Everyone knows what a 500 lb gorilla can do. It does anything it wants to. But what about an 800 lb gorilla, viz. the pharmaceutical industry? This industrial behemoth for the last 25 years has been doing pretty much what it wants to do. And as a result it has become a $ 200 billion Fortune 500 industry ranking third in profit. How was this accomplished? Why, by raising prices of drugs so that no one can afford them let alone poor people. As the economy shrinks employers cut health care benefits so that the employee is forced to pay more and more of his drug bills. As a result, the patient does not fill the prescription given to him by the doctor or he shares a prescription with his spouse. Sometimes the patient just takes the prescribed pill less often. The doctor thinks what he gave the patient is not working so he prescribes another drug. Thus, worsening the patient’s problem.
When the complaints come in regarding the high prices of drugs, the drug companies reply that those prices are necessary because the cost of research and development (R & D) of new drugs is enormous. This excuse is, of course, corporate spin, more familiarly known as b.s. In actual fact most of the industry’s expenses go into administration and marketing. Note, for example, all the TV ads touting old drugs presented as new as well as public relation messages to offset the complaints of high drug prices. R& D is a small part of their budget. Most of the research is done by academic institutions, small biotech companies and the NIH (National Institute of Health). In reality the drug companies are not as creative as they claim. There have been very few new drugs brought to the market in the recent past. As Marcia Angell, M.D. points out most “new drugs” are not new at all but rather a variation on old drugs which she calls “me-too” drugs. For example, there are six drugs available that lower cholesterol, all variations of the first one. All that is required is to make a slight molecular change in the original drug, get a new patent after the first runs out and the drug company has another 14 years of fabulous profit with very little expenditure on “research”. The old drug is a sure fire hit so why spend tons of money looking for something new that involves huge risk.
As Dr. Angell further points out, the drug industry is not a very good example of free-enterprise as it claims in its ads. It actually has a monopoly on its drugs granted to it by government patent rights and the Food and Drug Administration both of which give it “exclusive marketing rights”. And those rights are global. However, many foreign drug companies like to present themselves as American whether they are or not because we do not regulate drug prices as do foreign countries. Also the research is practically free here since universities and the NIH provide the development at taxpayer expense.
There are a number of other ways that drug companies promote their me-too drugs that you and I pay for in increased prices. One is the old tradition of giving “free samples” to doctors to the tune of $11 billion a year. In recent years these drugs are the most expensive “me-too drugs” and the point is to ensnare the doctor and patient into using them on a continuing basis. Obviously they are not “free.” Also the drug companies send sales representatives known as detail men to visit the doctors and personally hand out the samples along with a pitch promoting the drug as well as free lunches and other gifts. There are 88,000 sales reps employed by the companies at a cost of $5.5 billion which you and I pay for.
Another hot market for promotion is “erectile dysfunction”. And the medium is sports. In order to compete with Viagra the drug company that produces Levitra made a deal with the NFL for $20 million to promote the drug. Levitra signs were posted at the stadium and one coach even gave a pitch on TV. Viagra can be seen on the Nascar circuit and even on a yacht in the America’s cup race. The cost is on you.
Then there are the so-called stealth ads. A prominent celebrity is paid to do video spots for the drug company that are supposed to be news casts and are actually drug promotions. Also Dr Angell refers to an interview of Lauren Bacall who talks of a friend with macular degeneration and mentions the name of the company and the drug used for that condition. What was not revealed was that Bacall was paid by the drug company for
that promotion. The cost was included in your drug price.
These are all marketing expenditures that far exceed the costs of research and development. Marketing expense is the largest item on the drug company ledger. It can be as high as 35% of total revenue.
Another marketing gimmick used by the drug companies is to go directly to the doctor. After all he writes the prescription. So the detail men roam the hospital corridors looking to buttonhole doctors and provide technical information about the drugs they represent. They also visit the doctors in their offices. Many visit the doctor several times a month and the doctors look forward to these visits to keep up with the new drugs. Along with the drug information comes the free samples and many other goodies distributed to the doctor’s staff as well. Many doctors are invited to dinner at first class restaurants, given tickets to athletic events and invited to champagne receptions. Family vacations in expensive resorts are not infrequent and even gifts of cash have been reported. And the doctors for the most part do not hesitate to accept these lavish gifts. In other industries gifts of this magnitude would be considered bribes but many doctors have no problem accepting them.
Another marketing device is to use the doctor himself to market the drug. The pharmaceutical company invites a large number of doctors to come to a week-end symposium to learn about a new drug. The company pays their expenses and gives each doctor $500 to attend. If any are willing to give talks about the drug to other doctors, they receive another $500 each time they talk. Sometimes competitors will pay as much as $1000 to each doctor who attends. Obviously conflict of interest is endemic. But no one seems to care. The physicians deny that they are being influenced by the endless gifts and meals. But it must pay off since the drug manufacturers continue to pour money into this kind of influence peddling. The drug reps maintain that what they do educates doctors to prescribe knowledgably. And the reps push the newest and the most expensive drugs on the doctors.
Let’s now look at the latest sham perpetrated by the 800 pound gorilla. In the late 1990’s Prozac, a widely used anti-depressant was about to lose its patent and the drug company in this case, Lilly, would lose millions of dollars. So Lilly invented a new mental illness called PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder) that could be treated with Prozac. It turns out that this sham illness is nothing but normal premenstrual difficulties with some symptoms of mild depression. Outside this country it is not accepted as a disease. Even in this country it is not fully listed in the “psychiatrists’ manual of diseases” (DSM) despite the efforts of Lilly and the FDA. In its ads Lilly is attempting to convince young women that the mood swings associated with normal premenstrual cycles is actually a mental illness that requires treatment with an anti-depressant, viz. Prozac. Unfortunately the FDA after much delay and discussion has approved the use of this drug for this “disease”. Lilly is now off and running once again toward huge profits. Advertising a disorder that does not exist in order to promote the use of a drug which can have serious side effects for some people is a very risky business
One more example of the powerful influence that drug companies have on the federal government was the passage in 2003 of the “prescription drug benefit” to be included in Medicare. Ostensibly it was done to assist seniors who were taking multiple drugs daily at a huge personal cost. But Medicare owing to the powerful lobby of the drug companies was not allowed to contract for lower prices. The Veterans Administration, insurance companies, auto manufacturers and many other large employers, for example, are allowed to bargain for lower prices but Medicare by far the largest buyer cannot under the new law influence drug prices. This means that costs will go up and seniors will get very little benefit from the law. In fact it will cost seniors more because monthly premiums and deductibles will increase to pay for the rise in drug costs. The total cost was estimated before the bill was passed at $550 billion. And the taxpayer will pay the bill with huge profits going to the drug companies.
References:
Angell, Marcia, MD. The Truth About The Drug Companies. Random House. 2004.
Kassirer, Jerome, M.D. On The Take. Oxford. 2005.
Nation Magazine. Oct. 17, 2005. Moynihan & Cassels. A Disease For Every Pill.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Saturday, October 15, 2005
The Snowman
We are in a country governed by spin. We are whirling in a Category 5 hurricane of lies, fabrications and disinformation and reported by the mainstream media as truths. In 1964 LBJ ordered the bombing of North Vietnam after Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution which gave the President authority to repel any attack against U.S. forces. Congress passed the resolution because it was believed and reported that Vietnamese gunboats had fired upon American destroyers in the Gulf not once but twice, an obviously aggressive act. But in reality there was no second attack simply because there was no first attack. The supposed truth was that we, that is to say, South Vietnamese gunboats secretly operating under our direction had fired on North Vietnam coastal islands as part of an intelligence gathering operation. It was then that the Pentagon concocted the distortion that North Vietnam PT boats had fired on us a second time. Following that, LBJ went on TV and spun us into war, calling for bombing of North Vietnam. We were “retaliating” for a North Vietnam torpedoing that never occurred. The media picked up the story, continued the spin and lauded the President for his firm stand. The American people once more were spun into war based on official lies and disinformation spread very effectively by the American press and TV pundits.
According to Norman Solomon, later at the Senate Foreign Relations committee hearings, Secretary of Defense McNamara continued the fabrication. He maintained that our destroyers had fired back at the North Vietnam gunboats after the attack. When asked by the committee whether the North VN had “initiated” the attack, McNamara lied and said, “Yes.” The General sitting next to him replied, “That’s correct.” At that time Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon was on the committee and he had received from an anonymous Pentagon source the information that one of our destroyers, the Maddux, had played a role in the South Vietnam raids. When he asked McNamara about this, McNamara lied once more saying that our Navy had played no role in any such action if it had occurred at all. He ended his testimony by emphatically declaring: “I say this flatly. This is a fact.” On the other hand, Daniel Ellsberg revealed later that the Tonkin Gulf events were “entirely U.S. operations.” The South Vietnamese were involved in a very limited way. The U.S. owned the boats, hired the crews and controlled the whole operation. The CIA and the Navy trained the crews.
In May of 1962 McNamara had just returned from Vietnam and he reported that the Vietnam operation was progressing extremely well and the future looked excellent. By 1964 Daniel Ellsberg, compiler of the Pentagon Papers, was working as a special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense, McNaughton. Ellsberg was therefore privy to all Defense Dept secrets. In Oct 1966 McNamara had again returned from Vietnam and at a press conference described the extensive progress being made in Vietnam. Ellsberg, on the other hand, said that McNamara made this statement to the press just a few minutes after he had told Ellsberg in confidence that things were much worse that the year before. This kind of deception continued from LBJ down. The President himself frequently stated publicly that peace was near. So the American people were victims of ceaseless spin. Not even the mainstream media saw through the duplicity. They reported whatever they were told.
Unfortunately the American public because of their political naiveté suffer like the Swiss from amnesia. But the Swiss amnesia is based on greed. The American amnesia is based on ignorance of the facts and possibly a false optimism. As one observer pointed out, “Despite how many times in the past we have been lied to, we still think that the present government will tell us the truth.”
Now let’s fast forward to approximately 40 years in the future to the meeting of the U.N. Security Council in February 2003. It was in that month that Colin Powell, our Secty of State gave a speech in support of a war against Iraq that should have won him an Academy Award for his snow job par excellence. Powell was originally presented to us as a man of character, i.e. honest, trustworthy and dependable. The press had crowned him with a halo and never questioned or challenged his statements. He was in a secure bubble protected from the mainstream media. So in his speech he was able to fabricate, invent and hyperbolize. For example, taped phone calls in Arabic were exaggerated as to their intention. He further referred in detail to Hussein Kamel, who was in charge of the development of chemical and biological weapons under Saddam. He defected in 1995 and told the CIA and British Intelligence that those weapons had been destroyed after the Gulf War. Powell chose in his speech to ignore that fact. It happened that Kamel was Saddam’s son-in-law and was well versed in the Iraqi weapons program. Powell further maintained that Iraq was a serious threat to the Middle East but in fact no Arabic country made such a complaint. The only aggressive act that Iraq had taken was the invasion of Kuwait 12 years prior and at that time Saddam was given the go ahead by our Ambassador to Iraq under instructions from Secretary of State Baker. Our attitude was that we do not get involved in Arab to Arab hostility. Powell also mentioned Saddam’s use of chemical weapons against Iran but ignored the fact that we had provided intelligence and financial and military assistance to Iraq to carry out those attacks. None of these statements were challenged by the media. In fact the media fell all over themselves in support of the speech. Even the liberal columnists were convinced by his speech that war was an absolute necessity. But only in the U.S. was this so. In Britain the speech “went over like a lead balloon.” British journalists did not buy his allegations and proceeded to tear apart his arguments.
Another argument used in support of the Iraqi War was the relevance of the U.N. If the U.N. did not support the war it became irrelevant. The logic of that position implies that the U.N. is relevant only to the extent that it supports what ever the U.S. wants. In that regard it is a defeat if the U.S. doesn’t get its way. But there are many political and economic favors that the most powerful country in the world can employ to convince small countries to support our position. For example, before the Gulf War began Yemen voted against the resolution to attack. Three days later the U.S. punished Yemen severely for that negative vote by stopping financial aid in the amount of $70 million. Yemen happens to be one of the poorest countries in the world. The World Bank and the IMF also put economic pressure on Yemen. And to make matters even worse thousands of Yemeni workers were banished from Saudi Arabia.
Later it was revealed that the U.S. was spying on certain UN Security Council delegations in order to gain support for the Iraqi war. We were engaged in surveillance operations, e.g. tapping phones and intercepting e-mails of UN delegates. This operation was directed specifically toward six delegations that were crucial in gaining votes for the Iraqi war. It happens that the information was in a secret memo that was leaked by a British newspaper and caused acute embarrassment to the Bush administration. The news circulated world-wide except in the U.S. Another example of our main stream media’s refusal to challenge the duplicitous policies of the Bush administration.
After 9/11 the President did not have a clue as to why anyone would want to attack us. He asked, why do they hate us? It must be our way of life, our democracy that they hate. It never would occur to him or the media that it might be our foreign policy that enrages most of the third world countries. If they have oil or other natural resources, we want to control those resources. We do that by building military bases in their country. We control and dominate their country by suppressing popular uprisings and in the process violate their human rights. When they persist in misbehaving, we send in the World Bank and the IMF to warp their economy and invite the corporate investors to assume control of the economic resources. Once we have control we remain there and we call it “democracy building.”
Gore Vidal believes that the “war on terrorism” is nonsense. He says it’s like declaring “war on dandruff.” Any government should protect its citizens from terrorism but why call it a war. The reason is simple. It is in wartime that the president has maximum power and can ignore the checks and balances of the Constitution, as well as ignoring the Bill of Rights. 9/11 was committed by well organized individual extremists not a nation. Wars are fought by nations not zealots who are willing to die for their cause. So this administration has established war time powers but there is no war. We are flooded with lies to support this fallacy.
Thus, the war on terrorism becomes essentially spin to convince the American public that all other possibilities, e.g. international negotiations, have been tried when in actual fact nothing else has been considered. According to the administration, war on terrorism is meant to protect our way of life and since it is, as Rumsfeld stated, open-ended, it meant that the U.S. is “waging virtually perpetual war.” And we can’t win it. Suicidal bombing is a response to the occupation of a national homeland. And the only solution is withdrawal.
References:
Ellsberg, Daniel. Secrets. Viking, 2002.
Solomon, Norman. War Made Easy. Wiley, 2005.
Vidal, Gore. Imperial America. Avalon, 2004.
According to Norman Solomon, later at the Senate Foreign Relations committee hearings, Secretary of Defense McNamara continued the fabrication. He maintained that our destroyers had fired back at the North Vietnam gunboats after the attack. When asked by the committee whether the North VN had “initiated” the attack, McNamara lied and said, “Yes.” The General sitting next to him replied, “That’s correct.” At that time Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon was on the committee and he had received from an anonymous Pentagon source the information that one of our destroyers, the Maddux, had played a role in the South Vietnam raids. When he asked McNamara about this, McNamara lied once more saying that our Navy had played no role in any such action if it had occurred at all. He ended his testimony by emphatically declaring: “I say this flatly. This is a fact.” On the other hand, Daniel Ellsberg revealed later that the Tonkin Gulf events were “entirely U.S. operations.” The South Vietnamese were involved in a very limited way. The U.S. owned the boats, hired the crews and controlled the whole operation. The CIA and the Navy trained the crews.
In May of 1962 McNamara had just returned from Vietnam and he reported that the Vietnam operation was progressing extremely well and the future looked excellent. By 1964 Daniel Ellsberg, compiler of the Pentagon Papers, was working as a special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense, McNaughton. Ellsberg was therefore privy to all Defense Dept secrets. In Oct 1966 McNamara had again returned from Vietnam and at a press conference described the extensive progress being made in Vietnam. Ellsberg, on the other hand, said that McNamara made this statement to the press just a few minutes after he had told Ellsberg in confidence that things were much worse that the year before. This kind of deception continued from LBJ down. The President himself frequently stated publicly that peace was near. So the American people were victims of ceaseless spin. Not even the mainstream media saw through the duplicity. They reported whatever they were told.
Unfortunately the American public because of their political naiveté suffer like the Swiss from amnesia. But the Swiss amnesia is based on greed. The American amnesia is based on ignorance of the facts and possibly a false optimism. As one observer pointed out, “Despite how many times in the past we have been lied to, we still think that the present government will tell us the truth.”
Now let’s fast forward to approximately 40 years in the future to the meeting of the U.N. Security Council in February 2003. It was in that month that Colin Powell, our Secty of State gave a speech in support of a war against Iraq that should have won him an Academy Award for his snow job par excellence. Powell was originally presented to us as a man of character, i.e. honest, trustworthy and dependable. The press had crowned him with a halo and never questioned or challenged his statements. He was in a secure bubble protected from the mainstream media. So in his speech he was able to fabricate, invent and hyperbolize. For example, taped phone calls in Arabic were exaggerated as to their intention. He further referred in detail to Hussein Kamel, who was in charge of the development of chemical and biological weapons under Saddam. He defected in 1995 and told the CIA and British Intelligence that those weapons had been destroyed after the Gulf War. Powell chose in his speech to ignore that fact. It happened that Kamel was Saddam’s son-in-law and was well versed in the Iraqi weapons program. Powell further maintained that Iraq was a serious threat to the Middle East but in fact no Arabic country made such a complaint. The only aggressive act that Iraq had taken was the invasion of Kuwait 12 years prior and at that time Saddam was given the go ahead by our Ambassador to Iraq under instructions from Secretary of State Baker. Our attitude was that we do not get involved in Arab to Arab hostility. Powell also mentioned Saddam’s use of chemical weapons against Iran but ignored the fact that we had provided intelligence and financial and military assistance to Iraq to carry out those attacks. None of these statements were challenged by the media. In fact the media fell all over themselves in support of the speech. Even the liberal columnists were convinced by his speech that war was an absolute necessity. But only in the U.S. was this so. In Britain the speech “went over like a lead balloon.” British journalists did not buy his allegations and proceeded to tear apart his arguments.
Another argument used in support of the Iraqi War was the relevance of the U.N. If the U.N. did not support the war it became irrelevant. The logic of that position implies that the U.N. is relevant only to the extent that it supports what ever the U.S. wants. In that regard it is a defeat if the U.S. doesn’t get its way. But there are many political and economic favors that the most powerful country in the world can employ to convince small countries to support our position. For example, before the Gulf War began Yemen voted against the resolution to attack. Three days later the U.S. punished Yemen severely for that negative vote by stopping financial aid in the amount of $70 million. Yemen happens to be one of the poorest countries in the world. The World Bank and the IMF also put economic pressure on Yemen. And to make matters even worse thousands of Yemeni workers were banished from Saudi Arabia.
Later it was revealed that the U.S. was spying on certain UN Security Council delegations in order to gain support for the Iraqi war. We were engaged in surveillance operations, e.g. tapping phones and intercepting e-mails of UN delegates. This operation was directed specifically toward six delegations that were crucial in gaining votes for the Iraqi war. It happens that the information was in a secret memo that was leaked by a British newspaper and caused acute embarrassment to the Bush administration. The news circulated world-wide except in the U.S. Another example of our main stream media’s refusal to challenge the duplicitous policies of the Bush administration.
After 9/11 the President did not have a clue as to why anyone would want to attack us. He asked, why do they hate us? It must be our way of life, our democracy that they hate. It never would occur to him or the media that it might be our foreign policy that enrages most of the third world countries. If they have oil or other natural resources, we want to control those resources. We do that by building military bases in their country. We control and dominate their country by suppressing popular uprisings and in the process violate their human rights. When they persist in misbehaving, we send in the World Bank and the IMF to warp their economy and invite the corporate investors to assume control of the economic resources. Once we have control we remain there and we call it “democracy building.”
Gore Vidal believes that the “war on terrorism” is nonsense. He says it’s like declaring “war on dandruff.” Any government should protect its citizens from terrorism but why call it a war. The reason is simple. It is in wartime that the president has maximum power and can ignore the checks and balances of the Constitution, as well as ignoring the Bill of Rights. 9/11 was committed by well organized individual extremists not a nation. Wars are fought by nations not zealots who are willing to die for their cause. So this administration has established war time powers but there is no war. We are flooded with lies to support this fallacy.
Thus, the war on terrorism becomes essentially spin to convince the American public that all other possibilities, e.g. international negotiations, have been tried when in actual fact nothing else has been considered. According to the administration, war on terrorism is meant to protect our way of life and since it is, as Rumsfeld stated, open-ended, it meant that the U.S. is “waging virtually perpetual war.” And we can’t win it. Suicidal bombing is a response to the occupation of a national homeland. And the only solution is withdrawal.
References:
Ellsberg, Daniel. Secrets. Viking, 2002.
Solomon, Norman. War Made Easy. Wiley, 2005.
Vidal, Gore. Imperial America. Avalon, 2004.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
The Gnomes of Zurich
On those rare occasions when some of us thought about Switzerland, we saw a democratic oasis in the middle of Europe that was, aside from being a beautiful mountainous country, moral, tolerant and respectful of the truth. We believed it was a country that most people saw as a haven in times of need and that refugees were welcome to enter and stay as long as needed. But these were beliefs that stemmed from political naivete and we have since discovered that those perceptions were a myth perpetuated by the crafty gnomes of Zurich. Today there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary and it all began with World War II in 1940. But before going into the events of that period let’s consider Switzerland as a nation.
As one observer has said: “Switzerland is not a country – it is a defensive alliance.” And the alliance is made up of autonomous people that have their own language and culture. Yet the Swiss confederation does not rely on its so called multiculturalism. That is another myth. There are French, German and Italian cultures within its borders but there is no real bond or tie between them. They are totally diverse. What holds them together is defense against foreigners. But because the Swiss tend to be xenophobic, they refer to foreigners as the “damn foreigners.” Nevertheless, the foreigners do hold the Swiss alliance together as a defense against the outsider. Furthermore, Switzerland is not a state. It is a confederation made up of self-governing cantons. Another point of view is that Switzerland “is not a real country.” “It is a business and it is run like a business.” It is always on the defensive and has been for 700 years. This would tend to explain the secrecy laws of the banking industry which made it a popular depository for stolen goods as well as a turntable for laundering stolen gold and looted art works during the war.
The Swiss also suffer from amnesia. For the Swiss there is no past. In fact they are very adept at suppressing the past. Particularly is this true when the Swiss are accused of involvement in Nazi war crimes. It is interesting that in the field of psychiatry patients are taught through the discipline of cognitive therapy to forget the past. The past is gone and to relive it will only create more anxiety. The Swiss developed this procedure into a tradition and they are experts.
Another myth that the Swiss very skillfully preserved was the myth of neutrality. Outsiders have always identified Switzerland with the perception of neutrality. And this was a very important aspect of the Swiss identity going as far back as 1648. But with the
advent of World War II the myth of Swiss neutrality was eventually destroyed.
The Swiss avoided the destruction of World War II by becoming an integral part of the German economic system, but at the same time maintained its bogus neutrality. In this way it avoided the saturation bombing of the Allies and was able to continue the manufacturing of munitions, optical instruments, precision equipment and other military equipment, all of which was delivered to the German military machine. Then the Swiss bankers acted as “fencing” agents in the exchange of looted gold for Swiss Francs and in this way the Swiss manufacturers received payment for their materiel. At the same time the secret bankers were receiving huge fees for their services. In short the cunning bankers were laundering gold stolen from all the occupied countries of Europe, as well as gold teeth and jewelry taken from Jews in the death camps and stolen art work from the Jewish galleries of Paris. The Germans needed exchange currency to pay for the raw material necessary for the production of arms. The countries that had the required raw materials would not accept looted gold in payment. The Swiss fenced the gold and exchanged it for Swiss Francs. Since the Swiss were “neutral” their currency was accepted everywhere in Europe. The Germans had run out of their own gold reserves by 1940. The looting of gold was the solution, and Swiss cooperation was their salvation. Bank officials of Switzerland saw a tremendous opportunity for huge profits as the intermediary for the Nazis. The gnomes filled with unrestrained greed became the willing puppets for the Wehrmacht. While Europe burned, the bankers were accumulating gold and foreign exchange reserves at an exponential and unbelievable rate. As a word of explanation: Gnomes are little people who live under the surface of the earth and guard its treasures. This is exactly where all the “filthy lucre” is buried in the underground vaults of the banks in Zurich, Basel and Bern. Much of it is still there. After the war the clients were no longer Hitler, Goring or Goebbels but rather Mobutu, Ceausescu, Saddam, Noriega, Suharto and Marcos. The banks are still making exorbitant profits from transfers of capital, looted gold, fencing or laundering. Because of these essentially illegal transactions Switzerland is now the “second richest country in the world.”
When Hitler took power and harassed the Jews, the Jewish people deposited gold, money, jewelry and art works in the secret numbered vaults of the Swiss banks. The assumption was that since the Swiss were neutrals and the accounts were secret, there would be no problem claiming the deposits in the future for either themselves or their survivors. After the war because many of these Jews had been murdered in the camps, there were no death certificates. In order to claim the deposits the Swiss insisted on a death certificate. Since the surviving family members had no proof of the death of their relatives it was not possible to retrieve their wealth. This of course increased the reserves of the bank and added to the monumental Swiss wealth.
Almost immediately after the occupation of France in June 1940 the looting of art by the Germans began in Paris. At that time the art world centered in Paris on the rue de la Boetie in the 8th arrondissement. New York and London were relatively unimportant. The most famous art dealer in Paris was Paul Rosenberg. He had the most impressive collection of modern and impressionistic paintings and was known throughout Europe and America. Picasso lived across the street with his wife.
Hitler made a grand tour of Paris and two days later swept all art owned by Jews into German hands supposedly for “safekeeping”, but in actuality that was one of the many lies employed by Hitler to cover illegal acts, in this case looting. In fact, Hitler set up an organization known as the ERR to find works of art. There were those who did the raiding and collecting aided by art historians and appraisers. They went, of course, immediately to the rue de la Boetie. They seized Paul Rosenberg’s gallery, the Rothschild collection, the David David-Weill collection, the Schloss collection of Dutch painters among many others owned by Jews.
Both Hitler and Goring had a passion for the “Old Masters” and considered modern and impressionistic paintings degenerate art. However, they recognized the value of these paintings and by confiscating them they were able to ship them to Switzerland to exchange for Swiss Francs. Or they used them to buy Old Masters from Swiss dealers. The most famous art of the Old Masters was in the Rothschild collection and that was plundered by the ERR. Some was sent to Hitler’s private museum and some went to Goring’s personal collection in his hunting lodge.
The ERR used the Musee Jeu de Paume in the Tuilleries Garden for storage of looted paintings. A staff catalogued and appraised the tremendous amount of art work that fell into their hands. Some went to Germany for Hitler’s collection and the modern works were kept for exchange or sale. Goring had access to the Jeu de Paume and visited there frequently taking paintings for exchange, e.g. Van Gogh, Degas, Cezanne, Renoir, Monet, Matisse, Modigliani, Leger, Braque, Picasso and many others. Most of these went to the Swiss for fencing and for some their whereabouts are still unknown. Some paintings were deposited in the secret vaults and others were sold immediately to galleries and private collectors. The laws of Switzerland protected the buyer of stolen art. If a collector buys art in good faith, after five years even if it was stolen to begin with, it belongs to the buyer. On the other hand, if a Swiss dealer finds that he has in his possession a stolen painting and the original owner discovers the painting he must pay the dealer the value of the painting before he can repossess it. Trying to reclaim the art work through the courts was not very successful either because by 1945 much of the art had been in possession of the buyer for at least five years.
Paris was liberated in Aug.1944 and by that time it had been the most plundered in all of Western Europe. One third of all the art in private collections had been stolen. Tens of thousands of art works were looted and many of these are still missing. One of the more interesting sagas is the pillaging of the Rothschild family collections which included over 5000 works of art. The Nazis looked upon the Rothschild collections as the most noted and important works in France. The Rothschilds were an “aristocratic dynasty” that came to Paris in 1800. James established the French branch. By 1940 there were three branches of the family headed by Baron Edouard, Baron Robert and Baron Edmund. Banking was the family’s main occupation but it also controlled French and European railroads, Russian oil, Bordeaux vineyards and a number of racing stables.
As for the art collection Baron Edouard’s contained the most works including Vermeer’s Astronomer, Boucher’s Portrait of the Marquise de Pompadour, Raphael’s Man With A Red Hat, several Rubens, one Titian and two Watteaus among others. Baron Robert’s collection was not as large but most important including such pieces as Jan Van Eyck triptych, Virgin and Child with Saints and Donors ( it is presently in the Frick collection in New York), and Rembrandt’s The Standard Bearer among others.
The Rothschilds had no idea of the kind of plundering that eventually occurred but were more afraid of bombardment at the start of the war. Therefore they packed up the collections and sent them to chateaus that they owned in the rural areas of France. Other portions of the collection were stored in the Louvre with the cooperation of the Director of the French National Museums. Then the families left Paris. Edouard went to the U.S. Robert followed. A British cousin, Henri, had his very special collection of Chardins shipped to the City of Bath in England. All of those who resided in Paris lost their French citizenship and all their possessions were confiscated.
The ERR went immediately to work to locate the Rothschild incredible collections with true German efficiency and vigor and they managed to locate most of the hidden art still packed in crates. They were then put on Goering’s personal train in 1941 and 19 crates went to Hitler and the rest to Goering. These crates contained the most prized of the collection. There were some items that escaped the ERR in Paris. Baron Robert had built a secret room in his residence before WWI. The room was sealed and the walls whitewashed and then hidden behind huge armoires. The house was used by Luftwaffe officers during the occupation as a residence with no idea of the treasures stored there. The hidden art remained safe until the liberation. Most of the collections were either sitting in air raid shelters in Munich or in ERR warehouses. They were never opened. The American Army eventually found them. One positive thing about all this was the fact that the collections were pretty much kept together and not sold and scattered. They were intended for Hitler and Goering and they wanted the collections intact. So it was relatively easy to track down the works after the war and were eventually returned to France with very little loss or damage.
After the war Paul Rosenberg discovered that many of his paintings were in the hands of Emil G. Buhrle, the largest armaments manufacturer in Switzerland. He had made a fortune providing the Nazis with military equipment. He was also one of the biggest buyers of looted art in Switzerland the source being the Fischer Gallery. This Swiss gallery had a direct connection to the Nazi looters. After a personal interview with Buhrle and much negotiation with the Swiss government, Rosenberg was forced to sue Buhrle and Fischer to recover his paintings. He had the good fortune to win the case in the Swiss courts and for the most part got his paintings back. Many others have not been so fortunate. However, Rosenberg, at Buhrle’s request, did allow Buhrle to buy back the paintings that he had in his possession. They are today exhibited at Buhrle’s foundation. The catalogues of these Swiss collections in most cases do not give an accurate history of the paintings, concealing the fact that they were confiscated by the Nazis during the war. Another example of Swiss amnesia.
References:
Feliciano, Hector. The Lost Museum. BasicBooks, 1997.
Silva, Daniel. The English Assassin, Signet. 2003.
Ziegler, Jean. The Swiss, the Gold, and the Dead. Penguin. 1998.
As one observer has said: “Switzerland is not a country – it is a defensive alliance.” And the alliance is made up of autonomous people that have their own language and culture. Yet the Swiss confederation does not rely on its so called multiculturalism. That is another myth. There are French, German and Italian cultures within its borders but there is no real bond or tie between them. They are totally diverse. What holds them together is defense against foreigners. But because the Swiss tend to be xenophobic, they refer to foreigners as the “damn foreigners.” Nevertheless, the foreigners do hold the Swiss alliance together as a defense against the outsider. Furthermore, Switzerland is not a state. It is a confederation made up of self-governing cantons. Another point of view is that Switzerland “is not a real country.” “It is a business and it is run like a business.” It is always on the defensive and has been for 700 years. This would tend to explain the secrecy laws of the banking industry which made it a popular depository for stolen goods as well as a turntable for laundering stolen gold and looted art works during the war.
The Swiss also suffer from amnesia. For the Swiss there is no past. In fact they are very adept at suppressing the past. Particularly is this true when the Swiss are accused of involvement in Nazi war crimes. It is interesting that in the field of psychiatry patients are taught through the discipline of cognitive therapy to forget the past. The past is gone and to relive it will only create more anxiety. The Swiss developed this procedure into a tradition and they are experts.
Another myth that the Swiss very skillfully preserved was the myth of neutrality. Outsiders have always identified Switzerland with the perception of neutrality. And this was a very important aspect of the Swiss identity going as far back as 1648. But with the
advent of World War II the myth of Swiss neutrality was eventually destroyed.
The Swiss avoided the destruction of World War II by becoming an integral part of the German economic system, but at the same time maintained its bogus neutrality. In this way it avoided the saturation bombing of the Allies and was able to continue the manufacturing of munitions, optical instruments, precision equipment and other military equipment, all of which was delivered to the German military machine. Then the Swiss bankers acted as “fencing” agents in the exchange of looted gold for Swiss Francs and in this way the Swiss manufacturers received payment for their materiel. At the same time the secret bankers were receiving huge fees for their services. In short the cunning bankers were laundering gold stolen from all the occupied countries of Europe, as well as gold teeth and jewelry taken from Jews in the death camps and stolen art work from the Jewish galleries of Paris. The Germans needed exchange currency to pay for the raw material necessary for the production of arms. The countries that had the required raw materials would not accept looted gold in payment. The Swiss fenced the gold and exchanged it for Swiss Francs. Since the Swiss were “neutral” their currency was accepted everywhere in Europe. The Germans had run out of their own gold reserves by 1940. The looting of gold was the solution, and Swiss cooperation was their salvation. Bank officials of Switzerland saw a tremendous opportunity for huge profits as the intermediary for the Nazis. The gnomes filled with unrestrained greed became the willing puppets for the Wehrmacht. While Europe burned, the bankers were accumulating gold and foreign exchange reserves at an exponential and unbelievable rate. As a word of explanation: Gnomes are little people who live under the surface of the earth and guard its treasures. This is exactly where all the “filthy lucre” is buried in the underground vaults of the banks in Zurich, Basel and Bern. Much of it is still there. After the war the clients were no longer Hitler, Goring or Goebbels but rather Mobutu, Ceausescu, Saddam, Noriega, Suharto and Marcos. The banks are still making exorbitant profits from transfers of capital, looted gold, fencing or laundering. Because of these essentially illegal transactions Switzerland is now the “second richest country in the world.”
When Hitler took power and harassed the Jews, the Jewish people deposited gold, money, jewelry and art works in the secret numbered vaults of the Swiss banks. The assumption was that since the Swiss were neutrals and the accounts were secret, there would be no problem claiming the deposits in the future for either themselves or their survivors. After the war because many of these Jews had been murdered in the camps, there were no death certificates. In order to claim the deposits the Swiss insisted on a death certificate. Since the surviving family members had no proof of the death of their relatives it was not possible to retrieve their wealth. This of course increased the reserves of the bank and added to the monumental Swiss wealth.
Almost immediately after the occupation of France in June 1940 the looting of art by the Germans began in Paris. At that time the art world centered in Paris on the rue de la Boetie in the 8th arrondissement. New York and London were relatively unimportant. The most famous art dealer in Paris was Paul Rosenberg. He had the most impressive collection of modern and impressionistic paintings and was known throughout Europe and America. Picasso lived across the street with his wife.
Hitler made a grand tour of Paris and two days later swept all art owned by Jews into German hands supposedly for “safekeeping”, but in actuality that was one of the many lies employed by Hitler to cover illegal acts, in this case looting. In fact, Hitler set up an organization known as the ERR to find works of art. There were those who did the raiding and collecting aided by art historians and appraisers. They went, of course, immediately to the rue de la Boetie. They seized Paul Rosenberg’s gallery, the Rothschild collection, the David David-Weill collection, the Schloss collection of Dutch painters among many others owned by Jews.
Both Hitler and Goring had a passion for the “Old Masters” and considered modern and impressionistic paintings degenerate art. However, they recognized the value of these paintings and by confiscating them they were able to ship them to Switzerland to exchange for Swiss Francs. Or they used them to buy Old Masters from Swiss dealers. The most famous art of the Old Masters was in the Rothschild collection and that was plundered by the ERR. Some was sent to Hitler’s private museum and some went to Goring’s personal collection in his hunting lodge.
The ERR used the Musee Jeu de Paume in the Tuilleries Garden for storage of looted paintings. A staff catalogued and appraised the tremendous amount of art work that fell into their hands. Some went to Germany for Hitler’s collection and the modern works were kept for exchange or sale. Goring had access to the Jeu de Paume and visited there frequently taking paintings for exchange, e.g. Van Gogh, Degas, Cezanne, Renoir, Monet, Matisse, Modigliani, Leger, Braque, Picasso and many others. Most of these went to the Swiss for fencing and for some their whereabouts are still unknown. Some paintings were deposited in the secret vaults and others were sold immediately to galleries and private collectors. The laws of Switzerland protected the buyer of stolen art. If a collector buys art in good faith, after five years even if it was stolen to begin with, it belongs to the buyer. On the other hand, if a Swiss dealer finds that he has in his possession a stolen painting and the original owner discovers the painting he must pay the dealer the value of the painting before he can repossess it. Trying to reclaim the art work through the courts was not very successful either because by 1945 much of the art had been in possession of the buyer for at least five years.
Paris was liberated in Aug.1944 and by that time it had been the most plundered in all of Western Europe. One third of all the art in private collections had been stolen. Tens of thousands of art works were looted and many of these are still missing. One of the more interesting sagas is the pillaging of the Rothschild family collections which included over 5000 works of art. The Nazis looked upon the Rothschild collections as the most noted and important works in France. The Rothschilds were an “aristocratic dynasty” that came to Paris in 1800. James established the French branch. By 1940 there were three branches of the family headed by Baron Edouard, Baron Robert and Baron Edmund. Banking was the family’s main occupation but it also controlled French and European railroads, Russian oil, Bordeaux vineyards and a number of racing stables.
As for the art collection Baron Edouard’s contained the most works including Vermeer’s Astronomer, Boucher’s Portrait of the Marquise de Pompadour, Raphael’s Man With A Red Hat, several Rubens, one Titian and two Watteaus among others. Baron Robert’s collection was not as large but most important including such pieces as Jan Van Eyck triptych, Virgin and Child with Saints and Donors ( it is presently in the Frick collection in New York), and Rembrandt’s The Standard Bearer among others.
The Rothschilds had no idea of the kind of plundering that eventually occurred but were more afraid of bombardment at the start of the war. Therefore they packed up the collections and sent them to chateaus that they owned in the rural areas of France. Other portions of the collection were stored in the Louvre with the cooperation of the Director of the French National Museums. Then the families left Paris. Edouard went to the U.S. Robert followed. A British cousin, Henri, had his very special collection of Chardins shipped to the City of Bath in England. All of those who resided in Paris lost their French citizenship and all their possessions were confiscated.
The ERR went immediately to work to locate the Rothschild incredible collections with true German efficiency and vigor and they managed to locate most of the hidden art still packed in crates. They were then put on Goering’s personal train in 1941 and 19 crates went to Hitler and the rest to Goering. These crates contained the most prized of the collection. There were some items that escaped the ERR in Paris. Baron Robert had built a secret room in his residence before WWI. The room was sealed and the walls whitewashed and then hidden behind huge armoires. The house was used by Luftwaffe officers during the occupation as a residence with no idea of the treasures stored there. The hidden art remained safe until the liberation. Most of the collections were either sitting in air raid shelters in Munich or in ERR warehouses. They were never opened. The American Army eventually found them. One positive thing about all this was the fact that the collections were pretty much kept together and not sold and scattered. They were intended for Hitler and Goering and they wanted the collections intact. So it was relatively easy to track down the works after the war and were eventually returned to France with very little loss or damage.
After the war Paul Rosenberg discovered that many of his paintings were in the hands of Emil G. Buhrle, the largest armaments manufacturer in Switzerland. He had made a fortune providing the Nazis with military equipment. He was also one of the biggest buyers of looted art in Switzerland the source being the Fischer Gallery. This Swiss gallery had a direct connection to the Nazi looters. After a personal interview with Buhrle and much negotiation with the Swiss government, Rosenberg was forced to sue Buhrle and Fischer to recover his paintings. He had the good fortune to win the case in the Swiss courts and for the most part got his paintings back. Many others have not been so fortunate. However, Rosenberg, at Buhrle’s request, did allow Buhrle to buy back the paintings that he had in his possession. They are today exhibited at Buhrle’s foundation. The catalogues of these Swiss collections in most cases do not give an accurate history of the paintings, concealing the fact that they were confiscated by the Nazis during the war. Another example of Swiss amnesia.
References:
Feliciano, Hector. The Lost Museum. BasicBooks, 1997.
Silva, Daniel. The English Assassin, Signet. 2003.
Ziegler, Jean. The Swiss, the Gold, and the Dead. Penguin. 1998.
Saturday, July 09, 2005
Some Like It Hot
George W. Bush ran for the presidency the first time as a “compassionate conservative”. The program emphasized community over profit and riches. “Family, church and neighborhood” were more important than the market place. But as the administration progressed Bush still emphasized repeatedly the above concepts but the compassionate conservative gradually disappeared and instead we found his administration destroying the forests, polluting the air and poisoning the waterways. It was a disturbing example of “bait and switch”. And Americans fell for it. Of course, more than half of the country knew Bush was no environmentalist but no one anticipated that in the four years of his first term he would break environmental regulations that had been in force for 100 years originating first with Teddy Roosevelt.
According to Bush’s own pollster, Frank Lutz, the American people did not want Bush’s anti-environmental changes. So Lutz proposed to the administration that they change the wording when referring to environmental issues. For example, the “Healthy Forests Initiative” gave the forests back to the logging companies for “protection against wildfires”. Another example was “Clear Skies”, which allowed mercury and sulphur pollution at dangerous levels
Let’s look now at Bush and global warming. There is no way possible to ignore global warming. The final 10 years of the last century was the warmest in history. In Montana’s Glacial National Park there are only 35 glaciers left of the original 150. Arctic temperatures were the warmest in 400 years since 1990. Alaska is 5 degrees warmer than 30 years ago. In the last 40 years sea ice at the North Pole has decreased by 40%. And in the Antarctica temperatures have risen by 4 ½ degrees in the last 50 years. So Bush’s pollster advised him to stop referring to “global warming” but rather to use the term “climate change” because it has less emotion attached to its use. Also Bush has repeatedly stated that there is no scientific certainty supporting “global warming”. Lutz advised him to continue to emphasize that point publicly as a primary issue. Of course it isn’t true that there is no scientific basis for global warming. Scientists are convinced that green house gases, i.e. carbon dioxide, methane and water vapor in the atmosphere do raise the temperature of the planet. And CO2 emissions from power plants in America alone contribute 10% of the global emissions.
Bush doesn’t use the term global warming very often anymore and he has attacked the Kyoto Protocols which every nation in the world has signed except the U.S. and Russia. Kyoto required the signers to reduce greenhouse gases to 5% below 1990. As for Russia, off the north coast of Siberia, average temperatures have risen 5 degrees Celsius since 1970. This has caused the Arctic ice to shrink by 3%. There is now a channel of ice free water along the coast. Melting ice inland is exposing rock and dirt. Since the dirt is darker than ice, it absorbs more heat and raises temperatures more quickly. This in turn melts more ice and bares more soil, and the temperature rises more quickly. Therefore Siberia is warming much faster than other areas of the world. Not everyone is unhappy about this situation, particularly Mr. Putin. Warmer temperatures in Siberia is a definite plus for Russia. And it explains why he refused to sign the Kyoto agreement. Putin likes it hot.
Obviously not everyone is shocked by the frightening climate changes. Despite drought, famine, flooding and unsuccessful farming caused already by global warming, there are those in the north such as Russia that see the changes as an advantage. In Siberia there would be “longer growing seasons” and “milder winters” that would improve timber growth and farming. Particularly potato crops would increase by one third. An ice free northern sea route would make it possible for oil tankers to travel from Europe to Japan faster than through the Suez Canal.
Oil companies in Russia would benefit from warmer temperatures making it possible to drill more easily offshore in the Russian Arctic. There are billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of gas buried offshore. This could be reached at lower cost and at greater efficiency if there were thinner ice and less icebergs. Arctic oil will be of tremendous help to the Russian economy suffering from a serious lack of liquidity. Russia depends on its oil for a third of its revenue. As oil depletes in other areas Arctic oil will have to replace that depletion.
Unfortunately Russia produces 17% of all carbon emissions mainly because its factories are so obsolete making Russia number three in the export of carbon, the U.S. and China being first and second. The Russian economy still has not recovered from the economic catastrophe of the 1990’s when the government nearly collapsed. Therefore, saving the climate is not on the agenda when their economy cannot support its pensioners, veterans and soldiers. To reduce fossil fuel emissions would require hundreds of billions of rubles to replace their polluting industries and cut the use of energy. The negative impact on their GNP would be cataclysmic. In the U.S. the problem is similar in that any change in the use of energy could cost the U.S. “one percentage point of its GNP every year for the next century”. The Bush administration is, therefore, not enthusiastic about making that kind of change despite the fact that to burn a gallon of gas produces 5 pounds of carbon. By driving a car most Americans produce in a year a ton of carbon.
Up until 500 years ago green plants extracted from the atmosphere so much carbon dioxide that the level was very small, i.e. 270 parts per million (ppp). This kept the temperatures very low and thus lowered the “green house effect”. As we all learned in our high school biology class that plants capture and store carbon dioxide and then through a process called photosynthesis convert it into oxygen and carbohydrates. At that time the “carbon cycle” was roughly equal. The CO2 released by nature was absorbed by forests. In fact, it stayed a little ahead, i.e. nature released 210 billion tons of carbon dioxide and the forests and jungles took in 213 billion tons. Thus there was a “safety margin” of 3 billion tons. By the year 1500 ,however, things began to change. Because of the decrease in forests the plants ability to absorb CO2 decreased. Then with onset of the Industrial Revolution the burning of fossil fuels increased enormously. Over time CO2 emissions increased to 6.3 billion tons per year, twice what the planet can absorb to the point that carbon in the atmosphere has increased to 370 ppm today. And this, according to climate scientists, will continue to increase no matter what we do because “reabsorption can take centuries”. Scientists have maintained that the line should be held at 550 ppm. But it may not be possible to stay at that level since the carbon level is rising so fast. Above this level warming is extremely hazardous. Shorelines disappear, multiple hurricanes occur, as do floods, droughts and forest fires. Staying below 450 ppm would certainly help in that the destruction would be less. However, for that to occur would be unrealistic. Just to keep the line at 550 ppm would require the U.S. alone to reduce carbon emissions by 70% by the end of the century. And that’s with a much larger population and a bigger economy. As long as we continue to rely on fossil fuels environmentalists agree that it is impossible. At the moment it appears that we will hit the 550 ppm by 2050. We have four decades to reduce the use of fossil fuels.
Let’s now travel from Russia across the Bering Sea to Alaska. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has been an environmental issue for 2 decades. It is the home of huge herds of caribou, musk oxen, grizzlies and polar bears. But it also contains insignificant oil deposits that have become a political football. Since the world produces 75 million barrels of oil per day and the U.S. uses 20 million per day, the Arctic Refuge would give us possibly one million per day. Hardly a significant factor toward “energy independence”. And , of course , that amount would be used up fairly quickly. The Bush administration and the former Alaska Senator, Frank Murkowski, now Governor of Alaska, pressured Congress to pass an act that would allow drilling. The administration supported drilling because it could be a wedge toward allowing drilling in other restricted areas. In short, it would set a precedent. Murkowski as we shall see had other motives. However, a very important reason Congress has not passed any act to allow drilling is the cost. Domestic oil production whether in Alaska or off-shore costs between $5 and $7.50 per barrel, while in Saudi Arabia it costs $1.50. So the refusal to drill on domestic land has nothing to do with our dependence on foreign oil.
So who has been paying the lobbyists pressuring for Arctic oil? None other than the state of Alaska itself. The oil companies did not care. They were really more interested in the Caspian Sea deposits. It turns out that Alaska is the “last great Welfare State”. Alaska retains ½ of the royalties from the sale of oil produced on public lands. A percentage of this is distributed to each resident every year. In 2003 it amounted to $1107. This is in addition to no payment of state income tax or sales tax. No one wants to give up this largess. However, the Republicans do not have the votes in congress to despoil the refuge. At the moment it appears to be a dead issue.
References:
Pope, Carl. Strategic Ignorance. Sierra Club Books. 2004.
The New York Review. 6/10/04. Bill McKibben. The Real Climate Crisis.
Roberts, Paul. The End Of Oil. Mariner Books. 2005.
According to Bush’s own pollster, Frank Lutz, the American people did not want Bush’s anti-environmental changes. So Lutz proposed to the administration that they change the wording when referring to environmental issues. For example, the “Healthy Forests Initiative” gave the forests back to the logging companies for “protection against wildfires”. Another example was “Clear Skies”, which allowed mercury and sulphur pollution at dangerous levels
Let’s look now at Bush and global warming. There is no way possible to ignore global warming. The final 10 years of the last century was the warmest in history. In Montana’s Glacial National Park there are only 35 glaciers left of the original 150. Arctic temperatures were the warmest in 400 years since 1990. Alaska is 5 degrees warmer than 30 years ago. In the last 40 years sea ice at the North Pole has decreased by 40%. And in the Antarctica temperatures have risen by 4 ½ degrees in the last 50 years. So Bush’s pollster advised him to stop referring to “global warming” but rather to use the term “climate change” because it has less emotion attached to its use. Also Bush has repeatedly stated that there is no scientific certainty supporting “global warming”. Lutz advised him to continue to emphasize that point publicly as a primary issue. Of course it isn’t true that there is no scientific basis for global warming. Scientists are convinced that green house gases, i.e. carbon dioxide, methane and water vapor in the atmosphere do raise the temperature of the planet. And CO2 emissions from power plants in America alone contribute 10% of the global emissions.
Bush doesn’t use the term global warming very often anymore and he has attacked the Kyoto Protocols which every nation in the world has signed except the U.S. and Russia. Kyoto required the signers to reduce greenhouse gases to 5% below 1990. As for Russia, off the north coast of Siberia, average temperatures have risen 5 degrees Celsius since 1970. This has caused the Arctic ice to shrink by 3%. There is now a channel of ice free water along the coast. Melting ice inland is exposing rock and dirt. Since the dirt is darker than ice, it absorbs more heat and raises temperatures more quickly. This in turn melts more ice and bares more soil, and the temperature rises more quickly. Therefore Siberia is warming much faster than other areas of the world. Not everyone is unhappy about this situation, particularly Mr. Putin. Warmer temperatures in Siberia is a definite plus for Russia. And it explains why he refused to sign the Kyoto agreement. Putin likes it hot.
Obviously not everyone is shocked by the frightening climate changes. Despite drought, famine, flooding and unsuccessful farming caused already by global warming, there are those in the north such as Russia that see the changes as an advantage. In Siberia there would be “longer growing seasons” and “milder winters” that would improve timber growth and farming. Particularly potato crops would increase by one third. An ice free northern sea route would make it possible for oil tankers to travel from Europe to Japan faster than through the Suez Canal.
Oil companies in Russia would benefit from warmer temperatures making it possible to drill more easily offshore in the Russian Arctic. There are billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of gas buried offshore. This could be reached at lower cost and at greater efficiency if there were thinner ice and less icebergs. Arctic oil will be of tremendous help to the Russian economy suffering from a serious lack of liquidity. Russia depends on its oil for a third of its revenue. As oil depletes in other areas Arctic oil will have to replace that depletion.
Unfortunately Russia produces 17% of all carbon emissions mainly because its factories are so obsolete making Russia number three in the export of carbon, the U.S. and China being first and second. The Russian economy still has not recovered from the economic catastrophe of the 1990’s when the government nearly collapsed. Therefore, saving the climate is not on the agenda when their economy cannot support its pensioners, veterans and soldiers. To reduce fossil fuel emissions would require hundreds of billions of rubles to replace their polluting industries and cut the use of energy. The negative impact on their GNP would be cataclysmic. In the U.S. the problem is similar in that any change in the use of energy could cost the U.S. “one percentage point of its GNP every year for the next century”. The Bush administration is, therefore, not enthusiastic about making that kind of change despite the fact that to burn a gallon of gas produces 5 pounds of carbon. By driving a car most Americans produce in a year a ton of carbon.
Up until 500 years ago green plants extracted from the atmosphere so much carbon dioxide that the level was very small, i.e. 270 parts per million (ppp). This kept the temperatures very low and thus lowered the “green house effect”. As we all learned in our high school biology class that plants capture and store carbon dioxide and then through a process called photosynthesis convert it into oxygen and carbohydrates. At that time the “carbon cycle” was roughly equal. The CO2 released by nature was absorbed by forests. In fact, it stayed a little ahead, i.e. nature released 210 billion tons of carbon dioxide and the forests and jungles took in 213 billion tons. Thus there was a “safety margin” of 3 billion tons. By the year 1500 ,however, things began to change. Because of the decrease in forests the plants ability to absorb CO2 decreased. Then with onset of the Industrial Revolution the burning of fossil fuels increased enormously. Over time CO2 emissions increased to 6.3 billion tons per year, twice what the planet can absorb to the point that carbon in the atmosphere has increased to 370 ppm today. And this, according to climate scientists, will continue to increase no matter what we do because “reabsorption can take centuries”. Scientists have maintained that the line should be held at 550 ppm. But it may not be possible to stay at that level since the carbon level is rising so fast. Above this level warming is extremely hazardous. Shorelines disappear, multiple hurricanes occur, as do floods, droughts and forest fires. Staying below 450 ppm would certainly help in that the destruction would be less. However, for that to occur would be unrealistic. Just to keep the line at 550 ppm would require the U.S. alone to reduce carbon emissions by 70% by the end of the century. And that’s with a much larger population and a bigger economy. As long as we continue to rely on fossil fuels environmentalists agree that it is impossible. At the moment it appears that we will hit the 550 ppm by 2050. We have four decades to reduce the use of fossil fuels.
Let’s now travel from Russia across the Bering Sea to Alaska. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has been an environmental issue for 2 decades. It is the home of huge herds of caribou, musk oxen, grizzlies and polar bears. But it also contains insignificant oil deposits that have become a political football. Since the world produces 75 million barrels of oil per day and the U.S. uses 20 million per day, the Arctic Refuge would give us possibly one million per day. Hardly a significant factor toward “energy independence”. And , of course , that amount would be used up fairly quickly. The Bush administration and the former Alaska Senator, Frank Murkowski, now Governor of Alaska, pressured Congress to pass an act that would allow drilling. The administration supported drilling because it could be a wedge toward allowing drilling in other restricted areas. In short, it would set a precedent. Murkowski as we shall see had other motives. However, a very important reason Congress has not passed any act to allow drilling is the cost. Domestic oil production whether in Alaska or off-shore costs between $5 and $7.50 per barrel, while in Saudi Arabia it costs $1.50. So the refusal to drill on domestic land has nothing to do with our dependence on foreign oil.
So who has been paying the lobbyists pressuring for Arctic oil? None other than the state of Alaska itself. The oil companies did not care. They were really more interested in the Caspian Sea deposits. It turns out that Alaska is the “last great Welfare State”. Alaska retains ½ of the royalties from the sale of oil produced on public lands. A percentage of this is distributed to each resident every year. In 2003 it amounted to $1107. This is in addition to no payment of state income tax or sales tax. No one wants to give up this largess. However, the Republicans do not have the votes in congress to despoil the refuge. At the moment it appears to be a dead issue.
References:
Pope, Carl. Strategic Ignorance. Sierra Club Books. 2004.
The New York Review. 6/10/04. Bill McKibben. The Real Climate Crisis.
Roberts, Paul. The End Of Oil. Mariner Books. 2005.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Beetles and Bacteria Revisited
Not too long ago a respected biologist posed an interesting question: Is it better to be smart or stupid? For example, beetles and bacteria are much more successful as survivors than humans. Since the average life expectancy of a species is only 100,000 years, humans may be coming to the end of their time on earth. As we have evolved we have become extremely proficient at destroying ourselves both through our attacks on the environment and our cruel attacks on each other.
The Bush administration appears to be ignoring the serious environmental problems world-wide. But one governmental agency is taking the problem seriously. And who might it be? Believe it or not, the Pentagon. In direct refutation to the right-wingers in this administration, the Pentagon has issued a report declaring that climate changes, i.e. global warming, is a serious security threat to the U.S. It is most urgent, the Pentagon declares, and it requires immediate attention. Climate change can occur much sooner than originally thought and very quickly. For example, it could occur over a period as short as 3-5 years causing droughts and starvation. Incredibly it could cause another Ice Age. Europe could freeze over, our mid-west could become another dust-bowl and Southern California would be without water. Even the World Bank is debating a possible recommendation to stop financing oil and coal development both emissions of which can cause climate change. Investors in the fossil-fuel and auto industries aren’t going to like these conclusions but can they continue to ignore them? A special review commission involving third world governments and “indigenous people” has recommended that the World Bank stop all coal loans now and all oil loans by 2008. It also suggested that the bank increase renewal energy (wind and solar) loans by 20% per year. As it stands now the World Bank is lending 94% of its funds for fossil-fuel and only 6% for renewables. So far the bank has refused to change because fossil energy is the cheapest energy to pull third world countries out of poverty. But what good is it if the world is headed for weather changes that will cause chaos and starvation?
Individuals in the Bush administration and their conservative think tank cohorts, viz. the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, who may still believe the earth is flat and that evolution is not a fact but only a theory, are re-writing science. They are blacklisting scientists whose work threatens the profits of mega-corporations and who are major supporters of the Bush administration. In addition any scientist or engineer who disputes the anti environmental beliefs of the neo-conservatives is immediately suspect and viciously attacked. So extreme has this been that, according to Robert Kennedy , Jr., who works as an environmental lawyer, approximately 60 scientists, many who are Nobel Laureates have accused the Bush gang of distorting scientific facts “for partisan political ends.”
Let’s take, for example, the air quality in downtown New York City after the 9/11 tragedy. The EPA released nine press releases between September and December stating that the air was safe to breathe. We have since learned the EPA’s data was being doctored by the White House in order to re-open Wall St. as quickly as possible. So once again our government was lying to the public. Also shortly after 9/11 the E PA maintained that the asbestos level was very low in that area and perfectly safe to breathe. An independent study done by UC Davis at the time indicated that the levels of asbestos particulates were the highest ever seen world-wide. Another study showed that 78% of rescue workers had lung ailments and 88% had ear, nose and throat problems for months, sometimes a year, following the disaster.
Another extremely dangerous problem that the Bush administration is ignoring is global warming. The Bushites have consistently altered the facts regarding the serious case of global warming. Since the beginning of this administration there have been at least a dozen government studies on global warming that the White House has suppressed or discredited as a favor to the mega-corporations whose industrial emissions are a major contributing factor to the problem of global warming. The National Research Council, the National Academy of Sciences and NASA have all presented studies on the effect of fossil fuel emissions on global warming to the administration and are ignored.
Halliburton, VP Cheney’s former company, has given millions to the Republican Party to protect itself from interference by government in a process that the company employs to extract oil and gas. Benzene is injected into the ground to aid in the process. The EPA discovered that the process could contaminate drinking water beyond the usual acceptable drinking water standards. Shortly after this was reported to a Congressional Committee, the EPA backed off saying that the benzene did not exceed government standards. EPA finally admitted that industry pressure had forced them to change their position.
The coal industry introduces large amounts of mercury into the environment. The EPA delayed for nine months a report on the tragic effect of mercury on the health of children. One in 12 women are carrying mercury in their blood stream to cause neurological damage and a lower IQ in their unborn children.
Or let’s take the case of Atrazine, a commonly used weed killer in America. Back in 1980 it was identified as a carcinogen that could cause prostate cancer. Tests by government scientists found large concentrations of Atrazine in the drinking water across middle America, primarily in the corn belt. UC Berkeley found that this chemical at “one thirtieth the government’s ‘safe’ 3 parts per billion” causes major deformities in frogs. Recently the University of Missouri found that male semen counts in farm communities were 50% below normal. What did the Bush administration do about this? It did not ban the chemical as was done in Europe but rather turned control and monitoring over to the manufacturer. With a perfectly straight face the spokesman for the manufacturer said, “This is one way we can ensure it’s not presenting any risk to the environment.”
Before going any further with the anti-environmental agenda of the Republican administration, let’s take another look at the Pentagon report on global warming and the resulting green house effect. The climate changes that are sure to occur if the use of fossil fuel continues would cause the Arctic ice to melt and since it is “less dense” than salt water would then flow into the Atlantic. This in a very short period would shut down the warm Gulf Stream. As a result, Western Europe and Eastern North America would become very much colder and Europe’s climate would become similar to Siberia. Now the reason the Pentagon is so concerned is the effect it would have on agricultural harvests. Thus, widespread starvation becomes a reality. Wars would then change in character and become struggles over natural resources rather than over ideology. Any changes in the causes of war would affect the way in which wars are fought. And that, of course, interests the Pentagon. Therefore, we need to look at some of the problems caused by the use of fossil fuels and what, if any, are the solutions?
So let’s start with the preeminent but problematic fossil fuel of our day—oil. Whenever I drive my compact car into the parking lot of the local supermarket, I invariably windup between a huge sport utility vehicle (SUV) on one side and an oversized pickup truck with huge tires and an exposed chassis on the other. I feel as though I have been dropped into the maintenance bay of a Greyhound Bus terminal. My visibility is totally obstructed and backing out requires a great deal of courage. The other day I was on foot and a “Grandma Moses” type approached me, believe it or not, in a Hummer and impatiently waved me out of the way so she could park this tank in a “Disabled Parking” space. Now these vehicles were originally designed for off the road use for people who need to use truck for that purpose. But studies indicate that only 1 in 20 owners take the vehicle off the road and only 1 in 10 carry anything in the back of the pickup. So these people are using the “gas guzzlers” (as low as 5 miles to the gallon and as high as 18 or any number in between) to carry a couple bags of groceries or to take the kids to the soccer field or a Little League baseball game. If they think they will be any safer in these tanks, safety studies show that the SUV in a crash is more likely to kill the occupants of the other car and it is also a danger to its occupants because it tends to roll over. Incidentally, the new Volkswagon bug introduced a few years ago actually has proved in tests that it is the safest car on the road and gets the best mileage.
So what is the American public seeking when it buys these huge vehicles. It appears to be a combination of conspicuous consumption, the desire of urbanites to appear macho and tough and for some just plain stupidity. The average fuel economy of all vehicles has dropped to less than 21 mpg, the lowest level since 1988, the peak year for fuel efficiency. The increased use of these vehicles has caused oil consumption to grow in the US from “17 million barrels per day in 1990 to 20 million today”. This could rise to 32 million in the year 2020.
The use of oil in the world by 2035 will leap to almost twice what it is today. Today we use 80 million barrels per day and that will increase to over 140 million barrels. Natural gas usage will increase over 120 % and coal by 60%. In countries like China and India, which are in the process of emerging industrially, consumption will grow exponentially. In a recent auto show in China it was reported that the crowds were elbow to elbow. No one had ever seen such a turn out. China is fast becoming “the hottest car market in the world.” The Chinese purchase of autos alone will raise the use of oil by 2 million barrels per day.
So are we going to run out of oil? And how soon? Let’s check out the Saudi oil fields where ¼ of the world’s oil is produced. Unquestionably modern civilization owes its development to the fossil fuel industry, i.e. oil, gas and coal. But what most people who live this comfortable life and take the energy for granted don’t realize is that the most popular energy, oil, has its limits. Some of the biggest oil deposits in the world, e.g. Saudi Arabia and the Baku deposits of the former Soviet Empire have already peaked. Once that happens production slows and eventually produces nothing. It’s at that point that a new oil deposit must be found. When the ground is broken and the new deposit is released the natural pressure is so intense that the oil shoots out similar to a geyser. But then after decades of use the pressure subsides so that in order to get the oil out of the ground water is injected to force the oil out. The oldest and largest oil field in Saudi Arabia first dug in 1953 originally produced 6 million barrels per day. Today that well requires water injection that produces oil with a “water cut” of 30%. A new well will produce almost pure oil with natural gas and only a trace of water. Eventually the well that requires water injection and produces as much as 30% water will in time produce nothing but pure water and the well has to be abandoned.
The world today requires more and more energy and there appears to be no end to our requirements. So oil production world wide is peaking. Take, for example, the oil wells on the Caspian Sea. 20 years ago the oil wells 2 miles into the Sea were gushing seemingly endlessly until they peaked and then depleted. Now there is nothing but rusted pipe lines and empty buildings. However, new wells were sunk but production is nowhere near the peak production of 1986. Given a few more years and all oil from that region will be gone permanently. There will be nothing left of the old Soviet Oil Empire. The same problem exists in Texas, Pennsylvania and Borneo. Self pressurized oil wells producing millions of barrels per day gradually deplete and new wells are dug elsewhere to replace the oil already used.
The problem is that it is getting harder to find oil deposits world-wide that are easy to produce. The oil that exists in the ground is in most cases today located in very difficult environments, i.e. under Arctic ice, Siberia and unstable African countries. As demand continues to rise, the cost of production also rises and so does the price of gasoline.
So what does “peaking” mean? It means that when half the oil in the ground has been pumped, we have peaked. Once half the oil is gone world-wide we cannot produce the same number of barrels required per day and we are faced with falling production. If we continue to use increased amounts of oil at the rate of 2% a year, we will reach our peak in 2030 if the estimates of oil in the ground are accurate. However, the numbers are suspect. The oil companies tend to conceal impending peaks in their current wells. And they do this for political or economic advantage. Therefore, most of the time their estimates for reserves are bogus. In reality, since 1995, the world has used much more oil than it has found in new deposits. (24 billion barrels annually vs. 9.6 billion barrels per year.) One study indicates that the energy industry is finding less than 40% of the new oil needed to support the known reserves. Thus depletion continues because there is less and less oil to be found despite improved technology. Oil producers continue to pump more oil than they can replace. And most of the world’s oil is still in the Middle East controlled by OPEC, a not very friendly cartel that controls production and prices.
References:
The Nation. 3/1/04. Mark Hertsgaard. A New Ice Age.
The Nation. 3/8/03. Robert Kennedy, Jr. Bush’s Jungle Science.
The New York Review. 6/10/04. Bill McKibben. The Real Climate Crisis.
Roberts, Paul. The End of Oil. Mariner Books. 2005.
The Bush administration appears to be ignoring the serious environmental problems world-wide. But one governmental agency is taking the problem seriously. And who might it be? Believe it or not, the Pentagon. In direct refutation to the right-wingers in this administration, the Pentagon has issued a report declaring that climate changes, i.e. global warming, is a serious security threat to the U.S. It is most urgent, the Pentagon declares, and it requires immediate attention. Climate change can occur much sooner than originally thought and very quickly. For example, it could occur over a period as short as 3-5 years causing droughts and starvation. Incredibly it could cause another Ice Age. Europe could freeze over, our mid-west could become another dust-bowl and Southern California would be without water. Even the World Bank is debating a possible recommendation to stop financing oil and coal development both emissions of which can cause climate change. Investors in the fossil-fuel and auto industries aren’t going to like these conclusions but can they continue to ignore them? A special review commission involving third world governments and “indigenous people” has recommended that the World Bank stop all coal loans now and all oil loans by 2008. It also suggested that the bank increase renewal energy (wind and solar) loans by 20% per year. As it stands now the World Bank is lending 94% of its funds for fossil-fuel and only 6% for renewables. So far the bank has refused to change because fossil energy is the cheapest energy to pull third world countries out of poverty. But what good is it if the world is headed for weather changes that will cause chaos and starvation?
Individuals in the Bush administration and their conservative think tank cohorts, viz. the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, who may still believe the earth is flat and that evolution is not a fact but only a theory, are re-writing science. They are blacklisting scientists whose work threatens the profits of mega-corporations and who are major supporters of the Bush administration. In addition any scientist or engineer who disputes the anti environmental beliefs of the neo-conservatives is immediately suspect and viciously attacked. So extreme has this been that, according to Robert Kennedy , Jr., who works as an environmental lawyer, approximately 60 scientists, many who are Nobel Laureates have accused the Bush gang of distorting scientific facts “for partisan political ends.”
Let’s take, for example, the air quality in downtown New York City after the 9/11 tragedy. The EPA released nine press releases between September and December stating that the air was safe to breathe. We have since learned the EPA’s data was being doctored by the White House in order to re-open Wall St. as quickly as possible. So once again our government was lying to the public. Also shortly after 9/11 the E PA maintained that the asbestos level was very low in that area and perfectly safe to breathe. An independent study done by UC Davis at the time indicated that the levels of asbestos particulates were the highest ever seen world-wide. Another study showed that 78% of rescue workers had lung ailments and 88% had ear, nose and throat problems for months, sometimes a year, following the disaster.
Another extremely dangerous problem that the Bush administration is ignoring is global warming. The Bushites have consistently altered the facts regarding the serious case of global warming. Since the beginning of this administration there have been at least a dozen government studies on global warming that the White House has suppressed or discredited as a favor to the mega-corporations whose industrial emissions are a major contributing factor to the problem of global warming. The National Research Council, the National Academy of Sciences and NASA have all presented studies on the effect of fossil fuel emissions on global warming to the administration and are ignored.
Halliburton, VP Cheney’s former company, has given millions to the Republican Party to protect itself from interference by government in a process that the company employs to extract oil and gas. Benzene is injected into the ground to aid in the process. The EPA discovered that the process could contaminate drinking water beyond the usual acceptable drinking water standards. Shortly after this was reported to a Congressional Committee, the EPA backed off saying that the benzene did not exceed government standards. EPA finally admitted that industry pressure had forced them to change their position.
The coal industry introduces large amounts of mercury into the environment. The EPA delayed for nine months a report on the tragic effect of mercury on the health of children. One in 12 women are carrying mercury in their blood stream to cause neurological damage and a lower IQ in their unborn children.
Or let’s take the case of Atrazine, a commonly used weed killer in America. Back in 1980 it was identified as a carcinogen that could cause prostate cancer. Tests by government scientists found large concentrations of Atrazine in the drinking water across middle America, primarily in the corn belt. UC Berkeley found that this chemical at “one thirtieth the government’s ‘safe’ 3 parts per billion” causes major deformities in frogs. Recently the University of Missouri found that male semen counts in farm communities were 50% below normal. What did the Bush administration do about this? It did not ban the chemical as was done in Europe but rather turned control and monitoring over to the manufacturer. With a perfectly straight face the spokesman for the manufacturer said, “This is one way we can ensure it’s not presenting any risk to the environment.”
Before going any further with the anti-environmental agenda of the Republican administration, let’s take another look at the Pentagon report on global warming and the resulting green house effect. The climate changes that are sure to occur if the use of fossil fuel continues would cause the Arctic ice to melt and since it is “less dense” than salt water would then flow into the Atlantic. This in a very short period would shut down the warm Gulf Stream. As a result, Western Europe and Eastern North America would become very much colder and Europe’s climate would become similar to Siberia. Now the reason the Pentagon is so concerned is the effect it would have on agricultural harvests. Thus, widespread starvation becomes a reality. Wars would then change in character and become struggles over natural resources rather than over ideology. Any changes in the causes of war would affect the way in which wars are fought. And that, of course, interests the Pentagon. Therefore, we need to look at some of the problems caused by the use of fossil fuels and what, if any, are the solutions?
So let’s start with the preeminent but problematic fossil fuel of our day—oil. Whenever I drive my compact car into the parking lot of the local supermarket, I invariably windup between a huge sport utility vehicle (SUV) on one side and an oversized pickup truck with huge tires and an exposed chassis on the other. I feel as though I have been dropped into the maintenance bay of a Greyhound Bus terminal. My visibility is totally obstructed and backing out requires a great deal of courage. The other day I was on foot and a “Grandma Moses” type approached me, believe it or not, in a Hummer and impatiently waved me out of the way so she could park this tank in a “Disabled Parking” space. Now these vehicles were originally designed for off the road use for people who need to use truck for that purpose. But studies indicate that only 1 in 20 owners take the vehicle off the road and only 1 in 10 carry anything in the back of the pickup. So these people are using the “gas guzzlers” (as low as 5 miles to the gallon and as high as 18 or any number in between) to carry a couple bags of groceries or to take the kids to the soccer field or a Little League baseball game. If they think they will be any safer in these tanks, safety studies show that the SUV in a crash is more likely to kill the occupants of the other car and it is also a danger to its occupants because it tends to roll over. Incidentally, the new Volkswagon bug introduced a few years ago actually has proved in tests that it is the safest car on the road and gets the best mileage.
So what is the American public seeking when it buys these huge vehicles. It appears to be a combination of conspicuous consumption, the desire of urbanites to appear macho and tough and for some just plain stupidity. The average fuel economy of all vehicles has dropped to less than 21 mpg, the lowest level since 1988, the peak year for fuel efficiency. The increased use of these vehicles has caused oil consumption to grow in the US from “17 million barrels per day in 1990 to 20 million today”. This could rise to 32 million in the year 2020.
The use of oil in the world by 2035 will leap to almost twice what it is today. Today we use 80 million barrels per day and that will increase to over 140 million barrels. Natural gas usage will increase over 120 % and coal by 60%. In countries like China and India, which are in the process of emerging industrially, consumption will grow exponentially. In a recent auto show in China it was reported that the crowds were elbow to elbow. No one had ever seen such a turn out. China is fast becoming “the hottest car market in the world.” The Chinese purchase of autos alone will raise the use of oil by 2 million barrels per day.
So are we going to run out of oil? And how soon? Let’s check out the Saudi oil fields where ¼ of the world’s oil is produced. Unquestionably modern civilization owes its development to the fossil fuel industry, i.e. oil, gas and coal. But what most people who live this comfortable life and take the energy for granted don’t realize is that the most popular energy, oil, has its limits. Some of the biggest oil deposits in the world, e.g. Saudi Arabia and the Baku deposits of the former Soviet Empire have already peaked. Once that happens production slows and eventually produces nothing. It’s at that point that a new oil deposit must be found. When the ground is broken and the new deposit is released the natural pressure is so intense that the oil shoots out similar to a geyser. But then after decades of use the pressure subsides so that in order to get the oil out of the ground water is injected to force the oil out. The oldest and largest oil field in Saudi Arabia first dug in 1953 originally produced 6 million barrels per day. Today that well requires water injection that produces oil with a “water cut” of 30%. A new well will produce almost pure oil with natural gas and only a trace of water. Eventually the well that requires water injection and produces as much as 30% water will in time produce nothing but pure water and the well has to be abandoned.
The world today requires more and more energy and there appears to be no end to our requirements. So oil production world wide is peaking. Take, for example, the oil wells on the Caspian Sea. 20 years ago the oil wells 2 miles into the Sea were gushing seemingly endlessly until they peaked and then depleted. Now there is nothing but rusted pipe lines and empty buildings. However, new wells were sunk but production is nowhere near the peak production of 1986. Given a few more years and all oil from that region will be gone permanently. There will be nothing left of the old Soviet Oil Empire. The same problem exists in Texas, Pennsylvania and Borneo. Self pressurized oil wells producing millions of barrels per day gradually deplete and new wells are dug elsewhere to replace the oil already used.
The problem is that it is getting harder to find oil deposits world-wide that are easy to produce. The oil that exists in the ground is in most cases today located in very difficult environments, i.e. under Arctic ice, Siberia and unstable African countries. As demand continues to rise, the cost of production also rises and so does the price of gasoline.
So what does “peaking” mean? It means that when half the oil in the ground has been pumped, we have peaked. Once half the oil is gone world-wide we cannot produce the same number of barrels required per day and we are faced with falling production. If we continue to use increased amounts of oil at the rate of 2% a year, we will reach our peak in 2030 if the estimates of oil in the ground are accurate. However, the numbers are suspect. The oil companies tend to conceal impending peaks in their current wells. And they do this for political or economic advantage. Therefore, most of the time their estimates for reserves are bogus. In reality, since 1995, the world has used much more oil than it has found in new deposits. (24 billion barrels annually vs. 9.6 billion barrels per year.) One study indicates that the energy industry is finding less than 40% of the new oil needed to support the known reserves. Thus depletion continues because there is less and less oil to be found despite improved technology. Oil producers continue to pump more oil than they can replace. And most of the world’s oil is still in the Middle East controlled by OPEC, a not very friendly cartel that controls production and prices.
References:
The Nation. 3/1/04. Mark Hertsgaard. A New Ice Age.
The Nation. 3/8/03. Robert Kennedy, Jr. Bush’s Jungle Science.
The New York Review. 6/10/04. Bill McKibben. The Real Climate Crisis.
Roberts, Paul. The End of Oil. Mariner Books. 2005.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Corporate Conspiracy
Four years later it is still difficult for many people to understand how huge companies like Enron and WorldCom with billions of dollars in revenue and stock prices close to the ceiling could in a matter of weeks declare bankruptcy. And the people who should have been able to predict the fall, i.e. the investment bankers, the rating agencies, the analysts and the most prestigious accounting firm in the country did not appear to have a clue. Most shareholders upon receiving the beautiful annual report assume that the company is in fine financial shape since one of the largest and most respected accounting firms in the country has signed off on the report. Now accountants are just people including the lead partners who actually supervise the audits. But they are as corruptible as anyone because in order for fraud to occur, as one financial observer commented, there has to be “complicity”.
So now the question arises, how can a “company manipulate its earnings?” For example, during the annual audit one of the young outside accountants assigned to the company discovers that the company’s internal accountants have been “booking something incorrectly”. It doesn’t “conform to generally accepted accounting procedures”. It may not appear on the surface to be a major problem but it is significant enough to put downward pressure on the earnings per share if it is corrected. The company, therefore, will not look as good to the Wall St. community and the share price will drop. This inevitably happens when the street analysts publicly downgrade the stock. The smallest decrease in earnings per share (EPS) can cause a rush to sell and the stock price drops like a stone.
Now the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) are concerned for another important reason. They own millions of dollars in options and since the stock price has been going straight up, these options are worth millions more. But if the EPS drops, the options will drop also and could possibly end up worthless. The executives have probably made financial commitments based on the future value of the options and now they are faced with losing it all and having to deal with the financial embarrassment that follows. When the lead partner of the accounting firm informs the CFO of the problem, the CFO is in shock. He had been relying on his internal accountants who in turn were relying on the outside accounting firm who told them that what they were doing was O.K. The lead partner is now saying they were wrong. Oh, my! It is at this point that the CFO involves the lead partner by telling him that the Board of Directors had been considering switching accounting firms and that the CFO had talked them out of it. The CFO had told the Board that he and the lead partner had a very good working relationship and didn’t advise changing. Now the lead partner was on the spot. A client of this size represented millions of dollars in fees and to lose it would mean personal financial loss for him. Furthermore, any reduction in the EPS could mean the loss of the CFO’s job. In that case the lead partner would lose his support and the client would go to another accounting firm to say nothing of the possibility of the lead partner being degraded. So he tells the CFO that he won’t press the issue this time but let’s not do it again.
So what happens the following year? Is it fixed? Of course, not. A young accountant points out the “inconsistency” once again but this time the lead partner tells him to keep his mouth shut. The lead partner is now inextricably involved in the company fraud. And the EPS would drop even more if the books are corrected. Now the young accountant is caught in the trap because he has financial commitments also that he cannot jeopardize. Nothing more is said about the discrepancy. The books are bogus and the shareholders are fleeced. The executives, on the other hand, are making a pile. It is outright fraud. When the annual report is published once again the following year no one says a word and the stock continues to rise. Everybody involved gets a bonus.
Now specifically how does the company continue to support the rising EPS figure? The simple answer is to “book fraudulent revenues.” You claim you made more sales than you really did. How does the company get away with this? Well, large corporations normally book income when they ship the product not when they get the cash. Many corporations wait 90 days or more for their cash. So any fraudulent sales reported goes immediately into the income statement, the net income increases and therefore the EPS increases. Then a bogus receivable is recorded on the balance sheet. But payment is never received because the sale was never made. It is difficult for any outsider to determine that some receivables are bad since the bad are included with the good. The ordinary investor looking at the financial statements at the end of the year could not possibly detect the fraud. And bogus receivables will be on the balance sheet every year in increased amounts because in some years business is bad, but the EPS has to go up. The catch is that eventually all the receivables are bad and there is no cash. Somebody knowledgeable eventually snoops around and discovers the fraud, discloses it publicly and the banks begin demanding payment on their loans. Even worse they refuse to make any further loans to carry the company over. The house of cards collapses. Enron, for example, was selling 30 year energy contracts and booking the total sale on day one. The income came in slower than the expense outgo. In addition huge Enron revenues were being drawn down to support “lousy” business deals organized into limited partnerships with the CFO, Andrew Fastow, acting as general partner. This in itself was a conflict of interest ignored by Fastow. However, he also was collecting huge management fees as the general partner and Enron was footing the bill. Enron was being milked by Fastow and this contributed to the astronomic Enron debt. Much of this money was going to members of his family and friends. Actually it was Fastow’s responsibility to keep an accounting of the debt and when asked at one point what the extent of the indebtedness was, he was unable to say. He did not know.
Another serious problem that disturbed some of the smarter people in Enron was the fact that Enron itself was often borrowing billions of dollars for short periods of time, i.e. weekly or monthly and then using the cash for long term projects. These had to be repaid long before the project produced any revenue. This could cause a liquidity crisis if a loss occurred at which time the banks might refuse any further short term loans. Enron could not stay in business without these loans. This eventually, of course, happened. It is interesting to note that the savings and loan industry toppled in the 1980’s for the very reason that it was using short term loans for long term investments. It was considered a “classic financial blunder.” And so with Enron.
Enron was able to function in the way that it did because the stock market “bubble” that produced high stock prices made it possible to use “aggressive accounting” (fraud) to push the stock prices even higher. This is done by inventing “phantom profits” which make the company grow even more and the bottom line to look even more outrageously profitable. Enron, WorldCom , Adelphia and Tyco to name just a few were in reality gigantic Ponzi pyramid schemes. They used slightly different accounting methods but in essence they were using money from new investors to pay off old investors. This was the way Fastow operated his limited partnerships. As the price of the stock rises, more investors are attracted and the capital gains to the initial investors increases hugely. Thus more investors are attracted and so on. Until eventually the seemingly successful business implodes because you’ve “run out of suckers” and cash. Enron, for example, invited their banks to invest in “the shell companies they used to hide debt and siphon off money.”
The Enron scandal did not emerge suddenly for it was building for a decade. Enron started out as a natural gas pipeline company but when deregulation came on the scene much through the efforts of Ken Lay, the CEO of Enron and a personal friend and supporter of the Bush family, the company became one that “dealt in contracts.” It became more like a Wall St. investment house and was the market maker for the deregulated natural gas industry. From there it began making markets in electricity and selling long term contracts. This, of course, lead to the California catastrophe caused by energy company market manipulation to drive prices up. One dirty trick was to pull energy companies offline to create shortages and prices went through the ceiling. Much to the anger and consternation of Californians. There are actually Enron memos that show that Enron was without question “rigging the markets” to harm the state of California. In addition there was a division in Enron that produced fraudulent profits in order to puff up its stock price. And it also devised bogus energy transactions to again puff up Enron’s profits “at the expense of the state of California”.
So what we have here was a method of operation that completely ignored ethical standards. It was an environment of callous greed and criminal behavior but also startling incompetence and shocking arrogance. The executives were inadequate and blinded by avarice. The bankers, accountants and lawyers were more interested in their huge fees than investigating the company’s questionable policies. Brokers and investors did not have a clue as to what was going on and were interested only in making huge profits. The CFO and his cronies supported by the CEO and the Board of Directors indulged in bad business practices and spent much of Enron’s huge revenues supporting them.
The end result to those involved was devastating. Arthur Anderson, the prestigious accounting firm that was signing off on fraud, went up in smoke. Thousands of innocent employees who had nothing to do with Enron lost their jobs. Andrew Fastow, the Machevellian mind behind much of the bogus business deals, has pleaded guilty to all counts and will serve 10 years in prison. His wife has already completed a year sentence. Still to be tried and sentenced are Ken Lay, the founder and CEO and Jeffrey Skilling, the replacement CEO when Lay moved on. Incidentally, shortly after Skilling appeared on the cover of BusinessWeek as the new brilliant CEO, he resigned ostensibly for “personal reasons”. Some time later he admitted that he left because the company stock had dropped 50% but denied that anything was amiss in the company. Not too long after, the company declared bankruptcy.
References:
Eichenwald, Kurt. Conspiracy of Fools. Random House. 2005.
Frey, Stephen. Shadow Account. Ballantine Books. 2004.
Krugman, Paul. The Great Unraveling. Norton. 2003.
So now the question arises, how can a “company manipulate its earnings?” For example, during the annual audit one of the young outside accountants assigned to the company discovers that the company’s internal accountants have been “booking something incorrectly”. It doesn’t “conform to generally accepted accounting procedures”. It may not appear on the surface to be a major problem but it is significant enough to put downward pressure on the earnings per share if it is corrected. The company, therefore, will not look as good to the Wall St. community and the share price will drop. This inevitably happens when the street analysts publicly downgrade the stock. The smallest decrease in earnings per share (EPS) can cause a rush to sell and the stock price drops like a stone.
Now the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) are concerned for another important reason. They own millions of dollars in options and since the stock price has been going straight up, these options are worth millions more. But if the EPS drops, the options will drop also and could possibly end up worthless. The executives have probably made financial commitments based on the future value of the options and now they are faced with losing it all and having to deal with the financial embarrassment that follows. When the lead partner of the accounting firm informs the CFO of the problem, the CFO is in shock. He had been relying on his internal accountants who in turn were relying on the outside accounting firm who told them that what they were doing was O.K. The lead partner is now saying they were wrong. Oh, my! It is at this point that the CFO involves the lead partner by telling him that the Board of Directors had been considering switching accounting firms and that the CFO had talked them out of it. The CFO had told the Board that he and the lead partner had a very good working relationship and didn’t advise changing. Now the lead partner was on the spot. A client of this size represented millions of dollars in fees and to lose it would mean personal financial loss for him. Furthermore, any reduction in the EPS could mean the loss of the CFO’s job. In that case the lead partner would lose his support and the client would go to another accounting firm to say nothing of the possibility of the lead partner being degraded. So he tells the CFO that he won’t press the issue this time but let’s not do it again.
So what happens the following year? Is it fixed? Of course, not. A young accountant points out the “inconsistency” once again but this time the lead partner tells him to keep his mouth shut. The lead partner is now inextricably involved in the company fraud. And the EPS would drop even more if the books are corrected. Now the young accountant is caught in the trap because he has financial commitments also that he cannot jeopardize. Nothing more is said about the discrepancy. The books are bogus and the shareholders are fleeced. The executives, on the other hand, are making a pile. It is outright fraud. When the annual report is published once again the following year no one says a word and the stock continues to rise. Everybody involved gets a bonus.
Now specifically how does the company continue to support the rising EPS figure? The simple answer is to “book fraudulent revenues.” You claim you made more sales than you really did. How does the company get away with this? Well, large corporations normally book income when they ship the product not when they get the cash. Many corporations wait 90 days or more for their cash. So any fraudulent sales reported goes immediately into the income statement, the net income increases and therefore the EPS increases. Then a bogus receivable is recorded on the balance sheet. But payment is never received because the sale was never made. It is difficult for any outsider to determine that some receivables are bad since the bad are included with the good. The ordinary investor looking at the financial statements at the end of the year could not possibly detect the fraud. And bogus receivables will be on the balance sheet every year in increased amounts because in some years business is bad, but the EPS has to go up. The catch is that eventually all the receivables are bad and there is no cash. Somebody knowledgeable eventually snoops around and discovers the fraud, discloses it publicly and the banks begin demanding payment on their loans. Even worse they refuse to make any further loans to carry the company over. The house of cards collapses. Enron, for example, was selling 30 year energy contracts and booking the total sale on day one. The income came in slower than the expense outgo. In addition huge Enron revenues were being drawn down to support “lousy” business deals organized into limited partnerships with the CFO, Andrew Fastow, acting as general partner. This in itself was a conflict of interest ignored by Fastow. However, he also was collecting huge management fees as the general partner and Enron was footing the bill. Enron was being milked by Fastow and this contributed to the astronomic Enron debt. Much of this money was going to members of his family and friends. Actually it was Fastow’s responsibility to keep an accounting of the debt and when asked at one point what the extent of the indebtedness was, he was unable to say. He did not know.
Another serious problem that disturbed some of the smarter people in Enron was the fact that Enron itself was often borrowing billions of dollars for short periods of time, i.e. weekly or monthly and then using the cash for long term projects. These had to be repaid long before the project produced any revenue. This could cause a liquidity crisis if a loss occurred at which time the banks might refuse any further short term loans. Enron could not stay in business without these loans. This eventually, of course, happened. It is interesting to note that the savings and loan industry toppled in the 1980’s for the very reason that it was using short term loans for long term investments. It was considered a “classic financial blunder.” And so with Enron.
Enron was able to function in the way that it did because the stock market “bubble” that produced high stock prices made it possible to use “aggressive accounting” (fraud) to push the stock prices even higher. This is done by inventing “phantom profits” which make the company grow even more and the bottom line to look even more outrageously profitable. Enron, WorldCom , Adelphia and Tyco to name just a few were in reality gigantic Ponzi pyramid schemes. They used slightly different accounting methods but in essence they were using money from new investors to pay off old investors. This was the way Fastow operated his limited partnerships. As the price of the stock rises, more investors are attracted and the capital gains to the initial investors increases hugely. Thus more investors are attracted and so on. Until eventually the seemingly successful business implodes because you’ve “run out of suckers” and cash. Enron, for example, invited their banks to invest in “the shell companies they used to hide debt and siphon off money.”
The Enron scandal did not emerge suddenly for it was building for a decade. Enron started out as a natural gas pipeline company but when deregulation came on the scene much through the efforts of Ken Lay, the CEO of Enron and a personal friend and supporter of the Bush family, the company became one that “dealt in contracts.” It became more like a Wall St. investment house and was the market maker for the deregulated natural gas industry. From there it began making markets in electricity and selling long term contracts. This, of course, lead to the California catastrophe caused by energy company market manipulation to drive prices up. One dirty trick was to pull energy companies offline to create shortages and prices went through the ceiling. Much to the anger and consternation of Californians. There are actually Enron memos that show that Enron was without question “rigging the markets” to harm the state of California. In addition there was a division in Enron that produced fraudulent profits in order to puff up its stock price. And it also devised bogus energy transactions to again puff up Enron’s profits “at the expense of the state of California”.
So what we have here was a method of operation that completely ignored ethical standards. It was an environment of callous greed and criminal behavior but also startling incompetence and shocking arrogance. The executives were inadequate and blinded by avarice. The bankers, accountants and lawyers were more interested in their huge fees than investigating the company’s questionable policies. Brokers and investors did not have a clue as to what was going on and were interested only in making huge profits. The CFO and his cronies supported by the CEO and the Board of Directors indulged in bad business practices and spent much of Enron’s huge revenues supporting them.
The end result to those involved was devastating. Arthur Anderson, the prestigious accounting firm that was signing off on fraud, went up in smoke. Thousands of innocent employees who had nothing to do with Enron lost their jobs. Andrew Fastow, the Machevellian mind behind much of the bogus business deals, has pleaded guilty to all counts and will serve 10 years in prison. His wife has already completed a year sentence. Still to be tried and sentenced are Ken Lay, the founder and CEO and Jeffrey Skilling, the replacement CEO when Lay moved on. Incidentally, shortly after Skilling appeared on the cover of BusinessWeek as the new brilliant CEO, he resigned ostensibly for “personal reasons”. Some time later he admitted that he left because the company stock had dropped 50% but denied that anything was amiss in the company. Not too long after, the company declared bankruptcy.
References:
Eichenwald, Kurt. Conspiracy of Fools. Random House. 2005.
Frey, Stephen. Shadow Account. Ballantine Books. 2004.
Krugman, Paul. The Great Unraveling. Norton. 2003.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Perpetual Reconstruction
Many of us went into a state of shock when we learned that our President had appointed Paul Wolfowitz as head of the World Bank. This was the guy who so ineptly designed the Iraqi project, i.e. the war and the reconstruction. He obviously was unfit to head up the World Bank. But was he? There were those who felt that Iraq had actually prepared him for his new job. As many of us know Wolfowitz was doing in Iraq what the World Bank had been doing in every country in the world torn by war or natural disaster, e.g. tsunami).Formerly the UN would step in after a conflict ended to provide emergency aid and re-build housing. But since Iraq and prior it was discovered that reconstruction was a lucrative business and that it was a profit making venture to attempt to ameliorate poverty through reconstruction. But why is reconstruction so inept? It is a fact that after the tsunami in Aceh 3 months later nothing had been done to re-build. It is also true that the water plants in Iraq that Bechtel had re-built at huge profit are breaking down. Foreign contractors in Afghanistan are corrupt and are wasting aid money that was provided. Unfortunately re-building is not its principle purpose. What the World Bank wants is to re-construct the society or in effect to reengineer the economy by privatizing state industry. The tsunami is a good example of the use of catastrophe to “re-shape” the society. In Sri Lanka corporate globalization is taking control of the sea coast and giving it over to foreign corporations with the help of the U.S. Marines. Condoleezza Rice back in January considered the tsunami as “a wonderful opportunity” that “has paid great dividends for us”. Using tragedy for political advantage was for some people appalling.
Linked to Wolfowitz and the World Bank is an organization created by the White House called the Office of the Coordination for Reconstruction and Stabilization and run by the former Ambassador to the Ukraine, Carlos Pascual. The purpose of this organization is to make plans for reconstruction prior to conflict. After the conflict it would be possible to handle “three full scale reconstruction operations” simultaneously for 5 to 7 years. No longer would it be necessary to wait for the conflict to end to make plans. There are 25 countries on the list for monitoring that are not yet in conflict. Pascual’s organization has teams ready to mobilize reconstruction after the conflict ends. Private companies and non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) will have prior contracts to re-build the country at a huge profit. The idea is to change the economy of the nation from a state run economy to a market-oriented one, i.e. privatization. According to Pascual re-building could mean “tearing apart the old”. One East Indian observer commented that we formerly had “vulgar colonialism” but now it is a more “sophisticated colonialism” and we call it “reconstruction”. There are more and more regions world wide now under reconstruction through the efforts of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) but the actual re-building is done by private consulting firms, engineering companies, NGO’s and other financial organizations. In 1998 16% of the World Bank loans were provided for reconstruction in “post-conflict” countries. Now this year it is up to 20-25%, an 800% increase since 1980.One company that has a so-called “public service division” reports that its profits in 2002 increased by $342 million, a 35% margin.
There are several advantages to the World Bank when dealing in post-conflict or post-catastrophe areas. The situation is usually so bad that the country will agree to any thing to improve its plight. So they do whatever the World Bank demands. They will agree to huge debt and major changes in policy. The population is without housing or food and therefore cannot effectively prevent privatization. The country is considered too unstable to manage money and therefore the World Bank puts the aid money in a trust fund to be managed by the bank. The bank allows the government a certain amount of money periodically as long as they are acting responsibly. Thus public service jobs are gradually eliminated and aid money is given to the “private foreign consultants” that government is required to hire. These people earn many times more than any public service employee, if there are any left.
Linked to this plan of reconstruction is the President and his national security advisers’ plan to control intelligence analysis and covert operations. The program will first be directed toward the control of Iran. The CIA will have less independent responsibility and will only carry out policies as dictated by Bush and Cheney. The Bush administration does not consider the Iraq operation a failure and intends to continue its attempt to “democratize”, i.e. privatize the Middle East. The re-election of Bush indicates support for his position by the American people. The neoconservatives’ agenda has been justified. Rumsfeld told his Jt. Chiefs of Staff that the American people support the Pentagon’s program and that America will remain in Iraq.
Iraq is not the only campaign. The future looks toward many more like campaigns and the next one will be Iran. Rumsfeld will be responsible for any future operations. He will expand the war on terrorism and the Pentagon will run the program. The President has authorized covert operations in the Middle East and Asian countries using secret commando groups and Special Forces. Giving Rumsfeld control over these operations also allows him to run them “off the books”. This means there will be no “legal restrictions” as there had been when the CIA was in control. CIA covert operations formerly required reporting all such activities to Congress. Now under Rumsfeld there is no necessity to report to Congress. It will be called “black reconnaissance” instead of “covert ops”. Not even the upper level military commanders will be told.
Already the administration since last summer has conducted secret reconnaissance missions in Iran. They are collecting intelligence on “nuclear, chemical and missile sites”. The purpose is to identify at least 3 dozen sites that we might destroy by bombing strikes or commando raids. The neocon civilians in the Pentagon would like to destroy as much of Iran’s military installations as possible by actually invading the country. The civilians do not believe that diplomatic negotiations will prove effective and that Iran will only respond to the threat of military action. Haven’t we heard this before? However in the event that we attacked we would not know when or how a counter-attack might occur. They do have long-range missiles. Also once having been attacked they would certainly repudiate the Non-Proliferation Treaty and future inspections would halt. Thus the treaty would become a dead issue world-wide.
On the one hand, the President as usual is dissembling by talking diplomacy as the road to nuclear disarmament in Iran, while the Pentagon insists that negotiations will not achieve that goal. They want to attack Iran in some limited way in the hope that the religious leadership will fall. Within Iran there is a conflict between the secular leaders and the religious fundamentalists, i.e. the mullahs. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz believe that if the mullahs are severely weakened the regime will topple. This is slightly reminiscent of their prediction that Iraq would fall after two weeks of fighting. On the other hand there are those who maintain that attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities will not produce a “popular uprising” because these sites are extremely popular with both the secular and religious population. It is essential to their desire to be a modern technological nation. One observer believes that such an attack will produce a “backlash” against America and strengthen the present rulers.
Rumsfeld has worked 2 years to convince the President that military commandos be used for covert operations. The President finally conceded that the Pentagon should have control over the CIA’s para-military units that have been operating covertly around the world for many years. Furthermore, two former CIA covert officers announced recently that the Pentagon had been finally permitted to act in certain countries where there was a terrorist threat. One former CIA operative does not believe that the military can handle this type of assignment. To be successful requires “finesse and sensibility’, which the military lacks. The CIA was much better equipped for this role. Even the special operations officers aren’t sure about its success. Furthermore, Congress isn’t being told much about these plans, and there are serious legal questions regarding not informing Congress about covert operations. Congress has always been concerned about the military getting us into trouble politically when they were not informed beforehand.
Under the new Rumsfeld rules the Special Forces will go into action in certain countries looking for terrorist organizations. It is mindful of the “right wing execution squads” of El Salvador. We organized and financed them. They were roving gangs that murdered and tortured members of anti-American populist groups. We want to repeat this kind of operation but we are not going to tell Congress. The point of this kind of activity is to eliminate so-called terrorist groups and once having done so seize control of the government by putting down any possibility of a populist uprising. We are doing it to some degree in Afghanistan, we are doing it more successfully in Haiti and we are still trying to do it in Iraq, but not so successfully.
It is Rumsfeld’s intention to maintain the efficiency of Pentagon intelligence and devitalize the CIA on the basis that the CIA did not provide useful intelligence in the Middle East. Human intelligence on the ground was severely lacking in the CIA, at least so the Pentagon claimed. In addition the White House put pressure on certain CIA analysts to support the political position of the Administration. A political purge of the Directorate of Intelligence (CIA) took place after Tenet left. A number of senior analysts quietly resigned who were at loggerheads with the Administration. Rumsfeld under a new reform bill passed by Congress will be able to end-run around the CIA and will not have to refer anything through government intelligence. He does not have to tell anyone what he is doing.
References:
Hersh, Seymour. The Coming Wars. New Yorker. Jan. 19, 2005.
Klein, Naomi. The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. The Nation. April 19, 2005
Linked to Wolfowitz and the World Bank is an organization created by the White House called the Office of the Coordination for Reconstruction and Stabilization and run by the former Ambassador to the Ukraine, Carlos Pascual. The purpose of this organization is to make plans for reconstruction prior to conflict. After the conflict it would be possible to handle “three full scale reconstruction operations” simultaneously for 5 to 7 years. No longer would it be necessary to wait for the conflict to end to make plans. There are 25 countries on the list for monitoring that are not yet in conflict. Pascual’s organization has teams ready to mobilize reconstruction after the conflict ends. Private companies and non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) will have prior contracts to re-build the country at a huge profit. The idea is to change the economy of the nation from a state run economy to a market-oriented one, i.e. privatization. According to Pascual re-building could mean “tearing apart the old”. One East Indian observer commented that we formerly had “vulgar colonialism” but now it is a more “sophisticated colonialism” and we call it “reconstruction”. There are more and more regions world wide now under reconstruction through the efforts of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) but the actual re-building is done by private consulting firms, engineering companies, NGO’s and other financial organizations. In 1998 16% of the World Bank loans were provided for reconstruction in “post-conflict” countries. Now this year it is up to 20-25%, an 800% increase since 1980.One company that has a so-called “public service division” reports that its profits in 2002 increased by $342 million, a 35% margin.
There are several advantages to the World Bank when dealing in post-conflict or post-catastrophe areas. The situation is usually so bad that the country will agree to any thing to improve its plight. So they do whatever the World Bank demands. They will agree to huge debt and major changes in policy. The population is without housing or food and therefore cannot effectively prevent privatization. The country is considered too unstable to manage money and therefore the World Bank puts the aid money in a trust fund to be managed by the bank. The bank allows the government a certain amount of money periodically as long as they are acting responsibly. Thus public service jobs are gradually eliminated and aid money is given to the “private foreign consultants” that government is required to hire. These people earn many times more than any public service employee, if there are any left.
Linked to this plan of reconstruction is the President and his national security advisers’ plan to control intelligence analysis and covert operations. The program will first be directed toward the control of Iran. The CIA will have less independent responsibility and will only carry out policies as dictated by Bush and Cheney. The Bush administration does not consider the Iraq operation a failure and intends to continue its attempt to “democratize”, i.e. privatize the Middle East. The re-election of Bush indicates support for his position by the American people. The neoconservatives’ agenda has been justified. Rumsfeld told his Jt. Chiefs of Staff that the American people support the Pentagon’s program and that America will remain in Iraq.
Iraq is not the only campaign. The future looks toward many more like campaigns and the next one will be Iran. Rumsfeld will be responsible for any future operations. He will expand the war on terrorism and the Pentagon will run the program. The President has authorized covert operations in the Middle East and Asian countries using secret commando groups and Special Forces. Giving Rumsfeld control over these operations also allows him to run them “off the books”. This means there will be no “legal restrictions” as there had been when the CIA was in control. CIA covert operations formerly required reporting all such activities to Congress. Now under Rumsfeld there is no necessity to report to Congress. It will be called “black reconnaissance” instead of “covert ops”. Not even the upper level military commanders will be told.
Already the administration since last summer has conducted secret reconnaissance missions in Iran. They are collecting intelligence on “nuclear, chemical and missile sites”. The purpose is to identify at least 3 dozen sites that we might destroy by bombing strikes or commando raids. The neocon civilians in the Pentagon would like to destroy as much of Iran’s military installations as possible by actually invading the country. The civilians do not believe that diplomatic negotiations will prove effective and that Iran will only respond to the threat of military action. Haven’t we heard this before? However in the event that we attacked we would not know when or how a counter-attack might occur. They do have long-range missiles. Also once having been attacked they would certainly repudiate the Non-Proliferation Treaty and future inspections would halt. Thus the treaty would become a dead issue world-wide.
On the one hand, the President as usual is dissembling by talking diplomacy as the road to nuclear disarmament in Iran, while the Pentagon insists that negotiations will not achieve that goal. They want to attack Iran in some limited way in the hope that the religious leadership will fall. Within Iran there is a conflict between the secular leaders and the religious fundamentalists, i.e. the mullahs. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz believe that if the mullahs are severely weakened the regime will topple. This is slightly reminiscent of their prediction that Iraq would fall after two weeks of fighting. On the other hand there are those who maintain that attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities will not produce a “popular uprising” because these sites are extremely popular with both the secular and religious population. It is essential to their desire to be a modern technological nation. One observer believes that such an attack will produce a “backlash” against America and strengthen the present rulers.
Rumsfeld has worked 2 years to convince the President that military commandos be used for covert operations. The President finally conceded that the Pentagon should have control over the CIA’s para-military units that have been operating covertly around the world for many years. Furthermore, two former CIA covert officers announced recently that the Pentagon had been finally permitted to act in certain countries where there was a terrorist threat. One former CIA operative does not believe that the military can handle this type of assignment. To be successful requires “finesse and sensibility’, which the military lacks. The CIA was much better equipped for this role. Even the special operations officers aren’t sure about its success. Furthermore, Congress isn’t being told much about these plans, and there are serious legal questions regarding not informing Congress about covert operations. Congress has always been concerned about the military getting us into trouble politically when they were not informed beforehand.
Under the new Rumsfeld rules the Special Forces will go into action in certain countries looking for terrorist organizations. It is mindful of the “right wing execution squads” of El Salvador. We organized and financed them. They were roving gangs that murdered and tortured members of anti-American populist groups. We want to repeat this kind of operation but we are not going to tell Congress. The point of this kind of activity is to eliminate so-called terrorist groups and once having done so seize control of the government by putting down any possibility of a populist uprising. We are doing it to some degree in Afghanistan, we are doing it more successfully in Haiti and we are still trying to do it in Iraq, but not so successfully.
It is Rumsfeld’s intention to maintain the efficiency of Pentagon intelligence and devitalize the CIA on the basis that the CIA did not provide useful intelligence in the Middle East. Human intelligence on the ground was severely lacking in the CIA, at least so the Pentagon claimed. In addition the White House put pressure on certain CIA analysts to support the political position of the Administration. A political purge of the Directorate of Intelligence (CIA) took place after Tenet left. A number of senior analysts quietly resigned who were at loggerheads with the Administration. Rumsfeld under a new reform bill passed by Congress will be able to end-run around the CIA and will not have to refer anything through government intelligence. He does not have to tell anyone what he is doing.
References:
Hersh, Seymour. The Coming Wars. New Yorker. Jan. 19, 2005.
Klein, Naomi. The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. The Nation. April 19, 2005
The New Imperial Age
Journalists today are writing tomes about the American Empire. In fact the Bush administration policies seem clearly to be moving relentlessly in the direction of a global empire. And serious journalists are writing columns and books in support of those policies. For example, Thomas Friedman, who is the N.Y. Times correspondent for the State Dept. has stated that “the U.S. had to make clear to Iraq and the U.S. allies that…America will use force without negotiation, hesitation or U.N. approval. And further he has written that “the hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist.” Major corporations cannot profit globally without the safety of the U.S. military. Corporate globalization and the free market economy as applied to the third world countries, as Arundhati Roy, India’s dissident political essayist has stated, is “the perfect vehicle for endless expansion of American Imperialism.”
Friedman, although a three- time winner of the Pulitzer prize for journalism, is considered by some critics as a “blowhard”. Nevertheless, he does have the ear of the administration and he believes that Iraq will not be controlled without a strong leader with an iron fist and the presence of a strong military force. He believed that the invasion of Iraq was the correct policy to depose Saddam but he tended to ignore the administration lies about WMD and the supposed Iraqi connection to Al Qaeda. Of course, Saddam used the iron fist to prevent chaos, but he was no longer “our guy”. We could not control him. And we require obedience from third world leaders.
In any case, there has been developing for some time a new world government that answers to the needs and is controlled by “an international corporate ruling class”. It is an actual world government based on international trade agreements, viz. NAFTA and GATT. And these agreements are linked to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The purpose is “to centralize power in a world economic system” and to make sure that the world’s population plays no role in decision making. The planning of policy is raised to such a level that the ordinary citizen has no idea what decisions are being made and if he did would not be able to understand or influence them in anyway. In short, a country could have all the democracy it wanted, but if the people have no say in the decision making, they are no threat to the corporate elite. Clearly that is a democracy that is not real because in that system the press only pretends to be free and the criminal justice system only pretends to administer justice. The reality is a corrupt government that uses a paramilitary force to suppress populist uprisings.
In the last decade what has corporate globalization produced? The total income of the world has increased by 2.5% annually. That’s the good news but the bad news is that at the same time the total poor in the world has increased by 100 million. And the “War Against Terror” is playing the role of increasing the disparity. Corporate globalization and widespread privatization is forcing people off their land and increasing joblessness. As the poor get poorer popular unrest spreads throughout the third world. In order to control extensive dissent these movements are tagged as “terrorists” and are suppressed by brutal paramilitary forces financed by the power elite, viz. the U.S. and the huge trans- national corporations. It is in this way that democracy to the extent that it exists at all is totally subverted.
Now what does the World Bank and the IMF offer third world countries in distress that in the end destroys their economy and hands over their national resources to the mega-corporations of the world? The philosophy of the IMF World Bank is based in what has come to be known as neo-liberalism. This political economic framework is founded on a free market that promotes and supports private enterprise, prizes entrepreneurial aptitude
and discourages bureaucratic government through widespread economic deregulation. In the end private investors control the economic and social life of a country in order to achieve maximum profit.
So let’s look at the African country of Tanzania to see how the IMF World Bank puts into practice the neo-liberal policies. Tanzania today is on the verge of losing 1.3 million people to AIDS. There is no money to treat this dying population despite IMF control for the last 15 years. In order for a third world country to get a loan the World Bank requires the country to meet certain requirements. According to Greg Palast, the first requirement placed on Tanzania was to charge for hospital appointments that were formerly free. As a result, the number of patients treated in three major hospitals dropped by 53%. Next it required that the schools charge attendance fees and the attendance thus dropped from 80% to 66%. So far so good, is the situation improving? Then the IMF World Bank required a total of 157 additional changes and Tanzania had no option but to accept, otherwise no loan. This took place in 1985 when the country was suffering under a socialist regime characterized by deep poverty and disease. So then the IMF went on to reduce trade barriers, cut subsidies and sell the nationalized industries. The net result after 15 years was a GDP (Gross Domestic Product) that dropped from $309 to $210 per capita, poverty rose to 51% of the total population and literacy decreased. According to Greg Palast, the World Bank did not understand why it failed. After so many years of Socialism the population still felt that the state should provide social services.
The West assured the third world countries that through the efforts of the IMF they would enjoy unparalleled prosperity. In many cases Globalization and the free market has instead increased the number of poor. Colonial independence rather than improving the plight of the African has, as Joseph Stiglitz, the former chief economist of the World Bank, points out, plunged the continent “deeper into misery” as incomes fell to less than a dollar a day. In those countries which were converting from communism to a market economy, the latter proved considerably worse than was predicted. Stiglitz compares Russia to China in 1990 when China’s GDP was 60% of Russia’s and by 2000 that number had reversed. China’s poverty had decreased while Russia’s had increased. And China’s economy was not controlled by any international institution as was Russia’s.
Again hypocrisy plays a big role in the application of the free market economy. The West insists that the third world drop its trade barriers while the West refuses to drop theirs. Thus the poor countries cannot export their agricultural products and are therefore robbed of their export income necessary to their survival. The U.S. was primarily guilty of this disgraceful offense. This obtuse policy was also costly to the American consumer in higher prices and to the taxpayer who was paying for expensive agricultural subsidies. The latter made it impossible for the poor countries to compete. It was impossible to change this policy because the power elite had control. The West obviously gains most of the benefits from globalization. In addition the “terms of trade” decided on in the trade agreement of 1995 resulted in lowering prices the poorest countries received in relation to “what they paid for their imports.” This in effect made the poorer countries poorer.
The World Bank offers every poor country that comes with a begging bowl in hand a document called “a restructuring agreement”. A careful analysis is supposedly done of the economic problems of the country and then a plan is designed to deal with them. The issue is that the plan as outlined is all smoke and mirrors because the investigators rarely leave their hotel to interact with the people. It helps to understand poverty when you re forced to face it in close proximity. As a result, the major weakness in the World Bank plan is that the same plan is handed out to every finance minister who appears at the door begging for aid.
It is usually a four-step program as described by Palast and Stiglitz. The first step is privatization. This means that the leaders of the country are forced to sell off their nationalized industries, e.g. water and electricity to foreign investors mainly the U.S. corporations at discount prices. In essence corrupt national leaders are bribed into selling at less then the value of the industry for a piece of the pie. Often a 10% commission went directly into a Swiss bank account. The worst case occurred in Russia where “industrial assets” were sold at a price that reduced domestic production by one half. The final result was a severe economic depression and starvation.
The second step is called Capital Market Liberalization. The deregulation of the capital market laws allows money to flow in and out of a country freely without taxation. The problem, however, was in certain countries capital just kept flowing out, e.g. Brazil. According to Stiglitz, this is “hot money” that enters the country for speculation in real estate or currency. Then if there is trouble that will jeopardize the funds, it immediately is pulled out. The reserves of a country can under these conditions be totally depleted. So then the IMF in order to attract that capital back into the country requires that the nation raise interest rates astronomically, viz. anywhere from 30% to as high as 80%. In Latin-America, for example, the higher rates destroyed property values, savagely reduced industrial production and emptied the national treasuries. Same problem occurred in Asia.
The third step is also disastrous. It is called Market Based Pricing which is simply raising the prices on necessary commodities, viz. food, water and domestic gas. This, of course, leads to the “IMF riot”, according to Stiglitz. The situation becomes so painful to the people of the country that a major blowup occurs. In every country where this was done riots were so intense that the paramilitary forces were called in to quell the uprising. And they are well known for their brutality. This happened in Indonesia, Bolivia and Ecuador to name just three. The riot caused capital to flee and widespread bankruptcies to occur. Then it is possible for foreign investors to step in and buy the national assets for pennies on the dollar. It would almost appear that the riots were written into the plan for this very reason. At this point the IMF steps in and raises tens of billions of dollars to save the financiers and the Western banks that are holding loans. This “churning” of capital is profitable for the Western banks and the U.S. Treasury, the latter owning 51% of the IMF.
The last step is called “poverty reduction” strategy, or free trade. Free trade according to the World Bank is reducing barriers to trade in the third world and at the same time blocking trade from the third world, e.g. agriculture.
The World Bank plans are designed in secrecy by a group of technocrats who are employed in essence by the huge international corporations. The plans are evolved by employees “insulated” from the public. The policies are developed undemocratically and are not open to discussion by outsiders. It is essentially an autocracy driven by a neo-liberal ideology for purposes of deriving maximum profit. There is much talk about free elections and democracy but the programs themselves destroy democracy. And even worse, as Stiglitz says, they don’t work.
References:
Chomsky, Noam . Profit Over People. Seven Stories Press, 1999
Chomsky, Noam . Understanding Power. New Press, 2002
Palast, Greg. The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Penguin, 2003
Roy, Arundhati. War Talk. South End Press, 2003
Stiglitz, Joseph. Globalization and Its Discontents. Norton, 2003
Friedman, although a three- time winner of the Pulitzer prize for journalism, is considered by some critics as a “blowhard”. Nevertheless, he does have the ear of the administration and he believes that Iraq will not be controlled without a strong leader with an iron fist and the presence of a strong military force. He believed that the invasion of Iraq was the correct policy to depose Saddam but he tended to ignore the administration lies about WMD and the supposed Iraqi connection to Al Qaeda. Of course, Saddam used the iron fist to prevent chaos, but he was no longer “our guy”. We could not control him. And we require obedience from third world leaders.
In any case, there has been developing for some time a new world government that answers to the needs and is controlled by “an international corporate ruling class”. It is an actual world government based on international trade agreements, viz. NAFTA and GATT. And these agreements are linked to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The purpose is “to centralize power in a world economic system” and to make sure that the world’s population plays no role in decision making. The planning of policy is raised to such a level that the ordinary citizen has no idea what decisions are being made and if he did would not be able to understand or influence them in anyway. In short, a country could have all the democracy it wanted, but if the people have no say in the decision making, they are no threat to the corporate elite. Clearly that is a democracy that is not real because in that system the press only pretends to be free and the criminal justice system only pretends to administer justice. The reality is a corrupt government that uses a paramilitary force to suppress populist uprisings.
In the last decade what has corporate globalization produced? The total income of the world has increased by 2.5% annually. That’s the good news but the bad news is that at the same time the total poor in the world has increased by 100 million. And the “War Against Terror” is playing the role of increasing the disparity. Corporate globalization and widespread privatization is forcing people off their land and increasing joblessness. As the poor get poorer popular unrest spreads throughout the third world. In order to control extensive dissent these movements are tagged as “terrorists” and are suppressed by brutal paramilitary forces financed by the power elite, viz. the U.S. and the huge trans- national corporations. It is in this way that democracy to the extent that it exists at all is totally subverted.
Now what does the World Bank and the IMF offer third world countries in distress that in the end destroys their economy and hands over their national resources to the mega-corporations of the world? The philosophy of the IMF World Bank is based in what has come to be known as neo-liberalism. This political economic framework is founded on a free market that promotes and supports private enterprise, prizes entrepreneurial aptitude
and discourages bureaucratic government through widespread economic deregulation. In the end private investors control the economic and social life of a country in order to achieve maximum profit.
So let’s look at the African country of Tanzania to see how the IMF World Bank puts into practice the neo-liberal policies. Tanzania today is on the verge of losing 1.3 million people to AIDS. There is no money to treat this dying population despite IMF control for the last 15 years. In order for a third world country to get a loan the World Bank requires the country to meet certain requirements. According to Greg Palast, the first requirement placed on Tanzania was to charge for hospital appointments that were formerly free. As a result, the number of patients treated in three major hospitals dropped by 53%. Next it required that the schools charge attendance fees and the attendance thus dropped from 80% to 66%. So far so good, is the situation improving? Then the IMF World Bank required a total of 157 additional changes and Tanzania had no option but to accept, otherwise no loan. This took place in 1985 when the country was suffering under a socialist regime characterized by deep poverty and disease. So then the IMF went on to reduce trade barriers, cut subsidies and sell the nationalized industries. The net result after 15 years was a GDP (Gross Domestic Product) that dropped from $309 to $210 per capita, poverty rose to 51% of the total population and literacy decreased. According to Greg Palast, the World Bank did not understand why it failed. After so many years of Socialism the population still felt that the state should provide social services.
The West assured the third world countries that through the efforts of the IMF they would enjoy unparalleled prosperity. In many cases Globalization and the free market has instead increased the number of poor. Colonial independence rather than improving the plight of the African has, as Joseph Stiglitz, the former chief economist of the World Bank, points out, plunged the continent “deeper into misery” as incomes fell to less than a dollar a day. In those countries which were converting from communism to a market economy, the latter proved considerably worse than was predicted. Stiglitz compares Russia to China in 1990 when China’s GDP was 60% of Russia’s and by 2000 that number had reversed. China’s poverty had decreased while Russia’s had increased. And China’s economy was not controlled by any international institution as was Russia’s.
Again hypocrisy plays a big role in the application of the free market economy. The West insists that the third world drop its trade barriers while the West refuses to drop theirs. Thus the poor countries cannot export their agricultural products and are therefore robbed of their export income necessary to their survival. The U.S. was primarily guilty of this disgraceful offense. This obtuse policy was also costly to the American consumer in higher prices and to the taxpayer who was paying for expensive agricultural subsidies. The latter made it impossible for the poor countries to compete. It was impossible to change this policy because the power elite had control. The West obviously gains most of the benefits from globalization. In addition the “terms of trade” decided on in the trade agreement of 1995 resulted in lowering prices the poorest countries received in relation to “what they paid for their imports.” This in effect made the poorer countries poorer.
The World Bank offers every poor country that comes with a begging bowl in hand a document called “a restructuring agreement”. A careful analysis is supposedly done of the economic problems of the country and then a plan is designed to deal with them. The issue is that the plan as outlined is all smoke and mirrors because the investigators rarely leave their hotel to interact with the people. It helps to understand poverty when you re forced to face it in close proximity. As a result, the major weakness in the World Bank plan is that the same plan is handed out to every finance minister who appears at the door begging for aid.
It is usually a four-step program as described by Palast and Stiglitz. The first step is privatization. This means that the leaders of the country are forced to sell off their nationalized industries, e.g. water and electricity to foreign investors mainly the U.S. corporations at discount prices. In essence corrupt national leaders are bribed into selling at less then the value of the industry for a piece of the pie. Often a 10% commission went directly into a Swiss bank account. The worst case occurred in Russia where “industrial assets” were sold at a price that reduced domestic production by one half. The final result was a severe economic depression and starvation.
The second step is called Capital Market Liberalization. The deregulation of the capital market laws allows money to flow in and out of a country freely without taxation. The problem, however, was in certain countries capital just kept flowing out, e.g. Brazil. According to Stiglitz, this is “hot money” that enters the country for speculation in real estate or currency. Then if there is trouble that will jeopardize the funds, it immediately is pulled out. The reserves of a country can under these conditions be totally depleted. So then the IMF in order to attract that capital back into the country requires that the nation raise interest rates astronomically, viz. anywhere from 30% to as high as 80%. In Latin-America, for example, the higher rates destroyed property values, savagely reduced industrial production and emptied the national treasuries. Same problem occurred in Asia.
The third step is also disastrous. It is called Market Based Pricing which is simply raising the prices on necessary commodities, viz. food, water and domestic gas. This, of course, leads to the “IMF riot”, according to Stiglitz. The situation becomes so painful to the people of the country that a major blowup occurs. In every country where this was done riots were so intense that the paramilitary forces were called in to quell the uprising. And they are well known for their brutality. This happened in Indonesia, Bolivia and Ecuador to name just three. The riot caused capital to flee and widespread bankruptcies to occur. Then it is possible for foreign investors to step in and buy the national assets for pennies on the dollar. It would almost appear that the riots were written into the plan for this very reason. At this point the IMF steps in and raises tens of billions of dollars to save the financiers and the Western banks that are holding loans. This “churning” of capital is profitable for the Western banks and the U.S. Treasury, the latter owning 51% of the IMF.
The last step is called “poverty reduction” strategy, or free trade. Free trade according to the World Bank is reducing barriers to trade in the third world and at the same time blocking trade from the third world, e.g. agriculture.
The World Bank plans are designed in secrecy by a group of technocrats who are employed in essence by the huge international corporations. The plans are evolved by employees “insulated” from the public. The policies are developed undemocratically and are not open to discussion by outsiders. It is essentially an autocracy driven by a neo-liberal ideology for purposes of deriving maximum profit. There is much talk about free elections and democracy but the programs themselves destroy democracy. And even worse, as Stiglitz says, they don’t work.
References:
Chomsky, Noam . Profit Over People. Seven Stories Press, 1999
Chomsky, Noam . Understanding Power. New Press, 2002
Palast, Greg. The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Penguin, 2003
Roy, Arundhati. War Talk. South End Press, 2003
Stiglitz, Joseph. Globalization and Its Discontents. Norton, 2003
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I have an interest in contemporary politics and history. I'm interested in all the intricate and various policies of governments and how they affect ordinary people from all over the world.
From time to time I put my thoughts about things that I've read or studied into an essay which I hope to share with you. I hope you will share your ideas with me too.
You might want to look periodically for updates and new additions.
Thank you for visiting!
El Gato
From time to time I put my thoughts about things that I've read or studied into an essay which I hope to share with you. I hope you will share your ideas with me too.
You might want to look periodically for updates and new additions.
Thank you for visiting!
El Gato
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