Go to Original
By Saeed Shah
Bara, Pakistan - The only thing standing between Pakistan's Taliban and the lifeline for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan may be an Islamist warlord who controls the area near Pakistan's famed Khyber Pass.
In an interview with McClatchy, Mangal Bagh, who leads a group called Lashkar-i-Islam, voiced his disdain for America but said he's rebuffed an offer from the Taliban to join them.
Truckloads of food, equipment and fuel for NATO troops wind through the Khyber Pass daily to the bustling border at Torkham. Last month, Taliban fighters bombed fuel trucks waiting at Torkham to cross into Afghanistan, and last week, fighting between Bagh's men and a pocket of Taliban resistance closed the highway for several days.
Locals said that Bagh wouldn't allow Taliban fighters to cross into the Khyber agency, which is part of Pakistan's tribal belt and is now largely under his control.
Bagh's stronghold, the market town of Bara, is a half-hour drive from the center of Peshawar, the provincial capital, but an escort of his heavily armed followers is needed to reach his fortified compound in the countryside.
"I'm not the ruler of Khyber, I'm the servant," said Bagh, 35, who had an unexpectedly gentle manner as he relaxed with his Kalashnikov-toting men, drinking tea. "My aim is to finish all social evils."
The Pakistani Taliban, who control other parts of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas on the country's wild northwestern border, have issued repeated entreaties to Bagh to join forces with them. A traditional jirga, a meeting of elders, was held between Lashkar-i-Islam and the Taliban about 40 days ago.
"I told them (the Taliban) that what I am doing is enough. It is the right direction. There is no need to join you," he said.
"The Taliban consists of religious scholars. We are fighters for Islam, laypeople. We don't have any religious figures in our organization."
Unlike the Taliban and al Qaida, Lashkar-i-Islam opposes kidnappings and suicide bombings. Bagh's message is more an austere one, that "vices" must end, rather than the calls for international jihad, or Islamic holy war, of the Taliban and al Qaida.
However, he also called the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan "wrong" and said American troops must leave.
"While the Americans are in Afghanistan, there is no way to bring peace and prosperity, over there and here," Bagh said. "We do not want to kill Americans, we just want to make them Muslims."
Bagh, now called the "Emir," used to drive a bus and has built an empire in three years. He said he has more than 10,000 men under his command and could summon as many 120,000 - greater than the number of Pakistani soldiers stationed in all the tribal areas.
Bagh's stance has led to allegations that he has ties to Pakistani authorities or to the country's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
One of the senior members of Lashkar-i-Islam, Mistry-Sahib, denied any connection with the Pakistan state.
"We don't want to fight the government (unlike the Taliban); it is our country," said Mistry. "We just want peace in our area. We have no connection with the government because their policies are not right."
Pakistani authorities appear to have withdrawn from Bara and much of Khyber agency, and they've taken no recent action to rein in Bagh.
In Bara, the local government office was padlocked, and no army or police were visible on the streets. Lashkar-i-Islam has, it seems, become the de facto police, driving around in four-wheel-drive vehicles with flashing blue lights.
A local politician who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject, said: "If we finish Mangal Bagh, the Taliban will come in. He's a better alternative. At least he will never pick up his gun against Pakistan."
No women were walking around in Bara. Lashkar-i-Islam's harsh strictures, delivered on a pirate radio station, appear to have driven them indoors. In the market, people praised Bagh for cracking down on crime, which had been rampant.
Only a brave man, however, would criticize Bagh openly. Praying five times a day at the mosque is now mandatory, although it's a source of pride for Bagh that he's left Bara's small but conspicuous Sikh community alone.
"Conditions are good," said one Sikh in the market, Sant Singh. "When there is the azaan (the Islamic call to prayer), people leave their shops open and go to the mosque. There is no theft here anymore."
Bagh said that people frustrated by the government's failure to bring law and order to Khyber have flocked to his movement.
"I just preached, praised Islam. It was not difficult for me to organize these people. They are not my followers, they are followers of the Quran."
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Fed interest rate cuts prove calming to sub-prime mortgage resets
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By E. Scott Reckard
Home loan payments are going up modestly -- by just 1% on average in March, a study shows.
The great mortgage reset of 2008 isn't turning out quite as advertised.
Thanks to interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, payments on sub-prime loans with expiring "teaser" rates are going up only modestly when the loans start adjusting -- by just 1% on average last month, one study found.
A payment that would have risen by $450 in December is currently going up by no more than $100 and often much less, according to Tom Deutsch, an industry expert who testified recently to a housing panel of Congress.
Last fall, consumer advocates and government officials had raised concerns that increases of several hundred dollars in monthly payments were in store for about 2 million sub-prime loans made to high-risk borrowers at the height of the housing boom.
Defaults and foreclosures are still rising, however -- it's just that the culprit isn't solely the payment shocks once feared.
Instead, industry experts put most of the blame on tumbling housing prices, which have left many borrowers owing more than their homes are worth after making little or no down payment, taking on second mortgages or sucking their equity dry through refinancings.
"Every single borrower with a resetting loan has gotten effectively a mortgage modification in the sense that they are paying significantly less every month than they would have just last December," said Deutsch, deputy executive director of the American Securitization Forum, a trade group for the companies involved in creating mortgage bonds.
Consumer advocates say Deutsch understates the problem of resets. Bruce Marks, chief executive of Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America, said the troubled borrowers who ask his organization for help often stretched to qualify for start rates of 5% on their loans, not the 7.5% or 8% that the industry says was typical.
That means their loans become unaffordable even if the rate rises just 1.5 percentage points at the first adjustment, as often occurs, Marks said. What's more, he noted, sub-prime adjustable loans are set up so the initial rate can never go down, unlike traditional adjustable-rate loans.
"Payments on sub-prime loans are still going up, just not as much," Marks said.
Even so, without the recent reduction in interest rates, "things would have been worse," said economist Peter Morici of the University of Maryland. "The fact that it is down has made resets easier to swallow and has reduced the level of foreclosures."
Lower short-term interest rates also help certain other adjustable-rate borrowers, including people with home equity lines of credit, which have interest rates at or close to the prime rate. The prime rate, which was 8.25% a year ago, was at 5.25% this week.
Holders of controversial "pay option" mortgages, which allow borrowers to pay so little that the balance rises, also will benefit.
Facing what was shaping up to be the worst wave of foreclosures since the 1930s, the Fed lowered its benchmark rate for short-term loans between banks by 1.25 percentage points in January and by an additional 0.75 of a percentage point March 18.
In response, the index for most sub-prime loans -- a European inter-bank lending rate known as six-month U.S. LIBOR -- fell to 2.4% on March 18, the lowest level in more than three years, a recent Standard & Poor's study noted.
The Federal Reserve cuts were aimed in part at stemming foreclosures and propping up the slumping housing market, which many economists believe has tilted the economy into recession.
But the reduction in interest rates hasn't revived the moribund sub-prime lending market, economist Morici said.
Big investors such as pension funds, burned on mortgage investments, now will buy only those mortgage bonds backed by the safest prime loans or guaranteed by government-sponsored entities. And that, Morici said, has cut off sub-prime lending to potentially worthy borrowers with some credit dings and also loans for self-employed people and others in the "alt-A" loan category between prime and sub-prime.
"That's one reason the housing markets are tanking so badly, especially new-home sales," Morici said.
The Fed also has little control over long-term fixed mortgage interest rates. The average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose to 6.1% after the Fed reduced short-term rates in January because investors feared that the stimulus to the economy might fuel inflation. The rate had moved back down to 5.8% as of Thursday.
Consumer advocates said lower resets were no substitute for the five-year rate freeze that Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. had promoted back in December. Under that plan, many lenders had pledged to leave unchanged the teaser rates for sub-prime borrowers if their payments would become unaffordable because they were rising by 10% or more.
"The important thing for a family getting a [rate freeze] loan modification is that it provides long-term stability," said Kevin Stein, associate director of the California Reinvestment Coalition, who testified last week before the same House subcommittee as Deutsch. "Getting a temporary small increase based on a LIBOR index that can go back up in a few months is not going to do that."
Still, the lower resets are very real for what the industry describes as typical sub-prime borrowers. Their loans might start with an 8% rate for two years, the S&P study noted, then start adjusting twice a year to six-month LIBOR plus 6 percentage points. If LIBOR was 5%, the borrower would pay 11% interest on the loan.
Borrowers who got a loan like that in January 2005 would have paid $734 a month for two years on a $100,000 mortgage, S&P said. The payment would have jumped to $945 a month -- a 29% increase -- in January 2007, when six-month LIBOR was at 5.4%. The borrowers would have been paying even more at that point if not for restrictions on interest-rate increases built into the loan to reduce the payment shocks, S&P noted.
But as of March 18, payment shocks were only about 1%, S&P said, compared with 19% at the end of December, before the Fed started cutting rates.
After recent news articles questioned whether banks were properly reporting the interest rates used to calculate LIBOR, it crept back up a bit, to just over 3% last week.
But most sub-prime loans adjust by adding 5.5 or 6 percentage points to the index, meaning adjusted rates would be in the 8.5% to 9% range, not the double digits that had been feared last year when Paulson was promoting a "streamlined modification plan" to freeze the initial interest rates.
By E. Scott Reckard
Home loan payments are going up modestly -- by just 1% on average in March, a study shows.
The great mortgage reset of 2008 isn't turning out quite as advertised.
Thanks to interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, payments on sub-prime loans with expiring "teaser" rates are going up only modestly when the loans start adjusting -- by just 1% on average last month, one study found.
A payment that would have risen by $450 in December is currently going up by no more than $100 and often much less, according to Tom Deutsch, an industry expert who testified recently to a housing panel of Congress.
Last fall, consumer advocates and government officials had raised concerns that increases of several hundred dollars in monthly payments were in store for about 2 million sub-prime loans made to high-risk borrowers at the height of the housing boom.
Defaults and foreclosures are still rising, however -- it's just that the culprit isn't solely the payment shocks once feared.
Instead, industry experts put most of the blame on tumbling housing prices, which have left many borrowers owing more than their homes are worth after making little or no down payment, taking on second mortgages or sucking their equity dry through refinancings.
"Every single borrower with a resetting loan has gotten effectively a mortgage modification in the sense that they are paying significantly less every month than they would have just last December," said Deutsch, deputy executive director of the American Securitization Forum, a trade group for the companies involved in creating mortgage bonds.
Consumer advocates say Deutsch understates the problem of resets. Bruce Marks, chief executive of Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America, said the troubled borrowers who ask his organization for help often stretched to qualify for start rates of 5% on their loans, not the 7.5% or 8% that the industry says was typical.
That means their loans become unaffordable even if the rate rises just 1.5 percentage points at the first adjustment, as often occurs, Marks said. What's more, he noted, sub-prime adjustable loans are set up so the initial rate can never go down, unlike traditional adjustable-rate loans.
"Payments on sub-prime loans are still going up, just not as much," Marks said.
Even so, without the recent reduction in interest rates, "things would have been worse," said economist Peter Morici of the University of Maryland. "The fact that it is down has made resets easier to swallow and has reduced the level of foreclosures."
Lower short-term interest rates also help certain other adjustable-rate borrowers, including people with home equity lines of credit, which have interest rates at or close to the prime rate. The prime rate, which was 8.25% a year ago, was at 5.25% this week.
Holders of controversial "pay option" mortgages, which allow borrowers to pay so little that the balance rises, also will benefit.
Facing what was shaping up to be the worst wave of foreclosures since the 1930s, the Fed lowered its benchmark rate for short-term loans between banks by 1.25 percentage points in January and by an additional 0.75 of a percentage point March 18.
In response, the index for most sub-prime loans -- a European inter-bank lending rate known as six-month U.S. LIBOR -- fell to 2.4% on March 18, the lowest level in more than three years, a recent Standard & Poor's study noted.
The Federal Reserve cuts were aimed in part at stemming foreclosures and propping up the slumping housing market, which many economists believe has tilted the economy into recession.
But the reduction in interest rates hasn't revived the moribund sub-prime lending market, economist Morici said.
Big investors such as pension funds, burned on mortgage investments, now will buy only those mortgage bonds backed by the safest prime loans or guaranteed by government-sponsored entities. And that, Morici said, has cut off sub-prime lending to potentially worthy borrowers with some credit dings and also loans for self-employed people and others in the "alt-A" loan category between prime and sub-prime.
"That's one reason the housing markets are tanking so badly, especially new-home sales," Morici said.
The Fed also has little control over long-term fixed mortgage interest rates. The average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose to 6.1% after the Fed reduced short-term rates in January because investors feared that the stimulus to the economy might fuel inflation. The rate had moved back down to 5.8% as of Thursday.
Consumer advocates said lower resets were no substitute for the five-year rate freeze that Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. had promoted back in December. Under that plan, many lenders had pledged to leave unchanged the teaser rates for sub-prime borrowers if their payments would become unaffordable because they were rising by 10% or more.
"The important thing for a family getting a [rate freeze] loan modification is that it provides long-term stability," said Kevin Stein, associate director of the California Reinvestment Coalition, who testified last week before the same House subcommittee as Deutsch. "Getting a temporary small increase based on a LIBOR index that can go back up in a few months is not going to do that."
Still, the lower resets are very real for what the industry describes as typical sub-prime borrowers. Their loans might start with an 8% rate for two years, the S&P study noted, then start adjusting twice a year to six-month LIBOR plus 6 percentage points. If LIBOR was 5%, the borrower would pay 11% interest on the loan.
Borrowers who got a loan like that in January 2005 would have paid $734 a month for two years on a $100,000 mortgage, S&P said. The payment would have jumped to $945 a month -- a 29% increase -- in January 2007, when six-month LIBOR was at 5.4%. The borrowers would have been paying even more at that point if not for restrictions on interest-rate increases built into the loan to reduce the payment shocks, S&P noted.
But as of March 18, payment shocks were only about 1%, S&P said, compared with 19% at the end of December, before the Fed started cutting rates.
After recent news articles questioned whether banks were properly reporting the interest rates used to calculate LIBOR, it crept back up a bit, to just over 3% last week.
But most sub-prime loans adjust by adding 5.5 or 6 percentage points to the index, meaning adjusted rates would be in the 8.5% to 9% range, not the double digits that had been feared last year when Paulson was promoting a "streamlined modification plan" to freeze the initial interest rates.
Siege continues in Iraq as US escalates threats against Iran
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By Joe Kay
The United States military’s brutal offensive in Sadr City continued this week, with overnight raids killing dozens of people, including many civilians. The US offensive against the impoverished Baghdad neighborhood of 2 million people is entering its second month.
The direct target of US operations in Sadr City is the Mahdi Army militia led by Moqtada al-Sadr. Sadr’s followers are drawn from the largely working class Shiite population in Sadr City. He also has substantial support in southern Iraq, including Basra. The recent wave of violence in Iraq was triggered last month, when the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched an offensive, backed by the US, against Sadr’s forces in Basra.
According to media reports, the US military killed at least 11 people in Sadr City on Thursday night, and wounded another 74. “Criminals” have replaced “terrorists” as the label affixed by the US military to those it has slaughtered, but many are ordinary civilians. According to a report by Agence France-Presse (AFP), a Sadr City medic “said the dead included four old men, two women and a child” and that women and children were among the wounded.
The US military is employing helicopters armed with Hellfire rocket missiles to terrorize the population of Sadr City and target anyone it claims may be preparing rockets or roadside bombs.
According to figures tabulated by AFP from reports by the Iraqi government and the US military, at least 383 people have been killed in Sadr City over the past month. This figure, however, substantially underestimates the real death toll, since it is based only on official reports.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has reported that the main market in Sadr City has been severely damaged in the fighting, exacerbating food and water shortages. Several hospitals have also run out of supplies while attempting to treat the wounded.
Concurrent with the siege on Sadr City, Bush administration and military officials are also escalating their threats against Iran. On Friday, a ship contracted by the US military fired warning shots at what it said were Iranian boats in the Persian Gulf. Iranian officials denied that any of its vessels were involved.
Referring to the claim that the boats were Iranian, a military official said, “We don’t have complete confirmation of that, but we suspect it.” The incident mirrors an earlier one in January involving US Navy ships near the Strait of Hormuz. The military claimed then that two Iranian boats headed towards its ships, threatening to blow themselves up. These claims were later debunked, but the incident was used to ratchet up pressure on Iran.
Earlier this month, a US coastal patrol ship fired a flare at an Iranian boat, and in December the USS Whidbey Island fired warning shots at another Iranian vessel.
The administration has also claimed that Iran is behind most of the attacks on US forces in Iraq, creating the pretext for some form of possible military action. On Friday, Navy Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, claimed at a press conference that the US had acquired evidence of weapons in Iraq that had been recently manufactured in Iran.
An article published in the Wall Street Journal on Friday reported, “Officials in Washington and Baghdad said the purported Iranian mortars, rockets and explosives had date stamps indicating they were manufactured in the past two months. The US plans to launch a public campaign over the alleged weapons caches in coming days. A pair of senior commanders said a presentation was tentatively planned for Monday.”
“I believe recent events, especially the Basra operation, have revealed just how much and just how far Iran is reaching into Iraq to foment instability,” Mullen declared. “Their support to criminal groups in the form of munitions and training, as well as other assistance they are providing and the attacks they are encouraging continues to kill coalition and Iraqi personnel.”
The head of a military that has carried out a five-year occupation of Iraq, killing over 1 million people and turning 4 million into refugees, denounced Iran for continuing to “meddle” in the country.
Mullen said that the US was not planning a military operation in the immediate future, and that any such action would pose problems for the strained US military. He said, however, “It would be a mistake to think we are out of combat capacity.” He added, “We have military options. That kind of planning activity has been going on for a long time. I think it will go on for some time into the future.”
Mullen’s press conference is only the latest in a series of provocative statements and actions directed against Iran. On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, “What the Iranians are doing is killing American servicemen and women inside Iraq.” This month, Gates said for the first time that he thinks Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knew about the alleged arms transfers.
Bush’s announced this week that he would nominate General David Petraeus to fill the position of head of US Central Command, which oversees US military operations throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. Petraeus is currently the top commander in Iraq and is overseeing the US offensive in Sadr City.
If confirmed by the Democratic-controlled Congress—a virtual certainty—Petraeus will replace Admiral William Fallon, who announced his resignation last month after coming into conflict with the Bush administration over military policy, including in relation to Iran. An Esquire magazine article published shortly before Fallon resigned stated that the admiral was the main obstacle to war against Iran.
Petraeus, on the other hand, has associated himself with the hard-line policy against Iran promoted within the administration. In congressional testimony earlier this month, Petraeus said that he believed Iran was responsible for killing hundreds of American soldiers.
Petraeus also helped develop the theory of “special groups” operating in Iraq—a term invented to designate rogue factions within Sadr’s militia who are supposedly taking orders from the Iranian government. In his Congressional testimony, Petraeus said that the “special groups” “pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq.”
The theory of the “special groups” has been developed to justify the contradictory character of US policy in Iraq. Of the major Shiite organizations, the Sadr militia is the most distant from Iran, or at least from the principal organs of the Iranian government and military. Sadr is traditionally associated with Iraqi nationalism rather than Shiite sectarianism.
In fact, Iran has supported the operations of the Iraqi government and US military in Basra. The Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki told a press conference this week, “Weapons should be only in the hands of the Iraqi army,” supporting the disarmament of the Sadr militia.
The Iranian government is more closely tied with the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), which is itself closely integrated into the Maliki government and the Iraqi military.
The US is carrying out an offensive against Sadr’s militia not because of ties with Iran, but because of its base among the more impoverished sections of the Shiite working class, which is deeply opposed to the US occupation and the selling off of the country’s oil. Following the operations in Basra, the Iraqi government has moved quickly to open up the region’s oil and gas resources for exploitation by international companies.
At the same time, the US is seeking to undermine Iran as part of its overreaching plan to control the energy resources of the entire region. For these reasons, American imperialism finds itself in the position of supporting Iranian-backed political factions in Iraq even as it beats the drums for war against Iran.
For his part, Sadr is caught between an increasingly restive popular base, furious over the offensive launched by the Iraqi government and the US military, and his own desire to reach some form of accommodation with this same Iraqi government and the US occupation. Earlier this week, Sadr threatened “open war” against the US, but he has since backtracked. On Friday, Sadr asked his followers to continue to observe a ceasefire.
By Joe Kay
The United States military’s brutal offensive in Sadr City continued this week, with overnight raids killing dozens of people, including many civilians. The US offensive against the impoverished Baghdad neighborhood of 2 million people is entering its second month.
The direct target of US operations in Sadr City is the Mahdi Army militia led by Moqtada al-Sadr. Sadr’s followers are drawn from the largely working class Shiite population in Sadr City. He also has substantial support in southern Iraq, including Basra. The recent wave of violence in Iraq was triggered last month, when the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched an offensive, backed by the US, against Sadr’s forces in Basra.
According to media reports, the US military killed at least 11 people in Sadr City on Thursday night, and wounded another 74. “Criminals” have replaced “terrorists” as the label affixed by the US military to those it has slaughtered, but many are ordinary civilians. According to a report by Agence France-Presse (AFP), a Sadr City medic “said the dead included four old men, two women and a child” and that women and children were among the wounded.
The US military is employing helicopters armed with Hellfire rocket missiles to terrorize the population of Sadr City and target anyone it claims may be preparing rockets or roadside bombs.
According to figures tabulated by AFP from reports by the Iraqi government and the US military, at least 383 people have been killed in Sadr City over the past month. This figure, however, substantially underestimates the real death toll, since it is based only on official reports.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has reported that the main market in Sadr City has been severely damaged in the fighting, exacerbating food and water shortages. Several hospitals have also run out of supplies while attempting to treat the wounded.
Concurrent with the siege on Sadr City, Bush administration and military officials are also escalating their threats against Iran. On Friday, a ship contracted by the US military fired warning shots at what it said were Iranian boats in the Persian Gulf. Iranian officials denied that any of its vessels were involved.
Referring to the claim that the boats were Iranian, a military official said, “We don’t have complete confirmation of that, but we suspect it.” The incident mirrors an earlier one in January involving US Navy ships near the Strait of Hormuz. The military claimed then that two Iranian boats headed towards its ships, threatening to blow themselves up. These claims were later debunked, but the incident was used to ratchet up pressure on Iran.
Earlier this month, a US coastal patrol ship fired a flare at an Iranian boat, and in December the USS Whidbey Island fired warning shots at another Iranian vessel.
The administration has also claimed that Iran is behind most of the attacks on US forces in Iraq, creating the pretext for some form of possible military action. On Friday, Navy Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, claimed at a press conference that the US had acquired evidence of weapons in Iraq that had been recently manufactured in Iran.
An article published in the Wall Street Journal on Friday reported, “Officials in Washington and Baghdad said the purported Iranian mortars, rockets and explosives had date stamps indicating they were manufactured in the past two months. The US plans to launch a public campaign over the alleged weapons caches in coming days. A pair of senior commanders said a presentation was tentatively planned for Monday.”
“I believe recent events, especially the Basra operation, have revealed just how much and just how far Iran is reaching into Iraq to foment instability,” Mullen declared. “Their support to criminal groups in the form of munitions and training, as well as other assistance they are providing and the attacks they are encouraging continues to kill coalition and Iraqi personnel.”
The head of a military that has carried out a five-year occupation of Iraq, killing over 1 million people and turning 4 million into refugees, denounced Iran for continuing to “meddle” in the country.
Mullen said that the US was not planning a military operation in the immediate future, and that any such action would pose problems for the strained US military. He said, however, “It would be a mistake to think we are out of combat capacity.” He added, “We have military options. That kind of planning activity has been going on for a long time. I think it will go on for some time into the future.”
Mullen’s press conference is only the latest in a series of provocative statements and actions directed against Iran. On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, “What the Iranians are doing is killing American servicemen and women inside Iraq.” This month, Gates said for the first time that he thinks Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knew about the alleged arms transfers.
Bush’s announced this week that he would nominate General David Petraeus to fill the position of head of US Central Command, which oversees US military operations throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. Petraeus is currently the top commander in Iraq and is overseeing the US offensive in Sadr City.
If confirmed by the Democratic-controlled Congress—a virtual certainty—Petraeus will replace Admiral William Fallon, who announced his resignation last month after coming into conflict with the Bush administration over military policy, including in relation to Iran. An Esquire magazine article published shortly before Fallon resigned stated that the admiral was the main obstacle to war against Iran.
Petraeus, on the other hand, has associated himself with the hard-line policy against Iran promoted within the administration. In congressional testimony earlier this month, Petraeus said that he believed Iran was responsible for killing hundreds of American soldiers.
Petraeus also helped develop the theory of “special groups” operating in Iraq—a term invented to designate rogue factions within Sadr’s militia who are supposedly taking orders from the Iranian government. In his Congressional testimony, Petraeus said that the “special groups” “pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq.”
The theory of the “special groups” has been developed to justify the contradictory character of US policy in Iraq. Of the major Shiite organizations, the Sadr militia is the most distant from Iran, or at least from the principal organs of the Iranian government and military. Sadr is traditionally associated with Iraqi nationalism rather than Shiite sectarianism.
In fact, Iran has supported the operations of the Iraqi government and US military in Basra. The Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki told a press conference this week, “Weapons should be only in the hands of the Iraqi army,” supporting the disarmament of the Sadr militia.
The Iranian government is more closely tied with the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), which is itself closely integrated into the Maliki government and the Iraqi military.
The US is carrying out an offensive against Sadr’s militia not because of ties with Iran, but because of its base among the more impoverished sections of the Shiite working class, which is deeply opposed to the US occupation and the selling off of the country’s oil. Following the operations in Basra, the Iraqi government has moved quickly to open up the region’s oil and gas resources for exploitation by international companies.
At the same time, the US is seeking to undermine Iran as part of its overreaching plan to control the energy resources of the entire region. For these reasons, American imperialism finds itself in the position of supporting Iranian-backed political factions in Iraq even as it beats the drums for war against Iran.
For his part, Sadr is caught between an increasingly restive popular base, furious over the offensive launched by the Iraqi government and the US military, and his own desire to reach some form of accommodation with this same Iraqi government and the US occupation. Earlier this week, Sadr threatened “open war” against the US, but he has since backtracked. On Friday, Sadr asked his followers to continue to observe a ceasefire.
US: Emails suggest Veterans Administration cover-up of suicide rate
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By Naomi Spencer
Internal emails from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) turned over to a federal district court in San Francisco this week reveal that the agency’s mental health unit saw a staggering 1,000 suicide attempts every month among veterans receiving government care last year. emails also indicated that among all US veterans, the VA was aware of a suicide rate of 6,570 per year, or 18 suicides every day on average.
This figure—which corresponds to the suicide estimate CBS News arrived at independently last fall and which VA officials vehemently contested—further underscores the social costs of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. The emails also reveal the attitudes and policies of Bush administration and military officials regarding the suffering of veterans and the public’s right to know.
The emails were reviewed by the federal District Court of Northern California on Monday, where a lawsuit against the VA is being heard. The suit, brought by the veterans’ advocacy groups Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth, is seeking to force a restructuring of the veterans’ medical system in light of an enormous backlog of healthcare claims, large numbers of suicides and cases of untreated mental trauma among military personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
One of the most damning emails, made available by CBS on its web site April 21, was written by VA Mental Health director Ira Katz and headed with the subject line “Not for the CBS News Interview Request.”
Katz sent the message to the agency’s media relations chief February 13: “Shh! Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?”
Everett Chasen, the VA’s chief communications officer, replied: “I think this is something we should discuss among ourselves, before issuing a release.... It might be something we drop into a general release about our suicide prevention efforts, which (as you know far better than I) prominently include training employees to recognize the warning signs of suicide.”
In November, CBS News published the results of a study it commissioned of state-by-state death statistics for 2005. Among the 45 of 50 states for which data was returned, the study found that at least 6,256 veterans had committed suicide that year.
By the network’s calculations, 120 veterans took their own lives each week on average, or about 17 every single day.
At the time of the CBS report, Katz insisted that “Their number is not, in fact, an accurate reflection of the rate.” According to the network, three days after making this statement, Katz admitted in an email, “there are about 18 suicides per day among America’s 25 million veterans,” or about 6,570 per year. This figure, Katz wrote, “is supported by the CBS numbers.”
In contrast, when asked by CBS why the military had not conducted a national study of suicides, Katz told the network, “There is no epidemic of suicide in the VA, but suicide is a major problem.”
Another email exchange turned over to the court, between Katz and VA undersecretary Michael Kussman from December 15, further confirms that top VA officials knew the suicide rate they publicly disclosed was far lower than the actual rate. Kussman wrote, “McClatchy [news agency] alleges that 18 veterans kill themselves everyday and this is confirmed by the VA’s own statistics. Is that true? Sounds awful but if one is considering 24 million veterans.”
In his reply, Katz confirmed the validity of the reports and added that “VA’s own data demonstrate 4-5 suicides per day among those who receive care from us.”
Yet on February 5, VA Secretary James Peake issued a letter to Congress stating that between October 2001 and December 2005, VA records indicated only 144 combat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan had committed suicide. In March, the VA provided CBS data suggesting that among recently treated VA patients, there were 790 attempted suicides for 2007.
The disparity between the content of internal correspondence and public statements of VA officials suggests a cover-up. Indeed, in one email reviewed by the court, dated March 10, communications officer Chasen commented, “I don’t want to give CBS any more numbers on veterans suicides or attempts than they already have—it will only lead to more questions.”
Since Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth filed suit against the government last July, the Bush administration has sought to have the case dismissed. According to the Justice Department, the advocacy groups did not have the right to sue because they were associations rather than individuals. The Justice Department further declared that veterans were not legally entitled to bring a class action lawsuit against the government. These arguments were rejected in district court, but it is likely that the administration will challenge any unfavorable ruling.
In court this week, VA officials were defensive about the agency’s mental health management system. In an opening statement Tuesday, Justice Department lawyer Richard Lepley told the court that medical claims have increased at the VA by 25 percent since 2001, from 675,000 to 838,000 in 2007. The defense maintained that this increase was mainly attributable to aging Vietnam veterans seeking medical care.
Because of this increase, Lepley said, the VA had failed to reduce the long waiting period for claims processing as it had pledged to do last year. The agency had announced it would shorten the average processing time to 125 days. According to Gordon Erspamer, an attorney representing the veterans’ groups, the VA takes as long as 15 years before compensating veterans for psychological disorders.
Lepley told the court the VA currently took 185 days on average to attend to medical claims. The defense called this processing time “reasonable.”
Kerri Childress, a spokesperson for the California VA in attendance at the trial, told the New York Times Tuesday that, in the newspaper’s words, “News coverage from the current wars has also led to new mental health problems among Vietnam veterans.” Referring to the war in Iraq, Childress told the Times, “I don’t think anybody had any idea how long the war was going to go on,” adding that, as the paper put it, “there was no way to fully anticipate the demand for medical care from Vietnam veterans.”
The connection between the brutality of war, especially colonial war, and psychological trauma is historically well established. Moreover, it is widely acknowledged among sections of the military brass that current US forces are being stretched to the breaking point, and the entire political establishment agrees that the so-called “war on terror” and particularly the occupation of Iraq are intentionally open-ended.
A multitude of social problems and military policies account for the large number of suicides among returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans: the recruitment of soldiers with preexisting psychological problems, long and repeated deployments, widespread reliance upon anti-depressants and other drugs to dull mental trauma, as well as the underfunding of post-deployment mental health care and the stigmatization of mental illness within the military. Fundamentally, however, both the mounting social crisis among returning veterans and the VA’s negligence have their source in the nature of the war itself.
In light of the publication of the VA internal emails, Senate Democrats have called for the resignation of Mental Health director Katz. On Wednesday, during a Veterans’ Affairs committee hearing, Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray told VA officials that the agency faced a credibility crisis. “The culture of the VA has to change.... The whole culture is repressing information. We are not your enemy. We are your support system.”
Katz was not present at the hearing. Deputy VA secretary Gordon Mansfield offered to “apologize for the implications here,” but denied that the agency made any effort to stonewall or obfuscate suicide data.
VA personnel undersecretary David Chu suggested that although suicides have increased, it was “good news” that the rate was lower than the national average. This is a gross distortion. The CBS News survey found that among veterans aged 20-24, the suicide rate was between 2.5 and 4 times higher than for non-veterans of the same age. For a subgroup of the population that is young, fit and ostensibly screened for mental problems, the suicide rate is alarmingly high—between 23 and 33 per 100,000 young veterans killed themselves in 2005.
On April 17, the RAND Corporation think-tank released a study that found symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or major depression among 300,000 returned military personnel—nearly a fifth of all those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Based on interviews of 1,965 service members from 24 areas throughout the US, the study found that of those reporting PTSD or depressive symptoms, only 53 percent have sought treatment for their trauma.
The RAND survey also found that 19 percent of returned veterans—320,000 individuals—had experienced possible traumatic brain injury (TBI), called the “signature wound” of the Iraq occupation because of the frequency of improvised explosive devices, the primary cause of active-duty troop brain injuries. According to the report, “Of those reporting a probable TBI, 57 percent had not been evaluated by a physician for brain injury.”
Despite the fact that the VA has handled some 300,000 cases from Iraq and Afghanistan, the RAND findings suggest that the majority of mentally traumatized veterans go without care. Furthermore, the report notes, “Even when individuals receive care, too few receive quality care. Of those who have a mental disorder and also sought medical care for that problem, just over half received a minimally adequate treatment. The number who received quality care (i.e., a treatment that has been demonstrated to be effective) would be expected to be even smaller.”
By Naomi Spencer
Internal emails from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) turned over to a federal district court in San Francisco this week reveal that the agency’s mental health unit saw a staggering 1,000 suicide attempts every month among veterans receiving government care last year. emails also indicated that among all US veterans, the VA was aware of a suicide rate of 6,570 per year, or 18 suicides every day on average.
This figure—which corresponds to the suicide estimate CBS News arrived at independently last fall and which VA officials vehemently contested—further underscores the social costs of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. The emails also reveal the attitudes and policies of Bush administration and military officials regarding the suffering of veterans and the public’s right to know.
The emails were reviewed by the federal District Court of Northern California on Monday, where a lawsuit against the VA is being heard. The suit, brought by the veterans’ advocacy groups Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth, is seeking to force a restructuring of the veterans’ medical system in light of an enormous backlog of healthcare claims, large numbers of suicides and cases of untreated mental trauma among military personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
One of the most damning emails, made available by CBS on its web site April 21, was written by VA Mental Health director Ira Katz and headed with the subject line “Not for the CBS News Interview Request.”
Katz sent the message to the agency’s media relations chief February 13: “Shh! Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?”
Everett Chasen, the VA’s chief communications officer, replied: “I think this is something we should discuss among ourselves, before issuing a release.... It might be something we drop into a general release about our suicide prevention efforts, which (as you know far better than I) prominently include training employees to recognize the warning signs of suicide.”
In November, CBS News published the results of a study it commissioned of state-by-state death statistics for 2005. Among the 45 of 50 states for which data was returned, the study found that at least 6,256 veterans had committed suicide that year.
By the network’s calculations, 120 veterans took their own lives each week on average, or about 17 every single day.
At the time of the CBS report, Katz insisted that “Their number is not, in fact, an accurate reflection of the rate.” According to the network, three days after making this statement, Katz admitted in an email, “there are about 18 suicides per day among America’s 25 million veterans,” or about 6,570 per year. This figure, Katz wrote, “is supported by the CBS numbers.”
In contrast, when asked by CBS why the military had not conducted a national study of suicides, Katz told the network, “There is no epidemic of suicide in the VA, but suicide is a major problem.”
Another email exchange turned over to the court, between Katz and VA undersecretary Michael Kussman from December 15, further confirms that top VA officials knew the suicide rate they publicly disclosed was far lower than the actual rate. Kussman wrote, “McClatchy [news agency] alleges that 18 veterans kill themselves everyday and this is confirmed by the VA’s own statistics. Is that true? Sounds awful but if one is considering 24 million veterans.”
In his reply, Katz confirmed the validity of the reports and added that “VA’s own data demonstrate 4-5 suicides per day among those who receive care from us.”
Yet on February 5, VA Secretary James Peake issued a letter to Congress stating that between October 2001 and December 2005, VA records indicated only 144 combat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan had committed suicide. In March, the VA provided CBS data suggesting that among recently treated VA patients, there were 790 attempted suicides for 2007.
The disparity between the content of internal correspondence and public statements of VA officials suggests a cover-up. Indeed, in one email reviewed by the court, dated March 10, communications officer Chasen commented, “I don’t want to give CBS any more numbers on veterans suicides or attempts than they already have—it will only lead to more questions.”
Since Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth filed suit against the government last July, the Bush administration has sought to have the case dismissed. According to the Justice Department, the advocacy groups did not have the right to sue because they were associations rather than individuals. The Justice Department further declared that veterans were not legally entitled to bring a class action lawsuit against the government. These arguments were rejected in district court, but it is likely that the administration will challenge any unfavorable ruling.
In court this week, VA officials were defensive about the agency’s mental health management system. In an opening statement Tuesday, Justice Department lawyer Richard Lepley told the court that medical claims have increased at the VA by 25 percent since 2001, from 675,000 to 838,000 in 2007. The defense maintained that this increase was mainly attributable to aging Vietnam veterans seeking medical care.
Because of this increase, Lepley said, the VA had failed to reduce the long waiting period for claims processing as it had pledged to do last year. The agency had announced it would shorten the average processing time to 125 days. According to Gordon Erspamer, an attorney representing the veterans’ groups, the VA takes as long as 15 years before compensating veterans for psychological disorders.
Lepley told the court the VA currently took 185 days on average to attend to medical claims. The defense called this processing time “reasonable.”
Kerri Childress, a spokesperson for the California VA in attendance at the trial, told the New York Times Tuesday that, in the newspaper’s words, “News coverage from the current wars has also led to new mental health problems among Vietnam veterans.” Referring to the war in Iraq, Childress told the Times, “I don’t think anybody had any idea how long the war was going to go on,” adding that, as the paper put it, “there was no way to fully anticipate the demand for medical care from Vietnam veterans.”
The connection between the brutality of war, especially colonial war, and psychological trauma is historically well established. Moreover, it is widely acknowledged among sections of the military brass that current US forces are being stretched to the breaking point, and the entire political establishment agrees that the so-called “war on terror” and particularly the occupation of Iraq are intentionally open-ended.
A multitude of social problems and military policies account for the large number of suicides among returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans: the recruitment of soldiers with preexisting psychological problems, long and repeated deployments, widespread reliance upon anti-depressants and other drugs to dull mental trauma, as well as the underfunding of post-deployment mental health care and the stigmatization of mental illness within the military. Fundamentally, however, both the mounting social crisis among returning veterans and the VA’s negligence have their source in the nature of the war itself.
In light of the publication of the VA internal emails, Senate Democrats have called for the resignation of Mental Health director Katz. On Wednesday, during a Veterans’ Affairs committee hearing, Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray told VA officials that the agency faced a credibility crisis. “The culture of the VA has to change.... The whole culture is repressing information. We are not your enemy. We are your support system.”
Katz was not present at the hearing. Deputy VA secretary Gordon Mansfield offered to “apologize for the implications here,” but denied that the agency made any effort to stonewall or obfuscate suicide data.
VA personnel undersecretary David Chu suggested that although suicides have increased, it was “good news” that the rate was lower than the national average. This is a gross distortion. The CBS News survey found that among veterans aged 20-24, the suicide rate was between 2.5 and 4 times higher than for non-veterans of the same age. For a subgroup of the population that is young, fit and ostensibly screened for mental problems, the suicide rate is alarmingly high—between 23 and 33 per 100,000 young veterans killed themselves in 2005.
On April 17, the RAND Corporation think-tank released a study that found symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or major depression among 300,000 returned military personnel—nearly a fifth of all those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Based on interviews of 1,965 service members from 24 areas throughout the US, the study found that of those reporting PTSD or depressive symptoms, only 53 percent have sought treatment for their trauma.
The RAND survey also found that 19 percent of returned veterans—320,000 individuals—had experienced possible traumatic brain injury (TBI), called the “signature wound” of the Iraq occupation because of the frequency of improvised explosive devices, the primary cause of active-duty troop brain injuries. According to the report, “Of those reporting a probable TBI, 57 percent had not been evaluated by a physician for brain injury.”
Despite the fact that the VA has handled some 300,000 cases from Iraq and Afghanistan, the RAND findings suggest that the majority of mentally traumatized veterans go without care. Furthermore, the report notes, “Even when individuals receive care, too few receive quality care. Of those who have a mental disorder and also sought medical care for that problem, just over half received a minimally adequate treatment. The number who received quality care (i.e., a treatment that has been demonstrated to be effective) would be expected to be even smaller.”
Israel Might Have Many More Spies Here, Officials Say
Go to Original
By Jeff Stein
The elderly New Jersey man arrested last week on charges of spying for Israel years ago was probably still working for the Jewish state’s espionage service in tandem with another, as yet unidentified spy, former American intelligence officials say.
Ben-Ami Kadish, now 84, was employed as a mechanical engineer at a U.S. Army weapons center in New Jersey when he allegedly supplied his Israeli handler with classified military documents, according to charges filed last week.
The handler was named only as “CC-1,” or co-conspirator 1, in the criminal complaint. But its description of him as the same man who was handling the notorious Israeli mole Jonathan Pollard all but identified him as Yosef Yagur, formerly the consul for scientific affairs at the Israeli consulate in New York.
Pollard, who gave Yagur thousands of highly classified documents while working as a navy intelligence analyst in the 1980s, is in the 21st year of a life sentence for espionage.
Kadish, who worked at the U.S. Army’s Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, N.J., from 1963 to 1990, could also spend the waning years of his life in jail if he is convicted.
A former senior CIA counterintelligence operative believes the case “will never go to trial, because of all the ugly stuff that would come out” about Israeli activities in the United States.
Indeed, Justice Department attorneys have fought to keep “ugly stuff” from emerging in the trial of two officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, charged with accepting classified documents from Pentagon official Larry Franklin.
But the federal judge in the case has indicated he might not go along with their strategy. Last month Judge Thomas Ellis III indefinitely postponed the trial of AIPAC officials Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, which was scheduled to open next week.
Neither the United States nor Israel, strategic allies struggling with Middle East terrorism, the war in Iraq and the rising threat of Iran, can afford a breech in relations triggered by either case.
The Justice Department said Kadish brought home briefcases full of classified documents, which “CC-1” photographed in his basement. Among the documents was “restricted data” on nuclear weapons, classified information on a modified F-15 fighter that was sold to an unnamed foreign country (most likely Saudi Arabia), and a document relating to the Patriot anti-missile system, which the United States deployed to Israel during the first Gulf War in 1990.
Yagur fled New York in 1985 as U.S. counterintelligence agents closed in on Pollard. He has not been back since, U.S. officials believe.
They thought that was the end of his espionage operations here.
But Yagur evidently kept in touch with Kadish, exchanging e-mails and telephone calls with him long after he returned to Israel. Kadish went to Israel in 2004 and met with his former spy master, authorities said.
Just last month, on March 20, “CC-1” told Kadish to lie to FBI agents who had questioned him about the documents, according to a wiretap transcript produced by federal prosecutors.
“Don’t say anything. Let them say whatever they want. You didn’t do anything,” CC-1 told Kadish. “What happened 25 years ago? You didn’t remember anything.”
Ron Olive, the navy investigator in charge of the Pollard case, said he was shocked when he heard about Kadish’s arrest.
The description of CC-1 as Pollard’s handler meant that “it has to be” Yagur, he said by telephone from Arizona, where he was giving a counterintelligence lecture to federal officials.
“I was like, ‘holy cow, this is unbelievable,’” he said.
Olive said the arrest meant that Kadish was still working for Israeli intelligence.
“It means Israel still has an agent in place in the U.S. who can ferret out someone who has access to information they want,” Olive said.
One role Kadish could play was as a “spotter,” who could size up possible recruits for Israeli intelligence, even while living in a retirement community in Monroe Township, N.J., said Olive and another former federal agent.
“That jumped out at me,” said Harry B. “Skip” Brandon, a former deputy assistant director of counterintelligence at the FBI.
“It is very unusual for a former agent handler and his former agent to remain friends. And it’s dangerous for both,” he added. Any communication between the two, no matter how innocent, raises the risk of detection and exposure.
Other aspects of the case suggest that Jerusalem has at least one, and maybe several more spies embedded in U.S. military services or intelligence agencies: As with Pollard, the Israelis asked Kadish for specific documents, indicating they knew what they were looking for, supplied by another spy.
“You know, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit,” said Olive, who in 2006 published a memoir about the case, “Capturing Jonathan Pollard: How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History Was Brought to Justice”.
Olive said Pollard stole “360 cubic feet” of classified documents during his six years as an Israeli mole.
“It was the most devastating spy case I ever saw.”
There have long been rumors of a “Mr. X,” Olive said, “another unknown government employee who had access to information that the Israelis could use.”
Israeli intelligence had a spy, code-named MEGA, high up in the Reagan administration at the same time Pollard, and now allegedly Kadish, were stealing documents, according to a Washington Post story years ago that has never been confirmed.
In fact, according to past and present U.S. counterintelligence officials, Israeli agents were so aggressive even after the Pollard case that an FBI counterintelligence boss in the late 1990s, David Szady, summoned Mossad’s top official for a tongue lashing.
“Knock it off,” Szady said, according to a reliable source on condition of anonymity.
Szady has been pilloried in pro-Israel circles for pursuing the AIPAC case, which many critics say amounts to trumping up espionage charges against officials who were merely engaging in the kind of transaction officials and journalists conduct every day.
But the Israelis here have never stopped practicing the “world’s second oldest profession,” as espionage is sometimes dubbed, despite years of rote denials, many officials say.
“I guarantee you the same thing is happening now,” said Olive, who trains Department of Energy security officials on detecting signs of espionage.
One effective espionage tool is forming joint partnerships with U.S. companies to supply software and other technology products to U.S. government agencies, intelligence officials say.
But Brandon, who retired in the mid-1990s but retains many intelligence contacts for his global security consulting business, says the Israelis are interested in commercial as much as military secrets. They have a muscular technology sector themselves.
“They are always looking for a leg up,” he said.
Congress is a major target, too, Brandon said.
“God, they would work the Hill, ” he said. “They really worked the Hill. They were not necessarily interested in collection [of information] so much as they were in influence.”
Influencing Congress is usually the domain of foreign diplomats, he said, but in Israel’s case there was “very little distinction between Mossad and the diplomats.”
“They were very sharp,” he added. “Their best and brightest.”
Mossad agents also scout for people to help them in the Jewish-American community, he said, based on their religious and political commonality. It’s a vast community of potential “spotters,” who can point them to other Jewish Americans in government, law, finance and banking who might be susceptible to recruitment, as is the case with potential Chinese and Cuban recruits.
Or just useful conversation. Israeli agents, Brandon said, are skilled at eliciting information from unwary Jewish Americans in strategically important positions.
“They make you feel good, feel important,” he said. “They don’t even realize they’re giving up something” sensitive, or even classified — until it’s too late.
At the same time, U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials have worked hand in glove on numerous fronts since 1948, when the Jewish state was founded.
Mossad had access to Russian Jews who supplied the West with Soviet military, scientific and technical secrets. American and Israel intelligence have always worked closely in counterterrorism.
But they don’t tell each other everything, which is why the relationship sometimes veers from friendship to competition.
“They were never, ever allowed in our facilities,” says a former CIA officer who was sometimes assigned a liaison role with Israeli counterterrorism agents.
Likewise, when CIA or other U.S. intelligence operatives visited Israel, Israeli security agents would “toss their room,” he said, “just to show who’s in charge.”
By Jeff Stein
The elderly New Jersey man arrested last week on charges of spying for Israel years ago was probably still working for the Jewish state’s espionage service in tandem with another, as yet unidentified spy, former American intelligence officials say.
Ben-Ami Kadish, now 84, was employed as a mechanical engineer at a U.S. Army weapons center in New Jersey when he allegedly supplied his Israeli handler with classified military documents, according to charges filed last week.
The handler was named only as “CC-1,” or co-conspirator 1, in the criminal complaint. But its description of him as the same man who was handling the notorious Israeli mole Jonathan Pollard all but identified him as Yosef Yagur, formerly the consul for scientific affairs at the Israeli consulate in New York.
Pollard, who gave Yagur thousands of highly classified documents while working as a navy intelligence analyst in the 1980s, is in the 21st year of a life sentence for espionage.
Kadish, who worked at the U.S. Army’s Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, N.J., from 1963 to 1990, could also spend the waning years of his life in jail if he is convicted.
A former senior CIA counterintelligence operative believes the case “will never go to trial, because of all the ugly stuff that would come out” about Israeli activities in the United States.
Indeed, Justice Department attorneys have fought to keep “ugly stuff” from emerging in the trial of two officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, charged with accepting classified documents from Pentagon official Larry Franklin.
But the federal judge in the case has indicated he might not go along with their strategy. Last month Judge Thomas Ellis III indefinitely postponed the trial of AIPAC officials Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, which was scheduled to open next week.
Neither the United States nor Israel, strategic allies struggling with Middle East terrorism, the war in Iraq and the rising threat of Iran, can afford a breech in relations triggered by either case.
The Justice Department said Kadish brought home briefcases full of classified documents, which “CC-1” photographed in his basement. Among the documents was “restricted data” on nuclear weapons, classified information on a modified F-15 fighter that was sold to an unnamed foreign country (most likely Saudi Arabia), and a document relating to the Patriot anti-missile system, which the United States deployed to Israel during the first Gulf War in 1990.
Yagur fled New York in 1985 as U.S. counterintelligence agents closed in on Pollard. He has not been back since, U.S. officials believe.
They thought that was the end of his espionage operations here.
But Yagur evidently kept in touch with Kadish, exchanging e-mails and telephone calls with him long after he returned to Israel. Kadish went to Israel in 2004 and met with his former spy master, authorities said.
Just last month, on March 20, “CC-1” told Kadish to lie to FBI agents who had questioned him about the documents, according to a wiretap transcript produced by federal prosecutors.
“Don’t say anything. Let them say whatever they want. You didn’t do anything,” CC-1 told Kadish. “What happened 25 years ago? You didn’t remember anything.”
Ron Olive, the navy investigator in charge of the Pollard case, said he was shocked when he heard about Kadish’s arrest.
The description of CC-1 as Pollard’s handler meant that “it has to be” Yagur, he said by telephone from Arizona, where he was giving a counterintelligence lecture to federal officials.
“I was like, ‘holy cow, this is unbelievable,’” he said.
Olive said the arrest meant that Kadish was still working for Israeli intelligence.
“It means Israel still has an agent in place in the U.S. who can ferret out someone who has access to information they want,” Olive said.
One role Kadish could play was as a “spotter,” who could size up possible recruits for Israeli intelligence, even while living in a retirement community in Monroe Township, N.J., said Olive and another former federal agent.
“That jumped out at me,” said Harry B. “Skip” Brandon, a former deputy assistant director of counterintelligence at the FBI.
“It is very unusual for a former agent handler and his former agent to remain friends. And it’s dangerous for both,” he added. Any communication between the two, no matter how innocent, raises the risk of detection and exposure.
Other aspects of the case suggest that Jerusalem has at least one, and maybe several more spies embedded in U.S. military services or intelligence agencies: As with Pollard, the Israelis asked Kadish for specific documents, indicating they knew what they were looking for, supplied by another spy.
“You know, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit,” said Olive, who in 2006 published a memoir about the case, “Capturing Jonathan Pollard: How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History Was Brought to Justice”.
Olive said Pollard stole “360 cubic feet” of classified documents during his six years as an Israeli mole.
“It was the most devastating spy case I ever saw.”
There have long been rumors of a “Mr. X,” Olive said, “another unknown government employee who had access to information that the Israelis could use.”
Israeli intelligence had a spy, code-named MEGA, high up in the Reagan administration at the same time Pollard, and now allegedly Kadish, were stealing documents, according to a Washington Post story years ago that has never been confirmed.
In fact, according to past and present U.S. counterintelligence officials, Israeli agents were so aggressive even after the Pollard case that an FBI counterintelligence boss in the late 1990s, David Szady, summoned Mossad’s top official for a tongue lashing.
“Knock it off,” Szady said, according to a reliable source on condition of anonymity.
Szady has been pilloried in pro-Israel circles for pursuing the AIPAC case, which many critics say amounts to trumping up espionage charges against officials who were merely engaging in the kind of transaction officials and journalists conduct every day.
But the Israelis here have never stopped practicing the “world’s second oldest profession,” as espionage is sometimes dubbed, despite years of rote denials, many officials say.
“I guarantee you the same thing is happening now,” said Olive, who trains Department of Energy security officials on detecting signs of espionage.
One effective espionage tool is forming joint partnerships with U.S. companies to supply software and other technology products to U.S. government agencies, intelligence officials say.
But Brandon, who retired in the mid-1990s but retains many intelligence contacts for his global security consulting business, says the Israelis are interested in commercial as much as military secrets. They have a muscular technology sector themselves.
“They are always looking for a leg up,” he said.
Congress is a major target, too, Brandon said.
“God, they would work the Hill, ” he said. “They really worked the Hill. They were not necessarily interested in collection [of information] so much as they were in influence.”
Influencing Congress is usually the domain of foreign diplomats, he said, but in Israel’s case there was “very little distinction between Mossad and the diplomats.”
“They were very sharp,” he added. “Their best and brightest.”
Mossad agents also scout for people to help them in the Jewish-American community, he said, based on their religious and political commonality. It’s a vast community of potential “spotters,” who can point them to other Jewish Americans in government, law, finance and banking who might be susceptible to recruitment, as is the case with potential Chinese and Cuban recruits.
Or just useful conversation. Israeli agents, Brandon said, are skilled at eliciting information from unwary Jewish Americans in strategically important positions.
“They make you feel good, feel important,” he said. “They don’t even realize they’re giving up something” sensitive, or even classified — until it’s too late.
At the same time, U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials have worked hand in glove on numerous fronts since 1948, when the Jewish state was founded.
Mossad had access to Russian Jews who supplied the West with Soviet military, scientific and technical secrets. American and Israel intelligence have always worked closely in counterterrorism.
But they don’t tell each other everything, which is why the relationship sometimes veers from friendship to competition.
“They were never, ever allowed in our facilities,” says a former CIA officer who was sometimes assigned a liaison role with Israeli counterterrorism agents.
Likewise, when CIA or other U.S. intelligence operatives visited Israel, Israeli security agents would “toss their room,” he said, “just to show who’s in charge.”
The Pentagon Strangles Our Economy: Why the U.S. Has Gone Broke
Go to Original
By Chalmers Johnson
By Chalmers Johnson
The military adventurers in the Bush administration have much in common with the corporate leaders of the defunct energy company Enron. Both groups thought that they were the "smartest guys in the room" -- the title of Alex Gibney’s prize-winning film on what went wrong at Enron. The neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon outsmarted themselves. They failed even to address the problem of how to finance their schemes of imperialist wars and global domination.
As a result, going into 2008, the United States finds itself in the anomalous position of being unable to pay for its own elevated living standards or its wasteful, overly large military establishment. Its government no longer even attempts to reduce the ruinous expenses of maintaining huge standing armies, replacing the equipment that seven years of wars have destroyed or worn out, or preparing for a war in outer space against unknown adversaries. Instead, the Bush administration puts off these costs for future generations to pay or repudiate. This fiscal irresponsibility has been disguised through many manipulative financial schemes (causing poorer countries to lend us unprecedented sums of money), but the time of reckoning is fast approaching.
There are three broad aspects to the U.S. debt crisis. First, in the current fiscal year (2008) we are spending insane amounts of money on "defense" projects that bear no relation to the national security of the U.S. We are also keeping the income tax burdens on the richest segment of the population at strikingly low levels.
Second, we continue to believe that we can compensate for the accelerating erosion of our base and our loss of jobs to foreign countries through massive military expenditures -- "military Keynesianism" (which I discuss in detail in my book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic). By that, I mean the mistaken belief that public policies focused on frequent wars, huge expenditures on weapons and munitions, and large standing armies can indefinitely sustain a wealthy capitalist economy. The opposite is actually true.
Third, in our devotion to militarism (despite our limited resources), we are failing to invest in our social infrastructure and other requirements for the long-term health of the U.S. These are what economists call opportunity costs, things not done because we spent our money on something else. Our public education system has deteriorated alarmingly. We have failed to provide health care to all our citizens and neglected our responsibilities as the world’s number one polluter. Most important, we have lost our competitiveness as a manufacturer for civilian needs, an infinitely more efficient use of scarce resources than arms manufacturing.
Fiscal disaster
It is virtually impossible to overstate the profligacy of what our government spends on the military. The Department of Defense’s planned expenditures for the fiscal year 2008 are larger than all other nations’ military budgets combined. The supplementary budget to pay for the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not part of the official defense budget, is itself larger than the combined military budgets of Russia and China. Defense-related spending for fiscal 2008 will exceed $1 trillion for the first time in history. The U.S. has become the largest single seller of arms and munitions to other nations on Earth. Leaving out President Bush’s two on-going wars, defense spending has doubled since the mid-1990s. The defense budget for fiscal 2008 is the largest since the second world war.
Before we try to break down and analyze this gargantuan sum, there is one important caveat. Figures on defense spending are notoriously unreliable. The numbers released by the Congressional Reference Service and the Congressional Budget Office do not agree with each other. Robert Higgs, senior fellow for political economy at the Independent Institute, says: "A well-founded rule of thumb is to take the Pentagon’s (always well publicized) basic budget total and double it." Even a cursory reading of newspaper articles about the Department of Defense will turn up major differences in statistics about its expenses. Some 30-40% of the defense budget is ’black,’" meaning that these sections contain hidden expenditures for classified projects. There is no possible way to know what they include or whether their total amounts are accurate.
There are many reasons for this budgetary sleight-of-hand -- including a desire for secrecy on the part of the president, the secretary of defense, and the military-industrial complex -- but the chief one is that members of Congress, who profit enormously from defense jobs and pork-barrel projects in their districts, have a political interest in supporting the Department of Defense. In 1996, in an attempt to bring accounting standards within the executive branch closer to those of the civilian economy, Congress passed the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act. It required all federal agencies to hire outside auditors to review their books and release the results to the public. Neither the Department of Defense, nor the Department of Homeland Security, has ever complied. Congress has complained, but not penalized either department for ignoring the law. All numbers released by the Pentagon should be regarded as suspect.
In discussing the fiscal 2008 defense budget, as released on 7 February 2007, I have been guided by two experienced and reliable analysts: William D Hartung of the New America Foundation’s Arms and Security Initiative and Fred Kaplan, defense correspondent for Slate.org. They agree that the Department of Defense requested $481.4bn for salaries, operations (except in Iraq and Afghanistan), and equipment. They also agree on a figure of $141.7bn for the "supplemental" budget to fight the global war on terrorism -- that is, the two on-going wars that the general public may think are actually covered by the basic Pentagon budget. The Department of Defense also asked for an extra $93.4bn to pay for hitherto unmentioned war costs in the remainder of 2007 and, most creatively, an additional "allowance" (a new term in defense budget documents) of $50bn to be charged to fiscal year 2009. This makes a total spending request by the Department of Defense of $766.5bn.
But there is much more. In an attempt to disguise the true size of the U.S. military empire, the government has long hidden major military-related expenditures in departments other than Defense. For example, $23.4bn for the Department of Energy goes towards developing and maintaining nuclear warheads; and $25.3bn in the Department of State budget is spent on foreign military assistance (primarily for Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Republic, Egypt and Pakistan). Another $1.03bn outside the official Department of Defense budget is now needed for recruitment and re-enlistment incentives for the overstretched U.S. military, up from a mere $174m in 2003, when the war in Iraq began. The Department of Veterans Affairs currently gets at least $75.7bn, 50% of it for the long-term care of the most seriously injured among the 28,870 soldiers so far wounded in Iraq and 1,708 in Afghanistan. The amount is universally derided as inadequate. Another $46.4bn goes to the Department of Homeland Security.
Missing from this compilation is $1.9bn to the Department of Justice for the paramilitary activities of the FBI; $38.5bn to the Department of the Treasury for the Military Retirement Fund; $7.6bn for the military-related activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; and well over $200bn in interest for past debt-financed defense outlays. This brings U.S. spending for its military establishment during the current fiscal year, conservatively calculated, to at least $1.1 trillion.
Military Keynesianism
Such expenditures are not only morally obscene, they are fiscally unsustainable. Many neo-conservatives and poorly informed patriotic Americans believe that, even though our defense budget is huge, we can afford it because we are the richest country on Earth. That statement is no longer true. The world’s richest political entity, according to the CIA’s World Factbook, is the European Union. The E.U.’s 2006 GDP was estimated to be slightly larger than that of the U.S. Moreover, China’s 2006 GDP was only slightly smaller than that of the U.S., and Japan was the world’s fourth richest nation.
A more telling comparison that reveals just how much worse we’re doing can be found among the current accounts of various nations. The current account measures the net trade surplus or deficit of a country plus cross-border payments of interest, royalties, dividends, capital gains, foreign aid, and other income. In order for Japan to manufacture anything, it must import all required raw materials. Even after this incredible expense is met, it still has an $88bn per year trade surplus with the U.S. and enjoys the world’s second highest current account balance (China is number one). The U.S. is number 163 -- last on the list, worse than countries such as Australia and the U.K. that also have large trade deficits. Its 2006 current account deficit was $811.5bn; second worst was Spain at $106.4bn. This is unsustainable.
It’s not just that our tastes for foreign goods, including imported oil, vastly exceed our ability to pay for them. We are financing them through massive borrowing. On 7 November 2007, the U.S. Treasury announced that the national debt had breached $9 trillion for the first time. This was just five weeks after Congress raised the "debt ceiling" to $9.815 trillion. If you begin in 1789, at the moment the constitution became the supreme law of the land, the debt accumulated by the federal government did not top $1 trillion until 1981. When George Bush became president in January 2001, it stood at approximately $5.7 trillion. Since then, it has increased by 45%. This huge debt can be largely explained by our defense expenditures.
The top spenders
The world’s top 10 military spenders and the approximate amounts each currently budgets for its military establishment are:
Our excessive military expenditures did not occur over just a few short years or simply because of the Bush administration’s policies. They have been going on for a very long time in accordance with a superficially plausible ideology, and have now become so entrenched in our democratic political system that they are starting to wreak havoc. This is military Keynesianism -- the determination to maintain a permanent war economy and to treat military output as an ordinary economic product, even though it makes no contribution to either production or consumption.
This ideology goes back to the first years of the cold war. During the late 1940s, the U.S. was haunted by economic anxieties. The great depression of the 1930s had been overcome only by the war production boom of the second world war. With peace and demobilization, there was a pervasive fear that the depression would return. During 1949, alarmed by the Soviet Union’s detonation of an atomic bomb, the looming Communist victory in the Chinese civil war, a domestic recession, and the lowering of the Iron Curtain around the USSR’s European satellites, the U.S. sought to draft basic strategy for the emerging cold war. The result was the militaristic National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68) drafted under the supervision of Paul Nitze, then head of the Policy Planning Staff in the State Department. Dated 14 April 1950 and signed by President Harry S. Truman on 30 September 1950, it laid out the basic public economic policies that the U.S. pursues to the present day.
In its conclusions, NSC-68 asserted: "One of the most significant lessons of our World War II experience was that the American economy, when it operates at a level approaching full efficiency, can provide enormous resources for purposes other than civilian consumption while simultaneously providing a high standard of living."
With this understanding, U.S. strategists began to build up a massive munitions industry, both to counter the military might of the Soviet Union (which they consistently overstated) and also to maintain full employment, as well as ward off a possible return of the depression. The result was that, under Pentagon leadership, entire new industries were created to manufacture large aircraft, nuclear-powered submarines, nuclear warheads, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and surveillance and communications satellites. This led to what President Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address of 6 February 1961: "The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience" -- the military-industrial complex.
By 1990 the value of the weapons, equipment and factories devoted to the Department of Defense was 83% of the value of all plants and equipment in U.S. manufacturing. From 1947 to 1990, the combined U.S. military budgets amounted to $8.7 trillion. Even though the Soviet Union no longer exists, U.S. reliance on military Keynesianism has, if anything, ratcheted up, thanks to the massive vested interests that have become entrenched around the military establishment. Over time, a commitment to both guns and butter has proven an unstable configuration. Military industries crowd out the civilian economy and lead to severe economic weaknesses. Devotion to military Keynesianism is a form of slow economic suicide.
Higher spending, fewer jobs
On 1 May 2007, the Center for Economic and Policy Research of Washington, DC, released a study prepared by the economic and political forecasting company Global Insight on the long-term economic impact of increased military spending. Guided by economist Dean Baker, this research showed that, after an initial demand stimulus, by about the sixth year the effect of increased military spending turns negative. The U.S. economy has had to cope with growing defense spending for more than 60 years. Baker found that, after 10 years of higher defense spending, there would be 464,000 fewer jobs than in a scenario that involved lower defense spending.
Baker concluded: "It is often believed that wars and military spending increases are good for the economy. In fact, most economic models show that military spending diverts resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment, and ultimately slows economic growth and reduces employment."
These are only some of the many deleterious effects of military Keynesianism.
It was believed that the U.S. could afford both a massive military establishment and a high standard of living, and that it needed both to maintain full employment. But it did not work out that way. By the 1960s it was becoming apparent that turning over the nation’s largest manufacturing enterprises to the Department of Defense and producing goods without any investment or consumption value was starting to crowd out civilian economic activities. The historian Thomas E Woods Jr. observes that, during the 1950s and 1960s, between one-third and two-thirds of all U.S. research talent was siphoned off into the military sector. It is, of course, impossible to know what innovations never appeared as a result of this diversion of resources and brainpower into the service of the military, but it was during the 1960s that we first began to notice Japan was outpacing us in the design and quality of a range of consumer goods, including household electronics and automobiles.
Can we reverse the trend?
Nuclear weapons furnish a striking illustration of these anomalies. Between the 1940s and 1996, the U.S. spent at least $5.8 trillion on the development, testing and construction of nuclear bombs. By 1967, the peak year of its nuclear stockpile, the U.S. possessed some 32,500 deliverable atomic and hydrogen bombs, none of which, thankfully, was ever used. They perfectly illustrate the Keynesian principle that the government can provide make-work jobs to keep people employed. Nuclear weapons were not just America’s secret weapon, but also its secret economic weapon. As of 2006, we still had 9,960 of them. There is today no sane use for them, while the trillions spent on them could have been used to solve the problems of social security and health care, quality education and access to higher education for all, not to speak of the retention of highly-skilled jobs within the economy.
The pioneer in analyzing what has been lost as a result of military Keynesianism was the late Seymour Melman (1917-2004), a professor of industrial engineering and operations research at Columbia University. His 1970 book, Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War, was a prescient analysis of the unintended consequences of the U.S. preoccupation with its armed forces and their weaponry since the onset of the cold war. Melman wrote: "From 1946 to 1969, the United States government spent over $1,000bn on the military, more than half of this under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations -- the period during which the [Pentagon-dominated] state management was established as a formal institution. This sum of staggering size (try to visualize a billion of something) does not express the cost of the military establishment to the nation as a whole. The true cost is measured by what has been foregone, by the accumulated deterioration in many facets of life, by the inability to alleviate human wretchedness of long duration."
In an important exegesis on Melman’s relevance to the current American economic situation, Thomas Woods writes: "According to the U.S. Department of Defense, during the four decades from 1947 through 1987 it used (in 1982 dollars) $7.62 trillion in capital resources. In 1985, the Department of Commerce estimated the value of the nation’s plant and equipment, and infrastructure, at just over $7.29 trillion ... The amount spent over that period could have doubled the American capital stock or modernized and replaced its existing stock."
The fact that we did not modernize or replace our capital assets is one of the main reasons why, by the turn of the 21st century, our manufacturing base had all but evaporated. Machine tools, an industry on which Melman was an authority, are a particularly important symptom. In November 1968, a five-year inventory disclosed "that 64% of the metalworking machine tools used in U.S. industry were 10 years old or older. The age of this industrial equipment (drills, lathes, etc.) marks the United States’ machine tool stock as the oldest among all major industrial nations, and it marks the continuation of a deterioration process that began with the end of the second world war. This deterioration at the base of the industrial system certifies to the continuous debilitating and depleting effect that the military use of capital and research and development talent has had on American industry."
Nothing has been done since 1968 to reverse these trends and it shows today in our massive imports of equipment -- from medical machines like proton accelerators for radiological therapy (made primarily in Belgium, Germany, and Japan) to cars and trucks.
Our short tenure as the world’s lone superpower has come to an end. As Harvard economics professor Benjamin Friedman has written: "Again and again it has always been the world’s leading lending country that has been the premier country in terms of political influence, diplomatic influence and cultural influence. It’s no accident that we took over the role from the British at the same time that we took over the job of being the world’s leading lending country. Today we are no longer the world’s leading lending country. In fact we are now the world’s biggest debtor country, and we are continuing to wield influence on the basis of military prowess alone."
Some of the damage can never be rectified. There are, however, some steps that the U.S. urgently needs to take. These include reversing Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the wealthy, beginning to liquidate our global empire of over 800 military bases, cutting from the defense budget all projects that bear no relationship to national security and ceasing to use the defense budget as a Keynesian jobs program.
If we do these things we have a chance of squeaking by. If we don’t, we face probable national insolvency and a long depression.
The Sick and Crazy Science Tobacco Companies Pursue to Get You Hooked
Go to original
By Scott Thill
By Scott Thill
Those who complain about how the internet or advances in technology haven’t done enough to make us smarter or better may not truly remember what life was like before either. For one, digging up any type of public or private information took loads more work, especially when offending parties, from governments to free-marketers, were allowed to hide behind arbitrary legalese and the lawyers who enforce it. Before the internet, offenders worked in the shadows while their consumers and citizens were overexposed in the light.
But with organizations like the non-profit Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and their various exercises in citizen journalism, those unhappy days have thankfully passed. Check out one of their more interesting wiki projects called Maximum Weirdness, which rifles through declassified files from University of California, San Francisco’s Legacy Tobacco Documents Library and posts both the boring and bizarre results on a wikipedia dedicated strictly to Big Tobacco’s metaverse. It might sound like wonk work on paper, but the right mixture of keyword searches can produce some eye-opening, lung-crushing laughs. Or is that cries? You decide.
Consider the machines with electrostatic traps used to conduct analysis of tobacco smoke. On the surface it may read like science, but pulled roughly from a library file it feels like something out of the Terminator:
The machine is equipped with special controls for parameters such as puff duration, interval between puffs, number of puffs, automatic interruption of the puffs at a given butt length, expulsion of the butt, control of puff volume ... At the same time up to twenty cigarettes from different samples can be smoked ... The machine is suitable for both restricted and free smoking and a change between these two conditions can mechanically be achieved in a few seconds.
Whatever floats your boat, dude. That’s tame compared to trying to give cats hard-ons, which is what scientists at Tulane University did while trying to study the effects of nitric oxide on erections. At least they gave the cats some Special K before slicing and needling their manhood: "Twenty-six mature male cats … were sedated with ketamine hydrochloride…and anesthetized with sodium pentobarbital. A vertical, circumcision-like incision was made to expose the two ventral corpora cavernosa and the dorsal corpus spongiosum. A 30-gauge needle was placed into the right corpus to permit administration of the drug into the penis. A 25-gauge needle was placed midway into the left corpus for the measurement of intracavernous pressure."
Normally, nitric oxide is a free radical pollutant belched from cars and factories, but who knew that having it mainlined into your penis from a couple of needles would give you an erection? Well, Tulane evidently, and now you. It’s may be a urologist’s dream, but most likely it’s a cat’s worst nightmare.
Of course, there are more damning documents. Brown and Williamson’s 1967 brainstorming session suggesting cocaine-enhanced cigarettes or signing on Fonzi from Happy Days as a celebrity endorsement is a good one. One interesting British American Tobacco Company document puts nicotine’s lethality into perspective, as its suits try to figure out ways to compete with harder drugs like heroin, cocaine and, yes, glue, all the while rationalizing that cigarettes might one day become as passe as pipes. Punch in some marketing keywords and you’ll find everything from proposals for celebrity smokers programs to cigarettes defiantly named after Death, or even the Black Death. The latter’s brainstorming one-sheet, courtesy of Philip Morris, is especially tactical in turning tolerance on its head with a four-point Bill of Rights for people who may be able to indirectly kill you if you’re near them while they’re smoking. "Black Death cigarettes are a direct protest from smokers against the strongly increasing intolerant anti-smoke movement," it clumsily proclaims without irony about its ironically titled product. "Black Death smokers want to maintain their rights and they do not want to be socially discriminated by arbitrary legal measures."
Word for word, the grammatically challenged pitch alone says more about the tobacco industry than all the Joe Camel ads you’ll ever read and throw away. After all, who else but the tobacco industry could complain with a straight face about intolerance and discrimination over a proposed product literally called the Black Death?
But there’s a wiki full of these in Maximum Weirdness, with room for more and with our best interests in mind. The opensourcing movement has changed the way information is compressed, computed and compiled, as well as how it is valued. Information may want to be free, as the internet maxim goes, but it takes public participation in citizen journalism through projects like this to make it happen.
Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com. His writing has appeared on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Inside Story-Israeli espionage and the US
Inside Story explores the ramifications of the Ben Ami Kadish case.
Detroit: American Axle workers hold protest amidst heavy police presence
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By Shannon Jones
By Shannon Jones
Striking American Axle workers held a picket outside the company’s headquarters Thursday afternoon ahead of a scheduled stockholders meeting.
The UAW local at the striking plants in Detroit called the protest, which drew about five hundred American Axle workers and supporters. The demonstration followed the cancellation by the UAW of a strike support rally set for last Friday in downtown Detroit.
Workers briefly blocked the entrance to American Axle headquarters before dozens of heavily armed police cleared the street. The crowd regrouped on the sidewalk in front of the headquarters before dispersing after about one hour. There were no reports of arrests. The police presence, however, was extremely heavy, in an evident attempt to intimidate the workers.
About 3,600 American Axle workers in Michigan and western New York have been on strike since late February. They are resisting demands by the auto parts supplier for wage cuts of up to 50 percent and a reduction in benefits.
Those participating in the protest evinced the determination of the working class not to surrender its hard won gains. However, local level UAW officials who attended the rally offered no policy to fight the attacks by American Axle other than hurling insults at CEO Richard Dauch. Workers continue to express frustration over the fact that they get no information from either the local or the international union about the content of negotiations. Reports in the media demonstrate that even prior to the strike the UAW had agreed to substantial concessions to the auto parts manufacturer.
The decision by the UAW to call off last week’s scheduled rally has evidently emboldened American Axle to take an even harder line. In a press statement Tuesday the company demanded concessions equivalent to those granted by the UAW to other parts suppliers and restated its threat to shut down production at the striking plants. “If the International UAW is not willing to consider a US market labor agreement...AAM will be forced to plan for the potential closure of some, or all of these uncompetitive facilities,” the statement declared.
WSWS supporters distributed a leaflet at the rally titled, “Appeal to working class, not corporate shareholders, to back American Axle strike.”
The statement called on American Axle workers to make a direct appeal to workers in the auto industry to carry out a struggle against the concessions accepted by the UAW.
The WSWS interviewed workers who attended the rally. Scott, a worker with 14 years seniority, told the WSWS that the turnout was “only a small percentage of what we could have gotten. We needed this demonstration to boost up morale, but I know that the shareholders don’t care; they are with Dauch.”
“They brought in the two-tier contract on us in 2004 and look at what is happening to the Big Three workers. They have it now. If we accept more concessions the same thing will happen to other workers. We have to take a stand against this.”
Scott spoke about his previous experience in the auto parts industry. “I used to work for ITT Automotive. They went out of business in 1994. GM came in and said they were unprofitable. But what was happening was they were shifting production to other plants; we were paying for all the other plants they were building. They shut us down and moved all their operations to Ohio.
Scott said that workers saw signs that GM was preparing to resume operations at plants idled by the strike. “What is making it bad is that GM is getting parts from other plants. I heard that Dana is retooling to make our axles. The truck plant in Arlington, Texas, is going back up. They say they are getting parts from an undisclosed source.”
“Sometimes I look at it and I think the union is selling us out,” Scott added. “They are walking this line and they are teetering, tottering. I heard they even accepted the $14 before the strike. The only gripe was the buydown.”
Like many workers we spoke to, Latanya was angered by the decision of the UAW to call off the strike support rally set for last week. “It was a smack in the face. We were told we were close to something - then they cancelled it. I think it was to limit the exposure to us.”
She was also unhappy about the lack of information from the UAW. “We should know what we are getting into. The cost of living is getting worse. A lot of us are sole providers; we have a lot to lose. We want to maintain what we have established over the years. No one is getting rich. It just allows us to be comfortable.
“It is definite that they want to eliminate the middle class. They want to pay poverty wages for the working class.”
Alex Clements said there was growing frustration and tension among American Axle workers. “People are getting upset. We go back in there, and we won’t be able to buy the products we make.
“They cancelled the rally for no reason, they said they were close to an agreement—and then they said there was no agreement. I think it was a ploy or a trick.”
A worker from Chrysler Sterling Heights Assembly came to show his support for the American Axle workers. He noted the provocative police presence outside the American Axle corporate headquarters. “I think they are trying to incite something.”
He said that many workers had been prepared to attend the strike support rally in Detroit the previous week. “They cancelled that day’s rally and they would have had people from all over the country there.”
Latoya, who has worked at AAM for 10 years, said she would not accept having her standard of living cut in half, which would happen if the UAW accepted the cuts proposed by American Axle. “I am not willing to settle for just having a job,” she said. “We need jobs with decent wages.”
How the Pentagon manipulated the media to promote the Iraq war
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By David Walsh
On April 20, the New York Times published a lengthy article by investigative reporter David Barstow detailing the US Defense Department’s extensive and ongoing program of manipulating news coverage of the Iraq war. The article provides a glimpse into the intimate connections between the government, military and mass media and the means by which they have attempted to package and sell a neo-colonial war to the US population.
Barstow writes that the record indicates a “symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated.” Essentially, the US mass media has allowed itself to become little more than a propaganda instrument of American militarism.
According to the April 20 piece, more than 75 retired officers have been coached by government and military officials to ‘spin’ the news about Iraq—or simply lie—on countless network and cable channel news programs and talk shows over the course of the past five years or more. Fox News has led the way in presenting these individuals to the public, but NBC, CNN, CBS and ABC have followed suit.
The military analysts have not simply propagandized for ideological reasons; in many cases, they work for defense contractors and are “in the business of helping companies win military contracts.”
The existence of such a program, worthy of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, will come as no surprise to anyone who has observed the increasing resort to anti-democratic and illegal methods by the White House and the Pentagon.
The military analysts’ program was put in place prior to the invasion of Iraq. Indeed, as the Times makes clear, “even before Sept.11,” Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke had “built a system within the Pentagon to recruit ‘key influentials,’” who might be called on to “generate support” for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s policies.
By early 2002, as detailed planning for an Iraq invasion was under way, the Bush administration encountered an “obstacle”—US public opinion. “Many Americans, polls showed, were uneasy about invading a country with no clear connection to the Sept. 11 attacks. Pentagon and White House officials believed the military analysts could play a crucial role in helping overcome this resistance.”
Clarke and her team set about recruiting the analysts, all of whom were personally approved by Rumsfeld (and with whom he met as a group at least 18 times). “In the fall and winter leading up to the invasion,” writes Barstow, “the Pentagon armed its analysts with talking points portraying Iraq as an urgent threat. The basic case became a familiar mantra: Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, was developing nuclear weapons, and might one day slip some to Al Qaeda; an invasion would be a relatively quick and inexpensive ‘war of liberation.’”
The analysts then obediently repeated the administration’s line all over the broadcast media. As one of Clarke’s lieutenants told the Times, on certain days, “We were able to click on every single station and every one of our folks were up there delivering our message. You’d look at them and say, ‘This is working.’”
The analysts were instructed not to indicate they had been briefed and prepared by the Defense Department.
The increasingly disastrous character of the war, along with revelations of torture and abuse at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, provided further opportunities for the military experts to be trotted out before the public. In September 2003, for instance, as the insurgency was beginning to have an impact and the administration was attempting to justify Bush’s request for $87 billion in war financing, a group of analysts—four from Fox, one each from CBS and ABC—were invited to tour Iraq and promised a look at “the real situation on the ground.”
Needless to say, on their return, they offered glowing reports about the situation. Paul E. Vallely, a retired army general who specialized in psychological warfare, told Fox News, about the conditions in Iraq, “You can’t believe the progress.” He predicted the insurgency would be washed up within months.
Barstow makes the point that the trip also “represented a business opportunity: direct access to the most senior and military leaders in Iraq and Kuwait,” some of whom had decision-making power over how the billions of US dollars were to be spent.
Media treatment of the horrific conditions at Guantánamo was another source of major concern at the Pentagon. Groups of analysts visited the base six times from June 2005 to counter “the growing perception” of the internment camp “as an international symbol of inhumane treatment.” The collection of retired officers carried out their assignment. “The analysts went on TV and radio, decrying Amnesty International, criticizing calls to close the facility and asserting that all detainees were treated humanely.”
The Pentagon analyst program is apparently illegal under US statutes. A provision of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 forbids the Voice of America from disseminating information about the US and its policies domestically. The Foreign Relations Act of 1972 amended that act to include a ban on disseminating within the US any “information about the United States, its people, and its policies” prepared for distribution abroad. The so-called Zorinsky Amendment (named after Nebraska Democratic Senator Edward Zorinsky) of 1985 forbids US Information Agency funds to “be used to influence public opinion in the United States.”
The article concentrates on the television appearances of the military analysts, and this was undoubtedly where they had their greatest impact. Barstow is too modest, however, about the role played by the print media and the New York Times in particular. He notes merely that members of the group “often published op-ed articles or were quoted in magazines, web sites and newspapers. At least nine of them have written op-ed articles for the Times.”
Editor & Publisher points out that a number of the analysts were regularly cited in the press and that one of their number, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, was quoted often in 2002 and 2003 in support of the attack on Iraq and wrote op-eds for the Washington Post.
Thomas McInerney, “one of the prominent cabal members,” writes Editor & Publisher, “shows up in several Times articles since 2002—as late as 2006 he is quoted as still believing Saddam had WMD and simply hid them in Syria and elsewhere.”
In an online question-and-answer session April 21, Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor, responded to a question about the Times op-ed pieces written by Pentagon analysts. Rosenthal refers to only one of the pieces by name, “Rebels, Guns and Money” (November 10, 2004), authored by retired army Gen. James A. Marks. He claims blandly that the column “discussed the tactics, strategies and techniques involved in urban warfare, looking ahead to an impending military assault on the city of Falluja. General Marks did not take a stand on how the war was going in Iraq.”
This is serious misrepresentation of Marks’ repellent propaganda piece. First of all, Rosenthal claims that the assault was “impending” on November 10. In fact, the attack by US marines began November 8, and by November 10 it was already clear that a major war crime was underway. The Times does not care to reveal that it published an article celebrating the destruction of a major city while it was taking place.
Marks’ article begins triumphantly, “The Marine and Army forces now entering Falluja, Iraq have prepared for this fight for some time, and not just since the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime last spring.” It strongly touts the US forces’ prowess at “urban fighting.” The piece is meant to prepare the American public for the devastation and loss of life in Fallujah.
“We will use precision weapons where there is a high probability of killing innocent Iraqis, but for the most part we will use conventional artillery, mortars and rockets. Buildings will crumple—the train station demolished on Monday will not be the last [so much for Rosenthal’s “impending”]—because we will destroy them and so will the insurgents. Dust will be everywhere, small fires and smoke will obscure the vision of our troops and the enemy.
“But it will not be as out of control as it may seem; the destruction will have a purpose... Our goal is to bring democracy and liberty to Iraq, and that won’t happen if we destroy whole cities and towns. Fortunately, our soldiers have extensive training in urban operations down to the platoon and company level.”
Marks concludes by asking rhetorically when American troops would come home, and continues: “One of the most difficult aspects of counter-insurgency operations is deciding when to declare victory and head on home, and it is far too early to even begin thinking about that. But with each American and Iraqi soldier that steps into Falluja this week, we are that much closer to the end.”
The retired general, as part of the Pentagon propaganda campaign, was making the case on the pages of the New York Times for mass murder.
In any event, the Times did not especially need the intervention of outside “experts.” It had a sufficient number of internal advocates for the Iraq war and for US domination of the Middle East in columnist Thomas Friedman and reporters like Judith Miller and Michael Gordon.
During the buildup to the war, Miller’s articles on Iraqi WMD served as a transmission belt for government misinformation and lies. The pieces, it later emerged, were largely based on information provided by Iraqi exile leader and convicted embezzler Ahmad Chalabi. The whole operation was directed by the office of Vice President Dick Cheney and the civilian leadership in the Pentagon.
The response of the US media to the revelation of the Pentagon campaign to manage the war news has been largely to ignore it. The television networks, the guiltiest parties in Barstow’s piece, have either stonewalled inquiries or played the innocent victim.
CBS News and Fox wouldn’t make any comment at all. NBC News issued a brief and evasive statement, claiming it had policies in place “to assure that the people who appear on our air have been appropriately vetted and that nothing in their profile would lead to even a perception of a conflict of interest.” CNN officials said they were unaware that Gen. Marks, one of its main analysts, was, according to Barstow, “deeply involved in the business of seeking government contracts, including contracts related to Iraq.”
The network executives knew precisely what was going on with their military analysts and approved the program. They were as interested as the government and the military in spreading false information to justify an invasion and occupation. As the complicity of the Democrats in Congress has underscored, the need to control Middle East oil reserves is the consensus policy of the American ruling elite.
The moral and intellectual deterioration of the American media has reached an advanced stage. The US has become a society dominated by massive social differentiation. The top officials at the media conglomerates are enormously sensitive to the need to conceal social reality in America as well as the consequences of US foreign policy.
In 1922, at a time when America was a rising political and industrial power, the liberal journalist and political commentator Walter Lippmann could write confidently that “on the whole, the quality of the news about modern society is an index of its social organization. The better the institutions, the more all interests concerned are formally represented, the more issues are disentangled, the more objective criteria are introduced, the more perfectly an affair can be presented as news.”
Following from Lippmann, the opposite holds true as well. ‘The worse the institutions ... ’
By David Walsh
On April 20, the New York Times published a lengthy article by investigative reporter David Barstow detailing the US Defense Department’s extensive and ongoing program of manipulating news coverage of the Iraq war. The article provides a glimpse into the intimate connections between the government, military and mass media and the means by which they have attempted to package and sell a neo-colonial war to the US population.
Barstow writes that the record indicates a “symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated.” Essentially, the US mass media has allowed itself to become little more than a propaganda instrument of American militarism.
According to the April 20 piece, more than 75 retired officers have been coached by government and military officials to ‘spin’ the news about Iraq—or simply lie—on countless network and cable channel news programs and talk shows over the course of the past five years or more. Fox News has led the way in presenting these individuals to the public, but NBC, CNN, CBS and ABC have followed suit.
The military analysts have not simply propagandized for ideological reasons; in many cases, they work for defense contractors and are “in the business of helping companies win military contracts.”
The existence of such a program, worthy of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, will come as no surprise to anyone who has observed the increasing resort to anti-democratic and illegal methods by the White House and the Pentagon.
The military analysts’ program was put in place prior to the invasion of Iraq. Indeed, as the Times makes clear, “even before Sept.11,” Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke had “built a system within the Pentagon to recruit ‘key influentials,’” who might be called on to “generate support” for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s policies.
By early 2002, as detailed planning for an Iraq invasion was under way, the Bush administration encountered an “obstacle”—US public opinion. “Many Americans, polls showed, were uneasy about invading a country with no clear connection to the Sept. 11 attacks. Pentagon and White House officials believed the military analysts could play a crucial role in helping overcome this resistance.”
Clarke and her team set about recruiting the analysts, all of whom were personally approved by Rumsfeld (and with whom he met as a group at least 18 times). “In the fall and winter leading up to the invasion,” writes Barstow, “the Pentagon armed its analysts with talking points portraying Iraq as an urgent threat. The basic case became a familiar mantra: Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, was developing nuclear weapons, and might one day slip some to Al Qaeda; an invasion would be a relatively quick and inexpensive ‘war of liberation.’”
The analysts then obediently repeated the administration’s line all over the broadcast media. As one of Clarke’s lieutenants told the Times, on certain days, “We were able to click on every single station and every one of our folks were up there delivering our message. You’d look at them and say, ‘This is working.’”
The analysts were instructed not to indicate they had been briefed and prepared by the Defense Department.
The increasingly disastrous character of the war, along with revelations of torture and abuse at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, provided further opportunities for the military experts to be trotted out before the public. In September 2003, for instance, as the insurgency was beginning to have an impact and the administration was attempting to justify Bush’s request for $87 billion in war financing, a group of analysts—four from Fox, one each from CBS and ABC—were invited to tour Iraq and promised a look at “the real situation on the ground.”
Needless to say, on their return, they offered glowing reports about the situation. Paul E. Vallely, a retired army general who specialized in psychological warfare, told Fox News, about the conditions in Iraq, “You can’t believe the progress.” He predicted the insurgency would be washed up within months.
Barstow makes the point that the trip also “represented a business opportunity: direct access to the most senior and military leaders in Iraq and Kuwait,” some of whom had decision-making power over how the billions of US dollars were to be spent.
Media treatment of the horrific conditions at Guantánamo was another source of major concern at the Pentagon. Groups of analysts visited the base six times from June 2005 to counter “the growing perception” of the internment camp “as an international symbol of inhumane treatment.” The collection of retired officers carried out their assignment. “The analysts went on TV and radio, decrying Amnesty International, criticizing calls to close the facility and asserting that all detainees were treated humanely.”
The Pentagon analyst program is apparently illegal under US statutes. A provision of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 forbids the Voice of America from disseminating information about the US and its policies domestically. The Foreign Relations Act of 1972 amended that act to include a ban on disseminating within the US any “information about the United States, its people, and its policies” prepared for distribution abroad. The so-called Zorinsky Amendment (named after Nebraska Democratic Senator Edward Zorinsky) of 1985 forbids US Information Agency funds to “be used to influence public opinion in the United States.”
The article concentrates on the television appearances of the military analysts, and this was undoubtedly where they had their greatest impact. Barstow is too modest, however, about the role played by the print media and the New York Times in particular. He notes merely that members of the group “often published op-ed articles or were quoted in magazines, web sites and newspapers. At least nine of them have written op-ed articles for the Times.”
Editor & Publisher points out that a number of the analysts were regularly cited in the press and that one of their number, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, was quoted often in 2002 and 2003 in support of the attack on Iraq and wrote op-eds for the Washington Post.
Thomas McInerney, “one of the prominent cabal members,” writes Editor & Publisher, “shows up in several Times articles since 2002—as late as 2006 he is quoted as still believing Saddam had WMD and simply hid them in Syria and elsewhere.”
In an online question-and-answer session April 21, Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor, responded to a question about the Times op-ed pieces written by Pentagon analysts. Rosenthal refers to only one of the pieces by name, “Rebels, Guns and Money” (November 10, 2004), authored by retired army Gen. James A. Marks. He claims blandly that the column “discussed the tactics, strategies and techniques involved in urban warfare, looking ahead to an impending military assault on the city of Falluja. General Marks did not take a stand on how the war was going in Iraq.”
This is serious misrepresentation of Marks’ repellent propaganda piece. First of all, Rosenthal claims that the assault was “impending” on November 10. In fact, the attack by US marines began November 8, and by November 10 it was already clear that a major war crime was underway. The Times does not care to reveal that it published an article celebrating the destruction of a major city while it was taking place.
Marks’ article begins triumphantly, “The Marine and Army forces now entering Falluja, Iraq have prepared for this fight for some time, and not just since the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime last spring.” It strongly touts the US forces’ prowess at “urban fighting.” The piece is meant to prepare the American public for the devastation and loss of life in Fallujah.
“We will use precision weapons where there is a high probability of killing innocent Iraqis, but for the most part we will use conventional artillery, mortars and rockets. Buildings will crumple—the train station demolished on Monday will not be the last [so much for Rosenthal’s “impending”]—because we will destroy them and so will the insurgents. Dust will be everywhere, small fires and smoke will obscure the vision of our troops and the enemy.
“But it will not be as out of control as it may seem; the destruction will have a purpose... Our goal is to bring democracy and liberty to Iraq, and that won’t happen if we destroy whole cities and towns. Fortunately, our soldiers have extensive training in urban operations down to the platoon and company level.”
Marks concludes by asking rhetorically when American troops would come home, and continues: “One of the most difficult aspects of counter-insurgency operations is deciding when to declare victory and head on home, and it is far too early to even begin thinking about that. But with each American and Iraqi soldier that steps into Falluja this week, we are that much closer to the end.”
The retired general, as part of the Pentagon propaganda campaign, was making the case on the pages of the New York Times for mass murder.
In any event, the Times did not especially need the intervention of outside “experts.” It had a sufficient number of internal advocates for the Iraq war and for US domination of the Middle East in columnist Thomas Friedman and reporters like Judith Miller and Michael Gordon.
During the buildup to the war, Miller’s articles on Iraqi WMD served as a transmission belt for government misinformation and lies. The pieces, it later emerged, were largely based on information provided by Iraqi exile leader and convicted embezzler Ahmad Chalabi. The whole operation was directed by the office of Vice President Dick Cheney and the civilian leadership in the Pentagon.
The response of the US media to the revelation of the Pentagon campaign to manage the war news has been largely to ignore it. The television networks, the guiltiest parties in Barstow’s piece, have either stonewalled inquiries or played the innocent victim.
CBS News and Fox wouldn’t make any comment at all. NBC News issued a brief and evasive statement, claiming it had policies in place “to assure that the people who appear on our air have been appropriately vetted and that nothing in their profile would lead to even a perception of a conflict of interest.” CNN officials said they were unaware that Gen. Marks, one of its main analysts, was, according to Barstow, “deeply involved in the business of seeking government contracts, including contracts related to Iraq.”
The network executives knew precisely what was going on with their military analysts and approved the program. They were as interested as the government and the military in spreading false information to justify an invasion and occupation. As the complicity of the Democrats in Congress has underscored, the need to control Middle East oil reserves is the consensus policy of the American ruling elite.
The moral and intellectual deterioration of the American media has reached an advanced stage. The US has become a society dominated by massive social differentiation. The top officials at the media conglomerates are enormously sensitive to the need to conceal social reality in America as well as the consequences of US foreign policy.
In 1922, at a time when America was a rising political and industrial power, the liberal journalist and political commentator Walter Lippmann could write confidently that “on the whole, the quality of the news about modern society is an index of its social organization. The better the institutions, the more all interests concerned are formally represented, the more issues are disentangled, the more objective criteria are introduced, the more perfectly an affair can be presented as news.”
Following from Lippmann, the opposite holds true as well. ‘The worse the institutions ... ’
US-backed crackdown in Basra paves way for opening up Iraq’s oil and gas
Go to Original
By James Cogan
The Iraqi government is following up its US-backed campaign of terror against the Shiite Sadrist movement and its Madhi Army militia in Basra with moves to open up the country’s oil and gas resources for exploitation by transnational conglomerates.
On April 16, Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani announced that four undeveloped oil fields in southern Iraq will be tendered to international companies in coming months—three in Basra province. The massive Akkaz natural gas field in the western province of Anbar and an untapped oil field near the northern city of Kirkuk are to be offered up as well. Earlier this month, the Oil Ministry published the names of the first 35 companies—out of 120 that applied for licenses to operate in the Iraqi oil industry—that will be permitted to make bids.
The Akkaz gas field, which is believed to hold seven trillion cubic feet of natural gas, will be developed from start-up production of 50 million cubic feet per day to as much as 500 million cubic feet per day. The long-term plan is to extend an existing pipeline to Syria into Turkey, and sell gas on the lucrative European Union markets. The supply of Iraqi gas to the EU was one of the main agenda items during a two-day visit to Brussels by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in mid-April.
The aim of the southern oil projects is to increase Iraqi production by at least 500,000 barrels to close to three million barrels per day. Longer term, the opening up of dozens of other untapped fields is anticipated to enable production to be pushed to between six million and 10 million barrels per day. Iraq has estimated oil reserves of 115 billion barrels, though one analyst, Fadhil Chalabi of the London-based Centre for Global Energy Studies, puts the figure at more than 300 billion barrels—the largest reserves in the world.
The list of companies highlights the predatory motives behind the 2003 invasion and the subsequent international support for the occupation. It includes US giants ExxonMobil, Chevron, Conoco Phillips, Occidental Petroleum, Hess, Marathon and Anadarko, Britain’s BP, BG and Premier, and Australian firms BHP-Billiton and Woodside. These are the three countries that deployed troops. Royal Dutch Shell, France’s Total, Germany’s BASF, and a number of Japanese, Russian and Chinese firms have also gained the right to tender.
The operations against the Madhi Army in Basra have been used to tackle a number of obstacles to large-scale corporate involvement in the oil industry. The Sadrists, who oppose foreign exploitation of Iraq’s oil industry from the standpoint of Iraqi nationalism, have effectively been driven underground in the city and hundreds of their loyalists killed. In addition, the US, British and Iraqi government forces have targeted the Basra-based Fadhila party, which holds the provincial governorship and dominates trade unions in the oilfields and ports.
Over the past several years, government representatives in Baghdad have repeatedly accused Fadhila of using its control of the Basra administration and the state-owned southern oil company to operate a highly organised and profitable oil smuggling racket. According to an unconfirmed April 10 report in the British-based Times, Fadhila governor Mohammed Al-Waili has been placed under house arrest by Iraqi troops. There are no media reports, but it is highly likely that a purge of Fadhila appointees is taking place, especially within the oil industry.
In the wake of the Basra offensive, security in the oilfields and pipelines has been taken out of the hands of a Fadhila-controlled force and delegated to Iraqi army and police units loyal to the two Shiite parties that dominate the central government—the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) and Maliki’s own Da’wa. The weakened position of Fadhila is reflected in signals this week that the party wanted talks on rejoining the Maliki government and the dominant Shiite parliamentary faction—the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA). With the incorporation of Fadhila and the physical suppression of the Sadrists, the UIA expects to take control of the Basra government in the upcoming October provincial elections.
The deployment of government forces into the oilfields also seeks to intimidate members of the Basra Oil Union, who have taken strike action several times in opposition to the US occupation. The union opposes privatisation of the oil industry. Government troops have occupied the port of Umm Qasr, from which much of the country’s oil is shipped. The New York Times foreshadowed the move onto the docks in a March 13 article that denounced “a militia-controlled union that will load and unload ships only eight hours a day—rather than the 24 hours a day typical of modern ports”.
Transnational companies will initially enter the Iraqi oil and gas industry on the basis of two-year “technical support agreements”, for which they will be paid a flat fee and have no rights over reserves or any share in profits. Sharp differences among the various sectarian and ethnic-based factions in the Iraqi parliament have prevented the passage of a proposed oil law that would legalise foreign control of oil resources.
Concerted efforts are underway to remove that obstacle, however. US Vice President Dick Cheney held meetings with representatives of the main Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs during his visit to the country last month. He reportedly demanded a crackdown on the Sadrists and pressed for an agreement on the terms of the oil law.
On April 16, the Maliki government and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), which controls the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, announced that a deal had been reached. Legislation based on a February 2007 draft, already approved by Maliki’s cabinet, will reportedly be presented to parliament soon. The KRG will have the right to enter into contracts with foreign firms for oil and gas projects within its territory—a key Kurdish demand.
A central feature of the 2007 draft was that it legitimised “production sharing agreements” (PSAs)—a one-sided form of contract that allows companies developing oil fields to use initial revenues to recoup all their costs and gives them a proportion of subsequent profits. The KRG has signed as many as 20 PSAs for oil and gas operations in northern Iraq.
The quid pro quo from the Kurdish elite is to shelve their ambitions to incorporate the city of Kirkuk and its surrounding oil fields into their autonomous territory. A UN mission is currently preparing a report on whether it is feasible to hold a referendum in Kirkuk on joining the KRG. The UN team is expected to recommend that four largely Kurdish areas be included in the autonomous Kurdish region, but not Kirkuk.
Under the Iraqi constitution, a referendum on the future status of Kirkuk was meant to have taken place by December 2007. It was postponed in the face of vehement opposition by ethnic Arabs and Turkomen in the city and threats of Turkish intervention. The Turkish government opposes any expansion of the Kurdish region on the grounds that it could encourage separatist agitation among Turkey’s own large Kurdish minority. In February, Turkish troops carried out an eight-day incursion into the KRG to hunt down members of the rebel Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The operation was a clear message to the Iraqi Kurds to back off on the issue of Kirkuk.
The largest Sunni parliamentary bloc, the Iraqi Accordance Front (IAF), has indicated that it too wants to rejoin the government, suggesting that it is prepared to accept the oil law. The plan to develop gas fields in Anbar province, which has an overwhelming Sunni population and is currently governed by parties belonging to the IAF, provides a definite incentive to do so.
The repression of opposition in Basra to meet US demands and accommodate big oil underscores the venal character of the Iraqi government and its various factions. The Iraqi elite are concerned with securing their own privileged position within the framework of US occupation, regardless of the consequences for the mass of the population.
By James Cogan
The Iraqi government is following up its US-backed campaign of terror against the Shiite Sadrist movement and its Madhi Army militia in Basra with moves to open up the country’s oil and gas resources for exploitation by transnational conglomerates.
On April 16, Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani announced that four undeveloped oil fields in southern Iraq will be tendered to international companies in coming months—three in Basra province. The massive Akkaz natural gas field in the western province of Anbar and an untapped oil field near the northern city of Kirkuk are to be offered up as well. Earlier this month, the Oil Ministry published the names of the first 35 companies—out of 120 that applied for licenses to operate in the Iraqi oil industry—that will be permitted to make bids.
The Akkaz gas field, which is believed to hold seven trillion cubic feet of natural gas, will be developed from start-up production of 50 million cubic feet per day to as much as 500 million cubic feet per day. The long-term plan is to extend an existing pipeline to Syria into Turkey, and sell gas on the lucrative European Union markets. The supply of Iraqi gas to the EU was one of the main agenda items during a two-day visit to Brussels by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in mid-April.
The aim of the southern oil projects is to increase Iraqi production by at least 500,000 barrels to close to three million barrels per day. Longer term, the opening up of dozens of other untapped fields is anticipated to enable production to be pushed to between six million and 10 million barrels per day. Iraq has estimated oil reserves of 115 billion barrels, though one analyst, Fadhil Chalabi of the London-based Centre for Global Energy Studies, puts the figure at more than 300 billion barrels—the largest reserves in the world.
The list of companies highlights the predatory motives behind the 2003 invasion and the subsequent international support for the occupation. It includes US giants ExxonMobil, Chevron, Conoco Phillips, Occidental Petroleum, Hess, Marathon and Anadarko, Britain’s BP, BG and Premier, and Australian firms BHP-Billiton and Woodside. These are the three countries that deployed troops. Royal Dutch Shell, France’s Total, Germany’s BASF, and a number of Japanese, Russian and Chinese firms have also gained the right to tender.
The operations against the Madhi Army in Basra have been used to tackle a number of obstacles to large-scale corporate involvement in the oil industry. The Sadrists, who oppose foreign exploitation of Iraq’s oil industry from the standpoint of Iraqi nationalism, have effectively been driven underground in the city and hundreds of their loyalists killed. In addition, the US, British and Iraqi government forces have targeted the Basra-based Fadhila party, which holds the provincial governorship and dominates trade unions in the oilfields and ports.
Over the past several years, government representatives in Baghdad have repeatedly accused Fadhila of using its control of the Basra administration and the state-owned southern oil company to operate a highly organised and profitable oil smuggling racket. According to an unconfirmed April 10 report in the British-based Times, Fadhila governor Mohammed Al-Waili has been placed under house arrest by Iraqi troops. There are no media reports, but it is highly likely that a purge of Fadhila appointees is taking place, especially within the oil industry.
In the wake of the Basra offensive, security in the oilfields and pipelines has been taken out of the hands of a Fadhila-controlled force and delegated to Iraqi army and police units loyal to the two Shiite parties that dominate the central government—the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) and Maliki’s own Da’wa. The weakened position of Fadhila is reflected in signals this week that the party wanted talks on rejoining the Maliki government and the dominant Shiite parliamentary faction—the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA). With the incorporation of Fadhila and the physical suppression of the Sadrists, the UIA expects to take control of the Basra government in the upcoming October provincial elections.
The deployment of government forces into the oilfields also seeks to intimidate members of the Basra Oil Union, who have taken strike action several times in opposition to the US occupation. The union opposes privatisation of the oil industry. Government troops have occupied the port of Umm Qasr, from which much of the country’s oil is shipped. The New York Times foreshadowed the move onto the docks in a March 13 article that denounced “a militia-controlled union that will load and unload ships only eight hours a day—rather than the 24 hours a day typical of modern ports”.
Transnational companies will initially enter the Iraqi oil and gas industry on the basis of two-year “technical support agreements”, for which they will be paid a flat fee and have no rights over reserves or any share in profits. Sharp differences among the various sectarian and ethnic-based factions in the Iraqi parliament have prevented the passage of a proposed oil law that would legalise foreign control of oil resources.
Concerted efforts are underway to remove that obstacle, however. US Vice President Dick Cheney held meetings with representatives of the main Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs during his visit to the country last month. He reportedly demanded a crackdown on the Sadrists and pressed for an agreement on the terms of the oil law.
On April 16, the Maliki government and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), which controls the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, announced that a deal had been reached. Legislation based on a February 2007 draft, already approved by Maliki’s cabinet, will reportedly be presented to parliament soon. The KRG will have the right to enter into contracts with foreign firms for oil and gas projects within its territory—a key Kurdish demand.
A central feature of the 2007 draft was that it legitimised “production sharing agreements” (PSAs)—a one-sided form of contract that allows companies developing oil fields to use initial revenues to recoup all their costs and gives them a proportion of subsequent profits. The KRG has signed as many as 20 PSAs for oil and gas operations in northern Iraq.
The quid pro quo from the Kurdish elite is to shelve their ambitions to incorporate the city of Kirkuk and its surrounding oil fields into their autonomous territory. A UN mission is currently preparing a report on whether it is feasible to hold a referendum in Kirkuk on joining the KRG. The UN team is expected to recommend that four largely Kurdish areas be included in the autonomous Kurdish region, but not Kirkuk.
Under the Iraqi constitution, a referendum on the future status of Kirkuk was meant to have taken place by December 2007. It was postponed in the face of vehement opposition by ethnic Arabs and Turkomen in the city and threats of Turkish intervention. The Turkish government opposes any expansion of the Kurdish region on the grounds that it could encourage separatist agitation among Turkey’s own large Kurdish minority. In February, Turkish troops carried out an eight-day incursion into the KRG to hunt down members of the rebel Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The operation was a clear message to the Iraqi Kurds to back off on the issue of Kirkuk.
The largest Sunni parliamentary bloc, the Iraqi Accordance Front (IAF), has indicated that it too wants to rejoin the government, suggesting that it is prepared to accept the oil law. The plan to develop gas fields in Anbar province, which has an overwhelming Sunni population and is currently governed by parties belonging to the IAF, provides a definite incentive to do so.
The repression of opposition in Basra to meet US demands and accommodate big oil underscores the venal character of the Iraqi government and its various factions. The Iraqi elite are concerned with securing their own privileged position within the framework of US occupation, regardless of the consequences for the mass of the population.
Food Riots Erupt Worldwide
Go to Original
By Anuradha Mittal
It's time to stop worshiping at the alter of "market forces."
Food riots are erupting all over the world. To prevent them and to help people afford the most basic of goods, we need to understand the causes of skyrocketing food prices and correct the policies that have fueled them.
World food prices rose by 39 percent in the last year. Rice alone rose to a 19-year high in March - an increase of 50 per cent in two weeks alone - while the real price of wheat has hit a 28-year high.
As a result, food riots erupted in Egypt, Guinea, Haiti, Indonesia, Mauritania, Mexico, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen. For the 3 billion people in the world who subsist on $2 a day or less, the leap in food prices is a killer. They spend a majority of their income on food, and when the price goes up, they can't afford to feed themselves or their families.
Analysts have pointed to some obvious causes, such as increased demand from China and India, whose economies are booming. Rising fuel and fertilizer costs, increased use of bio-fuels and climate change have all played a part.
But less obvious causes have also had a profound effect on food prices.
Over the last few decades, the United States, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have used their leverage to impose devastating policies on developing countries. By requiring countries to open up their agriculture market to giant multinational companies, by insisting that countries dismantle their marketing boards and by persuading them to specialize in exportable cash crops such as coffee, cocoa, cotton and even flowers, they have driven the poorest countries into a downward spiral.
In the last thirty years, developing countries that used to be self-sufficient in food have turned into large food importers. Dismantling of marketing boards that kept commodities in a rolling stock to be released in event of a bad harvest, thus protecting both producers and consumers against sharp rises or drops in prices, has further worsened the situation.
Here's what we must do to prevent an epidemic of starvation from breaking out.
First, it is essential to have safety nets and public distribution systems put in place. Donor countries should provide more aid immediately to support government efforts in poor countries and respond to appeals from U.N. agencies, which are desperately seeking $500 million by May 1.
Second, we should help affected countries develop their agricultural sectors to feed more of their own people and decrease their dependence on food imports. We should promote production and consumption of local crops raised by small, sustainable farms instead of growing cash crops for western markets. And we should support a country's effort to manage stocks and pricing so as to limit the volatility of food prices.
To embrace these crucial policies, however, we need to stop worshipping the golden calf of the so-called free market and embrace, instead, the principle of food sovereignty. Every country and every people have a right to food that is affordable. When the market deprives them of this, it is the market that has to give.
By Anuradha Mittal
It's time to stop worshiping at the alter of "market forces."
Food riots are erupting all over the world. To prevent them and to help people afford the most basic of goods, we need to understand the causes of skyrocketing food prices and correct the policies that have fueled them.
World food prices rose by 39 percent in the last year. Rice alone rose to a 19-year high in March - an increase of 50 per cent in two weeks alone - while the real price of wheat has hit a 28-year high.
As a result, food riots erupted in Egypt, Guinea, Haiti, Indonesia, Mauritania, Mexico, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen. For the 3 billion people in the world who subsist on $2 a day or less, the leap in food prices is a killer. They spend a majority of their income on food, and when the price goes up, they can't afford to feed themselves or their families.
Analysts have pointed to some obvious causes, such as increased demand from China and India, whose economies are booming. Rising fuel and fertilizer costs, increased use of bio-fuels and climate change have all played a part.
But less obvious causes have also had a profound effect on food prices.
Over the last few decades, the United States, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have used their leverage to impose devastating policies on developing countries. By requiring countries to open up their agriculture market to giant multinational companies, by insisting that countries dismantle their marketing boards and by persuading them to specialize in exportable cash crops such as coffee, cocoa, cotton and even flowers, they have driven the poorest countries into a downward spiral.
In the last thirty years, developing countries that used to be self-sufficient in food have turned into large food importers. Dismantling of marketing boards that kept commodities in a rolling stock to be released in event of a bad harvest, thus protecting both producers and consumers against sharp rises or drops in prices, has further worsened the situation.
Here's what we must do to prevent an epidemic of starvation from breaking out.
First, it is essential to have safety nets and public distribution systems put in place. Donor countries should provide more aid immediately to support government efforts in poor countries and respond to appeals from U.N. agencies, which are desperately seeking $500 million by May 1.
Second, we should help affected countries develop their agricultural sectors to feed more of their own people and decrease their dependence on food imports. We should promote production and consumption of local crops raised by small, sustainable farms instead of growing cash crops for western markets. And we should support a country's effort to manage stocks and pricing so as to limit the volatility of food prices.
To embrace these crucial policies, however, we need to stop worshipping the golden calf of the so-called free market and embrace, instead, the principle of food sovereignty. Every country and every people have a right to food that is affordable. When the market deprives them of this, it is the market that has to give.
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