Friday, November 30, 2007

I-35 Can Stop Homosexuality

Is this what the Christian Right has become today? Watch this video, starring Pat 'Diamond Mines' Robertson.

The Disappearing Dollar


Wall Street is cheering the latest hint of a new interest rate cut by Fed chief Ben Bernanke. Stocks are up! If you are like me, Wall Street gains hardly impact my day-to-day existence as I don't have a million bucks tucked away in stocks. The downside, of course, to a new rate cut is that the dollar will continue to tumble.

The dollar slid against the European single currency on Friday after US Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke stoked expectations of another reduction in US borrowing costs, analysts said.

In early European trading, the euro rose to 1.4752 dollars from 1.4742 late on Thursday in New York. At the end of last week, the euro had hit a record 1.4967 dollars.

Jim Hightower- Voting with your Dollars

Jim Hightower is one of my favorite radio commentators today. Here is his holiday message to you...

John Edwards vs Mitt Romney- Two Americas

Mitt Romney, the multi-millionaire, needs to take a look at the economic realities that exist in the United States today. John Edwards gives him a primer...

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Shock Doctrine- US in Iraq for Years?


I read with interest bit no surprise yesterday that Bush and Iraqi PM al-Maliki had signed a long term 'agreement' committing American forces in Iraq for years. The stated purpose was to protect the government in Baghdad from internal coup plots and foreign enemies. The corrupt Iraqi government, no matter how unpopular, will be protected by its puppet masters in Washington for years to come.

Iraq's government, seeking protection against foreign threats and internal coups, will offer the U.S. a long-term troop presence in Iraq in return for U.S. security guarantees as part of a strategic partnership, two Iraqi officials said Monday.

The proposal, described to The Associated Press by two senior Iraqi officials familiar with the issue, is one of the first indications that the United States and Iraq are beginning to explore what their relationship might look like once the U.S. significantly draws down its troop presence.

In Washington, President Bush's adviser on the Iraqi war, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, confirmed the proposal, calling it "a set of principles from which to begin formal negotiations."


What really caught my attention in the whole story was this little detail:

U.S. troops and other foreign forces operate in Iraq under a U.N. Security Council mandate, which has been renewed annually since 2003. Iraqi officials have said they want that next renewal — which must be approved by the U.N. Security Council by the end of this year — to be the last.

The two senior Iraqi officials said Iraqi authorities had discussed the broad outlines of the proposal with U.S. military and diplomatic representatives. The Americans appeared generally favorable subject to negotiations on the details, which include preferential treatment for American investments, according to the Iraqi officials involved in the discussions.
That is the real story here. We are going to prop up a puppet government in Iraq, commit our armed forces for years and continue to pay taxpayer subsidized private armies all to make Iraq safe for U.S. companies in Iraq. Was this the intention all along? Grab a foothold in the Middle East to project U.S. power through the region and have access to the many resources that are there?

As a side, I am reminded once again of Naomi Klein, author of Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Take a look at this video and how it relates to what we see today.

Monday, November 26, 2007

The Cost of The Twelve Days of Christmas

Ever wondered how much it would really cost to buy the items mentioned in The Twelve Days of Christmas?

It would cost $78,100 to buy the 364 items, from a single partridge in a pear tree to the 12 drummers drumming, repeatedly on each day as the song suggests, according to the annual PNC Christmas Price Index compiled by PNC Wealth Management. The cost is up 4 percent from $75,122 last year.

Buying each item in the song just once would cost $19,507, up 3.1 percent from last year's $18,921. And shopping online would be costlier, with the total for the 364 items costing $128,886, up 2.5 percent from last year's $125,767. You would spend $31,249 online for each item just once this year.

Helping push the cost up this year is the minimum wage hike, which bumped the cost of eight maids a-milking from about $41 to nearly $47.

"They have not had an increase since 1997," said Jim Dunigan, managing executive of investment for PNC Wealth Management. "The good news is, if you're a maids a-milking, they will also see an increase in 2008 and 2009."

John Edwards- Born TV Ad

A great ad running in South Carolina.

Sarkozy and EU pressure Beijing over Yuan


The EU trade deficit with China continues to grow.

Sarkozy and EU pressure Beijing to revalue Chinese currency

by Dong Zhixin

European leaders are mounting more pressure on China to allow the yuan to appreciate faster amid a rising trade deficit with the world's fourth largest economy.

Peter Mandelson, the European Union trade commissioner, warned of anti-dumping measures if Beijing failed to reduce an "unsustainable" trade deficit, according to the Britain-based Financial Times.

China should "manage its currency better" for its own economic good and address the widening trade gap, Mandelson was reported as saying.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy will also raise the currency issue during talks with Chinese leaders this weekend in Beijing, according to the Reuters.

Sarkozy plans to call for an "equitable and fair" relationship among four major currencies - the dollar, euro, yen and yuan, a senior French official was quoted as saying.

The lobbying for a stronger yuan is set to intensify when an EU delegation led by Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker and European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet visit Beijing at the end of this month.

In the first nine months, China's trade surplus with the EU reached US$94.89 billion, an increase of 39.7 percent from a year earlier, according to statistics from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. The EU is China's largest trade destination ahead of the United States.

To address the widening surplus, a commerce ministry spokesman Thursday urged the EU to ease restrictions on high-tech exports to China.

So far this year, the Chinese currency, the yuan, has appreciated more than five percent against the US dollar. However, that was far less than the euro’s 11 percent growth against the greenback.

By Thursday, the yuan has depreciated seven percent against the European single currency from the end of last year, prompting Europe to join the chorus of China's major trade partners in demanding the yuan to rise faster in value.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Chinese Toy Recall- the PR Push Begins!

We have all heard the horrific stories concerning the safety of the toy products sold that were imported from China. From dangerous levels of lead paint to date rape drug coated toys, the news has not been good.

It appears, however, that both the toy manufacturers and the government of China are hitting back hard to dispel any fears about product safety. ABC News published a 'news' story yesterday entitled The Myths and Misconceptions of Chinese Toys, which sought to dispel any fears about the products coming from China.

It has been a long, hot summer and a difficult autumn for the toy industry, with an incredible amount of media coverage and political interest -- on both sides of the Pacific -- in the product design and quality issues that have become apparent. As we enter into the 2007 holiday season, I thought this would be a good opportunity to provide some perspective on all this from the standpoint of someone who cares deeply about the toy industry and who has been a part of it all his life.

There have been a number of product recalls, for a variety of reasons, and because of them, both the U.S. toy industry and our Chinese suppliers have taken it on the chin. Some of this is deserved, but a lot is not. As inevitably happens with issues involving our children and their health and safety, a lot of mistaken information has been passed around and blown up beyond all recognition.

The piece, incidentally, was written by Alan Hassenfeld. And who is he? According to his bio on Forbes:

Alan Hassenfeld has served as a Director since December 2003. Mr. Hassenfeld has been Chairman of Hasbro since May 2003 and from 1989 until May 2003 was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Hasbro, Inc., a provider of children's and family entertainment products. Mr. Hassenfeld is a trustee of the Hasbro Charitable Trust and Hasbro Children's Foundation. Mr. Hassenfeld also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the salesforce.com/foundation and other not-for-profit organizations. Mr. Hassenfeld received a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.
You see, according to this ABC 'News' piece, written by the Hasbro Chairman, it was all just an unfortunate misunderstanding that was fueled by misinformation. The real victims? The toy manufacturers and, of course, China. Uh-Huh!

Not to be outdone, this PR video has popped up on YouTube. The video, produced in China, purports to show how vigilant the Chinese are when it comes to product safety. Take a look...

John Edwards on NAFTA


Take a look at this Edwards video which shows the devastating impact that NAFTA has had on our country.

Dollar Drops to New Low


How low will it go?

The dollar hit a new low against the euro in thin trading Friday as speculation continued that the American credit crisis will lead to another cut in interest rates in the U.S.

The 13-nation European currency spiked early to hit $1.4966, breaking the previous record of $1.4873, set the day before.

The Mortgage Crisis Continues


The bad news just continues.

Borrowers who took out loans in the first six months of this year are already falling behind on their payments faster than those who took out loans in 2006, according to a report from Arlington, Va.-based investment bank Friedman, Billings Ramsey. That's making it even harder for would-be buyers to get new mortgages — a frightening prospect for home builders with projects going begging on the market, and for homeowners desperate to unload property to avoid defaulting on their loans.

Meanwhile, the number of U.S. homes in foreclosure is expected to keep soaring after more than doubling during the third quarter from a year earlier, to 446,726 homes nationwide, according to Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac Inc. That's one foreclosure filing for every 196 households in the nation, a 34 percent jump from just three months earlier.

Such data suggests more Americans could lose their homes than ever before, and those in peril are people who never thought they'd welsh on a mortgage payment. They come from a broad swath — teachers, pharmacists, and civil servants who were lured by enticing mortgage terms.


The article cited, Have we seen worse of mortgage crisis?, makes it clear that the worst of this crisis is far from over.

Gap Profits Rise in Third Quarter

The AP reports that GAP 3rd Quarter Earnings rose 26% as marketing prices fell. According to the article:

Gap, which also operates Banana Republic stores, said it cut marketing expenses by about $75 million in the quarter, as planned.

On the sales side, one of the few bright spots came from online sales, which surged 36 percent to $247 million, from $182 million in the third quarter of last year. Gap operates online shoe store Piperlime, gap.com and other e-commerce sites.

The company ended the quarter with $1.7 billion in cash and investments. It repurchased 48 million shares during the quarter for $887 million -- part of a $1.5 billion share repurchase program announced in August.

Aggressive cost-cutting has reduced in 1,500 job cuts this year, and the company is reorganizing its North American real-estate holdings -- selling underperforming, older stores in aging markets and buying property in hot growth suburbs and urban retail centers.

The company opened 187 new stores this year and closed 127 stores, including closure or conversion of all Old Navy outlet stores, and the closure of all Forth & Towne stores, which targeted older women. Overall, the company increased store square footage by 2 percent.

Analysts peppered executives about the seemingly slow pace of the turnaround. Reorganizing the company's retail holdings could take years, but Murphy emphasized that the turnaround has already begun.

"Round one is just identifying what we're going to do, and then we focus on executing," he said.

The piece, of course, credits lower marketing costs, increased online sales and cost-cutting measures as being the driving forces behind this surge in profits. I wonder if one of these 'cost-cutting' measures was the cheap labor costs that Gap enjoyed from their use of child labor in sweatshops.

Friday, November 23, 2007

Manufacturing Consent for World War 3

The role of the media in conjuring up support for war was on clear display in the run up to the Iraq War. Now, four years later, we see the same game being played in an ever building hostile environment with regards to Iran. The following piece, written by Michael Barker, is an excellent analysis of the role that the media plays in shaping public opinion on some of the most important issues of our day.

“When President Bush used an October 17 [2007] White House press conference to threaten that the escalating US confrontation with Iran posed a danger of ‘World War III’ his remark was passed over in silence by most of the media. Those that did report it seemed, for the most part, to accept the White House claim that the president was engaging in hyperbole and merely making a ‘rhetorical point.’” Bill Van Auken (2007).

The key role the mainstream media plays in manufacturing public consent for elite decision makers has a long and inglorious history that has wreaked havoc on progressive aspirations for the development a truly democratic globa l p olity. While the antidemocratic implications of Manufacturing Consent were first popularized in the late 1980s by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s (1988) classic book of the same title, the methods of manufacturing public consent were honed much earlier by communications researchers participating in the seminal (Rockefeller Foundation funded) Communications Group, and many of the founding fathers of mass communication research.[1] Given the high level of involvement of mass communications researchers in refining the means by which to manufacture consent, it is little wonder that recent studies provide ample evidence illustrating the US government’s ability to exploit the system-supportive tendencies of the mainstream media to justify overt wars and cover-up covert wars,[2] distract attention from their support (throughout the Cold War) of right-wing terrorist armies in every European country,[3] legitimize controversial ‘humanitarian’ interventions,[4] play down genocides in which their government is implicated, and manufacture public consent for economic sanctions that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children.[5] More recent events (post 9/11) also demonstrate how a relentless propaganda campaign waged through the American media was able to persuade a significant proportion of the domestic population that the destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq was both necessary and justified.[6]

Thus considering the historical willingness of the US media to propound antidemocratic elite propaganda, it is entirely predicable that the media would play an integral role in manufacturing the next perceived threat to international stability, that is, the Iranian ‘threat’. As Marjorie Cohn (2007) notes: “It’s déja vu. This time the Bush gang wants war with Iran. Following a carefully orchestrated strategy, they have ratcheted up the ‘threat’ from Iran, designed to mislead us into a new war four years after they misled us into Iraq.” John Pilger (2007) adds that this ‘threat’ is “entirely manufactured, aided and abetted by familiar, compliant media language that refers to Iran’s ‘nuclear ambitions’, just as the vocabulary of Saddam’s non-existent WMD arsenal became common usage.”

It is then unfortunate to note that international attention is now firmly fixated on the Iranian ‘threat.’ Furthermore, given the success of the Bush administration’s most recent propaganda offensives, which have led to the destruction and ongoing occupation of both Afghanistan and Iraq, there is little reason to doubt that the American government does not have similar plans for Iran. In an earlier study I documented how the ostensibly democratic US-based National Endowment of Democracy has funnelled money to Iranian groups and media projects in an attempt to overthrow the Iranian government from within. However, in an attempt to counter the US government’s ongoing propaganda initiatives, this article will review how the mass media is manufacturing public consent for yet another illegal war by examining the work of radical mass media critics.

Mediating the Path to World War III

“…we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” President Bush, October 17, 2007.

(For a useful commentary on this statement, see Cuban Missile Crisis Redux)

Judging by the ongoing discussions in both the mainstream and alternative (progressive) media, it is apparent that, one way or the other, the US (and its coalition of willing cronies) has its sights firmly set on bringing regime change to Iran. So far, for the most part, the alternative media has focused on the nuclear threat posed by the Middle East’s most dangerous lawbreaker, Israel. The mainstream media, however, has persistently and erroneously portrayed Iran as the ‘real’ nuclear threat. Even Britain’s so-called liberal media is demonstrating its ability to manufacture consent for elite interests, with the BBC recently devoting an entire (Israeli-made) documentary to the issue of the Iranian problem, ironically titled Will Israel bomb Iran? This is not really surprising, as the governments guilty of involvement are heavily reliant on the mainstream media’s willingness to legitimize their ‘war on terror’, which in turn, could turn out to be the catalyst for an illegal and catastrophic foreign intervention in Iran (and thereby a catalyst for a global war).

In a manner which is eerily reminiscent of the mainstream media’s focus on Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, Dmitriy Sedov (2007) notes that in Iran’s case the media similarly “never stop[s] debating the issue of the ‘Iranian atomic bomb’”. Indeed John Pilger (2007) points out that “[w]e are being led towards perhaps the most serious crisis in modern history as the Bush-Cheney-Blair ‘long war’ edges closer to Iran for no reason other than that nation’s independence from rapacious America.” However, as Pilger notes, despite the proximity of this crisis:

“…there is a surreal silence, save for the noise of ‘news’ in which our powerful broadcasters gesture cryptically at the obvious but dare not make sense of it, lest the one-way moral screen erected between us and the consequences of an imperial foreign policy collapse and the truth be revealed.”

This phenomenon was well documented by Edward S. Herman (2006), who as early as March last year wrote:

“Today’s big news is the possibility that Iran, the Little Satan, might some day acquire a nuclear weapon: the administration says so, the media say so, and now three times as many people regard Iran as the U.S.’s greatest menace than four months ago and 47 percent of the public agrees that Iran should be bombed if needed to prevent its acquiring any nuclear weapon capability.”

In August 2007, Noam Chomsky pointed out that “[w]ithout irony, the Bush administration and the media charge that Iran is ‘meddling’ in Iraq”. Unfortunately:

“…Washington’s propaganda framework is reflexively accepted, apparently without notice, in US and other Western commentary and reporting, apart from the marginal fringe of what is called ‘the loony left.’ What is considered ‘criticism’ is skepticism as to whether all of Washington’s charges about Iranian aggression in Iraq are true. It might be an interesting research project to see how closely the propaganda of Russia, Nazi Germany, and other aggressors and occupiers matched the standards of today’s liberal press and commentators.



“The rhetoric about Iran has escalated to the point where both political parties and practically the whole US press accept it as legitimate and, in fact, honorable, that ‘all options are on the table,’ to quote Hillary Clinton and everybody else, possibly even nuclear weapons. ‘All options on the table’ means that Washington threatens war.”

War, Propaganda, the Corporate Media, and the BBC?

Herman (2006) outlines Twelve Principles of Propaganda Used in Setting the Stage for War in Iran, which in summary (without his accompanying evidence) are (1) that the US “has the legal and moral right” to lead the international community in stopping Iran’s nuclear program, (2) that countries targeted by US foreign policy elites should not be allowed the right to defend themselves, (3) to exaggerate the dangers posed by Iran’s eventual development of nuclear weapons, (4) to engage in “unrelenting demonization” of the said target, (5) to exclude any discussion of US relations with countries more deserving of the “demon status” that has been ascribed to Iran (also see here), (6) to underplay/ignore historical actions/relationships with Iran “that might show both hypocrisy and the fraudulence of the claimed threat”, (7) to underplay/ignore recent US actions that “might appear incompatible with its harsh stand opposing Iran’s pursuing any nuclear program” (8) that the US does not need to apply the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to its own actions, but can still “alter the terms of the NPT as it applies to its target”, (9) that “if the target cannot prove a negative, the severity of the threat to U.S. ‘national security’ requires that Iran be bombed and that there be a change in regime to one that can be trusted (like that of the Shah of Iran, or Sharon, or Musharraf)”, (10) to manipulate the “mechanisms of international regulation linked to the UN to serve the war and goal of regime change” – for a detailed treatment of this subject, see Herman and David Peterson (2007) (11) to maintain that the need to deal with the “Iran threat is based on a universal worry, and does not reflect U.S. power and the attempts to appease that power”, and (12) to dismiss any other hidden geostrategic interests that the U.S. may be pursuing in the Middle East. (Of course, as part and parcel of these propaganda principles the media also routinely engage in distributing outright disinformation.) Just a few months after Herman’s prescient analysis, Herman and Peterson (2006) concluded that:

“…the mainstream media have followed the party line on the Iran ‘crisis’ and failed almost without exception to note the problems and deal with matters raised in the alternative frames. Remarkably, despite their acknowledged massive failures as news organizations and de facto propaganda service for the Bush administration in the lead up to the Iraq invasion, with the administration refocusing on the new dire threat from Iran it took the mainstream media no time whatsoever to fall into party-line formation-from which they have not deviated.”

Like many media scholars who study the US media system, the noticeable contrast between the US media environment and other slightly more democratic media outlets overseas leads Herman (2006) to highlight the existence of dissenting voices in the British media: thus he notes that “[t]he ‘Drumbeat sounds familiar’ to Simon Tisdall in the London Guardian (March 7, 2006), but not to the servants of power in the U.S. media.”[7] However, even though some parts of the British media – like the Guardian and BBC – are often rated highly by American media analysts for their progressive credentials, some British-based researchers actually surmise that these so-called Left-orientated media outlets still serve to manufacture public consent for elite interests by setting distinct boundaries on the limits of acceptable dissent (see http://www.medialens.org).[8] On this point, Medialens writers David Edwards and David Cromwell (2007) suggest that: “There are glimmers of conscience in the [British] libera l p ress where journalists just cannot help but notice the echoes of 2002-2003 ahead of the Iraq catastrophe”, but Edwards and Cromwell still conclude that “the key point is that the liberal media are fully participating in the demonisation of Iran”.

As early as January 2005, Medialens drew attention to the BBC’s role in the propaganda offensive against Iran, while by February 2006, Medialens led off a follow-up article by noting that Timothy Garton Ash writing in the ‘liberal’ broadsheet the Guardian wrote: “Now we face the next big test of the west: after Iraq, Iran.” Furthermore, just a few months later Medialens demonstrated how the BBC had distorted an Amnesty International press release in their ongoing efforts to demonise Iran, and concluded their article by asking the following poignant questions:


“Why did the BBC decide to focus so prominently and heavily on Iran – a country under serious threat of attack by the United States and perhaps Britain? Why would the BBC choose to isolate and highlight the sins of an official enemy, thereby boosting the government’s propaganda campaign? Is this innocent, or are more cynical forces at work here?”

(Click here to read more about this case and to read the BBC’s response to Medialens.)


Of course a group like Medialens which has limited resources can only ever hope to document a smaller proportion of the British (‘liberal’) media’s servility to power, but nonetheless they have produced another two media-alerts this year concerning British media coverage of Iranian affairs, these being Iran in Iraq: The Art of Instant Forgetting (see related FAIR article), and Pentagon Propaganda Occupies the Guardian’s Frontpage (also see their follow-up article). For another recent discussion of the warmongering role of the British ‘liberal’ media, see Britain’s Channel Four Propaganda Machine Now Churning for Iran War, which describes the grilling that Channel Four presenter, Jon Snow, gave to President Ahmadinejad in September 2007.

Similarly, British-based Media Workers Against the War (MWAW) have highlighted the BBC’s role in building the case for a war on Iran, and have even held protests outside of their broadcasting studios. In June 2006, MWAW noted that BBC Radio Four’s flagship current affairs programme, Today, “paid lip service of [sic] ‘balance’ while presenting the debate over Iran in such a way as to legitimise a US military response”. Again, this news should not be overly surprising, as earlier academic studies have already concluded that the BBC had “displayed the most pro-war agenda of any [British] broadcaster” in the lead-up to Iraq’s destruction.[9]

In another MWAW (2007) report, this time pertaining to the media coverage of the recent so-called ‘hostage’ crisis, a journalist from the Financial Times described how his newspaper purposely chose to use the word detainees not hostages to describe the 15 British navy personnel recently held in Iran for 13 days. Crucially this thoughtful journalist was most concerned about how the broadsheets switched from using the word “detainees/captives” to “hostages” “after George W. Bush demanded on March 31 that ‘The Iranians must give back the hostages’”. Again this revelation should not be surprising to any scholars familiar with the vital role the so-called liberal media plays in supporting illegal foreign interventions.[10] So it should be expected that Anthony DiMaggio’s (2007) examination of the media coverage of the detainment crisis (in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post) led him to conclude that as Herman and Chomsky’s “propaganda model suggests, American reporters have faithfully taken to the role of an unofficia l p ropaganda arm for the state”.

More News on the March Towards War

More recently DiMaggio (2007), in another excellent article, has demonstrated how the Washington Post exhibited “a pattern of deception, one-sidedness, and manipulation” in its (mis)reporting on Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons. In his review of “over 230 Post news stories, 31 editorials, and 58 op-eds from 2003 through 2007” he demonstrated:

“…that assertions suggesting Iran may or is developing nuclear weapons appeared twice as often as claims or assertions that Iran is not or may not be developing such weapons. The paper’s op-eds and editorials are even more slanted, as 90% of editorials and 93% of op-eds suggest Iran is developing nuclear weapons, as opposed to 0% of editorials and 16% of op-eds suggesting Iran may not be developing such weapons. Belligerent rhetoric is also used far more often in regards to the Iranian ‘threat’ (of which there is no evidence of to date) than to the far larger U.S. and Israeli military threat to Iran (which has been announced vocally and shamelessly over and over throughout the American and Israeli press). Belligerent terms are applied twice as often in regards to Iranian development of nuclear weapons. Such terms, portray Iran as a ‘threat,’ and discuss the ‘fear’ invoked by a potentially nuclear armed Iran, as well as the ‘danger’ of such a development – as contrasted with similar references to a U.S. ‘threat,’ to the ‘fear’ of a U.S. or Israeli attack, or the ‘danger’ both countries pose to Iran.”

DiMaggio’s research also determined that while the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was mentioned in the majority of the Washington Post’s editorials (and 29% of the time in its op-eds), “the IAEA’s actual conclusion that there is ‘no evidence’ Iran is developing nuclear weapons” is reported in just one editorial and one op-ed. He goes on to note that:

“References to the fact that it was the U.S. itself that originally supported Iranian uranium enrichment show up in just 1% of the Post’s news stories, and in just 3% of all op-eds, and none of the paper’s editorials. The same goes for admissions that the United States is undertaking a similar project of enriching its own uranium for use in a new generation of American nuclear weapons (the major distinction, however, is that the U.S. openly admits to its project, while Iran has admitted to no such program). The very activity that U.S. leaders are condemning Iran for secretly pursuing is arrogantly advocated and pursued by the United States (the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons on civilians), although one wouldn't know any of this from looking at the coverage.”

With the release of the IAEA’s most recent (nine page report) released in mid-November, Farideh Farhi (2007) discussed the “interestingly partial way various news organizations and governments end up interpreting or representing the report to audiences they are sure will not read the reports themselves.” Farhi critiques the misreporting of the New York Times, Associated Press, and the Washington Post, and concludes his piece by noting that a BBC piece titled Mixed UN Nuclear Report for Iran although with some shortcomings was at least able to give “a relatively accurate description of the issues involved.” In fact, as the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) illustrated in May 2007, there are at least “twenty reasons to oppose sanctions and military intervention in Iran”, and:

“Contrary to the myth created by the western media, it is not Iran, but the US and its European allies which are defying the overwhelming majority of the international community, in that, they have resisted the call to enter into direct, immediate and comprehensive negotiations with Iran without any pre-conditions.”

A couple of months later, in July 2007, CASMII went on to criticise the Financial Times over the publication of an article that made “unfounded allegations about Iranian government’s complicity with Al-Qaeda launching terrorist operations in Iraq, using Iranian territory.” (The article in question was titled Al-Qaeda linked to operations from Iran.)

Finally, in September 2007, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited the US to address the United Nations General Assembly, the corporate media was on form again, ready to leap at any opportunity to vigorously thump the drum for war: indeed media analyst Deepa Kumar (2007) described the treatment of Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York as “xenophobic and hysterical”.[11] Ironically, in sharp contrast to the harsh treat Ahmadinejad’s visit provoked from the US media, Edward S. Herman (2007) reminds us that:

“In February 1955, the Shah of Iran was a guest at Columbia [University] receiving an honorary Doctor of Laws degree and he, like Musharraf, was greeted deferentially by Grayson Kirk and gave a well-received speech featuring an accolade to the U.S. ‘policy of peace backed by strength.’ The New York Times also noted that the Shah was ‘impressed by the desire of Americans for a secure and enduring peace’ (‘Shah Praises U.S. For Peace Policy,’ NYT, February 5, 1955). This was, of course, just a few months after the United States had overthrown the elected government of Guatemala via a proxy army and had installed a regime of permanent terror.”

Concluding Thoughts

In the case of the mainstream media’s recent coverage of Iranian issues it is perhaps uncontroversial to suggest that the media are conforming to Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s (1988) Propaganda Model by demonstrating their willingness to manufacture of mass consent for elite interests. Of course, this democratic deficit of the mainstream media is particularly noticeable to any regular readers/viewers of the alternative press, as the latter’s stories are almost unrecognizable when contrasted with their mainstream counterparts. That said, like the mainstream media’s coverage of Iranian issues, the alternative media has concentrated almost all of its energy into analysing the ongoing (and potential nuclear) military operations in the Middle East.[12] This is problematic because military threats and interventions (both overt and covert) are only one among many instruments available to the imperial architects of US foreign policy to promote regime change in Iran. As discussed earlier, a relative newcomer to the armoury of foreign policy elites is the use of democracy itself as a tool of foreign policy, a tool which is arguably one of the most potent weapons in the war of ideas waged by policy elites against progressive activists. Nevertheless despite the minimal coverage of such ‘democratic’ tactics, World War III still lurks on the horizon, and as Jean Bricmont (2007) summarised this September:

“All the ideological signposts for attacking Iran are in place. The country has been thoroughly demonized because it is not nice to women, to gays, or to Jews. That in itself is enough to neutralize a large part of the American ‘left’. The issue of course is not whether Iran is nice or not – according to our views – but whether there is any legal reason to attack it, and there is none; but the dominant ideology of human rights has legitimized, specifically in the left, the right of intervention on humanitarian grounds anywhere, at any time, and that ideology has succeeded in totally sidetracking the minor issue of international law.”

To work to defeat the propaganda war (not to mention the military war) on Iran, it is essential that citizens around the world develop the know-how to see through the propaganda veil that has been cast over Iranian affairs. For example. to counter the influence of best-selling authors like neoconservative-linked Azar Nafisi – (in)famous for writing Reading Lolita in Tehran – concerned citizens would do well to help publicise more honest books dealing with Iranian affairs like Fatemeh Keshavarz’s (2007) recent book Jasmine and Stars: Reading More than Lolita in Tehran. (See interview with the author here, and also read Hamid Dabashi’s (2006) important critique of Nafisi’s work). However, at the end of the day it is vital that al l p eople, with even a passing interest in the foreign affairs of their elected governments, work to create a media that can support democratic principles, not undermine them. This can be done in a number of ways but of course providing financial support for independent media outlets is a must. This is because as Robert McChesney (1997) points out: “regardless of what a progressive group’s first issue of importance is, its second issue should be media and communication, because so long as the media are in corporate hands, the task of social change will be vastly more difficult, if not impossible, across the board.”[13]

Michael Barker is a doctoral candidate at Griffith University, Australia. He can be reached at Michael.J.Barker [at] griffith.edu.au and some of his other articles can be found here.

Endnotes

[1] Barker, M.J. (Submitted) ‘The Liberal Foundations of Media Reform? Creating Sustainable Funding Opportunities for Radical Media Reform’, Global Media Journal.

[2] Herman, E. S. and N. Chomsky (1988) Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books; Keeble, R. (1997) Secret State, Silent Press: New Militarism, the Gulf and the Modern Image of Warfare. Bedfordshire, U.K.: John Libbey Media Faculty of Media University of Luton; Molwana, H., G. Gerbner and H. I. Schiller (1992) Triumph of the Image: The Media’s War in the Persian Gulf : A Global Perspective. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.

[3] Also see Danielle Ganser’s online articles Secret Warfare: Operation Gladio and NATO's Stay-Behind Army, and Terrorism in Western Europe: An Approach to NATO’s Secret Stay-Behind Armies.

[4] Hammond, P. and E. S. Herman (2000) Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis. London: Pluto Press; Robinson, P. (2000) ‘The Policy-Media Interaction Model: Measuring Media Power During Humanitarian Crisis’, Journal of Peace Research, 37(5): 613-633.

[5] Herring, E. (2004) ‘Power, Propaganda and Indifference: An Explanation of the Maintenance of Economic Sanctions on Iraq Despite Their Human Cost’, pp. 34-56 in T. Y. Ismael & W. W. Haddad (eds) Iraq: The Human Cost of History. London: Pluto Press.

[6] Friel, H. and R. A. Falk (2004) The Record of the Paper: How the New York Times Misreports US Foreign Policy. London: Verso; Kumar, D. (2006) ‘Media, War, and Propaganda: Strategies of Information Management During the 2003 Iraq War’, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 3(1): 48-69; Miller, D. (2004) Tell Me Lies: Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq. London: Pluto.

[7] Writing for the US-based mediawatchdog FAIR, Norman Solomon has been busily documenting the US media propaganda war against Iran, see Nuclear Fundamentalism and the Iran Story (5/5/05), The Iran Crisis: “Diplomacy” as a Launch Pad for Missiles (2/6/06), Media Tall Tales for the Next War (9/26/06). Also see FAIR’s Buying the Bush Line on Iran Nukes: Despite uncertainty, U.S. journalists take sides (September/October 2005), Won't Get Fooled Again? NYT, networks offer scant skepticism on Iran claims (2/2/07), and NYT Breaks Own Anonymity Rules: Paper pushes Iran threat with one-sided array of unnamed officials (2/16/07).

[8] McKiggan, M. 2005. Climate Change and the Mass Media: A Critical Analysis. Unpublished MSc thesis, Southampton University.

[9] Cited in Pilger, J. (2003) ‘The BBC and Iraq: Myth and Reality’, New Statesman, December 4, 2003; Wells, M. (2003) ‘Study Deals a Blow to Claims of Anti-War Bias in BBC News’, The Guardian, July 4, 2003.

[10] Edwards, D. and D. Cromwell (2006) Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media. London: Pluto Press; Friel, H. and R. A. Falk (2004) The Record of the Paper: How the New York Times Misreports US Foreign Policy. London: Verso; Klaehn, J. (2005) Filtering the News: Essays on Herman and Chomsky's Propaganda Model. Montreal: Black Rose Books.

[11] It is also not so surprising that amongst the protestors (which the media called a “large anti-Iran protest movement”) based outside of Columbia University during Ahmadinejad’s visit “were in fact anti-war protestors demanding an end to US threats directed against Iran.”

[12] Some progressive commentators like Gabriel Kolko (2007) argue that a war with Iran is unlikely.

[13] McChesney, R. W. (1997) Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy. New York: Seven Stories Press, p.71.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

White House Deserves Medal of Freedom Over Plame Outing- Fox News

Take a look at the latest garbage being spewed by John Gibson over at Fox 'News'. Besides completely rewriting history (nothing new), he shares his thoughts on the whole Plame affair. He also alludes to a great 'left wing conspiracy' that exists in the government and how it is out to destroy the President and his policies. What a joke!

Just another example of how the 'public' airwaves are used today.

Sigh...

The Real Rudy Giuliani- Mr. 9/11

9/11...9/11...I'm a hero...9/11...I'm a hero....9/11...Everything changed on 9/11...

Court Dismisses Legal Challenge Against Musharraf


Wow- what a surprise!

Moscow Warns NATO Against Military Build-Up

And to think that I was naive enough to believe at one time that the Cold War was really over. It should come as no surprise that nothing substantial has really changed over the years. NATO, a cold war relic which should have been dismantled along with the Warsaw Pact, is ever growing. Missile defense shield? Oh, let's stick that in Poland and the Czech Republic. Moscow won't mind!

On the Russian side, the rhetoric has heated up as well. This past Tuesday, Putin held a meeting with his country's top military brass. Here is what he had to say:


Moscow warns NATO against military build-up targeting Russia


President Vladimir Putin told an annual gathering of the nation's military top brass Tuesday that an appropriate response to "muscle-flexing" by NATO is crucial when setting guidelines for development of the armed forces.

Addressing the annual gathering as commander in chief for the last time before his term ends in May, Putin accused NATO of encroaching on Russia's borders "in violation of previous agreements."

"Military resources of NATO members are being built up next to our borders," Putin told top commanders at the Defense Ministry's headquarters in central Moscow. "Of course, we cannot allow ourselves to remain indifferent to this obvious muscle-flexing."

Putin did not specify which countries' militaries are in violation of previous agreements, but said the Kremlin's plan to suspend participation in the adapted Conventional Forces in Europe treaty was part of an "adequate response."

The treaty, which a number of NATO members including East European countries have not joined, regulates the deployment of non-nuclear weapons such as aircraft and tanks around Europe. NATO insists that Russia first make good on a pledge to withdraw troops from Georgia and Moldova before joining the treaty. The Kremlin has rejected the demands, and Putin announced earlier this year that Russia would suspend its participation in this key treaty -- a suspension set to come into effect on Dec. 13.

"Some of our partners have not only failed to ratify but didn't even sign the treaty. ... Russia will consider the question of resuming its obligations as soon as they have joined the adapted treaty and, most importantly, begun complying with it," Putin said, according to a transcript of the speech posted on the Kremlin's web site.

Notably, Putin did not voice another of Russia's top security grievances vis-a-vis the West: U.S. plans to deploy elements of a global missile defense system in Eastern Europe. He did lament, however, that Russia's calls to NATO to build a joint missile defense system "with equal access for all participants" remain unheeded.

Putin touted progress made in strengthening Russia's response to NATO's expansion in the form of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Moscow-led defense alliance comprising several former Soviet republics. He also praised the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which unites China, Russia and several Central Asian republics and which Moscow sees as an instrument to deter expansion of Western influence in Central Asia.

Putin, who served as an officer in the KGB's foreign intelligence arm during the Cold War, also outlined his vision for the development of the armed forces, saying the development of strategic nuclear forces should be a priority.

"They should be ready to give a quick and adequate response to any aggressor," he said. Conventional forces, he added, "should seek new forms of neutralizing threats at early stages."

Putin, who is heading up United Russia's federal ticket in the Dec. 2 State Duma elections, also used his speech to plug populist perks for the military. He said monthly salaries for servicemen will increase by 15 percent next month and reiterated his recent vow to pay all arrears to military pensioners, which will cost the federal budget billions of rubles.

In another populist gesture Putin gave a public -- if misguided -- scolding to a senior general responsible for health issues in the military, demanding an improvement in the quality of housing for soldiers.

"Our officers should no longer live in stinking slums," he said, adding that officers without housing -- who number 150,000 -- should be provided with adequate housing by 2012.

The Defense Ministry's health service is not responsible for military housing.

Putin's speech was followed by a report from Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, who assured Putin that the commissioning of strategic nuclear weapons is being carried out "strictly" on schedule, Interfax reported.

Serdyukov boasted of an intensification of combat training, with around 300 war games conducted this year, and said the military would conduct a strategic exercise called Stability 2008 next year, focusing on stamping out armed conflicts "along the perimeter" of Russian borders, Interfax reported.

The exercise is clearly designed to send a signal to neighboring countries - like Georgia with separatist provinces within their borders.

The share of professional soldiers in the rank and file will reach some 44 percent next year, and all sailors serving on ships will be professional servicemen beginning in January, Serdyukov said.

Serdyukov, head of the Federal Tax Service until Putin appointed him to run the armed forces in February, said hazing had decreased dramatically in the ranks and that the overall number of hazing-related offenses decreased by 20 percent this year. Mortality in the armed forces dropped by 16.5 percent, Serdyukov said, giving credit not only to commanders but also to nongovernmental organizations.


As the old saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same...

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

John Edwards - Thanksgiving - TV ad

A Thanksgiving message from John Edwards...

Musharraf Plays Bush for a Fool

Following up on my last post, I thought the following analysis was very good in relation to what is happening in Pakistan now.

Musharraf Plays Bush for a Fool

by Prof. Marjorie Cohn

Pakistan 's President General Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency on November 3rd after the Pakistani Supreme Court indicated it would overturn the results of an illegitimate election that would have extended Musharraf's term as president. Musharraf quickly fired the Supreme Court justices who planned to rule against him. And his declaration of emergency attacked the entire population of Pakistan by suspending fundamental constitutional rights to life and liberty, freedom of speech, assembly and association, and equal protection of the law.

As a result of Musharraf's action, Pakistani Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry is being held under house arrest, and over 2500 lawyers in different parts of Pakistan have been detained. The detainees include the President of the Supreme Court Bar Association and officials of the Democratic Lawyers Association of Pakistan. The government also ordered that journalists who brought "ridicule or disrepute" to Musharraf could face three years in prison.

The real motivation for Musharraf's declared emergency is not to defend the country against "Islamic extremists," as he claims, but to maintain Musharraf in power. He acted to prevent public protests that lawyers and political parties were organizing. And his scheme is working. Musharraf's new brand-new, hand-picked Supreme Court ruled on Monday that Musharraf can remain in power for five more years.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration is scurrying around in damage control mode. Musharraf's actions would be very embarrassing for Bush -- if Bush were the type of guy to get embarrassed. After all, Bush has been claiming for the past several years that he wants to spread democracy throughout the Islamic world. Somehow, Musharraf's declared state of emergency, followed by mass arrests of his political opponents, doesn't seem very democratic.

Bush dispatched Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte to Pakistan to talk sense to Musharraf. Negroponte urged Musharraf to end the state of emergency. But Bush's man didn't complain about Musharraf shutting down the Supreme Court and replacing it with his loyalists. Negroponte also failed to tell Musharraf to release the judges and lawyers from prison. So much for democracy and an independent judiciary.

The recipient of nearly $11 billion of U.S. aid since 9/11, Musharraf will cover for his benefactor Bush to keep him from losing face in light of the Pakistani strongman's blatant and tyrannical power grab. Musharraf has agreed that parliamentary elections scheduled for January will proceed and that he will take off his military uniform after the sham elections are held. Of course, Musharraf's jailed political opponents will likely find it difficult to campaign effectively for seats in parliament while incarcerated under a state of martial law.

American citizens whose tax dollars are being used to prop up this ruthless and corrupt regime should demand an accounting of how their money is being spent.

Bush claims that Musharraf is an indispensable ally in his "war against terror," and that money sent to Pakistan supports that goal. It appears from my vantage point, though, that Musharraf is playing Bush for a fool. Musharraf tells Bush he will help destroy the Taliban. However, Pakistani Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy wrote in the November 18 Los Angeles Times that some people in Pakistan believe Musharraf is "secretly supporting the Taliban as a means for countering Indian influence." Moreover, if Musharraf wants to regain and maintain support of the Pakistani people, he will continue to support the Taliban. Hoodbhoy also wrote, "Most Pakistanis see the [Taliban] as America 's enemy, not their own. The Taliban is perceived as the only group standing up against the unwelcome American presence in the region." According to Hoodbhoy, "For more than 25 years, the army has nurtured Islamist radicals as proxy warriors for covert operations on Pakistan 's borders in Kashmir and Afghanistan ."

Hoodbhoy's remarks are corroborated by Adrien Levy, co-author of "Deception: Pakistan , the United States and the Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy." Levy told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, "The [Musharraf] agenda is to destabilize Afghanistan , to create a government there which is favorable to Islamabad . These are goals which are actually contrary to the goals - very largely contrary to the goals of the West. Yet," Levy, said, "this slowly moving car crash of the U.S. pumping billions of untraceable cash into the Pakistan military has continued since 2001 and we're left with the position where Pakistan is devoid of democracy, democracy is weakened and feeble, and we have just increased instability, quite honestly."

If Congress stands by and does nothing to cut off the funds to Musharraf while he maintains martial law in Pakistan , it will confirm our worst fears that Democrats and Republicans alike are making a sham of our democracy.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and the President of the National Lawyers Guild. She is the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law. Her columns are archived at www.marjoriecohn.com.

Bush More Emphatic In Backing Musharraf

Is it any wonder that no one in the world outside of a few Republicans here in the U.S. believe anything that this man says anymore? Bush had this to say about his dictator buddy in Pakistan:

President Bush yesterday offered his strongest support of embattled Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying the general "hasn't crossed the line" and "truly is somebody who believes in democracy."

Bush spoke nearly three weeks after Musharraf declared emergency rule, sacked members of the Supreme Court and began a roundup of journalists, lawyers and human rights activists. Musharraf's government yesterday released about 3,000 political prisoners, although 2,000 remain in custody, according to the Interior Ministry.
Let's see- Musharraf sacked the Supreme Court, rounded up journalists, lawyers and human rights activists. Declared emergency rule martial law. Hmmm...sounds like Bush democracy to me! WooHooo!

Oh, and Musharraf is going to shed his military uniform. The change of clothes makes a good leader everytime!

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Noam Chomsky on Iran

Iraq, Iran.....Groundhog Day

Obey, Murtha Say Bush Can Get Iraq Money


I am so tired of hearing Republican shrieks that Democrats are somehow tying the Pentagon's hands by not passing a war spending bill. The troops will do without, they cry. Nothing could be further from the truth.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) and Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the Defense subcommittee on Appropriations, said President Bush can receive all $200 billion in new funding he wants to pay for the Iraq war next year, as long as he agrees to their demands to set a non-binding "goal" for withdrawing most U.S. combat troops by Dec. 2008.

The two senior Democrats also repeatedly slammed Pentagon officials for claiming that the Defense Department may have to shut down some military depots, and lay off civilian employees, if the Iraq funding bill is not enacted soon. Murtha called the charge "despicable," and he angrily yelled at a reporter at one point during today's press conference, asking "Do you believe the Pentagon?"

Obey said the "bridge fund" passed by the House before it left for a two-week recess includes "three simple requests" that must be met before he agrees to any release any of Iraq funding - more training and better equipment for troops before they are deployed to Iraq; adoption of the Army Field Manual's prohibition on torture by all U.S. government agencies; and "the president produce a plan to end our military involvement in Iraq by the end, not this year, but next year. That is another 14 months. That is more than 400 days. That is hardly a precipitous withdrawal."

There you go. The money is there but it doesn't pass the Republican 100% approval test. Last week, the House passed a $50 billion bill that would keep operations afloat for several more months, but sets a goal of bringing most troops home by December 2008. After Bush threatened to veto the measure, Senate Republicans blocked it.

Just who is obstructing here? The Democrats who passed a funding bill with non-binding measures attached, or the Republicans, who perceive any challenge to Bush as somehow akin to treason?

Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government


I have always enjoyed Sirota's writings on the corrupting influence that corporate money has had on our political system. His latest book, Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government--And How We Take It Back,is an in-depth look at how this culture of corruption has twisted the way that government works today. From his site:

Do you ever wonder if there's a connection between the increasingly frequent corruption scandals in the news and the steady decline in the quality of life for millions of Americans? Do you ever wonder what corporations get for the millions of dollars they pour into the American political system? Do you ever think the government has been hijacked by forces hostile to average Americans? Do you ever want to fight back?

If your answer to any of these questions is "yes," then Hostile Takeover is your guide.

Millions of Americans lack health care, millions more struggle to afford it. Politicians claim they care, and then pass legislation that does nothing more than send more cash to the HMO industry. Wages have been stagnant for thirty years, and the minimum wage isn't enough to live on, even as corporate profits skyrocket. Politicians say they want to fix the problem, and then pass bills written by lobbyists that help drive wages even lower and punish those crushed by debt. Jobs are being shipped overseas, pensions are being cut, politicians feign outrage, and then support policies written by their Big Money donors that ships more jobs overseas and help executives eliminate workers' retirement benefits.

People who are worried about their families feel helpless when confronted with this reality; patriotic individuals who love their country are worried about what these trends mean for the future of America. And our government, more concerned about maintaining its corporate sponsorship than protecting its citizens, does nothing about it. In fact, politicians deliberately work to make these problems worse.

In Hostile Takeover, David Sirota seeks to open the eyes of ordinary Americans and show us exactly how corporate interests have conquered our democracy, aided and abetted by their lackeys in our allegedly representative government. At a time when more and more of America's major political leaders are being indicted or investigated for corruption, Sirota takes readers on a journey that shows how all of this nefarious behavior happens right under our noses, how it is all symptomatic of a diseased political system, and how the high-profile scandals are merely one product of a political system and a political debate wholly owned by Big Money interests.

Sirota considers ten of the most pressing pocketbook issues for ordinary citizens' taxes, wages, jobs, debt, pensions, health care, prescription drugs, energy, worker protections and legal rights. In each case, he shows how workable solutions are buried under the lies of lobbyists, the influence of campaign cash, and the ubiquitous spin machine financed by Big Business.

With fiery passion, pinpoint wit, and lucid analysis, Sirota reveals the true enemies of reform and the increasingly sophisticated tactics being used to wage an economic war on ordinary citizens. Hostile Takeover is, in short, an easy-to-read guidebook not for the elitists, the insiders or the bought off politicians, but for the rest of us who are tired of government selling us out - and who want answers about how we can take our country back.


Sunday, November 18, 2007

The War Profiteers- Enough is Enough

There is a must read article in this months Vanity Fair entitled The People vs. the Profiteers. The story told is an amazing look inside the world of the for-profit war machine and the often horrific actions taken by some of the largest defense contractors in Iraq. Here is but one example that the article makes note of:

Consider the case of Grayson's client Bud Conyers, a big, bearded 43-year-old who lives with his ex-wife and her nine children, four of them his, in Enid, Oklahoma. Conyers worked in Iraq as a driver for Kellogg, Brown & Root. Spun off by Halliburton as an independent concern in April, KBR is the world's fifth-largest construction company. Before the war started, the Pentagon awarded it two huge contracts: one, now terminated, to restore the Iraqi oil industry, and another, still in effect, to provide a wide array of logistical-support services to the U.S. military.

In the midday heat of June 16, 2003, Conyers was summoned to fix a broken refrigerated truck—a "reefer," in contractor parlance—at Log Base Seitz, on the edge of Baghdad's airport. He and his colleagues had barely begun to inspect the sealed trailer when they found themselves reeling from a nauseating stench. The freezer was powered by the engine, and only after they got it running again, several hours later, did they dare open the doors.

The trailer, unit number R-89, had been lying idle for two weeks, Conyers says, in temperatures that daily reached 120 degrees. "Inside, there were 15 human bodies," he recalls. "A lot of liquid stuff had just seeped out. There were body parts on the floor: eyes, fingers. The goo started seeping toward us. Boom! We shut the doors again." The corpses were Iraqis, who had been placed in the truck by a U.S. Army mortuary unit that was operating in the area. That evening, Conyers's colleague Wallace R. Wynia filed an official report: "On account of the heat the bodies were decomposing rapidly.… The inside of the trailer was awful."

It is not unheard of for trucks in a war zone to perform hearse duty. But both civilian and U.S.-military regulations state that once a trailer has been used to store corpses it can never again be loaded with food or drink intended for human consumption. According to the U.S. Army's Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine, "Contact with whole or part human remains carries potential risks associated with pathogenic microbiological organisms that may be present in human blood and tissue." The diseases that may be communicated include aids,hepatitis, tuberculosis, septicemia, meningitis, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human variant of mad cow.

It only gets worse...

But when Bud Conyers next caught sight of trailer R-89, about a month later, it was packed not with human casualties but with bags of ice—ice that was going into drinks served to American troops. He took photographs, showing the ice bags, the trailer number, and the wooden decking, which appeared to be stained red. Another former KBR employee, James Logsdon, who now works as a police officer near Enid, says he first saw R-89 about a week after Conyers's grisly discovery. "You could still see a little bit of matter from the bodies, stuff that looked kind of pearly, and blood from the stomachs. It hadn't even been hosed down. Afterwards, I saw that truck in the P.W.C.—the public warehouse center—several times. There's nothing there except food and ice. It was backed up to a dock, being loaded."

As late as August 31, 11 weeks after trailer R-89 was emptied of the putrefying bodies, a KBR convoy commander named Jeff Allen filed a mission log stating that it had carried 5,000 pounds of ice that day. This ice, Allen wrote, was "bio-contaminated." But to his horror, on that day alone, "approx 1,800 pounds [were] used."

This is but one example of many of how the privatization of war has been nothing short of a disaster. Slogans that echo from the past such as "Duty, Honor, Country" have been replaced with "Profit, Profit and More Profit". It is the height of insanity for a country to depend on the actions of a private company unrestrained by any type of law to do its war bidding. Private mercenaries have no oath other than to their company. The company has no oath other than to its shareholders.

Americans from all sides of the political divide should be against such the privatization of our armed forces and we owe it to our men and women in uniform to speak out against it. Our military, once the greatest and well run in the world, is slowly dying the death of a thousand cuts.

Sunday Matinee- Iraq For Sale


This for all of you 'fiscal conservatives' who care about the 'people's money'...

Glenn Beck- Use Military to Stop Domestic Opposition



Glenn Beck in action.

Complaints and demands for a retraction and an apology are flooding CNN today after Neo-Con host Glenn Beck and ex-Marxist David Horowitz smeared Ron Paul supporters, libertarians and the anti-war left as terrorist sympathizers and inferred that the U.S. military should be used to silence them, parroting a talking point that traces back to a September 2006 White House directive.

This is part of an ongoing propaganda assault which has also been mimicked by other anti-American Neo-Con talking heads like Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.

Beck opened up his show segment by inferring that the U.S. military should be used to silence domestic dissent against the war, claiming that those he would later identify as Ron Paul supporters, libertarians and the anti-war left and link with terrorists, were a "physical threat."

"When you enlist in the U.S. military, you have take an oath that says you're gonna support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies - foreign and domestic - we talk a lot on this program about the foreign threats - maybe we should spend some time tonight on the domestic one....the physical threat may be developing domestically as well," said Beck.

Beck then goes on to make the absurd insinuation that Ron Paul supporters are a terrorist threat because they are causing disenfranchisement with the government. His evidence? The November 5th donation drive coincided with a 400-year-old piece of British history and Guy Fawkes plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament.

Beck then introduces his guests, the great grandson of Winston Churchill, and admitted former Marxist and now Neo-Con ideologue David Horowitz.

We are forced to digest the bizarre and abhorrent spectacle of a British elitist, "former" Marxist Horowitz and anti-American Neo-Con Glenn Beck infer that 1776, the founding fathers and the very birth of freedom in America is somehow evil and affiliated with terrorism and extremism.




Glenn Beck, so called 'libertarian', is nothing more than another neocon in disguise.

OPEC and the Dollar- What's Next?


I have read many stories of late about the declining dollar but this one really stuck out.

OPEC blunder reveals debate on weak dollar

By SEBASTIAN ABBOT
The Associated Press


The accidental airing of a closed OPEC session Friday provided a surprise glimpse into a sensitive debate over the weakening U.S. dollar, with Saudi Arabia's foreign minister warning that even talking publicly about the currency's decline could further hurt its value.

The high-profile blunder ahead of a rare OPEC summit revealed the debate as Iran attempted to convince other member countries to express concern over dollar depreciation in the meeting's final declaration.

Oil is priced in dollars on the world market, and its depreciation has concerned oil producers because it has contributed to rising crude prices and has eroded the value of their dollar reserves. Cartel officials have resisted pressure to increase oil production to ease prices.

"The reality is that we have this problem. I think we should draft the declaration to reflect our concerns," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said during a pre-summit meeting here with fellow ministers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

But Saud al-Faisal, foreign minister of U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, came out against the proposal with unusually frank comments.

"In my feeling, the mere mention that the OPEC countries are studying the issue of the dollar is itself going to have an impact that endangers the interests of the countries," he said.

"We all should be worried if any action that we take will lead us to do some injury to our returns on our product," al-Faisal said. "Nobody wants to have less money than more money. I am sure that we all agree on that."

Broadcast accidental

The closed meeting was accidentally broadcast to journalists and after about 40 minutes, an official rushed into the press room and yanked the television cable out of the wall.

A public declaration by OPEC expressing concern about the falling value of the dollar could send the currency even lower, putting at risk the vast dollar holdings oil producers have generated as crude prices have soared to record levels.

Iran and Venezuela have proposed trading oil in a basket of currencies to replace the historic link to the dollar, but they have been unable to generate enough support from fellow OPEC members.

After the meeting, OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salem el-Badri said the group had decided not to mention concern over dollar depreciation in the declaration.

"We discussed it among ourselves, but I will tell you, you will not see it in the final declaration," he said. "I told you ... many times that we are concerned, but this is a member-country policy."

Saudi Foreign Minister al-Faisal suggested during the meeting that OPEC analyze the impact of dollar depreciation without documenting its efforts or concern.

"This is not new. We have done this in the past, decide to study something without putting down on paper that we are going to study it so that we avoid any implication that will bring adverse effect to our countries' finances," al-Faisal said.

Not everyone agreed with the Saudi foreign minister in the meeting. Nigerian Finance Minister Shamsuddeen Usman suggested accommodating Iran's proposed addition.

"While underlining our concern for the continued depreciation of the dollar and its adverse impact on our revenues, we instruct our finance ministers to study the issue exhaustively and advise us on ways to safeguard the purchasing power of our revenues, of our members' revenues," Usman suggested the statement should read.

Production speculation

Although the issue of dollar depreciation took center stage on the eve of the upcoming summit, which starts today, the run-up to the meeting was also dominated by speculation over whether OPEC would raise production after recent oil-price increases that have closed in on $100.

The record oil prices prompted U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to call on OPEC to increase production earlier this week, but cartel officials have said they will hold off any decision until the group meets next month in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Friday, November 16, 2007

The Poor in Mississippi Lag Behind in Hurricane Aid


This story is a national disgrace. How can it be that after two years, citizens affected by the ravages of Katrina are still suffering and not receiving the help that they so desperately need?

Like the other Gulf Coast states battered by Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi was required by Congress to spend half of its billions in federal grant money to help low-income citizens trying to recover from the storm.

But so far, the state has spent $1.7 billion in federal money on programs that have mostly benefited relatively affluent residents and big businesses. The money has gone to compensate many middle- and upper-income homeowners, to aid utility companies whose equipment was damaged and to prop up the state’s insurance system.

Just $167 million, or about 10 percent of the federal money, has been spent on programs dedicated to helping the poor, mostly through a smaller grant program for lower-income homeowners.

And while that total will certainly increase, Mississippi has set aside just 23 percent of its $5.5 billion grant money — $1.25 billion — for these programs. About 37 percent of the residents of the state’s coast are low income, according to federal figures.

Mississippi is the only state for which the Bush administration has waived the rule that 50 percent of its Community Development Block Grants be spent on low-income programs, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which administers the program. It is also the only state to ask for such waivers.

State officials, from Gov. Haley Barbour on down, insist that the state does not discriminate by race or income when it hands out aid to storm victims.

“We feel like we have programs in place to address all walks of life,” said Gray Swoope, executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority, which administers the federally financed grant programs.

Any delays in spending money on low-income projects have been caused by the complexity of creating the projects, said Donna Sanford, director of the disaster recovery program for the development authority. The state, Ms. Sanford said, “has done everything that we can to keep it on track and moving as fast as possible to meet the needs of everyone.”

They go on report the latest 'progress' being made

Because fewer applicants than expected applied for Mississippi’s assistance program, the state still has almost $2 billion left, some of which it plans to use for community development projects and for the port expansion.

The port, at the foot of Gulfport’s main street, flies a Chiquita banner under its American flag; fruit imports remain down but are bouncing back, though exports of frozen poultry have stopped since the storm destroyed the port’s refrigerated warehouses. The state says that the expansion will add about 1,000 jobs over the next five years, and that many of those will be reserved for low-income residents.

But some community advocates are dubious, noting that before the storm only 10 percent of the port jobs went to low-income residents. They also think the cost per job will be too high.

And they note that the port’s own master plan envisions a new tourist and casino development. “It’s not all about bananas,” said Reilly Morse, a lawyer for the Mississippi Center for Justice.

Mr. Morse and many others who oppose the port plan say the state should first ensure that all the families now living in more than 10,000 government trailers have a permanent place to live, that rental housing gets built and that all homeowners can repair their houses.

“I don’t have any problem with economic development and expanding the port, but not at the cost of people,” said James W. Crowell, president of the N.A.A.C.P. branch in Biloxi, just down the beach from Gulfport.
Hmmm...fewer applicants than expected filed for assistance and the state just happens to have a $2 billion dollar surplus. Wow. Tell that to the people still living in their toxic FEMA trailers.