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Understanding Malaysian politics can be a struggle for European observers.

How is it possible, that a country on the edge of becoming a first world nation, still deals with racial issues? The racial issue states an anachronism for many Europeans, a paradox of progress. Why is it so difficult for the west to understand the nation building process of Malaysia and its political setting?

There is a German quote, saying that ignorant people see the world through ‘pink colored sunglasses’, meaning they just see what they want to see and have no sense of empathy. This is what actually happens if one is referring to Malaysia and its political setting. Calling it racist, without taking any effort to highlight the historical and cultural backgrounds and the feelings of people involved.

Let us replace the sunglasses with spectacles and start with some simple analyzing of basic terms. Let’s take for instance a term often used in Malaysian politics,  the word ‘race’. Malaysians and Europeans associate the word with something different .

European chauvinism and racism

To understand the European problem with the term ‘race’ it is necessary to know the background of its usage and its transition of meaning in the past.

The actual word ‘race’ derives from the Spanish term ‘rraça’ which simply meant ‘from good or bad origin’ in the 15th century and referred to horses or aristocratic families. In the following decades this word was adopted by other languages and it was soon to be used to classify human collectives. At first the term was used to refer to a ‘Christian race’ in contrast to the Jews, Pagans and later Muslims. After the recapture of the Iberian peninsula by the Spaniards in 1492 the Andalusian Jews and Muslims were forced to adopt the Christian faith. In fact, most converts still practiced their previous faith secretly and were accused of doing so. Thus, beside the purity of faith, the purity of blood became an issue and soon the word ‘race’ referred to origin, which, in the case of Andalusia, was either Christian, Jewish or  Muslim.

The emergence of colonialism in the 15th and 16th century and the values of the Age of Enlightenment led to the development of the so-called ‘race theory’. The thinkers of the Enlightenment were convinced that there is a structured order in nature which led to the concept of ‘scala naturae’, an imagination of a natural hierarchy in which homo sapient is the most superior species and monkeys being the most superior animals. The black African was considered as the link between fauna and the species homo sapient. In this context many scholars of the Age of Enlightenment categorized the human species on behalf of their skin color, type of hair or character into races and concluded that one race is superior or inferior to another, thus making race a biological category.

In the 19th century Darwin’s theory of evolution accelerated this thinking in biological categories, leading to the concept of race-struggle. The heyday of race-struggle hysteria  peaked in National Socialist Germany between 1933-1945, causing an ideology of aggressive racism and an attempt to conquer Eastern Europe, to wipe out its Jewish population and to enslave the original Slavic population. The aim was the founding of the so called ‘thousand year old reich’ with German-Aryan supremacy in Europe. In the Reich itself laws to protect ‘German blood and German honor’ were implemented and inter-marriages and sexual encounters between different races were prohibited and persecuted brutally.

Paradigm shift after World War 2.

The experience of the holocaust and the encounters with the cruelty of colonial regimes caused a major paradigm shift in Europe and in a dogma of unquestionable premises.  The 60s student revolts in France, Germany, Japan and other western countries as well as the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King in the USA are a result of a new set of values which is emphasizing the individual and a humanistic worldview, finally causing a sensibility on issues concerning social problems, including racism and on how to deal with social outcasts like homosexuals, disabled people etc.

Scientific attempts were made to disprove the race theory. Geneticists found out that gene-codes among individuals of a group who share a similar appearance have broader varieties compared to individuals with a different appearance. Thus, the term ‘race’ as a biological categorization of humans is scientifically wrong. Therefore the term ‘ethnic group’ is more accurate when referring to a group of people with a similar appearance and similar cultural background.

Since the 1960s societies in Europe are in transition and have lost their homogeneous setting due to an influx of immigrants from other parts of the world. In many European countries campaigns are launched to tackle stereotype thinking and to reduce prejudices to maintain social peace and promote integration. Somehow it’s leading to a form of exaggerated political correctness. For example the term ‘negro’ is absolutely unacceptable in contemporary German media. Instead the term ‘maximum pigmented’ is used in official forms and ‘German with African root’ is the term used in the media. Even the word foreigner is considered as judging when referring to non-Germans. The official language refers to these individuals as ‘person with migration background’. This phenomenon is not unique to Germany; it is a phenomenon in entire Europe. This is where Europeans got their ‘pink colored sunglasses’ from. It has to be seen in the context of the emergence of a humanistic, individualistic worldview which became an ideological dogma.

‘Race’ in Malaysia

Let’s come back to Malaysia. Prior to the British colonial regime, racism or thinking in racial categories as a biological term was alien to Southeast Asia. In the Malay language a word for ‘race’ as a biological category is missing. The term ‘bangsa’ is used to refer to ethnic groups, nations or people, but is not equivalent to ‘race’.

It were the Europeans, especially the British, who imported the idea of human ‘races’. Just skim over Frank Swettenham’s script ‘the Real Malay’ and notice his judgment on the culture of the original Malay during the heyday of British colonialism and link it to their ‘divide and rule’ policy. The ideological foundation in the shaping of race-based economic functions and roles like Malay farmers (the noble savage), Chinese tin miners or businessmen and Indian estate workers has to be seen in the context of the European concept of inferior and superior races.

Even though a consciousness of otherness and a identification with economic roles among the societies on the Malayan Peninsula emerged, there was never an understanding of being inferior or superior compared to another ethnic group, either Malay, Chinese or Indian. Malay nationalism developed not in a chauvinist manner. It emerged because there was a feeling that Malay culture is facing extinction after the proposal of the Malayan Union. In fact, the proposal of the Malayan Union was the first encounter of Malays with Europeans wearing the ‘pink colored sunglasses’.

Conclusion

The Western difficulty in dealing with the Malaysian ‘race-issue’ is caused by a major misunderstanding which goes beyond the semantics of the actual term. There is some kind of Western chauvinism in the context of norms and values. The Western encounter with its historical failures implemented a chauvinist dogma which is shaping the worldview of many Western observers.

The Malaysian race issue is questioning the dogmatic premise of the (formal and legal) equality of races (or, as we know now, ethnic groups). This premise is seen as universal and therefore unquestionable. In Malaysia the legal equality of races is relativised by the premise of economic power. Chinese (from a Malay perspective immigrant) economic supremacy which emerged from the colonial divide and rule policy placed them in a powerful position and threatened the political power of the local Malay rulers (‘ketuanan melayu’). This fact is ignored by western observers due to their dogmatic premise of equality, or in other words, their ‘pink sunglasses’.

In favor of a broader understanding, not just in the Malaysian race-issue,the book of Plea For Empathy should be sent to Western critics and observers who always emphasize the premises of their ideological dogma which emerged in a different culture and history. One should leave his ‘pink colored sunglasses’ at home and honestly try to understand other cultures

by Nurman Nowak

Nurman Nowak was an intern with JUST from August until September 2010. Currently, he is pursuing his degree in Asia Studies in University of Bonn, Germany

The synods for the Middle East which lasted two weeks in the Vatican, have issued an important document which supports the Palestinian right to live free in Palestine. The document signed by more than 180 bishops from the catholic churches and other churches invalidated the Jewish argument that they are exclusively chosen by God. The argument of the so called chosen people has been invested by the Jewish Zionist invaders to legalize the occupation of Palestine and the uprooting of most of its native inhabitants.

Pope Benedict XVI addressed the synod by stressing that decent life is a right for all citizens to call for the consolidation of tolerance, and coexistence.

The document has cast out the zionist argument which uses the bible to authenticate its occupation. It makes it crystal clear that the bible cannot be used to inflict pain, occupation, or injustice on Palestinians.

The synod was held to debate the situation of the Arab Christians which has been diminishing particularly since the Zionist invasion in 1948 which destroyed thousands of years of established Palestinian Christian society, most of which was located in the major Palestinian cities such as Haifa, Akka, Jaffa, Nazareth, and Jerusalem.

The synod has accused Israel of hindering the movement of Palestinian Christians by the Zionist wall and by the hundreds of check points which humiliate Palestinians on a daily basis.

The synod called for the immediate establishment of the Palestinian state as a condition to end the cycle of violence, and for the return of Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes by Zionist troops in 1948.

The document of the synod urged the peoples of the region to work hard to find political compromises which enable the region to live in freedom, democracy, and mutual respect among faiths. This in turn will create in the end a culture of peace and tolerance that will benefit all. If this is implemented, it will bring about an end to the wars, and hopefully enable future generations to live together without fear, without occupation, and without horror.

The prime reason for the synod is concern at the massive decrease of Arab Christians from Palestine in the last 100 years. The widespread immigration of Arab Christians to countries such as Canada, North America, and Australia, has been due to these continuous wars and conflicts. This situation worsened considerably after the establishment of the Zionist state which launched 7 wars against the region. This laid the groundwork for a culture of violence, religious fanaticism and militarization. Al Jazeera TV mentions that in the past century Arab Christians formed about 20 percent of the population in the Arab orient. This figure has now dropped to around 5 percent. In Jerusalem for instance Palestinian Christians were 30,000 in the 1948 but now do not exceed 10,000.

Throughout history Arab Christians have played important roles in the political and intellectual life of the Arab orient. In modern history they contributed in the Arab renaissance movement of the 19th century which modernized the Arabic language and culture and contributed greatly in the secular pan Arab movement.

Palestinian Christians were in front of the forces which opposed the Zionist project which sought to destroy Palestine in favor of Polish and Russian Jews. One of them was Najeeb Nassar who devoted his pen and life to defend Palestine from falling in the hand of the Zionist invaders. He also toured Palestine from north to south warning Palestinians of the future dangers of the Zionist project. The synod also addressed the painful situation of the Iraqi Christians who became the victims of the violence which characterized Iraq after the American occupation of Iraq. There have been several episodes where narrow minded Islamists have confused Zionist Christians, who support the occupation of Iraq and Palestine, with the Iraqi native Christians who have themselves paid the price of the American occupation.

Palestinians eager to see an end to the occupation view the synod document as a step towards their salvation. The Palestinian president said that the uprooting of Palestinian Christians has a negative impact on the national identity of Palestine. He said too that the Pope himself saw during his visit to Palestine the Zionist wall which separates Bethlehem from Jerusalem which is the biggest insult against 2000 Christians and to the continuance of Palestinian Christendom.

Israel attacked the synod document on the basis that the synod was a platform for Palestinians to put forward their argument as if the occupied and the oppressed have no right to talk about the horror they are subjected to. The Israeli position goes in harmony with the Jewish fundamental government which issued a law forbidding Palestinians in the 1948 land to commemorate the Nakhba day when Zionists destroyed their country.

Israel must not have the illusion of Stalin who underestimated the power of the Vatican by asking once”how many divisions can the Vatican mobilize against Hitler”. The Vatican has no military troops but it has the moral strength which has its impact all over the world. And if Israel chooses not to listen to the voice of the Vatican which calls for a just peace. This then means that Israel has learnt nothing from the past which taught humanity that racist ideologies have no future.

By Salim Nazzal

26 October, 2010

Countercurrents.org

Dr Salim Nazzal is a Palestinian-Norwegian historian in the Middle East, who has written extensively on social and political issues in the region.

500 civil resisters from 17 Asian countries will join the caravan from India and march through 18 Asian cities of Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey to break the siege of Gaza through the sea route in December 2010

The  Asia to Gaza Solidarity Caravan  is being organised by the  Asian People’s Solidarity for Palestine , an alliance of peoples’ organisations, social movements, trade unions, and civil society institutions of Asia. This struggle is broad-based, varied and multi-dimensional. It is humanitarian and for peace, freedom and  human dignity . It is against occupation, imperialism, apartheid, Zionism  and all forms of discrimination including religious discrimination .  Simultaneous press conferences are being held in 5 countries today – India, Turkey, Iran, Indonesia and Lebanon – to announce the launch of the Asia to Gaza Caravan.  Similar press conferences will be held next week in Syria, Palestine, Malysia, Nepal and Bangladesh.

The Asian People’s Solidarity for Palestine extends solidarity to the courageous people of Palestine in their struggle, resistance, and intifada against the Zionist Israeli occupation and affirms its commitment to Palestinian Self-Determination; Ending the Occupation; Equal Rights for All within historic Palestine; the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees; and the Establishment of a Sovereign, Independent and Democratic state of Palestine with Jerusalem as the capital.

The Asian People’s Solidarity for Palestine commits to build the solidarity of Asian people for the freedom of Palestine, provide materials, resources, and volunteers to support the struggle of the people of Palestine and oppose our own governments’ decisions and actions that give economic, financial, military and diplomatic support to Israel and allow it to behave with impunity.

India Lifeline to Gaza , which is a constituent of the Asian People’s Solidarity for Palestine will have a conference and a large flag off programme in New Delhi on 2nd December 2010. The Caravan will carry relief material for the people of Gaza. The Asia to Gaza Caravan will cross into Pakistan via the Wagah border where members of the Pakistan Solidarity for Gaza will join the Caravan onwards to Iran. In every country and city that the caravan travels through, public meetings will be organised as more activists and participants join the caravan.  We also support  the United Palestinian call of July 2005 for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) to compel Israel to comply with international law; the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI); and all other initiatives to end the occupation of Palestine.

Peaceful Resistance

The civil resisters have resolved to resist the Israeli sea siege in a peaceful manner and following the example of civil resisters such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela as well as the long tradition of peaceful resistance from all ethical and religious traditions. The civil resisters are willing to be convicted for their peaceful resistance.

India  Lifeline to Gaza

This process has been initiated by Indian people’s movements, social movements, trade unions, civil society organisations and multi-faith and ecumenical organisations. In the two months prior to departure of the Asia to Gaza caravan there will be multi-city programmes in solidarity of the people of Gaza and Palestine. Film festivals of Palestinian films and films of resistance, music concerts, photo exhibits, and theatre productions are being organised by the supporters of the people of Gaza and Palestine.

Palestinian Film Festival: Celebrating Cultures of Resistance

A week-long film festival screening Palestinian films and documentaries is being planned across several cities of India in the last week of October (tentatively 23-30 October). Several other initiatives such as solidarity concerts, theatrical performances, photo exhibits, panel discussions and seminars will also be planned in the days leading up to the flag-off of the Caravan.

End the Siege of Gaza • Freedom to Palestine • Boycott Israel

Endorsed by:

Organisations

All India Students Association

Aman Bharat

Asha Parivar

Awami Bharat

Ayodhya Ki Awaaz

Bahujan Sewak Sangh

Banglar Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha

Bharat Bachao Andolan

Bharat Jan Vigyan Jatha

Campaign for Peace & Democracy (Manipur)

Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha (Mazdoor Karyakarta Committee)

CPI(ML)

CPI-ML (New Democracy)

Forum against Oppression of Women

Free Gaza – India

Global Gandhi Forum

Hard News

Indian Isladhi Movement

India Palestine People’s Solidarity Forum

Indian Fed of Trade Unions

Insaaniyat

Intercultural Resources

Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Hind

Jamat-e-Islami-Hind

Le Monde Diplomatique

Loknaad

Mahatma Phule-Dr Ambedkar Vichar Manch

Mazdoor Ekta Manch

Muslim Intellectual Forum

Muslim Political Council of India

National Association of Peoples Movements

National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers

New Socialist Initiative

New Trade Union Initiative

Palestine  Solidarity Movement

People’s Union for Civil Liberties

Phule-Ambedkar Vichar Manch

Programme against Custodial Torture and Impunity

Progressive Students Union

Republican Panther

Saheli Women’s Resource Centre

Sarva Seva Sangh

Solidarity Youth Movement

South Asia Peace Alliance

South Asian Network of Gender Activists and Trainers

Students Islamic Organisation of India

Trade Union Centre of India

Teesra Swadheenta Andolan

Vidyarthi Bharti

Yuva Koshish

All India Majlis-i-Mushawarrat

Individuals:

Achin Vanaik

Agdish Nagarkar

Ambarish Rai

Amol Madame

Amit Sengupta

Anand Grover

Anand Patwardhan

Anand Swaroop Verma

Anil Chaudhary

Arif Kapadia

Ashish Kothari

Asif Khan

Aslam Ghazi

Bajrang Sonawane

Brig. Sudhir Sawant

Chetna Birje

Dr Sunilam

Ghazala Azad

Gopal Rai

Ihtishaam Ansari

Jai Sen

Javed Naqvi

Kabir Arora

Kalyani Menon-Sen, New Delhi

Khalid Riaz

Medha Patkar

Mehmood Madni

Mukta Srivastava

Mukul Sinha

Mulniwasi Mala

Munawwar Azad

Munawwar Khan

Pandit Jugal Kishore Shastri

Qurratulain Sundus

Reshma  Jagtap

Ritu Menon

Rohini Hensman

Salman Usmani

Sandeep Pandey

Sanjay Shinde

Savyasaachi

Sayeed Khan

Sayeeda Hameed

Shabnam Hashmi

Shahid Siddiqui

Sheikh Muhammad Hussain

Shyam Sonar

Sudhir Dhawale

Sumi Saikia

Syed Iftikhar Ahed

Thomas Matthew

Tusha Mittal

Varsha V V

Vasanthi Raman

Vilas Gaikwad

Winnie Thomas

Yawar Ali Qazi

There is no question that the United States has a relationship with Israel that has no parallel in modern history. Washington gives Israel consistent, almost unconditional diplomatic backing and more foreign aid than any other country. In other words, Israel gets this aid even when it does things that the United States opposes, like building settlements. Furthermore, Israel is rarely criticized by American officials and certainly not by anyone who aspires to high office. Recall what happened last year to Charles Freeman, who was forced to withdraw as head of the National Intelligence Council because he had criticized certain Israeli policies and questioned the merits of the special relationship.

Steve Walt and I argue that there is no good strategic or moral rationale for this special relationship, and that it is largely due to the enormous influence of the Israel lobby. Critics of our claim maintain that the extremely tight bond between the two countries is the result of the fact that most Americans feel a special attachment to Israel. The American people, so the argument goes, are so deeply committed to supporting Israel generously and unreservedly that politicians of all persuasions have no choice but to support the special relationship.

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs has just released a major study of how the American public thinks about foreign policy. It is based on a survey of 2500 Americans, who were asked a wide variety of questions, some of which have bearing on Israel. Their answers make clear that most Americans are not deeply committed to Israel in any meaningful way. There is no love affair between the American people and Israel.

This is not to say that they are hostile to Israel, because they are not. But there is no evidence to support the claim that Americans feel a bond with Israel that is so strong that it leaves their leaders with little choice but to forge a special relationship with Israel. If anything the evidence indicates that if the American people had their way, the United States would treat Israel like a normal country, much the way it treats other democracies like Britain, Germany, India, and Japan.

Consider some of the study’s main findings:

“Contrary to the long-standing, official U.S. position, fewer than half of Americans show a readiness to defend Israel even against an unprovoked attack by a neighbor. Asked whether they would favor using U.S. troops in the event that Israel were attacked by a neighbor, only 47 percent say they would favor doing so, while 50 percent say they would oppose it …This question was also asked with a slightly different wording in surveys from 1990 to 2004 (if Arab forces invaded Israel). In none of these surveys was there majority support for an implicitly unilateral use of U.S. troops.”

Americans “also appear to be very wary of being dragged into a conflict prompted by an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. In this survey, conducted in June 2010, a clear majority of Americans (56%) say that if Israel were to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran were to retaliate against Israel, and the two were to go to war, the United States should not bring its military forces into the war on the side of Israel and against Iran”

“While Americans have strongly negative feelings toward the Palestinian Authority … a strong majority of Americans (66%) prefer to ‘not take either side’ in the conflict.”

“There is some tangible worry regarding the direction of relations with Israel. Although 44 per-cent say that relations with Israel are “staying about the same,” a very high 38 percent think relations are ‘worsening,’ and only 12 percent think they are ‘improving’.”

“Americans are not in favor of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, a major sticking point in the conflict, with 62 percent saying Israel ‘should not build’ these settlements.”

Finally, only 33 percent of those surveyed feel that Israel is “very important” to the United States, while 41 percent said it was “somewhat important.” It is also worth noting that on the list of countries that were said to be “very important” to the United States, Israel ranked fifth behind China, Great Britain, Canada, and Japan. Of course, all of those countries have a normal relationship with the United States, not a special relationship like the one Israel has with Washington.

The data in the Chicago Council’s study is consistent with the data that Steve and I presented in our book and in countless public talks. The story remains the same.

The bottom line is that the lobby is largely responsible for America’s special relationship with Israel, which is harmful to both countries. Alan Dershowitz was spot on when he said, “My generation of Jews … became part of what is perhaps the most effective lobbying and fund-raising effort in the history of democracy.”

September 19, 2010

Mondoweiss

by John Mearsheimer

Tea Party.org calls itself “a grassroots movement (for making Americans aware of) any issue that challenges the security, sovereignty, or domestic tranquility of our beloved nation, the United States of America. From our founding, the Tea Party is the voice of the true owners of the United States, WE THE PEOPLE.”

More below about these PEOPLE, and their deep-pocketed ability to manipulate minds effectively with considerable right wing media support.

Another web site headlines “Tea Party Patriots, Official Home of the American Tea Party Movement, A community committed to standing together, shoulder to shoulder, to protect our country and the Constitution upon which we were founded!”

Its mission statement aims at “excessive government spending and taxation,” stressing “three core values of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets,” largely veiled terms to mean whatever its backers endorse, including incorrectly connecting tea to America’s revolution.

Blaming taxation without representation and Britain’s 1773 Tea Act as the cause is a red herring. It granted the East India Company monopoly rights on colony tea imports at a lower than smuggled in price, but retained an unpopular tax. Determined to prevent cargo deliveries, Samuel Adams and others boarded three docked ships, dumping 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. In fact, it was symbolism only, nothing else, unrelated to revolutionary furor over control of the nation’s money.

In 1691, three years before the Bank of England’s creation, Massachusetts created its own paper money. Other colonies followed, called scrip, backed by the full faith and credit of each state, enabling inflation-free growth for 25 years without taxes – what could happen today if freed from banker-controlled money.

It worked then by using money to achieve growth, not issuing too much, and recycling it back to the states in the form of principal and interest on government-issued loans.

However, colony-based British merchants and financiers objected to Parliament. Enough so that in 1751, King George II banned new paper money issuance to force colonists to borrow it from UK bankers. In addition, the Bank of England got Parliament to pass a Currency Act, making it illegal for colonies henceforth to issue their own. As a result, prosperity became poverty because the money supply halved, leaving too little to pay for goods and services.

According to Benjamin Franklin:

“the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on the Parliament” got colonists angry enough to spark war. “The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters (if) England (hadn’t taken their money), which created unemployment and dissatisfaction.”

Tea Party adherents need a name change, instead of tea, a theme around controlling our own money, as mandated by the Constitution’s Article 1, Section 8, saying only “Congress shall have Power to coin Money, (and) regulate the Value thereof,” not bankers and complicit Fed officials they manipulate and control.

Origins

Promoted as grassroots activism, the party gained national recognition in media-hyped mid-2009 congressional town hall protests against Obamacare, banker and other bailouts, fiscal excess, and bogus claims about Obama’s socialist agenda.

Then last February, its Nashville, TN national convention increased its prominence, highlighting an agenda to shift America further to the right on the pretext of popular opposition to big government and fiscal irresponsibility. As a result, hardline extremists mostly attracted middle income Americans facing lost jobs, homes, and economic uncertainty at a time they should have shifted left, not right. Instead of blaming big government, a groundswell for addressing popular needs should be demanded.

It didn’t. Demagogues took advantage and aroused millions, aided by daily Fox News support and its lunatic fringe hosts. Among them, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and others rage against big government, hyping an extremist agenda, spreading fear, and growing ranks of adherents, largely mindless that their best interests are compromised, not helped.

Deep Pocket Tea Party Backers

Sourcewatch.org tracked its funders, quoting an August 30, 2010 Jane Mayer New Yorker article citing David and Charles Koch, billionaire owners of Koch Industries, a privately owned energy conglomerate with interests in manufacturing, ranching, finance, and numerous other ventures. In 2008, Forbes called it America’s second largest private company after Cargill with annual revenues approaching $100 billion. According to Mayer:

“The anti-government fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs. By giving money to ‘educate,’ fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement.”

Conservative economist/historian Bruce Bartlett said earlier libertarians were “all chiefs and no Indians.” As a result, they attracted few adherents. Tea Party furor changed things, letting “everyone suddenly see that for the first time there are Indians out there – people who can provide real ideological power,” and with right-wing media-hyped support, it resonates and grows. The Kochs took advantage, “shap(ing) and control(ling) and channel(ling) the populist uprising into their own policies.”

According to Sourcewatch, Party strength also comes “from millions of dollars from conservative foundations,” funded by “wealthy US families and their business interests.” Most prominent are Americans for Prosperity (AP) and FreedomWorks (FW – chaired by former Republican House majority leader Dick Armey), promoting the same hard right agenda as Koch, other backers, and Tea Party leaders.

In April 2009, ThinkProgress.org said AP and FW were the principal Tea Party organizers, describing them as “well-funded lobbyist-run think tanks,” providing the logistics and major efforts nationally. Media Matters said David Koch co-founded Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), FreedomWorks’ predecessor.

For its part, Koch Industries denies FW and Tea Party ties, saying only that it “value(s) free speech and believe(s) it is good to have more Americans engaged in key policy issues.” Koch admitted it funds AFP.

The Fox Effect

Media power means everything, the best efforts falling flat without it. Fox provides plenty, sustained from the outset by its extremist faithful, featuring “frequently aired segments imploring its audience to get involved with tea-party protests across the country,” according to Media Matters’ Karl Frisch.

Worse still, Fox hosts Glenn Beck, Neil Cavuto, Greta Van Susteren, Sean Hannity, and perhaps others participated live at various protests. Fox literally serves as the movement’s official mouthpiece, including at “FNC Tax Day Tea Parties,” promoting tax cuts for the rich, masquerading as universal benefits. Moreover, involved groups claim spontaneous activism for success, but according to The Atlantic’s Chris Good:

Its “organizational landscape (includes) three national-level conservative groups (running things), all with slightly different agendas.” They stress a “bottom-up affair and that its grassroots cred is real….Conservative bloggers, talk show hosts, and other media figures have attached themselves to the movement in peripheral capacities.”

Major publications also through coverage. For example, The New York Times called it “a diffuse American grass-roots group that taps into antigovernment sentiments,” saying it “burst onto the streets a year ago,” belying its top-down control.

Covering its corporate-controlled February national convention, the Washington Post said “millions of Americans (are) just like” attendees, suggesting spontaneity about a well planned and organized movement.

On October 10, Washington Post writers Jon Cohen and Dan Balz headlined, “Beyond the tea party: What Americans really think of government,” saying:

The 2010 election’s “overarching theme (is over) how big the government should be and how far it should reach into people’s lives….a nationwide report card (barely gives Washington) passing grades….Today, more than four in 10 people give the government a D or F.”

“I think the less the government governs us, the better we do,” suggested mass numbers feel like the “stay-at-home mother” quoted. She believes America is going “socialist,” when, in fact, it’s swung sharpley to the right, Obama going Bush one better, yet disguising it as populism, or a variant thereof. However, credit perceptions, economic hard times, public angst, its gullibility, big money support, and media hype for growing Tea Party success.

In a photo essay titled, “Signs of the Tea-Party Protests,” Time magazine highlighted it, showing mass, sign-waving, Tea Party Express gatherings, saying:

“Some of the demonstrators came on their own, but many were affiliated with or inspired by the Tea Party Express, a cross-country tour that stopped in more than 30 cities, organizing rallies in protest of ‘out-of-control spending, bailouts and the growth in the size and power of government.’ “

Unexplained was a deep-pocketed, well planned PR blitz, complete with mass media coverage, especially by Fox News. Also, other events, including Americans for Prosperity’s Hot Air Balloon Tour, its Patients First Bus Tour, and the American Energy Alliance’s American Energy Express, as well as nationwide momentum-building rallies ahead of the November election. Party backers hope key victories will solidify a powerful political force, run top-down by and for elitists, not deluded grassroots supporters, fooled again like so many previous times.

As a result, once again, expect November 2 voters to throw out the bums for new ones. The cycle keeps repeating, “the bewildered herd” mindless that they only have themselves to blame, getting the best democracy big money can buy.

By Stephen Lendman

21 October, 2010

Countercurrents.org

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

Leaders of the G20 will meet in Seoul on Nov. 11 and 12 to discuss a myriad of issues concerning global financial stability and economic recovery. In many ways, the G20 Seoul Summit is significant because 

By Kavaljit Singh

As prospects dim in Iraq, the pentagon digs in deeper around the Middle East

The construction projects are sprouting like mushrooms: walled complexes, high-strength weapons vaults, and underground bunkers with command and control capacities — and they’re being planned and funded by a military force intent on embedding itself ever more deeply in the Middle East.

If Iran were building these facilities, it would be front-page news and American hawks would be talking war, but that country’s Revolutionary Guards aren’t behind this building boom, nor are the Syrians, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, or some set of al-Qaeda affiliates. It’s the U.S. military that’s digging in, hardening, improving, and expanding its garrisons in and around the Persian Gulf at the very moment when it is officially in a draw-down phase in Iraq.

On August 31st, President Obama took to the airwaves to announce “the end of our combat mission in Iraq.” This may, however, prove yet another “mission accomplished” moment. After all, from the lack of a real Iraqi air force (other than the U.S. Air Force) to the fact that there are more American troops in that country today than were projected to be there in September 2003, many signs point in another direction.

In fact, within days of the president’s announcement it was reported that the U.S. military was pouring money into improving bases in Iraq and that advance elements of a combat-hardened armored cavalry regiment were being sent there in what was politely dubbed an “advise and assist” (rather than combat) role. On September 13th, the New York Times described the type of operations that U.S. forces were actually involved in:

“During two days of combat in Diyala Province, American troops were armed with mortars, machine guns, and sniper rifles. Apache and Kiowa helicopters attacked insurgents with cannon and machine-gun fire, and F-16’s dropped 500-pound bombs.”

According to the report, U.S. troops were within range of enemy hand grenades and one American soldier was wounded in the battle.

Adhering to an agreement inked during George W. Bush’s final year in office, the Obama administration has pledged to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. U.S. military commanders have, however, repeatedly spoken of the possibility of extending the U.S. military’s stay well into the future. Just recently, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates let the Iraqi government know that the U.S. was open to such a prospect. “We’re ready to have that discussion if and when they want to raise it with us,” he said. As the British Guardian’s Martin Chulov wrote last month, “[T]he U.S. is widely believed to be hoping to retain at least one military base in Iraq that it could use as a strategic asset in the region.”

Recent events, however, have cast U.S. basing plans into turmoil. Notably unnerving for the Obama administration was a deal reportedly brokered by Iran in which Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr — whose forces had repeatedly clashed with U.S. troops only a few short years ago — threw his support behind Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, currently vying for a second term in office. This was allegedly part of a regional agreement involving Syria and Lebanon’s Hezbollah that could leave the U.S. military out in the cold. A source informed the Guardian that “Maliki told [his new regional partners that] he will never extend, or renew [any bases] or give any facilities to the Americans or British after the end of next year.”

Even if the U.S. was forced to withdraw all its troops from Iraq, however, its military “footprint” in the Middle East would still be substantial enough to rankle opponents of an armed American presence in the region and be a drain on U.S. taxpayers who continue to fund America’s “empire of bases.” As has been true in recent years, the latest U.S. military documents indicate that base expansion and upgrades are the order of the day for America’s little-mentioned garrisons in the nations around Iraq.

One thing is, by now, clear: whatever transpires in Iraq, the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf and surrounding environs will be formidable well into the future.

Middle Eastern Mega-Bases

As the “last” U.S. combat troops withdrew from Iraq under the glare of TV lights in the dead of night and rolled toward Kuwait, there was plenty of commentary about where they had been, but almost none about where they were going.

In the Gulf War of 1991, the U.S. military helped push Saddam Hussein’s invading Iraqi army out of Kuwait only to find that the country’s leader, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah, refused to return home “until crystal chandeliers and gold-plated bathroom fixtures could be reinstalled in Kuwait City’s Bayan Palace.” Today, the U.S. military’s Camp Arifjan, which grew exponentially as the Iraq War ramped up, sits 30 miles south of the refurbished royal complex and houses about 15,000 U.S. troops. They have access to all the amenities of strip-mall America, including Pizza Hut, Pizza Inn, Taco Bell, Starbucks, Hardees, Subway, and Burger King. The military talks little about its presence at Arifjan, but Army contracting documents offer clues about its intentions there. A recent bid solicitation, for example, indicated that, in the near future, construction would begin there on additional high strength armory vaults to house “weapons and sensitive items.”

In addition to Camp Arifjan, U.S. military facilities in Kuwait include Camps Buehring and Virginia, Kuwait Naval Base, Ali Al Salem Air Base, and Udairi Range, a training facility near the Iraqi border. The U.S. military’s work is also supported by a Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) distribution center in Kuwait, located not on a U.S. base but in the Mina Abdulla industrial zone about 30 miles south of Kuwait City.

Unlike other DLA hubs, which supply U.S. garrisons around the world, the Kuwaiti facility is contractor owned and operated. Made up of a walled compound spanning 104 acres, the complex contains eight climate-controlled warehouses, each covering about four acres, one 250,000-square-foot covered area for cargo, and six uncovered plots of similar size for storage and processing needs.

Typical of base upgrades in Kuwait — some massive, some modest — now on the drawing boards, recent contracting documents reveal that the Army Corps of Engineers intends to upgrade equipment at Kuwait Naval Base for the maintenance and repair of ships. In fact, the Department of Defense has already issued more than $18 million in construction contracts for Kuwait in 2010.

The U.S. military also operates and utilizes bases and other facilities in the nearby Persian Gulf nations of Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman.

During the 1930s, the British Royal Air Force operated an airfield on Oman’s Masirah Island. Today, the U.S. Air Force and members of other service branches have settled in there, operating from the island as well as other facilities by special agreement with the sultanate. The Air Force is also supported in Oman by “War Reserve Materiel” storage and maintenance facilities, operated by defense contractor Dyncorp, in Seeb, Thumrait, and Salalah Port.

From 2001 to 2010, the U.S. military spent about $32 million on construction projects in Oman. In September, the Army upped the ante by awarding an $8.6 million contract to refurbish the Royal Air Force of Oman’s air field at Thumrait Air Base.

U.S. efforts in Bahrain are on a grander scale. This year, the U.S. Navy broke ground on a mega-construction project to develop 70 acres of waterfront at the port at Mina Salman. Scheduled for completion in 2015, the complex is slated to include new port facilities, barracks for troops, administrative buildings, a dining facility, and a recreation center, among other amenities, with a price tag of $580 million.

There are similar expenditures in neighboring Qatar. In 1996, lacking an air force of its own, Qatar still built Al Udeid Air Base at a cost of more than $1 billion with the goal of attracting the U.S. military. It succeeded. In September 2001, U.S. aircraft began to operate out of the facility. By 2002, the U.S. had tanks, armored vehicles, dozens of warehouses, communications and computing equipment, and thousands of troops at and around Al Udeid. In 2003, the U.S. moved its major regional combat air operations center out of Saudi Arabia and into neighboring Qatar where the government was ready to spend almost $400 million on that high-tech command complex.

From then on, Al Udeid Air Base has served as a major command and logistics hub for U.S. regional operations including its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Last year, the Pentagon awarded a $52 million contract to further upgrade its airfield capabilities, a $44 million deal to upgrade other facilities there, and a $6 million contract for expanded warehousing capacity. Nor does the building boom there show any signs of abating. A report by the Congressional Research Service issued earlier this year noted:

“The Obama administration requested $60 million in FY2010 military construction funds for further upgrades to U.S. military facilities in Qatar as part of an ongoing expansion and modernization program that has been underway since 2003 at a cost of over $200 million. The administration’s FY2011 military construction request for Qatar is $64.3 million.”

Jordan’s Bunker Mentality

The Pentagon has also invested heavily in Jordanian military infrastructure. One major beneficiary of these projects has been the international construction firm Archirodon which, between 2006-2008, worked on the construction of the King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Center (KASOTC). It is a state-of-the-art military and counterterrorism training facility owned and operated by the Jordanian government, but built in part under a $70 million U.S. Army Corps of Engineers contract.

In 2009, when that 1,235-acre $200 million Jordanian training center was unveiled, King Abdullah II gave the inaugural address, praising the facility as a world-class hub for special forces training. General David Petraeus, then-head of the U.S. Central Command overseeing the Greater Middle East, was also on hand to laud the facility as “a center of excellence not only for doctrinal development and refinement of TTPs [technology, tactics and procedures], but for strengthening the regional security network emerging in this area.”

Between 2001 and 2009, the Army awarded $89 million in contracts for Jordanian construction projects. This year, it inked deals for another $3.3 million (much of it for improvements to KASOTC). Recently, the Army also issued a call for bids for the construction of subterranean complexes at three locations in Jordan, the largest of them approximately 13,000 square feet. Each of these underground bunkers will reportedly boast a command-and-control operations center, offices, sleeping quarters, cafeterias, and storage facilities. The project is set to cost up to $25 million.

1,001 Arabian Contracts

According to a 2009 Congressional Research Service report, from 1950 to 2006 Saudi Arabia purchased almost $63 billion in weapons, military equipment, and related services through the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program. Just last month, the U.S. announced that it would conclude new arms deals with the Saudis which would equal that sum — not in another half century but in the next 15 to 20 years. Labeled a move to counter Iranian power in the region, the deal for advanced tactical fighter aircraft and state-of-the-art helicopters garnered headlines. What didn’t were the longstanding, ongoing U.S. military construction efforts in that country.

Between 1950 and 2006, Saudi Arabia experienced $17.1 billion in construction activity courtesy of the Pentagon. In the years since, according to government data, the Department of Defense has issued more than $400 million in construction contracts for the kingdom, including $33 million in 2010 for projects ranging from a dining hall ($6 million) to weapons storage warehouses and ammunition supply facilities (nearly $1 million).

Bases and “the Base”

In his 1996 “Declaration of War Against the Americans Who Occupy the Land of the Two Holy Mosques,” Osama bin Laden wrote:

“The presence of the USA Crusader military forces on land, sea and air of the states of the Islamic Gulf is the greatest danger threatening the largest oil reserve in the world. The existence of these forces in the area will provoke the people of the country and induces aggression on their religion, feelings, and prides and pushes them to take up armed struggle against the invaders occupying the land.”

Since then, the U.S. and bin Laden’s rag-tag guerrilla force, al Qaeda (“the Base”), have been locked in a struggle that has led to further massive U.S. base expansions in the greater Middle East and South Asia. At the height of its occupation, the U.S. had hundreds of bases throughout Iraq. Today, hundreds more have been built in Afghanistan where, in the 1980s, bin Laden and other jihadists, backed and financed by the CIA, the Saudis, and the Pakistanis, fought to expel the Soviet occupiers of that country.

As early as 2005, the U.S. military was floating the possibility of retaining some of its Afghan bases permanently. In Iraq, plans for similar permanent garrisons have recently been thrown into doubt by the very government the U.S. helped install in power. Whatever happens in either war zone, however, one thing is clear: the U.S. military will still be deeply dug into the Middle East.

While American infrastructure crumbles at home, new construction continues in oil-rich kingdoms, sultanates, and emirates there, courtesy of the Pentagon. It’s a building program guaranteed to further inflame anti-American sentiment in the region. History may not repeat itself, but ominously — just as in 1996 when bin Laden issued his declaration — most Americans have not the slightest idea what their military is doing with their tax dollars in the Persian Gulf and beyond, or what twenty-first century blowback might result from such activities.

By Nick Turse

Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at TomDispatch. His latest book, The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso Books), which brings together leading analysts from across the political spectrum, has just gone into its second printing. Turse is currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute. You can follow him on Twitter @NickTurse, on Tumblr, and on Facebook. His website is NickTurse.com.

By understanding that money is simply credit, we unleash it as a powerful tool for our communities

The reason our financial system has routinely gotten into trouble, with periodic waves of depression like the one we’re battling now, may be due to a flawed perception not just of the roles of banking and credit but of the nature of money itself. In our economic adolescence, we have regarded money as a “thing”—something independent of the relationship it facilitates. But today there is no gold or silver backing our money. Instead, it’s created by banks when they make loans (that includes Federal Reserve Notes or dollar bills, which are created by the Federal Reserve, a privately-owned banking corporation, and lent into the economy). Virtually all money today originates as credit, or debt, which is simply a legal agreement to pay in the future.

Money as Relationship

In an illuminating dissertation called “Toward a General Theory of Credit and Money” in The Review of Austrian Economics, Mostafa Moini, Professor of Economics at Oklahoma City University, argues that money has never actually been a “commodity” or “thing.” It has always been merely a “relation,” a legal agreement, a credit/debit arrangement, an acknowledgment of a debt owed and a promise to repay.

The concept of money-as-a-commodity can be traced back to the use of precious metal coins. Gold is widely claimed to be the oldest and most stable currency known, but this is not actually true. Money did not begin with gold coins and evolve into a sophisticated accounting system. It began as an accounting system and evolved into the use of precious metal coins. Money as a “unit of account” (a tally of sums paid and owed) predated money as a “store of value” (a commodity or thing) by two millennia; the Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations using these accounting-entry payment systems lasted not just hundreds of years (as with some civilizations using gold) but thousands of years. Their bank-like ancient payment systems were public systems—operated by the government the way that courts, libraries, and post offices are operated as public services today.

In the payment system of ancient Sumeria, goods were given a value in terms of weight and were measured in these units against each other. The unit of weight was the “shekel,” something that was not originally a coin but a standardized measure. She was the word for barley, suggesting the original unit of measure was a weight of grain. This was valued against other commodities by weight: So many shekels of wheat equaled so many cows equaled so many shekels of silver, etc. Prices of major commodities were fixed by the government; Hammurabi, Babylonian king and lawmaker, has detailed tables of these. Interest was also fixed and invariable, making economic life very predictable.

Grain was stored in granaries, which served as a form of “bank.” But grain was perishable, so silver eventually became the standard tally representing sums owed. A farmer could go to market and exchange his perishable goods for a weight of silver, and come back at his leisure to redeem this market credit in other goods as needed. But it was still simply a tally of a debt owed and a right to make good on it later. Eventually, silver tallies became wooden tallies became paper tallies became electronic tallies.

The Credit Revolution

The problem with gold coins was that they could not expand to meet the needs of trade. The revolutionary advance of medieval bankers was that they succeeded in creating a flexible money supply, one that could keep pace with a vigorously expanding mercantile trade. They did this through the use of credit, something they created by allowing overdrafts in the accounts of their depositors. Under what came to be called “fractional reserve” banking, the bankers would issue paper receipts called banknotes for more gold than they actually had. Their shipping clients would sail away with their wares and return with silver or gold, settling accounts and allowing the bankers’ books to balance. The credit thus created was in high demand in the rapidly expanding economy; but because it was based on the presumption that money was a “thing” (gold), the bankers had to engage in a shell game that periodically got them into trouble. They were gambling that their customers would not all come for their gold at the same time; but when they miscalculated, or when people got suspicious for some reason, there would be a run on the banks, the financial system would collapse, and the economy would sink into depression.

Today, paper money is no longer redeemable in gold, but money is still perceived as a “thing” that has to “be there” before credit can be advanced. Banks still engage in money creation by advancing bank credit, which becomes a deposit in the borrower’s account, which becomes checkbook money. In order for their outgoing checks to clear, however, the banks have to borrow from a pool of money deposited by their customers. If they don’t have enough deposits, they have to borrow from the money market or other banks.

As British author Ann Pettifor observes: “the banking system… has failed in its primary purpose: to act as a machine for lending into the real economy. Instead the banking system has been turned on its head, and become a borrowing machine.”

The banks suck up cheap money and return it as more expensive money, if they return it at all. The banks control the money spigots and can deny credit to small players, who wind up defaulting on their loans, allowing the big players with access to cheap credit to buy up the underlying assets very cheaply.

That’s one systemic flaw in the current scheme. Another is that the borrowed money backing the bank’s loans usually comes from shorter-term loans. Like Jimmy Stewart’s beleaguered savings and loan in It’s a Wonderful Life, the banks are “borrowing short to lend long,” and if the money market suddenly dries up, the banks will be in trouble. That is what happened in September 2008: According to Rep. Paul Kanjorski, speaking on C-Span in February 2009, there was a $550 billion run on the money markets.

Securitization: “Monetizing” Loans Not with Gold But with Homes

The money markets are part of the “shadow banking system,” where large institutional investors park their funds. The shadow banking system allows banks to get around the capital and reserve requirements now imposed on depository institutions by moving loans off their books.

Large institutional investors use the shadow banking system because the conventional banking system guarantees deposits only up to $250,000, and large institutional investors have much more than that to move around on a daily basis. The money market is very liquid, and what protects it in place of FDIC insurance is that it is “securitized,” or backed by securities of some sort. Often, the collateral consists of mortgage-backed securities (MBS), the securitized units into which American real estate has been sliced and packaged, sausage-fashion.

Like with the gold that was lent many times over in the 17th century, the same home may be pledged as “security” for several different investor groups at the same time. This is all done behind an electronic curtain called MERS (an acronym for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.), which has allowed houses to be shuffled around among multiple, rapidly changing owners while circumventing local recording laws.

As in the 17th century, however, the scheme has run into trouble when more than one investor group has tried to foreclose at the same time. And the securitization model has now crashed against the hard rock of hundreds of years of state real estate law, which has certain requirements that the banks have not met—and cannot meet, if they are to comply with the tax laws for mortgage-backed securities. (For more on this, see here.)

The bankers have engaged in what amounts to a massive fraud, not necessarily because they started out with criminal intent (although that cannot be ruled out), but because they have been required to in order to come up with the commodities (in this case real estate) to back their loans. It is the way our system is set up: The banks are not really creating credit and advancing it to us, counting on our future productivity to pay it off, the way they once did under the deceptive but functional façade of fractional reserve lending. Instead, they are vacuuming up our money and lending it back to us at higher rates. In the shadow banking system, they are sucking up our real estate and lending it back to our pension funds and mutual funds at compound interest. The result is a mathematically impossible pyramid scheme, which is inherently prone to systemic failure.

The Public Credit Solution

The flaws in the current scheme are now being exposed in the major media, and it may well be coming down. The question then is what to replace it with. What is the next logical phase in our economic evolution?

Credit needs to come first. We as a community can create our own credit, without having to engage in the sort of impossible pyramid scheme in which we’re always borrowing from Peter to pay Paul at compound interest. We can avoid the pitfalls of privately-issued credit with a public credit system, a system banking on the future productivity of its members, guaranteed not by “things” shuffled around furtively in a shell game vulnerable to exposure, but by the community itself.

The simplest public credit model is the electronic community currency system. Consider, for example, one called “Friendly Favors.” The participating Internet community does not have to begin with a fund of capital or reserves, as is now required of private banking institutions. Nor do members borrow from a pool of pre-existing money on which they pay interest to the pool’s owners. They create their own credit, simply by debiting their own accounts and crediting someone else’s. If Jane bakes cookies for Sue, Sue credits Jane’s account with 5 “favors” and debits her own with 5. They have “created” money in the same way that banks do, but the result is not inflationary. Jane’s plus-5 is balanced against Sue’s minus-5, and when Sue pays her debt by doing something for someone else, it all nets out. It is a zero-sum game.

Community currency systems can be very functional on a small scale, but because they do not trade in the national currency, they tend to be too limited for large-scale businesses and projects. If they were to grow substantially larger, they could run up against the sort of exchange rate problems afflicting small countries. They are basically barter systems, not really designed for advancing credit on a major scale.

The functional equivalent of a community currency system can be achieved using the national currency, by forming a publicly owned bank. By turning banking into a public utility operated for the benefit of the community, the virtues of the expandable credit system of the medieval bankers can be retained, while avoiding the parasitic exploitation to which private banking schemes are prone. Profits generated by the community can be returned to the community.

A public bank that generates credit in the national currency could be established by a community or group of any size, but as long as we have capital and reserve requirements and other stringent banking laws, a state is the most feasible option. It can easily meet those requirements without jeopardizing the solvency of its collective owners.

For capital, a state bank could use some of the money stashed in a variety of public funds. This money need not be spent. It can just be shifted from the Wall Street investments where it is parked now into the state’s own bank. There is precedent establishing that a state-owned bank can be both a very sound and a very lucrative investment. The Bank of North Dakota, currently the nation’s only state-owned bank, is rated AA and recently returned a 26 percent profit to the state. A decentralized movement has been growing in the United States to explore and implement this option. [For more information, see public-banking.com.]

We have emerged from the financial crisis with new clarity: Money today is simply credit. When the credit is advanced by a bank, when the bank is owned by the community, and when the profits return to the community, the result can be a functional, efficient, and sustainable system of finance.

Ellen Brown wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Ellen is an attorney and the author of eleven books, including Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free. Her websites are webofdebt.com, ellenbrown.com, and public-banking.com.

29 October, 2010

Countercurrents.org

By Ellen Brown

To understand just how bad the 112th Congress, elected on November 2nd and taking office on January 3rd, is likely to be for peace on Earth, one has to understand how incredibly awful the 110th and 111th Congresses have been during the past four years and then measure the ways in which things are likely to become even worse.

Oddly enough, doing so brings some surprising silver linings into view.

The House and Senate have had Democratic majorities for the past four years. In January, the House will be run by Republicans, while the Democratic majority in the Senate will shrink. We still tend to call the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “Bush’s wars.” Republicans are often the most outspoken supporters of these wars, while many Democrats label themselves “critics” and “opponents.”

Such wars, however, can’t happen without funding, and the past four years of funding alone amount to a longer period of war-making than U.S. participation in either of the world wars. We tend to think of those past four years as a winding down of “Bush’s wars,” even though in that period Congress actually appropriated funding to escalate the war in Iraq and then the war in Afghanistan, before the U.S. troop presence in Iraq was reduced.

But here’s the curious thing: while the Democrats suffered a net loss of more than 60 seats in the House in the midterm elections just past, only three of the defeated Democrats had voted against funding an escalation in Afghanistan this past July 27th. Three other anti-war Democrats (by which I mean those who have actually voted against war funding) retired this year, as did two anti-war Republicans. Another anti-war Democrat, Carolyn Kilpatrick of Michigan, lost in a primary to Congressman-elect Hansen Clarke, who is also likely to vote against war funding. And one more anti-war Democrat, Dan Maffei from western New York, is in a race that still hasn’t been decided. But among the 102 Democrats and 12 Republicans who voted “no” to funding the Afghan War escalation in July, at least 104 will be back in the 112th Congress.

That July vote proved a high point in several years of efforts by the peace movement, efforts not always on the media’s radar, to persuade members of Congress to stop funding our wars. Still a long way off from the 218-vote majority needed to succeed, there’s no reason to believe that anti-war congress members won’t see their numbers continue to climb above 114 — especially with popular support for the Afghan War sinking fast — if a bill to fund primarily war is brought to a vote in 2011.

Which President Will Obama Be in 2012?

The July funding vote also marked a transition to the coming Republican House in that more Republicans (160) voted “yes” than Democrats (148). That gap is likely to widen. The Democrats will have fewer than 100 House Members in January who haven’t already turned against America’s most recent wars. The Republicans will have about 225. Assuming a libertarian influence does not sweep through the Republican caucus, and assuming the Democrats don’t regress in their path toward peace-making, we are likely to see wars that will be considered by Americans in the years to come as Republican-Obama (or Obama-Republican) in nature.

The notion of a war alliance between the Republicans and the president they love to hate may sound outlandish, but commentators like Jeff Cohen who have paid attention to the paths charted by Bill Clinton’s presidency have been raising this possibility since Barack Obama entered the Oval Office. That doesn’t mean it won’t be awkward. The new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), for example, is aimed at reducing the deployment and potential for proliferation of nuclear weapons. Obama supports it. Last week, we watched the spectacle of Republican senators who previously expressed support for the treaty turning against it, apparently placing opposition to the president ahead of their own views on national security.

That does not, however, mean that they are likely to place opposition to the President ahead of their support for wars that ultimately weaken national security. In fact, it’s quite possible that, in 2011, they will try to separate themselves from the president by proposing even more war funding than he asks for and daring him not to sign the bills, or by packaging into war bills measures Obama opposes but not enough to issue a veto.

For Obama’s part, while he has always striven to work with the Republicans, a sharp break with the Democrats will not appeal to him. If the polls were to show that liberals had begun identifying him as the leader of Republican wars, the pressure on him to scale back war-making, especially in Afghanistan, might rise.

If the economy, as expected, does not improve significantly, and if people begin to associate the lack of money for jobs programs with the staggering sums put into the wars, the president might find himself with serious fears about his reelection — or even about getting the Democratic Party’s nomination a second time. His fate is now regularly being compared to that of Bill Clinton, who was indeed reelected in 1996 following a Republican midterm trouncing. (In his successful campaign to return to the Oval Office, Clinton got an assist from Ross Perot, a third-party candidate who drew off Republican votes and whose role might be repeated in 2012 by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.)

History, however, has its own surprises; sometimes it’s the chapters from the past you’re not thinking about that get repeated. Here, for instance, are three presidents who are not Bill Clinton and whose experiences might prove relevant: Lyndon Johnson’s war-making in Vietnam led to his decision not to run for reelection in 1968; opposition to abuses of war powers was likely a factor in similar decisions by Harry Truman in 1952 in the midst of an unpopular war in Korea and James Polk in 1848 after a controversial war against Mexico.

The Unkindest Cut

Bills that fund wars along with the rest of the military and what we have, for the past 62 years, so misleadingly called the “Defense” Department, are harder to persuade Congress members to vote against than bills primarily funding wars. “Defense” bills and the overall size of the military have been steadily growing every year, including 2010. Oddly enough, even with a Republican Congress filled with warhawks, the possibility still exists that that trend could be reversed.

After all, right-wing forces in (and out of) Washington, D.C., have managed to turn the federal budget deficit into a Saddam-Hussein-style bogeyman. While the goal of many of those promoting this vision of deficit terror may have been intent on getting Wall Street’s fingers into our Social Security savings or defunding public schools, military waste could become collateral damage in the process.

The bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, known on television as “the deficit commission” and on progressive blogs as “the catfood commission” (in honor of what it could leave our senior citizens dining on), has not yet released its proposals for reducing the deficit, but the two chairmen, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, have published their own set of preliminary proposals that include reducing the military budget by $100 billion. The proposal is, in part, vague but — in a new twist for Washington’s elite — even includes a suggested reduction by one-third in spending on the vast empire of bases the U.S. controls globally.

Commission member and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) has proposed cutting only slightly more — $110.7 billion — from the military budget as part of a package of reforms that, unlike the chairmen’s proposals, taxes the rich, invests in jobs, and strengthens Social Security. Even if a similar proposal finally makes it out of the full commission, the new Republican House is unlikely to pass anything of the sort unless there is a genuine swell of public pressure.

Far more than $110.7 billion could, in fact, be cut out of the Pentagon budget to the benefit of national security, and even greater savings could, of course, be had by actually ending the Afghan and Iraq wars, a possibility not considered in these proposals. If military cuts are packaged with major cuts to Social Security or just about anything else, progressives will be as likely as Republicans to oppose the package.

While the new Republican House will fund the wars at least as often and as fulsomely as the outgoing Democratic House, namely 100% of the time, the votes will undoubtedly look different. The Democratic leadership has tended to allow progressive Democrats the opportunity to vote for antiwar measures as amendments to war-funding bills. These measures have ranged from bans on all war funding to requests for non-binding exit strategies. They have not passed, but have generated news coverage. They may also, however, have made it easier for some Democrats to establish their antiwar credentials by voting “yes” on these amendments — before turning around and voting for the war funding. If the funding is the only war vote they are allowed, some of them may be more likely to vote “no.”

On March 10, 2010, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) used a parliamentary maneuver (that will still be available to him as a member of the minority) to force a lengthy floor debate on a resolution to end the war in Afghanistan. Kucinich has said that he will introduce a similar resolution in January 2011 that would require the war to end by December 31, 2012. That will provide an initial opportunity for Congress watchers to assess the lay of the land in the 112th Congress. It will likely also be the first time that war is powerfully labeled as the property of the president and the Republicans.

The other place public discussion of the wars will occur is in committee hearings, and all of the House committees will now have Republican chairs, including Buck McKeon (R-CA) in Armed Services, and Darrell Issa (R-CA) in Oversight and Government Reform. In recent decades, the oversight committee has only been vigorously used when the chairman has not belonged to the president’s party. This was the case in 2007-2008 when Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) investigated the Bush administration, even though he did allow high officials and government departments to simply refuse compliance with subpoenas the committee issued. It will be interesting to see how Republican committee chairs respond to a similar defiance of subpoenas during the next two years.

A Hotbed of Military Expansionism

The Armed Services Committee is likely to be a hotbed of military expansionism. Incoming Chairman McKeon wants Afghan War commander General David Petraeus to testify in December (even before he becomes chairman) on the Obama administration’s upcoming review of Afghan war policy, while the Pentagon reportedly does not want him to because there is no good news to report. While Chairman McKeon may insist on such newsworthy witnesses next year, his goal will be war expansion, pure and simple.

In fact, McKeon is eager to update the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) to grant the president the ongoing authority to make war on nations never involved in the 9/11 attacks. This will continue to strip Congress of its war-making powers. It will similarly continue to strip Americans of rights like the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures that President Obama has tended to justify more on the basis of the original AUMF than on the alleged inherent powers of the presidency that Bush’s lawyers leaned on so heavily.

The president has been making it ever clearer in these post election weeks that he’s in no hurry to end the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. The scheduled end date for the occupation of Iraq, December 31, 2011, will now arrive while Republicans control a Congress that might conceivably, under Democrats, have been shamed into insisting on its right to finally end that war. Republicans and their friends at the Washington Post are now arguing avidly for the continuation of existing wars in the way their side always argues, by pushing the envelope and demanding so much more — such as a war on Iran — that the existing level of madness comes to seem positively sane.

The most silvery of possible silver linings here may lie in the possibility of a reborn peace movement. George W. Bush’s new memoir actually reveals the surprising strength the peace movement had achieved by 2006. In that year, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who was publicly denouncing any opposition to war, privately urged Bush to bring troops out of Iraq before the congressional elections. But that was the last year in which the interests of the peace movement were aligned with those of groups and funders that take their lead from the Democratic Party.

In November 2008, the last of the major funders of the peace movement took their checkbooks and departed. Were they at long last to take this moment to build the opposite of Fox News and the Tea Party, a machine independent of political parties pushing an agenda of peace and justice, anything would be possible.

By David Swanson

23 November, 2010

Countercurrents.org

David Swanson is the author of the just published book War Is A Lie and Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union. He blogs at Let’s Try Democracy and War Is a Crime.

Jon Stewart And The Left

The left in America is desperate; desperate for someone who can inspire them, if not lead them to a better world; or at least make them laugh.  TV star Jon Stewart is sometimes funny, especially when he doesn’t try too hard to be funny, which is not often enough.  But as a political leader, or simply political educator for the left, forget it.  He’s not even what I would call a genuine, committed leftist.  What does he have to teach the left?  He himself would certainly not want you to entertain the thought that Jon Stewart is in any way a man of the left.

He billed his October 30 rally on the National Mall in Washington, DC, as the Million Moderate March.  Would a person with a real desire for important progressive social and political change, i.e, a “leftist”, so ostentatiously brand himself a “moderate”?  Even if by “moderate” he refers mainly to tone of voice or choice of words why is that so important?  If a politician strongly supports things which you are passionate about, why should it bother you if the politician is vehement in his arguments, even angry?  And if the politician is strongly against what you’re passionate about does it make you feel any better about the guy if he never raises his voice or sharply criticizes those on the other side?  What kind of cause is that to commit yourself to?

Stewart in fact appears to dislike the left, perhaps strongly. In the leadup to the rally he criticized the left for various things, including calling George W. Bush a “war criminal”.  Wow!  How immoderate of us.  Do I have to list here the 500 war crimes committed by George W. Bush?  If I did so, would that make me one of what Stewart calls the “crazies”?  In his talk at the rally, Stewart spoke of our “real fears” — “of terrorists, racists, Stalinists, and theocrats”.  Stalinists?  Where did that come from, Glenn Beck?  What decade is Stewart living in?  What about capitalists or the corporations?  Is there no reason to fear them?  Is it Stalinists who are responsible for the collapse of our jobs and homes, our economy?  Writer Chris Hedges asks: “Being nice and moderate will not help.  These are corporate forces that are intent on reconfiguring the United States into a system of neofeudalism.  These corporate forces will not be halted by funny signs, comics dressed up like Captain America or nice words.”

Stewart also grouped together “Marxists actively subverting our constitution, racists and homophobes”.  Welcome to the Jon Stewart Tea Party.  In his long interview last week of President Obama on his TV show, Stewart did not mention any of America’s wars.  That would have been impolite and divisive; maybe even not nice.

He billed his rally as being “for people who are politically dissatisfied but who are not ideological”.(Democracy Now, November 1, 2010)  Really, Jon?  You have no ideology?  To those who like to tell themselves and others that they don’t have any particular ideology I say this: If you have thoughts about why the world is the way it is, why society is the way it is, why people are the way they are, what a better way would look like, and if your thoughts are fairly well organized, then that’s your ideology, even if it’s not wholly conscious as such.  Better to organize those thoughts as best you can, become very conscious of them, and then consciously avoid getting involved with individuals or political movements who have an incompatible ideology.  It’s like a very bad marriage.

America’s Press Corps(e)

“Goyim [non-Jews] were born only to serve us.  Without that, they have no place in the world; only to serve the People of Israel,” said Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in a sermon in Israel on October 16.  Rabbi Yosef is the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel and the founder and spiritual leader of the Shas Party, one of the three major components of the current Israeli government.  “Why are gentiles needed?” he continued.  “They will work, they will plow, they will reap.  We will sit like an effendi [master] and eat,” he said to some laughter.

Pretty shocking, right?  Apparently not shocking enough for the free and independent American mainstream media.  Not one daily newspaper has picked it up.  Not one radio or TV station.  Neither have the two leading US news agencies, Associated Press and United Press International, which usually pick up anything at all newsworthy.  And the words of course did not cross the lips of any American politician or State Department official.  Rabbi Yosef’s words were reported in English only by the Jewish Telegraph Agency, a US-based news service (October 18), and then picked up by a few relatively obscure news agencies or progressive websites.  We can all imagine the news coverage if someone like Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said something like “Jews have no place in the world but to serve Islam”.

On October 8, 2001, the second day of the US bombing of Afghanistan, the transmitters for the Taliban government’s Radio Shari were bombed and shortly after this the US bombed some 20 regional radio sites.  US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld defended the targeting of these facilities, saying: “Naturally, they cannot be considered to be free media outlets.  They are mouthpieces of the Taliban and those harboring terrorists.”[1]  In 1999, during the US/NATO 78-day bombing of the former Yugoslavia, state-owned Radio Television Serbia (RTS) was targeted because it was broadcasting things which the United States and NATO did not like (like how much horror the bombing was causing).  The bombs took the lives of many of the station’s staff, and both legs of one of the survivors, which had to be amputated to free him from the wreckage.[2]  UK Prime Minister Tony Blair told reporters that the bombing was “entirely justified” for the station was “part of the apparatus of dictatorship and power of Milosevic”.[3]  Threatening more such attacks on Serbian media, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon declared a few hours after the bombing: “Stay tuned.  It is not difficult to track down where TV signals emanate from.”[4]

Accordingly, and with all due forethought, I call for the bombing of the leading members of the United States mainstream media — from the New York Times to CNN, from NPR to Fox News — for, naturally, they cannot be considered to be free media outlets, and are part of the apparatus of imperialism and power of the United States.

Anti-communism 101: Hijacking History

We like to think of death as the time for truth.  No matter how much the deceased may have lived a lie, when he goes to meet his presumed maker the real, sordid facts of his life will out.  Or at least they should; the obituary being the final chance to set the record straight.  But obituaries very seldom perform this function, certainly not obituaries of those who played an important role in American foreign policy; the myths surrounding foreign policy and the deceased individual’s role therein accompany him to the grave, and thence into Texas-approved American history textbooks.

In January of this year I commented in this report on the obituary of Lincoln Gordon[5], former ambassador to Brazil and State Department official.  The obituary in the Washington Post painted him, as I put it, as a “boy wonder, intellectual shining light, distinguished leader of men, outstanding American patriot.”  No mention whatsoever was made of the leading role  played by Gordon in the military overthrow of a progressive Brazilian government in 1964, resulting in a very brutal dictatorship for the next 21 years.  Later, Gordon blatantly lied about his role in testimony before Congress.

Now we have the death a few weeks ago of Phillips Talbot, who was appointed by President Kennedy to be Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs and later became ambassador to Greece.  In 1967 the Greek military and intelligence service, both closely tied to the CIA, overthrew another progressive government, that of George Papandreou and his son, cabinet minister Andreas Papandreou.  For the next seven years the Greek people suffered utterly grievous suppression and torture.  Talbot’s obituary states: “Dr. Talbot was asleep in his bed while tanks rumbled through the streets of Athens and was completely surprised when Armed Forces radio announced at 6:10 a.m. that the military had taken control of the country.  Dr. Talbot was adamant that the United States was impartial throughout the transition. ‘You may be assured that there has been no American involvement in or, in fact, prior knowledge of the climactic events that those residing in this country have lived through in the past couple of years,’ Dr. Talbot told the New York Times in 1969 shortly before he returned home.”[6]

Andreas Papandreou had been arrested at the time of the coup and held in prison for eight months.  Shortly after his release, he and his wife Margaret visited Ambassador Talbot in Athens.  Papandreou later related the following:  I asked Talbot whether America could have intervened the night of the coup, to prevent the death of democracy in Greece.  He denied that they could have done anything about it.  Then Margaret asked a critical question: What if the coup had been a Communist or a Leftist coup?  Talbot answered without hesitation.  Then, of course, they would have intervened, and they would have crushed the coup.[7]      In November 1999, during a visit to Greece, President Bill Clinton was moved to declare:  When the junta took over in 1967 here the United States allowed its interests in prosecuting the cold war to prevail over its interest — I should say its obligation — to support democracy, which was, after all, the cause for which we fought the cold war.(sic)  It is important that we acknowledge that.[8]

Clinton’s surprising admission prompted the retired   Phillips Talbot to write to the New York Times: “With all due respect to President Clinton, he is wrong to imply that the United States supported the Greek coup in 1967.  The coup was the product of Greek political rivalries and was contrary to American interests in every respect. … Some Greeks have asserted that the United States could have restored a civilian government.  In fact, we had neither the right nor the means to overturn the junta, bad as it was.”[9]

Or, as Bart Simpson would put it: “I didn’t do it, no one saw me do it, you can’t prove anything!”

After reading Talbot’s letter in the Times in 1999 I wrote to him at his New York address reminding him of what Andreas Papandreou had reported on this very subject.  I received no reply.

The cases of Brazil and Greece were of course just two of many leftist governments overthrown, as well as revolutionary movements suppressed, by the United States during the Cold War on the grounds that America had a moral right and obligation to defeat the evil of Soviet communism that was — we were told — instigating these forces.  It was always a myth.  Bolshevism and Western liberalism were united in their opposition to popular revolution.  Russia was a country with a revolutionary past, not a revolutionary present.  Even in Cuba, the Soviets were always a  little embarrassed by the Castro-Guevara radical fervor.  Stalin would have had such men imprisoned.  The Cold War was not actually a struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union.  It was a struggle between the United States and the Third World.  What there was, was people all over the Third World fighting for economic and political changes against US-supported repressive regimes, or setting up their own progressive governments.  These acts of self-determination didn’t coincide with the needs of the American power elite, and so the United States moved to crush those governments and movements even though the Soviet Union was playing virtually no role at all in the scenarios.  It is remarkable the number of people who make fun of conspiracy theories but who accept without question the existence of an International Communist Conspiracy.[10]

The United States’ Annual Self-Imposed Humiliation

For years American political leaders and media were fond of labeling Cuba an “international pariah”.  We don’t hear that any more.  Perhaps one reason is the annual vote in the United Nations General Assembly on the resolution which reads: “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba”.  This is how the vote has gone (not including abstentions), this year being the strongest condemnation yet of Washington’s policy:

Year/   Yes-No / No Votes

1992    59-2 (US, Israel)

1993    88-4 (US, Israel, Albania, Paraguay)

1994   101-2 (US, Israel)

1995   117-3 (US, Israel, Uzbekistan)

1996   138-3 (US, Israel, Uzbekistan)

1997   143-3 (US, Israel, Uzbekistan)

1998   157-2 (US, Israel)

1999   155-2 (US, Israel)

2000   167-3 (US, Israel, Marshall Islands)

2001   167-3 (US, Israel, Marshall Islands)

2002   173-3 (US, Israel, Marshall Islands)

2003   179-3 (US, Israel, Marshall Islands)

2004   179-4 (US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau)

2005   182-4 (US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau)

2006   183-4 (US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau)

2007   184-4 (US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau)

2008   185-3 (US, Israel, Palau)

2009   187-3 (US, Israel, Palau)

2010   187-2 (US, Israel)

Is the United States Foreign Policy Establishment Capable of Being E mbarrassed?

Each fall, however, the UN vote is a welcome reminder that the world has not completely lost its senses and that the American empire does not completely control the opinion of other governments.

How it began: On April 6, 1960, Lester D. Mallory, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, wrote in an internal memorandum: “The majority of Cubans support Castro … The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. … every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba.”  Mallory proposed “a line of action which … makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”[11]  Later that year, the Eisenhower administration instituted the suffocating embargo against its eternally-declared enemy.

Covert Action Quarterly

From 1978 to 2005 one of the leading progressive print (Remember that word?) magazines in the world, dealing primarily with US foreign policy, the CIA/NSA/FBI, repression at home and abroad, and corporate crime.  The magazine, initially called CovertAction Information Bulletin, regularly published the names and career histories around the globe of undercover CIA officers derived from careful research of open, public sources.  This so infuriated the powers-that-be that Congress passed the Intelligence Identities Protection Act in 1982, which made the practice of revealing the name of an undercover officer illegal under US law.  The law was a virtual bill of attainder — it is unconstitutional for Congress to enact legislation directed at a specific individual or organization.  At the time, members of the House Intelligence Committee were telling journalists and lawyers that the legislation was aimed only at CovertAction Information Bulletin and its editors, but this was always said off the record and no one would confirm it on the record; although during the House debate Congressman William Young (R.-FL) declared: “What we’re after today are the Philip Agees of the world.”[12]  Ironically, the law became the basis for the prosecution of George W. Bush special counsel Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, who outed CIA employee Valerie Plame.

Amongst the magazine’s numerous contributors were Philip Agee, John Stockwell, Ralph McGehee, Ellen Ray, William Schaap, Louis Wolf, Michael Parenti, Noam Chomsky, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Diana Johnstone, Sean Gervasi, Philip Wheaton, Immanuel Wallerstein, Kathy Kelly, Tony Benn, Ramsey Clark, David MacMichael, Edward Herman, William Blum (Whatever happened to him?), Michel Chossudovsky, Marjorie Cohn, James Petras, Gregory Elich, and many other prominent progressive writers.

A recent Washington Post story states: “The private papers of Philip Agee, the disaffected CIA operative whose unauthorized publication of agency secrets 35 years ago was arguably far more damaging than anything WikiLeaks has produced, have been obtained by New York University, which plans to make them public next spring.”[13]

A partial Table of Contents for each of the issues can be found at: http://redactednews.blogspot.com/p/covertaction-quarterly-back-issues.html

Individual copies or the entire set of 78 issues (mostly original copies and about a dozen in quality photocopy format) are available for purchase: $3.00 per issue, 25 copies for $65.00, 50 for $115, or all 78 for $165, including postage in the United States.  To place an order, write: Louis Wolf, 1500 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Room 732, Washington, DC 20005, or e-mail: louw7@live.com

By William Blum

03 November, 2010

The Anti-Empire Report

NOTES

[1] Index on Censorship online, the UK’s leading organization promoting freedom of expression, October 18, 2001

[2] The Independent (London), April 24, 1999, p.1

[3] Bristol (UK) Evening Post, April 24, 1999

[4] The Guardian (London), April 24, 1999

[5] http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer77.html

[6] Washington Post, October 7, 2010

[7] Andreas Papandreou, Democracy at Gunpoint: The Greek Front (1970), p.294.

[8] New York Times, November 21, 1999

[9] New York Times, November 23, 1999

[10] See William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II for details of the Cold War

[11] Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Volume VI, Cuba (1991), p.885

[12] Wikipedia, under “Intelligence Identities Protection Act”

[13] Washington Post online, October 26, 2010, “Spytalk” by Jeff Stein

William Blum is the author of:

> Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2

> Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower

> West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir

> Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org