organized and struggled and continue to win real results.
We furthermore consider the efforts by Golinger et al against the good people of the CONAIE to themselves be a form of North American imperialism and view it necessary to call it what it is: dishonesty based on the imperatives of political expediency and worship at the altar of State power. McCarthyism and Stalinism were always two faces on the same coin, after all. Each make their lists, invent false charges, distort the whole truth, as they seek to purge, destroy and silence debate and dissent.
3. ...while disregarding the fact that CONAIE is, in fact, very much a recipient of USAID funding, and has been for several years, just like the worst racist and fascist opponents of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Which kind of puts a crimp in the whole "CONAIE good people" spin.
It's not as though indigenous people can't be misled by gringos with mucho dinero, either. Happens more often than you think in Ecuador; Philip Agee could have told you as much, back when he was still alive. He was with the CIA when they fomented political coups during the 1960s, after all, and one of them (his first assignment, in fact) was in Ecuador. And how did the CIA do it? By cultivating conservative, strongly Catholic indigenous groups, among others. And yes, plenty of US money changed hands then, too. CONAIE did not yet exist, but the pattern of CIA subversion of non-governmental organizations in Ecuador was established during Agee's time there. It was later carried out under USAID and the NED--to give the whole putschist enterprise the appropriate "democratic" gloss. Scratch the veneer a bit, though, and you'll see the CIA still very much at work underneath it all.
4. But I guess it's easier to smear Eva Golinger, absurdly, as a "Stalinist" (never mind that Joe Stalin is long dead) than it is to take a good hard look at CONAIE's strange assertions:
We energetically announce that there never was any attempted coup d'etat, much less a kidnapping, but an event that responded to the uncertain political management of the government that causes popular discontent through permanent aggression, discrimination and violations of human rights consecrated in the Constitution.We do not recognize this dictatorial "democracy" because of its lack of freedom of speech, the kidnapping of all the powers of the state by the executive branch in its political system of one government, that does not generate spaces to debate the projects, and laws elaborated from the indigenous movement and other social sectors.
We categorically refute claims that the CONAIE, the Pachakutik Political Movement, the peoples and nationalities have any relationship at all with the organism known as USAID, previously NED, not today nor ever. To the contrary, we know that this organization finances the "social programs" of this government like the forest partnership and that, yes, is condemnable.
We demand the constitutional suspension of the National Congress for its failure to comply with the constitutional mandate that it legislate much less audit as it is well known that all laws are approved by the president's legal minister.
We condemn the usurpation of press freedom when on September 30 all media not allied with the government was forced to broadcast government news in "cadena nacional," a means by which all access to information is controlled and manipulated with a version of the facts that does not inform about the real dimensions of the situation on that day in the country.
Really, Al are you going to let THAT pass unchallenged? You call THAT "authentic"?
I call bullshit. On several points. Let's take them down one by one:
(a) "We energetically announce that there never was any attempted coup d'etat, much less a kidnapping, but an event that responded to the uncertain political management of the government that causes popular discontent through permanent aggression, discrimination and violations of human rights consecrated in the Constitution."
This is the first bald-faced CONAIE lie. What happened in Ecuador on September 20 WAS, unequivocally, a coup. Eyewitnesses who were at the hospital where Rafael Correa was held prisoner that day say that yes, he WAS kidnapped and held there against his will. One of them, Dr. Paula Vernimmen, actually tweeted the events as they went down. I followed her on Twitter that day, almost literally biting my nails in fear for Correa's life. My fear was well justified; Dr. Vernimmen later tweeted some pictures that prove that yes, there was a coup. Mere protesters against alleged human-rights violations don't fire big live ammo at an armored van containing a president, after all.
As for the "violations of human rights consecrated in the Constitution", I seem to recall Rafael Correa convening a constituent assembly to rewrite Ecuador's old, fusty gringo-imperialist era one. Why would he violate his own rules? Makes no sense, and doesn't explain his high popularity in the days and weeks immediately following the coup attempt, either. Consistently over 70% in the polls since the coup, people. And this popularity comes even as Quito remains under an indefinite state of emergency!
It also doesn't explain the fact that the general public strongly supports the army, which was instrumental in rescuing Correa, and condemns the police for revolting.
So yes, as you may have guessed, this too is CONAIE talking out its collective buttocks. One might think that if they really valued democracy, they would at least have the decency to condemn putschist tactics, but oh nooooo. To the contrary, they endorse them. Read on...
(b) "We do not recognize this dictatorial 'democracy' because of its lack of freedom of speech, the kidnapping of all the powers of the state by the executive branch in its political system of one government, that does not generate spaces to debate the projects, and laws elaborated from the indigenous movement and other social sectors."
"Dictatorial democracy"? Now there's an oxymoron if ever I heard one. Correa is popularly elected (and re-elected). With a margin of victory that leaves no doubt. He even won his second term on the first round, in a region all too known for its two-round elections of less-popular, more conservative candidates. What could be more "dictatorial"? Well, maybe if Correa had abolished the entire Ecuadorian parliament, CONAIE's absurd claim of "kidnapping all of the powers of the state" might hold water. But last I looked, the country still had one, and it was still running, albeit not always in CONAIE's favor. So it's not as though there are no "spaces to debate the projects, and laws elaborated from the indigenous movement and other social sectors." Actually, it looks more as if the democratic debate works just fine, and if CONAIE comes out the loser, well, too bad. Nobody elected THEM to a majority in the assembly, or to the presidency. (Maybe they'd be more popular if they cut the USAID purse strings!)
(c) "We categorically refute claims that the CONAIE, the Pachakutik Political Movement, the peoples and nationalities have any relationship at all with the organism known as USAID, previously NED, not today nor ever. To the contrary, we know that this organization finances the 'social programs' of this government like the forest partnership and that, yes, is condemnable."
Whoa, whoa, whoa...USAID finances Correa? Now that's just plain crazy talk. Why would they finance a man who's on the same side as another president they've been trying to topple since he came to office more than a decade ago? I'm talking here about Chavecito, to whom Correa is often (and not wrongly) compared. USAID, like the CIA, wants Correa dead; their lackeys in the Ecuadorian federal police made that abundantly clear.
Plus, that "categorically refute" thing has already been shot down by Eva Golinger's documented proof of the exact opposite. They may deny, but they CAN'T refute what she has found--hard documentation proving that yes, there is a long-standing relationship between CONAIE and USAID and the NED.
(d) "We demand the constitutional suspension of the National Congress for its failure to comply with the constitutional mandate that it legislate much less audit as it is well known that all laws are approved by the president's legal minister."
They demand WHAT? Suspension of an elected parliament? That sounds awfully putschist and dictatorial. Who are these people to condemn democracy as "dictatorial" when what they are doing is worse?
And as you may have guessed, they're also not telling the truth about the assembly's failure to "legislate much less audit". What's very strange is that their legislative arm, Pachakutic, originally voted to support Correa's constitution. When did they turn against him, and what turned them? Questions, questions--don't expect honest answers from them or Al Giordano, though.
(e) "We condemn the usurpation of press freedom when on September 30 all media not allied with the government was forced to broadcast government news in 'cadena nacional,' a means by which all access to information is controlled and manipulated with a version of the facts that does not inform about the real dimensions of the situation on that day in the country."
This is the same bullshit the Venezuelan opposition spouts all the time, freely and in their own private media, whenever Chavecito uses his legal right to broadcast an important announcement on all channels. It is also a legally enshrined right in Ecuador. And public service announcements by the federal government are also a fact of life here in North America, although we don't have cadenas per se. So this is another silly complaint that doesn't hold water. It does, however, smell very much of USAID's media-manipulating hand.
As to the claim that "all access to information is controlled and manipulated with a version of the facts that does not inform about the real dimensions of the situation on that day in the country", that's an absurd projection. Not to mention false. CNN's Spanish channel was unaffected, and transmitted nonstop lies, pro-US crapaganda and just plain bullshit throughout the cadena. It was so bad, and so utterly wrong, that the local CNN correspondent, Rodolfo Muñoz, resigned--in a move eerily reminiscent of what Andrés Izarra, formerly news director of Venezuela's oldest private channel, RCTV, did when his bosses told him to allow "nothing pro-Chávez on screen".
And that's not even touching the fact that Ecuador's private TV channels are all very right-wing--and bitterly opposed to Rafael Correa, who has often complained of their biased coverage. The idea that they were "manipulated" by the president into misinforming the people is laughable on the face of it. They were, if anything, for once made to report the truth. And you can bet that they are bitter...
Yes, CONAIE is lying. It and Pachakutic are lying in support of a fascist coup, one that would only hurt the indigenous peoples of Ecuador if it had succeeded. It would have put the treacherous Lucio "Sucio" Gutiérrez back in power, reinstated all the old corruption, led to murderous riots and repressions, and prevented the rainforest cleanup (by Chevron, among others) that Correa was pushing for--a move that would have directly benefited the indigenous! If anyone is manipulated here, it is clearly CONAIE and Pachakutic, who are touting, by strange coincidence, the exact same line as the US State Dept. would have them do. That line is the lie.
And Al Giordano accepts the lie at face value, with no further investigation, simply because his loopy anti-statist views dictate that he must denounce anyone favorable to a LatAm head of state, even someone as diligent as Eva Golinger, as "Stalinist". And that this is somehow "authentic journalism", to present a crazy, downright libelous press release, merely translated and not analyzed, as "the truth". Maybe because serious analysis would reveal him, embarrassingly, to be a hack, fronting for the same awful policies as CONAIE--policies that would only hurt their own people in the long run, and actively hinder plurinational participation in Ecuador's future.
Shame on him.
Sic transit gloria Obama
THE ROVING EYE
Sic transit gloria Obama
By Pepe Escobar
So United States President Barack Obama has publicly admitted he and his party took “a shellacking” - and there are “easier ways” to learn political lessons.
Yet an astonished globalized world may be forgiven the temptation to reduce US politics to a digital cartoon - with the Tea Party to the right, fire-baggers to the left, and the incoherent masses stuck in the middle with anger. (For the Tea Party, government, any government, is the ultimate "evil" while for fire-baggers, Obama is at best a Republican lite.) And all this in a
toxic context where the US Supreme Court has graphically shelved democracy by allowing free-flowing corporate funding of candidates.
The American right's "road map" for these past two years has been to declare Obama an abysmal failure since January 20, 2008, and to do absolutely zilch to help the country out of its political/economic/cultural quagmire. Now - at least in theory - their bluff has been called by the American electorate.
Or has it? To talk about incoherence is a huge understatement. Americans have told exit polls they almost equally blame Wall Street (35%), Bush (30%) and Obama (23%) for the current economic disaster. Obama royally screwed up by bailing out Wall Street the way he did. But now the electorate has decided to reward a whole bunch of clowns and crooks who caused the debacle in the first place - among other things by endorsing George W Bush's tax cuts and two trillionnaire, unwinnable wars. The tearful John Boehner - probably the next speaker of the House - is very tight with (what else is new?) financial lobbyists. Angry Americans voted - once again - for Wall Street.
Clowns to the left, jokers to the right
The heart of the (sorry) matter is that Obama and the Democrats did not even strive to meet the great expectations awakened by the 2008 "Change we can believe in" collective rapture. They sowed the seeds of their own doom instead. No wonder they were deserted en masse by young people, ethnic minorities, pacifists and environmentalists while at the same time masses of enraged centrists, moderates and independents sought refuge in the right. Add to it the electorate's gullibility in its manipulation by corporate media.
The verdict is out on whether Obama 2.0 will be your typical, dialogue-averse, hardcore Washington gridlock or, as Obama insisted in his White House press conference this Wednesday, a move further to the right towards a compromise with the uncompromising Republicans. On both options, in an US increasingly configured by corporate power as a neo-feudal plutocracy, what passes for "democracy" will be the loser.
Moreover, it's absurd to hope that Obama will connect with his inner Martin Luther King and suddenly start to walk on water and lead the masses to the Promised Land when the absolute majority of working class/middle class Americans - manipulated by special interests and indoctrinated with conservative dogmas such as taxes are evil - don't even know what they are supporting anymore.
The kiss of death
Amid this wasteland, for progressives California at least will function as a consolation prize - via "quirky" Jerry Brown back at the governor's mansion, pulverizing billionaire Republican and former eBay chief executive officer (for 10 years) Meg Whitman, who thought she could literally buy an election, spending a staggering $142 million, most of it her own money (talk about "fiscal responsibility" ...) on an ultra-negative campaign.
Even tough some of her proteges in the House did well, the fact is most of Sarah "I can see Russia from my house" Palin's endorsements proved largely to be the kiss of death - as in Delaware, Colorado, California, Nevada, West Virginia and Alaska.
The wackiest of the Tea Party running for the senate were total failures - such as Christine "the witch" O'Donnell in Delaware. In Nevada, Sharron Angle collapsed facing Democratic senate majority leader Harry Reid essentially because she ran an ultra-racist, anti-Latino campaign in a state where the Latino vote is crucial (75% of it ultimately went to Reid). Angle and O'Donnell were too much of a freak show anyway.
As for Rand Paul, now the Republican senator from Kentucky, sound minds suspect he is little else than plain scary. Paul's victory speech was quintessential rightwing populism - government derided in apocalyptic tones as less than worthless. Were Paul to try to filibuster the next senate vote inevitably increasing the US national debt, he could conceivably plunge the country into default, provoke a further depression, and wreak economic hell all around the world.
How's that for a rookie record?
The reality test for the Tea Party will be whether it can break away from incoherent blabber about no new taxes, the Fed, "evil" progressives, assorted conspiracy theories and "legislative action" outlawing Obama's birth certificate or will they actually try to propose sound policies to improve the system. Don't bet on it.
Flash forward to 2012; to the sound of Aretha Franklin singing Don Covay's See Saw - "going up, down, all around/ like a see saw" - scores of US voters will have finally noticed they threw the bums out just to bring in another basket of equally lame bums.
Beware the white Obama
United States corporate media is not emitting a peep about it but Obama should really start worrying about his white mirror - Marco Rubio, who has just won a senate seat for Florida. Rubio, 39, intelligent, good-looking, good orator, promises the world to people and has "American Dream" written all over his bio.
Born in Miami, raised in Vegas (where his Cuban exile parents worked hard in a hotel), good football player, hard-working college student, law degree, Catholic, blonde wife from a Colombian family, four kids - as a bonus to the establishment Rubio is not a wacko (althoughPalin loves him unconditionally). Mike Huckabee - former presidential candidate and now Fox News pundit - says he's "our Obama, with more substance". And crucially, his political godfather is none other than Jeb Bush. Establishment Republicans won't allow Palin to grab a presidentialnomination even over their dead bodies. Thus Rubio may be their savior for 2012.
An inept/indecisive Obama allowed Republicans to get away with murder - as in not being held accountable for the monster financial/economic mess and on top of it being allowed to exploit and profit from the all-American rage provoked by their "policies". Now, after the "shellacking", it's about time for the president to show some balls and start playing offense. He could start by firing everyone at the White House. It won't happen. Get ready; white Obama will eat him for breakfast in 2012.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
The Anti-Empire Report
by William Blum
Jon Stewart and the left
The left in America is desperate; desperate for someone who can inspire them, if not lead them to a better world; or at least make them laugh. TV star Jon Stewart is sometimes funny, especially when he doesn't try too hard to be funny, which is not often enough. But as a political leader, or simply political educator for the left, forget it. He's not even what I would call a genuine, committed leftist. What does he have to teach the left? He himself would certainly not want you to entertain the thought that Jon Stewart is in any way a man of the left.
He billed his October 30 rally on the National Mall in Washington, DC, as the Million Moderate March. Would a person with a real desire for important progressive social and political change, i.e, a "leftist", so ostentatiously brand himself a "moderate"? Even if by "moderate" he refers mainly to tone of voice or choice of words why is that so important? If a politician strongly supports things which you are passionate about, why should it bother you if the politician is vehement in his arguments, even angry? And if the politician is strongly against what you're passionate about does it make you feel any better about the guy if he never raises his voice or sharply criticizes those on the other side? What kind of cause is that to commit yourself to?
Stewart in fact appears to dislike the left, perhaps strongly. In the leadup to the rally he criticized the left for various things, including calling George W. Bush a "war criminal". Wow! How immoderate of us. Do I have to list here the 500 war crimes committed by George W. Bush? If I did so, would that make me one of what Stewart calls the "crazies"? In his talk at the rally, Stewart spoke of our "real fears" — "of terrorists, racists, Stalinists, and theocrats". Stalinists? Where did that come from, Glenn Beck? What decade is Stewart living in? What about capitalists or the corporations? Is there no reason to fear them? Is it Stalinists who are responsible for the collapse of our jobs and homes, our economy? Writer Chris Hedges asks: "Being nice and moderate will not help. These are corporate forces that are intent on reconfiguring the United States into a system of neofeudalism. These corporate forces will not be halted by funny signs, comics dressed up like Captain America or nice words."
Stewart also grouped together "Marxists actively subverting our constitution, racists and homophobes". Welcome to the Jon Stewart Tea Party. In his long interview last week of President Obama on his TV show, Stewart did not mention any of America's wars. That would have been impolite and divisive; maybe even not nice.
He billed his rally as being "for people who are politically dissatisfied but who are not ideological". (Democracy Now, November 1, 2010) Really, Jon? You have no ideology? To those who like to tell themselves and others that they don't have any particular ideology I say this: If you have thoughts about why the world is the way it is, why society is the way it is, why people are the way they are, what a better way would look like, and if your thoughts are fairly well organized, then that's your ideology, even if it's not wholly conscious as such. Better to organize those thoughts as best you can, become very conscious of them, and then consciously avoid getting involved with individuals or political movements who have an incompatible ideology. It's like a very bad marriage.
America's press corps(e)
"Goyim [non-Jews] were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world; only to serve the People of Israel," said Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in a sermon in Israel on October 16. Rabbi Yosef is the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel and the founder and spiritual leader of the Shas Party, one of the three major components of the current Israeli government. "Why are gentiles needed?" he continued. "They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi [master] and eat," he said to some laughter.
Pretty shocking, right? Apparently not shocking enough for the free and independent American mainstream media. Not one daily newspaper has picked it up. Not one radio or TV station. Neither have the two leading US news agencies, Associated Press and United Press International, which usually pick up anything at all newsworthy. And the words of course did not cross the lips of any American politician or State Department official. Rabbi Yosef's words were reported in English only by the Jewish Telegraph Agency, a US-based news service (October 18), and then picked up by a few relatively obscure news agencies or progressive websites. We can all imagine the news coverage if someone like Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said something like "Jews have no place in the world but to serve Islam".
On October 8, 2001, the second day of the US bombing of Afghanistan, the transmitters for the Taliban government's Radio Shari were bombed and shortly after this the US bombed some 20 regional radio sites. US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld defended the targeting of these facilities, saying: "Naturally, they cannot be considered to be free media outlets. They are mouthpieces of the Taliban and those harboring terrorists." 1
In 1999, during the US/NATO 78-day bombing of the former Yugoslavia, state-owned Radio Television Serbia (RTS) was targeted because it was broadcasting things which the United States and NATO did not like (like how much horror the bombing was causing). The bombs took the lives of many of the station's staff, and both legs of one of the survivors, which had to be amputated to free him from the wreckage. 2 UK Prime Minister Tony Blair told reporters that the bombing was "entirely justified" for the station was "part of the apparatus of dictatorship and power of Milosevic". 3 Threatening more such attacks on Serbian media, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon declared a few hours after the bombing: "Stay tuned. It is not difficult to track down where TV signals emanate from." 4
Accordingly, and with all due forethought, I call for the bombing of the leading members of the United States mainstream media — from the New York Times to CNN, from NPR to Fox News — for, naturally, they cannot be considered to be free media outlets, and are part of the apparatus of imperialism and power of the United States.
Anti-communism 101: Hijacking history
We like to think of death as the time for truth. No matter how much the deceased may have lived a lie, when he goes to meet his presumed maker the real, sordid facts of his life will out. Or at least they should; the obituary being the final chance to set the record straight. But obituaries very seldom perform this function, certainly not obituaries of those who played an important role in American foreign policy; the myths surrounding foreign policy and the deceased individual's role therein accompany him to the grave, and thence into Texas-approved American history textbooks.
In January of this year I commented in this report on the obituary of Lincoln Gordon 5, former ambassador to Brazil and State Department official. The obituary in the Washington Post painted him, as I put it, as a "boy wonder, intellectual shining light, distinguished leader of men, outstanding American patriot." No mention whatsoever was made of the leading role played by Gordon in the military overthrow of a progressive Brazilian government in 1964, resulting in a very brutal dictatorship for the next 21 years. Later, Gordon blatantly lied about his role in testimony before Congress.
Now we have the death a few weeks ago of Phillips Talbot, who was appointed by President Kennedy to be Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs and later became ambassador to Greece. In 1967 the Greek military and intelligence service, both closely tied to the CIA, overthrew another progressive government, that of George Papandreou and his son, cabinet minister Andreas Papandreou. For the next seven years the Greek people suffered utterly grievous suppression and torture. Talbot's obituary states: "Dr. Talbot was asleep in his bed while tanks rumbled through the streets of Athens and was completely surprised when Armed Forces radio announced at 6:10 a.m. that the military had taken control of the country. Dr. Talbot was adamant that the United States was impartial throughout the transition. 'You may be assured that there has been no American involvement in or, in fact, prior knowledge of the climactic events that those residing in this country have lived through in the past couple of years,' Dr. Talbot told the New York Times in 1969 shortly before he returned home." 6
Andreas Papandreou had been arrested at the time of the coup and held in prison for eight months. Shortly after his release, he and his wife Margaret visited Ambassador Talbot in Athens. Papandreou later related the following:
I asked Talbot whether America could have intervened the night of the coup, to prevent the death of democracy in Greece. He denied that they could have done anything about it. Then Margaret asked a critical question: What if the coup had been a Communist or a Leftist coup? Talbot answered without hesitation. Then, of course, they would have intervened, and they would have crushed the coup. 7
In November 1999, during a visit to Greece, President Bill Clinton was moved to declare:
When the junta took over in 1967 here the United States allowed its interests in prosecuting the cold war to prevail over its interest — I should say its obligation — to support democracy, which was, after all, the cause for which we fought the cold war.(sic) It is important that we acknowledge that. 8
Clinton's surprising admission prompted the retired Phillips Talbot to write to the New York Times: "With all due respect to President Clinton, he is wrong to imply that the United States supported the Greek coup in 1967. The coup was the product of Greek political rivalries and was contrary to American interests in every respect. ... Some Greeks have asserted that the United States could have restored a civilian government. In fact, we had neither the right nor the means to overturn the junta, bad as it was." 9
Or, as Bart Simpson would put it: "I didn't do it, no one saw me do it, you can't prove anything!"
After reading Talbot's letter in the Times in 1999 I wrote to him at his New York address reminding him of what Andreas Papandreou had reported on this very subject. I received no reply.
The cases of Brazil and Greece were of course just two of many leftist governments overthrown, as well as revolutionary movements suppressed, by the United States during the Cold War on the grounds that America had a moral right and obligation to defeat the evil of Soviet communism that was — we were told — instigating these forces. It was always a myth. Bolshevism and Western liberalism were united in their opposition to popular revolution. Russia was a country with a revolutionary past, not a revolutionary present. Even in Cuba, the Soviets were always a little embarrassed by the Castro-Guevara radical fervor. Stalin would have had such men imprisoned. The Cold War was not actually a struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was a struggle between the United States and the Third World. What there was, was people all over the Third World fighting for economic and political changes against US-supported repressive regimes, or setting up their own progressive governments. These acts of self-determination didn't coincide with the needs of the American power elite, and so the United States moved to crush those governments and movements even though the Soviet Union was playing virtually no role at all in the scenarios. It is remarkable the number of people who make fun of conspiracy theories but who accept without question the existence of an International Communist Conspiracy. 10
The United States' annual self-imposed humiliation
For years American political leaders and media were fond of labeling Cuba an "international pariah". We don't hear that any more. Perhaps one reason is the annual vote in the United Nations General Assembly on the resolution which reads: "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba". This is how the vote has gone (not including abstentions), this year being the strongest condemnation yet of Washington's policy:
| Year | Votes (Yes-No) | No Votes |
|---|---|---|
| 1992 | 59-2 | US, Israel |
| 1993 | 88-4 | US, Israel, Albania, Paraguay |
| 1994 | 101-2 | US, Israel |
| 1995 | 117-3 | US, Israel, Uzbekistan |
| 1996 | 138-3 | US, Israel, Uzbekistan |
| 1997 | 143-3 | US, Israel, Uzbekistan |
| 1998 | 157-2 | US, Israel |
| 1999 | 155-2 | US, Israel |
| 2000 | 167-3 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands |
| 2001 | 167-3 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands |
| 2002 | 173-3 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands |
| 2003 | 179-3 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands |
| 2004 | 179-4 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau |
| 2005 | 182-4 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau |
| 2006 | 183-4 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau |
| 2007 | 184-4 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau |
| 2008 | 185-3 | US, Israel, Palau |
| 2009 | 187-3 | US, Israel, Palau |
| 2010 | 187-2 | US, Israel |
Is the United States foreign policy establishment capable of being embarrassed?
Each fall, however, the UN vote is a welcome reminder that the world has not completely lost its senses and that the American empire does not completely control the opinion of other governments.
How it began: On April 6, 1960, Lester D. Mallory, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, wrote in an internal memorandum: "The majority of Cubans support Castro ... The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. ... every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba." Mallory proposed "a line of action which ... makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government." 11 Later that year, the Eisenhower administration instituted the suffocating embargo against its eternally-declared enemy.
CovertAction Quarterly
From 1978 to 2005 one of the leading progressive print (Remember that word?) magazines in the world, dealing primarily with US foreign policy, the CIA/NSA/FBI, repression at home and abroad, and corporate crime. The magazine, initially called CovertAction Information Bulletin, regularly published the names and career histories around the globe of undercover CIA officers derived from careful research of open, public sources. This so infuriated the powers-that-be that Congress passed the Intelligence Identities Protection Act in 1982, which made the practice of revealing the name of an undercover officer illegal under US law. The law was a virtual bill of attainder — it is unconstitutional for Congress to enact legislation directed at a specific individual or organization. At the time, members of the House Intelligence Committee were telling journalists and lawyers that the legislation was aimed only at CovertAction Information Bulletin and its editors, but this was always said off the record and no one would confirm it on the record; although during the House debate Congressman William Young (R.-FL) declared: "What we're after today are the Philip Agees of the world." 12 Ironically, the law became the basis for the prosecution of George W. Bush special counsel Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, who outed CIA employee Valerie Plame.
Amongst the magazine's numerous contributors were Philip Agee, John Stockwell, Ralph McGehee, Ellen Ray, William Schaap, Louis Wolf, Michael Parenti, Noam Chomsky, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Diana Johnstone, Sean Gervasi, Philip Wheaton, Immanuel Wallerstein, Kathy Kelly, Tony Benn, Ramsey Clark, David MacMichael, Edward Herman, William Blum (Whatever happened to him?), Michel Chossudovsky, Marjorie Cohn, James Petras, Gregory Elich, and many other prominent progressive writers.
A recent Washington Post story states: "The private papers of Philip Agee, the disaffected CIA operative whose unauthorized publication of agency secrets 35 years ago was arguably far more damaging than anything WikiLeaks has produced, have been obtained by New York University, which plans to make them public next spring." 13
A partial Table of Contents for each of the issues can be found here.
Individual copies or the entire set of 78 issues (mostly original copies and about a dozen in quality photocopy format) are available for purchase: $3.00 per issue, 25 copies for $65.00, 50 for $115, or all 78 for $165, including postage in the United States. To place an order, write:
Louis Wolf
1500 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Room 732
Washington, DC 20005
... or e-mail louw7@live.com
Notes
- Index on Censorship, the UK's leading organization promoting freedom of expression, October 18, 2001 ↩
- The Independent (London), April 24, 1999, p.1 ↩
- Bristol (UK) Evening Post, April 24, 1999 ↩
- The Guardian (London), April 24, 1999 ↩
- Anti-Empire Report, January 2010 ↩
- Washington Post, October 7, 2010 ↩
- Andreas Papandreou, Democracy at Gunpoint: The Greek Front (1970), p.294. ↩
- New York Times, November 21, 1999 ↩
- New York Times, November 23, 1999 ↩
- See William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II for details of the Cold War ↩
- Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Volume VI, Cuba (1991), p.885 ↩
- Wikipedia: Intelligence Identities Protection Act ↩
- Washington Post online, October 26, 2010, "Spytalk" by Jeff Stein ↩
–
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
Jon Stewart and the left
The left in America is desperate; desperate for someone who can inspire them, if not lead them to a better world; or at least make them laugh. TV star Jon Stewart is sometimes funny, especially when he doesn't try too hard to be funny, which is not often enough. But as a political leader, or simply political educator for the left, forget it. He's not even what I would call a genuine, committed leftist. What does he have to teach the left? He himself would certainly not want you to entertain the thought that Jon Stewart is in any way a man of the left.
He billed his October 30 rally on the National Mall in Washington, DC, as the Million Moderate March. Would a person with a real desire for important progressive social and political change, i.e, a "leftist", so ostentatiously brand himself a "moderate"? Even if by "moderate" he refers mainly to tone of voice or choice of words why is that so important? If a politician strongly supports things which you are passionate about, why should it bother you if the politician is vehement in his arguments, even angry? And if the politician is strongly against what you're passionate about does it make you feel any better about the guy if he never raises his voice or sharply criticizes those on the other side? What kind of cause is that to commit yourself to?
Stewart in fact appears to dislike the left, perhaps strongly. In the leadup to the rally he criticized the left for various things, including calling George W. Bush a "war criminal". Wow! How immoderate of us. Do I have to list here the 500 war crimes committed by George W. Bush? If I did so, would that make me one of what Stewart calls the "crazies"? In his talk at the rally, Stewart spoke of our "real fears" — "of terrorists, racists, Stalinists, and theocrats". Stalinists? Where did that come from, Glenn Beck? What decade is Stewart living in? What about capitalists or the corporations? Is there no reason to fear them? Is it Stalinists who are responsible for the collapse of our jobs and homes, our economy? Writer Chris Hedges asks: "Being nice and moderate will not help. These are corporate forces that are intent on reconfiguring the United States into a system of neofeudalism. These corporate forces will not be halted by funny signs, comics dressed up like Captain America or nice words."
Stewart also grouped together "Marxists actively subverting our constitution, racists and homophobes". Welcome to the Jon Stewart Tea Party. In his long interview last week of President Obama on his TV show, Stewart did not mention any of America's wars. That would have been impolite and divisive; maybe even not nice.
He billed his rally as being "for people who are politically dissatisfied but who are not ideological". (Democracy Now, November 1, 2010) Really, Jon? You have no ideology? To those who like to tell themselves and others that they don't have any particular ideology I say this: If you have thoughts about why the world is the way it is, why society is the way it is, why people are the way they are, what a better way would look like, and if your thoughts are fairly well organized, then that's your ideology, even if it's not wholly conscious as such. Better to organize those thoughts as best you can, become very conscious of them, and then consciously avoid getting involved with individuals or political movements who have an incompatible ideology. It's like a very bad marriage.
America's press corps(e)
"Goyim [non-Jews] were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world; only to serve the People of Israel," said Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in a sermon in Israel on October 16. Rabbi Yosef is the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel and the founder and spiritual leader of the Shas Party, one of the three major components of the current Israeli government. "Why are gentiles needed?" he continued. "They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi [master] and eat," he said to some laughter.
Pretty shocking, right? Apparently not shocking enough for the free and independent American mainstream media. Not one daily newspaper has picked it up. Not one radio or TV station. Neither have the two leading US news agencies, Associated Press and United Press International, which usually pick up anything at all newsworthy. And the words of course did not cross the lips of any American politician or State Department official. Rabbi Yosef's words were reported in English only by the Jewish Telegraph Agency, a US-based news service (October 18), and then picked up by a few relatively obscure news agencies or progressive websites. We can all imagine the news coverage if someone like Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said something like "Jews have no place in the world but to serve Islam".
On October 8, 2001, the second day of the US bombing of Afghanistan, the transmitters for the Taliban government's Radio Shari were bombed and shortly after this the US bombed some 20 regional radio sites. US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld defended the targeting of these facilities, saying: "Naturally, they cannot be considered to be free media outlets. They are mouthpieces of the Taliban and those harboring terrorists." 1
In 1999, during the US/NATO 78-day bombing of the former Yugoslavia, state-owned Radio Television Serbia (RTS) was targeted because it was broadcasting things which the United States and NATO did not like (like how much horror the bombing was causing). The bombs took the lives of many of the station's staff, and both legs of one of the survivors, which had to be amputated to free him from the wreckage. 2 UK Prime Minister Tony Blair told reporters that the bombing was "entirely justified" for the station was "part of the apparatus of dictatorship and power of Milosevic". 3 Threatening more such attacks on Serbian media, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon declared a few hours after the bombing: "Stay tuned. It is not difficult to track down where TV signals emanate from." 4
Accordingly, and with all due forethought, I call for the bombing of the leading members of the United States mainstream media — from the New York Times to CNN, from NPR to Fox News — for, naturally, they cannot be considered to be free media outlets, and are part of the apparatus of imperialism and power of the United States.
Anti-communism 101: Hijacking history
We like to think of death as the time for truth. No matter how much the deceased may have lived a lie, when he goes to meet his presumed maker the real, sordid facts of his life will out. Or at least they should; the obituary being the final chance to set the record straight. But obituaries very seldom perform this function, certainly not obituaries of those who played an important role in American foreign policy; the myths surrounding foreign policy and the deceased individual's role therein accompany him to the grave, and thence into Texas-approved American history textbooks.
In January of this year I commented in this report on the obituary of Lincoln Gordon 5, former ambassador to Brazil and State Department official. The obituary in the Washington Post painted him, as I put it, as a "boy wonder, intellectual shining light, distinguished leader of men, outstanding American patriot." No mention whatsoever was made of the leading role played by Gordon in the military overthrow of a progressive Brazilian government in 1964, resulting in a very brutal dictatorship for the next 21 years. Later, Gordon blatantly lied about his role in testimony before Congress.
Now we have the death a few weeks ago of Phillips Talbot, who was appointed by President Kennedy to be Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs and later became ambassador to Greece. In 1967 the Greek military and intelligence service, both closely tied to the CIA, overthrew another progressive government, that of George Papandreou and his son, cabinet minister Andreas Papandreou. For the next seven years the Greek people suffered utterly grievous suppression and torture. Talbot's obituary states: "Dr. Talbot was asleep in his bed while tanks rumbled through the streets of Athens and was completely surprised when Armed Forces radio announced at 6:10 a.m. that the military had taken control of the country. Dr. Talbot was adamant that the United States was impartial throughout the transition. 'You may be assured that there has been no American involvement in or, in fact, prior knowledge of the climactic events that those residing in this country have lived through in the past couple of years,' Dr. Talbot told the New York Times in 1969 shortly before he returned home." 6
Andreas Papandreou had been arrested at the time of the coup and held in prison for eight months. Shortly after his release, he and his wife Margaret visited Ambassador Talbot in Athens. Papandreou later related the following:
I asked Talbot whether America could have intervened the night of the coup, to prevent the death of democracy in Greece. He denied that they could have done anything about it. Then Margaret asked a critical question: What if the coup had been a Communist or a Leftist coup? Talbot answered without hesitation. Then, of course, they would have intervened, and they would have crushed the coup. 7
In November 1999, during a visit to Greece, President Bill Clinton was moved to declare:
When the junta took over in 1967 here the United States allowed its interests in prosecuting the cold war to prevail over its interest — I should say its obligation — to support democracy, which was, after all, the cause for which we fought the cold war.(sic) It is important that we acknowledge that. 8
Clinton's surprising admission prompted the retired Phillips Talbot to write to the New York Times: "With all due respect to President Clinton, he is wrong to imply that the United States supported the Greek coup in 1967. The coup was the product of Greek political rivalries and was contrary to American interests in every respect. ... Some Greeks have asserted that the United States could have restored a civilian government. In fact, we had neither the right nor the means to overturn the junta, bad as it was." 9
Or, as Bart Simpson would put it: "I didn't do it, no one saw me do it, you can't prove anything!"
After reading Talbot's letter in the Times in 1999 I wrote to him at his New York address reminding him of what Andreas Papandreou had reported on this very subject. I received no reply.
The cases of Brazil and Greece were of course just two of many leftist governments overthrown, as well as revolutionary movements suppressed, by the United States during the Cold War on the grounds that America had a moral right and obligation to defeat the evil of Soviet communism that was — we were told — instigating these forces. It was always a myth. Bolshevism and Western liberalism were united in their opposition to popular revolution. Russia was a country with a revolutionary past, not a revolutionary present. Even in Cuba, the Soviets were always a little embarrassed by the Castro-Guevara radical fervor. Stalin would have had such men imprisoned. The Cold War was not actually a struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was a struggle between the United States and the Third World. What there was, was people all over the Third World fighting for economic and political changes against US-supported repressive regimes, or setting up their own progressive governments. These acts of self-determination didn't coincide with the needs of the American power elite, and so the United States moved to crush those governments and movements even though the Soviet Union was playing virtually no role at all in the scenarios. It is remarkable the number of people who make fun of conspiracy theories but who accept without question the existence of an International Communist Conspiracy. 10
The United States' annual self-imposed humiliation
For years American political leaders and media were fond of labeling Cuba an "international pariah". We don't hear that any more. Perhaps one reason is the annual vote in the United Nations General Assembly on the resolution which reads: "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba". This is how the vote has gone (not including abstentions), this year being the strongest condemnation yet of Washington's policy:
| Year | Votes (Yes-No) | No Votes |
|---|---|---|
| 1992 | 59-2 | US, Israel |
| 1993 | 88-4 | US, Israel, Albania, Paraguay |
| 1994 | 101-2 | US, Israel |
| 1995 | 117-3 | US, Israel, Uzbekistan |
| 1996 | 138-3 | US, Israel, Uzbekistan |
| 1997 | 143-3 | US, Israel, Uzbekistan |
| 1998 | 157-2 | US, Israel |
| 1999 | 155-2 | US, Israel |
| 2000 | 167-3 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands |
| 2001 | 167-3 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands |
| 2002 | 173-3 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands |
| 2003 | 179-3 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands |
| 2004 | 179-4 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau |
| 2005 | 182-4 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau |
| 2006 | 183-4 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau |
| 2007 | 184-4 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau |
| 2008 | 185-3 | US, Israel, Palau |
| 2009 | 187-3 | US, Israel, Palau |
| 2010 | 187-2 | US, Israel |
Is the United States foreign policy establishment capable of being embarrassed?
Each fall, however, the UN vote is a welcome reminder that the world has not completely lost its senses and that the American empire does not completely control the opinion of other governments.
How it began: On April 6, 1960, Lester D. Mallory, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, wrote in an internal memorandum: "The majority of Cubans support Castro ... The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. ... every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba." Mallory proposed "a line of action which ... makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government." 11 Later that year, the Eisenhower administration instituted the suffocating embargo against its eternally-declared enemy.
CovertAction Quarterly
From 1978 to 2005 one of the leading progressive print (Remember that word?) magazines in the world, dealing primarily with US foreign policy, the CIA/NSA/FBI, repression at home and abroad, and corporate crime. The magazine, initially called CovertAction Information Bulletin, regularly published the names and career histories around the globe of undercover CIA officers derived from careful research of open, public sources. This so infuriated the powers-that-be that Congress passed the Intelligence Identities Protection Act in 1982, which made the practice of revealing the name of an undercover officer illegal under US law. The law was a virtual bill of attainder — it is unconstitutional for Congress to enact legislation directed at a specific individual or organization. At the time, members of the House Intelligence Committee were telling journalists and lawyers that the legislation was aimed only at CovertAction Information Bulletin and its editors, but this was always said off the record and no one would confirm it on the record; although during the House debate Congressman William Young (R.-FL) declared: "What we're after today are the Philip Agees of the world." 12 Ironically, the law became the basis for the prosecution of George W. Bush special counsel Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, who outed CIA employee Valerie Plame.
Amongst the magazine's numerous contributors were Philip Agee, John Stockwell, Ralph McGehee, Ellen Ray, William Schaap, Louis Wolf, Michael Parenti, Noam Chomsky, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Diana Johnstone, Sean Gervasi, Philip Wheaton, Immanuel Wallerstein, Kathy Kelly, Tony Benn, Ramsey Clark, David MacMichael, Edward Herman, William Blum (Whatever happened to him?), Michel Chossudovsky, Marjorie Cohn, James Petras, Gregory Elich, and many other prominent progressive writers.
A recent Washington Post story states: "The private papers of Philip Agee, the disaffected CIA operative whose unauthorized publication of agency secrets 35 years ago was arguably far more damaging than anything WikiLeaks has produced, have been obtained by New York University, which plans to make them public next spring." 13
A partial Table of Contents for each of the issues can be found here.
Individual copies or the entire set of 78 issues (mostly original copies and about a dozen in quality photocopy format) are available for purchase: $3.00 per issue, 25 copies for $65.00, 50 for $115, or all 78 for $165, including postage in the United States. To place an order, write:
Louis Wolf
1500 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Room 732
Washington, DC 20005
... or e-mail louw7@live.com
Midterm Miscarriage
World Beat
by JOHN FEFFER |
Even before the polls opened for voting in the U.S. midterm elections, the finger-pointing had already begun. The Obama agenda, instead of coming to term after four years, was suffering a miscarriage halfway through. The potential culprits were many and diverse.
President Barack Obama was to blame because his populist attempt to rally the economically disgruntled was too little and too late. The Supreme Court was to blame because it decimated campaign finance reform and allowed record amounts of money to distort the political process. The Democratic Party was to blame because it moved to the center in a misguided effort to win over independents. The Republican Party was to blame for arguing that "big government" is responsible for all of America's ills even while making government grind to a halt with obstructionist tactics. The tea party was to blame for, well, being itself. The media was to blame for focusing on trivia instead of the critical issues. The economy was to blame for not rebounding more quickly. The American people were to blame for turning certifiable nut jobs into viable political candidates.
Even comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were to blame for distracting hundreds of thousands of people from doing critical get-out-the-vote work and then failing to mention the election at all on the day of their rally on the Mall last weekend.
These fingers, however, were all pointed inward. Foreign policy played almost no role in this election. This is rather strange. After all, the United States is still involved in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The gargantuan military budget, even at this time of economic crisis, barely merits a mention in the news. (Check out this short film clip from director Iara Lee for information on military spending, featuring me and other Foreign Policy In Focus colleagues, that the TV news won't give you). Critical treaties, such as New START, hang in the balance. Negotiations with Iran and North Korea might be in the offing. We're coming up on another round of climate change negotiations in Cancun at the end of this month.
And yet, the elections will likely have a huge impact on U.S. foreign policy. A realigned Congress will alter how the United States engages (or doesn't) with the world.
The first likely victim of the elections will be New START, our latest arms control agreement with Russia. Senate Democrats have so far been unable to guarantee the 67 votes needed for passage. The one Republican who has promised to vote yes, Richard Lugar (R-IN), doubts the treaty will even come up for a vote in the lame-duck session if the Republicans pick up enough seats.
Although the arms control community is battling hard for New START, others are more skeptical of the agreement. The deals cut in the Senate to win passage, writes Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) contributor Darwin BondGraham in START: Arms Affirmation Treaty, "ensure that the military and its contractors will receive huge budget increases, including funding for a new plutonium bomb pit factory, a growing the missile defense program that is already as large as the NNSA nuclear weapons program, the conversion of nuclear-capable missiles into conventional strike weapons under the prompt global strike weapons program, and a new generation of submarines and jets to deploy the nuclear arsenal." Still, it could be worse. More Senate Republicans will give Jon Kyl (R-AZ) the leverage to push for even more money for nuclear modernization.
A second potential victim is the Obama administration's commitments on climate change. You might ask, what commitment? The administration backs a controversial market-based solution by which governments issue pollution permits. "The $127 billion global carbon trading market has become a lucrative marketplace for turning planetary salvation into business deals," writes FPIF columnist Laura Carlsen in Worlds Collide in Cancun Climate Talks. "The upshot is that the polluter is allowed to keep on polluting."
But more Republicans in the Senate will give tea party favorites Jim DeMint (R-SC) and James Inhofe (R-OK) more opportunities to voice their climate change denial. Both received significant campaign contributions from BP.
And then there's Obama's more diplomatic approach to various conflicts around the world. True, I find the administration's way of dealing with North Korea — lots of sticks, no carrots — too reminiscent of the early Bush years. But a Republican takeover of the House means that Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) will take charge of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Known for her UN-bashing and unqualified support for Israel, Ros-Lehtinen prefers regime change strategies to the current containment approach the U.S. favors with North Korea. Led by the Florida hardliner, Congress will likely take more extreme positions toward China, Iran, Venezuela, and other nations.
Some might argue that Obama missed his golden opportunity to push through all the vital pieces of legislation on his agenda — including a jobs stimulus bill and a climate change bill — when he had a clear majority in both the House and Senate. But the Republicans used the arcane rules of the Senate to block as much as they could.
Bringing a bill to the floor of the Senate requires a cloture vote. According to this rule, adopted in 1917, 60 Senators have to agree to end debate before the body can vote by a simple majority on most bills. To block Obama, Michael Tomasky points out, Republicans have threatened a filibuster roughly twice as many times since 2007 as the Democrats did when Republicans controlled Congress during the Bush administration between 2003 and 2007.
Of course, the tilting of the playing field begins even before the senators take their seats. As FPIF contributor Caleb Rossiter argues, our electoral rules have long supported our imperial foreign policy. "Members of the U.S. House, by state laws, and the Senate, by a constitutional amendment in 1913, are chosen under a winner-takes-all rule," he writes in Is Obama a Turkey or an Eagle? "This reduces the representation in government of the anti-imperialist minority that would be present under a proportional election rule."
In many ways, the Obama administration's foreign policy has been a major disappointment. Even where he has achieved some success — negotiating with the Russians on arms control, putting climate change on the table — these have been very qualified victories. But after a few whiffs of the alternatives proposed by the newly ascendant Republicans, and those hawkish Democrats who consistently fall in behind them, we'll be waxing nostalgic about the good old days of Obama's first two years. It might not have been a golden age, but it sure beats the dark ages to come.
Failures of Leadership Abroad
There are obstructionists at home, and abroad. Take Israel. Any peace deal at the moment has to involve Benjamin Netanyahu, the country's right-wing leader. "The current right-wing government of Israel wants to negotiate with the Palestinians for their independent state as much as China wants to negotiate with Taiwan for its independent state," writes FPIF senior analyst Adil Shamoo in If Israel Wants Peace… So, don't expect Obama to get any foreign policy bump as a result of a Middle East peace deal any time soon.
Nearer to home, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has pushed the ordinarily sensible neighbor to the north into unusually extreme positions. As FPIF senior analyst Ian Williams points out, Canada has until recently been a model international actor. Then Harper took over and began copying George W. Bush. "Canada showed hostility to Russia and China, more on atavistic Cold War grounds than because of any deep concern for human rights, since Ottawa developed a U.S.-style expediency on that subject," Williams writes in Canada on Ice: At the UN. "Its troops in Afghanistan handed over prisoners to the CIA. Its officials did nothing at all about Canadian citizens that the United States kidnapped in New York and sent for torture in the Middle East or held in Guantanamo."
Finally, to the south, communities are trying to rein in the Mexican military. In the village of Mini Numa, the Me'phaa Indigenous Peoples Organization struggle for day-to-day human rights, which includes flush toilets. "They want a fair share of the commons, basic services and resources with which to scrape out modestly improved lives," writes FPIF contributor Daniel Moss in Postcard from…Mini Numa. "But these assertions of dignity, no matter how mundane they may appear, are a slippery slope, deeply threatening to local politicians and their goons who enjoy the plunder opportunities offered by despotic control.
Monday, November 01, 2010
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Osama has (not) left the building By Pepe Escobar
Osama has (not) left the building
By Pepe Escobar
For the dubious privilege of financing the 16-agency, alphabet soup, United States intelligence establishment not to find Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda's number two Ayman al-Zawahiri, US taxpayers have been plundered to the staggering tune of US$500 billion - and counting. Still, the obvious questions resonate from Seattle to Selma and from Sweden to Swaziland. Where's Osama? Where's al-Zawahiri? Where's escaped-on-the-back-of-a-motorcycle Taliban supremo Mullah Omar?
For starters, why don't US intelligence agencies ask the French Foreign Ministry? They swear on their Dior ties Osama is indeed alive - and it is his jihadi master's voice showcased in an audiotape broadcast by al-Jazeera this past Wednesday. In the tape, Osama in so many words warns France that the Eiffel Tower may experience a different kind of wobble one of these days (it has been evacuated twice lately).
Osama - or the ghost passing for Osama - said: "If you want to tyrannize and think that it is your right to ban the free women from wearing the burqa, isn't it our right to expel your occupying forces, your men from our lands by striking them by the neck?" A jittery Paris has taken the analogy extremely seriously.
A room with a view
So now that it's established that Osama seems to be alive and well, having made a successful transition from TDK cassettes to MP3 (unless very circumspect French diplomats are lying; and unless we suppress roars of laughter at the assertion by row after row of US "intelligence analysts" that fake Osama tapes have never been broadcast), comes the question of his humble abode.
So why not turn to the formidable North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its arrays of the most sophisticated military hardware in the world - after all they are spectacularly losing a war in Afghanistan itself as we speak? (The legendary Mikhail Gorbachev - who knows a thing or two about losing a war in the Hindu Kush - has just made it plain and simple: "Victory is impossible in Afghanistan. Obama is right to pull the troops out. No matter how difficult it will be.")
Anyway, NATO officials recently leaked to global corporate media that Osama is hiding "somewhere in northeastern Pakistan". Oh really? Would that be Miram Shah, across from Paktika? Would that be Parachinar, across from Nangarhar (where Osama and al-Zawahiri escaped to from Tora Bora in December 2001)? Would that be Chitral, across from Kunar? Would that be on the Karakoram Highway near the Chinese border?
Radio silence. The NATO boys simply don't know - as they don't seem to be very familiar with the intricate mountain geography and tribal rivalries south of the Hindu Kush. Seems like the NATO boys are taking a cue from those rows of so-called US "intelligence analysts" swearing over their air-con think-tank offices that Osama still oversees the "strategic direction" of al-Qaeda from a base “somewhere in Pakistan". Pakistan happens to be twice as big as California. Try finding a stray wacko in the Mojave Desert.
NATO boys also swear that Mullah Omar is commuting between Quetta, Balochistan's capital, and Karachi. Well, he could be taking a night desert bus or a donkey caravan - and still he can't be found. Has anyone searched the VIP rooms at the Serena Hotel in Quetta, perhaps?
Maybe the Pakistani intelligence apparatus knows something. "Not us!" - screams the Pakistani ambassador to the US, Hussain Haqqani, "The reason why this statement is not made officially and publicly by NATO is because they do not have any basis to make that statement."
Well, then certainly Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence knows - or some key operatives inside the ISI. And in this case, the Central Intelligence Agency would know. Ambassador Haqqani: "If anybody thinks that Pakistan has any interest in protecting bin Laden they are smoking something they shouldn't be smoking.” Well, apparently no one is smoking Hindu Kush's finest - because Haqqani still swears Washington and NATO have shared "no intelligence" with Pakistan about Osama for a few years now. Would it be because - as in the famous Hollywood dictum - no one knows anything?
The invisible man
In real life, the fact is that a selected few inside the ISI know - as they have followed Osama's every move since the early 1980s in Peshawar. And they are not talking - never will. But for the CIA and the 16-agency alphabet-soup intel community not to know, this speaks volumes about an "intelligence" establishment where 1 million Americans hold top-secret clearances. Those 1 million are absolutely worthless when it comes to gathering on-the-ground intelligence south of the Hindu Kush.
So maybe they should ask the Pakistani Army. General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani - a Pentagon darling - has been to Washington for the third round of what is called a "strategic dialogue" with the Pentagon. It's easy to picture Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asking Kiani, "If North Waziristan is the epicenter of terrorism, where al-Qaeda is holed up, why don't you go there with all guns blazing and snatch them for us?"
In principle, Kiani will do it - that's what he has promised the Pentagon. But will he? Not really. Kiani will scare away - just for show - the Haqqanis, led by Sirajuddin Haqqani, eldest son of legendary mujahid Jalaluddin Haqqani, while ISI operatives duly tell them to run the other way.
Chapman Base in Khost, Afghanistan, on the other side of North Waziristan, is operated by the CIA. But don't expect Chapman to come out swinging exhibiting "dead or alive" al-Qaeda scalpels. There are indeed some Arab al-Qaeda jihadis sheltered by the Haqqanis - a few dozen at max, but they will have plenty of time to get out of Dodge, thanks again to the services of those ISI agents.
Moreover, Kiani is not suicidal. He knows the Haqqanis and the myriad groups they protect are intimately linked to the Punjabi Taliban. If Kiani launches a major offensive, blowback - in the form of an epidemic of urban suicide bombings rocking Pakistan - is an absolute certainty.
Blowback is on the way anyway - because in this "no one knows anything, and no one's talking" scenario, the only real weapon available for Washington is to drone North Waziristan to death.
Granted, the Barack Obama administration is also desperately trying to find a way out in AfPak. Saudi Arabia is key. Not only Mullah Omar, but also other viscerally anti-occupation Afghan leaders such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf maintain very close ties with Saudi Arabia. Washington now depends on Saudi Arabia to convince them to sit down and talk.
That's not a given (they all say they're not talking). And even if they did it might - or might not - lead to an endgame (the Pentagon certainly doesn't want one). As for the Pakistani army and intelligence establishment, what they do want is an Afghan satellite government, still part of the "strategic depth" doctrine, and to keep receiving military aid from Washington till perpetuity. Thus playing a double game is key - and that applies most of all to Osama and al-Zawahiri, the golden rationale behind the everlasting "war on terror" - another name for the Pentagon's "long war".
Now you see them - now you don't. So expect a lot of Osama digital audio from now on. He should consider his own podcast on iTunes. There's no real prospect in sight that Osama will honor former US vice president Dick Cheney's correctional facilities anytime soon. He has not left the building, and is now merrily singing Suspicious Minds in a double bill with Elvis.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
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