From Afghanistan to Iraq: Connecting the Dots with Oil - The "global war on terror" began as a fraud and a smokescreen and remains so today

From Afghanistan to Iraq: Connecting the Dots with Oil
By Richard W. Behan, AlterNet
Posted on February 5, 2007, Printed on February 5, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/47489/

In the Caspian Basin and beneath the deserts of Iraq, as many as 783 billion barrels of oil are waiting to be pumped. Anyone controlling that much oil stands a good chance of breaking OPEC's stranglehold overnight, and any nation seeking to dominate the world would have to go after it.

The long-held suspicions about George Bush's wars are well-placed. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were not prompted by the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. They were not waged to spread democracy in the Middle East or enhance security at home. They were conceived and planned in secret long before September 11, 2001 and they were undertaken to control petroleum resources.

The "global war on terror" began as a fraud and a smokescreen and remains so today, a product of the Bush Administration's deliberate and successful distortion of public perception. The fragmented accounts in the mainstream media reflect this warping of reality, but another more accurate version of recent history is available in contemporary books and the vast information pool of the Internet. When told start to finish, the story becomes clear, the dots easier to connect.

Both appalling and masterful, the lies that led us into war and keep us there today show the people of the Bush Administration to be devious, dangerous and far from stupid.

The following is an in-depth look at the oil wars, the events leading up to them, and the players who made them possible.

Iraq

The Project for a New American Century, a D.C.-based political think tank funded by archconservative philanthropies and founded in 1997, is the source of the Bush Administration's imperialistic urge for the U.S. to dominate the world. Our nation should seek to achieve a "...benevolent global hegemony," according to William Kristol, PNAC's chairman. The group advocates the novel and startling concept of "pre-emptive war" as a means of doing so.

On January 26, 1998, the PNAC, sent a letter to President William Clinton urging the military overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The dictator, the letter alleged, was a destabilizing force in the Middle East, and posed a mortal threat to "...the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's oil supply..." The subjugation of Iraq would be the first application of "pre-emptive war."

The unprovoked, full-scale invasion and occupation of another country, however, would be an unequivocal example of "the use of armed force by a state against the sovereignty, territorial integrity, or political independence of another state." That is the formal United Nations definition of military aggression, and a nation can choose to launch it only in self-defense. Otherwise it is an international crime.

President Clinton did not honor the PNAC's request.

But sixteen members of the Project for a New American Century would soon assume prominent positions in the Administration of George W. Bush, including Dick Cheney, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage and John Bolton.

The "significant portion of the world's oil supply" was of immediate concern, because of the commanding influence of the oil industry in the Bush Administration. Beside the president and vice president, eight cabinet secretaries and the national security advisor had direct ties to the industry, and so did 32 others in the departments of Defense, State, Energy, Agriculture, Interior, and the Office of Management and Budget.

Within days of taking office, President Bush appointed Vice President Cheney to chair a National Energy Policy Development Group. Cheney's "Energy Task Force" was composed of the relevant federal officials and dozens of energy industry executives and lobbyists, and it operated in tight secrecy. (The full membership has never been revealed, but Enron's Kenneth Lay is known to have participated, and the Washington Post reported that Exxon-Mobil, Conoco, Shell, and BP America did, too.)

During his second week in office, President Bush convened the first meeting of his National Security Council. It was a triumph for the PNAC. In just one hour-long meeting, the new Bush Administration turned upside down the long-standing focus of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Over Secretary of State Colin Powell's objections, the goal of reconciling the Israel-Palestine conflict was abandoned, and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was set as the new priority. Ron Suskind's book, The Price of Loyalty, describes the meeting in detail.

The Energy Task Force wasted no time, either. Within three weeks of its creation, the group was poring over maps of the Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, tanker terminals, and oil exploration blocks. It studied an inventory of "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts" -- dozens of oil companies from 30 different countries, in various stages of negotiations for exploring and developing Iraqi crude.

Not a single U.S. oil company was among the "suitors," and that was intolerable, given a foreign policy bent on global hegemony. The National Energy Policy document, released May 17, 2001 concluded this: "By any estimation, Middle East oil producers will remain central to world security. The Gulf will be a primary focus of U.S. international energy policy."

That rather innocuous statement can be clarified by a top-secret memo dated February 3, 2001 to the staff of the National Security Council. Cheney's group, the memo said, was "melding" two apparently unrelated areas of policy: "the review of operational policies toward rogue states," such as Iraq, and "actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields." The memo directed the National Security Council staff to cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as the "melding" continued. National security policy and international energy policy would be developed as a coordinated whole. This would prove convenient on September 11, 2001, still seven months in the future.

The Bush Administration was drawing a bead on Iraqi oil long before the "global war on terror" was invented. But how could the "capture of new and existing oil fields" be made to seem less aggressive, less arbitrary, less overt?

During April of 2002, almost a full year before the invasion, the State Department launched a policy-development initiative called "The Future of Iraq Project" to accomplish this. The "Oil and Energy Working Group" provided the disguise for "capturing" Iraqi oil. Iraq, it said in its final report, "should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the war ... the country should establish a conducive business environment to attract investment in oil and gas resources."

Capture would take the form of investment, and the vehicle for doing so would be the "production sharing agreement."

Under production sharing agreements, or PSAs, oil companies are granted ownership of a "share" of the oil produced, in exchange for investing in development costs, and the contracts are binding for up to 30 years. What would happen, though, if the companies' investments were only minimal, but their shares of the production were obscenely, disproportionately large?

This is hardwired. According to a UK Platform article titled "Crude Designs," production sharing agreements have now been drafted in Baghdad covering 75 percent of the undeveloped Iraqi fields, and the oil companies, waiting to sign the contracts, will earn as much 162 percent on their investments. And the "foreign suitors" are not quite so foreign now: The players on the inside tracks are Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, BP-Amoco and Royal Dutch-Shell.

The use of PSAs will cost the Iraqi people hundreds of billions of dollars in just the first few years of the "investment" program. They would be far better off keeping in place the structure Iraq has relied upon since 1972: a nationalized oil industry leasing pumping rights to the oil companies, who then pay royalties to the central government. That is how it is done today in Saudi Arabia and the other OPEC countries.

Production sharing agreements, heavily favored by the oil companies, were specified by George Bush's State Department. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority drafted an oil law privatizing the oil sector, and American oil interests have lobbied in Baghdad ever since then for the PSAs. Apparently successfully: The Oil Committee headed by Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih is said currently to be "leaning" toward them.

With the capture of Iraqi oil resources prospectively disguised, the Halliburton company was then hired, secretly, to design a fire suppression strategy for the Iraqi oil fields. If oil wells were to be torched during the upcoming war (as Saddam did in Kuwait in 1991), the Bush Administration would be prepared to extinguish them rapidly. The contract with Halliburton was signed in the fall of 2002. Congress had yet to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

So a line of dots begins to point at Iraq, though nothing illegal or unconstitutional has yet taken place. We are still in the policy-formulation stage, but two "seemingly unrelated areas of policy" -- national security policy and international energy policy -- have become indistinguishable.

Afghanistan

The strategic location of Afghanistan can scarcely be overstated. The Caspian Basin contains up to $16 trillion worth of oil and gas resources, and the most direct pipeline route to the richest markets is through Afghanistan.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the first western oil company to take action in the Basin was the Bridas Corporation of Argentina. It acquired production leases and exploration contracts in the region, and by November of 1996 had signed an agreement with General Dostum of the Northern Alliance and with the Taliban to build a pipeline across Afghanistan.

Not to be outdone, the American company Unocal (aided by an Arabian company, Delta Oil) fought Bridas at every turn. Unocal wanted exclusive control of the trans-Afghan pipeline and hired a number of consultants in its conflict with Bridas: Henry Kissinger, Richard Armitage (now Deputy Secretary of State in the Bush Administration), Zalmay Khalilzad (a signer of the PNAC letter to President Clinton) and Hamid Karzai.

Unocal wooed Taliban leaders at its headquarters in Texas, and hosted them in meetings with federal officials in Washington, D.C.

Unocal and the Clinton Administration hoped to have the Taliban cancel the Bridas contract, but were getting nowhere. Finally, Mr. John J. Maresca, a Unocal Vice President, testified to a House Committee of International Relations on February 12, 1998, asking politely to have the Taliban removed and a stable government inserted. His discomfort was well placed.

Six months later terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and two weeks after that President Clinton launched a cruise missile attack into Afghanistan. Clinton issued an executive order on July 4, 1999, freezing the Taliban's U.S.-held assets and prohibiting further trade transactions with the Taliban.

Mr. Maresca could count that as progress. More would follow.

Immediately upon taking office, the new Bush Administration actively took up negotiating with the Taliban once more, seeking still to have the Bridas contract vacated, in exchange for a tidy package of foreign aid. The parties met three times, in Washington, Berlin, and Islamablad, but the Taliban wouldn't budge.

Behind the negotiations, however, planning was underway to take military action if necessary. In the spring of 2001 the State Department sought and gained concurrence from both India and Pakistan to do so, and in July of 2001, American officials met with Pakistani and Russian intelligence agents to inform them of planned military strikes against Afghanistan the following October. A British newspaper told of the U.S. threatening both the Taliban and Osama bin Laden -- two months before 9/11 -- with military strikes.

According to an article in the UK Guardian, State Department official Christina Rocca told the Taliban at their last pipeline negotiation in August of 2001, just five weeks before 9/11, "Accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs."

The Great Game and Its Players

The geostrategic imperative of reliable oil supplies has a long history, arguably beginning with the British Navy in World War I. First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill repowered the British fleet -- from coal (abundant in the UK) to oil (absent in the UK), and thus began the Great Game: jockeying by the world powers for the strategic control of petroleum. (Churchill did this to replace with oil pumps the men needed to shovel coal -- a large share of the crew -- so they could man topside battle stations instead.) Iraq today is a British creation, formed almost a century ago to supply the British fleet with fuel, and it is still a focal point of the Game.

The players have changed as national supremacy has changed, as oil companies have morphed over time, and as powerful men have lived out their destinies.

Among the major players today are the Royal family of Saudi Arabia and the Bush family of the state of Maine (more recently of Texas). And they are closely and intimately related. The relationship goes back several generations, but it was particularly poignant in the first Gulf War in 1990-91, when the U.S. and British armed forces stopped Saddam Hussein in Kuwait, before his drive reached the Arabian oil fields. Prime Minister John Major of the UK, and President George H.W. Bush became the much esteemed champions of the Arabian monarchy, and James Baker, Bush's Secretary of State, was well regarded, too. (Years earlier, Mr. Baker and a friend of the royal family's had been business partners, in building a skyscraper bank building in Houston.)

The Carlyle Group: Where the Players Meet to Profit

After President Bush, Secretary Baker, and Prime Minister Major left office, they all became active participants and investors in the Carlyle Group, a global private equity investment firm comprised of dozens of former world leaders, international business executives (including the family of Osama bin Laden); former diplomats, and high-profile political operatives from four U.S. Administrations. For years, Carlyle would serve as the icon of the Bush/Saudi relationship.

Carlyle, with its headquarters just six blocks from the White House, invests heavily in all the industries involved in the Great Game: the defense, security, and energy industries, and it profits enormously from the Afghan and Iraqi wars.

In the late 1980s, Carlyle's personal networking brought together George W. Bush, the future 43rd U.S. president, and $50,000 of financial backing for his Texas oil company, Arbusto Energy. The investor was Salem bin Laden (half-brother of Osama bin Laden) who managed the Carlyle investments of the Saudi bin Laden Group. (After the tragedy of 9/11, by mutual consent, the bin Laden family and Carlyle terminated their business dealings.) George Bush left Carlyle in 1992 to run for governor of Texas.

Ex-President Bush, Ex-Prime Minister Major, and Ex Secretary Baker, in the 1990's, were Carlyle's advance team, scouring the world for profitable investments and investors. In Saudi Arabia they met with the royal family, and with the two wealthiest, non-royal families -- the bin Ladens and the bin Mahfouzes.

Khalid bin Mahfouz was prominent in Delta Oil, Unocal's associate in the Afghan pipeline conflict. He was later accused of financing al Qaeda, and named in a trillion dollar lawsuit brought by the families of 9/11 victims. (It was Mr. bin Mahfouz who had been Mr. Baker's business associate in Houston.)

Carlyle retained James Baker's Houston law firm, Baker-Botts, and Baker himself served as Carlyle Senior Counselor from 1993 until 2005. (Other clients of Baker-Botts: Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, Texaco, Shell, Amoco, Conoco-Phillips, Halliburton, and Enron.)

Mr. Baker has long been willing to put foremost the financial advantage of himself, his firm, and his friends, often at the expense of patriotism and public service. As President Reagan's Secretary of the Treasury, he presided over the savings-and-loan scandal, in which S&L executives like Charles Keating and the current President's brother Neil Bush handed the American taxpayers a bill to pay, over a 40-year period, of $1.2 trillion. His law firm willingly took on the defense of Prince Sultan bin Abdul Azis, the Saudi Defense Minister sued by the families of 9/11 victims for complicity in the attacks.

We will encounter Mr. Baker again soon.

September 11, 2001

In September of 2000, the Project for a New American Century published a report, "Rebuilding America's Defenses." It advocated pre-emptive war once again, but noted its acceptance would be difficult in the absence of "some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor."

President Bush formally established the PNAC's prescription for pre-emptive, premeditated war as U.S. policy when he signed a document entitled "The National Security Strategy of the United States of America" early in his first term.

Still nothing illegal or unconstitutional had been done.

But the rationale and the planning for attacking both Afghanistan and Iraq were in place. The preparations had all been done secretly, wholly within the executive branch. The Congress was not informed until the endgame, when President Bush, making his dishonest case for the "war on terror" asked for and was granted the discretion to use military force. The American people were equally uninformed and misled. Probably never before in our history was such a drastic and momentous action undertaken with so little public knowledge or Congressional oversight: the dispatch of America's armed forces into four years of violence, at horrendous costs in life and treasure.

Then a catastrophic event took place. A hijacked airliner probably en route to the White House crashes in Pennsylvania, the Pentagon was afire, and the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were rubble.

In the first hours of frenetic response, fully aware of al Qaeda's culpability, both President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld sought frantically to link Saddam Hussein to the attacks, as we know from Richard Clarke's book, Against All Enemies. They anxiously waited to proceed with their planned invasion of Iraq.

If the Bush Administration needed a reason to proceed with their invasions, they could not have been handed a more fortuitous and spectacular excuse, and they played their hand brilliantly.

9/11 was a shocking event of unprecedented scale, but it was simply not an invasion of national security. It was a localized criminal act of terrorism, and to compare it, as the Bush Administration immediately did, to Pearl Harbor was ludicrous: The hijacked airliners were not the vanguard of a formidable naval armada, an air force, and a standing army ready to engage in all out war, as the Japanese were prepared to do and did in 1941.

By equating a criminal act of terrorism with a military threat of invasion, the Bush Administration consciously adopted fear mongering as a mode of governance. It was an extreme violation of the public trust, but it served perfectly their need to justify warfare.

As not a few disinterested observers noted at the time, international criminal terrorism is best countered by international police action, which Israel and other nations have proven many times over to be effective. Military mobilization is irrelevant. It has proven to be counterproductive.

Why, then, was a "war" declared on "terrorists and states that harbor terrorists?"

The pre-planned attack on Afghanistan, as we have seen, was meant to nullify the contract between the Taliban and the Bridas Corporation. It was a matter of international energy policy. It had nothing to do, as designed, with apprehending Osama bin Laden -- a matter of security policy.

But the two "seemingly unrelated areas of policy" had been "melded," so here was an epic opportunity to bait-and-switch. Conjoining the terrorists and the states that harbored them made "war" plausible, and the Global War on Terror was born: It would be necessary to overthrow the Taliban as well as to bring Osama bin Laden to justice.

(In retrospect, the monumental fraud of the "war on terror" is crystal clear. In Afghanistan the Taliban was overthrown instead of bringing the terrorist Osama bin Laden to justice, and in Iraq there were no terrorists at all. But Afghanistan and Iraq are dotted today with permanent military bases guarding the seized petroleum assets.)

On October 7, 2001 the carpet of bombs is unleashed over Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai, the former Unocal consultant, is installed as head of an interim government. Subsequently he is elected President of Afghanistan, and welcomes the first U.S. envoy -- Mr. John J. Maresca, the Vice President of the Unocal Corporation who had implored Congress to have the Taliban overthrown. Mr. Maresca was succeeded by Mr. Zalmay Khalilzad -- also a former Unocal consultant. (Mr. Khalilzad has since become Ambassador to Iraq, and has now been nominated to replace John Bolton, his PNAC colleague, as the ambassador to the UN.)

With the Taliban banished and the Bridas contract moot, Presidents Karzai of Afghanistan and Musharraf of Pakistan meet on February 8, 2002, sign an agreement for a new pipeline, and the way forward is open for Unocal/Delta once more.

The Bridas contract was breached by U.S. military force, but behind the combat was Unocal. Bridas sued Unocal in the U.S. courts for contract interference and won, overcoming Richard Ben Veniste's law firm in 2004. That firm had multibillion-dollar interests in the Caspian Basin and shared an office in Uzbekistan with the Enron Corporation. In 2004, Mr. Ben Veniste was serving as a 9/11 Commissioner.

About a year after the Karzai/Musharraf agreement was signed, an article in the trade journal "Alexander's Gas and Oil Connections" described the readiness of three US federal agencies to finance the prospective pipeline: the U.S. Export/Import Bank, the Trade and Development Agency, and the Overseas Private Insurance Corporation. The article continued, "...some recent reports ... indicated ... the United States was willing to police the pipeline infrastructure through permanent stationing of its troops in the region." The article appeared on February 23, 2003.

The objective of the first premeditated war was now achieved. The Bush Administration stood ready with financing to build the pipeline across Afghanistan, and with a permanent military presence to protect it.

Within two months President Bush sent the armed might of America sweeping into Iraq.

Then came the smokescreen of carefully crafted deceptions. The staging of the Jessica Lynch rescue. The toppling of the statue in Baghdad. Mission accomplished. The orchestrated capture, kangaroo court trial, and hurried execution of Saddam Hussein. Nascent "democracy" in Iraq. All were scripted to burnish the image of George Bush's fraudulent war.

The smokescreen includes the cover-up of 9/11. Initially and fiercely resisting any inquiry at all, President Bush finally appoints a 10-person "9/11 Commission."

The breathtaking exemptions accorded President Bush and Vice President Cheney in the inquiry rendered the entire enterprise a farce: They were "interviewed" together, no transcription of the conversation was allowed, and they were not under oath. The Commission report finally places the blame on "faulty intelligence."

Many of the 10 commissioners, moreover, were burdened with stunning conflicts of interest -- Mr. Ben Veniste, for example -- mostly by their connections to the oil and defense industries. The Carlyle Group contributed to Commissioner Tim Roemer's political campaigns. Commission Chairman Thomas Kean was a Director of Amerada Hess, which had formed a partnership with Delta Oil, the Arabian company of Khalid bin Mahfouz, and that company was teamed with Unocal in the Afghan pipeline project. Vice-Chairman Lee Hamilton serves on the board of Stonebridge International consulting group, which is advising Gulfsands Petroleum and Devon Energy Corporation about Iraqi oil opportunities.

The apparent manipulation of pre-war intelligence is not addressed by the 9/11 Commission, the veracity of the Administration's lies and distortions is assumed without question, and the troubling incongruities of 9/11 are ignored: The theories of controlled demolition, the prior short-selling of airline stock, the whole cottage industry of skepticism.

The doubters and critics of 9/11 are often dismissed as conspiracy crazies, but you needn't claim conspiracy to be skeptical. Why did both President Bush and Vice President Cheney pressure Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to forego any investigation at all? Failing in that, why did the President then use "Executive Privilege" so often to withhold and censor documents? Why did the White House refuse to testify under oath? Why the insistence on the loopy and unrecorded Oval Office interview of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney simultaneously?

There is much we don't know about 9/11.

The Iraq Study Group

Viewing the carnage in Iraq, and seeking desperately to find a way out of it, the U.S. Congress appointed on March 15, 2006 the Iraq Study Group. It was also called the Baker-Hamilton Commission after its co-chairmen, the peripatetic problem-solvers James Baker and Lee Hamilton. It was charged with assessing the situation in Iraq and making policy recommendations.

The Commission assessed the situation as "grave and deteriorating" and recommended substantive changes in handling it: draw down the troop levels and negotiate with Syria and Iran. These recommendations were rejected out of hand by the Bush Administration, but those about the oil sector could hardly have been more pleasing.

The Commission's report urged Iraqi leaders to "... reorganize the national industry as a commercial enterprise." That sounds like code for privatizing the industry (which had been nationalized in 1972.) In case that wasn't clear enough, the Commission encouraged "...investment in Iraq's oil sector by the international energy companies." That sounds like code for Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, Conoco/Phillips, BP/Amoco and Royal Dutch Shell. The Commission urged support for the World Bank's efforts to "ensure that best practices are used in contracting." And that sounds like code for Production Sharing Agreements.

Mr. Baker is a clever and relentless man. He will endorse pages and pages of changes in strategy and tactics -- but leave firmly in place the one inviolable purpose of the conflict in Iraq: capturing the oil.

A Colossus of Failure

The objectives of the oil wars may be non-negotiable, but that doesn't guarantee their successful achievement.

The evidence suggests the contrary.

As recently as January of 2005, the Associated Press expected construction of the Trans Afghan Pipeline to begin in 2006. So did News Central Asia. But by October of 2006, NCA was talking about construction "... as soon as there is stability in Afghanistan."

As the Taliban, the warlords, and the poppy growers reclaim control of the country, clearly there is no stability in Afghanistan, and none can be expected soon.

Unocal has been bought up by the Chevron Corporation. The Bridas Corporation is now part of BP/Amoco. Searching the companies' websites for "Afghanistan pipeline" yields, in both cases, zero results. Nothing is to be found on the sites of the prospective funding agencies. The pipeline project appears to be dead.

The Production Sharing Agreements for Iraq's oil fields cannot be signed until the country's oil policies are codified in statute. That was supposed to be done by December of 2006, but Iraq is in a state of chaotic violence. The "hydrocarbon law" is struggling along -- one report suggests it may be in place by March -- so the signing of the PSA's will be delayed at least that long.

The U.S. and British companies that stand to gain so much -- Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, Concoco/Phillips, BP/Amoco and Royal Dutch Shell -- will stand a while longer. They may well have to stand down.

On October 31, 2006 the newspaper China Daily reported on the visit to China by Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein Shahristani. Mr. Shahristani, the story said, "welcomed Chinese oil companies to participate in the reconstruction of the Iraqi oil industry." That was alarming, but understated.

Stratfor, the American investment research service, was more directly to the point, in a report dated September 27, 2006 (a month before Minister Shahristani's visit, so it used the future tense). The Minister "... will talk to the Chinese about honoring contracts from the Saddam Hussein era. ... This announcement could change the face of energy development in the country and leave U.S. firms completely out in the cold."

The oil wars are abject failures. The Project for a New American Century wanted, in a fantasy of retrograde imperialism, to remove Saddam Hussein from power. President George Bush launched an overt act of military aggression to do so, at a cost of more than 3,000 American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and half a trillion dollars. In the process he has exacerbated the threats from international terrorism, ravaged the Iraqi culture, ruined their economy and their public services, sent thousands of Iraqis fleeing their country as refugees, created a maelstrom of sectarian violence, dangerously destabilized the Middle East, demolished the global prestige of the United States, and defamed the American people.

Richard W. Behan lives and writes on Lopez Island, off the northwest coast of Washington state. He is working on a new book, To Provide Against Invasions: Corporate Dominion and America's Derelict Democracy. He can be reached at rwbehan@rockisland.com. (This essay is deliberately not copyrighted: It may be reproduced without restriction.)

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
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Chavez: Bush is more dangerous than a monkey with a razor blade".

Chávez makes a monkey of Bush


In the lexicon of political insults it will take some beating. Already known for his somewhat colourful use of language Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has probably written himself into the history books for a new sidewipe at his US counterpart George Bush.

In the latest salvo in the war of words between the two countries Mr Chávez described Mr Bush as "evil," a "criminal" but then added that he was "more dangerous than a monkey with a razor blade".

The comment came during a news conference in Caracas in which Mr Chávez responded to accusations made earlier this week by Mr Bush that he was "undermining ... democratic institutions" by the recent passage of a controversial enabling law to allow for government by decree.

Referring to the war in Iraq, Mr Chávez said that both Mr Bush and John Negroponte, the US director of national intelligence, should be tried for "war crimes ... the two of them are criminals. They should be tried and thrown in prison for the rest of their days." He added: "I pray to God for the people of the United States. I hope they're capable of liberating themselves from the tyranny they have. Who would be the greater fascist - Hitler or Bush? They might end up in a draw."

Insults have been fired between US politicians and Venezuela for some months now. Nancy Pelosi, the new speaker of the house and a Democrat, said of Mr Chávez's earlier remarks at the UN that "he fancies himself as a modern day Simón Bolívar, but all he is an everyday thug."

Politicians have swapped insults for generations. In Britain, the former Liberal MP Clement Freud once described Margaret Thatcher as "Attila the Hen". Former French president François Mitterrand said: "She has the mouth of Marilyn Monroe and the eyes of Caligula."

The Deadly Nature of "Non-Lethal" Weapons

Plasma clouds, microwave beams, electrified bullets -- military contractors have been developing futuristic new combat technologies under the public radar. Already, the TASER stun gun has emerged from the pages of speculative fiction, and into the hands of military, corrections, and law enforcement personnel (See "Stunning Revelations," November 2006). But stun technology is just one tool in the arsenal for developers of proposed "non-lethal" weapons.

Guard that perimeter

For the past several years, Taser International, Inc. has been testing products with the military market in mind. Most recently it has been working on Tasernet, a weapon it describes as a "non-lethal area denial and force protection system." In October, the Taser Remote Area Denial (T-RAD) concept was officially unveiled at the annual United States Army meeting in Washington, D.C.

When used in tandem with what Taser bills as the "companion computer networking system," Tasernet, the defensive weaponry amounts to a "Star Trek"-style forcefield, stunning uninvited guests. Tasernet can capture digital facial scans, allowing authorized users through the forcefield. According to Taser's press release, the T-RAD, based on the Taser X26 core technology, is "designed to be deployed at checkpoints, facility perimeters, embassies, airports, and other critical infrastructures." The weapon is expected to be ready for deployment in 2008.

Projectiles with a zing

In July, three inventors applied for a U.S. patent on research that would enable the creation of wire-free, "piezoelectric" stun guns. (Piezoelectric crystals generate voltage in response to mechanical vibrations--"piezo" means "push" in Greek.) In their patent application, the inventors explain that their invention would create darts containing an explosive charge, which detonate upon contact with pierced skin. The guns could be used from a distance of nearly 500 feet.

In September 2005, the U.S. Correctional Special Operations Group (U.S. C-SOG) and the Australia-based Harrington Group also announced an agreement to develop weapons capable of introducing a piezoelectric charge to "traditional ammunition and other projectiles such as rubber bullets," according to a jointly issued press release. With a patent pending, the two companies have trademarked the weapon technology under the name "ShockRounds."

U.S. C-SOG is a corrections training firm specializing in emergency tactical operations for penal institutions; it boasts of having relationships with more than 4,000 correctional institutions in 14 countries. The companies describe ShockRounds as a "safe, less-lethal" product designed to provide correctional employees with a new way to subdue inmates and to quell "serious crowd disturbances and threat situations."

Set phaser to stun

Raytheon, based in Palo Alto, Calif., is also testing numerous "non-lethal" weapons for military use, with funding from the National Institute of Justice. According to FOIA documents obtained by the U.S. Sunshine Project, Raytheon's Pulsed Energy Projectiles (PEPs) fire a laser burst of expanding plasma--a collection of charged particles containing equal parts positive ions and electrons. (In science fiction terms, this could best be described as a "raygun.")

PEPs can be used from as far as two kilometers away, and are designed to create severe and debilitating pain resulting in temporary paralysis. Of particular concern is the fact that PEPs, apparently ready for use as early as 2007, are being investigated for use against "rioters," according to the British science magazine New Scientist.

And an Anderson, Ind.-based company, Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems (XADS), is marketing their Close Quarters Shock Rifle to the military. The Shock Rifle projects plasma toward a target, and can be used for shutting down the ignition systems of vehicles, as well as for crowd control.

According to a New Scientist interview with XADS president Peter Bitar, the weapon can fire "a stream of electricity like water out of a hose at one or many targets in a single sweep." An even more advanced form of the weapon may have a range of more than 300 feet. New Scientist noted that this version would utilize a tabletop-sized laser to produce an intense pulse that would ionize the air itself. The process would produce "long, thread-like filaments of glowing plasma that [could] be sustained by repeating the pulse every few milliseconds." The effect would be one of a shock similar to that of one of Taser's 50,000-volt stun guns.

That burning sensation

Raytheon is also pursuing a microwave-technology-based weapon, named the Active Denial System (ADS), which fires a 95-gigahertz beam at its targets. Thus far, what is known about ADS is that people hit by the weapon's beam experience a sharp rise in body heat and severe pain within five seconds of contact, an experience that is supposed to prompt targets to run in the other direction. A vehicle-mounted version of the weapon is already being designed for use in Iraq, while other portable versions are being designed for both U.S. Marine Corps and domestic law enforcement use.

A 2005 Reuters article noted that tests of the weapon have taken place at the Kirtland Air Force base in Albuquerque, N.M. As a part of those tests, researchers first made sure that participants removed all glasses, contact lenses and metal objects like keys, to prevent serious injury--of course, the conditions of real-world use are less controlled.

"How do you ensure that the dose doesn't cross the threshold for permanent damage?" asked Neil Davison, coordinator of the non-lethal weapons research project at Britain's Bradford University, in the Reuters article. Notably, one controlled test in New Mexico has already resulted in serious injury to a test subject, apparently after a higher-than-normal ADS power level setting was used.

Not so harmless

"Non-lethal" is still the operative term with all of these new weapons, but civilian experience with Taser stun guns shows that "non-lethal" means "usually not lethal." Since 2001, roughly 200 people have died after being stunned with Tasers. Taser International, Inc., attributes all of the deaths to other causes, including acute intoxication and "excited delirium." The U.S. Department of Justice has launched an investigation to review some of those deaths.

The rapid evolution of electricity-based weaponry raises concerns for abuse by governments and law enforcement agencies that have already demonstrated a propensity to use electrical shock weaponry as a form of torture.

During a March 2005 debate with Taser CEO Rick Smith, Amnesty International USA's William Schulz pointed out that "stun technology in general is one of the most widely used instruments of torture around the world."

Human rights advocates everywhere should bear that in mind. The new wave of shock technology isn't just around the corner--it's already here.

Thanks to the Nation Institute's Investigative Fund for research support.

Silja J.A. Talvi is a senior editor at In These Times. Her work appears in the anthology, "Prison Nation" (Routledge, 2003).

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/47092/

US Jewish groups seek to expel anti-IDF group

Matthew Wagner, THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 1, 2007

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and Aish Hatorah have called this week to expel the Union of Progressive Zionists (UPZ) from the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC) for supporting Breaking the Silence, an organization that is hyper-critical of the IDF's treatment of Palestinians in Judea and Samaria.

The ZOA said that Breaking the Silence contradicts the ICC mission to "foster support for Israel," "cultivate an Israel-friendly university environment" and "reduce anti-Israel intimidation and harassment on campus."

On January 19, the ICC's steering committee, which is made up of Aish Hatorah, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, AIPAC, the Jewish National Fund, Hillel, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and the Shusterman Foundation voted unanimously to keep UPZ in the ICC. Aish Hatorah later backtracked and voted to remove UPZ.

In a statement circulated to Jewish organizations, Aish Hatorah apologized for "not clearly stating our position during the official vote on the proposal. We should have known all the facts at that time. But since we didn't, we now are stating that our official viewpoint is that programs and organizations that support such programs that demonize and cause hatred for Israel should not have a place on the Israel on Campus Coalition. For that reason, we vote to remove the UPZ from the Coalition for its support of the 'Breaking the Silence' program."

ZOA's National President Morton Klein hopes to convince the entire steering committee to change its mind.

"I am not denying anyone the right to free speech," said Klein. "As far as I am concerned, let UPZ bring Nazis to college campuses. But there is no way they can continue to be part of a pro-Zionist coalition. Breaking the Silence is precisely the type of program that the ZOA's college campus activities try to combat."

Breaking the Silence (Shovrim Shtika) is a group of former IDF combat soldiers, many of whom continue to do reserve duty, who give personal testimony of purported human rights violations perpetrated by the IDF in Judea and Samaria.

"We try to explain to audiences on college campuses what it feels like to stand for hours at a checkpoint in the territories telling someone twice our age that he cannot go where he wants to because of a decision by some high-ranking official," said Mikhael Manekin, administrative director of Breaking the Silence. "Or what an IDF soldier feels after breaking in to a Palestinian family's house in the middle of the night and arresting the father while his children scream and cry."

Manekin, 27, an IDF lieutenant who still does reserve duty in Judea and Samaria, said that he has testimony from 400 soldiers who have served in Judea and Samaria. "All of them talk of the ethical and moral dilemmas they faced while on duty."

Manekin said that his organization did not offer political solutions, although the vast majority of Breaking the Silence were left-wing. "We just give expression to the price we have to pay for what we do."

Tammy Shapiro, executive director of UPZ, said that her organization facilitated Breaking the Silence's appearance on four college campuses.

"The present generation of Jewish students is turned off by pro-Zionist organizations that present an unblemished picture of Israel," said Shapiro, 24.

"Students read the papers; they know what is happening in the territories as a result of the occupation. That's why it is so important to talk about the really controversial issues in an open way. Otherwise you stifle real debate, real dialogue."

Shapiro said that it is was of utmost importance that the pro-Zionist UPZ, which was created by Ha'Shomer Hatzair, Meretz USA, Habonim-Dror and Amenu, sponsor groups like Breaking the Silence on college campuses.

"It sends out a message that you can be supportive of a Jewish democratic state and at the same time carry a real dialogue over the most pressing ethical issues facing Israeli society," she said.

However, Dalia Lockspeiser, ZOA's campus coordinator, said that Breaking the Silence completely removed IDF acts against Palestinians from the larger Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"Yehuda Shaul, the IDF soldier who spoke, told the crowd that by the end of his army service he had completely lost his self-identity because of the horrible things he had done," said Lockspeiser. "But he never explained what these horrible things were.

"Then he went on to tell of how IDF soldiers seemingly arbitrarily take over an innocent Palestinian's house and convert it into a security base. He showed pictures of IDF soldiers who had commandeered one Palestinian's house and were sitting watching the World Cup. He never explained anything about suicide bombings or other terrorist threats, as if everything were done by whim."

Various pro-Palestinian organizations have been very supportive of Breaking the Silence. Electronic Antifada, an Internet site, posted a positive article about the group. An appearance at New York University was facilitated by Students for Justice In Palestine and the Princeton Committee on Palestine did the same at Princeton. The Coalition for Justice in the Middle East co-sponsored them at Stanford and Indybay was involved in a San Jose State University engagement.

Israeli Consul-General in Los Angeles Ehud Danoch and Consul for Media and Public Affairs Gilad Millo sent an internal letter to the Foreign Ministry and all of Israel's representatives in North America warning of the harm caused by Breaking the Silence to Israel's image abroad.

Sources in the Foreign Ministry told The Jerusalem Post that the issue would be discussed.

The Myth of an al Qaeda Takeover of Iraq By Ted Galen Carpenter

By Ted Galen Carpenter

"The notion of al Qaeda using Iraq as a sanctuary is a specter -- a canard that the perpetrators of the current catastrophe use to frighten people into supporting a fatally flawed, and seemingly endless, nation-building debacle."

In his State of the Union Address last Tuesday, President Bush warned that if the U.S. fails in Iraq, al Qaeda will gain a safe haven from which to launch attacks against America. It is an argument that the President, other members of the administration, and neoconservative hawks have been using for years.

In late 2005, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned that al Qaeda leaders "would turn Iraq into what Afghanistan was before 9/11 -- a haven for terrorist recruitment and training and a launching pad for attacks against U.S. interests and our fellow citizens."

Despite such scare mongering, it is highly improbable that al Qaeda could use Iraq as the kind of safe haven it enjoyed in Afghanistan. There, the organization had the protection of an entrenched, friendly government, which it will not have in Iraq. Al Qaeda also had a much larger force in Afghanistan -- an estimated 18,000 fighters. Even the U.S. government concedes that there are fewer than 2,000 al Qaeda fighters in Iraq, and the Iraq Study Group put the figure at only 1,300.

Indeed, foreign fighters make up a relatively small component of the Sunni insurgency against the U.S. and British occupation forces. It strains credulity to imagine 1,300 fighters (and foreigners at that) dominating a country of 26 million people.

The challenge for al Qaeda in Iraq would be even more daunting than those raw numbers suggest. While the organization has some support among Sunni Arabs there, opinion even among that segment of the population is surprisingly negative.

A September 2006 poll conducted by the University of Maryland's prestigious Program on International Policy Attitudes found that 94 percent of Iraqi Sunnis had a somewhat or highly unfavorable attitude toward al Qaeda.

As the violence of al Qaeda attacks has mounted, and the victims are increasingly Iraqis, not Americans, many Sunnis have turned against the terrorists. There have been a growing number of reports during the past year of armed conflicts between Iraqi Sunnis and foreign fighters.

And the anemic Sunni support for al Qaeda is overshadowed by the intense Shiite and Kurdish hostility to the group. Almost to a person, they loathe al Qaeda. The PIPA poll showed that 98 percent of Shiite respondents and 100 percent of Kurdish respondents had somewhat or very unfavorable views of the organization.

The notion that a Shiite-Kurdish-dominated government would tolerate Iraq becoming a safe haven for al Qaeda is improbable on its face. Even if U.S. troops left Iraq, the successor government would continue to be dominated by Kurds and Shiites, since they make up more than 80 percent of Iraq's population. And, in marked contrast to the situation under Saddam Hussein, they now control the military and police.

At best, al Qaeda could hope for a tenuous presence in predominantly Sunni areas of the country while being incessantly stalked and harassed by government forces -- and probably hostile Iraqi Sunnis as well. That doesn't exactly sound like a reliable base of operations for attacks on America.

Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican of Nebraska, has it right. "I have never been persuaded to believe that whether we stay there six months, a year, or two years, that if we would leave, that somehow Iraq would turn into a haven for terrorists."

His skepticism is well placed.

The notion of al Qaeda using Iraq as a sanctuary is a specter -- a canard that the perpetrators of the current catastrophe use to frighten people into supporting a fatally flawed, and seemingly endless, nation-building debacle.

Ted Galen Carpenter is vice president for defense and foreign policy studies and co-author of Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. Must End the Military Occupation and Renew the War Against Al Qaeda (2004).

This article appeared in the Sacramento Bee Register

The War on Iran By Stephen Gowans

By Stephen Gowans

The war has already begun and it has nothing to do with nuclear weapons and threats against Israel and everything to do with who rules America.

According to US economist Jeffrey Sachs, “Bush recently invited journalists to imagine the world in 50 years…he wanted to know whether Islamic radicals would control the world’s oil.” Sachs pointed out that stoking fears over who will control the world’s petroleum reserves is not new to the Bush administration.

In the lead up to the Anglo-American war on Iraq, US vice president Dick Cheney made the ridiculous claim that Saddam Hussein was assembling a massive arsenal of WMD “to take control of a great portion of the world’s energy supplies.” “Perhaps though, Saddam was too eager to sell oil concessions to French, Russian and Italian companies rather than British and US companies,” Sachs observed. (“Fighting the wrong war,” The Guardian, September 25, 2006) Strip away the fear-mongering, and what Bush and Cheney are really saying is that a resource as lucrative as petroleum won’t be allowed to remain in the hands of its true owners. It will be stripped from them, by force if necessary.

In the Bush administration’s assessment “Iran sees itself at the head of an alliance to drive the United States out of Iraq and ultimately out of the Middle East,” (New York Times, January 28, 2007) forcing the US hand from the world’s oil spigot. Like Iraq, which was said to be a WMD threat, Iran is portrayed as being on the verge of making a nuclear breakthrough. But the fears over Iran’s nuclear program are contrived. “Despite being presented as an urgent threat to nuclear non-proliferation and regional and world power…a number of Western diplomats and technical experts close to the Iranian program (say) it is archaic, prone to breakdown and lacks the material for industrial scale production.” (Observer, January 28, 2007)

The mistake is often made of assuming the absence of overt hostilities amounts to peace. War, however, can have various faces. It’s not only missiles crashing into buildings, tanks advancing across international borders, and troops smashing down doors. It can be economic strangulation (blockades and sanctions); funding and training dissidents; military threats, to cow an enemy into submission or bankrupt its economy (as it tries to keep pace.) By these criteria, the US is at war with Cuba, north Korea, Zimbabwe, Belarus and Iran. War need not be Sturm und Drang. Diplomacy, in the age of imperialism, remarked R. Palme Dutt, is simply war by other means. Sanctions, the funding of civil society to bring about color revolutions, war games along an enemy’s borders -- are as much manifestations of war, as overt military intervention. And sometimes, they’re just as devastating. The sanctions on Iraq in the 90s – what some regarded as a pacific alternative to war -- killed hundreds of thousands.

Subversion

The US has established new offices in the State Department and Pentagon to build an opposition movement in Iran to topple the government. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked the US Congress a year ago for $75 million to supplement $10 million already allocated to underwriting the activities of dissidents in Iran and to expand Voice of American broadcasts. (Los Angeles Times, May 19, 2006) The CIA’s budget for programs aimed at bringing about regime change in Iran is probably many times larger.

Financial Isolation

Last September, the new US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (as chairman of the New York investment firm Goldman Sachs he amassed a personal fortune of $700 million in a career than has seen him move between the Nixon administration, the Pentagon and the world of high finance) announced that Iran needed to be isolated financially, in the manner of north Korea. North Korea’s foreign trade was disrupted when the US sanctioned a Macau bank. Wary of being cut-off from the US financial system, other banks, seeking to avoid the example of Banco Delta Asia, have steered clear of transactions with north Korean enterprises. As a result, the DPRK finds it difficult to export to other countries to earn the foreign exchange it needs to import vital goods.

In Paulson’s view, Iran is still a major player globally, and needs to suffer the same pariah treatment. (New York Times, September 17, 2006) In October, US Treasury Department officials banned US banks from facilitating transactions involving Iran’s state-owned Bank Saderat. In January, the ban was widened to include another Iranian bank, Bank Sepah.

When Iran sells oil to a customer in Germany, the German customer asks a European bank to deposit US dollars into an Iranian bank account. The European bank then arranges for the transfer of US dollars from a US bank to an Iranian bank account in Europe. Paulson’s ban prohibits US banks from transferring funds if Bank Saderat and Bank Sepah are involved. (New York Times, October 16, 2006) With oil sales denominated in US dollars, the aim is to impede Iran’s ability to sell oil. The way around the US manoeuvre is to sell oil in Euros, something Iran has already begun to do. (New York Times, January 10, 2007)

This would seem to be a simple enough way of beating the US at its own game. It also raises questions about the prudence of compelling Iran to switch to Euros, since a change to Euros, if adopted by a number of oil-exporting countries, would push down the value of the US greenback. US investment banker John Hermann, a comptroller of currency in the Carter administration, wonders whether the US is shooting itself in the foot. (New York Times, October 16, 2006)

On the surface, these are valid concerns. But Paulson’s aims are broader. In September he let the world banking community know that it should stop doing business with more than 30 named Iranian enterprises. Behind the request lay a veiled threat. Banks that deal with Iranian businesses run the risk of jeopardizing their future access to the US financial system. Already, a number of European banks have taken heed, scaling back their dealings with Iranian banks and businesses. Credit Suisse and UBS in Switzerland, ABN Amro in the Netherlands and HSBC in Britain are starting to steer a wide berth around Iran.

Economic Warfare

Additionally, Washington is pressuring Europe to curtail exports to Iran and to block transactions with Iranian companies. (New York Times, January 30, 2007) For its part, Israel is campaigning to isolate Iran economically. Israel plans to apply pressure to “major US pension funds to stop investment in about 70 companies that trade directly with Iran, and to international banks that trade with the oil sector, cutting off” Iran’s access to hard currency. “The aim is to isolate Iran from world markets in a campaign similar to that against South Africa at the height of apartheid.” (The Guardian, January 26, 2007)

To win support for its campaign, Israel will argue that Iranian president Mohamed Ahmadinejad is working to acquire nuclear weapons to carry out a systematic extermination of the Jews and will pursue the Iranian leader in international courts “under the 1948 UN Convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, which outlaws ‘direct and public incitement to genocide.’” (The Guardian January 26, 2007) Former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, has already filed suit against Ahmadinejad at the International Court of Justice, claiming the Iranian president is inciting genocide. Additionally, Bolton charged Ahmadinejad with “making numerous threats against the United States,” a claim so risible as to mark Bolton as a man whose chutzpah is limitless. (The Guardian, December 13, 2006) Both Bolton’s trip to the ICJ, and Israeli’s plan to pursue litigation against Ahmadinejad, are mischievous. Ahmadinejad hasn’t called for genocide but for the replacement of Israel as a Jewish state by a multi-national democratic state based on equality among the peoples of historic Palestine. What matters for Israel, however, is not so much winning a conviction but incessantly repeating the lie that the Iranian leader is a new Hitler. Who’s going to object to sanctions on a country whose president Israel’s ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman describes as “saying, ‘There really was no Holocaust, but just in case, we shall finish the job.’”? (Los Angeles Times, January 27, 2007)

The Israeli campaign, if successful, will add to sanctions the United States has already imposed under the Iran Non-proliferation Act, passed by the US Congress in 2000. The US sanctions prohibit trade with companies that sell goods to Iran that could be used to build missiles or weapons of mass destruction. Foreign firms that trade with Iran run the risk of getting caught up in the sanctions and losing their access to the US market. Since 2000, 40 companies have fallen afoul of the US law, including Russian, north Korean and Cuban firms. (New York Times, August 5, 2006) Since any of a number of goods that have non-threatening uses could conceivably be used in the manufacture of missiles and other weapons, the effect of the sanctions is to isolate Iran economically by discouraging companies from trade with Iran. A company that sells chlorine for water treatment, for example, wouldn’t want to be accused of supplying Iran with the means of manufacturing chemical weapons and lose its access to US customers. As a consequence many companies tend to give Iran a wide berth, making it difficult for the country to import the goods it needs.

In recent weeks, Washington has opened yet another front in its war on Iran: driving down the price of oil to reduce Iran’s revenue. The US can’t affect the price of oil itself, but it can pressure Saudi Arabia to increase output to bring prices down. In January, Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, vetoed an emergency meeting of OPEC to discuss cutting production after oil dropped below $50 a barrel. The Saudis have signalled that they’re committed to keeping the price of oil hovering around $50 a barrel, down $27 a barrel from the summer. From Washington’s perspective, the high prices allow Iran (and another US bete noire, Venezuela) to export “radical agendas,” (New York Times, January 28, 2007) or more directly, to mount a threat of self-defense.

Intimidation

It’s unclear whether elements of the Israeli ruling circle are preparing to attack Iran or whether they’re simply engaged in a campaign of psychological warfare, seeking to unnerve Tehran by threatening war. The press is full of warnings of an imminent Israeli attack. “Two Israeli air force squadrons,” warned The Guardian (January 7, 2007) are training to use nuclear ‘bunker busting’ bombs to demolish Iran’s heavily guarded enrichment program.” (The Guardian, January 7, 2007.) The Independent (January 22, 2007) concluded that “senior Israeli politicians and analysts appear to be preparing the public for military conflict with Iran” and (January 25, 2007) “Israeli military officials warned … that Israel – acting alone or in coordination with the US – could launch pre-emptive military strikes against Iran before the end of this year.” The warnings were described by a senior British military source as “watering the turf.” Iran, the source said, “is not under enough pressure.” (The Independent, January 25, 2007.)

In early January, the Pentagon deployed a second aircraft carrier, the USS John Stennis to join a battle group led by the USS Dwight D Eisenhower, stationed menacingly close to Iran. (The Independent, January 14, 2007.) Britain also beefed up its complement of ships in the region (New York Times, December 21, 2006.) At the same time, the Pentagon dispatched a 600-strong Patriot anti-missile defense system to the Middle East. Asked to explain why the anti-missile defense system was being deployed, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a press conference that “We are simply reaffirming…the importance of the Gulf region to the United States and our determination to be an ongoing strong presence in that area for a long time into the future.” (Globe and Mail, January 15, 2007) US officials would later say the building naval presence was intended to deter Iran from trying to dominate the region.

Provocation

US troops raided an Iranian diplomatic office in Ebril on January 11, detaining six Iranians working inside. Despite the apparent breach of diplomatic immunity, the incident was greeted with supreme indifference by the Western media, which, some two and half decades ago, howled in outrage at Iranian radicals overrunning the US embassy in Tehran and seizing US diplomats, an event since seared into the US collective conscience as “the hostage crisis.”

Military Industrial Complex

Elevating Iran to a threat comes in handy in justifying extravagantly high military expenditures, incurred, not to build a legitimate national defense, but to soak up surplus capital and provide influential corporations with a boost to their bottom lines. The wars on Iraq and Afghanistan help. “The steadily rising cost of the Iraq war will reach about $8.4 billion a month this year…as the price of replacing lost, destroyed and aging equipment mounts.” (Reuters, January 19, 2007) Manufacturers of helicopters, airplanes and armoured vehicles -- among the largest and most influential corporations – will rake in loot hand over fist replacing worn out and destroyed military equipment.

British prime minister Tony Blair is proposing to spend $40 billion to buy a new generation of submarines to carry nuclear warheads. Blair says the expenditures are needed to counter “the desire by states, highly dubious in their intentions, like north Korea and Iran, to pursue nuclear weapons capability.” (New York Times, December 5, 2006)

His reasoning is chock full of holes. First, there’s no evidence Iran is producing a nuclear weapons capability. Second, if Iran did develop one, it would be dwarfed by Britain’s existing capability. Iran’s arsenal would be so small and rudimentary to be nothing more than defensive -- a way of deterring the British and American habit of busting down the doors to take whatever they like rather than a way of presenting an offensive threat. Third, Blair talks as if Britain hasn’t a massive deterrent capability already.

The United States is also planning to spend over $100 billion to replace its own nuclear arsenal, despite a study that says its existing warheads can be expected to work reliably for a century or more. (New York Times, January 7, 2007) This suggests the real purpose of the program has little to do with self-defense. Massive expenditures on weapons – which distributes income upward through the transfer of tax dollars from working people to the owners and high-level executives of arms-producing corporations – is an ongoing US practice, and has been since the Himalayan military expenditures of WWII dragged the US out of the Great Depression. It has been evident in ruling circles since that without large military expenditures to soak up surpluses, the US economy teeters on the brink of stagnation. Having a stable of demons that can be trotted out whenever necessary to justify frivolous military spending is a necessary part of keeping the profits rolling in.

The Class Basis of US and British Foreign Policy

The foreign policy of capitalist countries, including that of the US and Britain, is driven to secure investment opportunities for the high-level executives, bankers and hereditary capitalist families that have capital to invest and need places to invest it in. By virtue of their wealth and their ownership and control of major enterprises, they are able to dominate public policy and shape it to their own interests.

Two important ways in which this class secures opportunities for the profitable investment of its capital is by shaping foreign policy to dominate other countries in order to secure access to their natural resources, markets, and other assets and by providing opportunities for profitable investment in the production of arms and the machinery of war. Both imperatives necessitate a third: to invent threats to national security to justify massive military expenditures, to provide the basis for the deployment of military forces abroad to protect existing overseas investments, and to furnish a plausible reason for wars of conquest to pry open nationalist, socialist or communist economies to investment.

Here’s how it works. I have idle capital I need to put to work. I loan part of my capital to the US government by buying bonds. The government sells bonds to raise money to finance government programs, including military and weapons programs, and pays interest to me on my investment. I also invest part of my capital in companies that have secured contracts with the US government to supply the Pentagon with tanks, helicopters, bombers and missiles. Thanks to these contracts, I receive dividends from my investments on the profits these companies make. In effect I’m loaning my capital to the government to spend on companies I have investments in. Moreover, the military equipment I’ve profited from (through interest on the bonds I’ve bought and dividends from the defense contractors I have a stake in) will be used to deter foreign countries in which I’ve invested from confiscating my capital through programs of nationalization and may be used to pry open economies currently off-limits to my capital.

I use part of my capital to buy lobbyists and help fund think-tanks and foundations to press the government to change policies I dislike – not only in my own country, but in other countries as well. I press for the opening of investment opportunities that are closed to foreign investment (in the oil industry in Iraq, for example), for the removal of restrictions on investments overseas, and for the improvement of conditions for the profitable investment of my capital. To pre-empt opposition to policies that enlarge my capital, I buy public relations expertise, fund university chairs, employ sympathetic researchers and buy media outlets to make the case that policies beneficial to me are natural, desirable, necessary and ultimately advantageous to all.

To ensure the public policy prescriptions formulated by the think-tanks and foundations I support are implemented (and which in turn are promoted by the public relations network I underwrite) I put part of my capital to work by contributing to the major political parties. I also hand out high-paying corporate and lobbying jobs to ex-politicians who have looked after my interests while in office. In this way, I send a message to those who hold public office today that if they play their cards right, they’ll be rewarded. I support the candidacies for public office of promising high-level executives in companies I have major investments in and the high-level operatives of the think-tanks and foundations I support. In this way, those who implicitly share my values and understand my objectives are placed in positions in which they can shepherd public policy through the executive and legislative branches of government to facilitate my profit-making activities.

The Real Reason for War by Other Means

The US, Britain and Israel are at war with Iran. The war is not conducted, at the moment, anyway, through missile strikes, bombing campaigns or land invasion, but by intimidation, provocation, subversion, and economic warfare. While the war is being justified as a necessary response to a growing threat of nuclear proliferation and to counter the alleged existential threat to Jews living in Israel posed by the president of Iran, the real reason for the war is to be found in the domination of public policy by the owners and high-level executives of banks and large corporations and in the directions in which the logic of capitalism pushes them to shape foreign policy.

Iran is not a nuclear threat. Its nuclear program is oriented to civilian uses, and even then is “archaic, prone to breakdown and lacks the material for industrial scale production.” Moreover, the country vehemently denies it is seeking nuclear weapons, and no one has produced a shred of evidence to say it is. All we have are the unsubstantiated claims of a Bush administration notorious for sexing up intelligence and lying about its reasons for going to war. What’s more, even if Iran managed to produce a nuclear weapon, it would be rudimentary and incapable of presenting an offensive threat against the much bigger arsenals of the US, Britain and Israel. At best, it would create a threat of self-defense.

The president of Iran, no matter what he thinks of the truth or scope of the systematic extermination of Jews by Nazi Germany, is not an existential threat to the Jewish inhabitants of Israel, though he is unquestionably an implacable anti-Zionist. Anti-Zionism, however, is not equivalent to hating Jews, and nor is the promotion of anti-Zionist aims equivalent to inciting genocide.

Iran is not a threat to anyone in the West, but is an irritant to a tiny stratum of the population with capital to invest and a need, driven by the logic of capitalism, to find places to invest it in. Iran’s economy is in large part state-owned, inclined to attach conditions to foreign investment, and competes with US enterprises (Iran has its own automobile industry, for example, and has invested in automobile factories in Syria and Venezuela.) From the perspective of the US capitalist class, an Iran that limited itself to oil exports (preferably with plenty of scope for US investment), recycled petrodollars through New York investment banks, and worked with the Pentagon to crush the resistance in Iraq, would be preferable to the current economically nationalist regime that bristles at the idea of throwing its doors wide open to US domination and has too many ties to Europe.

As for the Israeli ruling class, its aims are to facilitate US foreign policy as a condition of continuing to receive the US military and economic aid and diplomatic support it needs to remain viable to pursue the Zionist project of dispossessing the rightful inhabitants of historic Palestine. To secure the consent of the Israeli population for the sacrifices of a potential war on Iran, and to play the role of potential victim of Iranian aggression to justify an Anglo-American naval build up in the Gulf, Israel’s ruling circles liberally employ the arts of public relations to bamboozle Israelis, and the rest of the world, into believing Iran is working toward the revival of the Nazi project of exterminating the Jews. Iran’s pursuit of civilian nuclear energy becomes a secret program to build a nuclear bomb to wipe Israel off the face of the map. Ahmadinejad’s anti-Zionism becomes an insane anti-Semitism headed toward a nuclear confrontation with Israel.

My Enemy’s Enemy

“The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend,” intone those too unwilling, too frightened, too unprincipled, or too comfortable, to rouse themselves to defend Iran. (By defend Iran I mean doing what one can to thwart the de facto war against the country, even if it only means challenging the deceitful pretexts used to “water the turf”.) While it may be that my enemy’s enemy is not always my friend, this has nothing to do with the reasons why the US, Britain and Israel are locked in a war (by other means) with another oil-rich Gulf state. Powerful countries driven by the expansionary logic of capitalism have always sought, in various ways, to dominate other countries for the purposes of opening new opportunities for the profitable investment of capital. Imperialism is carried on independently of whether the dominated countries are ruled by the friends of progressives in the West, or their enemies. The Iranian government needn’t be your friend to recognize why a war on Iran is being carried out, whose interests it serves, and that it doesn’t serve yours. On the contrary, it detracts from them.

Peek below the surface, and the hostility to our own interests of the recurrent pattern of capitalist-driven expansion at the expense of the sovereignty of other countries becomes evident. Who pays the taxes to pay the interest on bonds sold to investment bankers and hereditary capitalist families to refurbish nuclear arsenals that don’t need refurbishing, to replace tanks, armoured vehicles and helicopters lost in the wars that should never have been fought, and to build war machines to outrage the sovereignty of other countries? Who foots the bill for lucrative defense contracts to make the machinery of war? Who carries the ball to finance the programs of subverting democracy in other countries? Who sacrifices their limbs, eyesight, hearing, sanity and lives to fight wars to secure profitable investment opportunities for the super-rich? In this system, the bulk of us are exploited, while a tiny minority reaps the benefit of monstrous profits. We are the cannon-fodder, the vote-fodder, the tax-fodder that allows the system to run and the super-rich get super-richer. True, the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. But we should be clear on who – and what -- the enemy is, who the victims are, and how the victims have a common interest in challenging their common enemy

Venezuela: The real meaning of “Fatherland, socialism or death” (Patria, Socialismo, o Muerte. Venceremos!)

By Pablo Roldan


On January 10, 2007 Hugo Chávez Frías was sworn in as President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, changing the traditional formula of "Fatherland or Death" to "Fatherland, socialism or death."

This variation in the ceremony's protocol has received quite a lot of attention from the bourgeois media internationally. Depending on the degree of their political vehemence, their more or less openly counter-revolutionary stance, and the particular economic interests of the respective business groups, the respectable media outlets, from The Guardian in Britain through to The New York Times in the United States and Le Monde in France, and the hysterical tone of El País in Spain or the more patronising and polite touch of The Financial Times in Britain, what one finds is a confirmation of the image of Chavez they have so painstakingly constructed over the last eight years.

They have painted Chavez to be a demagogue with a terrible thirst for power, who has led the poor, illiterate, and ignorant Venezuelan masses using a mixture of flowery revolutionary and anti-imperialistic rhetoric along with the use of the crumbs from state oil revenues.

The mention of socialism at the swearing-in ceremony of the President, the use of the s-word within the state institutions, even if these are not yet the institutions of a socialist republic, along with the announcement of the creation of a new party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (which is to be built from the rank and file up), the nationalisation of CANTV and the utilities sector, constitutional reform, the non-renewal of RCTV's licence, and the formation of a new cabinet without Rangel as vice-president, can only mean one thing for the international bourgeois media and, therefore, for the international bourgeoisie. It is the confirmation of their worst fears: capitalism is in danger of being abolished in Venezuela through a socialist revolution. In the pages of the bourgeois newspapers this is translated in the following way: "there is no revolution in Venezuela, just a cunning shepherd and a flock of sheep looking for trouble".

However, "Fatherland, socialism or death" expresses in a concise and emotional way the experience of the revolutionary masses in Venezuela and the long journey that Chavez himself has travelled - from his admiration for Tony Blair and his advocacy of the "Third Way" and "capitalism with a human face" to the realisation that "within the limits of capitalism there is no possible solution for the problems facing the masses of Venezuela".

In this sense, it is not surprising that Chávez, when speaking about the new Minister of Labour, José Ramón Rivero, joked saying that "when I called him he said to me: 'Mr. President, I want to tell you something before someone else tells you... I am a Trotskyist', and I said, 'Well, what is the problem? I am also a Trotskyist! I follow Trotsky's line, that of permanent revolution'."

If the oath of "Fatherland, socialism or death" graphically captures the particular experience of the Venezuelan masses in their struggle to break free from the yoke of imperialism and achieve a decent life, Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution, first formulated one hundred years ago, expresses the general dynamics of this phenomenon.

When explaining the basic idea of the Permanent Revolution, Trotsky wrote:

"With regard to countries with a belated bourgeois development, especially the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of the permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as the leader of the subjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses.

"Not only the agrarian, but also the national question assigns to the peasantry - the overwhelming majority of the population in backward countries - an exceptional place in the democratic revolution. Without an alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry the tasks of the democratic revolution cannot be solved, nor even seriously posed. But the alliance of these two classes can be realized in no other way than through an irreconcilable struggle against the influence of the national-liberal bourgeoisie.

"This in turn means that the victory of the democratic revolution is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat which bases itself upon the alliance with the peasantry and solves first of all the tasks of the democratic revolution.

"The dictatorship of the proletariat which has risen to power as the leader of the democratic revolution is inevitably and, very quickly confronted with tasks, the fulfilment of which is bound up with deep inroads into the rights of bourgeois property. The democratic revolution grows over directly into the socialist revolution and thereby becomes a permanent revolution".

But, what is this dictatorship of the proletariat about which there is so much talk?

"The exploited classes", wrote Lenin in The State and Revolution, "need political rule in order to completely abolish all exploitation, i.e., in the interests of the vast majority of the people, and against the insignificant minority consisting of the modern slave-owners - the landowners and capitalists.

"Only the proletariat - by virtue of the economic role it plays in large-scale production - is capable of being the leader of all the working and exploited people, whom the bourgeoisie exploit, oppress and crush, often not less but more than they do the proletarians, but who are incapable of waging an independent struggle for their emancipation

"The transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society proceeds through the dictatorship of the proletariat, and cannot do otherwise, for the resistance of the capitalist exploiters cannot be broken by anyone else or in any other way."

The dictatorship of the proletariat envisaged by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, in spite of what some may fear, has nothing to do with the totalitarian Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe and Asia. Rather, they saw the workers' and community councils as being the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and this state will be, of necessity, the most democratic of states and will for the first time "create democracy for the people, for the majority, along with the necessary suppression of the exploiters, of the minority."

The dictatorship of the proletariat, "a state so constituted that it begins to wither away immediately, and cannot but wither away", can only be founded on the following principles:

1) Free and democratic elections with the right of the electors to recall every and any official.

2) No official to receive a wage higher than that of a skilled worker.

3) No standing army but an armed people.

4) Gradually, all administrative tasks will be performed by everyone in turn, that way when "everyone is a bureaucrat no one is a bureaucrat".

To the masses who, risking their lives, poured onto the streets in April 2002 to defeat the coup led by Carmona and co., to the revolutionary workers who broke the bosses' lock-out of December 2002/January 2003, not to mention the daily economic sabotage of the Venezuelan capitalists, to the peasants who day in and day out face the violence of the landlords' thugs in their struggle for something so basic as the right to land, to the millions and millions who again and again have mobilised in defence of their lives and the dream of a better, more fulfilling, future, to all those who form the engine of this revolution, Trotsky's words will not appear as old and abstract ideas but, on the contrary, will be seen as the most accurate description of reality. So accurate are they in fact, that it is as if Trotsky himself had experienced the same events that have shaped the Venezuelan revolution with them, and had drawn from these particular experiences the general dynamic of the process and had generalized them in a coherent, comprehensive and orderly way.

To the housewives, urban poor, youth, students, unemployed, workers and peasants who, after eight years of the Bolivarian government, still face the entrenched bureaucracy and corruption of the bourgeois state, Lenin's four principles must seem the soundest of advice and not - as reformists of every shade try to present them - as utopian dreams not fit for this world. On the contrary, these are the best ideas for securing a successful transition to socialism and the further evolution of the human race.

In a previous article I expressed the opinion that it was critical for the revolution to move onto the offensive against the capitalist counter-revolution and the bureaucratism and corruption within the Bolivarian movement, avoiding any kind of compromise with the escuálidos advocated by the most moderate and reformist elements of the Bolivarian movement.

Chávez has apparently moved on to the offensive, rejecting a compromise with the opposition that would see them enter the national assembly and he has announced a whole series of important changes (see Chavez announces radical measures against capitalism in Venezuela by Fred Weston).

Amongst the most important measures that Chávez has recently taken, considering the critical role that the working class will be called upon to play if the revolution is to succeed, are the creation of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and the plans for nationalisations.

On the night of December 3, Chávez issued a call to fight against bureaucratism and corruption. And by proposing the creation of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, he is creating a new channel for that struggle within the political party of the revolution.

This, as Luis Primo argues in his article Venezuela: five planks in building socialism, workers' council and the role of the working class, by itself will not guarantee a victory over the bureaucracy. Such a victory, as always, will depend on the resoluteness of the working class and, in particular, on the skills and foresightedness of its leadership. But without doubt this initiative has provided a channel for that struggle.

The nationalisation of CANTV and other companies poses the question of what type of nationalisation should be carried out. The UNT must put forward the demand of nationalisation under workers' control and for compensation to be given only in cases of proven need (many CANTV workers and former workers received shares in the company during the privatisation process). This demand must be extended beyond the utilities sector, as Chávez has suggested, to all the most important levers of the economy, especially the banks, and the occupied factories, such as Sanitarios Maracay. This must be part of the development of a plan to occupy all abandoned factories and those operating well below their productive capacity.

Only by developing a strong Marxist tendency within the Bolivarian and Labour movement in Venezuela, that is, within the USPV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) and the UNT, can these objectives be achieved.

In Venezuela the most advanced elements of the revolutionary movement are gathering around the programme for the socialist transformation of society under the banner of the Revolutionary Marxist Current. They have put themselves at the forefront of the struggle for nationalisation under workers' control through FRETECO, as in the case of Sanitarios Maracay, and at the forefront of the building of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, on the basis of a genuine socialist programme.

Their brothers and sisters around the world are learning from their experiences. Through the Hands off Venezuela Campaign they are building international solidarity with the Venezuelan revolution. The ideas of Trotsky are being brought to life again in the experience of the revolutionary masses of Venezuela.

As he concluded in his basic postulates of the Theory of Permanent Revolution, "The completion of the socialist revolution within national limits is unthinkable (...) The socialist revolution begins on the national arena, it unfolds on the international arena, and is completed on the world arena. Thus, the socialist revolution becomes a permanent revolution in a newer and broader sense of the word; it attains completion, only in the final victory of the new society on our entire planet".

Long live the socialist revolution!
For the Socialist Federation of Cuba and Venezuela!
For the Socialist Federation on Latin America!
Join the International Marxist Tendency!

Some things you need to know before the world ends

February 3, 2007
by William Blum

Full Spectrum Dominance
It is not often that the empire is put in the position of one its victims, in fear of the military and technical prowess of another country, forced to talk of peace and cooperation, just as Iraq and others, hoping to put off an American attack, were forced to do over the years; just as Iran now. No, China is not about to attack the United States, but the Chinese shootdown of a satellite (an old weather satellite of theirs) in space on January 11, has made a US attack on China much more dangerous and much less likely; it's made the empire's leaders realize that they don't have total power to make any and all other nations do their bidding.

Here's how the gentlemen of the Pentagon have sounded in the recent past on the subject of space.

"We will engage terrestrial targets someday -- ships, airplanes, land targets -- from space. ... We're going to fight in space. We're going to fight from space and we're going to fight into space." -- General Joseph Ashy, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Space Command, 1996[1]

"With regard to space dominance, we have it, we like it, and we're going to keep it." -- Keith R. Hall, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space and Director of the National Reconnaissance Office, 1997[2]

"US Space Command -- dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment. Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict. ... During the early portion of the 21st century, space power will also evolve into a separate and equal medium of warfare. ... The emerging synergy of space superiority with land, sea, and air superiority will lead to Full Spectrum Dominance. ... Development of ballistic missile defenses using space systems and planning for precision strikes from space offers a counter to the worldwide proliferation of WMD [weapons of mass destruction]. ... Space is a region with increasing commercial, civil, international, and military interests and investments. The threat to these vital systems is also increasing. ... Control of Space is the ability to assure access to space, freedom of operations within the space medium, and an ability to deny others the use of space, if required." -- "United States Space Command: Vision for 2020", 1997[3]

"Space represents a fundamentally new and better way to apply military force" -- U.S. Strategic Command, 2004[4]

And now along comes China, with the ability to make all this proud talk look somewhat foolish. At a State Department press briefing a week after the shootdown, the department's deputy spokesman Tom Casey stated, presumably without chuckling: "We certainly are concerned by any effort, by any nation that would be geared towards developing weapons or other military activities in space. ... We don't want to see a situation where there is any militarization of space." He spoke of the "peaceful use of space", and was concerned about the threat to "modern life as we know it", because "countries throughout the world are dependant on space based technologies, weather satellites, communications satellites and other devices".

A reporter asked: "Has the United States conducted such a test destroying a satellite in space?"

Yes, said Casey, in 1985. But that was different because "there was a Cold War that was being engaged in between the United States and the Soviet Union" and there were much fewer satellites moving about space.[5]

Cong. Terry Everett, senior Republican on the House armed services subcommittee on strategic forces, said China's test "raises serious concerns about the vulnerability of our space-based assets. ... We depend on satellites for a host of military and commercial uses, from navigation to ATM transactions."[6]

Even prior to the Chinese test, the Washington Post pointed out: "For a U.S. military increasingly dependent on sophisticated satellites for communicating, gathering intelligence and guiding missiles, the possibility that those space-based systems could come under attack has become a growing worry. ... The administration insists that there is no arms race in space, although the United States is the only nation that opposed a recent United Nations call for talks on keeping weapons out of space. ... Although the 1967 U.N. Outer Space Treaty, signed by the United States, allows only peaceful uses of space, some believe that the United States is moving toward some level of weaponization, especially related to a missile defense system."[7]

Tom Casey, the State Department spokesperson, tried his best to give the impression that the United States has no idea why China would do such a thing -- "We would like to see and understand and know more about what they're really trying to accomplish here." ... "exactly what their intentions are" ... "questions that arise about what Chinese intentions are" ... "not only the nature of what they've done, but the purpose and intent"[8]

But the United States can well imagine what China's intention was. The Chinese were responding to the efforts of the Bush administration, and the Clinton administration before them, to establish and maintain US military supremacy in space and to use that supremacy as a threatening, or actual, weapon. Beijing wished to put Washington on notice that in any future conflict with China the United States will not be dealing with Iraq or Afghanistan, or Yugoslavia, Panama or Grenada.

"But what did anyone expect?" asks Lawrence Martin, columnist for The Globe and Mail of Canada. "For several years, China, Canada, and virtually every country in the world have been urging the United States to enter into an arms-control treaty for outer space. Leave the heavens in peace, for god's sake. Come together and work something out. It's called collective security. ... Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney showed no interest in a space treaty. Their national space policy is essentially hegemony in the heavens. They oppose the development of new legal regimes or other measures that restrict their designs. A UN resolution to prevent an arms race in space was supported by 151 countries with zero opposed. The U.S. abstained. It wants strategic control."[9]


The ideology of the ruling class in any society is one that tries to depict the existing social order as "natural".
In 1972 I traveled by land from San Francisco to Chile, to observe and report on Salvador Allende's "socialist experiment". One of the lasting impressions of my journey through Latin America is of the strict class order of the societies I visited. There are probably very few places in the world where the dividing lines between the upper and middle classes on the one hand and the lower class on the other are more distinct and emotionally clung to, including Great Britain. In the Chilean capital of Santiago I went to look at a room in a house advertised by a woman. Because I was American she assumed that I was anti-Allende, the same assumption she'd have made if I had been European, for she wanted to believe that only "Indians", only poor dumb indígenas and their ilk, supported the government. She was pleased by the prospect of an American living in her home and was concerned that he might be getting the wrong impression about her country. "All this chaos," she assured me, "it's not normal, it's not Chile". When I relieved her of her misconception about me she was visibly confused and hurt, and I was a little uncomfortable as well, like I had betrayed her trust. I made my departure quickly.

There's the classic Latin American story of the servant of a family of the oligarchy. He bought steak for his patrón's dog, but his own family ate scraps. He took the dog to the vet, but couldn't take his own children to a doctor. And complained not. In Chile, under Allende, there was a terribly nagging fear amongst the privileged classes that servants no longer knew their place. (In Sweden, for some years now, they have been able to examine children of a certain age -- their height, weight, and various health measurements -- and are then not able to tell which social class the child is from; they have ended class warfare against children.)

In the 1980s, in Central America, servants rose up in much of the region against their betters, the latter of course being unconditionally supported with Yankee money, Yankee arms, even Yankee lives. At the end of that decade the New York Times offered some snapshots of El Salvador:

Over canapes served by hovering waiters at a party, a guest said she was convinced that God had created two distinct classes of people: the rich and people to serve them. She described herself as charitable for allowing the poor to work as her servants. "It's the best you can do," she said. The woman's outspokenness was unusual, but her attitude is shared by a large segment of the Salvadoran upper class.

The separation between classes is so rigid that even small expressions of kindness across the divide are viewed with suspicion. When an American, visiting an ice cream store, remarked that he was shopping for a birthday party for his maid's child, other store patrons immediately stopped talking and began staring at the American. Finally, an astonished woman in the check-out line spoke out. "You must be kidding," she said.[10]

The same polarization is taking place now in Venezuela as Hugo Chávez attempts to build a more egalitarian society. The Associated Press (January 29, 2007) recently presented some snapshots from Caracas: A man of European parents says that at his son's private Jewish school some parents are talking about how and when to leave the country. The man wants a passport for his 10-year-old son in case they need to leave for good. "I think we're headed toward totalitarianism." A middle-class retiree grimaces at what she sees coming: "Within one year, complete communism. ... What he's forming is a dictatorship." The fact that Chávez is himself part indígena and part black, and looks it, can well add to their animosity towards the man.

I wonder what such people think of George "I am the decider" Bush and his repeated use of "signing statements", which effectively means a law is what he says it is, no more, no less; his Patriot Act, and his various assaults on the principle of habeas corpus, to name but a few of the scary practices of his authoritarian rule.

Chuck Kaufman, National Co-Coordinator of the Washington-based Nicaragua Network, was part of a group which visited Venezuela last fall. Following is part of his report:

Venezuela is politically polarized. We witnessed the extremes of this during a dinner with lawyer and author Eva Golinger. Some very drunk opposition supporters recognized Golinger as author of The Chávez Code and a strong Chavez partisan. Some of them surrounded our table and began screaming at Golinger and the delegation, calling us "assassins" "Cubans," and "Argentines." The verbal abuse went on for long minutes until waiters ejected the most out-of-control anti-Chávez woman. We were later told that she worked in the Attorney General's office, highlighting one of the many contradictions arising from the fact that Chávez' Bolivarian revolution came into power democratically through the ballot box rather than by force of arms. Armed revolutions generally sweep opponents out of government jobs and places of influence such as the media, but in Venezuela many in the opposition are still in the civil service and most of the media is virulently anti-Chávez.[11]

I admire Hugo Chávez and what he's trying to do in Venezuela, but I wish he wouldn't go out of his way to taunt the Bush administration, as he does so frequently. Doesn't he know that he's dealing with a bunch of homicidal maniacs? Literally. Someone please tell him to cool it or he will endanger his social revolution.


Liberalism's best and brightest
A report in the Washington Post, headlined "Soldier's Death Strengthens Senators' Antiwar Resolve", informs us that Senators Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) have been rather upset upon learning of the death in Iraq of an Army Captain whom they met on a visit to the country in December, and who made a strong impression upon them. Dodd has been "radicalized", the story says, and Kerry has been "energized" in his opposition to the war.

Why, it must be asked, does it take the death of someone they met by chance to fire up their anti-war sentiments? Many millions of Americans, and many millions more around the world, have protested the war vehemently and passionately without having met any of the war's victims. What do these protestors have inside of them that so many members of Congress seem to lack?

"This was the kind of person you don't forget," said Dodd. "You mention the number dead, 3,000, the 22,000 wounded, and you almost see the eyes glaze over. But you talk about an individual like this, who was doing his job, a hell of a job, but was also willing to talk about what was wrong, it's a way to really bring it to life, to connect."[12]

Dear reader, is it the same for you? Do your eyes glaze over when you read or hear about the dead and wounded of Iraq?

Neither senator has apparently been "energized" enough to call for the immediate withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. That would be too "radical".

This gap -- emotionally and intellectually -- between members of Congress and normal human beings has been with us for ages of course. The anti-Vietnam War movement burst out of the starting gate back in August 1964, with hundreds of people demonstrating in New York. Many of these early dissenters took apart and critically examined the administration's statements about the war's origin, its current situation, and its rosy picture of the future. They found continuous omission, contradiction, and duplicity, became quickly and wholly cynical, and called for immediate and unconditional withdrawal. This was a state of intellect and principle it took members of Congress -- and then only a minority -- until the 1970s to reach. The same can be said of the mass media. And even then -- even today -- our political and media elite viewed Vietnam only as a "mistake"; i.e., it was "the wrong way" to fight communism, not that the United States should not be traveling all over the globe to spew violence against anything labeled "communism" in the first place. Essentially, the only thing these best and brightest have learned from Vietnam is that we should not have fought in Vietnam.


In the land where happiness is guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence
"Think raising the minimum wage is a good idea?"
"Think again."

That was the message of a full-page advertisement that appeared in major newspapers in January. It was accompanied by statements of approval from the usual eminent suspects:

"The reason I object to the minimum wage is I think it destroys jobs, and I think the evidence on that, in my judgment, is overwhelming." Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve Chairman

"The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws." Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist[13]

Well, if raising the minimum wage can produce such negative consequences, then surely it is clear what we as an enlightened and humane people must do. We must lower the minimum wage. And thus enjoy less unemployment, less social unrest. Indeed, if we lower the minimum wage to zero, particularly for poor blacks ... think of it! ... No unemployment at all! Hardly any social unrest! In fact -- dare I say it? -- What if we did away with wages altogether?

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." John Kenneth Galbraith


Some little-known items from my old files
Here is US General Thomas Power speaking in December 1960 about things like nuclear war and a first strike by the United States: "The whole idea is to kill the bastards! At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!" The response from one of those present was: "Well, you'd better make sure that they're a man and a woman."[14]

Edward R. Murrow is of course a much-honored newsman and "legendary broadcaster". There's the annual Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Public Diplomacy, with nominations made by the State Department, and there's the recent acclaimed film about Murrow, "Good Night, and Good Luck", amongst many other tributes. In 1960, CBS aired "Harvest of Shame", a documentary made by Murrow, which was lauded for exposing the terrible abuses endured by migratory farm workers in the United States. The following year Murrow left broadcasting to become the director of the United States Information Agency, whose raison d'être was to make the United States look as good to the world as it does in American high school textbooks. Thus it was that when the BBC planned on showing "Harvest of Shame" in the UK, Murrow called them in an effort to suppress the broadcast, saying it was for US domestic use only. But the film was shown in the UK.[15]

One could wax cynical about Jimmy Carter as well; for example, while in the White House he tried hard to sabotage the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua; even worse, Carter supported the Islamic opposition to the leftist Afghanistan government in 1979, which led to a decade of very bloody civil war, the Taliban, and anti-American terrorism in the United States and elsewhere. However, I think that overall Carter was closer to a decent human being than any post-World War Two president. In 1978 he invited 1960s anti-war activist and leader of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Tom Hayden, to the White House. (Think George W inviting Michael Moore.) As recounted by Hayden, in their private conversation he said to Carter: "You are the elected President of the United States, yet I'm concerned that you have less power than the chairmen of the boards of the large multinational corporations -- men we don't elect or even know."

"After looking pensively out the Oval Office window, President Carter nodded and said, 'I believe that's right. I've learned that these last 12 months'."[16]


NOTES

[1] "Aviation Week and Space Technology" (New York), August 5, 1996, p.51

[2] Speaking to the National Space Club (Washington, DC), September 15, 1997

[3] Excerpts are in the same sequence as found in the August 1997 brochure beginning on page 1.

[4] March 2004, www.stratcom.mil/fact_sheets/fact_sm.html. In 2002, the U.S. Space Command was merged with the U.S. Strategic Command.

[5] State Department Press Briefing, January 19, 2007, www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2007/79056.htm

[6] Associated Press, January 19, 2007

[7] Washington Post, December 17, 2006; p.12

[8] See note 5

[9] January 25, 2007 p.A19

[10] New York Times, October 7, 1990, p.10

[11] For the full report of October 28, 2006, see www.vensolidarity.org

[12] Washington Post, January 30, 2007, p.3

[13] To see the advertisement -- www.MinimumWage.org

[14] Fred Kaplan, "The Wizards of Armageddon" (1983), p.246

[15] Google

[16] San Francisco Chronicle, March 4, 1978