El Gato - Reflections on the World

The Nightmare

2011-10-23T11:38:00.000-07:00

Over the years in an attempt to bring about some degree of social justice the Federal Government through Congress has funded a number of social welfare programs that millions of moderate and low income families depend on. For example, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and Pell Grants are designed to assist the elderly, the sick, the disabled , the health of 24 million children and the education of the needy.

For the domestic programs the Federal Government gets high marks. But when historically we consider our foreign policy over the years the Feds failed miserably.

Beginning with the Russian Revolution in 1917 we have had a foreign policy directed toward destroying Bolshevism either militarily or politically. Our military budget and our political action was directed to that end for 74 years . To the capitalists of the world the successful Bolshevik revolution was a fearful nightmare. Here was an alternative option to plutocracy that might spread widely. Oh, my! So in 1918 with the paranoid backing of the capitalist power brokers the U.S. along with Britain, France and Japan militarily invaded Russia intending to overthrow the Bolshevik government. The U.S. and Britain also gave financial aid to the right-wing anti-Bolshevik White Russian armies. Herbert Hoover, who was Chairman of the American Relief Administration used humanitarian fund intended for starving civilians to supply the White Russian armies.

The U.S. Sent 40,000 troops plus naval vessels as part of the allied invasion causing many military and civilian casualties . It was a total waste of blood and money. Most American are not aware that we participated in this failure, not even Ronald Reagan who wrongly stated publicly in 1984 and directed his remarks to the Soviet Union that “our sons and daughters have never fought each other in war.”

Another reason for the invasion was, of course, the vast natural resources located in Russia. The Western Corporate investors hoped to invest in the natural wealth of the country before it was nationalized by the Bolsheviks. The corporate capitalists followed the armies and intended to pull out oil, coal, timber, ore and gold for use in the West.

Historically what is significant about this period is that although the invasion of Russia was a “hot war” in reality it was the beginning of the “cold war.” The “cold war” was based not on a fear of Russia attacking us but rather the corporatists fear of communism. After World War II the cold war as we know it kicked into high gear. At that time there was much talk about engaging the Soviet Union in war. But it became obvious after WWII when Field Marshall Montgomery paid a visit to the Soviet Union, he reported to Eisenhower that the Russians were in “no fit state to go to war.” They had lost 22 million citizens while at the same time cities, railways and industries were destroyed. Even our own military advisers admitted that the Soviets were not preparing for war. Yet the specter of a Russian attack was used all during the cold war to support a constant military buildup in the U.S. Today we understand the power of the military-industrial complex that produced endless weaponry and huge profits for the U.S. weapons manufacturers. Money that could have been well spent in other areas.

Poverty in the world frightens the world's capitalists because eventually people suffering in an unstable economy may rise up, smote the wealthy and drive them from their land. Free market globalization was introduced by the transnational corporations to deal with this problem. But as we have shown in previous blogs, it wasn't free nor was it a market and it only increased poverty. And remember the fear of communism in SE Asia made the Viet Nam war a reality based on lies and was a total waste.

Now returning to the 1920's during the rise of Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany, there was continual conflict between Western Capitalism and Soviet Communism. On the other hand, the corporate capitalists were extremely tolerant and approving of the Fascist countries in Europe.

Hitler and Mussolini supplied troops and weapons to Franco in Spain to crush the Republic. The Western Allies and the U.S imposed an embargo against the democratic Republic and supplied fuel to Franco's army.

The Western plutocracy did not look upon Fascism with the same fear as Communism. In fact they hoped that Germany would move against the Soviet Union. After all the Fascists were not a threat to business. Both Nazism and Italian Fascism had destroyed the labor unions and made business more profitable. Privatization increased in both countries. The power brokers of the West recognized that Nazism had destroyed the Communist movement in Germany and in the occupied portions of Europe. Fascism in Italy did the same in that country.

After WWII the cold war antagonisms continued for 50 additional years backed by the dread of Communism. The continued production of weaponry on both sides finally bankrupted the Soviet Union In effect Western plutocracy won the “war” but in the process traded off Bolshevism for the Russian mafia spreading thuggery, violence and drugs throughout Europe and the U.S.

We are now coming full circle with uprisings in the Middle East and with the “Occupy Wall Street: We are the 99%”. Poverty in the world has become a crushing burden, and people are no longer silent. The nightmare of the corporate capitalists continues.

Former President Eisenhower has often been quoted as warning the American public to be aware of the "military-industrial complex". But actually the original phrase that he used was the “military-industrial-congressional complex.”

Recently an observer from another source pointed out that wars occur today because:

“we invent enemies to buy the bombs.”

References:

Common Dreams
M.Parenti
B. Sanders
Wikipedia

The Return of the Invertebrates

2011-09-01T08:35:00.000-07:00

Turn over a rock and here they come crawling down main street.

Who are they ?

Why its Rick Perry, the Governor of Texas, who is also the latest candidate for President, followed by his Pentecostal gang known as the “New Apostolic Reformation.” (NAR) These new prophets, who have a direct link to God, are planning slyly to insinuate their control over the Federal Government and intend to use Rick Perry as their entree. Their plan is to take dominion over all aspects of society, i.e. education, business, government, politics, media, arts and entertainment. This means that Christians have a “god-given right” to rule autocratically all American cultural, political and economic institutions. Another name for the NAR is Dominionism. So beware of Dominionism! It is a new theocracy and it is based on Christian fundamentalism. It is the radical right wing effort to control and direct the Republican Party. And Rick Perry is deeply linked to this brand of Evangelical theocracy. The state of Texas is considered “The Prophet State” and has been chosen by God to lead the country back to Godliness with Rick Perry as the Commander.

The adherents of the NAR have some very odd and eccentric beliefs. There is a woman named Cindy Jacobs, who is a “respected prophet” and a neo-Pentecostal leader. She believes that the repeal of “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” caused thousands of birds to fall out of the sky in Arkansas. C. Peter Wagner, one of the founders of the NAR, believes that the demonization of Japan is occurring because the Sun Goddess visits the Emperor for sexual intercourse. As a result, the Japanese stock market has plunged and has not recovered. Mike Bickle, another Pentecostal minister, teaches from the pulpit that Oprah is an anti-Christ. She is the forerunner of the Harlot of Babylon, he maintains. She is, therefore, evil and deceitful. Or how about this one? The Statue of Liberty is a demonic idol.

These bizarre beliefs were expressed at a prayer meeting Gov. Perry held in Houston, Texas. He was present and has not disavowed this lunacy. In fact, the day of the event he announced his intention to run as a candidate for President. There is no question that Perry openly seeks the support of pastors who believe in Dominionism. As one Evangelical minister has said, “Christians have an obligation to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ, to have dominion over every aspect of life”. “It is dominion we are after”, he said. In short, these looney- tunes are seeking “World Conquest”. Sounds like Christian Imperialism. Can you believe these ding-a-lings?

Now we are going to hear a great deal about the jobs miracle that Perry was able to bring off in the state of Texas. Well, the job miracle is a myth. Texas is fortunate to have some very valuable natural resources, i.e. gas and oil that is the basis for a very profitable industry. When prices rose, the industry increased production and hired new workers. Perry's magic had nothing to do with the increased jobs in the oil industry. It was beyond his control. The remainder of the job miracle is actually minimum wage jobs with no benefits. In fact Texas has highest number of minimum wage jobs in the country except for Mississippi.

As Molly Ivins once said in reference to the office of governor:

“In Texas we do not hold high expectations for the office. It has mostly been occupied by crooks, dorks and the comatose."

References:

Rachel Maddow
Daily Beast
Huffington Post
Wikipedia

Beware of the Bachmann

2011-08-14T09:23:00.000-07:00

Well, folks, I think we can forget about Sara Palin as a presidential candidate. She had a screening of her documentary film and no one showed up. Lewis Black's comment was that he had never thought of her as a real person but he saw her really as just an “ hallucination.”

However, Michelle Bachmann is another story. She may be a loony tune but she is actually a psychopath. Or to state it another way, she is ill. She is suffering from an anti-social personality disorder. These are people who are smart and personable but have no conscience. The government and the corporations are full of them . The have no sense of right and wrong. They are not bothered by the distress of the poor or unemployed. They have no “guilt or shame”. They just don't care. Cutting entitlements does not disturb their sleep because they have no self-doubt. In the case of Michelle Bachmann who is a religious fanatic, God speaks to her and divines her political program. If she is really listening to God, God must be getting it wrong because Bachmann in real life is a pathological liar and is totally uniformed about American history. She is a genetic con artist. It's her nature. She can't help it.

She recently repeated her mantra of too much government spending, but her record shows that both she and her husband have helped themselves to government subsidies shamelessly whenever possible. For example, while ranting against government spending she had 23 foster children, for whom she received a sizable amount for each child from the state. In addition, according to public records, she petitioned the government 16 times for financial aid, much of which would come out of Obama's stimulus package. She had nothing but contempt publicly for the President's economic package. She called the program “fantasy economics”.

The president's package included aid for the states, infrastructure upgrades, health care and education improvements . Bachmann led the attack against these policies.

In 2007, she petitioned the EPA to fund technical assistance and rural water programs in Minnesota. Publicly, she attacked the EPA as a “job-killing agency” and said that if she were president she would eliminate the agency. She wrote at least a dozen times to the Transportation Secretary LaHood asking for federal funds to support replacement of buses and road improvement. She petitioned the Agricultural Secretary Vilsak for funds to support a large industrial complex that would provide jobs in a rural community.

The woman is a world class hypocrite, a mass of contradictions and just a little bit crazy. Unfortunately, she has quite a following in the middle west among the Tea party gang.

She and her husband attended a very strange law school devoted to the teaching of law from the “biblical world view”. It was a segment of the Oral Roberts University, where “60% of the graduates flunked the bar.” One of Bachmann's mentors was a frequent contributor to the John Birch Society rags. Bachmann herself is a strong supporter of the “Left Behind” bunch. She claims that they have been an inspiration for her political ideology and career. I must say that the lunacy is overwhelming. I have to shake my head to make sure that I am not hallucinating.

As George Carlin once said:

I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older, then it dawned on me – they are cramming for their final exam.

References:

Huffington Post – Politics
David Schwartz – Common Dreams
Matt Taibbi – Rolling Stone

Breaking News:

Michelle Bachmann was interviewed by the New Yorker Magazine where she states that the problem is not the economy: it's the Renaissance. Because it did away with the god-fearing Dark Ages. Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo have “dragged us all down.”

Can Michelle be real?

Religion, Politics and Sex

2011-05-30T15:57:00.000-07:00

I have a question: Why is it that the religious left gets so little exposure in the main stream media?

Could it be that progressives are opposed to war , military spending and support social justice? Whereas the religious right gets incredible amounts of publicity in the major media and oppose vehemently public spending for job creation, social security, medicare and health care for the masses.
On the other hand, liberal organizations such as the American Friends Committee, Catholic Worker Movement and the Unitarian Universalists who promote all of the above get no mention in the main stream press.

There are two reasons: money and availability. The religious right has been able to buy up air wave frequencies, i.e. television, radio networks, cable and satellite channels. Millions of people are watching and listening to the ideology of the right wing fanatics, for example, the end of the world foolishness. Ultraconservative spokesmen have been interviewed on TV and radio many more times than progressive leaders. Since the media is owned by billion dollar corporations, it is easy to understand why the networks tend to favor the ultra-religious right.

The right wing televangelists promote globalization in support of the wealthy industrial corporations. Pat Robertson, Ted Haggard and the late Jerry Falwell encourage the wealthy capitalists to exploit the poor masses of the Third World. The role of the missionaries is to precede the investment corporatists. Their purpose is not to encourage social reform but rather to teach piety and faith. Right wing religionists do very little to improve the lot of the masses. Why? Because it is pointless. Judgment day is coming soon and the righteous will float up to heaven and the rest will burn in hell. It is the “rapture” of the second coming of Jesus that will save only the “righteous”, so spend all your money. Clothes, pets and Sinners are forbidden, they will be left behind.

There are actually “Left Behind” computer games sold by Wal-Mart. In the game the”good guys” are taught to slaughter non-believers. The righteous are the missionaries. “Bad Guys” have “Arab sounding names”. Let us build a world of social injustice by teaching hate and bigotry to our kids.

Let us now consider this peculiar breed, the television preacher, the televangelist. He preaches moralistic nonsense bathed in piety, but when it comes to his private life the hypocrisy is shocking. We all remember Jimmy Swaggart who preached to millions of television viewers about the perils of
“loose morality” and a belief in family values. But privately Jimmy was caught consorting with prostitutes. Jim Bakker, another televangelist, was accused and convicted of fraud and illegal sex. Ted Haggard, pastor of the New Life Church and a vehement homophobic was throughout his career having sex with male prostitutes.

And then there is sensational tale of a prominent conservative college headed by George C. Roche III. A man who believed intensely in family values and was just as vehemently anti-liberal. As it happened, Roche was a proved philanderer, liar and a fraud. A shocking revelation was the fact that for 20 years he was having sex with his son's wife. She later committed suicide after he divorced his dying wife and married another woman . He was a skirt chaser among students and employees. By the way, William F. Buckley, Jr. was a trustee of the college and had nothing but praise for the school.

Finally, religious pedophiles, rapists and homophobes still exist in the Catholic church and other denominations.

As George Carlin once said,

“When you are born you get a ticket to the freak show.
When you are born in America , you get a front row seat.”

References:

George Carlin
Google
M. Parenti
Wikipedia

The Lessons of Weimar

2011-04-22T08:30:00.000-07:00

After the demise of the monarchy following Germany's defeat in World War I, the Germans established the Weimar Republic. Although Germany had instituted some welfare reforms in the late 19th century, Weimar was Germany's first exposure to democratic government since it included a constitution and a parliament.

There are some parallels in the U.S. today to what occurred in the 1920's in Germany. Is it possible that we can learn something from history? We tend not to, but let's try anyway.

In 1930 the major world depression had caused huge unemployment in Germany. Six million were unemployed or 1/3 of the work force. Currently in the U.S., We are faced with a similar unemployment crisis. Also, we have a huge debt, as did the Weimar Republic. Their solution was to make drastic cuts in government spending as many of our politicians today are spinning. In Germany debt reduction made the situation worse, weakened the Republic and in the end put the Nazi party in power. Unemployment demands job creation and this is done by increasing the debt temporarily. Then when the employed worker pay his taxes, the debt will begin to decrease. In the U.S., we are not dealing with the unemployment crisis which amounts to 14.5 million with 5 million of that total no longer looking for work. In addition, today in the “muddle west” there are anti-democratic Republican governors who intend to break the labor unions that represent public employees. And that's just the beginning. The crypto-Fascist Koch Brothers are financing these right-wing fanatics whose purpose is to quash all unions.

This is all done to preserve the power and control of the billion dollar giant corporations. Preservation of the plutocracy is the ultimate goal even if it means the destruction of democracy. It is clear then that there is a definite link between Fascism and Capitalism, that a Fascist political system is intended to preserve Capitalism. Fascism is the key instrument for the preservation of plutocratic domination.

In the early days of the Weimar Republic workers were able to win crucial benefits, namely unemployment compensation, the 8 hour day and the right to unionize. But when the economic shock of 1929 occurred, the giant corporations and banks were faced with reduced profits. It was then that the wealthy corporations withdrew their support from the Republic because it was too pro-labor. The corporations pressured the government to eliminate welfare programs and big business cut wages and broke the unions. Then the corporatists poured money into the Nazi Party.

Thus, braced with cash it was possible for the party to win 37% of the vote in the 1932 election, the most they had ever won. It was more than any other party and made it possible to gain control of the government with the help of the right-wing power brokers in secret negotiations. Hitler was appointed Chancellor by President Hindenburg and that ended the Republic. The Corporate Fascists won the day, saved German capitalism and traded the Democratic Republic for murder, torture and political repression.

Now the situation in this country is not that bad - yet. But in Wisconsin and other middle western states we see the powerful few using the economic crisis to destroy union organization. The right wing claims there is no money for welfare, health plans, pensions and collective bargaining. But this not true. There is plenty of money. It is just in the hands of the few instead of the working population.

The fascistic Koch Bros. want to destroy all your hard won democratic rights and privileges. And they use puppets like the Governor of Wisconsin to achieve their goals.

There is a joke going the rounds of the internet.

There are three guys sitting around a table. One is a billionaire, the second is a union worker, and the third is a Tea Partier. In the center of the table is a dozen delicious cookies. The billionaire takes 11 cookies for himself. Then he warns the Tea Party guy,

“Lookout, that union guy is going to take your cookie.”

References:

Hedges, Chris. American Fascism
Parenti, M. Contrary Notions
Weitz, Eric. Weimar Germany
Wikipedia

PDF for 2010

2011-03-08T06:50:00.000-08:00

For those who would like copies of my writings there is a link in the download section for a PDF file containing all the posting for El Gato 2010.

Capitalist Imperialism

2011-02-03T08:27:00.000-08:00

Imperialism by definition means the domination of another nation through control of their land, labor and natural resources. It is done commonly through the investments of capitalist corporations spreading their tentacles primarily throughout the third world. Oftentimes it is preceded by military invasion as in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although capital is largely invested in Western nations, i.e. North America and Europe, third world investments are much more profitable. For example, profits in the underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa and Latin-America are about 50% greater than in the developed nations. Now, free market imperialism is already spreading into Eastern Europe.

We invade nations militarily in the name of democracy and humanitarianism or especially if they “threaten our national security.” When what we are really doing is making “the world safe for the Fortune 500.” We select those countries that could not possible be a threat to our national security because they are smaller and weaker. However, their natural resources are the main attraction , namely oil, mercury, platinum, zinc, aluminum and the like. And, of course, cheap labor is a strong lure.

We propagandize our own people to believe that democracy and capitalism are linked and we spread that gospel around the globe. We disregard the many countries that are capitalistic and undemocratic, such as Thailand, Pakistan, South Africa, Indonesia, Columbia and many others. They are all “free market” third world counties and none are prosperous. Through the free market system we have destroyed social democracy in Eastern Europe and installed capitalistic democracy. As a result, the people no longer have food subsidies nor price controls. Health plan benefits are cut and guaranteed employment is gone. The free market has privatized land, farming and factories. There are major increases in corruption, crime, alcoholism and drug addiction. The Russian Mafia has spread throughout Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the United States. Investors are getting wealthier, while the poor grow in number and get poorer. Living standards have dropped by half, thanks to free market globalization.

According to the last census, in the U.S., a free market capitalist nation, 48 million are living at the poverty level or below, while the Wall St. plutocrats are accumulating unbelievable wealth.

Due to the super exploitation by imperialistic capitalism, millions of third world people are living in urban slums enduring disease and hunger. The land was taken by western agribusiness to raise export crops for the corporations profit. As a result, there is no land for the locals to raise beans and rice for home consumption. Millions of children are suffering from mental illness, malnutrition and catastrophic stress caused by life in the slums. The adults are demoralized, depressed and physically ill from malnutrition and stress. Child labor is widespread for a few cents per hour. According to one report in India there are 55 million underage children working for pennies.

The neo-imperialists today are no longer interested in acquiring colonies. Rather the aim is to acquire wealth through the channel of the client state. A client state opens itself to investment by foreign capitalists at a very favorable rate of profit. The country is administered by native rulers so that the corporate investor is not burdened with the costs of administration and is free to take the profits and run. The native rulers are very generous to the corporate investor in return for large amounts of financial aid available to those who govern. However, this type of government encourages rampant corruption and fraud.

But, if a charismatic reformer comes along, then political situation can change. A good example is Chavez in Venezuela, Morales in Bolivia and the popular uprisings, as we speak, in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Jordan. Unfortunately, in the United States today, if the system takes away your job and your house, you just “roll over”.

As one observer said,

“We live in a world that is out of joint, as if it has been struck by an enormous earthquake so that the roads are no longer flat, nor the buildings straight.”

References:

Davis
Kerr
Parenti
Wikipedia

The Sacking of the Third World

2011-01-10T09:05:00.000-08:00

Why does the rest of the world hate us?

George W never figured it out ... and still hasn't.

In the Middle East, for example, 80% of the Arabs believe that the U.S. and Israel are the biggest threat to their welfare. Only 10% believe Iran is and 52% believe that Iran should have nuclear weapons for defense. The Arabs hate the democracies of the U.S. and Israel. We ignore these facts and the media doesn't even report them.

So why do they hate us?

They hate us because of what we have done to Iraq, what we are doing to Afghanistan, how the IMF, the World Bank and the corporate capitalists are spreading poverty in the Third World. The free market is not really free and it is not a market. It is a pillage.

How so?

Western agribusiness unloads subsidized surplus produce in the Third World at a price that local farmers cannot meet. Looking for a quick cash crop, the corporations literally take arable land and introduce a monoculture (single crop) that requires the use of pesticides. This interferes with the organic farming that the locals employ to feed their people. In the end, the corporation usurps the local farming industry and in time destroys it. In the process, the corporate capitalists limit the amount of food available to the local population and further reduces the income to the farmers. Eventually, the people are forced to leave the land and look for other work if available. And this is how the populace is pressed into poverty.

There is another way that the Third World is impoverished; it is through the World Bank and the IMF. A country needs to strengthen its economy so it borrows from the World Bank. Over time it cannot meet the high interest payments because exports have fallen, so it needs another loan. This time it borrows from the IMF. The IMF is much tougher. It requires tax breaks for investor corporations, demands a reduction in wages and privatization of nationalized industries. In order to have money to pay their debt, the country is required to cut back on expenditures for health care, education and food. This policy is deliberate in order to gain control of the country's resources, limit competition and shamelessly increase the wealth of the western corporate investors.

In contrast to this destructive policy, Third World countries need to introduce a form of social and economic change similar to social democracy. Social democracies have changed since WWII. Today it is state capitalism with an emphasis on universal health care, public education and improvement in the welfare of the working class as well as the urban slum dwellers.

Social democracy is not so bizarre as one might think. One can find Social Democratic political parties all across Europe and Scandinavia. In other parts of the world, for example, there are dominant Social Democratic parties in India, Australia and Brazil. The U.S. is the only Western industrial nation that has no Social Democratic political party.

The fear of Social Democracy among the power brokers of this country is intense. The right wing Republican politicians work very hard to keep any form of Social Democracy out of the country and if they could, they would like to roll back all of our present social welfare entitlements.

It is vital also to recognize that workers and their families world wide are migrating from rural areas where there is no subsistence, to urban centers where there is no employment. It is known as the “urbanization of poverty”. As a result, the migrants are “warehoused” in slums or as one “slum dweller” described it, “a semi-death”. According to the UN, the population in slums planet wide is increasing by a mind-boggling 25 million per year. Obviously, neither corporate capitalism nor the free market system have been able to cope with the over whelming social and economic problems that they have created. At the moment world capitalism has no workable plan to bring this workforce back into the world economy.

As one observer pointed out, right wing Republicans encourage people to volunteer in their countries. Why? Because volunteers work for nothing. And Republicans have been trying to get people to work for nothing for a very long time.

References:

George Carlin
Noam Chomsky
Mike Davis
Michael Parenti
Wikipedia

Control By The Few

2010-12-27T05:57:00.000-08:00

I have a question: Do you think a capitalist democracy provides for the welfare of all the people?

The answer is: No.

It is a myth that a capitalist democracy has brought economic prosperity to the people of any country including the U.S. Any improvement in the welfare of the working class was fought against bitterly by the capitalists. The struggle made by the labor movement from the 1930's on to improve their standard of living is what made life bearable. It was no gift from the corporate capitalists. Organized labor leading often times violent class struggles brought improved living standards to the workers. The violence was perpetrated and paid for by the corporations through the use of goons and strikebreakers. And, of course, the main stream media always blamed labor for the violence.

Yes, there are those who prosper under corporate capitalism, for example, the upper 10% and the upper 1% who prosper shamelessly as we have seen. Obviously the plutocracy protects those at the top and ignores those at the bottom. At the same time that obscene fortunes amass at the top, millions of Americans are living below the poverty line and middle class family income in the last 20 years has decreased. Millions have lost their health care, their pensions and their homes.

Democracy and capitalism are actually in constant conflict. We really can't have both. When democracy really works, the people benefit. They are more prosperous and their standard of living goes up. Entitlements and social welfare are an accepted part of the economy. The corporations, on the other hand, prefer poverty for the masses. Why? Because the poor are powerless and are not a threat. Corporation profit increases enormously when the poor work for less. As a result, poverty is increasing world wide while the wealth of billionaires is increasing exponentially. So to prevent Democracy from working at its best, the main street media sabotages it with misinformation, ballyhoo and amusement.

The corporate capitalists utilize another wrinkle to protect and increase their profit. They transfer their production to the sweat shops of South East Asia where the poverty stricken population have no option but to work the for very low wages set by the contractors who are hired by the corporations. The corporations are thus freed from paying high wages and benefits and so again maximize their profit.

As we have seen corporate capitalism has a chronic problem of over production and under employment occurring periodically. A high percentage of unemployed and underemployed reduces the ability of the populace to buy the goods and services produced. At the same time there is a vast accumulation of capital looking for a place to invest. Since there weren't any, the power brokers made something up. They poured it into sub-prime mortgages, highly leveraged derivatives, hedge funds and whatever. In 2008 it all came crashing down and that's where we are today.

Now the U.S. Corporate Capitalists own Congress and “greed is good”. The Republicans show no interest in the unemployed but show intense interest in protecting tax cuts for the rich.

The “Karl Rove” of the 19th century was a man named Mark Hanna. He used his political and financial skills to buy the office of President for William McKinley, an essential non-entity. Hanna is remembered for the following statement:

“There are two things that are important in politics, the first is money and I can't remember what the second is”.

References:

Michael Parenti. Znet
Wikipedia

Government Is The Problem

2010-10-21T09:56:00.000-07:00

How about this picture? We are at a Tea Party rally in the South. Sarah Palin is the speaker. The audience is made up of elderly whites only. A large number of the gathering are breathing oxygen from a tank while sitting in motorized wheel chairs (scooters). All paid for by Medicare. And guess what? The seniors are ranting against government spending, while Palin intones the Ronald Reagan mantra: “Government is not the solution, government is the problem.”

This is a moment to remember. You are witnessing the opening salvo of the ding-a-ling revolution. The problem is they are all full of horse-pucky. They are around the bend, suffering from paranoia. But these are the crazies that the right wing Republicans are using to limit Obama's power and eventually get him out of office. It is becoming more and more obvious that it isn't “socialism” or “welfare” that bugs these people. Rather it is the fact that a black man was elected to the highest office in the land. That is what these “redneck crackers” can't handle. "How in the world did a “black Moslem” from Kenya become President of my country?" It is not your country. It is our country. So what do these yahoos want? "They want their country back." But, nobody took it. Instead, they are giving it away to the right wing Republican power brokers.

So it is not the socialists who are stealing their country. It is the super-capitalists. They support lower taxes for the rich and no government programs for the poor. If the Tea Party Wingnuts think they are going to get their country back in the polling booth, they are sadly mistaken. They don't recognize that the country is controlled by a deeply embedded plutocracy that prevents political change of any consequence. The Tea Party fantasy is that it is a third party but it has no chance of surviving. It will be run over and wrecked by the entrenched 2-party system. It will be swept away by the Republican party first and then the remainder by the Democrats until there is nothing left.

We should keep in mind, however, that the Tea Party people are conservative Republicans who supported for 8 years the Bush doctrine of lower taxes for the rich and no regulation. So in effect, they have contributed by their vote to the economic crisis and the national debt. They rant about government spending now, but never a word while Bush was in office. There was a surplus before Bush came on the scene and he turned it completely around with lower taxes and a 3 trillion dollar war that was launched with lies.

Paul Krugman, the economist and NY times columnist, has pointed out that the Tea Party is not a grass roots movement, but rather is AstroTurf (a fake grass roots movement) and the events are manufactured by a right wing Republican, former Congressman, Richard Armey. Financial support comes from the billionaire Koch Brothers and Koch Industries through the organization, Americans For Prosperity. The AFP is an ultra right wing political organization started by David Koch in support of very little government and hair-brained free market policies. The Koch Bros are worth a 100 billion dollars and have given 100 million to the Tea Party organization. They own numerous oil refineries, 4000 miles of pipe lines, Georgia- Pacific Lumber, Stainmaster Carpet, Dixie Cup, and Brawny Towel. The Kochs are hard line libertarians who fight government. They use the anger of the Tea Partiers for their own purpose, by training “rednecks” to fight against regulation, energy reform, environmental reform and finally to wage all out war against Obama.

FYI - the Koch Bros are known to support zany causes, to mass produce bad ideas, and are just a little daft. Their father, Fred, was a founding member of the John Birch Society. Some of you will remember those crazies. I think you get the picture.

References:

Frank, Thomas. What's The Matter With Kansas.
Green, David. Common Dreams.
Mayer, Jane. The New Yorker.
Taibbi, Matt. Rolling Stone.
Wikipedia

Right Wing Fantasies

2010-09-25T09:19:00.000-07:00

All right, here's a question for you.

What makes Americans so gullible and simple-minded?

Well, they are gullible because they believe what politicians tell them. And they are simple-minded because when angered and frustrated, they foolishly go after the wrong cause. They do not perceive that economic issues are where the problem lies. A spiritual crisis caused by reputed “moral decadence” may exist in the minds of some misguided individuals but the real crisis is the right wing itch to wreck social security, social welfare and eliminate the national debt. When the level of hatred towards government becomes intense enough, where do these simple-minded souls turn?

Since they believe that poverty is an absence of spirituality, they go to the protestant sects, e.g. Assemblies of God and Pentecostal churches for help. Since they believe we are dealing with a crisis of the soul and not economics, we need to become “virtuous” and build the “Kingdom of God”. For them, low wages, hunger and security in old age are not significant.

In Washington D.C. there is a Christian group known as the “Family”. The senior Senator from Kansas stays with them when he is in town. Although the Senator himself is not a member of Opus Dei, he converted to Catholicism through an Opus Dei priest. Opus Dei is an ultra right wing sect that was active during the Franco regime in Spain and still is widespread in Catholic circles both in and out of the U.S. The "Family" actually studies the organizational outline of Hitler's ideology. They invite right wing legislators, capitalists and dictators from around the world to join in their discussions.

It is ironic that the poorest followers of these extremist sects have the gall to paint a brush-like mustache on an Obama image and label him Hitler for supporting welfare legislation, while the wealthiest super-capitalists are secretly studying Hitler's grand plan.

Now those legislative power brokers involved in these “brain sick” activities are 100% pro-business. They support deregulation, no government and the destruction of the welfare state. The Christian zealots believe that they are bringing America back to God but at the same time support pro-business legislation that increases the profits of the plutocracy. They believe that we are having an affliction of the "crisis of the soul" not an economic crisis. The power brokers use them to obscure the self interest of the very people who need help the most. The free market system is "sacred" especially if it produces policies where "Profit precedes God".

The leadership of these extremist cults deplore American culture for its vulgarity and lack of "family values" but scramble it up with corporate capitalism and it winds up on the right wing Republican platform.

So what does the extremist Republican platform in its tangled reasoning offer to the voter? In order to counter the "immoral decadence" of our society, the platform opposes gun control, homosexuality and abortion. Since evolution, according to the right wingers, is not a fact but rather a theory, it will not be permitted in the school system curriculum. Creationism is the preferred fantasy. The platform also calls for no government interference in health care, for privatization of social security and tax cuts for the rich.

So as Einstein once said, “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe”.

References:

Hedges, Chris. Truth Dig.
Thomas, Frank. What's The Matter with Kansas?
Wikipedia

Occupation By Any Other Name

2010-08-17T08:32:00.000-07:00

Hey, fellow Americans, you are finally going to get something you voted for!

Really, like what?

Well, your President is pulling out of Iraq.

But wait a minute , something doesn't sound right. 90,000 combat troops are leaving by the end of August. What happened to the other 50,000? Well, bad news, they are staying. You see we have hundreds of military bases scattered throughout Iraq a portion of which will be either closed or manned by those troops remaining to provide security and training for the Iraq Army. We also have the largest embassy in the world in Iraq. It's actually the size of Vatican City (80 football fields). The people working there require security. So our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has requested the State Department to provide a maximum of 7000 special operation forces hired through private contractors similar to Blackwater for “diplomatic security”. In short we are downsizing the occupation and calling it something else like “diplomatic security”. And a number of these bases will become “enduring posts”. (a euphemism for forever and ever). Recently 20 year contracts to run Iraqi oil fields were given to a number of private companies . Obviously the U.S. has no intention of really leaving. We are, therefore, privatizing the occupation by hiring armed mercenaries to replace the troops that are returning home. The mercenaries are paid well for dying while a majority of U.S. troops are finally relieved of the stress of combat.

So was it all worth it ? The short answer is no. Iraq remains a disaster. The situation is still unstable. The puppet leaders cannot form a government. Potable water is limited as is electricity. Oil production is still below what Saddam produced. Millions of people have migrated to Syria and Jordan. The American Empire made the situation in Iraq worse.

The mercenary special operation troops will continue to chase down “terrorists” paid for out of the deficit budget and the military black budget.

And what is happening in Afghanistan? According to some observers there are two wars going on there. One is the war reported by the main street media. The other is the special operation war that are night time raids and go unreported. This is the one where civilians get killed if they get in the way of the target. There is a lot of public talk by the military about “ reducing civilian casualties” but these night time raids which we lie about are responsible for many civilian deaths. The Afghan forces avenge these deaths at a rate of 6 to 1, according to recent reliable reports.

So let's keep in mind as it does bear repeating: “ Politicians are like talking dogs in a circus, interesting, but no sane person believes what they say.”

References:

Common Dreams, Guardian UK.
Democracy Now, Jeremy Scahill.
Alan Furst.

A Few Little Mistakes

2010-07-12T06:57:00.000-07:00

The arrogant Tony Haywood, the CEO of British Petroleum, announced to the world after a major spill that was dumping approximately 100,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico that the environmental impact would be very small and that the spill was tiny compared to the size of the ocean. And, oh yes, he would like to see this over with because “I would like my life back. The lives of thousands along the coast had already lost their livelihood and sure as hell would like their lives back.

Since the spill, mental health problems, namely, depression, anxiety and anger have soared as well as spousal abuse and alcoholism among fisherman on the coast. Lately there has been an increase in suicidal thoughts and some actual suicides, very similar to the crisis situation caused by the Exxon Valdez tragedy. Mental health clinics have been established along the coast for counselors and therapists to assist those workers who are in crisis.

The company reports in 2010 1st quarter profits of 61 million dollars daily and it has spent 33.8 billion dollars to explore for new oil and gas deposits during the past 3 years. However, spending on research for safety, accident prevention and spill response has been paltry. To top it off, BP has the worst safety record of all the oil companies. They just don't give a damn about the public or the workers. According to Hayward , “Our primary purpose in life is to create value for our stockholders.” And by the way , keep the dividends coming.

Giving the devil his due, Tony Hayward admits that he might lose his job because “we made a few little mistakes early on.” One mistake that should be mentioned was an automatic shut off valve that was not installed. All the other companies claim that they never fail to make that installation. BP is known for cutting corners to benefit the bottom line and, oh yes, to keep the shareholders happy.

The problem is there is no easy extraction of oil anymore. That is why the oil companies are drilling in deep water. And it is not safe. Just recently in Australia there was an oil rig explosion that spewed millions of gallons for ten weeks. A relatively short time span because they were drilling only at a 250 foot depth. BP was drilling at 5000 feet. The oil companies, of course, won't admit it but they just don't know how to stop a blowout in deep water or how to clean up a massive spill. There are federal regulations but BP violates the regs and pays the fines. The fines are in the millions but it is “chump change” to a company that reports a daily profit of 61 million dollars

As a former unenlightened Republican VP once said, “We're all capable of mistakes but I do not care to enlighten you on the mistakes we may or may not have made.”

References:

Wikipedia
Google

The Failings Of Liberalism

2010-07-05T11:57:00.000-07:00

Let's take another look at “family values”, how it got started and its link to the demise of the liberal reform movement. You probably don't remember the easily forgettable and barely adequate Republican Vice- President who served with Bush Sr. in 1989. His name was Dan Quayle, a hopeless dipstick. If anyone cares, I am preserving a few of his inane quotations for posterity: “ The future will be better tomorrow.” “We don't want to go back to tomorrow, we want to go forward.” “ I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.” “ Republicans understand the importance of bondage between mother and child.” There are many more just as cockeyed.

I am remembering him today because he was the one who introduced the BS called “family values”into Republican politics. He cited the TV program “Murphy Brown” featuring Candice Bergen as a single professional woman who derided the importance of fathers and bore a child alone. Quayle attacked the show as an example of the “poverty of values” and the rejection of the “nuclear family” characteristic of American culture.

Over the years the concept became an important part of the conservative political platform, namely the endorsement by the U.S. Government of Christian values and Biblical truth. The Christian Right picked up the ball and are still running with it. The liberals, on the other hand, have been totally unable to counter effectively this right wing ploy. But there is a reason.

It all started in the 1970's when the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), the organization which eventually became associated with Bill Clinton and Al Gore, decided to increase the flow of money by switching their concentration from the poorer blue collar union worker to the more affluent white collar professional particularly those who were liberal on “social issues”, for example pro-choice, universal health care, living wage, family planning and many more.

The next step then was to seek the support of corporations for their campaign contributions. Financial support from this source far exceeded what was possible from trade unions. It was the former Senator, Bob Dole, who once said that poor people do not contribute to political campaigns. So the Democratic party became more friendly to business interests confident that the “working class voters” had no other place to go. After all, the Democrats were slightly better on economic issues than the Republicans. So the DLC drops the “class warfare” language and becomes similar to the Republican representatives of the upper middle class. Thus the two parties become more tweedledee and tweedledumber than ever. I believe we are witnessing today not a dimes worth of difference between the two parties. Can you think of a stupider strategy?

Liberalism is no longer relevant to the traditional base of the party. So what the liberals have always stood for, namely, economic security and social welfare has been relinquished at a time when the country is in critical need.

To quote the dork, Dan Quayle, “I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change.”

References:

Frank, Thomas. What's The Matter With Kansas. 2004.
Wikipedia
Google

The Demise of Liberalism

2010-06-18T11:55:00.000-07:00

It is often intriguing to consider just how these "comatose bozos" get into public office, whether it is the state legislature or the U.S. Congress. It would not be likely if a significant number of voters were not voting against their own self-interest. Now how does this happen? For example, remember the uninformed and confused individual who went into a Unitarian Church and shot up the place tragically killing and wounding several unfortunate people. He selected that church because he learned probably from Fox News that is where Liberals congregated. And it was the Liberals who were wrecking the country. He was totally oblivious to the fact that it was the Liberals who were supporting legislation that would be beneficial to him, not the right wing Republicans. But it is the right wing Republicans that have convinced working people that Liberals are destroying the "American Way of Life" because they do not believe in “family values.” It's a kind of culture war of rich versus the culture of the poor. Religious conservatives use the family value ploy to promote Christian morality and actually want government to endorse that morality.

The Republican argument is that American moral values are being destroyed by the Liberals who represent the Eastern intellectual elite. In this way they distract working people from the economic issues that directly affect them. The problem is that there is no longer a strong, aggressive labor movement to keep workers focused on the real issues. The Republican scam artists have a free rein. This is how a state like Kansas with many poor workers votes Republican every election. (Red State) And the Liberals have been totally unable to counter “the corporate assault on workers.” There is no organized protest and no effective peace movement. The Liberal movement is moribund.

The last place to look for moral leadership is in political parties. Politics is a dirty business. As Molly Ivins said, “if you want moral leadership, try the clergy. That's their job.” RIP, Molly.

References:

Frank, Thomas, The Wrecking Crew.
Frank, Thomas, What's The Matter With Kansas.
Ivins, Molly.

The Madness Of War

2010-04-28T09:45:00.000-07:00

In 1946 Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg Trials outlined the quintessential method to get support for a war that the people of a country do not want. Since the leaders make the policy, the people get dragged along by lying to them. They are told that they are being attacked and the antiwar protestors are accused of a lack of patriotism thereby “ exposing the country to greater danger.” So you see how easy it is for any government whether it is a democracy or a dictatorship to take the country to war. Why do I say that? Because just about every U.S. President since World War II has used similar tactics to get us into a “hopeless, unnecessary and costly war”, e.g. Korea, Vietnam, Dominican Republic, Panama, Grenada, First Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan.

By now most informed people know that Vietnam was a prime example of how lying got us into a war. Ben Bradlee , formerly Senior Editor of the Washington Post 20 years later admitted that the Vietnam conflict was a lie from beginning to end. Daniel Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers fame admitted that when he first took the job of special assistant to the Pentagon official in charge of Vietnam, he marveled at his boss's ability to lie poker faced to the press. Ellsberg would watch and listen for an hour to “whoppers” handed out to the press. And the press soaked up the lies not having a clue as to how flagrant and consistent they were. The press in turn passed on this misinformation joyfully to the public. This was part of the build-up to war.

Ellsberg again reported in 2004 during the Iraq War that again we had been lied to and were now in an endless and destructive war comparable to Vietnam. Officials who understood what was happening refused to speak out and just repeated the lies.

Let's consider now the invasion of Panama led by Pres. Bush Sr. There was a great deal of fog consisting of lies, inaccuracies and misinformation created by the U.S. Government and spread by the press. For years General Noriega, the dictator of Panama, was involved with CIA knowledge and acceptance in drug trafficking as long as the revenues received were used to buy arms and then transshipped to the U.S. backed contras who were fighting the Sandanista government in Nicaragua. Once Noriega changed his mind and stopped supporting the contras, he then became that evil man who bought and sold drugs. He was then presented to the American public as a bad guy that we must eliminate. So in order to do that we needed to first invade Panama. The reasons given were to protect American citizens, to preserve democracy , to preserve the Canal and to capture Noriega. Well, as usual there were no American citizens in danger, there was no democracy in Panama and the Canal was not in any danger. Because of the bombardments that followed the invasion 25000 poor people were made homeless and 1000 civilians died. In the end Noriega was captured. And we left the country in chaos. Furthermore, to use Noriega's drug trafficking as a weapon against him when we were directly involved in it is the worst kind of political hypocrisy. And the mainstream press just lapped it up.

Since lies continuously repeated get us into war and keep us at war , perhaps we should look carefully at what wars do to us as a people, both soldiers and civilians. Modern medicine has made it possible for severely wounded front line troops to survive. The ratio of wounded to dead has improved sharply. For example, in World War I and World War II the ratio was approximately 2 wounded to 1 death. The Vietnam War saw a slight increase to approximately 3 wounded to one fatality. However, in Iraq and Afghanistan the ratio jumped to 7 to 1 by far the largest in our history. But there is a downside. Many of these survivors have suffered horrific injuries that require long term care in Veteran facilities and years of family assistance.

One of the most common injuries of the Iraq War is brain trauma caused by blast waves and diagnosed as “traumatic brain injury” or TBI. This is significant because in previous wars deaths from this type of explosion was 75%. Now we can save the majority . However, unfortunately these injuries depending on the severity can inflict permanent damage that requires continuing care. Other horrific injuries are multiple amputations, burns, blindness and permanent spinal injuries.

Probably the longest lasting non- physical injury is mental health disability caused by combat stress. Many combat veterans report continuing psychological problems throughout their life. Continuing health problems and the use of drugs and alcohol are common due to prolonged depression. Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is widespread among front line veterans. Suicide among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans is the highest in 16 years. Many of these soldiers committed suicide while still serving in those countries.

These mental and physical disabilities experienced by veterans can be overwhelming to both the soldier and his family. Many of them are unable to work and mental illness can cause physical illness as well. Chronic pain is a problem for those with physical disabilities and require daily pain medication. Also many require assistance in daily living activities.

The death, destruction and astronomical cost of war demand that we find alternatives.We cannot allow the War Dept to hide the number of casualties from the general public in order to prevent mass protests against the war. In addition hiding suicides and desertions , for example, is deliberate concealment to “protect” the public from the pain of the conflict.

As one observer commented: “ Political leaders want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers.”

References:

George Carlin
Hedges, Chris. What Every Person Should Know About War. 2003
Hedges, Chris. War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning. 2002
Solomon, Norman. War Made Easy.2005
Stiglitz & Bilmes. The Trillion Dollar War. 2008

PDF for 2005 - 2009

2010-03-24T07:46:00.000-07:00

For those who would like copies of my postings there is a link in the download section for a PDF file containing all the posting on El Gato from 2005 - 2009.

The End Is Near

2010-03-18T17:29:00.000-07:00

What we are facing today in the U.S. is on the one hand a plutocracy where the wealthy few control the government and on the other hand a circus freak show composed of idiots , hopeless dipsticks and just plain liars. Our vote counts for nothing. We voted to end the the wars, to provide jobs for the jobless, to end housing foreclosures, to provide health care for everyone, to control Wall St. gambling and what happened? Nothing. The corporations have injected so much payola into the Congress that the politicians are fearful of voting for any laws that would benefit the middle class and the poor. Further, they refuse to enact any legislation that will regulate the highly leveraged speculation of the enormously wealthy and powerful financial corporations of Wall St. No regulation means banks will continue to rob us over and over. Since the legislators that supposedly represent us are unable to act, we are no longer a democracy but we are headed instead toward “totalitarian capitalism”. Hang on to your hat. The Empire is ended. We are about to descend into chaos. We will be poorer while the system disintegrates.

Now let's look at some of the characters in the freak show. They are the Tea Party Protestors, Russ Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Fox News, and Glenn Beck. These people are the right wing representatives of the Republican Party who belligerently combat government regulation and are linked to the thievery of Wall Street and the larceny of the “for profit” health care organizations. The Tea Party Protestors are composed of stupid, ignorant no-nothings. Russ Limbaugh said he will leave the country if a Federal health plan was passed. So where was he going? He picked Costa Rica, where apparently unbeknownst to him there is a national health plan that covers everyone. Maybe he did his homework because now he says he is not leaving. Too bad.

Sarah Palin admitted that as a child, she and her family would cross the border into Canada to use their health plan free of charge. Not too long ago, she advised Canadians to drop their National Health Plan. Is she “cuckoo” or just a hypocrite? Maybe both. We are all familiar with the sanctimonious Newt Gingrich and the people on Fox News are pathological liars who deliberately deceive rather than inform. Glenn Beck is obviously mentally ill.

Nonetheless, 35,000,000 people or more are struck dumb by these buffoons and believe what they say. They are allied with the Christian Right, a wing of the Republican Party. Millions of jobless who have no hope are easy prey for the religious fanatics. The program of the Christian Right is an alliance with the wealthy power brokers to control the State and destroy democracy.

As Molly Ivins once said: “Just when you think there wasn't a dimes worth of difference between the two parties, the Republicans go and prove you're wrong.” Rest in Peace, Molly.

References:

Hedges, Chris. American Fascists. 2006
Ivins, Molly. Quotations
Prins, Nomi. It Takes A Pillage. 2009

Make It Cheap

2010-03-02T08:51:00.000-08:00

It should be clear by now that free market globalization is in actuality “crony capitalism” whereby politicians hand over public wealth to private corporations in exchange for political support. This model is used in impoverished nations throughout the world to provide loans to desperate economies channeled through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World trade Organization (WTO) which the U.S. controls. The foundation for the model is deregulation and privatization. It very soon becomes apparent that globalization is in fact simply unscrupulous corporatism.

The manufacturing corporation seeks to produce its product as cheaply as possible by using the labor of poverty stricken Third World countries. In order to achieve this goal, it was necessary to give up the ownership of their productive facilities and the employment of workers. Instead production was outsourced to contractors and sub-contractors at a less than livable wage in the poorest of countries. For example, if companies, such as Wal-Mart, Ralph Lauren, Liz Claiborne, K-Mart, Nike, and Reebok were contracting for labor in China where at one time 87 cents per hour was considered a living wage by the government, some U.S. Companies paid as little as 13 cents per hour. The mark- up on many of the products jumped from 100% to 400%.

The CEO's saw this as an opportunity to decrease their costs, increase their profits and above all develop a brand name that consumers would buy. Soon consumers no longer bought the product but rather they bought the brand which represented a life style. The life style was introduced through advertising, design and marketing. All the products manufactured carried the brand logo. You might be middle class but the brand logo gave you upper class pride of ownership. The logo was there for all to see, whether it was Levi, Gap, Tommy Hilfiger or Eddie Bauer.

When complaints came in about conditions in the sweat shops and less than a living wage for the workers, the corporation spokesman could say that they did not employ anyone. The contractor was responsible. He owned the factory and set the pay scales. The corporation tells the contractor how to design the product but to “make it cheap.”

All the costs of building factories, buying machinery and labor are transferred to the contractors and subs. The most profitable corporations are running from the costs of production. Factories re-
quire maintenance , employees cost in wages and benefits. By ridding itself of these expenses, corporate profit rises enormously. Money is then available to design and market brand logos.

As for the workers in the sweatshops,for example in Honduras in 2003 garment workers were paid 24 cents for each $50 branded sweat shirt. Most contractors pay the worker less than the required living expenses. Nevertheless, if the worker does not take a job with the contractor, his only other option is backbreaking labor, subsistence farming, prostitution, trash picking or starvation. Today because of the economic crises world wide, many of these marginal workers are being laid off as sales dwindle.

Obviously free trade agreements do not promote free trade at all but only protect multinational corporations from competition by local industries that may be unionized. Free trade agreements only reduce tariffs and barriers to entry to the benefit of the corporation.

It's axiomatic that the people at the top have always had a hard time seeing those at the bottom. As Molly Ivins said, “ they practically need a telescope.”

References:

Molly Ivins
Klein, Naomi. No Logo. 2009
Wikipedia

Volker Speaks

2010-02-15T11:16:00.000-08:00

President Obama may have finally seen the light. He is considering a recommendation by former Federal Reserve Chairman, Paul Volker, to change the banking regulations to prevent commercial banks (the banks in which you and I deposit our money) from acting also as investment banks. This would in effect restore the Glass-Steagall law that FDR in 1933 put into place.

For 60 years it worked extremely well until 1999 when President Clinton signed into law a bill introduced by Senator Phil Gramm, the "Senator from Enron", that did away with the regulation. This allowed investment banks to merge with commercial banks and use the deposits (yours and mine) as collateral for wild speculation; to gamble in the Wall Street Casinos.

President Reagan, instead of reappointing Paul Volker as Federal reserve Chairman put Alan Greenspan in his place. Reagan and Greenspan saw eye to eye ideologically, i.e. the belief in the laissez-faire free market. Of course the supposed "free market" is free only for Wall Street to steal from Main Street. No regulation encourages banking banditos to commit fraud.

Once the banks are separated, the speculating institutions become responsible for their own losses and cannot rely on the Federal Government to bail them out. Instead, in the future, when a bank collapses, we won't have to try to save it but rather, we can liquidate it in an orderly manner or effect a merger with another bank. As Volker puts it, “euthanasia, not a rescue.”

Nomi Prins, a former Wall Street investment banker and financial expert makes the point that “everyone comes to Wall Street for the money.” With money comes power. “No one comes to Wall Street to help humanity”.

For some, greed may be good but greed also kills. It is killing our country. We need regulations to prevent the dissolution of our economy. We cannot allow continuing “unchecked greed” and the race for endless profits and power. The government should support commercial banking by injecting capital for loans to “ordinary Americans”. It should not support speculators who indulge in casino gambling on the back of middle class money and homes.

As George Carlin said, “It is no longer a game when you are winning.” It is deadly serious. And the monster could destroy us all.

References:

Carlin, George.
Ivins, Molly.
Prins, Nomi. It Takes A Pillage. 2009
Prins, Nomi. Other People's Money. 2004
Scheer, Robert. Truth Dig. 2010

Sound The Alarm

2010-01-10T16:01:00.000-08:00

Remember the CEO that spent $16,000 on his own personal umbrella stand and he did it by stealing from his own company. This bone head had a neurotic need to accumulate stuff to the tune of $600 million. Cars, houses, travel, furnishings , it did not matter. After he had everything and he ran out of space, he bought another multimillion dollar house and stuffed it with more stuff. The umbrella stand was peanuts. The rest of us just use the bath tub, perfect for wet umbrellas. Right?

Dennis Kozlowski was CEO of Tyco International, a company that sold burglar alarm systems. How appropriate! Dennis and his Chief Financial Officer are now languishing in prison for fraud and theft.

It happens that the burglar alarm business is highly profitable because the taxpayer provides the profit. Now how is that? Well, when you buy the burglar alarm system, you have the option of paying for monitoring. That means when the alarm sounds, a call goes into the monitoring center. The technician then calls you and if he doesn't get the right answer he calls the police. So Tyco collects the monitoring fee, approximately $30 a month average per customer and they don't even call the police because that is outsourced to a monitoring center at a very low cost to Tyco. The profit on the monitoring fee is huge. But when the police check out an alarm, it costs the taxpayer at least $50.00; multiply that by 38 million alarms per year nationally and the total cost to the taxpayer is $1.9 billion. Tyco pockets the profit on the alarm system as well as most of the monitoring fee and doesn't even have to make a call. It is left to the local police department to check out the alarm. Moreover, 99% of the alarms are false and 60% of the false alarms are made by the customer themselves setting the alarm incorrectly or whatever. So we have a gigantic public subsidy to a private corporation that profits hugely from a system that in the end has no purpose.

Tyco's profit increased by a half billion dollars per year due to the free labor provided by the police. If Tyco had to pay this cost, their profit would drop considerably as would the price of their stock. Tyco executives, as a result, would receive less compensation and bonuses. And Kozlowski would have had considerably less money to steal and waste.

Furthermore, while the police were spending more time on false burglar alarms, they were spending less time on murders and other violent crimes. More killers walked away free while the police were checking out alarms for companies like Tyco. So the rich get obscenely richer and you and I get less protection and stuck with the bill.

One comic observer suggested a dead-end business would be a shoe shine stand at the beach. If Dennis ever gets out of prison, wouldn't that be a great career for him?

References:

George Carlin
David Kay Johnston. Free Lunch
Wikipedia

The Invisible Hand

2009-12-09T12:17:00.000-08:00

In the 18th century Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, wrote that the free market produced the right amount and variety of goods guided by “the invisible hand” and in the process benefited all mankind. Furthermore, pursuing one's self- interest promoted the general welfare and allowed the”the invisible hand” to work. Thus, “greed is good”. Also the market has the natural ability to establish a price that promotes a fair return. Pursuing one's own interest is, therefore, good. But even Adam Smith recognized that owners of business often met to control or raise prices.

Thus, government regulation is necessary because we cannot rely on business owners not to stymie “the invisible hand” in order to increase profits. Making more money can be an addiction because more is never enough. So stealth becomes endemic.

Smith was very much opposed to price fixing monopolies and subsidies to business. He believed in liberty and justice as opposed to fraud and injustice with impunity.

The prelude to our present economic crisis was the Wall St. bubble that destroyed Enron, WorldCom and Tyco. All the CEO's of these firms are now languishing in jail. Many more were never indicted for their thievery. As of today, the cheating continues. No one else has been indicted.

For the past 25 years our government has adopted rules that favor the rich and powerful and taken away the protections for workers and retirees. The new rules were directed at the regulators. Every game requires rules but Wall St. wants to play the game without rules. They want to do whatever they damn well please at the expense of the middle class and the poor. They even steal from their own shareholders and investors.

Let's look now at some of the individuals who influenced our economic decisions in the last 25 years and prior. The following people lived in a world of illusion: Ayn Rand: the ultra conservative Libertarian, Alan Greenspan: her disciple, Milton Friedman: the No Regulation Chicago School of Economics and Ronald Reagan, the no nothing politician, all wedded to the trickle down theory of economics. Their belief in the invisible hand was a fantasy and the trickle down theory or supply side economics was a myth. Obviously it did not work. No regulation works only in your dreams. In fact, in real life it is a delusion. It is unbelievable.

Even Adam Smith, and this is usually ignored in his work, recognized the need for rules. Despite "the invisible hand", he witnessed in own time business people applying for unneeded subsidies merely to increase their personal wealth.

A good example of a corporate executive illegally increasing his personal wealth was the stunt that Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple Computer, pulled. Without the Board of Directors permission he was awarded stock options in the millions and then exchanged those options for stock in the hundreds of millions. It was fraud and the only person charged was the CFO in the amount of a $3.5 million fine. No action was taken against Jobs. Multiply this by the thousands of executives doing the same thing and we get an idea of the extent to which shareholders were robbed. It is pure and simple banditry for which no one is prosecuted. And any federal prosecutor who tried to get these guys was fired. So here you have the Justice Department aiding the cause of greed.

Alan Greenspan , the Chairman of the Federal Reserve since Ronald Reagan's administration, believed in no rules. He actually was convinced that Wall St. was run by honorable people who would protect the market from fraud. In short, regulation was unnecessary since the market could police itself.

Fast forward to a Congressional investigation where Alan Greenspan testified as to how mistaken and false was his economic theory. A theory that he believed for 40 years. He had to admit that he was wrong to believe in the self regulating power of the market.

Brooksley Born, the Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the brilliant woman who saw the crises coming, warned Greenspan, Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers. She was told to shut up. Multiple times.

Until we reinstate regulatory controls on the banks and Wall St., financial crises will repeat, repeat and repeat. And the system will finally breakdown into total chaos.

But remember Wall St. and Goldman Sachs are doing God's work. Brothers and sisters, you will be saved by the “invisible hand” of Ronald Reagan.

References:

Front Line Documentary
Johnston, David Cay. Free Lunch
Wikipedia

Saving Afghanistan

2009-10-27T12:04:00.001-07:00

The best way to save Afghanistan is to get out. But who are we saving Afghanistan from? Al Qaeda? Al Qaeda left long ago. They are in Pakistan, our nuclear ally. We are fighting in the wrong country. One Afghan official has said that Afghans do not accept the notion that foreign invaders are “fighting for our freedom.” Bringing freedom and democracy to a country at the point of a gun does not gain supporters. All it does is make the people “mad as hell”. They will not be satisfied until they throw the invaders out. Meanwhile the U.S. is wasting blood and treasure in another losing battle. Viet Nam and Iraq are good examples of stupid political decisions.

The U.S. decision makers are claiming that we must save the Afghan people from the Taliban. Firstly, the Taliban is not Al Qaeda. They are not terrorists. Secondly, they traditionally ruled the country. In 2001 by overthrowing the Taliban, the largest ethnic group in the country, we put in power the Tajiks, a smaller ethnic group of the North. Now we have set up the country for a civil war as the Taliban takes back its control. Similarly, we brought about a civil war in Iraq by causing ethnic conflict that resulted in the deaths of a million Iraqis. So far does it sound as though we are helping the Afghans.

Next, the President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, was put in place by the Bush-Cheney administration to form a central government in a country that has no longing for a national government. Karzai is a puppet and his government is weak, incompetent and corrupt. He has no influence outside the capitol. And in the recent election he stole the victory with obvious ballot stuffing. Do we really want to support this guy with the bodies of our soldiers? It is a total disgrace and an embarrassment to President Obama.

So far our occupation of Afghanistan has been a total failure. For once the American people are right and are opposed to sending more troops there. We are not bringing peace to that country nor are we making ourselves more secure. We should plan on getting out in less than a year. Cheney has criticized Obama publicly for “dithering” on sending more troops. Biden’s reaction to Cheney’s remark was “Who cares?” It is not right to kill more soldiers and civilians in order to parry right wing political attacks. There is a morality here that needs to be considered.

Remember when President Reagan, the Republican Party icon, introduced the term “freedom fighters” to the political scene in connection with the Nicaraguan Contras which we supported with American dollars. What Reagan did was illegal and he came very close to impeachment.

A well known comic satirist raised the following question: If crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fires, what do freedom fighters fight? Think about it. Let’s get out of Afghanistan before we sink any deeper into the quagmire.

References:

George Carlin
Hightower Low Down
Znet

Web of Fraud

2009-10-21T11:55:00.000-07:00

Let’s bring the economic crises up to date with facts rather than the B.S. spread by the mainstream media. According to one report foreclosures are up 23% over last year. That may very well be, however, the actual foreclosures are low compared to the number of delinquencies. And there is a reason for that. The banks have a new gimmick. They are not foreclosing. Why? Because once they do that they have to report the loss. So the banks have dishonestly changed the accounting rules and got Congress to cooperate. Now in order to pay the huge bonuses ($700,000 per employee) coming up at the end of the year, the bank must show huge profits. If your losses are less, your profits are more and as a result your bonuses go through the roof. This may be temporarily beneficial to the delinquent borrower since he can stay a little bit longer in his home but come the first quarter of the new year, his furniture may be on the sidewalk. Besides this is taxpayer money being paid out by the bushel. So what we have here is a “web of fraud.” As long as it lasts the banks are getting fat at the trough.

Another gimmick that banks pulled involved the appraisers. If the lender did not like the appraisal that came in he would fire the appraiser. If the appraisal was not high enough, out he went. According to a survey done in 2007, 90% of the appraisers reported intimidation by the lender to increase appraisals. So it was the lenders who were committing widespread fraud not the borrowers. There is only one reason to “inflate appraisals” and that is to commit fraud, according to a former bank regulator. Also white collar criminologists state that the lender is responsible for 80% of “mortgage fraud losses”.

The financial sector of our economy is so large it acts as a parasite. It wastes a huge portion of the national income. It produces no products or services useful to the economy. It acts only as a gambling casino for the benefit of Wall St. And what is even worse, this parasitic financial sector produced a criminal environment that resulted in a destructive mortgage “bubble”. Until we can regulate the Wall St. scam, fraud and corruption will continue. In that case we will be headed for another “bubble.” Keep in mind that Wall St. plays a zero sum game. If someone profits, someone else has to lose. There is no contribution to the economy. It does not create goods and services. It is just outright gambling for large stakes.

However, as one observer commented, “it’s never just a game when you are winning”.

References:

George Carlin
Democracy Now: William Black
New Deal 2.0

Corporate Capitalism

2009-10-08T08:39:00.001-07:00

Perhaps you have noticed that we are no longer living in a democracy. But rather we are living under a system that is really corporate capitalism. Corporations are not democracies. Instead they are totalitarian in structure and control. Corporations are run from the top without regulation and workers have no say in their operation. Furthermore, corporations control legislature so that our vote counts for nothing. We voted for Obama and the democratic platform and they have been unable to pass any legislation of consequence.

Moreover if you think the administration is helping the economy, think again. Their antics are creating another bubble. The money that has been spent to save these mercenary corporations has been totally wasted. We will see more fraud and corruption. It is happening already. Foreclosures are continuing. The banks are not lending the money that we the taxpayers gave them. Instead they used the money to pay bonuses and dividends and/or to acquire other corporations. The banks are paying practically nothing in interest to its depositors. The FDIC that protects your deposits is in trouble because the banks are refusing to pay for it. In addition, no one has gone to jail for the perpetration of fraud and corruption. The corporations have bought off the Congress and the politicians either are refusing to help the poor and middle class or are totally powerless to pass legislation that might help. Thus corporate capitalism will bankrupt the country. If the banks fail again there will not be sufficient funds to bail them out.

In the meantime the corporatists and their lackeys will continue to slice and dice you and me while the 1% run off to their private, rich and splendid shelters with 99% of the gold. Someone once said, “politicians are like talking dogs in a circus, it is impressive that they exist, but no sane person would believe anything they say.”

Let’s look at some of the lies emanating from our representatives to make the economy look better when it is really getting worse. For example, do not count the workers who are unemployed but have stopped looking. Then there are those who want full time employment but can only get part-time work that doesn’t pay them a living wage. These are not counted either as unemployed. The unemployment rate looks quite a bit different when you include those people. It jumps from 10% to 20% and we are continuing to lose jobs.

Another lie is the CPI (Consumer Price Index). The government lowers the inflation rate by excluding certain products that tend to inflate and replacing them with products that do not change much. If the government ceased lying to us, the inflation rate would be 10%.

However there is hope. But don’t bet your unemployment check on it. Instead of waiting for the collapse there is something that the Federal government can do providing we can get the Democratic Congress to act. The government can create jobs in order to improve the infra-structure of the country in the same way that FDR did in the 30’s. Building and improving roads, parks, bridges, schools, sewer systems and anything else that is needed, will provide employment for the unemployed. Then as the tax revenues increase the debt will eventually become smaller and the economy will begin to flourish. In short, do not be concerned about increasing the debt temporarily because it will be paid down in the future providing workers are back to work.

Here’s a thought for the day: Would you say that by and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth? Check out Sarah Palin’s new book “Going Rogue”. The book is coming out in November. There are excerpts available but you might want to wait for the English edition.

References:

George Carlin
Chris Hedges
Robert Reich

The March of the Invertebrates

2009-09-19T08:24:00.001-07:00

Turn over the rocks in front of the local Evangelical Church and you will find an army of invertebrates singing the praise of the Lord and marching to Armageddon. It is the Christian Right seeking to grab power in the future American Theocracy. Is this the American Dream? According to George Carlin, the reason they called it the American Dream is because you had to be asleep to believe it. But beware of the American Theocracy. You are awake, I hope. It is real and it is gonna getcha.

Do you know why? Because the Christian right intends to substitute Theocracy for the Constitution. That is its plan. We have now a serious economic crises and the Christian Right thrives on crisis. They are opposed to the government solving people’s problems because the movement thrives on solving those problems. It is in this way people in deep trouble e.g. depression, grief, drugs, alcohol, joblessness, unaffordable medical care, can be manipulated into accepting evangelical solutions. It is the application of Biblical teachings to their daily life, often known as “born again”. Once having joined the movement and are weeping in the presence of the reprehensible Pat Robertson they give up choice and are required to submit to the will of the leader. It is pure and simple demagoguery and hypocrisy. The followers join the march to the secular state.

The Christian Right is a movement seeking political power and control of the state. It is not really a religious movement. It calls for the submission of will by its followers to the will of its leaders. Any questioning of the leaders will is blamed on Satan. It is the cult of masculinity. The male leaders are not questioned because they speak for God. Facts are treated as thought they were only opinions. Thus, lies become truth. The religious claptrap is spurious and is used only for control.

It is true that people believe what they want to believe but once they have surrendered and are under control submission is required. In the end submission is to a demagogic leader who envisions a totalitarian political state. In order to achieve his goal he creates an alliance with powerful right wing corporate interests. This comes appallingly close to the European Fascism of the 1930’s. Say good-bye to your vaunted democracy.

However, as one comic put it, would you really want to be a member of a group whose symbol is a man nailed to two pieces of wood? Think about it.

References:

Max Blumenthal
George Carlin
Chris Hedges

Idiot’s Delight

2009-09-06T08:21:00.000-07:00

Well, folks, stupidity and ignorance continue unabated. Let’s look at CNBC, the financial TV channel. This channel represents Wall St. Maria Bartiromo is a financial news anchor on this show. She analyzes investments for her viewers. She was interviewing a Democratic legislator about health care reform. He was well informed. She, on the other hand, was attacking government managed health care in the US because it would, in her opinion, lower the quality of medical care. The legislator pointed out that we already have government managed health care and it is called Medicare. Anyone who has Medicare coverage will testify that the quality of medical care is excellent and that they are very well satisfied with the program. Her reply was, “If it is so great, why don’t you have it? I don’t see you using that plan.” The Congressman answered that he was not old enough. He said that he was only 44 and the eligibility age is 65. She laughed disbelievingly and commented, “Yeah…c’mon." Now here is an American working in the center of the main stream media and who should be well informed but does not know or believe that Medicare is for 65 year olds. Is this a tragic joke, or what?

Now let’s take a look at a Town Hall meeting. This man is afraid that the government is going to take away his constitutional rights probably to bear arms. So he is standing by a sign that says “Save the USS Constitution”. Now this confounded individual does not know that the USS Constitution is not the basic principles and laws of our nation but rather the fighting ship called “Old Ironsides” employed in the War of 1812. So what can we say? At this point all one can really say is to quote George Carlin, “Think how stupid the average person is and realize that half of them are stupider than that”.

Now we realize that some of the people raising hell at Town Hall Meetings are “goon squads” sent in by right wing Republicans just to create chaos and make it impossible for anyone to learn anything about health care changes proposed by the administration. But then there are also a large group of right wing Christians, followers of Pat Robertson, who are deluded enough to believe that they speak for God and can carry out the will of God. And they believe that prayer and fasting will save their butts because to them delusion is reality. Now, how does this mistaken reality apply to health care which is the major topic at the meetings? It’s very simple. You do not need health insurance because Jesus will cure you. If you have lost your job, there is no need to worry, because God will take care of you. And according to the “gospel of prosperity”, God will make you materially wealthy.

And it is in this way that a link is forged between the corporations, i.e. the insurance industry, the drug industry, and the for profit health care industry, and the Christian right wing that prevents any change that would improve the lot of the poor and the middle class.

So as a droll wit once said, “You can’t have everything, where would you put it?”

References:

Carlin, George.
Hedges, Chris, Democracy Now.
Huffington Post.

Another Cuckoo

2009-08-22T17:24:00.000-07:00

Suddenly Newt Gingrich appears on the main stream media defending Sarah Palin. We hadn’t heard from him for some time but he is now planning a run for President in 2012. So he is gearing up.

He is defending her opposition to the so-called “death panel” and “euthanasia” which she claims are part of the Obama health care plan. The fact that last year (2008) she endorsed end of life counseling is ignored. Her reversal just turns her into a bigger hypocrite. Death panels and euthanasia are lies. There are no such fantasies in the health care bill. The lies are used to scare hell out of senior citizens so that they will not support any change in health care. .

Living wills have been available in most states for years and they describe certain life prolonging treatments for patients with terminal illness or in a vegetative state. The decisions are made by the family and the doctor accepts whatever they decide. To twist this commendable option into euthanasia and compare it the policies of an insane Hitler is just vile and outrageous. Sen. Grassley is spreading the same crap and he should be censured or worse by the Senate for his lies. Incidentally, he also in 2003 voted for end of life counseling.

Since Gingrich is presenting himself as a Palin political tutor, let’s take a look at Newt’s character. He is well known for his mendacity, hypocrisy, political trickery, a belief in family values except when his first wife was dying of cancer, he was philandering. In fact he has a history of philandering and prays to God for forgiveness but admittedly can’t stop. God might forgive him if he would stop presenting himself as a believer in family values. Stop lying, Newt. God has spoken.

His advice to Sarah to make a run for President in 2012 is to first write a book which she is about to do. Next make three different speeches. Put in some television time and work hard. This has worked for Newt and he believes it will make her a political personality forever.

The problem is that most people, and it is growing, believe she is a flake and as the Democratic Party consultant, Paul Bergala, has said, she is “about half a wack job”. Intellectually she is not just a light weight but rather a no weight.

If Newt and Sarah coalesce in 2012, run, run, run for your life.

References:

Google
Huffington Post
Wikipedia.

A Proliferation of Crackpots

2009-07-30T13:22:00.000-07:00

How did ignorance and stupidity become virtuous traits? It began with the selection of Sarah Palin as VP candidate for the Republican Party. Carl Bernstein calls this half-baked Alaskan “an ignorant demagogue.” Now the Republicans are grooming this airhead for a Presidential run in 2012. Since she was an American Idol beauty contestant, it would appear that she is as qualified to be President as Bush was. She mouths imbecilic drivel and since she has a Right Wing following, aided and abetted by the mainstream media, she has become a threat to a democratic society. Sarah is for saving the economy by putting back what we had before with no change. Don’t change anything and when things collapse again just come to Alaska and drill, baby, drill. Produce our own gas and oil and when that runs out, which it will do, go some place else in the world and destroy another frontier. According to her brand of nonsense, there are plenty of frontiers, just grab one. But Sarah is not the only problem.

Our society is divided between the right wing blockheads who talk gibberish and those voters who support the present administration. For example, we now have a deployment of insects called the “Birthers” that have crawled out from an overturned rock. They claim that Obama is not a citizen and that his birth certificate is a forgery. And he has managed through some gigantic conspiracy to get himself elected to the highest office in the land. These pinheads continue their ravings despite the assurances of the state of Hawaii that Obama’s birth certificate is authentic.

Now let’s consider the truck driver, James David Adkisson, who entered a Unitarian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee with a rifle and proceeded to shoot up the place killing two people and injuring six. Fortunately, he was grabbed by several members of the church and prevented from doing any more harm. This man lost his job and is running out of food stamps. He believes that the liberals are responsible for his problems and since he couldn’t get to the liberals in power he went to a church that had a liberal reputation to kill the voters who put the liberals in power. Get it? He believes that all liberals should be killed because they are ruining the country. He believes that his perception is reality. In his blind ignorance he doesn’t know that the liberals are supporting legislation that would assist people like himself. Instead he turns it around and kills them.

So what is the source of this inane perception? In his house the police found books by Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Michael Savage. All have viciously attacked liberals and outspokenly mandated their disappearance. Glenn Beck who is another nut case must be included since he was actually shown on his TV show trying to decide whether he should kill Michael Moore.

The Dept. of Homeland Security has issued a report in which it is stated that the right wing extremists groups are using the poor economy and the first black President as recruiting tools. Right wing talk radio and Fox News has an audience of more than 35 million listening or viewing hate talk. I would think that the malicious talk spewed by these hypocrites presumably plays a role in the killings that have occurred. Do you?

References:

Bill Moyer’s Journal
Jon Stewart. The Daily Show
Naomi Klein. Progressive Magazine.

The Economy is Sound

2009-07-06T13:40:00.000-07:00

When Wall St. is in trouble, we are always reassured with the statement that the “fundamentals are sound”. We hear it repeatedly on the financial channels of our TV. We need to recognize the spin for what it is. Obviously there is nothing fundamentally sound about our current economic crisis.

So we need to point out repeatedly that billions of dollars for the Pentagon and the armaments industry are really not intended for “national security” but rather to keep the economy from collapsing. The present economic crisis is an indication of possible over-all collapse because some of the huge Wall St. investment banks that had over-leveraged for outrageous profit needed injections of cash to prevent their collapse. So the Secty of Treasury, Hank Paulsen, appointed by Bush, came up with a scam known as the TARP. He himself was former head of Citi bank and it was in deep yogurt. He needed a cash injection for that bank. But since it would not be appropriate to just save that bank, he proposed to Congress that he needed 700 billion dollars to save all the banks. And Congress bought it. Well, it happens that all the banks did not need saving, only a greedy few on Wall St.

Now some banks are giving back the money because it isn’t needed and as long as they keep it, since it is our money, they are required to accept regulations that they do not want. We are still out 200-300 billion dollars that were gifts to banks. On top of that 2-3 trillion dollars is being spent on the military and it is all borrowed money. A number of pundits believe that this cannot continue and it is an economic crisis that will lead eventually to bankruptcy. It could be the end of the capitalist system as we know it.

The neocons may revel in the power of an “American Empire” But the empire is no longer supportable. We are hugely in debt; we cannot raise sufficient taxes and we cannot pay for the troops required to maintain the empire. Japan and China are keeping our economy functioning by lending huge amounts to our Treasury. In addition we spend outrageous sums on war and the military in order to maintain the growth of the economy.

There is no question that the Defense budget is a jobs program and military research that develops new weapons systems and new military technologies produce billions of dollars for corporations and their lobbyists. In this way does the military-industrial complex encourage militarism and the need for continuing wars. It is true that there have been some technological advances derived from military research that have become civilian industries. However, weapons spending far out weighs any other expenditures in the Pentagon budget. Furthermore, it is politically very difficult to trim munitions spending once the program is entrenched. There are far too many politicians and their constituents benefiting from the program.

References:

Johnson, Chalmers. Nemesis. 2006
Galbraith, John Kenneth. The Great Crash 1929. 1997.
Wikipedia

Weapons and War

2009-05-26T20:26:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not there are those who are still asking, why did we invade Iraq? Some pundits are still saying that they really don’t know. As soon as we ran into a stone wall looking for WMDs, there were those who believed there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. And, of course, there was no link. In fact, they hated each other. So Bush and his coterie, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Perle decide to invade Iraq despite there being no connection between Iraq and 9/11. In fact, 15 of the 19 hi-jackers were Saudi citizens. No one mentioned attacking Saudi Arabia since we were getting huge amounts of oil from our long time ally and selling highly profitable military weapons to them.

Next the Israel Lobby was presented as the force behind the invasion of Iraq in order to make Israel more secure. It certainly was true that the Israel Lobby was very active in Congress garnering support for war but to make Israel more secure was really a bogus argument, pure unadulterated spin since Israel is very strong militarily. Spreading democracy in the Middle East was a pure fantasy that became a total disaster. So what is left? There is only one possibility and that is U.S. domination of the oil resources of that region. And directly linked to that natural resource is the build-up of a war machine as a source of power, military prowess and most important huge profits.

Many wars are fought over natural resources but the U.S. has fought a number of wars where there was no vital resource as the reason for the hostilities. Vietnam is a good example. That country had no resource that the U.S. needed for its own security. The reason given for the war was to prevent the take-over of South East Asia by the communists was just another bogus argument. That war from beginning to end was based on lies.

The only reason for the confrontations small and large that occurred during the cold war, e.g. Panama, Grenada, Dominican Republic, Yugoslavia and others, was not for natural resources but rather to justify the continuing production of military weapons to enhance our position of power in the world and to provide huge profits for the military-industrial complex. The neo-conservative war hawks, i.e. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, and Perle, were and are constantly spinning and lobbying for continuing wars for this purpose. To ignore the power of the corporations that produce military weaponry for overwhelming profit is a huge mistake, for it is these corporations, such as Haliburton, KBR, Norton, Lockheed-Martin and others that provided the rational for the invasion of Iraq.

Although the Israel lobby was pushing very hard for invasion, there are those pundits who believe that the invasion would have happened even without the help of the lobby. The neocons were determined to invade and had been for a decade.

References:

Mearsheimer and Walt. The Israel Lobby. 2007
Scheer, Robert. The Pornography of Power. 2008
Wikipedia

Israeli Morality

2009-05-26T20:21:00.000-07:00

In 1917 Arthur Balfour issued a statement of policy from the British Government stating that the British favor the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine and nothing shall be done to prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. And therein is the rub. The local population of Arabs who had been living on this land since the Ottoman Empire and possibly before did not approve of the establishment of a Jewish homeland on their land. The rights of the Palestinians were not in the least considered. As far as the Jews were concerned God, as stated in the Old Testament Bible, gave them that land and were told to force out anyone who was there. That alone was a violation of the Balfour declaration. So the Jews took the land and by 1967 they were settling on the West Bank and Gaza. Now we have another problem. The Israelis are not really settlers, they are in fact colonizers. “They are living on someone else’s land.”

The all-knowing God apparently was not familiar with the real estate laws of Palestine. It happens that the Palestinians legally own that land and have the deeds to prove it. It was plain and simple thievery. By 2003 400,000 Jews were occupying the land in direct violation of Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions, which specifically prohibits an occupying power from deporting or transferring “parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

Unfortunately Israeli politicians suffer from an overwhelming flaw and that is the inability to recognize the humanity of the Palestinians. As a result, they force Palestinians off the land, destroy their home and continue the colonization of the land. The Palestinians are then forced to move into unhygienic slums. Yet the U.S. supports Israel on moral grounds. First it is assumed that Israel is weak and surrounded by enemies. Next Israel’s moral behavior is superior to that of the Palestinians. The Jews were victims in Europe but in the Middle East they are victimizers. They have victimized and are continuing to victimize the Palestinians.

In the wars that Israel fought starting in 1947 against the Palestinians and later the Arabs Israel was never weak. It won both wars and all subsequent conflicts because it had superior firepower and manpower, was better organized and had better leadership. And this was despite that it was outnumbered. The Israeli army was an overwhelming force. No Arab army would ever attempt to attack Israel today and survive. Don’t forget Israel also has nuclear weapons paid for by the U.S.

As for the Israel’s moral behavior toward the Palestinians, it was hardly benevolent. During the 40 years of military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza the Israelis used brutal beatings and torture to repress protests. The troops were issued truncheons and encouraged to break the bones of Palestinians. Approximately 30,000 children needed medical treatment for beatings suffered at the hands of Israeli troops. The children were under 10 years of age and some cases under 5. The children sustained head injuries and fractures. 6000 to 8000 children suffered gunshot wounds. And most of the children were not participating in any protest demonstrations. Some were actually shot in their homes. As time goes on the Israeli troops are ever more brutal, killing and wounding larger numbers of Palestinians. Israel’s conduct is shocking, disgraceful and patently immoral.

References:

Fisk, Tom. The Great War for Civilization. 2005
Mearsheimer and Walt. The Israel Lobby. 2007
Wikipedia.

Greed and Stupidity

2009-05-26T20:18:00.000-07:00

It is often said that we are incapable of learning from history. In fact, one acerbic wit said that history does not enlighten the petrified mind. If we learn anything from history, it is that we do not learn from history. However, the inability to learn from history is not really the point.

To make changes necessary to prevent recurring crises requires that we limit the power of the corporatists. These are the brokers of power that operate and control the financial institutions behind the façade of constitutional government. The people vote for the legislative representatives but the power brokers, the corporatists, control the legislative branch. They are the military-industrial complex in collusion with bank financed speculation pursuing insane profit. In fact, Senator Durbin recently stated that bankers own the U.S. Congress. And there are those who believe that bank financed speculation may eventually destroy capitalism. The present day economic crisis is an indication of how close we have come. We have survived several economic bubbles in the last 30 years but none were as serious as this one and those in power do not want change.

The shocking lack of regulatory control over the financial institutions, of course, was a major contributing factor to our present economic crisis. In addition the corruption of our legislative branch of government due to the control of lobbyists who represent the military, the industrialists, and the financial institutions is destroying the checks and balances written into the Constitution. As a result, the Congress has very little control over the expanded power of the Presidency. This was particularly true under the Bush administration. Whether this will continue to occur under the present administration will require that we wait and see.

What will likely continue to occur is the control of the lobbyists and the payoffs for favors. Bribes to legislators in the guise of campaign contributions will no doubt continue. Greed and stupidity is endemic in all political systems.

One of the more scandalizing operations of the ace lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, who was eventually convicted of a number of counts of fraud and is now languishing in jail, was the one in which he and Tom Delay, Texas Congressman, lobbied Congress to prevent the passing of a minimum wage law on Saipan in the Mariana Islands. Sweat shops owned by U.S. Chinese industrialists paid Abramoff $10 million to defeat the bill. Thousands of women work for practically nothing to produce high priced clothing for big name companies, such as Nordstrom, Liz Claiborne, Reebok, Eddie Bauer and many others.

Another one of the tactics used by lobbyists to gain approval of a particular bill is to stress the number of jobs that the legislation will provide for the Congressman’s constituency. This strategy is often used to pass a weapons bill for the military, whether it is a useful weapon or not. The main concern is to get that Pentagon money into the local community. The initial payoff is again called a campaign contribution.

Does anyone think Obama can break up this entrenched corruption?

References:

Galbraith, John Kenneth. A Short History of Financial Euphoria. 1994
Johnson, Chalmers. Nemesis. 2006
Wikipedia

Imperial Bankruptcy

2009-04-29T08:10:00.000-07:00

Many of us are not aware of how inevitably and speedily our imperial capitalist economy is moving toward bankruptcy. We are sailing on a magnificent yacht that is moving downstream toward an immense waterfall and we are deaf to the crashing sounds of falling water.

The money we spend on the military, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but world wide far exceeds the TARP bail out funds. But if you include the cost of Iraq, now 2-3 trillion dollars, on top of Tarp which Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, says we may need 2 trillion dollars to fix Wall St. and the banks, we are looking at an economic crisis that cannot continue. Keep in mind that all this money is borrowed. Income tax is insufficient to cover the expense. Bush did not raise taxes for his imperial war, he lowered them. We are borrowing from China, Japan and other Asian countries. Add the service on the debt and you feel as though you are becoming mentally unsound. It cannot be real. Oh, but it is.

Now let’s consider what we actually manufacture for export. Guess? It’s weaponry. We don’t manufacture much of anything else. We produce more arms and munitions than anyone else in the world and we ship this weaponry to 730 American military bases throughout the world, actually in 130 countries. The money spent also includes global communications, espionage installations, military operations, nuclear weapons, construction, pension, hospitalization and disability payments for veterans and much, much more.

We are now at the point where we may not raise enough money to pay for all of this. We cannot continue to rely on massive spending for armies and weapons to keep the economy afloat and prevent collapse. It is not productive. It is dead end spending. Furthermore, an economy based on war leads to the destruction of the human spirit. We tend to think of war only in terms of victory or defeat when in reality “it is about death and the infliction of death.” We do not consider our adversary as people and we kill without conscience. As a result, we also kill unarmed civilians and we establish secret prisons where our soldiers torture the inmates. Torture was permissible because Attorney General Gonzalez decreed that the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture was obsolete. It happens that this prohibition was a ratified treaty signed by the U.S. and was therefore a law. According to our Constitution a ratified treaty is a law of the land. Gonzalez had no power or authority to nullify it. Bush then issued a memo stating that captives from the battlefields are not POWs but rather are “illegal combatants.” There is no such term in International Law. Bush’s attorneys made it up.

Thus the Geneva Conventions in regard to POWs did not apply, according to Bush, Gonzalez and John Yoo in the Office of Legal Counsel. Troops were then free to torture.

Those responsible for torture should be prosecuted. It is a violation of the law. The subject is not debatable.

References: .
Fisk, Tom. The Great War for Civilization. 2005.
Johnson, Chalmers. Nemesis. 2006.
Stiglilitz, J. and Bilmes, L. The 3 Trillion Dollar War. 2008.

Israel and the United States

2009-04-14T08:23:00.000-07:00

Despite the Israel Lobby’s indoctrination of Congress, it is recognized by almost 40 % of Americans that the incredible anti-Americanism experienced all over the world is caused mainly by the US support of Israel. It is also true that Israel’s influence on the Bush administration was a primary cause for the invasion of Iraq and the constant pressure on Congress and the present administration to start another war this time against Iran. Furthermore, if it is real, the so-called “war on terror” certainly is not aided by our alliance with Israel nor is our relationship with our allies around the world strengthened by our constant praise of Israeli policies in the Middle East. Our support of Israel is promoted primarily by the political power of the Lobby and has no strategic value. In fact that support is not in our national interest and is actually in the end harmful to Israel.

What are some of the arguments used in America for the support of Israel? The moral argument is quite effective. For example, Israel is weak and encircled by those who want to demolish it; Jews have suffered persecution in Europe; Jews are “morally superior” to the Palestinians. Except for European persecution these arguments are pure and simple myths. Moreover, Jews are no longer the victims rather Jews instead have become the persecutors. The treatment of Palestinians has been brutal. The Israel Defense Forces since 2006 have been striking Palestinian civilian targets killing men, women and children by the thousands.

Under these circumstances Israel is hardly the underdog. It is not weak and has always been militarily superior to the Palestinians going back to the first war, the War for Independence in 1948. The Israelis have “superior firepower, manpower, organization and command.” No Arab army would consider invading the Israeli state. They would be wiped out.

America quite often uses the argument for support of Israel that it is a democracy surrounded by dictatorships. It is the only democracy in the Middle East and America supports democracies. That isn’t always true since there are democracies in the world that we do not support. But more importantly Israel’s democratic values are a little different than ours. In the U.S. people of any race, color or religion enjoy equal rights. In Israel Arabs do not enjoy equal rights. In fact Palestinian Arabs are treated in a highly discriminatory manner and it is accepted by most Israeli Jews that Arabs be unequally treated. The excuses used are that they are dirty and smell bad, they are ignorant and uneducated. The average Jew ignores the fact that Palestinians are kept in poverty by Israeli law. Evicting Palestinian families from their homes is a continuing policy that forces them to live in slums.

Special interest groups of all kinds actively influence members of Congress and have for decades. A particularly powerful interest group is the Israel Lobby which is made up of Jewish organizations, registered lobbyists and wealthy or not so wealthy Jewish individuals. This lobby is a “loose coalition” that strives to influence U.S. foreign policy in favor of Israel. It is extremely effective in supporting policies in the Middle East that often have no strategic or moral value for the U.S. The organization that has the most influence in Congress and is the core of the Israel Lobby is the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). This committee’s effectiveness in Congress is overpowering. When an issue comes up involving Israel, there is never any debate. The critics are silent. Every other issue whether it is education, energy, abortion, gay rights, you name it, the debate is always brisk and animated. There is an extended exchange of views. But when the issue involves Israel, there is very little dialogue or none. And any Congressman or Senator that takes an adversarial position in regard to an Israel issue supported by AIPAC usually ends up persona non grata. The motto is: “Cross AIPAC, you play with fire.”

Now as for the Palestinians, it will not be easy but there are a number of things we can do. According to some experts in international affairs, we could encourage other countries to “isolate Israel as we did in the case of South Africa.” We could aid the Palestinians economically to help develop their own state. Of course, they would have to stop all violence against Israel. And Israel would have to stop its violence against the Arabs.

Continuing the present policy just makes things worse and destroys our reputation in the world. Opinion polls indicate that the American people would support pressing Israel to settle. At the moment the hard line lobby stands in the way.

References:

Mearsheimer and Walt. The Israel Lobby. 2007
Fisk, Robert. The Great War For Civilization. 2005.
Wikipedia

Bank Fraud

2009-04-14T08:21:00.000-07:00

Let’s start with a definition of fraud. Fraud is the intentional perversion of the truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right. It involves deceit, trickery or misrepresentation. And of course fraud is a criminal act.

So who committed this fraud? You may find this hard to believe but the deceit was coldly planned by those in charge of the major banks and lending institutions in the country. The CEOs, CFOs and members of the boards are guilty of fraud. They have not been prosecuted and they have not been found guilty but that is what they were about. To make themselves personally rich they deliberately made bad loans because bad loans pay extremely well. These loans were called “liar’s loans”. That means that nothing is documented. A borrower applies for a mortgage and the lender does not verify the borrower’s job, his income or his assets. He is encouraged to misrepresent, i.e. lie about his finances. This kind of deception can only lead to disaster. For example, the bank known as Indy Mac in Los Angeles went down because it had made $80 billion (!) worth of “liar’s loans”.

The complicated financial instruments such as CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) that were created to deceive buyers, i.e. institutional investors, were made up of liar’s loans and given AAA ratings by the rating agencies without even looking at them. AAA means “zero credit risk”. But in fact these instruments had overwhelming risk. One trader said that “the banks knew they were selling crap”. And that is how these investments became toxic. When the original mortgages foreclosed, the banks became insolvent. That is where we are today. But the government is covering up the insolvency of the banks saying it will take 2 trillion taxpayers’ dollars to solve the problem. But at the same time the banks are claiming they are fully capitalized, i.e. solvent. What is the truth? The real solution is to close the banks, put them in receivership and fire the executives who caused the problems which means that a person is appointed to manage the corporation during the reorganization. It is not nationalization and it was done during the S & L debacle in the 80’s.It was also done during the Great Depression in the 30’s. It happens to be legally mandated and it is being disregarded. By the way the FDIC will protect your deposits during the re-org. So don’t panic if it ever comes to that.

Primarily we need to get rid of the people at the top who committed the fraud and caused the problem If they remain in charge, we will never find out how the fraud was perpetrated, who was responsible and what are the assets (if any) really worth. We can’t expect the guys who did it to tell us anything. Dump these guys and put in new people we can trust. In short, uncover the cover-up and then regulate.

References:

Black, William K, Bill Moyers Journal 4/3/09
Common Dreams.

The Wall St. Bookies

2009-03-14T12:51:00.000-07:00

In order to understand the present economic crisis, more needs to be explained as to what the Wall St. “financial wizards” were up to.

First, let’s begin with the simple example of betting at the race track. You pick a horse that you think will win. The owner of the horse bets to win. You also bet to win even though you don’t own the horse. This is known as a side bet. You can make the bet at the track or off the track through a bookie. In either case there is money to back up the bet so if you win you will be paid.

Now on Wall St. a side bet is called a derivative. It is a financial investment that also does not require that you own the investment. For example, you can bet on interest rates going up or down, a stock index going up or down or whether a mortgage owner will default on his mortgage. These are all side bets that do not require that you own the investment. Betting on mortgage defaults were called “credit default swaps” (CDS) and it was these bets that caused the crisis. “Swaps” were sold by investment banks, were unregulated by law and no money was required to back them. Credit default swaps were actually insurance policies that protected the investor in the event the bet went bad. But why would it go bad? Housing prices continued to go up. No one could lose. Anyway you weren’t really buying protection because you were just placing a side bet. And remember you did not have to own the investment. So the three big investment banks i.e. Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros and AIG accepted bets that they could not pay off when the mortgage market went south and, as a result, those investment banks, the largest on Wall St., failed. It was “illegal gambling” that had been made legal by Congress in the year 2000. The bank lobbyists managed to persuade Congress with argument and large amounts of cash to pass a bill that removed derivatives and credit default swaps from regulation.

You see, a conventional insurance company that conforms to established standards by law has to set aside sufficient funds to pay off losses. So the “insurance” that the banks were selling weren’t insurance but rather another side bet, the credit default swap. It was a swap because you were swapping the default risk to a supposed insurer. But when the bubble burst there was no money to pay the loser. It was bye-bye baby. Now it’s in the US taxpayer’s lap. Unfortunately the whole world is suffering because of Wall St. greed.

One particular company should take the major blame and it has been brought to its knees. It is AIG, the largest insurance company in the world with offices all over the world. The former CEO, the man who built the company, was responsible for the move from insurance to credit default swaps making it possible to credit endless risk with no regulation. As a result, the loss to the company was $100 billion and the destruction of the corporation. The Feds are still pouring our money into it to save it. One economist calls it “lemon socialism”, i.e. losses are socialized and profits are privatized.

References:

The Baseline Scenario
Krugman, Paul
Wikipedia

The Plunderers

2009-01-25T18:12:00.000-08:00

Who are they? You can be sure that they are not the pirates of yore. No, they are the corrupt pirates of Wall Street that devour the small to medium investors and leave them penniless. It takes a Madoff to leave the rich penniless.

Before 1980 corporations were able to get credit from commercial banks relatively easily. After 1980 the rise in interest rates forced corporations to seek out other sources of credit. As a result investment banks reappeared on Wall Street and became the controlling source of corporate money. Earnings projections had to be met or the stock price declined and their ratings dropped. This opened the corporation to a “hostile takeover” and further upset. In order to survive a corporation had to be highly competitive and able to bring a technology to the market that appeared “indispensable”. So in order to obtain venture capital, the corporation had to convince the source of money that it had the skills and talent to provide a high return to the investors. Once a capital institution was convinced, huge amounts of money became available and the new young entrepreneur became instantly and phenomenally rich.

What was the difference between the entrepreneurs of old and the new leaders of business? The “old boys” were hard workers, concerned about the customers and the company’s share of the market. All of this took time and effort. The new young entrepreneur was rich before the business was successful. All he needed to convince the venture capitalist to invest was a viable business plan, sometimes an innovative patent and the right connections. The money then rolled in the door. And since the CEO of this potentially successful business had no self-image problems, he paid himself a huge salary. Instead of pursuing the interests of the company, i.e. the welfare of the customers, employees and shareholders, the CEO looked upon himself as “numero uno”. He was the only one that counted. In short, every man for himself became the pattern. CEOs moved from one company to another attracted by higher salaries and bonuses. Their riches were shameful.

However, in order to maintain that style of life, companies resorted to cooking the books, fraud, corruption and criminality. The company became for some CEOs an unlimited ATM machine, brazenly availing themselves of millions. It was pure and simple looting. They looted their own corporations and the corporation under their leadership looted their employees, their customers and their shareholders. The end result was that everyone except the CEO wound up penniless. Some of the tragic examples are Enron, Tyco and WorldCom. No one blew the whistle, neither the reputable accounting firms nor the rating agencies.

The belief that corporations and financial institutions are capable of policing themselves is a fantasy. Regulators’ refusal to regulate opened the doors to looting for private profit and eventual criminality. Jeff Skilling, former CEO of Enron with a Harvard Masters Degree in Business Administration, was convicted of multiple counts of fraud and was sentenced to 24 years in prison. He fought aggressively against government regulation.

Here’s some “breaking news” that will shock your socks: The CEO of Merrill Lynch, while the company was seeking financial help, was paying his chauffeur $230,000 a year and was redecorating his office at a cost of $1.2 million which included a $35,000 elevated commode. And this was going on at the time of huge layoffs at Merrill Lynch. The purchase of Merrill Lynch by the Bank of America has caused a major crisis for the bank. The stock price has dropped precipitously and the dividend will probably be cut. This will force the price even lower.

Now the CEO of Merrill Lynch has been asked to leave by the CEO of Bank of America because of additional losses not revealed at the time of the merger. And the shareholders of the B of A are now considering forcing the CEO of B of A out because of lack of due diligence.

One wonders how A.P. Giannini (1870-1949), the founder of the Bank of America, originally called the Bank of Italy (1904) would react to the SOBs of Wall Street who are crippling his bank. It was the first bank in the early 20th century to offer banking services to the middle class rather than only the rich.

References:

Galbraith, James. The Predator State. 2008.
Wikipedia

The Supreme Irony

2009-01-11T10:23:00.000-08:00

There is a good deal of praise at the moment regarding Obama’s selection of a cabinet. The phrase “the best and the brightest” has surfaced once again as a description of those selected. You may recall that term as the title of a prize winning book by David Halberstam (1972) describing the Vietnam quagmire and those responsible.

Two of the best and brightest were Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy. McNamara was Secretary of Defense and Bundy was National Security Advisor. These were the “whiz kids”, men of overweening self-confidence, highly educated at the best eastern schools, top of their class, plutocratic ideologues and a paranoid fear of communism. They believed that communism was monolithic, that all the countries in Southeast Asia would adopt authoritarian communism (Stalinism) and would prevent western corporate investors from developing the natural resources of the areas. The potential loss of profit was an issue.

After all, the cold war was at its height and the best and brightest mistakenly assumed that the Soviets and China intended to control Southeast Asia. Another mistake was the failure to recognize that the Vietnam conflict was a civil war and we had no cause to interfere. Finally, McBundy in particular failed to comprehend the “endurance of the enemy” and that a guerrilla war could not be won by large numbers of mechanized combat troops. Does this sound familiar? (Iraq)

McNamara in his memoir and in the film “Fog of War” admitted that he was “wrong, terribly wrong” about every aspect of the war. And Bundy when questioned whether he agreed said that “it was very unlikely that we were right.”

Another blind spot on the part of our brilliant leaders was the inability to recognize that the communist ideology had split into totalitarian communism and democratic socialism. In the 60’s and 70’s there were a number of third world countries experimenting with social democracy because it was clear to them that socialism could not sustain itself without democracy. A good example in 1970 was Chile where Salvador Allende, a social democrat, not a Stalinist, ran for election to the office of President and won overwhelmingly. It was a mixed economy where major corporations were nationalized and privatization of smaller business continued to exist. The success of the government frightened the power elite, viz. Nixon and Kissinger. Kissinger informed Nixon that the spread of social democracy would endanger our control of the natural resources of these countries and potential world markets. So in order to kill Allende’s government, Kissinger labeled it a Marxist dictatorship, followed with a military coup aided by the CIA and placed Pinochet, a brutal fascist dictator, in Allende’s place. Allende tragically died in the takeover.

Today democratic socialism has once again surfaced particularly in Latin-America. It does not make Washington very happy but there really isn’t much the administration can do about it this time around. We can hardly invade every country now controlled by popular uprisings. And besides our problems at home are overwhelming.

It is ironical that the Obama advisors are claiming that the appointees are the “best and brightest” One observer wryly commented that obviously they “had not read the end of the book.” Can Obama get us out of the current quagmire?

References:

Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine.
Truthdig. Blight, James.
Wikipedia

War on Terror Boom

2008-12-23T09:10:00.000-08:00

Have you ever noticed that whenever we want to deal with an annoying social problem we declare war on it? War seems to be a cultural and political compulsion. It’s world wide. But we make it into a slogan, e.g. war on poverty, war on drugs and in the last decade war on terror has become notorious. One observer has said that “America is addicted to wars of distraction.” Not one of these so-called “wars” has accomplished much except the war on terror and only in Israel. However, Israel has not been able to vanquish terror but rather instead has used terror to create an endless war economy. Very clever! In fact the growth of surveillance technology saved Israel’s economy.

A significant contribution, however, was made by the huge Russian migration to Israel starting in 1993 with the approval of the Russian government. Approximately a million Russian Jews most of whom were non-religious but some of whom had scientific skills that fit extremely well in Israel’s growing telecommunication and surveillance industries. In fact Israeli representatives traveled to Russia for the express purpose of persuading Jews to move to Israel. They offered them low cost loans and cheap rent. Many were encouraged to settle in Gaza in a town called Ariel which provided them with many comforts unknown to the Russians in their homeland. These settlements of course forced the Palestinians to leave creating sever hardship for them. Also the unskilled Russians were encouraged to take over the unskilled work of the Palestinians creating even more havoc.

The significance of this migration is the effect that it had on the communication industry in Israel. In 2000 the dot.com bubble caused a severe recession in Israel. Prior to that Israel had become known as the Silicon Valley of the Middle East. In order to deal with the economic downturn the government decided to switch from communication to security and surveillance. As the War on Terror spread throughout the world by 2004 Israel became the center for “homeland security” technology and this industry exploded in Israel and saved its economy. Israel’s sales pitch to the rest of the world was, we have been fighting terrorism since our inception and we are the experts. To people in the security business Israel every year offers conferences which are really trade shows. They demonstrate high tech security systems at these shows. And it has paid off. The Israelis believe that the war on terror is endless and the technology sector of their economy will continue to grow exponentially. It already is 60% of its exports. When an economy is benefiting from this kind of program, there really isn’t much incentive to find better solutions to deal with conflict. In fact, a cynical wit once said, “life is like licking honey off a thorn.” Do you think he had a point?

References:

Ehrenreich, Barbara. The Progressive
Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine.

Cataclysmic Capitalism

2008-11-27T08:56:00.000-08:00

We need to divest ourselves of the delusion that we live in a free market economy. We don’t. Rather, according to one observer, we live in a “corporate republic” where the “profits are privatized” and the “risks are socialized”. This means that a reckless investment is backed by the government which in turn is incentive for more reckless investment. In short, Wall Street is practicing “no risk capitalism”.

This is exactly what is happening today, i.e. the bail out of the “Wall Street Casino” by the federal government. The refusal by the corporations to accept regulation even when there are laws on the books forces the government to step in to prevent the economy from tanking. The regulators in collusion with the corporations won’t regulate. The rating agencies, Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s, paid by the corporations, hand out triple A ratings to corporations that in many cases are junk making them eligible for leveraged loans to the tune of 30 to 40 times their assets. (In actuality there are possibly only a half dozen companies among hundreds that are really AAA.) And this was the major cause of the crash. But on top of this, mortgage lenders were conning potential home buyers into borrowing beyond their means (sub-prime) until the housing market crashed also.

Now how does this corporate state affect our foreign policy? A multi-national corporation operating in a foreign country may find its profit negatively impacted by certain demands put on the company by the local government, e.g. new laws or new taxes. The US politicians interpret this as harassment of the corporation. It is anti-American and repressive. So it becomes necessary to “intervene”. That intervention quite often entails regime change which requires military intrusion in the form of a coup or actual invasion. The American public is then propagandized to support the intrusion because the cruel and corrupt government is interfering with the right of an American international corporation to exploit the poor of the country. However, it is presented to the American people as a “struggle between good and evil”. A military intervention would, of course, create a cataclysmic disaster in essentially a peaceful country. Then we send in Halliburton and/or Bechtel ostensibly to fix the disaster we have created. Disaster capitalism makes it possible to profit from the mayhem. Catastrophe is good for profit. It’s good to be king.

References:

Galbraith, James K. The Predator State. 2008
Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine. 2007

Our “friend” Saudi Arabia

2008-11-16T08:47:00.000-08:00

Most of us are not fully aware of the influence of foreign governments on US public policy. This is done by foreign governments willing to pay “foreign registered agents” or lobbyists located in Washington who are able to reach the desired goals easily. Foreign interests are quite able to buy influence in D.C. They use retired ubiquitous “Generals for sale “ and ex-Congressmen now lobbyists who know their way around Washington and are able to buy a dozen more Congressman still in office. The problem arises when the objectives of the foreign governments are in direct conflict with our nation’s objectives. Thus we end up high jacked.

We have a good example in the 9/11 tragedy. It is a fact that two of the hijackers were supported by Saudi government agents and a Congressional investigation into that link was blocked by the Bush administration and the FBI. It became clear that a foreign government aided the attack in our country resulting in the death of 3000 lives. 27 pages of the Congressional inquiry detailing the connection between a foreign government and the hijackers were entirely censored (blacked out). It became obvious that the perpetrators were supported by the Saudi government, a supposed friend of America. The Saudi embassy was the channel that led directly to the Saudi Royal family. The President’s refusal to allow public disclosure of this duplicity was an indication that his loyalty was stronger toward the Saudis than the safety of the US.

President Bush is not interested in protecting American national security but rather in protecting an American ally. Saudi Arabia is a very, very special ally because they provide us with oil at a discount. In return we provide them with weaponry to the tune of 36.9 billion since 1990 through the Pentagon sales program and another 394 million through the State Dept. And the sellers are Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman and Boeing.

Another area in which the Saudis are involved is the “nuclear black market”.They have in their possession “the longest-range ballistic missiles” of any third world country. They have also approved Pakistan’s nuclear program and contributed billions to Iraq’s program in the 80’s.

A private equity firm known as the Carlyle Group that invests heavily in defense companies is also one of the largest defense contractors tied to the Saudi Royal family to the tune of 14 billion between 1998 and 2003. James Baker, former Secty of State under Bush I, is the head attorney for the Carlyle Group and his connections in the Pentagon and Congress produces huge profits for Carlyle. Incidentally the Bush family is also closely tied financially to Carlyle.

The Saudis pour huge amounts of money into the lobbyists firms that in turn pay highly placed governnment officials as well as members of Congress to support military contracts provided by the defense industry. On top of that Boeing, Lockheed and Northrup pay millions to lobby Congressmen and political action committees to support military contracts on the defense industry’s wish list.

Do you think for one second any Democratic Congress or President would be able to severe these entrenched ties? The Military-Industrial Complex may be cast in concrete. Let’s hope it is watered down concrete.

References:

Graham, Bob. Intelligence Matters. 2008
Edmonds, Sibel. Wikipedia

The Revolving Door

2008-09-25T15:46:00.000-07:00

The term “revolving door” describes a cunning device whereby government employees elected or appointed move from their jobs to private jobs for much higher salaries in industries or lobbying firms that are receiving favors from the very same Congressional representatives. It can be plainly a conflict of interest but is usually ignored. The cycling of jobs is a very important asset of the lobbying industry.

Before getting into the dizzying complexities of lobbying in Washington, let’s look as an example at the case of Dennis Hastert, the former Republican Speaker of the House. It is by now a well known fact revealed by the whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI Turkish-American translator, that Dennis Hastert while Speaker had received tens of thousands of dollars in bribes for favors to the lobbying firm representing Turkey. He received the money in payment for his support of a Turkish oil and gas pipeline that was to run from Baku to the Mediterranean. He did other favors for Turkey and eventually when he left Congress, he joined in June 2008 the lobbying firm of Dickstein and Shapiro that represented Turkey in Congress. Salaries usually jump from 150,000 annually to 100,000 monthly for those who go through the revolving door. Quite an incentive, eh? It’s somewhat mindful of Alice in Wonderland. Except unlike Matrix it is real.

A word about Turkey. Most of us know very little about the role of Turkey. There are many lobbying machines that are on the Turkish payroll and they manage to keep the Turkey influence invisible. However, Turkey plays a central role in areas of terrorism, money laundering, black marketing of arms sales, nuclear secrets and manufacturing and sale of narcotics. It operates inside criminal networks with ostensible legitimate fronts and has links to our military and political machines. Turkey is a major customer of the US for military hardware, technology and weapons. It is very active in criminal networks that transport narcotics from Afghanistan through Central Asia to Turkey. The poppies are processed in Turkey then transported through the Balkans to Europe and America. Money laundering is done through its own banks or banks in Cyprus. High ranking US government employees sell nuclear secrets to Turkey and Pakistan which are then passed on to A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani black marketeer of nuclear secrets. He in turn with the approval of Pakistan government officials helps Iran and North Korea to start their nuclear programs. Pakistan, of course, gets its cut.

There is a link between terrorism and organized crime. Narcotics trafficking and black marketing of arms sales supports terrorism financially. Funds are used to buy arms and train terrorists.

Public service and influence peddling have crossed to such a degree that the revolving door is wide open and proliferating. Political and federal employees leave office for the “insider game” of lobbying and advising private interests how to gain advantage from federal officers. Influence peddling has become a multi-billion dollar industry annually. Today 32 former US Senators and 250 ex-Congressmen now lobby Congress for private interests. Unelected individuals who work for powerful committees in Congress go through the revolving door multiple times to work for lobbying firms. It’s a dizzying merry-go-round in that many cycle back and forth. As a result, House and Senate appropriations committees dole out billions in pork (earmarks).

Let’s look at one other example. William Cohen, former Secty of Defense under Clinton, after leaving the US government, set up his own lobbying company, called the Cohen Group. It represents the largest defense companies in the business, e.g. Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Cohen’s company is an active member of the American Turkish Council (ATC). Lockheed Martin is on the board of ATC and its biggest paying client. The Cohen Group also is very active in India and has just opened in China.

Laws to control lobbyists are full of loopholes so that the Cohen Group is not registered and is able to say that Turkey is not a “direct client”. Cohen claims he is not getting paid directly by the government of Turkey, according to his spin machine. But somehow money does pass between them. Money laundering is very useful. And the corrupt Turks are experts.

Lewis Black, the standup comic, once said: I wake up everyday thinking that it can’t get any worse and it does.

References:

Edmonds, Sibel. justacitizen.com
Wikipedia
Zwicker,Barrie. Towers of Deception. 2006.

False Flags

2008-09-25T15:44:00.001-07:00

Historically “false flag operations” originated in the Navy. A ship flying a flag that is not its true nationality is a false flag. It was done to fool the enemy but the rules of warfare at sea required that a true national flag be displayed before the battle.

In modern times a false flag operation has nothing to do with a flying flag but rather is employed by governments to rally the population in support of a war or a coup that the duplicitous rulers want. The whole point is to deceive the public into supporting a military conflict for the profit of the corporatists. The operation is launched by the power brokers behind the scenes by people none of us even know. They are the “invisible government”, the true rulers of our country. And they don’t give a damn how many military personnel or civilians lose their lives as long as the operation from their point of view is successful.

So let’s now consider a few false flag operations that hoodwinked the American public into passionately supporting wars.

We are all familiar with the Tonkin Gulf incident. The main stream media played an important role in reporting an attack by North Viet Nam torpedo boats against an American destroyer, the Maddin. That was supposedly the first attack. A second attack was later reported. By this time the American public was fuming. Johnson on television asked the American public to support a war against North Vietnam. The infamous Tonkin Gulf resolution got Congressional approval and became the basis for a war that killed 58000 Americans and 3 million Vietnamese. However, years later it became known that Johnson was lying and knew he was lying because the attacks never took place. And for further corroboration the former Managing Editor of the Washington Post, Ben Bradlee, was reported in a public speech 20 years later as saying that the Tonkin Gulf fraud “was one of the big lies that changed history.” There were no facts to support the resolution. The basis for the resolution was simply lies.

The USS Liberty, a technical research ship, was on a mission for the National Security Agency (NSA). Her role was to collect foreign communications and electronic emissions in the interest of National Defense. She was sent to the Mediterranean in 1967 during the six day war between Israel and Egypt. Although she was a “spy” ship, she was not sent to the war zone for that purpose. On June 8 she was attacked by Israeli forces. 34 sailors were killed and 170 were injured. The ship was severely damaged with a huge hole amidships. She stayed afloat, however, and was taken to Malta for repairs.

The USS Liberty was in neutral waters and was attacked by Israeli jet fighters and torpedo boats. The Israeli government claimed that the attack was in error. They stated that the US had not informed them of any US ships in the area. They also said that they “misidentified” the ship and thought it was an Egyptian cargo ship. According to crew members the attack was intentional and no way could it be misidentified. It was flying an American flag. It did not look like any Egyptian ship and the jet fighters flew over the ship numerous times at low altitudes.

Despite the presence of a flag this was a “false flag operation” that went wrong. The ship was sent onto these waters for a devious purpose. It was President Johnson’s intention that the ship be sunk, all lives be lost and the attack be blamed on Egypt. Then the US would attack Egypt giving military support to Israel, our ally. At the time Johnson was reported to have said that he did not care if the ship was sunk and all hands lost. He was not going to embarrass his ally, Israel. The powerful Israeli Lobby represented money and votes for the Democratic party.

Since the ship didn’t sink and 170 sailors survived, the Israeli Defense Command had to claim it was all a mistake. The attack was so vicious it was quite apparent that the intention was to totally destroy the ship and everyone on it. At the time it was generally believed that Johnson had made a secret deal behind the scenes with the Israelis to back them militarily in their war with Egypt. We were allies in the cold war against the Soviet Union. The invisible government at work.

In 1990 Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait stating that the Kuwaitis were slant drilling into Iraq’s oil fields. Bush Sr. wanted to go to war immediately. But the American public was not so sure. They were split on the topic. So Washington introduced a false flag operation.

The “invisible government” some how found a 15 yr. old girl to testify before a Congressional Committee. She claimed that when she was present in a Kuwaiti hospital she saw armed Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators and leave them on the cold floor to die. As she said this she produced a few crocodilian tears.

Immediately the American public moved by this monstrous offense fanatically supported the war. Operation desert Storm was responsible for the deaths of 135,000 Iraqis and an additional 1 million died because of sanctions applied for ten years.

So what was the truth? Not one baby died. Incubator baby deaths were a bald faced lie. The girl who testified was the Kuwaiti Ambassador’s daughter. She was tutored by a huge public relations firm to speak the lines written for her and to produce the tears. Good acting job. So again the American public was deceived into supporting another war planned by the ruling elite. Bush Sr. and others repeated the lie over and over again. Fraud and false documents were presented by the main stream media to the American people in support of this monstrous lie.

There are 500 members of the Scholars for 9/11/Truth and Justice. The members are architects, physicists, chemists and engineers. Many take issue with the 9/11 Commission Report. 9/11 family members, a number of whom pressured Congress for several years to initiate an independent investigation, were very disappointed with the Commission’s conclusions. They felt that a number of questions that they presented to Congress and the Commission were not answered. Also, according to the family members, the National Institute of Safety and Technology (NIST) Report that preceded the 9/11 Commission Report was biased toward a foregone conclusion, ignored well known facts and became essentially a whitewash. The Scholars for Truth and Justice and family members take issue with the label of “conspiracy theorists” used against them “to discredit the skeptics”. They believe that the attack was a possible “false flag operation” perpetrated by the “invisible government” and the collapse of the buildings shown on film resembled footage of controlled or explosive demolition. But it is very difficult to prove and therefore it is extremely controversial. However, according to the whistleblower, Kevin Ryan, a knowledgeable chemist who worked on the steel that went into the supports, insists that the fire was not hot enough to melt the supports and certainly not in a maximum of 45 minutes. There are examples of fires in building towers all over the world that burned for a maximum of 18 hours and the buildings did not collapse. Building 7 which was not hit by the planes was left standing. It was decided by the Fire Chief and the leasing agent to demolish the building. The same afternoon the building collapsed. There was no appreciable damage to the building and no fire. What made Building 7 collapse? Some people believe it was explosives that had to be applied to the building several weeks beforehand.

Did the Washington power elite need a “New Pearl Harbor” to take us to war?

References:

Bamford, James. Body of Secrets. 2002.
Zwicker, Barrie. Towers of Deception.2006.
Wikipedia.

Does Your Vote Count?

2008-08-26T10:06:00.000-07:00

Your vote counts only if it is counted. Let’s look at the deviousness that occurs in the polling place. In 2004, according to the exit polls in Ohio and televised on CNN at 1 A.M., among men voters Kerry defeated Bush 51% to 49% and among women Kerry defeated Bush 53% to 47%. As the voters leave the polls, when asked, they indicate who they have voted for. There is not much chance that the voter had a memory loss. So the next morning you wake up and the results are just the opposite by the same percentages, i.e. Bush defeats Kerry. Now how could that possibly happen? It’s simple. You cast your ballot for your candidate and it is not counted. In every state uncounted ballots go down the toilet. In the case of Ohio the number was 153,237. Nationwide the official number was 1,855,827. But if you include the under reporting of the no-count vote it goes as high as 3,000,380.

So what ballots go uncounted? Let’s start with the “provisional ballot”. This was invented in the 2004 election because too many voters were refused the right to vote. So now if the voter’s name is missing from the rolls, the voter will be given a provisional ballot that would be counted after the polls closed and the identity of the voter is checked. Well, it was a great idea that was supported by the black caucus in Congress because so many black voters were left out. But what happened? A large number of provisional ballots were not counted and at least half were black voters. There were approximately 3 million provisional ballots of which 1 million were trashed and never counted.

And then there are the machines. Bad machines do not record your vote. If you don’t punch the card hard enough, the machine can’t read it. The Election Commission counted 1 million votes lost in this manner.

Many more voters are using absentee ballots today. Over a half million are rejected for some minor technical reason. So if you vote absentee, you may not be voting at all.

Another trick is the assumption that most black voters are “felons” and felons lose their right to vote. But for many there only crime is their skin color.

Next is the elimination of polling stations so that the lines become so long that people won’t wait to vote.

Lastly one more bit of chicanery we should be aware of. Voters reported in 2004 that when they punched the card for Kerry, the vote went to Bush and his name would appear on the machine. This is known as “vote switching”.

And this is the way the 2000 and 2004 elections were won by the Republicans despite the fact that the Democrats had more votes than their opponents. So what is going to happen in 2008? At the moment it looks as though it may be another close vote.

Reference: Palast, Greg. Armed Madhouse. 2007.

The Food Crisis

2008-08-26T09:59:00.000-07:00

Food prices are going up because the giant corporations have global control of commodities and resources. Seed, fertilizer and even water are controlled by Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM), Mosaic and Monsanto. The shortages in seed and fertilizer are artificially created by the huge agricultural corporations in order to run up the prices. For example, the third quarter profits of ADM jumped 42%. New income from storage and transportation of wheat, corn and soybeans has risen seven-fold. The fertilizer companies, such as Potash Corporation, have seen the rise in its stock price from $70 to $238. Mosaic also a fertilizer and feed producer has seen its stock go from $32 to $159. Monsanto profits jumped 45%. So do you wonder why food costs are up?

Furthermore, their intention is even to privatize the water supplies or possibly patent the water as Monsanto has done with seed. The farmer will no longer own the well under his farm. Also, rising oil prices are directly linked to the rise in food prices because fossil fuel is used in the production of chemical fertilizer. Third world countries are facing a starvation crisis because of food shortages and rising prices created by the profiteering of the huge agricultural corporations. The corporations blame the shortages on countries like China and India that for the first time have increased their food consumption. Increased income from manufacturing has improved the life style of the middle class. The corporations obviously are making obscene profits from the increased consumption.

To make matters even worse, the production of ethanol has tripled in the last several years promoted by the corporatists. The resultant increase of food prices has created a scarcity of food for the poor. Nearly all US corn production has gone into the making of ethanol. This has caused a severe shortage of grains and it is the poor who suffer. In the US it is not just the poor who are feeling the pressure. The middle class consumer is not spending as in the past; for example: restaurants that have been in business for many years are declaring bankruptcy. Chapter 7 of the bankruptcy act is the end.

One more point. ADM has a history of price fixing and their profiteering is causing global tragedy. Corporate spin covers their double-dealing.

Reference: commondreams.org

The Struggle For Justice

2008-07-28T08:12:00.000-07:00

This is the tragic chronicle of how democracy was destroyed in Chile in the early 70’s by Kissinger, Nixon, the CIA and the corporatists, viz. IT & T and the copper mining companies owned by Anaconda and Kennecott.

But first in 1970 Salvador Allende, as head of the Popular Unity party, was elected President of Chile. Chile had been a democracy for 30 years and Allende, who was a democratic socialist, believed in the ballot box as the road to power rather than armed revolution. A significant plank in his platform was the nationalization of the phone company and the copper mines as well as a number of other well known companies. We have here an excellent example of the power of private corporations because as soon as it became clear that Allende had won the election, the private investors both in Chile and America began a concerted campaign to subvert and undermine Allende’s government.

Nixon became apoplectic when he was told that Allende had won. The CIA had been assigned the job of stopping him but had failed. Nixon’s instruction to Helms, the head of the CIA, was to do anything that caused the collapse of the Chilean economy. His expression was “make the economy scream”. It sounded a little like present day torture. In the meantime the US would stop lending money to the Chilean government and buying from Chile. Also the CIA funded mass anti-government strikes to no avail. Milton Friedman’s “Chicago Boys” had an economic project in Chile opposed to Allende and in favor of continuing privatization of the important industries. But the public had moved so far in favor of Allende that the “Chicago Boys’” project was dead on arrival.

Before Allende was elected Kissinger made two statements both of which were hypocritically arrogant and ignored Chile’s sovereignty. First and I quote: “The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves regarding Chile’s government.” Second: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist (sic) due to the irresponsibility of its people.” Kissinger took considerable bashing for these statements as patronizing and disparaging. His egomania, as resistant as Kevlar, prevented any attacks from making an impression.

Despite all the assaults against Allende in the three years that he managed to stay in power, he gained more support than the number that elected him in 1970.

But Nixon and Kissinger persisted in pressing for a coup and assigned the CIA chief of covert operations to push for a coup. It became the official policy of the US government (USG).During the three years that Allende was in office, the USG with the help of the incompetent CIA created havoc in the economy of Chile. But Allende managed through it all to become more popular. When the coup finally occurred in 1973 led by Pinochet, Allende was surrounded by the military and died either by his own hand or was killed. The official explanation was suicide. And that was the end of any semblance of democracy in Chile for 17 years.

Pinochet murdered, tortured or imprisoned any opposition to the military dictatorship. His repression was called the “Caravan of Death”. That was the CIA contribution to the Chilean people. Do you still wonder why we are hated? They have not forgotten. We were responsible for the death of the Chilean military commander in 1970 who refused to lead a coup against the legal government because he supported the Chilean constitution. Since he stood in the way, he was ambushed and fatally shot multiple times. His son today is still trying to seek justice in the courts for the murder of his father. Sometime after the coup a personal friend of Allende’s and his Ambassador to the US was killed by a car bomb in Washington D.C., 14 blocks from the White House. The bombing was planned by Pinochet and carried out by a paid CIA agent who was a Chilean national.

In 1975 the military intelligence leaders of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay met with the Chilean secret police to plan “Operation Condor”. Kissinger was aware of the plan. The members used assassination and covert intelligence to eliminate left of center opposition. The operation was intended to liquidate all dissidents in the so-called “Southern Cone” of South America. Its members were all right wing military dictatorships similar to Pinochet’s”. The USG provided support through consultation with both Nixon and Kissinger (Secty of State). Operation Condor organized the “death squads” that traveled throughout the country torturing and assassinating all who opposed the right wing governments. In Argentina alone 30,000 persons were tortured and murdered or just disappeared.

Kissinger as Secretary of State maintained diplomatic relations with the Southern Cone governments. He encouraged the atrocities committed by Argentina and Chile. In recent years he has been asked to answer questions by France, Brazil, Spain, Argentina and Chile regarding human rights abuses. He has refused. His personal papers are inaccessible until his death.

References:

Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine. 2007
Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes. 2007
Wikipedia

Bloodbath

2008-07-28T08:09:00.000-07:00

A perceptive observer once characterized the world as a slaughterhouse. And if you think that is a cynical overstatement, let’s look at the carnage of the 20th century, the worst bloodletting in history. The First World War destroyed the lives of 10 million people and the Second World War, which was the result of the first, destroyed the lives of 50 million.

Most of us poor and middle class are deluded into thinking that we live in a democracy and, on the other hand, the rich chronically fear that we might get it. It’s the people in power who make the decisions, pile up the profits and take us to war. The power brokers and corporatists run the show. You may vote but you are powerless. We recently voted to get out of Iraq. You went to the polls and exercised your so-called democratic right to vote to get out of Iraq. Did it happen? The people in power instead did the opposite. They sent more troops and kept the troops already there longer, as the suicides increased and more families were broken. Political campaigns in this country are bullshit on a grand scale.

George Carlin (RIP) may have been right – Why vote? If you don’t vote for a candidate who wins and he does something stupid, you can always look innocent and say, I didn’t vote for him. However, if you do vote for him and he does something stupid—Well, Ralph, you voted for him. So whether you vote or not, you’re screwed.

Let’s now consider how real power handles war. But first, real power no longer resides with governments but rather with private corporations, corrupt, mafia-style private interests. That’s why your vote doesn’t mean much. And the secret powerful few use the politicians as a front to lie and spin us into war. Why? Because war is profitable. It makes the rich richer while the poor die. The tragedy is that the poor believe the spin. It’s good to die for your country. Yeah, right.

In almost every case the paranoia of the Executive Branch and the State Department forced them, for example, to invade the following countries: Dominican Republic (Johnson), Grenada (Reagan), Panama (Bush, Sr.). The fear of popular revolt, land redistribution and assistance to the poor was basic to the decision to send the marines. The successful Cuban revolution frightened the very rich corporatists into believing they might lose their investments. But the excuse for invading in every case was the lie: protection of American lives and in every case there was no danger to American lives.

As for Noriega in Panama, he was a paid CIA agent and a well known drug trafficker, but now he was refusing to support the Nicaraguan contras with drug money and arms. So we had to invade to “protect American lives”. The lives that were lost were innocent Panamanians in very large numbers. And to this day the anniversary of the invasion is remembered as a day of mourning. Do you wonder why they hate us?

References:

Keegan, John. The First World War. 2000.
Solomon, Norman. War Made Easy. 2005.

He Makes War Gladly

2008-07-28T08:06:00.000-07:00

Henry Kissinger began his career of human rights abuse in 1968 as a Nixon emissary before Nixon’s election. Johnson who was still President had decided not to run again and Hubert Humphrey became the Democratic nominee. Nixon won the election and Humphrey was out of the picture. During the election campaign Johnson’s emissaries were involved in the Vietnam peace negotiations in Paris. Nixon and his team had decided to subvert the negotiations by spinning the South Vietnamese into believing that they would get a better deal from the Republicans and so right before the election they pulled out of the conference. Thus was Humphrey’s peace plank splintered. Nixon won. As it turned out the war lasted another 4 years and the Vietnamese did not get any better deal than what the Democrats had offered.

The duplicitous Dr. Kissinger made himself welcome on the Johnson negotiating team and was secretly passing information to Nixon and his coterie. Thus they were able to keep the pressure on the South Vietnamese team by staying one step ahead. This may sound incredible but it has all been documented. The tragedy, of course, was that 20,000 more Americans died as well as thousands more of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians.

The secretive Kissinger became Nixon’s National Security Advisor and he alone benefited from all the killing. Nixon, on the other hand, was secretly and illegally, as a private citizen, (he had not been elected as yet), interfering in Executive branch negotiations with the Vietnamese through Kissinger’s presence on the team. So we had Kissinger “leaking” information from the negotiations to Nixon and in effect “playing both ends against the middle”. If Humphrey had won, Kissinger would have been hired as Humphrey’s National Security Advisor.

But the whole point of the duplicity was to defeat Humphrey and elect Nixon by means of an illegal “private foreign policy”. Kissinger played the unscrupulous role of slyly assisting Nixon in getting elected. Nixon had a history of mental illness not widely known. He showed intermittent symptoms of paranoid psychosis and he believed that Jews were plotting against him. Nixon and Kissinger made an infamous team. Nixon was treacherous and Kissinger colluded in mass murder, making him potentially guilty of war crimes.

References:

Heller, Joseph. Good As Gold. 1976
Hitchens, Christopher. The Trial of Henry Kissinger. 2001.

Second Rate [Part 1 of 2]

2008-06-11T07:47:00.000-07:00

It is often said of the CIA that there are two words that aptly describe it: mendacity and mediocrity. And this is from the time Harry Truman initiated the agency to the present. It has never gotten any better.

If you are an incompetent liar in intelligence work, you can create a crisis and failure. If you have no patience for espionage (it takes too long for results) or dissimulation then an agent has to rely on covert operations e.g. military coups, assassinations, surveillance of dissidents or secret interventions in internal affairs of governments. Many CIA covert operations were essentially failures because of incompetence or inexperience resulting sometimes in the death of 100 to 1000 innocent individuals. CIA operatives who worked in the Middle East and knew no Arabic and had no familiarity with the culture discovered over time that the Moslems were very effective liars, much better at it than the CIA. After all, the Moslems had been lying to each other for centuries. To them “deception was the essence of survival”. In fact there is an actual Arabic word derived from Islamic texts. It is “taqiya” and it means “the necessary lie” or the lie to get what you want. The Shiites habitually lied to the Sunnis in order to survive. But when the CIA operative lied, for example, to an individual Moslem who was a likely candidate for a source of information, the CIA agent frequently was caught in his lies and his potential informer ended up dead. Moslem surveillance was so good that the agent had no clue as to how he was found out. The Moslem agents knew that the informer had been recruited by the Americans and so they killed him. And what was the lie that got him murdered? The CIA agent promised to bring him to the US, give him money and a safe place to live. The informer believed the promises because that was his dream.

In 1967 a Greek junta known as “the colonels” seized power in Greece led by a Greek undercover CIA agent recruited 20 years before by Allen Dulles, former head of the CIA.
The “colonels” and their friends had been slipping hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Nixon campaign as a gift. The money came through the Greek intelligence service which was linked to the CIA. The colonels were well known fascists, i.e. the classic fascists- Mussolini style. The trains ran on time. So here we have a bunch of fascist militants paying off the Nixon administration and at the same time planning a coup that the CIA knew nothing about despite their close relationship. In short, they had been conned by the colonels. To top it off the US sold military hardware to the junta and the CIA justified the sales with the laughable lie that it would return democracy to Greece. The CIA would not allow anything critical to be said about the junta. It was a well known fact that the junta tortured its enemies and when the question of human rights was raised, the CIA denied it by belittling the protestors.

At this point the colonels decided they would overthrow the leader of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios, whom they hated. The US warned them not to do this because if they attacked, the Turks, who were only 40 miles off the coast of the island, would invade. And that was not in the plan. The colonels ignored our warning and attacked anyway. The end result was a war between the Turks and the Greeks who were both “trained and armed” by the US. The slaughter was horrendous and once again the CIA failed to warn Washington that the war was about to begin because of inept intelligence. The horror of maintaining an intimate relationship with a repressive dictatorship is readily apparent. Something we tend to do all over the world because it is good for business. In the end a popular uprising deposed the junta. However, the American Embassy was surrounded and the American Ambassador was fatally shot. Later a new CIA station chief was brought in and he also was assassinated. With this kind of history is it any wonder why we are hated throughout the world? Obviously it is not a wise choice to allow the CIA a free hand in foreign policy.

References:

Ignatius, David. Body of Lies. W.W. Norton, 2007.
Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes. Doubleday, 2007.
Wikipedia

Korean War and the CIA [part 2 of 2]

2008-06-11T07:45:00.000-07:00

The Korean War was the first major conflict of the cold war. It started on June 25, 1950. It was known as a Korean police action in order to avoid the need for congressional approval. North Korea had invaded the South and Truman was preparing to meet with Douglas McArthur. Truman expected useful CIA intelligence on Korea. Specifically he wanted to know whether the Chinese would cross the border. McArthur assured him that they would not. As it turned out the CIA was once again of no help because it knew nothing at all about China. What American spies we had in China at the time of Mao’s victory over Chiang Kai-shek had all left the country in a hurry. Furthermore, McArthur hated the CIA and kept its operatives out of the Far East wherever possible. The CIA had a weak group of agents left over from WWII. Its research was poor and its bulletins to the President were valueless. Its allies were Syngman Rhee and Chiang Kai-shek both of whom produced intelligence that was worthless and corruption was rampant. No information was reliable. It became apparent that the intelligence agency of the strongest country in the world was conned and deceived by crooks and foes. Exiles were once again faking intelligence for pro fit and the CIA was the patsy.

When the President traveled to Wake Island to meet McArthur the CIA headquarters assured him that the Chinese did not intend to intervene. And this was despite the warning of their Tokyo station chief that the Chinese had 300,000 troops mobilized on the border. Taiwan told headquarters the same thing. The warnings were ignored. After the American troops were attacked on the border, the CIA still insisted that a major intervention was not likely. Finally when the Chinese did invade we were so surprised and unprepared that the Chinese pushed our forces down the entire southern peninsula to the sea. Eventually we were able to force them out of the South and the conflict became a trench war until it ended on July 27, 1953. However, there were horrendous casualties on both sides. Also the agency engaged in paramilitary operations which were for the most part failures and were responsible for many more lives lost.

The CIA recruited Chinese and Korean agents and dropped them behind the lines in North Korea where they disappeared—never to be heard from. They were sent to gain intelligence or give support to resistance movements that did not exist. In short, they were suicidal assignments. The money and lives lost was way disproportional to what was gained. In fact there are those who say nothing was gained and this kind of irresponsibility continued on into the 1960’s. The CIA just kept sending agents to their death for no damn reason.

Years later, the final conclusion was that all the “secret” information collected during the war was pure fiction produced by Chinese and North Korean intelligence agents and passed on to the administration. In fact, even worse the paramilitary operations had been sold out from the very beginning. Treachery and deceit was rampant and headquarters did not have a clue.

References:

Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes. Doubleday, 2007
Wikipedia

Democracy Canceled

2008-03-30T08:54:00.000-07:00

[This is Part 2 of a 2 part essay: see Chicago School for Part 1]

No one in the Bush administration anticipated that the application of Milton Friedman ‘s basic principles would cause the “violent backlash” that occurred. It was assumed that after “shock and awe” the population would be so frazzled that they would happily accept the privatization of their economy. But amazingly, instead the Iraqis shocked Washington by insisting that they wanted a voice in any changes in the economy. So what did they do immediately after the invasion? They voluntarily held elections on their own in every municipality in Iraq. Didn’t Bush tell them that they were to become “the democratic state” of the Middle East? So when Paul Bremer, who had previously run a private counter-terrorist company, arrived and saw what was happening, he within the first two weeks canceled all the elections. He further canceled any election of delegates to a constituent assembly which would, if allowed, vote for members of an executive council. He realized quickly that any such election would put Iraqis in power over whom we had no control. Instead he would appoint the delegates and the executive council. In addition Bremer and his committee would appoint the local leaders as well.

Obviously if the Iraqis were allowed freely to vote for their own representatives, we would be giving up control of the oil, establishment of military bases and corporate investment. And certainly the Iraqis did not intend to give up the nationalization of their resources. So what happened? Violent uprisings across the country occurred. Despite our lying promises, the trusting Iraqis believed every word. In the end we denied them their democratic rights because those rights would negate the real purpose of the invasion. Interestingly enough, a poll that was taken in 2003 after the invasion indicated that 49% of Iraqis would vote for a political party that promised an increase of government jobs and only 4.6% would support a political party that promised more “private” jobs. This poll may have had something to do with Bremer’s decision to cancel all elections.

And so the ebb and flow of forceful resistance has continued for the past five years. In order to combat the resistance, because Rumsfeld refused to increase our forces, we had to hire private security firms to protect our VIPs and our contractors. So here we are privatizing our army. Over time the mercenaries were involved in “street combat”. In the first year there were only 10,000 private fighters but three years later it had increased to 48,000.And these guys were fighting side by side with the regular army. They came from all over the world. Some had actually been in our army but after discharge joined the private army because the pay was significantly better. Blackwater became well known as a security firm and private army and got into serious trouble for killing too many civilians. Blackwater is a neoconservative right wing organization. It has given large amounts of money to the Republican Party.

Reference:

Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine. N.Y. Holt, 2007

The Chicago School

2008-03-30T08:52:00.000-07:00

[This is Part 1 of a 2 part essay: see Democracy Canceled for Part 2]

It was Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize economist, who instructed President Reagan in the “trickle down theory” of economics. But “Uncle Miltie’s” Chicago School of economics was more complex than that. He made it simple for Reagan. The pixie-like Friedman believed in three basic tenets: privatization, government deregulation and cuts in public spending. These basic principles were applied at a time of crisis or catastrophe when the destruction of the infrastructure left a clean slate ready for a free market economy whether caused by military invasion or a hurricane. Then the corporate investor who is waiting at the border invades the nation or the state applies the three tenets and rebuilds the infrastructure for profit. The neoconservatives call this “a free market democracy”. But what is it really? The wealthy corporations and the rich politicians merge and buy up what is left of the infrastructure with public money, reconstruct it and operate it for profit. In Iraq the desirable resources were the electric grids, and the water system but most importantly the oil. The intention is to privatize all of this. However, the corporatists have not been successful in Iraq as yet because of too much violent opposition by Iraqis and corruption by Bechtel, Halliburton and Carlyle.

On the other hand, in New Orleans after Katrina the neocons saw this as an opportunity to do away with the public school system. As a result, today there are only four public schools in New Orleans but there are thirty charter schools. Very little else has been done and the charter schools are operated for profit. The poor cannot afford to send their kids there and the public schools are inadequate.

You see, in the case of Iraq nothing can be privatized, even remotely, until the violence is under control. No corporatist will invest money in an unstable country. So then the dream, and it is only a dream, of a “free market democracy” cannot be realized. And this is why Bush’s neoconservative plan of a so-called “democracy” spread throughout the Middle East is plainly delusional.

One last point, many analysts have said that the invasion was a success and the occupation was a failure. Not so. That was the plan: utter destruction in order to provide a clean slate for privatization. But so far the Iraqis haven’t let it happen.

Reference:

Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine. N.Y. Henry Holt. 2007.

The Forgotten War

2008-03-19T11:56:00.000-07:00

The war in Iraq has been pushed off the front pages by the presidential campaign. There has not been much discussion lately about Iraq except to report briefly that there is some “good news” coming out of Iraq and if that is so some people might just think that “victory” over this devastated land is possible.

Recently a Congressman from my district returned from Iraq ecstatic about the progress being made in that country. He was pictured in the local paper decked out in full body armor and surrounded by U.S. security troops. And what did he say? This didn’t look like a war to him. He could walk around town surrounded by his entourage and the violence was less compared to his previous visit. Two days later five U.S. soldiers were killed and three severely wounded by a bomb directed to them in the heart of the shopping district in Baghdad. A day later just a short distance out of town three more soldiers were killed not to mention the injured. That’s eight deaths in a little more than 48 hours.

Four thousand troops killed, sixty thousand injured, some permanently, not counting the mental health patients suffering from PTSD who return to the U.S. and kill themselves and their families. 1.3 million Iraqis killed, 2.5 million refugees now trying to survive in Jordan and Syria. These two countries cannot continue to support these people with very little space and money. No one else is contributing to their support. Both Jordan and Syria cannot accept anymore refugees and will eventually have to ask them to leave. Where will they go?

If the violence in Iraq has decreased, it must be because there are not that many left to kill.

A permanent decrease in violence could occur if the occupying forces would withdraw. It is the general belief among most Iraqis that the cause of the violence between sectarian and ethnic groups is the occupation of their country by U.S. troops. Reconciliation could occur if the invaders would leave. The official position now for the original invasion was to protect the world from terror. But instead terror has increased 7-fold according to some terrorist specialists.

As for reconstruction of Iraq, Gen. Petraeus claims that the Iraqi government has greatly increased spending on reconstruction. Good news, right? But when the Government Accountability Office examined the facts, they found that the figure was actually one-sixth of that reported by Petraeus and further was a fifty per cent decline when compared to the previous year. Should we praise our government for militarily destroying the infra-structure of a country and then proceeding to reconstruct it for profit? Practically all the no-bid contracts go to Halliburton, a company linked to Vice-President Cheney, not to mention the reported corruption involved in the process.

What is the clincher? Bush plays his trump card once again, another signing statement. This time he is refusing to implement the provisions of a Congressional law that prohibits him from spending tax payer money on permanent military bases in Iraq or control of Iraqi oil.

Last week Deputy Secretary of State, John Negroponte, testified before Congress that the administration had no plans for permanent bases in Iraq, ignoring the fact that four huge bases were already built. No Congressman challenged his statement. The poor people of Honduras will always remember Negroponte, who as Ambassador to Honduras under Reagan, constantly denied the horrific crimes of the Chief of the Honduras armed forces so that financial aid to the military would continue. (Reagan’s policy) It was called bringing democracy to the people of Honduras. Where have we heard that before? Mendacity in government is our watchword.

Reference:

Znet

Iraq and Greenhouse Gases

2008-02-25T17:47:00.000-08:00

Now what would Iraq have to do with global warming? Good question. Very few of our leaders have been willing to say that the war in Iraq is about oil. But recently a major exception was Alan Greenspan now retired from the Federal Reserve Bank. In his new book of memoirs, The Age of Turbulence, he flatly states that the “Iraq war is largely about oil.” He said that it might be politically incorrect to say it but it nevertheless was true.

A primary goal of U.S. foreign policy has been for decades the control of Middle Eastern oil. The invasion of Iraq and the unseating of Saddam Hussein finally gave Washington the opportunity to plant its feet firmly in the oil deposits of Iraq and with the intention of remaining there permanently. After all, we are the largest user of a non-renewable source of energy, i.e. oil and therefore the largest producer of “greenhouse” gas emissions. Thus we make overwhelmingly the largest contribution to global warming.

So in order to support our need for oil as a source of energy we chose military force to seize that energy and control its use indefinitely.

Now we all are aware of the negative impact of that war in terms of death, permanent disability and destruction. But what is the impact of the war on global warming? Believe it or not, the war in and of itself is producing huge amounts of greenhouse emissions. How is this so? Aircraft, motorized vehicles and naval vessels, to name just a few, all necessary to military operations use 3 million gallons of oil per day. This is, according to one estimate,16 times more than that used in WW II.

Now let’s look at the cost. The latest figure is over $600 billion for the war but does not include medical supervision of the wounded and mental health patients. We are not paying for the war through increased taxes but rather by borrowing to pay and running up a huge debt for the future. It is further estimated that the war will cost this country over $2 trillion. On the other hand, this administration has appropriated only $1.5 billion to deal with the problem of global warming. This is totally inadequate to develop replaceable fuels. As long as this war continues there is no way that funds will be available to replace petroleum as a source of energy.

Endless Chatter

2007-07-25T11:17:00.000-07:00

We hear endless chatter about “exit strategy” called by some devious personalities as “precipitous withdrawal.” But no one has the courage to ask why we are building huge military bases in four different locations of Iraq if we are planning to leave? Well, we are told they are not permanent rather they are “enduring bases.” The truth, of course, is we are not really leaving. Bush and Cheney have no intention of leaving. We cannot give up our authority over Iraq and lose control over the 2nd largest oil deposit in the world. That’s it in a nutshell. We are not there to bring liberal democracy to the Middle East. That’s window dressing. We are there for one reason only—the oil. And we “ain’t” leaving. Probably never—ever. Talking exit strategy is plain unadulterated B.S. Oh, we might take a few troops out but we will leave at least 50,000 or more and they will live in there “self-contained” military bases with more amenities and conveniences than at home.

In order to move any troops at all requires that the client state be stable and does what it is told. A free election alone is not democracy. But real popular democracy is too dangerous. Once the occupier has control then withdrawal of some sort is possible but the fully manned military bases remain.

Further, in order to gain stability, we need to restore Iraqi civil society and reconstruct the economy. We need to stop privatization for the benefit of outside investors. The Iraqi Oil Law which gives control of oil and royalties to foreign oil companies must not be implemented. The General Assembly of the UN is the body that might be able to apply these principles along with the Iraqis participating in the reconstruction.

Since the odds are very long indeed for our pulling out, we don’t need to worry about a blood bath. Nevertheless, the Iraqis maintain there is already a blood bath and if it worsened, they intend to handle it. 80% of the Iraqis want us out and they are going to do everything possible to achieve that goal however long it takes.

Reference:

Znet

The Paradigm of Democracy

2007-07-24T10:07:00.000-07:00

As we all know WWI was the death knell of the antediluvian monarchies of Europe. And in the case of Germany out of its defeat came a golden experiment in democracy. There were, of course, many problems in the beginning. The Weimar Republic was a socialist democracy that the left wing communists wanted to destroy. There were bloody battles on the streets of Berlin. The onerous reparations placed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles almost destroyed the economy. We all know about the hyperinflation. Paper money was worthless and was used to burn in home stoves for warmth. Eventually the left wing leaders were assassinated and the reparations were reduced to a level that Germany could handle. Chancellor Stresseman who took over the leadership was able to develop a functioning economy and government that became known as the golden age of the Weimar Republic (1924-1929).There are Jewish historians still alive today who recall that period as closely comparable to the Italian Renaissance. The extraordinary production in the fields of science, philosophy, psychology, painting and architecture happened no where else in Europe.

So what in the world happened? Why did the grand experiment plunge into barbarism?

By 1930 Hitler and his Nazi thugs had arrived on the scene and introduced their propaganda techniques to win support for their political party. Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, crowed that he would use American advertising techniques to sell National Socialism to the people of Germany in the same way that American business sold toothpaste, candy and drugs. Symbols and political slogans repeated over and over whether true or not will sell products or ideology. It worked in Germany and it is working in the US. It destroyed the Weimar Republic and the Bush administration is very effectively destroying our American democracy. If Bush and Cheney are not stopped before the end of 2008, the American Constitution will be a shambles.

Unfortunately, so far I do not see any evidence of articles of impeachment for Bush and Cheney.

Reference: Chomsky, Noam. Failed States. 2006.

The Circus Is Back

2007-07-19T11:16:00.000-07:00

The circus is back in town but the clowns haven’t changed. The other night on Jon Stewart’s show a 3 month old tape of Tony Snow, the administration press secretary, was viewed in which he stated emphatically that the lawyers in the justice department had been fired for incompetence. At a recent press conference a reporter asked a question regarding those lawyers and prefaced it with Tony Snow’s statement that they had been fired for incompetence. Snow immediately interrupted and said that we had never said that those lawyers were fired for incompetence. Jon Stewart then ran the two tapes side by side. Who are you going to believe? Tony Snow or Tony Snow? Which one is lying?

Now let’s look at a sad viewer of an unfunny circus. A retired NYC cop lost a son in 9/11. He was told at the time by his President that the Iraqis were responsible for the disaster. Being old fashioned (as he says) the cop accepted everything his President told him because he (the cop) believed that his President “walked on water.” So if the Iraqis destroyed those buildings and killed thousands of people and his son then, let’s go get them. Then another thought occurred to him. He would like to have his son’s name put on one of the “smart bombs” that our Air Force was dropping on Iraq. After much hassle he managed to get it done and the Defense Department sent him a picture of the bomb with his son’s name on it with the date that it was dropped.

Despite that it wasn’t true over half the country believed that it was the Iraqis who destroyed the towers. All the soldiers fighting in Iraq believed it. Sometime afterward the President is shown on a video tape saying that he never said that Iraqis were responsible for 9/11.When the cop heard this, he went into shock. He could not believe it. When the realization that his President had lied, hit him, he was dumfounded. When asked if he was sorry that his son’s name was on a bomb, he was unable to reply. He was just bewildered.

During the invasion of Iraq some 50 or more “smart bombs” were dropped none of which hit their military targets. They did destroy homes and people but no soldiers. The mainstream press did not report this. Rumsfeld and the Defense Department steadily maintained that the “smart bomb” does not cause “collateral” damage. As an American that’s all you need to know.

King George the Second

2007-03-19T00:21:00.000-07:00

In one of her last columns before her death, Molly Ivins in answer to King George’s claim that he was the “decider” pointed out that "no, George, we are the deciders , the people and the Congress elected by the people". It happens now that only 36% of the people support his policies. So who are the 36% who applaud him so enthusiastically? They are in large part men and women of the New York Stock Exchange. When he visited the exchange recently, the reception was over whelming. These are his champions. These are the leaders of mega-corporations and world finance whose profits have gone through the ceiling since this administration has been in office. And they were showing their gratitude. George has made them richer than ever. The petroleum industry which is tied firmly to the administration has had unbelievable profits this past year. For example, Exxon-Mobil had a profit of $35.9 billion, breaking all records in our history. Chevron topped out 3 years in a row. Conoco Phillips broke all records. Shell increased its profit to $25 billion. Boeing has reached new heights earned from the production of military aircraft and other hardware. And as long as this administration relies on war rather than diplomacy to implement its foreign policy, the military budget will continue to grow and the petroleum and military industries will continue to profit shamefully. Obviously wars are great for the families who don’t have to fight them and the rich continue to get richer. Note that the top 1% of income earners own 35% of the wealth of the country, but the lower half (50%) own only 2.5% of the wealth. And the gap gets wider.

Reference:

Znet

Breaking News

2007-01-26T21:45:00.000-08:00

If you watch CNN and your attention is captured by “breaking news”, here is the latest but you won’t see or hear it on CNN. Not yet, anyway. A number of states are seriously considering passing a resolution to impeach both Bush and Cheney and to send that petition to the House of Representatives to begin the proceedings. According to the House Rules all it takes is one state to petition Congress and one representative to accept receipt of the petition, then impeachment begins. The state that may be the first to do this is New Mexico which has the strongest popular backing.

A number of states have introduced resolutions to impeach but have not as yet passed them. Many cities have actually passed resolutions already but they cannot petition Congress.

There appears to be a growing popular movement to impeach and as long as the President continues to nullify the laws of Congress with his “signing statements” the movement to impeach will grow even stronger. In addition the Iraq war has been so successful that Bush is seriously considering starting a war with Iran and Syria without Congressional approval. He has tossed into the waste basket the Baker-Hamilton study that certainly offered a series of proposals that had a better chance of success than Bush’s “troop surge”.

Well it has been unusually cold in Albuquerque this winter but it has not cooled off the popular movement against Bush.

Reference:

Znet.

Same Circus

2006-10-09T22:23:00.000-07:00

When you consider the delusional and incompetent leadership that made decisions in Europe prior to WWI and compare it to the delusional and incompetent leadership in Washington today, we can only say that it is the same circus, just different clowns.

In 1900 the monarchs of Europe were the clowns. The insane regimes of Germany and Russia were lead by autocratic airheads who had tunnel vision, were duplicitous and just plain stupid. German megalomania was verbalized by the Kaiser who was essentially a blowhard with a temperament and uncontrolled anger. His personal need to expand German influence was the central focus of his ideology. (Hitler’s aims were similar but his mantra was “living space”.) Add to this a sizeable helping of religious puffery to the extent that the Kaiser believed, as does Bush, that he too spoke for God.

Leaders of the French Republic were not much better. For example, at the battle of the Marne, Marshall Foch was loudly calling “attack, attack” when actually retreat was indicated. When asked why he called for attack, he didn’t really know except that his men were there, he had the will, and God was present. These were soldiers on the ground attacking automatic machine gun emplacements. And, of course, huge numbers of men were needlessly lost on that day. [1]

It is mindful of the 1850’s when Britain was fighting the Russians and the famous cavalry unit known as the Light Brigade was ordered to make a frontal assault on Russian heavy artillery emplacements. In a situation like this the usual attack would have been from the flanks but because of the geography this was not possible. The British should have retreated but instead were defeated. As a result, they lost in essence the whole Brigade. The commanding generals blamed each other. No one was willing to take responsibility.

As for WWI the Kaiser wanted Belgium as an ally. King Leopold, however, refused. The Kaiser’s reply was that “anyone not with me is against me.” Now where have we heard that before? It was Bush’s favorite mantra when he was trying to put together a coalition to invade Iraq. Both Bush and the Kaiser confused themselves with God. In fact the Kaiser deluded himself into believing that the Germans were “the chosen people”. Sound familiar?

We can learn a great deal from history but we tend conveniently to forget the lessons and the country suffers.

[1] Tuchman, Barbara. The Guns of August. Random House, 1962

Get Over It

2006-08-26T13:47:00.000-07:00

When Bush was told that Hezbollah had attacked Israel, his immediate reaction was to announce that a phone call telling Iran to “cut that sh-t out” would take care of the problem. In short, whatever the cause of the conflict, just get over it. It’s mindful of how people dealt with mental illness before the advent of drugs. The mentally ill person was told by their families as well as some physicians to just get over it. The present administration believes that the answer to all the problems in the Middle East is “democracy”. Encourage free elections and the masses will vote in a parliamentarian government with a cooperative leader who will deal with the U.S. and Israel in an acceptable and peaceful manner. This fantasy is also the proposal of the think tanks in Washington as well as everybody else in Foggy Bottom. As we know, in Iraq we are forcing a false “democracy” on the country at the point of a gun. When Bush proposed more democracy for Russia, Putin cleverly replied that he certainly would not want the Iraqi version.

So what happens in the Middle East when the people are given the vote? In Iraq because of our presence there is now a civil war between the Sunnis and the Shias. However, in the Palestine authority Hamas, the Islamic party, won the election and is now in control of the government. In Lebanon Hezbollah now has 14 seats in the Lebanon parliament. None of this makes Washington very happy. Obviously give these countries “democracy” and they will vote for an Islamic state. On the other hand, the remaining countries in the Middle East except for Israel are autocracies. Our dependable allies in the region still remain Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, all autocracies. So the belief that “democracy” would be the cure-all is in reality a tooth fairy’s delusion. To give any of these autocratic countries the vote would undoubtedly place in power a hostile Islamic government, assuming that the present power brokers would even consider such a change. And the democracy that we would implant would be a myth. (See Iraq and Afghanistan) It would be a puppet government controlled by Washington. Keep in mind that the last thing Saudi Arabia would want is a popular vote. That would be the end of the monarchy. The powerful people who run that country want Saudi Arabia to remain just as it is so that they may use the money gained from oil in any despicable way that they see fit.

One comment on the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that appears to have ended: It was Israel’s intention by hitting the civilian populations very hard to turn them against Hezbollah and Hamas. But instead of destroying these authorities they have gained overwhelming support to the extent that 80% of the people polled endorsed both parties. Israel’s extreme violence has caused a severe blowback.

References:

Baer, Robert. Sleeping With The Devil, Crown, 2003
Wall Street Journal. 8/8/06. Mixed Message

King George

2006-07-01T13:33:00.000-07:00

We all learned in school as we sat in our places with sunshiny faces that the Constitution provides for three branches of power, viz. the executive, the legislative and the judiciary. And there is a balance between them. Bush may have been absent on that day. Nevertheless, George is aggressively increasing the power of the executive and weakening the legislative branch. When Congress passes a law, George maintains that he will interpret that law as he sees fit. And often that is the exact opposite of what Congress intended. He does this with a “signing statement” that he files separately and states that he will interpret the bill as he wishes. Bush has maintained repeatedly that he is the decision maker and that he has the power to ignore the laws as written. In short, he is above the law. If so, he has unilaterally overturned the Constitution and he is now King. It’s great to be King. Something the founding fathers anticipated by writing a Constitution that provided for a balance of power.

According to a number of psychiatrists, Bush is a psychopathic personality demonstrating definite signs of megalomania. Monarchs suffering from megalomania can be very dangerous to the world. Check out the causes of WWI. (See Tuchman, The Guns of August.) As the late Senator Fulbright wrote, wars are caused more often by pathology than politics.

But Bush has other pathological problems as well. Primarily, his behavior demonstrates the pattern of the “dry drunk”. This is a term used by Alcoholics Anonymous to refer to individuals who have stopped drinking but are not really sober. Their patterns of thought are still similar to when they were drunk. Bush loses focus easily and therefore has an attention deficit disorder. Bush drank for 20 years and at some point also used cocaine. At age 40 he became a “born again Christian” and stopped drinking. However, he was never treated for alcohol abuse. Typically he denies he was an alcoholic. Long periods of drinking, according to experts, do cause brain damage and can be permanent. A good example is his inability to talk coherently when he is not reading a script. Another illustration is his tendency to repeat constantly a thought as though his brain was stuck in a groove. One member of his cabinet who resigned some time ago was appalled by his lack of attention at meetings and his apparent inability to even ask questions regarding a topic that he might have known very little about.

His reliance on Cheney and Rumsfeld indicates his need for constant advice and reassurance. He is the puppet and Cheney is his handler. His simplistic understanding of right and wrong as expressed in his repeated mantra “If you are not with us, you are against us”, is another example of his inability to distinguish between reality and fantasy.

Finally, he claims he is compassionate and patient, but he is neither. It is another personality deficit of a “dry drunk”.

References:

Drew, Elizabeth. Power Grab. N.Y. Review, 6/22/06.
Frank, Justin, M.D. Bush on the Couch. Harpers, 2004.

God’s Chosen

2006-05-21T19:02:00.000-07:00

My brain may possibly have a Teflon coating when it comes to religious dogma. What little I was exposed to never really stuck. But one thing I do remember is that the Israelites were considered by Old Testament scholars to be God’s chosen people. So it came as quite a shock when our President, an ex-alcoholic and a born again Christian, tells us that God speaks through him and that his administration is literally following God’s will because Americans are God’s chosen people. Obviously Bush is suffering from the delusion that he is a prophet that speaks for God. He preaches the gospel of “freedom and liberty” that he imputes to God and he uses these words repeatedly in his speeches to the point that he deludes his listeners into believing that Christ speaks through him. Observers are convinced that he is an evangelical fundamentalist who believes in the truth and infallibility of the Bible, that Christ died for our sins and that the second coming, according to the Bible, will occur in Israel, the battle of Armageddon. But our troops are presently stationed in Iraq opposing the power of the Moslem national resistance insurgency whose stated purpose is to resist the American occupation of their country and to fight until the American coalition forces leave. What will happen to Iraq afterwards will be up to the Iraqis. One option is that the country could split into three independent sections. After all, the British, after their occupation failed in 1920-21, stitched together these same sections and called it Iraq. Ethnically there were no similarities and it required a strong fist to hold it together, viz. Saddam.

However, in the eyes of the American evangelical fundamentalists, Iraq is the second Babylon and Saddam the modern Nebuchadnezzar. These religious fanatics of whom there are millions in this country and all of them voters were not concerned about oil in the Middle East. Rather they saw Iraq as the anti-Christ and the possible route to Heaven through the coming of the Rapture. This non-Biblical event known as the end-times is when Christ appears and pulls all believers up to Heaven. Non-believers will be left behind as recounted in the novels of Tim LaHaye (Left Behind Series).

Now since these delusional beliefs are linked to America as the chosen Imperial society, it is clear that the fundamental evangelical knows very little about history. History does teach important lessons which most of us tend to forget. Some call it national amnesia. For example, all Imperialist societies before their fall referred to themselves as unique and God’s chosen people, i.e. Britain, Spain and the Netherlands. Based on this past history it is not likely that our experiment as an Imperialist country will last too much longer. The sensible secular people in this country will have to turn back the evangelists at the voting booth and that includes Bush and his supporters. Once having done that we may be able to apply a rational foreign policy to the serious problems of the world.

Since 2/3 of the secular population of the U.S. reject evangelical theology, it should eventually become clear that Rapture as prophetic theology is nonsense. It is difficult to comprehend how fundamentalists who believe in the literal truth of the Bible can accept Rapture as a belief when not one word can be found in the Bible. Rather it was a delusional fantasy of an English ex-priest named Darby who was tossed out of the Anglican church and then came over here in the 19th century to preach the doctrine. He planted the seed and for some unintelligible reason it took root.

However, there is a fly in the ointment. The call to withdraw our troops now creates a serious problem for the evangelists. According to the literal Biblical prophecy Armageddon will occur in the Middle East. Withdrawal of the troops returns the country to the Moslems and it is their decision as to what happens next. But according to the fundamentalists if our troops remain, they become the soldiers of Christ opposing the anti-Christ, the Moslems. This is the battle Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and their supporters envision in their end-times fantasy.

Unfortunately those who believe in this twaddle have a major influence in Washington and many take the attitude that they are not concerned about such issues as global warming, environmental deregulation, or the approaching end of oil because the second coming is imminent. So what does it matter? Attention non-believers, try sleeping comfortably with that one. Instead of taking Ambien, relax with Bush’s latest poll numbers at 31%.

References:

Phillips, Kevin. American Theocracy. Viking, 2006.
Lincoln, Bruce. Holy terrors. Chicago, 2003.

Oil and the Military

2006-04-15T22:22:00.000-07:00

As we all know the reason given for the invasion of Iraq was the alleged existence of WMD but when it became apparent that no such weapons existed, the reason for the invasion became the gift of democracy and freedom to this poor backward country. At no time was it ever mentioned that the real reason was to gain possession of its oil fields. It seems historically that whenever the subject of oil arises, our leaders feel compelled to lie. In the case of the American invasion of Iraq the President’s press secretary stated with a straight face that the occupation had nothing to do with oil. The Secretary of Defense asserted shamelessly that the attack was in no way connected to the existence of oil. And the Prime Minister of England stated the same bald faced lie.

It was interesting that at the time our army reached Baghdad a cordon was thrown around the oil ministry building to protect it from harm but the outstanding archeological museum and library filled with rare artifacts and antiquarian books stood totally unprotected from shameless looting.

Before 9/11 Osama bin Laden made it clear that since Saudi Arabia was a center for religious worship for millions of Muslims, American military bases had to go. So the occupation of Iraq played a dual role though not admitted publicly. The military bases were in time moved from Saudi Arabia to Iraq, sitting on top of the 2nd largest oil preserve in the world. Could it get any better than that?

It is not only in Iraq but the military is also being used world wide as protection for oil fields particularly in unstable nations from which we import oil. Nigeria is in the news at the moment. Others are Venezuela, Columbia, Angola and Indonesia. All of these countries rely almost totally on energy exports for income. Such one sidedness perverts their political institutions and restricts their economy. Bribery and cronyism are endemic and wealth remains in the hands of the powerful few. Finally when the economic stress becomes intolerable, a popular arising occurs accompanied by or led by insurgent terrorists. And frequently these uprisings are put down by outside military intervention. Imperial oil must continue to flow irrespective of the needs of the poor.

However, it wasn’t until the first Gulf War that the word oil was used as a reason for military intervention. Bush, Sr. said at the time that our way of life would be threatened if Saddam continued to control the huge oil resources of his country. Then in 2002 when invasion of Iraq was again on the agenda, oil was never mentioned. Freedom and democracy became the new spin; the pipedream of the neocons.

Enduring Camps

2006-03-19T17:46:00.000-08:00

This administration has repeatedly stated that we have no intention of maintaining permanent military bases in Iraq. In support of this spin we now have an administration engaging in withdrawal propaganda because of the upcoming Congressional elections and the concern of a number of Republican Party members about the increasing national debt to pay for the war. There is also increased pressure from the states that are desperate for revenue sharing to pay for needed upgrades to the states’ infrastructure. Rebuilding Louisiana is one very good example. Billions are being spent for the war and the states are left begging.

Rumsfeld has stated that there are no plans for permanent bases in Iraq. The military commanders have stated the same. Other administration spokesmen have restated ad nauseam that we want to bring the boys home after the job is done. When would that be? Ten years from now?

So after absorbing all this administration spin, what are the facts? Since 2003 billions of dollars have been spent building enormous military bases in Iraq. In a country that has inadequate electricity, undrinkable water, gasoline shortages and unreliable sewer systems, we are building military bases that resemble hometown suburbia. There are Pizza Huts, Burger Kings, Subway sandwich shops, Popeye’s, air conditioning, football fields, rent-a-cars, movie theatres, Px’s, swimming pools, internet connections and much, much more. Some bases are at least 15 square miles. And there are four of these huge American military towns. If that is not indicative of permanency, tell me what is. Incidentally, the Pentagon was calling them “enduring camps” but that sounded a little too permanent. Now let’s say that another administration comes along and decides to really withdraw as was the case in Vietnam. What happens to the bases and all its expensive equipment? Why, it is just left behind to rot and rust, looted, or bulldozed by the local population and it becomes in accounting terms a “sunk cost” to the American taxpayer? Just another budgetary fiasco. O-hum.

Saudi Arabia Spin

2006-01-06T23:40:00.000-08:00

We have been living in harmony with Saudi Arabia for longer than most of us can remember or even care. Only geopolitical buffs would be aware that the Saudis were sitting on 60% of the world’s known oil reserves, and that the US is more dependent on the cheap oil produced by the Saudis than any other country because we use more. However, the industrial economies of the world are also dependent on the oil of the Arab states and if those oil fields were rendered useless by Islamic insurgents, the economies of the world including the US would be devastated.
The administration spin machine spreads the myth that Saudi Arabia is politically stable, their borders are secure, their police efficient, reliable and tough and their population well educated and well fed. In actual fact the Al Saud family that rules the kingdom is constantly threatened by the radical religious fanatics, i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood and the Wahabis, a dangerous organization of religious extremists. The kingdom is “protected” by a well organized and very well trained police force, many of whom were trained in the US. They have a very strong military force with the latest hardware purchased here in the US and the military personnel were also for the most part trained in the US. A small segment of the population is well educated and well fed whereas 30% of the young males are unemployed. These are the men who are recruited for suicide attacks. Fifteen of these Saudis along with four others hijacked the commercial jets that destroyed the World Trade Center on 9/11. Despite administration spin no Iraqis were involved in this suicidal mission. Soldiers who volunteered for the military to avenge 9/11 by killing Iraqis have been deceived by Washington and the Pentagon. It is now clear that it was administration spin that deluded our fighting forces into believing that the Iraqis were responsible for 9/11. If we are looking for answers, perhaps we should look more closely at the manner in which the State Dept issued visas to young Saudi men.

Since we and the Saudis are strange bedfellows, the State Dept allowed young unemployed Saudi men to apply for tourist visas at a designated travel agency in the capital city of Saudi Arabia (Riyadh). They were not required to apply at the US embassy and as long as they paid their fees and presented a valid passport, they could buy an airline ticket to the US and they were on their way. It was called “Visa Express”. But their visas were illegal since the men were classified as immigrants who had no intention of returning home. They had no job, no money and no family. Obviously they intended to remain in the US. As Bob Baer points out they could work in a 7/11 and be better off financially than in Saudi Arabia. So fifteen unemployed Saudis bent on a suicidal mission were allowed into the US illegally, thanks to the State Department. Furthermore, in view of the history of Saudi “terrorism”, where was the political know-how of the State Department? Osama bin Laden was a well known Saudi. The Saudis were involved in hundreds of terror atrocities in many different countries, i.e. the Khobar Tower barracks bombing, the bombing of the Cole, the National Guard barracks and the hijacking of a plane to Iraq to just name a few. The State Department did not pressure the Saudis for any real investigation of these events. They were considered merely aberrant behavior and accepted the Saudi government’s affirmation that they were seriously combating terrorism, which was of course a lie. They were doing absolutely nothing. At the same time the fifteen potential hijackers were being recruited.

So as it turns out the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is in deep trouble. Corruption is rampant, birth rates are high and per capita income is down by 60% or more. Unemployment is 30%. And the very rich members of the Saudi ruling family of which there are many are wanton and wastrel. In fact the regime is so unstable that it fears that it will be overthrown by the religious fundamentalists and therefore it is funneling huge amounts of dollars (hundreds of millions) to the fanatics as protection against a possible coup that would end the monarchy. From 1996 on, Saudi money was actually supporting Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda as well as many other extremists in the Middle East. The Saudi kingdom is so unstable that its oil reserves are liable to attack by fanatics and thereby becoming a real threat to US political and economic interests in the Persian Gulf. The situation has not changed. In fact there is a continuing power struggle within the ruling family regarding corruption and control of money and a ceaseless crisis revolves around staying in power.

After 9/11 spokesmen for the Saudi regime invoked repeatedly the mantra of denial that it had never contributed to Islamic fundamentalist groups. The press had reported that monies given to Islamic charities had somehow gotten to fanatic terrorist groups. The Saudi spin was complete denial. However, the intelligence community through intercepted telephone conversations knew that Prince Salman, the Governor of Riyadh, had contributed millions to certain charities which in turn transferred the money to the religious fundamentalists. Salman was well known as a supporter of fanatic causes. The Bush administration has repeatedly insisted that the Saudis have been totally cooperative in its refusal to support terrorist organizations in the Middle East and in helping in the investigations to collect names and backgrounds. In 1996 when bin Laden was holed up in Sudan, that country offered to turn him over to the Saudis. But the Saudis refused to take him because, they said, he was too popular in Saudi Arabia. They feared that his arrest might provoke a popular uprising. As a result, not one useful piece of information has come out of Saudi Arabia. Even the FBI has not been allowed to interrogate possible suspects or the families of the hijackers. The Saudis have not been willing since 9/11 to provide passenger lists for flights to the US, a major violation of our security. Most American journalists are not allowed into the country and the few that manage to get in are watched very carefully by secret police. Today the religious police control education and the press. As a result, the Saudi press is filled with anti-American tirades.

References:
Baer, Robert. See No Evil. Three River Press. 2002.
Baer, Robert. Sleeping With The Devil. Crown, 2003.
Hersh, Seymour. Chain Of Command. Harper. 2005.

The Five Hundred Pound Gorilla

2005-12-02T10:09:00.000-08:00

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.

The Snowman

2005-10-15T09:51:00.000-07:00

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.

The Gnomes of Zurich

2005-09-13T12:30:00.000-07:00

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.

Some Like It Hot

2005-07-09T11:07:00.000-07:00

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.

Beetles and Bacteria Revisited

2005-06-28T19:02:00.000-07:00

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.

Corporate Conspiracy

2005-06-15T19:49:00.000-07:00

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.

Perpetual Reconstruction

2005-05-24T19:54:00.000-07:00

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

The New Imperial Age

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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

Welcome

2005-05-24T17:40:00.000-07:00

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.

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El Gato