The global media has presented Greece, tiny Greece, as the epicenter of the second stage of the global financial crisis, much as it portrayed Wall Street as ground zero of the first stage.

Yet there is an interesting difference in the narratives surrounding these two episodes.
Narratives in Conflict

The unregulated activities of financial institutions, which created ever more complex instruments to magically multiply money, created the Wall Street crash that morphed into the global financial crisis.

With Greece, however, the narrative goes this way: This country piled up an unsustainable debt load to build a welfare state it could not afford, and is now the spendthrift that must tighten its belt. Brussels, Berlin, and the banks are the dour Puritans now exacting penance from the Mediterranean hedonists for living beyond their means and committing the sin of pride by hosting the costly 2004 Olympics.

This penance comes in the form of a European Union-International Monetary Fund program that will increase the country's value-added tax to 23 percent, raise the retirement age to 65 for both men and women, make deep cuts in pensions and public sector wages, and eliminate practices promoting job security. The ostensible aim of the exercise is to radically slim down the welfare state and get the spoiled Greeks to live within their means.

Although the welfare-state narrative contains some nuggets of truth, it is fundamentally flawed. The Greek crisis essentially stems from the same frenzied drive of finance capital to draw profits from the massive indiscriminate extension of credit that led to the implosion of Wall Street. The Greek crisis falls into the pattern traced by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff in their book This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly: Periods of frenzied speculative lending are inexorably followed by government or sovereign debt defaults, or near defaults. Like the Third World debt crisis of the early 1980s and the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, the so-called sovereign debt problem of countries like Greece, Europe, Spain, and Portugal is principally a supply-driven crisis, not a demand-driven one.

In their drive to raise more and more profits from lending, Europe's banks poured an estimated $2.5 trillion into what are now the most troubled European economies: Ireland, Greece, Belgium, Portugal, and Spain. German and French banks hold 70 percent of Greece's $400 billion debt. German banks were great buyers of toxic subprime assets from U.S. financial institutions, and they applied the same lack of discrimination to buying Greek government bonds. For their part French banks, according to the Bank of International Settlements, increased their lending to Greece by 23 percent, to Spain by 11 percent, and to Portugal by 26 percent.

The frenzied Greek credit scene featured not only European financial actors. Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs showed Greek financial authorities how financial instruments known as derivatives could be used to make large chunks of Greek debt "disappear," thus making the national accounts look good to bankers eager to lend more. Then the very same agency turned around and, engaging in derivatives trading known as "credit default swaps," bet on the possibility that Greece would default, raising the country's cost of borrowing from the banks but making a tidy profit for itself.

If ever there was a crisis created by global finance, Greece is suffering from it right now.
Hijacking the Narrative

There are two key reasons why the Greek narrative has become a time-worn cautionary tale of people living beyond their means, rather than a case of financial irresponsibility on the part of bankers and investors.

First of all, financial institutions successfully hijacked the narrative of crisis to serve their own ends. The big banks are now truly worried about the awful state of their balance sheets, impaired as they are by the toxic subprime assets they took on and realizing that they severely overextended their lending operations. The principal way they seek to rebuild their balance sheets is to generate fresh capital by using their debtors as pawns. As the centerpiece of this strategy, the banks seek to persuade the public authorities to bail them out once more, as the authorities did in the first stage of the crisis in the form of rescue funds and a low prime lending rate.

The banks were confident that the dominant Eurozone governments would never allow Greece and the other highly indebted European countries to default because it would lead to the collapse of the euro. By having the markets bet against Greece and raising its cost of borrowing, the banks knew that the Eurozone governments would come out with a bailout package, most of which would go toward servicing the Greek debt to them. Promoted as rescuing Greece, the massive 110-billion-euro package, put together by the dominant Eurozone governments and the IMF, will largely go toward rescuing the banks from their irresponsible, unregulated lending frenzy.

The banks and international financial institutions played this same old confidence game on developing country debtors during the Third World debt crisis of the 1980s, and on Thailand and Indonesia during the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s. The same austerity measures -- then known as structural adjustment -- followed lending binges from northern banks and speculators. And the scenario played out the same way: Pin the blame on the victims by characterizing them as living beyond their means, get public agencies to rescue you with money upfront, and stick the people with the terrible task of paying off the loan by committing a massive chunk of their present and future income streams as payments to the lending agencies.

No doubt the authorities are preparing similarly massive multibillion-euro rescue packages for the banks that overextended themselves in Spain, Portugal, and Ireland.
Shifting the Blame

The second reason for promoting the "living beyond one's means" narrative in the case of Greece and the other severely indebted countries is to deflect the pressures for tighter financial regulation, which have come from citizens and governments since the start of the global crisis. The banks want to have their cake and eat it too. They secured bailout funds from governments in the first phase of the crisis, but don't want to honor what governments told their citizens was an essential part of the deal: the strengthening of financial regulation.

Governments, from the United States to China and Greece, had resorted to massive stimulus programs to keep the real economy from collapsing during the first phase of the financial crisis. By promoting a narrative that moves the spotlight from lack of financial regulation to this massive government spending as the key problem of the global economy, the banks seek to forestall the imposition of a tough regulatory regime.

But this is playing with fire. Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman and others have warned that if this narrative is successful, the lack of new stimulus programs and tough banking regulations will result in a double-dip recession, if not a full-blown depression. Unfortunately, as the recent G-20 meeting in Toronto suggests, governments in Europe and the United States are caving in to the short-sighted agenda of the banks, who have the backing of unreconstructed neoliberal ideologues that continue to see the activist, interventionist state as the fundamental problem. These ideologues believe that a deep recession and even a depression is the natural process by which an economy stabilizes itself, and that Keynesian spending to avert a collapse will only delay the inevitable.
Resistance: Will It Make a Difference?

The Greeks are not taking all this lying down. Massive protests greeted the ratification of the EU-IMF package by the Greek parliament on July 8. In an earlier and much larger protest on May 5, 400,000 people turned out in Athens in the biggest demonstration since the fall of the military dictatorship in 1974. Yet, street protests seem to do little to avert the social catastrophe that will unfold with the EU-IMF program. The economy is set to contract by 4 percent in 2010. According to Alexis Tsipras, president of the left parliamentary coalition Synapsismos, the unemployment rate will likely rise from 15 to 20 percent in two years, with the rate among young people expected to hit 30 percent.

As for poverty, a recent joint survey by Kapa Research and the London School of Economics found that, even before the current crisis, close to a third of Greece's 11 million people lived close to the poverty line. This process of creating a "third world" within Greece will only be accelerated by the Brussels-IMF adjustment program.

Ironically, this adjustment is being presided over by a Socialist government headed by George Papandreou voted into office last October to reverse the corruption of the previous conservative administration and the ill effects of its economic policies. There is resistance within Papandreou's party PASOK to the EU-IMF plan, admits the party's international secretary Paulina Lampsa. But the overwhelming sense among the party's parliamentary contingent is TINA, as Margaret Thatcher famously put it: "there is no alternative."
The Consequences of Compliance

Faced with the program's savage consequences, an increasing number of Greeks are talking about adopting a strategy of threatening default or a radical unilateral reduction of debt. Such an approach could be coordinated, says Tsipras, with Europe's other debt-burdened countries, like Portugal and Spain. Here Argentina may provide a model: it gave its creditors a memorable haircut in 2003 by paying only 25 cents for every dollar it owed. Not only did Argentina get away with it, but the resources that would otherwise have left the country as debt service was channeled into the domestic economy, triggering an average annual economic growth rate of 10 percent between 2003 and 2008.

The "Argentine Solution" is certainly fraught with risk. But the consequences of surrender are painfully clear, if we examine the records of countries that submitted to IMF adjustment. Forking over 25 to 30 percent of the government budget yearly to foreign creditors, the Philippines in the mid-1980s entered a decade of stagnation from which it has never recovered and which condemned it to a permanent poverty rate of over 30 percent. Squeezed by draconian adjustment measures, Mexico was sucked into two decades of continuing economic crisis, with consequences such as the pervasive narcotics traffic that has brought it to the brink of being a failed state. The current state of virtual class war in Thailand can be traced partly to the political fallout of the economic sufferings of the IMF austerity program imposed on that country a decade ago.

The Brussels-IMF adjustment of Greece shows that finance capitalism in the throes of crisis no longer respects the North-South divide. The cynics would say, "Welcome to the Third World, Greece."

But this is no time for cynicism. Rather, it's a key moment for global solidarity. We're all in this together now.

Walden Bello is a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines, representing the party-list Akbayan. He is also the author of Food Wars (London: Verso, 2009). He is columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus and can be reached at waldenbello@yahoo.com

There is magic about those sun-sparkled coasts, translucent, shimmering, sapphire sea, later turning peach, apricot, deep blush, then seeming near blackberry as the sun falls and the dusk, then dark, takes over. Then the great pelicans sit sentry, on remains of old breakwaters, silhouetted against the moon's silvered light.

An all time memory is of the Mexican coast on the Gulf. One day remains apart, on some special mental shelf for treasures, oft taken down, wondered at, minutely re-savoured. Four of us hired a boat for the day, the others wanted to fish for marlin, I to relish the glittering ocean and sun. Lying below the little open wheelhouse, the old, toothless boatman and I quickly formed a bond. His boat was his life, he was an extention of it and it of him. His eyesight was phenominal. "Look, look", he'd say, pointing somewhere into the distant horizon: "tuna .." I could see nothing, but a few miles towards the spot, sure enough, the ocean boiled and churned with the great shoal.

Shark fins often glided along side the boat, their sleek elegance visible below the surface

Another: "look ..", a pointed, gnarled finger, and there would be the unmistakable spout from a whale, then a great, seemingly ocean-shuddering, roll or two. The Gulf hosts twenty nine marine mammal species, alone, including blue, beaked, fin, dwarf sperm and humpback whale. On 16th June, the first whale, a sperm whale, was found dead off Mississipi. Whales are thought to live up to one hundred and thirty years. The July 1st issue of "Nature" reveals remains of a sperm whale in Peru, thought to be thirteen and a half million years old. The whale is also thought to possibly be the world's oldest species. If the oil industry turns out to be the biggest threat they have ever faced, that will be quite a first.

As ever, the old man of the sea, saw the dolphins before I did : "look, look, look ...." they leapt, in their joyous pairs, in perfect synchrony. As the boat neared, they surrounded it, cavorting in fours, sixes, eights, twelves, higher and higher, over and over. Attempting to capture the images, the lens appeared less than clear, then I realized it was not the lens, but the tears streaming down my face, in response to witnessing overwhelming minutes of beauty beyond imagination. Suddenly, was a certainty of feeling blessed, to understand poet John Gillespie Magee's words : "...in the sunlit silence, put out my hand, and touched the face of God."

Fifty dolphin have so far, been reported found dead. Experts estimate only one tenth of species which die will be washed up. The full toll of big oil's "collateral damage", now, previously and in the future, will likely never be known.

When my friends hauled in a huge marlin, which had fought for its life with wile and valor, the old man of the sea said again: "Look. Watch." The great creature lay in the sun, gasping on the deck, its body glittering all over, in sequin-like, opalescence. "Watch", he repeated. In seconds, the lights started to go out and the magnificent creature became just a very large, dark, lump of flesh. Killing for sport is another obscenity.

As the sun lowered, we headed for the shore. Approaching it, the boatman ("Watch...") put his arms above his head, steering with his knees. Instantly, the sky darkened with birds, appeared seemingly from no where. They called, swooped, rose, fell, circled. He leant in to the bait bucket and threw the remains, bit by bit, in to the air. Every morsel was expertly caught. Not one missed, dropped. The bucket empty, his hands went back on the wheel, the birds did a farewell fly past and departed in to the dusk. In the shallower waters shoals of vibrantly coloured fish, darted between the delicate coral reefs.

Bird species of the region include albatrosses, petrels, shearwaters, frigatebirds, cormorants, gannets, boobies, gulls, terns and skimmers. With temperatures of one hundred degrees and birds becoming oil covered, experts warn they are boiling, alive. The thick, tarry oil, absorbs the heat

The many turtle species lay their eggs on or near the beach where they were born. Conservationists are removing eggs to unpolluted shores hundreds of miles away, where hopefully they will survive but another extraordinary natural miracle will have been severed. Four hundred and thirty two turtles have been found dead since April.

The Gulf's Loggerhead turtle's hatchlings follow the light of the moon to reach the ocean and swim to safety, away from land's predators, when they emerge from the egg. For the tiny moon followers, the ocean itself has become their ultimate predator.

Inspite of the scale of this environmental death warrant, Louisiana Governor, Bobby Jindal, supports a legal action to reverse the Presidential six month moratorium on deep water drilling, in place to allow time to determine the exact cause of the spill, thus, hopefully, avoiding a repetition. Jindal views the cost in jobs as too high. Oil jobs, that is. And as the hurricane season has moved in with the great winds spreading unleashed deadly pollutants, farther and wider.

Dahr Jamail, in Louisiana, writes of a poignant, differing view. Locals have erected white crosses, each representing something loved and lost: "Family time, crabs, white trout, camping, diving, walking the dog on the beach, sea shells, sea turtles, dolphins, barbecues, shrimp, shark, sand between my toes, boogie boarding, mullet, marsh, palm trees." (Christian Science Monitor, 22nd June 2010.) The crosses will undoubtedly multiply.

Mexico's ancient mariner was utterly in tune with with his universe and all which shared it with him. A reverence a million miles from those who think only to ravage it.

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!

President Obama missed what the BP oil spill disaster is really about. Though unquestionably an environmental disaster, the BP oil spill is much much more.

The BP oil spill is part of the same problem as the financial crisis: The BP oil spill and the banking crisis are two examples of the era we are living in, the era of corporate anarchy.

In a nutshell, in this era of corporate anarchy, corporations do not have to abide by any rules--none at all. Legal, moral, ethical, even financial rules are irrelevant. They have all been rescinded in the pursuit of profit--literally nothing else matters.

As a result, corporations currently exist in a state of almost pure anarchy--but an anarchy directly related to their size: The larger the corporation, the greater its absolute freedom to do and act as it pleases. That's why so many medium-sized corporations are hell-bent on growth over profits: The biggest of them all, like BP and Goldman Sachs, live in a positively Hobbesian State of Nature, free to do as they please, with nary a consequence.

The added bonus to this, though, is that the largest corporations have convinced the governments and the people of the "Too Big To Fail" fallacy--they have convinced the world that if they cease to exist, the sky will fall atop our collective heads. So if they fail, they must be saved--without argument, without penalty, and without reform.

Let's take BP: British Petroleum caused the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. There were various Federal Government agencies charged with supervising their operations--but all of those agencies deferred to BP, before the accident. As a large corporation--one of the largest oil companies in the world--BP operated more or less without any Government supervision. As is emerging, because of this lax and toothless supervision, safety rules and procedures were ignored. Insane risks were taken. No safety contingency plans were drawn up.

From what some memos are saying, disaster was inevitable.

Once the accident happened, BP controlled the information it released concerning the disaster. BP unilaterally decided not to proceed with an immediate top-kill of the well--instead, BP risked a wider disaster, in order to save the oil field by drilling a "relief well". BP's reasoning was simple: By implementing an immediate top-kill, BP would have sacrificed the oil field (and lost its investment) in order to save the environment. BP did not do this. Instead, it tried to stretch out the process, so as to salvage the oil field (and the profits) with the "relief well". But when it became impossible to hide the extent of the damage--when the smell of oil permeated the clear skies of Louisiana a hundred miles from the site of the spill--BP tried to implement the top-kill. We know how that ended.

Where was Authority? Where was Someone In Charge? The fact was, there was no one in charge. There was no one supervising--or at any rate, the ones who were supposed to be supervising had had their teeth yanked. And BP knew it--so they did whatever they wanted, regardless of the risks, or the costs.

Worst of all, BP realizes that, if it finally cannot get a handle on the oil spill disaster, they can simply fob it off on the U.S. Government--in other words, the people of the United States will wind up cleaning BP's mess. BP knows that no one will hold it accountable--BP knows that it will get away with it.

No one was holding the banks accountable either. It's no accident that American and European banks nearly went broke, but banks here in Chile sailed along smoothly: That's because banks here are regulated up the wazoo. They literally can't fart without an independent banking inspector supervising them, and then getting a stamped form in triplicate. When Chile's banks went bust in the crisis of 1980, it put paid to any illusions that the banks knew what they were doing--the government bailed out the banks then, but kept them under glass ever after.

But in Europe and America, the story was the Greenspan Put. Easy Al was so convinced that the banks would "self-regulate" that he pulled the teeth of the Fed, the banks regulatory agency, and let the "free market" have its way.

With this free pass, what do you think the banks did? They went anarchic--they invented all sorts of clever "financial products" that exponentially increased risk, rather than mitigating it. We all saw how that movie ended. When Lehman busted and the credit markets froze, a slap-dash improvised "rescue package" was drawn up, then the $700 billion TARP, then Quantitative Easing, all of these efforts lubed up with a lot of talk to "strengthening the regulatory environment" and "protecting the financial markets".

The upshot? The banks did whatever they pleased--with no supervision. And when their recklessness led inevitably to the catastrophe in the Fall of '08, the banks got bailed out--with no repercussions. The biggest ones even managed to turn a profit off the tax payer-funded bail-outs!

Even after the worst of the crisis--when the effects of no regulation and no supervision were clearly understood--nothing happened. The zero-regulation, zero-supervision regime continued.

This isn't the case for people, for individuals: People are regulated, people are controlled. Individuals are supervised and limited in what they can do and say--and no one complains. On the contrary--everyone is relieved, because it protects us all from the unreasonable behavior of an individual.

As an individual, I am limited in countless ways, from the trivial, like jaywalking, to the severe, like murder. I can't even speak up and yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater--I would be arrested for inciting a panic, the general good of avoiding a potentially lethal stampede overriding my need to express myself by yelling "Fire!" when there is none.

Curiously, individuals--ordinary people--are being supervised and regulated more and more stringently. Yet at the same time, corporations are becoming more and more free to do as they please. No one notices how strange this is--we have even lost the social framework to even talkabout regulating and supervising corporations, because too many foolish pundits equate supervision and regulation with Socialism. Yet curiously, personal freedom is being chipped away, day by day, without a peep from these pundits.

Meanwhile, the banks run amok.

Meanwhile, BP runs amok.

We can look at other industries--Big Pharma, for one--but there's no real need: Big Pharma will fit the same pattern as BP and the banks. Get so big that you can do whatever you want, and no one will challenge you, not even the government. Carry out practices that will inevitably create a crisis--like unsafe drilling, like toxic bonds--and be confident that you will be bailed out.

Bailed out, and allowed to continue, unfettered. "Allowed" to continue, unfettered? I'm sorry, I mis-spoke: Encouraged to continue, unfettered.

This era of corporate anarchy is reaching a crisis point--we can all sense it. Yet the leadership in the United States and Europe is making no effort to solve the root problem. Perhaps they don't see the problem. Perhaps they are beholden to corporate masters. Whatever the case, in his speech, President Obama made ridiculous references to "clean energy" while ignoring the cause of the BP oil spill disaster, the cause of the financial crisis, the cause of the spiralling health-care costs--the corporate anarchy that underlines them all.

This era of corporate anarchy is wrecking the world--literally, if you've been tuning in to images of the oil billowing out a mile down in the Gulf of Mexico.

I think we are at the fork in the road: One path leads to revolutionary change, if not outright revolution. The other, appeasement and stasis, as the corporations grind the country down.

My own sense is, there will be no revolutionary change. The corporations won. They won when they convinced the best and brightest--of which I used to be--that the only path to success was through a corporate career. No necessarily through for-profit corporations--Lefties never seem to quite get how pernicious and corporatist the non-profits really are; or perhaps they do know, but are clever enough not to criticize them, since those non-profits and NGO's pay for their meals.

Obama is a corporatist--he's one of Them. So there'll be more bullshit talk about "clean energy" and "energy independence", while the root cause--corporate anarchy--is left undisturbed.

Once again: Thank God I no longer live in America. It's too sad a thing, to watch while a great nation slowly goes down the tubes.

Gonzalo Lira, a novelist and filmmaker (and economist) currently living in Chile and writing at Gonzalo Lira

Big oil spills are no longer news in this vast, tropical land. The Niger Delta -- where the wealth underground is out of all proportion with the poverty on the surface -- has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates. The oil pours out nearly every week, and some swamps are long since lifeless.

BP is talking about cleaning up the mess they made. But what does clean-up really mean? Is it no visible oil on the surface of the water?  How can life survive after being embraced by oil?  What fish or birds would ever want to make love?  

In the Niger Delta the villain is Shell. Oil leaks in the region are also a result of oil thieves and aging pipelines, no longer properly being maintained. The people in the Niger Delta have been battling for years to control their destiny and protect their environment.

One wonders what will happen here in the United States? Will a populist movement organize against a big oil company? Will the "small" people fight back?

It might be a good idea to bring Nigerian fishermen and folks from Louisiana to Washington and have them sit side by side and tell their stories. There is a similar (if not singular) narrative taking place and it is beginning to sound too much like science-fiction.

The fear of a black planet could be one engulfed by oil.

This evidence indicating apparent research and experimentation on detainees opens the door to potential additional legal liability for the CIA and Bush-era officials. There is no publicly available evidence that the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel determined that the alleged experimentation and research performed on detainees was lawful, as it did with the "enhanced" techniques themselves.

"The CIA appears to have broken all accepted legal and ethical standards put in place since the Second World War to protect prisoners from being the subjects of experimentation," said Frank Donaghue, PHR's Chief Executive Officer. "Not only are these alleged acts gross violations of human rights law, they are a grave affront to America's core values."

Physicians for Human Rights demands that President Obama direct the Attorney General to investigate these allegations, and if a crime is found to have been committed, prosecute those responsible. Additionally, Congress must immediately amend the War Crimes Act (WCA) to remove changes made to the WCA in 2006 by the Bush Administration that allow a more permissive definition of the crime of illegal experimentation on detainees in US custody. The more lenient 2006 language of the WCA was made retroactive to all acts committed by US personnel since 1997.

"In their attempt to justify the war crime of torture, the CIA appears to have committed another alleged war crime - illegal experimentation on prisoners," said Nathaniel A. Raymond, Director of PHR's Campaign Against Torture and lead report author. "Justice Department lawyers appear to never have assessed the lawfulness of the alleged research on detainees in CIA custody, despite how essential it appears to have been to their legal cover for torture."

PHR's report, Experiments in Torture, is relevant to present-day national security interrogations, as well as Bush-era detainee treatment policies. As recently as February, 2010, President Obama's then director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, disclosed that the US had established an elite interrogation unit that will conduct "scientific research" to improve the questioning of suspected terrorists. Admiral Blair declined to provide important details about this effort.

"If health professionals participated in unethical human subject research and experimentation they should be held to account," stated Scott A. Allen, MD, a medical advisor to Physicians for Human Rights and lead medical author of the report. "Any health professional who violates their ethical codes by employing their professional expertise to calibrate and study the infliction of harm disgraces the health profession and makes a mockery of the practice of medicine."

Several prominent individuals and organizations in addition to PHR will file a complaint this week with the US Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) and call for an OHRP investigation of the CIA's Office of Medical Services.

The PHR report indicates that there is evidence that health professionals engaged in research on detainees that violates the Geneva Conventions, The Common Rule, the Nuremberg Code and other international and domestic prohibitions against illegal human subject research and experimentation. Declassified government documents indicate that:

* Research and medical experimentation on detainees was used to measure the effects of large- volume waterboarding and adjust the procedure according to the results. After medical monitoring and advice, the CIA experimentally added saline, in an attempt to prevent putting detainees in a coma or killing them through over-ingestion of large amounts of plain water. The report observes: "'Waterboarding 2.0' was the product of the CIA's developing and field-testing an intentionally harmful practice, using systematic medical monitoring and the application of subsequent generalizable knowledge."
* Health professionals monitored sleep deprivation on more than a dozen detainees in 48-, 96- and 180-hour increments. This research was apparently used to monitor and assess the effects of varying levels of sleep deprivation to support legal definitions of torture and to plan future sleep deprivation techniques.
* Health professionals appear to have analyzed data, based on their observations of 25 detainees who were subjected to individual and combined applications of "enhanced" interrogation techniques, to determine whether one type of application over another would increase the subject's "susceptibility to severe pain." The alleged research appears to have been undertaken only to assess the legality of the "enhanced" interrogation tactics and to guide future application of the techniques.

Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Experimentation in the 'Enhanced' Interrogation Program is the most in-depth expert review to date of the legal and medical ethics issues concerning health professionals' involvement in researching, designing and supervising the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation program. The Experiments in Torture report is the result of six months of investigation and the review of thousands of pages of government documents. It has been peer-reviewed by outside experts in the medical, biomedical and research ethics fields, legal experts, health professionals and experts in the treatment of torture survivors.

The lead author for this report was Nathaniel Raymond, Director of the Campaign Against Torture, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the lead medical author was Scott Allen, MD, Co-Director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Brown University and Medical Advisor to PHR. They were joined in its writing by Vincent Iacopino, MD, PhD, PHR Senior Medical Advisor; Allen Keller, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, NYU School of Medicine, Director, Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture; Stephen Soldz, PhD, President-elect of Psychologists for Social Responsibility and Director of the Center for Research, Evaluation and Program Development at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis; Steven Reisner, PhD, PHR Advisor on Ethics and Psychology; and John Bradshaw, JD, PHR Chief Policy Officer and Director of PHR's Washington Office.

The report was extensively peer reviewed by leading experts in related medical, legal, ethical and governmental fields addressed in the document.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) mobilizes the health professions to advance the health and dignity of all people by protecting human rights. As a founding member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, PHR shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.

The latest International Energy Outlook, an annual forecast by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, provides a cautionary "what if" for the global energy future if current policies remain unchanged. Driven by population and economic growth in developing countries, the world in 2035 would be more dependent on fossil fuels than ever, it finds. Countries overall would be consuming 49 percent more energy and spewing 43 percent more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2035 than in 2007.

Highlights of the international outlook were released in late May, and the full report will be available in July. Earlier this year, Miller-McCune.com reported on the administration's energy forecast for the U.S. to 2035.

The burgeoning world demand for energy comes in part from an extra 1.8 billion people by 2035, for a total population of 8.5 billion. The fastest-growing regions are India, the Middle East, Africa and Central and South America -- in short, much of the developing world.

In addition to population, the outlook finds, strong growth in gross domestic product would help fuel an 84 percent increase in energy consumption in those countries and China by 2035, absent any new national policies or binding international agreements on climate change. Coal consumption would increase by more than 50 percent, with most of the increase coming from Asia, minus Japan and South Korea. In 2035, coal still would fuel the largest share -- 43 percent -- of the world's electricity.

At the same time, 30 countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Iceland and much of the European Union, would see an increase of 14 percent in their energy consumption by 2035. These countries have been undergoing a transition from manufacturing to service economies, and their gross domestic product is projected to grow only half as fast as in the rest of the world. Their population also would grow more slowly. Europe, for example, would grow 0.2 percent yearly, compared to a 1.7 percent in Africa.

The global recession has had a profound impact on energy demand, causing it to contract by 1.2 percent in 2008 and 2.2 percent in 2009, as manufacturing sharply declined, along with consumer demand for goods and services. But the outlook shows that oil consumption will rise again this year and every year after that, and oil will remain the world's largest energy source. If energy policies remain unchanged, an estimated 26 million extra barrels of oil per day would be needed by 2035 to meet the world demand.

As the price of oil increases to $133 per barrel in 2035, the outlook finds, nuclear power would become competitive with fossil fuels, resulting in a 70 percent increase in electricity generation from nuclear power, mostly in Asia and Central and South America. With the exception of hydropower and wind power, most renewable sources of energy would not be economically competitive with fossil fuels.

"Typically," the outlook states, "government incentives or policies provide the primary support for construction of renewable generation facilities."

Of course, energy policy is not likely to stay static for the next 25 years.

The U.S. House of Representatives in 2009 approved a bill that aims to cut greenhouse gases by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050, roughly in line with the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Senate Democrats introduced similar legislation last month.

Getting the votes for policy change will be an uphill battle, though. Today, the Senate debated a resolution that challenges U.S. regulatory power over greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. It would bar the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases at power plants, oil refineries and other large-scale industrial facilities. The resolution, introduced by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, was defeated on a 47-53 vote.

"The Clean Air Act was written by Congress to regulate criteria pollutants, not greenhouse gases, and its implementation remains subject to oversight and guidance from elected representatives," Murkowski said in a press release earlier this year. "We should continue our work to pass meaningful energy and climate legislation, but in the meantime, we cannot turn a blind eye to the EPA's efforts to impose back-door climate regulations with no input from Congress."

Senior administration officials have said they would have recommended a presidential veto if the Senate approved the resolution. In a statement to the Senate this week, the Office of Management and Budget said the resolution would block the administration's efforts to promote fuel economy standards, reduce the impacts of catastrophic oil spills and jump-start investment in renewable energy.

Further, the office said, the resolution "would increase the nation's dependence on oil and other fossil fuels and block efforts to cut pollution that threatens our health and well-being"; and is "contrary to the widely-accepted scientific consensus that greenhouse gases are at increasingly dangerous concentrations and are contributing to the threat of climate change."

Among the principal factors leading up to the April 20 oil rig explosion, and the subsequent uncontrolled eruption from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, was the absence of any regulations on the profit-driven operations of the energy industry. Government agencies under both Bush and Obama pushed for the expansion of deep-sea oil drilling and rubber-stamped all the decisions made by BP.

One measure of this influence is money. Through a combination of large individual gifts, Political Action Committees and other indirect channels, the oil and gas industry pumped over $250 million into federal campaign coffers over the past 20 years, according to a new report from the Center for Responsive Politics.

This does not include lobbying. The industry spent $174 million last year alone on lobbying the federal government, the third largest of 121 industries. BP, for its part, spent $16 million last year. All told, since 1998 the oil lobby has committed $1 billion to exert its influence on public policy.

"The oil and gas industry has long been one of the most influential in Washington. They are truly a powerhouse industry," Center for Responsive Politics Communications Director Dave Levinthal told the WSWS.

Levinthal explained, "At any time there are dozens of pieces of legislation on the table and lots of diverging interests. Still, the confluence of all this oil industry money in politics above all purchases access. It gets company executives into the game. The amount of influence they get one can only dream of if you don't have millions to spend."

One direct result is that the industry has been allowed to regulate itself. The federal agency with responsibility for oversight and regulation of oil drilling, the Minerals Management Service (MMS), routinely allows extensive offshore drilling without requiring obligatory environmental reviews and permits. MMS waived basic safety precautions that might have prevented the spill.

While the public disgust in the wake of the disaster has skyrocketed, it has not stalled the collusion between government and Big Oil. In fact, the opposite is true. Halliburton, the energy company involved in making the cement casings for the rig, which may have ultimately contributed to the explosion, last month ramped up its political spending to the highest levels since just before the 2008 elections.

Just one week prior to appearing before an investigative subcommittee of the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, Halliburton donated $1,500 to the campaign fund of the ranking Republican, Joe Barton (Texas), according to a report by Politico.

In May, Halliburton also contributed donations of $1,000 on Senator Mike Crapo (Idaho) of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and Senator Richard Burr (North Carolina) of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Both committees are holding their own hearings to investigate the oil disaster.

Along similar lines, Democratic Senator turned lobbyist John Breaux, who now represents some clients in the oil and gas industry, is working to ensure oil industry representation on the five member "independent" presidential commission to investigate the spill. Breaux told the New Orleans newspaper Times-Picayune, "The commission shouldn't consist of all environmentalists, or all industry people. You need to have a mix."

One of Obama's two choices to head the commission is former Environmental Protection Agency chief William Reilly, who currently sits on the board of directors of oil giant ConocoPhillips.

Congressional donations, not surprisingly, are highest to committee members who play integral roles in crafting legislation affecting the oil industry. Members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee received an average of about $52,000 from individuals and groups associated with the oil and gas industry this election cycle. However contributions are near ubiquitous: 78 percent of House members and 84 percent of Senators received funding from oil and gas this past election cycle.

Both parties have received millions, though donations to Republicans have outweighed Democrats over the years about three to one. Nonetheless, President Obama was the second largest recipient of all candidates for federal office from the oil industry in 2008, pulling in just shy of one million. Only Republican presidential challenger John McCain received more.

BP executives, however, contributed twice as much to Obama, the largest single recipient of the company's funds.

This current election season, several candidates have already received over $100,000 from the oil industry. Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas) leads the way with over $280,000 collected thus far. Lincoln currently sits on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Republican Senators David Vitter and Lisa Murkowski--from the oil states of Louisiana and Alaska, respectively--both pulled in over $200,000 to date.

The influence extends beyond the executive and legislative branches of government. According to the National Law Journal, seven of the 12 federal judges in the Eastern District of Louisiana have recused themselves from hearing oil spill cases, citing connections to the oil industry.

The ties uniting government officials with the oil industry are intertwined further by the "revolving door" between political office and industry employment. Just within the Department of Interior, these connections are everywhere.

The Obama administration appointed Sylvia Baca, a BP executive, to serve as a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management. Baca was appointed last June by Obama's Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, who himself has extensive ties to the oil industry and has long promoted off-shore oil drilling.

Bush administration Interior Secretary Gale Norton, after leaving the government took a position as general counsel for Royal Dutch Shell.

Outside the Interior Department, Obama's Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, headed a research institute at the University of California, Berkeley, which was funded by BP with a $500 million grant. On becoming Energy Secretary, Chu selected BP's chief scientist, Steven Koonin, to be the DOE undersecretary for science.

One of the most egregious examples is Steve Griles, who served as Deputy Secretary of the Interior Department and a representative on Dick Cheney's energy task force. After leaving office to start up his own energy lobbying firm, Griles was convicted of obstructing justice in the investigation of lobbyist Jack A. Abramoff. A federal judge sentenced Griles to 10 months in prison.

The movement between political positions and lobbying firms is very widespread. Of BP's 37 registered lobbyists identified by Center for Responsive Politics, 22 have held positions within the executive or legislative branches or as senior staffers.

Acting Inspector General Mary Kendall underscored these connections in an investigation released last month that confirmed allegations of MMS employees accepting gifts from oil and gas companies and other misconduct. In the report she wrote, "Of greatest concern to me is the environment in which these inspectors operate--particularly the ease with which they move between industry and government."

Mandy Smithberger, from the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight put it more bluntly in an interview with the Associated Press. "To say that MMS has had a revolving door problem doesn't even begin to describe how profoundly this agency has entangled itself with industry. The revolving door has spun so readily in this case that the lines between the regulators and the regulated are now virtually nonexistent."

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.

Speaking at the West Point military academy late last month, President Obama was even more upbeat, declaring that as US troops depart, "a strong American civilian presence will help Iraqis forge political and economic progress" towards establishing "a democratic Iraq that is sovereign and stable and self-reliant".

The reality is entirely different. Even after the September deadline, the US military will maintain a huge military presence of 50,000 troops, ostensibly in "non-combat" and "training" roles, to prop up a puppet regime in Baghdad, which, three months after the national election, is yet to be formed. While the character of the American occupation of Iraq is changing, its underlying purpose--to maintain the country firmly under US domination--remains the same.

In his comments last Friday, General Odierno declared that the "drawdown" was ahead of schedule--600,000 containers of gear and 18,000 vehicles moved out; and the number of bases down from 500 last year to 126 and set to decline to 94 by September 1. What is actually underway, however, is not a withdrawal, but a vast consolidation in preparation for the long-term occupation of the country by US forces.

The Stars and Stripes newspaper noted in an article on June 1 that the ratification of the US-Iraq security agreement in November 2008 governing the drawdown was followed by a massive expansion of base construction work. "In all, the military finished $496 million in base construction projects during 2009, the highest annual figure since the war began and nearly a quarter of the $2.1 billion spent on American bases in Iraq since 2004. An additional $323 million worth of projects are set to be completed this year."

While the number of US bases may be declining, the Pentagon is establishing what are known as "enduring presence posts"--including four major bases: Joint Base Balad in the north, Camp Adder in southern Iraq, Al-Asad Air Base in the west and the Victory Base Complex around Baghdad International Airport. These are sprawling fortified facilities--Balad alone currently houses more than 20,000 troops. In addition to the 50,000 troops that will remain, there will be up to 65,000 contractors after September 1.

Under the 2008 agreement, the US military handed over internal security functions to Iraqi forces last year, but, under the guise of "training" and "support", retains tighter supervision of the army and police. Moreover the Iraqi government can always "request" US troop assistance in mounting operations. As Odierno explained in a letter to US personnel on June 1, even after all US combat troops leave, "we will continue to conduct partnered counter-terrorism operations and provide combat enablers to help the Iraqi Security Forces maintain pressure on the extremist networks."

The 2008 agreement sets December 31, 2011 as the deadline for all US troops to quit Iraq, but the construction of huge new US bases indicates a long-term US military presence under a Strategic Framework Agreement that is yet to be negotiated. As Stars and Stripes pointed out, "the nascent condition of the Iraqi Air Force... could lead the Iraqi government to request that a US training force remain in the country beyond 2011, most likely at Balad."

Accompanying the troop drawdown is a buildup of civilian operations centred on the US embassy in Baghdad. The new embassy, situated in the fortified Green Zone, is the largest and most expensive in the world. Opened in January 2009, the complex includes 21 buildings, occupies 0.4 square kilometres and houses 1,000 regular employees as well as up to 3,000 additional staff. The embassy's No 2 diplomat Cameron Munter told the Washington Post last month: "Our commitment will not be on the scale of numbers and money that the military has. But it will be extraordinarily substantial."

The Post also touched on certain sensitive projects that would not be handed over to embassy staff, including "the collection of intelligence, initiatives to counter what the military calls 'malign Iranian influence', and the integration of tens of thousands of former insurgents the military turned into Sunni paramilitary groups." In other words, the US military will remain actively involved in monitoring and manipulating the sectarian divisions that Washington has exploited since the 2003 invasion to assert its control.

The "ending" of the insurgency, trumpeted by the Pentagon and White House, has involved the ruthless suppression of opposition to the US occupation, resulting in the deaths of more than a million Iraqis, another two million driven into exile, and tens of thousands detained and tortured. Iraqi "democracy" rests on a police state apparatus developed and honed by the US military. The "legitimate and credible" election in March was only open to those parties and politicians that accepted the occupation.

Seven years of war has had a devastating impact on the Iraqi people. Unemployment and underemployment remain high. According to last month's Brookings Iraq Index, as of last year, only 20 percent of the population had access to proper sanitation, 45 percent to clean water, 50 percent to more than 12 hours a day of electricity, 50 percent to adequate housing and 30 percent to health services. A 2007 World Bank survey found that 23 percent of people were living in poverty on less than $US2.20 a day.

The criminal US invasion of Iraq was not aimed at helping the Iraqi people. Rather, its purpose was to subjugate the country in order to establish control over its vast energy reserves and to transform it into a base for wider American strategic objectives in the Middle East and Central Asia. Having bloodily suppressed resistance in Iraq, the Obama administration is pulling its troops out in order to expand its neo-colonial war in Afghanistan and for new military aggression in other parts of the globe.

Being left behind is an extensive American civilian and military apparatus that will continue to control the levers of power in Baghdad, bully the Iraqi government into line on matters concerning US interests, keep a watchful eye on the country's festering sectarian tensions and leave the door open to a rapid return of US troops.

Access to safe water is essential for life. People need water to drink, for cooking, for laundry, dishwashing and personal hygiene. When safe water is not readily available, life becomes extremely difficult.

While the tap water was not safe on the night of May 1 and into May 2, there was a rush on bottled water in stores all over the area. Along with the rush for safe water came reports that store chains and owners were taking advantage of the situation and overcharging customers. According to the Boston Globe, one resident of the Jamaica Plain neighborhood found a case of water being sold for more than $52 in a 7-Eleven store in her community.

Water should be a guaranteed right for all and it should be free. But under capitalism, it is a commodity sold to make a profit. Those who cannot afford the asking price must simply suffer.

Many truck drivers and grocery store workers in the Boston area were called in and forced to work on Sunday, their day off, in order to meet the city's demand for bottled water. With jobs under constant threat in our current economy, these workers likely did not feel that they could say "no" to "requests" from their bosses to work these extra hours.

On May 3, it was announced that local towns in the area would distribute water to residents for free. The locations for distribution included surrounding suburbs and towns but not a single location within the city of Boston. Working people within the city, many of whom do not have access to a car, had no way to access these free supplies.

The clamp that broke and caused the crisis was less than 10 years old, said officials of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. According to the Boston Globe, the state Water Infrastructure Finance Commission met for the first time after the crisis was over to discuss the water system, which probably needs billions of dollars in upgrades and repairs.

The recent emergency may seem like an unusual event. However, lacking access to safe tap water is not a new scenario to many working people in and around Boston. An organization called Massachusetts Global Action has found that people who live in Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan, which are low-income communities of color, are 10 times more likely than residents of wealthier neighborhoods to experience a water shutoff as a consequence of bill non-payment. Further, as the proportion of people of color increases in a city ward, there is a disproportionate likelihood that water will be shut off in a resident's home if a bill is not paid, according to Massachusetts Global Action. So while all 2 million people in the Greater Boston Area experienced this water crisis together, it is a constant threat for many working people in the city.

Water is a human right that should be guaranteed to all people. This "crisis" revealed that it is not guaranteed to the working people of Boston, nor is it freely available to most working people around the country. We must fight back against the system of capitalism that puts a price on a most basic and necessary resource for human survival, water.

Francisco Castaneda came from his native El Salvador to the United States to work. After a 2005 conviction, he was detained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has jurisdiction over non-U.S. citizens.

Immediately after his incarceration, Castaneda began complaining of a bleeding lesion on his penis. Despite the advice of medical staff at the facility, who believed the growth could be cancerous, the U.S. Public Health Service refused to schedule a biopsy, labeling the procedure "elective." Instead, they offered him ibuprofen, antibiotics and additional underwear.

After almost a year of Castaneda pleading for treatment, the U.S. Department of Immigration Health Services scheduled a biopsy only after the growth spread, cancer became obvious and a prisoners' rights group agitated for action.

The results of the biopsy confirmed cancer. But before the results came back, Castaneda was released from ICE custody so the government would not have to pay for his treatment. As a result of the neglect he suffered at the ICE facility the cancer had spread elsewhere in his body. He had only a short time to live.

Represented by Public Justice and supported by the American Civil Liberties Union and others, Castaneda sought to sue the health officials responsible for neglecting his health and violating the constitutional prohibition on "cruel and unusual punishment," rather than simply suing the federal government itself. By law, the government's liability costs would not be nearly enough to cover the medical costs incurred by Castaneda and his family in the desperate attempt to save his life, let alone compensate for his suffering and his family's loss.

After his 2008 death, Castaneda's family continued the fight, with both a federal judge and a U.S. Appeals Court ruling that the suit against the health officials could go forward. The government itself admitted culpability in Castaneda's death, but the Supreme Court disagreed with the lower courts, citing a 1970 law prohibiting lawsuits against health officials. Recently appointed Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered the court's opinion.

Gabriel Eber, a staff attorney with the ACLU's National Prison Project, said, "The Supreme Court has unfortunately closed the door on an important avenue of accountability for the gross mistreatment that immigration detainees across the country have suffered."

Working-class prisoners in the United States, including people yet to be tried in court, usually suffer from degrading and inhumane conditions. People caught in the web of immigration detention, especially Latin Americans, suffer particular injustices. Sometimes without charges, they are separated from their families and face indefinite incarcerations. The specter of deportation is constantly held over their heads, and periodic raids are used to frighten workers into accepting the worst of working and living conditions. Mistreatment by government personnel is common; the Castaneda case is a prime example of this, but also points to the capitalist state's role in terrorizing immigrant workers--with no mechanism for accountability by abusive personnel, prisoners can freely be treated cruelly.

The PSL stands with all immigrants in demanding immediate and full legal rights!

In a May 9 piece, Times columnist Thomas Friedman denounces workers in the US and Western Europe for believing in the "tooth fairy" and expecting government services without paying for them. In America, Friedman says, the baby-boom generation, which supposedly had inherited the prosperity of the post-war years, had "eaten through all that abundance like hungry locusts."

"After 65 years in which politics in the West was, mostly, about giving things away to voters, it's now going to be, mostly, about taking things away. Goodbye Tooth Fairy politics, hello Root Canal politics."

Describing what he has in mind, two days later Friedman wrote about his meeting with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou in a rooftop restaurant in Athens. Praising Papandreou for defying mass protests, the Times columnist hails the government for carrying out a "revolution," including raising the retirement age and slashing wages and pensions for public sector workers, imposing regressive consumption taxes and wiping out two-thirds of the country's publicly owned companies.

Another May 11 article, appearing on the front page of the Times, is entitled, "In Greek Debt Crisis, Some See Parallels to U.S." Its author, David Leonhardt, led the newspaper's campaign to promote Obama's health care overhaul, explicitly supporting limits on medical treatments ordinary people could receive. ("In truth, rationing is an inescapable part of economic life").

"It's easy to look at the protesters and the politicians in Greece--and at the other European countries with huge debts--and wonder why they don't get it," Leonhardt writes. "They have been enjoying more generous government benefits than they can afford...

"Yet in the back of your mind comes a nagging question: how different, really, is the United States?... Both countries have a bigger government than they're paying for. And politicians, spendthrift as some may be, are not the main source of the problem.

We, the people, are."

It is rich to hear demands for sacrifices and lectures about "the people" living beyond their means, particularly from the likes of Leonhardt and Friedman. The latter, who is paid $50,000 per speaking engagement, is married to the heir of a multi-billion dollar real estate fortune. According to the Washingtonian magazine, the couple owns "a palatial 11,400-square-foot house" in suburban Washington, DC, valued in 2006 at $9.3 million.

In these circles it is taken for granted that massive cuts must be imposed on the living standards of the working class, but not a word is said about the hundreds of billions that are funneled into the personal fortunes of the financial aristocracy and the subordination of the entire economy to increasing their piles of wealth.

The events of the last several years have revealed to the world that the greatest burden on society is not ordinary working people but the anti-social activities of an unproductive and parasitic financial elite. The grotesque consumption and appropriation of social wealth by this oligarchy is not a minor factor in the crisis of the global capitalist system itself.

The bankrupting of whole countries--chiefly through the transferring of the bad debts of the financial speculators onto the books of various governments--is being used to demand austerity from workers and ever-greater riches for the elite.

The four biggest US financial firms--Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase--made money from trading every single day during the first quarter of the year, according to their financial filings. The banks, which all benefited from the Wall Street bailout, reaped hundreds of millions in profits from betting on the movement of currency, commodity and sovereign debt markets, including in relation to Greece.

At the same time, the value of corporate shares has risen, chiefly through a campaign of job cutting, wage and benefit concessions and a staggering 3.8 percent increase in worker productivity in 2009. As a result, corporate CEOs, who took stock options in lieu of pay increases when profits were down, are now cashing in, according to an Associated Press report, entitled, "America's top CEOs are set for a once-in-a-lifetime pay bonanza." Yahoo's Carol Bartz, for example, received a $47.2 million package during her first year on the job, 90 percent of which came from stock awards and options.

While these vast personal fortunes have been made, there has been no recovery in the wages and benefits workers have lost during the recession. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported that real wages fell last year by 2.7 percent in Japan and Ireland, 1.1 per cent in Germany and 0.8 percent in the US.

The unbridled greed of America's ruling elite--and the complete subservience of the political establishment, from Obama on down, to its needs--can only be compared to the ancien régime in France. The parasitism and extravagance of the aristocracy became a major factor in the country's breakdown, and ultimately the eruption of the French Revolution in 1789.

Workers must reject the demand for austerity. The working class did not create this crisis and must not pay for it. Instead, the ill-gotten gains of the ruling elite must be confiscated and used to meet the interests of society as a whole, instead of gutting social programs and destroying jobs.

This must include a multi-trillion dollar program of public works to put the unemployed to work--at decent wages and full medical care--to rebuild the cities and suburbs, repair the nation's infrastructure and provide high quality housing, medical care and education for all.

In the midst of the Great Depression, the founder of the Fourth International, Leon Trotsky, argued in the Transitional Program that it is "impossible to take a single serious step in the struggle against monopolistic despotism and capitalistic anarchy--which supplement one another in their work of destruction--if the commanding posts of the banks are left in the hands of predatory capitalists. In order to create a unified system of investment and credits, along a rational plan corresponding to the interests of the entire people, it is necessary to merge all the banks into a single national institution. Only the expropriation of the private banks and the concentration of the entire credit system in the hands of the state will provide the latter with the necessary actual, i.e., material, resources--and not merely paper and bureaucratic resources--for economic planning."

The nationalization of the banks, however, will produce positive results, Trotsky explained, "only if the state power itself passes completely from the hands of the exploiters into the hands of the toilers."

For this to be realized the working class must build its own mass political party, independent of and irreconcilably opposed to the two parties of big business, and dedicated to the fight for a workers' government to replace capitalism with socialism.

It has now become abundantly clear that the nearly $1 trillion package cobbled together by European finance ministers and the International Monetary Fund was not merely aimed at staving off the bankruptcy of Greece and other European Union member states gripped by sovereign debt crises.

It was designed to effect a massive transfer of social wealth from the masses of the population to the international banks and investment firms. And it is to be paid for by compelling governments across the continent to implement the kind of draconian attacks that have brought hundreds of thousands of Greek workers into the streets in strikes and mass protests.

The European bourgeoisie is acting on the cynical adage of "never let a crisis go to waste." It has seized upon the dramatic events in Greece and the threat of a worldwide financial meltdown, largely the product of the financial elite's own speculative activities, to ram through an assault on conditions of life for European workers that is without precedent since the continent lay in ruins at the end of World War II.

An unannounced corollary to the agreement on the bailout package reached in Brussels early Monday was the immediate implementation of austerity measures in Spain and Portugal, whose public deficits have made them the targets of international financial speculators seeking super profits by bidding up interest rates on the countries' debt offerings.

After the Spanish stock market rose a dizzying 14.4 percent on Monday, "It has belatedly dawned on Spaniards that the Iberian peninsula, not Greece, is the main target of the financial 'bazooka' unveiled by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund," the Financial Times commented Wednesday.

With the euro zone's third largest public deficit, Spain has been increasingly targeted by financial speculators and forced to pay ever higher interest rates to secure foreign credit.

The country's social democratic Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero went before parliament on Wednesday and announced a series of austerity measures, including: a 5 percent pay cut for public employees, followed by a wage freeze; the freezing of most pension payments; the elimination of the so-called cheque-bebé, a 2500-euro government subsidy for families with new babies; elimination of a program funding elder care and public funding for prescription drugs.

Also to be slashed are over 6 billion euros in public investment, including on public transportation projects. Billions more will be eliminated in funding to local governments and development aid, necessitating still further layoffs and cutbacks.

Under conditions in which the country's official unemployment rate already stands at over 20 percent, the austerity program will mean millions more being thrown on the unemployment and a further turn by the country's economy towards slump as consumption is curtailed.

Portugal followed suit on Thursday with its own proposal for across-the-board cuts in public spending and increases in regressive valued-added taxes.

"If we fail to show we can implement credible measures to cut the deficit, the tap of overseas financing will be turned off," Fernando Teixeira dos Santos, Portugal's finance minister, told members of parliament during a debate on the proposed austerity package.

The social democratic government of Prime Minister José Sócrates did not spell out where the budget ax would fall, but indicated that it would include reductions in funding for local governments, and that the plan comes on top of already announced measures that include an elimination of public sector jobs, cuts in unemployment benefits, a freeze on salaries, and the sale of publicly owned enterprises.

The European Commission, speaking for the European and international banks, warned Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark and Finland Wednesday that their budget deficits have grown too large, and that they will be subjected to "excessive deficit procedures" (EDPs), imposing deadlines for slashing public spending.

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund, working together with the EU, has approved the latest tranche of a "rescue package" for Romania, or more precisely for international financial interests holding Romanian debt.

The condition for releasing the latest outlay from the 20 billion euro package (12 billion euros have been paid out thus far) was the government's approval of an economic plan to reduce the public deficit to 4.4 percent of GDP by next year, compared to 7.2 percent for 2009.

The Romanian government produced a proposal for a devastating round of budget reductions that includes cutting public workers' pay by 25 percent and slashing state pensions by 15 percent. It is estimated that the austerity measures could mean the wiping out of as many as a quarter of a million jobs.

The announcement provoked demonstrations by workers and pensioners throughout the country and scenes of older retired workers clashing with security forces in the capital of Bucharest. Strikes have been called for next week.

The official unemployment rate in Romania already stands at 10 percent, while according to some estimates fully two thirds of the population is living at or below the poverty line.

These unprecedented attacks are to be carried out throughout Europe. In Germany, Roland Koch, deputy leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Party and considered a likely candidate to succeed the ailing Wolfgang Schauble as finance minister, warned that no cutbacks could be "considered taboo" as Germany confronts its own 10 billion euro fiscal deficit, as well as the cost of its 123 billion euro contribution to the EU rescue package.

Koch, the minister president of the state of Hesse, called for reconsidering a policy that provides for kindergarten for all children under the age of three. The proposal has provoked outrage. "Anyone who starts talking about such cuts is acting like an arsonist," Christine Haderthauer, Bavaria's social affairs minister, told the Passauer Neue Presse. "If we have to take the red marker specifically to the areas of education and family, we're playing the lottery with our future."

Meanwhile, economists are predicting that the decline in the value of the euro will slash the real wages of the working class in Germany and throughout Europe. "We can expect inflation to rise sharply over the next few years," German economist Wolfgang Brachinger told the British Guardian. "The euro is losing value, and consumers will have to dig deeper in their pockets as a result."

In Britain, with the new Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition just beginning to unveil its right-wing agenda of "emergency" measures, the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, stated that there could be no delay in implementing a deficit-reduction program.

King described the crisis in Greece as an opportunity to "tackle the excessive fiscal budget deficit." He added, "The bigger risk at present, given the experience of the last two weeks, would be for a new government not to put in place clear and credible measures to deal with the fiscal deficit."

On the other side of the Atlantic, the Obama administration's chief budget official sounded a similar note, warning that Washington must take action to slash its deficit, which is expected to exceed $1.5 trillion this fiscal year, or "wind up facing the sorts of choices that Greece now faces."

"I would prefer to be addressing this sooner rather than later," said Peter Orszag, the White House budget director in an interview Wednesday with the Reuters news agency. Orszag declined to discuss specific measures, saying that the administration wants to allow a bipartisan commission on the deficit formed by Obama to complete its work.

The panel is taking aim at so-called entitlement programs, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It is co-chaired by Alan Simpson, a former Republican Senator from Wyoming, and Erskine Bowles, a former Clinton administration official and investment banker. Bowles sits on the board of directors of Morgan Stanley, the Wall Street investment firm, where he chairs its compensation committee, approving eight-figure salaries and bonuses for top executives.

That such an individual could combine these two roles underscores the class character of the economic policies being pursued, not only by the Democratic administration of Barack Obama in the US, but by governments throughout Europe and internationally. All of them are attempting to impose the full burden of the financial crisis on the backs of the working class, while transferring massive amounts of social wealth to the financial parasites who are responsible for it.

On 25 April 2010, representatives from a host of organisations and nations with the clout to shape policies and millions of lives around the world gathered for a Roundtable at the headquarters of the US Millennium Challenge Corporation in Washington. Among them were representatives from the World Bank Group, Japan, the US, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), African governments and the African Union Commission. Their stated aim was to 'facilitate a dialogue among government representatives, multilateral agencies, civil society, and the private sector to further explore progress and advancement of ongoing work related to principles for responsible agricultural investment.'[1]

Others prefer simpler language. They describe the form of agricultural investment under discussion at the Roundtable, which involves large-scale land acquisition for industrial-style agriculture in African and other developing countries, as a global 'land grab'. They say there is no way it can be 'responsible' because it threatens food, seed and land sovereignty of family farmers, social stability, environmental health and biodiversity around the world.[2]

According to Devlin Kuyek of GRAIN, the international NGO that has been drawing the world's attention to the land-grab issue, the Roundtable was 'a smoke and mirrors show to dampen the escalating social backlash threatening land grab investors.' He was one of the activists who travelled to Washington to protest in front of the Roundtable venue in Washington. Well over 100 farmer, civil society and non-governmental organisations and broad-based coalitions around the world have signed onto the campaign, 'Stop land grabbing now!'.[3]

The investors and the proponents of this kind of agricultural investment in Africa deny it is a land grab.[4] They say that the investments are positive, providing jobs and infrastructure, posing no threat to food security even if the food and agrofuels they produce are for export. Such a stance is understandable; it would be unrealistic to expect an objective assessment of such foreign direct investment from the nations, corporations, investment banks and funds, and billionaire tycoons that stand to profit from it.

What is perplexing, however, is that the same kind of rhetoric is coming from some whose job it is to protect Africa's farmers' rights and their farmland from exploitative foreign takeover. By this, I mean African heads of state and other elected representatives of the people, as well as some holding key positions in Africa's regional economic and political bodies.

Take, for example, the views of Sindiso Ngwenya, secretary general of Comesa, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa. He calls the agricultural investment in the region, particularly by Gulf States, a 'win-win' partnership.[5] Egypt's minister of investment, Mahmoud Mohieddin, says that if foreign investors exploit an African country, it's the fault of the country itself because individual countries have the obligation to protect themselves. In the words of Minister Mohieddin, 'If your country doesn't provide this kind of policy priority in its investment policy, don't blame those who are coming to exploit and extract. The issue of responsible investment lies with the government and all of these things should be established.'[6]

The question is: Are African governments being responsible and putting protection of their own people ahead of, or at least on par with protection for the investors? Listening to some African leaders, it doesn't look that way.[7] Some defend the investors' acquisition of land in their countries, saying it is 'virgin' or 'under-utilised' or 'uncultivated' or 'degraded' land and they applaud the 'modernisation' of agriculture with agribusiness that is heavy on the use of imported seed and environmentally destructive machinery, chemicals and irrigation. This suggests they know precious little about the importance of fallows and the resilience and diversity of agroforestry systems, or about sustainable agriculture and the knowledge base of their own farmers in using soil, tree, water and genetic resources wisely and productively, particularly in the face of climate change. It certainly shows they have not read or understood the world's most comprehensive study of agriculture, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). It was done by 400 scientists over many years and it showed that agro-ecological farming is the best - the only - sustainable approach to land use.[8] So did the recent study by the United Nations Environment Program on the appropriate response to the food crisis and to climate change.[9]

Even less comprehensible is that some African leaders seem to be prostrating themselves at the feet of the investors, competing to outdo each other to court them with generous tax holidays and concessions. Such giveaways cast doubts on how cash-strapped African governments will benefit at all from such investments.
So the next question is: Why are Africa's leaders so eager to sell out their own farmers by leasing their precious land (water, soils and other natural resources) to foreign interests? Is it just because of their own lack of understanding of the value of agro-ecological agriculture and environmental sustainability? Or are they also being influenced by imported ideology and neo-liberal ideologues from major international financial institutions? It appears the answer is both of the above.

THE WORLD BANK GROUP AND FOREIGN INVESTORS FIND FRIENDS IN SIERRA LEONE

Take the case of Sierra Leone. Its president, Ernest Bai Koroma, says that he wants to run his country 'like a business' and that his background in the private sector as an insurance broker gives him the know-how to do that.[10] President Koroma recently praised the economic and political reforms that have made his country 'climb 20 places in the World Bank's annual Doing Business rankings in the last three years, and made Sierra Leone one of the top 5 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa for investor protection and the ease of starting a business.'[11]

The importance of 'investor protection' surfaces frequently in interviews with President Koroma's business-friendly team. His special advisor on the private sector, Oluniyi Robbin-Coker, formerly of Citibank and the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC), refers to it so often during an interview about large-scale land acquisition and agricultural investment in Sierra Leone that I finally ask him if the government is so busy protecting investors that it is neglecting to protect itself and its people.

'We have to take a long-term view and a broad view,' he replies. 'So in the short term, we may have to make some concessions in order to get the businesses up and running and profitable.' He refused to say just what incentives or tax holidays the government of Sierra Leone was offering to Addax Bioenergy for its 'flagship' agricultural investment in the country, a giant sugarcane plantation to produce ethanol for export to Europe, to fuel European vehicles. Addax Bioenergy is part of the Addax & Oryx Group of Swiss billionaire, Jean Claude Gandur, who has a long record of oil and mining business in Africa.[12]

Even if Robbin-Coker wouldn't divulge what concessions had been made for Addax Bioenergy in Sierra Leone, the website of the Sierra Leone Investment and Export Promotion Agency (SLIEPA) said that agricultural investors enjoyed a 10-year corporate tax holiday (although that information later disappeared from the SLIEPA website, coincidentally, after I quoted it in the media).

SLIEPA itself makes an interesting study. According to its enthusiastic director of investor promotion, Raymond Kai-Gbekie, SLIEPA was established by an act of Sierra Leone's parliament in 2007 and is financed by the IFC and the UK's Department for International Development (DFID). Like other such 'one-stop-shops' for investors that the IFC has been setting up in African nations (and around the world), SLIEPA's mission to 'assist and inform investors and exporters' may initially look almost banal.[13] How it assists investors, however, is more telling. SLIEPA boasts that a new Investment Code has gone into effect, which 'was designed to provide more protection for companies investing in Sierra Leone ... full foreign ownership is allowed ... there is no discriminatory economic or industrial strategy against foreign investors, and no limit is imposed on foreign ownership or control.'[14]

Kai-Gbekie becomes very animated when he recalls his meetings with illustrious billionaire investors, royalty and dignitaries who attended last year's Sierra Leone Trade and Investment Forum, partly organised by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's 'charity', the African Governance Initiative. Asked why the forum to promote and sell Sierra Leone's assets to the world was held in London rather than in Freetown, Kai-Gbekie replies, 'As a nation, backed by an ever-ready and energetic private-sector-led president, we had to go to London to make ourselves known, that we have no business being poor, and that we have 5.4 million hectares of land and less than 20 per cent is under cultivation.'

He admits there is 'a lot of controversy' on whether it is wise to invite, even bend over backwards to woo investors to lease huge tracts of Sierra Leone's farmland to produce agrofuels for export in a country still trying to regain its own food security after a long civil war. Then he adds, 'Against this backdrop we had to look for hired guns, brought in by IFC, two gentlemen, Simon Bell and Julien Haarman, they were here and they came up with strong arguments.'

So, SLIEPA and the IFC were using 'hired guns' to come up with 'strong arguments' to promote large-scale land acquisition for agrofuel production - from palm oil and sugarcane for export to Europe. One of them, Simon Bell, who presented the 'Sugar Opportunity in Sierra Leone' at the London Forum, was described as an 'advisor to the Government of Sierra Leone on Sugar Investments'.[15]

But the IFC with its one-stop-shops for investors and 'hired guns' within government ministries is just one of the tools the World Bank Group employs to open up the continent to direct foreign investment and press for reforms that benefit and protect foreign investors. There is also the IFC's Investment Climate Advisory Service (FIAS), which 'helps governments implement reforms to improve their business environment, and encourage and retain investment.'[16]

Yet another is MIGA, the World Bank's Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency. MIGA protects investors from losses caused for a host of reasons, including if a government were to take political action, say, to protect its own citizens when it sees an investor causing harm or social and environmental upheaval.

'MIGA acts as a *potent restraint* on potentially damaging government actions,' says DeRisk Advisory Services, an authorised marketing agent for MIGA. 'MIGA's leverage with host governments frequently enables the agency to resolve differences.'[17] [emphasis added]

With such powerful World Bank machinery working on behalf of the investors, and working so closely with and within African governments, it certainly seems that the playing field has been systematically tilted to favour the investors rather than local people. The Oakland Institute says the IFC and FIAS have been instrumental in promoting foreign access to developing countries' land markets, threatening food security and local populations, and it calls for an investigation into the workings of the IFC and FIAS technical assistance and advisory services.[18]

Meanwhile, African governments themselves and their one-stop-shop investment agencies seem to have become the investors' most vocal cheerleaders.

That is certainly the impression Raymond Kai-Gbekie gives in the IFC- and DFID-backed SLIEPA office in Freetown. He dismisses my suggestions that the two IFC 'hired guns' promoting investment in land for agrofuels in his country might not be the most objective sources. Then he launches into another round of praise for both his president and the Addax Bioenergy project.

'I want to tell you the time for change is here,' he says. 'We have a president who launched an agenda for change and that agenda for change is a package for even the poor.' Kai-Gbekie sees the Addax project as part of this package, and tells me that it will have '6,000 employees'.

This figure contradicts ones that other officials have given for the project and it is one of many contradictions that abound about the Addax project. While Kai-Gbekie told me it would employ 6,000 people, a few weeks later a press release from the Office of President Koroma stated that the Addax project would assure 4,000 jobs and cost US$200 million.[19] The same press release quotes Addax Bioenergy managing director Nikolai Germann as saying it would take '20,000 hectares of land'. But the Addax Bioenergy website says it will involve 10,000 hectares and cost about 200 million Euros, employing more than '2,000 people'.[20] President Koroma says that it will cost US$400 million and involve 30,000 hectares.[21] The official Environmental, Social and Health Impact Assessment (ESHIA) done by a South African consulting company for the Addax project says it will involve 15,500 hectares and directly employ 2,200 people.[22] Oluniyi Robbin-Coker, the president's special private sector advisor, told me it would eventually cover 40,000 hectares.

In 2008, Addax Bioenergy's project manager, Andrew Turay went to Europe to give a presentation at the European Parliament Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuel Production in Tropical and Subtropical Countries. In his presentation he said the project would cover 26,000 hectares.[23] And he made it clear the ethanol production was for the European market.

Yet in 2009, Turay told me that the ethanol would be for 'local use and an export crop.' He said that the sugarcane could produce both ethanol and sugar. He added, 'We import a lot of sugar into this country', implying that Addax could help Sierra Leone reduce those sugar imports. He also told me the project would produce between 30 and 60 MW of renewable energy from sugarcane residues, which would be pumped into the national grid. However, the Addax website says that the generation plant will be able to export (sell) about 15 MW to the national grid, and makes it clear that the sugarcane is for ethanol production only and the ethanol is for export.

Turay told me the Addax project would be producing ethanol for 'the next 100 years'. Member of parliament for the project area, Martin Bangura, told me Addax would employ 4,000 people directly and that the initial lease was for 50 years, renewable for 21 years.

All of these are contradictions are coming from the people who are speaking on behalf of the project, who should, in theory, know of what they speak and be sure they are offering the public accurate information.

The Honourable Martin Bangura calls himself the 'champion' of Addax because he is the 'bridge' between Addax and his constituents. He tells me that to build confidence between the project and the people he sometimes had to 'sleep two or three nights in villages'. His idea of consultation with the local people is apparently to offer them all kinds of reassurances, provided to him by Addax, that the project would bring only benefits. Although he claims he read the ESHIA, he seems unaware of the potential risks listed in the report. Asked about the potential health and environmental risks of the spraying of pesticides and herbicides on the plantations, the heavy use of fertilisers, the run-off into rivers and onto the pockets of land around them on which local people were assured they would still be able to farm their rice, Bangura responds by saying that Addax had set up 'suggestion boxes' and given local people one month to submit their concerns or suggestions. A woman in one of the villages in the area points out to me that the suggestion boxes 'make no sense' since the majority of the local people cannot read or write.

In villages in the project area, even among those young men who say they are eager for the project to start so they can be employed, I find no one who has any idea how much land or what lands are involved in the project. A local chief in the area, whose responsibility as custodian of the ancestral lands should really have propelled him to protect them from foreign takeover, has already accepted a job driving a tractor for Addax. Asked if he has any concerns about the potential noise, pollution, and disruption to local communities, farms and lives, he replies that he is 'very happy' because he now earns '200,000 Leones (about $US50) bulk' a month and 'besides, at the work site they have electricity and we don't have to pay to charge our mobile phones.'

I meet women farming on the land, producing enough income to send their children to school and care for their families, who aren't even aware the project is coming. No one I meet in the area is aware that there will be large-scale use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers on the sugarcane plantation that could affect their health or the health of their crops in surrounding lands, or that some communities will have to be resettled. No one has read the weighty ESHIA - hardly surprising with an illiteracy rate of close to 90 per cent and no access to the document. Some are afraid to speak to me at all for fear of repercussions from those who are promoting and hope to benefit from the project, either because of a job or by leasing land, for which Addax will pay US$12 per hectare per year, in a complex arrangement that divides it among landowners, District and Chiefdom Councils and the national government.[24]

The ESHIA identifies several 'issue/impacts' - on human health, on the natural ecosystem, involving contamination of aquatic resources and soils by pesticides and fertilisers, that are described as 'moderately severe' despite recommended 'mitigation measures', which would have to be closely and independently monitored throughout the life of the project. It also points out that because the project is seeking funding from European development banks, it has been geared to meet 'Performance Standards' on environmental and social sustainability, as laid down by none other than the World Bank agency that has been so active in promoting the land deals - the IFC.[25] The proverbial fox not just guarding but also setting the rules for the hens and the henhouse?

Given the chronic lack of resources in Sierra Leone for monitoring other extractive industries - particularly its diamond sector - one has to ask if it's realistic to believe that the government will be able to carry out the requisite independent and credible monitoring of the Addax project.[26]

GENUINE 'RESPONSIBLE' AGRICULTURAL INVESTMENT WOULD PROTECT FAMILY FARMERS AND FARMLAND

The Addax Bioenergy project in Sierra Leone is just one example of the agricultural investment on-going in that country, where at least three more European companies are each seeking to lease 40,000 hectares for palm oil for agrofuel for export. And it is just one relatively modest case in Africa where hundreds of large land deals have already been signed and sealed, giving foreign investors and nations control over many millions of hectares of African farmland.

But the Sierra Leone case does reveal much about the way the land deals are being made, the contradictory information being given out about them, what local people are actually being told (and not being told) about the high stakes involved. It also reveals the powerful machinery of the World Bank Group at work inside African governments that promotes the land deals, and the considerable powers of the investors awash in capital to sway government and public opinion.

Most importantly, it helps explain why, even if it is the obligation of African governments to protect their own people from exploitative investment - as Egypt's minister of investment says - instead some seem intent on protecting the investors who are coming to their countries to 'exploit and extract.' Protection for local people, their land, soil, genetic resources and their water, has been whittled away piece-by-piece under the tutelage of the World Bank Group and its donor partners.

Until African governments recognise the immense potential of their own farmers and their sustainable, diverse family farming systems, that are so desperately in need of genuine 'responsible' agricultural investment to assure food and seed sovereignty and access to micro-credit and markets, it seems likely they will continue to protect and favour the powerful investors - and that their own rural populations will pay the terrible price of the land grabbing.

* Joan Baxter is a Canadian journalist, development researcher and science writer, and an award-winning author who has lived and worked in Africa for 25 years. Her most recent book, Dust From Our Eyes, was shortlisted for the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize in the US.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] 12 April 2010. Japan, US and AU to host 'Roundtable on Responsible Agricultural Investment. http://bit.ly/aQkrUS
[2] Stop Land-grabbing immediately. 7 April - 19 May 2010. Campaign of FIAN (Fighting Hunger with Human Rights): 'Do not support the principles of 'responsible' agribusiness investment promoted by the World Bank'. http://www.fian.org/cases/letter-campaigns/stop-land-grabbing-immediately
[3] Stop land grabbing now: Say NO to the principles of 'responsible' agro-enterprise investment promoted by the World Bank. http://farmlandgrab.org/12200
[4] Dulane, Abdirashid. 11 April 2010. No 'land grab' in Ethiopia. Japan Times
Virgo, Paul. 18 Nov. 2009. To Grab, Or To Invest. IPS News. http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49317
[5] Bladd, Joanne Bladd. 15 April 2010. Arabian Business. http://www.arabianbusiness.com/586105-gulfs-farmland-policy-seen-as-win-win-partnership-for-africa
[6] Ibid
[7] Ramkumar, K.S. 7 Aug. 2008. Ethiopia - Zenawi offers huge land to Saudis to grow cereals. Arab News. http://archive.arabnews.com/?page=6§ion=0&article=112524&d=7&m=8&y=2008
[8] International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). http://agassessment.org/index.cfm?Page=IAASTD%20Reports&ItemID=2713
[9] 2010. The Environmental Food Crisis: the environment's role in averting future food crises. A UNEP Rapid Response Assessment. http://www.grida.no/publications/rr/food-crisis/
[10] BBC News. 18 Sept. 2007. New Sierra Leone leader sworn in. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6998687.stm
[11] Bai Koroma, Ernest (President of Sierra Leone). 22 March 2010. Time for Africa to Get Serious About Investment. Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ernest-bai-koroma/time-for-africa-to-get-se_b_508463.html?view=print
[12] Helman, Christopher. 15 Oct. 2007. Trouble is my business. Forbes Magazine. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2007/1015/099.html
[13] http://www.sliepa.org/
[14] http://www.sliepa.org/doing-business
[15] DFID and IFC. 18 Nov. 2009. Agenda: Sierra Leone Conference: Trade and Investment Forum. http://www.sliepa.org/sites/default/files/documents/Agenda_SLCTIF1_2009.pdf
[16] FIAS, The Investment Climate Advisory Service. http://www.fias.net/ifcext/fias.nsf/Content/Home
Daniel, Shepard with Mittal, Anuradha. 2010. (Mis)investment in Agriculture: the role of the International Finance Corporation in global land grabs. The Oakland Institute. http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/pdfs/misinvestment_web.pdf">
[17] Political Risk Insurance. DeRisk. Reducing investment risk in frontier markets and assets. DeRisk Advisory Services.
[18] Daniel, Shepard with Mittal, Anuradha. 2010. pp 12 and 35
[19] The Press Secretariat, Office of the President, Sierra Leone. 21 Jan. 2009. Sierra Leone: U.S.$200 Million Bioenergy Project for the Country - 4,000 Jobs Assured. Concord Times
[20] http://www.addax-oryx.com/AddaxBioenergy/Addax-Bioenergy-Questions&Answers.pdf
[21] Bai Koroma, Ernest (President of Sierra Leone). 22 March 2010. Time for Africa to Get Serious About Investment. Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ernest-bai-koroma/time-for-africa-to-get-se_b_508463.html?view=print
[22] Sugar cane to ethanol project, Sierra Leone. (Draft) Environmental, Social and Health Impact Assessment. October 2009. http://www.cesnet.co.za/publicdocs.htm
[23] Turay, Andrew. 12 June 2008. Africa's potential of biomass and production of biofuels under EU sustainability criteria. European Parliament, Workshop: Sustainable biofuel production in tropical and sub-tropical countries. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/committees/studies.do?language=EN p 17.
[24] Sugar cane to ethanol project, Sierra Leone. (Draft), p 159
[25] Daniel, Shepard with Mittal, Anuradha. 2010.
[26] Smillie, Ian (editor). Oct. 2009. Sierra Leone: Everyone wants to be in control and no one is. Diamonds and Human Security Annual Review. Partnership Africa Canada. pp 14 - 18
Baxter, Joan. 2010. Dust From Our Eyes: an unblinkered look at Africa. Hamilton, Canada: Wolsak & Wynn. Pp 236 - 244.

Even if the materials, called dispersants, are effective, BP has already bought up more than a third of the world's supply. If the leak from 5,000 feet beneath the surface continues for weeks, or months, that stockpile could run out.

On Thursday BP began using the chemical compounds to dissolve the crude oil, both on the surface and deep below, deploying an estimated 100,000 gallons. Dispersing the oil is considered one of the best ways to protect birds and keep the slick from making landfall. But the dispersants contain harmful toxins of their own and can concentrate leftover oil toxins in the water, where they can kill fish and migrate great distances.

The exact makeup of the dispersants is kept secret under competitive trade laws, but a worker safety sheet for one product, called Corexit, says it includes 2-butoxyethanol, a compound associated with headaches, vomiting and reproductive problems at high doses.

"There is a chemical toxicity to the dispersant compound that in many ways is worse than oil," said Richard Charter, a foremost expert on marine biology and oil spills who is a senior policy advisor for Marine Programs for Defenders of Wildlife and is chairman of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council. "It's a trade off - you're damned if you do damned if you don't -- of trying to minimize the damage coming to shore, but in so doing you may be more seriously damaging the ecosystem offshore."

BP did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Dispersants are mixtures of solvents, surfactants and other additives that break up the surface tension of an oil slick and make oil more soluble in water, according to a paper published by the National Academy of Sciences. They are spread over or in the water in very low concentration - a single gallon may cover several acres.

Once they are dispersed, the tiny droplets of oil are more likely to sink or remain suspended in deep water rather than floating to the surface and collecting in a continuous slick. Dispersed oil can spread quickly in three directions instead of two and is more easily dissipated by waves and turbulence that break it up further and help many of its most toxic hydrocarbons evaporate.

But the dispersed oil can also collect on the seabed, where it becomes food for microscopic organisms at the bottom of the food chain and eventually winds up in shellfish and other organisms. The evaporation process can also concentrate the toxic compounds left behind, particularly oil-derived compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs.

According to a 2005 National Academy of Sciences report, the dispersants and the oil they leave behind can kill fish eggs. A study of oil dispersal in Coos Bay, Ore. found that PAH accumulated in mussels, the Academy's paper noted. Another study examining fish health after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989 found that PAHs affected the developing hearts of Pacific herring and pink salmon embryos. The research suggests the dispersal of the oil that's leaking in the Gulf could affect the seafood industry there.

"One of the most difficult decisions that oil spill responders and natural resource managers face during a spill is evaluating the trade-offs associated with dispersant use," said the Academy report, titled Oil Spill Dispersants, Efficacy and Effects. "There is insufficient understanding of the fate of dispersed oil in aquatic ecosystems."

A version of Corexit was widely used after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill and, according to a literature review performed by the group the Alaska Community Action on Toxics, was later linked with health impacts in people including respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney and blood disorders. But the Academy report makes clear that the dispersants used today are less toxic than those used a decade ago.

"There is a certain amount of toxicity," said Robin Rorick, director of marine and security operations at the American Petroleum Institute. "We view dispersant use as a tool in a toolbox. It's a function of conducting a net environmental benefit analysis and determining the best bang for your buck."

Charter, the marine expert, cautioned the dispersants should be carefully considered for the right reasons.

"Right now there is a headlong rush to get this oil out of sight out of mind," Charter said. "You can throw every resource we have at this spill. You can call out the Marine Corps and the National Guard. This is so big that it is unlikely that any amount of response is going to make much of a dent in the impacts. It's going to be mostly watching it happen."

Ryan Knutson contributed to this report

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.

In a white-dominated world, that may seem counterintuitive. In the racial arena, what do we white people have to be afraid of?

There are lots of things to fear in this world, of course; race is not the only aspect of life in which people face injustice and inequality. A majority of people of all colors (including working-class and poor whites) struggles economically in a predatory corporate capitalist system, and all women, regardless of race, cope with gender discrimination and the threat of sexual violence in a male-dominated world.

But what fears could white people have as white people?

Understanding the fears behind the racial politics of both conservative and liberal whites can help guide strategy for changing a society in which wealth and well-being are still tied to race. And make no mistake, there is still a racialized gap between white and non-white America on measures of wealth and well-being--income, home ownership, graduation rates, access to health care, infant mortality, etc. In fact, the gap between white and black America on some of these measures is greater today than in the immediate aftermath of the major legislative achievements of the civil rights movement, and on some measures the rate of improvement is so glacial that it will be decades, if not centuries, before we reach equality. The legislative achievements that ended legal apartheid in America were a great victory, but the economic apartheid that remains is a reminder of our failures.

Put bluntly: The United States abolished a formal apartheid system but remains a white-supremacist society. After more than a decade of writing and speaking about these issues, which has sparked lots of feedback from all political angles, here's what I have concluded about white folks and our fears.

Aren't We Special?

For conservative white people, the dominant fear is of someday living without the privilege that comes with whiteness. Polite conservatives defend the primacy of "Western civilization." More reactionary whites are openly racist about the threat that non-white peoples pose to "our way of life." Both versions defend the existing distribution of wealth and power, even though many of the working-class and poor whites who endorse such views have access to precious little wealth or power. Race is used by white elites today, just as it was in the nation's formative years, to drive a wedge between people who would otherwise come together to challenge those elites. Divide-and-conquer strategies, it seems, never go out of style.

Liberals are quick to denounce both the thinly veiled and the openly reactionary conservative racism. But what of the fears of liberals? White liberals might reject the very idea that they are afraid, citing their support for diversity and multiculturalism. But my experience suggests that while white liberals reject assertions of white supremacy, many fear the loss of white centrality. They are willing to renounce the idea that white people are superior, as long as they are allowed to live comfortably in a world where white is the norm.

In short, both the conservative and liberal positions are based on the same underlying assertion: "I'm white, and I'm special." Conservatives are more likely to say it openly, while liberals tend to offer platitudes about racial justice while avoiding the risks required to make good on anti-racist principles.

What remains obscured is the distinctly uncivilized nature that Europeans and European Americans exhibited during their barbarous conquest of much of the world. The inherently fragile sense of white self-importance that emerges from that history is at the core of white fears--at some level, we all know that the truth of the depravity of white supremacy belies claims of white superiority.

In the institutions that adopt the liberal view, diversity is just fine (as long as whites remain in control) and multiculturalism can flourish (as long as white norms remain dominant). Institutions defined by the values and practices rooted in white Europe can open up to non-white people, as long as we white people remain comfortable. In such a white-defined liberal world, "people of color"--abstracted into a single group, erasing the particularity of people--are welcome, even sought after, to prove that we have transcended white supremacy.

Getting Uncomfortable

This analysis of the dynamics of mixed-race settings is hardly original. Non-white people have long recognized that white liberals are happy to engage with folks who aren't white as long as their white-centric worldview isn't threatened, and that white groups are happy to have non-white members as long as the power dynamics don't change.

I observe all this not from some arrogant high ground, but as someone stuck in the same dynamic, struggling to get out. I know that for all my writing and political work on racial justice, I still feel most comfortable in settings where my understanding of the world defines the interaction, no matter the racial composition of the group. Rather than pretend otherwise, I start with that reality and search for ways to move forward.

A first step for me has been to question the value of the seemingly endless "race dialogues" that are popular in white liberal groups. In the pseudo-­therapeutic setting of such dialogues, with more talk about personal healing than about political change, white people are guaranteed that we won't be forced out of a white-defined world. White-dominated institutions--corporations, nonprofits, universities, government agencies--are happy to sponsor such dialogues, diversity trainings, and multicultural events, precisely because they don't threaten the fundamental distribution of wealth and power.

I have been involved in many of those events myself, as a facilitator or a participant, and I have learned from them (typically as much from my failures as successes). The most important lesson I take away is that race dialogues are not enough. As long as we stay confined in a safe world that doesn't challenge power, we guarantee failure--if our goal really is to change the distribution of that power.

There's no easy recipe for this kind of challenge, but we move in the right direction when we seek out places where we don't feel comfortable, looking for relationships in which we can help change the dynamic. For me, that means putting myself in situations where I have to face my fear of being seen--or, more accurately, being seen-through--by non-white people. What if I step into those uncomfortable spaces and non-white people see the ways in which I hang onto some sense of my own supremacy/centrality? What if they see the ways in which I haven't shaken off my racist cultural training?

A desire to confront that fear has led me, over the past year, to organizing efforts with the Workers Defense Project. It's a local group that advocates for workplace justice for immigrant workers, addressing problems such as wage theft within a larger social justice framework.

This project has forced me to cross lines around race and ethnicity, class, language, and age. The members and staff are predominantly Latina/Latino and working class. They speak Spanish and/or English, while I'm monolingual in English, and the leaders of the group include a number of people who are at least two decades younger than me.

The collaboration between WDP and the Third Coast Activist Resource Center (a predominantly white group to which I belong) to buy and renovate a building for a progressive community center has gone forward with explicit conversations about all these differences and how they affect decision-making. The trust necessary to move forward has been built slowly over time, and I'm aware that the WDP staff and members are watching for signs that we are serious about establishing a truly egalitarian relationship.

As tricky as this Latina/Latino-white collaboration can be, we also recognize that a successful community center with progressive politics cannot leave out African Americans, the third largest racial group in Austin. That means not just casting around for some black people to add to the mix, but engaging in serious discussions with people from that part of the community to find out what kinds of collaborations are needed and possible. Austin is a white-dominated city, but that's no guarantee that black and Latina/Latino groups will automatically come together; such alliances have to be built as carefully as any other. For us white folks in the mix, our contribution is to use the resources we have to aid in that process--not trying to control it, but also not pretending to be detached.

While there is a lot of dialogue necessary in this work, the dialogue is focused on a common goal: to provide office space for organizers, rehearsal space for artists, meeting space for the community, and a place for people to get to know each other. That common goal doesn't mean we will naturally, or easily, put aside differences, but it means we all have a tangible stake in our collective success.

My interest in this project flows from moral and political principles--a belief in the dignity of all and the struggle to eliminate hierarchy in all forms. But I would be naïve or dishonest if I pretended that was my only, or even my most powerful, motive. In the end, I have committed to this project out of selfishness--I would like to claim my full humanity before I check out of this world. To do that, I have to move beyond the framework of conservative versus liberal and adopt a truly radical politics.

I have a choice: I can be white--that is, I can refuse to challenge white supremacy or centrality--or I can be a human being. I can rest comfortably in the privileges that come with being white, or I can struggle to be fully human. But I can't do both. Though the work is difficult, the choice for those of us who are white should be easy.

Robert JensenRobert Jensen wrote this article for America: The Remix, the Spring 2010 issue of YES! Magazine. Robert, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, is author of The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege and his latest, All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice. He is co-producer of the new documentary Abe Osheroff: One Foot in the Grave, the Other Still Dancing. Contact information and articles at uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen.

The parallels between the administrations of Barack Obama and John Kennedy are stunning:

1.  Both engaged in what might be called "Election Deception":

 During the 1960 election, Kennedy attacked Nixon for being soft on communism, particularly Cuba.  In his book, 6 Crises, Nixon complained, bitterly and accurately, that this was an unscrupulous deception on Kennedy's part.  Kennedy had been briefed that Nixon and the CIA were planning a full scale invasion of Cuba.  So, even though he knew it wasn't true, Kennedy attacked Nixon from the right, claiming that he, Kennedy, was more of a hawk on Cuba than Nixon.  As soon as he got in, Kennedy told the CIA to forget their invasion plans; the CIA went ahead anyway at the Bay of Pigs; and Kennedy fired the top three men at CIA for disobeying his orders.[1]

The military shared Nixon's perception that Kennedy was a liar and a traitor.

During the 2008 election, Obama surrounded himself with hawks like Zbigniew Brzezinski, and attacked Bush from the right, saying that he had neglected "the right war," the war in Afghanistan, and that he, Obama, would transfer troops and treasure to the effort in Afghanistan.  However, once he got in, Obama brought none of the Brzezinski people with him.  None of them.  Not Richard Clark.  Not Anthony Lake (both of whom were very active in Obama's campaign, and are very deep-cover operatives for the darkest side of the Pentagon).  And, as you will see, Obama fought bitterly with the military over their desire for more troops.

2.  Both Kennedy and Obama experienced a dramatic change of attitude toward the military early in their presidencies:

Even if Obama did not perpetrate a deception to win the election, after he was sworn in, his thinking and attitude toward the military began to change dramatically, sharpen and harden against them.  This directly parallels what happened to Kennedy. 

I don't regard Bob Woodward as a fundamentally reliable source, but to be an effective liar he has to tell important truths sometimes.  And I believe there is good reason to credit the story he tells below, inadvertently revealing the development of Obama's thinking on the war in Afghanistan. It describes a briefing given by Obama's National Security Advisor, Jim Jones, to the military commanders in Afghanistan (from Bob Woodward, The Washington Post, Jul 1, 2009, A1.):

During the briefing, [Marine Brigadier General] Nicholson had told Jones that he was "a little light," more than hinting that he could use more

forces, probably thousands more. "We don't have enough force to go everywhere," Nicholson said.

But Jones recalled how Obama had initially decided to deploy additional forces this year. "At a table much like this," Jones said, referring to the polished wood table in the White House Situation Room, "the president's principals met and agreed to recommend 17,000 more troops for Afghanistan." The principals -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; Gates; Mullen; and the director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair -- made this recommendation in February during the first full month of the Obama administration. The president approved the deployments, which included Nicholson's Marines.

Soon after that, Jones said, the principals told the president, "oops," we need an additional 4,000 to help train the Afghan army.

"They then said, 'If you do all that, we think we can turn this around,' " Jones said, reminding the Marines here that the president had quickly approved and publicly announced the additional 4,000.

Now suppose you're the president, Jones told them, and the requests come into the White House for yet more force. How do you think Obama might look at this? Jones asked, casting his eyes around at the colonels. How do you think he might feel?

Jones let the question hang in the air-conditioned, fluorescent-lighted room. Nicholson and the colonels said nothing.

Well, Jones went on, after all those additional troops, 17,000 plus 4,000 more, if there were new requests for force now, the president would quite likely have "a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment." Everyone in the room caught the phonetic reference to WTF -- which in the military and elsewhere means "What The F(expletive)?" 

My take on the above is that Obama came in somewhat open minded on Afghanistan.  In his first month in office, he asked the military what they needed; they told him, and he gave them 17,000 troops without a blink.  When they turned around and asked for another 4,000 just a few months later, Obama was disconcerted.  If these guys knew what they were doing, they should have been right the first time about how many troops they needed.  But without a complaint, he gave them another 4,000.  When the generals started to press for more, Obama had his WTF moment, and sent Jones to straighten them out.  Jones was telling the generals that requesting more troops would be showing Obama that they are clueless.  Obama has tried to show his awareness that there are thousands of lives in the balance.

Kennedy had his Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment at the Bay of Pigs, and again during the Cuban Missile Crisis.[2]  He came to see his military advisors and commanders as blind-to-the-point-of-insane ideologues.  And the quote above I think shows that Obama's developing vision of the military has closely paralleled the development of Kennedy's vision of these professional killers.

3.  Kennedy faced, and Obama faces, a military full of ideologues:

Curtis LeMay is the most infamous of the insanely rabid military advisors Kennedy had.  LeMay, against specific orders, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, sent a U2 spy plane flying into Russian airspace, apparently hoping that the Russians would think this was an attack and push the red button.  LeMay was confident that in the full-scale nuclear exchange that would follow, the US would suffer 30 to 50 million casualties, tops, but the Russians would be wiped out.  Hurray!  We'd win!  LeMay and his peers were livid that Kennedy was refusing to send troops to Vietnam.

For the past eight years, Bush has forced into retirement those military leaders with an objective approach to fighting "terrorism"; and he has promoted Muslim-hating Christian ideologues who seek a new-age Christian Crusade against the Muslim heretics.[3]

An objective military observer must question the idea of equating "insurgents" with "terrorists":  There has never been even a suggestion that the Taliban were involved in attacks on the US.  The Taliban government of Afghanistan offered to hand over Osama if the US could provide evidence of his guilt.  But the US invaded instead of providing evidence.  In this context, the "insurgents" are, essentially and merely, patriots who oppose the domination of their country by foreign troops.  This is a common view within the Obama administration:

 "Supporters of [Vice-President Joe] Biden's view [that no more troops should be sent] argue that adding more troops would actually make the problem worse, not better, because the Taliban draw support from the fiercely nationalist Pashtun ethnic group in Afghanistan and Pakistan, who will mobilize to resist a long-term occupation. 'The real fact is, the more people we put in, the more opposition there will be,' says Selig Harrison, a longtime observer of Afghanistan at the Center for International Policy."  (Rolling Stone[4])

 One need not agree with this view to recognize that it is reasoned and legitimate.[5]  But this viewpoint is not represented in the military that Obama inherited from Bush.  Senior officers with this point of view were forced into retirement under Bush.  And Obama is faced with commanders such as Lt. Gen. David Barno, a "counter-insurgency" advocate who served as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan:  "We're going to be involved in this type of activity in a number of countries for the next 15 to 20 years."  Barno does not just want to wipe out the Taliban.  He wants to expand the conflict to other countries and carry it on for generations.  What does Barno's plan, to kill Afghan patriots, have to do with eliminating "terrorism"? 

And a more terrifying question:  These trained killers from the military currently have the blood of hundreds of thousands of Muslims on their hands.  They have watched at close range as 1000's of young American soldiers have been slaughtered.  How do you suppose they feel about a Black president, born to a Muslim father, trained in Muslim schools, telling them they can't have any more troops for their holy war against Muslims?  "Rabid" seems a likely answer.

I am not the first to see the parallels between Kennedy's and Obama's conflicts with the military.  The first article I saw on this topic was by Berkeley Professor Peter Dale Scott.[6] Robert Parry has written importantly on the topic.[7]  Lawrence Wilkerson, a former top aide to Secretary of State Colin Powell, observed in the Rolling Stone article,⁴ "It's going to take John Kennedy-type courage to turn to his Curtis LeMay and say, 'No, we're not going to bomb Cuba.'  It took a lot of courage on Kennedy's part to defy the Pentagon, defy the military - and do the right thing."  (I must assume that Wilkerson is not familiar with the details of how John Kennedy's conflict with the military ended.  See section 8. below for some of those pertinent details.  There can not be a reasonable doubt that the military killed JFK.)

4.  Kennedy sought out military advisors not committed to, or dominated by, the Pentagon:

Obama has done likewise.  The "Jim Jones" from the long quote (in section 2. above), is a familiar figure; that is, he reminds me of the kind of man that Kennedy brought in to advise him.  He is a former Marine general.  He has impeccable "toughness" credentials.  But he is not a Muslim-hating ideologue, out to wage a modern crusade against Islam, to win back the holy land (holy oil?), for Jesus.  So he was forced into retirement by Bush.    But Obama picked him up out of retirement and made him National Security Advisor.  Kennedy had such people in his administration.  Roger Hillsman was a WWII hero, who Kennedy made his undersecretary for South East Asian affairs.  Hillsman looked at Vietnam, and saw what Kennedy saw; and he saw what many observers of Afghanistan see today:

•a.       an utterly corrupt, inept, cowardly, self-interested puppet regime with no constituency among the local people;

•b.      a dedicated, heroic, entrenched opposition with roots 1000 years deep among the locals; and

•c.       an ideology-driven military willing to make ridiculous promises of success, "if only we can get just one more troop increase"; with a nearly unlimited thirst for "insurgent" blood; and with no understanding of the limits of their power. 

5.  The military overtly challenged Kennedy's right as commander-in-chief to set policy.  Their treatment of Obama has been similarly outrageous:

Kennedy rejected the military's recommendation for an invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs; and the military, led by the CIA, went ahead with it anyway. JFK rejected the military's suggestion that the US should overthrow Diem, the president of South Vietnam; the military not only organized Diem's overthrow, they assassinated him.  And of course, for three years Kennedy steadfastly refused their pressure to commit combat troops to Vietnam.  Obama's military has similarly challenged his right to set military policy.

After Obama sent Jim Jones to Afghanistan to let his generals know that they had gotten all the troops they were going to get (as described in section 2. above), Stanley McChrystal began a campaign for more troops that was insubordinate to the point of being illegal.  (The endnote 4 below contains the full story as outlined in Rolling Stone.)  McChrystal responded to Jones' visit and message by writing a demand for 40,000 troops, which he immediately, and illegally, leaked to the press.  The Republican leadership demanded that McChrystal be brought before the Senate to have a national stage for his defiance of Obama's attempts to set policy.  McChrystal went on 60 Minutes to complain that Obama was not listening to him; and then flew into London to publicly call Obama "shortsighted."   Obama flew to Europe and ordered McChrystal to meet with him on his plane.  Two days later, Jim Jones rebuked McChrystal for failing to "follow the chain of command."

But on December 1st, Obama caved in to McChrystal and committed to send an additional 30,000 troops; even though the American public, the Democratic leadership in the Congress, and his closest advisors were overwhelmingly dead set against it.  WTF?!  What happened?  Obama tried, in this speech, to maintain a shred of dignity and authority by saying that the primary role of these troops would be to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people; and he promised that they would begin to head home in 18 months.   Eight days later, he was roundly contradicted on every score, simultaneously, by a quartet of men we ought to regard as his underlings:  Hamid Karzai, the US installed, officially illegitimate "president" of Afghanistan, who owes his position, security, and daily bread to the US, overtly contradicted Obama's statements about the limits of the US commitment, telling a press conference that "Afghanistan's security forces will need U.S. support for another 15 to 20 years."[8]  

On the same podium, on the same day, Robert M. Gates, US Secretary of Defense (and Karzai's apparent puppet master) echoed this same affront to Obama, saying "it will be some time before Afghanistan is able to sustain its security forces entirely on its own ... whether that's 15 or 20 years".⁸   (It should be noted in red letters that Gates was appointed by Bush, and carried over by Obama.)  On the same day, the LA Times reports McChrystal told the Senate, "that the U.S. needed to signal a long-term commitment in Afghanistan".⁸

Such calls for a long term US commitment not only contradict the stated policy of the President, but they are overt provocations to legitimate Afghan nationalists.  They not only undermine official US policy, but they serve the recruiting efforts of the "insurgents"; thereby putting the lives of American soldiers at greater risk; and not only constitute insubordination, but speeches by the military constitute an illegal and anti-democratic attempt by unelected military officials to dictate political policy, a virtual military coup of the President's powers and duties.

6.  Both Obama and JFK were faced with overt threats of assassination: 

On November 22, 1963, Dallas was filled with wanted posters calling for Kennedy to be given the death penalty for treason.  The NY Times carried an op-ed on September 29, 2009 talking about the "very dangerous" climate now in America, "the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination."  Four days later, on October 3rd, the Wall Street Journal pointed to three overt physical threats to Obama: a poll on Facebook asking whether the president should be assassinated, a column on a conservative Web site suggesting a military coup is in the works, and Rep. Trent Franks (R., Ariz.) calling Mr. Obama "an enemy of humanity."[9]  

JFK felt, and Obama feels, threatened by the military.  JFK encouraged and assisted Hollywood in the making of "Seven Days in May," a fictional account of a military coup in the US.  Kennedy wanted this story to be told. He thought the American people needed to be alerted to the threat to democracy posed by the military.  No one knows what went on in his head, but it is reasonable to conclude that he felt this was a real and important threat.  Robert Parry has written that Obama had a "'Seven Days In May' moment," meaning that he felt the threat of a military coup, when he began trying to withdraw troops from Iraq. (This is another critically important news article. See endnote 7.)

The Rolling Stone article says that in October, "the Pentagon and top military brass were trying to make the President an offer he couldn't refuse."  Now - "an offer he can't refuse" is a reference to the movie, "The Godfather."  In the movie, the man who receives the "offer he can't refuse" wakes up and finds that the head of his prized horse has been cut off and put in the bed next to him while he was asleep; in order to send the message:  "We are brutal.  We are killers.  We got into your bedroom.  If we had wanted to kill you, we would have.  Next time we will.  If you want to live, don't let there be a next time."  The author of the Rolling Stone article does not have superhuman powers of perception.  But he has written a detailed article on the relations between Obama and his military.  And he has included this suggestion of overt threats of death made to Obama by the military.

And the article goes on:   "They [the generals] wanted the president to escalate the war - go all in by committing 40,000 more troops and another trillion dollars to a Vietnam-like quagmire - or face a full-scale mutiny by his generals."  And what is "a full-scale mutiny"?  It means a coup.  That is what it means, clearly, plainly, and simply.  The perceptive author of this insightful article, Robert Dreyfus, clearly feels that the military wants Obama to feel threatened. 

7.  Kennedy was plagued, and Obama is plagued, with a Secret Service that is grossly incompetent 

Kennedy's murder should be proof enough.[10]  The failures of the Secret Service to protect Obama are worse.  At the very least, it can be said in favor of Kennedy's Secret Service that they did not allow the shooters onto the White House grounds.  The incident of the so-called "Party Crashers," has to give Obama pause.  The Salahis, the uninvited guests, the husband and wife team who walked into the White House reception for the Indian Prime Minister, easily penetrated the most high-security affair to take place at the White House in recent memory.  The Indian Prime Minister is regarded as a prime target for Muslim extremists, and everyone present could be considered at great risk from a security lapse.  Whatever else can be said of the Salahis, they presented a starkly clear message to Obama:  "You are not protected.  Your Secret Service is criminally negligent, if not just criminal."

8.  Is the military threatening to kill Obama?  The evidence of the involvement of the military in the assassination of JFK is, I think, beyond dispute.[11]

Certainly, this evidence has given every president since Kennedy nightmares about the risks involved in taking on the military.  Kennedy, like Obama, was under fierce pressure to send troops to Vietnam.[12]  And as you will see, the military has taken steps to make Obama feel that his life is in grave danger at their hands.

Vice President Biden, and Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, have both been outspoken in their opposition to sending troops to Afghanistan.  They are both Obama spokesmen.  It may be assumed that at all times they speak for the president.  And yet they spent the 10 months before the President's Dec. 1 speech, undercutting the President's final decision to send troops.[13]  Does that make any sense?  Two weeks before the President's speech, Obama's ambassador to Afghanistan wrote Obama a memo in which he warned against sending troops to support a regime so corrupt that it enjoyed no popular support.  This ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, is a retired Army general and former commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan.  He is one of the not-insane commanders that Bush pushed into retirement; and Obama brought back him back in.  Eikenberry's memo against sending troops was immediately leaked to the press, and showed up on the front pages of the LA Times and NY Times.  There was no outcry from the White House about the leak, suggesting that Obama approved it.   Does that make any sense?  It appears that the President was undercutting his own position, two weeks before taking it?

Pelosi and the other Democratic leaders have taken similar positions as Eikenberry.  They might be accused of pandering to the American people, who are broadly opposed to sending more troops; but it would be unusual for congressional Democratic leaders to undercut their president in this way.  The Bob Woodward article, presented in section 2. above, reveals a President with no plans to send troops, taking steps to confront those military leaders with desires for more troops, and telling them to forget it.  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!!  What happened?  Why did Obama suddenly change the position that his spokesmen had been taking for nearly a year; the position that he was promoting, through his ambassador, just two weeks before; that other leading Democrats had been promoting; and that he had stated so forcefully to his commanders in the field?  Why did he suddenly decide to send 30,000 troops to kill and be killed in a cause he knows to be hopeless?

This is NOT a small deal.  It can't have been a whimsical decision on his part.  It must have been based on something.  We should be able, then, to look at the events in the news and identify some major occurrence that would cause such a shift.  No?  Let's see.  The central feature behind Biden's and Emmanuel's position was that the Afghan puppet regime was too corrupt to win popular support.[14]  Just recently, the regime proved too corrupt to even stage an election, even after the UN ruled the last election fraudulent and illegitimate.  Could this miserable failure, to stage an election, have changed Obama's mind?  No.  In fact, reports from Afghanistan are that the corruption and incompetence of the puppet regime have only gotten worse.[15]

When you come up with an answer, for any of these questions, I would be very grateful if you would let me know.  Because I don't like my answer.  But here it is:

A military coup, of sorts, has taken place.  This coup, this wresting by force of power from the hands of the President was accomplished in two separate events.

The first event involves the so-called "Party Crashers."  The Salahis managed, not only to enter, but they proceeded to first shake hands with the two most outspoken opponents of sending more troops:  Joe Biden, and Rahm Emanuel.  And the Salahis then shook hands with Obama himself.  They had gained entrance through the intercession of the Pentagon.[16]  Whether or not they told the President, "Send troops or die", they unquestionably told him, through their actions, "The Secret Service can't, or won't, protect you.  Your life is over when the Pentagon says it's over."  This is not speculation; or interpretation.  It is clear; unequivocal; basic.

But wait!  There's more!  The Rolling Stone article is so much better than the author intended!  I know that he did not mean a "coup" when he wrote that the generals were threatening a "full scale revolt."  I don't think he meant a death threat when he wrote "an offer he couldn't refuse."  And I don't think he grasped the import of this remark.  Even worse, the administration has to take into account the possibility of a terrorist attack, which would allow the GOP to put the blame on the White House. "All it would take is one terrorist attack, vaguely linked to Afghanistan, for the military and his opponents to pounce all over him," says Pillar.

Robert Dreyfuss, the Rolling Stone writer, is saying that Obama caved because of the threat of another "terrorist" attack.  Now.  The suggestion that US military was complicit in the crimes of 9/11 is similar to saying that the Secret Service was complicit in the crashing of the Obama's White House party:  it's indisputable.  The Salahis could not have entered if the White House had the Secret Service not let them in.  Indisputably.  And none of the planes could have hit any of the buildings on 9/11 if the US air defenses had not gone completely to sleep.  The Pentagon attack is particularly egregious.  The official story is that 50 minutes after the 1st plane hit the World Trade Center, US air defenses, on flaming red alert, designed to defend against supersonic missiles and jet fighters, not only failed to stop a slow moving humongous 757, they failed to get off a shot!  Not a single shot in defense of the most highly defended building on the planet.  The following week, Richard Meyers, who was in charge of US air defenses on 9/11, instead of being court-marshaled and shot, as he clearly ought to have been, was promoted, to the highest position in the military:  Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.[17]

So the military, under the Bush administration, was indisputably complicit in the events of 9/11, if only by the most jaw-dropping incompetence; incompetence that was warmly rewarded by the Republican White House.  So when the Republican leadership says Obama's attempts to reduce troops and spending in Iraq and Afghanistan threaten to unleash a new terrorist attack, this is a genuine threat from genuine blood-covered terrorists. 

The Fort Hood shooting is this "terrorist" threat made real.  There is much in the story of Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, to suggest that he was a Manchurian Candidate, that he was "programmed," through hypnosis, to do what he did.  Though such a thing can never, by its very nature, be proved.  (If you have ever seen a demonstration by a professional hypnotist, you already know that some people will do anything under hypnosis and that they will have no recollection afterward.)[18]

However, there are a number of things about the case of Malik Hasan that are especially persuasive that he was under military control:[19]

•a.       Hasan had at least 13 email contacts with a radical Muslim imam.  The Imam told Al JaZeera that the first of these emails, sent 11 months before the shooting, sought the Imam's approval for Hasan's shooting his fellow soldiers.[20]  Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee's intelligence subcommittee, said that he has confirmed that Hasan wired money to Pakistan.[21]  There has been much discussion in the "news" about the fact that the FBI took no steps to apprehend or otherwise stop Hasan.  But the contents of his emails have not been released.  That is highly suspicious.  Can we conjecture that if the contents were innocuous, that they would have been released?  Sure we can.  The Imam found his house under attack within 24 hours of his publicizing the contents of those emails.  But this discussion is a distraction from the flashing red light:  the FBI did not even open a file on Hasan.  That is not preposterous.  It is very clear in its meaning.  There is only one conceivable explanation, and an obvious one.  If the FBI failed to take steps as basic as opening a file, it is because they were ordered not to do so; by another agency of the federal government.  Again, that is hardly speculative.  It should be basic common knowledge:  if a drug dealer gets picked up by some police agency in possession of a bag full of drugs; and walks out the door, without being arrested, with his bag of drugs, and without a file being opened, it's because he's undercover.  Apparently some agency of the federal government ordered Hasan to send these emails.  That is speculative, but no other explanation will suffice.[22]  And certainly, the FBI was ordered not to open a file.  Of this there cannot be any doubt. 

•b.      Similarly, the FBI's excuse for not opening a file, was that they discovered that Hasan was doing research on the attitudes of Muslims serving in the US military.  How they made this determination, without opening a file, is a mystery to me.  But let that alone for the moment.  For whom was Hasan doing this research?  Duh.  No?  But the attitude of the media to such obvious questions is "don't ask, don't tell."

•c.       Lee Harvey Oswald had been set up by the CIA to appear to be an agent of Fidel Castro.  But the FBI investigated all this evidence and determined that it was a fraud.[23]  So for Hasan to have been set-up in a similar fashion would be par for the course.  Fletcher Prouty (see endnote 12) was tipped off that Kennedy's murder was a military plot by the fact that Oswald's entire bio appeared in the papers in Australia, where Prouty was when he learned of the crime, before Oswald was even charged.   The NY Times and Fox news were spreading the contents of the FBI's non-files / non-investigation, showing Hasan to be an Arab terrorist, while they were still reporting that he was dead, before they knew that he was still alive.  That is, someone on the inside was distributing this insider knowledge about a guy who supposedly was of no interest.  It seems clear as day to me that it was a set-up.

•d.      Now, this is my favorite part.  In the 1944 detective movie, "Double Indemnity," Edward G. Robinson, the detective, is alerted that something foul is going on because the insured dead man had an insurance policy with disability as well as death benefits; but when he broke his leg, he didn't try to use the disability benefits in his policy.  Why didn't he use it?  He must not have known he had an insurance policy.  His wife purchased the policy behind his back, and then killed him.  OK.  Now answer this:  If Obama actually wanted to send troops to Afghanistan; if he actually wanted to move the American people to see the necessity of "fighting terrorism there before it becomes terrorism here"; why did he not wave the bloody shirt from the Fort Hood shooting?  Why did he not claim Hasan to be a terrorist?  Why did he not use him as an example of the continued threat?   Obviously, then, Obama was not part of any plot to kill soldiers at Fort Hood to justify a continued war on "terror." 

And now, you do the math.  Add 1 + 1.  Add "Party Crashers" to "programmed shooter" and what do you get?  You get Nancy Pelosi as president. 

But things have changed since 1963, haven't they?  The military has matured.  It is not so rabid, blood thirsty, and wild, as it used to be.  They wouldn't overtly threaten to kill the President in this way, would they?  The threats to which Obama caved were political threats, not physical ones.  No?  No.

•a.       Obama is a master politician.  He's not afraid of a political fight.  He is more capable of winning support for his position than any of his opponents.  And besides, the American people are against sending troops, so this is an easy victory.  I don't see how political threats could force him to send young men and women to their deaths, for a cause he and everyone around him know is hopeless.  Counter insurgency in support of a corrupt regime is killing for the sake of killing.

•b.      The military was, at the very least, complicit in the 9-11 murders of 3,000 Americans.

•c.       They were apparently involved in the murder of 13 soldiers at Ft. Hood.

•d.      So, it doesn't seem times have changed for the better. Eisenhower said that the greatest threat to our national security came from what he called "the military industrial complex" in this country; a ruling elite with enormous political power.  These people had the deepest support for Hitler during WWII.  And they orchestrated a performance by the media, the Secret Service, the FBI, the mafia, and the military that murdered JFK; and they have kept the truth suppressed ever since, the ridiculousness of their cover-story not withstanding.  They just passed a $630 billion defense budget, in a world where the primary threat is a few hundred men with hand-held weapons.  What reason is there to think that they would hesitate to kill Obama?  Do you suppose they like having a Black man as President?

So.  Perhaps you are convinced that Obama was persuaded, by threats against his life, to send troops.  If so, there is a more terrible question lurking out there.  Were they threatening?  Or were they practicing?  Or both?

A "full scale revolt" of the generals does not merely imply the death of Obama.  A military seizure of the government would entail far more deaths than his, certainly many thousands.  President Johnson, in choosing not to pursue Kennedy's killers (no-doubt well known to him), faced a similar choice:  the threat of a full scale revolt - that is, a military coup; civil war, death and prison camps for many thousands, if not millions. But Johnson and Obama are not the only ones confronted with difficult choices.  The information presented here suggests that your democratic government has already been seized.  It is not in the hands of your democratically elected President.  And what are YOU going to do about it, Patriot?  Are you going to be a sheep and a traitor, a collaborator?  Or an insurgent?

In our political system, it is virtually a given that all politicians are corrupt.  The politician wants to get elected; so he takes money from thieves; the best do small things to help the people; but they all do what they think they have to to keep the money flowing in.  But people are people.  They occasionally get carried away by an idea, or by the moment, and they get inspired to think that real virtue is possible, even for them.  And for such people, at such times, there are other forms of coercion.  Blackmail, for example.  Further, all politicians know, and the media too, that to admit certain truths means, at least, political death. And on occasion, there is the real murder of an individual who thinks he can, and does, serve the interests of the people.  John Kennedy was such a one.  And such a murder is a great lesson to all the living about the facts of life.  My point is that "coercion with the threat of death" is a real tool used by the ruling elite.  Typically its use is extremely low key, I'm sure.  But on occasion its use may be sufficiently high profile to be identified.  And I think we can see this clearly with Obama.  I believe that the evidence shows that the military has overtly threatened, at the very least, to kill Obama.  I believe they are also, in preparation for the day that he stands up to them, practicing to kill him. 

The fact that Obama has refused to waive the bloody shirt from Ft. Hood shows clearly that he did not authorize the shooting.  However, you are likely unaware that the moment the FBI concluded their initial investigation of the Ft. Hood shooting, Obama rejected it out of hand and called William Webster out of retirement to oversee a new investigation.[24]  This has received no attention from any quarter.  And, again, it closely parallels Kennedy:  after the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy called Maxwell Taylor out of retirement to supervise the investigation (referred to in endnote 1) of how the invasion occurred when Kennedy had cancelled it.  The investigation lasted two months.  The results were kept secret for twenty years.  Kennedy knew in April that the CIA had betrayed him, launching the Bay of Pigs invasion against his specific orders.  But he didn't fire Dulles until September, six months later.  Obama certainly is aware of the complicity of his intelligence agencies in the Fort Hood shootings.  Whether William Webster's investigation will be as effective as Maxwell Taylor's is impossible to tell.  But Obama is trying to collect the evidence; and he is biding his time.  Which brings us to the "Underwear Bomber."

I have been very slow to recognize the Detroit plane "bombing" as a plot of the intelligence agencies.  But the following, entirely suppressed from the media, settles the question, I think. Patrick Kennedy, State Department Under-Secretary for Management testified before the House Committee on Homeland Security on January 27.  His purpose was to explain in detail how it was that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Crotch Bomber, was not put on the no-fly list, despite his father's warnings to the State Department that his son was being recruited by terrorists.  Kennedy testified:

"We ask our law enforcement and intelligence community partners, 'Do you have eyes on this person and do you want us to let this person proceed under your surveillance so that you may potentially break a larger plot?'"  He added: "And one of the members [of the intelligence community]-and we'd be glad to give you that out of [open session]-in private-said, 'Please, do not revoke this visa. We have eyes on this person. We are following this person who has the visa for the purpose of trying to roll up an entire network, not just stop one person.'"[25]

Abdulmutallab has not been water-boarded.  His family has been brought in.  At their urging, he is cooperating.  The Republicans are screaming that he shouldn't have a trial.  And the prosecutors are collecting evidence.  What if they succeed in identifying "the entire network"?  What next?  Is anyone paying attention besides Cheney and his network?  Not that I've noticed.

Finally - the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed:

When Obama was questioned by 9-11 Truthers about the evidence of an inside job, he commented "we need to investigate a whole range of options, although some of the issues you guys have raised I'm not entirely confident are the case."[26]  This is not an endorsement.  But it is as good as anything Ron Paul has said publicly.  And it is far from a condemnation.

His decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) in open court in New York City was a brilliantly casual knife to the throat of the perpetrators:  It presents a spotlighted stage, a platform, for the 9-11 Truth movement to demonstrate, raise issues, and bring attention to the glaring facts.  And what better argument could the defense make, that Mohammed was not responsible for the attacks, than to show the jury footage of building 7 coming down in a classic controlled demolition?

Thus, the prospect of a public trial for KSM presents Cheney and the other perpetrators with an everything-to-lose situation.  The decision was announced to stage the public trial, and, in the words of Newsweek magazine:  As if on cue, a Nigerian man with explosives in his crotch nearly brought down an American airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day, leaving the neocons feeling further vindicated and energized"; and leaving Obama, "mugged by reality," as the neocons themselves put it.[27]  These "energized neocons" are the signatories of the Project for a New American Century, who called for the "new Pearl Harbor" just before the 9-11 attacks; their fingerprints are all over the 9-11 attacks.

When Cheney objects to having a public trial for KSM out of one side of his mouth,²⁷ and threatens biological and nuclear attacks out of the other,[28] he must be taken seriously.  And unless Obama feels that he has the cards in his hand to arrest Cheney and his cohorts, what can he do?

Late last year, Holder accompanied Obama on a middle-of-the-night visit to Dover Air Force Base. An Air Force plane had just delivered eighteen bodies of soldiers and Drug Enforcement Administration officials who had been killed that week, in Afghanistan. Holder said that Obama, after seeing a hangar filled with caskets, sat alone in a nearby room. Holder added that he "was struck by the fact that this guy has the weight of the world on his narrow shoulders."[29]

John Hankey is the author of "Dark Legacy:  George Bush and the Murder of John Kennedy," a documentary detailing the evidence linking George Bush Sr. to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  The video is available for free on the web, at BushKilledJFK.com, and at Amazon.com. 

Endnotes:

[1] Kennedy's cancellation of the invasion is not widely known; but it is documented in the US Government publication of the official investigation, a document entitled "Operation Zapata."

[2] During the missile crisis, Kennedy's advisors told him that the Russian missiles in Cuba were not armed, and advised an attack and invasion.  It has come out from the Russian side, that the missiles were ready, armed with nuclear warheads, and the local commanders were authorized to use them.  Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense at the time, has made much of this in his book and DVD "The Fog of War."

[3] Both Obama's National Security Advisor, Jim Jones, and his Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eichenberry, were pulled by Obama out of retirement, where Bush had forced them. The most egregious case of the promotion of Christian ideologues is that of Lieutenant-General William "Jerry" Boykin, the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Intelligence under Bush and a leading figure behind the prisoner abuses in Iraq and at Guantanamo.

Writing for the Los Angeles Times on October 16, 2003, columnist William Arkin pointed out that Boykin sees the "war on terror" as a religious war between Judeo-Christian civilization and Satan, with Islam of course cast in the latter role. According to Arkin, Boykin told a religious group in Oregon, in June, that radical Islamists hate the United States "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian ... and the enemy is a guy named Satan." He continued to say that "our spiritual enemy will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus."

Boykin, a 30-year veteran of the US Army's Delta Force, the Central Intelligence Agency and Army Special Forces, told another audience, in reference to operations he was involved in in Somalia in 1993, that "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol." Arkin further reports that Boykin believes that President George W. Bush was not elected to the White House by mere mortals, but chosen by God, and that he himself received his orders from God. Arkin also noted that Boykin's concept of "war on terror" is quite different from the way the US president looks at it. Boykin sees it as a war against Muslims.

Though most individuals in the military have the common sense not to speak as openly as Boykin did, the entire notion that "insurgents" need to be killed, held by all the leading brass, is fundamentally similar.  That is, upon what basis do we condemn these men to death?  Because they are insurgents against a foreign occupier?  How can that be?  There is a justification that is not stated.  Clearly.  And why not?  Because it is racist, and/or religious.  http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FE11Aa04.html

[4] The following are highlights from the Rolling Stone article depicting the efforts by McChrystal to force Obama to implement McChrystal's foreign policy, rather than Obama's:  http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30493567/the_generals_revolt

The military's campaign to force Obama's hand started in earnest in September, when the Commander's Initial Assessment of the war - a highly classified report prepared by McChrystal - was leaked to The Washington Post. ...  In the report, McChrystal paints a dire picture of the American effort in Afghanistan, concluding that a massive increase in troop levels is the only way to prevent a humiliating failure.

On Capitol Hill, hawkish GOP congressmen seized the opening to turn up the heat on Obama by demanding that he allow McChrystal and Petraeus to come to Washington to testify at high-profile hearings to ask for more troops. "It is time to listen to our commanders on the ground, not the ever-changing political winds whispering defeat in Washington," declared Sen. Kit Bond, a Republican from Missouri. Attempting to usurp Obama's authority as commander in chief, Sen. John McCain introduced an amendment to compel the two generals to come before Congress, but the measure was voted down by the Democratic majority.

As the pressure from the military and the right built, McChrystal went on 60 Minutes to complain that he had only talked to Obama once since his appointment in June. Then, upping the ante, the general flew to London for a speech, where he was asked if de-escalating the war, along the lines reportedly suggested by Vice President Joe Biden, might work. "The short answer is: no," said McChrystal, dismissing the idea as "shortsighted." His comment - which bluntly defied the American tradition that a military officer's job is to carry out policy, not make it - shocked political observers in Washington and reportedly angered the White House.  ... 

For his part, Obama moved quickly to handle the insurrection. One day after McChrystal's defiant London speech, the president unexpectedly summoned the general to a one-on-one meeting aboard an idling Air Force One in Copenhagen. No details of the discussion were released, but two days later Jim Jones, the retired Marine general who now serves as Obama's national-security adviser, publicly rebuked McChrystal, declaring that it is "better for military advice to come up through the chain of command."

[5] Eichenberry, 18 days before Obama's Dec. 1 speech announcing 30,000 more troops, wrote a memo to Obama urging him not to send Americans to die defending a regime as utterly corrupt and worthless as the puppet regime in Afghanistan.  http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-obama-afghan12-2009nov12,0,2561752.story

[6] P.D. Scott:  http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15752

[7] Robert Perry says the same things have happened to Obama's stated plans to withdraw from Iraq.  http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/022009.html

[8] LA Times,12/9/09  http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-afghan-mcchrystal9-2009dec09,0,224382.story

[9] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125452861657560895.html

[10] The secret service manual requires the planners of a motorcade to pour on extra protection when there is a sharp turn in the route, which requires that the car slow down.  Agents should, therefore, have been positioned all over Dealey Plaza to insure that there were no open windows.  That is standard procedure.  Instead, there were no secret service agents at all on the ground in Dealey Plaza.  The protective motorcycle escort was ordered to stay behind the President's vehicle.  The limo is equipped with handles on the rear trunk lid, and steps built into the bumper, to accommodate agents riding on the back.  The agents were waived off this position and moved into a following car.  The driver should have stepped on the gas when the first shot was fired.  Instead, the driver braked and slowed, for the next 6 seconds.  Only after Kennedy was shot in the head did the driver take off.

[11] I've spent 40 years researching, and 10 years making a documentary that makes this point in spades.  (I'll gladly provide you with a copy.  It is available on Amazon if you'd like to read the reviews.)  In the video, you will see a video interview with Aubrey Rike, the man who loaded Kennedy's body into a bronze casket.  You will also see a video interview with Paul O'Neil, the Bethesda Naval Hospital sailor who unloaded the body from a grey shipping casket, 20 minutes before the bronze casket arrived at the facility.  An FBI memo, shown in a section of the video narrated by Walter Cronkite, says that it was obvious that Kennedy's wounds had been altered.  Pre-autopsy photos also show this mutilation of the body.  And one of the doctors from the Dallas emergency room, in an excerpt from a NOVA special, points to an autopsy photo of the entrance wound on Kennedy's right temple and says that the photos show it was altered before the autopsy began.

The military had complete control of the body and the autopsy.  They, and no one else, altered the critical head wound.  This was an entrance wound to Kennedy's right temple.  It was fired from the so-called "grassy knoll."  It exited the back leaving a gaping 4-inch hole in the rear of Kennedy's head.  The wound to Kennedy's temple was altered to disguise its characteristic appearance as an entrance wound.  But the alterations were done at least 5 hours before Oswald was charged.  The autopsy room was full of admirals and generals.  These men were acting as part of the conspiracy to murder.  There is no room for reasonable debate on any of these points.

[12] The movie "JFK" does an amazing job of making this point.  The movie presents a "Mr. X."  This is not a fictional character.  The man's name was Fletcher Prouty.  He was the Pentagon liaison to the CIA.  And he was deeply and directly involved, as shown in the movie, in the dual efforts of JFK both to eliminate the CIA, and to withdraw from Vietnam.

[13] Biden:  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/09/biden-begs-obama-no-more-troops-to-afghanistan.html

Emanuel:  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/world/asia/19afghan.html

Eikenberry: http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-obama-afghan12-2009nov12,0,2561752.story

[14] You can NOT win a war against an insurgency that is more popular than you.  You can go on fighting forever, which is what the generals have stated is their anticipated outcome.  But you can not win a peace without a government that is popularly supported.

[15] In fact, conditions in Afghanistan continue to deteriorate.  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091211/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan, Dec. 11, 2009.  Top UN official in Afghanistan to leave in March, Gareth Price, head of the Asia program at Chatham House, a think tank in London, said "it's clear now that the Afghan government isn't working."

[16] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/30/AR2009113004420_pf.html.  "People familiar with the inquiry into how the Salahis were able to attend Tuesday's gala, even though they weren't on the official guest list, said the Salahis exchanged e-mails with Michele S. Jones, Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense and the Pentagon-based liaison to the White House. It was unclear how well the Salahis know Jones, but Jones includes the Salahis' lawyer, Paul W. Gardner, as one of her 50 friends on Facebook.

[17] My favorite is a lecture given by a physics professor, Steven Jones.  Jones was a tenured, admired physics professor at Brigham Young University.  Jones is a devout and conservative Christian and Mormon.  He voted for Bush.  But his physics students asked him to explain the collapse of the buildings at the World Trade Center, particularly building 7.  He enthusiastically approached the question as a teachable moment.  At first he approached the question as one of basic physics:  "Can the heat from jet fuel and office supplies explain the collapse of a steel structure?"  He concluded, with enormous anguish, that it cannot.  He was tortured by the implications for many months.  And then he woke up one morning and remembered that he was a leading expert, on a world-class level, at chemical analysis.  (The first time I googled his name, his published papers on his techniques for determining the chemical content of crystalline structures is what came up first.)  And, having determined that the official story of airplanes and jet fuel could not account for the collapse of the buildings, he determined to use his expertise to analyze samples of dust from the World Trade Center to search for evidence of what did, in fact, bring down the buildings.  He found abundant evidence (metallic microspheres) of steel having been evaporated (such tiny microspheres are created when steel is evaporated) and also abundant samples of the military grade demolition explosive, thermite.  Thermite is virtually the only way that steel can be heated to sufficiently high temperatures that it evaporates.  But I have several other DVD's besides the one by Professor Jones.  All of this information, including the videos, is available online.

[18] The assassin of Robert Kennedy, Sirhan Sirhan, is the best example, since his case was the most thoroughly examined.  The papers splashed the idea of his being a radical West-hating Palestinian across the front page.  But Sirhan was a Christian.  He and his family liked the Kennedys.  He had no recollection of the shooting.  And every eye-witness says that his gun never got within 3 feet of Kennedy's front, while Kennedy had powder burns on the back of his head, which the coroner said were left by a shot from not more than 1 inch.  Photographs showing CIA operatives, known Kennedy haters, around the Biltmore hotel that night, have been recently uncovered.

The shooters of John Lennon, George Wallace, and Ronald Reagan fit similar profiles, but their cases have not been so carefully investigated.

The CIA spent 30 years researching hypnotism, but they learned nothing and there are no files.  As I said, if you've ever seen a hypnotist at work, you will see that some people under hypnosis can be made to do anything.  But not everyone is susceptible.  Sirhan was hypnotized by court appointed psychiatrists.  He was demonstrably susceptible. 

[19] The link will take you to a stunning report on the shooter from the NY Times.  You have to read through to the end to get to the most amazing quotes from his neighbors.  He was, apparently, a friendly, lovable guy.  The tenants generally saw him leave early and come home late in the afternoon, usually in his fatigues. He never had visitors, they said, but he was friendly with his neighbors.  "The first day he moved in, he offered to give me a ride to work," said Willie Bell, 51, who lived next door. "He'd give you the shoes and shirt and pants off him if you need it. Nicest guy you'd want to meet.  (Boy!  You sure don't find that quote in the headlines.)  "The very first day I seen him, he hugged me like, 'My brother, how you doing?'"  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/us/09reconstruct.html?scp=3&sq=%22Why%20the%20War%20on%20Terror%20Is%20a%20War%20on%20Islam%22&st=cse

[20] http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=9410718.  "Fort Hood: Hasan Asked Awlaki If It Was Okay to Kill American Soldiers"   Please note that this is ABC news online.  This story has been utterly suppressed.  It was never broadcast by ABC, or carried by any major newspaper.  Within 24 hours of the publication of this report, Awlaki's home was bombed by Yemeni war planes.  You didn't know Yemen had an air force? 

[21] http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/111309dnentcharges.4179b70.html.  "I have confirmed through independent sources that there were communications and wire transfers made to Pakistan," McCaul said in a prepared statement provided by his spokesman. "This Pakistan connection just raises more red flags about this case and demonstrates why it's important for Congress to exercise its oversight authority."

[22] Curiouser and curiouser.  Obama ordered the FBI to investigate themselves to determine "whiskey tango foxtrot" they were doing in this case.  And the day they finished their investigation, he ordered them to do it again, only this time with outside supervision.  Immediately after the shooting, Obama ordered a total clampdown on leaks of information about the case.  There is clearly much more going on here than meets the eye:  http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-fort-hood9-2009dec09,0,399074.story

[23] John Connally, who is implicated in the JFK assassination, called LBJ to urge him to pursue this avenue in order to justify an invasion of Cuba.  The call was recorded and is available on line both in transcript and audio form.  The CIA claimed to have a photo of Oswald visiting the Cuban embassy.  But the photo does not remotely resemble Oswald, and the FBI investigation says Oswald was elsewhere at the time.  Further, Oswald's representation of himself as a member of the genuine pro-Castro "Fair Play for Cuba Committee" (FPCC) proved to be a complete fraud.  He was the only "member" of his local chapter.  He set it up without authorization from the actual FPCC.  The address he used on his leaflets for the FPCC was that of a CIA office run by the former head of the Chicago FBI, Guy Bannister.

[24] http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-fort-hood9-2009dec09,0,399074.story

[25] http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/f253-f03.shtml

[26] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWta99fesPw&NR=1

[27] http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/02/15/100215fa_fact_mayer.  This is an excellent and thorough description of the Obama administration's and Eric Holder's process in deciding to bring the case to trial.  It also describes the bloody threats of the neocons, led by Cheney's daughter, against the people of the city of New York, should the trial go forward.

[28] http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Politics/dick-cheney-vice-president-joe-biden-square-off/story?id=9839602.  Cheney:  "I think, in fact, the situation with respect to al Qaeda to say that, you know, that was a big attack we had on 9/11, but it's not likely again, I just think that's dead wrong," the former VP said on "This Week. "I think the biggest strategic threat the United States faces today is the possibility of another 9/11 with a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind, and I think al Qaeda is out there even as we meet trying to figure out how to do that."

[29] http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/02/15/100215fa_fact_mayer

The Pentagon called it the "long war" in its 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), what past administrations waged every year without exception since the republic's birth, at home and abroad. Obama is just the latest of America's warrior presidents that included Washington, Madison, Jackson, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, Wilson, F. Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, GHW Bush, Clinton, and GW Bush preceding him.

This article covers WW II and its aftermath history of imperial wars for unchallengeable global dominance throughout a period when America had and still has no enemies. Then why fight them? Read on.

Wars Without End

America glorifies wars in the name of peace, what historian Charles Beard (1874 - 1948) called "perpetual war for perpetual peace" in describing the Roosevelt and Truman administrations' foreign policies - what concerned the Federation of American Scientists when it catalogued about 200 post-1945 conflicts in which America was, and still is, the aggressor.

Historian Gore Vidal used Beard's phrase in titling his 2002 book, "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace" and saying:

"our rulers for more than half a century have made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that our government has done to other people, not to mention our own."

In his 2002 book "Dreaming War," he compared GW Bush's imperial ambitions to WW II and the 1947 Truman Doctrine's pledge:

"To support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

It was to keep Greece and Turkey from going communist, but it applied globally and initiated America's National Security State strategy that included:

- NATO in 1949 for offense, not defense;

- NSC-68 against Soviet Russia in 1950 to "contain" what was called an enemy "unlike previous aspirants to hegemony....animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own (wishing to) impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world" at a time America was the only global superpower, the Soviet Union lay in ruins, threatened no one, and needed years to regain normality.

Then came:

- Truman's instigated June 25, 1950 war after the DPRK retaliated in force following months of ROK provocations, what Americans call the Korean War, South Koreans the 6-2-5 War (meaning June 25), and the North its "fatherland liberation war" that left it in ruins, the South occupied to this day, and it was only the mid-century beginning as succeeding administrations continued an agenda for what's now called "full spectrum dominance" for global US hegemony.

It worried historian Harry Elmer Barnes (1889 - 1968) in his 1953 collection of leading historical revisionists' essays titled, "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and It's Aftermath" in which he wrote in the preface:

"If trends continue as they have during the last fifteen years, we shall soon reach this point of no return, and can only anticipate interminable wars, disguised as noble gestures for peace. Such an era could only culminate in a third world war which might well, as Arnold J. Toynbee has suggested, leave only the pygmies in remote jungles, or even the apes and ants, to carry on 'the cultural traditions' of mankind."

He cited how America's "needless" entry into two world wars converted its pre-1914 dream "into a nightmare of fear, regimentation, destruction, insecurity, inflation, and ultimate insolvency." He debunked the cause and merits of WW I, "the folly of our entering it, and the disastrous results that followed." He cited "popular fictions" about WW II, the injustices to Germany and Austria that caused it, the war Roosevelt wanted early in the 1930s as captured Polish documents and the censored Forrestal Diaries confirmed.

Before it began, he wanted US neutrality legislation ended, then after September 1939, he dropped any pretense by supporting Britain and France and opposing peace efforts after Poland's defeat. His June 1940 "dagger in the back" address was a de facto act of war by beginning vast amounts of weapons and munitions shipments to Britain after Dunkirk, followed by the September 1940 (peacetime) Selective Service Act, the first in US history, in preparation for what close advisor Harry Hopkins told Churchill in January 1941 that:

"The President is determined that we shall win the war together. Make no mistake about it," followed by Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Harold Stark telling his fleet commanders that "The question of our entry into the war now seems to be when, and not whether."

Only a pretext was needed, first by trying and failing to provoke Germany, then deciding Japan would be attacked, whether or not it struck US ships, territory, or forces in the Pacific. In a July 4 radio broadcast, Roosevelt said:

"solemnly (understand) that the United States will never survive as a happy and fertile oasis of liberty surrounded by a cruel desert of dictatorship." Then his July 25 Executive Order froze Japanese assets, stating it was:

"....To prevent the use of the financial facilities of the United States in trade between Japan and the United States in ways harmful to national defense and American interests, to prevent the liquidation in the United States of assets obtained by duress or conquest, and to curb subversive activities in the United States."

Britain followed suit the next day, and Roosevelt nationalized the Philippines' armed forces "as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States" with dominion over its Asian colony.

As early as 1937, he planned a naval blockade, but dropped the idea after an adverse reaction. It resurfaced in 1938 because he knew strangling Japan economically assured war.

Throughout his administration, from 1933 through late 1941, he spurned Japanese peace overtures that would have protected all American interests in the Pacific. By November 25, the final die was cast. America chose war, and on that day, War Secretary Henry Stimson wrote in his diary that it depended only on how to maneuver Japan to attack with the lowest number of US casualties.

Tokyo had no other recourse, knowing it couldn't win, but hoping for a negotiated settlement to solidify whatever Asian control it could retain. It failed, lost the war, and remains an occupied US vassal state.

In the late 1930s, Roosevelt encouraged a Japanese attack by stationing the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor against the advice of two key admirals, James Richardson, Pacific Fleet commander and Harold Stark, Chief of Naval Operations until March 1942.

Selling arms to Japan's enemies and an embargo assured war, and US cable documentation confirmed it was coming. Breaking the Japanese code let Britain and Washington track its fleet from the Kurile Islands to its North Pacific refueling point en route to Pearl Harbor on or about December 7.

At a December 5 cabinet meeting, Navy Secretary Frank Knox said: "Well, you know Mr. President, we know where the Japanese fleet is?"

"Yes, I know," responded Roosevelt, saying "Well, you tell them what it is Frank," who explained where it was, where it was heading until Roosevelt interrupted adding that perfect information wasn't available in spite of navy reports confirming it in Pacific waters heading toward Hawaii. On December 6, officials awaited the attack until it came the next morning at 7:55AM Hawaii time.

It was a day of infamy and deceit, with Pearl Harbor's commander, Admiral HE Kimmel, denied crucial intelligence to let it proceed unimpeded, arouse public anger, and give FDR his war - one decoded Japanese messages showed they didn't want but Roosevelt gave them no choice.

Like other presidents, he lied the country into war against the wishes of 80% of the public, at a cost of millions of lives in both theaters, and a policy henceforth of perpetual wars for perpetual peace to achieve unchallengeable US dominance. In the modern era, FDR's foreign policy began it, leaving a bankrupted moral and political legacy active to this day.

Consider also what revisionist historians say about Lincoln - that he provoked the Fort Sumpter (in Charleston, SC harbor) attack and began the Civil War for economic reasons, not to end slavery.

Consider also that ordinary people and soldiers don't want war, just their leaders and commanders - to wit, Christmas 1914 during WW I when German and British troops stopped fighting, didn't know why they were doing it, then defied orders by fraternizing with each other for two weeks despite risking being court-martialed. Unable to stop them, their officers joined them in a celebratory pause that didn't stop another three years of carnage, millions of lost lives, and post-war policies that assured WW II.

The lesson is clear. All wars are immoral, unnecessary, and only happen when one side provokes the other for reasons unrelated to national security threats.

In his seminal book, "A Century of War," Gabriel Kolko called the 20th century:

"the bloodiest in all history. More than 170 million people were killed," 70% of whom in WW II were civilians, "mainly (from) the bombing of cities by Great Britain and America." There was nothing good about "the good war" nor any others.

In Kolko's later book "Another Century of War," he stressed how America contributes to much of the world's disorder through its interventions and as the world's largest arms producer and exporter. Post-WW II, the US became a global menace, today claiming "terrorism" as the main threat - a bogus fiction to justify militarism, perpetual wars heading the nation for moral, political and economic bankruptcy. According to Kolko:

"The way America's leaders are running the nation's foreign policy is not creating peace or security at home or stability abroad. The reverse is the case: its interventions have been counterproductive."

In his newest book, "The World in Crisis," Kolko believes that America's decline "began after the Korean War, was continued in relation to Cuba, and was greatly accelerated in Vietnam - but (GW Bush did) much to exacerbate it further." He also thinks:

- US power is declining everywhere;

- "the world is no longer dependent on its economic might" because other nations like China and India are growing and may some day equal or surpass America;

- after the Soviet Union's collapse, "the absence of identifiable foes has been a disaster, leaving the US aimless - (so) it picks and chooses enemies: rag-tag Afghan tribesmen, Iraqis or all sorts, perhaps China, perhaps Russia....South American caudillos," whatever bogus ones can be invented for imperial wars, but the justification is wearing thin, and the burgeoning cost unsustainable.

The result is that America's "century of domination is now ending."

America's Permanent War Economy

It's how Seymour Melman (1917 - 2004) characterized it in his books and frequents writings on America's military-industrial complex. One of his last articles was titled "In the Grip of a Permanent War Economy (CounterPunch, March 15, 2003) in which he said:

"at the start of the twenty-first century, every major aspect of American life is being shaped by our Permanent War Economy." He then examined the horrific toll:

- a de-industrialized nation, the result of decades of shifting production abroad leaving unions and communities "decimated;"

- government financing and promoting "every kind of war industry and foreign investing by US firms;" war priorities take precedence over essential homeland needs;

- America's "Permanent War Economy....has endured since the end of World War II....Since then the US has been at war - somewhere - every year, in Korea, Nicaragua, Vietnam, the Balkans, Afghanistan - all this to the accompaniment of shorter military forays in Africa, Chile, Grenada, Panama," and increasingly at home against its own people;

- "how to make war" takes precedence over everything leaving no "public space....on how to improve the quality of our lives;"

- "Shortages of housing have caused a swelling of the homeless population in every major city (because) State and city governments across the country have become trained to bend to the needs of the military....;" the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) currently estimates over 21,000 are on city streets nightly, and during winter months it's dangerous;

- the result is a nation of growing millions of poor, disadvantaged, uneducated, and "disconnected from society's mainstream, restless and unhappy, frustrated, angry, and sad;"

"State Capitalism" characterizes America's government - business partnership running a war economy for greater power and wealth at the expense of a nation in decline, corrupted leadership, lost industrialization, crumbling infrastructure, and suffering millions on their own, uncared for, unwanted, ignored, and forgotten.

Melman stressed that:

"Further evasion is out of order. We must come to grips with America's State Capitalism and its Permanent War Economy." Re-industrialization is essential "to restore jobs and production competence - industry by industry."

"Failing that, there is no hope for any constructive exit," for the nation or its people.

Dwight Eisenhower's January 17, 1961 Address to the Nation

It was his farewell address delivered 30 years to the day before Operation Desert Storm began in which he warned about the "military-industrial complex," citing the "grave implications" of a "coalition of the military and industrialists who profit by manufacturing arms and selling them to the government."

He stated "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence....by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

He also said that:

"Every gun that is made, every war ship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, from those who are cold and not clothed," the result of what some analysts call the "iron triangle" of Congress, the Pentagon, and the defense industry that includes producers of sophisticated technology for digital age warfare of a kind Eisenhower never imagined.

In combination, they've addicted America to war, not for threats, but for the power and profits that result. In his book "The Political Economy of US Militarism," Professor Ismael Hossein-Zadeh refers to "parasitic military imperialism," consuming over 40% of the national tax revenue at the expense of unmet human needs.

Morality aside, it's not justified economically. It's wasteful, inefficient, comes at a great cost, and over time is ineffective and self-destructive.

"The control over huge amounts of national resources tends to lead to an undermining of democratic values, a perversion of republican principles and a reduction of civil freedoms, as well as to the political corruption at home and abroad." Moreover, "The constant need for international conflicts makes (America's) military imperialism....more dangerous than the imperial powers of the past."

It's made war-making a giant enterprise "not only for expansionism but, in fact, for the survival of this empire," yet consider the fallout Hossein-Zadeh examined in a July 10, 2007 article titled, "Parasitic Imperialism:"

- the redistribution of income and resources to the wealthy;

- the undermining of physical and human capital;

- the nation's increased vulnerability to natural disasters;

- economic and financial instability, the result of the growing national debt now totally out of control;

- less foreign market potential for non-military ventures;

- the undermining of civil liberties and democratic values; and

- "foster(ing) a dependence on or addiction to military spending, and, therefore....a spiraling vicious circle of (unsustainable) war and militarism" that's sucking the nation into decline.

America's Post-WW II Imperial Grand Strategy

Post-WW II, America emerged as the world's sole superpower - economically, politically and militarily, given the war's toll on East Asia, Europe and Soviet Russia. In his book, "The Cold War and the New Imperialism," Professor Henry Heller examined it with emphasis on the Cold War, America's containment policy, and its efforts against leftist forces in support of fascist elements on the right at both state and local levels.

The Soviet Union controlled Eastern and Central Europe while Mao's War of Liberation defeated Chiang Kai-Shek Nationalists. Cold War confrontation followed. It pitted US imperialism against an opposing ideology, the aim being which side would triumph or could both co-exist peacefully and avoid conflict.

War was never an option given each side's nuclear strength under a policy of "mutually assured destruction (MAD)". In addition, post-Stalinist Russia began reforms and expanded its sphere of influence. It wasn't to destroy the West, but to co-exist equally. America and Soviet Russia only competed for developing country allies to keep them from the opposing camp, so neither would be dominated by the other or more vulnerable to being isolated, marginalized, or shut out from world markets and influence.

US Imperialism Post-WW II

James Petras and others have said behind every imperial war is a great lie, the more often repeated the more likely to be believed because ordinary people want peace, not conflict, so it's vital to convince them.

In the 1950s, the Eisenhower administration overthrew two popularly elected governments in Iran and Guatemala, and sought greater influence in Africa and Southeast Asia as anti-colonial movements gained strength.

On January 1, 1959 Fidel Castro's socialist revolution ousted the US-backed Batista dictatorship. He then survived America's failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, but faced decades of US hostility, including an embargo, destabilization, intimidation, and hundreds of attempts to kill him, unsuccessful so Cuba is still free from US dominance, but hardly safe from its northern hegemon.

In the 1950s, America also backed French Southeast Asian imperialism until defeat at Dien Bien Phu drove them out. A repressive South Vietnamese client regime was established at the same time, supported by US military advisors teaching war and repression tactics. Unifying North and South elections were blocked, and direct intervention began in 1961. In 1958, Washington also subverted Laotian democracy and incited civil war. Cambodia as well was targeted but remained free.

Early in his administration, Kennedy intervened, but a new James Douglass book titled "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters" says without conviction because he opposed using force. After the Joint Chiefs demanded troops for Laos, he told his Geneva Conference representative, Averell Harriman:

"Did you understand? I want a negotiated settlement in Laos. I don't want to put troops in."

He wouldn't agree to using nuclear weapons in Berlin and Southeast Asia and refused to bomb or invade Cuba during the 1962 missile crisis, saying afterwards that "I never had the slightest intention of doing so."

In June 1963 (a few months before his assassination), he called for the abolition of nuclear weapons, ending the Cold War, and moving forward for "general and complete disarmament." In October 1963, he signed National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263 to withdraw 1,000 US forces from Vietnam by year end and all of them by 1965. He said he wanted "to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds." He wanted peace, not conflicts. It cost him his life, and future presidents got the message.

Johnson resumed Southeast Asian escalation to establish client regimes and military bases across East and South Asia, encircle China, and crush nationalist anti-imperial movements. The Indochinese war engulfed Cambodia and Laos as well under Johnson and Nixon. It killed three to four million, inflicted vast amounts of destruction, caused incalculable human suffering, got America to sign a peace treaty in January 1973, but war continued until its clients were defeated in April 1975.

Prior to Reagan's election, the "Vietnam syndrome" and easing Cold War tensions and disarmament efforts alarmed militarists to fear defense spending cuts detrimental to profits. A propaganda campaign exaggerated bogus threats, manipulated intelligence to heighten fear, and got the Reagan administration to approve large military spending increases to confront "Soviet expansionism" at a time it was transitioning from Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko to Gorbachev in 1985, followed by perestroika in 1986, glasnost in 1988, border openings and the Berlin Wall's collapse in 1989, then the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991 - a new threat militarists feared would bring large, not to be tolerated, defense budgets cuts.

In the late 1980s, however, leading figures, including Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel Huntington, and Albert Wohlstetter alleged Third World conflicts threatened US interests in the Middle East, Mediterranean, and Western Pacific, and recommended deterrence to stop them. Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney agreed. Others wanted large defense cuts for a peace dividend, including Johnson's DOD chief Robert McNamara who proposed reductions up to 50%.

Throughout the 1989 - 1999 period, mostly under Bill Clinton, US-instigated provocations, sanctions, and armed insurrections support involved America in 134 military operations according to the Federation of American Scientists. The most egregious was Clinton's bombing and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, an act playwright Harold Pinter called:

"barbaric" and despicable, "another blatant and brutal assertion of US power using NATO as its missile" to consolidate "American domination of Europe." Worse was yet to come with the election of George Bush, America's worst president in a country that never had a good one and never will as it's now governed.

Long before 9/11, Middle East restructuring plans were based on bogus terrorist, rogue state, and "clash of civilizations" threats by hordes of Islamofascists, including the Palestinian resistance, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Saddam Hussein targeted in the 1990 - 91 Gulf War, followed by years of devastating sanctions, then ousted by GW Bush in 2003.

Iraq was destroyed, occupied and balkanized. Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran face similar threats, the common thread being dominating Eurasia through endless conflicts and increased military spending for war profiteering bounties. September 11 assured it, and got Michelle Ciarocca of the Arms Trade Resource Center, in September 2002 to say:

"The whole mind set of military spending changed on Sept. 11. The most fundamental thing about defense spending is that threats drive (it). It's now going to be easier to fund almost anything."

Hossein-Zadeh investigated the growing role of private contractors creating a "built-in propensity to war that makes the US military-industrial complex a menace to world peace and stability, a force of death and destruction," as virulent under Obama as George Bush.

The fallout includes a burgeoning national debt, loss of civil liberties and democratic freedoms, erosion of social services, collapse of the dollar, America already in decline, its coming loss of preeminence as a world power, its potential bankruptcy, perhaps demise in its present form. and the possibility of WW III.

America's Illegal Wars of Aggression - The "Supreme Crime"

All US post-WW II conflicts were premeditated wars of aggression against nations posing no threat to America - what Justice Robert Jackson at Nuremberg called:

the "supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

Canadian Law Professor Michael Mandel explained America's guilt in his superb 2004 book, "How America Gets Away with Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage, and Crimes Against Humanity," his main theme being Jackson's Nuremberg "supreme crime" declaration, as relevant now as then.

Tragically, as Edward Herman observed in reviewing Mandel's book:

"The problem for the United States (and the world) has been that this country is now in the business of aggression and its commission of the "supreme crime" is standard policy, thereby bringing the "scourge of war" across the globe in direct violation of the UN charter."

Its Purposes and Principles state that:

"The Purposes of the United Nations are:

(1) To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace."

Conspiratorially with NATO and Israel, America willfully and repeatedly violates international and US laws, punishes its victims, absolves itself, and since WW II has directly or indirectly murdered millions of people globally, mostly civilian non-combatants.

Barack Obama - America's New Warrior President

America glorifies conflicts and the righteousness of waging them, packaged as liberating ones for democracy, freedom, justice, and the best of all possible worlds. Obama is just the latest in a long line of warrior leaders promising peace by waging war, justifying them by bogus threats, and calling pacifism unpatriotic to further an imperial agenda for greater wealth, power, and unchallengeable global dominance.

In opposition to his announced Afghanistan surge, peace activists gathered across from the White House on December 12 for an "Emergency Anti-Escalation Rally" organized by "End US Wars"- a new coalition of grassroots anti-war organizations.

Speakers included Kathy Kelly, David Swanson, Granny D (age 100 on January 24, 2010) former Senator Mike Gravel (1969 - 1981), and former Representative and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, among others.

This writer was asked to prepare a short commentary to be read to the crowd. Updated, it's reproduced below:

Obama's Permanent War Strategy

Disingenuously calling Afghanistan a "war of necessity, not choice," Obama ordered 30,000 more troops deployed over the next six months with perhaps many more to follow. In one of his most defining decisions, he's more than doubled the force count since taking office, angered a majority in the country, and continues his permanent war agenda while calling himself a man of peace.

Next target, Yemen, and its newest, occupied Haiti for plunder, exploitation, and very likely killing unwanted Haitians by neglect, starvation, disease, and face-to-face confrontations if they resist.

As a candidate, Obama campaigned against imperial militarism, promised limited escalation only, and pledged to remove all combat troops from Iraq by August 31, 2010. That was then. This is now, and consider what he has in mind - the permanent occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and more.

Besides the Afghan escalation, he's also destabilizing Pakistan to balkanize both countries, weakening them to control the Caspian Sea's oil and gas riches and their energy routes to secured ports for export. The strategy includes encircling Russia, China, and Iran, obstructing their solidarity and cohesion, defusing a feared geopolitical alliance, weakening the Iranian government, perhaps attacking its nuclear sites, eliminating Israel's main regional rival, and securing unchallenged Eurasian dominance over this resource rich part of the world that includes China, Russia, the Middle East, and Indian subcontinent.

Like George Bush, Obama plans permanent war and more military spending than all other nations combined at a time America has no enemies. He promised change and betrayed us. Grassroots activism must stop this madness and make America a nation again to be proud of. The alternative is too grim to imagine.

Over 50 years ago, Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970) warned:

"Shall we put an end to the human race, or shall mankind renounce war" and live in peace, because we have no other choice.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

I used to ponder at that admonition every morning back in 1962, and its message did sink in, as I think it did in the minds of every student in the class who wasn't just falling asleep in the back of the room, or idly daydreaming. Students in that class went on to become brain surgeons, genetic engineers, writers, computer scientists, horticulturalists and lawyers. I don't think too many of us are conspiracy theorists.

Malone encouraged me and my classmates to pursue a science track. He selected a fellow student and me for an experiment, shifting us midway through the fall term to an 11th grade advanced physics class, where we learned to calculate vectors, understand wave behavior and the peculiar nature of light, and where we experimented with electricity (I learned its power when, during a boring lecture, I absent-mindedly stuck two straight pins into the electric outlet on my science desk and crossed them, causing a flash and pop, burning the outlet cover and my fingers, and casting the whole classroom into darkness). Sometimes I was lost, but most of the time, I was simply captivated, learning about the inner workings of the atom and the universe.

The public school I attended was excellent, featuring a number of iconoclastic teachers, who taught us to question, not just to memorize.

Sadly, I have learned that this is not the norm in American education, which many explain why the country is so prone to conspiracy theories.

What can we expect when polls show that only 39% of Americans believe in evolution (no surprise since fewer than 33% even know about DNA and its role in heredity)? What can we expect when one in five Americans, or about 20% of us, think that the sun revolves around the earth, or that 55% believe that they are protected by a "guardian angel"?

Conspiracy theories abound where people are fearful and ignorant. There is the conspiracy theory that Americans never really landed on the moon, the conspiracy theory that Jews run the world, the contradictory conspiracy theory that the Freemasons or Opus Dei run the world, the conspiracy theory that President Obama is a secret Muslim born in Kenya. The list goes on and on.

I'm not saying there are not good reasons for considering 1some conspiracy theories. Certainly the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 was more complicated than the work of one man, Lee Harvey Oswald. Too many things had to work perfectly, and there are too many conflicting pieces of evidence, from the poorly adjusted sight on his gun to the Zapruder film and the alleged trajectory of one incredibly destructive "magic" bullet, for the official story to work. Ditto the assassination several years later of Martin Luther King.

Nor, or course, is the official story of the 9-11 attacks credible, and indeed even the participants in the 9-11 Commission are now refusing to stand by the commission's conclusions about what happened. There are too many gaping holes, from how planes hitting the tops of buildings and creating fires that were far below the melting point of steel could have caused those buildings to dissolve into dust from the bottom up to why another building, not hit by any plane, would collapse in exactly the same fashion for no reason.

But not accepting an official explanation is different from adhering to a full-blown conspiracy theory, and Americans seem amazingly inclined to do the latter.

The most stunning example of this is the popularity of the global warming conspiracy theory.

Despite all the terrifying evidence before our eyes-the rapid disappearance of the North Polar ice cap, the rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet, the shrinking back of mountain glaciers all over the world, the frightening acidification of the upper layer of the global oceans, the measurable and accelerating rise in sea levels, and the thousands of years of data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere that can clearly be linked to temperature changes around the world, only half of Americans even believe that global climate is changing, and even fewer, just 36%, believe that the rising global temperature is caused even in part by human activity. Even more astounding is the fact that the number of Americans who believe the earth is heating up has fallen over the last few years from 77% to 51%.

Parallel to this is a growing support for an elaborate conspiracy theory that postulates that governments around the world, in collusion with virtually the entire scientific community, are working collectively to make up and promote a bogus story about global warming.

With other conspiracy theories, from the swine flu vaccination conspiracy to the lunar landing hoax, there is little need for concern. People have their belief system and go about their lives harmlessly. But with the climate change conspiracy, there is a terrible danger that it is leading to government inaction that could ultimately doom the human race, and indeed many of the earth's myriad life forms, to extinction.

Let's look at what the climate change conspiracy advocates are saying. They argue that the governments of Europe, of the US, of Canada, of China and India, and indeed of much of the rest of the world--governments that rarely agree on anything, I might point out--are acting in concert to promote a bogus claim that the earth is heating up because of man-made release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. They claim that this conspiracy is being supported by the almost universal connivance of the world's scientists, who are collectively falsifying data and hiding countervailing data. And all this is happeningthey assert, despite the almost universal opposition of the world's corporations, most of which, we know, are resisting having governments take any serious action to combat climate change, and in many cases (look at the US Chamber of Commerce), are actively challenging the whole notion of climate change.

To believe in such a far-reaching conspiracy theory, one would have to first deny all the evidence before our eyes. But then one would also have to believe that the US, China, and Europe, as well as other countries, are in league. You would also have to assume that thousands of tenured scientists--a group with a disproportionate number of large egos and people with a penchant for disputation and controversy, I might add--are all working in concert to bury information and create a false theory. Finally, you would have to believe that all this effort is being made in order to pursue an economy-crippling strategy of making fossil fuels more expensive that is directly in opposition to the wishes of virtually the entire capitalist system.

When, I have to ask, has the US government ever acted deliberately against the interests of the major capitalist enterprises? When, except during revolutionary moments, have any nations acted against the wishes of the assembled commercial interests within their borders? The short answer is: never.

Unless you think the Jews, or alternatively the Freemasons or Opus Dei or the Federalist Society, or maybe all these disparate groups together, are behind this vast conspiracy, and have successfully terrorized and bribed the tens of thousands of scientists and government officials into complicity, the idea of a conspiracy so huge and far-reaching is simply laughable.

And yet with almost half of Americans ready to believe it, the corporate media, eager for ratings, are playing along, giving equal billing to the global warming deniers. Just last night, ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson offered a story on climate change that featured competitor Fox TV's ardent climate change denier and conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck as a suppsedly credible advocate for the argument that global warming is an elaborate hoax.

We might as well be watching news stories about how we've all been duped into believing that the earth revolves around the sun, or that, god help us, the damned thing is round.

The truth is, if there is a conspiracy regarding climate change, it is a conspiracy by our government to minimize the threat (we saw that concretely with the attempt by the Bush administration to muzzle climate scientists like NASA's James Hansen), avoid taking serious action, and pretend that the actions being proposed, like "cap and trade," will solve the problem.

As I sit here in southeastern Pennsylvania on December 10, looking out at the green grass on my lawn, which has yet to feel a hard frost just two weeks before Christmas, I'm reminded of Mr. Malone's old banner: "If you can't measure it, it doesn't exist." The corollary is clearly: "If you can measure it, it does exist."

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

In a statement released by the CIA after the attack, the agency stated, referring to the casualties, that "we pledge to them and their families that we will never cease fighting for the cause to which they dedicated their lives--a safer America."

This "noble cause" that the CIA and its agents are vowing to fight until the end did not begin in Afghanistan in response to the Sept. 11 attacks. CIA operations in the country began in the late 1970s.

Washington's public rationale for why the U.S. government must fight in Afghanistan--lack of women's rights, Islamic law, lack of education, and so on--have not always existed in Afghanistan. There is, in fact, a period during which Afghanistan was on a progressive path. In 1978, under the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, women's rights and anti-sexist laws were enacted for the first time in Afghanistan's history. Schools began opening throughout the country and a literacy campaign was initiated. The government functioned on a secular, democratic platform, after a long feudal era.

As Afghanistan was building equality, increasing literacy and education and building a new progressive society, Washington was worried about one thing. The new government wanted independence and would not allow itself to be made a puppet serving the interests of U.S. capitalism. The CIA was promptly dispatched, not for a "safer America," but for a safer region for U.S. companies to exert their dominance.

The CIA's history in Afghanistan begins like this: spending billions of dollars to crush the only progressive period in the country's history.

How did they do this? By heavily funding and fighting alongside the most reactionary religious organizations, who began killing and maiming women not observing the most fundamentalist interpretations of Islamic law, destroying schools and murdering scores of civilians throughout the country. Those CIA-backed forces then took state power, and ruled the country--while still receiving millions of dollars from the CIA. Then, they were overthrown by the CIA in 2001.

The CIA orchestrated the overthrow of the Taliban government in 2001, commanding the war with its operatives on the ground. One of those agents who masterminded the U.S. takeover in 2001, Henry Crumpton, recently spoke out about the CIA tactics used. He and his agents would visit tribal leaders, and offer them this ultimatum: "If you do not cooperate, the chances of your survival are greatly diminished."

If that particular tribal leader refused to assist the invading foreign forces in his country, Crumpton and his team would openly murder him. Crumpton admitted, "And the next day, we'd talk to the tribal leader that was next door. ... Given the incentive that we had set the previous day, he was much more amenable to negotiations in our favor."

The terrorist tactics used by the CIA in Afghanistan make it obvious why their base was targeted.

The CIA has long commanded military operations, from its death squads in Latin America to bloody military coups in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. But there has been a fundamental change in the CIA's military role since 2001.

Now, the CIA is on the front lines in Afghanistan more so than in any other mission. Previously, the CIA primarily commanded U.S. military special operations troops, as well as local militias. The CIA's own paramilitary branch, known as the Special Activities Division, was small and rarely used in lieu of U.S. and foreign troops.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration began the process of militarizing the CIA, which continues today. The Special Activities Division was increased in size and funding. They were given greater authority to clandestinely conduct military operations in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and other countries where U.S. troops are not legally allowed.

Now, instead of commanding U.S. or foreign military units and local reactionary militias, the CIA is increasingly conducting military operations with their own agents. They even operate out of their own firebases scattered all over Afghanistan and Iraq. This constitutes a major change in the structure of the CIA.

The growing trend of privatizing the military can be seen as the CIA militarizes. In addition to increasing their own number of troops, the CIA has also absorbed sectors of the notorious mercenary company known as Blackwater (now known as Xe).

It was recently revealed that the CEO of Blackwater, right-wing evangelical billionaire Eric Prince, works directly for the CIA. Blackwater troops became CIA troops, and have been conducting assassination campaigns and military operations in Pakistan and other countries.

But the CIA's militarization spans beyond commanding their own troops. The CIA established a vast network of secret prisons, where suspects endure vicious illegal torture and absolutely no legal rights.

In addition, the CIA now has its own personal air force, commanding and piloting drones that are now being regularly used all over the world, conducting bombing missions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere. The Obama administration recently approved even more funds to increase the CIA's drone capabilities, putting bombs and missiles at their fingertips.

The CIA is playing a more direct role in U.S. wars than ever before. The U.S. ruling class wants the so-called "war on terror" to be shifted into the shadows.

The anti-war movement exploded in late 2002, drawing the largest anti-war demonstrations in history against the invasion of Iraq. The anti-war movement during the Vietnam War grew to a point where the U.S. government was forced to abandon its colonial aims in Vietnam. Now, the United States is involved in what is already the longest war in U.S. history, which is growing more unpopular everyday. The occupation of Iraq still has no end in sight. The Pentagon brass has made it clear that we should brace for a long and bloody fight in Afghanistan. Additionally, U.S. imperialism has goals elsewhere in the region.

Capitalism has developed into a global economic system. The United States and a handful of countries in Western Europe have competed with each other to dominate the markets and resources of the rest of the world for the past century. They have also cooperated together in their joint struggle against socialism or against independent non-socialist governments in the developing world.

This has led to the bloodiest century in human history and shows no signs of abating.

One way that the militarization of the CIA benefits the ruling class is that it allows the U.S. government to substitute other forces for those the U.S. military would have deployed. U.S. military operations are much more subject to publicity and scrutiny, but clandestine CIA operations are ambiguous. Working in the shadows allows the government to deny its own role in secret bombings, targeted assassinations and economic sabotage in other countries. The history of the CIA includes the most blatantly criminal military operations, using the most brutal and murderous tactics to overthrow popular, democratically elected governments who do not submit to U.S. corporations, and installing the most reactionary and repressive dictators, from Guatemala, to Iran, to Haiti, to the Congo, and countless others. If U.S. troops deployed to conduct these operations, there would have been even greater public outcry. But they are instead conducted in the shadows, to mask the true nature of the system we live under.

Outright military invasion is often a last resort for the ruling class, when their other methods have failed to achieve their goals of economic domination. With the changing role of the CIA, the extent of the capabilities of conducting covert operations has been stretched to new boundaries. The CIA can now deploy its own soldiers, pilot its own bombing missions and manage its own prison apparatus.

Global stratification can be traced back as far as the 1750s when Great Britain and other countries in Western Europe began sailing around the world, conquering weaker countries and colonizing them. After invading the country, they would subdue the people and leave a "governing force" in place who would exploit the indigenous people and the resources for their own economic benefit.

This global stratification process is still going on today but the Western European countries have been replaced by multinational corporations. These corporations "sail" around the world and find the least expensive labor they can, set up shop (just as the colonists did), and begin exploiting the indigenous people and their resources. Third world countries are a particularly easy target because the people there live in extreme poverty. Any offer, no matter how meager, is usually better than what they currently have available to them.

Many people defend multinational corporations, and "globalization" saying they create jobs, transfer technology, and help a countries economic development. This can be true, but what we are finding today is that the main goal of the huge multinational corporations is to maximize profits, not to try and help the local population in their plight for a better life. These multinational corporations operate without any respect for the people, the environment, or even the government of the country in which they operate. They continuously break laws with no consequence. They exploit workers with no consequence. They pollute the land with no consequence. And they do all this to earn bigger profits for Wall Street.

Some of the biggest multinational corporations are oil companies. These corporations have had a long history of bad behavior in which they exploit the local population for their own economic gain. One example of this is ExxonMobil. This is an American company based in Irving, Texas. They were operating a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Lhokseumawe, Ache (A special territory of Indonesia located on the northern tip of Sumatra). MobilExxon paid the Indonesian government (a centralized, military-dominated government) 30% of its total oil and gas revenues in order to operate there; however, the local population did not receive any benefits from this arrangement. (Collingsworth) When the natural gas was discovered there in the 1970s the local villagers were immediately displaced and forced to move from their land without any compensation.

After beginning operations, ExxonMobil separated themselves from the local population by building their own "compounds" that were fenced off from the local villagers. These compounds included luxurious living quarters for their corporate staff. The ExxonMobil elite even had their own paved road (the only paved one in the area) which the locals were not allowed to drive on. The locals had to constantly put up with natural gas flair ups and chemical spills. These spills caused many health problems in the nearby villages. The industrial waste from the plant polluted rice paddies (their main source of food) and fishing ponds. The villagers who organized themselves and tried to speak out against MobilExxon were routinely raped, tortured, and even murdered by Indonesian Military soldiers who were hired by ExxonMobil Corporation to provide security for them. These atrocities were reported by human rights groups, international human rights organizations, and the U.S. Department of State, to no avail. Many of the people were tortured by the security forces inside the ExxonMobil compound itself. The facilities had special areas built inside the compound to accommodate the military forces needs, such as barracks and holding rooms. Additionally, ExxonMobil provided these security forces with heavy equipment to cover mass burials after a conflict with locals who were protesting against conditions there.

Even though ExxonMobil knew of these human rights violations, they kept providing the Indonesian military with money and resources. Clearly, ExxonMobil believed the people of Ache were a separate underclass that did not deserve to be treated the same as their corporate "elite" who were mostly American. The ExxonMobil officers and management did not care about the land, environment, or the people of Ache, they just wanted to extract natural gas and make very large profits even if it was at the expense of the locals and the environment.

Another multinational corporation who definitely stratifies the country they operate in and the local people is Coca-Cola. In the late 1990s, Coca-Cola (Nestle Corporation participated in this too) was accused of bringing in paramilitaries to intimidate, kidnap, torture and then ultimately murder union leaders who were trying to improve working conditions at the bottling plant in Columbia. Coca-Cola wanted to keep wages low and orchestrated these events to keep the unions from gaining power. In fact, the multinational corporations have so much power in Columbia, that more union leaders are murdered there than anywhere else in the word.

In India, Coca-Cola is accused of polluting groundwater and soil, causing water shortages and having high levels of pesticide in its soft drinks. Amit Srivastava, of the India Resource Centre stated, "We are profiling a series of community struggles against Coca-Cola in India, all of which point to a pattern in the company's operations. The communities are left thirsting as Coca-Cola draws water from the common water resources. . ."

Additionally, Coca-Cola has illegally occupied some private property that belonged to local villages and has not even paid for it. The villagers took Coca-Cola to court and the company was ordered to pay the villagers for the property, but they were never paid. When they protested the Coca-Cola plant hoping to get their money, they were met by 200 law enforcement officers who were sent to the plant to protect Coca-Cola. The demonstrators were then badly beaten by the police and sent away. (Srivastava, 2003) Furthermore, when Coca-Cola set up bottling plants in India, they agreed to divest a forty-nine percent stake in the company to Indian entities within five years of operation. Coca-Cola no longer wants to do this, and the government of India became worried that Coca-Cola may leave India, so they will accommodate Coca-Cola by accepting a new arrangement which includes some ownership without any voting rights.

I personally know several people who have worked for Coca-Cola in America. The workers there were treated like numbers, not people. The employees were never happy and had many quotas set on them. I can only imagine how the employees in other countries are treated without the protections that are afforded workers in the United States. It is evident that the Coca-Cola Corporation thinks they can do what they please to laborers in other countries. They feel the people in third world countries are beneath them and they will continue to exploit them in order to keep soft drinks cheap, and earn Coca Cola large profits.

Another example of multinational corporations exploiting a country and the people is Chiquita Brands. They are headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. They produce fresh fruits, vegetables and juices which are sold all over the world. Chiquita's exploitation of workers began in the 1950s when it used it political power to convince the U.S. government to overthrow the government of Guatemala. Over 100,000 people we killed or went missing as a result of this action. Additionally, they used a pesticide called Nemagon that is so toxic it had been banned in the United States since the 1970s. They would spray Nemagon on their crops without any type of protection for the field workers. Sometimes the workers were still in the fields picking bananas when the spraying occurred. Nemagon has been proven to cause many medical problems including migraines, vision loss, liver and kidney damage, infertility, cancer, miscarriage and birth defects. Additionally, Chiquita brands admitted in Federal Court that it had for years paid terrorists to protect its banana fields in Columbia. According to U.S. Officials familiar with the case, the terrorists that had been paid were involved in torture, kidnapping, rape, beatings, extortion, drug trafficking, and the killing of thousands of rural Columbians.

Lastly, is the Gap which is headquartered in San Francisco, California. The Gap has manufacturing facilities all over the world, including some that are in American territories. All the countries where the Gap operates have reported human rights abuses. In October 2007, Indian authorities raided manufacturing facilities in New Delhi and found children as young as 10 years old who had been sold to the factory by their parents working there as slaves - they were not even earning a salary. Another factory reported three deaths in 2007 because management refused to allow the employees to leave when they became seriously ill at work.

Just like the early European colonists, these corporations have no regard for the people, or the government of the country where they operate. They move in to these countries in order to exploit the people and get valuable resources to benefit only themselves. They do not build infrastructure, offer medical plans, or try to enhance the indigenous people's life in any way. They are arrogant, powerful, and many times can be more powerful than the governments where they operate. If multinational corporations are going to continue to expand around the world, perhaps we should consider a "world minimum wage" and world "working conditions" reforms that all the companies must abide by. The wages do not have to be as high as they are in the United States, but they should be high enough that the people can work a normal workday and live comfortably. If these multinational companies had these types of regulations put on them, they may even think twice about moving into another country and interfering with their culture and traditions. Maybe it will slow down the pace of their expansion around the world and their exploitation of the people, their resources, and governments to get what they want - corporate profits at the expense of everyone.
Works Cited:

1. Henslin, James M. 2009. Essentials of Sociology A down-to-Earth Approach. Allyn and Bacon: Boston MA

2. Collingsworth, Terry. "Using the Alien Tort Claims to Act to Introduce the Rule of Law to the Global Economy"
http://wwwlaborrights.org

3. Leech, Gay M. "Coca-Cola Accused of Using Death Squads to Target Union Leaders" 2001
http://www6.svsu.edu/~boles/index/coca-coladeath.htm

4. Srivastava, Amit "Communities Reject Coca-Cola in India" India Resource Center. 2003
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=7508/

5. Krebs, A.V. "Chiquita, Dole, & Del Monte Sued for Poisoning Banana Workers in Costa Rica" The
http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/chiquita100804.cfm

6. Staff, "Chiquita pleads guilty in terrorism probe" The Associated Press 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17688439/

7. Staff, "Nicaragua: International Action Day in Support of Banana Workers!" Report from Nicaragua Network. 2003
http://www.labournet.net/world/0311/nicarag1.html

8. Cisneros, Noel "Gap Sweatshop Videos Cause Uproar" ABC7. 2007
http://www. abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=business&id=5732845

9. McVeigh, Karen "Third death in a year at Indian factory that supplies Gap" Guardian. 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,,2191399,00.html

The politics of social stratification with its relationship to race, culture, and social class are very much alive and ongoing in the United States today. Most Americans don't want to believe that any type of oppression is still happening here in the United States. They want to believe that we are a country in which there are opportunities for all, and moving up the social ladder, or social mobility, is something that is an inherit right and available to everybody. However, sociologists know this is not true. There are many different ways people in power use their positions to "seize greater rewards for themselves," while oppressing others. (Henslin 2009) What I will be discussing in this paper is the struggle of migrant and "guestworkers" in the United States, and how they are socially oppressed, exploited and abused. Additionally, I will describe how politicians and corporations have influenced American ideologies and have reinforced the belief that hiring guestworkers is good because they do jobs that Americans don't want to do.

Let us begin with the notion that unattractive jobs must be filled by foreign workers. Employers who state that Americans will not do certain jobs because they are beneath them imply that the foreign workers who take them are a separate underclass. Having our government back these employers by issuing policies that allow them to hire guestworkers internalizes this ideology in our society - that guestworkers are a separate underclass and deserve to be treated as such. This idea is in conflict with what we are outwardly taught that America is a society that believes in equality of opportunity and that we should avoid ethnic and racial discrimination of any kind.

This internalized ideology is prevalent among employers who seek to hire guestworkers for low wages. An example of just how prevalent this ideology is among employers comes from a company, Professional Grounds, Inc., which is a landscaping company located in Springfield, Virginia. In 2006, they ran a help wanted ad in the local newspaper for landscaper help. The company stated in their ad that the starting wage was $7.74 per hour - which is $8.32 in comparable 2009 wages. (In researching these figures, I found that one of the lowest paid positions in Springfield at the time was a car wash attendant who made $11.00 per hour in 2006 wages and $11.83 per hour in 2009 wages). The company always placed ads like this, and they hoped that nobody would respond, because if they did, Professional Grounds would by law, have to offer the jobs to United States citizens. Professional Grounds actually recruits its real labor force from Mexico and Central America through the United States Department of Labor's H-2A Program. This is a program that allows employers who cannot find enough American workers at the market's "prevailing wages" to hire foreign migrant workers on temporary work visas. By advertising for these jobs at such low wages, Professional Grounds is assured of being able to hire "guest workers" and pay them very low wages because they know that American citizens will not apply. The low wages offered for these jobs support the ideology that "Immigrants fill the jobs native workers won't do." The President of Professional Grounds buys into the ideology wholeheartedly. When he was asked if "native-born Americans" would apply if the wages were doubled he said, "I don't think it's a wage situation. It's the type of work and the nature of the work. It's hard, backbreaking work." (Jaynes, p. 6)

Additionally, the idea that the guestworker policy is good because it helps keep prices low and does not affect American jobs is not true. History has showed us time and again that guestworkers are exploited and abused. In fact, we should ask ourselves, "How can a program, which permanently isolates a class of workers and treats them as a separate and unequal social class, not lead to exploitation?" According to Henslin, conflict theorists believe that there are two main ways to keep laborers under control. "The first tactic is to keep workers insecure. Fear of unemployment works especially well," and the second tactic is "encouraging and exploiting racial - ethnic divisions" by pitting worker against worker". (Henslin 2009) One of the main problems guestworkers face is that fact that they cannot freely change jobs, because their H-2 contract stipulates that they can only work for the employer who hired them. Moreover, they do not complain if they are exploited or abused because they are afraid that they will be deported. Furthermore, they face many civil rights abuses. Some of these abuses are that they are cheated out of wages, held captive by employers who confiscate their documents, forced to live in unsanitary and overcrowded conditions, denied medical coverage if they are injured on the job, and many are forced to pay large sums of money for the privilege of coming to the United States to work. (Bauer 2007)

The first occurrence of guestworkers being exploited and socially oppressed began in 1942, when the United States negotiated with the Mexican government to import low-skilled labor, creating the Bracero Program. This program began as a way to help American farmers because there was a labor shortage as the United States had just entered World War II. The Bracero Program was supposed to bring in a few hundred experienced farm laborers to harvest sugar beets in California, but by the time the program was abolished in 1964, more than 4,500,000 Mexican laborers filled jobs of the Braceros. Although this program had many legal protections written in it, including contracts with workers, housing that would comply with minimum standards, wage guarantees, minimum of 30 days of work, and shared transportation costs, none of these protections stopped American employers from exploiting the Braceros.

As is the case today, due to deportation threats, the Braceros were afraid to complain; they were technically held captive because they did not work consistently and were unable to earn enough money to even pay their way back home. When they did work, they had to work long hours - sometimes 12 a day, and their earnings barely covered their expenses. They constantly had unauthorized deductions taken out of their pay, were given little or no food and they had to live in run-down, unsanitary and overcrowded housing. In addition, they encountered unsafe working conditions that sometimes led to disabling or fatal accidents, and they even tolerated physical abuse, as well as severe racial discrimination. In fact, the exploitation and mistreatment of the Braceros was so severe in Texas, that the Mexican government barred Texas from participating in the program from 1942 to 1947. This first guestworker program was so abused and the people were so badly exploited that the Labor Officer in charge of it, Lee G. Williams said that it was a system of "legalized slavery." (Bauer 2007) Conflict theorists term this type of treatment of one social class exploiting the other, "internal colonialism." Internal colonialism is similar to colonialism, but instead of an industrialized nation taking advantage of a less industrialized nation, a country's dominate group exploits minority groups for their economic advantage. They manipulate social and governmental institutions to control minorities and deny them full access to their society's benefits. (Henslin 2009)

Just like the employers of today, the farmers' main purpose in recruiting foreign workers was to be able to exercise control over who worked, dictate how much they earned, and to be able to control under what conditions they worked and lived. Like any other classification based on immigration status, guestworker programs segregate the workforce, which allows employers to exploit immigrant workers which in turn, drives all workers' wages down.

Stratification of the guestworkers become even more pervasive when, in addition to abuse in the work place, Braceros had to contend with discrimination in the communities where they worked. Many of the establishments in these communities posted "No Mexicans, White Trade Only" signs in an effort to keep Braceros away. Furthermore, many Braceros reported that they often received verbal abuses, false arrests, and physical attacks. (Hines 2006)

After the Bracero Program was terminated in 1964, another phase of exploitation began when foreign workers were imported for agricultural work under the H-2 sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act. This program was set up in 1943 because Florida's sugar cane industry requested and was given permission to hire Caribbean workers to cut sugar cane on temporary visas. This program too, was badly flawed, and the Caribbean laborers were often exploited, abused, and paid a lower rate than originally promised. Then, in 1986, a well-publicized labor dispute occurred where 300 sugar cane cutters refused to work unless they were paid their stated contract amount. The company involved called the police, and they used guns and dogs to gain control over the laborers, round them up, put them on busses and send them back to the Caribbean. This incident demonstrates the opportunity for extreme abuse in a guestworker program, because it permits the employers to have absolute control of the workers, which includes their right to remain in the United States. (Bauer 2007)

This H-2 program was revised in 1986 as part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which divided it into two sections, the H-2A agricultural program and the H-2B non-agricultural program. Both these programs have protections written in them, but these protections exist only on paper. As was stated earlier, one of the fundamental problems with these guestworker programs is that it gives the employer absolute control over their guestworkers, not just in their wages and working conditions, but also in their legal status. This creates a huge imbalance of power, which is dangerous and leads to extreme abuses.

The exploitation of guestworkers normally begins in their home countries when the agencies that represent the United States employers recruit the workers. Lured by these recruiters and promised jobs that pay high wages, they are required to pay large fees, sometimes thousands of dollars, to cover the cost of travel, fees, visas and profit for the recruiters. Most of the workers who want to come to the United States to work are doing so because they have little or no economic opportunities available to them, and they usually are living in poverty. To pay these huge fees, they borrow from friends, or may mortgage a family home. If they don't have anything to mortgage, or have friends to borrow from they must take out loans at very high interest rates, making it impossible for them to ever pay the loan off during the term of their contract.

For example, in her article "Close to Slavery, Mary Bauer of The Southern Poverty Law Center writes how Guatemalan guestworkers paid an average of $2,000 in travel, visa, and hiring fees to obtain forestry jobs in the United States. She states, "Guatemalans are recruited from Huehuetenango, an extremely poor region where many indigenous people live. . . They generally work as subsistence farmers and have virtually no opportunity to earn wages in rural Guatemala.

Thus, their only realistic option for raising the funds needed to secure H-2 jobs in the United States is to visit a loan shark, who will likely charge exorbitant interest rates. Many of these workers report having been charged 20 percent each month. Given that the pine tree planting season is three months long and workers often earn less than $1,000 per month, they have little hope of repaying the debt doing the work for which they were hired." In her report, she tells the story of Alvaro Hernandez-Lopez who came to the United States to work for Express Forestry Inc. He states, "What I earned planting trees in the States was hardly enough to pay my debt . . . it was really hard for us to fight to get to the States legally and then not earn any money. We were told we had to leave our deeds to get the job. On a blank paper, we had to sign our names and hand over our deeds. They said that if we didn't sign this paper they wouldn't bring us to the states to work." (Bauer 2007)

Then, there is the story of Nelson Ramirez. He signed up to work with Eller and Sons Trees Inc. The agency who recruited him required his wife to sign a paper agreeing to be responsible for his debt if he did not honor his contract. Again, as the conflict theorists believe, this is a tactic of keeping the workers insecure, and therefore, under control.

This type of extortion is not limited to Latin America. There are recruiters in Thailand who charged $5,000 - $10,000 or more for the privilege of being employed in short-term agricultural jobs that pay less than $10.00 per hour. In actually, the workers were not even paid that.

Additionally, in an effort to keep wages low, many employers will seek long visa periods, claiming to have many more months of work than they actually have. When the guestworkers have completed their contract, the employer "allows" them to go work somewhere else. The guestworkers call this period "tiempo libre," or their "free period." This is violation of the immigration laws, but the workers think this is legal because their employer gave them permission. By allowing this period of "tiempo libre", the employers are able to continue to attract a low paid workforce. (Bauer 2007) This policy of allowing a worker to "work off" their contract, then being released to work somewhere else closely resembles the definition of an indentured servant.

Another tactic of ensuring that the guestworkers remain insecure and vulnerable is that the employers "hold all the cards" relating to the employment of the guestworker. The worker basically has no rights because the employer can send them home for any reason whatsoever. A forestry worker from Guatemala reported that when a supervisor noticed that a guestworker was getting fed up because the pay was too low, the employer would take the workers papers away. The forestry worker said the employers would rip up their visas and threaten them with deportation. This has been one of the most common complaints from guestworkers - the seizure of their papers. Some employers say they are holding the documents for safekeeping, while there are others who will admit that they are taking the papers so the guestworkers will not leave in the middle of the contract. The employers believe that if the workers have their paperwork, they will leave. (Bauer 2007)

Discrimination is another form of stratification guestworkers must endure. Many of the workers who want to come and work in the United States are told by recruiters that they are too old. One guestworker was told that it was the policy of the North Carolina Growers Association that they don't accept employees over the age of 40. The United States claims they have no jurisdiction over this type discrimination because it does not happen on United States soil. Moreover, guestworkers often times receive different pay based on their national origin, and women are frequently put into H-2B jobs (non-agricultural) because they pay less than H-2A jobs. (Bauer 2007)

In addition to discrimination, women guestworkers report being continuously sexually harassed. After meeting with farm workers in Fresno, California, William R. Tamayo, a regional attorney for the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), stated that, "We were told that hundreds, if not thousands, of women had to have sex with supervisors to get or keep jobs and/or put up with a constant barrage of grabbing and touching and propositions for sex by supervisors." Additionally, Tamayo was told that there is a field in California that the guestworkers refer to as "fil de calzon," or "field of panties," because so many women had been raped by there by their supervisors. (Bauer 2007)

Another requirement set by the H-2 guestworker program is that employees of the H-2A program (the agricultural workers) are to receive free housing that is in good condition for the period of the contract. The housing is often times inadequate, and some workers have reported that as many as 20 workers must share a "house" and many more report having to live in accommodations such as old school busses. Guestworkers who are hired on the H-2B program are not required to receive free housing, but many employers still offer it purely out of necessity - the workers are paid so little they cannot find housing on their own. The employers who offer housing to the H-2B workers are allowed to charge them rent which, of course they do. The rent, which is often excessive, is deducted from the workers' paycheck, and the workers end up earning much less than they expected; it often works out to be less than the minimum wage.

Moreover, employers often locate guestworker's housing in isolated rural areas. This causes the workers to be extremely dependent on their employer since they usually don't have cars and there is insufficient public transportation available to them in these rural areas. In addition to being exploited by their employers, the workers must also rely on them for transportation for trips to the grocery store and banks. Having the guestworkers so dependent on the employer gives the employer absolute power over their workers. Furthermore, many guestworkers report that the housing given to them lacks electricity, bathrooms, and even windows. For example, some of the guestworkers who were hired to help clean up after Hurricane Katrina actually had to live in the hotels that had been damaged by the hurricane. These hotels were dirty, moldy, and filled with garbage. The water was not safe to drink, but the workers had no choice but to use it to cook their food. (Bauer 2007)

Due to the fact there is so much illegal immigration in the United States, there is much debate in congress about what we should do with our H-2 guestworker program. President Bush implemented changes to it before he left office that President Obama and our new representatives do not agree with, so the debate continues. However, what congress really needs to consider is whether or not we can really fix a broken program that has had allowed such terrible abuses to migrant workers. Moreover, since these abuses have been ongoing since the 1940s, maybe we should consider a completely new approach to the guestworker dilemma. While researching what might work to fix the H-2 program I discovered what seems like a promising alternative to our current program. A Futurist and an International Affairs Student, named King Taj, suggests that a possible solution would be to allow the migrant workers to move freely from the United States to their home country. He calls this a "Circular Pattern." This would allow the migrant workers to maintain a relationship with their families, and maintain social ties with their home country. He states, "This can lead to eventual permanent repatriation for many reasons. First, it may help migrants maintain a sense of belonging to their original communities. It may also encourage migrants to develop business relationships and look for financial opportunities in their home countries. For immigrants in the United States, a circular pattern means being able to return home without the risk of being shut out when trying to return to the United States. Daniel Griswold argues that most Mexicans who come to the United States do not have plans to stay permanently, and that the goal is typically to return home and rejoin families and communities. The implication here is that migrant workers are afraid to return home for fear they will not be able to easily return to the United States." (Taj, 2007)

This seems like a promising idea since we have a history about this too. Before the introduction of the Border Patrol in 1924, and before the introduction Bracero Program in 1942, Mexican laborers were free to cross the border, work, and return home. Most laborers did not stay in the United States. They just wanted and needed to work and then would return home to their families, friends, and their own familiar culture. The United States created the problem of illegal immigrants by making it hard for the laborers to reenter the United States after they returned home. Perhaps our representatives in Washington D.C. should look at what has worked in the past before making decisions about what we should do in the future.

Clearly, the H-2 guestworker program contains many flaws in it that allow employers to exploit migrant workers who want to work in the United States. Although changes to the policy could offer more protections to the guestworkers, I do not believe this program should be expanded, or even used at all in the United States. Moreover, when immigrants come to America, they become part of our society and culture. Even the immigrants who are here illegally can become part of our society; if not them, their children who are born here can. Unless we can change the ideology that the politicians and the corporations have engrained into our culture, a guestworker and their family will have no opportunity to become part of our American society. They will be slotted into a "caste," with no real hope of ever rising above it. They will never be viewed by Americans as equals. They will never be immigrants or future Americans; they will merely be janitors, construction workers, and housekeepers. (The New Republic, 2006)

Works Cited

1. Henslin, James M. 2009. Essentials of Sociology A down-to-Earth Approach. Allyn and Bacon:
Boston MA

2. Hines, Sarah 2006. "America's Last Guest Worker Program: A System Designed for Maximum Exploitation"
http://www.counterpunch.org/hines04212006.htm

3. Bauer, Mary 2008. "Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States"
http://www.uncommonthought.net/global/SPLCguestworker.pdf

4. Coleman, David A. 2007. "To the Contrary" PBS TV show transcript
http://www.fairus.org/site/PageNavigator/facts/quotes_library/#coleman

5. Taj, King 2007 Guest Worker Programs: Establishing a Circular Pattern.
http://kingtaj.newsvine.com/_news/2007/04/30/694137-guest-worker-programs-establishing-a-circular-pattern

6. "That's Hospitality" 2006 The New Republic
http://www.tnr.com/article/thats-hospitality

7. Jaynes, Gerald D. "Migration and Social Stratification: Bipluralism and the Western Democratic State"
http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FDBR%2FDBR4_01%2FS1742058X07070026a.pdf&code=ec0f02a071a588220244640216120c97

After researching the history of the development of Portland, I now understand that "up and up" is code word for where young white professionals are buying up houses and remodeling the neighborhoods to reflect aspects of affluent white culture -yoga studios, art galleries, trendy hole-in-the-wall fine dining establishments, hipster coffee shops, and baby boutiques. This paper is an outsider's view on the history of gentrification in Portland's Northeast neighborhoods and the impacts on the longtime residents of the black community.

The ITS Geography Dictionary & Glossary defines gentrification as "the renovation of the housing fabric in an old, usually inner-city area, when more affluent groups displace lower income groups en masse over a relatively short period of time. May be triggered by a clear event such as the improvement or provision of a better transport link, or by something less tangible such as a fashion trend taking off in the housing market" (ITS, 2009.) Elizabeth Kirkland writes "in urban lore, the pre-gentrified neighborhood is inhabited mostly by African Americans or other people of color when the rumblings of change begin, and the rumblers are typically white--white, upper middle-class, professional homebuyers, displacing the original residents" in her article 'What's Race Got to Do With it? Looking for the Racial Dimensions of Gentrification' (Kirkland, 2008).

Through these processes, it is no far leap to surmises how gentrification could in fact re-enforce segregation as housing prices escalate and trendy consumer culture drives away cornerstone community businesses. Unable to afford rising costs, families move farther out to cheaper areas, which in effect dissolves the core of all neighborhoods- community. "As black residents leave the central areas of Portland and Seattle for the suburbs -- either because they have sold their homes or been forced out by higher rents -- their community is being splintered by geographic dispersal and racial integration" (Harden, 2006).

In class discussions we learned the importance of social structure on the maintenance of culture and how social institutions re-enforce our connection to culture. So if the social institution of Economy drives families and communities apart to different geographical areas, the culture as was defined prior will be in risk of losing power over identity of not just the culture at large, but of the individual as well. The loss of identity sparks depression, low self esteem, and isolation. In many ways, this can be seen as a means of controlling a specific population by stripping away aspects of power. Isolation in itself defies organization, which is a fundamental pillar of social change.

Last winter I took a job as a holiday delivery helper for UPS. The Mississippi/Emanuel Legacy Hospital is Curtis's (the driver) route. Curtis is a tall, thin, black man whose family moved to Portland in the mid-50's from the "deep south." He grew up in the neighborhoods where we were delivering packages and I was amazed at how many people he knew on a personal level. He called the elderly by their formal last names, who in turn greeted him with lifelong familiarity and called out greetings to pass to his family members. He pointed out cousins, childhood friends, teachers, old neighbors, old sweethearts, and congregation leaders of his past. And it was through Curtis that I learned Oregon was still segregated until 1964.

He told me about how he couldn't go into stores, movie houses, or restaurants when he was a young man and how it made him feel frustrated and angry, and yet it was perceived as normal at the time. He told me how the neighborhoods had changed and how many people had moved to other areas of Portland, including himself due to inflating housing costs. He embodied what I now recognize as a communal story of black displacement in Northeast Portland. As more white people move into these neighborhoods, that web of community is littered with gaps of connection and replaced with suspicion, doubt, and even a lack of introduction.

I have since moved into Northeast Portland over the last month and have literally not met a single neighbor on my street. And as I grow to understand the history on how parts of Portland became black communities, there is a deep sadness attached to my time with Curtis because I understand now that these communities were forced into these specific places, however, in these areas there was a vast network of family and extended family to serve as culture informers and a framework of support. And these communities had been thriving.

When Oregon became a state of the Union in 1859, the state constitution excluded the right of admittance and establishment of black Americans. This remained state law for more than 60 years (Yardley, 2008). In 1943, the "first influx of African American families moved into cramped quarters in the Guild's Lake district and... into the new wartime housing project at Vanport" to work in the shipping yards (Robbins, 2002). In the flood in 1948, Vanport- which had been the second largest city in all of Oregon- was under 15 feet of water and thousands of low income dock workers, both white and black, were suddenly homeless (McGregor, 2003).

Portland had restrictions on who could rent what and where. Ridiculously enough, this was written in what was called the real estate industry's "Code of Ethics," which forced black people into the Albina area of Portland (McGregor, 2003). If you were black, you could not rent or buy a home in any other area of the city aside from the Albina district. This was built into law and re-enforced by deed restrictions, bank loans, and policing. Even once the "Code of Ethics" had been amended to repeal these restrictions, in "1960, when over 10,000 African Americans lived in the city, 73 percent of them were still huddled together in Albina. Because of this concentration, Portland's schools were as segregated as Alabama's" (McGregor, 2003).

It wasn't too long until the city of Portland began increasing the density of residents to smaller neighborhoods by reclaiming areas for urban renewal, beginning with the construction of the coliseum of the Rose Quarter in 1956 (Hyatt-Evenson and Griffith, 2002). The city claimed the housing in this area was substandard, and presumably the people living there too. If the norms of a culture, in this instance white elite Portland developers, is to regard the black community as insignificant, than the range of acceptable behavior is to ignore or possibly even fail to acknowledge the impact of literally wiping out neighborhoods for the sake of a sports arena. It is highly possible that the attitude atmosphere at the time was one of complete ignorance and lack of caring towards the displacement of black residents. William Toll outlines the city's continual moves against the black community over the next twenty years of development:

"Between 1956 and the early 1970s a series of massive construction projects decimated the Albina district. In 1956 voters approved bonds to build the Memorial Coliseum, which was located on the oldest portion of the neighborhood. In the 1960s the interstate highway to Seattle was routed away from downtown Portland to the east bank of the Willamette River through central Albina. In the 1970s Emanuel Hospital expanded to absorb still more housing, and construction began on the Fremont Bridge. Its ramps to Interstate-5 shredded the southern end of Albina, pushing still more black families to the northeast (Toll, 2003)."

And Portland isn't the only city to take such actions against the black community. Birmingham, between 1926 and the mid 1970's, zoned and constructed highways directly through the center of black neighborhoods to perpetuate racial segregation (Connerly, 2009). This was happening to black communities all over the nation- it was purposeful and damaging to the integrity of the established neighborhoods.

So it is no wonder why in the 1980's so much of the inner Northeast of Portland was falling into disrepair and abandonment with empty lots and boarded up houses. The people who had been living here had been forced to relocate multiple times! With so many empty houses, the property values of the neighborhoods fell which attracted many developer's eyes. "In the mid to late 1980's, it was possible to buy houses in Portland that were in sound condition for under $30,000" (Howe, 2004: 187). However, the unwritten policy of banks financing mortgages set the loan minimum to $25,000, as such, "someone who could qualify to buy a $25,000 car could not obtain a loan for a $16,000 house. It was a system of red lining without the red lines (Lane, 1990)" (Howe, 2004:193).

The 1990's brought more of the me's (that is Californians) to Portland in the form of Dot-Commer's (not me) who were young, 20-34, with pockets full of fast made money. This influx of population drove prices higher, and moderate to low income families weren't able to participate in the property purchasing. "Between 1990 and 1996 housing prices rose so rapidly that north and northeast neighborhoods saw prices double and in some places triple" (Gibson and Abbott, 2002) (Seltzer, 2004:69). With African American homeownership growing only 1.6% compared with white homeownership's 6.9% increase in the 1990's, it is clear that the accumulation of equity in the form of property was slanted toward white favor (Howe, 2004:190-191). This directly affects the social class and social stratification placement of the large group of black families that could not afford to purchase a home, and as we discussed in class, the access to control over resources is closely tied to power and prestige. These neighborhoods were primed for the reverse of white flight in the form of white flood. And as I write this from my apartment just off of Mississippi Ave, I know I am part of the problem facing the black community in Portland.

So what is to be done regarding gentrification in Portland? There are many currently working on this issue. The Restorative Listening Project is designed to provide the opportunity for those affected by gentrification to engage in dialogue with the "gentrifiers" in an effort to establish an understanding of the experienced impact. How much will this help? I can't imagine it will stop gentrification or black displacement but it may provide an awareness to the white people moving into these historically black neighborhoods. As for me, when the time comes to buy a house, I think I will look into other areas of Portland. Until then, it's about time I meet the neighbors and find a way to engage in the community around me. While I will always be considered "white," although it wasn't too long ago that my Hungarian ancestors were not, I can be considered a good neighbor and a part of the community.

Works Cited:
Connerly, Charles E. 2009. "From Racial Zoning to Community Empowerment: The Interstate Highway System and the African American Community in Birmingham, Alabama." Portland State University Urban Planning Department class notes.

Curtis, the UPS driver. 2008.

Harden, Blaine. 2006. "In Parts of U.S. Northwest, a Changing Face: Economics Drive White Gentrification of Core Black Neighborhoods of Seattle and Portland." The Washington Post. Monday, June 19.

Howe, Deborah. 2004. "The Reality of Portland's Housing Market." The Portland Edge: Challenges and Successes in Growing Communities. Edited by Connie P. Ozawa. Pages 184-205. Island Press: Washington, DC.

Hyatt-Evenson, Tania and Sarah Griffith. 2002. "Albina Residents Picket Emanuel Hospital." Oregon Historical Socitey. http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/historical_records/dspDocument.cfm?doc_ID=0004CBF8-16F2-1ECD-A42A80B05272006C

ITS Tutorial School. 2009. " 'G' , Geography Dictionary." http://www.tuition.com.hk/geography/g.htm

Kirkland, Elizabeth. 2008. "What's Race Got to Do With it? Looking for the Racial Dimensions of Gentrification." The Western Journal of Black Studies. 32(2):18-30.

McGregor, Michael. 2003. "The Vanport Flood & Racial Change in Portland." Oregon Historical Society. http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/learning_center/dspResource.cfm?resource_ID=000BC26B-EE5A-1E47-AE5A80B05272FE9F

Robbins, William G. 2002. "Cramped Quarters." Oregon Historical Society. http://www.ohs.org/the-oregon-history-project/narratives/this-land-oregon/oregon-depression-war/cramped-quarters.cfm

Seltzer, Ethan. 2004. "It's Not an Experiment: Regional Planning at Metro, 1990 to the Present." The Portland Edge: Challenges and Successes in Growing Communities. Edited by Connie P. Ozawa. Pages 184-205. Island Press: Washington, DC.

Toll, William. 2003. "Subtopic : Portland Neighborhoods, 1960s-Present: Race and Progressive Resistance." Oregon Historical Society. http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/narratives/subtopic.cfm?subtopic_ID=220

Wolf, Rowan. 2009. SOC 204 class discussions and notes.

Yardley, William. 2008. "Racial Shift in a Progressive City Spurs Talks", New York Times. http://www.srwolf.com/wolfsoc/articlearchives/2008/06/racial_shift_in_a_progressive.html

The meeting was prompted by the open emergence of differences within the governing coalition during the new regime's first two weeks in office--over tax policy, public health policy and other issues. The disputes arose between the coalition partners--the CDU, the Christian Social Union (CSU) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP).

The direction in which the government is now heading is much clearer after the meeting at Schloss Merseburg. Financial policy decisions were taken that will lead to an unparalleled level of social devastation, beginning at the latest two years from now.

The government is still keeping most of its intentions under wraps, giving out no information about forthcoming budget cuts and delegating the issue of health "reforms" to an inter-ministerial working group, which is to present its proposals next year. The controversial issue of extending the life of Germany's atomic power plants was also postponed to next year, primarily for tactical reasons.

On the one hand, the government fears the public reaction if it puts all its cards on the table. Above all, it does not want to place in jeopardy next year's state elections in North Rhine Westphalia. If the CDU/CSU-FDP coalition loses power in the country's most densely populated state, it will lose its present majority in the Bundesrat (the upper house of parliament).

On the other hand, the chancellor wants to secure support for the impending social attacks from the trade unions and the opposition parties. In order to gain "the consent of all social forces for more employment," she invited the union leaders, together with the employers' associations and banks, to a crisis summit in Berlin in early December.

In pro-business circles, "more employment" is a codeword for the dismantling of workers' rights and the slashing of wages. Since the election, union leaders have demonstrated their readiness to cooperate closely with the new government on these questions.

Among the nominal opposition parties, the Greens are the pioneers when it comes to cutting public expenditure, and Merkel can count on their support. Since they have already joined CDU-led state governments in Hamburg and Saarland, discussions have begun in North Rhine Westphalia as to whether the Greens will help ensure that the CDU remains in power in that state legislature.

As for the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Left Party, they recently signed a coalition agreement in Brandenburg, at the centre of which is the dismantling of 20 percent of public service jobs. State Premier Matthias Platzeck (SPD) justified this by saying that by 2019 Brandenburg's budget will decline by 25 percent from its current level. In this respect, he is to a certain extent anticipating the policies of the federal government. His finance minister, responsible for proposing the cuts, is a member of the Left Party.

It is in this context that the central message emanating from Schloss Merseburg should be seen. Federal Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) and Economics Minister Rainer Brüderle (FDP) made a demonstrative show of unity before the press, announcing that taxes would be lowered, the European Union deficit criteria would be upheld, and the brake applied to federal debt, as enshrined last summer in the federal constitution. In 2011, taxes are to be reduced by around 20 billion euros and new graduated rates will replace the present progressive taxation system. In the same year, the budget deficit will be substantially reduced in order to reduce the federal debt.

It is clear what this means. Pointing to the exploding deficit, the government will cut public expenditure to an extent that has never before been witnessed, hitting government subsidies to both the pension fund and education spending. New and even greater gaps will arise in the coffers of the state legislatures and municipalities, which are already strapped for cash, leading to higher charges for services.

Economist Peter Bofinger commented in the Passaue Neue Presse: "I fear that a narrow gauge federal government is intentionally being brought about here. The first step was to agree to put the brake on the federal debt. Now taxes are to be massively lowered. The result will be to force a brutal cut in expenditure starting from 2011. Then the crowbar will be taken to all government spending."

Bofinger is member of the Council of Economic Experts. According to his calculations, the annual budgetary deficit will rise to 100 billion euros if the announced tax reductions come into force. However, the federal deficit must be lowered to 10 billion euros by 2016 in order to meet the legal requirement for reining in the federal debt. "Nobody in the federal government is saying how cuts of 30, 40, 50 billion euros can be implemented. But this is what is threatened in the coming years," Bofinger concluded.

One item will surely remain exempt from cuts--the defence budget. The cabinet conference broke off its deliberations for one hour in order to agree to the extension of Armed Forces missions in Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa and off the Lebanese coast. The upper limit for Germany's troop deployment in Afghanistan remains 4,500, but this may be raised following the international conference on Afghanistan at the beginning of next year.

The meeting in Schloss Merseburg has set the stage for a sweeping redistribution of income and wealth from those at the bottom of society to those at the top. The social divisions that have been growing for years will be widened. While the government is striving might and main to conceal this from the public, those occupying the executive suites at banks and corporations have long since gotten the message.

According to a report in the business daily Handelsblatt, the thirty largest German companies listed on the DAX exchange plan to disburse 20.3 billion euros in dividends to their shareholders this year, despite falling profits. This amounts to approximately 71 percent of their net profits. In the previous record year of 2007, they paid out 45 percent of their profits.

While the government is lowering taxes, saying business needs more capital to invest, the large corporations are doling out these funds to their shareholders. The planned dividend payout by the DAX-registered corporations corresponds almost exactly to the planned tax reduction of 20 billion euros.

The problem is that Conrad-Gregg and Cooper-Wolf did not come out of nowhere and 'bi-partisan' does not mean what it would normally mean. Instead these bills exist to realize the vision of one man, a man who has founded and lavishly funded a series of 'Bi-Partisan' Institutions and Working Groups whose goals are, at times perhaps unknown to many of the participants in them, explicitly to destroy the crown jewel of the New Deal, that is Social Security, while also doing as much collateral damage to Medicare and Medicaid as possible in the process.

The man and his goal were revealed to the wider world in this important piece by William Grieder in the Nation last March Looting Social Security and was in fact the cover piece which had the result of having Peter G Peterson's face staring at you from the cover. Who is PGP? Well the Grieder article gives you a start, but suffice it to say that you couldn't make him or his career up, it reads more like an over the top conspiracy thriller than anything (though with less special effects and explosions).

For today's purposes let us just start with his role as founder and funder of the Concord Coalition. Like most of PGPs efforts it is cast as a bi-partisan group devoted to fiscal responsibility and typically has titular leaders drawn from both parties. For example if we go to About the Concord Coalition:

The Concord Coalition is a nationwide, non-partisan, grassroots organization advocating generationally responsible fiscal policy. The Concord Coalition was founded in 1992 by the late former Senator Paul Tsongas (D-Mass.), former Senator Warren Rudman (R-N.H.), and former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Peter Peterson. Former Senator Bob Kerrey (D-Ne.) was named a co-chair of the Concord Coalition in January 2002.

The Concord Coalition is dedicated to educating the public about the causes and consequences of federal budget deficits, the long-term challenges facing America's unsustainable entitlement programs, and how to build a sound economy for future generations.

For PGP and his like-minded colleagues, followers and employees the problem mostly start and stop with 'entitlements', a word whose existence largely owes itself to Peterson to begin with.

The current head of Concord is Robert Bixby and its current main instrument is its Fiscal Wake Up Tour in which Bixby and former Comptroller General David Walker go around the country essentially selling 'Entitlements Crisis'. Now while Walker is invariably described by his former title and so an a more or less neutral observer, he actually has a day job with a somewhat more revealing title: President and CEO of the Peter G Peterson Foundation, itself endowed by PGP with a cool billion (with a 'b') dollars to promote its mission. About the PGPF On this page you will see the smiling faces of PGP himself and Walker and among other things a link to I.O.U.S.A.: the Movie itself a documentary of the Fiscal Wake Up Tour, which the About page proudly reports:

The Foundation awarded the Concord Coalition $1.5 million to expand its highly acclaimed Fiscal Wake-Up Tour, an urgent, bipartisan call for changes to America's fiscal policies in the tradition of Paul Revere.

So lesson one. Anytime you see the names Robert Bixby or David Walker know that you are talking full time employees of the PGP founded Concord Coalition or the Peter G Peterson Foundation. Lesson two. Almost every time you see the buzzwords 'fiscal responsibility', 'bi-partisan' anything, 'intergenerational equity' odds are you are only one or two degrees of separation from a PGP entity or employee.

But what does this have to do with Cooper-Wolf SAFE Commission. Well if we follow the link on the PGPF About page announcing the grant we find the following:

Partners in the Fiscal Wake-Up Tour include The Concord Coalition, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the Brookings Institution and the Heritage Foundation. The Concord Coalition is a 501(c)3 organization focused on promoting federal fiscal responsibility.

What the hell is 'left-leaning' Brookings doing in this mix? Well there is a tale. Back in 2008 Brookings and Heritage announced the formation of their 'Fiscal Seminar' which in time produced the following report Facing Our Fiscal Future (PDF) itself signed by sixteen authors, seven from Brookings, three from similarly 'left leaning' the Urban Institute, and one from the Progressive Policy Institute. Certainly seems bi-partisan. Until you realize that PPI is the creation of signatory Will Marshall and was the prime vehicle for sending Clintonism down the DLC/New Democrat/Third Way which mostly adds up to 'Renouncing FDR and All His Works'. And that a bunch of the Brookings people are similarly Clinton-Rubinista Deficit Hawks like Alice Rivlin and that the Urban Institute people include similarly hawkish former CBO Director Robert Reischauer. Plus among the remaining signatories from the center to right we have Robert Bixby (again), Maya MacGuineas (an author of a draconian Social Security 'reform' plan known as Liebman-MacGuineas-Samwick or LMS), and Stuart Butler the author of a detailed plan from 1983 to undermine and kill Social Security under the charming name Social Security Reform: Achieving a "Leninist" Strategy (PDF) which has to be read to be believed.

What do we find if we delve into Facing our Fiscal Future? Unsurprisingly we find a reprise of the central message of the Fiscal Wakeup Tour

The authors of this paper are longtime federal budget and policy experts who have been drawn together by a deep concern about the nation's long-term fiscal outlook. Our group covers the ideological spectrum. We are affiliated with a diverse set of organizations. We have been meeting informally for over a year, under the auspices of The Brookings Institution and The Heritage Foundation, to define the dimensions and consequences of the looming federal budget problem, examine alternative solutions, and reach agreement on what should be done. Despite our diverse philosophies and political leanings, we have found solid common ground. We agree that: • Unsustainable deficits in the federal budget threaten the health and vigor of the American economy. • The first step toward establishing budget responsibility is to reform the budget decision process so that the major drivers of escalating deficits-Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid-are no longer on autopilot.

Once again the "ideological spectrum" means from barely center-left to right, and the only problem that matters is not military spending or regressive taxation, nope everything is the fault of Social Security and Medicare. And what is there solution? One establish a system of triggers that would automatically slash Social Security and Medicare benefits (and so keep Congress's hands clean when and if) or

Alternatively, the trigger process could require that a commission make recommendations for closing the gap to the president and Congress on which an up or down vote must be held.

. I.e. some version of Cooper-Wolf.

Pete G Peterson and associates want to kill Social Security under the guise of 'fiscal responsibility'. And PGP has spent decades founding organizations largely or wholly devoted to that end and committed a billion dollars of his own money to do so. In the days and weeks to come look for the key words, starting not least with 'bi-partisan', and names like Bixby and Walker. These people are paid professional agents of the open conspiracy to roll back the New Deal.

And that ain't paranoia talking. Follow the links.

PGP: the Biography
From the Peter G Peterson Institute for International Economics
Peterson Institute:

Hedge fund billionaire: founder of the Blackstone Group 1985
CEO of Lehman Brothers: 1973-1984
Secretary of Commerce under Nixon
Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, succeeding David Rockefeller
Founder of the Concord Coalition
Founder of the Peter G Peterson Foundation with its $1 billion dollar endowment
Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York 2000-2004.

Semi-secretive billionaire who served in all these roles? Are you kidding me? There are Bond super-villains who have more plausible resumes than this, somewhere Aureus Goldfinger is whimpering with envy.

The basic idea is to force state governments to compete for $4.35 billion in federal assistance, with the money going to those states which do the most to promote charter schools, utilize standardized testing, and weaken workplace rules for teachers. Essentially, the scheme sets up a bidding war among the states for desperately needed funds on the basis of an anti-public education agenda that has been promoted for decades by the right wing.

Pairing the Democratic Party demagogue Sharpton with Gingrich is aimed at suggesting that a broad coalition has formed behind Obama's education agenda.

Sharpton's role is to defuse opposition in largely African-American urban schools that will be particularly devastated by Obama's policies. Citing the "achievement gap" that remains between black and white students, Sharpton now champions the same policies he opposed when they were put forward by the Bush administration.

The teachers unions are also on board. The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association now support essentially the same policies they opposed under the previous administration. The difference is that they were shut out of education "reform" by the Bush administration, while Obama and the Democrats are eager to utilize their services in attacking teachers and undermining the foundations of public education.

Further underscoring the true nature of the "reforms" being put in place is the support offered by Gingrich, a diehard opponent of government social programs and partisan of school privatization.

As for Obama's education secretary, while CEO of the Chicago public education system Duncan forced the shutdown of dozens of schools, the tearing up of rules for teachers relating to seniority and academic freedom, and the creation of a wave of charter schools, including military-style academies.

What are the results of Duncan's years in Chicago? The graduation rate from the city's high schools is little better than 50 percent, and dozens of high schoolers have been killed, many as a result of traversing hostile gang territory en route to distant schools, their neighborhood schools having been closed.

Presented by Duncan as an enormous amount of money, the $4.35 billion fund is a tiny fraction of Obama's outlays for the military and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and about 2 hundredths of 1 percent of the $23 trillion Washington has made available to the finance industry. The grand total allotted for education is less than the individual personal fortunes of about 60 Americans, and a fraction of the Christmas bonuses that Wall Street will pay its executives and traders next month.

By 2011, the combined state-level funding gap for schools will be $20 billion. This does not include local revenue shortfalls, much of it resulting from collapsing real estate tax assessments. Scores of school districts will be bankrupt by the end of the year. The state of Hawaii has gone so far as to cut the school week to four days.

Only a handful of states will receive any "Race to the Top" money, possibly fewer than 15, according to the Wall Street Journal. "This is going to be highly competitive, and there are going to be a lot more losers than winners," Duncan bluntly declared in announcing the 30-plus criteria that will be used to judge the states.

These blackmail tactics are already having the desired effect. A number of states have in recent months passed legislation promoting charter schools, expanding testing and other metrics, and channeling funding to those schools whose students perform well. These policies will starve the very schools that need funding the most.

Obama's policies encourage the development of an openly class-based system of education. Wealthy districts will prosper, while the great majority of schools--in the cities, rural areas and even the suburbs--will suffer or vanish.

Many teachers, students and parents oppose Obama's education policies. After Duncan outlined the plan in July, "1,200 public comments poured into the Department of Education" condemning the plan, the New York Times noted.

The Obama administration responded with its usual contempt for popular opinion. "Even after all the comments, the rules are as comprehensive and demanding as before, they haven't changed," said Rahm Emanuel, the president's chief of staff. "We're seeking reforms, so we haven't backed off anything."

As it becomes clear what Obama's education policies mean and as the public school system continues to collapse, teachers, students and parents will move to defend public education, which has for nearly two centuries been bound up with egalitarian and democratic principles.

This opposition will require an independent political perspective, in opposition to both parties of big business and based on a socialist program.

No one, of course, believed for a second that a few thousand American poets could stop this or any other war. But we have entered our sincere pleas at this tribunal of all humanity, and history will ask just how much better off the world would be today had Shelley's "unacknowledged legislators" been heard by this deaf-eared administration. What can we do but make our gift? And if, as Katha Pollitt truthfully observes in her elegant poem, we often take on a tone of moral superiority, must we admit it, while realizing nevertheless that in matters of nations at war, silence is a crime. We must resist. We must find our lives in words.

No doubt most of the world will pause for a moment this day to remember the horrors and tragedies and eventually heroism of September 11, 2001. And many people all over the world will also reflect on the horrors in Spain and in Russia and in the Sudan and elsewhere; and we will reflect of the inevitable tragedies of empire-building and the long history of bloody crusades undertaken by the government of the U.S.A. We have bombed more than forty countries since the end of World War II. Our history is a long sad litany of almost perpetual warfare, and when we were not ourselves waging war, we were the world's great supplier of arms. We have repeatedly supported dictators like Manuel Noriega in Panama and Augusto Pinochet in Chile, both put in power by the CIA. How could there not be deep-seated resentment toward such a dictatorial superpower? What message does it send to independent-minded Iraqis when the two most powerful political leaders in their country both have long CIA ties?

Democracy is not a government that can be imposed. We are not a democracy.
If we were, Al Gore would be president, and it's utterly implausible that we would be floundering in the quagmire we presently face at home and abroad. Our air would be cleaner, our water less polluted. And there would have been far fewer children "left behind." It was the spirit of democracy that inspired the Dr. Kings, the Gandhis, and yes, poets like Whitman, Dickinson, and Hughes (and the generations who follow in the footsteps), to make their commitments to ideals. It is a poet's business to dream as much as it is a politician's to glad-hand and grin. But a poet's dreams are not just fleeting, superficial things. They are the very stuff of what arises from within as we attend with great care and consideration that which informs us from without. The conscious needs the subconscious just as the rational depends on the irrational: each to define itself. Chuang Tzu dreamed he was a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Tzu and a great philosophy was born.

As we dream of a safer, saner world, we must dare to stand beside our few well-chosen words. We must never fail to correct those who insist that poets are merely dreamers: while freedom and democracy are abstract ideals, we all inch one step closer one step at a time, and artists are as important in that struggle (and in every other) as anyone else. Poetry has entirely practical uses. Who knows how many tens or hundreds of thousands of poems have been written about September 11? Each was necessary. Each was a vital communication.

In Chile, September 11 is the anniversary of the demise--authored by the CIA-- of the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. When Pinochet's troops stormed into Pablo Neruda's house, the poet declared, "The only weapons here are words."

Those who suffered as a consequence of the Attica prison riots remember September 11, too. We have been victims and we have been executioners. We can do better.

There are presently over 16,000 poems at poetsagainsthewar.org --the largest single-theme anthology ever compiled. Is this to be our final statement? Or is there a lot more work we all agree needs to be addressed? The war most of us oppose is not merely the war in Iraq, but Bush's plan to rewrite our Constitution and, ultimately, to dominate the world. I hope everyone will join us in our efforts to free our nation of this neo-fascist administration. Yes, "neo-fascist" sounds harsh, but it was Mussolini who defined "the perfection of fascism" as "the marriage of the corporation and the state." Government by Halliburton, for Conoco? Is that not what's at stake? We have no anti-war candidate. But almost any candidate would be an improvement over the mendacious, swaggering international bully presently occupying public housing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Do not forget for a second that Iraq had no connection to September 11. And September 11 happened on George Bush's watch despite an August memorandum and many other warning signs.

September 11 is a day that lives in infamy in many ways. When I remember the horrors visited upon the people of New York City, I think of the dreams that perished, foremost among them the shared dream of a peaceful world. Peace can be made only by a commitment to an ideal presented and clarified in a few well-chosen words. Our poetry will remember the shock, the suffering, and the heroism of those days, and also the candles, the flowers, and the continued pleas to Bush from the people of New York City: "Please don't wage war!" I think of all those connected with the devastation at the Pentagon, the children, grandchildren, friends, who are often left out of the equation because the image of the crumbling towers in a majestic city is so indelibly incomprehensible.

This is not merely a referendum on Iraq. Iraq is only the symptom. The disease is the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and their Project for a New American Century. It is positively Orwellian. And indeed, what's at stake is likely to be the future of the world: from endless war to environmental disaster, from the destruction of the middle class to the impoverishment of our Constitutional rights, this is the most dangerous, threatening administration in American history. One in three citizens has no faith in the election system itself already, in part because of Bush's successful theft of the 2000 election.

We must all work diligently for a fair and open election, and for the election of John Kerry and John Edwards. The very fundamentals of our democracy are at risk.

We presently connect with like-minded poets' organizations in dozens of countries. There is important work we can continue to do in conjunction with poets around the world. I believe it is our duty to join with fellow poets, to listen closely, and to join with them in times of need. But to do so, we must address one major issue immediately: If we are to continue past the November election, we must change our name (something like "Poets for Humanity"?) and establish a democratic leadership and enlist new volunteers. We who founded this organization--and the volunteers who have given so very much--are all exhausted. The international networks are mostly already in place, and we have only to make our organization better organized, more democratic, and more efficient.

If we sustain the organization, there will have to be a small annual fee. We still have about $2000 in debt. A small member fee would allow for web site updating and expansion and perhaps allow us to sponsor a few activities. Anyone knowledgeable and interested in working on organizational transition should contact us. Unless this is accomplished, we shall have no choice but to bid sayonara and go in peace.

Please visit Poets Against the War for update and to and post any scheduled readings or related activities.

Yours,
Sam Hamill

In our post September 11th political climate, the culture of terrorism has been given a new role and has come to be viewed very differently by the U.S. and the world at large. We are now fighting a highly subsidized war on terrorism and having been told by the CIA that another attack on the U.S. is eminent, many people have a new heightened sense of fear at what atrocities the future might hold. The attacks on the world trade center and the Pentagon were the first large scale attacks to occur on American soil and the people were no where near prepared. Many mixed feelings and emotions arose. People across the country waved flags from their homes and vehicles in a collective call to demonstrate “patriotism” and the word “terrorism” became a part of everyday vocabulary for most people.

In the book Chronicles of Dissent, linguist Noam Chomsky says that the word terrorism became commonly used around the end of the 18th century to mean acts of violence by the state against its own people. However, those in power sought to change the term in order to benefit from it so “terrorism” has come to mean acts of violence against the state by small, marginal groups of citizens. Chomsky says that we no longer refer to “state terrorism” anymore except when we talk about our enemies (Chomsky Chronicles 50).

According to the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics, terrorism has “no agreed definition among governments or academic analysts” but usually refers to “threatening actions perpetrated by politically motivated self-appointed substrate groups” (Mclean 492). The uncertainty by many people of the true meaning of terrorism along with its various contrived definitions has allowed rogue states to justify their own acts of violence and aggression against people all over the world while simultaneously condemning the aggressions of their enemies. The most notorious perpetrators of such hypocrisy is the United States government.

United States Sponsored Terrorism and Clandestine Support

The School of the Americas and El Salvador

Clear evidence of U.S. terrorism can be found by analysis of the operations and military tactics of the former School of the Americas. The School of the Americas was established in 1946 in Panama by the U.S. Army and moved to Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia in 1984. Its purpose was to train Latin American military personnel in combat techniques, counter insurgency and psychological warfare to be used to handle “instability” in their own countries (Salter1). Many perpetrators of brutal murders and torture occurring in El Salvador over the past couple of decades have been traced back to graduates of the School of the Americas.

El Salvador has been run by dictators installed and supported by the U.S. government for years. As a result, many of its citizens, mostly peasants, have been subjected to extreme forms of oppression. During the 1970’s there were popular movements growing in El Salvador. Peasants were joining to form cooperatives, unions and bible study groups which raised the threat of democracy. In February 1980, the Archbishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero sent a letter to president Carter begging him not to send military aid to the junta that ran the country out of fear that it would increase oppression against these peasant organizations. On march 7, 1980 a war against the peasant population began with a large massacre at the Rio Sumpal. At least 600 people were brutally butchered. The massacre was organized by the Honduran and Salvadoran armies. Two weeks later, Romero was assassinated while saying mass (Chomsky Uncle Sam p 34-35). In November 1989, six Jesuit priests, their cook and her daughter were murdered by the El Salvador death squad, Atlacatle Battallion. In early 1990, a US congressional task force investigation found that those responsible for the murders were trained at the SOA (Harbury 1).

The SOA was widely criticized for years by human rights advocates around the world for its training in torture tactics and its promotion of other techniques that violated human rights. One deserter of the Salvadoran army seeking asylum in Texas in 1990 claimed that in training, “draftees were made to bite the throats of dogs and vultures to kill them. They were also forced to watch soldiers torture and kill suspected traitors, decapitating them, cutting their bodies into pieces and playing with their limbs (Chomsky Uncle Sam p38).

In January 2001, the House finally voted to cut SOA funding and it was shut down by the army. A month later it was replaced by the Department of Defense and given the new name, the Western Hemiphere Intistute for Security Cooperation. Supporters of the new institution claim that abuse is no longer taught and that new law requires that each student be given eight hours of training in human rights practices (Ciponline.org 2). However, critics claim that the cirriculum is similar to the SOA. Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of the School of the Americas Watch organization says “Changing the name is like taking a bottle of poison and simply writing ‘penicillin” on it. They tell us they’re teaching democracy there now. How is this possible through the barrel of a gun in an undemocratic institution?” (Salter 1). Bourgeous, a 62 year old Catholic priest, has spent close to four years in federal prisons for protesting the School of the Americas (Salter1).

U.S. Aid to the Contras

Another blatant example of U.S. support for terrorist organizations can been seen upon examining the Iran-Contra Affair. In the late 1970’s Nicaragua’s dictator Anastasio Somoza’s rule was challenged by the Sandanista army which sought redistribution of wealth. The Sandanista government follows what is known as “liberation theology” which the Oxford Concise Dictionary of politics defines as “Belief that the Christian Churches have a duty and a commitment to oppose social, economic, and political repression in societies where exploitation and oppression of humanity exist” (p 287). The Sandanista’s genuine care for the Nicaraguan people and their desire to create a real democracy terrified policy makers in Washington (Chomsky Uncle Sam p 43). President Reagan instructed the CIA to organize and fund an opposition group known as the Contras. This created a huge controversy and many opposed the Contras, especially human rights groups who complained about the Contras’ brutality. Even a CIA official testified that judges, doctors and other supporters of the Sandanistas had been assassinated by the Contras (Hastedt 62). In 1984 congress cut all funding for the Contras and passed legislation forbidding any U.S. funding to the Contras. Reagan, who called the Contras “freedom fighters” and the “moral equivalent of the founding fathers” had to find another means to continue military aid.

Conveniently, in 1984, three Americans, one of whom was the CIA station chief, were abducted and four more Americans were taken hostage in 1985.

The Reagan administration blamed the Iranian government of Ayatollah Khomeini for anti American terrorism and felt that violating the administration’s own policy of nonnegotiation would end terrorism in the Middle East (Hastedt 63). The U.S. embargo against selling arms to Iran was lifted in exchange for the hostages and the arms transfer generated a $16 million dollar profit with the Contras receiving $3.8 million dollars in aid (Hastedt 63). Even though the entire operation was run from the white house by Colonel Oliver North, Reagan denied any knowledge about the connection between the arms sales and the Contras. At a time when the Reagan administration was highly critical of terrorism in Libya and the rest of the Middle East it had no problem with supporting terrorism throughout Latin America. The United States government has been condemned by the United Nations for unlawful use of force AKA “terrorism” in Nicaragua (Chomsky Chronicles p 3-4)

The 1975 Indonesian Invasion of East Timor

Another example of U.S. support of aggression is the 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor. I am particularly interested in mentioning the invasion because it is an event which not only had extremely limited media coverage at the time it occurred, but was also never taught to me in school, and was completely omitted from my history textbooks despite the fact that estimated murders reached genocidal levels.

East Timor was a Portuguese Colony since the 16th century and finally gained its independence in December of 1975. Within a month, Indonesia invaded East Timor, killing thousands of innocent people. In an article published by the International Committee of the Fourth International, Frank Gaglioti reveals secret documents from the National Security Archive at George Washington University that prove the United States government supported the invasion of East Timor. The released documents dating from July 1975 to June 1976 reveal the role and responsibility of President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger in the atrocities carried out by the Indonesian military dictatorship (Gaglioti 1). Several exchanges occurred between Suharto, Ford and Kissinger prior to the invasion. The first document dated July 5 1975 documents the discussion between General Suharto and Gerald Ford about their interests in surpressing political dissidence throughout Southeast Asia and Suharto declares that East Timor cannot be allowed independence. The second document dated August 12 1975 describes a discussion held by Kissinger and some of his staff about a reported coup in East Timor. Kissinger states “It is quite clear that the Indonesians are going to take over the island sooner or later” (Galioti 2).

The third document from November 1975 is an outline Kissinger prepared for Ford on the full extend of the tactics Indonesia would take to control East Timor and alerted Ford that the U.S. supplied weapons to Suharto may pose a problem because U.S. law prohibits such weapons to be used unless in self defense (Galioti 2). Document 4, dated December 6, 1975 is an official transcript of the
discussion between Ford, Kissinger, and Suharto in Jakarta the day before the invasion. It quotes Suharto saying “We want your understanding if we deem necessary to take rapid drastic action” and Ford responds “ We will understand and will not press you on the issues. We understand the problem you have and the intentions you have.” Then Kissinger asks Suharto to wait until they return to America and then make sure the invasion is as quick and effective as possible (Gialoti 2). Within hours of their departure, the slaughtering began. Over 200,000 people have been killed out of a population of about 600,000 people. Indonesian rule continued over East Timor despite the call on Jakarta by the United Nations in 1975 and 1976 to withdraw “without delay”(www.etan.org ).

Not only was the Carter administration aware of the projected invasion of East Timor, but the U.S. actually doubled military aid to Indonesia and blocked the UN from effectively enforcing any action. Since 1975, more than $1.1 billion dollars worth of arms has been transferred from the U.S. to the Indonesian government (www.etan.org). And yet president Carter won the Nobel Peace prize for his wonderful human rights campaign.

More U.S. Benevolence aka Hegemony

I believe the three examples I have given: El Salvador, Nicaragua, and East Timor, blatantly illustrate U.S. hegemony and acts of terrorism, however there are many more cases in which the United States has supported, if not personally placed brutal dictators into power. Manuel Noriega in Panama (also a graduate of the SOA), Marcos in the Philippines, CIA-trained battalions in Honduras, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Pinochet in Chile, and our favorite bad guy, the man we love to hate, Saddam Hussein (Chomsky, Uncle Sam, p 54). Saddam Hussein may be trying to produce nuclear weapons but the U.S. has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. I have heard arguments made that although the U.S. has such harmful weapons, we would never dream of using them to harm civilians. And I ask what about Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What about Dresden? What about Vietnam?

I personally cannot see the difference between these violent acts of aggression that are carried out by the U.S. to achieve political and economical goals and the violent actions of Saddam Hussein towards the Kurds, Kuwait, or Iran. Why is it that violence inflicted by this nation is somehow always justified as being benevolent, democratic, and in the “national interest” while the violence in the rest of the world is fundamentalism (Islam), terrorism, and genocide? It seems like even when this nation does recognize wrongful actions committed by our government such as the case with the Iran-Contra scandal, reparations are not made and policy makers get a little tap on the wrist at most. Unless of course they are having sex with interns and then they’ve got to pay the price, their crimes must be exposed.

Bibliography

Chomsky, Noam. Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs. South End Press: Cambridge, 2000.

What Uncle Sam Really Wants, 1989. Chronicles of Dissent.

Hastedt, Glenn. American Foreign Policy: Past, Present, Future. Prentice Hall: New Jersey, 2000.

Mclean, Iain. Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics. Oxford: New York, 1996.

Web Sources

Common Dreams News Center

Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation

Democracy Now

Gaglioti, Frank Gaglioti

Timor

What is "greenwashing"?

In 2000, in a moment of victory for environmentalists, the term "greenwashing" was included in the 10th Edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (Pelupessy, 2000). It is defined there as "Disinformation disseminated by an organisation so as to present an environmentally responsible public image. Derivatives greenwashing (n). Origin from green on the pattern of whitewash." The CorpWatch definition: "1.) The phenomenon of socially and environmentally destructive corporations attempting to preserve and expand their markets by posing as friends of the environment and leaders in the struggle to eradicate poverty. 2) Environmental whitewash. 3) Hogwash." (CorpWatch, 2002)

Greenwash takes many forms. From the print advertisement described above and television commercials to participation in environmental conferences and the creation of eco-friendly-looking corporate front groups, many transnational corporations (TNCs) have made expensive and wide-reaching efforts to ensure that no matter how they act environmentally, the public will view them in a good light. These companies sink their dollars into huge public relations campaigns designed to manufacture and preserve a green image. The whole situation is two-faced. As John Stauber, publisher of PR Watch magazine said, "Companies take on corporate ad campaigns and high-profile partnerships with mainstream environmental group--while simultaneously lobbying to gut green laws." (Helvarg, 1996)

Greenwashing has a full history behind it, beginning in the mid to late 1960s. Back then Westinghouse, recognizing the growing anti-nuclear movement, ran four-color ads proclaiming the anti-polluting virtues of atomic energy (Karliner, 2001). In 1969 alone, the utility companies spent over $300 million advertising their anti-pollution efforts, apparently more than eight times the amount the companies were spending on the efforts themselves. This brand of greenwash, which Jerry Mander labeled "eco-pornography" at the time, increased in prevalence over the coming decades, peaking around Earth Day 1990. Corporate environmentalism came into its own that year. Companies realized that increasing numbers of consumers wanted green products and so they set about marketing themselves as environmentally conscious and concerned. Today, it doesn't take long to find products made by the biggest TNCs boasting "recyclable", "biodegradable" or "all natural" properties. The problem is, these corporations rank among the biggest enemies of the environment when it comes to their day-to-day operations. In fact, it's often the greatest culprits that pour the most money into hefty green PR campaigns. Ten years ago, O'Dwyer's PR Services Report, a trade publication, posited that the environment would be, "the life-and-death PR battle of the 1990s." (Helvarg, 1996) A battle is exactly what one would call it, with TNCs fighting it out by whatever means necessary to win the public's approval.

What is fundamentally at play when it comes to greenwash tactics is corporations' belief that they should be allowed to police themselves and participate in environmental causes on their own terms. There is an intrinsic assertion that governments should relax regulations and avoid legislations, allowing corporations to handle their own operation and cleanups in a voluntary way. Our government has heavily bought into this notion of corporate freedom. Protected by free speech laws and laissez-faire policy, corporations are permitted to wreak their environmental havoc, and then select eco causes that hurt their bottom lines the least and tout their affiliation with those to the public.

The oil companies

In writing this paper, once I decided to narrow my focus to a single industry the choice was glaringly obvious - the oil industry. "According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, just 122 corporations account for more than 80 percent of all global carbon emissions - by far the major greenhouse gas. And just five private global oil corporations -- ExxonMobil, BP Amoco, Shell, Chevron and Texaco -- produce oil that contributes some 10 percent of the world's carbon emissions." (Bruno & Karliner, 2000) The pattern we find in oil corporation greenwash is one of highlighting and glorifying the very small amount they spend on environmental research and projects (often involving renewables). The truth the public rarely hears is what a minute budget percentage goes to that which these companies are advertising.

In reality, over time, the Greenhouse Gangsters have not used their power for significant development of renewable energy. In 1973, geothermal, wind, and solar accounted for 0.1% of world energy supply. In 1996, renewables accounted for a mere 0.4% of world energy supply. During that same period, oil declined in terms of dominance of fuel supply, from 44.9% to 35.3%, though it is still the biggest source. But this decline was replaced largely with natural gas, which contributes equally to global warming, and nuclear power. (Bruno, Karliner & Brotsky, 1999)

To follow is an overview of greenwashing campaigns of BP Amoco, Chevron, Shell, and ExxonMobil.

BP Amoco - "Plug in the Sun"

The 1998 merger of BP and Amoco formed Britain's largest company and the world's second largest oil corporation. The oil company most determined to carve out an environmentally sensitive image, the corporation spent over ₤69.5 million in 2000 to rebrand itself as green (Arnold, 2001). It declared a new name, "Beyond Petroleum" and now boasts a new green logo design and commitment to invest in renewable energy sources. Included in this rebranding campaign was the purchase of Solarex, the largest solar energy company. With that $45 million purchase (CorpWatch, 2001), BP can now claim that it is the largest solar energy company in the world. Within a week after the purchase, BP launched a "Plug in the Sun" global program, installing solar panels on 200 BP stations nationwide.

All of this newfound environmental concern sounds great in print and on television commercials. However, sweeping aside the green curtain also reveals some jaw-dropping hypocrisy. "A week before the purchase of Solarex, BP Amoco showed its true colors (closer to black than green) when it purchased ARCO for $26.5 billion." (Bruno, 1999) For every $100 the company spends on oil exploration and development, a mere 16 cents is spent on solar energy (Pelupessy, 2000). The purchase of Solarex was a drop in the bucket for BP to be able to call itself the world's largest solar energy company. "BP will spend $5 billion over five years for oil exploration in Alaska alone" (CorpWatch, 2001) and is in fact one of the strongest lobbyists for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. BP Amoco's track record is like that of any oil company - full of oil spills, major accidents, regulations violations, and environmental destruction. Ironically, on the same day the company announced its "Beyond Petroleum" campaign, it agreed to pay $10 million in penalties for environmental and pollution violations at nine of its oil refineries. (Manuel, 2001)

Make no mistake, BP Amoco's bread and butter is its oil business. Ads stating, "We can fill you up with sunshine" mislead consumers into thinking the company is steering away from oil and pouring vast amounts of resources into the solar energy business. Once you look past the designer greens of the print ads and the pretty glare of the service station solar panels, you see that while "BP Amoco hopes you will feel you are putting 'some sun in your life,'....you put greenhouse gases in your tank". (Bruno, 1999)

Chevron - "People Do"

One of the top five oil corporations in the world, Chevron has one of the longest histories of greenwash. The company's "People Do" advertisements debuted in 1985 and the campaign is considered the textbook case of successful greenwashing. According to CorpWatch, polls Chevron conducted in California in the late 1980's showed that it had become the oil corporation people trusted most to protect the environment (CorpWatch, 2001). In fact, Chevron rates consistently high in marketing polls asking respondents to name the oil company they would trust most to conduct environmentally sensitive projects. Perhaps most notably is that the corporation ranks best among those most antagonistic to oil companies. The following is a description of one of their fruitful "People Do" ads:

The shot opens with a troop of tiny sea turtles moving along the sand towards the full moon's glow on the ocean. "In a race to survive, instinct and moonlight guide newborn sea turtles," a somber narrator intones. "Do people make certain that the only light visible is the one that leads home? People Do." Sounds like a generic nature special, right? But actually this is an ad - for Chevron oil company. The ad goes on to explain how Chevron is saving the turtles by concealing light from nearby oil and gas operations so they can make it to the water. The message is clear: Chevron is a defender of the environment, a champion of endangered species, a lovable, eco-friendly corporation saving the infants of the animal kingdom. (Pelupessy, 2000)

What Chevron's green ads don't explain to the public is that these actions are usually a result of "legal 'mitigation' that Chevron is required to carry out under the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act and other laws before it can destroy other habitats with its drilling operations." (Helvarg, 1996) Also bear in mind that the company is spending much less on the promoted projects than on the "People Do" campaign itself. "The butterfly preserve project at the El Segundo refinery in California, for example, costs the company $5,000 a year to run. But producing a 30 second advertisement about the preserve may cost $200,000." (Pelupessy, 2000) And that amount does not even cover airtime. Chevron has been slapped with millions of dollars in fines resulting from plant explosions, illegal air pollution, neighborhood chemical and waste pollution, and improper hazardous waste disposal (Pelupessy, 2000). While achieving the best reputation of the oil companies through its greenwash ads, Chevron continues to rack up some of the highest fines recorded by the EPA.

Shell - "Profits or Principles"

Shell Corporation is the third largest global oil company. Their "Profits and Principles" campaign emphasizes Shell's renewed commitment to "not only meet the agreed Kyoto targets to reduce greenhouse gas emission, but to exceed them" (Bruno, 2001). The commercials feature company employees doing environmental work, and Shell's annual report now includes a special addition covering their environmental and ethical endeavors. Even their U.S. corporate web address is .

Shell looks as if it is making eco-friendly strides, beginning with its alignment with the Kyoto Protocol. Upon closer inspection, though, we see that the backing is largely symbolic. Shell alone accounts for more CO2 than most countries, and the corporation is as active in its efforts to locate oil as the other oil giants. "Shell touts its commitment to renewable energy and stresses that it has created a division called Shell Renewables...(The fact is) Shell spends just 0.6% of its annual investments on renewables." (Bruno, 2001) The following is from a satirical Shell "acceptance speech" for winning Lifetime Achievement Award at 2002's Green Oscars:

Our commitment to greenwash has never faltered. We believe we have spent more on greenwash than any other company (though naturally we will not give out figures)...We imply that the PR fiascoes of the 1990's have changed us, without ever admitting that there were any fiascoes, or that anything needed changing! In other words, we didn't do anything wrong, and we'll never do it again. Our ads have everything from exuberant green foliage to attractive blond actresses/geologists in Third World villages. We're starting a Sustainability Institute at Rice University...Best of all, our greenwash is working! Most 'reasonable' people (i.e. newspaper editors, government policy wonks, pretty much everyone except green wackos who we can easily marginalize) think we have changed. (EarthSummit.biz, 2002)

ExxonMobil - "Helping Earth breathe easier"

ExxonMobil continues to be the "hard-liner" of the oil corporations. As the largest in the world, the company is the least concerned with presenting an eco-friendly image. Although ExxonMobil greenwash may be less ubiquitous than that of the other corporations, it is certainly as reprehensible. A recent campaign showed the corporation contesting claims that America's air quality is getting worse. "In fact, ExxonMobil informs (the public) that the improvement in air quality comes from a 'determined and cooperative effort involving both public and private sectors, harnessed to the power of advanced technology.'" (Heller & O'Malley, 2002) The oil giant also ran weekly commentaries in the editorial section of the New York Times explaining how its industry is "helping Earth breathe easier" due to tree-planting and financially supporting environmental groups (Pelupessy, 2000).

One only need turn to ExxonMobil's actions to see that not only is the company preventing Earth from breathing a little easier, but it in fact has the most staunchly anti-environmental record of any of the oil companies. Unlike Shell and BP Amoco, ExxonMobil refuses to speak out against global warming, instead taking the stance that the issue does not exist. According to the company's website, "fears of global warming 'are based on completely unproven climate models or more often on sheer speculation without a reliable scientific basis'. ExxonMobil believes that current scientific understanding does not justify 'mandatory restrictions on the use of fossil fuels'". (Bruno, 2001) The corporation also provides major funding to so-called "greenhouse skeptics" - groups that serve mainly to mislead the public and policy makers by asserting that global warming is largely a myth. One of these groups is the Global Climate Coalition, which has spent more than $63 million to fight Congressional global warming policies (Pelupessy, 2000). Through this and other industry fronts, ExxonMobil was one of the most influential opponents of U.S. entry into the Kyoto Protocol.

ExxonMobil continues to be the biggest oil industry spender when it comes to protecting its interests politically. Its campaign contributions and lobbying efforts have enormous power over which regulations are passed or renewed.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, in the 2000 election cycle, ExxonMobil ranked second out of all donors by contributing $1,375,250 in campaign contributions. To make sure Congress gets their message, ExxonMobil spends millions of dollars on lobbying each year. In 1999, the company spent $11,695,800 to protect their interests from regulations...ExxonMobil was responsible for nearly a fifth of all lobbying dollars spent by the oil and gas industry. (Heller & O'Malley, 2002)

The above passage reveals the frighteningly close link between the corporation's purse strings and our nation's legislative process.

The impact on the public

Because greenwashing is a public relations issue, it is vital to look at how these campaigns shape public perception of the oil corporations. Their advertisements work extremely well to the companies' benefit, but prey upon the public's trust, intelligence, and good intentions. According to a 1999 Cone/Roper survey, Americans are more likely to give their business to companies which support environmental protection causes (Pelupessy, 2000). The oil corporations heed this message, but instead of taking actions and implementing policy to transform their companies into ones of which the public can be proud, they resort instead to greenwashing campaigns that deliberately deceive the people. The oil companies carefully craft an image rather than disclose to the public where their real motivations lie. To be expected, the companies are quick to defend their ads:

The companies claim they're simply responding to pressure. "When you see corporate America doing green advertising, it's because they get hit so often