February 20, 2009

Mohawk Nation News update

Global Nuclear Genocide of Indigenous - government liquidation strategy? It won't work!


MNN. Feb. 19, 2009. A sickening picture is shaping up. The evidence continues to mount like a smelly compost heap, except it has no organic value and it’s a serious threat to the generations to come. Who doesn’t know that radiation is deadly? Government and the nuclear industry keep lying to us! They deny the grisly effects such as cancer, birth defects and many environmental illnesses caused by radioactive toxins in our air, land and water.


The nuclear industry seized on the “peak oil” and “global warming” crisis which they created and turned it to their advantage. They call nuclear a “green”, “clean”, “renewable” resource because they can reuse the deadly waste to make nuclear weapons. They lump it under with wind and solar. The theme of the Canadian Nuclear Association CNA convention and trade show from February 25 to 27 at the Westin in Ottawa is “the reality of renaissance”. [Is that crazy or what?] Yes, they rely on our ignorance and naivety. Their philosophy is, “There’s a sucker born every minute” and let’s melt them down!


These transnational corporate psychopaths are anti-life. They want to build dozens of nuclear reactors all over the world in Indigenous communities along and dump the nuclear waste for us to “manage”!! We live in remote areas far from any place they would want to even visit. If the radiation doesn’t kill us, they can make nuclear weapons to finish us off. We are in the way for their attempted reckless pillage and plunder of Mother Earth.


These multinational thugs are fomenting war in the volatile tribal areas between India and Pakistan. Both countries are already armed with nuclear weapons. To make money and depopulate Asia both sides are being armed by the same interests. Canada is one.


India doesn’t produce uranium. They lease it from Russia. The highly radioactive and toxic spent fuel is sent back to Russia. If Canada sells more CANDU reactors to India, they want to supply the uranium fuel and then bring back the nuclear waste to make nuclear weapons. (See endnotes for profiteers).


Meanwhile, Canada helps set up private organizations as government fronts like CNA (Canadian Nuclear Association), NWMO (Nuclear Waste Management Organization) and CAP (Congress of Aboriginal People) and OMAA (Ontario Metis and Aboriginal Association). The latter two are so-called “aboriginal” organizations. NWMO and CNA are funding the Assembly of First Nations, another government set up, and CAP to talk us into managing and storing nuclear fuel waste on our territories. Meetings have gone on for years to get Elders and “leaders” on side. Canada has even sent in Mother Joan Holmes to turn non-natives into “Indians” who can then sign away our inherent rights. Nuclear salesmen are courting “Aboriginal partners” to sign away our birthright and existence.

So-called 34-year old “aboriginal”, Patrick “Fabio-Wannabe” Brazeau, was recently appointed Senator by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen “Ford-Modelling-Agent” Harper. What was this all about? Brazeau’s rap sheet looks like the antithesis of anything anyone would want in the Senate. He was rewarded for fronting the phony CAP to try to destroy Indigenous nations and sovereignty.

CAP has arrangements with NRC (Natural Resources Canada) and NWMO to consider nuclear waste management on or near our communities. Brazeau proposed, “... the 633 native communities in Canada be reduced to between 60 and 80. The 10 Algonquin reserves in Quebec and Ontario, for example, would become one. Same for the Cree. The Mohawk. And so on”. The guy didn’t consult any of us or visit any of our communities. Now, if he has any sense, he’d be afraid to come. He wants to redirect the flow of nearly $10 billion in federal funding for “aboriginal” programs and services in Canada. He thinks we wont need it because we are going to liquidated. So he wants the money to go to the many “aboriginal” that he and Mother Jones have created.

NWMO wants to store nuclear waste in Indigenous communities in the Canadian Shield. Sites in NAN (Nishnaabe Aski Nation) in northern Ontario appear to be the most likely. Ben Cheechoo and other Indigenous started out defying the government and defending our people, culture and sovereignty. They were gradually worn down to accept this senseless destructive agenda that threatens all of the future generations on the whole earth. The FSC (Forestry Stewardship Council of Germany) was instrumental in Cheechoo’s conversion through agents like Russell Diabo and David Nahwehgabow. FSC is a private UN backed organization that is designed to issue permits allowing multinational companies to cut down old growth forests on Indigenous lands worldwide. It’s completely illegal!

A telling example of these “courtships” with the Indigenous is the recent attempted seduction of the Navaho. Areva, the French nuclear power company, took the council on a recent trip to Paris. Areva “owns” uranium mines in northern Saskatchewan. They want the Navaho to put a nuclear reactor and to do more uranium mining in their territory in the U.S. southwest.


The Navaho know about the devastation of uranium tailings. Most want nothing to do with nuclear development. The same is true of the Ojibwe, Cree and Metis who have been targeted in northern Canada. Nishnaabe are fully aware of and suffering from the ongoing poisoning at Blind River and the tons of nuclear waste at Elliot Lake.


Nuclear promoters like AECL (Atomic Energy Canada Ltd) and CNSC (Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission) will coo soothingly, in their brushed suits, carefully coiffed hair [if they have any] and manicured hands, “There’s no risk”. (See endnotes) They lie while people are slowly dying horrible deaths in communities like Chalk River and Port Hope near nuclear facilities.


How do we stop this madness? We all need the facts about these dirty deals and sinister schemes. We have to closely watch and loudly object to those people the government sets up to “represent” us.


We all have to drastically cut back on our materialistic lifestyle. Every household could be generating enough clean energy to power their own grid. We Indigenous understand this basic and practical way of taking only what we need and leaving little or no footprint.


The elders are concerned about the future based on our traditional knowledge. The youth are concerned with living with the legacy of nuclear waste disposal. Women are concerned with protecting the clean and safe water for all people and the environment as this is our traditional role. [See notes and links below].


Iakoha’ko:wa & MNN Staff Mohawk Nation News www.mohawknationnews.com kittoh@storm.ca katenies20@yahoo.com kahentinetha2@yahoo.com Note: Your financial help is needed and appreciated. Please send your donations to PayPal at www.mohawknationnews.com, or by check or money order to “MNN Mohawk Nation News”, Box 991, Kahnawake [Quebec, Canada] J0L 1B0. Nia:wen thank you very much. Go to MNN “Canada” category for more stories; New MNN Books Available now! Purchase t-shirts, mugs and more at our CafePressStore http://www.cafepress.com/mohawknews; Subscribe to MNN for breaking news updates http://.mohawknationnews.com/news/subscription.php; Sign Women Title Holders petition! http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Iroquois


Notes, Sources and Contacts
In “Eaglefeather News” of Saskatchewan www.brucepower.com. Very misleading article. With all the sun, wind and low population, why would anyone want a nuclear reactor there?

Re CNSC and AECL: MNN spoke with Marc Drolet. Why is it the leaking NRU reactor still going? Marc passed the buck to AECL. CNSC told Parliamentarians on Feb 5 that there was no risk. He called it "concentration". The levels permitted in Canada is 100 times that allowed in Europe. He disagreed. We emailed him the link for Ace Hoffman's book. Later he email: "I suggest you formulate more precise questions to receive comments from our scientists. You mention tritium; and its long-term impact on infants and export-control issues related to some states that may want to use nuclear technology to less than peaceful ends. He said, “Our experts provide answers in plain English”. Marc Drolet, Public Affairs and Media Relations, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Ottawa, Canada K1P 5S9, 613-947-0442, Blackberry 613-808-3134, Fax 613-992-2915


Sean Cotnam of AECL said: the reactor was running today and had been shut down last week for regular maintenance. When would it be shut down permanently? "It won't be shut down for a long time, ma'am". He said the information from the Uof Toronto professor saying that Canada's tritium level is 100 times that of Europe was incorrect. He said it is only 70 times that of Europe and 10 times that of the US!!! He is completely safe living on the Ottawa River and was not worried about his young children.


India and Pakistan each have about 30 nuclear warheads and have reached the brink of nuclear war before. India is buying plenty of military hardware. Pakistan is the #1 top recipient of US military aid in the world, receiving about $3.6 billion [New American Century] since 2006. They also receive aid from the World Bank to build dams and other infrastructure.
<http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/u_s_weapons_war_2008_0>
US Predator UAV's armed with Hellfire missiles have killed dozens of people in cross border forays into Pakistan from Afghanistan.


Profiteers in the global nuclear industry include: WorleyParsons Canada Ltd. Nuclear Energy, (905) 940-4770 8133 Warden Avenue, Markham, ON L8G 1B3 http://www.worleyparsons.com/GlobalPresence/Pages/default.aspx
Offices worldwide, including 4 in China and one in Canada. 28,000 employees in engineering and construction. Biggest in China. Ready to build "nuclear parks" deep in the mire of Athabasca oil sands. Their profits are up 50% over last year. OTHER SUCKS: Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL),Organization of CANDU Industries, CAMECO Corporation, SNC Lavalin Nuclear, Bechtel, Canada China Power Inc., Areva of France, Ontario Power Generation, Bruce Power, Power Workers Union, GE-Hitachi, Hitachi, Comstock, Fox Constructors, Wardrop, The Society, AMEC, L-3Com, RCM Technologies, B&W, Black & McDonald, Power Train, Nuvia, NWMO, Hydro-Quebec, HSL, Aecon, Amidyne, CUSW, Industrial AUdit, McMaster University, UOIT (University of Ontario Industry Technology), IML, BPR, SWI.
* Canadian Nuclear Association Conference and Trade Show, February 25 -27, Westin Hotel, Ottawa.
http://www.cna.ca/english/index.asp Canadian Nuclear Association, 130 Albert Street, Suite 1610 Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5G4, 613-237-4262 Fax: 613-237-0989
Contacts: http://www.nrcan-rncan.gc.ca/com/concon/concon-eng.php
Lisa Raitt, NR Min; MP Halton, (613) 996-2007 MINO/MINO Lisa.Raitt@NRCan-RNCan.gc.ca
(613) 996-7046 Fax: (613) 992-0851 EMail: Raitt.L@parl.gc.ca DM Deputy Minister Doyle, Cassie J. since June, 2006; (613) 992-3280 DMO/DMO CassieJ.Doyle@NRCan-RNCan.gc.ca [also on board of directors at AECL]
Serge Dupont, Associate Deputy Minister, Natural Resources Canada (613) 996-9753 DMO/DMO Serge.Dupont@NRCan-RNCan.gc.ca
Min. Health Leona Aglukkaq Conservative Constituency: Nunavut, Telephone: (613) 992-2848 Fax: (613) 996-9764, Aglukkaq.L@parl.gc.ca www.leonaaglukkaq.ca/EN/5215/
HEALTH [WHAT A CONTRADICTION]! Morris Rosenberg, Deputy Minister Health since December 2004. Deputy Minister Justice and Deputy Attorney General of Canada from July 1998 to December 2004. 1993 to 1996 Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet, Economic and Regional Development Policy, Privy Council Office. Deputy Minister's Office - Health Canada, Brooke Claxton Building, Tunney's Pasture, Postal Locator: 0906C, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada > K1A 0K9 Fax: (613) 952-1154 dm_sm@hc-sc.gc.ca
CRITICS OF AECL: Geoff Regan ReganG@parl.gc.ca, (613) 996-3085 Fax: (613) 996-6988,
John Gerretsen MPP Minister of the Environment <jgerretsen.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org>,
George Smitherman MPP Energy & Infr. <gsmitherman.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org>
CNSC Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, CNSC Chalk River Laboratories Site, Building 432 Chalk River, ON K0J 1J0, Telephone: 613-584-7743 Fax: 613-584-9077, interventions@cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca; EA@cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca Marc Drolet, Public relations, 613 947-0442 <info@cnsc-ccsn.bc.ca>
AECL Chalk River Laboratories, Chalk River, Ontario Canada K0J 1J0, Phone: (613) 584-3311, Bill Pilkington, VP, talks to media Ext.#44429 (Sarah), Hugh MacDiarmid, Pres & CEO, Ext.#37330 (Helene)
Glenna Carr, Chair Board of Directors Ext.#37506 (Kimberly), Sean Cotnam, Public relations direct line: 613 584-8291
http://www.aecl.ca/Contact/Make_a_request_for_information.htm
http://www.aecl.ca/site3.aspx Public Requests for Information Toll free: 1-866-513-AECL (2325)
Media Enquiries Toll free: 1-866-886-2325 Community Enquiries Toll free: 1-800-364-6989
Some Canadian politicians including senators: NOTE: No email or photo is available for "Senator Brazeau". 613-947-4231 Fax: 613-947-4228, He is current Member of the following Senate committee(s): Aboriginal Peoples, Human Rights.
http://www.nan.on.ca/article/nan-staff-163.asp
NAN. sbeardy@nan.on.ca, twaboose@nan.on.ca, roseanne@nan.on.ca, afiddler@nan.on.ca, dfletcher@nan.on.ca, dkiecman@nan.on.ca, jshewaybick@nan.on.ca, fmckenzie@nan.on.ca, bnothing@nan.on.ca, gsmith@nan.on.ca, jhunter@nan.on.ca, acrozier@nan.on.ca, mheintzman@nan.on.ca, jnelson@nan.on.ca, ibeardy@nan.on.ca, pdesmoul@nan.on.ca, jforneri@nan.on.ca, pfayrick@nan.on.ca, jthompson@nan.on.ca, eachneep@nan.on.ca, nan@nan.on.ca, caudet@nan.on.ca, twilson@nan.on.ca, rmetlin@nan.on.ca, bmaloney@nan.on.ca, mgoodchild@nan.on.ca, wcaruk@nan.on.ca, lwabasse@nan.on.ca, sperrault@nan.on.ca, sbarkman@nan.on.ca, sbrown@nan.on.ca, cfox@nan.on.ca, cmackay@nan.on.ca, sachneep@nan.on.ca, bmainville@nan.on.ca, klcheechoo@nan.on.ca, amurphy@nan.on.ca, wtrylins@nan.on.ca, jcheechoo@nan.on.ca, gmedicin@nan.on.ca, kadcock@nan.on.ca, lbaxter@nan.on.ca, dsimon@nan.on.ca, csimard@nan.on.ca, ehanson@nan.on.ca, jalto@nan.on.ca, bwheesk@nan.on.ca, rmamakwa@nan.on.ca, dfrenett@nan.on.ca, blouttit@nan.on.ca, lhunter@nan.on.ca, jwheesk@nan.on.ca, bencheechoo@nan.on.ca, msault@nan.on.ca, ljeffries@nan.on.ca, staylor@nan.on.ca, lbiggeorge@nan.on.ca,

OTTAWA DOUCHE BAGS: Reid.S@parl.gc.ca, Harper.S@parl.gc.ca, Nicholson.R@parl.gc.ca, Aglukkaq.L@parl.gc.ca, Day.S@parl.gc.ca,VanLoan.P@parl.gc.ca, McCallum.J@parl.gc.ca, ReganG@parl.gc.ca, Raitt.L@parl.gc.ca, Easter.W@parl.gc.ca, Szabo.P@parl.gc.ca, Baird.J@parl.gc.ca, Clement.T@parl.gc.ca, leader@greenparty.ca, donna.dillman@greenparty.ca, Cannon.L@parl.gc.ca, Sorenson.K@parl.gc.ca, Dewar.P@parl.gc.ca, FAAE@parl.gc.ca, Patry.B@parl.gc.ca, ThibaLo@parl.gc.ca, ChongM@parl.gc.ca, TrostB@parl.gc.ca, BigraB@parl.gc.ca, CardiS@parl.gc.ca, LafraM@parl.gc.ca, CulleN@parl.gc.ca, GallaC@parl.gc.ca, HawnL@parl.gc.ca, McTeaD@parl.gc.ca, AlghaO@parl.gc.ca, AnderDa@parl.gc.ca, BevinD@parl.gc.ca, DebelC@parl.gc.ca, OuellCh@parl.gc.ca, CrowdJ@parl.gc.ca, ChowO@parl.gc.ca, LunnG@parl.gc.ca, BerniM@parl.gc.ca, StrahC@parl.gc.ca, MilliP@parl.gc.ca, Hill.J@parl.gc.ca, MacKay.P@parl.gc.ca, Kramp.D@parl.gc.ca, Brown.G@parl.gc.ca, DelMastro.D@parl.gc.ca, Dewar.P@parl.gc.ca, Coderre.D@parl.gc.ca, DionS@parl.gc.ca, Comartin.J@parl.gc.ca, Oda.B@parl.gc.ca, OConnor.G@parl.gc.ca, Atamaa1@parl.gc.ca, blackd@parl.gc.ca,Black.D@parl.gc.ca, Ambrose.R@parl.gc.ca, Toews.V@parl.gc.ca, Blackburn.J@parl.gc.ca, Paradis.C@parl.gc.ca, Moore.J@parl.gc.ca, Mulcair.T@parl.gc.ca, Duceppe.G@parl.gc.ca, Barbot.V@parl.gc.ca, Layton.J@parl.gc.ca, BlackJ@parl.gc.ca,

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"Afghanistan needs troops--but it needs troops of doctors, troops of teachers, troops of Peace Corps volunteers, and troops of farmers to go and replant the fruit orchards."
--Kavita Ramdas, President and CEO of Global Fund for Women

Dear Virginia,

We danced the "Yes We Can-Can" on Inauguration day as we applauded President Obama's promises to take our nation in a new direction. With his recent announcement of an additional 17,000 troops to be deployed to Afghanistan, we see change come to a screeching halt and a dangerous continuation of the same failed US policies of the Bush era blaze forward. Just as in Iraq, misplaced hope in military solutions is pushing peaceful strategies to the back seat. Take action and help President Obama do the right thing- we need an escalation in peaceful alternatives, not military force!

Call 202-456-1111 today! Tell the Administration that we want:

1) Reduction of troop levels in Afghanistan
2) Rapid withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Iraq
3) A commitment to diplomacy involving all major regional players, including major international peace-keeping bodies
4) Addressing the real needs of Afghans by funding development assistance for Afghanistan's basic human needs - health-care, clean water, education, security, rights for women and girls-, through Afghan NGOs, using local labor and services

Take a tip from Senator Feingold and ask the tough questions: "We need to ask: After seven years of war, will more troops help us achieve our strategic goals in Afghanistan? Is there a danger that a heavier military footprint will further alienate the population, and, if so, what are the alternatives?" Even Obama's advisors say the war in Afghanistan "cannot be won on the battlefield." Over 2/3 of Americans oppose the deployments, and a majority of Europeans want their troops home- leaders of Spain, France and Germany have refused to send any additional forces!

It is said that the definition of insanity is to repeat the same action but to expect a different result. President Obama is a deeply intelligent man, but it is crazy for him to stay on Bush's crash course of empire building, and all the devastation and loss of life it leaves in its wake. We can help Obama find the road to peace and make sure he keeps his promises!

Yes we can end war,
Audrey, Dana, Deidra, Desiree, Farida, Gael, Gayle, Jean, Jodie, Liz, Lori, Medea, Nancy, Paris, and Rae

P.S. When you are connected to your Representative's office, keep your message short and to the point. Tell them:

More troops only means more violence, more suffering, more killing of innocents, and more recruits for the Taliban. Instead of a surge, President Obama must take bold and compassionate action to address the Afghan's real need for health care, clean water and education, instead of continuing to cripple Afghanistan with more years of war. Call on Obama to fulfill his promise for peace and change! Call (202)456-1111 TODAY!
Click here for more resources

Glenn Greenwold war crimes update

Greenwald: U.S. Is Bound By Treaty to Prosecute Torture Crimes

Posted: 18 Feb 2009 07:00 PM PST

Glenn Greenwald on why we're bound by law to prosecute torture cases. (Incidentally, he also points out that a new report states that Bush officials were informed that the legal memos submitted to justify torture were slanted to fit administration policy):

The U.S. really has bound itself to a treaty called the Convention Against Torture, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988 and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1994. When there are credible allegations that government officials have participated or been complicit in torture, that Convention really does compel all signatories -- in language as clear as can be devised -- to "submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution" (Art. 7(1)). And the treaty explicitly bars the standard excuses that America's political class is currently offering for refusing to investigate and prosecute: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture" and "an order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture" (Art. 2 (2-3)). By definition, then, the far less compelling excuses cited by Conason (a criminal probe would undermine bipartisanship and distract us from more important matters) are plainly barred as grounds for evading the Convention's obligations.

There is reasonable dispute about the scope of prosecutorial discretion permitted by the Convention, and there is also some lack of clarity about how many of these provisions were incorporated into domestic law when the Senate ratified the Convention with reservations. But what is absolutely clear beyond any doubt is that -- just as is true for any advance promises by the Obama DOJ not to investigate or prosecute -- issuing preemptive pardons to government torturers would be an unambiguous and blatant violation of our obligations under the Convention. There can't be any doubt about that. It just goes without saying that if the U.S. issued pardons or other forms of immunity to accused torturers (as the Military Commissions Act purported to do), that would be a clear violation of our obligation to "submit the [torture] case to [our] competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution." Those two acts -- the granting of immunity and submission for prosecution -- are opposites.

And yet those who advocate that we refrain from criminal investigations rarely even mention our obligations under the Convention. There isn't even a pretense of an effort to reconcile what they're advocating with the treaty obligations to which Ronald Reagan bound the U.S. in 1988. Do we now just explicitly consider ourselves immune from the treaties we signed? Does our political class now officially (rather than through its actions) consider treaties to be mere suggestions that we can violate at will without even pretending to have any justifications for doing so? Most of the time, our binding treaty obligations under the Convention -- as valid and binding as every other treaty -- don't even make it into the discussion about criminal investigations of Bush officials, let alone impose any limits on what we believe we can do.


February 03, 2009

Another Chalmers Johnson Classic: DoD procurement nightmare

Tomgram: Chalmers Johnson, Economic Death Spiral at the Pentagon

Recently, reviewing lobbying disclosure reports, the Washington Times discovered "that 18 of the top 20 recipients of federal bailout money spent a combined $12.2 million lobbying the White House, the Treasury Department, Congress, and federal agencies during the last quarter of 2008." Citibank alone, according to the New York Times, fielded "an army of Washington lobbyists," plunking down $1.77 million in lobbying fees just in the fourth quarter of last year.

And it isn't only sinking financial institutions begging for federal dollars that have bolstered their Washington lobbying corps. So have the biggest U.S. armaments companies -- "drastically," according to reporter August Cole of the Wall Street Journal. In 2008, he found, Northrop Grumman almost doubled its lobbying budget to $20.6 million (from $10.9 million the previous year); Boeing upped its budget from $10.6 million to $16.6 million in the same period; and Lockheed-Martin, the company that received the most contracts from the Pentagon last year, hiked its lobbying efforts by a whopping 54% in 2008.

If you want to get a taste of what that means, then click here to view an ad for that company's potentially embattled boondoggle, the F-22, the most expensive jet fighter ever built. What you'll discover is not just that it will "protect" 300 million people -- that's you, if you live in the USA -- but that it will also employ 95,000 of us. In other words, the ad's threatening message implies, if the Obama administration cuts this program in bad times, it will throw another 95,000 Americans out on the street. Now that's effective lobbying for you, especially when you consider, as Chalmers Johnson does below, that for any imaginable war the U.S. might fight in the coming decades, the F-22 will be a thoroughly useless plane.

We don't usually think of the Pentagon as a jobs-and-careers scam operation, a kind of Mega-Madoff Ponzi scheme that goes BOOM!, though it is clearly designed for the well-being of defense contractors, military officers, and congressional representatives; nor do we usually consider the "defense" budget as a giant make-work jobs racket, as arms experts Bill Hartung and Christopher Preble recently suggested, but it's never too late.

Chalmers Johnson, author of the already-classic Blowback Trilogy, including most recently Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, makes vividly clear just how little the Pentagon is organized to consider the actual defense needs of the United States. In many ways, it remains a deadly organization of boys with toys that now poses a distinct economic danger to the rest of us. (Check out, as well, a TomDispatch audio interview with Johnson on the Pentagon's economic death spiral by clicking here). Tom

The Looming Crisis at the Pentagon

How Taxpayers Finance Fantasy Wars
By Chalmers Johnson

Like much of the rest of the world, Americans know that the U.S. automotive industry is in the grips of what may be a fatal decline. Unless it receives emergency financing and undergoes significant reform, it is undoubtedly headed for the graveyard in which many American industries are already buried, including those that made televisions and other consumer electronics, many types of scientific and medical equipment, machine tools, textiles, and much earth-moving equipment -- and that's to name only the most obvious candidates. They all lost their competitiveness to newly emerging economies that were able to outpace them in innovative design, price, quality, service, and fuel economy, among other things.

A similar, if far less well known, crisis exists when it comes to the military-industrial complex. That crisis has its roots in the corrupt and deceitful practices that have long characterized the high command of the Armed Forces, civilian executives of the armaments industries, and Congressional opportunists and criminals looking for pork-barrel projects, defense installations for their districts, or even bribes for votes.

Given our economic crisis, the estimated trillion dollars we spend each year on the military and its weaponry is simply unsustainable. Even if present fiscal constraints no longer existed, we would still have misspent too much of our tax revenues on too few, overly expensive, overly complex weapons systems that leave us ill-prepared to defend the country in a real military emergency. We face a double crisis at the Pentagon: we can no longer afford the pretense of being the Earth's sole superpower, and we cannot afford to perpetuate a system in which the military-industrial complex makes its fortune off inferior, poorly designed weapons.

Double Crisis at the Pentagon

This self-destructive system of bloated budgets and purchases of the wrong weapons has persisted for so long thanks to the aura of invincibility surrounding the Armed Forces and a mistaken belief that jobs in the arms industry are as valuable to the economy as jobs in the civilian sector.

Recently, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen began to advocate nothing less than protecting the Pentagon budget by pegging defense spending to a fixed percentage of gross domestic product (GDP, the total value of goods and services produced by the economy). This would, of course, mean simply throwing out serious strategic analysis of what is actually needed for national defense. Mullen wants, instead, to raise the annual defense budget in the worst of times to at least 4% of GDP. Such a policy is clearly designed to deceive the public about ludicrously wasteful spending on weapons systems which has gone on for decades.

It is hard to imagine any sector of the American economy more driven by ideology, delusion, and propaganda than the armed services. Many people believe that our military is the largest, best equipped, and most invincible among the world's armed forces. None of these things is true, but our military is, without a doubt, the most expensive to maintain. Each year, we Americans account for nearly half of all global military spending, an amount larger than the next 45 nations together spend on their militaries annually.

Equally striking, the military seems increasingly ill-adapted to the types of wars that Pentagon strategists agree the United States is most likely to fight in the future, and is, in fact, already fighting in Afghanistan -- insurgencies led by non-state actors. While the Department of Defense produces weaponry meant for such wars, it is also squandering staggering levels of defense appropriations on aircraft, ships, and futuristic weapons systems that fascinate generals and admirals, and are beloved by military contractors mainly because their complexity runs up their cost to astronomical levels.

That most of these will actually prove irrelevant to the world in which we live matters not a whit to their makers or purchasers. Thought of another way, the stressed out American taxpayer, already supporting two disastrous wars and the weapons systems that go with them, is also paying good money for weapons that are meant for fantasy wars, for wars that will only be fought in the battlescapes and war-gaming imaginations of Defense Department "planners."

The Air Force and the Army are still planning as if, in the reasonably near future, they were going to fight an old-fashioned war of attrition against the Soviet Union, which disappeared in 1991; while the Navy, with its eleven large aircraft-carrier battle groups, is, as William S. Lind has written, "still structured to fight the Imperial Japanese Navy." Lind, a prominent theorist of so-called fourth-generation warfare (insurgencies carried out by groups such as al-Qaeda), argues that "the Navy's aircraft-carrier battle groups have cruised on mindlessly for more than half a century, waiting for those Japanese carriers to turn up. They are still cruising today, into, if not beyond, irrelevance… Submarines are today's and tomorrow's capital ships; the ships that most directly determine control of blue waters."

In December 2008, Franklin "Chuck" Spinney, a former high-ranking civilian in the Pentagon's Office of Systems Analysis (set up in 1961 to make independent evaluations of Pentagon policy) and a charter member of the "Fighter Mafia" of the 1980s and 1990s, wrote, "As has been documented for at least twenty years, patterns of repetitive habitual behavior in the Pentagon have created a self-destructive decision-making process. This process has produced a death spiral."

As a result, concluded Spinney, inadequate amounts of wildly overpriced equipment are purchased, "new weapons [that] do not replace old ones on a one for one basis." There is also "continual pressure to reduce combat readiness," a "corrupt accounting system" that "makes it impossible to sort out the priorities," and a readiness to believe that old solutions will work for the current crisis.

Failed Reform Efforts

There's no great mystery about the causes of the deep dysfunction that has long characterized the Pentagon's weapons procurement system. In 2006, Thomas Christie, former head of Operational Test and Evaluation, the most senior official at the Department of Defense for testing weapons and a Pentagon veteran of half a century, detailed more than 35 years of efforts to reform the weapons acquisition system. These included the 1971 Fitzhugh (or Blue Ribbon) Commission, the 1977 Steadman Review, the 1981 Carlucci Acquisition Initiatives, the 1986 Packard Commission, the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act, the 1989 Defense Management Review, the 1990 "Streamlining Review" of the Defense Science Board, the 1993-1994 report of the Acquisition Streamlining Task Force and of the Defense Science Board, the late 1990s Total System Performance Responsibility initiative of the Air Force, and the Capabilities-Based Acquisition approach of the Missile Defense Agency of the first years of this century.

Christie concluded: "After all these years of repeated reform efforts, major defense programs are taking 20 to 30 years to deliver less capability than planned, very often at two to three times the costs and schedules planned." He also added the following observations:

"Launching into major developments without understanding key technical issues is the root cause of major cost and schedule problems… Costs, schedules, and technical risks are often grossly understated at the outset… There are more acquisition programs being pursued than DoD [the Department of Defense] can possibly afford in the long term…

"By the time these problems are acknowledged, the political penalties incurred in enforcing any major restructuring of a program, much less its cancellation, are too painful to bear. Unless someone is willing to stand up and point out that the emperor has no clothes, the U.S. military will continue to hemorrhage taxpayer dollars and critical years while acquiring equipment that falls short of meeting the needs of troops in the field."

The inevitable day of reckoning, long predicted by Pentagon critics, has, I believe, finally arrived. Our problems are those of a very rich country which has become accustomed over the years to defense budgets that are actually jobs programs and also a major source of pork for the use of politicians in their reelection campaigns.

Given the present major recession, whose depths remain unknown, the United States has better things to spend its money on than Nimitz-class aircraft carriers at a price of $6.2 billion each (the cost of the USS George H. W. Bush, launched in January 2009, our tenth such ship) or aircraft that can cruise at a speed of Mach 2 (1,352 miles per hour).

However, don't wait for the Pentagon to sort out such matters. If it has proven one thing over the last decades, it's that it is thoroughly incapable of reforming itself. According to Christie, "Over the past 20 or so years, the DoD and its components have deliberately and systematically decimated their in-house technical capabilities to the point where there is little, if any, competence or initiative left in the various organizations tasked with planning and executing its budget and acquisition programs."

Gunning for the Air Force

President Obama has almost certainly retained Robert M. Gates as Secretary of Defense in part to give himself some bipartisan cover as he tries to come to grips with the bloated defense budget. Gates is also sympathetic to the desire of a few reformers in the Pentagon to dump the Lockheed-Martin F-22 "Raptor" supersonic stealth fighter, a plane designed to meet the Soviet Union's last proposed, but never built, interceptor.

The Air Force's old guard and its allies in Congress are already fighting back aggressively. In June 2008, Gates fired Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne and Air Force Chief of Staff General T. Michael Moseley. Though he was undoubtedly responding to their fervent support for the F-22, his cover explanation was their visible failure to adequately supervise the accounting and control of nuclear weapons.

In 2006, the Air Force had managed to ship to Taiwan four high-tech nose cone fuses for Minutemen ICBM warheads instead of promised helicopter batteries, an error that went blissfully undetected until March 2008. Then, in August 2007, a B-52 bomber carrying six armed nuclear cruise missiles flew across much of the country from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. This was in direct violation of standing orders against such flights over the United States.

As Julian Barnes and Peter Spiegel of the Los Angeles Times noted in June 2008, "Tensions between the Air Force and Gates have been growing for months," mainly over Gates's frustration about the F-22 and his inability to get the Air Force to deploy more pilotless aircraft to the various war zones. They were certainly not improved when Wynne, a former senior vice president of General Dynamics, went out of his way to cross Gates, arguing publicly that "any president would be damn happy to have more F-22s around if we had to get into a fight with China." It catches something of the power of the military-industrial complex that, despite his clear desire on the subject, Gates has not yet found the nerve -- or the political backing -- to pull the plug on the F-22; nor has he even dared to bring up the subject of canceling its more expensive and technically complicated successor, the F-35 "Joint Strike Fighter."

More than 20 years ago, Chuck Spinney wrote a classic account of the now-routine bureaucratic scams practiced within the Pentagon to ensure that Congress will appropriate funds for dishonestly advertised and promoted weapons systems and then prevent their cancellation when the fraud comes to light. In a paper he entitled "Defense Power Games," of which his superiors deeply disapproved, Spinney outlined two crucial Pentagon gambits meant to lock in such weaponry: "front-loading" and "political engineering."

It should be understood at the outset that all actors involved, including the military officers in charge of projects, the members of Congress who use defense appropriations to buy votes within their districts, and the contractors who live off the ensuing lucrative contracts, utilize these two scams. It is also important to understand that neither front-loading nor political engineering is an innocent or morally neutral maneuver. They both involve criminal intent to turn on the spigot of taxpayer money and then to jam it so that it cannot be turned off. They are de rigueur practices of our military-industrial complex.

Front-loading is the practice of appropriating funds for a new weapons project based solely on assurances by its official sponsors about what it can do. This happens long before a prototype has been built or tested, and invariably involves the quoting of unrealistically low unit costs for a sizeable order. Assurances are always given that the system's technical requirements will be simple or have already been met. Low-balling future costs, an intrinsic aspect of front-loading, is an old Defense Department trick, a governmental version of bait-and-switch. (What is introduced as a great bargain regularly turns out to be a grossly expensive lemon.)

Political engineering is the strategy of awarding contracts in as many different Congressional districts as possible. By making voters and Congressional incumbents dependent on military money, the Pentagon's political engineers put pressure on them to continue supporting front-loaded programs even after their true costs become apparent.

Front-loading and political engineering generate several typical features in the weapons that the Pentagon then buys for its arsenal. These continually prove unnecessarily expensive, are prone to break down easily, and are often unworkably complex. They tend to come with inadequate supplies of spare parts and ammunition, since there is not enough money to buy the numbers that are needed. They also force the services to repair older weapons and keep them in service much longer than is normal or wise. (For example, the B-52 bomber, which went into service in 1955, is still on active duty.)

Even though extended training would seem to be a necessary corollary of the complexity of such weapons systems, the excessive cost actually leads to reductions in training time for pilots and others. In the long run, it is because of such expedients and short-term fixes that American casualties may increase and, sooner or later, battles or wars may be lost.

For example, Northrop-Grumman's much touted B-2 stealth bomber has proven to be almost totally worthless. It is too delicate to deploy to harsh climates without special hangars first being built to protect it at ridiculous expense; it cannot fulfill any combat missions that older designs were not fully adequate to perform; and -- at a total cost of $44.75 billion for only 21 bombers -- it wastes resources needed for real combat situations.

Instead, in military terms, the most unexpectedly successful post-Vietnam aircraft has been the Fairchild A-10, unflatteringly nicknamed the "Warthog." It is the only close-support aircraft ever developed by the U.S. Air Force. Its task is to loiter over battlefields and assist ground forces in disposing of obstinate or formidable targets, which is not something that fits comfortably with the Air Force's hot-shot self-image.

Some 715 A-10s were produced and they served with great effectiveness in the first Persian Gulf War. All 715 cumulatively cost less than three B-2 bombers. The A-10 is now out of production because the Air Force establishment favors extremely fast aircraft that fly in straight lines at high altitudes rather than aircraft that are useful in battle. In the Afghan war, the Air Force has regularly inflicted heavy casualties on innocent civilians at least in part because it tries to attack ground targets from the air with inappropriately high-performance equipment.

Using the F-22 to Fight the F-16

The military-industrial complex is today so confident of its skills in gaming the system that it does not hesitate to publicize how many workers in a particular district will lose their jobs if a particular project is cancelled. Threats are also made -- and put into effect -- to withhold political contributions from uncooperative congressional representatives.

As Spinney recalls, "In July 1989, when some members of Congress began to build a coalition aimed at canceling the B-2, Northrop Corporation, the B-2's prime contractor, retaliated by releasing data which had previously been classified showing that tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions in profits were at risk in 46 states and 383 congressional districts." The B-2 was not cancelled.

Southern California's biggest private employers are Boeing Corporation and Northrop-Grumman. They are said to employ more than 58,000 workers in well-paying jobs, a major political obstacle to rationalizing defense expenditures even as recession is making such steps all but unavoidable.

Both front-loading and political engineering are alive and well in 2009. They are, in fact, now at the center of fierce controversies surrounding the extreme age of the present fleet of Air Force fighter aircraft, most of which date from the 1980s. Meanwhile the costs of the two most likely successors to the workhorse F-16 -- the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter -- have run up so high that the government cannot afford to purchase significant numbers of either or them.

The F-16 made its first flight in December 1976, and a total of 4,400 have been built. They have been sold, or given away, all over the world. Planning for the F-22 began in 1986, when the Cold War was still alive (even if on life support), and the Air Force was trumpeting its fears that the other superpower, the USSR, was planning a new, ultra-fast, highly maneuverable fighter.

By the time the prototype F-22 had its roll-out on May 11, 1997, the Cold War was nearly a decade in its grave, and it was perfectly apparent that the Soviet aircraft it was intended to match would never be built. Lockheed Martin, the F-22's prime contractor, naturally argued that we needed it anyway and made plans to sell some 438 airplanes for a total tab of $70 billion. By mid-2008, only 183 F-22s were on order, 122 of which had been delivered. The numbers had been reduced due to cost overruns. The Air Force still wants to buy an additional 198 planes, but Secretary Gates and his leading assistants have balked. No wonder. According to arms experts Bill Hartung and Christopher Preble, at more than $350 million each, the F-22 is "the most expensive fighter plane ever built."

The F-22 has several strikingly expensive characteristics which actually limit its usefulness. It is allegedly a stealth fighter -- that is, an airplane with a shape that reduces its visibility on radar -- but there is no such thing as an airplane completely invisible to all radar. In any case, once it turns on its own fire-control radar, which it must do in combat, it becomes fully visible to an enemy.

The F-22 is able to maneuver at very high altitudes, but this is of limited value since there are no other airplanes in service anywhere that can engage in combat at such heights. It can cruise at twice the speed of sound in level flight without the use of its afterburners (which consume fuel at an accelerated rate), but there are no potential adversaries for which these capabilities are relevant. The plane is obviously blindingly irrelevant to "fourth-generation wars" like that with the Taliban in Afghanistan -- the sorts of conflicts for which American strategists inside the Pentagon and out believe the United States should be preparing.

Actually, the U.S. ought not to be engaged in fourth-generation wars at all, whatever planes are in its fleet. Outside powers normally find such wars unwinnable, as the history of Afghanistan, that "graveyard of empires" going back to Alexander the Great, illustrates so well. Unfortunately, President Obama's approach to the Bush administration's Afghan War remains deeply flawed and will only entrap us in another quagmire, whatever planes we put in the skies over that country.

Nonetheless, the F-22 is still being promoted as the plane to buy almost entirely through front-loading and political engineering. Some apologists for the Air Force also claim that we need the F-22 to face the F-16. Their argument goes this way: We have sold so many F-16s to allies and Third World customers that, if we ever had to fight one of them, that country might prevail using our own equipment against us. Some foreign air forces like Israel's are fully equipped with F-16s and their pilots actually receive more training and monthly practice hours than ours do.

This, however, seems a trivial reason for funding more F-22s. We should instead simply not get involved in wars with former allies we have armed, although this is why Congress prohibited Lockheed from selling the F-22 abroad. Some Pentagon critics contend that the Air Force and prime contractors lobby for arms sales abroad because they artificially generate a demand for new weapons at home that are "better" than the ones we've sold elsewhere.

Thanks to political engineering, the F-22 has parts suppliers in 44 states, and some 25,000 people have well-paying jobs building it. Lockheed Martin and some in the Defense Department have therefore proposed that, if the F-22 is cancelled, it should be replaced by the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, also built by Lockheed Martin.

Most serious observers believe that this would only make a bad situation worse. So far the F-35 shows every sign of being, in Chuck Spinney's words, "a far more costly and more troubled turkey" than the F-22, "even though it has a distinction that even the F-22 cannot claim, namely it is tailored to meet the same threat that… ceased to exist at least three years before the F-35 R&D [research and development] program began in 1994."

The F-35 is considerably more complex than the F-22, meaning that it will undoubtedly be even more expensive to repair and will break down even more easily. Its cost per plane is guaranteed to continue to spiral upwards. The design of the F-22 involves 4 million lines of computer code; the F-35, 19 million lines. The Pentagon sold the F-35 to Congress in 1998 with the promise of a unit cost of $184 million per aircraft. By 2008, that had risen to $355 million per aircraft and the plane was already two years behind schedule.

According to Pierre M. Sprey, one of the original sponsors of the F-16, and Winslow T. Wheeler, a 31-year veteran staff official on Senate defense committees, the F-35 is overweight, underpowered, and "less maneuverable than the appallingly vulnerable F-105 'lead sled' that got wiped out over North Vietnam in the Indochina War." Its makers claim that it will be a bomber as well as a fighter, but it will have a payload of only two 2,000-pound bombs, far less than American fighters of the Vietnam era. Although the Air Force praises its stealth features, it will lose these as soon as it mounts bombs under its wings, which will alter its shape most un-stealthily.

It is a non-starter for close-air-support missions because it is too fast for a pilot to be able to spot tactical targets. It is too delicate and potentially flammable to be able to withstand ground fire. If built, it will end up as the most expensive defense contract in history without offering a serious replacement for any of the fighters or fighter-bombers currently in service.

The Fighter Mafia

Every branch of the American armed forces suffers from similar "defense power games." For example, the new Virginia-class fast-attack submarines are expensive and not needed. As the New York Times wrote editorially, "The program is little more than a public works project to keep the Newport News, Va., and Groton, Conn., naval shipyards in business."

I have, however, concentrated on the Air Force because the collapse of internal controls over acquisitions is most obvious, as well as farthest advanced, there -- and because the Air Force has a history of conflict over going along with politically easy decisions that was recently hailed by Secretary of Defense Gates as deserving of emulation by the other services. The pointed attack Gates launched on bureaucratism was, paradoxically, one of the few optimistic developments in Pentagon politics in recent times.

On April 21, 2008, the Secretary of Defense caused a storm of controversy by giving a speech to the officers of the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. In it, he singled out for praise and emulation an Air Force officer who had inspired many of that service's innovators over the past couple of generations, while being truly despised by an establishment and an old guard who viewed him as an open threat to careerism.

Colonel John Boyd (1927-1997) was a significant military strategist, an exceptionally talented fighter pilot in both the Korean and Vietnamese war eras, and for six years the chief instructor at the Fighter Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas. "Forty-Second Boyd" became a legend in the Air Force because of his standing claim that he could defeat any pilot, foreign or domestic, in simulated air-to-air combat within 40 seconds, a bet he never lost even though he was continuously challenged.

Last April, Gates said, in part:

"As this new era continues to unfold before us, the challenge I pose to you today is to become a forward-thinking officer who helps the Air Force adapt to a constantly changing strategic environment characterized by persistent conflict.

"Let me illustrate by using a historical exemplar: the late Air Force Colonel John Boyd. As a 30-year-old captain, he rewrote the manual for air-to-air combat. Boyd and the reformers he inspired would later go on to design and advocate for the F-16 and the A-10. After retiring, he would develop the principals of maneuver warfare that were credited by a former Marine Corps Commandant [General Charles C. Krulak] and a Secretary of Defense [Dick Cheney] for the lightning victory of the first Gulf War….

"In accomplishing all these things, Boyd -- a brilliant, eccentric, and stubborn character -- had to overcome a large measure of bureaucratic resistance and institutional hostility. He had some advice that he used to pass on to his colleagues and subordinates that is worth sharing with you. Boyd would say, and I quote: 'One day you will take a fork in the road, and you're going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go. If you go one way, you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and get good assignments. Or you can go the other way and you can do something -- something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself. If you decide to do something, you may not get promoted and get good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won't have to compromise yourself. To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That's when you have to make a decision. To be or to do'… We must heed John Boyd's advice by asking if the ways we do business make sense."

Boyd's many accomplishments are documented in Robert Coram's excellent biography, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War. They need not be retold here. It was, however, the spirit of Boyd and "the reformers he inspired," a group within Air Force headquarters who came to be called the "Fighter Mafia," that launched the defense reform movement of the 1980s and 1990s. Their objectives were to stop the acquisition of unnecessarily complex and expensive weapons, cause the Air Force to take seriously the idea of a fourth generation of warfare, end its reliance on a strategy of attrition, and expose to criticism an officer's corps focused on careerist standards.

Unless Secretary Gates succeeds in reviving it, their lingering influence in the Pentagon is just about exhausted today. We await the leadership of the Obama administration to see which way the Air Force and the rest of the American defense establishment evolves.

Despite Gates's praise of Boyd, one should not underestimate the formidable obstacles to Pentagon reform. Over a quarter-century ago, back in 1982, journalist James Fallows outlined the most serious structural obstacle to any genuine reform in his National Book Award-winning study, National Defense. The book was so influential that at least one commentator includes Fallows as a non-Pentagon member of Boyd's "Fighter Mafia."

As Fallows then observed (pp. 64-65):

"The culture of procurement teaches officers that there are two paths to personal survival. One is to bring home the bacon for the service as the manager of a program that gets its full funding. 'Procurement management is more and more the surest path to advancement' within the military, says John Morse, who retired as a Navy captain after twenty-eight years in the service….

"The other path that procurement opens leads outside the military, toward the contracting firms. To know even a handful of professional soldiers above the age of forty and the rank of major is to keep hearing, in the usual catalogue of life changes, that many have resigned from the service and gone to the contractors: to Martin Marietta, Northrop, Lockheed, to the scores of consulting firms and middlemen, whose offices fill the skyscrapers of Rosslyn, Virginia, across the river from the capital. In 1959, Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois reported that 768 retired senior officers (generals, admirals, colonels, and Navy captains) worked for defense contractors. Ten years later Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin said that the number had increased to 2,072."

Almost 30 years after those words were written, the situation has grown far worse. Until we decide (or are forced) to dismantle our empire, sell off most of our 761 military bases (according to official statistics for fiscal year 2008) in other people's countries, and bring our military expenditures into line with those of the rest of the world, we are destined to go bankrupt in the name of national defense. As of this moment, we are well on our way, which is why the Obama administration will face such critical -- and difficult -- decisions when it comes to the Pentagon budget.

Chalmers Johnson is the author of three linked books on the crises of American imperialism and militarism. They are Blowback (2000), The Sorrows of Empire (2004), and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2006). All are available in paperback from Metropolitan Books. To listen to a TomDispatch audio interview with Johnson on the Pentagon's potential economic death spiral, click here.

Copyright 2009 Chalmers Johnson

Prosecute torture crimes and send Karl Rove to jail

What will Obama do?

Obama can go after the criminals who authorized torture.

He can also instruct the Justice Department to go after Karl Rove. Unprotected by Bush, Rove has a good shot at seeing jail time.

But we'll see. So far, Obama has been a good Republicrat.


Take a look at this great video I found called:

"Prosecute torture crimes and send Karl Rove to jail "

You can view it here:

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/547.html

The "I couldn't agree more" department

It’s Not Going to Be OK, By Chris Hedges

Dandelion Salad

By Chris Hedges
ICH
February 02, 2009 “TruthDig

see

The daily bleeding of thousands of jobs will soon turn our economic crisis into a political crisis. The street protests, strikes and riots that have rattled France, Turkey, Greece, Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Iceland will descend on us. It is only a matter of time. And not much time. When things start to go sour, when Barack Obama is exposed as a mortal waving a sword at a tidal wave, the United States could plunge into a long period of precarious social instability.

At no period in American history has our democracy been in such peril or has the possibility of totalitarianism been as real. Our way of life is over. Our profligate consumption is finished. Our children will never have the standard of living we had. And poverty and despair will sweep across the landscape like a plague. This is the bleak future. There is nothing President Obama can do to stop it. It has been decades in the making. It cannot be undone with a trillion or two trillion dollars in bailout money. Our empire is dying. Our economy has collapsed.

How will we cope with our decline? Will we cling to the absurd dreams of a superpower and a glorious tomorrow or will we responsibly face our stark new limitations? Will we heed those who are sober and rational, those who speak of a new simplicity and humility, or will we follow the demagogues and charlatans who rise up out of the slime in moments of crisis to offer fantastic visions? Will we radically transform our system to one that protects the ordinary citizen and fosters the common good, that defies the corporate state, or will we employ the brutality and technology of our internal security and surveillance apparatus to crush all dissent? We won’t have to wait long to find out.

There are a few isolated individuals who saw it coming. The political philosophers Sheldon S. Wolin, John Ralston Saul and Andrew Bacevich, as well as writers such as Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, David Korten and Naomi Klein, along with activists such as Bill McKibben and Ralph Nader, rang the alarm bells. They were largely ignored or ridiculed. Our corporate media and corporate universities proved, when we needed them most, intellectually and morally useless.

Wolin, who taught political philosophy at the University of California in Berkeley and at Princeton, in his book “Democracy Incorporated” uses the phrase inverted totalitarianism to describe our system of power. Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. It purports to cherish democracy, patriotism and the Constitution while cynically manipulating internal levers to subvert and thwart democratic institutions. Political candidates are elected in popular votes by citizens, but they must raise staggering amounts of corporate funds to compete. They are beholden to armies of corporate lobbyists in Washington or state capitals who write the legislation. A corporate media controls nearly everything we read, watch or hear and imposes a bland uniformity of opinion or diverts us with trivia and celebrity gossip. In classical totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi fascism or Soviet communism, economics was subordinate to politics. “Under inverted totalitarianism the reverse is true,” Wolin writes. “Economics dominates politics-and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness.”

I reached Wolin, 86, by phone at his home about 25 miles north of San Francisco. He was a bombardier in the South Pacific during World War II and went to Harvard after the war to get his doctorate. Wolin has written classics such as “Politics and Vision” and “Tocqueville Between Two Worlds.” His newest book is one of the most important and prescient critiques to date of the American political system. He is also the author of a series of remarkable essays on Augustine of Hippo, Richard Hooker, David Hume, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Max Weber, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx and John Dewey. His voice, however, has faded from public awareness because, as he told me, “it is harder and harder for people like me to get a public hearing.” He said that publications, such as The New York Review of Books, which often published his work a couple of decades ago, lost interest in his critiques of American capitalism, his warnings about the subversion of democratic institutions and the emergence of the corporate state. He does not hold out much hope for Obama.

“The basic systems are going to stay in place; they are too powerful to be challenged,” Wolin told me when I asked him about the new Obama administration. “This is shown by the financial bailout. It does not bother with the structure at all. I don’t think Obama can take on the kind of military establishment we have developed. This is not to say that I do not admire him. He is probably the most intelligent president we have had in decades. I think he is well meaning, but he inherits a system of constraints that make it very difficult to take on these major power configurations. I do not think he has the appetite for it in any ideological sense. The corporate structure is not going to be challenged. There has not been a word from him that would suggest an attempt to rethink the American imperium.”

Wolin argues that a failure to dismantle our vast and overextended imperial projects, coupled with the economic collapse, is likely to result in inverted totalitarianism. He said that without “radical and drastic remedies” the response to mounting discontent and social unrest will probably lead to greater state control and repression. There will be, he warned, a huge “expansion of government power.”

“Our political culture has remained unhelpful in fostering a democratic consciousness,” he said. “The political system and its operatives will not be constrained by popular discontent or uprisings.”

Wolin writes that in inverted totalitarianism consumer goods and a comfortable standard of living, along with a vast entertainment industry that provides spectacles and diversions, keep the citizenry politically passive. I asked if the economic collapse and the steady decline in our standard of living might not, in fact, trigger classical totalitarianism. Could widespread frustration and poverty lead the working and middle classes to place their faith in demagogues, especially those from the Christian right?

“I think that’s perfectly possible,” he answered. “That was the experience of the 1930s. There wasn’t just FDR. There was Huey Long and Father Coughlin. There were even more extreme movements including the Klan. The extent to which those forces can be fed by the downturn and bleakness is a very real danger. It could become classical totalitarianism.”

He said the widespread political passivity is dangerous. It is often exploited by demagogues who pose as saviors and offer dreams of glory and salvation. He warned that “the apoliticalness, even anti-politicalness, will be very powerful elements in taking us towards a radically dictatorial direction. It testifies to how thin the commitment to democracy is in the present circumstances. Democracy is not ascendant. It is not dominant. It is beleaguered. The extent to which young people have been drawn away from public concerns and given this extraordinary range of diversions makes it very likely they could then rally to a demagogue.”

Wolin lamented that the corporate state has successfully blocked any real debate about alternative forms of power. Corporations determine who gets heard and who does not, he said. And those who critique corporate power are given no place in the national dialogue.

“In the 1930s there were all kinds of alternative understandings, from socialism to more extensive governmental involvement,” he said. “There was a range of different approaches. But what I am struck by now is the narrow range within which palliatives are being modeled. We are supposed to work with the financial system. So the people who helped create this system are put in charge of the solution. There has to be some major effort to think outside the box.”

“The puzzle to me is the lack of social unrest,” Wolin said when I asked why we have not yet seen rioting or protests. He said he worried that popular protests will be dismissed and ignored by the corporate media. This, he said, is what happened when tens of thousands protested the war in Iraq. This will permit the state to ruthlessly suppress local protests, as happened during the Democratic and Republic conventions. Anti-war protests in the 1960s gained momentum from their ability to spread across the country, he noted. This, he said, may not happen this time. “The ways they can isolate protests and prevent it from [becoming] a contagion are formidable,” he said.

“My greatest fear is that the Obama administration will achieve relatively little in terms of structural change,” he added. “They may at best keep the system going. But there is a growing pessimism. Every day we hear how much longer the recession will continue. They are already talking about beyond next year. The economic difficulties are more profound than we had guessed and because of globalization more difficult to deal with. I wish the political establishment, the parties and leadership, would become more aware of the depths of the problem. They can’t keep throwing money at this. They have to begin structural changes that involve a very different approach from a market economy. I don’t think this will happen.”

“I keep asking why and how and when this country became so conservative,” he went on. “This country once prided itself on its experimentation and flexibility. It has become rigid. It is probably the most conservative of all the advanced countries.”

The American left, he said, has crumbled. It sold out to a bankrupt Democratic Party, abandoned the working class and has no ability to organize. Unions are a spent force. The universities are mills for corporate employees. The press churns out info-entertainment or fatuous pundits. The left, he said, no longer has the capacity to be a counterweight to the corporate state. He said that if an extreme right gains momentum there will probably be very little organized resistance.

“The left is amorphous,” he said. “I despair over the left. Left parties may be small in number in Europe but they are a coherent organization that keeps going. Here, except for Nader’s efforts, we don’t have that. We have a few voices here, a magazine there, and that’s about it. It goes nowhere.”

© 2009 TruthDig.com

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Obama’s New Bank Giveaway, by Michael Hudson

Nests In Hell, by Rand Clifford

The Age Of Liberal Fascism, by Rocket Kirchner

Ralph Nader Posts & Videos

The Economy Sucks and or Collapse 2

Leading Human Rights Groups Request Full Access To Guantánamo Prison
(1/30/2009)


Outside Review Needed To Ensure Transparency And Full Compliance With The Law

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org

NEW YORK – Four leading human rights and civil liberties organizations asked President Obama to grant them full access to the Guantánamo Bay detention center so that they can review the conditions of confinement and make recommendations for revising U.S. detention policies. The American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, Human Rights First and Human Rights Watch have had permission to observe the military commissions at Guantánamo since August 2004, but have thus far only been offered a guided tour of the detention camp without access to detainees.

On January 22, President Obama issued an executive order requiring a review of detention conditions at Guantánamo to ensure compliance with the Geneva Conventions and all other applicable laws. According to today's letter, also allowing the groups full access to the prison "will be welcomed as another break from the prior administration's policies on detainees, and set an example that will help advance human rights worldwide."

The full text of the letter is as follows and available online at: www.aclu.org/safefree/detention/38600res20090130.html


January 30, 2009

Dear President Obama,

As heads of four prominent civil liberties and human rights organizations, we greatly appreciate your decisive action in restoring U.S. commitment to the rule of law and respect for human rights by issuing executive orders to close Guantánamo, suspend the military commissions, prohibit CIA prisons, and enforce the ban on torture. We eagerly await your continued actions to renew American justice.

Today, we write to request full access to the Guantánamo Bay detention camps so that we may independently review and report on the conditions of confinement there and make concrete recommendations for change. In August 2004, our four organizations were granted observer status to observe the military commissions, but for years the Bush administration has denied our organizations' repeated requests for full access to the detention camps. We have only been offered the VIP tour to observe a model Guantánamo detention camp, which was far from adequate access.

Section 6 of your January 22, 2009 executive order, "Review and Disposition of Individuals Detained at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base and Closure of Detention Facilities," addresses the issue of conditions of confinement and orders Secretary of Defense Gates to "immediately undertake a review of the conditions of detention at Guantánamo to ensure full compliance with [Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions]."

Our presence can assist this effort. We will provide an outside assessment of current conditions and, as improvements are made, credibly, independently, and publicly report them to the world. Such access and reporting would further the objectives of the current Department of Defense (DoD) review and amplify the international benefits of improving conditions at the camps. Our presence itself will be welcomed as another break from the prior administration's policies on detainees, and set an example of transparency that will help advance human rights worldwide.

We ask you to reconsider our organizations' request for full access to the Guantánamo Bay detention camps and honor it in light of the current DoD review. According to your executive order, the DoD review "shall be completed within 30 days and any necessary corrections shall be implemented immediately thereafter." We ask that, if granted full access, our independent review should take place within the next few weeks, to allow time for us to finalize our report and recommendations before the completion of the DoD's review.

The Bush administration's past policy of secrecy regarding detention conditions at Guantánamo makes it critically important for your administration to open Guantánamo to independent review as part of a new government policy of transparency. Full and independent review of conditions of confinement by human rights organizations is urgently needed because of the secrecy regarding detention conditions at Guantánamo Bay as a whole. The ACLU and other organizations continue to struggle for production of materials requested pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) regarding Guantánamo Bay. The Bush administration denied full access to several UN independent human rights experts who insisted on confidential interviews with the detainees as dictated by UN protocol for such visits.

While the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has had access to Guantánamo detainees, its access has been restricted in the past and the extent of its current access is unclear to us. A leaked version of the Camp Delta Standard Operation Procedures (SOP) from March 2003 revealed that the ICRC was denied access to various groups of detainees at the camp, and a leaked version of the SOP manual from 2004 revealed continued restrictions on ICRC access.

Regardless of the ICRC's present level of access, its role is distinct from that of our organizations. While the ICRC plays an important role in visiting prisoners under the Geneva Conventions, the ICRC maintains full confidentiality in order to preserve the exclusively humanitarian nature of its work. The role of our human rights organizations in reviewing and reporting on conditions at Guantánamo would be distinct and equally important.

Granting human rights organizations full and unfettered access to a detention facility where torture and abuse have occurred will send a powerful message to the world regarding your administration's commitment to transparency and openness, consistent with your January 21, 2009 FOIA directive, which noted, "A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency." Opening Guantánamo to full review by human rights organizations would help to restore American legitimacy and standing in the world, and place pressure on other governments to open their detention centers for independent inspections.

Furthermore, independent review of conditions of confinement by human rights organizations will assist your administration in revising its policies and improving detention conditions in the camps. If granted full access, our independent human rights delegation would include experts on detention conditions and medical professionals, and would offer your administration concrete recommendations on how to improve conditions of confinement in order to comply with relevant national and international standards and guidelines on persons in detention.

We hope that you will act quickly on this matter in the interest of transparency and the protection of human rights.


Sincerely,


Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union

Larry Cox, Executive Director, Amnesty International USA

Elisa Massimino, Executive Director, Human Rights First

Kenneth Roth, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch


cc:
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates
White House Counsel Gregory B. Craig


Valentines for Palestine (Action Alert)

Dandelion Salad

on current

Please donate funds at http://www.valentinesforpalestine.org, and photos and poems via ValentinesforPalestine@gmail.com. Thank you. ~ DS

ManilaRyceTLM

Visit our official website:
http://www.valentinesforpalestine.org

The show in downtown LA will be held at the Lost Souls Café on Thursday February 12th
http://lostsouls.com/

After the LA show, pieces will be permanently displayed in the Arts & Crafts Village in Gaza City
http://www.gazavillage.org/

For info on how to submit a work to be auctioned off for adoption, email: ValentinesforPalestine@gmail.com

Many thanks to Bambu for giving us permission to use his song “When Will The Time Come”. Visit his site:
http://www.bambu.la

more about “Valentines for Palestine“, posted with vodpod

see

Valentines For Palestine

A Gaza story by WDA (poem)

Israel-Palestine-Gaza-Occupation

I've had some very very bad days recently. Then I remember; I am at least not in prision as is Leonard Pelltier.

Sometimes I wonder if he knows why I live in Canada; I opened my big mouth about my disgust for his imprisonment to Senator Paul Wellstone back in 1993 and so my family got SET UP to be thrown out under a quota system under the War on Drugs.

And do NOT doubt it: I really was a founding member of AIM.


mergency Protest for Leonard Peltier in San Francisco January 24, 2009

Filed under: Leonard Peltier — ourfreedom @ 10:22 pm

Emergency Protest for Leonard Peltier in San Francisco

Saturday Jan 24th, 2009
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/01/24/18565416.php

On short notice the American Indian community and their supporters came out in the rain today in San Francisco to protest this attack on Leonard Peltier. Family members of Leonard feel this cowardly assault was orchestrated by the FBI to prejudice his next parole hearing. Today’s demonstration began at the new federal building and then marched to the Phillp Burton Federal Building. Tony Gonzalez, Director of AIM West, led a delegation inside to house leader Nancy Pelosi’s office to demand a congressional hearing into the attack on Leonard and the policies of all federal prisons. To keep up to date on these developments contact AIM-West at 415-557-1492 or gazelbe [at] yahoo.com

aimwest.info

———————————————————————————————-

“My brother Leonard was severely beaten upon his arrival at the Canaan Federal Penitentiary. When he went into population after his transfer, some inmates assaulted him.”

- Betty Ann Peltier-Solano, Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee, January 20, 2009

Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee

Incredible read!! Newest BuZh-Cheney OUTRAGE !!

From today's Think Progress !!


Loyal Bushies Create Bush-Cheney Alumni Association Website To ‘Help Build A Lasting Legacy’»

Even before President Bush left office, he and his loyal Bushies were hard at work shaping his legacy, comparing him to Abraham Lincoln and claiming his failed policies were smashing successes. Work on his presidential library has also been increasing in recent months.

The newest installment of “George Bush is a wonderful person” is now online: the Bush-Cheney Alumni Association website. All Bush employees, appointees, interns, campaign donors, and volunteers are eligible to join. The site’s mission is to be “a forum in which alumni can stay connected and help build a lasting legacy for President George W. Bush and the Bush-Cheney Administration.”

The site contains a considerable amount of hagiography, with the highlighted “Bush Record Documents” compilations called:

– The Bush Record: Praise For President’s Accomplishments

– The Bush Record: More Praise For President’s Accomplishments

– The Bush Record: Praise Continues For President’s Accomplishments

Many of the articles were written by conservative columnists or former Bush aides. A look at the site:

bushalum.gif

These loyal Bushies have also set up several Facebook pages, including “Bush Cheney Alumni,” “Bush-Cheney Administration Alumni,” “White House Advance - Bush/Cheney 2001-2009,” and “Thank You President Bush.” Users on those sites have left comments such as: “Is it too soon to miss them?” and “Got a kiss from W yesterday at his farewell ceremony at Andrews :o(.”


- This blog will now have a MAJOR change in focus -

There are several points that need to be made.


(1) Those who induced me to attend the war crimes conference in Andover and helped me put this blog together have not been very supportive of me financially nor emotionally. This has been very disappointing to me. So has some of the underhanded behaviour that some people here in Toronto who disrupted my efforts for social change. I sold thousands of copies of Vincent Bugliosi's book and never even received a single dime or a copy of the book! I had wished to bring some of the people who are concerned about war crimes to Toronto to offset the financial losses my son and I incurred in the course of our blogging in the past two years. I would certainly appreciate any financial support any of those who are still dropping by to check out this blog would provide!, as noted below! I truly believe we deserved better treatment than this as I have no family to depend on at all. I have made effort to contact them over the past months and expected to meet them in Andover. Because of my chronically financial depression I have no hearing aids, bad eyewear, and must watch every penny I spend !! I overspent promoting the Town Hall that NEVER happened, thanx to the head of the Native American Centre here in Toronto. I did not get a job as I thought, really and truly, that I just might be actually on the International Criminal Court as alleged to me in private comments. But there is no evidence to support this notion at all.

(2) It is imperative that HONEST politicians get elected now at the local level as the Second Great Depression sets in - due to military keynesianISM - which means that we look at how real solutions for people have been ignored in favour of having a SECURITY (hahahhaha - Read: fascistic) society set in. Have you noticed it yourself?

(3) I have been the victim of a crack addict for 23 months because I am deaf and could not hear her enter my apartment repeatedly. She actually assaulted me December 1st. The cops came in and threatened me with violence if I did not quit calling the police department !! My son is repeatedly being arrested, but the dealer, the fence for stolen goods and the crack addict and her illegally occupying roommate NEVER get arrested !! What is the motive of the police department in all this ? Who knows? It is now February 3rd and she is STILL not arrested. This loss of property has turned my apartment into a real dump and is a horrible place to live. I had a housing tribunal on January 6th that refused to compensate me for my misery that was adjourned after they tried to arrest ME.

(4) My son was illegally incarcerated on a Form 30 (involuntary commission) and is even now being held in a mental asylum (5 months later !!) Meanwhile, the mental health establishment continues to harass me.

(5) I have applied to be a recipient of an award to be in something in Toronto called the Dream Team or Voices in the Street, and I have high hopes I will be selected for this incredible project.

and HENCE:

I will then run for Toronto City Council since the City Councillor should make certain that the police and the city public housing authority provides safe spaces for disabled seniors to live in !!

To effect this election, I have been melodramatic.

I read people's palms and tell people to remember my name

VIRGINIA

I was given the gift of palm reading by a Yogananda disciple in London, UK many, many years ago and am polishing that gift.

I give away angel cards, dog biscuits and chocolates to those I hope will remember my name.

My platform will consist of several points:

1. The need to rebuild all city housing with appropriate building materials - the idea I have been trying to sell for over a year using the Web Urbanist idea of using shipping crate containers and solar heating. I will also push the idea of gardens on roof tops of these buildings.

2. An overhaul of social service agencies so that the real needs of the unemployed get addressed. This includes new soup kitchens, more services for women and children, the disabled, the lonely.

3. A redress of the wrongs done those who suffer from a new Mental Health Act that puts more distress on families. Also, more focus on nutrition and orthomolecular therapies.

4. More education in schools about the need for Democracy in Action so that students learn/have access on DVD to the Canadian Charter, the US Constitution, tbe Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other important documents that are often overlooked.

And of course, putting focus on the need for people to take part in ensuring that NO MORE WAR CRIMES are committed.

Right now I have a need to write a book about all my experiences, which I intend to publish on this blog, using money I got by taking taxi cabs while my electricity was illegally shut off.
I had earlier written a book called Earthlings Anonymous which was thrown away. I had hoped that my anonymous war crimes commentator would either help me assemble a new edition of this book with experts on depleted uranium, ecological architure, indigenous rights, and many other issues, but support was not forthcoming. Neither was further information on Infragard. I wish to high heaven I had a writer's grant, but I don't.

The EVIL toastmaster person, Reginald Cottle, made sure I have no computer, so I must use computer spaces elsewhere than my home.

Trust that I shall endeavor to do the best that I can. I did not have enough money to enrol in an educational program and get a student grant to cover my expenses better !! And although I have several years of back US taxes owing me, I have yet to find someone who will help me collect them.

This is 2009; this is supposed to be my year !! I sincerely hope so.

But right now I am suffering extreme exhaustion and panic attacks;
I am so post-traumatically stressed out I have real burn out.


WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP

If you are reading this; you can contact me by email to help me out financially and emotionally. If you know of someone who is a good speaker on any of the above platform items who I could publicize and get to speak publically for a fee, please let me know. I can arrange good venues for appearances !!

ladybroadoak@gmail.com

If you leave a number or an email address I will respond as promptly as I am able.

I need funding as my appeal to have my ex-husband censored by the bar in Minnesota of his unethical behaviour towards me in my refugee case was REFUSED !! Unfortunately, there goes $177,000 !! My exhusband and Senator Paul Wellstone colluded to get me thrown out back in 1994 in the State of Minnesota. (sigh) and I stood up for Leonard Pelletier to my demise.

Also, please PRAY that I get out of that horrid apartment as quickly as possible. It REALLY, REALLY sucks and I need companionship which is sorely lacking in the present circumstance and has been all along. I am a disabled, empty nester who needs daily contact with other other people !!















Leila Khaled with Fight Back! editor Mick Kelly

This is a quick little audio interview with Leila Khaled, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The interview was conducted by Mick Kelly, editor of Fight Back!

(Fight Back! is the newspaper of one of the two Freedom Road Socialist Organizations that emerged from the FRSO split in 1999.)

This audio interview and the associated article in Fighting Back! can be viewed here.

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