Talk by Colonel (Ret.) Ann Wright co-author of the book "Dissent: Voices of Conscience - Government Insiders Speak Out Against the War in Iraq" given April 18, 2008 at University Temple United Methodist Church in Seattle.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Inside Story-Israel seeks peace with Syria
We examine possibilities of Syria and Israel preparing to resume peace talks.
TV Networks Silenced Anti-War Voices
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By Jeff Cohen
By Jeff Cohen
In the fall of 2002, week after week, I argued vigorously against invading Iraq in debates televised on MSNBC. I used every possible argument that might sway mainstream viewers – no real threat, cost, instability. But as the war neared, my debates were terminated.
In my 2006 book Cable News Confidential, I explained why I lost my airtime:
“There was no room for me after MSNBC launched Countdown: Iraq – a daily one-hour show that seemed more keen on glamorizing a potential war than scrutinizing or debating it. Countdown: Iraq featured retired colonels and generals, sometimes resembling boys with war toys as they used props, maps and glitzy graphics to spin invasion scenarios.
“They reminded me of pumped-up ex-football players doing pre-game analysis and diagramming plays. It was excruciating to be sidelined at MSNBC, watching so many non-debates in which myth and misinformation were served up unchallenged.”
It was bad enough to be silenced. Much worse to see that these ex-generals – many working for military corporations – were never in debates, nor asked a tough question by an anchor. (I wasn’t allowed on MSNBC unless balanced by at least one truculent right-winger.)
Except for the brazenness and scope of the Pentagon spin program, I wasn’t shocked by the recent New York Times report exposing how the Pentagon junketed and coached the retired military brass into being “message-force multipliers” and “surrogates” for Donald Rumsfeld’s lethal propaganda.
The biggest villain here is not Rumsfeld nor the Pentagon. It’s the TV networks. In the land of the First Amendment, it was their choice to shut down debate and journalism.
No government agency forced MSNBC to repeatedly feature the hawkish generals unopposed. Or fire Phil Donahue. Or smear weapons expert Scott Ritter. Or blacklist former attorney general Ramsey Clark.
It was top NBC/MSNBC execs, not the Feds, who imposed a quota system on the Donahue staff requiring two pro-war guests if we booked one anti-war advocate – affirmative action for hawks.
I’m all for a Congressional investigation into the Pentagon’s Iraq propaganda operation – which included an active-duty general exhorting ex-military-turned-paid-pundits that “the strategic target remains our population.”
Network Villains
But I’m also for keeping the focus and onus on CNN, FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS, even NPR – who were partners in the Pentagon’s mission of “information dominance.”
And for us to see that American TV news remains so corrupt today that it has hardly mentioned the Times story on the Pentagon’s pundits, which was based on 8,000 pages of internal Pentagon documents acquired by a successful Times lawsuit.
It’s important to remember that at the same time corporate TV outlets voluntarily abandoned journalistic ethics in the run-up to Iraq, independent media boomed in audience by making totally different journalistic choices.
Programs like Democracy Now! featured genuine experts on Iraq who – what a shock! – got the facts right. Independent blogs and Web sites, propelled by war skepticism, began to soar.
As for the major TV networks, they were not hoodwinked by a Pentagon propaganda scheme. They were willingly complicit, and have been for decades.
As FAIR’s director, I began questioning top news executives years ago about their over-reliance on non-debate segments featuring former military brass. After the 1991 Gulf war, CNN and other networks realized that their use of ex-generals had helped the Pentagon dazzle and disinform the public about the conduct of the war.
CNN actually had me debate the issue of ex-military on TV with a retired U.S. Army colonel. Military analysts aren’t used to debates, and this one got heated:
Cohen: “You would never dream of covering the environment by bringing on expert after expert after expert who had all retired from environmental organizations after 20 or 30 years and were still loyal to those groups. You would never discuss the workplace or workers by bringing on expert after expert after expert who’d been in the labor movement and retired in good standing after 30 years. . . . When it comes to war and foreign policy, you bring on all the retired generals, retired secretaries of state.”
The Colonel (irritably): “What do you want, a tax auditor to come in and talk about military strategy?”
Cohen: “You hit it on the nail, Colonel. What you need besides the generals and the admirals who can talk about how missiles and bombs are dispatched, you need other experts. You need experts in human rights, you need medical experts, you need relief experts who know what it’s like to talk about bombs falling on people.”
Before the debate ended, I expressed my doubts that corporate media would ever quit their addiction to unreliable military sources:
“There’s this ritual, it’s a familiar pattern, a routine, where mainstream journalists, after the last war or intervention, say, ‘Boy, we got manipulated. We were taken. But next time, we’re going to be more skeptical.’ And then when the next time comes, it’s the same reporters interviewing the same experts, who buy the distortions from the Pentagon.”
Experts, Not Advocates?
A few years later, during the brutal U.S.-NATO bombing of Serbia, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! interviewed CNN vice-president and anchor Frank Sesno:
Goodman: “If you support the practice of putting ex-military men, generals, on the payroll to share their opinion during a time of war, would you also support putting peace activists on the payroll to give a different opinion in times of war, to be sitting there with the military generals, talking about why they feel that war is not appropriate?”
Sesno: “We bring the generals in because of their expertise in a particular area. We call them analysts. We don’t bring them in as advocates.”
It’s clear: War experts are neutral analysts; peace experts are advocates. Even when the Pentagon helps select and prep the network’s military analysts.
Shortly after the Iraq invasion, CNN’s news chief Eason Jordan acknowledged on-air that he’d run the names of potential analysts by the Pentagon: “We got a big thumbs-up on all of them. That was important.”
Of all the excruciating moments for me – after having been terminated by MSNBC along with Phil Donahue and others – the worst was watching retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, NBC’s top military analyst, repeatedly blustering for war on Iraq.
Undisclosed to viewers, the general was a member (along with Lieberman, McCain, Kristol and Perle) of the pro-invasion “Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.”
A leading figure in the Pentagon’s pundit corps, no one spewed more nonsense in such an authoritative voice than McCaffrey – for example, on the top-notch advanced planning for securing Iraq:
“I just got an update briefing from Secretary Rumsfeld and his team on what’s the aftermath of the fighting. And I was astonished at the complexity and dedication with which they’ve gone about thinking through this.”
After the invasion began, McCaffrey crowed on MSNBC: “Thank God for the Abrams tank and the Bradley fighting vehicle.”
No federal agency forced NBC and MSNBC to put McCaffrey on the air unopposed. No federal agency prevented those networks from telling viewers that the general sat on the boards of several military contactors, including one that made millions for doing God’s work on the Abrams and Bradley.
Genuine separation of press and state is one reason growing numbers of Americans are choosing independent media over corporate media.
And independent media don’t run embarrassing promos of the kind NBC was proudly airing in 2003:
“Showdown Iraq, and only NBC News has the experts. Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, allied commander during the Gulf War. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, he was the most decorated four-star general in the Army. Gen. Wayne Downing, former special operations commander and White House advisor. Ambassador Richard Butler and former UN weapons inspector David Kay. Nobody has seen Iraq like they have. The experts. The best information from America’s most watched news organization, NBC News?"
Cash Before Chemo: Hospitals Get Tough
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By Barbara Martinez
Bad debts prompt change in billing; $45,000 to come in.
By Barbara Martinez
Bad debts prompt change in billing; $45,000 to come in.
Lake Jackson, Texas - When Lisa Kelly learned she had leukemia in late 2006, her doctor advised her to seek urgent care at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. But the nonprofit hospital refused to accept Mrs. Kelly’s limited insurance. It asked for $105,000 in cash before it would admit her.
Sitting in the hospital’s business office, Mrs. Kelly says she told M.D. Anderson’s representatives that she had some money to pay for treatment, but couldn’t get all the cash they asked for that day. "Are they going to send me home?" she recalls thinking. "Am I going to die?"
A growing trend in the hospital industry means cancer patients like Lisa Kelly are being asked to pay cash upfront before receiving treatment. Even ill patients without enough funds are being turned away.
Hospitals are adopting a policy to improve their finances: making medical care contingent on upfront payments. Typically, hospitals have billed people after they receive care. But now, pointing to their burgeoning bad-debt and charity-care costs, hospitals are asking patients for money before they get treated.
Hospitals say they have turned to the practice because of a spike in patients who don’t pay their bills. Uncompensated care cost the hospital industry $31.2 billion in 2006, up 44% from $21.6 billion in 2000, according to the American Hospital Association.
The bad debt is driven by a larger number of Americans who are uninsured or who don’t have enough insurance to cover medical costs if catastrophe strikes. Even among those with adequate insurance, deductibles and co-payments are growing so big that insured patients also have trouble paying hospitals.
Letting bad debt balloon unchecked would threaten hospitals’ finances and their ability to provide care, says Richard Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association. Hospitals would rather discuss costs with patients upfront, he says. "After, when it’s an ugly surprise or becomes contentious, it doesn’t work for anybody."
M.D. Anderson says it went to a new upfront-collection system for initial visits in 2005 after its unpaid patient bills jumped by $18 million to $52 million that year. The hospital said its increasing bad-debt load threatened its mission to cure cancer, a goal on which it spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
The change had the desired effect: The hospital’s bad debt fell to $33 million the following year.
Asking patients to pay after they’ve received treatment is "like asking someone to pay for the car after they’ve driven off the lot," says John Tietjen, vice president for patient financial services at M.D. Anderson. "The time that the patient is most receptive is before the care is delivered."
M.D. Anderson says it provides assistance or free care to poor patients who can’t afford treatment. It says it acted appropriately in Mrs. Kelly’s case because she wasn’t indigent, but underinsured. The hospital says it wouldn’t accept her insurance because the payout, a maximum of $37,000 a year, would be less than 30% of the estimated costs of her care.
Tenet Healthcare and HCA, two big, for-profit hospital chains, say they have also been asking patients for upfront payments before admitting them. While the practice has received little notice, some patient advocates and health-care experts find it harder to justify at nonprofit hospitals, given their benevolent mission and improving financial fortunes.
In the Black
An Ohio State University study found net income per bed nearly tripled at nonprofit hospitals to $146,273 in 2005 from $50,669 in 2000. According to the American Hospital Directory, 77% of nonprofit hospitals are in the black, compared with 61% of for-profit hospitals. Nonprofit hospitals are exempt from taxes and are supposed to channel the income they generate back into their operations. Many have used their growing surpluses to reward their executives with rich pay packages, build new wings and accumulate large cash reserves.
M.D. Anderson, which is part of the University of Texas, is a nonprofit institution exempt from taxes. In 2007, it recorded net income of $310 million, bringing its cash, investments and endowment to nearly $1.9 billion.
"When you have that much money in the till and that much profit, it’s kind of hard to say no" to sick patients by asking for money upfront, says Uwe Reinhardt, a health-care economist at Princeton University, who thinks all hospitals should pay taxes. Nonprofit organizations "shouldn’t behave this way," he says.
It isn’t clear how many of the nation’s 2,033 nonprofit hospitals require upfront payments. A voluntary 2006 survey by the Internal Revenue Service found 14% of 481 nonprofit hospitals required patients to pay or make an arrangement to pay before being admitted. It was the first time the agency asked that question.
Nataline Sarkisyan, a 17-year-old cancer patient who died in December waiting for a liver transplant, drew national attention when former presidential candidate John Edwards lambasted her health insurer for refusing to pay for the operation. But what went largely unnoticed is that Ms. Sarkisyan’s hospital, UCLA Medical Center, a nonprofit hospital that is part of the University of California system, refused to do the procedure after the insurance denial unless the family paid it $75,000 upfront, according to the family’s lawyer, Tamar Arminak.
The family got that money together, but then the hospital demanded $300,000 to cover costs of caring for Nataline after surgery, Ms. Arminak says.
UCLA says it can’t comment on the case because the family hasn’t given its consent. A spokeswoman says UCLA doesn’t have a specific policy regarding upfront payments, but works with patients on a case-by-case basis.
Federal law requires hospitals to treat emergencies, such as heart attacks or injuries from accidents. But the law doesn’t cover conditions that aren’t immediately life-threatening.
At the American Cancer Society, which runs call centers to help patients navigate financial problems, more people are saying they’re being asked for large upfront payments by hospitals that they can’t afford. "My greatest concern is that there are substantial numbers of people who need cancer care" who don’t get it, "usually for financial reasons," says Otis Brawley, chief medical officer.
Mrs. Kelly’s ordeal began in 2006, when she started bruising easily and was often tired. Her husband, Sam, nagged her to see a doctor.
A specialist in Lake Jackson, a town 50 miles from Houston, diagnosed Mrs. Kelly with acute leukemia, a cancer of the blood that can quickly turn fatal. The small cancer center in Lake Jackson refers acute leukemia patients to M.D. Anderson.
When Mrs. Kelly called M.D. Anderson to make an appointment, the hospital told her it wouldn’t accept her insurance, a type called limited-benefit.
"When an insurer is going to pay the small amounts, we don’t feel financially able to assume the risk," says M.D. Anderson’s Mr. Tietjen.
An estimated one million Americans have limited-benefit plans. Usually less expensive than traditional plans, such insurance is popular among people like Mrs. Kelly who don’t have health insurance through an employer.
Mrs. Kelly, 52, signed up for AARP’s Medical Advantage plan, underwritten by UnitedHealth Group Inc., three years ago after she quit her job as a school-bus driver to help care for her mother. Her husband was retired after a career as a heavy-equipment operator. She says that at the time, she hardly ever went to the doctor. "I just thought I needed some kind of insurance policy because you never know what’s going to happen," says Mrs. Kelly. She paid premiums of $185 a month.
A spokeswoman for UnitedHealth, one of the country’s largest marketers of limited-benefit plans, says the plan is "meant to be a bridge or a gap filler." She says UnitedHealth has reimbursed Mrs. Kelly $38,478.36 for her medical costs. Because the hospital wouldn’t accept her insurance, Mrs. Kelly paid bills herself, and submitted them to her insurer to get reimbursed.
M.D. Anderson viewed Mrs. Kelly as uninsured and told her she could get an appointment only if she brought a certified check for $45,000. The Kellys live comfortably, but didn’t have that kind of cash on hand. They own an apartment building and a rental house that generate about $11,000 a month before taxes and maintenance costs. They also earn interest income of about $35,000 a year from two retirement accounts funded by inheritances left by Mrs. Kelly’s mother and Mr. Kelly’s father.
Mr. Kelly arranged to borrow the money from his father’s trust, which was in probate proceedings. Mrs. Kelly says she told the hospital she had money for treatment, but didn’t realize how high her medical costs would get.
The Kellys arrived at M.D. Anderson with a check for $45,000 on Dec. 6, 2006. After having blood drawn and a bone-marrow biopsy, the hospital oncologist wanted to admit Mrs. Kelly right away.
But the hospital demanded an additional $60,000 on the spot. It told her the $45,000 had paid for the lab tests, and it needed the additional cash as a down payment for her actual treatment.
In the hospital business office, Mrs. Kelly says she was crying, exhausted and confused.
The hospital eventually lowered its demand to $30,000. Mr. Kelly lost his cool. "What part don’t you understand?" he recalls saying. "We don’t have any more money today. Are you going to admit her or not?" The hospital says it was trying to work with Mrs. Kelly, to find an amount she could pay.
Mrs. Kelly was granted an "override" and admitted at 7 p.m.
Appointment "Blocked"
After eight days, she emerged from the hospital. Chemotherapy would continue for more than a year, as would requests for upfront payments. At times, she arrived at the hospital and learned her appointment was "blocked." That meant she needed to go to the business office first and make a payment.
One day, Mrs. Kelly says, nurses wouldn’t change the chemotherapy bag in her pump until her husband made a new payment. She says she sat for an hour hooked up to a pump that beeped that it was out of medicine, until he returned with proof of payment.
A hospital spokesperson says "it is very difficult to imagine that a nursing staff would allow a patient to sit with a beeping pump until a receipt is presented." The hospital regrets if patients are inconvenienced by blocked appointments, she says, but it "is a necessary process to keep patients informed of their mounting bills and to continue dialog about financial obligations." She says appointments aren’t blocked for patients who require urgent care.
Once, Mrs. Kelly says she was on an exam table awaiting her doctor, when he walked in with a representative from the business office. After arguing about money, she says the representative suggested moving her to another facility.
But the cancer center in Lake Jackson wouldn’t take her back because it didn’t have a blood bank or an infectious-disease specialist. "It risks a person’s life by doing that [type of chemotherapy] at a small institution," says Emerardo Falcon Jr., of the Brazosport Cancer Center in Lake Jackson.
Ron Walters, an M.D. Anderson physician who gets involved in financial decisions about patients, says Mrs. Kelly’s subsequent chemotherapy could have been handled locally. He says he is sorry if she was offended that the payment representative accompanied the doctor into the exam room, but it was an example of "a coordinated teamwork approach."
On TV one night, Mrs. Kelly saw a news segment about people who try to get patients’ bills reduced. She contacted Holly Wallack, who is part of a group that works on contingency to reduce patients’ bills; she keeps one-third of what she saves clients.
Ms. Wallack began firing off complaints to M.D. Anderson. She said Mrs. Kelly had been billed more than $360 for blood tests that most insurers pay $20 or less for, and up to $120 for saline pouches that cost less than $2 at retail.
On one bill, Mrs. Kelly was charged $20 for a pair of latex gloves. On another itemized bill, Ms. Wallack found this: CTH SIL 2M 7FX 25CM CLAMP A4356, for $314. It turned out to be a penis clamp, used to control incontinence.
M.D. Anderson’s prices are reasonable compared with other hospitals, Mr. Tietjen says. The $20 price for the latex gloves, for example, takes into account the costs of acquiring and storing gloves, ones that are ripped and not used and ones used for patients who don’t pay at all, he says. The charge for the penis clamp was a "clerical error" he says; a different type of catheter was used, but the hospital waived the charge. The hospital didn’t reduce or waive other charges on Mrs. Kelly’s bills.
Continuing Treatment
Mrs. Kelly is continuing her treatment at M.D. Anderson. In February, a new, more comprehensive insurance plan from Blue Cross Blue Shield that she has switched to started paying most of her new M.D. Anderson bills. But she is still personally responsible for $145,155.65 in bills incurred before February. She is paying $2,000 a month toward those. Last week, she learned that after being in remission for more than a year, her leukemia has returned.
M.D. Anderson is giving Blue Cross Blue Shield a 25% discount on the new bills. This month, the hospital offered Mrs. Kelly a 10% discount on her balance, but only if she pays $130,640.08 by this Wednesday, April 30. She is still hoping to get a bigger discount, though numerous requests have been denied. The hospital says it gives commercial insurers a bigger discount because they bring volume and they are less risky than people who pay on their own.
The hospital has urged Mrs. Kelly to sell assets. But she worries about losing her family’s income and retirement savings. Mrs. Kelly says she wants to pay, but, suspicious of the charges she’s seen, she says, "I want to pay what’s fair."
House Democrats work on huge Iraq money bill
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By Zachary Coile
By Zachary Coile
House Democratic leaders are putting together the largest Iraq war spending bill yet, a measure that is expected to fund the war through the end of the Bush presidency and for nearly six months into the next president’s term.
The bill, which could be unveiled as early as this week, signals that Democrats are resigned to the fact they can’t change course in Iraq in the final months of President Bush’s term. Instead, the party is pinning its hopes of ending the war on winning the White House in November.
Bay Area lawmakers, who represent perhaps the most anti-war part of the country, acknowledge the bill will anger many voters back home.
"It’s going to be a tough sell to convince people in my district that funding the war for six months into the new president’s term is the way to end the war," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, a leader of the Out of Iraq Caucus who plans to oppose the funding. "It sounds like we are paying for something we don’t want."
The bill is expected to provide $108 billion that the White House has requested for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lawmakers who are drafting it say it also will include a so-called bridge fund of $70 billion to give the new president several months of breathing room before having to ask Congress for more money.
The debate is shaping up as a key test for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The San Francisco Democrat, who opposed the war from the start, faces fierce criticism from the anti-war left for refusing to cut off funding for the war. She’s trying to hold together a caucus split between anti-war lawmakers, who’d prefer a showdown with the White House, and conservative Democrats, who believe cutting off the war funding would make the party look weak on national security and put its majority at risk.
Guns-for-butter
Pelosi is plotting a "guns-for-butter" strategy to try to force Bush to accept some new domestic spending in exchange for the money he needs to fight the war. The speaker is floating a proposal to extend unemployment benefits for 13 weeks for those whose benefits have run out. The package also could include a new GI Bill benefit to help veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan pay for college.
Bush is already vowing to veto any spending that goes over his $108 billion request. House Republicans, eager for an election-year fight with Democrats over spending, are pledging to back up his veto threat.
"We’re going to insist that this is about funding the troops and nothing else," House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said last week.
Pelosi has been trying to ease tensions within her caucus over the bill. Anti-war lawmakers - including Woolsey, Rep. Maxine Waters of Los Angeles and Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland - met with the speaker last week to urge her to keep the votes on war spending and domestic spending separate.
"We raised concerns," Lee said. "It just wouldn’t make sense to force (members of Congress) to choose between providing food stamps for people who are hurting and need help during this terrible time and funding an occupation that people do not support."
House leaders may be able to get around the issue by splitting the votes. Last May, Democrats used a similar tactic, staging votes on two amendments - one for $22 billion in domestic spending, and another for $98 billion for the two wars - to allow anti-war lawmakers to vote for the domestic spending, but against the money for the war.
The strategy would let many Democratic lawmakers register their opposition to the war, but it wouldn’t change the outcome. The Senate would eventually wrap all the spending into one package to send to the White House for Bush’s signature.
Democrats may use the bill to put Republicans on the defensive by offering an amendment to boost tax incentives for renewable energy as well as language that would block the administration from implementing new rules that would cut Medicaid payments and shift those costs to the states.
House leaders also may introduce an amendment that would require Bush to use any new war money only for redeploying U.S. troops from Iraq. Bush vetoed a bill with similar language last year and Democrats lacked the votes to override it. Still, Democrats say it would remind voters that it’s Bush and Republicans who are refusing to end the war.
But anti-war activists say Democrats are being disingenuous by claiming to oppose the war while also preparing to give the president even more war funding than he requested.
"They are the biggest hypocrites in the world," said Medea Benjamin, the San Francisco-based founder of the anti-war group CodePink. "They want to paint the Republicans as warmongers and they want to keep funding the war, and they think we don’t see through this?"
Bay Area anti-war activists met at Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater last week to discuss ways to protest the war spending bill. CodePink plans to renew its protests outside Pelosi’s home in San Francisco and at lawmakers’ offices, Benjamin said.
Pelosi on hot seat
Pelosi was pressed on the issue last week during a sit-down with CNN’s Larry King. "Your party became the majority in the House primarily pledging to end the war," King said. "That didn’t happen."
"No," Pelosi acknowledged. "It didn’t happen because we had hoped that the president would listen to the will of the people and at least be willing to compromise on ... how the war is conducted and some timetable for redeployment of our troops."
Congress watchers said Democrats are still stung after losing repeated battles with the White House and Republicans over the war last year.
"Last year they tried a lot of confrontation and they went nowhere," said Louis Fisher, a constitutional scholar at the Library of Congress and an expert on congressional war powers. He said Democrats still fear being portrayed as putting U.S. troops at risk if they try to shut off war funds.
"That argument seems to win almost every time," Fisher said. "Look how long it took to cut off the funding in Vietnam. It wasn’t until the summer of 1973."
Congressional scholar Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution said House leaders are making a wise choice to give a new president, whether Democrat or Republican, some time to chart a new course in Iraq. He noted that even the Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, have said it would take a few months to begin withdrawing troops.
Democrats in Congress may risk frustrating their base by funding the war into next year, but Mann said it’s unlikely to hurt them in the November election. The public still generally sees the Iraq conflict as Bush’s war, he said.
"This only becomes a Democratic war if a Democratic president fails to deliver on his or her promise to end the war," Mann said.
Clash Ahead Over Longshore Union War Protest
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By George Raine
Members of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union are proceeding with plans for a work stoppage at 29 West Coast ports on May 1 to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the fact that union leadership has withdrawn its request to waterfront employers that they accommodate closure of the ports.
Planning for the protest began in February when the Longshore Caucus, the highest decision-making body for the 25,000 members of the longshore division within the ILWU, overwhelmingly approved a resolution in support of a day of protest.
According to its contract, the ILWU is entitled to schedule a "stop-work meeting" each month to discuss union business. It must give adequate advance notice to employers, who are represented by the Pacific Maritime Association, a group of shipowners, stevedore companies and terminal operators that negotiates labor contracts on their behalf.
The PMA routinely grants these requests, but only for meetings that are to be held during the second work shift, beginning in the evening. For the war protest, the ILWU said it wanted stop-work time during the day, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., the busiest cargo-handling shift of the day.
After the matter was approved by the caucus, ILWU President Bob McEllrath said on the ILWU Web site, "The caucus has spoken on this important issue, and I've notified the employers about our plans for stop-work meetings on May 1."
However, in March, the president of PMA, James McKenna, said he would not agree to the request. Employers do not want the ports to be shut during the first, or day shift, as it would be disruptive to the flow of cargo. The PMA said Friday that about 10,000 containers are loaded and unloaded coastwide during an eight-hour day.
On April 8, the union leadership withdrew the stop-work request for May 1.
The employers wanted the union to convey the withdrawal to its members, but management sources said it was unclear whether that had happened. So the PMA took the issue to an arbitrator. On Thursday, he issued an opinion that the union is obligated to inform members that the request has been withdrawn. There was no mention of the matter on the ILWU Web site on Friday.
Craig Merrilees, a spokesman for the ILWU, issued a statement seemingly supportive of a war protest: "The Longshore Caucus resolution calling on all locals to honor May 1 by taking action to end the war and bring the troops home safely from Iraq continues to move forward. Various voluntary rallies and public demonstrations are scheduled for May Day."
The protest was advanced by Jack Heyman, a longshore worker who is a member of the Local 10 Executive Board. He said Friday he expects the ports to be shut down May 1. He added, "I have never seen our membership so resolute on a given issue."
He said it was Vietnam War veterans in the caucus who drove the discussion.
Steve Getzug, a spokesman for the PMA, said, "They informed us they had dropped their demand for a stop-work meeting May 1. An arbitrator has ruled they inform their members, and in light of that we hope the day (May 1) will come and go without disruption."
Heyman and other organizers said there will be a rally at noon May 1 at Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco. Speakers will include activists Danny Glover, Cindy Sheehan and Daniel Ellsberg.
In the meantime, the PMA and ILWU are negotiating a labor contract. The current contract expires July 1.
By George Raine
Members of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union are proceeding with plans for a work stoppage at 29 West Coast ports on May 1 to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the fact that union leadership has withdrawn its request to waterfront employers that they accommodate closure of the ports.
Planning for the protest began in February when the Longshore Caucus, the highest decision-making body for the 25,000 members of the longshore division within the ILWU, overwhelmingly approved a resolution in support of a day of protest.
According to its contract, the ILWU is entitled to schedule a "stop-work meeting" each month to discuss union business. It must give adequate advance notice to employers, who are represented by the Pacific Maritime Association, a group of shipowners, stevedore companies and terminal operators that negotiates labor contracts on their behalf.
The PMA routinely grants these requests, but only for meetings that are to be held during the second work shift, beginning in the evening. For the war protest, the ILWU said it wanted stop-work time during the day, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., the busiest cargo-handling shift of the day.
After the matter was approved by the caucus, ILWU President Bob McEllrath said on the ILWU Web site, "The caucus has spoken on this important issue, and I've notified the employers about our plans for stop-work meetings on May 1."
However, in March, the president of PMA, James McKenna, said he would not agree to the request. Employers do not want the ports to be shut during the first, or day shift, as it would be disruptive to the flow of cargo. The PMA said Friday that about 10,000 containers are loaded and unloaded coastwide during an eight-hour day.
On April 8, the union leadership withdrew the stop-work request for May 1.
The employers wanted the union to convey the withdrawal to its members, but management sources said it was unclear whether that had happened. So the PMA took the issue to an arbitrator. On Thursday, he issued an opinion that the union is obligated to inform members that the request has been withdrawn. There was no mention of the matter on the ILWU Web site on Friday.
Craig Merrilees, a spokesman for the ILWU, issued a statement seemingly supportive of a war protest: "The Longshore Caucus resolution calling on all locals to honor May 1 by taking action to end the war and bring the troops home safely from Iraq continues to move forward. Various voluntary rallies and public demonstrations are scheduled for May Day."
The protest was advanced by Jack Heyman, a longshore worker who is a member of the Local 10 Executive Board. He said Friday he expects the ports to be shut down May 1. He added, "I have never seen our membership so resolute on a given issue."
He said it was Vietnam War veterans in the caucus who drove the discussion.
Steve Getzug, a spokesman for the PMA, said, "They informed us they had dropped their demand for a stop-work meeting May 1. An arbitrator has ruled they inform their members, and in light of that we hope the day (May 1) will come and go without disruption."
Heyman and other organizers said there will be a rally at noon May 1 at Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco. Speakers will include activists Danny Glover, Cindy Sheehan and Daniel Ellsberg.
In the meantime, the PMA and ILWU are negotiating a labor contract. The current contract expires July 1.
Military Propaganda Pushed Me off TV
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By Jeff Cohen
By Jeff Cohen
In the fall of 2002, week after week in debates televised on MSNBC, I argued vigorously against invading Iraq. I used every possible argument that might sway mainstream viewers - no real threat, cost, instability. But as the war neared, my debates were terminated.
In my 2006 book ""Cable News Confidential," I explained why I lost my airtime:
There was no room for me after MSNBC launched "Countdown: Iraq" - a daily one-hour show that seemed more keen on glamorizing a potential war than scrutinizing or debating it. "Countdown: Iraq" featured retired colonels and generals, sometimes resembling boys with war toys as they used props, maps and glitzy graphics to spin invasion scenarios. They reminded me of pumped-up ex-football players doing pre-game analysis and diagramming plays. It was excruciating to be sidelined at MSNBC, watching so many non-debates in which myth and misinformation were served up unchallenged.
It was bad enough to be silenced. Much worse to see that these ex-generals - many working for military corporations - were never in debates, nor asked a tough question by an anchor. (I wasn’t allowed on MSNBC unless balanced by at least one truculent right-winger.)
Except for the brazenness and scope of the Pentagon spin program, I wasn’t shocked by the recent New York Times report exposing how the Pentagon junketed and coached the retired military brass into being "message-force multipliers" and "surrogates" for Donald Rumsfeld’s lethal propaganda.
The biggest villain here is not Rumsfeld or the Pentagon. It’s the TV networks. In the land of the First Amendment, it was their choice to shut down debate and journalism.
No government agency forced MSNBC to repeatedly feature the hawkish generals unopposed. Or fire Phil Donahue. Or smear weapons expert Scott Ritter. Or blacklist former Attorney General Ramsey Clark. It was top NBC/MSNBC execs, not the feds, who imposed a quota system on the Donahue staff requiring two pro-war guests if we booked one antiwar advocate - affirmative action for hawks.
I’m all for a Congressional investigation into the Pentagon’s Iraq propaganda operation - which included an active-duty general exhorting ex-military-turned-paid-pundits that "the strategic target remains our population."
But I’m also for keeping the focus and onus on CNN, FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS, even NPR - who were partners in the Pentagon’s mission of "information dominance." And for us to see that American TV news remains so corrupt today that it has hardly mentioned the Times story on the Pentagon’s pundits, which was based on 8,000 pages of internal Pentagon documents acquired by a successful Times lawsuit.
It’s important to remember that at the same time corporate TV outlets voluntarily abandoned journalistic ethics in the run-up to Iraq, independent media boomed in audience by making totally different journalistic choices. Programs like "Democracy Now!" featured genuine experts on Iraq who - what a shock! - got the facts right. Independent blogs and web sites, propelled by war skepticism, began to soar.
As for the major TV networks, they were not hoodwinked by a Pentagon propaganda scheme. They were willingly complicit, and have been for decades. As FAIR’s director, I began questioning top news executives years ago about their over-reliance on non-debate segments featuring former military brass. After the 1991 Gulf war, CNN and other networks realized that their use of ex-generals had helped the Pentagon dazzle and disinform the public about the conduct of the war.
CNN actually had me debate the issue of ex-military on TV with a retired US Army colonel. Military analysts aren’t used to debates, and this one got heated:
ME: You would never dream of covering the environment by bringing on expert after expert after expert who had all retired from environmental organizations after 20 or 30 years and were still loyal to those groups. You would never discuss the workplace or workers by bringing on expert after expert after expert who’d been in the labor movement and retired in good standing after 30 years.... When it comes to war and foreign policy, you bring on all the retired generals, retired secretaries of state.
THE COLONEL (irritably): What do you want, a tax auditor to come in and talk about military strategy?
ME: You hit it on the nail, Colonel. What you need besides the generals and the admirals who can talk about how missiles and bombs are dispatched, you need other experts. You need experts in human rights, you need medical experts, you need relief experts who know what it’s like to talk about bombs falling on people.
Before the debate ended, I expressed my doubts that corporate media would ever quit their addiction to unreliable military sources: "There’s this ritual, it’s a familiar pattern, a routine, where mainstream journalists, after the last war or intervention, say, ’Boy, we got manipulated. We were taken. But next time, we’re going to be more skeptical.’ And then when the next time comes, it’s the same reporters interviewing the same experts, who buy the distortions from the Pentagon."
A few years later, during the brutal US-NATO bombing of Serbia, Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now!" interviewed CNN vice president and anchor Frank Sesno:
GOODMAN: If you support the practice of putting ex-military men, generals, on the payroll to share their opinion during a time of war, would you also support putting peace activists on the payroll to give a different opinion in times of war, to be sitting there with the military generals, talking about why they feel that war is not appropriate?
SESNO: We bring the generals in because of their expertise in a particular area. We call them analysts. We don’t bring them in as advocates.
It’s clear: War experts are neutral analysts; peace experts are advocates. Even when the Pentagon helps select and prep the network’s military analysts. Shortly after the Iraq invasion, CNN’s news chief Eason Jordan acknowledged on-air that he’d run the names of potential analysts by the Pentagon: "We got a big thumbs-up on all of them. That was important."
Of all the excruciating moments for me - after having been terminated by MSNBC along with Phil Donahue and others - the worst was watching retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, NBC’s top military analyst, repeatedly blustering for war on Iraq. Undisclosed to viewers, the general was a member (along with Lieberman, McCain, Kristol and Perle) of the pro-invasion "Committee for the Liberation of Iraq."
A leading figure in the Pentagon’s pundit corps, no one spewed more nonsense in such an authoritative voice than McCaffrey - for example, on the top-notch advanced planning for securing Iraq: "I just got an update briefing from Secretary Rumsfeld and his team on what’s the aftermath of the fighting. And I was astonished at the complexity and dedication with which they’ve gone about thinking through this."
After the invasion began, McCaffrey crowed on MSNBC: "Thank God for the Abrams tank and the Bradley fighting vehicle."
No federal agency forced NBC and MSNBC to put McCaffrey on the air unopposed. No federal agency prevented those networks from telling viewers that the general sat on the boards of several military contactors, including one that made millions for doing God’s work on the Abrams and Bradley.
Genuine separation of press and state is one reason growing numbers of Americans are choosing independent media over corporate media.
And independent media don’t run embarrassing promos of the kind NBC was proudly airing in 2003:
"Showdown Iraq," and only NBC News has the experts. Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, allied commander during the Gulf War. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the most decorated four-star general in the Army. Gen. Wayne Downing, former special operations commander and White House adviser. Ambassador Richard Butler and former UN weapons inspector David Kay. Nobody has seen Iraq like they have. The experts. The best information from America’s most-watched news organization, NBC News.
Is There an Army Cover-Up of Rape and Murder of Women Soldiers?
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By Ann Wright
By Ann Wright
The Department of Defense statistics are alarming - one in three women who join the US military will be sexually assaulted or raped by men in the military. The warnings to women should begin above the doors of the military recruiting stations, as that is where assaults on women in the military begin - before they are even recruited.
But, now, even more alarming, are deaths of women soldiers in Iraq and in the United States following rape. The military has characterized each death of women who were first sexually assaulted as deaths from "noncombat related injuries," and then added "suicide." Yet, the families of the women whom the military has declared to have committed suicide strongly dispute the findings and are calling for further investigations into the deaths of their daughters. Specific US Army units and certain US military bases in Iraq have an inordinate number of women soldiers who have died of "noncombat related injuries," with several identified as "suicides."
Ninety-four US military women have died in Iraq or during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). Twelve US civilian women have been killed in OIF. Thirteen US military women have been killed in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). Twelve US Civilian women have been killed in Afghanistan.
Of the 94 US military women who died in Iraq or in OIF, the military says 36 died from noncombat related injuries, which included vehicle accidents, illness, death by "natural causes" and self-inflicted gunshot wounds, or suicide. The military has declared the deaths of the Navy women in Bahrain, which were killed by a third sailor, as homicides. Five deaths have been labeled as suicides, but 15 more deaths occurred under extremely suspicious circumstances.
Eight women soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas, (six from the Fourth Infantry Division and two from the 1st Armored Cavalry Division) have died of "noncombat related injuries" on the same base, Camp Taji, and three were raped before their deaths. Two were raped immediately before their deaths and another raped prior to arriving in Iraq. Two military women have died of suspicious "noncombat related injuries" on Balad base, and one was raped before she died. Four deaths have been classified as "suicides."
Nineteen-year-old US Army Pvt. Lavena Johnson was found dead on the military base in Balad, Iraq, in July, 2005, and her death characterized by the US Army to be suicide from a self-inflicted M-16 shot. On April 9, 2008, Dr. John Johnson and his wife Linda, parents of Private Johnson, flew from their home in St. Louis for meetings with US Congress members and their staffs. They were in Washington to ask that Congressional hearings be conducted on the Army’s investigation into the death of their daughter, an investigation that classified her death as a suicide despite extensive evidence suggesting she was murdered.
From the day their daughter’s body was returned to them, the parents had grave suspicions about the Army’s investigation into Lavena’s death and the characterization of her death as suicide. In charge of a communications facility, Lavena was able to call home daily. In those calls, she gave no indication of emotional problems or being upset. In a letter to her parents, Lavena’s commanding officer Capt. David Woods wrote, "Lavena was clearly happy and seemed in very good health both physically and emotionally."
In viewing his daughter’s body at the funeral home, Dr. Johnson was concerned about the bruising on her face. He was puzzled by the discrepancy in the autopsy report on the location of the gunshot wound. As a US Army veteran and a 25-year US Army civilian employee who had counseled veterans, he was mystified how the exit wound of an M-16 shot could be so small. The hole in Lavena’s head appeared to be more the size of a pistol shot rather than an M-16 round. He questioned why the exit hole was on the left side of her head, when she was right handed. But the gluing of military uniform white gloves onto Lavena’s hands, hiding burns on one of her hands, is what deepened Dr. Johnson’s concerns that the Army’s investigation into the death of his daughter was flawed.
Over the next two and one-half years, Dr. and Mrs. Johnson and their family and friends relentlessly, through the Freedom of Information Act and Congressional offices requested the Department of the Army for documents concerning Lavena’s death. With each response of the Army to the request for information, another piece of information/evidence about Lavena’s death emerged.
The military criminal investigator’s initial drawing of the death scene revealed Lavena’s M16 was found perfectly parallel to her body. The investigator’s sketch showed her body was found inside a burning tent, under a wooden bench, with an aerosol can nearby. A witness stated he heard a gunshot and, when he went to investigate, found a tent on fire, and when he looked into the tent, saw a body. The Army official investigation did not mention a fire or that her body had been burned.
After two years of requesting documents, one set of papers provided by the Army included a photocopy copy of a CD. Wondering why the photocopy copy was in the documents, Dr. Johnson requested the CD itself. With help from his local Congressional representative, the US Army finally complied. When Dr. Johnson viewed the CD, he was shocked to see photographs taken by Army investigators of his daughter’s body as it lay where her body had been found, as well as other photographs of her disrobed body taken during the investigation.
The photographs revealed that Lavena, a small woman, barely five feet tall and weighing less than 100 pounds, had been struck in the face with a blunt instrument, perhaps a weapon stock. Her nose was broken and her teeth knocked backwards. One elbow was distended. The back of her clothes had debris on them indicating she had been dragged from one location to another. The photographs of her disrobed body showed bruises, scratch marks and teeth imprints on the upper part of her body. The right side of her back as well as her right hand had been burned, apparently from a flammable liquid poured on her and then lighted. The photographs of her genital area revealed massive bruising and lacerations. A corrosive liquid had been poured into her genital area, probably to destroy DNA evidence of sexual assault.
Despite the bruises, scratches, teeth imprints and burns on her body, Lavena was found completely dressed in the burning tent. There was a blood trail from outside a contractor’s tent to inside the tent. Apparently, she had been dressed after the attack and her attacker placed her body into the tent and set it on fire.
Investigator records reveal members of her unit said Lavena told them she was going jogging with friends on the other side of the base. One unit member walked with her to the Post Exchange where she bought a soda and then, in her Army workout clothes, went on by herself to meet friends and get exercise. The unit member said she was in good spirits with no indication of personal emotional problems.
The Army investigators initially assumed Private Johnson’s death was a homicide and indicated that on their paperwork. However, shortly into the investigation, a decision apparently was made by higher officials that the investigators must stop the investigation into a homicide and to classify her death a suicide.
As a result, no further investigation took place into a possible homicide, despite strong evidence available to the investigators.
Another family that does not believe their daughter committed suicide in Iraq is the family of Army Pfc. Tina Priest, 20, of Smithville, Texas, who was raped by a fellow soldier in February, 2006, on a military base known as Camp Taji. Priest was a part of the 5th Support Battalion, lst Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. The Army said Tina was found dead in her room on March 1, 2006, of a self-inflicted M-16 shot, a "suicide", 11 days after the rape. Private Priest’s mother, Joy Priest, disputes the Army’s findings. Mrs. Priest said she talked several times with her daughter after the rape, and while very upset about the rape, she was not suicidal. Priest continues to challenge the Army’s 800 pages of investigative documents with a simple question: How could her petite, five-foot-tall daughter, with a short arm length, have held the M-16 at the angle that would have resulted in the gunshot? The Army attempted several explanations, but each was debunked by Mrs. Priest and by the 800 pages of materials provided by the Army itself. The Army now says Tina used her toe to pull the trigger of the weapon that killed her. The Army never investigated Tina’s death as a homicide, but only as a suicide.
Rape charges against the soldier whose sperm was found on her sleeping bag were dropped a few weeks after her death. He was convicted of failure to obey an order and sentenced to forfeiture of $714 for two months, 30 days restriction to the base and 45 days of extra duty.
On the same Camp Taji, ten days later after Tina Priest was found dead, on May 11, 2006, a female US Army Pfc. (name known to author, but not identified for the article), 19, was found dead. She died three days after she suffered what the Army called "a self-inflicted gunshot". The Army claimed she, too, had committed suicide. In her room, where her body was found, investigators discovered her diary open to a page on which she had written about being raped during training, after unknowingly drinking a date-rape drug. The person identified in the diary as the rapist was charged by the Army with rape after her death. Many who knew her did not believe she shot herself, but there is no evidence of a homicide investigation by the Army.
The September 4, 2006, the death at Camp Taji of Pfc. Hannah Gunterman McKinney, 20, of the 44th Corps Support Battalion, Ft. Lewis, Washington, was investigated. Rather than having been run over by a military vehicle as she crossed a road from a guard tower to the latrine, as initially claimed by the Army, she fell, or was pushed from, and run over by a vehicle driven by a drunk sergeant from her unit, who had first sexually assaulted her. The sergeant pleaded guilty to drinking in a war zone, drunken driving and consensual sodomy with an underage, incapacitated junior soldier to whom he had supplied alcohol. A military judge ruled McKinney’s death was an accident and the sergeant was sentenced to 13 months imprisonment, demotion to private, but he would not be discharged from the Army.
Other suspicious "noncombat related injury" deaths on Camp Taji include Fort Hood’s 1st Armored Cavalry Division Pfc. Melissa J. Hobart (who died June 6, 2004), 1st Armored Cavalry Sgt. Jeannette Dunn (who died November 26, 2006), 89th Military Police Brigade Specialist Kamisha J. Block (who died August, 2007), 4th Infantry Division Specialist Marisol Heredia (who died September 7, 2007) and 4th Infantry Division Specialist Keisha M. Morgan (who died February, 22, 2008). None of the deaths have been classified as suicides, but the circumstances of their deaths should be investigated further because of serious questions concerning their deaths.
The US Army has classified the deaths of four other women as suicides. In the space of three months in 2006, three members of the US Army, who had been part of a logistics group in Kuwait, committed suicide. Two of them were women. In August 2006, Lt. Col. Marshall Gutierrez was arrested at a restaurant in Kuwait and accused of shaking down a laundry contractor for a $3,400 bribe. He was allowed to return to his quarters, and found dead on September 4, 2006, with an empty bottle of prescription sleeping pills and an open container of what appeared to be antifreeze.
Maj. Gloria D. Davis, 47, assigned to the Defense Security Assistance Agency, which handles the sales of military equipment to other countries, reportedly committed suicide in Baghdad on December 12, 2006, the day after she allegedly admitted to an Army investigator that she had accepted at least $225,000 in bribes from Lee Dynamics, a US Army contractor, who reportedly bribed officers for work in Iraq. Major Davis had a daughter, son and granddaughter. She had worked as a police officer, was a volunteer at women’s shelters and helped get disadvantaged African-American students into ROTC programs.
New York Army National Guard Sgt. Denise A. Lannaman, 46, was assigned to a desk job at a procurement office in Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, that purchased millions of dollars in supplies. She received excellent performance ratings, her supervisor citing that her work eliminated misuse of funds by 36 percent. On October 1, 2006, Lannaman was questioned by a senior officer about the death of Lt. Col. Gutierrez, and reportedly told by that officer that she would be leaving the military in disgrace. Later in the day, she was found in a jeep, dead of a gunshot wound. While her family said she had attempted suicide four different times in her life, the Army has not ruled on the cause of Lannaman’s death.
US Army interrogator Specialist Alyssa Renee Peterson, 27, assigned to C Company, 311th Military Intelligence Battalion, 101st Airborne Division, Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, was an Arabic linguist, who reportedly was very concerned about the manner in which interrogations were being conducted. She died on September 15, 2003, near Tal Afar, Iraq, in what the Army described as a gunshot wound to the head, a noncombat, self-inflicted weapons discharge, or suicide. Peterson reportedly objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners and refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Members of her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Peterson objected to. The military says all records of those techniques have now been destroyed. After refusing to conduct more interrogations, Peterson was assigned to guard the base gate, where she monitored Iraqi guards. She was also sent to suicide-prevention training. On the night of September 15, 2003, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle. Family members challenge the Army’s conclusion.
US Army Sgt. Melissa Valles, 26, assigned to Headquarters Detachment, Company B, 64th Forward Support Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, Fort Carson, Colorado, died on July 9, 2003, in Balad from two noncombat gunshot wounds to her abdomen. The Army has not ruled whether her death was a suicide or a homicide. But Valles’s family stated that, although small in stature at five-foot-three, she was a tough person. "She really put people in their place. She did that since she was a girl. She would put little boys who were bullies in their place." The family does not believe Valles committed suicide.
One suspicious noncombat death of a military woman occurred in Afghanistan.
On September 28, 2007, Massachusetts Army National Guard Specialist Ciara Durkin, 30, a finance specialist, was found lying near a church on the very secure Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, with a single gunshot wound to her head. She had recently told her relatives to press for answers if anything happened to her while she was deployed in Afghanistan. When she was home three weeks prior to her death, she told her sister about something she had come across that raised some concern with her and that she had made some enemies because of it. Members of her family also questioned whether the fact that she was gay played a role in her death. They believe Ciara was killed by a fellow service member, intentionally or accidentally, and they are confident that she did not commit suicide.
In Bahrain, on January 16, 2007, US Navy Petty Officer First Class Jennifer A. Valdivia, 27, assigned to the naval security force for Naval Support Activity, Bahrain, was found dead three days after she was to report for duty on January 14. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has classified her death as a suicide. Valdivia was kennel master of the largest military kennel in the world. In 2005, she was named Sailor of the Year at the Bahrain Naval Base.
The circumstances surrounding each of these deaths warrants further investigation by the US military. Congress can compel the military to reopen cases and provide further investigation. I strongly urge Congress to demand further investigation of the deaths of these women.
Developing the New "Capitalists' Man"
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By Dean Baker
By Dean Baker
In the wake of revolutions in Russia, China, Cuba, and elsewhere, there was talk of creating a new type of person with a socialist mindset. The idea was that people in the prerevolutionary capitalist societies had been educated to be individualistic and greedy. The post-revolutionary societies would instead educate people to be socially minded and to consider the collective good in their actions.
I’ll leave it to others to debate the merits of these efforts. The reason that they are suddenly relevant is that our political leaders now seem concerned that people have not been adequately educated for their vision of a capitalist society.
This came to light recently when Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson insisted that people who are underwater in their mortgages still had an obligation to pay off their loans. Mr. Paulson is concerned that, because of the collapse of the housing bubble, many people now find themselves owing more than the value of their house and are simply walking away from their debts.
For example, in some of the rapidly deflating bubble markets, many homeowners are in situations where they owe $400,000 or $500,000 on a home that today is worth $100,000 less than the amount of their mortgage. In this situation, homeowners can effectively save $100,000 if they stop paying the mortgage and let the bank foreclose on the house.
Tens of thousands of homeowners are opting do exactly this. They calculate that it makes more sense for them to let the bank take the house than to repay the mortgage. Businesses have even opened that show people exactly how to "walk away" from their mortgage and explain the potential consequences.
As a committed capitalist, we might expect Mr. Paulson to applaud people taking initiative and acting to improve their plight. Instead, he is insisting that these homeowners should ignore their self-interest and act in the interest of the banks. In other words, he wants homeowners to keep making payments on their mortgages even if it is a bad deal for them. Apparently, individualistic behavior can go too far when it affects bank profits.
Mr. Paulson isn’t the only capitalist who wants people to put aside self-interest. The entertainment industry is also struggling with the fact that people acting in their self-interest are unlikely to pay copyright protected prices for music, movies and video games when they can get the material for free over the web. To try to discourage people from acting in their self-interest, the Recording Industry Association of America (the trade association for the music industry) has developed curriculum for grade school, high school and university level courses that are supposed to instill in children the proper respect for copyright. Instead of debating the most efficient mechanism for financing creative work in the Internet Age, we are getting propaganda courses on copyright protecti
on.
Of course, no industry has a more urgent need for people to act selflessly in support of their profits than the pharmaceutical industry. Their profits depend on being able to sell drugs at prices that can be hundreds or even thousands of times the actual production cost.
With few exceptions, drugs are cheap to produce, but the industry can charge very high prices because it has a government-granted patent monopoly. The absolute highest prices are associated with drugs for diseases like cancer that can literally mean life or death for patients. The cost for a year’s prescription of these drugs can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If people act in their own self-interest, they will seek out unauthorized copies of high-priced drugs, either from foreign countries or from gray market producers in the United States who will step in the fill the need. (There are more efficient ways to pay for pharmaceutical research than the patent system.) Unless the government becomes ever more repressive in enforcing patent protection, the pharmaceutical companies will not be able to sustain its current business model, since people will not pay tens of thousands of dollars for drugs that cost a few dollars to produce.
But the problems of the pharmaceutical industry, the entertainment industry and the mortgage industry can all be solved if we can just perfect the new capitalists’ man - a person who willingly subordinates his own needs to the greater need for corporate profit. There is an obvious name for this new man: "sucker."
Israel Strengthens Hamas Leadership
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By Mohammed Omer
The one political result of Israel's attacks and sanctions on Gaza has been that the Hamas leadership, and particularly Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, have emerged greatly strengthened.
Over the last three months, support for Haniyeh has overtaken that for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of the Fatah party. Fatah rules the West Bank, and Hamas Gaza, the two main Palestinian territories.
A poll conducted in March by the independent Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research shows that Abbas has lost a 19 percent advantage over Haniyeh over the past three months. Now, the poll suggests Haniyeh would get 47 percent of the Palestinian vote, and Abbas 46 percent.
The poll was carried out among 1,270 adults, 830 in the West Bank and 440 in the Gaza Strip, at 127 randomly selected locations.
Popularity for Haniyeh increased after the breaching of the Rafah border between Gaza and Egypt, said Dr Khalil Shikaki, head of the survey centre. The breach is believed to have been the work of Hamas, and it helped Palestinians bring in badly needed provisions denied earlier by an Israeli blockade.
The continuing Israeli attacks that brought a large number of casualties in recent weeks has also brought increased sympathy and support for Haniyeh, Shikaki told IPS.
The Hamas movement has been swiftly labelled 'terrorist' by Western governments. Israel has said it cannot deal with Haniyeh because he refuses to recognise Israel. He has been accused of failure to honour the Oslo accords of 1993. These accords were signed between Mahmoud Abbas for the Palestinians and Israel's President, Shimon Peres. The accords brought the first acknowledgement from Palestinians of Israel's right to exist, and agreement on the creation of a Palestinian state.
Haniyeh's position on these issues too has brought him increased support among Palestinians. "The Oslo agreements said that a Palestinian state would be established by 1999," Haniyeh said in an interview to IPS. "Where is this Palestinian state? Has Oslo given the right to Israel to reoccupy the West Bank, to build the wall and expand the settlements, and to Judaize Jerusalem and make it totally Jewish?
"Has Israel been given the right to disrupt work on the port and airport in Gaza? Has Oslo given it the right to besiege Gaza, and to stop all tax refunds to the Palestinians?"
Haniyeh is dismissive of the conditions imposed on Hamas. Israel and much of the international community, with backing from Abbas, have said they will deal with a Hamas government only if it recognises Israel, honours existing agreements, and renounces violence.
"We are surprised that such conditions are imposed on us," said Haniyeh. "Why don't they direct such conditions and questions to Israel? Has Israel respected its agreements? Israel has bypassed practically all agreements. We say, let Israel recognise the legitimate right of Palestinians first, and then we will have a position regarding this. Which Israel should we recognise?
Hamas won the elections held in Gaza Jan. 25, 2006, taking 76 seats in the assembly to Fatah's 43. But Fatah refused to hand over full control to Hamas, and Hamas then seized control of the Gaza administration by force in June 2007.
This has brought a strange situation. Former political prisoners from Hamas, jailed by Fatah on Western prompting, now occupy power, sometimes alongside men who were their jailors.
And among them too, Haniyeh is winning increased respect by the day. Unlike Fatah leaders, Haniyeh moves without escort, and mixes freely with people on the streets. He has turned down the offer of 4,000 dollars a month as salary, and accepts only 1,500 dollars, which is what he needs, he says, for his family that includes 13 children. And he still lives in his old house in Shati Camp, one of the poorest refugee camps in the east of Gaza City.
Ismail Haniyeh was born in 1963 to a family of refugees originally from al-Jouar village now in Israel. He graduated from the Islamic University in Gaza City in Arabic. As a student he was a member of the Islamic Bloc, the student wing of Muslim Brotherhood that would later become Hamas. Even through his student days in the 1980s, he was often at odds with Fatah members. Haniyeh later became an administrator at Islamic University.
Israeli troops jailed him four times, and sent him into exile (in Lebanon) in December 1992 along with about 400 other Hamas and Islamic Jihad members. He returned to his job as administrator in 1994, but was branded a terrorist. He worked closely with then Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. He took a prominent public role only after an Israeli missile killed the wheelchair-bound Sheikh Yassin on Mar. 21, 2004.
Haniyeh has since proven himself a forceful speaker – and a patient listener. That, along with the many social activities in which he leads Hamas, such as support for orphans and hospitals, has put Hamas in good standing. He makes it a point to visit Gaza's Christians and their churches, and his supporters say he is no Taleban leader.
But he has drawn new opposition too. "He has brought no development of the area, but only more problems," said a Gaza resident who did not wish to be named. "He has made it easy for Israel and America to carry out their plans against Palestinian people. He is a preacher, not a politician; if he was a politician, conditions today would not be so unbearable."
Haniyeh narrowly escaped an Israeli attack in December 2003. And many Gazans worry what might happen now if the Israelis assassinate him and other Hamas political leaders as they move around openly. "Then who will look after the 1.5 million Palestinians of Gaza," said a resident. Israel has said it will keep up its policy of political assassinations.
By Mohammed Omer
The one political result of Israel's attacks and sanctions on Gaza has been that the Hamas leadership, and particularly Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, have emerged greatly strengthened.
Over the last three months, support for Haniyeh has overtaken that for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of the Fatah party. Fatah rules the West Bank, and Hamas Gaza, the two main Palestinian territories.
A poll conducted in March by the independent Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research shows that Abbas has lost a 19 percent advantage over Haniyeh over the past three months. Now, the poll suggests Haniyeh would get 47 percent of the Palestinian vote, and Abbas 46 percent.
The poll was carried out among 1,270 adults, 830 in the West Bank and 440 in the Gaza Strip, at 127 randomly selected locations.
Popularity for Haniyeh increased after the breaching of the Rafah border between Gaza and Egypt, said Dr Khalil Shikaki, head of the survey centre. The breach is believed to have been the work of Hamas, and it helped Palestinians bring in badly needed provisions denied earlier by an Israeli blockade.
The continuing Israeli attacks that brought a large number of casualties in recent weeks has also brought increased sympathy and support for Haniyeh, Shikaki told IPS.
The Hamas movement has been swiftly labelled 'terrorist' by Western governments. Israel has said it cannot deal with Haniyeh because he refuses to recognise Israel. He has been accused of failure to honour the Oslo accords of 1993. These accords were signed between Mahmoud Abbas for the Palestinians and Israel's President, Shimon Peres. The accords brought the first acknowledgement from Palestinians of Israel's right to exist, and agreement on the creation of a Palestinian state.
Haniyeh's position on these issues too has brought him increased support among Palestinians. "The Oslo agreements said that a Palestinian state would be established by 1999," Haniyeh said in an interview to IPS. "Where is this Palestinian state? Has Oslo given the right to Israel to reoccupy the West Bank, to build the wall and expand the settlements, and to Judaize Jerusalem and make it totally Jewish?
"Has Israel been given the right to disrupt work on the port and airport in Gaza? Has Oslo given it the right to besiege Gaza, and to stop all tax refunds to the Palestinians?"
Haniyeh is dismissive of the conditions imposed on Hamas. Israel and much of the international community, with backing from Abbas, have said they will deal with a Hamas government only if it recognises Israel, honours existing agreements, and renounces violence.
"We are surprised that such conditions are imposed on us," said Haniyeh. "Why don't they direct such conditions and questions to Israel? Has Israel respected its agreements? Israel has bypassed practically all agreements. We say, let Israel recognise the legitimate right of Palestinians first, and then we will have a position regarding this. Which Israel should we recognise?
Hamas won the elections held in Gaza Jan. 25, 2006, taking 76 seats in the assembly to Fatah's 43. But Fatah refused to hand over full control to Hamas, and Hamas then seized control of the Gaza administration by force in June 2007.
This has brought a strange situation. Former political prisoners from Hamas, jailed by Fatah on Western prompting, now occupy power, sometimes alongside men who were their jailors.
And among them too, Haniyeh is winning increased respect by the day. Unlike Fatah leaders, Haniyeh moves without escort, and mixes freely with people on the streets. He has turned down the offer of 4,000 dollars a month as salary, and accepts only 1,500 dollars, which is what he needs, he says, for his family that includes 13 children. And he still lives in his old house in Shati Camp, one of the poorest refugee camps in the east of Gaza City.
Ismail Haniyeh was born in 1963 to a family of refugees originally from al-Jouar village now in Israel. He graduated from the Islamic University in Gaza City in Arabic. As a student he was a member of the Islamic Bloc, the student wing of Muslim Brotherhood that would later become Hamas. Even through his student days in the 1980s, he was often at odds with Fatah members. Haniyeh later became an administrator at Islamic University.
Israeli troops jailed him four times, and sent him into exile (in Lebanon) in December 1992 along with about 400 other Hamas and Islamic Jihad members. He returned to his job as administrator in 1994, but was branded a terrorist. He worked closely with then Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. He took a prominent public role only after an Israeli missile killed the wheelchair-bound Sheikh Yassin on Mar. 21, 2004.
Haniyeh has since proven himself a forceful speaker – and a patient listener. That, along with the many social activities in which he leads Hamas, such as support for orphans and hospitals, has put Hamas in good standing. He makes it a point to visit Gaza's Christians and their churches, and his supporters say he is no Taleban leader.
But he has drawn new opposition too. "He has brought no development of the area, but only more problems," said a Gaza resident who did not wish to be named. "He has made it easy for Israel and America to carry out their plans against Palestinian people. He is a preacher, not a politician; if he was a politician, conditions today would not be so unbearable."
Haniyeh narrowly escaped an Israeli attack in December 2003. And many Gazans worry what might happen now if the Israelis assassinate him and other Hamas political leaders as they move around openly. "Then who will look after the 1.5 million Palestinians of Gaza," said a resident. Israel has said it will keep up its policy of political assassinations.
Mother, four children amongst victims of Israeli Gaza strike
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By Al Mezan
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) killed four children and their mother when they shelled their home in Ezbet Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip today. Another man was killed in the attack which occurred during an IOF incursion in different parts of the town of Beit Hanoun. Al Mezan Center for Human Rights’ monitoring finds that the IOF stepped up their aggression on Gaza. In April 2008 alone, the IOF killed 66 Palestinians, 20 of whom were children and one was a woman. One hundred and thirty-nine others were injured, including 18 children. IOF launched 29 incursions into the Gaza Strip during the same period.
According to Al Mezan Center’s field investigations, at approximately 8:15am on 28 April 2008, IOF scouting drones fired two rockets that landed in front of the house of Ahmed Eid Abu Me’teq, which is located near Abdullah Azzam mosque in Ezbet Beit Hanoun. As a result, four children and their mother were killed, and their sister was wounded. One man was also killed. Those who were killed were identified as:
Meanwhile, according to the Center’s monitoring, IOF’s incursion in the area continues. At approximately 6:00am on 28 April 2008, IOF ground troops, backed by 20 armored vehicles and drones, penetrated the vicinity of Beit Hanoun (Erez) Crossing. They took positions in the streets of al-Sultan Abdul Hamid and al-Shanti, and in the Thakanet al-Ghazalat, Talet al-Haowuz and Um al-Nasser areas. The IOF took combat positions and opened fire towards Ezbet Beit Hanoun, al-Seka and al-Sultan Streets in western Beit Hanoun.
The IOF’s incursion continues at the time of issuance of this release. At approximately 9:30am today, IOF tanks fired ten shells that landed in the vicinity of al-Nada and al-Awda Towers. One of the shells hit the fourth floor of building number four in al-Nada Towers; and another shell hit the seventh floor of building number seven in al-Awda Towers. No injuries were reported; however, the shelling caused damage to apartments in the two towers. The shelling also traumatized the residents, particularly children. At approximately 10:20am, also today, IOF drones fired one missile that landed in an open area in al-Wad Street in western Beit Hanoun, but no injuries or damages were reported.
This new IOF aggression comes as the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip continues. Al Mezan emphasizes that IOF’s conducts represent serious violations of the population’s human rights in a gross way that infringes upon the different aspects of their life.
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights condemns strongly the IOF’s brutal aggression and the escalation of arbitrary killing of civilians, especially children, in the Gaza Strip. This conduct has taken a systematic manner as IOF blatantly and indiscriminately targets residential buildings with artillery shells and guided missiles.
These conducts, in addition to the IOF’s collective punishment of the entire population of Gaza through the tight blockade that seriously infringes upon Gazans’ humanitarian conditions, constitute grave breaches of the rules of international humanitarian law (IHL) and are acts that must be investigated and whose perpetrators must be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity under international law.
Al Mezan calls for immediate international action to end the siege of Gaza and alleviate the risks it poses on people’s lives and well-being. The siege threatens to stop hospitals and medical crews from operating at the very time when IOF escalate their acts of killing and maiming. Al Mezan also reiterates its warning about the consequences of the international community’s silence while the IOF conduct such grave breaches of IHL, especially after the Israeli government’s numerous statements threatening of more military attacks on Gaza.
Al Mezan calls on the international community to take urgent action to bring to an end the IOF’s crimes, and to provide protection for the civilian population of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. These acts represent part of the legal and moral obligations towards the civilians who live under control and occupation.
By Al Mezan
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) killed four children and their mother when they shelled their home in Ezbet Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip today. Another man was killed in the attack which occurred during an IOF incursion in different parts of the town of Beit Hanoun. Al Mezan Center for Human Rights’ monitoring finds that the IOF stepped up their aggression on Gaza. In April 2008 alone, the IOF killed 66 Palestinians, 20 of whom were children and one was a woman. One hundred and thirty-nine others were injured, including 18 children. IOF launched 29 incursions into the Gaza Strip during the same period.
According to Al Mezan Center’s field investigations, at approximately 8:15am on 28 April 2008, IOF scouting drones fired two rockets that landed in front of the house of Ahmed Eid Abu Me’teq, which is located near Abdullah Azzam mosque in Ezbet Beit Hanoun. As a result, four children and their mother were killed, and their sister was wounded. One man was also killed. Those who were killed were identified as:
Eleven other people were also injured, including four children. Five of the injured were reported to have sustained serious wounds.
- Five-year-old Saleh Abu Me’teq;
- Four-year-old Rodina Abu Me’teq;
- Three-year-old Hana’ Abu Me’teq;
- One-year-old Mos’ad Abu Me’teq;
- Their mother, 40-year-old Myassar Abu Me’teq; and
- 40-year-old Ibrahim Hajouj.
Meanwhile, according to the Center’s monitoring, IOF’s incursion in the area continues. At approximately 6:00am on 28 April 2008, IOF ground troops, backed by 20 armored vehicles and drones, penetrated the vicinity of Beit Hanoun (Erez) Crossing. They took positions in the streets of al-Sultan Abdul Hamid and al-Shanti, and in the Thakanet al-Ghazalat, Talet al-Haowuz and Um al-Nasser areas. The IOF took combat positions and opened fire towards Ezbet Beit Hanoun, al-Seka and al-Sultan Streets in western Beit Hanoun.
The IOF’s incursion continues at the time of issuance of this release. At approximately 9:30am today, IOF tanks fired ten shells that landed in the vicinity of al-Nada and al-Awda Towers. One of the shells hit the fourth floor of building number four in al-Nada Towers; and another shell hit the seventh floor of building number seven in al-Awda Towers. No injuries were reported; however, the shelling caused damage to apartments in the two towers. The shelling also traumatized the residents, particularly children. At approximately 10:20am, also today, IOF drones fired one missile that landed in an open area in al-Wad Street in western Beit Hanoun, but no injuries or damages were reported.
This new IOF aggression comes as the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip continues. Al Mezan emphasizes that IOF’s conducts represent serious violations of the population’s human rights in a gross way that infringes upon the different aspects of their life.
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights condemns strongly the IOF’s brutal aggression and the escalation of arbitrary killing of civilians, especially children, in the Gaza Strip. This conduct has taken a systematic manner as IOF blatantly and indiscriminately targets residential buildings with artillery shells and guided missiles.
These conducts, in addition to the IOF’s collective punishment of the entire population of Gaza through the tight blockade that seriously infringes upon Gazans’ humanitarian conditions, constitute grave breaches of the rules of international humanitarian law (IHL) and are acts that must be investigated and whose perpetrators must be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity under international law.
Al Mezan calls for immediate international action to end the siege of Gaza and alleviate the risks it poses on people’s lives and well-being. The siege threatens to stop hospitals and medical crews from operating at the very time when IOF escalate their acts of killing and maiming. Al Mezan also reiterates its warning about the consequences of the international community’s silence while the IOF conduct such grave breaches of IHL, especially after the Israeli government’s numerous statements threatening of more military attacks on Gaza.
Al Mezan calls on the international community to take urgent action to bring to an end the IOF’s crimes, and to provide protection for the civilian population of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. These acts represent part of the legal and moral obligations towards the civilians who live under control and occupation.
The Pentagon's Puppets
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The Bush administration has covertly tried to influence public opinion in its favor throughout the Iraq war, planting stories in Iraqi newspapers and disseminating misleading polls. Last week, The New York Times reported that the Pentagon has been using more than 75 "military analysts" as "puppets," revealing one of the most extensive attempts at domestic propaganda in this war. These retired military officials, many of whom have contracting business with the government, have pushed the Bush administration’s talking points but without revealing their contracts with the Pentagon. In a disturbing tit-for-tat, analysts admitted that they were reluctant to buck the Bush administration out of fear that they might lose access to future briefings and information. "Our military services have an important story to tell, and public affairs offices are critical to that task," said Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO) on the House floor this pasts week. "But credibility is paramount. Once lost, it is difficult or impossible to regain."
PRIVILEGED ACCESS: Day after day, the American public has watched distinguished retired military officers go on television and assess progress in the Iraq war. Many of these analysts, however, were repeating talking points given to them during private briefings by the administration, using this special access "as a marketing and networking opportunity or as a window into future business possibilities." They were all instructed to not "quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon." "It was them saying, ’We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’" said Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst. Certainly not all retired military officials have parroted Pentagon talking points. Last year, for example, CBS asked Iraq veteran Gen. John Batiste to step down as a consultant because he appeared in a VoteVets ad criticizing the war. A CBS vice president justified the network’s decision by saying of Batiste, "By putting himself front and center in an anti-Bush ad, the viewer might have the feeling everything he says is anti-Bush." The largest contingent of "puppets" was affiliated with Fox News, followed by MSNBC and CNN, although analysts also appeared on CBS and ABC. At least nine of them wrote op-eds for The New York Times. After significant public outcry, the Pentagon announced last week that it would be temporarily suspending the program, pending a review of the situation.
MEDIA BLACKOUT: "[T]he degree of behind-the-scenes manipulation -- including regular briefings by then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other officials -- is striking, as is the lack of disclosure by the networks of some of these government and business connections," wrote Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz last week, who also addressed the controversy on CNN. On the whole, however, the media have been disappointingly silent on their role in the Pentagon’s scheme since the story broke last week. On Thursday, PBS’s News Hour did a lengthy segment on the scandal, but it could not convince the other networks to join in. "And for the record, we invited Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and NBC to participate," said senior correspondent Judy Woodruff, "but they declined our offer or did not respond." Since The New York Times report, Fox News has repeatedly used quotes from one of the military analysts named in the story, without mentioning his ties to the Pentagon. Several conservatives have also rushed to dismiss the expose. Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Max Boot said simply, "All this is part and parcel of the daily grind of Washington journalism." Neoconservative pundit John Podhoretz added that the revelations showed "nothing more than that the Pentagon treated former military personnel like VIPs."
PATTERN OF PROPAGANDA: While The New York Times’s revelation was galling, it was hardly the first instance of abuse of public information by the Bush administration. In 2005, the Los Angeles Times revealed that the U.S. military was "secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the US mission in Iraq." However, most of those stories were presented as "unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists." Officials said the stories were "basically factual" but would often "present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the US or Iraqi governments." Even at this time, conservatives were backing the Bush administration’s propaganda. The National Review’s Stephen Spruiell said, "We need more operations like this in Iraq, and more respect for their classified nature." Also in 2005, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers touted poll results of Iraqis that supposedly demonstrated the insurgency was losing political steam, without revealing that the poll surveyed only Iraqis who had actively worked against the insurgents. More recently, in October 2007, it was revealed that the U.S. military was attempting to use funds from the independent military newspaper Stars and Stripes to bolster a PR campaign, which some Pentagon officials described as "tax-payer-funded propaganda."
The Bush administration has covertly tried to influence public opinion in its favor throughout the Iraq war, planting stories in Iraqi newspapers and disseminating misleading polls. Last week, The New York Times reported that the Pentagon has been using more than 75 "military analysts" as "puppets," revealing one of the most extensive attempts at domestic propaganda in this war. These retired military officials, many of whom have contracting business with the government, have pushed the Bush administration’s talking points but without revealing their contracts with the Pentagon. In a disturbing tit-for-tat, analysts admitted that they were reluctant to buck the Bush administration out of fear that they might lose access to future briefings and information. "Our military services have an important story to tell, and public affairs offices are critical to that task," said Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO) on the House floor this pasts week. "But credibility is paramount. Once lost, it is difficult or impossible to regain."
PRIVILEGED ACCESS: Day after day, the American public has watched distinguished retired military officers go on television and assess progress in the Iraq war. Many of these analysts, however, were repeating talking points given to them during private briefings by the administration, using this special access "as a marketing and networking opportunity or as a window into future business possibilities." They were all instructed to not "quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon." "It was them saying, ’We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’" said Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst. Certainly not all retired military officials have parroted Pentagon talking points. Last year, for example, CBS asked Iraq veteran Gen. John Batiste to step down as a consultant because he appeared in a VoteVets ad criticizing the war. A CBS vice president justified the network’s decision by saying of Batiste, "By putting himself front and center in an anti-Bush ad, the viewer might have the feeling everything he says is anti-Bush." The largest contingent of "puppets" was affiliated with Fox News, followed by MSNBC and CNN, although analysts also appeared on CBS and ABC. At least nine of them wrote op-eds for The New York Times. After significant public outcry, the Pentagon announced last week that it would be temporarily suspending the program, pending a review of the situation.
MEDIA BLACKOUT: "[T]he degree of behind-the-scenes manipulation -- including regular briefings by then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other officials -- is striking, as is the lack of disclosure by the networks of some of these government and business connections," wrote Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz last week, who also addressed the controversy on CNN. On the whole, however, the media have been disappointingly silent on their role in the Pentagon’s scheme since the story broke last week. On Thursday, PBS’s News Hour did a lengthy segment on the scandal, but it could not convince the other networks to join in. "And for the record, we invited Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and NBC to participate," said senior correspondent Judy Woodruff, "but they declined our offer or did not respond." Since The New York Times report, Fox News has repeatedly used quotes from one of the military analysts named in the story, without mentioning his ties to the Pentagon. Several conservatives have also rushed to dismiss the expose. Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Max Boot said simply, "All this is part and parcel of the daily grind of Washington journalism." Neoconservative pundit John Podhoretz added that the revelations showed "nothing more than that the Pentagon treated former military personnel like VIPs."
PATTERN OF PROPAGANDA: While The New York Times’s revelation was galling, it was hardly the first instance of abuse of public information by the Bush administration. In 2005, the Los Angeles Times revealed that the U.S. military was "secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the US mission in Iraq." However, most of those stories were presented as "unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists." Officials said the stories were "basically factual" but would often "present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the US or Iraqi governments." Even at this time, conservatives were backing the Bush administration’s propaganda. The National Review’s Stephen Spruiell said, "We need more operations like this in Iraq, and more respect for their classified nature." Also in 2005, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers touted poll results of Iraqis that supposedly demonstrated the insurgency was losing political steam, without revealing that the poll surveyed only Iraqis who had actively worked against the insurgents. More recently, in October 2007, it was revealed that the U.S. military was attempting to use funds from the independent military newspaper Stars and Stripes to bolster a PR campaign, which some Pentagon officials described as "tax-payer-funded propaganda."
From the Nile to the Euphrates; The 'Victims of a Map'
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By Felicity Arbuthnot
By Felicity Arbuthnot
When the State of Israel declared independence on the 14th May 1948, her founding vow was to:
“... uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens without distinction of religion, race, or sex; (to) guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, education, and culture; will safeguard the holy places of all religions; and will loyally uphold the principles of the United Nations Charter. . . .” Israel called: “upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve the ways of peace and play their part in the development of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its bodies and institutions.”
Israel is about to celebrate sixty years of human rights violations against the region, Palestinians and destruction of their ever diminishing lands, revelling, in effect on graves, ancient bulldozed groves and over half a century of decimation of dreams, homes, heritage. The travesty of the theocracy’s founding on the above untruth, its betrayal, from the State’s inception, is encapsulated in the story of one child, caught in the early displacement of nearly three quarter of a million souls from the land of their birth. A forced flight and fragmentation of families, friends, communities, unceasing over six grinding decades.
The child was six years old in 1948. One night, that year, Israeli soldiers came to his home in al-Barweh. The family “...fled through a forest, bullets winging overhead and reached Lebanon, where they stayed for more than a year, living on meagre United Nations hand outs”. Finally, the child was led by his uncle, back across the border to the village of Deir al-Asad, in Galilee. They could not return to al-Barweh, for it had been obliterated by Israeli soldiers.
"All that had happened", he recounted in 1969, "was that the refugee had exchanged his old address for a new one. I had been a refugee in Lebanon and now I was a refugee in my own country."
Further, the first Israeli census deemed any Palestinian not accounted for as “an infiltrator” and “therefore not entitled to an identity card”. The child had been in Lebanon during the census and was, thus, illegal in his own country. His family and the Headmaster of his primary school used to hide him when police or officials appeared. Eventually, officials were told that he had been with the nomadic Bedouin during the census, thus finally obtaining an identity card, legalising him in the land of his birth.
From early on, literature and poetry were his passion. Whilst still at primary school, he was asked by his Headmaster to take part in Deir al-Asad’s celebration of the anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel. "I stood before a microphone for the first time in my life and read a poem, which was an outcry from an Arab boy, to a Jewish one.”
He still remembers the theme of his verses: "You can play in the sun as you please ... but I can’t. You have a house and I have none. You have celebrations, but I have none. Why can’t we play together?"
The following day, the boy was summoned by the military governor who insulted and threatened him, concluding that: “If you go on writing such poetry, I’ll stop your father working in the quarry.” The child wept bitter tears. "He was the first Jew I met and talked to ... If that was how Jews were, why should I speak to a Jewish boy?" He was saved from “the fire of distrust” by a Jewish woman teacher, who was “like a mother” and symbol of all that was good. She broadened his knowledge of poetry, refused to teach a curriculum "devised to distort and discredit our cultural heritage. She demolished the walls of distrust erected by the military governor." (1)
The boy was Mahmud Darwish, probably the world’s best known Palestinian poet, recipient of the 1969 Lotus Prize and 1983 Lenin Peace Prize. Palestine’s plight is reflected in the gentle, insightful screams of his haunting words, each poem a requiem to a land, history and people, raped by initial edicts from Whitehall and a world that has turned its face away from a “beloved country”, dismembered, piece by piece. To compare the lush richness of Palestine from the 1948 map and that of now, is to compare the vibrancy of beauty, become force-starved and mutilated, yet still fighting for precious life and future.
The contrast of Darwish’s poignant lines with the obscene language of those who have risen to the highest political offices in Israel, is stark: “We go to a country not of our flesh. The chestnut trees are not of our bones .... “We go to a country that does not hang a special sun over us ...”
Another poem begins: “We travel like other people, but we return to nowhere ...”
Another: “The earth is closing in on us, pushing us through the last passage .... “We saw the faces of those who’ll throw our children Out of the windows of this last space ...”
And his near unbearable: “Give birth to me again that I may know in which land I will die, In which land I will come to life again ...”
The lexicon, from which the leaders of Israel have pronounced over the years, must have come from the proverbial parallel universe. Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, opined of the Palestinians, as five hundred villages were being destroyed in sort of national house warming ceremony, unfettered violence raging: “The old will die off and the young will forget.”
Yitzhak Rabin, on the ethnic cleansing of residents of Gaza said: “Israel will create in the course of the next ten or twenty years, conditions which would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza….”
“The Palestinians are beasts walking on two legs..... Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for ever.” stated Menachem Begin, only to be outdone by Yitzhak Shamir: The Palestinians: “... would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls.” Ehud Barak weighed in with: “Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more....”
George W. Bush’s “man of peace”, Ariel Sharon, lynchpin of the 1982 Lebanon Sabra and Shatila massacres, voicing his action plan stated: “Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops as they can, to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay... Everything we don’t grab will go to them.”
Raphael Eitan, founder of the right wing Tzomet Party and clearly a soul mate of Sharon, stated: “When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” (2)
This Zionist wickedness, also mirrored in high places in Washington and Whitehall, also targets and denigrates the Jewish Diaspora in Israel and worldwide, who have devoted their lives - and often endangered or lost their careers - in their commitment to not alone a land, but a region where all can live in harmony, side by side. The vitriol, to which they are subjected by their own, includes being called “self hating Jews”. Even Orwell would be hard put to equate a passion for peace and “loving thy neighbour”, with “self hate”.
Whilst the United Nations Security Council threatens, has threatened and imposes embargoes against some of the world’s poorest countries, for actual or perceived violations, breaches or non-compliance with Resolutions, Israel: “...enjoys a unique relationship with the United Nations. Despite its failure to comply with a host of UN Resolutions, no action is ever taken”, writes Geoff Simons, in his exhaustive study of the world body. (3) Simons lists a few Resolutions which have been casually tossed aside by the Middle East’s “only democracy”: SCRs: 242, 338, 465, 672, 673 and 681.
The “important” Resolution 681 of 20th December 1990: “Deplores the decision by the government of Israel ... to resume the deportation of Palestinian civilians …” Israel responded shortly afterwards by further deportations.
Resolution 799 of 14th December 1992, was unanimous and also, uniquely, supported by the US and UK. It denounced Israel’s further violation of International L aw, noting that: “In contravention of its obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention ... deported on 17th December, hundreds of Palestinians ....” Further: “Strongly condemns the action ... Reaffirms the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention to all the territories occupied by Israel ... Reaffirms also the independent sovereignty and territorial integrity of Lebanon ... Demands that Israel as the occupying Power, ensure the safe and immediate return to the occupied territories of all those deported ...”
The then Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros Ghali expressed his “grave concern” over Israel’s action. The UK Foreign Office temporarily developed the semblance of a spine and declared that Israel was in violation of International Law - and one diplomat predicted the outcome: “... Israel hears the UN Resolution and then does what it does anyway.”
The refugees had been dumped in a wilderness in the early hours of the freezing winter morning. Israel turned a deaf ear to the UN and Western nations stood by. Palestinians demonstrated in sympathy in the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops opened fire, killing a ten year old girl and five others. By July 1993, Israel was back in Lebanon, decimating the tiny country, by land, sea and air.
Lebanon has been revisited and redecimated again (with beautiful little Israeli children shown, on military bases, signing missiles, which were to drop on Lebanese children). Palestine’s “long day’s journey into night” continues, year after year, as does the world’s silence.
Iraq lies in ruins for telling the truth to the United Nations (and the near five year assault on and plight of another Muslim nation, Afghanistan, barely flickers on the UN., or international radar.)
As the marking of the seven hundred and twentieth month of Israel’s betrayal of her vow to loyally uphold “the principles of the United Nations” is nearly upon the world, recent breaches include the killing of fifty nine Palestinians, including fifteen children and injuries to one hundred and five others in Gaza during April and three hundred and forty in just the fifteen weeks of 2008. http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m43336&hd=&size=1&l=e
Uruknet provides a litany of misery, taken from numerous sources; just three examples:
The planned closure and take-over of several orphanages and boarding schools sheltering thousands of orphans and impoverished students. Many of the orphans’ parents had been killed by the Israeli army and paramilitary Jewish terrorists, also known as “settlers”... http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m43382&hd=&size=1&l=e
The on-off halt of UNRWA relief operations in the Gaza because of lack of fuel supplies necessary to operate its trucks and centers deployed all over the Strip ...John Ging, the UNRWA’s director of operations in Gaza, stated Wednesday that the magnitude of death, destruction and despair in the Strip is considerable and disgraceful .... http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m43342&hd=&size=1&l=e
The finding of the mutilated body of 15 year old Hammad Nidar Khadatbh in lands of the illegal Israeli settlement of Al-Hamra by his father. Hammad had left the house on Tuesday, 15th April to work on the family’s land ... Hammadi’s body was naked, bloated, and tortured. His neck was broken, and his face had been smashed in with rocks. One finger had been cut off and there were multiple holes in his torso ... An Israeli police officer who arrived on the scene to investigate the incident confirmed that Hammad had been murdered ... http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m43343&hd=&size=1&l=e
On Tuesday, 22nd April, IMEMC’s Saed Bannoura reported: “A shipment of food aid for the people of the Gaza Strip was denied entry by Israeli military forces on Monday.... The World Health Organization has estimated malnutrition rates among children in Gaza may be as high as 45% due to the Israeli-imposed siege. Israeli politicians have openly declared that they plan to ’choke’ and ’starve’ Gaza into giving up resistance to the Israeli military occupation of their land.” Yitzhak Rabin’s words in minimally different guise.
AP reported (25th April 2008) that: “The United States, Britain, France and other members walked out of a closed meeting of the UN Security Council late Wednesday after Libya compared the situation in Gaza to Nazi concentration camps in World War II.” Israel’s Deputy Defence Minister, Matan Vilnai of course, last month, declared a holocaust for the people of Gaza. Libya clearly has no confusion over the use of lexicons.
Trauma surgeon, David Halpin responded to the BBC’s Today programme (25th April) on which Israel’s spokesman Mark Regev attempted to defend the indefensible. Halpin wrote: “The suffering of the 1.4 million people in Gaza, two thirds of whom are refugees and thus classified as persons due special protection, is beyond description and counting.”
In 1982, famed Syrian-born poet Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said) wrote of the siege of Beirut : “You do not die because you are created or because you have a body You die because you are the face of the future ...” And of: “being bombarded with darkness”.
As Israel celebrates by bombarding with darkness, the lights of humanity are going out, lost with their voice mute in those who walked from and closed the door on, the truth at the United Nations.
Britain’s also struck dumb, pantomime “Middle East Peace Envoy”, Anthony Lynton Blair QC., is, of course, lost in transit. Perhaps he’ll be unearthed somewhere in the uncountable thousands of missing bags at Heathrow’s infamous Terminal Five and dusted down just in time to join Friends of Israel’s birthday bash.’
Notes
(1) Darwish’s background and selected poems, with the evocative works of Sami al-Qasim and Adonis (Ali Ahmed Said) the all, soul songs of the Middle East, from: Victims of a Map, Saqi Books.
http://www.amazon.com/Victims-Map-Adonis/dp/0863565247
(2) Paradise: Lost, Professor Jamil I. Toubbeh, Palestine Chronicle, 22nd April 2008.
(3) The United Nations - A Chronology of Conflict, Geoff Simons, Macmillan, 1994.
Please also see:
http://www.hanini.org/Al-Nakbagallery.html Nakba May 1948 with pictures to cry for.
Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist and activist who has visited the Arab and Muslim world on numerous occasions. She has written and broadcast on Iraq, her coverage of which was nominated for several awards. She was also senior researcher for John Pilger’s award-winning documentary, "Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq" and author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of “Baghdad” in the “Great Cities” series, for World Almanac Books (2006.)
Please also see:
United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine
http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF?OpenDatabase
The Ghosts of Deir Yassin
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m43426&hd=&size=1&l=e
Why Palestinian Unity is Not an Option
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=13739
Love and resistance in the Gaza Strip Mona el-Farra, Guardian http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/?page=editorial&id=567&catID=3
Gaza is on the verge of bread crisis http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m43435&hd=&size=1&l=e
In Gaza: No shoe nor a drop of fuel http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m43421&hd=&size=1&l=e
Head of Catholic Church: Gaza will not die of hunger http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m43419&hd=&size=1&l=e
Video: Blockade halts food aid to Gaza Michael Bailey: 70,000 Gazans have no drinking water; UN can’t feed 700,000 refugees http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m43404&hd=&size=1&l=e
Dutch journalist deported from Israeli airport http://www.uruknet.info/?p=43325
Felicity Arbuthnot: Adopt a Doctor, Adopt a Patient, Adopt a Window, Adopt a Meal http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout4.php&id=4687&blz=1
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