www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/readersrespond/bs-ed-climate-letter-20120706,0,1808614.story
baltimoresun.com
Pentagon has role in climate change
9:45 AM EDT, July 6, 2012
The big story in The Sun this past week was the unforeseen storm. In the editorial, "Feeling powerless" (July 3), the question asked was this a "freak occurrence?" Your answer makes sense: "Climate science suggests that global warming will make unusual and severe weather much more common."
However, I have a suggestion. Instead of global warming, use climate chaos. What I witnessed in Baltimore on the Friday night of the storm was climate chaos. Only a head-in-the-sand politician would deny that human activity is causing climate chaos. Scientists have determined that the warming of the planet is happening, and many, including polar bears, are suffering the consequences. Of course, we must abandon dirty fossil fuels and get our green economy in gear. However, there is an elephant in the room — the Pentagon.
TheU.S. military's environmental record is, to say the least, dismal. I argue that the Pentagon is greatly responsible for the assault on Mother Earth, as it is the world's number one consumer of fossil fuels. There are some 1,000 military outposts, thousands of flights per year, gas-guzzling Hummers, depleted uranium, nuclear weapons, toxic military sites and environmental ecocide in war zones.
If we are to save this planet, war is not the answer. We the people must rise up and demand severe cutbacks in Pentagon spending. These tax dollars then can be use to develop the green economy. Let's do it before the next mega-storm hits Baltimore.
Max Obuszewski, Baltimore
Copyright © 2012, The Baltimore Sun
www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/readersrespond/bs-ed-egypt-brotherhood-letter-20120705,0,4608069.story
baltimoresun.com
Give the new Egyptian president a chance
10:30 AM EDT, July 5, 2012
Al Eisner, in his letter, "Egyptian election is tragic" (June 29), has substituted opinion for fact when he calls the Muslim Brotherhood "a virulent anti-Semitic organization." Anti-Zionist, yes; but he provides no evidence whatsoever that it is anti-Semitic.
Mr. Eisner shows no compassion for the Egyptian people who suffered for so many years under the brutal dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. Instead, his concern is only for Israel and what Egypt's new government might mean for Egyptian/Israel relations and also for U.S./Israel relations.
Israel likes to tout itself as being the only democracy in the region (even though it is not a democracy, but an ethnocracy). Now that Egypt has a democratically-elected government, it can no longer claim this (although it will no doubt still try). President Mohamed Morsi has vowed to form an inclusive government, with women and Christians among his deputies. I hope that the powers who would like to see Egypt fail will not succeed in interfering in Egypt's democratic process.
Doris Rausch, Columbia
Copyright © 2012, The Baltimore Sun
www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/readersrespond/bs-ed-egypt-letter-20120627,0,4772705.story
baltimoresun.com
Egyptian election results are tragic
9:45 AM EDT, June 27, 2012
Since it has been determined to be absolutely necessary to overthrow the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, even though Egypt and Israel had managed to co-exist for several decades, the results are now a tragedy ("Islamist wins Egypt presidency," June 25).
President Barack Obama was instrumental in supporting this and used the might of theU.S. military to help achieve it. He had to know that the vacuum created would be eventually filled by the Muslim Brotherhood, a virulent anti-Semitic organization, whose stated chief goal is the eradication of Israel and the Jewish people.
Sure enough, the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate has become Egypt's elected leader. This group is the most organized and powerful political group in Egypt. They are also calling for Sharia law to be implemented.
The position of the Obama administration is that "we can work with them." Now, long-standing friendliness, cooperation and common cause between Israel and the U.S. is evaporating due to the actions of the Obama administration.
Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave $1.5 billion in foreign aid to this terrorist group even before their candidate won the Egyptian election, despite objection from Congress. Unbelievable! Yes, the final results of this spell out a tragedy.
Al Eisner, Silver Spring
Copyright © 2012, The Baltimore Sun
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Women in Resistance/Scientists Say Ongoing Weather Extremes Offer Proof of Climate Change
Friends,
Denise Wiktor is hoping someone will have knowledge about women filmmakers in Baltimore in the late 1970s or early 1980s doing a project WOMEN IN RESISTANCE. Her mother Emma was filmed. I guessed the group was STORMS [Sisters Together Organized Against Racism, Militarism and Sexism], which was active during that time period. Does anyone have knowledge of this film project? Denise would like to see the footage of her mom, so that she can show it to her daughter. Kagiso, Max
Scientists Say Ongoing Weather Extremes Offer Proof of Climate Change
By Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian
Posted on July 4, 2012, Printed on July 6, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/story/156163/scientists_say_ongoing_weather_extremes_offer_proof_of_climate_change
The bizarre weather of early summer in the US – from heatwave, wildfires, drought to freak storms – is just a sampling of what is to come for 2012 and a window to the future under climate change, scientists have said.
Scientists are wary of linking specific weather events to climate change, and this year's punishing heat and deadly thunder storms have been confined to the Americas. Europe, Asia and Africa haven't experienced severe weather this year – though they have in past years.
But the run of extreme weather offers real-time proof of the consequences of climate change, said Kevin Trenberth, who heads climate research at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado – itself the scene of devastating wildfires.
"We are certainly seeing climate change in action," he said. "This year has been exceptionally unusual throughout the United States."
Jeff Masters director of meteorology at the Weather Underground website, told Democracy Now: "What we're seeing now is the future. We're going to be seeing a lot more weather like this, a lot more impacts like we're seeing from this series of heat waves, fires and storms."
He added: "This is just the beginning."
The prime exhibit for the bizarre turn of weather is the current heat wave.
The month of June alone shattered some 3,215 records for daily maximum heat. Cities like St Louis were sweltering under five consecutive days of triple digit temperatures on Tuesday. Last Thursday the city registered 108 degrees fahrenheit, the highest temperature in nearly 60 years.
"Historically this is going to end up being one of the hottest Junes of all time," said Harold Brooks, a research meteorologist at the National Severe Storm Laboratory in Oklahoma.
The high temperatures were also hitting earlier this summer, he said. Heat waves ordinarily do not build up until July.
But this has been a year for record-breaking heat. Since the start of the year, the United States set more than 40,000 hot temperature records and fewer than 6,000 cold temperature records, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Ordinarily, scientists would expect those numbers to be about the same, but the hot temperature records were falling at a ratio of about 7-1.
Such volatile temperatures, early in the year, helped contribute to the conditions for the deadly derecho thunder storm which blew through the Washington DC area with hurricane-force winds, killing some 22 people. Brooks said it was one of the most powerful such storms in recent history.
On the other side of the country, meanwhile, extreme drought conditions across a vast swathe of the American west led to an outbreak of mega-fires in Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico.
Colorado's fires, outside the cities of Colorado Springs and Boulder, have between them destroyed more than 650 houses.
And there was no relief in sight. Aside from pockets such as northern Minnesota, Washington state, and New England, temperatures across a vast swathe of the United States were heading to record hot temperatures, Brooks said.
The season has already raised public health concerns. At least three people, all in their 70s and 80s, have died in St Louis since last week because of heat-related illness, medical officials said.
In the greater Washington DC area, where power outages due to the furious thunderstorm deepened the effects of a heat wave, the authorities have opened cooling centres in schools and community centres for those without access to air conditioning.
"Watch out for a long hot summer," said Trenberth.
© 2012 The Guardian All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/156163/
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Denise Wiktor is hoping someone will have knowledge about women filmmakers in Baltimore in the late 1970s or early 1980s doing a project WOMEN IN RESISTANCE. Her mother Emma was filmed. I guessed the group was STORMS [Sisters Together Organized Against Racism, Militarism and Sexism], which was active during that time period. Does anyone have knowledge of this film project? Denise would like to see the footage of her mom, so that she can show it to her daughter. Kagiso, Max
Scientists Say Ongoing Weather Extremes Offer Proof of Climate Change
By Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian
Posted on July 4, 2012, Printed on July 6, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/story/156163/scientists_say_ongoing_weather_extremes_offer_proof_of_climate_change
The bizarre weather of early summer in the US – from heatwave, wildfires, drought to freak storms – is just a sampling of what is to come for 2012 and a window to the future under climate change, scientists have said.
Scientists are wary of linking specific weather events to climate change, and this year's punishing heat and deadly thunder storms have been confined to the Americas. Europe, Asia and Africa haven't experienced severe weather this year – though they have in past years.
But the run of extreme weather offers real-time proof of the consequences of climate change, said Kevin Trenberth, who heads climate research at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado – itself the scene of devastating wildfires.
"We are certainly seeing climate change in action," he said. "This year has been exceptionally unusual throughout the United States."
Jeff Masters director of meteorology at the Weather Underground website, told Democracy Now: "What we're seeing now is the future. We're going to be seeing a lot more weather like this, a lot more impacts like we're seeing from this series of heat waves, fires and storms."
He added: "This is just the beginning."
The prime exhibit for the bizarre turn of weather is the current heat wave.
The month of June alone shattered some 3,215 records for daily maximum heat. Cities like St Louis were sweltering under five consecutive days of triple digit temperatures on Tuesday. Last Thursday the city registered 108 degrees fahrenheit, the highest temperature in nearly 60 years.
"Historically this is going to end up being one of the hottest Junes of all time," said Harold Brooks, a research meteorologist at the National Severe Storm Laboratory in Oklahoma.
The high temperatures were also hitting earlier this summer, he said. Heat waves ordinarily do not build up until July.
But this has been a year for record-breaking heat. Since the start of the year, the United States set more than 40,000 hot temperature records and fewer than 6,000 cold temperature records, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Ordinarily, scientists would expect those numbers to be about the same, but the hot temperature records were falling at a ratio of about 7-1.
Such volatile temperatures, early in the year, helped contribute to the conditions for the deadly derecho thunder storm which blew through the Washington DC area with hurricane-force winds, killing some 22 people. Brooks said it was one of the most powerful such storms in recent history.
On the other side of the country, meanwhile, extreme drought conditions across a vast swathe of the American west led to an outbreak of mega-fires in Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico.
Colorado's fires, outside the cities of Colorado Springs and Boulder, have between them destroyed more than 650 houses.
And there was no relief in sight. Aside from pockets such as northern Minnesota, Washington state, and New England, temperatures across a vast swathe of the United States were heading to record hot temperatures, Brooks said.
The season has already raised public health concerns. At least three people, all in their 70s and 80s, have died in St Louis since last week because of heat-related illness, medical officials said.
In the greater Washington DC area, where power outages due to the furious thunderstorm deepened the effects of a heat wave, the authorities have opened cooling centres in schools and community centres for those without access to air conditioning.
"Watch out for a long hot summer," said Trenberth.
© 2012 The Guardian All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/156163/
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Egypt’s New Leader Orders Inquiry on Killings of Protesters
It is about time. Those who died are heroes
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/07/world/middleeast/egypts-leader-morsi-orders-inquiry-on-killings.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120707
July 6, 2012
Egypt’s New Leader Orders Inquiry on Killings of Protesters
By KAREEM FAHIM
CAIRO — President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt has appointed a committee to investigate the killing of protesters during and after the uprising early last year, in what appeared to be a strong challenge to the authority of Egypt’s powerful security services.
Mr. Morsi’s decree, which was issued late Thursday and was his 10th in his first week in office, created a 16-member panel to investigate the killing and wounding of “peaceful protesters.” It also ordered state institutions to cooperate with the committee’s work.
Mr. Morsi promised during his campaign to address the revolt’s most painful legacy: the killing of more than 800 protesters during the uprising that led to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 and the killing of dozens of others during the transitional period that followed. The families of the victims have been angered by a lack of accountability because dozens of police officers have been acquitted after trials for the killings.
The time frame for the committee’s work — from the start of the revolt in January 2011 until the end of last month — seemed to represent an attempt by Mr. Morsi to challenge the generals who ruled Egypt during the transition and have retained broad powers for the military despite the election of a civilian leader. Mr. Morsi’s committee, in theory, has the power to investigate killings that have been attributed to the military and that occurred during protests held months after Mr. Mubarak stepped down.
“This is a chance to start addressing the problems behind the uprising,” said Heba Morayef, the Egypt director for Human Rights Watch, referring to longstanding complaints about police brutality that galvanized the protests. “It’s a chance to finally start addressing the impunity, which remained unbroken by the uprising.”
Though the committee appears to have been given broad powers to investigate the violence, it is not clear that Mr. Morsi will be able to carry out its recommendations, which are supposed to be delivered to him within two months. Of the more than 150 police officers who have been referred to trial by prosecutors since March 2011, only two are serving prison sentences, according to Human Rights Watch, which is tracking the cases.
Most of the other cases have resulted in acquittals or are still pending, the group said.
Mr. Mubarak and his former interior minister, Habib el-Adly, were convicted last month as accessories to murder, but human rights advocates worry that those convictions will be overturned on appeal. Last month, Mr. Mubarak was allowed to leave prison and was sent to a military hospital, after an injury caused by slipping in the bathroom, according to his lawyer.
Holding the military to account will be even harder. Civilian judges in Egypt can call soldiers as witnesses, but only military courts can try them, Ms. Morayef said.
The new committee’s members include judges, doctors, senior security officials and a prosecutor. Members of victims’ families are to be included as observers. Its mandate includes investigating not only the violence against protesters, but also the conduct of government officials during previous investigations, in order to “clarify how cooperative they were to the judicial authorities,” according to the text of the decree.
Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.
© 2011 The New York Times Company
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/07/world/middleeast/egypts-leader-morsi-orders-inquiry-on-killings.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120707
July 6, 2012
Egypt’s New Leader Orders Inquiry on Killings of Protesters
By KAREEM FAHIM
CAIRO — President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt has appointed a committee to investigate the killing of protesters during and after the uprising early last year, in what appeared to be a strong challenge to the authority of Egypt’s powerful security services.
Mr. Morsi’s decree, which was issued late Thursday and was his 10th in his first week in office, created a 16-member panel to investigate the killing and wounding of “peaceful protesters.” It also ordered state institutions to cooperate with the committee’s work.
Mr. Morsi promised during his campaign to address the revolt’s most painful legacy: the killing of more than 800 protesters during the uprising that led to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 and the killing of dozens of others during the transitional period that followed. The families of the victims have been angered by a lack of accountability because dozens of police officers have been acquitted after trials for the killings.
The time frame for the committee’s work — from the start of the revolt in January 2011 until the end of last month — seemed to represent an attempt by Mr. Morsi to challenge the generals who ruled Egypt during the transition and have retained broad powers for the military despite the election of a civilian leader. Mr. Morsi’s committee, in theory, has the power to investigate killings that have been attributed to the military and that occurred during protests held months after Mr. Mubarak stepped down.
“This is a chance to start addressing the problems behind the uprising,” said Heba Morayef, the Egypt director for Human Rights Watch, referring to longstanding complaints about police brutality that galvanized the protests. “It’s a chance to finally start addressing the impunity, which remained unbroken by the uprising.”
Though the committee appears to have been given broad powers to investigate the violence, it is not clear that Mr. Morsi will be able to carry out its recommendations, which are supposed to be delivered to him within two months. Of the more than 150 police officers who have been referred to trial by prosecutors since March 2011, only two are serving prison sentences, according to Human Rights Watch, which is tracking the cases.
Most of the other cases have resulted in acquittals or are still pending, the group said.
Mr. Mubarak and his former interior minister, Habib el-Adly, were convicted last month as accessories to murder, but human rights advocates worry that those convictions will be overturned on appeal. Last month, Mr. Mubarak was allowed to leave prison and was sent to a military hospital, after an injury caused by slipping in the bathroom, according to his lawyer.
Holding the military to account will be even harder. Civilian judges in Egypt can call soldiers as witnesses, but only military courts can try them, Ms. Morayef said.
The new committee’s members include judges, doctors, senior security officials and a prosecutor. Members of victims’ families are to be included as observers. Its mandate includes investigating not only the violence against protesters, but also the conduct of government officials during previous investigations, in order to “clarify how cooperative they were to the judicial authorities,” according to the text of the decree.
Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.
© 2011 The New York Times Company
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Friday, July 6, 2012
Crime of the Century
If you are betting as a banker, there must be winners and losers. You are not producing a product, so you are not advancing the economy. You are gambling in a casino. Why should anyone get a bonus?
Robert Scheer
Crime of the Century
Friday, 06 July 2012 12:45 By Robert Scheer, Truthdig
News Analysis
Forget Bernie Madoff and Enron’s Ken Lay—they were mere amateurs in financial crime. The current Libor interest rate scandal, involving hundreds of trillions in international derivatives trade, shows how the really big boys play. And these guys will most likely not do the time because their kind rewrites the law before committing the crime.
Modern international bankers form a class of thieves the likes of which the world has never before seen. Or, indeed, imagined. The scandal over Libor—short for London interbank offered rate—has resulted in a huge fine for Barclays Bank and threatens to ensnare some of the world’s top financers. It reveals that behind the world’s financial edifice lies a reeking cesspool of unprecedented corruption. The modern-day robber barons pillage with a destructive abandon totally unfettered by law or conscience and on a scale that is almost impossible to comprehend.
Robert E. Diamond. (Photo: The CBI / Flickr)
How to explain a $450 million settlement for one bank whose defense, in a plea bargain worked out with regulators in London and Washington, is that every institution in their elite financial circle was doing it? Not just Barclays but JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and others are now being investigated on suspicion of manipulating the Libor rate, so critical to a $700 trillion derivatives market.
Caught as the proverbial deer in the headlights, Barclays Chairman Robert E. Diamond Jr. resigned this week and offered a plaintive defense to the British Parliament that he learned only recently that his bank was manipulating the index on which so large a part of international trade is based. That is plausible only if we assume he was paid $10 million a year to be deliberately ignorant. The Wall Street Journal had exposed this scandal fully four years ago but his bank continued to participate in it nonetheless.
“Study Casts Doubt on Key Rate” was the headline on the May 29, 2008, investigative report, which concluded: “Major banks are contributing to the erratic behavior of a crucial global lending benchmark, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows.” Even then, according to the report, it was known that the Libor rate was being manipulated “to act as if the banking system was doing better than it was at critical junctures in the financial crisis.”
Fast-forward four years to Diamond’s testimony before Parliament this week in which the CEO claimed his recent discovery of a pattern of interest manipulation by Barclays had made him “physically sick.” Who was to blame? According to the executive, subordinates acting behind his back.
The American-born banker, who has dual citizenship in the United States and Britain, is well versed in financial chicanery, having started by putting together derivatives packages at Credit Suisse First Boston back in 1996. He was compelled under parliamentary questioning Wednesday to admit that “I can’t sit here and say no one in the industry [knew] about the problems with Libor. There was an issue out there and it should have been dealt with more broadly.”
He couldn’t deny widespread chicanery within his bank because, as in the collapse of Enron a decade ago, investigators had uncovered an email record of market manipulation so glaring that if the top executives were unaware, it was because they didn’t want to know.
As The New York Times editorialized: “The evidence, cited by the Justice Department—which Barclays agreed is ‘true and accurate’—is damning. ‘Always happy to help,’ one employee wrote in an email after being asked to submit false information. ‘If you know how to keep a secret, I’ll bring you in on it,’ wrote a Barclays trader to a trader at another bank, referring to their strategies for mutual gain. If that’s not conspiracy and price-fixing, what is?”
The U.S. Justice Department made a deal with Barclays, and although it may prosecute some individuals in the scam, it agreed not to go after the bank itself.
“Such an agreement makes sense only if that cooperation will allow prosecutors to nail other banks that have been involved in setting the rates, including potential cases against Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and HSBC ... ,” the Times editorial said.
Both Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase were reported by The Wall Street Journal years ago to be suspected of rigging the Libor interest rate. The leaders of those banks, despite such media exposure, clearly remained confident enough to continue on their merry way.
The sad reality is that they will probably get away with it. The world of high finance is by design as obscure and opaque as the bankers and their political surrogates can make it, and even this most recent crack in their defense of deception will soon be made to go away.
© 2012 Creators.com
Robert Scheer is editor of truthdig.com, where this column originally appeared. E-mail Robert Scheer at rscheer@truthdig.com.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Robert Scheer
Crime of the Century
Friday, 06 July 2012 12:45 By Robert Scheer, Truthdig
News Analysis
Forget Bernie Madoff and Enron’s Ken Lay—they were mere amateurs in financial crime. The current Libor interest rate scandal, involving hundreds of trillions in international derivatives trade, shows how the really big boys play. And these guys will most likely not do the time because their kind rewrites the law before committing the crime.
Modern international bankers form a class of thieves the likes of which the world has never before seen. Or, indeed, imagined. The scandal over Libor—short for London interbank offered rate—has resulted in a huge fine for Barclays Bank and threatens to ensnare some of the world’s top financers. It reveals that behind the world’s financial edifice lies a reeking cesspool of unprecedented corruption. The modern-day robber barons pillage with a destructive abandon totally unfettered by law or conscience and on a scale that is almost impossible to comprehend.
Robert E. Diamond. (Photo: The CBI / Flickr)
How to explain a $450 million settlement for one bank whose defense, in a plea bargain worked out with regulators in London and Washington, is that every institution in their elite financial circle was doing it? Not just Barclays but JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and others are now being investigated on suspicion of manipulating the Libor rate, so critical to a $700 trillion derivatives market.
Caught as the proverbial deer in the headlights, Barclays Chairman Robert E. Diamond Jr. resigned this week and offered a plaintive defense to the British Parliament that he learned only recently that his bank was manipulating the index on which so large a part of international trade is based. That is plausible only if we assume he was paid $10 million a year to be deliberately ignorant. The Wall Street Journal had exposed this scandal fully four years ago but his bank continued to participate in it nonetheless.
“Study Casts Doubt on Key Rate” was the headline on the May 29, 2008, investigative report, which concluded: “Major banks are contributing to the erratic behavior of a crucial global lending benchmark, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows.” Even then, according to the report, it was known that the Libor rate was being manipulated “to act as if the banking system was doing better than it was at critical junctures in the financial crisis.”
Fast-forward four years to Diamond’s testimony before Parliament this week in which the CEO claimed his recent discovery of a pattern of interest manipulation by Barclays had made him “physically sick.” Who was to blame? According to the executive, subordinates acting behind his back.
The American-born banker, who has dual citizenship in the United States and Britain, is well versed in financial chicanery, having started by putting together derivatives packages at Credit Suisse First Boston back in 1996. He was compelled under parliamentary questioning Wednesday to admit that “I can’t sit here and say no one in the industry [knew] about the problems with Libor. There was an issue out there and it should have been dealt with more broadly.”
He couldn’t deny widespread chicanery within his bank because, as in the collapse of Enron a decade ago, investigators had uncovered an email record of market manipulation so glaring that if the top executives were unaware, it was because they didn’t want to know.
As The New York Times editorialized: “The evidence, cited by the Justice Department—which Barclays agreed is ‘true and accurate’—is damning. ‘Always happy to help,’ one employee wrote in an email after being asked to submit false information. ‘If you know how to keep a secret, I’ll bring you in on it,’ wrote a Barclays trader to a trader at another bank, referring to their strategies for mutual gain. If that’s not conspiracy and price-fixing, what is?”
The U.S. Justice Department made a deal with Barclays, and although it may prosecute some individuals in the scam, it agreed not to go after the bank itself.
“Such an agreement makes sense only if that cooperation will allow prosecutors to nail other banks that have been involved in setting the rates, including potential cases against Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and HSBC ... ,” the Times editorial said.
Both Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase were reported by The Wall Street Journal years ago to be suspected of rigging the Libor interest rate. The leaders of those banks, despite such media exposure, clearly remained confident enough to continue on their merry way.
The sad reality is that they will probably get away with it. The world of high finance is by design as obscure and opaque as the bankers and their political surrogates can make it, and even this most recent crack in their defense of deception will soon be made to go away.
© 2012 Creators.com
Robert Scheer is editor of truthdig.com, where this column originally appeared. E-mail Robert Scheer at rscheer@truthdig.com.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Baltimore Activist Alert July 6 – July 12, 2012
Baltimore Activist Alert July 6 – July 12, 2012
"I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours.
The initiative to stop it must be ours." -Martin Luther King Jr.
Friends, this list and other email documents which I send out are done under the auspices of the Baltimore Nonviolence Center. Go to www.baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com. If you appreciate this information and would like to make a donation, send contributions to BNC, 325 East 25th Street, Baltimore, MD 21218. Max Obuszewski can be reached at 410-366-1637 or mobuszewski [at] verizon.net.
Tune into the Maryland Progressive Blog at http://mdprogblog.org.
1] Books, buttons and stickers
2] Web site for info on federal legislation
3] Join Nonviolent Resistance lists
4] Buy coffee through HoCoFoLA
5] Help out the Green Party
6] White House vigil – July 6
7] WIB Inner Harbor vigil – July 6
8] WIB Roland Park vigil – July 6
9] Justice for Palestine/Israel vigil – July 6
10] WIB Frederick vigil – July 6
11] Silent peace vigil – July 6
12] Cleaning the Heart – July 6
13] Film BORN ON THE 4TH OF JULY – July 6
14] Sounds of Hope – July 6
15] Ballroom dancing – July 6
16] Rent Party – July 6
17] SLAP Fundraiser – July 6
18] Dog-A-Thon – July 7 & 8
19] Olney peace vigil – July 7
20] West Chester, PA demo – July 7
21] Silent vigil at Capitol – July 7
22] BES goes to D.C. – July 8
23] Get on Bridge for Peace – July 8
24] BDS demo against SodaStream – July 8
25] Beyond Differences – July 8
26] Philadelphia Peace Vigil – July 8
27] Earth Quaker Action Team – July 8
28] Pastors for Peace Caravan – July 8
29] Lobbying meeting – July 8
30] Red Emma’s meeting – July 8
31] Pentagon Vigil – July 9
32] Support Homeless Activists – July 9
33] Day One of General – July 9
------
1] – Buttons, bumperstickers and books are available. “God Bless the Whole World, No Exceptions” stickers are in stock. Donate your books to Max. Call him at 410-366-1637.
2] – To obtain information how your federal legislators voted on particular bills, go to http://thomas.loc.gov/. Congressional toll-free numbers are 888-818-6641, 888-355-3588 or 800-426-8073. The White House Comment Email is accessible at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/.
3] – THE ORGANIZING LIST will be the primary decision-making mechanism of the National Campaign of Nonviolent Resistance [NCNR]. It will be augmented by conference calls and possibly in-person meetings as needed. It will consist of 1 or 2 representatives from each local, regional, or national organization (not coalitions) that wishes to actively work to carry out the NCNR campaign of facilitating and organizing nonviolent resistance to the war in Iraq.
To join the ORGANIZING List, please send your name, group affiliation, city and email address to donmuller@msn.com. Different local chapters of a national organization are encouraged to subscribe.
THE NOTICES LIST will include only notices of NCNR actions and related information and is open to any interested person to subscribe. It will be moderated to maintain focus & will include periodic notices about getting involved in NCNR national organizing. To join the NOTICES List, send an email message to ncnrnotices-subscribe@lists.riseup.net. You will get a confirmation message once subscribed. If you have problems, please write to the list manager at ncnrnotices-admin@lists.riseup.net.
4] – You can help safeguard human rights and fragile ecosystems through your purchase of HOCOFOLA Café Quetzal. Bags of ground coffee or whole beans can be ordered by mailing in an order form. Also note organic cocoa and sugar are for sale. For more details and to download the order form, go to http://friendsoflatinamerica.typepad.com/hocofola/2010/02/hocofola-cafe-quetzal-order-form-2010.html. The coffee comes in one-pound bags.
Fill out the form and mail it with a check made out to HOCOFOLA on or before the second week of the month. Be sure you indicate ground or beans for each type of coffee ordered. Send it to Adela Hirsch, 5358 Eliots Oak Rd., Columbia, MD 21044. Be sure you indicate ground (G) or bean (B) for each type of coffee ordered. The coffee will arrive some time the following week and you will be notified where to pick it up. Contact Adela at 410-997-5662 or via e-mail at adela4peace@verizon.net.
5] – Bill Barry [wbarrymd@hotmail.com] is asking for your help in keeping the Maryland Green Party on the ballot line. The Maryland Green Party still needs another 1,500 signatures on petitions. Can you help out? He has the petitions, and would like to know if you can get ten signatures from registered voters. He will get you the petitions.
The national Green Party convention will be in Baltimore from July 12-15 at the U of Baltimore and at the Hilton--Inner Harbor downtown. You're invited to sit in or to watch on CSPAN: http://www.gpconvention2012.com/p/scheduling.html.
6] – A peace vigil takes place every Friday from noon to 1 PM at Lafayette Park facing the White House. Join the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker and friends. Contact Art Laffin: artlaffin@hotmail.com.
7] – Every Friday from noon to 1 PM, Women in Black, Baltimore, host a vigil at Pratt and Light Sts. in the Inner Harbor. Peace signs will be available. See http://www.peacepath911.com/ or write wibbaltimore@hotmail.com or call 410-467-9114.
8] – There is also a noon vigil on June 29 at Roland Park Place at 830 W. 40th St. Call 410-467-9114.
9] – A vigil for Justice in Palestine/Israel (now in its 8th year) takes place every Friday from noon to 1 PM at 19th & JFK Blvd., Philadelphia (across from Israeli Consulate. It is sponsored by Bubbies & Zaydes (Grandparents) for Peace in the Middle East. Email cswartz@pil.net. Go to http://phillyjewishpeace.org/.
10] – WIB holds a silent vigil mourning all violence, the first Friday of the month. The next vigil is July 6 from noon to 12:30 PM, War Memorial Park, intersection of W. 2nd & N. Bentz Sts. in Frederick. Please dress in black; no additional signs. Call 301-834-7581 or email wibfrederick@mizmail.com.
11] – There is a silent vigil on Fri., July 6 from 5 to 6 PM outside of Homewood Friends Meeting, 3107 N. Charles St., in opposition to war in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Placards say: "War Is Not the Answer." The silent vigil is sponsored by AFSC, Homewood Friends and Stony Run Meetings.
12] – Camille Brown presents Cleaning the Heart: an Exhibition to Benefit Thai Freedom House, a non-profit community language and arts center in Northern Thailand,
at Gallery 1448, Artists' Housing, 1448 E. Baltimore St. The opening reception is Fri., July 6 from 6 to 10 PM, but visitors can also see the show on Sundays & Saturdays from 1-5 PM through July 22 or by appointment at 433-392-5461. Call 410-327-1554. Proceeds from all work sold during the exhibition's run time will go to Thai Freedom House. Go to http://www.1448.org.
13] – On Fri., July 6 at 7 PM, see Oliver Stone's classic film BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY starring Tom Cruise. It tells the true story of Ron Kovic, Vietnam combat veteran turned peace activist and shows the impact of that war on the home front. It will be shown as part of the Peace Center of Delaware County First-Friday Large Screen Free Film Series, 1001 Old Sproul Road, Springfield, PA. The doors open at 6:30 PM for light refreshments. Call 610-544-1818 or go to www.delcopeacecenter.org.
The discussion will be led by John Grant, Vietnam veteran and a member of Veterans For Peace. As a writer/photographer, Grant has traveled in Vietnam, Iraq and Central America. He currently writes for the online publication This Can't Be Happening. Be sure to read his article, "The Vietnam War and the Struggle for Truth" at www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1205.
14] – On Fridays, from 7 to 10:30 PM at the Potter's House, 1658 Columbia Rd. NW, WDC 20009, enjoy the Sounds of Hope is Good Music, Good Food, for a Good Cause! Go to www.reverbnation.com/venue/soundsofhope. Contact Mary Shapiro, Sounds of Hope producer, at
soundsofhopebooking@gmail.com or 202-294-2906.
15] – There is an opportunity to participate in ballroom dancing, usually every Friday of the month, in the JHU ROTC Bldg. at 8 PM. Turn south on San Martin Dr. from the intersection of Univ. Parkway and 39th St. Drive on campus by taking the third left turn. The next dance will be July 5. Call Dave Greene at 410-599-3725.
16] – The 1st Friday's RENT PARTY & KARAOKE in an air conditioned space, Solidarity Center, 2011 N. Charles St., Baltimore 21218, is at 8 PM on July 6. Also celebrate the Peoples Assembly. Call 410-500-2168 or email info@justice-4-trayvon.org.
The Solidarity Center cannot pay this month's rent! The organizers have been so busy with police brutality that no time was spent on formal fund raising. Come out and enjoy a dinner and drinks for a $10 donation. If you have less still come out and if you have more -- they need it. Enjoy singing, poetry and having fun until midnight. APC is begging for you to stop by and leave a donation even if you can't stay.
17] – There’s a SLAP Fundraiser on Fri., July 6 from 8 to 10 PM at Adams Morgan Mellow Mushroom, 2436 18th St. NW. National SLAP is putting on a fundraiser to help send SLAP students to the USSA Congress in Madison, Wisconsin. Live music performance by Lucky Dub, featuring D.C. JwJ and SLAP's very own Isaiah Toney. The cover charge is $5 for the band, and donations to SLAP can be made inside. It has been a really exciting year for SLAP and the movement as a whole. SLAP students across the country were active in the Occupy Movement, and at this past year's USSA LegCon, SLAP and USSA took aim at Sallie Mae, one of the largest corporate profiteers of student loans. Over 300 students rallied in front of the Sallie Mae office demanding a meeting with CEO Albert Lord to discuss student debt. When Sallie Mae refused to talk 36 students were arrested in nonviolent civil disobedience. Then on May 24th, over 200 students and community activists protested Sallie Mae at their annual shareholder's meeting in Newark, Delaware with SLAP shareholders inside. Visit https://www.facebook.com/events/161569180634290/.
18] – The Pets On Wheels 7th Annual Dog-A-Thon is taking place on Sat., July 7 from 10 AM to 8 PM and on Sun., July 8 from 11 AM to 7 PM. It is designed to support the mission of visiting people in institutional settings. The Dog-A-Thon is happening at Maryland State Fairgrounds, 2200 York Road. Call 410-913-5569. The price is $10 for adults, and $5 for children 5 to 12. Go to http://www.PetsonWheels.org.
19] – Friends House, 17715 Meeting House Rd., Sandy Spring, MD 20860, hosts a peace vigil every Saturday, 10:30 to 11:30 AM, on the corner of Rt. 108 and Georgia Ave. in Olney, MD. The next vigil is July 7. Call Chuck Harker at 301-570-7167.
20] – Each Saturday, 11 AM – 1 PM, Chester County Peace Movement holds a peace vigil in West Chester in front of the Chester County Courthouse, High & Market Sts. Go to www.ccpeace.org. Email ccpeacemovement@aol.com.
21] – There will be a peace vigil on the West Lawn of the Capitol at noon on Sat., July 7. Look for the blue banner with the message, "Seek Peace and Pursue It.--Psalms 34:14." The vigil lasts one hour and is silent except when one responds to the occasional questions. Go to http://www.quaker.org/langleyhill/seekpeace.htm or email seekpeacevigil@yahoo.com.
22] – Usually, the Baltimore Ethical Society, 306 W. Franklin St., Suite 102, Baltimore, MD 21201-4661, meets on Sundays, and generally there is a speaker and discussion from 10:30 to 11:30 AM. On Sun., July 8, the topic is “Putting on Our Sunday Best.” However, the Baltimore Ethical Society will gather with members of the Washington and Northern Virginia Ethical Societies to celebrate Ethical Culture. This joint meeting – which will start at 11 AM – will be hosted at the Washington Ethical Society (WES, 7750 16th St. NW, WDC 20012). Along with the leaders of the three societies – Amanda Poppei, Mary Herman, Jone Johnson Lewis, and Hugh Taft-Morales – the program will explore what it is that makes the Sunday morning meetings special! An informal lunch is planned for after platform. Call 410-581-2322 or visit www.baltimoreethicalsociety.org.
23] – Maryland Bridges for Peace welcomes you to stand for peace Sundays from noon (or thereabouts) to 1 PM on the Spa Creek Bridge in Annapolis. Contact Lucy at 410-263-7271 or mdbridgesforpeace@toadmail.com. Signs are not allowed to be on a stick or pole. If there is interest, people will be standing on the Stoney Creek Bridge on Fort Smallwood Road in Pasadena [410-437-5379 or magicalgodmom@aol.com]. Go to http://BridgePeace.blogspot.com/.
24] – Join the Kick-off of the New D.C. BDS Campaign Against SodaStream on Sun., July 8 from 2 to 4 PM in front of Columbia Heights Mall at the Columbia Heights Metro Station on 14th St., just north of intersection with Irving St. Jewish Voice for Peace DC Metro Chapter is launching a new boycott campaign against SodaStream, a Swiss company that manufactures its beverage carbonating machine in Mishor Edumim, a settlement in the West Bank.
In large part, due to the success of the European boycott campaign, SodaStream has moved to the U.S. It's making a splash in a huge number of DC stores like Bed, Bath & Beyond, Staples, and Target, all of which are located in the Columbia Heights Mall. Email jvpdcmetro@gmail.com or call 301-518-0199.
25] – Reaching Beyond Our Differences: Views from the Next Generation of Leaders in the Middle East IS AN EVENT TAKING PLACE on Sun,, July 8 from 3:30 to 5 PM at 601 Bradley Blvd., Bethesda MD 20817. Hear the stories of young adult Palestinian & Israeli leaders with New Story Leadership (www.newstoryleadership.org). Learn how they are building a new story for the future. Hear the story of New Story Leadership – an organization committed to building a relationship of understanding and cooperation in the Middle East. This event is hosted by Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church, Bethesda Jewish Congregation and Idara e-Jaferia Mosque. RSVP to bishnasar@yahoo.com and reference "Bradley Hills" in the subject line. Email Ronnie Haber at rnhaber@erols.com.
26] – Every Sunday, 4 to 5 PM, there is a Quaker Peace Vigil at Independence Mall, N. side of Market between 5th and 6th Sts., Philadelphia. Call 215-421-5811.
27] – On Sun., July 8 at 4:30 PM, enjoy the Brandywine Peace Community Monthly Potluck Supper & Program @ University Lutheran Church, 3637 Chestnut St., Phila., PA. (Bring main dish, salad, or dessert to share). At 5:30 PM, there will be a presentation about the Earth Quaker Action Team by Zachary Hershman, speaking and showing a film short about EQAT's campaign to get PNC Bank out of the lethal business of mountaintop removal coal mining. Call 610-544-1818 or go to www.brandywinepeace.com.
28] – Enjoy a potluck dinner with members of the 23rd Pastors for Peace Cuba Caravan on Sun., July 8 at 5 PM at the home of Leslie Salgado and Steve Sharar at 6336 Sandchain Rd., Columbia, MD 21045. Bring a dish to share and join in for an evening of sharing, music and to welcome the “caravanistas,” who are traveling through Howard County on their way to Cuba. Call 410-381-4899.
The Friendshipment Caravan to Cuba will challenge the U.S. economic and travel blockade on Cuba, imposed on the Cuban people over 50 years ago. The Caravan will travel through up to 130 cities in the U.S. and Canada, to raise awareness about the U.S. blockade and to gather humanitarian aid to take to Cuba. After travelling through the U.S. there is a blockade-busting border crossing into Mexico. The “caravanistas” will then travel through Mexico and spend nine days in Cuba, participating in a variety of educational and cultural events. Go to http://www.pastorsforpeace.org/.
RSVP to Leslie at 410-381-4899 or cuba_is_hope@comcast.net. Visit http://www.friendsoflatinamerica.org. You can send a contribution to HoCoFoLA, PO Box 94, Columbia, MD 21045. The event is co-sponsored by Ho. Co. Friends of Latin America and the Baltimore-Matanzas Cuba Sister City Project.
29] – The Occupy DC Lobbying Group is meeting on Sun., July 8 at 6 PM at the Occupy DC Office, Institute for Policy Studies, 1112 16th St. NW, Suite 600. There are a lot of different laws that need to be changed that Occupy could lobby about—Glass-Stegal, Future Commodities Act, Taft-Hartley Act, co-determination laws, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and others. The idea is to start a lobbying campaign by fall. Visit http://www.facebook.com/events/.
30] – Red Emma’s needs volunteers. Stop in to the weekly Sunday meeting at 7 PM at 800 St. Paul St. or email info@redemmas.org. The next meeting is July 8. There is no meeting on the first Sunday of the month. Call 410-230-0450. If you would be interested in volunteering or becoming a collective member of 2640, send an email to 2640@redemmas.org.
31] – There is a weekly Pentagon Peace Vigil from 7 to 8 AM on Mondays, since 1987, outside the Pentagon Metro stop. The next vigil is Mon., July 9, and it is sponsored by the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker. Call 202-882-9649.
32] – The Free Franklin Shelter Trial takes place on Mon., July 9 at 9:30 AM in D.C. Superior Court, 500 Indiana Ave. NW, Courtroom #112. It is requested that supporters show up at 8:30 AM outside the courthouse. Last November a group of community members going by the name “Free Franklin” entered and occupied the former Franklin Shelter building at 13th and K Sts. NW. It was a protest about the lack of homeless shelters in D.C. Six of the people arrested at the occupation will be fighting a charge of unlawful entry in a jury trial. For updates on the trial, check out http://freefranklindc.blogspot.com or follow @FreeFranklinDC on Twitter or email freefranklindc@gmail.com.
33] – Day One of General Strike for DC Statehood is on for Mon., July 9 at 8:30 AM everywhere. Stand Up! for Democracy in DC (Free DC) will join consumer advocate and citizen rights organizer, Ralph Nader, local and national groups and other DC statehood supporters to launch a general limited Strike for DC Statehood. They're calling on all DC residents, their family, friends, relatives and supporters to postpone your arrival to work for 15 minutes! It's a painless but important way to start a campaign here for our liberty just 5 days after the 4th of July celebrations! They are encouraging everyone to expand the strike by postponing your arrival to work 30 minutes on August 1, 2012, 45 minutes on September 10, 2012 and one hour on October 1, 2012. Contact Anise Jenkins at 202-361-9739 or at anisej@hotmail.com.
To be continued.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/.
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
"I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours.
The initiative to stop it must be ours." -Martin Luther King Jr.
Friends, this list and other email documents which I send out are done under the auspices of the Baltimore Nonviolence Center. Go to www.baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com. If you appreciate this information and would like to make a donation, send contributions to BNC, 325 East 25th Street, Baltimore, MD 21218. Max Obuszewski can be reached at 410-366-1637 or mobuszewski [at] verizon.net.
Tune into the Maryland Progressive Blog at http://mdprogblog.org.
1] Books, buttons and stickers
2] Web site for info on federal legislation
3] Join Nonviolent Resistance lists
4] Buy coffee through HoCoFoLA
5] Help out the Green Party
6] White House vigil – July 6
7] WIB Inner Harbor vigil – July 6
8] WIB Roland Park vigil – July 6
9] Justice for Palestine/Israel vigil – July 6
10] WIB Frederick vigil – July 6
11] Silent peace vigil – July 6
12] Cleaning the Heart – July 6
13] Film BORN ON THE 4TH OF JULY – July 6
14] Sounds of Hope – July 6
15] Ballroom dancing – July 6
16] Rent Party – July 6
17] SLAP Fundraiser – July 6
18] Dog-A-Thon – July 7 & 8
19] Olney peace vigil – July 7
20] West Chester, PA demo – July 7
21] Silent vigil at Capitol – July 7
22] BES goes to D.C. – July 8
23] Get on Bridge for Peace – July 8
24] BDS demo against SodaStream – July 8
25] Beyond Differences – July 8
26] Philadelphia Peace Vigil – July 8
27] Earth Quaker Action Team – July 8
28] Pastors for Peace Caravan – July 8
29] Lobbying meeting – July 8
30] Red Emma’s meeting – July 8
31] Pentagon Vigil – July 9
32] Support Homeless Activists – July 9
33] Day One of General – July 9
------
1] – Buttons, bumperstickers and books are available. “God Bless the Whole World, No Exceptions” stickers are in stock. Donate your books to Max. Call him at 410-366-1637.
2] – To obtain information how your federal legislators voted on particular bills, go to http://thomas.loc.gov/. Congressional toll-free numbers are 888-818-6641, 888-355-3588 or 800-426-8073. The White House Comment Email is accessible at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/.
3] – THE ORGANIZING LIST will be the primary decision-making mechanism of the National Campaign of Nonviolent Resistance [NCNR]. It will be augmented by conference calls and possibly in-person meetings as needed. It will consist of 1 or 2 representatives from each local, regional, or national organization (not coalitions) that wishes to actively work to carry out the NCNR campaign of facilitating and organizing nonviolent resistance to the war in Iraq.
To join the ORGANIZING List, please send your name, group affiliation, city and email address to donmuller@msn.com. Different local chapters of a national organization are encouraged to subscribe.
THE NOTICES LIST will include only notices of NCNR actions and related information and is open to any interested person to subscribe. It will be moderated to maintain focus & will include periodic notices about getting involved in NCNR national organizing. To join the NOTICES List, send an email message to ncnrnotices-subscribe@lists.riseup.net. You will get a confirmation message once subscribed. If you have problems, please write to the list manager at ncnrnotices-admin@lists.riseup.net.
4] – You can help safeguard human rights and fragile ecosystems through your purchase of HOCOFOLA Café Quetzal. Bags of ground coffee or whole beans can be ordered by mailing in an order form. Also note organic cocoa and sugar are for sale. For more details and to download the order form, go to http://friendsoflatinamerica.typepad.com/hocofola/2010/02/hocofola-cafe-quetzal-order-form-2010.html. The coffee comes in one-pound bags.
Fill out the form and mail it with a check made out to HOCOFOLA on or before the second week of the month. Be sure you indicate ground or beans for each type of coffee ordered. Send it to Adela Hirsch, 5358 Eliots Oak Rd., Columbia, MD 21044. Be sure you indicate ground (G) or bean (B) for each type of coffee ordered. The coffee will arrive some time the following week and you will be notified where to pick it up. Contact Adela at 410-997-5662 or via e-mail at adela4peace@verizon.net.
5] – Bill Barry [wbarrymd@hotmail.com] is asking for your help in keeping the Maryland Green Party on the ballot line. The Maryland Green Party still needs another 1,500 signatures on petitions. Can you help out? He has the petitions, and would like to know if you can get ten signatures from registered voters. He will get you the petitions.
The national Green Party convention will be in Baltimore from July 12-15 at the U of Baltimore and at the Hilton--Inner Harbor downtown. You're invited to sit in or to watch on CSPAN: http://www.gpconvention2012.com/p/scheduling.html.
6] – A peace vigil takes place every Friday from noon to 1 PM at Lafayette Park facing the White House. Join the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker and friends. Contact Art Laffin: artlaffin@hotmail.com.
7] – Every Friday from noon to 1 PM, Women in Black, Baltimore, host a vigil at Pratt and Light Sts. in the Inner Harbor. Peace signs will be available. See http://www.peacepath911.com/ or write wibbaltimore@hotmail.com or call 410-467-9114.
8] – There is also a noon vigil on June 29 at Roland Park Place at 830 W. 40th St. Call 410-467-9114.
9] – A vigil for Justice in Palestine/Israel (now in its 8th year) takes place every Friday from noon to 1 PM at 19th & JFK Blvd., Philadelphia (across from Israeli Consulate. It is sponsored by Bubbies & Zaydes (Grandparents) for Peace in the Middle East. Email cswartz@pil.net. Go to http://phillyjewishpeace.org/.
10] – WIB holds a silent vigil mourning all violence, the first Friday of the month. The next vigil is July 6 from noon to 12:30 PM, War Memorial Park, intersection of W. 2nd & N. Bentz Sts. in Frederick. Please dress in black; no additional signs. Call 301-834-7581 or email wibfrederick@mizmail.com.
11] – There is a silent vigil on Fri., July 6 from 5 to 6 PM outside of Homewood Friends Meeting, 3107 N. Charles St., in opposition to war in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Placards say: "War Is Not the Answer." The silent vigil is sponsored by AFSC, Homewood Friends and Stony Run Meetings.
12] – Camille Brown presents Cleaning the Heart: an Exhibition to Benefit Thai Freedom House, a non-profit community language and arts center in Northern Thailand,
at Gallery 1448, Artists' Housing, 1448 E. Baltimore St. The opening reception is Fri., July 6 from 6 to 10 PM, but visitors can also see the show on Sundays & Saturdays from 1-5 PM through July 22 or by appointment at 433-392-5461. Call 410-327-1554. Proceeds from all work sold during the exhibition's run time will go to Thai Freedom House. Go to http://www.1448.org.
13] – On Fri., July 6 at 7 PM, see Oliver Stone's classic film BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY starring Tom Cruise. It tells the true story of Ron Kovic, Vietnam combat veteran turned peace activist and shows the impact of that war on the home front. It will be shown as part of the Peace Center of Delaware County First-Friday Large Screen Free Film Series, 1001 Old Sproul Road, Springfield, PA. The doors open at 6:30 PM for light refreshments. Call 610-544-1818 or go to www.delcopeacecenter.org.
The discussion will be led by John Grant, Vietnam veteran and a member of Veterans For Peace. As a writer/photographer, Grant has traveled in Vietnam, Iraq and Central America. He currently writes for the online publication This Can't Be Happening. Be sure to read his article, "The Vietnam War and the Struggle for Truth" at www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1205.
14] – On Fridays, from 7 to 10:30 PM at the Potter's House, 1658 Columbia Rd. NW, WDC 20009, enjoy the Sounds of Hope is Good Music, Good Food, for a Good Cause! Go to www.reverbnation.com/venue/soundsofhope. Contact Mary Shapiro, Sounds of Hope producer, at
soundsofhopebooking@gmail.com or 202-294-2906.
15] – There is an opportunity to participate in ballroom dancing, usually every Friday of the month, in the JHU ROTC Bldg. at 8 PM. Turn south on San Martin Dr. from the intersection of Univ. Parkway and 39th St. Drive on campus by taking the third left turn. The next dance will be July 5. Call Dave Greene at 410-599-3725.
16] – The 1st Friday's RENT PARTY & KARAOKE in an air conditioned space, Solidarity Center, 2011 N. Charles St., Baltimore 21218, is at 8 PM on July 6. Also celebrate the Peoples Assembly. Call 410-500-2168 or email info@justice-4-trayvon.org.
The Solidarity Center cannot pay this month's rent! The organizers have been so busy with police brutality that no time was spent on formal fund raising. Come out and enjoy a dinner and drinks for a $10 donation. If you have less still come out and if you have more -- they need it. Enjoy singing, poetry and having fun until midnight. APC is begging for you to stop by and leave a donation even if you can't stay.
17] – There’s a SLAP Fundraiser on Fri., July 6 from 8 to 10 PM at Adams Morgan Mellow Mushroom, 2436 18th St. NW. National SLAP is putting on a fundraiser to help send SLAP students to the USSA Congress in Madison, Wisconsin. Live music performance by Lucky Dub, featuring D.C. JwJ and SLAP's very own Isaiah Toney. The cover charge is $5 for the band, and donations to SLAP can be made inside. It has been a really exciting year for SLAP and the movement as a whole. SLAP students across the country were active in the Occupy Movement, and at this past year's USSA LegCon, SLAP and USSA took aim at Sallie Mae, one of the largest corporate profiteers of student loans. Over 300 students rallied in front of the Sallie Mae office demanding a meeting with CEO Albert Lord to discuss student debt. When Sallie Mae refused to talk 36 students were arrested in nonviolent civil disobedience. Then on May 24th, over 200 students and community activists protested Sallie Mae at their annual shareholder's meeting in Newark, Delaware with SLAP shareholders inside. Visit https://www.facebook.com/events/161569180634290/.
18] – The Pets On Wheels 7th Annual Dog-A-Thon is taking place on Sat., July 7 from 10 AM to 8 PM and on Sun., July 8 from 11 AM to 7 PM. It is designed to support the mission of visiting people in institutional settings. The Dog-A-Thon is happening at Maryland State Fairgrounds, 2200 York Road. Call 410-913-5569. The price is $10 for adults, and $5 for children 5 to 12. Go to http://www.PetsonWheels.org.
19] – Friends House, 17715 Meeting House Rd., Sandy Spring, MD 20860, hosts a peace vigil every Saturday, 10:30 to 11:30 AM, on the corner of Rt. 108 and Georgia Ave. in Olney, MD. The next vigil is July 7. Call Chuck Harker at 301-570-7167.
20] – Each Saturday, 11 AM – 1 PM, Chester County Peace Movement holds a peace vigil in West Chester in front of the Chester County Courthouse, High & Market Sts. Go to www.ccpeace.org. Email ccpeacemovement@aol.com.
21] – There will be a peace vigil on the West Lawn of the Capitol at noon on Sat., July 7. Look for the blue banner with the message, "Seek Peace and Pursue It.--Psalms 34:14." The vigil lasts one hour and is silent except when one responds to the occasional questions. Go to http://www.quaker.org/langleyhill/seekpeace.htm or email seekpeacevigil@yahoo.com.
22] – Usually, the Baltimore Ethical Society, 306 W. Franklin St., Suite 102, Baltimore, MD 21201-4661, meets on Sundays, and generally there is a speaker and discussion from 10:30 to 11:30 AM. On Sun., July 8, the topic is “Putting on Our Sunday Best.” However, the Baltimore Ethical Society will gather with members of the Washington and Northern Virginia Ethical Societies to celebrate Ethical Culture. This joint meeting – which will start at 11 AM – will be hosted at the Washington Ethical Society (WES, 7750 16th St. NW, WDC 20012). Along with the leaders of the three societies – Amanda Poppei, Mary Herman, Jone Johnson Lewis, and Hugh Taft-Morales – the program will explore what it is that makes the Sunday morning meetings special! An informal lunch is planned for after platform. Call 410-581-2322 or visit www.baltimoreethicalsociety.org.
23] – Maryland Bridges for Peace welcomes you to stand for peace Sundays from noon (or thereabouts) to 1 PM on the Spa Creek Bridge in Annapolis. Contact Lucy at 410-263-7271 or mdbridgesforpeace@toadmail.com. Signs are not allowed to be on a stick or pole. If there is interest, people will be standing on the Stoney Creek Bridge on Fort Smallwood Road in Pasadena [410-437-5379 or magicalgodmom@aol.com]. Go to http://BridgePeace.blogspot.com/.
24] – Join the Kick-off of the New D.C. BDS Campaign Against SodaStream on Sun., July 8 from 2 to 4 PM in front of Columbia Heights Mall at the Columbia Heights Metro Station on 14th St., just north of intersection with Irving St. Jewish Voice for Peace DC Metro Chapter is launching a new boycott campaign against SodaStream, a Swiss company that manufactures its beverage carbonating machine in Mishor Edumim, a settlement in the West Bank.
In large part, due to the success of the European boycott campaign, SodaStream has moved to the U.S. It's making a splash in a huge number of DC stores like Bed, Bath & Beyond, Staples, and Target, all of which are located in the Columbia Heights Mall. Email jvpdcmetro@gmail.com or call 301-518-0199.
25] – Reaching Beyond Our Differences: Views from the Next Generation of Leaders in the Middle East IS AN EVENT TAKING PLACE on Sun,, July 8 from 3:30 to 5 PM at 601 Bradley Blvd., Bethesda MD 20817. Hear the stories of young adult Palestinian & Israeli leaders with New Story Leadership (www.newstoryleadership.org). Learn how they are building a new story for the future. Hear the story of New Story Leadership – an organization committed to building a relationship of understanding and cooperation in the Middle East. This event is hosted by Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church, Bethesda Jewish Congregation and Idara e-Jaferia Mosque. RSVP to bishnasar@yahoo.com and reference "Bradley Hills" in the subject line. Email Ronnie Haber at rnhaber@erols.com.
26] – Every Sunday, 4 to 5 PM, there is a Quaker Peace Vigil at Independence Mall, N. side of Market between 5th and 6th Sts., Philadelphia. Call 215-421-5811.
27] – On Sun., July 8 at 4:30 PM, enjoy the Brandywine Peace Community Monthly Potluck Supper & Program @ University Lutheran Church, 3637 Chestnut St., Phila., PA. (Bring main dish, salad, or dessert to share). At 5:30 PM, there will be a presentation about the Earth Quaker Action Team by Zachary Hershman, speaking and showing a film short about EQAT's campaign to get PNC Bank out of the lethal business of mountaintop removal coal mining. Call 610-544-1818 or go to www.brandywinepeace.com.
28] – Enjoy a potluck dinner with members of the 23rd Pastors for Peace Cuba Caravan on Sun., July 8 at 5 PM at the home of Leslie Salgado and Steve Sharar at 6336 Sandchain Rd., Columbia, MD 21045. Bring a dish to share and join in for an evening of sharing, music and to welcome the “caravanistas,” who are traveling through Howard County on their way to Cuba. Call 410-381-4899.
The Friendshipment Caravan to Cuba will challenge the U.S. economic and travel blockade on Cuba, imposed on the Cuban people over 50 years ago. The Caravan will travel through up to 130 cities in the U.S. and Canada, to raise awareness about the U.S. blockade and to gather humanitarian aid to take to Cuba. After travelling through the U.S. there is a blockade-busting border crossing into Mexico. The “caravanistas” will then travel through Mexico and spend nine days in Cuba, participating in a variety of educational and cultural events. Go to http://www.pastorsforpeace.org/.
RSVP to Leslie at 410-381-4899 or cuba_is_hope@comcast.net. Visit http://www.friendsoflatinamerica.org. You can send a contribution to HoCoFoLA, PO Box 94, Columbia, MD 21045. The event is co-sponsored by Ho. Co. Friends of Latin America and the Baltimore-Matanzas Cuba Sister City Project.
29] – The Occupy DC Lobbying Group is meeting on Sun., July 8 at 6 PM at the Occupy DC Office, Institute for Policy Studies, 1112 16th St. NW, Suite 600. There are a lot of different laws that need to be changed that Occupy could lobby about—Glass-Stegal, Future Commodities Act, Taft-Hartley Act, co-determination laws, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and others. The idea is to start a lobbying campaign by fall. Visit http://www.facebook.com/events/.
30] – Red Emma’s needs volunteers. Stop in to the weekly Sunday meeting at 7 PM at 800 St. Paul St. or email info@redemmas.org. The next meeting is July 8. There is no meeting on the first Sunday of the month. Call 410-230-0450. If you would be interested in volunteering or becoming a collective member of 2640, send an email to 2640@redemmas.org.
31] – There is a weekly Pentagon Peace Vigil from 7 to 8 AM on Mondays, since 1987, outside the Pentagon Metro stop. The next vigil is Mon., July 9, and it is sponsored by the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker. Call 202-882-9649.
32] – The Free Franklin Shelter Trial takes place on Mon., July 9 at 9:30 AM in D.C. Superior Court, 500 Indiana Ave. NW, Courtroom #112. It is requested that supporters show up at 8:30 AM outside the courthouse. Last November a group of community members going by the name “Free Franklin” entered and occupied the former Franklin Shelter building at 13th and K Sts. NW. It was a protest about the lack of homeless shelters in D.C. Six of the people arrested at the occupation will be fighting a charge of unlawful entry in a jury trial. For updates on the trial, check out http://freefranklindc.blogspot.com or follow @FreeFranklinDC on Twitter or email freefranklindc@gmail.com.
33] – Day One of General Strike for DC Statehood is on for Mon., July 9 at 8:30 AM everywhere. Stand Up! for Democracy in DC (Free DC) will join consumer advocate and citizen rights organizer, Ralph Nader, local and national groups and other DC statehood supporters to launch a general limited Strike for DC Statehood. They're calling on all DC residents, their family, friends, relatives and supporters to postpone your arrival to work for 15 minutes! It's a painless but important way to start a campaign here for our liberty just 5 days after the 4th of July celebrations! They are encouraging everyone to expand the strike by postponing your arrival to work 30 minutes on August 1, 2012, 45 minutes on September 10, 2012 and one hour on October 1, 2012. Contact Anise Jenkins at 202-361-9739 or at anisej@hotmail.com.
To be continued.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/.
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Company Earned Millions in Defense Contracts While Making Illegal Sales to China
Company Earned Millions in Defense Contracts While Making Illegal Sales to China
By Zach Toombs
The Canadian arm of the aircraft engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney closed a six-year U.S. government probe last week by admitting that the lure of up to $2 billion in helicopter sales to China had caused it to export computer software illegally that helped China create its first modern attack helicopter.
“This case is a clear example of how the illegal export of sensitive technology reduces the advantages our military currently possesses,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton said in a statement released on June 28. That’s when the government disclosed that Pratt & Whitney and two related companies agreed to pay a total of $75 million in fines for multiple violations of export rules policed by the State Department.
The software probe and the heavy financial sanction appear to have had no punishing impact on Pratt & Whitney’s extensive and continuing contract work for the Defense Department, however. That’s the same department that in an ironic twist announced this spring that it was reorienting its forces to deal with what its officials regard as a rising Chinese military threat against U.S. allies in the region.
The events are once again raising questions about the circumstances under which major defense contractors might be barred from government work. Independent watchdogs have long complained that few such firms have been barred or suspended, even for egregious lawbreaking, such as supplying armaments or related equipment to a potential adversary. Nothing in the settlement agreement directly threatens Pratt's existing or future government contracting.
Since July 2006, when United Technologies — the parent company of Pratt and another firm, Hamilton Sundstrand, which also admitted wrongdoing — filed statements about the software exports with the government that it now admits were erroneous, the Pentagon has awarded more than $1.67 billion in contracts to Pratt and its affiliates, according to a search of the Federal Procurement Data System. And since Pratt & Whitney began its dealings with China in September 2000, the company has received $2.27 billion in Pentagon contracts.
One of Pratt & Whitney’s principal contracts with the department now is to supply jet engines for F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets. The Obama administration waged a major battle to make the company the sole provider of those engines over the last two years, writing General Electric’s rival engine contract out of federal budgets in an effort to save money. The Pentagon explained in the White House’s proposed fiscal year 2011 budget — issued Feb. 1, 2010 — that Pratt & Whitney’s engine work was “progressing well,” making GE’s work superfluous. The Government Accountability Offices subsequently disclosed in December 2010 that engine costs for the jets have risen by 75 percent since 2001.
The jet is being developed in part to ensure that the U.S. military can prevail against any hypothetical adversary, including major powers able to field mutiple advanced aircraft, such as China.
It’s not the first time that United Technologies or one of its subsidiaries has run afoul of government regulations. An SEC filing by the firm in February, in which the company disclosed the probe’s existence, listed two earlier lawsuits filed by the government against the company over its defense-related work; both were listed as still pending in the courts.
The Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group in Washington, ranks United Technologies at number seven on a list of the top 100 contractors cited for misconduct since 1995.
“They’ve had a smattering of issues over the years — everything from environmental violations to false claims made to the government,” said Neil Gordon, a POGO investigator focusing on government contracting issues. “The military relies on too few companies for these weapons and services. So, they often have few other options when a provider is guilty of misconduct.”
In addition to judicial prosecution, the U.S. government has three options for taking action against defense contractors. Suspension typically bars a company from receiving government contracts for 18 months, and debarment does the same for a longer period — three years. The State Department can also choose to revoke a company’s export license, blocking sales to foreign governments or corporations.
Cheryl Irwin, a spokeswoman for Secretary of Defense’s office, said the Defense Department to her knowledge had not taken action against UTC and its affiliates or reviewed the company’s contracts in light of last week’s settlement.
The prosecution marked “one of the largest resolutions of export violations with a major defense contractor in the Justice Department’s history,” according to U.S. Attorney for Connecticut David Fein, who directed the government's effort. Assistant Attorney General Lisa Monaco, who spoke with Fein at a press conference in Bridgeport, Connecticut said Pratt had compromised “U.S. national security for the sake of profits and then lie[d] about it to the government.” After closely examining company procedures and internal records, it found United Technologies responsible for a string of 576 export-related violations.
What the Defense Department knew and when it knew it is not completely clear. When the Justice Department launched its probe in 2006, it made no public announcement. DOJ spokesman Dean Boyd first said that to his knowledge, others besides the State Department weren't notified, but he later affirmed that the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, an arm of the Pentagon, had assisted the investigation. In the SEC filing, Pratt & Whitney said the Justice Department had been in discussions with the company about the violations since Nov. 2011.
In the settlement, Pratt admitted that some officials in its Canadian subsidiary were aware from the outset that the work with China was initially to be of military use. A marketing manager referred explicitly in an Aug. 2000 e-mail to the company’s export officials to the task of making engines for an “attack helicopter,” an agreed “Statement of Facts” accompanying the settlement recounted. The Chinese called the helicopter the “Z10.”
The United States has had an embargo on military exports to China since the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989. But the company told the Canadian government that because the engines were already approved for civilian export, it needed no special permission for use on a military aircraft. Canadian regulators disagreed, and demanded that company request a permit.
After Pratt conveyed this news to the Chinese, China’s Aviation Industry Corporation suddenly told the company it had begun developing a civilian variant of the military helicopter – the “Z10C,” which it said would be used for sightseeing, business VIPs, and search-and-rescue missions.
Management within Pratt & Whitney was skeptical of the civilian helicopter program’s “sudden appearance,” according to United Technologies’ deferred prosecution agreement. But the company nonetheless saw the claim as providing a useful opening: On November 13, 2000, a Pratt & Whitney manager for Asia Marketing emailed two other executives that whether the civil program was “real or imagined,” the company could bid for an exclusive role.
After being told about the parallel Z10C helicopter, Canadian authorities approved the export of 10 engines.
Pratt & Whitney’s Canadian subsidiary next asked its sister subsidiary Hamilton Sundstrand — headquartered in the United States — to write the software needed to control the engines, without saying that the purpose was to equip a military helicopter. From January 2002 to October 2003, Hamilton Sundstrand exported 12 versions of the software to Pratt & Whitney, which sent six of those on to China for use in the development model of the Z10 helicopter, according to the settlement agreement.
Pratt & Whitney executives also kept the military end-use of its engines and software secret from some of the company’s engineers. When two were dispatched to China in March 2003 to observe the helicopters, one asked a Chinese official, "where are the other 10 seats,” meaning those intended for civilian passengers? The helicopter they saw had only two seats in tandem — typical of an attack model — and mock weapons on the hull. According to federal prosecutors who interviewed the engineers, the Chinese official smiled and said, in effect, that it had always been an attack helicopter.
The engineers reported their observation — and their concerns — to Pratt & Whitney’s manager for Asian marketing upon returning to the company’s Montreal headquarters. But no restrictions were imposed by the firm and they kept working on the project.
When Hamilton finally discovered the military use of its software in Feb. 2004, it shut down its production in less than a week. Pratt, still holding out hope for the large civilian helicopter contract, picked up where Hamilton Sundstrand left off and resumed exporting its own versions of the software to China through June 2005.
United Technologies made a limited disclosure about its involvement to the State Department in 2006, after an institutional investor said it was researching the company’s role in helping China’s military and threatened to disinvest. The company has now admitted that disclosure — which claimed the company believed at the outset there were dual civilian and military helicopter programs — was inaccurate.
In the end, Pratt got nothing more for its troubles than a federal probe. In early 2006, China’s Aviation Industry Corporation told Pratt & Whitney the parallel civilian helicopter development would be scrapped. Instead, China said it would instead build a much larger civilian helicopter, too large for the engines built by Pratt & Whitney.
According to the Justice Department’s statement announcing the settlement, the first batches of the Z10 attack helicopter were delivered to the People’s Liberation Army of China in 2009 and 2010. The helicopter remains in production and comes outfitted with 30 mm cannons, anti-tank guided missiles, air-to-air missiles and unguided rockets.
UTC, a company with $58 billion in 2011 sales, told the Center through an email on Friday it was taking steps to improve oversight. Spokesman John Moran said UTC has established a new “Export Council” to internally inspect arms shipments and is now requiring online training for employees working with exports.
The company’s deferred prosecution agreement also shows a lengthy list of reforms the company has promised in response to the exports violation, assigning 175 executives to keep an eye on export law compliance for UTC and its subsidiaries, along with requiring internal reviews of exports from all its subsidiaries, including Pratt & Whitney.
This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/company-earned-millions-defense-contracts-while-making-illegal-sales-china-1341586676. All rights are reserved.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
How the American Military Machine Endangers the Whole World
How the American Military Machine Endangers the Whole World
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com
Posted on July 5, 2012, Printed on July 6, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/story/156180/how_the_american_military_machine_endangers_the_whole_world
Americans may feel more distant from war than at any time since World War II began. Certainly, a smaller percentage of us -- less than 1% -- serves in the military in this all-volunteer era of ours and, on the face of it, Washington’s constant warring in distant lands seems barely to touch the lives of most Americans.
And yet the militarization of the United States and the strengthening of the National Security Complex continues to accelerate. The Pentagon is, by now, a world unto itself, with a staggering budget at a moment when no other power or combination of powers comes near to challenging this country’s might.
In the post-9/11 era, the military-industrial complex has been thoroughly mobilized under the rubric of “privatization” and now goes to war with the Pentagon. With its $80 billion-plus budget, the intelligence bureaucracy has simply exploded. There are so many competing agencies and outfits, surrounded by a universe of private intelligence contractors, all enswathed in a penumbra of secrecy, and they have grown so large, mainly under the Pentagon’s aegis, that you could say intelligence is now a ruling way of life in Washington -- and it, too, is being thoroughly militarized. Even the once-civilian CIA has undergone a process of para-militarization and now runs its own “covert” drone wars in Pakistan and elsewhere. Its director, a widely hailed retired four-star general, was previously the U.S. war commander in Iraq and then Afghanistan, just as the National Intelligence Director who oversees the whole intelligence labyrinth is a retired Air Force lieutenant general.
In a sense, even the military has been “militarized.” In these last years, a secret army of special operations forces, 60,000 or more strong and still expanding, has grown like an incubus inside the regular armed forces. As the CIA’s drones have become the president’s private air force, so the special ops troops are his private army, and are now given free rein to go about the business of war in their own cocoon of secrecy in areas far removed from what are normally considered America’s war zones.
Diplomacy, too, has been militarized. Diplomats work ever more closely with the military, while the State Department is transforming itself into an unofficial arm of the Pentagon -- as the secretary of state is happy to admit -- as well as of the weapons industry.
And keep in mind that we now have two Pentagons, thanks to the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which is focused, among other things, on militarizing our southern border. Meanwhile, with the help of the DHS, local police forces nationwide have, over the last decade, been significantly up-armored and have, in the name of fighting terrorism, gained a distinctly military patina. They have ever more access to elaborate weaponry and gadgets, including billions of dollars of surplus military equipment of every sort, often being funneled to once peaceable small town police departments.
The Military Solution in the Greater Middle East
Militarization in this country is hardly a new phenomenon. It can be traced back decades, but the process hit warp speed in the post-9/11 years, even if the U.S. still lacks the classic look of a militarized society. Almost unnoticed has been an accompanying transformation of the mindset of Washington -- what might be called the militarization of solutions.
If the institutions of American life and governance are increasingly militarized, then it shouldn’t be surprising that the problems facing the country are ever more often framed in militarized terms and that the only solutions considered are similarly militarized. This paucity of imagination, this constraining of what might be possible, seems especially evident in the Greater Middle East.
In fact, Washington’s record there, seldom if ever collected in one place, should be eye-opening. Start with a dose of irony: before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it was a commonplace among neoconservatives to label the region extending across the oil heartlands of the planet, from North Africa to the Chinese border in Central Asia, “the arc of instability.” After a decade in which Washington has applied its military might and thoroughly militarized solutions to the region, that decade-old world now looks remarkably “stable.”
Here, in shorthand, is a little regional scorecard of what American militarization has meant in the Greater Middle East, 2001-2012:
Pakistan: The U.S. has faced a multitude of complex problems in this nuclear nation beset with insurgent movements, its tribal areas providing sanctuary to both Afghan and Pakistani rebels and jihadis, and its intelligence service entangled in a complicated relationship with the Taliban leadership as well as other rebel groups fighting in Afghanistan. Washington’s response has been -- as Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta recently labeled it -- war. In 2004, the Bush administration launched a drone assassination campaign in the country’s tribal borderlands largely focused on al-Qaeda leaders (combined with a few cross-border special forces raids). Those rare robotic air strikes have since expanded into something like a full-scale covert drone war that is killing civilians, is intensely unpopular throughout Pakistan, and by now is clearly meant to punish the Pakistani leadership for its transgressions as well.
Frustrated by what they consider Pakistani intransigence, elements in the U.S. military and intelligence community are reportedly pressing to add a new set of cross-border joint special operations/Afghan commando raids to the present incendiary mix. American air strikes from Afghanistan that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last November, with no apologies offered for seven months, brought to a boil a crisis in relations between Washington and Islamabad, with the Pakistani government closing off the country to American war supplies headed for Afghanistan. (That added a couple of billion dollars to the Pentagon’s expenses there before the crisis was ended with a grudging apology this week). The whole process has clearly contributed to the destabilization of nuclear Pakistan.
Afghanistan: Following a November 2001 invasion (light on invading U.S. troops), the U.S. opted for a full-scale occupation and reconstruction of the country. In the process, it managed to spur the reconstruction and reconstitution of the previously deeply unpopular and defeated Taliban movement. An insurgent war followed. Despite a massive surge of U.S. forces, CIA agents, special operations troops, and private contractors into the country, the calling in of air power in a major way, and the expansion of a program of “night raids” by special ops types and the CIA, success has not followed. By the end of 2014, the U.S. is scheduled to withdraw its main combat forces from what is likely to be a thoroughly destabilized country.
Iran: In a program long aimed at regime change (but officially focused on the country’s nuclear program), the U.S. has clamped energy sanctions -- often seen as an act of war -- on Iran, supported a special operations campaign of unknown proportions (including cross-border actions), run a massive CIA drone surveillance program in the country’s skies, and (with the Israelis) loosed at least two major malware “worms” against the computer systems and centrifuges of its nuclear facilities, which even the Pentagon defines as acts of war. It has also backed a massive build-up of U.S. naval and air power in the Persian Gulf and of military bases in countries on Iran’s peripheries, along with “comprehensive multi-option war-planning” for a possible 2013 strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities. (Though little is known about it, an assassination campaign against Iranian nuclear scientists has usually been blamed on the Israelis. Now that the joint U.S.-Israeli authorship of acts of cyberwar against Iran has been confirmed, however, it is at least reasonable to wonder whether the U.S. might also have had a hand in these killings.) All of this has embroiled the region and brought it to the edge of yet more war, while in no obvious way shaking the Iranian regime.
Iraq: The U.S. invaded in March 2003, occupying the country. It fought (and essentially lost) an eight-year-long counterinsurgency war, withdrawing its last troops at the end of 2011, but leaving behind in Baghdad the world’s largest, most militarized embassy. The country, now an ally and trading partner of Iran, remains remarkably unreconstructed and significantly destabilized, with regular bombing campaigns in its cities.
Kuwait: Just across the border from Iraq, the U.S. has continued a build-up of forces. In the future, according to a U.S. Senate report, there could be up to 13,000 U.S. personnel permanently stationed in the country.
Yemen: Washington, long a supporter of the country’s strong-man ruler, now backs the successor regime. (In Yemen, as elsewhere, Washington has been deeply uncomfortable with Arab-Spring-style democracy movements among its allies.) For years, it has had an air campaign underway in the southern part of the country aimed at insurgents linked to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). More recently, it has put at least small numbers of special operations troops on the ground there as advisers and trainers and has escalated a combined CIA drone and Air Force manned-plane air campaign in southern Yemen. There have been at least 23 air strikes already this year, evidently causing significant civilian casualties, reportedly radicalizing southerners, increasing support for AQAP, and helping further destabilize this impoverished and desperate land.
Bahrain: Home of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, tiny Bahrain, facing a democratic uprising of its repressed Shiite majority, called in the Saudi military on a mission of suppression. The U.S. has offered military aid and support to the ruling Sunni monarchy.
Syria: In radically destabilized Syria, where a democracy uprising has morphed into a civil war with sectarian overtones that threatens to further destabilize the region, including Lebanon and Iraq, the CIA has now been dispatched to the Turkish border. Its job: to direct weapons to rebels of Washington’s choice (assuming that the CIA, with its dubious record, can sort the democrats from the jihadis). The weapons themselves are arriving, according to the New York Times, via a “network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.” It’s a project that has “this can’t end well” written all over it.
Somalia: Long a failed state, Somalia has suffered, among other things, through a U.S.-fostered Ethiopian invasion back in 2006 (and another more recently), drone attacks, CIA and special forces operations, a complicated U.S. program to subsidize a force of African (especially Ugandan) troops in the capital and support for a Kenyan invasion in the south -- each step in the process seemingly leading to further fragmentation, further radicalization, and greater extremism.
Egypt: Ever since Tahrir Square, Washington has been focused on its close ties with the Egyptian military high command (key figures from which visit Washington every year) and on the billions of dollars in military aid it continues to provide to that military, despite the way it has usurped democratic rule.
Libya: The Obama administration called in the U.S. Air Force (along with air power from NATO allies) to support an inchoate uprising and destroy the regime of long-time strong-man Muammar Gaddafi. In this they were successful. The long-term results still remain unknown. (See, for instance, the Islamist revolt in destabilized neighboring Mali.)
How to Set the Planet on Fire and Learn Nothing
This remains a partial list, lacking, to give but one example, the web of drone bases being set up from the Seychelles Islands and Ethiopia to the Arabian Peninsula -- clearly meant for expanded drone wars across the region. Nonetheless, it is a remarkable example of the general ineffectiveness of applying military or militarized solutions to the problems of a region far from your own shores. From Pakistan and Afghanistan to Yemen and Somalia, the evidence is already in: such “solutions” solve little or nothing, and in a remarkable number of cases seem only to increase the instability of a country and a region, as well as the misery of masses of people.
And yet the general lack of success from 2002 on and a deepening frustration in Washington have just led to a stronger conviction that some recalibrated version of a military solution (greater surges, lesser surges, no invasions but special forces and drones, smaller “footprint,” larger naval presence, etc.) is the only reasonable way to go.
In fact, military solutions of every sort have such a deep-seated grip on Washington that the focus there might be termed obsessive. This has been particularly obvious when it comes to the CIA’s drone wars. Back in the Vietnam War years, President Lyndon Johnson was said to have driven his generals crazy by “micromanaging” the conflict, especially in weekly lunch meetings in which he insisted on picking specific targets for the air campaign against North Vietnam.
These days, however, Johnson almost looks like a laissez-faire war president. After all, thanks to the New York Times, we know that the White House has a “nominating” process to compile a “kill list” of terror suspects, and that the president himself decides which drone air attacks should then be launched, not target area by target area, but individual by individual. He is choosing specific individuals to kill in the Pakistani, Yemeni, and Somali backlands.
It should be considered a sign of the times that, whatever shock this news may have caused in Washington (mainly because of possible administration leaks about the nature of the “covert” drone program), few have even mentioned presidential micromanaging, nor, it seems, are any generals up in arms. Some may have found the “nomination” process shocking, but rare are those who seem to think it strange that a president of the United States should be involved in choosing individuals (including U.S. citizens) for assassination-by-drone in distant lands.
The truth is that such “solutions,” first tested in the Greater Middle East, are now being applied (even if, as yet, in far more modest ways) from Africa to Central America. In Africa, I suspect you could track the growing destabilization of parts of that continent to the setting up of a U.S. command for the region (Africom) in 2007 and in subsequent years the slow movement of drones, special forces operatives, private contractors, and others into a region that already has problems enough.
Here’s a 2012 American reality then: as a great power, the U.S. has an increasingly limited toolkit, into which it is reaching far more often for ever more similar tools. The idea that the globe is a chessboard, that Washington is in control of the game, and that each militarized move it makes will have a reasonably predictable result couldn’t be more dangerous. The evidence of the last decade is clear enough: there is little less predictable or more likely to go awry than the application of military force and militarized solutions, which are cumulatively incendiary in unexpected ways, and in the end threaten to set whole regions on fire. None of this, however, seems to register in Washington.
The United States is commonly said to be a great power in decline, but the militarization of American policy -- and thinking -- at home and abroad is not. It has Washington, now a capital of perpetual war, in its grip.
This process began, post-9/11, with the soaring romanticism of the Bush administration about, as the president put it, the power of the “greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known” (a.k.a. the U.S. military) to change the world. It was a fundamental conviction of Bush and his top officials that the most powerful military on the planet could bring any state in the Greater Middle East to heel in a “cakewalk.”
Today, in the wake of two failed wars on the Eurasian continent, a de-romanticized version of that conviction has become the deeply embedded, increasingly humdrum way of life of a militarized Washington. It will remain so.
If Barack Obama, the man who got Bin Laden, is reelected, nothing of significance is likely to change in this regard. If Mitt Romney wins, the process is likely to accelerate, possibly moving from global misfire, failure, and obsession to extreme global fantasy, with consequences -- from Iran to Russia to China -- difficult now to imagine.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The United States of Fear as well as The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050.
© 2012 TomDispatch.com All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/156180/
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com
Posted on July 5, 2012, Printed on July 6, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/story/156180/how_the_american_military_machine_endangers_the_whole_world
Americans may feel more distant from war than at any time since World War II began. Certainly, a smaller percentage of us -- less than 1% -- serves in the military in this all-volunteer era of ours and, on the face of it, Washington’s constant warring in distant lands seems barely to touch the lives of most Americans.
And yet the militarization of the United States and the strengthening of the National Security Complex continues to accelerate. The Pentagon is, by now, a world unto itself, with a staggering budget at a moment when no other power or combination of powers comes near to challenging this country’s might.
In the post-9/11 era, the military-industrial complex has been thoroughly mobilized under the rubric of “privatization” and now goes to war with the Pentagon. With its $80 billion-plus budget, the intelligence bureaucracy has simply exploded. There are so many competing agencies and outfits, surrounded by a universe of private intelligence contractors, all enswathed in a penumbra of secrecy, and they have grown so large, mainly under the Pentagon’s aegis, that you could say intelligence is now a ruling way of life in Washington -- and it, too, is being thoroughly militarized. Even the once-civilian CIA has undergone a process of para-militarization and now runs its own “covert” drone wars in Pakistan and elsewhere. Its director, a widely hailed retired four-star general, was previously the U.S. war commander in Iraq and then Afghanistan, just as the National Intelligence Director who oversees the whole intelligence labyrinth is a retired Air Force lieutenant general.
In a sense, even the military has been “militarized.” In these last years, a secret army of special operations forces, 60,000 or more strong and still expanding, has grown like an incubus inside the regular armed forces. As the CIA’s drones have become the president’s private air force, so the special ops troops are his private army, and are now given free rein to go about the business of war in their own cocoon of secrecy in areas far removed from what are normally considered America’s war zones.
Diplomacy, too, has been militarized. Diplomats work ever more closely with the military, while the State Department is transforming itself into an unofficial arm of the Pentagon -- as the secretary of state is happy to admit -- as well as of the weapons industry.
And keep in mind that we now have two Pentagons, thanks to the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which is focused, among other things, on militarizing our southern border. Meanwhile, with the help of the DHS, local police forces nationwide have, over the last decade, been significantly up-armored and have, in the name of fighting terrorism, gained a distinctly military patina. They have ever more access to elaborate weaponry and gadgets, including billions of dollars of surplus military equipment of every sort, often being funneled to once peaceable small town police departments.
The Military Solution in the Greater Middle East
Militarization in this country is hardly a new phenomenon. It can be traced back decades, but the process hit warp speed in the post-9/11 years, even if the U.S. still lacks the classic look of a militarized society. Almost unnoticed has been an accompanying transformation of the mindset of Washington -- what might be called the militarization of solutions.
If the institutions of American life and governance are increasingly militarized, then it shouldn’t be surprising that the problems facing the country are ever more often framed in militarized terms and that the only solutions considered are similarly militarized. This paucity of imagination, this constraining of what might be possible, seems especially evident in the Greater Middle East.
In fact, Washington’s record there, seldom if ever collected in one place, should be eye-opening. Start with a dose of irony: before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it was a commonplace among neoconservatives to label the region extending across the oil heartlands of the planet, from North Africa to the Chinese border in Central Asia, “the arc of instability.” After a decade in which Washington has applied its military might and thoroughly militarized solutions to the region, that decade-old world now looks remarkably “stable.”
Here, in shorthand, is a little regional scorecard of what American militarization has meant in the Greater Middle East, 2001-2012:
Pakistan: The U.S. has faced a multitude of complex problems in this nuclear nation beset with insurgent movements, its tribal areas providing sanctuary to both Afghan and Pakistani rebels and jihadis, and its intelligence service entangled in a complicated relationship with the Taliban leadership as well as other rebel groups fighting in Afghanistan. Washington’s response has been -- as Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta recently labeled it -- war. In 2004, the Bush administration launched a drone assassination campaign in the country’s tribal borderlands largely focused on al-Qaeda leaders (combined with a few cross-border special forces raids). Those rare robotic air strikes have since expanded into something like a full-scale covert drone war that is killing civilians, is intensely unpopular throughout Pakistan, and by now is clearly meant to punish the Pakistani leadership for its transgressions as well.
Frustrated by what they consider Pakistani intransigence, elements in the U.S. military and intelligence community are reportedly pressing to add a new set of cross-border joint special operations/Afghan commando raids to the present incendiary mix. American air strikes from Afghanistan that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last November, with no apologies offered for seven months, brought to a boil a crisis in relations between Washington and Islamabad, with the Pakistani government closing off the country to American war supplies headed for Afghanistan. (That added a couple of billion dollars to the Pentagon’s expenses there before the crisis was ended with a grudging apology this week). The whole process has clearly contributed to the destabilization of nuclear Pakistan.
Afghanistan: Following a November 2001 invasion (light on invading U.S. troops), the U.S. opted for a full-scale occupation and reconstruction of the country. In the process, it managed to spur the reconstruction and reconstitution of the previously deeply unpopular and defeated Taliban movement. An insurgent war followed. Despite a massive surge of U.S. forces, CIA agents, special operations troops, and private contractors into the country, the calling in of air power in a major way, and the expansion of a program of “night raids” by special ops types and the CIA, success has not followed. By the end of 2014, the U.S. is scheduled to withdraw its main combat forces from what is likely to be a thoroughly destabilized country.
Iran: In a program long aimed at regime change (but officially focused on the country’s nuclear program), the U.S. has clamped energy sanctions -- often seen as an act of war -- on Iran, supported a special operations campaign of unknown proportions (including cross-border actions), run a massive CIA drone surveillance program in the country’s skies, and (with the Israelis) loosed at least two major malware “worms” against the computer systems and centrifuges of its nuclear facilities, which even the Pentagon defines as acts of war. It has also backed a massive build-up of U.S. naval and air power in the Persian Gulf and of military bases in countries on Iran’s peripheries, along with “comprehensive multi-option war-planning” for a possible 2013 strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities. (Though little is known about it, an assassination campaign against Iranian nuclear scientists has usually been blamed on the Israelis. Now that the joint U.S.-Israeli authorship of acts of cyberwar against Iran has been confirmed, however, it is at least reasonable to wonder whether the U.S. might also have had a hand in these killings.) All of this has embroiled the region and brought it to the edge of yet more war, while in no obvious way shaking the Iranian regime.
Iraq: The U.S. invaded in March 2003, occupying the country. It fought (and essentially lost) an eight-year-long counterinsurgency war, withdrawing its last troops at the end of 2011, but leaving behind in Baghdad the world’s largest, most militarized embassy. The country, now an ally and trading partner of Iran, remains remarkably unreconstructed and significantly destabilized, with regular bombing campaigns in its cities.
Kuwait: Just across the border from Iraq, the U.S. has continued a build-up of forces. In the future, according to a U.S. Senate report, there could be up to 13,000 U.S. personnel permanently stationed in the country.
Yemen: Washington, long a supporter of the country’s strong-man ruler, now backs the successor regime. (In Yemen, as elsewhere, Washington has been deeply uncomfortable with Arab-Spring-style democracy movements among its allies.) For years, it has had an air campaign underway in the southern part of the country aimed at insurgents linked to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). More recently, it has put at least small numbers of special operations troops on the ground there as advisers and trainers and has escalated a combined CIA drone and Air Force manned-plane air campaign in southern Yemen. There have been at least 23 air strikes already this year, evidently causing significant civilian casualties, reportedly radicalizing southerners, increasing support for AQAP, and helping further destabilize this impoverished and desperate land.
Bahrain: Home of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, tiny Bahrain, facing a democratic uprising of its repressed Shiite majority, called in the Saudi military on a mission of suppression. The U.S. has offered military aid and support to the ruling Sunni monarchy.
Syria: In radically destabilized Syria, where a democracy uprising has morphed into a civil war with sectarian overtones that threatens to further destabilize the region, including Lebanon and Iraq, the CIA has now been dispatched to the Turkish border. Its job: to direct weapons to rebels of Washington’s choice (assuming that the CIA, with its dubious record, can sort the democrats from the jihadis). The weapons themselves are arriving, according to the New York Times, via a “network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.” It’s a project that has “this can’t end well” written all over it.
Somalia: Long a failed state, Somalia has suffered, among other things, through a U.S.-fostered Ethiopian invasion back in 2006 (and another more recently), drone attacks, CIA and special forces operations, a complicated U.S. program to subsidize a force of African (especially Ugandan) troops in the capital and support for a Kenyan invasion in the south -- each step in the process seemingly leading to further fragmentation, further radicalization, and greater extremism.
Egypt: Ever since Tahrir Square, Washington has been focused on its close ties with the Egyptian military high command (key figures from which visit Washington every year) and on the billions of dollars in military aid it continues to provide to that military, despite the way it has usurped democratic rule.
Libya: The Obama administration called in the U.S. Air Force (along with air power from NATO allies) to support an inchoate uprising and destroy the regime of long-time strong-man Muammar Gaddafi. In this they were successful. The long-term results still remain unknown. (See, for instance, the Islamist revolt in destabilized neighboring Mali.)
How to Set the Planet on Fire and Learn Nothing
This remains a partial list, lacking, to give but one example, the web of drone bases being set up from the Seychelles Islands and Ethiopia to the Arabian Peninsula -- clearly meant for expanded drone wars across the region. Nonetheless, it is a remarkable example of the general ineffectiveness of applying military or militarized solutions to the problems of a region far from your own shores. From Pakistan and Afghanistan to Yemen and Somalia, the evidence is already in: such “solutions” solve little or nothing, and in a remarkable number of cases seem only to increase the instability of a country and a region, as well as the misery of masses of people.
And yet the general lack of success from 2002 on and a deepening frustration in Washington have just led to a stronger conviction that some recalibrated version of a military solution (greater surges, lesser surges, no invasions but special forces and drones, smaller “footprint,” larger naval presence, etc.) is the only reasonable way to go.
In fact, military solutions of every sort have such a deep-seated grip on Washington that the focus there might be termed obsessive. This has been particularly obvious when it comes to the CIA’s drone wars. Back in the Vietnam War years, President Lyndon Johnson was said to have driven his generals crazy by “micromanaging” the conflict, especially in weekly lunch meetings in which he insisted on picking specific targets for the air campaign against North Vietnam.
These days, however, Johnson almost looks like a laissez-faire war president. After all, thanks to the New York Times, we know that the White House has a “nominating” process to compile a “kill list” of terror suspects, and that the president himself decides which drone air attacks should then be launched, not target area by target area, but individual by individual. He is choosing specific individuals to kill in the Pakistani, Yemeni, and Somali backlands.
It should be considered a sign of the times that, whatever shock this news may have caused in Washington (mainly because of possible administration leaks about the nature of the “covert” drone program), few have even mentioned presidential micromanaging, nor, it seems, are any generals up in arms. Some may have found the “nomination” process shocking, but rare are those who seem to think it strange that a president of the United States should be involved in choosing individuals (including U.S. citizens) for assassination-by-drone in distant lands.
The truth is that such “solutions,” first tested in the Greater Middle East, are now being applied (even if, as yet, in far more modest ways) from Africa to Central America. In Africa, I suspect you could track the growing destabilization of parts of that continent to the setting up of a U.S. command for the region (Africom) in 2007 and in subsequent years the slow movement of drones, special forces operatives, private contractors, and others into a region that already has problems enough.
Here’s a 2012 American reality then: as a great power, the U.S. has an increasingly limited toolkit, into which it is reaching far more often for ever more similar tools. The idea that the globe is a chessboard, that Washington is in control of the game, and that each militarized move it makes will have a reasonably predictable result couldn’t be more dangerous. The evidence of the last decade is clear enough: there is little less predictable or more likely to go awry than the application of military force and militarized solutions, which are cumulatively incendiary in unexpected ways, and in the end threaten to set whole regions on fire. None of this, however, seems to register in Washington.
The United States is commonly said to be a great power in decline, but the militarization of American policy -- and thinking -- at home and abroad is not. It has Washington, now a capital of perpetual war, in its grip.
This process began, post-9/11, with the soaring romanticism of the Bush administration about, as the president put it, the power of the “greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known” (a.k.a. the U.S. military) to change the world. It was a fundamental conviction of Bush and his top officials that the most powerful military on the planet could bring any state in the Greater Middle East to heel in a “cakewalk.”
Today, in the wake of two failed wars on the Eurasian continent, a de-romanticized version of that conviction has become the deeply embedded, increasingly humdrum way of life of a militarized Washington. It will remain so.
If Barack Obama, the man who got Bin Laden, is reelected, nothing of significance is likely to change in this regard. If Mitt Romney wins, the process is likely to accelerate, possibly moving from global misfire, failure, and obsession to extreme global fantasy, with consequences -- from Iran to Russia to China -- difficult now to imagine.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The United States of Fear as well as The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050.
© 2012 TomDispatch.com All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/156180/
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Baltimore Activist Alert - Part 4
51] International Conference on Health in the African Diaspora -- July 5 & 8
52] Healthy Food Challenge -- July 5 - 13
53] First Thursday Antiwar protest – July 5
54] Nutrition Made Simple – July 5
55] Celebrate Bolivarian Independence – July 5
56] Student needs housing
57] Dog needs a home
58] Stop Smart Meter installation
59] Health care job
60] HELP MAKE PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST!
61] Sign up with Washington Peace Center
62] Join Fund Our Communities
63] Submit articles to Indypendent Reader
64] Donate books, videos, DVDs and records
65] Do you need a television and/or a computer?
66] Join Global Zero campaign
67] War Is Not the Answer signs for sale
68] Click on The Hunger Site
69] Fire & Faith
70] Join Peace Park Antinuclear Vigil
--------
51] – On Thurs., July 5 at 8 AM, the International Conference on Health in the African Diaspora will begin. On that day it will continue until 9 PM at the Baltimore Renaissance Harborplace Hotel, 202 E. Pratt St. The conference will close at 12:45 PM on Sun., July 8. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (http://www.jhsph.edu/) will host the first major international conference on the health of the descendants of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. ICHAD 2012 – will explore the health status of people of African descent living throughout the Western Hemisphere – from Canada to Argentina: approximately 160 million across the region. The multidisciplinaryconference will focus on more than a dozen countries, including Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Jamaica, Peru, United States, and Venezuela. Today, roughly 3 out of 4 blacks in the region live south of the U.S. border. Throughout the region, people of African descent tend to be poorer and sicker, receive less health care and a lower quality of care, and die younger than the general population. Afro-Brazilians are twice as likely to live in poverty compared to the general population. In Colombia, babies of African descent are twice as likely to die before their first birthday compared to the national average. The same pattern holds true for African-American babies in the United States. ICHAD 2012 keynote speakers include Sir George Alleyne, PAHO Emeritus, the Honorable Donna Christensen, U.S. House of Representatives (Virgin Islands), the Honorable Elijah E. Cummings, U.S. House of Representatives (Maryland), and Dr. Gail Christopher, Vice President, W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Register at http://www.ichad.com/.
52] – The Urbanite Project 2012: Healthy Food Challenge begins on Thurs., July 5 and continues through Fri., July 13--Tuesdays-Saturdays, 11 AM to 7 PM at the Creative Alliance at the Patterson, 3134 Eastern Ave. The exhibition is made up of submissions that represent individual and group responses, which address the problem of food deserts in Baltimore and how they can be eradicated. Call
410-276-1651 or go to http://www.creativealliance.org.
53] – The Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore will host an End the Wars vigil on Thurs., July 5 from 5 to 6:30 PM in Mount Vernon at Centre & Charles Sts. The Pledge gathers in Mount Vernon on the first Thursday of the month to protest U.S. wars. Call Max at 410-366-1637.
54] – A Nutrition Made Simple Workshop is put on by the Maryland Athletic Club and Wellness Center with the theme "Eating Healthy On-The-Go." The workshop will teach participants how to maintain healthy eating habits while traveling or when in a rush at home. It takes place on Thurs., July 5 at 7 PM at the Maryland Athletic Club, Harbor East, 655 President St. Call 410-625-5000 or go to http://www.macwellness.com. The cost is $10.
55] – La Sardina de Naiguatá Concert is happening on Thurs., July 5 at 7:30 PM at Bolivarian Hall, 2443 Massachusetts Ave. NW, WDC. On the occasion of the 201st Anniversary of the Independence of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Chargé d’Affaires, a.i. Dr. Ángelo Rivero Santos, requests the pleasure of your company at a concert by La Sardina de Naiguatá and the inauguration of the exhibit The Heroines of Our America. RSVP at cultura@venezuela-us.org.
56] – There is a student who will attend the Maryland Institute College of Art in the fall. She needs housing, and would like to live in a “good collective house and maybe do some cleaning/gardening/child-care/ work trade.” Ideally, she would like to pay $100 a month in rent, but will pay as high as $400 a month. Let Max know, 410-366-1637, if you have some possible housing solution. Please do ASAP.
57] – There is a sweet little pit bull mix that needs a home. She is staying on a temporary basis in a backyard. Let Max know if you might be able to provide a home for this homeless dog. Call 410-366-1637. He is very cute, brown and white, petite, and a very mellow disposition.
58] – Rebecca Hanna is a full time smart meter activist. She wanted to alert consumers about a recent order from the Maryland Public Service Commission. Go to www.MarylandSmartMeterAwareness.org or contact her at Rebeccadiener63@gmail.com or 410 922-6535. The PSC ruled that ratepayers can defer the installation of a smart meter until an official decision has been made. You would have to submit the request in writing.
This could be sent by certified mail to Baltimore Gas & Electric, POB 1475, Baltimore, MD 21203: NOTICE OF DEFERRAL OF INSTALLATION OF SMART METERS PER PSC’S ORDER NO. 84926 DATED MAY 24, 2012 -- I am hereby notifying Baltimore Gas & Electric Company and its agents (including but not limited to Grid One Solutions, Inc.) that you are NOT to install a Smart Meter anywhere on my property pursuant to Order No. 84926 issued by the Maryland Public Service Commission on May 24, 2012. Sincerely, name and address. The PEPCO address is 701 9th Street NW, Washington DC, 20068. It is suggested a copy is sent to Public Service Commission, Attn: David J. Collins, Executive Secretary, William Donald Schaefer Tower, 6 St. Paul Street, 16th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21202-6808.
59] – There is a job available starting in August--Health Care is a Human Right with the United Workers Association. The application deadline is July 2. Email hchrmaryland@gmail.com to get a copy of the job description.
60] – HELP MAKE PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST! Since a civil war in 1974 the island of Cyprus has been divided in two with a United Nations patrolled border. Turkish/Muslim Cypriots are in the north; Greek/Christian Cypriots are in the south. Animosities and prejudices run deep. Children throw rocks at each other across the border. Experts believe that Cyprus is at a crossroads between renewed conflict or becoming an example in the Middle East of how two such cultures can live in peace.
The Cyprus Friendship Program, based on the successful model that helped build peace in Northern Ireland, brings over a Muslim and Christian teen to stay with an American host family for the month of July (or ½ month if paired with another host family). This bonding experience in a neutral environment almost always results in a strong friendship. Programming here and after their return to Cyprus turns them into peace builders who are trained in how to influence their peers. The teens are chosen for their maturity, leadership potential, and English speaking ability. You choose the gender and age (from 15 to 17). To learn more contact Tom McCarthy at 301-774-7069 or Thomas.McCarthy@RaymondJames.com.
This video is only 3 minutes long but gives a good overview of the program. It was made by the US State Department
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8rSmOKgY_4. This video is about 8 minutes, gives more info on some of their activities while here, and was made in part by the teens: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egcM0Fnj2YA.
61] – The Washington Peace Center has a progressive calendar & activist alert! Consider signing up to receive its weekly email: info@washingtonpeacecenter.org.
62] – Fund Our Communities campaign is a grass roots movement to get support from local organizations and communities to work together with their local and state elected officials to pressure Congresspersons and senators to join with Congresspersons Barney Frank and Ron Paul, who have endorsed a 25% cut to the federal military budget. Bring home the savings to state and county governments to meet the local needs which are under tremendous budget pressures. Go to www.OurFunds.org.
63] – The new Indypendent Reader is seeking articles for its web site at http://www.indyreader.org. Submit an article.
64] – If you would like to get rid of books, videos, DVDs or records, contact Max at 410-366-1637 or mobuszewski at verizon.net.
65] – Can you use a television set and/or a computer, monitor etc.? Contact Max at 410-366-1637 or mobuszewski at verizon.net.
66] – Join an extraordinary global campaign for the elimination of nuclear weapons: http://www.globalzero.org/sign-declaration. A growing group of leaders around the world is calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons and a majority of the global public agrees. This is an historic window of opportunity. With momentum already building in favor of Zero, a major show of support from people around the world could tip the balance. When it comes to nuclear weapons, one is one too many.
67] – WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER signs from Friends Committee on National Legislation are again for sale at $5. To purchase a sign, call Max at 410-366-1637.
68] – The Hunger Site was initiated by Mercy Corps and Second Harvest, and is funded entirely by advertisers. You can go there every day and click the big yellow "Give Food for Free" button near the top of the page; you do not have to look at the ads. Each click generates funding for about 1.1 cups of food. So consider clicking.
69] – Go online for FIRE AND FAITH: The Catonsville Nine File. On May 17, 1968, nine people entered the Selective Service Offices in Catonsville, Maryland, and burned draft records in protest against the war in Vietnam. View http://www.prattlibrary.org/digital/.
70] – Peace Park Antinuclear Vigil takes place every day in Lafayette Park, 1601 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, 24 hours a day, since June 3, 1981. Go to http://prop1.org; call 202-682-4282.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/.
"One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better" - Daniel Berrigan
52] Healthy Food Challenge -- July 5 - 13
53] First Thursday Antiwar protest – July 5
54] Nutrition Made Simple – July 5
55] Celebrate Bolivarian Independence – July 5
56] Student needs housing
57] Dog needs a home
58] Stop Smart Meter installation
59] Health care job
60] HELP MAKE PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST!
61] Sign up with Washington Peace Center
62] Join Fund Our Communities
63] Submit articles to Indypendent Reader
64] Donate books, videos, DVDs and records
65] Do you need a television and/or a computer?
66] Join Global Zero campaign
67] War Is Not the Answer signs for sale
68] Click on The Hunger Site
69] Fire & Faith
70] Join Peace Park Antinuclear Vigil
--------
51] – On Thurs., July 5 at 8 AM, the International Conference on Health in the African Diaspora will begin. On that day it will continue until 9 PM at the Baltimore Renaissance Harborplace Hotel, 202 E. Pratt St. The conference will close at 12:45 PM on Sun., July 8. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (http://www.jhsph.edu/) will host the first major international conference on the health of the descendants of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. ICHAD 2012 – will explore the health status of people of African descent living throughout the Western Hemisphere – from Canada to Argentina: approximately 160 million across the region. The multidisciplinaryconference will focus on more than a dozen countries, including Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Jamaica, Peru, United States, and Venezuela. Today, roughly 3 out of 4 blacks in the region live south of the U.S. border. Throughout the region, people of African descent tend to be poorer and sicker, receive less health care and a lower quality of care, and die younger than the general population. Afro-Brazilians are twice as likely to live in poverty compared to the general population. In Colombia, babies of African descent are twice as likely to die before their first birthday compared to the national average. The same pattern holds true for African-American babies in the United States. ICHAD 2012 keynote speakers include Sir George Alleyne, PAHO Emeritus, the Honorable Donna Christensen, U.S. House of Representatives (Virgin Islands), the Honorable Elijah E. Cummings, U.S. House of Representatives (Maryland), and Dr. Gail Christopher, Vice President, W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Register at http://www.ichad.com/.
52] – The Urbanite Project 2012: Healthy Food Challenge begins on Thurs., July 5 and continues through Fri., July 13--Tuesdays-Saturdays, 11 AM to 7 PM at the Creative Alliance at the Patterson, 3134 Eastern Ave. The exhibition is made up of submissions that represent individual and group responses, which address the problem of food deserts in Baltimore and how they can be eradicated. Call
410-276-1651 or go to http://www.creativealliance.org.
53] – The Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore will host an End the Wars vigil on Thurs., July 5 from 5 to 6:30 PM in Mount Vernon at Centre & Charles Sts. The Pledge gathers in Mount Vernon on the first Thursday of the month to protest U.S. wars. Call Max at 410-366-1637.
54] – A Nutrition Made Simple Workshop is put on by the Maryland Athletic Club and Wellness Center with the theme "Eating Healthy On-The-Go." The workshop will teach participants how to maintain healthy eating habits while traveling or when in a rush at home. It takes place on Thurs., July 5 at 7 PM at the Maryland Athletic Club, Harbor East, 655 President St. Call 410-625-5000 or go to http://www.macwellness.com. The cost is $10.
55] – La Sardina de Naiguatá Concert is happening on Thurs., July 5 at 7:30 PM at Bolivarian Hall, 2443 Massachusetts Ave. NW, WDC. On the occasion of the 201st Anniversary of the Independence of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Chargé d’Affaires, a.i. Dr. Ángelo Rivero Santos, requests the pleasure of your company at a concert by La Sardina de Naiguatá and the inauguration of the exhibit The Heroines of Our America. RSVP at cultura@venezuela-us.org.
56] – There is a student who will attend the Maryland Institute College of Art in the fall. She needs housing, and would like to live in a “good collective house and maybe do some cleaning/gardening/child-care/ work trade.” Ideally, she would like to pay $100 a month in rent, but will pay as high as $400 a month. Let Max know, 410-366-1637, if you have some possible housing solution. Please do ASAP.
57] – There is a sweet little pit bull mix that needs a home. She is staying on a temporary basis in a backyard. Let Max know if you might be able to provide a home for this homeless dog. Call 410-366-1637. He is very cute, brown and white, petite, and a very mellow disposition.
58] – Rebecca Hanna is a full time smart meter activist. She wanted to alert consumers about a recent order from the Maryland Public Service Commission. Go to www.MarylandSmartMeterAwareness.org or contact her at Rebeccadiener63@gmail.com or 410 922-6535. The PSC ruled that ratepayers can defer the installation of a smart meter until an official decision has been made. You would have to submit the request in writing.
This could be sent by certified mail to Baltimore Gas & Electric, POB 1475, Baltimore, MD 21203: NOTICE OF DEFERRAL OF INSTALLATION OF SMART METERS PER PSC’S ORDER NO. 84926 DATED MAY 24, 2012 -- I am hereby notifying Baltimore Gas & Electric Company and its agents (including but not limited to Grid One Solutions, Inc.) that you are NOT to install a Smart Meter anywhere on my property pursuant to Order No. 84926 issued by the Maryland Public Service Commission on May 24, 2012. Sincerely, name and address. The PEPCO address is 701 9th Street NW, Washington DC, 20068. It is suggested a copy is sent to Public Service Commission, Attn: David J. Collins, Executive Secretary, William Donald Schaefer Tower, 6 St. Paul Street, 16th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21202-6808.
59] – There is a job available starting in August--Health Care is a Human Right with the United Workers Association. The application deadline is July 2. Email hchrmaryland@gmail.com to get a copy of the job description.
60] – HELP MAKE PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST! Since a civil war in 1974 the island of Cyprus has been divided in two with a United Nations patrolled border. Turkish/Muslim Cypriots are in the north; Greek/Christian Cypriots are in the south. Animosities and prejudices run deep. Children throw rocks at each other across the border. Experts believe that Cyprus is at a crossroads between renewed conflict or becoming an example in the Middle East of how two such cultures can live in peace.
The Cyprus Friendship Program, based on the successful model that helped build peace in Northern Ireland, brings over a Muslim and Christian teen to stay with an American host family for the month of July (or ½ month if paired with another host family). This bonding experience in a neutral environment almost always results in a strong friendship. Programming here and after their return to Cyprus turns them into peace builders who are trained in how to influence their peers. The teens are chosen for their maturity, leadership potential, and English speaking ability. You choose the gender and age (from 15 to 17). To learn more contact Tom McCarthy at 301-774-7069 or Thomas.McCarthy@RaymondJames.com.
This video is only 3 minutes long but gives a good overview of the program. It was made by the US State Department
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8rSmOKgY_4. This video is about 8 minutes, gives more info on some of their activities while here, and was made in part by the teens: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egcM0Fnj2YA.
61] – The Washington Peace Center has a progressive calendar & activist alert! Consider signing up to receive its weekly email: info@washingtonpeacecenter.org.
62] – Fund Our Communities campaign is a grass roots movement to get support from local organizations and communities to work together with their local and state elected officials to pressure Congresspersons and senators to join with Congresspersons Barney Frank and Ron Paul, who have endorsed a 25% cut to the federal military budget. Bring home the savings to state and county governments to meet the local needs which are under tremendous budget pressures. Go to www.OurFunds.org.
63] – The new Indypendent Reader is seeking articles for its web site at http://www.indyreader.org. Submit an article.
64] – If you would like to get rid of books, videos, DVDs or records, contact Max at 410-366-1637 or mobuszewski at verizon.net.
65] – Can you use a television set and/or a computer, monitor etc.? Contact Max at 410-366-1637 or mobuszewski at verizon.net.
66] – Join an extraordinary global campaign for the elimination of nuclear weapons: http://www.globalzero.org/sign-declaration. A growing group of leaders around the world is calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons and a majority of the global public agrees. This is an historic window of opportunity. With momentum already building in favor of Zero, a major show of support from people around the world could tip the balance. When it comes to nuclear weapons, one is one too many.
67] – WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER signs from Friends Committee on National Legislation are again for sale at $5. To purchase a sign, call Max at 410-366-1637.
68] – The Hunger Site was initiated by Mercy Corps and Second Harvest, and is funded entirely by advertisers. You can go there every day and click the big yellow "Give Food for Free" button near the top of the page; you do not have to look at the ads. Each click generates funding for about 1.1 cups of food. So consider clicking.
69] – Go online for FIRE AND FAITH: The Catonsville Nine File. On May 17, 1968, nine people entered the Selective Service Offices in Catonsville, Maryland, and burned draft records in protest against the war in Vietnam. View http://www.prattlibrary.org/digital/.
70] – Peace Park Antinuclear Vigil takes place every day in Lafayette Park, 1601 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, 24 hours a day, since June 3, 1981. Go to http://prop1.org; call 202-682-4282.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/.
"One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better" - Daniel Berrigan
Demonstrations across Chile fight profiteering in education.
Largest student protest of the year draws 150,000 to march
Thursday, 28 June 2012 22:54
Written by Kevin Kunitake
Demonstrations across Chile fight profiteering in education.
The Chilean student movement brings out an estimated 150,000 people in the name of education reform. Photo by Kevin Kunitake/The Santiago Times.
Rain slowed, but did not stop massive files of students, workers and protesters as they marched past the presidential palace to protest education costs and profiteering Thursday. The Confederation of Chilean Students (Confech), the university student organization that coordinated the protest, estimated the number of protesters at 150,000.
The Chilean student movement has been relatively quiet this year compared to when it emerged in 2011. Thursday’s protest may be an indicator that the dormancy was only temporary.
“The government is right to be worried because we are dealing with a minister who bows to business,” said Confech Spokesperson Gabriel Boric at the march’s closing ceremony. “We want to say that while this happens, we will not be quiet. We went from a military dictatorship to a market dictatorship.”
In Chile, the majority of education costs are borne by private citizens. Confech and other student organizations have called for the government to take a more active investment.
In addition to the movement’s broad call for education reforms, many protesters specifically spoke against profiteering in the educational system. At least seven universities are under investigation for taking money from the instruction and putting it into the pockets of its directors and executives.
This was the movement’s third major protest of the year, but first sanctioned route past La Moneda presidential palace. It was also the biggest of the three, according to the Confech estimate.
An overwhelming majority were students from both private and public universities and varying grade levels. Others included grandmothers, teachers and workers, all supporting the movement.
“I’m glad I’m here,” public high school student Marco Vargas told The Santiago Times. “I see some of my neighbors and friends from private school and thought I saw an old teacher here too. We’re all out here in the cold.”
The march went down Santiago’s main street, La Alameda, where protesters clashed with water cannons and tear gas, and passed Universidad de Chile where a banner of solidarity draped over its entrance.
Moving in front of La Moneda, protesters unfurled a huge Chilean flag that reiterated the movement’s message of free quality education. The march continued, eventually culminating outside Parque O’Higgins for a closing ceremony and concert.
“Today we have reason to be proud, it was a great march,” Boric said in his closing remarks. “Down with profit, up with fighting.”
After the closing ceremony, hooded black-clad anarchists called “encapuchados” started destroying streetlights, setting them on fire and throwing bottles and rocks at the police. But other than a few violent spurts, including the destruction of an unoccupied bus by the “encapuchados,” the march was lighthearted.
Protesters kept eyes on police, but danced alongside marching bands and watched in awe at performers walking alongside them. Vendors sold lemons, a makeshift remedy for tear gas, but also cookies and sandwiches. Overall, the violence did not overshadow the movement’s message, as it often has in past marches.
Still, police called the protest "the most violent of the year." According to police records, 250 protesters were detained and 20 officers were injured.*
Other cities in Chile, including Valparaiso and Concepción, held marches Thursday fighting for the same grounds.
By Kevin Kunitake (kunitake@santiagotimes.cl)
Copyright 2012 - The Santiago Times 2012
*Editor's note: this passage has been added as an update.
http://www.santiagotimes.cl/national/education/23994-largest-student-protest-of-the-year-draws-150000-to-march#.T-2g9wJKpe4.twitter
About the writer
Kevin Kunitake
Kevin is an undergraduate at American University in Washington, D.C., studying journalism and international studies. He is in Santiago on his semester abroad studying Spanish and Latin American politics.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Thursday, 28 June 2012 22:54
Written by Kevin Kunitake
Demonstrations across Chile fight profiteering in education.
The Chilean student movement brings out an estimated 150,000 people in the name of education reform. Photo by Kevin Kunitake/The Santiago Times.
Rain slowed, but did not stop massive files of students, workers and protesters as they marched past the presidential palace to protest education costs and profiteering Thursday. The Confederation of Chilean Students (Confech), the university student organization that coordinated the protest, estimated the number of protesters at 150,000.
The Chilean student movement has been relatively quiet this year compared to when it emerged in 2011. Thursday’s protest may be an indicator that the dormancy was only temporary.
“The government is right to be worried because we are dealing with a minister who bows to business,” said Confech Spokesperson Gabriel Boric at the march’s closing ceremony. “We want to say that while this happens, we will not be quiet. We went from a military dictatorship to a market dictatorship.”
In Chile, the majority of education costs are borne by private citizens. Confech and other student organizations have called for the government to take a more active investment.
In addition to the movement’s broad call for education reforms, many protesters specifically spoke against profiteering in the educational system. At least seven universities are under investigation for taking money from the instruction and putting it into the pockets of its directors and executives.
This was the movement’s third major protest of the year, but first sanctioned route past La Moneda presidential palace. It was also the biggest of the three, according to the Confech estimate.
An overwhelming majority were students from both private and public universities and varying grade levels. Others included grandmothers, teachers and workers, all supporting the movement.
“I’m glad I’m here,” public high school student Marco Vargas told The Santiago Times. “I see some of my neighbors and friends from private school and thought I saw an old teacher here too. We’re all out here in the cold.”
The march went down Santiago’s main street, La Alameda, where protesters clashed with water cannons and tear gas, and passed Universidad de Chile where a banner of solidarity draped over its entrance.
Moving in front of La Moneda, protesters unfurled a huge Chilean flag that reiterated the movement’s message of free quality education. The march continued, eventually culminating outside Parque O’Higgins for a closing ceremony and concert.
“Today we have reason to be proud, it was a great march,” Boric said in his closing remarks. “Down with profit, up with fighting.”
After the closing ceremony, hooded black-clad anarchists called “encapuchados” started destroying streetlights, setting them on fire and throwing bottles and rocks at the police. But other than a few violent spurts, including the destruction of an unoccupied bus by the “encapuchados,” the march was lighthearted.
Protesters kept eyes on police, but danced alongside marching bands and watched in awe at performers walking alongside them. Vendors sold lemons, a makeshift remedy for tear gas, but also cookies and sandwiches. Overall, the violence did not overshadow the movement’s message, as it often has in past marches.
Still, police called the protest "the most violent of the year." According to police records, 250 protesters were detained and 20 officers were injured.*
Other cities in Chile, including Valparaiso and Concepción, held marches Thursday fighting for the same grounds.
By Kevin Kunitake (kunitake@santiagotimes.cl)
Copyright 2012 - The Santiago Times 2012
*Editor's note: this passage has been added as an update.
http://www.santiagotimes.cl/national/education/23994-largest-student-protest-of-the-year-draws-150000-to-march#.T-2g9wJKpe4.twitter
About the writer
Kevin Kunitake
Kevin is an undergraduate at American University in Washington, D.C., studying journalism and international studies. He is in Santiago on his semester abroad studying Spanish and Latin American politics.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Military Global Hawk drone crashes in Maryland
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-maryland-drone-crash-20120611,0,1085352.story
latimes.com
Military Global Hawk drone crashes in Maryland
By Brian Bennett
2:59 PM PDT, June 11, 2012
WASHINGTON -- An unmanned Navy surveillance aircraft crashed into a marsh in southern Maryland on Monday without causing any injuries or apparent property damage on the ground, officials said.
Officials said that the Global Hawk, a high-altitude drone aircraft that normally carries sophisticated cameras and sensors, was on a test mission from the Naval Air Station Patuxent River, about 65 miles southeast of Washington, when the ground pilot lost control of the plane.
After Navy personnel lost contact with the drone, a Navy F/A-18 fighter jet pilot flew over the area and spotted the smoking airframe on the edge of the Nanticoke River, which flows into the Chesapeake Bay. Navy officials are investigating the cause of the crash.
FULL COVERAGE: Drones
The Coast Guard set up a 500-yard safety zone around the crash site and will seek to contain any fuel leaks, according to a spokesman.
The Navy is testing Northrop Grumman RQ-4A Global Hawk drones in eastern Maryland for maritime intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions. The Navy wants to use drones to help find enemy boats as well as potential threats on shore, according to a statement released by Naval Air Systems Command.
The Navy, Army and Air Force all use specially designated airspace around the U.S. to test drones and train new pilots. It is unclear if the drone that crashed was in specially designated airspace for the naval air station or if it had strayed into civilian airspace.
In 2006, a Predator B drone flown by U.S. Customs and Border Protection crashed 1,000 yards from a home near Nogales, Ariz. An investigation later determined that the pilot had made an error.
Operated by a ground-based crew of four, a Global Hawk drone has a range of 10,500 nautical miles, flies 11 miles above the ground, and can stay aloft for 30 hours, according to the Navy. Each aircraft costs $176 million.
ALSO:
Blackhawk helicopters called in to Colorado wildfire
Could the end be near for Occupy Wall Street movement?
Supreme Court turns down appeal from Guantanamo Bay detainees
brian.bennett@latimes.com
Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
latimes.com
Military Global Hawk drone crashes in Maryland
By Brian Bennett
2:59 PM PDT, June 11, 2012
WASHINGTON -- An unmanned Navy surveillance aircraft crashed into a marsh in southern Maryland on Monday without causing any injuries or apparent property damage on the ground, officials said.
Officials said that the Global Hawk, a high-altitude drone aircraft that normally carries sophisticated cameras and sensors, was on a test mission from the Naval Air Station Patuxent River, about 65 miles southeast of Washington, when the ground pilot lost control of the plane.
After Navy personnel lost contact with the drone, a Navy F/A-18 fighter jet pilot flew over the area and spotted the smoking airframe on the edge of the Nanticoke River, which flows into the Chesapeake Bay. Navy officials are investigating the cause of the crash.
FULL COVERAGE: Drones
The Coast Guard set up a 500-yard safety zone around the crash site and will seek to contain any fuel leaks, according to a spokesman.
The Navy is testing Northrop Grumman RQ-4A Global Hawk drones in eastern Maryland for maritime intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions. The Navy wants to use drones to help find enemy boats as well as potential threats on shore, according to a statement released by Naval Air Systems Command.
The Navy, Army and Air Force all use specially designated airspace around the U.S. to test drones and train new pilots. It is unclear if the drone that crashed was in specially designated airspace for the naval air station or if it had strayed into civilian airspace.
In 2006, a Predator B drone flown by U.S. Customs and Border Protection crashed 1,000 yards from a home near Nogales, Ariz. An investigation later determined that the pilot had made an error.
Operated by a ground-based crew of four, a Global Hawk drone has a range of 10,500 nautical miles, flies 11 miles above the ground, and can stay aloft for 30 hours, according to the Navy. Each aircraft costs $176 million.
ALSO:
Blackhawk helicopters called in to Colorado wildfire
Could the end be near for Occupy Wall Street movement?
Supreme Court turns down appeal from Guantanamo Bay detainees
brian.bennett@latimes.com
Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
First Thursday Protest/For Pacific Islanders, Hopes and Troubles in Arkansas
The Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore will host an End the Wars vigil on Thurs., July 5 from 5 to 6:30 PM in Mount Vernon at Centre & Charles Sts. The Pledge gathers in Mount Vernon on the first Thursday of the month to protest U.S. wars. Call Max at 410-366-1637. The article below illustrates why we must protest these maddening wars.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/us/for-marshall-islanders-hopes-and-troubles-in-arkansas.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120705
July 4, 2012
For Pacific Islanders, Hopes and Troubles in Arkansas
By BRET SCHULTE
SPRINGDALE, Ark. — Melisa Laelan is a royal princess far from her Pacific Island home, presiding instead over a landlocked realm of grain silos and poultry processors.
Her subjects here are 4,300 Marshall Islanders — the largest enclave in the continental United States — and many of them are adrift in a culture that confounds them.
“I feel obligated to protect my people,” said Ms. Laelan, 34, who spoke of her exalted heritage with reluctance. In the islands, she said, “it’s a very common thing to expect that someone from a royal family will provide for you.”
Her uncle is a tribal king who owns much of the land in Majuro, the capital. But Ms. Laelan herself has no riches to share. Her only power is a meager one: persuasion. A single mother, she provides for her 7-year-old son, Zion, with money she earns as a court translator. They live in a small apartment next to a discount muffler shop.
She enlisted in the United States Army after she graduated from her Marshallese high school. In 2005, she entered the civilian world and, like thousands of Marshallese before her, came to Arkansas.
Almost all of them live in this working-class town in the northwest corner of the state, where Tyson Foods has its headquarters. They arrived here hoping to escape poverty and poor health: their nation ranks third in tuberculosis deaths per capita. Diabetes is rampant. Leprosy still lurks.
The promise of a steady income is a big draw. Tyson’s minimum starting wage is $8.70 an hour, with benefits, a relative fortune for Marshallese. But the islanders discover that they will need to buy a car to get to work and, before that, that they will need to pass a driver’s test, which is not offered in their language. Many must pay rent for the first time. They puzzle over the American obsession with time, and they are ignorant of bureaucracy and health care systems.
“Their language is a problem; their culture is a problem,” said Kathy Grisham, executive director of the Community Clinic in Springdale, which treats low-income patients. “They don’t have a word for prevention. They don’t have words for all the body parts.”
Springdale, which is heavily Hispanic, is well equipped with teachers of English as a second language and with special programs, but “I’m having to start at a different level with my Marshallese,” said Deborah Hardwick-Smith, the principal of Parson Hills Elementary School, which is 30 percent Marshallese. School administrators struggle with tardiness and absences among the Marshallese.
Ms. Hardwick-Smith started giving alarm clocks to parents as presents. Last semester, she created a program to educate parents about American life and expectations for students. Now, “I’m seeing higher scores with my kids,” she said.
That is good news, because the number of Marshallese is likely to grow. The islands and the United States have been intertwined since World War II. The United States has detonated at least 67 nuclear bombs in its 750,000-square-mile territory. The radioactive fallout rendered some islands uninhabitable. And United States military operations there are powered by American processed food, beloved by locals but blamed for the explosion in diabetes.
A 1986 compact gave the United States continued military access, while the Marshallese got the right to work and live in the United States indefinitely without visas. More than a third of the Marshallese — about 20,000 — have seized the opportunity. Marshallese politicians routinely fly the 6,000 miles to campaign here, and in 2008 the Marshall Islands opened a consulate on Spring Street, above a barbershop.
The Marshallese trace their roots in Springdale to one person, John Moody, who arrived in the 1980s to work in a Tyson plant. He sent back word of plentiful jobs. Word spread through the islanders’ family-centered culture. “This place got a population” because “everybody is related,” said Jacob Masha, 34, who left Majuro in 1990 and is a distant cousin to Mr. Moody.
The increasing numbers add urgency to Ms. Laelan’s cause. Health care is a top concern. Her mother, who was uninsured, died in Arkansas the same day that she learned that she had a brain tumor. “To this day, we are still losing people because of a lack of services,” Ms. Laelan said.
Still, a clinic that caters to the Marshallese opened in November. Ms. Laelan enlisted some friends to form an advocacy group, the Arkansas Coalition of Marshallese. She has also teamed up with a Marshallese congregation of Seventh-day Adventists to plant community gardens. A nutritious weekly supper is held at the pastor’s home.
At a supper in June, about 40 people — many of the women in traditional flower print dresses — crammed into a small duplex. Kevin Harkey, a member of Ms. Laelan’s coalition, was disappointed by the turnout. “We usually have more than this,” he said. But he was pleased with the punctuality. “We’re trying to get people to practice being on time.”
The dinner was part worship service and part gospel of good eating. There was vegetable soup, but a bowl of doughnut holes, too. Mr. Harkey stopped a teenager from drinking a soda. “He knows that can lead to diabetes,” he said. The teenager put the can down and grabbed a doughnut hole.
A few days later, Ms. Laelan was out working on another cause: persuading state officials to offer a Marshallese-language driver’s test. Few can pass the English test, but many must drive to work or to the doctor’s office. As a court translator, she sees Marshallese incur fines and jail time. Some lose their jobs.
Ms. Laelan and lawyers from Legal Aid of Arkansas have petitioned the State Police, which administers the test, and are considering filing complaints with the federal Transportation Department. “We tried asking nicely, and that didn’t work,” Casey Bryant, a Legal Aid lawyer, said. “The lack of language access can be seen as a violation of the Civil Rights Act.”
The Marshallese around the table in the Legal Aid office were silent and seemed worried about the idea of taking on the United States government.
The princess made a plea to her people. “Please hang in there,” she said. “If we don’t do it, who is going to?”
© 2011 The New York Times Company
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/us/for-marshall-islanders-hopes-and-troubles-in-arkansas.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120705
July 4, 2012
For Pacific Islanders, Hopes and Troubles in Arkansas
By BRET SCHULTE
SPRINGDALE, Ark. — Melisa Laelan is a royal princess far from her Pacific Island home, presiding instead over a landlocked realm of grain silos and poultry processors.
Her subjects here are 4,300 Marshall Islanders — the largest enclave in the continental United States — and many of them are adrift in a culture that confounds them.
“I feel obligated to protect my people,” said Ms. Laelan, 34, who spoke of her exalted heritage with reluctance. In the islands, she said, “it’s a very common thing to expect that someone from a royal family will provide for you.”
Her uncle is a tribal king who owns much of the land in Majuro, the capital. But Ms. Laelan herself has no riches to share. Her only power is a meager one: persuasion. A single mother, she provides for her 7-year-old son, Zion, with money she earns as a court translator. They live in a small apartment next to a discount muffler shop.
She enlisted in the United States Army after she graduated from her Marshallese high school. In 2005, she entered the civilian world and, like thousands of Marshallese before her, came to Arkansas.
Almost all of them live in this working-class town in the northwest corner of the state, where Tyson Foods has its headquarters. They arrived here hoping to escape poverty and poor health: their nation ranks third in tuberculosis deaths per capita. Diabetes is rampant. Leprosy still lurks.
The promise of a steady income is a big draw. Tyson’s minimum starting wage is $8.70 an hour, with benefits, a relative fortune for Marshallese. But the islanders discover that they will need to buy a car to get to work and, before that, that they will need to pass a driver’s test, which is not offered in their language. Many must pay rent for the first time. They puzzle over the American obsession with time, and they are ignorant of bureaucracy and health care systems.
“Their language is a problem; their culture is a problem,” said Kathy Grisham, executive director of the Community Clinic in Springdale, which treats low-income patients. “They don’t have a word for prevention. They don’t have words for all the body parts.”
Springdale, which is heavily Hispanic, is well equipped with teachers of English as a second language and with special programs, but “I’m having to start at a different level with my Marshallese,” said Deborah Hardwick-Smith, the principal of Parson Hills Elementary School, which is 30 percent Marshallese. School administrators struggle with tardiness and absences among the Marshallese.
Ms. Hardwick-Smith started giving alarm clocks to parents as presents. Last semester, she created a program to educate parents about American life and expectations for students. Now, “I’m seeing higher scores with my kids,” she said.
That is good news, because the number of Marshallese is likely to grow. The islands and the United States have been intertwined since World War II. The United States has detonated at least 67 nuclear bombs in its 750,000-square-mile territory. The radioactive fallout rendered some islands uninhabitable. And United States military operations there are powered by American processed food, beloved by locals but blamed for the explosion in diabetes.
A 1986 compact gave the United States continued military access, while the Marshallese got the right to work and live in the United States indefinitely without visas. More than a third of the Marshallese — about 20,000 — have seized the opportunity. Marshallese politicians routinely fly the 6,000 miles to campaign here, and in 2008 the Marshall Islands opened a consulate on Spring Street, above a barbershop.
The Marshallese trace their roots in Springdale to one person, John Moody, who arrived in the 1980s to work in a Tyson plant. He sent back word of plentiful jobs. Word spread through the islanders’ family-centered culture. “This place got a population” because “everybody is related,” said Jacob Masha, 34, who left Majuro in 1990 and is a distant cousin to Mr. Moody.
The increasing numbers add urgency to Ms. Laelan’s cause. Health care is a top concern. Her mother, who was uninsured, died in Arkansas the same day that she learned that she had a brain tumor. “To this day, we are still losing people because of a lack of services,” Ms. Laelan said.
Still, a clinic that caters to the Marshallese opened in November. Ms. Laelan enlisted some friends to form an advocacy group, the Arkansas Coalition of Marshallese. She has also teamed up with a Marshallese congregation of Seventh-day Adventists to plant community gardens. A nutritious weekly supper is held at the pastor’s home.
At a supper in June, about 40 people — many of the women in traditional flower print dresses — crammed into a small duplex. Kevin Harkey, a member of Ms. Laelan’s coalition, was disappointed by the turnout. “We usually have more than this,” he said. But he was pleased with the punctuality. “We’re trying to get people to practice being on time.”
The dinner was part worship service and part gospel of good eating. There was vegetable soup, but a bowl of doughnut holes, too. Mr. Harkey stopped a teenager from drinking a soda. “He knows that can lead to diabetes,” he said. The teenager put the can down and grabbed a doughnut hole.
A few days later, Ms. Laelan was out working on another cause: persuading state officials to offer a Marshallese-language driver’s test. Few can pass the English test, but many must drive to work or to the doctor’s office. As a court translator, she sees Marshallese incur fines and jail time. Some lose their jobs.
Ms. Laelan and lawyers from Legal Aid of Arkansas have petitioned the State Police, which administers the test, and are considering filing complaints with the federal Transportation Department. “We tried asking nicely, and that didn’t work,” Casey Bryant, a Legal Aid lawyer, said. “The lack of language access can be seen as a violation of the Civil Rights Act.”
The Marshallese around the table in the Legal Aid office were silent and seemed worried about the idea of taking on the United States government.
The princess made a plea to her people. “Please hang in there,” she said. “If we don’t do it, who is going to?”
© 2011 The New York Times Company
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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