Congressional Democrats and Republicans ratified the NDAA in a series of House and Senate votes in November and December that beat back nearly all efforts to set limits to the presidential power to arrest and imprison without trial or charge. As Republican Senator Lindsey Graham emphasized during the congressional debate, the legislation defines the entire world to be part of the battlefield against Al Qaeda, including the territory of the United States itself, making every human being on the planet, including every American citizen, a potential prisoner of the American military.

The NDAA effectively revokes the oldest democratic right, habeas corpus, which bars arbitrary imprisonment by requiring that the government present evidence to a judge or court to justify taking a person into custody. This right was first asserted in England during the Middle Ages and finally established and codified in the course of the English Revolution of the 17th century, which shattered the arbitrary power of the monarchy and established the supremacy of parliament.

Under the new law, the president of the United States can designate any individual, whether an American citizen, resident alien, or citizen of any other country, to be arrested and detained for life by the US military. The law defines a "covered person" in the following terms: "A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces."

This goes far beyond terrorists linked to the 9/11 attacks, the purported target of the Bush and Obama administrations' "war on terror," to include anyone defined by the president as "engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners." This could include Kurdish separatists in Turkey (a US NATO ally), Palestinian protesters in Israel, the West Bank or Gaza, and anyone engaged in resisting the ongoing US wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, or any future wars initiated by Obama or his successors.

It could include youth in Tahrir Square fighting the Egyptian military dictatorship (the second largest recipient of US military aid and a key US ally), workers on strike against the governments of Greece, Spain or Italy (all NATO allies), or those opposed to the stationing of US military forces anywhere in the world, including Obama's latest deployment of 2,500 US Marines in Australia.

It could well include domestic opponents of US military action, including opponents of the repressive actions of the military-intelligence apparatus at home. There have been repeated attempts by spokesmen for the political right to smear antiwar groups and the Occupy Wall Street protesters as allies of terrorists--and therefore potential targets for military incarceration.

First under Bush and then under Obama, the US government has advanced, with full sanction by the federal courts, an extremely broad reading of what constitutes "material support" to include anyone who engages in political activity that is in any way aligned with the actions of a supposedly "terrorist" organization. In several cases, the US government has even brought "material support" prosecutions against human rights activists who have advised nationalist movements fighting US-backed governments on how to shift from guerrilla war to electoral politics.

The American Civil Liberties Union denounced Obama's signing of the legislation. Obama "will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law," ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a statement. "Any hope that the Obama administration would roll back the constitutional excesses of George Bush in the war on terror was extinguished today," he added.

Obama sought to conceal the implications of this massive attack on democratic rights by claiming to oppose the applicable provisions of the bill even as he was signing them into law. The weasel-worded statement issued by the White House only underscores the duplicity of the Obama reelection campaign, in which the Democratic president will seek to appeal to youth, minorities and popular antiwar sentiment, while carrying out policies even more militaristic and anti-democratic than those of the Republican Bush.

In the signing statement, Obama claims to have "serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists." He continues: "I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens. Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation."

The language is carefully crafted. Obama admits that the NDAA represents a repudiation of the democratic traditions associated with the American Revolution and the Civil War. He makes an extremely limited promise--no military detention without trial of a US citizen--which does not bind any successor and which he can break just as easily as he broke his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp.

The promise is an easy one to make, since even the Bush administration abandoned its lone attempt to carry out "indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens," in the case of Jose Padilla, turning him over to the federal courts rather than risk a Supreme Court ruling on the issue.

But in signing the law, Obama has asserted his right to carry out such indefinite detention of an American citizen in the future, and thus the right of any future president to do so. This amounts to giving a green light to the abrogation of habeas corpus, with the dimensions of the breach in democratic rights dependent solely on the arbitrary whim of the executive power.

Even more ominously, Obama has already asserted an even more drastic power--the "right" to assassinate any American citizen designated by the president as an "enemy combatant," without trial or charge. The White House authorized the drone missile assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki four months ago, claiming the US-born Islamic preacher was a leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. A few weeks later, the CIA murdered Awlaki's 16-year-old son, also a US citizen, with the same weapon.

Much of the White House signing statement criticized the NDAA's detention provisions as too restrictive of the executive branch, essentially declaring that Obama wanted the flexibility to decide on military or civilian detention facilities and judicial processes on a case-by-case basis. An aide, speaking to the press in Hawaii, where Obama is vacationing, said that the president would be "making sure that none of these congressional provisions impede the ability of the counter-terrorism and law enforcement and military professionals who are keeping this country safe."

The White House statement specifically criticized "unwarranted restrictions on the executive branch's authority to transfer detainees to a foreign country." The Obama administration has continued the practice of "extraordinary rendition" in which individuals are seized by the US military or intelligence services overseas and transferred to third countries for torture and interrogation.

Obama also objected to any limitation on US military flexibility in transferring prisoners in Afghanistan to the custody of the Afghan government--another instance in which prisoner interrogation and torture have been "outsourced."

There is an intrinsic connection between the main purpose of the NDAA--to authorize and fund the Pentagon's operations for fiscal year 2012--and the sections on military detention of prisoners both inside and outside the United States. The legislation includes new US sanctions against Iran aimed at choking off the country's oil exports, an act of economic warfare, while financing the worldwide operations of American imperialism. It demonstrates that militarism and aggressive war abroad go hand in hand with authoritarianism and dictatorship at home.

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The crisis we are watching with the Postal Service with services being cut, workforce being cut, and post offices being closed, is a manufactured crisis. The Republican Congress in 2006 passed legislation - Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act or PAEA -  that requires the Postal Service to pay 75 years of future retirees' disability benefits - up front over 10 years. Charlie Hegee (President of the NALC - Branch 36) sums up the PAEA as follows:

"... the Postal Service has overpaid into federal retirement systems, FERS, and CSRS. Once the Postal Service has access to its own money, there will be no need for closures of neighborhood post offices and no need to eliminate six-day mail delivery." ... "The 2006 legislation forces the Postal Service to pay 75 years of future retirees' health benefits and pay all of it within ten years, which amounts to a 5.5 billion dollar payment each year! No other U.S. company or agency is required to do this. " (Hegee)

The insanity of the legislation is brought out by Chuck Zlatkin (legislative and political director of the NY Metro Area Postal Union) in discussing the manufacturing of the Postal Service crisis in that the Congress is demanding benefits be paid by workers who have not even been born yet!

In 2006, five years--had created this crisis, because it mandated that the Postal Service, every September 30th, has to write a check from its operating funds--that's the only place it could come from--for $5.5 billion to the U.S. Treasury to partially--it's involved in fully pre-funding future retirees' health benefits, for 75 years. You're talking about funding the retirement benefits for people who haven't even been born yet, let alone working in the Postal Service. - Chuck Zlatkin DemocracyNow! Interview 9/27/11)

This is a patently ridiculous requirement, and my guess is that it would bankrupt most organizations - public or private. Clearly, such a requirement is meant to force the Postal Service to close its doors. 

While it is true that email and text services have undoubtedly impacted the demand for letter services, it has not eliminated the need. In fact, no other carrier has jumped in to compete for first class mail service. If they did, the odds are that the cost would be astronomical. Why? Because no carrier other than the Postal Service is organized to deliver to every address in the United States on a daily basis. Have you ever stopped to think what a tremendous accomplishment that is? Or how important that is?

There are whole areas of this nation which are still largely disconnected from the internet and whose information lifeline is the US Postal Service. These are the rural areas, and importantly, many of them Reservations. Given that the population in these areas is low, and the cost of services higher than in urban areas (just consider gas costs), these would be prime areas to cut.

This whole thing is just plain wrong with hardly a nod to hiding what is being done. Already almost one-fifth of the workforce has been laid off. That helps a lot in terms of a flagging economy heading for a double-dip recession.
​
 As noted above, there are two highly apparent goals of the Bush administration "gotcha":
1. Destroy a major union;
2. Turn control of all postal services in the country into the hands of private corporations.

So why not kill the Post Service? What's the big deal? We might start by asking what the Postal Service contributes.

The Postal Service is just that. It provides parcel and letter service to every address in the United States on a daily basis six days a week. It does this at a cost which is less than half (in​ most instances) that of any other carrier - assuming that a carrier would handle just a letter for 44 cents. Further, despite these efforts to eliminate the Postal Service, it is a service included in the US Constitution. That means, like most other pawned off services in the this effort to destroy government, the tax payer will pay for the service via contracting out to private business. Adam Hatung is not trying to make this point in his Forbes article, but he provides some Postal Service factoids that show just how profitable that move might be (though he is not trying to make this point):

• delivers roughly 700 million pieces of mail a day;
• .009 cents per mile for a first class letter averaged across the entire nation;
• delivers more in a day than FedEx does in a year;
• delivers more in a week than UPS does in a year;
• The CEO of USPS is paid $800,000 a year, FedEx CEO $7,400,000, UPS CEO $9,500,000;
• The Post Office works with an all union shop.

How much more do you think that Scott Davis (CEO of UPS) or Fred Sidney Smith III (CEO and every top exec title of FedEx) might be compensated for landing the services of the USPS? Do YOU want to pay for that benefit package. Such is the lie that government services are "inefficient" when they are generally more efficient than anything that private industry can provide. Why? Because the government is NOT FOR PROFIT! Therefore, the workers are now paid a bit more than their private sector counterparts while the management is paid significantly less than their counterparts, and we the "shareholders" overall get an excellent "deal."

There is a belief that email has decimated the Postal Service. While I am sure that it has cut into the first class mail significantly, it certainly has not replaced the need for first class mail service. clearly advertisers and politicians still think that giving people something to hold onto and read has value - if my mail is any indication of "typical" mail. There is an ongoing need for physical mail for all kinds of legal things. While electronic documents are great, they also have a nasty habit of disappearing, getting junked, getting destroyed when a hard drive crashes, etc. If you have something that you are going to  need, or need to keep for a long time, I would definitely not recommend electronic media. Further, a solar storm of any EMP burst is going to take our electronic system O U T.

We are entering the holiday season. There is something distinctly different about receiving a JibJab Hanukkah card, and one you can share with others and hang it above the mantle.
But seriously, I think it is important to realize that this is the Postal Service. The carriers are involved in the community. Because they run their routes on a daily basis, they are intimately familiar with their neighborhoods. They are a first line of safety and response. They notice when mail goes uncollected, or something else changes. It is not happenstance, that we hear the news stories of the injured resident found by the action of a Mail Carrier. 

They are also a first line of anti-terrorism defense - particularly for the elected representatives who are trying to kill off the Postal Service all together. They might think twice about cutting the jobs of those who keep the anthrax laden letters from their offices.
It is time to take action.

There are two bills under consideration right now. One needs to be stopped and one encouraged.

STOP Darrell Issa's H.R. 2309-Postal Reform Act of 2011 (currently in committee). Call your Congressional Representatives at 202.224.3121.

Call your Senators at 202.224.3121 and SUPPORT Barney Sanders S. 1853.
Contact all of your Representatives and encourage them support the USPS by removing the retiree funding requirement and making sensible rate plans.

(Find your Representatives)

Let your Postal Carrier know that you support the Postal Service and Postal Carriers
Sign the petition

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For the first time ever, those arrested had formal hearings before a judge in two days. In 1995, a school for magistrates was opened. Courthouses and police stations were constructed and refurbished. Protecting children became paramount, including laws prohibiting all forms of corporal punishment.

A new law repealed child (mostly chattel) domestic service, and another one prohibited trafficking in persons. Haiti's hated military was disbanded. Ordinary Haitians experienced unprecedented free speech, assembly, and personal safety. A National Commission for Truth and Justice was created to investigate and report on crimes committed during the 1991 - 94 coup period. As a result, former soldiers and paramilitaries were tried, those found guilty convicted in fair proceedings.

Compared to pre and post-Aristide years, it was a renaissance period, erased after the February 29, 2004 coup, ousting the man 90% or more Haitians love, their only leader who cared since their 1791 - 1804 liberating revolution.

Last November, sham presidential and parliamentary elections prevented real democratic change. Stealth Duvalierist Michel ("Sweet Micky") Martelly, an anti-populist former Kompa singer, was named president in a March runoff against Mirlande Manigat, wife of former right-wing president, Leslie Manigat.

In both rounds, around 80% of Haitians abstained, knowing no candidate represented them. Orchestrated in Washington, the result both times was fraudulent, illegitimate, and predictable, assuring continuing repression and human rights abuses for another five years, even with Aristide home from exile.

Each year, the State Department publishes human rights reports for over 190 countries. Its complete Haiti one can be accessed through the following link:

http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/160458.pdf

It covers disturbing human rights violations, explained by category, despite attempts to downplay them.

Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life

Haiti's National Police and UN Blue Helmet paramilitaries commit regular abuses, including random and extrajudicial killings with no accountability. Most often, investigations are shams. Vigilante incidents also occur in some areas, including beatings, shootings, and other abuses. Though dozens of instances were documented, "police made no arrests."

Disappearances

Current and former police officers participated in kidnappings, nearly double the 2009 total. Over 120 were reported, though true numbers were likely much higher.

"Gonaives Police Commissioner Ernst Dorfeuille Bouquet (was) arrested and charged (with) kidnapping and killing Monica Pierre" (in 2008). In 2010, he awaited trial. Other police officers are part of gangs responsible for multiple kidnappings.

Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

Numerous instances occur, notably in Haiti's notorious prisons. Moreover, UN Blue Helmets sexually exploit and abuse children, besides numerous other offenses, including killings and other forms of mistreatment.

Prison and Detention Center Conditions

"Prisoners (report) physical abuse by correctional officers," at times using lethal force to quell disturbances. Overall, prisons are severely overcrowded, poorly maintained, dangerous, unsanitary, damaged by Haiti's 2010 earthquake, staffed by repressive guards, and run by repressive officials.

Moreover, "(s)ome prisons (have) no beds for detainees; some cells (have) no access to sunlights. Many prison facilities (lack) basic services" for healthcare, water, electricity, and isolation for contagious inmates, putting them all at risk to disease and death.

Detainees also lack basic hygiene, proper food and enough of it, minimal healthcare, time of out cells for exercise and fresh air, or other basic services. "In some prisons....AIDS, malaria, and drug-resistant tuberculosis (are) serious problem(s)." In addition, Haiti's cholera epidemic gravely harmed inmates.

At year end 2010, Haiti's prison population in 17 facilities was triple their capacity. Moreover, pretrial detention in overcrowded conditions is a major unaddressed issue.

Many untried and convicted prisoners are incarcerated for months or years in temporary holding cells. In some cases, male and female prisoners are held together for lack of space, and children 16 or older are confined with adults. However, some as young as 10 are imprisoned, leaving them especially vulnerable to sexual and other abuses.

Overall, Haitian prison conditions are appalling by any standard, affording no safety or justice to those interned.

Arbitrary Arrest or Detention

Despite laws prohibiting arbitrary arrest and detention, as well as the Aristide era requirement to grant detainees a judicial hearing within 48 hours of arrest, "(o)fficials frequently (do) not comply (in) practice."

Role of the Police and Security Apparatus

UN Blue Helmets (MINUSTAH) and Haiti's police are responsible for law enforcement and maintaining order. However, both authorities commit numerous human and civil rights violations, as well as other criminal acts.

Arrest Procedures and Treatment While in Detention

Often, warrantless arrests are made on unspecified charges. Judicial hearings aren't provided. Pretrial detention is a serious problem, in some cases "up to five years - without being informed of charges against them."

Moreover, few Haitians can afford attorneys, and none are provided free. Overall, "discriminatory practices include arbitrary arrests, false accusation, (and) extortion attempts against (detainees) and their families."

At year end 2010, of the (reported) 5,331 persons in custody, only 1,722 were tried and sentenced. Of those awaiting trial, one-third have been incarcerated for a year of longer. Moreover, prison populations don't include many others held in police stations for prolonged periods with no hearings or filed charges.

Denial of Fair Public Trials

Although an independent judiciary is mandated, "in practice the executive and legislative branches exert significant influence on the judicial branch." In addition, judicial corruption is common. Longstanding problems include poorly trained judges, justices of the peace, and prosecutors, as well as failure to convene court sessions on schedule as required. In fact, the nation's entire criminal justice system affords little to ordinary Haitians.

Trial Procedures

"In practice, authorities widely ignore" constitutionally mandated fair trial provisions, including the right to counsel.

Political Prisoners and Detainees

Claiming "no reports of political prisoners or detainees" is patently false in a country notorious for holding many hundreds, including Aristide Fanmi Lavalas supporters.

Civil Judicial Procedures and Remedies

Legal redress for civil and human rights abuses is difficult to impossible for most Haitians even though numerous cases proliferate.

Freedom of Speech and Press

Though mandated by law, activists, human rights workers, independent journalists, and pro-democracy advocates face possible harassment, arrest, or assassination. It bears repeating, important gains achieved during Aristide's years were lost post-coup. Democracy eludes Haitians, because Washington's iron boot, allied with local oligarchs, denies them.

Internet Freedom

Though unrestricted, most Haitians can't afford access. In addition, poor infrastructure limits others.

Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association

Though mandated by law, only demonstrations by hard to get permits are allowed. Violators are routinely assaulted, arrested, or otherwise abused.

Freedom of Movement, Internally Displaced Persons, Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons

Those challenging government authorities face losing all their rights, including to life.

Internally Displace Persons

Haiti's January 2010 earthquake displaced 1.5 million or more. To date, little has been done to help them, those affected forced to mostly survive on their own, as well as cope with an ongoing cholera epidemic.

Protection of Refugees

Rarely is refugee status or asylum granted.

Respect for Political Rights: The Right of Citizens to Change Their Government

Understating Haiti's repressive governance, the State Department said Haitians aren't "always able....to change their government" freely. In fact, "November elections were marred by fraud, flawed voter registration lists, ballot stuffing, intimidation, and some violence at the polls."

Elections and Political Participation

Serious irregularities make Haiti's electoral process illegitimate, including by banning its most popular party by far - Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas.

Official Corruption and Government Transparency

"According to the World Bank's worldwide governance indicators, government corruption (is) a severe problem." In fact, it's "widespread in all branches and at all levels of government." However, few are held accountable.

Governmental Attitude Regarding International Nongovernmental Investigation of Alleged Violations of Human Rights

"The Chamber of Deputies and Senate (have) human rights committee(s)." However, neither published any reports or introduced relevant legislation.

Discrimination, Societal Abuses and Trafficking in Persons

No law prohibits discrimination with regard to race, gender, disability, language or social status. Moreover, trafficking in various forms is rampant, especially affecting women and children. Rape is also a major problem, notably in quake affected areas. Women are mostly unprotected, on their own, and extremely vulnerable.

Persons with Disabilities

Laws don't protect hundreds of thousands of physically, emotionally or mentally disabled persons. In fact, only 3% of disabled children have access to schools.

Other Societal Violence or Discrimination

Haiti's large HIV/AIDS population faces considerable discrimination, especially affecting women.

The Right of Association

Though nominally Haitians may form and join unions, mass privatizations dilute effective representation. According to some, Haiti is now a laboratory for neoliberal politics and the interests of multinational corporations, affording none to impoverished workers. Moreover, mass unemployment negates the right to organize and bargain collectively. As a result, employers set wages and establish working conditions arbitrarily.

Prohibition of Forced or Compulsory Labor

Though prohibited by law, violations are commonplace, including against children afforded no rights in practice. Moreover, under Haiti's century-old Restavek system, impoverished families unable to adequately provide for their children send them to live with better off ones in return for food, shelter, education, and a better life in return for forced servitude - de facto slaves subjected to verbal and/or physical abuse.

As a result, some as young as three are beaten, required to do anything asked, request nothing, speak only when spoken to, display no emotion, and receive none of the benefits parents expect, just exploitation and often severe mistreatment, including from relatives.

Afforded no government protection, they experience horrific treatment, including whippings, days without food, being attacked by rodents during sleep or street predators any time, and being easy prey for kidnappers who seize them for prostitution or forced labor, internally or abroad. Haiti's January 2010 earthquake exacerbated conditions.

Working Conditions

Haitians are the region's lowest paid, earning sub-poverty wages for those lucky enough to have jobs with no rights afforded them with regard to health, safety and other workplace conditions.

A Final Comment

Overall, the State Department's report reveals disturbing civil and human rights violations, despite understating them. As a result, ordinary Haitians are at risk in a nation spurning democracy because Washington and local oligarchs won't tolerate it.

At least for the next five years, expect no change under Martelly, America's selected stooge in Port-au-Prince.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected] Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

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On March 28, New Times writer Helene Cooper headlined, "Obama Cites Limits of US Role in Libya," saying:

Obama "defended the American-led military assault in Libya on Monday, saying it was in the national interest of the United States to stop a potential massacre that would have 'stained the conscience of the world,' " even though no threat existed until:

-- Washington showed up with co-belligerents France and Britain;

-- beginning in 2010, armed and funded so-called "rebels" who, in fact, are cutthroat killers, rapists and marauders, terrorizing every area they control, including their Benghazi stronghold; and

-- support them with daily "shock and awe" terror attacks, causing increasing numbers of deaths and injuries, as well as destruction and contamination of all areas struck by depleted uranium bombs, missiles and shells, spreading radiation over wide areas.

Despite Pentagon denials, conservative estimates put civilian deaths at over 100, besides combatants killed and unknown numbers murdered by rebel allies. Since March 19 air attacks began, nearly 1,500 sorties have been flown, that number to rise exponentially as daily strikes continue under US command, running all NATO operations under AFRICOM's General Carter Ham. Alleged new commander, Canada's Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard, is his subordinate, a Pentagon figurehead.

The alleged handover is fabricated. NATO is code language for America/the Pentagon. Obama lied announcing otherwise, saying Washington's role will be limited to stop potential "slaughter and mass graves" in Benghazi. In fact, he supports and/or ignores rebel terror killings against defenseless civilians, making him complicit in their crimes, besides widespread ones caused by NATO, America's missile. US attacks, in fact, will continue throughout the campaign, perhaps lasting months at an enormous cost, besides hundreds of billions annually in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Making an indefensible case, Obama said:

"For more than four decades, the Libyan people have been ruled by a tyrant - Muammar Gaddafi," ignoring the numerous regional and global ones America supports, including rogue Israeli regimes, lawlessly terrorizing Palestinians for over six decades with generous US support and funding.

Addressing the issue, Obama's Deputy National Security Adviser, Denis McDonough, said:

"I think it's very important that we see each of these instances....in the region as unique. We don't get very hung up on the question of precedent....because we don't make decisions about questions like intervention based on consistency or precedent. We make them based on how we can best advance our interests in the region."

Precisely true on the last point. However, policy decisions are very consistent. Allies are supported whether despots or democrats. Outliers are opposed, even benign ones posing no threat to America or neighbors. The rule of law is a non-starter. So are democratic values, "principles of justice and human dignity."

Only imperial aims matter, especially resource and human exploitation adventurism for money and power. For generations, they've guided US policies, notably since WW II, at home and abroad.

Yet pseudo-left apologists back Obama's Libya war, its faux "humanitarian intervention" to save lives, including darling of the left Rachel Maddow, defending the indefensible, pretending Obama's different from Bush when, in fact, he's worse, waging four, not two wars.

He also:

-- supports others in Palestine, Yemen and Somalia;

-- operates US Special Forces in at least 75 countries globally;

-- backs killing US citizens abroad lawlessly;

-- endorses holding detainees indefinitely without charge;

-- practices torture as official US policy; and

-- backs the worst of despotic states, notably in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Egypt under a military junta, Algeria under a military dictatorship (Abdelaziz Bouteflika more figurehead than president), other GCC states, besides others in Africa, Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

Yet Maddow and other faux liberals call Obama a peace president. No matter how great the body count, she's firm saying "he appears to be walking more of that walk as well as talking that talk."

He indeed talks plenty while letting imperial forces reign death and destruction on non-belligerent nations, spends hundreds of billions of dollars, then claims we're too broke to address vital homeland needs, especially social ones and crumbling infrastructure.

Cheerleading Print Media Support

For decades, The York Times endorsed all US imperial wars, the tradition maintained on March 28 in an editorial headlined, "President Obama and Libya," saying:

Obama "made the right, albeit belated, decision to join with allies to try to stop (Gaddafi) from slaughtering thousands of Libyans," despite clear evidence that Washington, France, Britain and rebel killers initiated attacks. Love or hate him, Gaddafi justifiably responded in self defense.

However, despite Obama's willful deception and lies, The Times claimed he "made a strong case for why America needed to intervene in this fight - and why that did not always mean it should intervene in others," notably against subservient despots, no matter how much "violence on a horrific scale" they cause.

"Most important," said The Times, Obama "vowed that there would be no American ground troops in this fight." A previous article explained otherwise, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/03/us-led-libyan-ground-assault-planned.html

Numerous reports, in fact, suggest a ground assault is planned for late April-early May if air and rebel attacks don't oust Gaddafi, what most experts believe unlikely.

On March 28, New York Times writers Kareem Fahim and David Kirkpatrick suggested as much, headlining "Rebel Advance Halted Outside Qaddafi's Hometown," saying:

"....the American military warned on Monday that the insurgents' rapid advances could quickly be reversed without continued coalition air support," quoting General Ham saying more, in fact, may be needed, stopping short of suggesting ground forces deployed offshore will invade.

Whatever lies ahead, no matter how bloody and destructive, The Times insisted Obama "made the right choice to act."

So did the Washington Post, its editorial opinion headlined, "Mr. Obama and Libya: Where's the strategy to preserve success?" saying:

Obama "was right to act, and he deserves the credit that he claimed....He was right" saying "we must stand alongside those who believe in the same core principles of freedom and nonviolence," ones, in fact, America spurns at home and abroad, especially during direct or proxy imperial wars.

On March 29, a Wall Street Journal editorial headlined, "Obama, Libya and the GOP," saying:

Obama "made a substantial case for his Libya intervention, (and) we welcome the effort....The credibility of US power is essential to maintaining our influence in a Middle East that is erupting in popular revolt against decades of injustice," much, in fact, America caused.

US media opinions mostly expressed support. The Los Angeles Times said "no one can complain that he didn't make a thoughtful, compelling case for his decision to intervene." The Philadelphia Daily News endorsed "the Obama Doctrine....a rationale for the use of US force, (his Monday speech perhaps) the beginning of a saner foreign policy."

The Chicago Tribune wondered whether a "humanitarian mission (set) a precedent that will be used to demand American involvement in other places." The Boston Globe endorsed his "swift Libyan intervention (wrongly calling it) the first time Obama has ordered US troops into a new conflict, (then saying it's) a key test of his presidency and a moment that allowed him to delineate his most comprehensive vision yet for America's role in the world and the role of the military abroad."

According to the conservative Center for Strategic and International Studies' (CSIS) Stephen Flanagan, Obama "laid the beginnings of an Obama doctrine. He said that there are instances where our safety is not immediately threatened but our interests and values are, and in those cases....we will act, particularly when we can act with a broad international coalition" of willing co-belligerents plus others bullied and/or bribed to join or endorse imperial aggression against another targeted country.

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) on "Public TV's Libya Limits"

America's Public Television (PBS) and National Public Radio rely heavily on government and corporate funds. As a result, they provide managed news like major media networks, suppressing hard truths on vital issues.

PBS' Libya reporting is instructive, FAIR saying:

"Over the past two weeks, the (flagship) NewsHour has featured an array of current and former military and government officials in discussion segments - leaving little room for antiwar voices, US foreign policy critics and legal experts."

NPR and PBS are similar, supporting state and corporate policies throughout their histories, depriving listeners and viewers of real news, information and opinions on vital issues.

The 1967 Carnegie Commission report (creating PBS) envisioned a "forum for debate and controversy (to) provide a voice for groups in the community that may be otherwise unheard." NPR's founding mandate was similar, yet both operations represent power, money and privilege, not popular interests they were established to serve.

A Final Comment

In his book "The Next Decade," Stratfor Global Intelligence founder George Friedman "consider(s) the relation of the American empire to the American Republic and the threat the empire poses to the republic('s)" survival, given its addiction to war and abandonment of the Constitution's Article 1, Section 8 provision letting Congress alone declare it. It was last done on December 8, 1941 against Japan.

As a result, seven US decades of wars have been lawless. Moreover, no nation may attack another except in self-defense or until the Security Council acts - lawfully according to the UN Charter. In authorizing a no-fly zone (an act of war), SC members acted illegally, brazenly violating international law, letting America and co-belligerents France and Britain wage imperial war against a nation posing no threat to them or neighboring states.

Friedman stressed the importance of congressional declarations of war, "requir(ing) meticulous attention to the law and proprieties." However, he stopped short of addressing international law or explaining the Constitution's Supremacy Clause. Under it, every treaty America ratifies automatically becomes US law, the UN Charter, of course, included. No congressional or presidential act may contravene it, what, in fact, happens regularly, especially on matters of war.

As a result, in a recent interview, University of Illinois Professor of International Law Francis Boyle was blunt, calling Obama's war on Libya "plunder and aggression, (the) first major outright power grab by the United States and the major colonial, imperial powers against Africa in the 21st century." For sure, it's not the last.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected] Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

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I've also written about them all, discussed them on the Progressive Radio News Hour, and am committed to help achieve justice so far denied them.

This article concerns Abu-Baker, after Rafil Dhafir emailed me the following from Terre Haute, IN federal prison Communications Management Unit's (CMU) segregation section where Muslims receive excessively punitive treatment:

"Last night Shukri Baker, here in CMU, got a call from his family that his daughter Sanabil is dying in the hospital. She has cystic fibrosis, Thalassemia major and diabetes. She is not eligible for lung transplant. She is only 24 who has only 2 months left to finish college.

He is distraught. With tears in his eyes he kept asking:

'What did I do to this country to deny me enough time to talk to my dying daughter by phone? Why am I not allowed to hug my baby in her last days of her life? Who is going to council my young daughters and their mother in this hour of grief and uncertainty?'

He asked for extra phone calls to straighten things out. He was given the run around. The Chaplain claimed that he is new and does not know the procedure for approval. Those who can be talked to are no where to be found. It was late Friday when he learned of his daughter's condition.

It broke my heart to see this great man who helped save the lives of millions in places far away from here, who never hurt anyone intentionally, and who dedicated his life to saving and relieving children and needy people be denied the right of a human being to see his dying daughter off and to help his own children.

It is cruel to imprison one for providing relief but it is far worse in cruelty to deny such person the comfort of talking to his dying child. Would one then wonder why these calamities befall the world all over?"

Dr. Rafil Dhafir's Wrongful Conviction for His "Crime of Compassion"

Activist Katherine Hughes explained Dhafir's case in her 2006 article by that title. A Muslim American of Iraqi descent, he practiced oncology until wrongfully convicted for violating Iraqi Sanctions Regulations (IEEPA), using his own funds and what his Help the Needy charity raised to bring desperately needed aid to Iraqis in the 1990s.

Yet, he was convicted on 59 of 60 bogus charges, including tax fraud, money laundering, mail and wire fraud, imprisoning him for 22 years. Like Shukri Baker and other Muslims, he's incarcerated at Terre Haute's infamous CMU. More on it below.

Shukri Abu-Baker: President and CEO of the Holy Foundation (HLF) Charity

A previous article explained his case, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2008/12/criminal-injustice-against-holy-land.html

A later article followed the sentencing of HLF's five principles. Abu-Baker and Chairman Ghassan Elashi each got 65 years for providing:

-- financial aid to needy and impoverished families;

-- a sponsorship program for orphaned children;

-- various social services;

-- educational services;

-- medical and other emergency work; and

-- community development, including help to rebuild Palestinian homes on their own land in their own country that Israel lawlessly destroyed.

They, in fact, described their work as follows, saying - "We gave:

-- books, not bombs;

-- bread, not bullets;

-- smiles, not scars;

-- toys, not tanks;

-- peace, not terror;

-- liberty, not poverty;

-- hope, not despair;

-- love, not hate; (and)

-- life, not death.

So we ask: If (over six decades of occupation) obviously shatters lives, while charity builds them and charity feeds children, while occupation kills them, why is a charity organization - not occupation - paying the price?"

They, in fact, broke no laws, committee no crimes, but were targeted for their faith, ethnicity, prominence, activism and charity, the two main principles getting a de facto life sentence for being Muslims at the wrong time in America, like many others wrongfully imprisoned.

They provided essential relief to Palestinian refugees in Occupied Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan, as well as to needy recipients in Bosnia, Albania, Chechnya, Turkey and America.

Three other principles, included:

-- volunteer Mufid Abdulqader - 20 years;

-- New Jersey office director Abdulrahman Odeh - 15 years, and

-- California office director Mohammad El-Mezain - 15 years.

They were convicted on most or all 108 counts, including supporting a terrorist organization, money laundering and tax fraud. They also incurred a $12.4 million fine, impossible to pay nor should they.

Communications Management Unit (CMU) Imprisonment

A previous article explained its lawlessness, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/03/treatment-of-imprisoned-muslims-at.html

It's for so-called "high-security risk" Muslim and Middle Eastern prisoners in violation of federal law, prohibiting severely limiting or cutting them off entirely from other inmates, as well as outside contacts and communications.

Segregating prisoners by race, national origin, or language violates the Supreme Court's February 2005 Johnson v. California decision, affirming 14th Amendment protection against racial discrimination. Specifically, the Court:

"rejected the notion that separate can ever be equal-or 'neutral' - 50 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education" repudiated it. This court "refuses to resurrect it today."

US Prison Bureau regulations also stipulate that "staff shall not discriminate against inmates on the basis of race, religion, national origin, sex, disability, or political belief (including) administrative decisions (involving) access to work, housing and programs."

Nonetheless, the Bush administration instituted these practices. Under Obama, they continue unabated at Terre Haute, IN and Marion, IL federal prison Communications Management Units (CMU). Perhaps additional federal and state facilities will follow for other wrongfully persecuted Muslims.

They're to assure they get fewer rights and privileges than other prisoners, including allowable communications. Also:

-- poorer food quality, amount, or that conforms to a strict Muslim diet;

-- proper medical care; and

-- virtually everything else, prison authorities given much latitude to do as they please, including violating Bureau of Prisons regulations and US law.

As a result, emergency medical care takes days or longer to receive. Essential care can take weeks, months or be denied. Other mistreatment includes harassment, intimidation, food rationing, the serving of forbidden-to-eat kinds, frequent "shake-downs," and removal or theft of personal possessions. Also rejection of simple requests, delay or denial of mail and other communications, as well as restricting them altogether.

In other words, Muslims are fair game to be treated any way prison authorities wish. They take full advantage against glorious men like Dhafir, Abu-Baker, and many others deserving honor, not prison.

Instead, they're out of sight and mind, wrongfully denied justice by a lawless nation, withholding it from innocent victims targeted at home and abroad.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected] Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

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The 20-page ruling, issued in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, upheld government demands that it be allowed to seize the Twitter accounts of WikiLeaks supporters Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a leftist member of the Icelandic parliament, computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum and Rop Gonggrijp, the cofounder of the Dutch ISP XS4All.

Jónsdóttir was specifically targeted for her role in helping WikiLeaks release the Collateral Murder video last year that exposed the wanton slaughter of a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad, including two Reuters photojournalists, by a U.S. military Apache helicopter crew. Two children were also seriously wounded in the unprovoked attack.

The ruling also grants access to the Twitter accounts of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, the imprisoned and tortured Army private indicted for "aiding the enemy" over his alleged leak of incriminating documents that disclosed state crimes, charges which carry a potential death penalty.

Meanwhile, the cyber-guerrilla collective Anonymous, responsible for the HBGary hack that revealed plans by the Bank of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to target WikiLeaks and Chamber opponents, "has promised to avenge Manning, and wage a media war with the U.S. military," The Tech Herald reports.

Buchanan's ruling ordered that the micro-blogging site cough-up information to the government about what internet and email addresses are associated with the whistleblowers, as part of an "ongoing investigation" by a federal grand jury believed to be seeking criminal charges against WikiLeaks supporters.

The judge rejected arguments by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and private attorneys representing the account holders, dismissing claims that there were First Amendment issues involved because the activists "have already made their Twitter posts and associations publicly available."

In dismissing privacy concerns, Buchanan also ruled that the account holders had "no Fourth Amendment privacy interest in their IP addresses," and that federal privacy law did not apply because prosecutors were not seeking the contents of the communications themselves, a spurious argument.

Denouncing the ruling, EFF noted in a press release that "secret government demands for information about the subscribers' communications came to light only because Twitter took steps to ensure their customers were notified and had the opportunity to respond."

The ACLU and EFF are also seeking from the court similar orders issued by the Obama administration to other companies, widely reported to include Google and Facebook.

When the story first broke, WikiLeaks demanded that Google and Facebook reveal the contents of subpoenas they may have received from the government. However both multibillion firms, chock-a-block with contracts from the secret state as disclosed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) have refused all comment, leading critics to assume they have already complied with orders to hand over the data.

The ACLU's Aden Fine, a staff attorney with the group's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project said that Buchanan's ruling "gives the government the ability to secretly amass private information related to individuals' Internet communications." Decrying the judge's order, Fine commented: "If this ruling stands, our client may be prevented from challenging the government's requests to other companies because she might never know if and how many other companies have been ordered to turn over information about her."

EFF's Legal Director Cindy Cohn added, "with so much of our digital private information being held by third parties--whether in the cloud or on social networking sites like Twitter--the government can track your every move and statement without you ever having a chance to protect yourself."

Underscoring Cohn's point, EFF revealed back in August that "a number of documents from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) highlighted the government's ability to scour not only social networks, but record each and every corner of the Internet."

Both privacy watchdog groups plan to appeal the ruling.

As Antifascist Calling reported last month, the secret state began a criminal investigation of WikiLeaks and founder Julian Assange last July after the secret-spilling web site began releasing a mountain of classified files on the imperialist Empire's criminal invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

That probe was accelerated after WikiLeaks Cablegate revelations began last November and the group threatened to release compromising files on a "major American bank," believed to be the Bank of America.

While WikiLeaks hasn't followed up, Zero Hedge reported Friday that Anonymous "is claiming to be have emails and documents which prove 'fraud' was committed by Bank of America employees, and the group says it'll release them on Monday."

CNET News noted that "Buchanan's order isn't a traditional subpoena. Rather, it's what's known as a 2703(d) order, which allows police to obtain certain records from a Web site or Internet provider if they are 'relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation'."

Investigative journalist Declan McCullagh reports that a 2703(d) order "is broad" and covers "connection records, or records of session times and durations," and "records of user activity for any connections made to or from the account," including internet addresses used.

In other words, the order covers "all records" and "correspondence" relating to the accounts and is also "broad enough to sweep in the content of messages such as direct messages sent through Twitter or tweets from a nonpublic account."

According to EFF's Cindy Cohn, the Justice Department narrowed their request "to avoid asking for content" so as to avoid a federal appeals court decision that a "a 2703(d) order is insufficient for content data and a search warrant is necessary." Cohn told CNET "it sure seemed like the order sought" to sweep up message content as well.

Cohn told Bloomberg News even though Buchanan's order didn't involve content, "the judge downplayed what can be learned from non-content information that we give to third-parties all the time."

In February, San Francisco-based attorney John Keker who represents Jacob Appelbaum, argued in court that "it is incredibly powerful to know who the opposition is and who they're working with," and that turning over such information to a grand jury would violate Fourth Amendment guarantees against warrantless searches and seizures by the national security state.

For their part, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Davis argued in court that the government's request was "routine."

Davis told the court, "this is a standard--as this court knows well--investigative measure used in criminal investigations every day of the year all over the country."

As the Obama administration's war on whistleblowers escalates, prosecutions and threats of the same have focused journalists and corporate watchdogs in their gunsights.

Secrecy News disclosed last week that former National Security Agency official Thomas A. Drake, charged last year "with unauthorized retention of classified information about controversial NSA programs, should not be allowed to argue in court that overclassification is widespread or that he was engaged in whistleblowing in the public interest."

According to federal prosecutors, while "the defendant may claim that the current classification system is ineffectual or illegal and prevents his ability to air allegations of waste, fraud and abuse to the attention of the public," the secret state is arguing that such concerns are "irrelevant." Illegal or not, the defendant's "obligation" was to "protect classified information."

This from an administration that claimed one of its "top priorities" would be to "Protect Whistleblowers"!

As Salon's Glenn Greenwald pointed out last year: "Most of what our Government does of any real significance happens in the dark."

"Whistleblowers are one of the very few avenues we have left for learning about any of that," Greenwald wrote. "And politicians eager to preserve their own power and ability to operate in secret--such as Barack Obama--see whistleblowers as their Top Enemy."

"Hence," the Salon columnist informed us, "we have a series of aggressive prosecutions from the Obama administration of Bush era exposures of abuse and illegality--acts that flagrantly violate Obama's Look Forward, Not Backward decree used to protect high-level Bush administration criminals." And, I might add, "high-level criminals" within his own administration.

As the World Socialist Web Site pointed out last month, "the aim" of the Obama administration "is not only to extract revenge for WikiLeaks having published thousands of US Embassy cables detailing Washington's involvement in spying, torture and assassinations. It is also intended as a warning to any individual or group that tries to expose the dirty reality of imperialist diplomacy."

With any semblance of public accountability, let alone justice, closed off by America's capitalist elites, in and outside of government, whistleblowing web sites like WikiLeaks, Public Intelligence, Cryptome and Anonymous, may very well be the last line of defense we have for exposing state crimes against what little remains of our democracy.

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, he is a Contributing Editor with Cyrano's Journal Today. His articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press, Uncommon Thought Journal, and the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press and has contributed to the new book from Global Research, The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century.

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Of course, the dictatorship in Egypt is far different than what the vast majority of Americans face. Despite liberty and freedom, our tyranny exists within an electoral, constitutional republic. But with a two-party plutocracy thoroughly corrupted by corporate and wealthy interests most Americans are victims of a dysfunctional, inefficient and unfair democracy. How ironic that in the nation with monumental gun ownership among its citizens there is no hint of people giving up on meaningless elections and taking to the streets in massive numbers to protest their corrupt government.

Just this week a new report documented this: Nearly a year and a half into the economic recovery, some 43.6 million Americans continued to rely on food stamps in November, 2010. That amounts to more than 14 percent of the population that relied on food stamps to purchase groceries, just another result of stubborn high unemployment and low incomes among the employed. According to the new report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, compared to a year ago the number of people receiving food stamps was up 14.2 percent. Many other Americans are getting food at various kinds of charities and food banks. Add to this real unemployment approaching 20 percent in most areas and huge numbers of Americans going homeless and facing home foreclosure. Does this sound like the best country on Earth that politicians like to jabber about? Of course not.

The US is in terrible shape, but President Obama lied in his recent state of the union address. It was not his first time, nor will it be his last time. But it was one of the biggest possible lies. The state of union is absolutely not strong. Anyone with a smidgen of intelligence and critical thinking capability knows that in almost every conceivable way the US is in awful shape for a large fraction of its citizens.

Imagine if the President of the USA stood up in front of Congress, the whole nation and the world with the courage to tell the truth: the state of the union is terrible, about the worst in over 100 years. And that is why Americans have to wake up, pay attention, sacrifice and join together in rebellion to make things much, much better and the hell with conventional politics driven by the worst special interests and the rich.

By telling the lie that the state of the union is strong, Obama removed the necessary motivation for Americans to get their distracted and delusional minds oriented in the right direction. The nation needs to shift into revolution mode. Watching the Superbowl will not improve our government.

What Americans must face is the ugly truth that China and other nations are beating the crap out of the US and nothing the US is currently doing has the ability to change this situation and win the global competition. In just about every objective way that nations can be judged the US is losing the present. Our educational system for children is a joke; data keep showing that American children are far behind those in many other countries. Our industrial sector has lost an incredible amount of manufacturing and most large companies now make more money from foreign operations and invest money abroad for that reason. That explains a huge loss of jobs with no reversal possible. Our financial sector is awash with corruption, greed and dishonesty. Our health care system no longer produces healthy citizens, compared to many other nations, despite costing much, much more. Our physical infrastructure is a disgrace, crumbling and threatening public health and safety. Upward mobility has largely disappeared and the middle class continues to sink into a lower class. Economic inequality has skyrocketed with the rich becoming richer and everyone else suffering more and more. The large number of homeless, hungry, poor and imprisoned Americans defines a nation that has lost its glory.

Just as Americans have watched once great companies disappear (Remember Polaroid?), they need to wake up to the downfall of their own country. All the talk about jobs is just another monumental deception, because there is no way that millions of new, good paying jobs will be created for many years. Even more and more Americans face hunger and homelessness as well as joining the working poor.

In stark contrast to the empty rhetoric of Obama, at about the same time a remarkably honest report by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that provides incredibly honest criticisms and explanation of exactly what caused the economic meltdown that millions of Americans are still suffering from. If President Obama respected its findings, he would use them as the basis for detailing his actions against the entities responsible for the Great Recession. Here is a sample of the report's important views:

"The crisis was the result of human action and inaction, not of Mother Nature or computer models gone haywire. The captains of finance and the public stewards of our financial system ignored warnings and failed to question, understand and manage evolving risks within a system essential to the well-being of the American public. Theirs was a big miss, not a stumble."

The financial industry has gotten away with murder and ended up profiting enormously. No mystery because it and groups affiliated with it spent more than $3.7 billion on lobbying and campaign contributions from 1999 to 2008.

And imagine if the President would have had the guts to talk openly about the incredibly awful financial predicament of most states! Many more people will lose their jobs as governments cut spending.

Nothing defines our delusional democracy more than a president providing delusional thinking to mostly delusional citizens. Make no mistake; this is an epidemic of bipartisan delusion. This is what makes America exceptional. A once great nation is sliding down the toilet and most everyone, especially politicians, are lying endlessly as it does, as if the nation's decay should be ignored rather than honestly combated by its citizens.

Obama said "We do big things." Once, the country did big things, but not now. The best is behind us, the worst is now with us. The US is stuck in a quicksand of corrupt politics that has been killing the middle class as the elite and rich upper class gets more and more wealth and power. Republicans like to talk about US exceptionalism; it is a farce. There is no longer anything exceptional in a positive sense. That is a terribly bitter and painful truth to acknowledge, but if we do not do so, then how can we possibly fix the many things that are broken? We cannot. We are in a massive national state of delusion, hanging on to the fantasy that the nation is still great. Yes, we need to do big things to restore greatness to the nation, but for that to happen we must first admit the ugly truth and fight American tyranny.

Winning the future, the hot new slogan from Obama, only has meaning if he acknowledges that the nation is losing the present. Yet Americans remain unready to revolt. And the Tea Party movement puts its faith in Republicans! What a disgrace, especially for a nation built on revolution.

[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through delusionaldemocracy.com.]

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There isn't a single answer to this question. The issue of poverty in America has been politicized, which has made it a polarizing topic in the realm of public opinion. I believe that when corporations and government make important public policy decisions, they focus on profitability. When profits are at stake, why would the government allocate funds to people who are not in the market to buy the latest technologies or pay a mortgage? This is one of the reasons why poverty is an overwhelming problem, because people living in poverty generally do not have upward mobility, nor do they have a desirable social status. The institutions that we all rely upon to drive cars, attend schools, rent or pay a mortgage and buy groceries are all pandering to a segment of the population that is either middle class or upper class. There are no discounts at the grocery store if you prove you are low income; there are no gasoline vouchers or tax breaks for license and tag renewal fees at the DMV. The only assistance someone can obtain if they are living in poverty is from their state and federal government. The situation becomes worse if you are not working poor, but are a single mother in poverty.

A single mother with two children, in Oregon, qualifies for a maximum of just under $800.00 per month in cash assistance. Assuming a single mother has food stamps, she is able to buy groceries. The $800.00 in cash assistance- which comes from a federal program called TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) would then be allocated to living expenses, rent, utilities, child care, etc. That amount of money is not enough to pay for basic necessities, and it's only available for a maximum of 5 years. In the 1990's, President Clinton put a limit on the amount of time a family can be on TANF when he reformed the welfare system. Once you've been on it for 5 years, you can never get the assistance again. A single mother receiving welfare is put in a position where she can either live on welfare until it expires, or she can attempt to better her life chances with an education. If she attempts to get educated, her welfare programs will be cut. If she attempts to find a job, her welfare programs will be cut. The institutions put in place to "help" the working poor and single parents are the same institutions that contribute to the amount of poverty in the US because they limit the ability of the poor to better themselves economically. These institutions are also responsible for demonizing the poor, particularly poor single mothers, and use the person blame approach. The institutions in government that are supposed to help single mothers only exacerbate the situation with bureaucracy and rules that bind the individual to the program so it's near impossible to achieve desirable social status or a college education. The only way one could do that, and still receive welfare benefits, is to lie.

I believe that history has a lot to do with how our government treats women and children that are living in poverty. The US government has consistently been made up of Protestant white men. Men in power are surely capable of empathy, but our society isn't receptive to our most powerful leaders discussing how they are going to help poor people. The disconnection and lack of communication toward the public regarding poverty is part of the reason poor people are discriminated against. Silence results in speculation, and then blaming. Blaming poor people for the choices they've made in life are a theme in the media- I've heard these talking points: taking individual responsibility for your actions, making better decisions, and having "common sense" is enough to stay out of poverty. The truth is, poverty is a cycle, and if you're born into poverty, your chances of getting out of it are low. The government uses people in poverty to their advantage. Global corporations can hire an eager 25 year old for minimum wage, with the promise of climbing the corporate ladder. This is in government's favor, since they are beholden to corporations- and if enough corporations hire the right amount of low skilled workers for minimum wage, the amount of unemployed people goes down and public perception changes in a positive way. Also, a high percentage of poor people enter the military. Poor people are similar to illegal immigrants in a sense, because they can be taken advantage of by the same institutions put in place that are supposed to protect them and give them opportunity.

The government also tries to "help" poor people by creating urban renewal projects. The phrase, "I live in the projects" refers to someone who lives in an apartment complex that subsidizes housing for the poor. Urban renewal projects, however, is a way of transforming a neighborhood from being gritty and prone to crime and poverty, and turning it in to a place of opportunity for new home buyers. There is one huge problem with this, and it ends up resulting in concentrated poverty. The one huge problem is that in order to live in an urban renewal area, you have to be poor; you can buy a home, but you there is a wage ceiling. If you rent, there is also a wage ceiling. Urban renewal projects can bring in more homeowners, but what ends up happening is those homebuyers obtain risky loans with high interest rates, and there is a limit to how long you can live in the house before you can sell it if you want to move out. And, just because a poor person buys a home doesn't mean the culture of poverty, and the cycle of poverty, goes away.

Even though it's been proven that the working poor work harder than someone in a higher class status, people with the working poor status in our society are not looked at as being productive members of society. They don't have buying power, they are perceived to be less involved in the political process, and they don't have a voice that speaks for them. The US has very few people in government that speak for them. If the working poor, single mother, children that can't even get quality child care, had a national voice, then maybe some change could happen. This voice would have to have no political or financial agenda. Their only agenda would be based on pure empathy and a passion for justice in the form of social equality. Assembling the masses might not do anything, but one powerful person who has the ability to make her voice heard has the ability to change public policy and public perceptions about poverty, single mothers, and the institutions that are failing them.

Bibliography
Wolf, Rowan S., Kathleen Tiemann, Ralph McNeil, Betsy Lucal, and Morten Ender, comps & eds. The Intersections Collection: Rowan Wolf's Sections Only. Pearson Custom Publishing. 2009.

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The Chang Mai factory the CIA prevented me from destroying was the source of massive amounts of heroin being smuggled into the US in the bodies and body bags of GIs killed in Vietnam. (p. 165)

My unit, the Hard Narcotics Smuggling Squad, was charged with investigating all heroin and cocaine smuggling through the Port of New York. My unit became involved in investigating every major smuggling operation known to law enforcement. We could not avoid witnessing the CIA protecting major drug dealers. Not a single important source in Southeast Asia was ever indicted by US law enforcement. This was no accident. Case after case was killed by CIA and State Department intervention and there wasn't a damned thing we could do about it. CIA-owned airlines like Air America were being used to ferry drugs throughout Southeast Asia, allegedly to support our "allies." CIA banking operations were used to launder drug money. (pp. 165, 166)

In 1972, I was assigned to assist in a major international drug case involving top Panamanian government officials who were using diplomatic passports to smuggle large quantities of heroin and other drugs into the US. The name Manuel Noriega surfaced prominently in the investigation. Surfacing right behind Noriega was the CIA to protect him from US law enforcement. As head of the CIA, Bush authorized a salary for Manuel Noriega as a CIA asset, while the dictator was listed in as many as 40 DEA computer files as a drug dealer. (pp. 166, 167)

The CIA and the Department of State were protecting more and more politically powerful drug traffickers around the world: the Mujihadeen in Afghanistan, the Bolivian cocaine cartels, the top levels of Mexican government, Nicaraguan Contras, Colombian drug dealers and politicians, and others. Media's duties, as I experienced firsthand, were twofold: first, to keep quiet about the gush of drugs that was allowed to flow unimpeded into the US; second, to divert the public's attention by shilling them into believing the drug war was legitimate by falsely presenting the few trickles we were permitted to indict as though they were major "victories," when in fact we were doing nothing more than getting rid of the inefficient competitors of CIA assets. (pp. 166, 167)

On July 17, 1980, drug traffickers actually took control of a nation. Bolivia at the time [was] the source of virtually 100% of the cocaine entering the US. CIA-recruited mercenaries and drug traffickers unseated Bolivia's democratically elected president, a leftist whom the US government didn't want in power. Immediately after the coup, cocaine production increased massively, until it soon outstripped supply. This was the true beginning of the crack "plague." (pp. 167, 168)

The CIA along with the State and Justice Departments had to combine forces to protect their drug-dealing assets by destroying a DEA investigation. How do I know? I was the inside source. I sat down at my desk in the American embassy and wrote the kind of letter that I never myself imagined ever writing. I detailed three pages typewritten on official US embassy stationary--enough evidence of my charges to feed a wolf pack of investigative journalists. I also expressed my willingness to be a quotable source. I addressed it directly to Strasser and Rohter, care of Newsweek. Two sleepless weeks later, I was still sitting in my embassy office staring at the phone. Three weeks later, it rang. It was DEA's internal security. They were calling me to notify me that I was under investigation. I had been falsely accused of everything from black-marketing to having sex with a married female DEA agent. The investigation would wreak havoc with my life for the next four years. (pp. 168-171)

In one glaring case, an associate of mine was sent into Honduras to open a DEA office in Tegucigalpa. Within months he had documented as much as 50 tons of cocaine being smuggled into the US by Honduran military people who were supporting the Contras. This was enough cocaine to fill a third of US demand. What was the DEA response? They closed the office. (p. 175)

Sometime in 1990, US Customs intercepted a ton of cocaine being smuggled through Miami International Airport. A Customs and DEA investigation quickly revealed that the smugglers were the Venezuelan National Guard headed by General Guillen, a CIA "asset" who claimed that he had been operating under CIA orders and protection. The CIA soon admitted that this was true. If the CIA is good at anything, it is the complete control of American mass media. So secure are they in their ability to manipulate the mass media that they even brag about it in their own in-house memos. The New York Times had the story almost immediately in 1990 and did not print it until 1993. It finally became news that was "fit to print" when the Times learned that 60 Minutes also had the story and was actually going to run it. The highlight of the 60 Minutes piece is when the administrator of the DEA, Federal Judge Robert Bonner, tells Mike Wallace, "There is no other way to put it, Mike, [what the CIA did] is drug smuggling. It's illegal [author's emphasis]." (pp. 188, 189)

The fact is - and you can read it yourself in the federal court records - that seven months before the attempt to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, the FBI had a paid informant, Emad Salem, who had infiltrated the bombers and had told the FBI of their plans to blow up the twin towers. Without notifying the NYPD or anyone else, an FBI supervisor "fired" Salem, who was making $500 a week for his work. After the bomb went off, the FBI hired Salem back and paid him $1.5 million to help them track down the bombers. But that's not all the FBI missed. When they finally did catch the actual bomber, Ramzi Yousef (a man trained with CIA funds during the Russia-Afghanistan war), the FBI found information on his personal computer about plans to use hijacked American jetliners as fuel-laden missiles. The FBI ignored this information, too. (p. 191)

Michael Levine is a 25-year veteran of the DEA turned best-selling author and journalist. His articles and interviews on the drug war have been published in numerous national newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and Esquire.

Learn about Mr. Levine's books and radio show at http://www.expertwitnessradio.org.

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Structural arrangements in the US society buttress the belief system that reinforces the misuse of resources and abuses the ecosystem. (Tiemann, McNeal Jr., Lucal, & Ender, 2009) Polity, a particular system of government, created the need for nuclear technology and the need for Hanford. Structural polity and its creation of the Hanford site displaced many local residents through eminent domain, a governmental policy that allows the government to seize land from private owners with due compensation so long as it is used for civic or public use. Bad government policy such as this exploits the land and the people who use it. The hidden costs to society definitely outweighed the social benefits of the land. To make way for the Hanford Site, the government evacuated the towns of Hanford, White Bluffs and surrounding farmland; these people were given thirty days to do so. This area was needed to build the required factories and to create a buffer zone around the top secret site. Between 500 and 600 families were affected as well as many Tribes native to the area. Many families moved to the growing town of Richland, which was receiving many displaced families as well as housing government officials. Housing shortages consumed the surrounding areas and folks were forced to live in trailer parks and other temporary housing units. Livelihoods were lost as farmers had to sell off their land to the government. Displaced tribes were offered land for reservations, insignificant compared to what was lost of their livelihood and culture. Government structure, through bad policy, surely created social problems for the residents of eastern Washington and surrounding areas due to the construction of the Hanford Site.

The US's political hubris for ultimate power superseded the well-being of their people when they created Hanford. Systems of stratification such as environmental racism were perpetrated against the Native American tribes whose cultures rely on the local land. In 1855, when the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation signed a treaty with the US, they handed over 6.4 million acres while reserving land use rights pertinent to their survival. The effects of exploitation to the land and natural resources in the area by the Hanford Site have gravely disturbed the tribes' cultural relationship with the land for generations. (Wolf A. , 2007) Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla representative Stu Harris spoke eloquently about the long-term impacts of Hanford on his people. He observed that in less than one generation Hanford has become so contaminated that "my people will be left with a contaminated land so severe for 10,000 years." (Carpenter, 2010) As the Tribes exercised their right to fish, hunt, and gather on the land surrounding Hanford, the US government withheld pertinent information regarding exposure to contaminated land, water and air, including the dispersal of ionizing radiation. Particularly vulnerable to these exposures were the members of the Yakama Indian Nation, the reservation of which is located west of and "downwind" from the Hanford Nuclear facility.

They used their knowledge to further exploit a group of people who had no way of protecting themselves in their daily struggle for survival. The tribes have vital interests in any Hanford activity that risks any right or resource assured by the 1855 Treaty both then and now. That includes threats to the fishery from radioactive and chemical contamination in the Columbia River an economic livelihood for these tribes.

Another structural source creating social problems for American society via Hanford is the US's capitalist economy. A strong capitalist economy creates profits and continues to grow them and often, profits take priority over safety. Although the Tri-party Agreement was signed in 1989, so many amendments have been made that decades have been added to the timeline. It seems that the longer cleanup is put off, the more contractors and corporations make. There is the inevitable fact of inflation and causing bids/fees to increase as time increases. There is also the necessity to train new workers as time goes on and previously trained workers leave. Although many will get rich throughout the multi-billion dollar cleanup, stalling only hinders the safety of the people and the environment. Profits were also found through the displaced families who created great economic stability for the surrounding areas such as Richland and Kennewick. Goods and services were needed by not only these folks but also the 50,000 plus workers brought to the area by this new "atomic industry." Hanford successfully created a new and diverse economy of industry, tourism and agriculture. Rather than question the effects of this unknown energy source on themselves and their environment, the area jumped at the chance to grow economically.

This last point also touches on a cultural ideology that dominates the US and fostered Hanford's success and tragic legacy; a backstabbing growth ethic. Americans hold strong to the idea that growth means prosperity which equals success, usually at whatever cost necessary. The surrounding areas of Hanford relished their population increase, economic growth and affiliation to something so extraordinary, the nuclear bomb. "We see ourselves as a community with a major industry," one Richland resident claimed. Another resident so strongly believed in the prosperity of Hanford he cried out, "Nuclear is a religion!" (Edelstein, 2007) Nationally, this sentiment was felt all over America as safety was felt once again post WWII. The Cold War perpetuated nuclear science as America once again felt comfortable in its own shoes. Nuclear power brought a stagnant, war torn America back to a vibrant, safe place that could start to grow again, an ideology that trumped safety of the people and protection of the environment.

Another cultural belief that is the downfall of Hanford is America's belief and faith in technology and its mastery over nature. America was unprepared for the consequences of nuclear waste and assumed that as time went on, technology and science would be able to fix any current or future problems. For decades, waste disposal was haphazard and considered temporary, with few records remaining or ever kept. At one of Hanford's earliest documented waste burial grounds, notes on contents that included pyrophoric uranium chips "were written on little telephone notepads," says Jon Fancher, field remediation manager for Washington Closure Hanford. (Rubin, 2008) Lack of properly containing and disposing of waste has contributed to contaminated groundwater found on Hanford land, a fact that was covered up by the government when two whistle blowers produced evidence of the 250 foot seepage, a potential for great danger once it reaches the Columbia River. These problems were largely withheld from the public, thanks to national security restrictions on information about making bombs. When the leaks finally became public, Hanford managers maintained the 66 known leaks from the older tanks hadn't spread far (Steele, 1997), a negligent statement at best. Technology was also supposed to stop the release of chemicals into the air or into the ground. Unfortunately, mastery of this atomic force was not great and people were exposed to the airborne radiation by breathing the air and consuming certain foods, especially milk from goats or cows that grazed on contaminated vegetation. In 1948, the first crude filters were installed on the plant stacks, technology that was supposed to protect residents from release of radioactive materials but even after this, radioactive materials were found as far as Montana and Idaho. The quest for technology and science that could save America from enemies across the globe proved to be more dangerous to the creator itself as people were affected by cancer and other ailments directly related to this radiation exposure.

It is hard to know if the US truly grasps the monumental and maybe even impossible cleanup of Hanford or its long term effects on human survival. Current policy trends indicate nuclear power to be a viable option to fossil fuels, and the Obama Administration has offered over $50 billion in loan guarantees to utilities that will continue to build nuclear plants. This is astonishing as there is still no disposal remedy for nuclear waste. In 1989, the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signed a legally-binding agreement to build a Waste Treatment Plant to convert the nuclear waste and hazardous waste into leak-proof glass logs for safe, permanent storage but this process remains an enigma as its completion seems decades off. "The cleanup of Hanford is complex, enormously expensive and controversial. There is always someone in power who would like to simply build a fence around Hanford and walk away. Every new administration tries to find ways to cut corners and do it faster, cheaper." (Carpenter, 2010) Structural and cultural sources still dominate the Hanford mess just as they created it.

Carpenter, T. (2010, July 14). Report from the Blue Ribbon Commission meeting. Retrieved December 4, 2010, from Hanford Watch, Portland, OR: www.hanfordwatch.org

Edelstein, M. R. (2007). Hanford: The Closed City and it's Downwind Victims. In M. T. Michael R. Edelstein, Cultures of contamination: legacies of pollution in Russia and the U.S. (pp. 253-303). JAI Press.

Porter, L. (2004). Introduction to Hanford Issues. Retrieved December 4, 2010, from Hanford Watch: www.handfordwatch.org

Rubin, D. K. (2008, November 19). Huge Cleanup at Bomb-Making Megasite Is The New Atomic Fallout. Retrieved December 5, 2010, from ENR.com: http://enr.construction.com/infrastructure/environment/2008/1119-HugeCleanup.asp

Steele, K. D. (1997, September 1). High Country News. Retrieved December 4, 2010, from Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia: http://www.hcn.org/issues/113/3592

Tiemann, K. A., McNeal Jr., R. B., Lucal, B., & Ender, M. G. (2009). The Intersection Collection. New York: Pearson Custom Publishing.

Wolf, A. (2007). The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation: Culture, Renewable Energy, and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

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On the Pakistani political scene, it is shamelessness and spinelessness all around. With a vile determination and barbarous statecraft, the so called Pakistani leaders have taken turns over the decades to assault the body and spirit of this blighted nation. They have plundered and ravaged it, tore its fabric, blemished it with hideous scars until now when it has become this broken, mournful land swaying like a drunkard in the wind.

Thanks to the bunch of pygmies that have been running the show in Pakistan since its birth, the country is now virtually on the brink of disaster. Perhaps like a leviathan out of the ashes, it can still rise up on its wobbly knees to the challenge but the chances are dim. And that is because Pakistan, gasping for life breaths as it already is, will have to do that with these leaders weighting it down from the throat downward, sucking its lifeblood all that while.

The irony is that the Pakistani leadership, by and large, knows it. They know it not by being some kind of visionaries but by that innate hyena like sense that tells them that the prey is about to fall. They know it by those eerie howls on moonlit nights that they find themselves and their kith and kin baying involuntarily to invite each other to the carcass. They know it by that sudden urge to join the frenzy, that monstrous perversion written indelibly on their genetic code.

That much is what they know.

What we know is something entirely different. Though telling it to them is like throwing water on a duck's back, for they sit secure in their accepted littleness, one must jot it down nonetheless. Perhaps, if time allows, another crop of our national leadership will heed these words.

What we know is that we do not need leaders like these leading us out of these dire straits. It is impossible in fact. For no one has ever heard of the looters ultimately leading the caravan they had been robbing all along to its final destination.

What we know is that there are three individual values that all national leaders must possess i.e. moral courage, competence, and commitment. That these three values are considered essential for building the trust which must exist for the leadership of a nation. And that all these are alien to the aggressively selfish dwarfs going around as Goliaths in Pakistan.

What we know is that for the nation its leaders' moral courage is much more important than their physical courage for it is this form of courage that will make them stand firm on their values, their ethical principles, and their convictions. That it takes special courage to support unpopular decisions and to make it difficult for others to do the wrong thing. That the 'others' may push them to offer a 'slightly' unscrupulous solution as the easiest or most expedient way. That we expect them not to do that; to stand up for their beliefs and what they know is right. And that if they believe they are right after sober and careful judgment, they should hold their position and keep on coming. What we also know is that such fine distinctions are foreign to their wicked nature. They consider these to be an affront to their ancestral creed.

What we know is that a duty is a legal or moral obligation to do what should be done without being told to do it. That duty means accomplishing all the tasks to the fullest of one's ability. That it requires willingness to accept full responsibility for one's actions. That if one lies or tells a half-truth to make one's own self or one's party look good, it may be called being loyal to the leader and the party, but in fact it is being dishonorable and unethical, neglecting one's duty to the nation that has the first claim on that office. That, to put it in even simpler terms, a leader just cannot truly do his duty without being honorable. What we also know is that these 'leaders' laugh in our faces for holding such 'idiotic' ideals, calling it a babbling gossip.

What we know is that national leaders must put the nation's welfare ahead of their own interests. That they must resist the temptation to put self-gain, personal advantage, and self-interests ahead of what is best for the nation. That as leaders, in fact, they must be the greatest servants. That their offices and position are not personal rewards. That they earned them so that they can serve their nation. What we also know is that for cherishing such standards, right now they are silently saying 'go climb a pole' and suggesting that we read their lips.

What we know is that whether they like it or not, they are on display at all times. That their actions say much more than their words. That the nation watches them carefully and is likely to imitate their behavior. That they must accept the obligation to be worthy role models and that they cannot ignore the effect their behavior has on the nation. That they themselves must be willing to do what they require of their countrymen. What we also know is that in their midnight congregations, when the truth serum rages wildly through their veins, they damn us for holding close such values and bawl out their midnight howls to show their contempt for us.

After having written all these lines, I now have in my mind's eye the mug shots of the Zardaris, the Makh-Dooms, the Nawazes, the Hotis, the Raisanis, the Fazl-ur-Rehmans, the Adbullah Shahs, the countless feudal landlords and the many Generals of my unfortunate country. It instantly brings to my mind what Edmund Burk once said, "By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation."

Here is a whole rat pack at the dike. How much time does Pakistan have?

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These events deal a shattering blow to all claims that the working class is a spent force and the class struggle is a relic of the past. Once again, the immense social power of the working class is beginning to find expression. The basic division of modern society, between the bourgeoisie and the working class, is asserting itself under conditions of a historic breakdown of world capitalism.

By all accounts, the strikes against legislation that would raise the retirement age are expanding. As the week began, petrol stations throughout the country were running out of fuel as a result of a strike by refinery workers. Truck drivers have joined in, slowing traffic on the country's major highways. Hundreds of high schools are shut down by student protests. Mass demonstrations are planned for Tuesday, following similar days of action over the past week that brought more than 3 million people onto the streets.

The expansion of strike action is the response of the working class to the repressive measures of the Sarkozy government, including the use of riot police to break up oil workers' blockades of refineries. The efforts of the workers to expand the struggle and exercise their social power bring them into ever more open conflict with the trade unions, which are looking to wind down the mass actions.

The strikes have the overwhelming support of the French population. Polls show 70 percent in favor of the strikers. Among young people aged 18-24, support is as high as 84 percent. The popularity of Sarkozy, in contrast, is at record lows.

The events in France are world events. They are part of a growing mood of resistance in every country. In Europe, there is increasingly determined opposition to the austerity measures introduced throughout the continent following the debt crisis in the spring. This has included one-day general strikes in Greece and Spain. In Italy over the weekend, hundreds of thousands marched in Rome to protest austerity measures.

The reemergence of the working class into struggle is not limited to Europe. China has been rocked by strikes of auto workers; textile workers have staged mass actions in Cambodia and Bangladesh; and Foxconn workers in India have struck in defiance of police repression. In the United States, there is a brewing rebellion of auto workers against brutal wage cuts worked out between the auto companies, the government and the United Auto Workers union.

The ruling class is not backing down. The response of the Sarkozy government to the spreading strikes is to dig in its heels, insisting that the cuts must go forward. Behind Sarkozy stand the French and European banks, which have warned that failure to push through the cuts will call into question the credit rating on French debt. On a world stage, the financial and corporate elite is determined to impose the full cost of the crisis of the capitalist system on the working class.

These events show that there will be no peaceful restabilization of the world economy following the financial panic of September 2008. The breakdown of world capitalism has ushered in a new period of social upheaval and revolution.

The open conflict between the working class and the state, which represents the banks and corporations, poses in every country the question of power. In whose interests will society be run? The continued rule of the capitalist class--on the basis of private ownership of the means of production--means the ever greater impoverishment of the population, the destruction of democratic rights, and ever wider and more bloody military conflagrations.

The alternative is for the working class to take political power and reorganize the world economy on the basis of social need, ending the dictatorship of the banks and corporations over every aspect of economic and political life.

This question of political power is not one for the distant future. It arises organically and necessarily out of the new stage in the class struggle. The demands of the French workers and the demands of their class brothers and sisters internationally cannot be met in any other way.

The biggest obstacle to resolving the crisis in the interests of the French workers is not the Sarkozy government, which is weak and isolated. It is rather the trade union leadership and its allies in the Socialist and Communist parties and the other supposedly "left" middle-class organizations that work to keep opposition confined within the framework of the capitalist system and its political representatives. By blocking the road to a political struggle for power, they work to demobilize the struggle and demoralize the workers.

Whether it is the New Anti-Capitalist Party in France--which claims in its most recent statement that as a result of the strikes, "the government will be forced to capitulate"--the Left Party in Germany, SYRIZA in Greece or the International Socialist Organization in the US, the aim of all these tendencies is the same: to prevent workers from understanding the situation they confront, mobilizing their strength and fighting for political power.

For the struggle in France to be successful, it will have to break free of the stifling grip of the unions and take an independent path. Workers need to build new, democratic organizations of struggle--committees of action--to fight for the broadest unity of all sections of the working class and the active participation of students, youth, professionals and oppressed middle-class layers in an industrial and political offensive against the government and the ruling class. The committees of action will campaign for the development of a general strike to bring down the Sarkozy government and replace it with a workers government based on a socialist program.

The key issue is the building of a new leadership in the working class to arm the movement with a clearly worked out revolutionary program. What Leon Trotsky wrote 72 years ago in the founding program of the Fourth International applies with full force today: the crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of revolutionary leadership. The resolution of this crisis requires the building of the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country.

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At the same time, Tel Aviv has renewed its war threats against Tehran, cautioning that it might use the Saudi Arabia's airspace to launch a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities; however, the war of words and struggle over dominance and superiority between the governments does nothing but costing the daily life of ordinary Iranians who has been already entangled in a 30-year-long embargo by the United States.

"Sanctions rarely accomplish what they are intended to do, or what they are claimed to intend to do. They usually hurt the poor and middle class the most," says Eric Garris, the prominent American peace activist and the founder of Antiwar website.

"The Iraq sanctions are an excellent example. Sanctions are nothing more than a form of collective punishment and a step toward war," he adds.

According to Garris, the United States has resorted to the exercise of double standards by putting a lethal pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear program while neglecting the atomic arsenal of Israel that has threatened Iran with a nuclear strike several times: "Of course these double standards are not justifiable. But it is not just Israel. The U.S. and several Western nations have threatened Iran with nuclear weapons, yet they deny the right of Iran to possess the same sorts of weapons."

"It would not be surprising if Iran was trying to obtain nuclear weapons, although there is no evidence that they are trying to obtain them, given the number of countries threatening them with the same. The U.S. should begin disarmament of its own nukes and encourage others to do the same," stressed Garris.

Eric Garris believes that the obligations of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty are being imposed on Iran discriminatorily: "The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has become a farce. Nations like Israel, Pakistan, and India are not pressured to sign or submit to inspections, while Iran is forced to comply with even more inspections than are required by the treaty. The treaty can only work if it is applied equally across the board."

The co-founder of Antiwar website also believes that the United States has labeled Iran a "state sponsor of terrorism" fallaciously: "Iran is no more a state sponsor of terrorism than the U.S. is. By labeling a nation this way, the West is able to deny it basic respect and rights and to paint it as some sort of backward nation of thugs. Americans need to learn the recent history of Iran, including the US-backed overthrow of the democratic regime in 1953 and US support for Saddam in the Iran-Iraq War."

Responding to my question about the prospect of Israel without the unconditional sponsorship of the United States, Garris stated that it would be so effortful for Israel to survive politically should the White House lifts its support for Tel Aviv: "Israel would have a hard time sustaining their warfare, welfare state without the billions of U.S. aid and its unconditional diplomatic support. Americans need to kick the ultimate welfare queen, Israel, off the dole and cut off all foreign aid."

And the final word of Eric Garris was about the recent Freedom Flotilla massacre: "The international community, by and large, let Israel get away with an act of piracy on the high seas. They also continue to let Israel get away with turning the Gaza Strip into a giant prison camp, using collective punishment as the only rule of law."

 

- Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist and media correspondent. His articles and interviews have appeared on Tehran Times, Press TV, Global Research and Foreign Policy Journal. He has interviewed Noam Chomsky, Vicente Fox, Peter D. Feaver, Theodoros Pangalos, Joshua Frank and Gilad Atzmon.

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And when authorities searched the plane and found its cargo consisted solely of 128 identical black suitcases marked "private," packed with cocaine valued at more than $100 million, the silence was deafening.

But now a Bloomberg Markets magazine report, "Wachovia's Drug Habit," reveals that drug traffickers bought that plane, and perhaps fifty others, "with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.," Wachovia and Bank of America.

The Justice Department charge sheet against the bank tells us that between 2003 and 2008, Wachovia handled $378.4 billion for Mexican currency exchanges, "the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history."

"A sum" Bloomberg averred, equal to one-third of Mexico's current gross domestic product."

Since 2006, some 22,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence. Thousands more have been wounded, countless others "disappeared," torture and illegal imprisonment is rampant.

In a frightening echo of the Reagan administration's anti-communist jihad in Central America during the 1980s, the Bush and now, Obama administration has poured fuel on the fire with some $1.4 billion in "War on Drugs" funding under Plan Mérida. Much of that "aid" is destined to purchase military equipment for repressive police, specialized paramilitary units and the Mexican Army.

There is also evidence of direct U.S. military involvement. In June, The Narco News Bulletin reported that "a special operations task force under the command of the Pentagon is currently in place south of the border providing advice and training to the Mexican Army in gathering intelligence, infiltrating and, as needed, taking direct action against narco-trafficking organizations."

One former U.S. government official told investigative journalist Bill Conroy, "'Black operations have been going on forever. The recent [mainstream] media reports about those operations under the Obama administration make it sound like it's a big scoop, but it's nothing new for those who understand how things really work'."

But, as numerous investigations by American and Mexican journalists have revealed, there is strong evidence of collusion between the Mexican Army and the Juarez and Sinaloa drug cartels. A former Juarez police commander told NPR in May that "the intention of the army is to try and get rid of the Juarez cartel, so that [Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman] Chapo's [Sinaloa] cartel is the strongest."

The cosy relations among the world's biggest banks, drug trafficking organizations and the U.S. military-intelligence apparatus is not however, a new phenomenon. What is different today is the scale and sheer scope of the corruption involved. As Michel Chossudovsky points out,

This trade can only prosper if the main actors involved in narcotics have "political friends in high places." As legal and illegal undertakings are increasingly intertwined, the dividing line between "businesspeople" and criminals is blurred. In turn, the relationship among criminals, politicians and members of the intelligence establishment has tainted the structures of the state and the role of its institutions, including the military. (The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century, Montreal: Global Research, 2010, pp. 195-196)

While the Bloomberg story should cast new light on highly-profitable links amongst major financial institutions and narcotrafficking organizations in what may be protected drug rackets green-lighted by corrupt officials, media silence, particularly by outlets such as The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, threaten to propel what should be an international scandal into a one-off news item scheduled for a trip down the memory hole.

"Cocaine One"

If, as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman claims "the hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist," then perhaps too, drug cartels work their "market magic" with their own "hidden fist" or, as the Russians like to say a krysha, a web of protectors--and facilitators--drawn from business, finance, organized crime and the secret world of intelligence.

Dubbed "Cocaine One" by Hopsicker, the DC-9 was curious for a number of reasons, not least of which was the fact that "one of the chief shareholders" of a dodgy outfit called SkyWay Aircraft "is a private investment bank in Dallas which also raised funds for a Mexican industrialist with reported ties to a Cali and Juarez Cartel narcotics trafficker."

More curious still, the airline kitted-out its fleet with distinctive colors and a seal "designed to impersonate planes from the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security." And when he learned that "SkyWay's genesis can be traced to In-Q-Tel Inc., a secretive, Arlington, Va., investment group owned, operated, and financed out of the black box budget of the Central Intelligence Agency," well you can bet corporate media ran themselves ragged investigating that!

To top it off, when another drug plane crash landed in the Yucatan Peninsula eighteen months later and broke apart, a Gulfstream II business jet (N987SA) that spilled "4 tons of cocaine across a muddy field," Hopsicker reported that it had originated from the same network and used the same source for its financing, the "Casa de Cambio Puebla SA, a country-wide network of currency exchanges."

And to make matters even more intriguing from a parapolitical perspective, after searching through FAA records Hopsicker discovered that the Gulfstream II business jet "was owned by a secretive Midwestern media baron and Republican fund-raiser, who had a business partner who, incredibly, owned the other American drug plane, the DC-9, recently busted in Mexico."

In fact, as Bloomberg investigative journalist Michael Smith learned years later, these were the same planes and same currency exchange which Hopsicker reported back in 2007 traffickers had used to purchase drug jets with funds laundered through Wachovia.

"One customer that Wachovia took on in 2004 was Casa de Cambio Puebla SA," Smith wrote. The Puebla, Mexico currency exchange was the brainchild of Pedro Alatorre, a "businessman" who "had created front companies for cartels."

Alatorre, and 70 others connected to his network, were seized in 2007 by Mexican law enforcement officials. Authorities discovered that the accused drug money launderer and airline broker for the cartels controlled 23 accounts at the Wachovia Bank branch in Miami and that it held some $11 million, subsequently frozen by U.S. investigators.

In 2008, a Miami federal grand jury indicted Alatorre, now awaiting trial in Mexico along with three other executives, charging them with drug trafficking and money laundering, accusing the company of using "shell firms to launder $720 million through U.S. banks." The Justice Department is currently seeking Alatorre's extradition from Mexico.

According to Bloomberg, "Puebla executives used the stolen identities of 74 people to launder money through Wachovia accounts." Jose Luis Marmolejo, the former head of the Mexican attorney general's financial crimes unit told Smith, "Wachovia handled all the transfers, and they never reported any as suspicious."

Some $300,000 was transferred by Wachovia to a Bank of America branch in Oklahoma City. With cash in hand Bloomberg reports, traffickers "used the funds to buy the DC-9 through Oklahoma City aircraft broker U.S. Aircraft Titles Inc." When queried by Smith about the sale, "U.S. Aircraft Titles President Sue White declined to comment."

Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the Wachovia case said in a press release that "Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations."

Yet, as Hopsicker wrote nearly three years ago, "the politically-explosive implications of the scandal may explain why American officials have been reluctant to move against, or even name, the true owners of the planes and basically 'turned a blind eye' to the American involvement exposed by the drug trafficking seizures."

As of this writing, no Americans have been criminally charged in the cash-for drug planes banking conspiracy.

"Troubled Assets" or Something More Sinister?

When Wells Fargo bought Wachovia, once America's fourth largest bank in 2008 at the fire-sale price of $12.8 billion, the bank and its former CEO, Kennedy "Ken" Thompson, who "retired at the request of the board" before the full-extent of the financial meltdown hit home, were in deep trouble.

Before the Wells takeover, Wachovia had been on a veritable shopping spree. After the firm's 2001 merger with First Union Bank, Wachovia merged with the Prudential Securities division of Prudential Financial, Inc., with Wachovia controlling the lion's share of the firm's $532.1 billion in assets. This was followed by the bank's purchase of Metropolitan West Securities, adding a $50 billion portfolio of securities and loans to the bank's Lending division. In 2004, Wachovia followed-up with the $14.3 billion acquisition of SouthTrust Corporation.

Apparently flush with cash and new market clout, Wachovia set it sights on acquiring California-based Golden West Financial. Golden West operated branches under the name World Savings Bank and was the nation's second largest savings and loan. At the time of the buy-out, Golden West had over $125 billion in assets. For Wachovia however, it was a deal too far.

With an enormous housing bubble fully inflated, and a new speculative merger-mania in full swing, one can only surmise that the need for liquidity at any price, had driven banking giants such as Wachovia to play dumb when shadier, yet highly-profitable transactions, such as the "arrangement" with Casa de Cambio Puebla SA, were involved.

Bleeding cash faster than you can say "mortgage backed securities," Wachovia was on the hook for their 2006 $26 billion buy-out of Golden West Financial at the peak of the housing bubble, a move that BusinessWeek reported generated "resistance from his own management team" but ignored by Thompson.

Why? "Because no one outside of Thompson and Golden West CEO Herb Sandler seemed to like the deal from the moment it was announced," a company insider told BusinessWeek.

While the buy-out may have given Thompson "the beachhead in California he had long desired ... the ink was barely dry on the Golden West deal in late 2006 when the housing bubble in markets including California and Florida began to deflate."

Hammered by the housing bust, Wachovia's share price, which had risen to $70.51 per share when the Golden West deal was announced had slid to $5.71 per share by October 2008. In other words, Wachovia, along with the world's economy, began circling the proverbial drain.

However you slice it, although it was clear that the Golden West deal had gone south quicker than you can say "credit default swaps," this didn't seem to stop Wachovia from paying "smartest guy in the room" Thompson $15.6 million in total compensation in 2007, a year after the fatal Golden West transaction. Nor did these losses stop the bank from showering Thompson with a severance package worth nearly $8 million.

But was something else going on here?

Wells Fargo bank admitted in a signed Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the federal government that they would not contest charges brought by the Justice Department in its indictment of the bank.

The banking giant was forced to admit charges by prosecutors that "On numerous occasions, monies were deposited into a CDC [Casa de Cambio] by a drug trafficking organization. Using false identities, the CDC then wired that money through its Wachovia correspondent bank accounts for the purchase of airplanes for drug trafficking organizations. On various dates between 2004 and 2007, at least four of those airplanes were seized by foreign law enforcement agencies cooperating with the United States and were found to contain large quantities of cocaine."

Bloomberg reported that Wells Fargo, in the wake of the settlement "declined to answer specific questions, including how much it made by handling $378.4 billion--including $4 billion of cash--from Mexican exchange companies."

There was however, more than "troubled assets" and charges of money laundering to the story. In fact, the purchase of these drug planes have been tied to some of the Bush administration's most secretive "War On Terror" programs.

Drug Flights, CIA Renditions. Just Another Day at the Office!

Replicating a pattern used by the Central Intelligence Agency during the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, the secret state used a network of cut-outs and legitimate businesses to transport prisoners to Agency black sites for "special handling."

During Iran-Contra it was "guns in, drugs out." Today one might say its "drugs in, tortured prisoners out." The results however, were the same; egregious crimes and lawbreaking on a staggering scale.

Subsequent investigations by Narco News revealed that "this particular Gulfstream II (tail number N987SA), was used between 2003 and 2005 by the CIA for at least three trips between the U.S. east coast and Guantanamo Bay, home to the infamous 'terrorist' prison camp," Bill Conroy reported.

"In addition," Conroy wrote, "the two SkyWay companies are associated with individuals who have done highly sensitive work for the Department of Defense or U.S. intelligence agencies, public records show and Narco News sources confirm."

According to AFP, the Mexican daily El Universal said "it had obtained documents from the United States and the European Parliament which 'show that that plane flew several times to Guantanamo, Cuba, presumably to transfer terrorism suspects,'" the French newswire reported.

The plane was carrying "Colombian drugs" bound for the U.S. for the "fugitive leader of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin 'Chapo' Guzman," when it crashed in the Yucatan.

According to El Universal, the Federal Aviation Administration's "logbook registered that the plane had traveled between US territory and the US military base in Guantanamo," and that its last registered owner was "Clyde O'Connor in Pompano Beach, Florida."

The Independent confirmed separately in January of this year that "Evidence points to aircraft--familiarly known as 'torture taxis'--used by the CIA to move captives seized in its kidnapping or 'extraordinary rendition' operations through Gatwick and other airports in the EU being simultaneously used for drug distribution in the Western hemisphere."

Hugh O'Shaughnessy, confirming earlier reporting by Bill Conroy and Daniel Hopsicker said that "a Gulfstream II jet aircraft N9875A identified by the British Government and the European Parliament as being involved in this traffic crashed in Mexico in September 2008 while en route from Colombia to the US with a load of more than three tons of cocaine."

While O'Shaughnessy got the tail-number and date wrong, he's correct when he states that U.S. intelligence assets "continue the drug dealing they indulged in during the Iran-Contra affair of the Reagan years."

Narco News, citing DEA sources, learned that the crashed Gulfstream loaded with four tons of cocaine "was part of an operation being carried out by a Department of Homeland Security agency."

However in a later report, Mark Conrad, a former supervisory special agent with ICE's predecessor agency, U.S. Customs, told Narco News that the crashed Gulfstream used to transport drugs and prisoners was controlled by the CIA and "that the CIA, not ICE ... [was] actually the U.S. agency controlling the ... operation. If this were the case, then "any individuals or companies involved in a CIA-backed operation, even ones that are complicit in drug trafficking, would be off limits to U.S. law enforcers due to the cloak of national security the CIA can invoke."

In other words, a jet purchased by drug traffickers with funds laundered through an American bank and used in the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program may have been part of a protected drug operation by U.S. intelligence agencies. An operation furthermore, whose purpose is still unknown.

This report tracks closely with evidence uncovered by Peter Dale Scott. In a recent piece in Japan Focus Scott wrote that "it is not surprising that the U.S. Government, following the lead of the CIA, has over the years become a protector of drug traffickers against criminal prosecution in this country."

"A recent spectacular example" Scott tells us, drawing on research from his forthcoming book, is the curious case of CIA Venezuelan asset, General Ramon Guillén Davila.

General Ramon Guillén Davila, chief of a CIA-created anti-drug unit in Venezuela, was indicted in Miami for smuggling a ton of cocaine into the United States. According to the New York Times, "The CIA, over the objections of the Drug Enforcement Administration, approved the shipment of at least one ton of pure cocaine to Miami International Airport as a way of gathering information about the Colombian drug cartels." Time magazine reported that a single shipment amounted to 998 pounds, following earlier ones "totaling nearly 2,000 pounds." Mike Wallace confirmed that "the CIA-national guard undercover operation quickly accumulated this cocaine, over a ton and a half that was smuggled from Colombia into Venezuela." According to the Wall Street Journal, the total amount of drugs smuggled by Gen. Guillén may have been more than 22 tons. (Fueling America's War Machine: Deep Politics and the CIA's Global Drug Connection (in press, due Fall 2010 from Rowman & Littlefield).

Scott adds that "the United States never asked for Guillén's extradition from Venezuela to stand trial; and in 2007, when he was arrested in Venezuela for plotting to assassinate President Hugo Chavez, his indictment was still sealed in Miami. Meanwhile, CIA officer Mark McFarlin, whom DEA Chief Bonner had also wished to indict, was never indicted at all; he merely resigned."

But the stench of Iran-Contra, like that of the CIA's torture program, as with earlier secret state machinations with drug cartels never went away; in fact, like a cancer, one managed drug operation seamlessly metastasized into another.

Greasing the Wheels

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODOC) state in their 2010 Annual Report that "money-laundering is the method by which criminals disguise the illegal origins of their wealth and protect their asset bases in order to avoid suspicion of law enforcement and to prevent leaving a trail of incriminating evidence," and that financial institutions, particularly U.S. and European banks are key to efforts to choke-off illicit profits from the grisly trade.

The trouble is these institutions, along with U.S. intelligence agencies, are the problem.

UNODOC estimate that profits derived from narcotics rackets amount to some $600 billion annually and that up to $1.5 trillion dollars in drug money is laundered through seemingly legitimate enterprises.

Part of the fallout from capitalism's economic meltdown has been that "drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis," The Observer disclosed late last year.

Antonio Maria Costa, UNODOC's director, told the British newspaper he saw evidence that proceeds from the illicit trade were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year and that "a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result."

The UN drugs chief said that in "many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital." And with markets tanking and major bank failures nearly a daily occurrence, "liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor."

According to Costa, "Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities... There were signs that some banks were rescued that way."

Web of Corruption

Although the UN's top anti-narcotics official declined to identify either the countries or banks that have benefited from the murderous trade, a web of corruption envelops the entire financial sector of the capitalist economy as the quest for "liquid assets" trumps everything.

Martin Woods, once director of Wachovia's anti-money-laundering unit in London told Bloomberg, "It's the banks laundering money for the cartels that finances the tragedy." Woods told the magazine he "quit the bank in disgust" after executives "ignored his documentation that drug dealers were funneling money through Wachovia's branch network."

Despite warnings from the Treasury Department since 1996 that Mexican currency exchanges were laundering drug money through U.S. banks, "Wachovia ignored warnings by regulators and police, according to the deferred-prosecution agreement," Bloomberg reported.

"As early as 2004, Wachovia understood the risk," the bank admitted in court. "Despite these warnings, Wachovia remained in the business."

At the bank's anti-money laundering unit in London, Woods and his counterpart Jim DeFazio in Charlotte, NC told Smith "they suspected that drug dealers were using the bank to move funds."

Former Scotland Yard investigator Woods, said he "spotted illegible signatures and other suspicious markings on traveler's checks from Mexican exchange companies," and that he sent copies of his report to the U.K.'s Financial Services Authority, the DEA and U.S. Treasury Department.

But rather than being rewarded for his diligence, Woods told Smith "his bosses instructed him to keep quiet and tried to have him fired." In one meeting, "a bank official insisted Woods shouldn't have filed suspicious activity reports to the government, as both U.S. and U.K. laws require."

According to a whistleblower suit filed with an employment tribunal in London, Barrons reported last year before the Wachovia scandal broke, that Woods claimed "his bosses bullied and demoted him, then withdrew his reports of other suspicious activities in Eastern Europe."

It gets worse. Woods' complaint alleges "that Wachovia staff may have even tipped off Mexican-exchange clients about his laundering suspicions," and the veteran investigator told Wachovia officials "he feared for his safety."

In response, bank spokesperson Mary Eshet said at the time, "Wachovia believes that it has acted appropriately in its business dealings, and Mr. Woods' claims to the contrary are without merit."

Meanwhile, on the American side of the pond, 21-year FBI veteran DeFazio said "he told bank executives in 2005 that the DEA was probing the transfers through Wachovia to buy the planes." The bank ignored his warnings and continued along on their merry way until their indictment.

The law enforcement veteran told Bloomberg, "I think they looked at the money and said, 'The hell with it. We're going to bring it in, and look at all the money we'll make'."

The former Scotland yard investigator added, "If you don't see the correlation between the money laundering by banks and the 22,000 people killed in Mexico, you're missing the point."

But Wachovia wasn't the only large financial institution "missing the point." Bloomberg also revealed that Bank of America and the London-based "HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe's biggest bank by assets," American Express Bank, Banco Santander SA, Citigroup Inc., as well as "the world's largest money transfer firm," Western Union were also up to their eyeballs in dubious transactions.

In 1994 for example, American Express paid $14 million to settle with the federal government after "two employees were convicted in a criminal case involving drug trafficker Juan Garcia Abrego."

Yet between 1999-2004, Bloomberg reported "the bank failed to stop clients from laundering $55 million of narcotics funds, the bank admitted in a deferred-prosecution agreement in August 2007 ... and paid $65 million to the U.S. and promised not to break the law again." Charges were dismissed a year later under terms of the agreement.

And back in 2004, The Independent disclosed that "HSBC, the UK's largest bank, have been slammed for lax money-laundering procedures in a report by a US Senate subcommittee."

Journalists Hugh O'Shaughnessy and Paul Lashmar revealed that "the UK-based multinational stands accused of laxity in the fight against money laundering, drug trafficking, corruption and terrorism, notably in the oil-rich African state of Equatorial Guinea."

"In one of the few cases" when the scandal-plagued and now-shuttered Riggs Bank "seems to have properly followed US anti-money-laundering legislation," Riggs formally asked HSBC and a Spanish bank, Banco Santander, "to divulge the identities of the owners of two companies that kept accounts with them and that were receiving suspicious wire transfers totalling in excess of $35m (£20m). The banks refused to say who the owners were."

Bloomberg disclosed that "federal agents caught people who work for Mexican cartels depositing illicit funds in Bank of America accounts in Atlanta, Chicago and Brownsville, Texas, from 2002 to 2009." Authorities contend that "Mexican drug dealers used shell companies to open accounts at London-based HSBC."

Nevertheless, neither bank were accused of wrongdoing by the federal government and both firms denied any involvement in money laundering schemes.

Bank of America spokeswoman Shirley Norton told Smith that they "strictly follow the government rules." Norton said, "Bank of America takes its anti-money-laundering responsibilities very seriously," a fact not readily apparent from Bloomberg Markets investigation.

Both Norton and HSBC spokesman Roy Caple told Smith that "[privacy] laws bar them from discussing specific clients."

And so it goes.

Fallout? What Fallout!

In the wake of Wachovia's admission to federal prosecutors, Wells Fargo will pay "$160 million in fines and penalties, less than 2 percent of its $12.3 billion profit in 2009."

"If Wells Fargo keeps its pledge," Bloomberg reports, then "according to the agreement [the federal government will] drop all charges against the bank in March 2011."

Why might that be? Large banks are immune from vigorous prosecution for violating the Bank Secrecy Act "by a variant of the too-big-to-fail theory."

Veteran Senate investigator Jack Blum, who led probes into the Iran-Contra drug connection and the CIA's favorite shadow bank during the 1980s, the Bank of Credit and Commerce (BCCI) told Bloomberg, "the theory is like a get-out-of-jail-free card for big banks."

"There's no capacity to regulate or punish them because they're too big to be threatened with failure," Blum says. "They seem to be willing to do anything that improves their bottom line, until they're caught."

Meanwhile as the bodies pile up, there's no jail time for executives and the assets of firms that could charitably be described as part of a "continuing criminal enterprise" haven't been seized; only a slap on the wrist and a promise to "do better next time."

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press, Uncommon Thought Journal, Rowan's Avenger, and the whistleblowing website Wikileaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.
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Then through a microphone the cashier boomed to the boy, "Is that all?" I wondered if he knew what was about to happen, or if some form of oral manual was required to hold his hand through. Like an expert, however, he flawlessly, and without prompting, held up his bag of chips to the glass, the cashier scanned it from inside, he dropped his cash, she pushed his change, and he walked off undaunted. "Next!" she called out. Disturbed to my core, I burst my gums open, and undoubtedly inspired security concerns. It took a couple of minutes to recompose and let out a short request for $20 worth of gas.

As I returned home, the scene replayed in my mind - the boy stepping before me, lifting his baggage; the cashier responding with precision; the boy stoic but studied in this art, walking off without care; and my inability to pull him aside, shake him up, and let him know what had just happened was a travesty and a manifestation of how unmanageable society has become - where human beings fall into cubicles in the workplace of life, where contact is diminished drastically, where the frenzy-for-safety forces many into partitioning themselves (professionally and personally). I felt a failure for stifling the urge to put in his hand Henry Giroux's "Public Spaces, Private Lives" and clamor: "Read this or Die! You now live in a Glass Society, younger brother; and you had better get used to it because the worst is yet to arrive, and your elders rank you so low on the priority rung that to expect rectification anytime soon would usher in many dashed hopes which at your age cannot be healthy."

So far gone are the days when corner stores provided meaning for a whole community: when customer and clerk spoke the same tongue, shared the same values and communicated without concern. In a Glass Society, occasional "hi's" and "hellos" are exchanged, but sincerity falls short. It becomes just polite conduct to acknowledge the other person's humanity - but briefly enough to prevent unnecessary badger. Workers in the same office don't know each other. Sure, they "collaborate" on "projects" and "brainstorm" on "ideas," but relationships are outlawed. Each one is against the other. Each one just as suspicious of the other. Each one trying to annihilate the other - at any signs of weakness.

Society, not just schools anymore, is becoming modeled after the prison culture: most are inmates, a few are guards (who fare little better than inmates), and only one or two, wardens, can claim autonomy over their affairs. Inmates know guards have families to feed, and that the paycheck often comes at their expense. Guards know inmates deserve better from the society they owe debt to, but to protest policies could lead to loss of paycheck - or worse. Each one works daily to bend rules and cut schemes. Each one is aware of the other's deeds. Each one has, more or less, abandoned hope for a transformed society.

Inmates get their share of family visits - but under the jurisdiction of guidelines and regulations which, if followed correctly, smother just about all that is real and authentic about family time. And time is crucial here - for only a few minutes can inmates spend catching up on the last week, month or year: filled with birthdays, sick stories, prison hardship, Halloween costumes, academic issues, loss, joy, loneliness, melancholy, drama. Many inmates cannot even share the warmth of a child or spouse's hands. A glass window would have to suffice.

Skeptics can wonder through any corporate workplace today, and observe the conducts of employees - how close contact is, how high voices rise, how thick the tension feels. Most likely they would find human beings reduced to numbers and drones, who have functions to perform that must be carried out without complaint - however dehumanizing, however demoralizing. The same batch of skeptics should also escape to any Ivy League school in the country, and take note of the sounds issuing from most classrooms, of the communication between teacher and student, of the sense of rancid competition that destroys any possibility of meaningful education.

The more society drifts toward a partitioned and prisoned sensibility, the less chance young people have at any existence worthy of the title "human." In December 2006, a Texas four-year-old was hit with an in-school suspension for "inappropriate physical behavior interpreted as sexual contact and/or sexual harassment." He hugged a teacher's aide and "rubbed his face in [her] chest." (There goes tomorrow's felon!) With no-touch policies increasingly frequent - and, school officials argue, necessary - five-year-olds comforting grieving friends could end up whacked with the discipline stick.

It's easy to tell the bolts safeguarding the sanity of any society have been capped off when affection is criminalized, when children learn that to care for others, to resist narcissism, might incur harsh reprimand - and even be branded "sexual harassment." Awful as it is that kids today find few adults interested in their affairs, now when they attempt to correct a society losing touch with its humanity, all sorts of arbitrary - and, really, asinine - regulations show up to keep them in check.

If partitioning and prisoning wouldn't do, privatizing sure would. Advertising creeps up at every nook, cranny and corner of schools these days. On buses and scorecards, in hallways and cafeterias, in textbooks and bathrooms - brands drive hard bargains to kids. Schools even push snack and soda products without mercy - the same products highlighted in health classes as sure to command an early grave. No longer considered a public necessity, a condition without with a useful society ceases to exist, schools now fall under the impressions of companies and corporate foundations, flailing around market concepts like "bottom line" and "balancing budgets" and "tightening belts." Four decades back, Hannah Arendt spoke of this "decay of public services" as "the automatic results of the needs of mass societies that have become unmanageable."

A week back, I walked into a recently renovated branch of my local public library and, feeling a bit groggy, whisked off to the coffee table. On it stood two electronic coffeemakers, cream and sugar jars, stir straws and cup lids. There were, however, no cups. A librarian I complained to explained cups were no more free and would have to be purchased at 50 cents apiece. The urge once again overwhelmed me badly, and I let loose in front of him. I ended up with a steaming cup that day, but I knew complicity this time was indefensible.

At the same branch, a lady stands daily by the reception door - the last of three - welcoming and sending off customers. One door away, a DVD vending machine waits, stocked with scores of recent flicks, as well featuring a built-in screen displaying trailers. At the same branch, a plastic "Customer Service" banner hangs high in the main room. No wonder that when most kids stagger into libraries nowadays, their first stop is the computer's section; and not to tidy up an assignment, but to waste hours away on gaming sites.

And who dares blame them?

When they find more in common with animated characters than human beings, who dares blame them? When the jolting thrill that exercise or playtime or recess once afforded is deprived, who dares blame them? When all around glasses are erected, insane policies are presented and public spaces are resented, who dares blame them?

This emerging generation has been set up for what might mark the greatest disaster of a century - and it remains oblivious. Life has been so distorted but yet so normalized that many kids growing up today couldn't tell the difference between W. E. B. Du Bois and Wal-Mart - after all, both have something to say about education. It is natural that kids should imitate adults, but it is self-damning that adults should see how shabby a future awaits youth and refuse to take up necessary action.

It's time for true "revolution of values," as King called for almost 50 years ago. Only few today relish this current mode that has made life intolerably burdensome and even tyrannous to most. Many would rather do away with it and restore some semblance of sanity. There is, of course, the danger of hearkening to the cries of insincere pariahs like Glenn Beck who order a return to "simpler times"; but such commands nonetheless resonate high amongst crowds - boundless by ideology or political alliance - who find little substance in the world today.

Neoliberalism has run amok; extreme materialism has broken its countless promises; jingoism is losing grip fast. Only a real movement against any abuse of public life can restore hope in such dark times as this. The Civil Rights Movement did it. The Women's Rights Movement did it. The Labor Rights Movement did it. And this generation has no other choice. But the powers-that-be will only surrender when citizens work and struggle like the devil for a world deserving of their daily sacrifice.

Not in Utopia, subterranean fields, Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where! But in the very world, which is the world Of all of us,-the place where in the end We find our happiness, or not at all!

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The New York Times reported Wednesday ("Efforts to Limit the Flow of Spill News") that "Journalists struggling to document the impact of the oil rig explosion have repeatedly found themselves turned away from public areas affected by the spill, and not only by BP and its contractors, but by local law enforcement, the Coast Guard and government officials."

The Times article describes the media "being kept at bay" is merely "another example of a broader problem of officials' filtering what images of the spill the public sees," adding that "Scientists, too, have complained about the trickle of information that has emerged from BP and government sources."

Essentially, BP and the authorities are trying to suppress information about the oil spill just as the US military, with the complicity of the American media, has done in Iraq and Afghanistan. From Vietnam came images of wounded and dying soldiers, which had a significant impact on public opinion; from the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, notes Newsweek magazine, "pictures of dead otters, fish, and birds, as well as oil-covered shorelines, ignited nationwide outrage and led to a backlash against Exxon." The Pentagon and the corporate elite have learned a simple lesson: by whatever means necessary, prevent the population from learning the truth.

The Times observes, "Michael Oreskes, senior managing editor at the Associated Press, likened the situation to reporters being embedded with the military in Afghanistan. 'There is a continued effort to keep control over the access,' Mr. Oreskes said. 'And even in places where the government is cooperating with us to provide access, it's still a problem because it's still access obtained through the government.'"

Indeed CNN has described its correspondent, Kyra Phillips, as "embedded" with US Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen.

There are numerous examples of BP and the government blocking media coverage of the oil spill. A CBS television crew was threatened in late May with arrest for attempting to film an oil-covered beach in Louisiana. A vessel carrying BP contractors and Coast Guard officials stopped the crew, and the pilot told CBS reporters, "This is BP rules, it's not ours."

A reporter from Mother Jones recounted in detail how local deputies, at the behest of BP, prevented journalists from reaching Elmer's Island Wildlife Refuge, also in Louisiana. An oil company representative told the reporter, "BP's in charge because 'it's BP's oil.'"

An airplane pilot planning to carry a New Orleans Times-Picayune reporter over the oil slick was denied permission for the flight. "We were questioned extensively. Who was on the aircraft? Who did they work for?" recalled Rhonda Panepinto, who owns Southern Seaplane with her husband, Lyle. "The minute we mentioned media, the answer was: 'Not allowed.'"

When Associated Press photographer Gerald Herbert attempted to accompany Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of Jacques Cousteau, on a trip to Breton Island, a national wildlife refuge off the barrier islands of Louisiana, the US Coast Guard intervened. Newsweek reports, "Upon approaching the island, a Coast Guard boat stopped them. 'The first question was, 'Is there any press with you?' says Herbert.' They answered yes, and the Coast Guard said they couldn't be there. 'I had to bite my tongue. That should have no bearing.'"

Newsweek comments: "Photographers who have traveled to the Gulf commonly say they believe that BP has exerted more control over coverage of the spill with the cooperation of the federal government and local law enforcement. 'It's a running joke among the journalists covering the story that the words 'Coast Guard' affixed to any vehicle, vessel, or plane should be prefixed with 'BP,'' says Charlie Varley, a Louisiana-based photographer. 'It would be funny if it were not so serious.'"

At 10 pm the evening before a scheduled trip by Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, along with a group of journalists, on the Gulf of Mexico, reports the New York Times, "someone from the Department of Homeland Security's legislative affairs office called the senator's office to tell them that no journalists would be allowed.

"'They said it was the Department of Homeland Security's response-wide policy not to allow elected officials and media on the same 'federal asset,'' said Bryan Gulley, a spokesman for the senator. 'No further elaboration' was given, Mr. Gulley added."

A reporter and photographer from the New York Daily News were told by a BP contractor that they could not have access to a public beach on Grand Isle, Louisiana. A local sheriff, brought in by the BP employee, told the reporter that "news media had to fill out paperwork and then be escorted by a BP official to get access to the beach." (New York Times)

The stories go on and on, underscoring, on the one hand, the determination of BP to conceal the catastrophe by suppressing images of the spill on land and sea. Financial questions are at the heart of this. The extent of the devastation has a bearing on the immediate fate of BP's share price, as well as the amount of the damages eventually levied against the oil giant.

On the other hand, the collusion of the Coast Guard, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Aviation Administration and other institutions with the censorship efforts of a private corporation reveals something about the character of the Obama administration and all levels of the government in the US: they are entirely subservient to the interests of big business and equally hostile to the interests of the American population.

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What can Americans do? They can join Friends of the Article V Convention, the only national nonpartisan group with the single mission of compelling Congress to call the first convention. This group has performed admirably to better inform Americans about the Article V convention option and, even more importantly, about the refusal by Congress to obey the Constitution, recognize over 700 applications from all 50 states for a convention, and act as required by their oath of office by convening the first convention. Even today more state legislators are calling for a convention. FOAVC has done what neither Congress or any other group has done; it has made state applications for a convention publicly available as well as countless other materials to broaden public support for a convention.

And now Americans seeing the need for deep reforms of our political and government system and fed up with the two-party plutocracy that has not delivered them have a second opportunity.

They can join the Convention USA effort and become state delegates to an online virtual convention that will behave like a real Article V convention until Congress does its constitutional duty and convenes the first Article V convention. This is a test drive of a real Article V convention, showing how serious citizens can behave intelligently and responsibly to conceive constitutional amendments as the means intended by the Founders to update and improve our Constitution and create an even more perfect union.

This is what the new group says:

"Here you will find a gathering of patriotic citizens who have assembled, not as revolutionaries, but as loyal Americans, to exercise their right as guaranteed by Article V of the Constitution of the United States, to convene as the people of the several States and to consider, debate, refine and propose such amendments to the Constitution as the experience of more than two centuries of government in our Federal Republic shall suggest.

This Convention shall be called to order if and when delegates from two-thirds of the several states shall have registered, and shall adjourn sine die whenever the Congress shall have called a Convention pursuant to Article V of the Constitution of the United States."

This action is what makes more sense than ever before: Put aside partisan views, loss of confidence in government, and feelings of despair. Do not assume that some victories of anti-establishment candidates in elections will suffice to reform the system. Stay focused on your deep seated desire to make the US political and government system better, more just, more honest, more open, more effective and more efficient. Recognize that, if you honor and respect the Constitution, unless you support using the Article V convention option given to us by the Founders you are a constitutional hypocrite.

Convention USA understands that it does not have the legal power to actually propose amendments that have the same meaning as those proposed by Congress or an actual Article V convention. But it sees the potential power of bringing Americans together to see how a convention can make democracy work better to advance the most noble goals and values of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. What it accomplishes can also send an important message to Congress about the kinds of amendments Americans support.

Convention USA, therefore, is a lot more than mere protest. It offers a unique path to become much better informed about the benefits of using the Article V convention approach to making the USA all that it should and can be. To become a delegate, however, requires payment of $10 a month, something I wish the group would rethink.

The more members this group attracts, the more that Congress will find it difficult to ignore their constitutional responsibility to obey Article V. And with strong participation from people in many states even the mainstream media might take notice. One thing will surely become clear as Convention USA becomes fully operational: Congress fears many kinds of constitutional amendments that would truly reform our corrupt and dysfunctional political and government system, which explains why they have refused to convene the first Article V convention. Fear the status quo, not using the Article V convention option the Founders gave us.

Those opposing using the convention option are selfishly protecting their ability to work within the current corrupt, money-driven system to advance their objectives. Such opponents are not true American patriots. They use lies and disinformation to instill unjustified fears, like nonsense about a runaway convention. Remember this: An Article V convention can only propose amendments that sill must be ratified by three-quarters of the states, and it does not have the constitutional power to write a whole new Constitution. What Congress and opponents fear we the people should passionately embrace.

Take a serious look at the facts about the Article V convention issue and at the Convention USA effort.

[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through delusionaldemocracy.com; he is a co-founder of Friends of the Article V Convention.]

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But not so in Oregon, where investments are doing well, and state investment officers are doing even better.

The Oregonian reports that state investment officers are being wined and dined by the private investment firms [3] whose services to the state they oversee. State Treasury officers, paid on average "just shy of $200,000 last year," were treated to resort hotels, first-class airfare and high-end dinners--"all in the name of public service."

The cozy relationship, reports the Oregonian, raises questions about whether the first-class treatment skews officers' ability to oversee the investment firms that treat them so lavishly. For their part, the firms stand to gain quite a bit if they stay in the good graces of state Treasury officers:

Public investors such as Oregon are lucrative customers. Besides the cash to invest, investment firms collect huge fees for their day-to-day work. Oregon's pension system alone paid $335 million in investment fees and expenses last year. .... The concept is much like an individual investor figuring out how to put spare cash to work in profitable ways. Except Oregon has billions in cash. Profits from investments cover state retiree pensions and care for Oregon's injured and disabled workers.

Oregon Treasurer Ted Wheeler announced last week that he was reviewing travel protocols, though Oregon Treaury's chief investment officer Ron Schmitz has said high-end travel is "necessary normal business practice." "We consider none of it luxurious," he told the newspaper.

But that's not what it sounds like from communications between investment officers and the investment firms.

"I'm only packing my swimsuit, Tevas, and sun tan lotion and you guys will just have to find me on the beach or surfing the waves," one Treasury employee wrote to an firm representative. The firm ended up paying for his stay in a Four Seasons Resort in Mexico.

 

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Okay, it would have been much preferred to avoid using the term constitutional convention and, instead, use Article V convention, because the language in Article V clearly limits a convention to amendments and prevents a wholesale rewriting of the constitution. Still, the article focused repeatedly on a most important theme that the public urgently needs to fully understand: There really is no remotely possible scenario of a runaway convention that would do terrible damage to the Constitution, either from the left or right. Thank You Mr. LeMunyon.

LeMunyon did a masterful job of clarifying how the difficult job of ratifying any amendments proposed by a convention would have to get accepted by a large number of state legislative houses, with many controlled by Democrats and others by Republicans. Indeed, the state ratification requirement gives the safety net that sensible Americans must see as removing all fears of a damaging runaway convention. Why is this so important? Because convention opponents, mostly on the right, have for many years used the runaway convention argument to instill public fears about using the constitutional option of an Article V convention. It has made all those supposedly constitution-loving conservatives nothing more than constitutional hypocrites. With all their angry rhetoric about the many harms of the uncontrolled federal government they, nevertheless, have not seen what so many others, like LeMunyon, have seen: Using the Article V convention option is necessary to rein in Washington and all of the status quo corruption in the two-party plutocracy. Thank You Mr. LeMunyon.

Rather than fear a convention of state delegates, people must fully appreciate that, as stated by LeMunyon, "Congress is in a state of serious disrepair and cannot fix itself." Clearly Congress fears a convention, and what Congress fears we the people urgently need: the first Article V convention. The one major point not presented in the article is that, with over 700 applications from all 50 states, the one and only constitutional requirement for a convention has been met, but Congress has refused to obey the Constitution. So, state legislators like LeMunyon keep proposing new state legislation to submit still more applications for a convention. Until recently the whole historic set of state applications were not even made easily available for public scrutiny. Not by Congress or anyone else, until the nonpartisan Friends of the Article V Convention did so and made them available on their website.

Regardless of all the sound information and arguments given by LeMunyon, his highly visible article has stimulated considerable negative, anti-convention writings on many right wing websites. This, despite the logic that there is so much more to fear and oppose than a convention. All this irrational and irresponsible fear-mongering merits careful thought. Exactly why do so many people who profess love and respect for the Founders and the Constitution keep opposing using what the Founders knew we would have to use when the public lost trust in the federal government? Why do these anti-convention people ignore what LeMunyon correctly noted? There have been hundreds of state constitutional conventions that did not wreck states.

The baseless harangues by anti-convention screamers only act to maintain the political status quo and perpetuate the fiction that elections can succeed in sending enough radically different people to Congress and the White House to really reform and fix our nation. These people want to preserve their own organizations as means to oppose and fix the political and government system. They want to protect and retain their own perceived power and influence. They have had enough time and failed. Now it is time to use the Article V convention option.

Thank You Mr. LeMunyon for making the case that only constitutional amendments have any hope of making systemic changes to fix the corrupt, inefficient and outright dysfunctional federal government. Power to the states!

[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through delusionaldemocracy.com.]

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Nearly two years ago, Antifascist Calling revealed that when DNDO awarded contracts totaling some $1.2 billion over five years to defense and security giants Raytheon, Canberra Industries (a subsidiary of the French nuclear manufacturing titan, the Areva Group) and Thermo Scientific for Advanced Spectroscopic Portal (ASP) radiation monitors in 2006, it should have been "reality-check time."

For the moment at least, it apparently is.

As late as January 2010, despite revelations that the program widely missed the mark, DNDO officials claimed that the ASP "will enhance current detection capabilities by more clearly identifying the source of detected radiation through spectroscopic isotope identification."

Notwithstanding persistent flaws and cost overruns dogging the program, the Department of Homeland Security asked for $41M in its 2011 budget request "for the procurement and deployment of radiological and nuclear detection systems and equipment to support efforts across the Department."

Why would they do that? For answers, we'd better consult defense and security powerhouse Raytheon, the project's prime contractor.

A Homeland "Security Blanket" for the Defense Industry

Clocking-in at No. 5 on Washington Technology's 2009 "Top 100 List" of Federal Prime Contractors, the company pulled-down some $5,942,575,316 in defense and security-related contracts from the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, NASA, the armed forces and Department of Homeland Security.

According to Raytheon, "ASP detectors address the threat of radiological dispersal devices, improvised nuclear devices or a nuclear weapon being used by terrorists inside the United States," therefore "a more discriminating primary screening system--the ASP--is needed."

Touted as a next-gen "homeland security tool" that would provide Customs and Border Protection inspectors with the capability to detect illicit nuclear or radiological materials inside containers entering American ports, "with low false alarm rates" to boot, despite hundreds of millions of dollars poured into the program, the ASP performs no better than devices in place today.

As with existent monitors, the ASP was unable to distinguish between components required to manufacture a radiological dirty bomb from natural radiation emitters such as--wait!-- kitty litter, ceramics or bananas!

You would think the state would have considered another of the firm's more dubious highlights before awarding them with a lucrative contract for something as critical as preventing nuclear terrorism. You'd be wrong however!

According to the Project on Government Oversight's (POGO) Federal Contractor Misconduct Database, Raytheon has the distinction of another No. 5 listing, though I doubt the company will tout this on their web site.

Identified by the government watchdogs as a firm with a history of "misconduct such as contract fraud and environmental, ethics, and labor violations," since 1995, Raytheon has been cited for some $479.2M in 20 instances of what POGO has identified as "misconduct." These include: aircraft maintenance overcharges; contractor kickbacks; defective pricing; False Claims Act violations; improper classification of costs; the violation of SEC rules; TCE contamination at Kansas Airport; an EEOC racial discrimination lawsuit; contamination of Tucson, Arizona's water supply with TCE and dioxane, "chemical solvents believed to be human carcinogens," on and on.

Come to think of it, why wouldn't they be a perfect fit for DHS! As the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) has documented in a series of critical reports, the state's massive reorganization of the security apparatus under the DHS brand "involved new money--stacks of it."

According to CIR, "systematic federal efforts to measure the effectiveness of various homeland security programs and grants have been less than a complete success." And likely to stay that way in this writer's opinion, judging by DNDO's busted ASP program.

Revolving Doors, Greased Wheels

Citing a pressing need for the new gizmos, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert Bonner testified before a Senate panel in 2005, and setting the stage for the ASP fiasco, that detection machines first installed in 2000 "had picked up over 10,000 radiation hits in vehicles or cargo shipments entering the country. All proved harmless."

As security analyst Bruce Schneier wrote at the time, "It amazes me that 10,000 false alarms--instances where the security system failed--are being touted as proof that the system is working."

But as a former airline executive famously told investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker during his probe into the 9/11 attacks: "Sometimes when things don't make business sense, its because they do make sense...just in some other way."

Since completing government "service," Bonner became a partner in the white shoe law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, specializing in "crisis management" for corporate clients.

Amongst the firm's more dubious legal "accomplishments" was their representation of the soon-to-be-installed Bush regime during the 2000 Florida recount. On December 12, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court staged a judicial coup d'état and stopped the Florida vote count, thus handing the presidency to the Bush crime family and setting the stage for the most corrupt, and lawless, period in the nation's history.

Confirming suspicions that not much has changed since the Obama administration blew into town last year, the president's Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, appointed Bonner to the Homeland Security Advisory Council's Southwest Border Task Force.

Corroborating the notion that the top political echelons of the secret state are mere jump-off points for a lucrative "post-government" career, and that "homeland security" is a highly-profitable game the whole family can play, CBP's former head honcho is now a principal partner with The Sentinel HS Group, LLC, a Washington lobby shop.

According to a blurb on Sentinel's web site, the firm is "committed to assisting government entities in organizing effectively to carry out their homeland security responsibilities, and in designing and implementing effective homeland security strategies, policies, and programs."

The firm served as the "principal advisor" to the "Boeing Team" that speared the SBInet contract from DHS. Federal Computer Week reported in January however, that Napolitano "has ordered a reassessment of the $8 billion SBInet virtual border fence program in Arizona after another round of delays in the program, an official confirmed today."

The only thing that has changed in the years since the ASP boondoggle was launched, is that millions in taxpayer dollars have greased the palms of well-connected defense contractors. In turn, defense behemoth Raytheon has repaid the favor, showering some $2.2 million dollars on federal candidates in 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, with 55% of the lucre going to "progressive" Democrats.

And 2010 promises to be a banner year for the "best democracy money can buy." OpenSecrets.org reveals that as of January 31, the firm has already raised some $1.5 million, spending 59% of PAC dollars on congressional Democrats.

"I Cheated on the Test? Whaddaya Mean, the Government Gave Me the Answers!"

When DNDO announced the initiative back in 2006, it was trumpeted as one of the cornerstones of the Bush regime's corporate-friendly homeland security apparatus, to wit, it was sold to Congress as a front-line weapon that would prevent the smuggling of illicit nuclear materials into the heimat.

When the $1.2 billion contract was awarded, officials claimed each device would cost "only" $377,000 and would "dramatically" improve vehicle and cargo container screening.

Since those initial cost estimates, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) discovered that securocrats had deceived Congress and that each contraption would probably cost upwards of $822,000 each, with no demonstrable improvement over machines in use today.

Dialing-down the program, DNDO's acting chief William K. Hagan wrote neocon Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, that the Office will "possibly use the machines only for secondary screening, at no more than about a third of the cost originally planned," Post journalist Robert O'Harrow disclosed.

Hagan wrote that DNDO's decision makes "sense, given the available performance and cost data." In other words, although the ASP has proven to be a colossal failure, let's fund a scaled-down version of the program. Is this a great country, or what!

As I previously reported, GAO investigators revealed in a September 2008 report, that DHS massaged test results and painted a rosy picture of what, for all practical purposes, was a lead balloon.

GAO watchdogs discovered that DNDO "used biased test methods that enhanced the apparent performance" of the machines. Congressional investigators found that dodgy methodology designed to manipulate the results, allowed contractors to adjust the devices after preliminary runs, giving the appearance that ASP's performed better than they actually did. In other words, DNDO project managers handed out virtual Cliff Notes to the contractors during testing. Talk about a rigged game!

In 2009 testimony before the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, Committee on Science and Technology, House of Representatives, Gene Aloise, GAO Director of Natural Resources and Environment testified that "DNDO resumed the field testing of ASPs that it initiated in January 2009 but suspended because of serious performance problems. However, the July tests also revealed critical performance deficiencies."

Aloise disclosed that ASPs, like current monitors, "had a high number of false positive alarms for the detection of certain nuclear materials."

Auditors were told by Customs and Border Protection officials that "these false alarms are very disruptive in a port environment because any alarm for this type of nuclear material causes CBP to take enhanced security precautions."

However, despite earlier claims that the machines would "enhance" border security by weeding out nuclear or radiological materials that could be fashioned into IEDs, GAO revealed that DNDO planned "to address these false alarms" by modifying the devices "to make these monitors less sensitive to these nuclear materials and thereby diminishing the ASPs' capability."

Aloise told The Washington Post that "DHS's decision to abandon full-scale deployment of the ASP's is a victory for the U.S taxpayer--a savings of at least $1.5 billion--and our national security."

"As recent testing has revealed" Aloise said, "the consequences of these machines being deployed nationwide in 2007, as DNDO intended, could have been disastrous."

Fear not dear readers, in Washington's accountability-free zone failure is always generously rewarded.

Washington Technology reported on Friday, that Raytheon "has won an initial contract from the Air Force worth $886 million to develop a new element of the Global Positioning System that will improve the accuracy of information from GPS satellites."

If the firm's work for DNDO is any indication of "improved accuracy" we can expect from next-gen GPS, better dust off your compass and learn to navigate by starlight!


Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press , Uncommon Thought Journal, CJO's Avenger212, and the whistleblowing website Wikileaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.
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Unnamed sources who spoke to Newsweek magazine said the Obama Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) has concluded that John Yoo and Jay Bybee, who penned the infamous memos, used "poor judgment" but will not be subject to disciplinary action. Yoo and Bybee worked in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, along with Steven Bradbury, who is also named in the report.

The conclusions of the OPR report provide yet another demonstration of President Barack Obama's defense of the anti-democratic and criminal practices of the Bush administration in the "war on terror," and the current administration's resolve that no one--especially those at the highest levels of government--will be held to account.

An earlier version of the OPR report completed in December 2008 concluded that Yoo, presently a University of California at Berkeley law professor, and Bybee, now a federal appeals court judge on the 9th Circuit, violated professional standards when they drafted an August 2002 legal opinion authorizing brutal methods by the CIA in the interrogation of suspected terrorist detainees.

The OPR recommended referral of their cases to state bar associations, which could have revoked their law licenses. Bybee also could have faced an impeachment inquiry before Congress. However, under a new review of the OPR report ordered by Attorney General Eric Holder shortly after he took charge of the Justice Department, the two will not face even these weak sanctions.

In early 2009, the Obama Justice Department began to water down the conclusions of the OPR probe, which was initiated in mid-2004 during the Bush administration following disagreements between the Office of Legal Counsel and White House lawyers over the Bush administration's defense of "enhanced interrogation" techniques justified by the Yoo-Bybee opinions.

David Margolis, a 34-year career prosecutor at the Justice Department, was eventually tasked by Holder with reviewing the final version of the OPR report. It was reportedly Margolis who downgraded the report's initial findings against Yoo and Bybee from "professional misconduct" to "poor judgment."

As recently as December, Obama administration lawyers under the direction of Holder supported the dismissal of a case brought against Yoo by Jose Padilla, the US citizen held incommunicado and tortured for more than two years after his arrest at Chicago's O'Hare Airport.

Earlier last year, Obama administration attorneys supported the dismissal of suits brought by a wide range of victims, including those subject to "extraordinary rendition," targets of government eavesdropping, and detainees transported from the Middle East to US military bases in Afghanistan.

The Justice Department's defense of Yoo and Bybee testifies to the Obama administration's continuation of the police-state structures developed under Bush. The memos drafted by Yoo, Bybee and Bradbury were solicited by the Bush White House to provide pseudo-legal justification for systematic torture that was already being carried out by CIA interrogators.

The memos made the gruesome and legally absurd argument that "enhanced interrogation techniques" such as waterboarding, threats of death, sleep deprivation, extreme variations of temperature, and the use of psychotropic drugs do not rise to the level of torture unless they inflict pain equivalent to "major organ failure" or death.

Since authoring the memos, Yoo has gone on to write three books in which he defends his doctrine that the president as the "commander in chief" in wartime possesses unlimited powers, including the right to authorize torture and other illegal acts. In one of his August 2002 memos, he asserted that CIA agents accused of torturing Al Qaeda suspects could claim they were acting in "self-defense" to prevent future terror attacks.

Newsweek notes that the OPR report is "sharply critical" of the "legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding"' and other torture methods used by CIA interrogators after September 11, and that it will provide "many new details about how waterboarding was adopted and the role that top White House officials played in the process."

This is, however, merely window dressing for a cover-up of war crimes and crimes against the democratic rights of the American people and tacit sanction for the continuation of such practices. Obama has frequently touted his "ban" on torture, but this remains an empty and cynical gesture under conditions where the government protects former government officials who authorized these crimes.

There are two major reasons why the Obama administration continues to block any prosecution of those responsible for authorizing torture. First, the Democratic Party is complicit in the crimes of the Bush administration. Democratic congressional leaders were briefed by Bush officials on the torture practices and violations of democratic rights and international law, and supported them.

Second, such policies continue under the current administration.

One year after assuming office, Obama has broken his pledge to close the Guantanamo detention camp and blocked suits by Guantanamo detainees challenging their detention. He has explicitly defended the Bush administration policies of indefinite detention, extraordinary rendition, and military tribunals. The US military prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan continues to hold hundreds of prisoners, without charge or trial, under barbaric conditions.

Obama is going one step further than Bush by seeking to establish a military prison in Illinois where prisoners will be held indefinitely without charge or trial and subjected to treatment defined by international and US law as torture. He is thereby institutionalizing on US soil the illegal, police-state methods improvised by Bush.

Obama has moreover upheld the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war, with Yemen becoming the latest target of US threats, along with Iran.

The administration's de facto support for John Yoo and his torture memo accomplices is of a piece with these policies, which are supported by both big business parties. Under conditions of expanding militarism abroad and deepening social inequality at home, there is no section of the political establishment committed to the defense of democratic rights.

Democratic rights can be defended only through the independent mobilization of the working class against the Obama administration, the Democrats and Republicans, and the capitalist system which is the source of war and repression.

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It helps to know that three current constitutional amendments resulted because of Supreme Court decisions that needed remedial action: the Eleventh Amendment (shoring up states' legal immunity), the Sixteenth Amendment (authorizing a federal income tax), and the Twenty-sixth Amendment (assuring eighteen-year-olds the right to vote).

Among the current efforts MoveToAmend.org has already received nearly 50,000 signatories to support is plan, particularly: Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.

Another active group is ReclaimDemocracy.org advocating: Corporations and other for-profit institutions are prohibited from attempting to influence the outcome of elections, legislation or government policy through the use of aggregate resources or by rewarding or repaying employees or directors to exert such influence.

Ultimate Civics, a project of Earth Island Institute, wants this: This amendment affirms that constitutional rights extend only to human persons. Corporations, partnerships, and other organization entities are not human persons and, therefore, are not entitled to constitutional protections.

Largely missing from all this attention to the need for a new constitutional amendment, however, is the recognition that Congress, already corrupted by corporate and other special interest money, is very unlikely - no, make that will surely never propose any such amendment. Nor will any congressional attempts at fixing the Supreme Court problem with legislation do what is needed. In fact, there has been an older movement to take all private money out of federal elections and go to total public financing, which would offer the benefit of opening up the US political system to competitive third party candidates. But this too has never received strong support.

What merits far more attention and support is the use of the alternative path to amending the US Constitution offered in Article V. However, the convention of state delegates option has never been used because Congress has stubbornly refused to obey this part of the Constitution, as if they have a right to pick and choose what to obey, despite the one and only requirement for an Article V convention being satisfied. Indeed, there have been some 750 applications for a convention from all 50 states, more than the two-thirds requirement. A major reason Congress has gotten away with this illegal behavior is that nearly all organized political interests on the left and right have opposed a convention. Why? Because they like their current ability to corrupt Congress through lobbying and other forms of spending and fear true reforms of our political and government system through amendments proposed by a convention, which still must be ratified by three-quarters of the states. Both ratification and the exact words in Article V prevent any wholesale rewriting of the entire Constitution.

If Americans want to fix the recent, awful Supreme Court decision, then they should rally behind the effort of the nonpartisan Friends of the Article V Convention at foavc.org. They only advocate for making Congress obey the Constitution and call the first convention, but not specific amendments.

All those campaigning for a new constitutional amendment to accomplish any type of reform to improve the US should recognize that voting in new members of Congress or a President has proven to be totally ineffective in achieving necessary reforms to make government work better. The two-party plutocracy is far too corrupted by business and other special interests. The Founders gave us the Article V convention option because they anticipated the failure of the federal government to honestly serve public interests. Now, more than ever, is the time to use what they gave us. Now is the time for Americans to stop being constitutional hypocrites, saying they love and honor the US Constitution but refusing to make Congress obey every part of it, especially Article V.

How about President Obama who used to teach constitutional law getting behind this, especially because he reacted to the recent Supreme Court decision this way: "a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans." Wouldn't it be logical for the president to demand that Congress obey the Constitution?

Finally, when corporations are given more freedoms as if they are persons the inevitable result is that citizens lose freedoms and liberties, something that conservatives and libertarians in particular should recognize.

[Joel S. Hirschhorn is a co-founder of Friends of the Article V Convention; contact him through delusionaldemocracy.com]

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Following is a concise list of LOP(PPP);

First law of Politicianary Motion

The orbit of every politician is an ellipse with the power centre i.e. the king, the ruler or the president at its focus.

Law of Conservation of Political Corruption

It states that the total amount of corruption in a political system remains constant over time. A consequence of this law is that corruption can neither be created nor destroyed. It is always present in exploitable forms in any political system. The only thing that can happen to corruption in a political system is that it can change form, for instance power hunger can become nepotism that can in turn change into a buying and selling activity, a la the stock exchange, over a period of time.

Law of Buoyancy

Any politician, wholly or partially immersed in four letter gooey substances, is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the four letter gooey substance displaced by the politician. In other words, the more voluminous an immersed politician is, the larger will be the mass of four letter gooey substance displaced by him.

Law of Heat Conduction

The law of Heat Conduction states that the time rate of heat transfer through a politician is proportional to the thickness of his skin, its temperature and to the nature of the organ the skin is covering and through which the heat is flowing.

The Uncertainty Principle

The Uncertainty Principle states that certain pairs of character virtues in a politician, like honesty and honor, cannot both be known to random exactness. That is, the more precisely one property is known, the less precisely the other can be known. In other words, an accurate measure of a politician's honesty cannot guarantee an honorable stand on important national issues and vice versa.

Law of Pressure

In a politician of given volume at constant temperature, pressure and volume are inversely proportional (while one increases, the other decreases). Or in other words, in politicians of ever expanding volumes, pressure points on their bodies continue to reduce.

Law of Political Entropy

Entropy, a measure of disorder, continues to increase in a political system. Or, alternately, the more improvements that are promised to have been delivered by the politicians, the higher the rate of breakdown in other subsystems they oversee.

Physical Laws of Political Motion

Then are the three physical laws of political motion that form the basis for classical politics. These are:

1. In the absence of a proper stimulus, a politician at rest continues to remain at rest and one in motion continues to remain in motion with constant speed.

2. A politician experiencing a stimulus S experiences an acceleration a related to S by S = ma, where m is the mass of the politician. In other words, for a politician of given mass, the larger the stimulus S, the larger will be the acceleration a.

3. Whenever one politician exerts a force F on a second politician, the second politician exerts a force −F on the first politician. F and −F are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. The equilibrium continues till the introduction of a stimulus S at which time the −F becomes +F and the 2Fs continue in the same direction with combined force.

The scribe ends this piece with two quotes;

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy. ~Ernest Benn

Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel. ~John Quinton

The reader may contribute a quote or add to LOP(PPP) if he/she so wishes.

X-X-X-X

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These are among the findings of two 18 January reports on the dynamics of recent defense spending from the Project on Defense Alternatives, a small think tank with offices in the Washington area and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

According to the reports, the boost in spending after 1998 is unmatched over a nearly 60-year period, edging out both the Reagan and the Kennedy-Johnson spending hikes. And the Obama administration, in a move likely to confound critics and supporters alike, plans to spend more on the Pentagon than any administration since 1948.

"The recent wars are only half the story," says author Carl Conetta, "And their high price tag raises as many questions as it answers." The report finds the recent wars to have cost $792,000 per deployed person per year, while the Vietnam war cost only $256,000 per person per year in today's dollars.

Part of the reason for the relatively higher cost of current wars is that the United States today relies on an expensive professional military, rather than a conscript one. The cost-structure of today's military is not well-suited to protracted, labor-intensive wars, concludes the report. Related to this, the proportion of private contractors used in today's wars is five times higher than during the Vietnam war. Also adding to costs, DoD equipment purchases in the decade before the wars focused too heavily on the legacy systems favored by the services and on long-range strike weapons. So a new round of buying was needed to support counter-insurgency operations.

The reports find that DoD has been generally lax in setting priorities among contending acquisition programs. But the most serious problem cited in the studies was the adoption of ambitious new roles, missions, and strategies for a reduced military after the Cold War ended. A variety of reform and transformation efforts were supposed to make it possible for a smaller military to do more. But these efforts fell short of their promise. So costs rose with ambitions.

Since the mid-1990s, the Pentagon has turned increasingly to private contractors to help fill the gap between ambitious strategies and the available number of military personnel. The report finds that the Pentagon's contractor workforce has probably grown by 40% since 1989, while the numbers of military personnel and civilian DoD employees have declined by more than 30%.

To avoid today's exceptionally high budgets the reports suggest that national authorities would have to be more realistic in setting military missions and goals, more judicious in decisions about going to war, more forceful in pushing for Pentagon reform, and stricter in setting and enforcing budget priorities. There is a deeper political problem, warns Conetta: "At present, civilian leaders are politically disinclined to push the Pentagon hard or enact tighter budget constraints, and this stance undercuts reform." In reviewing the economic landscape, however, the reports do conclude that fiscal realities may soon prompt a change in attitudes.

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With the White House in crisis mode since the attempted bombing, President Obama met for two hours January 5 with top security and intelligence officials. Obama said that secret state agencies "had sufficient information to uncover the terror plot ... but that intelligence officials had 'failed to connect those dots'," The New York Times reports.

The latest iteration of the "dot theory" floated by the President, aided and abetted by a compliant media, claims "this was not a failure to collect intelligence" but rather, "a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had."

"Mr. Obama's stark assessment that the government failed to properly analyze and integrate intelligence served as a sharp rebuke of the country's intelligence agencies," declared the Times uncritically.

While the President's remarks may have offered a "sharp [rhetorical] rebuke," Obama's statement suggests that no one will be held accountable. Indeed, the President "was standing by his top national security advisers, including those whose agencies failed to communicate with one another."

While the President may be "standing by" his national security advisers, the question is, are the denizens of America's secret state standing by him? One well-connected Washington insider, MSNBC pundit Richard Wolffe, isn't so sure.

Wolffe, the author of a flattering portrait of Obama, Renegade: The Making of a President, when asked on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann January 4 what is the White House "focus here right now?" Wolffe's startling reply: "Is this conspiracy or cock up? It seems that the president is leaning very much towards thinking this was a systemic failure by individuals who maybe had an alternative agenda." (emphasis added)

"I will accept that intelligence by its nature is imperfect" the President said, "but it is increasingly clear that intelligence was not fully analyzed or fully leveraged."

The question is why? And more pertinently from a parapolitical perspective, what "alternative agenda" is playing out here that would put the lives of nearly 300 air passengers at risk?

British Evidence: Down the Memory Hole

As Antifascist Calling reported last week, The Sunday Times and The Observer newspapers disclosed that MI5 had built a dossier on Abdulmutallab which showed "his repeated contacts with MI5 targets who were subject to phone taps, email intercepts and other forms of surveillance."

It has since emerged, the Associated Press reported January 4, that British authorities began assembling a security file on Abdulmutallab shortly after his arrival the UK in 2005 when officials claimed he was in contact with "known radicals."

Prime Minister Gordon Brown's spokesperson Simon Lewis said on Monday, "Clearly there was security information about this individual's activities, and that was information that was shared with the U.S. authorities. That is the key point."

In an climb-down from Lewis's admission, The Wall Street Journal reported that Home Secretary Alan Johnson, whose brief includes MI5, said in an appearance before Parliament Tuesday, "Whilst we did provide information to the U.S., according to standard operational practices, linked to the wider aspect of this case, none of the information we held or shared indicated that Abdulmutallab was about to attempt a terrorist attack against the U.S."

The Brown government has steadfastly refused to say just when the file on Abdulmutallab was passed to the U.S., letting stand the implication it was sent before the aborted Christmas Day attack.

The cover story being floated by MI5 now mendaciously claims the agency did not send Abdulmutallab's security dossier on to American officials "because of concerns about breaching his human rights and privacy," The Sunday Times reported January 10.

"MI5 has privately conceded that as early as 2006 its surveillance operations had picked up 'multiple communications' between the 23-year-old Nigerian student and suspected terrorists in Britain," The Sunday Times disclosed.

Despite these concessions, we're now to accept at face value the absurd claim that information on a terrorist suspect wasn't passed along by British spooks to their closest ally "because of guidance from [MI5's] legal department."

Trying selling that fairy tale to Republican victims of the secret state's "human rights and privacy" campaign in Northern Ireland as The Sunday Herald revealed during their multiyear investigation into Britain's dirty war!

Under intense pressure by the United States about these disclosures, the Brown government has gone to great lengths to stress "the importance to Britain of close intelligence cooperation with the United States."

Still reeling however, from U.S. threats to cut-off intelligence sharing last summer if torture evidence was disclosed to the public by the British High Court, the government is moving to avoid a similar controversy over the Abdulmutallab affair.

In late July, The Guardian revealed that "Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, personally intervened to suppress evidence of CIA collusion in the torture of a British resident, the high court heard today." The Guardian also reported that MI5 chief Jonathan Evans said in a speech in October that the "Security Service had been 'slow to detect the emerging pattern of US practice in the period after 9/11'."

While the torture files were eventually released in late October by a High Court order, it is certainly reasonable to ask: what other "U.S. practice(s)" are being suppressed today by the Brown government?

The Independent confirms this and states, "The Downing Street comments were reported to have angered the US government, but after talks with the White House, Mr Brown's spokesman tried to lower the diplomatic temperature. He said relations remained 'excellent' between the two countries."

As part of a new and improved sanitized narrative, the Home Office now claims that Abdulmutallab's transformation into an erstwhile suicide bomber began only after he left Britain. This, despite revelations by The Sunday Times last week, that he stoked MI5's interest precisely because of his repeated contacts with individuals "who were subject to phone taps, email intercepts and other forms of surveillance."

In a further development that can't please the British state, The Guardian reported January 7, that Yemen's Deputy Prime Minister for Defense and Security, Rashad al-Alimi, told a news conference that "information provided to us is that Umar Farouk joined al-Qaida in London."

The Wall Street Journal reports that al-Alimi said Thursday, that Abdulmutallab had "no links" to al-Qaeda "when he first came to Yemen in 2004 and 2005 to study Arabic" and that he "was radicalized during his time in the U.K., where he had studied between his two stints in Yemen," charges that "senior British counterterrorism officials" dismiss, claiming "there was no evidence to back them up."

Why then, would Abdulmutallab's web browsing habits, cell phone conversations as well as "other forms of surveillance" on "targets of interest" to British spooks indicate a "lack of evidence"? It would seem to suggest just the opposite.

Indeed, Abdulmutallab had been in "close contact" with "a key suspect in an Al-Qaeda plot to murder British citizens," according to MP Patrick Mercer, the chairman of the parliamentary counter-terrorism committee. Mercer told The Sunday Times January 10, that the alleged airline bomber "had been in touch" with the suspect, currently a resident in a high-security British prison awaiting trial, "while both men were students in London."

Feeling the heat, Lewis has backtracked from his initial statement and now claims that information revealed Monday was simply a "routine exchange of information," and not specific warnings that "Abdulmutallab posed a terrorist threat."

This beggars belief. Indeed, the Brown government's climb-down is clearly intended to "disappear" inconvenient evidence from the official record, thus suppressing the actual content of MI5's security dossier on Abdulmutallab, and will only heighten suspicions that a transatlantic cover-up of the affair is in full-swing.

A Failure to "Integrate and Understand," or a Thin Tissue of Lies

Making the rounds of the Sunday talk shows last week, John O. Brennan, President Obama's top counterterrorism advisor, claimed that U.S. intelligence officials "had snippets of information" about the suspected bomber but "we didn't have any type of information that really allowed us to identify Mr. Abdulmutallab."

The Washington Post reported January 4 that Brennan mendaciously claimed, "We may have had a partial name. We might have had an indication of a Nigerian. But there was nothing that brought it all together."

Indeed, the 25-year CIA veteran and former CEO of The Analysis Corporation, the firm which built and maintained bloated watchlists for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's National Counterterrorist Center, went so far as to cheekily proclaim "there is no smoking gun piece of intelligence out there that said he was a terrorist, he was going to carry out this attack against this aircraft," or that America's multibillion counterterrorist apparatus only had "bits and pieces of information."

Let's take a look at those informational "snippets" and summarize what is quickly emerging as growing evidence of U.S. foreknowledge of an imminent attack on an American passenger plane:

* May: the British government withdrew its student visa for Abdulmutallab, a graduate of the prestigious University College London and placed him on a watchlist, barring his entry into the UK. MI5, and presumably their MI6 military intelligence colleagues in Yemen, compiled a dossier on the would-be bomber, citing his "political involvement" with "extremist networks" that have enjoyed on-again, off-again ties with NATO military intelligence organizations across the decades. This information, as Brown government spokesperson Simon Lewis, who let the cat out of the proverbial bag, was shared with their American counterparts.

* August: U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and NSA, intercepted cell- and satellite phone traffic which revealed that a Yemeni affiliate of the Afghan-Arab database of disposable Western intelligence assets, also known as al-Qaeda, were finalizing preparations for an operation that would utilize a "Nigerian."

* October: Newsweek revealed in their January 11 issue, that the dodgy cleric, the American-born Anwar al-Awlaki, who communicated extensively with the disturbed Ft. Hood shooter, Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan, posted "a provocative message on his English-language Web site: 'COULD YEMEN BE THE NEXT SURPRISE OF THE SEASON?'" According to Newsweek, "Al-Awlaki seemed to hint at an upcoming attack that would make Yemen 'the single most important front of jihad in the world'." The Washington Post reported in 2008 that al-Awlaki had extensive contacts with 9/11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar, and Hani Hanjour and was suspected of having assisted the 9/11 plot. According to the Post, "three of the hijackers had spent time at his mosques in California and Falls Church." Despite, or possibly because, of these dubious connections "he was allowed to leave the country in 2002." According to the History Commons, it is only in 2008 that the U.S. government concludes that the shady imam "is linked to al-Qaeda attacks." However, Al-Awlaki's provenance as a new "terrorist mastermind" should be viewed with suspicion, given well-documented links known to have existed amongst the 9/11 hijackers and American, Saudi and Pakistani secret state agencies.

* October: the same month Al-Awlaki was hinting at a "surprise," Newsweek revealed that John O. Brennan "received an alarming briefing at the White House from Muhammad bin Nayef, Brennan's Saudi counterpart. Nayef had just survived an assassination attempt by a Qaeda operative using a novel method: the operative had flown in from the Saudi-Yemeni border region with a bomb hidden in his underwear. The Saudi was concerned because he 'didn't think [U.S. officials] were paying enough attention' to the growing threat." A familiar trope we've heard in the aftermath of other terrorist strikes.

* Early November: Newsweek published an exclusive report January 4, that two U.S. "intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security circulated a paper within the government last fall that examined in some detail the threats that bombs secreted in clothing--or inside someone's body cavities--might pose to aviation security." According to information leaked to the newsmagazine by anonymous "national-security officials," the report "was prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center in conjunction with Homeland Security and the CIA," and that "one principal point of discussion in the document was whether the detonation of a bomb hidden in clothing on an airliner would have a different explosive effect than the detonation of a bomb secreted in a body cavity under similar circumstances." (emphasis added) This chilling report, prepared in the wake of intelligence information provided U.S. security agencies by Saudi Arabia's counterterrorism czar, should raise provocative questions. No other media outlet however, has followed the trail.

* November 19: Abdulmutallab's father, a prominent Nigerian banker and former high state official, visits the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, telling State Department and CIA officials he believes his son is a threat. A cousin tells The New York Times that the father told U.S. officials, "Look at the texts he's sending. He's a security threat." Although Embassy personnel promise "to look into it," the cousin told the Times that "they didn't take him seriously."

* November 20: the CIA prepares and files a report on Abdulmutallab that is sent to agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia "but not disseminated to other intelligence agencies," unnamed "officials" tell the Times. Embassy staff also wrote and sent a cable known as a "Visa Viper," to the State Department and National Counterterrorism Center and a security file is opened on the suspect.

* December 9-24: Abdulmutallab travels to Ghana from Ethiopia and pays cash, $2,831 to be precise, for a ticket on a Northwest Airlines flight from Lagos through Amsterdam to Detroit, landing on Christmas Day. "It is now known" The Independent on Sunday reported January 10, "that the Ghanaian hotel he listed on his immigration form was not the one where he was actually staying." According to IoS, although the FBI "has officers on the ground in Ghana and believe it is likely the terrorist may well have had his final al-Qa'ida briefing, and supplied with equipment and explosives, there," no steps are taken to apprehend the suspect. "All this" IoS comments, "was more than a month after his father, a wealthy Nigerian banker, had met officials at the US embassy in Abuja to share concerns about his son."

* December 22: during a White House Situation Room briefing Newsweek reports that "a document presented to the president titled 'Key Homeland Threats' did not mention Yemen, according to a senior administration official."

* December 25: Abdulmutallab boards Flight 253 in Amsterdam with only a carry-on bag for his international flight; the would-be lap bomber holds a 2-year entry visa into the United States. As is standard procedure, the Department of Homeland Security is notified an hour prior to departure that he is a passenger on the plane.

* December 25: the Los Angeles Times disclosed January 7 that "U.S. border security officials learned of the alleged extremist links of the suspect in the Christmas Day jetliner bombing attempt as he was airborne from Amsterdam to Detroit and had decided to question him when he landed." Homeland Security officials "declined to discuss what information reached the U.S. border officials in Amsterdam on Christmas Day." Despite suspicions by Customs and Border Protection agents, who had accessed NCTC's TIDE database, the flight crew is not notified of Abdulmutallab's presence aboard the airliner and additional security precautions therefore, are not made.

Preliminary White House Review: Crafting the Cover-Up

In remarks January 7 announcing the White House's preliminary review of alleged "intelligence failures" responsible for the near detonation of a bomb aboard Flight 253, President Obama said that "America's first line of defense is timely, accurate intelligence that is shared, integrated, analyzed, and acted upon quickly and effectively."

Echoing remarks made Tuesday, Obama reiterated the trope that the secret state "failed to connect the dots in a way that would have prevented a known terrorist from boarding a plane for America."

In a maneuver to deflect public attention from the glaring similarities between the 9/11 provocation and the near-tragedy Christmas Day over Detroit, Obama claimed that "intelligence reforms" instituted under the previous regime had "largely achieved" the goal of generating said "timely intelligence."

Leaving aside overwhelming evidence that secret state agencies and a Pentagon data mining program had amassed terabytes of data on the 9/11 hijack team, including detailed profiles and intelligence dossiers, and that the Bush administration had been repeatedly warned by elements within their own counterterrorism agencies as well as their foreign counterparts in Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Morocco and Russia, in other words possessed "timely intelligence" that an attack was imminent, the "connect the dot" meme, as with 9/11, is handmaiden to today's transparent cover-up.

The President then alleged that despite knowledge of the "al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen," and that secret state agencies had amassed considerable information on Abdulmutallab's ostensible Yemeni confederates, and that "we knew they sought to strike the United States and that they were recruiting operatives to do so," as with 9/11, "the intelligence community did not aggressively follow up on and prioritize particular streams of intelligence related to a possible attack against the homeland."

The preliminary review released by the White House presents an even more damning indictment of these purported "intelligence failures."

According to the declassified version of the report, "The U.S. Government had sufficient information prior to the attempted December 25 attack to have potentially disrupted the AQAP [Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] plot--i.e., by identifying Mr. Abdulmutallab as a likely operative of AQAP and potentially preventing him from boarding flight 253."

The document further charges that "the Intelligence Community leadership did not increase analytic resources working on the full AQAP threat."

Despite evidence to the contrary, the administration claims that "the fundamental problems ... are different from those identified in the wake of the 9/11 attacks" and that "firmly entrenched patterns of bureaucratic behavior as well as the absence of a single component that fuses expertise, information technology (IT) networks, and datasets ... have now, 8 years later, largely been overcome."

However, as I documented last week in "The Strange Case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab," as with 9/11, a similar pattern of concealing information from relevant counterterrorism officials who might have intervened and rescinded the suspect's U.S. visa, and thus preventing him from boarding Flight 253, were replicated.

Indeed, the CIA's Nigerian station had prepared a dossier on Abdulmutallab that included biographical details and texts handed over by the family, an analysis of NSA electronic intercepts, reports from their own on-the-ground operatives in Yemen that were sent to the agency's Langley headquarters "but not disseminated to other intelligence agencies," as The New York Times revealed December 31.

The CIA says it is now taking steps to "improve" its handling of "terrorist-threat" information. Agency spokesperson, George Little told the media that CIA Director Leon Panetta specifically ordered the Company to implement several "new measures," including "formally disseminating information on suspected extremists and terrorists within 48 hours," expanding "name traces" and "reviewing information" on individuals from "countries of concern" to determine whether the Agency should recommend "changes in status on U.S. government watch lists."

One would have thought these were precisely the policies already implemented after the September 11, 2001 attacks! And yet, here we are eight years later and the CIA, perhaps more concerned with protecting their intelligence assets--a motley crew of killers and sociopathic riff-raff that include neofascists, mafia kingpins, drug traffickers and terrorists--from scrutiny by law enforcement officials, have to be ordered by the reputed head of their Agency to protect something as trivial as the lives of airline passengers, is stark commentary on the state of affairs in an allegedly democratic republic!

It cannot be ruled out that the CIA was interested in recruiting Abdulmutallab as an asset. After all, the Nigerian youth came from a prominent family, was a graduate of an up-scale British university and was well-versed in the close relationships amongst British and Yemeni Islamist networks. Indeed Abdulmutallab, like MI6's man during the Yugoslav destabilization campaign of the 1990s, the reputed 9/11 bag man, ISI asset and al-Qaeda leader, Omar Saeed Sheik, a graduate of the London School of Economics, would seem to fit the bill quite nicely.

On the face of it, however you care to slice it, the "connect the dots" conspiracy theory floated by the White House doesn't pass muster.

Two separate agencies, the CIA and NCTC, had all the information required to identify the would-be bomber and yet both, if we are to believe the official narrative, failed to do so. This despite the inconvenient fact that NCTC was stood up precisely as a central repository to collate, fuse and "connect" each seemingly minute piece of intelligence, the "dots," flowing into the U.S. security apparatus.

The White House cover story, accepted uncritically by the media, suggest that a mass of disparate data points--raw intelligence--when taken separately, is not incriminating in and of itself. However, after each fragment is subjected to the massive data mining and analytic capabilities of the U.S. Government which "fuse" these datasets into a coherent whole, only then will a dodgy pattern emerge.

In Abdulmutallab's case however, each seemingly innocuous piece of information on its own should have set alarm bells ringing. That this didn't happen Christmas Day cannot be explained away as either incompetence or "firmly entrenched patterns of bureaucratic behavior" but rather, by conscious action, or if you prefer, sinister inaction by factions within America's secret state.

Conclusion

As of this writing, it is not yet possible to provide a comprehensive answer as to why these events unfolded as they did. I am however, certain of one thing: the Obama administration, the security agencies presumably under its control and the corporate media, johnny-on-the-spot when it comes to covering-up imperialism's multitude of crimes, are lying to the American people.

There are however, several preliminary hypotheses which can be advanced, all of which raise further troubling questions worthy of additional investigation.

Were the Christmas Day events a pretext to expand the "War on Terror" into yet another strategic petroleum chokepoint as analyst F. William Engdahl suggests in an excellent piece published by Global Research?

Nor can we dismiss out of hand the analysis offered by the World Socialist Web Site that the failed Christmas Day airline plot was a maneuver by extreme right-wing elements deeply embedded in the U.S. National Security State "to destabilize and undermine the Obama administration." To this can be added Richard Wolffe's provocative statement that factions within the secret state may have had their own "alternative agenda," and thus failed to act.

Add to the mix, the systematic outsourcing of intelligence and security functions to a host of giant defense firms, outside of democratic control; in other words, rightist grifters who answer to shareholders and not the American people, and suddenly another piece of Wolffe's "alternative agenda" comes into sharp focus.

Chock-a-block with ex-CIA officers, NSA analysts, FBI agents and U.S. Special Forces veterans of America's dirty wars who now staff the privatized U.S. security complex, in other words well-paid mercenaries who know a thing or two on how to run a clandestine operation, and we just might have another plausible theory why a "dot" or two was ignored Christmas Day.

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press , Uncommon Thought Journal, CJO's Avenger212, and the whistleblowing website Wikileaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.
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After all, there's nothing quite like exposing an exchange of cold, hard cash from one greedy fist to another to focus one's attention on the business at hand.

And when that dirty business is the subversion of the American people's right to privacy, there's also nothing quite like economic self-interest for ensuring that a cone of silence descends over matters best left to the experts; a veritable army of specialists squeezing singular advantage out of any circumstance, regardless of how dire the implications for our democracy.

In light of this recommendation researcher Christopher Soghoian, deploying the tools of statistical analysis and a keen sense of outrage, reaffirmed that "Internet service providers and telecommunications companies play a significant, yet little known role in law enforcement and intelligence gathering."

That the American people have been kept in the dark when it comes to this and other affairs of state, remain among the most closely-guarded open secrets of what has euphemistically been called the "NSA spying scandal."

And when the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) posted thousands of pages of documents "detailing behind-the-scenes negotiations between government agencies and Congress about providing immunity for telecoms involved in illegal government surveillance" last month, they lifted the lid on what should be a major scandal, not that corporate media paid the least attention.

A lid that Obama's "change" regime hopes to slam back down as expeditiously as possible.

Hoping to forestall public suspicions of how things actually work in Washington, the administration has declared that "it will continue to block the release of additional documents, including communications within the Executive Branch and records reflecting the identities of telecoms involved in lobbying for immunity," according to EFF's Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl.

No small matter, considering that should a court ever find avaricious telecoms and ISPs liable for violating the rights of their customers, fines could mount into the billions. Even in today's climate of corporate bailouts and "too big to fail" cash gifts to executive suite fraudsters, damages, both in monetary terms and adverse publicity, would hardly be chump change.

Hence, last year's mad scramble for the retroactive immunity avidly sought by these grifters and granted by congressional con men on both sides of the aisle when they passed the despicable FISA Amendments Act, hastily signed into law by our former "war president."

Without belaboring the point that corporate media largely failed to expose the extent of the dirty deals struck amongst these scofflaws, Soghoian, a graduate student no less, stepped into the breech and filled some necessary gaps in the surveillance story.

Believing, naïvely perhaps, that numbers don't lie and that laying out the facts might just wake us from our deadly slumber, Soghoian writes: "If you were to believe the public surveillance statistics, you might come away with the idea that government surveillance is exceedingly rare in the United States."

Indeed, "the vast majority of ... [court] intercept orders are for phone wiretaps. Thus, for example, of the 1891 intercept orders granted in 2008, all but 134 of them were issued for phone taps."

Which begs the question: "How often are Internet communications being monitored, and what kind of orders are required in order to do so."

Unsurprisingly, the threshold for obtaining personal records is exceedingly low and "very few of these methods require an intercept order."

All the government need do to obtain a pen register or trap and trace order, which examine to/from/subject lines of email messages, URLs of viewed web pages, search terms, telephone numbers dialed and the like, is to unilaterally declare that information obtained via this backdoor route is "relevant" to an ongoing criminal or counterterrorist investigation.

In other words, give us everything we want and move along!

The nation's telecoms and ISPs have been very accommodating in this regard. And, as with other recent historical examples that come to mind such as the rush by U.S. firms to "rebuild" Iraq, Afghanistan and other benighted nations "liberated" by that "shining city upon a hill" that bombs, maims and generally does what it pleases because it can, servicing the secret state's limitless appetite for "actionable intelligence" has proven to be a very lucrative cash cow indeed.

Open a Can of Worms and Blood-Sucking Night Crawlers Slither Out

Deciding to "follow the money," Soghoian hoped "to determine how often Internet firms were disclosing their customers' private information to the government." As often as possible as it turns out. Describing the nexus between Sprint Nextel and the secret state, Soghoian discloses:

Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers' (GPS) location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. This massive disclosure of sensitive customer information was made possible due to the roll-out by Sprint of a new, special web portal for law enforcement officers.

The evidence documenting this surveillance program comes in the form of an audio recording of Sprint's Manager of Electronic Surveillance, who described it during a panel discussion at a wiretapping and interception industry conference, held in Washington DC in October of 2009.

It is unclear if Federal law enforcement agencies' extensive collection of geolocation data should have been disclosed to Congress pursuant to a 1999 law that requires the publication of certain surveillance statistics--since the Department of Justice simply ignores the law, and has not provided the legally mandated reports to Congress since 2004. (Christopher Soghoian, "8 Million Reasons for Real Surveillance Oversight," Slight Paranoia, December 1, 2009)

A web portal I might add, equipped with a built-in price list ready-made for charging securocrats who spy on our blog posts, emails, web searches, mobile phone pings; indeed, any data the government might deem worthy of an "investigation." Call it a PayPal for spooks; now how's that for convenience!

How did Soghoian dig up the facts on the firm's lucrative arrangement with the government? In October, he attended the ISS World 2009 conference, Intelligence Support Systems for Lawful Interception, Criminal Investigations and Intelligence Gathering (ISS), described by Wired as "a surveillance industry gathering for law enforcement and intelligence agencies and the companies that provide them with the technologies and capabilities to conduct surveillance."

Closed to the media and the public, the enterprising researcher obtained entry as a graduate student and recorded several sessions, since taken down at the insistence of ISS's corporate master TeleStrategies, who hosted the conference.

Describing itself as "the leading producer of telecommunications conference events in the United States," the firm claimed that Soghoian's recordings "violated copyright law." But not having deep pockets to weather a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown fight, he removed the files from his blog.

Inquiring minds can't help but wonder what was so threatening to the corporatist apple cart that they threatened to bring their thumb down, on a student no less? Let's take a look!

Among the sponsors of this year's ISS confab, one finds the usual low-key suspects manning the exhibits, hawking their wares and delivering learned presentations to their "partners" in the intelligence and security "community."

Leading the pack is ETI Group, self-described as "a leading management consulting firm specializing in Process Management and Improvement." As a "leading provider" of so-called "lawful interception solutions" for security agencies, telecoms and ISPs, ETI Group provide "future proof and scalable platforms" for the acquisition of information from "multiple sources."

NICE Systems, another "leading provider" of what it calls "Insight from Interactions solutions" derived from the "the convergence of advanced analytics of unstructured multimedia content and transactional data--from telephony, web, email, radio, video and other data sources." Partners in the "Security Sector" include, among others, Raytheon, Honeywell, Siemens, Lockheed Martin, HP, Tyco and Motorola, all of whom are heavy-hitters in the Military-Industrial-Intelligence Complex and niche players in the burgeoning electronic surveillance industry in their own right.

Next up is SAP, a firm whose Government Support & Services division provide "a comprehensive range" of "enterprise software applications" to "help the analysts of the Intelligence Community" obtain "timely, accurate, objective and relevant intelligence." One can only wonder whether Doug Feith's shop over at the Pentagon deployed SAP "solutions" to find Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction" during the run-up to the Iraq invasion!

Taking their turn on the dais is Spectronic Systems, a Danish firm that is "100% privately owned." Little however, could be gleaned from a perusal of their web site since the company kindly informs us that it "is strictly for the benefit of Government Agencies, Law Enforcement Agencies, Intelligence Agencies and Government Approved companies." However, ISS World was good enough to disclose that Spectronic activities include "the development and manufacturing of monitoring systems and monitoring centres" for telephone, internet, fax and modem traffic. Their systems are designed to "handle--i.e. retrieve, collect, decode, store and present--bulk data," that can double as "data retention systems" for "bulk monitoring of SMS, MMS, e-mails or other means of data communication." But how beneficial is it to the bottom line? Alas, a diligent search of the business press by this writer hit a veritable blank wall.

SS8 on the other hand is more forthcoming, claiming that their "products" allow intelligence agencies to "visualize and analyze a target's internet session" and to "recognize, monitor, investigate and prevent criminal activity." Proud that they have a "global reach," SS8 broadcasts that their "electronic surveillance solutions" are "deployed in over 25 countries" and that their data installations "can intercept more than 100 million subscribers." The firm's platform for internet, WiFi, broadband and satellite interception claims to be capable of ferreting out "hidden relationships" while identifying "trends" (code for data mining and social network analysis) that "meet the functional needs" of the secret state.

Telesoft Technologies, produce "monitoring probes" that "allow data extraction" from "cellular and fixed networks." This can be done for "fixed, 2/3G mobile and packet networks." According to the firm, their "universal passive probes extract call content, signalling [sic] and location information for use by monitoring applications," ensuring a seamless connection" of applications to "real world systems."

True Position; this firm's national security brief involves the identification and tracking of any mobile device in "real time" and offer "insightful intelligence" while "delivering powerful solutions" that "enable private enterprises and government agencies" the capability "to protect people, combat crime, and save lives like never before." According to the company's web site, the firm deploys data mining technologies that "monitor activity and behavior over time in order to build detailed profiles and identify others that they associate with."

Last, but certainly not least, is the ultra-spooky Israeli firm, Verint (formerly Comverse Infosys). Billing itself as the world leader in "actionable intelligence," readers are well-advised to peruse the documents on Verint products such as Reliant and Star Gate generously posted by our good friends over at the whistleblowing web site Quintessenz. And while your at it, why not check out AFC's piece, "Thick as Thieves: The Private (and very profitable) World of Corporate Spying," where information on the shady activities of the firm's founder, Kobi Alexander, can be found. Currently holed-up in Windhoek, Namibia after becoming the recipient of a 2006 thirty-two count indictment by the Justice Department that charged the ex-Israeli intelligence officer and entrepreneur with backdating millions of stock options worth $138 million, Alexander is a sterling representative of an industry dedicated to "lawful interception" of our electronic communications to "prevent criminal activity."

Amongst the exhibitors at ISS World, one finds (yet another) spooky Israeli firm Narus, whose hardware was a permanent "guest" in ATT/NSA "secret rooms" scattered around the country for surveillance of the entire Internet. First disclosed by ATT whistleblower Mark Klein in his sworn affidavit on behalf of EFF's lawsuit, Hepting v. ATT, the firm's STA 6400 traffic analyzer can monitor traffic equal to 39,000 DSL lines at 10 Gbit/s, or in practical terms, a single Narus machine can surveil several million broadband users at any given time. In 2004, the former Deputy Director of NSA, William Crowell joined the firm's board of directors. As a result of FAA's retroactive immunity provision, Hepting v. ATT was dismissed in 2009.

Which brings us full-circle to Sprint Nextel's spiffy new web portal that enables the secret state to "ping" their customers' GPS locations eight million times in the space of a year.

Tip of the Proverbial Iceberg

Hoping to learn more, Soghoian filed multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the Department of Justice, seeking relevant details on just how much these corporate grifters charge our silent guardians for their electronic spying.

It was at that point that Soghoian ran into a brick wall. When he uncovered evidence that the illicit surveillance compact amongst federal security agencies, telecoms and ISPs was a limitless gold mine enriching shareholders at the expense of our constitutional rights, the firms struck back.

"Verizon and Yahoo intervened and filed an objection on grounds that, among other things, they would be ridiculed and publicly shamed were their surveillance price sheets made public," Wired reported December 1.

What do these firms have to hide? Apparently, quite a lot.

Yahoo and Verizon weren't about to release the data and filed a 12-page objection letter with the Justice Department, claiming that if their pricing information were disclosed to Soghoian he would use it for nefarious ends "to 'shame' Yahoo and other companies--and to 'shock' their customers."

Cryptome Delivers the Goods, Again

Despite their whining, the indefatigable John Young, webmaster of the intelligence and security whistleblowing web site Cryptome, has published the Yahoo! Compliance Guide for Law Enforcement.

The 17-page handy guide for spooks and cops provides information on what the firm can and will provide the secret state (everything) and what it will cost.

Cryptome, never a site to run from a fight, has also posted the compliance guides of AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, Voicestream, Cox, Cingular, SBC, and Pacific Telesis.

As Antifascist Calling has averred many times, since the business of America's security is, after all, business, let's just say the "service" Yahoo provides our nation's spooks doesn't come cheap.

For his sterling efforts to inform the public, Young has been threatened by Yahoo attorneys with the tony Washington law firm Steptoe & Johnson. Collapse

Washington has been pressuring its NATO allies to pour in more fighters even though Europeans don't want any part of it. The New York Times reported Nov. 25th the U.S. is asking NATO for 10,000 more troops above the 45,000 already in place. That could bring total Allied forces to about 150,000. Toss in 70,000 private contractors and the total force soars to over 200,000. Yes, Afghanistan is shaping up as another Viet Nam.

Obama apparently never seriously considered ending the war diplomatically. Recall his blustering campaign rhetoric about defeating the Taliban; recall the public commitment last December of Defense Secretary Robert Gates to strengthen military bases in Afghanistan. Gates was the Bush official Obama continued in office.

Even as polls show a majority of Americans want U.S. forces out of Afghanistan and that Americans do not believe the war is worth fighting, President Obama---a former editor at the CIA front Business International Corporation in 1983-84---embraces a position in line with the long-held CIA view the U.S. must control the Middle East's energy resources. It was the CIA that overthrew Iran in 1953 after Tehran nationalized its oil production, depriving British Petroleum of its lucrative swindle. Afghanistan is valued today for the oil and gas pipelines the U.S. wants built there, no matter what other reasons Obama gives.

"In the late 1990s," writes Washington reporter Bill Blum in his "Anti-Empire Report," "the American oil company, Unocal, met with Taliban officials in Texas to discuss the pipelines... Unocal's talks with the Taliban, conducted with the full knowledge of the Clinton administration...continued as late as 2000 or 2001." Adds Paul Craig Roberts writing in the December Rock Creek Free Press of Washington, D.C., the U.S./U.K. military aggression in Afghanistan "had to do with the natural gas deposits in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan." Roberts explains:

"The Americans wanted a pipeline that bypassed Russia and Iran and went through Afghanistan. To insure this, an invasion was necessary. The idiot American public could be told that the invasion was necessary because of 9/11 and to save them from 'terrorism,' and the utter fools would believe the lie." The war, Roberts continued, is to guard the pipeline route. "It's about money, it's about energy, it's not about democracy."

According to an AP dispatch of November 26th, "The president promised this week to 'finish the job' begun eight years ago...but liberal Democrats already are lining up against it (escalation), in part because of the also-surging cost---up to $75 billion a year." Describing the war in workplace terminology makes it sound as if Obama is running a personnel agency that was dispatching workers to build some public works, not as though he is continuing President George Bush's illegal war.

Apparently, only escalation in Afghanistan was considered by Obama. As The Washington Post reported last December, "standing at Kandahar Air Field in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the United States is making a 'sustained commitment' to that country, one that will last 'some protracted period of time.'" The story goes on to discuss $300 million in new construction at just one base, including a new power plant, electrical and water distribution systems, and housing for 1,500 personnel. Gates hardly would have made a "sustained commitment" if Obama planned to withdraw. And every day the war goes on while Obama mulls his options is a day of victory for the hawks.

In January, a Defense Department report stated "building a fully competent and independent Afghan government will be a lengthy process that will last, at a minimum, decades," The Nation magazine's Jonathan Schell reports (Nov. 30). So far from defeating the Taliban are Allied forces that US military contractors "are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes," Aram Roston writes in the same issue. "It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting." In fact, an American executive there told Roston, "The Army is basically paying the Taliban not to shoot at them. It is Department of Defense money."

Nevertheless, the slick orator from Illinois continues U.S. aggression in the energy-rich Middle East. Obama clearly is no liberal, much less a progressive. He is a reactionary. He is advancing the militarist policies of the Bush-Cheney regime. He is defending the CIA. He is increasing the total Pentagon budget. He is expanding an illegal war into Pakistan. Once this is understood, the other pieces of Obama policy fall into place. Obama is continuing the illegal "extraordinary rendition" kidnappings authorized by President Bush. Obama rejects prosecuting CIA torture goons who broke the law and refuses to release photos of their grisly handiwork. Obama balks at signing a treaty to ban land mines that has been affirmed by 150 nations. Obama expands the Predator assassination attacks claiming hundreds of civilian lives. And so on, ad nauseam.

The military-industrial complex will support Obama's escalation of these wars in order to cash in on those lucrative defense contracts valued at $700 billion a year while good jobs in other sectors of the U.S. economy, starved for investment capital, continue to shrink; while cities continue to decline; while handgun massacres become commonplace in our schools and offices; while homeowners are forced into the streets; while start-ups can't get loans; and while Wall Street loots the Treasury. In short, Obama is propelling the once great USA toward Third World status.

What's more, in all the recent debate in Washington, who has heard a word of concern for the impact of escalation on the suffering civilian populations of Afghanistan and Pakistan?

"Our military demands ever more troops," Veterans Speaker Alliance's founder Paul Cox said at an Oakland, Calif., rally, last week with Barbara Lee, the only member of Congress to vote against the initial Afghan aggression. "Meanwhile, our economy is in the toilet, health care costs are out of control, and we can't afford to educate our children. But somehow, there's always money for war." Rep. Lee called for putting "this stage of American history--a stage characterized by open-ended war--to a close."

Europeans---who are supporting a NATO organization that has no real purpose since the end of the Cold War---would agree with Lee. As the New York Times reported Nov. 25th: "America's European allies have remained noncommittal about sending additional troops to Afghanistan. France and Germany in particular have continued to limit their combat role, with both countries refusing to deploy troops in the south of the country, where Taliban forces are strongest."

If the majority Democrats won't end it, Americans could embrace the Green Party, which has consistently called for pulling U.S. forces out of the Middle East, sharply reducing the Pentagon budget, and shifting spending to respond to true public needs. Right now, voting Green appears to be the way to let the peace dove out of its cage.

(Reach the author, a former reporter for the Chicago Daily News, at [email protected])

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While congressional Democrats and Republicans diverted the public's attention with claims and counterclaims whether or not the Company had "misled" Congress by not disclosing the program's existence, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported months earlier that former Vice President Richard Cheney had stood up an "executive assassination ring."

According to Hersh, that fully-operational program was run, not by the CIA, but by the Pentagon's secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), a subunit attached to United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). During a "Great Conversations" event last March at the University of Minnesota, Hersh told the audience:

"Congress has no oversight of it. It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.

"Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us." (Eric Black, "Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh describes 'executive assassination ring'," MinnPost.com, March 11, 2009)

Old news right? Well, not entirely.

Wired investigative reporter Noah Shachtman revealed November 3, that a report published by the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations University (JSOU), the "educational component" of USSOCOM based at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, proposed creating a specialized "manhunting" unit with a global reach.

Shachtman writes that its author argues that the CIA "didn't go far enough. Instead, it suggests the American government should set up something like a 'National Manhunting Agency' to go after jihadists, drug dealers, pirates and other enemies of the state."

While not an "official" report, the fact that the monograph, Manhunting: Counter-Network Organization for Irregular Warfare, was written by retired Air Force Lt. Colonel George A. Crawford and published by JSOU, lends added weight to arguments by critics that the United States Government has "gone rogue" and is preparing a planet-wide Operation Condor network to capture or kill imperialism's enemies.

Currently a senior director for Archimedes Global, Inc., Crawford boasts a résumé that includes "operational assignments with special operations and special activities, intelligence collection and analysis, information operations and psychological operations."

The shadowy firm, while short on information describing what it actually does, like many newly-minted intelligence and security outfits in Washington, is chock-a-block with retired spooks and special forces operators cashing-in on the tsunami of public funds fueling the "War on Terror."

According to their web site the company offer services such as "Operations and Research" from "experienced, highly trained people" who possess "unmatched expertise across a number of industries and focus areas."

In the realm of Technology, Archimedes specializes in "Cryptanalysis and Applied Cryptography." Hint, hint, this is what the National Security Agency does when it isn't spying on the American people and building an exploitable database on dissidents destined for "special handling" should the need arise.

The firm's "Information and Risk" brief claims they will solve "the most difficult communication and risk problems by seeing over the horizon with a blend of art and science." And with focus areas that include "strategic communications, media analysis and support, crisis communications, and risk and vulnerability assessment and mitigation," it doesn't take a rocket scientist to infer that those well-schooled in the dark art of psychological operations (PSYOPS) would find a friendly home at Archimedes!

With some 25-years experience "as a foreign area officer specializing in Eastern Europe and Central Asia," including a stint "as acting Air and Defense Attaché to Kyrgyzstan," Crawford brings an interesting skill-set to the table.

A trained interrogator "selected by the commander of United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) as an inspector for the Secretary of Defense Interrogation Special Focus Team," one shudders to contemplate what his duties entailed in that capacity.

As the Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported in 2004 in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, with Special Operations Forces (SOF) tasked with "greater responsibility for planning and conducting worldwide counterterrorism operations," systematic human rights violations in Afghanistan and Iraq was just another day at the office.

Intimate with the narcotrafficking, al-Qaeda-linked Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), JSOU avers that Crawford "personally authored the intelligence plan for military operations in Kosovo and was the lead strategist for developing USSOCOM's advanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities for counterterrorism operations."

A rather ironic claim considering that right-up to the moment of the 9/11 attacks, as former FBI translator and whistleblower Sibel Edmonds revealed, the United States employed Afghan-Arab veterans of the anti-Soviet jihad for destabilization operations in innumerable global hot spots.

Manhunting: The Return of Operation Condor?

This isn't the first time that America's engagement with "dark actors" involved in "manhunting" as a state-sponsored blood sport led to a devil's pact with torturers, drug dealers and sociopathic fascist killers.

During the 1970s, in the wake of the overthrow of Chile's democratically-elected socialist president, Salvador Allende, the intelligence and security services of several Latin American states, notably Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay launched a secretive program, Operation Condor--with a major assist from the CIA and the Pentagon--that tracked down and murdered leftist opponents.

Operating under the radar, Condor operatives included military personnel, European neofascists, CIA-trained Cuban terrorists and international narcotraffickers who did the "wet work" for their political masters, Latin American oligarchs and their North American allies. Thousands were killed and thousands more "disappeared" into clandestine prisons.

Long Island University political science professor, J. Patrice McSherry, revealed, "U.S. military and intelligence forces were well informed of Condor operations, and the United States played a key covert role in modernizing and extending the Condor apparatus. An Argentine military source told a U.S. Embassy contact in 1976 that the CIA had been deeply involved in setting up computerized links among the intelligence and operations units of the six Condor states."

Indeed, so extensive were these links that "U.S. forces also gave the Condor organization access to the U.S. continental communications system based in the Panama Canal Zone." A declassified 1978 cable from U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay Robert White to the Secretary of State, "revealed that Condor operatives made use of a U.S. facility in the Canal Zone for secret communications and intelligence coordination."

The Pentagon, according to White's declassified cable, provided the narco-linked death squad with the sophisticated electronic means to coordinate global operations.

General Alejandro Fretes Dávalos, commander of Paraguay's armed forces told the ambassador, "that intelligence chiefs from Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay used 'an encrypted system within the U.S. telecommunications net[work],' which covered all of Latin America, to 'coordinate intelligence information'."

"Essentially," McSherry wrote, "U.S. military and/or intelligence forces put the official U.S. communications channel at the disposal of Operation Condor. It was a collaboration reflecting high-level executive approval of Condor."

This "high-level executive approval" of an international death squad reflected past--and current--Pentagon thinking that when it comes to killing capitalism's opponents, everything is permitted.

The parallels to contemporary American covert intelligence and military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with their documented linkages to the flourishing international drug trade are striking.

That these moves by Washington to seize the geostrategic high ground vis-à-vis their imperialist rivals, as in Latin America decades earlier, have spawned an unholy alliance with far-right political forces, warlords, religious extremists and drug traffickers, exposes the lie that U.S. military intervention has anything to do with democracy and human rights. Thirty years ago Danish journalist Henrik Krüger observed:

International Fascista was a crucial first step toward fulfilling the dream not only of [SS Col. Otto] Skorzeny, but also of his close friends in Madrid exile, José Lopez Rega, Juan Peron's grey eminence, and Prince Justo Valerio Borghese, the Italian Fascist money man who had been rescued from execution at the hands of the World War II Italian resistance by future CIA counterintelligence whiz James J. Angleton. They, and other Nazi and Fascist powers throughout Europe and Latin America, envisioned a new world order built on a Fascist Iron Circle linking Buenos Aires, Santiago, Lima, La Paz, Brasilia and Montevideo. (Henrik Krüger, The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence, & International Fascism, Boston: South End Press, 1980, p. 210)

Shaped by French unconventional warfare doctrines, U.S. counterinsurgency tactics employed in Southeast Asia, and their own on the ground expertise crushing dissent, the "new professionalism of internal security" deployed by Condor operatives--code for massive repression and unrestrained violence--was directed against the people of Latin America with predictable results.

Eerily prefiguring America's "War on Terror," counterinsurgency "specialist" Roger Trinquier, the author of Modern Warfare and an architect of France's bloody repression during the Algerian anticolonial struggle (1954-1962), averred that counterguerrillas must employ the full range of psychological warfare techniques against the civilian population if victory is to be achieved. This is a thesis to which Crawford returns time and again, particularly as it relates to the covert decapitation of resistance networks by American manhunters.

Fast forward and it becomes all-too-clear that Krüger's "Fascist Iron Circle" didn't disappear with Pinochet's fall from grace; instead, it has morphed into a high-tech killing machine whose tentacles have fanned-out from the Washington Beltway to encircle the globe. Peter Dale Scott, writing on America's descent into a lawless state presciently remarked:

Mafias and empires have certain elements in common. Both can be seen as the systematic violent imposition of governance in areas of undergovernance. Both use atrocities to achieve their ends; but both tend to be tolerated to the extent that the result of their controlled violence is a diminution of uncontrolled violence. I would tentatively suggest an important difference between mafias and empires: that, with the passage of time, mafias tend to become more and more part of the civil society whose rules they once broke, while empires tend to become more and more irreconcilably at odds with the societies they once controlled. ("Deep Events and the CIA's Global Drug Connection," Global Research, September 6, 2008)

Indeed, the "controlled violence" implicit in Crawford's thesis, provides stark confirmation of Scott's analysis that as the imperialist empire unravels it tends "to become more and more irreconcilably at odds" with popular control in a democratic republic.

The Mechanics of Standing Up a Death Squad

In "Unconventional Warfare in the 21st Century," Antifascist Calling revealed last December that USSOCOM had published its definitive doctrine on the subject. Titled Unconventional Warfare, the 248-page document asserted that Unconventional Warfare or UW establishes a "litmus test," namely warfare conducted "by, with or through surrogates" and that their preferred assets are irregular forces:

Irregulars, or irregular forces, are individuals or groups of individuals who are not members of a regular armed force, police, or other internal security force. They are usually nonstate-sponsored and unconstrained by sovereign nation legalities and boundaries. These forces may include, but are not limited to, specific paramilitary forces, contractors, individuals, businesses, foreign political organizations, resistance or insurgent organizations, expatriates, transnational terrorism adversaries, disillusioned transnational terrorism members, black marketers, and other social or political "undesirables." (Army Special Operations Forces, Unconventional Warfare, Field Manual No. 3-05.130, Headquarters, Department of the Army, Washington, DC, 30 September 2008, p. 1-3)

And with an explicitly stated goal to "gain or maintain control or influence over the population and to support that population through political, psychological, and economic methods," the organization that Crawford proposes in Manhunting clearly exists along this UW warfighting continuum.

Manhunting--the deliberate concentration of national power to find, influence, capture, or when necessary kill an individual to disrupt a human network--has emerged as a key component of operations to counter irregular warfare adversaries in lieu of traditional state-on-state conflict measures. It has arguably become a primary area of emphasis in countering terrorist and insurgent opponents. (George A. Crawford, Manhunting: Counter-Network Organization for Irregular Warfare, JSOU Report 09-7, The JSOU Press, Hurlburt Field, Florida, September 2009, p. 1)

In the author's view, a national manhunting agency of necessity, will be a hybrid organization, combining features of a Special Forces small tactical team with those of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team (HRT), the U.S. Marshals Services' Special Operations Group (USMSSOG) at the federal level, "down to Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams and fugitive or criminal task forces in most U.S. cities."

In addition to American examples, the author cites New Scotland Yard's Antiterrorist Branch (SO13), Germany's Grenzschutzgruppe (GSG-9), and the French Groupe de Sécurité et d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN) as examples of a combined task force built on the "elite unit concept." Moving on, Crawford recommends Israel's Sayaret Mat'kal, "a special reconnaissance unit within Israel's General Headquarters Intelligence Corps.

Lest readers forget, New Scotland Yard's Antiterrorist Branch, SO13, was the "crack" unit that murdered Jean Claude de Menezes in cold blood on a London subway in 2005.

After an investigation that was little more than a cover-up, it was revealed that de Menezes was entirely innocent and had been mistakenly targeted by SO13's armed wing, SO19, as part of "Operation Kratos," the Met's controversial "shoot-to-kill" program meant to take down suspected terrorists and would-be suicide bombers.

De Menezes was neither, but that didn't stop police from pumping seven bullets into his head.

Tellingly, SO13 was stood up after consultations with Israeli "experts," well-known for their fidelity to human rights, the rule of law and the sanctity of life, as Israel's murderous assault last year on Gaza amply demonstrated. Collapse

Hoh's resignation revolves around one basic point. And that is that he had lost the 'understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan.' Three facts clearly manifest themselves by the time one reaches the end of Hoh's resignation letter; the first two by their presence, the last by its absence in his long missive;

1. Matthew Hoh seems to be an honest and courageous officer.

2. He sincerely feels that United States blundered by occupying Afghanistan and continuing to remain tied in there.

3. Matthew Hoh does not feel the same about America's Iraq debacle. He did not complain about America's occupation of Iraq even once in his resignation letter.

The resignation itself, therefore, boggles the mind. What was Hoh thinking when he joined the Foreign Service of a government whose governance is seen more abroad than at home? Did he think that American presence in distant corners of the world was for some missionary purpose; or to distribute equitably the milk of human kindness?

He should have known that America had, even before the deployment of troops for the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, around 750 military installations located in more than 130 countries with actual American military contingents stationed in 65 different foreign countries. And that like all occupying powers, Americans have around 70,000 U.S. troops in Germany, 40,000 in Japan and about 37,000 in South Korea, where they have been since 1951.

As an aspiring Foreign Service officer, Matthew Hoh should have long known that Iraq and Afghanistan are just the latest victims of the colonial behemoth in a continued saga of American imperialism and not any thing else. And that, historically, successive American Administrations have made homeless the Native Americans in their own home, conquered half of Mexico, occupied Hawaii, subjugated the Philippines and bullied a rather large number of smaller nations. He should have known that as far back as 1986, in Nicaragua vs. United States, his became the only country ever condemned for 'international terrorism' by the World Court (a foreign policy venture conducted by Foreign Service officers like himself).

Furthermore, while one salutes the courage of Matthew Hoh for not wanting to be a part of the bloody drama in Afghanistan any more, he only found out what most of the world had long known. That Afghanistan is a burial ground of Empires and was a bad choice for his masters to launch their dream of neo-colonizing of an impoverished yet honorable people. That many an invader lie buried beneath the fiery sands of Afghanistan's desolate stretches. That, in the words of Sir Olaf Caroe, "unlike other wars, Afghan wars become serious only when they are over." But fuddled by majestic fantasies and self-adulation, the Empire seekers, whose representative Hoh was till late, went ahead and did exactly what they should have not.

Let us for a moment grant that Hoh erred by joining the Foreign Service and corrected himself later by resigning over Afghanistan issue when he saw things from up close. But then why not mention the Iraq flop too? He does after all remember with horror America's involvement in South Vietnam and the 'arrogance and ignorance' of the then U.S. Administrations in perpetuating the disaster. Yet he somehow forgets to refer to Iraq's occupation; a country where he served for two years and saw the results of America's invasion first hand.

Iraq posed no danger to the United States, having neither the means nor the intent of waging war against her, never issued any threat to America, and never possessed even a single WMD. Yet while Iraq now lies in tatters at the hands of Hoh's masters, the only mention that blighted country gets in his resignation letter is with rather a sense of pride of Hoh having 'served' his country there.

It is thus safe to assume, by natural corollary from the substance of his resignation letter, that he seems to have an 'understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence' in Iraq. Why else would he not refer to America's occupation of Iraq in his resignation letter?

But that is even more intriguing.

Did Hoh, an aspiring Foreign Service officer, never hear of something called the Downing Street memo that clearly shows that the two leading coalition members, the US and Britain, were fully engaged in "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression" and "fixing" intelligence to suit these aims-prosecutable war crimes in themselves.

Having been personally present in Iraq, Hoh should have known that the Bush administration leaders, and military personnel following orders of these leaders, had committed barefaced violations of the laws and customs of war. They caused, directly or indirectly, the massacre of civilian populations of an occupied territory, murdered and ill-treated prisoners of war, pillaged public and private properties, wantonly destroyed cities, towns, and villages not justified by any military necessity and used depleted uranium weapons taking a ghastly toll in human lives.

Every canon of the United Nations Charter, the 1945 Nuremberg Charter, International humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions was blown to bits by his government in Iraq. As a matter of fact, if he so wanted, Hoh could personally sue and prosecute his masters in a U.S. court of law. So blatant were these crimes that no legal genius is required to indict for war crimes some of his previous masters still strutting about in his great country.

And if he ever thought that 'the strategic purpose of the United States' presence' in Iraq was to contain, or wrestle to the ground, radical Islam, then he needs to think again. It is not hard to see that due to the absurd hubris of his previous masters, Islamic militancy is at present surging in tidal waves across the region. America has given Muslim fundamentalism a momentum so pernicious that it now threatens to devour entire nations. The whole area is currently in turmoil with America's closest ally Pakistan in almost death throes.

And now to 'oho'.

'Oho' is an interjection used to express surprise, comprehension, or mock astonishment as defined by the free online dictionary.

Though the scribe does appreciate the courage of the ex-marine, the comprehension part of 'oho', yet is surprised that it took so long for Foreign Service officer Matthew Hoh to lose 'understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan' while retaining the same for America's occupation of Iraq. The scribe's is for Hoh to finally have 'doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy,' and that his resignation was '...based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end.'

Welcome to the club Matthew Hoh, the small club of we the rest of the world, who have been saying the same thing for a rather long time now.

Perhaps someday Hoh will enlighten the world with his 'understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence' in Iraq. The scribe would like to see if it was any thing other than the hydrocarbon buried beneath the smoldering sands of Iraq.

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It should come as no surprise then, that the secret state and the capitalist grifters whom they serve, have zeroed-in on the explosive growth of these technologies. One can be certain however, securocrats aren't tweeting their restaurant preferences or finalizing plans for after work drinks.

No, researchers on both sides of the Atlantic are busy as proverbial bees building a "total information" surveillance system, one that will, so they hope, provide police and security agencies with what they euphemistically call "actionable intelligence."

Build the Perfect Panopticon, Win Fabulous Prizes!

In this context, the whistleblowing web site Wikileaks published a remarkable document October 4 by the INDECT Consortium, the Intelligence Information System Supporting Observation, Searching and Detection for Security of Citizens in Urban Environment.

Hardly a catchy acronym, but simply put INDECT is working to put a human face on the billions of emails, text messages, tweets and blog posts that transit cyberspace every day; perhaps your face.

According to Wikileaks, INDECT's "Work package 4" is designed "to comb web blogs, chat sites, news reports, and social-networking sites in order to build up automatic dossiers on individuals, organizations and their relationships." Ponder that phrase again: "automatic dossiers."

This isn't the first time that European academics have applied their "knowledge skill sets" to keep the public "safe"--from a meaningful exercise of free speech and the right to assemble, that is.

Last year The Guardian reported that Bath University researchers' Cityware project covertly tracked "tens of thousands of Britons" through the installation of Bluetooth scanners that capture "radio signals transmitted from devices such as mobile phones, laptops and digital cameras, and using the data to follow unwitting targets without their permission."

One privacy advocate, Simon Davies, the director of Privacy International, told The Guardian: "This technology could well become the CCTV of the mobile industry. It would not take much adjustment to make this system a ubiquitous surveillance infrastructure over which we have no control."

Which of course, is precisely the point.

As researchers scramble for a windfall of cash from governments eager to fund these dubious projects, European police and security agencies aren't far behind their FBI and NSA colleagues in the spy game.

The online privacy advocates, Quintessenz, published a series of leaked documents in 2008 that described the network monitoring and data mining suites designed by Nokia Siemens, Ericsson and Verint.

The Nokia Siemens Intelligence Platform dubbed "intelligence in a box," integrate tasks generally done by separate security teams and pools the data from sources such as telephone or mobile calls, email and internet activity, bank transactions, insurance records and the like. Call it data mining on steroids.

Ironically enough however, Siemens, the giant German electronics firm was caught up in a global bribery scandal that cost the company some $1.6 billion in fines. Last year, The New York Times described "a web of secret bank accounts and shadowy consultants," and a culture of "entrenched corruption ... at a sprawling, sophisticated corporation that externally embraced the nostrums of a transparent global marketplace built on legitimate transactions."

According to the Times, "at Siemens, bribery was just a line item." Which just goes to show, powering the secret state means never having to say you're sorry!

Social Network Spying, a Growth Industry Fueled by Capitalist Grifters

The trend by security agencies and their corporate partners to spy on their citizens has accelerated greatly in the West since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

This multi-billion industry in general, has been a boon for the largest American and European defense corporations. Among the top ten companies listed by Washington Technology in their annual ranking of the "Top 100" prime government contractors, all ten--from Lockheed Martin to Booz Allen Hamilton--earned a combined total of $68 billion in 2008 from defense and related homeland security work for the secret state.

And like Siemens, all ten corporations figure prominently on the Project on Government Oversight's Federal Contractor Misconduct Database (FCMD), which tracks "contract fraud, environmental, ethics, and labor violations." Talk about a rigged game!

Designing everything from nuclear missile components to eavesdropping equipment for various government agencies in the United States and abroad, including some of the most repressive regimes on the planet, these firms have moved into manufacturing the hardware and related computer software for social networking surveillance in a big way.

Wired revealed in April that the FBI is routinely monitoring cell phone calls and internet activity during criminal and counterterrorism investigations. The publication posted a series of internal documents that described the Wi-Fi and computer hacking capabilities of the Bureau's Cryptographic and Electronic Analysis Unit (CEAU).

New Scientist reported back in 2006 that the National Security Agency "is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks."

And just this week in an exclusive report published by the British high-tech publication, The Register, it was revealed that "the government has outsourced parts of its biggest ever mass surveillance project to the disaster-prone IT services giant formerly known as EDS."

That work is being conducted under the auspices of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British state's equivalent of America's National Security Agency.

Investigative journalist Chris Williams disclosed that the American computer giant HP, which purchased EDS for some $13.9 billion last year, is "designing and installing the massive computing resources that will be needed to analyse details of who contacts whom, when where and how."

Work at GCHQ in Cheltenham is being carried out under "a secret project called Mastering the Internet." In May, a Home Office document surfaced that "ostensibly sought views on whether ISPs should be forced to gather terabytes of data from their networks on the government's behalf."

The Register reported earlier this year that telecommunications behemoth Detica and U.S. defense giant Lockheed Martin were providing GCHQ with data mining software "which searches bulk data, such as communications records, for patterns ... to identify suspects." (For further details see: Antifascist Calling, "Spying in the UK: GCHQ Awards Lockheed Martin £200m Contract, Promises to 'Master the Internet'," May 7, 2009)

It seems however, that INDECT researchers like their GCHQ/NSA kissin' cousins in Britain and the United States, are burrowing ever-deeper into the nuts-and-bolts of electronic social networking and may be on the verge of an Orwellian surveillance "breakthrough."

As New Scientist sagely predicted, the secret state most certainly plans to "harness advances in internet technology--specifically the forthcoming 'semantic web' championed by the web standards organisation W3C--to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals."

Profiling Internet Dissent

Pretty alarming, but the devil as they say is in the details and INDECT's release of their "Work package 4" file makes for a very interesting read. And with a title, "XML Data Corpus: Report on methodology for collection, cleaning and unified representation of large textual data from various sources: news reports, weblogs, chat," rest assured one must plow through much in the way of geeky gibberish and tech-speak to get to the heartless heart of the matter.

INDECT itself is a rather interesting amalgamation of spooks, cops and academics.

According to their web site, INDECT partners include: the University of Science and Technology, AGH, Poland; Gdansk University of Technology; InnoTech DATA GmbH & Co., Germany; IP Grenoble (Ensimag), France; MSWiA, the General Headquarters of Police, attached to the Ministry of the Interior, Poland; Moviquity, Spain; Products and Systems of Information Technology, PSI, Germany; the Police Service of Northern Ireland, PSNI, United Kingdom (hardly slouches when it comes to stitching-up Republicans and other leftist agitators!); Poznan University of Technology; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid; Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria; University of Wuppertal, Germany; University of York, Great Britain; Technical University of Ostrava, Czech Republic; Technical University of Kosice, Slovakia; X-Art Pro Division G.m.b.H, Austria; and finally, the Fachhochschule Technikum, also in Austria.

I don't know about you, but I find it rather ironic that the European Union, ostensible guardians of democracy and human rights, have turned for assistance in their surveillance projects to police and spy outfits from the former Soviet bloc, who after all know a thing or two when it comes to monitoring their citizens.

Right up front, York University's Suresh Manadhar, Ionnis Klapaftis and Shailesh Pandey, the principle authors of the INDECT report, make their intentions clear.

Since "security" as the authors argue, "is becoming a weak point of energy and communications infrastructures, commercial stores, conference centers, airports and sites with high person traffic in general," they aver that "access control and rapid response to potential dangers are properties that every security system for such environments should have."

Does INDECT propose building a just and prosperous global society, thus lessening the potential that terrorist killers or other miscreants will exploit a "target rich environment" that may prove deadly for innocent workers who, after all, were the principle victims of the 2004 and 2007 terrorist outrages in Madrid and London? Hardly.

As with their colleagues across the pond, INDECT is hunting for the ever-elusive technological quick-fix, a high-tech magic bullet. One, I might add, that will deliver neither safety nor security but rather, will constrict the democratic space where social justice movements flourish while furthering the reach of unaccountable security agencies.

The document "describes the first deliverable of the work package which gives an overview about the main methodology and description of the XML data corpus schema and describes the methodology for collection, cleaning and unified representation of large textual data from various sources: news reports, weblogs, chat, etc."

The first order of business "is the study and critical review of the annotation schemes employed so far for the development and evaluation of methods for entity resolution, co-reference resolution and entity attributes identification."

In other words, how do present technologic capabilities provide police, security agencies and capitalist grifters with the ability to identify who might be speaking to whom and for what purpose. INDECT proposes to introduce "a new annotation scheme that builds upon the strengths of the current-state-of-the-art," one that "should be extensible and modifiable to the requirements of the project."

Asserting that "an XML data corpus [can be] extracted from forums and social networks related to specific threats (e.g. hooliganism, terrorism, vandalism, etc.)," the authors claim they will provide "different entity types according to the requirements of the project. The grouping of all references to an entity together. The relationships between different entities" and finally, "the events in which entities participate."

Why stop there? Why not list the ubiquitous "other" areas of concern to INDECT's secret state partners? While "hooliganism, terrorism, vandalism, etc.," may be the ostensible purpose of their "entity attributes identification" project, surely INDECT is well aware that such schemes are just as easily applicable to local citizen groups, socialist and anarchist organizations, or to the innumerable environmental, human rights or consumer campaigners who challenge the dominant free market paradigm of their corporate sponsors.

The authors however, couldn't be bothered by the sinister applications that may be spawned by their research; indeed, they seem quite proud of it.

"The main achievements of this work" they aver, "allows the identification of several types of entities, groups the same references into one class, while at the same time allows the identification of relationships and events."

Indeed, the "inclusion of a multi-layered ontology ensures the consistency of the annotation" and will facilitate in the (near) future, "the use of inference mechanisms such as transitivity to allow the development of search engines that go beyond simple keyword search."

Quite an accomplishment! An enterprising security service or capitalist marketing specialist need only sift through veritable mountains of data available from commercial databases, or mobile calls, tweets, blog posts and internet searches to instantaneously identity "key agitators," to borrow the FBI's very 20th century description of political dissidents; individuals who could be detained or "neutralized" should sterner methods be required.

Indeed, a surveillance scheme such as the one INDECT is building could greatly facilitate--and simplify--the already formidable U.S. "Main Core" database that "reportedly collects and stores--without warrants or court orders--the names and detailed data of Americans considered to be threats to national security," as investigative journalists Tim Shorrock and Christopher Ketchum revealed in two disturbing reports last year.

The scale of "datasets/annotation schemes" exploited by INDECT is truly breathtaking and include: "Automatic Content Extraction" gleaned from "a variety of sources, such as news, broadcast conversations" that identify "relations between entities, and the events in which these participate."

We next discover what is euphemistically called the "Knowledge Base Population (KBP)," an annotation scheme that "focuses on the identification of entity types of Person (PER), Organization (ORG), and Geo-Political Entity (GPE), Location (LOC), Facility (FAC), Geographical/Social/Political (GPE), Vehicle (VEH) and Weapon (WEA)."

How is this accomplished? Why through an exploitation of open source materials of course!

INDECT researchers readily aver that "a snapshot of Wikipedia infoboxes is used as the original knowledge source. The document collection consists of newswire articles on the order of 1 million. The reference knowledge base includes hundreds of thousands of entities based on articles from an October 2008 dump of English Wikipedia. The annotation scheme in KBP focuses on the identification of entity types of Person (PER), Organization (ORG), and Geo-Political Entity (GPE)."

For what purpose? Mum's the word as far as INDECT is concerned.

Nothing escapes this panoptic eye. Even popular culture and leisure activities fall under the glare of security agencies and their academic partners in the latest iteration of this truly monstrous privacy-killing scheme. Using the movie rental firm Netflix as a model, INDECT cites the firm's "100 million ratings from 480 thousand randomly-chosen, anonymous Netflix customers" as "well-suited" to the INDECT surveillance model.

In conclusion, EU surveillance architects propose a "new annotation & knowledge representation scheme" that "is extensible," one that "allows the addition of new entities, relations, and events, while at the same time avoids duplication and ensures integrity."

Deploying an ontological methodology that exploits currently available data from open source, driftnet surveillance of news, broadcasts, blog entries and search results, and linkages obtained through a perusal of mobile phone records, credit card purchases, medical records, travel itineraries, etc., INDECT claims that in the near future their research will allow "a search engine to go beyond simple keyword queries by exploiting the semantic information and relations within the ontology."

And once the scheme is perfected, "the use of expressive logics ... becomes an enabler for detecting entity relations on the web." Or transform it into an "always-on" spy you carry in your pocket or whenever you switch on your computer.

This is how our minders propose to keep us "safe."

CIA Gets In on the Fun

Not to be outdone, the CIA has entered the lucrative market of social networking surveillance in a big way.

In an exclusive published by Wired, we learn that the CIA's investment arm, In-Q-Tel, "want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates--even check out your book reviews on Amazon."

Investigative journalist Noah Shachtman reveals that In-Q-Tel "is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It's part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using "open source intelligence"--information that's publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day." Wired reported:

Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. (It doesn't touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.) Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what's being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords. (Noah Shachtman, Exclusive: U.S. Spies Buy Stake in Firm that Monitors Blogs, Tweets," Wired, October 19, 2009)

Although In-Q-Tel spokesperson Donald Tighe told Wired that it wants Visible to monitor foreign social media and give American spooks an "early-warning detection on how issues are playing internationally," Shachtman points out that "such a tool can also be pointed inward, at domestic bloggers or tweeters."

According to Wired, the firm already keeps tabs on 2.0 web sites "for Dell, AT&T and Verizon." And as an added attraction, "Visible is tracking animal-right activists' online campaigns" against meat processing giant Hormel.

Shachtman reports that "Visible has been trying for nearly a year to break into the government field." And why wouldn't they, considering that the heimat security and even spookier black world of the U.S. "intelligence community," is a veritable cash-cow for enterprising corporations eager to do the state's bidding.

In 2008 Wired reports, Visible "teamed-up" with the Washington, DC-based consulting firm "Concepts & Strategies, which has handled media monitoring and translation services for U.S. Strategic Command and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, among others."

According to a blurb on the firm's web site they are in hot-pursuit of "social media engagement specialists" with Defense Department experience and "a high proficiency in Arabic, Farsi, French, Urdu or Russian." Wired reports that Concepts & Strategies "is also looking for an 'information system security engineer' who already has a 'Top Secret SCI [Sensitive Compartmentalized Information] with NSA Full Scope Polygraph' security clearance."

In such an environment, nothing escapes the secret state's lens. Shachtman reveals that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) "maintains an Open Source Center, which combs publicly available information, including web 2.0 sites."

In 2007, the Center's director, Doug Naquin, "told an audience of intelligence professionals" that "'we're looking now at YouTube, which carries some unique and honest-to-goodness intelligence.... We have groups looking at what they call 'citizens media': people taking pictures with their cell phones and posting them on the internet. Then there's social media, phenomena like MySpace and blogs'."

But as Steven Aftergood, who maintains the Secrecy News web site for the Federation of American Scientists told Wired, "even if information is openly gathered by intelligence agencies it would still be problematic if it were used for unauthorized domestic investigations or operations. Intelligence agencies or employees might be tempted to use the tools at their disposal to compile information on political figures, critics, journalists or others, and to exploit such information for political advantage. That is not permissible even if all of the information in question is technically 'open source'."

But as we have seen across the decades, from COINTELPRO to Operation CHAOS, and from Pentagon media manipulation during the run-up to the Iraq war through driftnet warrantless wiretapping of Americans' electronic communications, the secret state is a law unto itself, a self-perpetuating bureaucracy that thrives on duplicity, fear and cold, hard cash.

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press and the whistleblowing website Wikileaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.
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After getting their asses handed to them on this issue for months precisely because of the never-ending snipe hunt for a bipartisan healthcare reform bill and then throughout August being publicly bullied, taunted, bitch slapped and manipulated while staring like a deer into the headlights it seems the oh so smart corporate Democrats running the show in DC have learned absolutely nothing. How can this be? What can those people be thinking if the answer they've come up with is essentially more of the same? How can they conclude that what we need is more capitulation, further retreat and finally sacrificing real healthcare reform for an insurance company subsidy program that will fatten those malevolent interests even more than they are, that costs far too much, and returns far too little to the common people? Do they know how weak they are making themselves look in the eyes of the American people as they insist on playing the submissive role to the Republicans' and how it demonstrates anything but leadership as they keep the sworn enemies of any healthcare reform in the driver's seat even though the legislative and executive branches are controlled by Democrats?

It is embarrassing and shocking really to come to grips with just how isolated and out of touch the DC Democrats are on this issue (excepting of course the relative handful of committed progressives who have been vocal in their opposition to further capitulation). From day one the corporate DC Dems have played the obsequious handmaidens of the parasitical special interests on healthcare and to their allies, the congressional Republicans, who openly declare not only that they are against reform but that the President is a foreigner hell bent on imposing Soviet style totalitarianism on America combined with Nazi style euthanasia policies and taking the guns from crazy white people everywhere. They handed control of the message to the Republicans from day one too, making the fundamental question one of cost instead of whether or not healthcare will no longer be a privilege in America but a right that every citizen is entitled to in this country just as citizens are in all the other industrialized countries on earth.

When will it occur, and what will it take at long last, for the DC Dems to understand that they cannot represent the corporate interests and the interests of the common people of this nation on healthcare not to mention most other important issues facing the nation? When, at long last will they understand that the situation has become so acute and out of balance that the Washington game of buying off corporate support with massive giveaways to special interests and throwing a bone or two to the people is no longer acceptable? When will they realize that healthcare for all is not an academic mind tease or a parlor game but a life and death issue for 18,000 Americans annually and that it is the difference between keeping their lives together and bankruptcy for a million families every year now? Establishing a viable healthcare system worth having and that serves every citizen is a moral question, not a question of cost. How the lack of healthcare, skyrocketing costs for premiums and deductibles, the lack of good insurance and the denial of benefits are harming human beings are the fundamental issues at stake when you get right down to it, not the cost of covering everyone for the benefit of the for profit insurance industry. And when oh when will the ever so smart minds of the DC Dems realize that the costliest possible approach is the one they seem to want to foist upon us which is one that does not cover everyone, keeps our grotesque and broken system in tact while enriching the insurance companies yet only tinkering at the margins of reform? Providing massive subsidies for people to pay for rotten insurance policies is not a solution to anything and it isn't acceptable. If that's what we get in the end it's hard to imagine what it is we've won other than a pig in a poke for the common American citizen and his or her family.

The bottom line is that sometimes you simply have to fight for what you really believe in and let the chips fall where they may. Yes, you risk losing but winning isn't the only thing that matters. It matters what you win too. If you fight for what is right, but lose, at least you have done so with some honor and the whole world knows what side you are on. To whimper and whine and capitulate to the greediest and most parasitical special interests only to "win" a bill that is no longer worth having can be worse than losing.

It is long past time for the President to come out in his speech to Congress next week strongly in favor of real healthcare reform: not merely insurance reform. It's time for the President to lead by fighting for what he said he believes in on healthcare reform and not to turn tail and run on the public option and instead hide behind weak euphemisms like "choice" and "competition" which means the score at the end of the game will be 100-0 in favor of the interests of the insurance companies vs the interests of the nation, our people and our businesses. If the President fails to do this but instead tries to sell the nation on a watered down, pale imitation of reform that isn't really worth having then why should the common people waste their time supporting it? If people are rational and act according to their interests there would be no reason for the people, in that case, to waste their time and energy. I hope the reports are wrong and the President is going to really change his strategy. I hope that instead of what is being reported, the President comes out of the gate next week no longer burdened by the bipartisan fantasy of what never was and never will be and instead comes out swinging as he should have been doing all along. If he does that the people will support him. Anything less and the people will turn away with a sour taste in their mouths because the DC Dems once again decided that being weak was smarter than being strong and fighting for the interests of the common people.

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After the presentation a former member of the National Security Council who happened to be seated to my right turned to me and said, "[The QDR] seems like a fraud."

More recently Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), Chairman of the House Armed Services air and land forces subcommittee, referred to the QDR as a "PR stunt" and a "PR exercise" (as reported by Marjorie Censer, Inside the Pentagon, 18 June 2009.) Rep. Abercrombie then went on to offer a less than precise elaboration, saying, "It's all Thunderbird stuff, booms and all that."

I can not be all that sure what the former National Security Council member or Rep. Abercrombie meant by their characterizations of the QDR. But, having followed all four QDRs fairly closely, I can make an educated guess at what they are getting at.

Congress has intended that through the QDR the Pentagon will make a serious attempt to reconcile the national defense strategy to the defense posture of the services and from that presumed point of congruence reconcile it to the defense budget. Policy analysts frequently complain that strategy, posture and budget are dangerously out of whack. If the QDR process addresses this problem and then does the analytical and policy work required making real advances toward reconciliation then we can judge that it is meeting it stated purpose. If it results in a public document that uses rhetorical flourish in order to mask disjuncture of ends and means and to perpetuate prior posture and budget directions, then it is something like a 'fraud' or 'PR exercise.'

The unfolding 2010 QDR process gives us a good opportunity to look for evidence of either real reconciliation or PR exercise. A few pieces of evidence:

There are dozens of high level policy professionals and planners in the Pentagon who have more than a cursory responsibility for aspects of the QDR. They work with hundreds of others, some inside the military and many civilian consultants and contractors. Models are built and simulations are run. Task forces and issue teams work the results. No doubt many of these people would be indignant if you told them their work was simply serving public relations and had little effect on the direction of policy.

On the other hand, modeling output and even the output of task forces are quite sensitive to starting assumptions and specifications. Senior civilian and military leaders in the Pentagon carefully review input parameters and seek to influence how the particulars of output is summed up and presented to those responsible for the next steps in the process of getting to the final report. "Startling findings" and their policy implications are unlikely to find their way into the document drafts unless senior leadership wants them there.

Consider also that Defense News has reported that the Pentagon is moving ahead with the FY'11 budget process before the budget work on the 2010 QDR is completed. This is at least suggestive of prior budget and posture decisions running the QDR output rather than the other way around.

The complete article may be read here

Charles Knight is the co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives and editor of the Defense Strategy Review page - http://www.comw.org/wordpress/dsr/. The webpage will closely follow the 2010 QDR process and track accumulating evidence of 'sincere effort' or 'PR stunt'.

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I highly recommend watching the entire program at Moyers Journal: Top Secret. The full transcript of the program is available at this link. The discussion addresses most of the major points that I have heard and read about how we should pursue the use of torture by the Bush administration.

Danner and Fein discuss the legal, political, and social implications of various ways of addressing the open acknowledgement that the United States institutionalized torture as an matter of policy.

Danner's focus in the discussion makes several key points. First, that because the country is divided on this issue we need to pursue it in a public way. Second, that there is a precedent that has been regarding the use of torture that opens us to using it in "extreme" situations again. Third, that the issue is not "past" politics, but present (and future) politics. Namely because the argument is being made by Cheney and others, that failure to continuing to use torture creates a vulnerability to the nation.

Fein's argument focuses around the legal and Constitutional issues. Namely that President Bush took it onto himself to override the law and created an illegal situation. It is a situation that continues to decimate the balance of powers and must be addressed. He says that if the law handcuffs the national security apparatus, then the resolution is to change the law - not ignore it. He argues, at length, that the Constitution and rule of law must be righted or that we truly do become a "banana republic." Fein notes that if Obama does not want to prosecute the architects of the torture policy, or those who engaged in it, he can do a pardon in advance of investigations. However, that it is critical to the country to operate under the rule of law.

Addendum
Additional related information and links to the memos, Red Cross report, and other source documents can be found at this link at the Moyers Journal site.

Bruce Fein is a conservative who has served in three Republican administrations, and is associated with the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation - both conservative think tanks. He has started his own American Freedom Agenda organization which is acting restore the Constitutional balance between the three branches of government.

Mark Danner is a long time journalist who has expertise in covering U.S. international policy and human rights issues. He was a long time writer for The New Yorker, has written a number of books, and is a professor of journalism.

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With the Bush-corrosion of our Constitution and collapse of the economic system after it had been exploited by the rich and corrupt, what better time for revolution? Instead, we got a president with a glib tongue, a terrific smile and a deep commitment to the two-party plutocracy and corporate state. Obama is no populist, not even close. Nor is he a genuine reformer. At best, he is a master exploiter of populism.

Obama was and still is a master of masquerading as just a regular guy. Even now, after making more than $8 million from his books, and even before when his wife made a huge salary and he lived in a million dollar house, and he reaped the many benefits of an elite Harvard Law School ticket to success. Totally consistent with his plutocratic and elitist background he has packed his administration with the same Harvard, elitist and Wall Street crowd that pumped many millions of dollars into his campaign and did nothing to stop the mortgage crisis and economic meltdown.

He has shown absolutely no courage or interest in standing up to the status quo, earmark-driven, and corrupt Democratic leaders in the House and Senate who, in large measure, share blame for the nation's economic crisis, especially its roots in the mortgage insanity and under-regulation of the financial sector that they nurtured. Obama should have rejected the spending bill with tons of pork earmarks. But in reality Obama has shown no taste for standing up for principles. He had no problem with a Treasury Secretary that was a blatant tax dodger. Almost on a daily basis there is news about decisions being made that resemble Bush policies. Rather than shunning signing statements when Congress sends him bills, so abused by Bush, Obama immediately issued his own one.

The spending of the nation's debt-based wealth on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue with no end in sight, despite the painful economic meltdown and mind-boggling deficit spending. When it comes to the wars and domestic problems, he seeks success through massive spending rather than through structural and systemic reforms.

Here is the problem: All the venom aimed at AIG and its bonus-receiving employees served more as a distraction than a viable political strategy to reform our government. True, there has been terrible economic warfare by the rich and corrupt in government and the private sector that has savaged ordinary Americans. Our corrupt and dysfunctional government did not protect us. We need a Second American Revolution. We need deep structural reforms to make our current MISrepresentatives obsolete and return our government to us. For this to happen we must not let ourselves be deceived by lying politicians. We must recognize that voting and elections have NOT worked effectively. We must look to our Constitution for the legal path to revolution.

The Founders anticipated that Americans would eventually lose confidence in the federal government. They created a never-used option in Article V. Never used because Congress has refused to obey the Constitution and gotten away with violating it and their oath of office. That option is an Article V convention of state delegates that has the constitutional power to propose constitutional amendments, only amendments, no wholesale rewriting of the Constitution. The one and only requirement in Article V is that two-thirds of state legislatures must apply to Congress for a convention. In fact, there have been over 700 such state applications from all 50 states.

Why no Article V convention? Because Congress and virtually every politically powerful group on the left and right oppose and fear an Article V convention. Why? Because clearly such a convention which is outside the control of Congress, the President and the Supreme Court has the constitutional authority to discuss and propose amendments that could truly reform our government to remove corruption and make it much more equitable and effective for we the people. Where is the public outrage over Congress disobeying and disrespecting the Constitution? There is far less to fear from a convention than from maintaining the status quo two-party plutocracy.

If you believe in our Constitution, if you liked the change rhetoric of Obama, if you are furious about the economic meltdown, and if you see the need to seriously reform our government, then examine the materials at foavc.org and become a member of the nonpartisan Friends of the Article V Convention. Help make Congress obey the Constitution and give us the convention we have a constitutional right to have. If you see yourself as a patriot, dissident or activist, join our effort.

[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through www.delusionaldemocracy.com; he is a co-founder of Friends of the Article V Convention.]

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The new Afghan "democracy" was touted with the "election" of Hamid Karzai - ex-primary UNOCAL consultant- to the presidency of Afghanistan. Many around the world, and in the region, feared the rigging of those elections, and that Karzai was little more than a U.S. pawn. Now we have open news that this may well be the case. Borger and Macaskill write in the Guardian "US Will Appoint Afghan 'Prime Minister' to Bypass Hamid Karzai." Really? The U.S. can appoint a government official in another nation to usurp the powers of the "elected" president? This is followed on 3/24 by Jane Perlez of the New York Times with "U.S. Weighs Sharif as Partner in Pakistan." So the U.S. is meddling in Pakistan's political process as well?

So why are we there? Is it to oust al Qaeda, control "terrorist" groups, "stabilize" the region? Or are we there because of the long simmering oil and natural gas issues with Russia?

As Pepe Escobar succinctly states in his article "Liquid war: Welcome to Pipelineistan:

Forget the mainstream media's obsession with al-Qaeda, Osama "dead or alive" bin Laden, the Taliban - neo, light or classic - or that "war on terror", whatever name it goes by. These are diversions compared to the high-stakes, hardcore geopolitical game that follows what flows along the pipelines of the planet.

This is not new news, but our ongoing "interest" in Afghanistan has virtually nothing to do with either "terrorism" or with good wishes for the people of Afghanistan - anymore than we seem to care about the people of Pakistan or Iraq. The United States is not there for them - it is there because of U.S. "interests." Apparently, both our government, and the people of the United States, are willing to accept a lot of "collateral damage" to protect (or advance) those "interests." All too frequently those interests are energy related, and those interests pass through and advance corporate interests. For example, the consortium of oil companies who were bargaining for the pipeline through Afghanistan.

The Clinton administration had been working with the Taliban from 1994 forward. Why? Because some companies (particularly UNOCAL and Saudi owned Delta) wanted "to build a pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan through Afghanistan." ... "so that the vast untapped oil and gas reserves in the Central Asian and Caspian region could be transported to markets in South Asia, South-East Asia, Far East and the Pacific" 17. This is supported by Jon Flanders article. While official relations were purportedly broken off in 1998, relations with the Taliban were maintained through the State Department (Ahmad) and through the Pakistan Military Intelligence ISI by the CIA (Chossudovsky).

According to Jon Flanders (2001), U.S. interest in the pipeline restarted in 2000, but was still not moving forward when Bush was elected. With Bush came Cheney (CEO of Halliburton) and Halliburton had investments in Turkmentistan for "integrated drilling services with an estimated value of $30 million for the total package." (Flanders)

It should not be surprising given the oil interests of the President, his kin, and his appointees, that Bush placed Afghanistan on the top of his action list. In July 2001, Colin Powell gave the Taliban $43 million for "humanitarian aid" (Madsen 2002).

According to a BBC report by George Arney (9/18/01), the US was planning military action in Afghanistan prior to 9/11. "Naiz Naik, a former Pakistan Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action would go ahead by the middle of October." (From: Power Play? Wolf, 2001)

All of which of course begs the question of September 11, 2001 and the catastrophic lies and invasions that occurred as a response. However, this article is not focused on 9/11 (though it hauntingly suggests the power of "interests"). Rather, one has to ask whether our new President has any different a world view, or policy initiative, than has been in play in the United States since at least the end of World War II.

Currently, Obama has expanded drone attacks into Pakistan and there is actually very little news of U.S. operations in Afghanistan. Has the "war" shifted? Obama has already stated, and started, the shifting of forces from Iraq (the "bad" war) to Afghanistan (the "good" war). I have to ask if this is because Iraq is seen as safely on a leash, or whether the saber rattling of Russia has raised the priority of protecting the pipeline (and hence "leashing" Russia's energy power)?

Left or right, there is little hard questioning of either why we are there, or what we should be trying to do. The focus has largely been "get out of Iraq" with a general acceptance that we left Afghanistan "undone." "Undone" meaning we still don't have bin Laden. However, the stakes have changed, and it is looking increasingly likely that the Taleban will be back in control of the Afghan government soon - and perhaps Pakistan's as well. While this prospect is murmured as "unfortunate," it is seen as a "realistic" approach. Perhaps, the negotiations with the Taleban have little to do with what is "realistic" and who can provide the muscle to guard the pipeline.

One note of hope is Obama's pledge to take the United States to energy independence. Success in this are - and around the world - would radically reduce the armed conflicts. While oil and gas are not the only conflict issues, they are major ones. Addressing that would start a transformation of international policy - overt and covert.

Related Articles of Interest
Ramzy Baroud. 2/21/2009. A New Afghanistan Nightmare

John Steppling. 8/13/2008. Inventing Your Own History as it Happens

Rowan Wolf. 5/26/2005. "Pipe-istan" Becomes A Reality.

Rowan Wolf. 6/27/04. Afghanistan - not a pipe dream any longer

Rowan Wolf. 5/2002. Power Play?.

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The promise of change echoed the world over as people from all corners anticipated the magic moment Obama could actually change the devastating reality in which we live today. But just weeks before his inauguration, Israel unleashed the most barbaric attacks on defenseless Palestinian civilians since 1948. Civil societies expressed outrage and called for Israeli leaders to be tried for war crimes and genocide. Other nations cut diplomatic ties completely with the Jewish state. But the man of change did absolutely nothing. For weeks he was completely silent. Even in his first days in office, Obama made no mention of the Israeli genocide in Gaza. So, what of this change that he promised? What kind of hold does Israel have to silence the President of the United States?

Authors and professors, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, of University of Chicago and Harvard University respectively defined the Israel Lobby in their volume: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy as a "loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to steer U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction." What has been revealed in their work is that "The Lobby" is not a unitary organization, of a few, or many paid lobbyists who are pushing for a specific foreign policy agenda. Sure, you have that too, manifested in the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) - an organization that boasts of 60,000 active members, and who showers US congressmen with many millions of dollars in campaign contributions, all with one aim in mind, a pro-Israel, right or wrong agenda. But it's much more complex than that.

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, less known than AIPAC is a powerful lobby conduit, for it supposedly represents 52 major Jewish organizations. Based in New York, the organization simply represents an uncompromisingly pro-Israel stance, which tends to advocate Israel's suppression of Palestinians (as Israel's right to defend itself), and advocates a pro-war agenda (as was the case before the Iraq war, and later against Syria and Iran.)

These are but mere examples. What Mearsheimer and Walt describe as a "loose coalition of individuals and organizations" is in fact a vast infrastructure that has penetrated every major organization and institution, governmental and otherwise, that could in some way influence, push for or advocate Israel's interests.

When AIPAC holds its annual conferences, countless members of the House and the Senate, the executive branch, top representatives of both parties, as well as hundreds of US ambassadors flock from all over the world in an unprecedented manner to vow their allegiance to Israel.

With the passing of time, the strength of the lobby, and the level of influence of Israel's "friends" in the Congress has grown immensely to the point that US allegiances actually jeopardize the interests of their own citizens. Even from an imperialistic viewpoint, the US has no particular interest in supporting Israel's genocidal policies in Gaza, for example, considering the fact that the US is struggling to find any semblance of 'stability' in the region that is saturated with anti-American sentiment.

Consider what outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in a speech in the Israeli southern town of Ashkelon on Jan 12, regarding how he influenced the US vote in the UN on a resolution pertaining to the Gaza war:

"In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the Secretary of State wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favor," Olmert said.

"I said 'get me President Bush on the phone'. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn't care. 'I need to talk to him now'. He got off the podium and spoke to me.

"I told him the United States could not vote in favor. It cannot vote in favor of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favor."

"She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favor."

Imagine, Olmert is boasting how he, with one telephone call managed to completely turn around the entire US foreign policy agenda, no questions asked. This tells us that it's not a give-and-take relationship.

One can learn a valuable lesson in all of this. Within the United States there is a great apparatus that has been in motion for generations. It is beyond civil society, beyond individual citizens and citizen groups, it is perhaps even more powerful than 'the man of change' himself. And if we are truly to see some transformation in the way the US now rules the world, then this war-mongering machine must be dismantled.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London).

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The first analysis is Forceful Engagement: Rethinking the Role of Military Power in US Global Policy. In this report, Conetta highlights that while there has been a dramatic increase in military spending over the last ten years, the world is a more dangerous place. Further, the virtual dependence of the US on projecting military force as its primary approach to global situations has stretched that resource beyond any level of efficiency. This means that the US is "paying more and more for less and less security."

Further, the dramatic increase in military spending and the end of the Cold War, was seen by some as an opportunity to extend US dominance. Perhaps in part to justify the growing budget, "worst case" scenarios were increasingly pushed to the fore. With the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive invasion and the use of nuclear weapons, we now are watching an escalation of military development which threatens to place us back on vulnerable footing with both old and new competitors.

There are possibilities for the new administration to transform growing tension into mutual cooperation by focusing on shared concerns. Conetta frames this alternative as follows:

An alternative security policy would emphasize broad multilateral cooperation in containing and resolving regional crises, reducing conflict potentials, and redressing the sources of instability in the international system. And, it would recognize that the sources of instability today are not principally military, political, or ideological in character, but instead economic, demographic, and environmental.

The real measure of a renewed US diplomacy will be efforts to reach across current strategic divides-- especially to Russia, China, and the Muslim world-- and find common ground. Cooperation on water, food, energy, and health security, global warming, economic development, and the management of globalization could serve as a foundation for progress on more divisive issues. A re-emphasis on traditional "quid pro quo" diplomacy will pay higher dividends in resolving divisive issues than will the resort to coercive diplomacy and saber rattling.

The second policy perspective is "Re-Envisioning Defense: An Agenda for US Policy Debate and Transition." Conetta points out twenty-five strategic concerns organized into three core areas - policy vision, role of the armed forces, and the fit between defense and global security.

Policy Vision: the "war on terrorism" places us on a permanent war footing which not only increases costs, but may actually serve to aggravate existing problems - such as stretch and the arms race.

The Role of the Armed Forces: Conetta argues that the use of force has been increasing. This is not only expensive, it makes that force increasingly ineffective and sometimes counter-productive.

Fit Between Defense and Global Security: the increasing reach of the Defense arena is overwriting the diplomatic arena. Not only has the pressure led us to a policy of global coverage, but military usurping of State Department arenas. Development of more peacekeeping and training activities would contribute to a better balance and increase security.

I strongly encourage readers to look carefully at these two documents. They raise issues and present information that is critical to our informed evaluation of the role of the defense system and national and international security. There are many forces that are driving the world towards either solutions or increased conflict (resources, environmental destruction, collapsing global and national economies). The military is currently the biggest and most frequently used tool in the box. This isn't working, won't work, and actually increases risk. We all need to think about these issues.

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What matters most are the lessons that the new administration gleans from the failed efforts of its predecessors. The first among these is perhaps the most difficult to fully grasp and take to heart: The United States has been using its armed forces and military power well beyond the limit of their utility. We are now experiencing not just diminishing returns, but negative ones. Thus, the nation finds itself paying more and more for less and less security.

The military effort expended these past eight years has been, by any measure, prodigious. But, in no area of concern has it produced much in the way of reliable progress. Indeed, the world seems less stable and more polarized today than it did in 2001. And anti-Americanism is at a level not seen since the Vietnam war years.

The Iraq and Afghanistan operations have demonstrated that the world's "sole superpower" cannot -- by its current methods -- reliably stabilize two destitute and dejected nations comprising only one percent of the world's population, despite the investment of nearly 5,000 American lives and more than $850 billion. What General David Petraeus once asked of the Iraq war -- "Tell me how this ends" -- still pertains, despite the reduction in violence there. The same question might be asked of the Afghanistan war and, indeed, of the "war on terror" as a whole, which seems to be on a road to nowhere.

Setting a new course in policy begins with acknowledging that America's recent emphasis on military action and instruments has been, on balance, counter-productive. Looking to the future, the next administration must be more realistic about what can be reliably accomplished by these means. This applies not only to counter-terrorism efforts, but also to efforts to stabilize troubled regions of the world and prevent the emergence of new threats.

It has become something of a mantra among reformers that the United States needs to "re-balance" its security "tool kit". But it is not enough to simply "plus up" the diplomatic side of engagement. Rolling back the current emphasis on military action and instruments is a prerequisite to greater success in diplomatic efforts. This, because what most divides the United States from those it proposes to lead is the issue of when, how, and how much to use force and the armed forces.

More generally, the next Administration needs to lead the nation in reappraising its defense posture and investments. Despite the expenditure of more than $7 trillion since 1992, and more than ten years of talk about "military transformation", America's armed forces are not yet especially well-adapted to the new security environment. Efforts to prepare and defend in all directions have dissipated American power and have left the nation less prepared to deal with what is actually emerging. Presently, the United States is responsible for nearly half of all military spending worldwide. And yet, our present and future Secretary of Defense argues that this is simply not enough -- which should lead all of us to suspect that either our resources are being misspent or our objectives misconceived.

Achieving real change in US security policy will not be easy. Our present posture and preferences are well rooted ideologically, institutionally, and politically. Nonetheless, the experiences of the past eight years (and more) provide a powerful argument for a sea-change in policy. For now, a minimum goal is that the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States should mark the renewal of the national debate on security policy and not its end.

Links to Companion Pieces
Forceful Engagement: Rethinking the Role of Military Power in US Global Policy

Re-Envisioning Defense: An Agenda for US Policy Debate and Transition

Suggestions for a New Defense Strategy for Obama. (Wolf)

Accompanying Charts

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On June 28, 2008, I published the summary of Re-Envisioning Defense Alternatives by Carl Conetta and Charles Knight. On June 7, the report received some positive corporate media attention with an editorial in the NY Times "Where Do We Go From Here?.

In a correspondence from Carl Conetta, I learned that the report has been downloaded more than 10,000 times, and is being circulated to members of Congress with a cover letter by Rep. Jim
McGovern. Carl and Charles have also been invited to debate alternative Iraq policies at the US Institute for Peace. It is great that such worthy work is getting serious attention.

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Recent defense policy evinces a disturbing paradox: it has been delivering less and
less security at ever increasing cost. And, on a world scale, a process of global re-
polarization and re-militarization is underway. If unchecked, this portends a return to
conditions reminiscent of the Cold War, which would add impetus to weapon
proliferation, arms races, and conflicts.

Reviewing current US policy, we have identified 25 concerns or areas of concern that
relate to the problems noted above. These might form an agenda for policy
discussion and reform. From these we have distilled a "short list" of three overarching
topics or concerns that, taken together, capture the fundamental problems in current
policy. Alternatives addressing these three core concerns can provide guidance for
understanding and addressing the rest.

THREE CORE CONCERNS

Core concern 1. Security policy vision: How do we understand and hope to attain
security?

This entails our assessment of the security environment and its dynamics as well as
our security interests, goals, concerns, and strategy. Presently, the "war on
terrorism" provides the principal organizing theme for US security policy, which puts
America on a permanent war footing. Is this the optimal frame for addressing
post-Cold War security challenges?

An alternative approach might emphasize non-military means and broad multilateral
cooperation in mitigating and redressing the sources of stress and instability in the
international system. Such an approach would not turn principally on waging and
winning wars or pursuing strategic advantage in a contest of nation-states. Instead,
it would turn on building broad cooperation and winning the confidence of people in
troubled regions. Focal concerns might include water, food, energy, and health
security, global warming, economic development, and the management of
globalization.

Core concern 2. The role of force and the armed forces in US foreign and security
policy.

Since the Cold War's end, the role of the US military in the world, and the role of force
in US policy, have grown more prominent. The outcome of this increased activity has
not been encouraging, however. It has done more to add to instability than resolve it.
And it has proved fabulously expensive in terms of both lives and treasure. Any
adequate alternative to recent defense policy must provide new guidance on the use
of force and the role of the military.

Core concern 3. The "fit" between America's defense posture and the global security
environment.

America's military posture is not well-adapted to today's security challenges. And
this contributes to its problem of sustainability. Adjusting the nation's defense
posture to more closely fit the security environment would simultaneously render that
posture more "sustainable". And this might turn the defense policy paradox "on its
head" yielding greater security at lower cost.

TOPICS FOR POLICY DEBATE AND REFORM

The 25 areas of concern that we have identified in US policy are listed below. They
can be divided into eight categories:

* Policy on strategic warfare
* Counter-proliferation, counter-terrorism, and homeland security
* Policy on major military operations, conventional and irregular
* Peacetime military engagement
* The US stance on international law and arms control
* Civil-military relations: The growing influence of the Pentagon
* Defense budget, acquisition, and management issues
* Country-specific controversies

>> POLICY ON STRATEGIC WARFARE

1. Nuclear weapons modernization, missile defense, and the "new (offensive)
deterrence"
2. Prompt global strike: The advent of conventional strategic warfare
3. Seizing the "new high ground": the weaponization of space

>> COUNTER-PROLIFERATION, COUNTER-TERRORISM, AND HOMELAND
SECURITY

4. Offensive counter-proliferation (OCP): Arms control by bombardment?
5. Counter-terrorism & homeland security: Search for a sensible strategy

>> MAJOR REGIONAL MILITARY OPERATIONS, CONVENTIONAL AND
IRREGULAR

6. Preparations for major wars reflect unnecessarily ambitious goals
7. "Shock and awe" strategy and attacks on civilian-military targets
8. Counter-insurgency, peace and stability operations, nation-building: renewed
enthusiasm despite Iraq experience.

>> PEACETIME MILITARY ENGAGEMENT

9. Global military presence & base posture: cover the earth?
10. Military cooperation, assistance, and arms transfers programs: uncertain effects.

>> US STANCE ON INTERNATIONAL LAW AND ARMS CONTROL

11. Adherence to international law and legal institutions
12. The role of negotiated arms control in US security policy

>> CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS: THE GROWING INFLUENCE OF THE
PENTAGON

13. DOD's domestic "perception management" efforts
14. DOD's drive for expanded "authorities" and greater freedom of action

>> DEFENSE BUDGET AND ACQUISITION ISSUES

15. DOD's broken financial and inventory accounting system.
16. Pork-barrel spending: the Pentagon budget as "gravy train"
17. DOD's broken weapon procurement system
18. Military transformation: To what end? How much of what is enough?
19. Setting the defense budget forever more than $600 billion?

>> COUNTRY-SPECIFIC ISSUES

20. Iraq withdrawal: soon or never?
21. Resolving the Iran and North Korea nuclear issues
22. Afghanistan war & Pakistan instability
23. Israel-Palestine and Lebanon conflict
24. Relations with China and Russia.
25. Increased military activity in sub-Saharan Africa and South America

Go to Full Text of the report

For a related discussion see Out from the House of War: A Litmus for New Leadership in Security Policy, also by Carl Connetta and pertinent in the presidential election year.

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Also, the OSC went on to state this same pumping equipment had previously malfunctioned under favorable contractor testing conditions and was subsequently shown to be defective, yet was knowingly installed by the Corps of Engineers.

In addition, the OSC went on further to state the whistleblower, a veteran Corps engineer who was the Team Leader of Pumping Systems Installation for New Orleans, alleged USACE employees and MWI (the pump manufacturer) circumvented contract requirements in an effort to complete the task, all at the expense of public safety. It was reported that key safeguards were circumvented and "there is an erroneous assumption that...hydraulic pumps are fully operational, and hence, the risk to the public remains high," in the words of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

We should have seen something reported on the status of this investigation over six months ago. Hurricane season started this weekend and we still don't have any answers?! There doesn't seem to be much urgency attached to this investigation. Maybe the Secretary of Defense is too busy handling other matters?

Failure of this pumping equipment to function properly during a time of flooding is yet another catastrophic event in waiting for New Orleans, a city still recovering from Hurricane Katrina.

If true, given the hardships suffered by the People of New Orleans, the United States Government can ill afford to take unnecessary risks with public safety due to faulty pumping equipment and lack of proper government oversight; a situation that indeed raises serious issues of public safety and government oversight.

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For details on correspondences related to this position reversal see today's Disaster Accountability Project Blog posting below and at this link

"Failure to promptly communicate information about disaster conditions to people in the field led to the unnecessary deaths of firefighters at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and is a common problem in other disasters. It is vital that FEMA and other federal agencies move swiftly to create a national alerting system before another catastrophic disaster occurs," says former Federal emergency management whistle-blower and Disaster Accountability Project's volunteer Policy Analyst, Linda Lewis. "With the CMAS program, FEMA has further undermined public trust and, moreover, has undermined its relationship with federal partners in preparedness. One wonders how much longer this dark play will last before the President finally gives stage manager Michael Chertoff his walking papers."

"A tropical storm has already formed, FEMA leadership is touting the Federal Government's level of readiness-- but really, in the end, FEMA is playing the same stalling games played since Katrina," says Ben Smilowitz, Executive Director of the Disaster Accountability Project. "The public must advocate for action to save the Emergency Alert System from the same fate as the Agency's disaster housing plans, currently moving at a snail's pace, leaving thousands unnecessarily in formaldehyde trailers."

With Hurricane Season beginning June 1, 2008, the Disaster Accountability Project is profiling six areas of concern in the U.S. disaster management system to expose gaps in preparedness -- and compare rhetoric to reality. Despite recent assurances from leadership at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and FEMA that the Federal government is prepared for a major disaster, significant areas of concern remain that must be resolved before the U.S. disaster management system can honestly represent itself as sufficiently prepared to respond to a disaster requiring federal resources.

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These "public affairs" efforts present an inherent conflict of interest for organizations simultaneously fulfilling a role tasked by the federal government and raising billions of dollars in private donations. The public should know exactly what limitations exist for organizations providing such critical services.The Role of Volunteers: The mostly volunteer force serving along the Gulf Coast after Katrina consisted of a number of highly-skilled volunteers that took unpaid time from work, individuals in-between jobs, many retirees, religious groups, first-time volunteers, and many others that simply wanted to get away for three weeks. America must decide if key Mass Care functions should be managed by a volunteer force. For example, see the following position description for a volunteer ESF-6 Mass Care Team Chief with responsibilities that include:

Prepare, submit and track all Action Request Forms with FEMA; report status daily to the ESF #6 Mass Care lead in the Disaster Operations Center.

Identify gaps and shortfalls in Mass Care.

While there were many highly skilled volunteers, many could not apply their skills because (we were told) ARC insurance policies capped the level of care Client Service Centers could provide at basic first aid. A large population of survivors that had not received any care for weeks after the storm could not receive tetanus shots, IVs, and other basics. Such necessities could only be provided by those carrying a sufficient insurance policy: National Guard Medics, lone doctors, and ambulances (some of the ambulances we regularly called to our Site had been driven down from Connecticut).While organizations like the ARC have allegedly made many changes to their response capacity, few changes have been publicly disclosed.... and the public is largely in the dark about the capacity of these multi-billion dollar organizations to respond to a major disaster.Ice: FEMA announced last month that ice would no longer be distributed after disasters... or, rather, ice would only be available to those that need it for medical emergencies. How would this work? FEMA typically gets called when States need help -- during emergencies. How will every mother with baby formula, every diabetic with insulin, and every other prescription drug user requiring refrigeration for their medications, and others- prove that they are deserving of ice- to FEMA's temp workers that get hired by the hundreds, after a disaster? I'm not convinced that the reasoning here is sound.The Durable Medical Equipment (DME) Crisis: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) conducted a bidding process for durable medical equipment reimbused by Medicare in 10 Metropolitan Service Areas (MSAs). Somehow, the bidding process somehow "forgot" to include any considerations of disaster preparedness and post-disaster response capacities. For example, in South Florida, there are 501 suppliers of oxygen. Through the new bidding process, only 44 suppliers were chosen to continue their Medicare contracts.While DAP is not passing judgment on the need to reduce the number of suppliers of oxygen, deeply troubling is the result of having only 44 suppliers of oxygen and other important life-sustaining DMEs in areas so disaster prone. According to current DME suppliers, after previous FL hurricanes, fewer than half of the suppliers were functional in the immediate aftermath. An oxygen shortage could lead to even larger emergency room surges after a disaster-- something that could overwhelm hospitals already potentially overwhelmed by a hurricane or other disaster. Surprisingly, CMS requires emergency and evacuation planning for hospitals and nursing homes. From GAO Report GAO-08-544R:

At the federal level, HHS's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has requirements related to hospital and nursing home evacuation planning as a condition of participation in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. (page 6)

How did an agency so "disaster conscious" forget to include similar considerations in its DME bidding process? The public deserves an answer.... before Hurricane Season begins.With Hurricane Season around the corner, the public remains vulnerable because the organizations and agencies responsible for providing Mass Care lack transparency. As a result, it is hard for the public to know what has improved to prevent the same bungled Katrina disaster response in 2005 from happening again in 2008.

Note: Ben Smilowitz is Founder and Executive Director of the Disaster Accountability Project. After Katrina, he served as the site manager of a Red Cross Client Service Center in Gulfport, MS.

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Following the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes, FEMA was bombarded with criticism of its handling of post-disaster assistance grants. In a 2006 CNN interview, Secretary Chertoff tried to deflect the criticism by suggesting that FEMA should be responsible only for response and short-term recovery, and there should be a "handoff when you get to long-term recovery." (Inside Cable News). Meanwhile, fraud, incompetence and political profit-taking continue.

The State of Mississippi received over $3 billion dollars appropriated by Congress for housing - half of that slated for low-income families. But, Governor Haley Barbour, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, asked for and received a waiver of the rules.

Where did the money go? The Steps Coalition says the governor "either excluded poor families from his recovery plans, or put them to the very back of the line," taking only eight months to issue a billion dollars to mostly affluent families, but taking more than a year to begin a program aiding lower income families, many of whom still haven't received grants (William Brangham, Bill Moyers Journal). As Coalition member Melinda Harthcock described it, "The people who have the least amount of backup, the least cushion in their budget, have been asked to wait two years before they got any help.

Delays turned out to be just part of the problem. State officials later announced that they were going to redirect $600 million of the housing funds to repairing and improving a port, to the potential benefit of cruise ships and casinos (Brangham).

"One of the most profound shifts that's happening down here is that people, even solidly middle class people who thought that they were respected members of society, who thought they'd done the right thing to protect their assets, who thought their voices counted for something - are finding that they don't" (Melinda Harthcoc, Bill Moyers Journal)

Louisiana, too, is suffering through a slow recovery. And, while the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina deserves condemnation, the slow trickle of aid to replace low and middle income communities is nothing new.

The reluctance to rebuilt low-rent housing commonly encountered after disasters (Phillips 1993a) has also occurred in South Florida (Hartman 1993a). The official explanations for the slow rate of rebuilding of public projects and private Section 8 (subsidized) rental units, include problems with asbestos, funding, and contractors (Tanfani 1993). Whatever the reasons, few deny the reluctance to rebuild low-income multifamily housing (Morrow 2000).

Many of the emergency plans that I reviewed over the years included only a page or two of recovery phase planning and said little or nothing about how the public would be involved in decision making. Federal emergency exercises, also, devoted little time to the recovery phase and some ignored it entirely.

Federal, state, local and tribal officials need to do more to plan in advance how resources will be used to rebuild communities and citizens need to demand a seat at the table before disaster strikes again. Over the years, I frequently heard government planners say there would be plenty of time to plan after a disaster. But, there never is enough time to attend to the millions of details fast enough to prevent the secondary tragedies that await families and small businesses due to slow recovery aid.

Perhaps, if responsible government officials were forced to work in FEMA trailers for the duration, the pace of recovery would pick up a bit. They might then give more than superficial attention to pre-disaster recovery planning. Until problems of bias, corruption and neglect are swept away by a competent nation recovery plan, government's claim to be prepared for hurricane season is little more than whistling in the dark.

Citations:

Morrow, B.H. (2000) Stretching the Bonds: the families of Andrew, in: W.G. Peacock, B.H. Morrow and H. Gladwin (eds) Hurricane Andrew: Ethnicity, Gender, and the Sociology of Disasters (Miami, International Hurricane Center).

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In recognition of Hurricane Preparedness Week, the Disaster Accountability Project will be highlighting an issue that is important to hurricane/disaster response and recovery on each of the following days: Wednesday 5/28 - Disaster Housing, Formaldehyde Levels in Cabins; Thursday 5/29 - Recovery; Friday 5/30 - Mass Care/Medical/Healthcare; Saturday 5/31 - Evacuations; Monday 6/2 - Emergency Alerts/Notifications; Tuesday 6/3 - Levees. Each day, the Disaster Accountability Blog (http://blog.disasteraccountability.org) will post a story on a different area of concern.

Please Publicize: The Disaster Accountability Project is recruiting a network of Disaster Accountability Monitors across the U.S. In the event of a disaster, Monitors will help publicize the Disaster Accountability Hotline (866-9-TIP-DAP) and report and/or verify reported gaps in disaster relief/response services.

Please Publicize: The public is encouraged to call the Disaster Accountability Hotline (866-9-TIP-DAP) with any tips on gaps in federal, state, and/or local preparedness, response, relief, or recovery systems. Individuals with special needs that 1) do not know the details of their local evacuation plans or 2) believe their local plans are insufficient, are encouraged to tip DAP by calling the DAP Hotline (866-9-TIP-DAP) or sending an email to [email protected] Tips must include the city or township and state in which any confusion or incomplete plans exist (this is critical information for DAP to evaluate where weaknesses lie).

---

The nonpartisan Disaster Accountability Project provides accountability and oversight to the nation's disaster prevention, response, relief, and recovery systems through monitoring and policy research.

A toll-free hotline (866-9-TIP-DAP) is available as a public service for disaster survivors, workers and volunteers to report critical gaps in disaster prevention, response, relief, and recovery services or planning. The group is recruiting a national network of Disaster Accountability Monitors and Bloggers to help report, verify, and publicize gaps in disaster services or planning.

The Disaster Accountability Project's website is http://www.DisasterAccountability.org

Disaster Accountability Project is a 2008 Echoing Green Finalist.
For more information: http://www.echoinggreen.org/fellows/2008-fellowship-finalists

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From the report:

Of the 72 programs GAO assessed this year, none of them had proceeded through system development meeting the best practices standards for mature technologies, stable design, or mature production processes by critical junctures of the program, each of which are essential for achieving planned cost, schedule, and performance outcomes.

The GAO started this monitoring in 2000. At that point development cost overruns were 6 %. In 2007 that had increased to 26%. In other words, it is getting worse every year. Further, since 200, the DOD has more than doubled it "investments" in planned systems from "$790 billion to $1.6 trillion." Please excuse me while I choke on those figures.

In 2000, the actual figures averaged in at 27% over estimates. By 2005 that had increased to 33%. By 2007 the DoD was 40% over estimates (page 2). The average schedule delay has increased from 16 months in 2007 to 21 months in 2007.

You have to shake your head at the wag your finger tone of the GAO introduction:

The current DOD leadership has recently established initiatives designed to change the strategic environment at the weapon acquisition portfolio level. These initiatives reflect sound business concepts and could lead to better outcomes if implemented fully and correctly. However, policy without practice is not uncommon within the Department and the upcoming change in administration presents challenges in advancing progress through sustained implementation of best practices, as well as addressing new issues that may emerge.

The DOD is supposed to be following a "knowledge point" system. Point 1 - "Resources and needs match.." Point 2 - "Product design is stable." Point 3 - "Production processes are mature. This point is achieved when it has been demonstrated that the company can manufacture the product within cost, schedule, and quality targets." Of the systems that responded (since obviously at least 23 programs couldn't be bothered with responding to oversight requirements), 12% met point 1; 4% met point 2; and ... 0% met point 3.

If the costs of these issues were not so huge, then the situation would be laughable. However, weapons systems development comes out of the discretionary budget. It is in direct competition with infrastructure, health, education, environment, the Centers for Disease Control (etc.) budgets. That $295 BILLION (plus) cost overrun is money that did not go to other critical needs. This cost also does not reflect the over $150 billion for the Iraq occupation. Nor is it part of standard military costs (troop pay and support). Even without the mortgage/credit crisis, these types of costs would drive any economy into the ground.

This makes me angry. Every year, the DOD is over budget - not just by a little bit, but by hundreds of billions of dollars. They essentially have no internal accounting system as far as anyone can tell. They operate as if they had a blank check. This is not acceptable. Yet year after year they cruise along spending money as if it drops like manna from heaven. Congress needs to shut this down - now.

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Just out of curiosity, you might wonder what they are looking for in program managers:

Are you a scientist or engineer with a radical idea (or ideas) that you believe could provide disruptive change for the United States military? Would you like to lead the country's most capable academic and industrial experts to make that idea become reality in a period of just a few years? If so, you should consider joining the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as a Program Manager.

Twisted geniuses please apply.

Whether because the vision of the future of "war fighting" is for a much smaller military, or whether it is easier to centralize control operations, DARPA's "big challenge" is a contest to produce an "autonomous vehicle" that can navigate in moving traffic. The contest is called the "Urban Challenge."

From what I can gather, they want a vehicle that can be remotely operated for supply transport operations. However, this vehicle is operating in urban environments. In other words - doing supply runs in cities. It would seem to me that if this is for use in a high conflict zone, that such a vehicle would be very vulnerable to hijacking. It also seems like a very expensive way to do delivery runs. However, maybe the commercial operations - like pizza delivery - will bring down the overall cost.

Well back at the DARPA conference, it looks like a combination show and tell and job fair.

Maybe I can get an invite for next year.

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I couldn't stop my jaw from dropping when I read the headline Seeking Iran Intelligence, U.S. Tries Google.

Yes comrades - GOOGLE!

Why, pray tell, is the U.S. State Department using google to determine who should go in the UN draft of sanctions on Iraq by doing google searches? Well, because they requested a list of Iranians connected with Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program from the CIA, but the CIA refused to give them a list. The CIA was too busy, and didn't want to share their sources with the folks at State.

Throwing up their hands, the task of coming up with a list of names was turned over to a "junior Foreign Service officer." Whether the officer was told to go search google, or whether that was his/her own creative solution, or whether such a procedure is common, is up for grabs. Regardless, searching under terms like "Iran and nuclear," he or she winnowed out a list of individuals and companies to put on the list. The consequences of the list are significant - bans on international travel and business.

Of course, the CIA scoffs at the list, and says that none of the listed are credible. You can see them thumbing their noses and making donkey ears with their hands as they issue their proclamation.

A senior administration official acknowledged that the back-and-forth with the CIA had been difficult, especially given the administration's desire to isolate Iran and avoid a repeat of flawed intelligence that preceded the Iraq war.

"In this instance, we were the requesters and the CIA was the clearer," the official said. "It's the process we go through on a lot of these things. Both sides don't know a lot of reasons for why either side is requesting or denying things. Sources and methods became their stated rationale and that is what they do. But for policymaking, it can be quite frustrating."

Well, it may be "frustrating" for them, but it burns me. We - the tax payers - are spending BILLIONS of dollars on "intelligence," purportedly aimed at ensuring the safety of the United States (us folks). We have watched the shredding of the Constitution and our protections from government abuse for the elusive claim of "safety."

On the other hand, we have those individuals who variously get identified as "threats" to national security which then subjects those so identified to a panoply of harm. Based on what? A GOOGLE search?

While State and the CIA apparently won't work cooperatively, the "diplomats" at the UN are much more agreeable: "The real scope of debate will be on the number of sanctions," one diplomat said. "Companies and individuals could go off the list or go on."

Maybe their google search was different. Or maybe they used a different search engine.

[Note: Nothing against google in any of this. I think it is an excellent search engine and use it all the time. However, I would think that our government had a more sophisticated and targeted "tool"]

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On social issues, the report is more mixed. South Dakotans voted down the proposed abortion ban, and Oregonians voted down an expansion of parental notification; however, four states (SC, TN, VA, WI) supported bans on gay marriage. Four other states (AZ, CO, ID, SD) have marriage bans on the ballot, but those results are not in yet. Michigan voters decided that race and gender could not be used to consider college entrance requirements -a blow for equity groups. In short a mixed bag for social justice.

Many states - including Oregon - rejected the Supreme Court's ruling on eminent domain by voting for private property protection.

While the Congress has consistently voted against raising the minimum wages, states that had minimum wage increases on the ballot (MO, MT, OH, NV, AZ, CO) seem to be leaning towards passing them. Results are still pending in Arizona and Colorado.

Last, but not least, THANK YOU OREGON for voting down the TABOR measure (48) that Colorado is trying desperately to rid itself of.

It seems that in most states across the nation voter turn out was strong. In fact, in some places very strong for a midterm election. It is clear that voters were aware, concerned and motivated. That seems a positive sign for our democracy at a point where it seems to have become history. People are realizing that the ultimate check in our system of checks and balances is us.

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Jane Mayer wrote Can the C.I.A. legally kill a prisoner?. The answer is "Yes we can and do." Mayer's article discusses the case of a civilian contractor, hired by the CIA, who participated in an interrogation that ended in the murder of a "detainee." There are no criminal charges for the contractor, and he is still contracted to the CIA. Meanwhile Cheney has lobbied and bullied the Congress to allow the CIA to continue its policies of using torture as a legal interrogation method.

"Senior Administration officials have led a fierce, and increasingly visible, fight to protect the C.I.A.'s classified interrogation protocol. Late last month, Cheney and Porter Goss, the C.I.A. director, had an unusual forty-five-minute private meeting on Capitol Hill with Senator McCain, who was tortured as a P.O.W. during the Vietnam War. They argued that the C.I.A. sometimes needs the "flexibility" to treat detainees in the war on terrorism in "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" ways. Cheney sought to add an exemption to McCain's bill, permitting brutal methods when "such operations are vital to the protection of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack." A Washington Post editorial decried Cheney's visit, calling him the "Vice-President for Torture." In the coming weeks, a conference committee of the House and the Senate will decide whether McCain's proposal becomes law; three of the nine senators who voted against the measure are on the committee."

Brian Ross and Richard Esposito of ABC News report that these interrogation methods lead to poor intelligence information:

Harsh interrogation techniques authorized by top officials of the CIA have led to questionable confessions and the death of a detainee since the techniques were first authorized in mid-March 2002, ABC News has been told by former and current intelligence officers and supervisors.

They say they are revealing specific details of the techniques, and their impact on confessions, because the public needs to know the direction their agency has chosen. All gave their accounts on the condition that their names and identities not be revealed. Portions of their accounts are corroborated by public statements of former CIA officers and by reports recently published that cite a classified CIA Inspector General's report."

We are told that the techniques used are 1) not torture, 2) necessary to "quickly" extract crucial intelligence, 3) not as "bad" as what the "enemy" is doing, and 4) that only "insurgents" and "terrorists" are being treated in this manner. Each and every one of these is not true. Groups that are taking hostages and murdering them in front of the cameras are not interrogating those hostages. They are making a political statement. Further, their participation in atrocity is no justification for the U.S. to participate in atrocity.

The cloak of secrecy only makes torture much more likely. The Iraqi torturers, like the CIA, hid their prisoners away while starving and beating them. Now it is highly likely that these Iraqi torture practices could be more widespread. Certainly they are likely widespread, and it is also highly likely that the U.S. is turning prisoners over to these groups knowing full well they will be tortured.

"Speaking from Amman, Mr Sadoun, a 38-year-old engineer, said: "They kicked down our door and asked about a neighbour. When I said I did not know where the man was, they started kicking me and beating me. The soldiers had paint on their faces and did not have same uniforms as other troops. The Americans did not take part, but they saw what was happening.

"But this was nothing. When they took me to their base I was blindfolded and beaten very, very badly with metal rods. They then hung me up on hooks by my wrists until I thought they would tear off. I think that stopped because one of the Americans said something. I could hear English spoken in an angry voice. But this happened again later." From the Independent (11/20/05) The Dirty War: Torture and mutilation used on Iraqi insurgents

Everyone who the U.S. chooses to "detainee" or attack, or kill, is an "insurgent." None are innocent bystanders. There are no civilians in this "war." It is critical to understand this because those who are aroused against the United States (and its allies) also define a conflict where there are no "civilians;" no "innocents." That is the justification for random bombings in Iraq, Spain, and London. It is the purported justification for the events of September 11, 2001. It is the justification for the targeting of journalists and aid workers. In sharing that definition of the scope of the "battlefield," we only legitimate its use by militants (and others). By practicing and legitimating secrecy, torture, and denying any legitimate international standards or laws, we legitimate them for others. This "policy" does not make anyone safer.

The United States is neither setting an example of democracy, nor are setting up a democracy in Iraq. Voting does not a democracy make. Heck, there were elections under Saddam Hussein, and no one quibbles that was a "democratic" government. Democracy requires openness and information. It requires protection of citizens by the laws of the land from the abuses of government. It should occur in an environment of standards recognized as humane in the international environment, and under international laws and agreements. None of that is true in the case of the actions of the United States in the "war on terrorism" wither inside or outside the U.S. What we are doing, and what we are creating in Iraq and Afghanistan are models of repressive rogue regimes. What has been created in the United States is also a repressive rogue regime - with barely present velvet gloves.

What is happening on the world stage cannot be hidden or legitimated by cute turns of phrase. Certainly the consequences of these actions, under whatever name, will haunt us for generations.

Side Note
I highly recommend reading the article by Kim Sengupta " The Dirty War: Torture and mutilation used on Iraqi 'insurgents'" in the Independent. You can access it at The Independent, or at this link

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"Well, gentlemen," he said to me and another journalist who had just been blasted out of our hotel rooms by suicide bombers, "this is what happens when terrorists carry out terrorism - a lot of people dead, a lot of people hurt. Now you can see what we are up against."

The general was savouring his moment. His special forces have been accused by the media and others of carrying out the worst human rights abuses against "suspected insurgents" in what is becoming an ever more savage and dirty war.

Behind the daily reports of suicide bombings and attacks on coalition forces is a far more shadowy struggle, one that involves tortured prisoners huddled in dungeons, death-squad victims with their hands tied behind their backs, often mutilated with knives and electric drills, and distraught families searching for relations who have been "disappeared".

This hidden struggle surfaced last week when US forces and Iraqi police raided an Interior Ministry bunker only a couple of hundred yards from where we were standing. They found 169 tortured and starving captives, who looked like Holocaust victims. The "disappeared" prisoners were being held, it is claimed, by the Shia Muslim Badr militia, which controls part of the ministry. Bayan Jabr, the Minister of the Interior, is himself a former Badr commander, but the ministry's involvement does not end there: General Adnan's commandos come under its control. So does the Wolf Brigade, which vies with the commandos for the title of most feared.

Baghdad is now a city in the shadow of gunmen. As I left the Hamra to replace what was lost in my bombed room, I had to negotiate checkpoints of the Badr militia, their Shia enemies, the Mehdi Army of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Kurdish peshmerga. The Iraqi police and the government paramilitaries have their own roadblocks.

And there are others: the Shia Defenders of Khadamiya - set up under Hussein al-Sadr, a cousin of Muqtada, who is an ally of the former prime minister Iyad Allawi - and the government-backed Tiger and Scorpion brigades. They all have similar looks: balaclavas or wraparound sunglasses and headbands, black leather gloves with fingers cut off, and a variety of weapons. When not manning checkpoints, they hurtle through the streets in four-wheel drives, scattering the traffic by firing in the air. Out of sight they are accused of arbitrary arrests, intimidation and extrajudicial killings.

The US and Britain, which trained many of the forces involved, and which still have ultimate responsibility for them, are implicated. But the pattern of illegality is also the continuation of a process that began with the questionable justification for the invasion. American and British forces have played their own part, from the abuses of Abu Ghraib to deaths in British military custody, from the deployment of white phosphorus as a chemical weapon in the assault on Fallujah to the wild use of overwhelming American firepower, which some have called almost as indiscriminate as the killings caused by Sunni insurgents' car bombings.

But more than two years after President George Bush officially declared a victorious conclusion to the war in Iraq, the body count continues to rise. Faced with an insurgency that shows no signs of abating, the US and Iraqi government rely more and more on the paramilitaries. Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, has said units such as General Adnan's commandos are among "forces that are going to have the greatest leverage on suppressing and eliminating the insurgency".

Those on the receiving end of some of this "leverage", however, describe terrifying experiences. Ahmed Sadoun (not his full name) was arrested in the middle of the night at his home in Mosul by government paramilitaries accompanied by American soldiers. He was held for seven months before being released without charge and left Iraq as soon as he could.

Speaking from Amman, Mr Sadoun, a 38-year-old engineer, said: "They kicked down our door and asked about a neighbour. When I said I did not know where the man was, they started kicking me and beating me. The soldiers had paint on their faces and did not have same uniforms as other troops. The Americans did not take part, but they saw what was happening.

"But this was nothing. When they took me to their base I was blindfolded and beaten very, very badly with metal rods. They then hung me up on hooks by my wrists until I thought they would tear off. I think that stopped because one of the Americans said something. I could hear English spoken in an angry voice. But this happened again later.

"I was in a room which was so small that not all the prisoners could even lie down properly. All night we could hear people screaming, people being hit. One day they said I could go, but after what happened to me I know they could do this to me again. So I left."

At one roadblock I met the Wolf Brigade, which was widely involved in suppressing disturbances in Mosul around the time Mr Sadoun was being held, though he does not know which paramilitaries seized him. One of them took off his balaclava and turned out to be in his late teens, belying the ferocity of the snarling wolf badges on his arms.

The young man shook his head about what happened at the Hamra. "That is bad, very bad," he said. "But you are alive, that is good - too many dead people in Baghdad." He was keen to make the point that "the people like us because we kill the people who try to kill them. Listen, mister, we are fighting bad people, you cannot treat them like normal persons."

But what about the innocent who get caught and end up being abused in detention centres? "Mister, those are just lies, you must not believe them. These people are terrorists. We are here because the police cannot do the job by themselves."

The paramilitary influence on the police is particularly overt in the British-controlled south of Iraq, where the British invited the militias to join the security forces, and then saw them take over. Nothing was done by the British authorities when police in plain clothes, along with their militia colleagues, killed Christians, claiming they sold alcohol, or Sunnis for being supposedly Baathists.

Action was only belatedly taken when a particularly menacing faction, a "force within a force" based at the Jamiat police station on the outskirts of Basra, captured two SAS soldiers who were gathering information on their mistreatment of prisoners.

British troops smashed into a police station to rescue the two soldiers and later arrested more than a dozen others. But now they more or less stay out of Basra, leaving Iraq's second city at the mercy of a police force that even its commanders say they barely control. There have been dozens of assassinations, including that of at least one foreign journalist.

Even families of fellow policemen are not exempt. Ammar Muthar, a member of the border police, knew his father, Muthar Abadi, was on the Shia militia hit list, because he had acted as a missile engineer in the war against Shia Iran. Ammar brought his father from Al-Amarah to Basra for safety. But while he was out one day, six policemen, in uniform but wearing black masks, dragged Abadi away. His body was later found, shot five times, three in the face.

"The neighbours could do nothing because it was the police who took him away," said Ammar. "They wanted to kill him, and no one could stop them."

One British officer said: "You hear about the militias infiltrating the police. But they did not have to. We invited them to join."

THE CHARGE SHEET

Endemic torture of prisoners

The discovery last week of starved and tortured prisoners in an Interior Ministry bunker emphasised that detention without due process remains endemic in Iraq, echoing the Saddam era. In Basra, militia elements in the police used cells to imprison and torture their enemies. When the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal broke, it emerged that among the prisoners being maltreated by US soldiers were "undocumented" detainees who had been kept hidden from the Red Cross. And Britain was shamed by the death of Baha Mousa, a Basra hotel clerk, in British military custody.

Use of napalm and phosphorus

Last week the Pentagon admitted using white phosporus as an offensive weapon in last year's assault on Fallujah. Its official use is to create smokescreens to shield troop movements, but if fired into trenches or foxholes it can burn victims to the bone. The legality of this use is debatable. Last year the US also admitted, after previous denials, that it had used napalm - which Britain has banned - against Iraqi forces during the invasion. There is also controversy over the deployment of cluster munitions, which Britain has said should not be used in or near civilian areas.

Extra-judicial killings

Early in the insurgency, it appeared that Sunnis loyal to Saddam were attacking defenceless Shias - an impression the coalition authorities sought to reinforce. Extra-judicial killings by Shias in the paramilitary groups operated by the Interior Ministry, or in party militias, have become increasingly open. Victims are rounded up in house-to-house raids at night and their bodies, frequently handcuffed, are found dumped later. Sunni civilians are the main target, but Shias seen as collaborators under Saddam, or connected with rival militias, have also "disappeared".

Indiscriminate 'spray and slay'

Heavy-handed tactics against the insurgency, dubbed "spray and slay", have attracted much criticism. The current American offensive in the west and north-west appears to replicate the methods used in Fallujah: the population is ordered to leave before the town is sealed off and subjected to an air and ground assault. Those killed are invariably described as insurgent fighters, even in incidents where there is strong evidence that groups of civilians, including women and children, have been caught up in airstrikes.

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It seems everyone is scrambling for either vaccines or anti-viral drugs. Taiwan has decided to violate Roche's patent and make its own version of Tamiflu. World wide, orders are over the moon anti-virals, and in the U.S. individuals are hoarding Tamiflu and Relenza. Britain has already promised to buy enough vaccine to cover its entire population - when it is ready.

The broadspread run on antivirals has health professionals concerned. Like the scenario we currently have with antibiotics, if the Avian flu meets Tamiflu and Relenza at every turn, it will simply mutate into an even stronger form of the disease. With a mortality rate of roughly 50% at this point, a more virulent strain is certainly not the news we want to hear.

Let's look at what we know.
The main form of transmission at this point is bird to bird. Migratory birds are now carrying the virus, and infecting domestic poultry stocks.

Most of the known cases of Avian flu have spread from birds (almost universally domestic stocks) to humans.

There is a vaccine for birds. There is not a vaccine for humans.

There are several unconfirmed cases of human to human transmission. The fear is a mutation in the Avian flu virus to a communicable human to human transmission.

The further the bird version of the virus spreads, the more likely it will meet the conditions to make the species jump.

Fighting back
Thus far most of the effort in the fight against Avian Flu has been the quarantining and mass destructions of infected flocks.

While nations try to figure out where it is going and how to deal with it once it arrives, the issue of public health surges to the surface. While many European nations have fairly strong public health access, this has deteriorated in the United States. It is not showing signs of strengthening in the current situation. In fact, some decisions fly in the face of all reason.

One example of this is the Bush brothers. George had given Jeb the " sweeping right to curb Medicaid." Facing a pandemic, does not seem to be an appropriate time to further limit health care access to the population. In Florida, this means increased restrictions on the 2.2 million Medicaid recipients. The "gift" also gives private insurers to right to limit benefits. The one caveat is that children and pregnant mothers are exempt from the limits.

Medicaid is the health care access for the poor. A population that is already under-covered, and at high risk. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, George Bush promised to address the economic divide. What is becoming ever more clear is that his approach id to widen it - not decrease it.

Frighteningly, Michael Leavitt (Secretary of HHS) is quoted as saying: "Today will be remembered as a day of transformation for the Florida Medicaid program. Florida's framework will be helpful to other states." In doing what? Giving more control to private providers and decreasing care to the poor?

Florida's planned changes seem to follow many of the changes that were made to Medicare - extending the questionable pharma "choices" to an even broader population. This means that even those who are able to access health care may not from the confusion of red tape placed to block them from that access.

Such moves take on huge implications in the face of a looming pandemic. While doctors fear antiviral hoarding, a huge portion of the population doesn't have access at all - or only limited access.

Protecting yourself ... and others
The best suggestions for protecting oneself from the Avian (and other) Flu infections come from Al Jazeera's Common sense can help fight bird flu. They include, washing your hands frequently, don't buy Tamiflu, stay home if you are sick.

My Chiropractor, whose advice I respect, suggests taking time released Vitamin C three times a day to keep the immune system up.

Like recent experience with hurricane and quake response displays, you had better prepare for lack of help from officialdom. A pandemic looks to be no different.

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It is instructive to look at the FY 2006 Budget Total Tables from the Office of Management and Budget, and the figures below for the 2006 Budget are taken from that document. The 1999 figures come from the 1999 Budget.

Item	1999 Budget	2006 Budget
Defense Funding	$271.6 (306.9)	$419 (increases to $492 in 2010)a
Homeland Security (New office)	not applicable	$32 (increases to $39 in 2010)a
Non-Defense portion of the Discretionary Budget	$290.7 (328.5)	$497
Total Discretionary Expense	$570.6 (644.8)	$895 (increased to $971 in 2010)a
Total Revenues	$1,742.7 (1942.7)	$2,178

Notes: Dollars are in Billions; Numbers in parentheses are year 2004 equivalents - $1 in 1999 - $1.13 in 2004; a - from Table S-10

Homeland Security is one of the so-called "cross cutting" areas. Effectively, this means they have their hands in a lot of pots (agriculture, commerce, defense, education, energy, health & human services, HUD, DoI, DoJ, DoL, State, Transportation, Treasury, ... Smithonian, Holocaust Museum - see page 50 of the online budget). Anyway, when you add in all the funding for their "cross cutting," their budget jumps from $32 billion to $49,942.9 Billion.

Individual income tax accounted for 46% of revenues in the 199 budget, and corporate income taxes were 11%. Under the Bush 2006 budget, individual income tax has droped to 44% and corporate income tax to 10%.

Now I know that we now have three wars going on - the war on terrorism, the war in Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq. However, neither Afghanistan or Iraq are included in the budget. THe expenses for those are being submitted separate from the usual budget process. The new Department of Homeland Security is roughly $50 billion of the increase. Much of the remainder is an increase for the Department of Defense - $147.4 billion (plus an addtional $9 billion for Homeland issues). However, the size of the military has not expanded dramatically. Bases are still being closed. The cost of the wars is not in the budget. So where is all that additional money going? Oh yeah, Star Wars and the development of the next generation of nuclear bombs (and other more secret activities).

p.s. Also not included in the Bush budget is the permantizing his tax cuts. That is expected to further reduce revenue by $1.4 trillion over ten years.

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