Saturday, August 29, 2009

Early and Current Fears about Vaccine Dangers


Early and Current Fears about Vaccine Dangers

Given today’s hysteria over a non-existent Swine Flu threat and possible mandating of experimental, untested, toxic, and likely bioengineered vaccines, it’s appropriate to review early fears about their dangers — when evidence first surfaced and concerns were raised.

In 1920, Charles Michael Higgins’ Horrors of Vaccination Exposed and Illustrated: Petition to the President to Abolish Compulsory Vaccination in Army and Navy (now available in a new 2008 edition) issued a “Public Challenge to Health Departments” in citing “Deaths from Vaccination Denied and Concealed – More Deaths from Vaccination than from Smallpox,” then continued:

“In order that there shall be no misunderstanding about the serious charge which I bring against vaccination, as being now actually more dangerous to public health and human life than natural smallpox, and the equally serious charge which I make against vaccinating doctors – who now control our Departments of Health and Vital Statistics – of denying and concealing these facts from the people, I now issue this special challenge” to the New York city and state authorities that “I will….prove from their death certificates and vital records, now concealed and withheld from the public, that there have been more deaths from vaccination than from smallpox in every year for the past fifteen years in the City and State of New York.”

Calling compulsory vaccinations “medical barbarism,” Higgins petitioned President Woodrow Wilson to stop mandating them for army and navy personnel. He cited facts he called shocking, including death certificates of primary school aged children “all killed in one week in September, 1915, from vaccination resulting in lockjaw and septicemia” and numerous others dead from “vaccine infection.” Yet throughout 1915, only three people died from smallpox.

Higgins bluntly stated that:

“Compulsory disease as a condition for public schooling or for service in army and navy is medically barbarous and legally unconstitutional, and should be abolished.” They violate the “right to life, health, and education…”

He asked Wilson to pardon court-martialed soldiers who refused non-consensual vaccinations, then imprisoned at “hard labor for twenty-five years!….for asserting (their) right to the medical sanctity of (their) own bod(ies)….”

He said that in the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War, typhoid vaccinations weren’t used. Instead, for almost the first time, modern, effective sanitation and hygiene practices were employed, and few soldiers experienced typhoid fever. But in the WW I Gallipoli campaign, English soldiers got typhoid vaccinations. Unsanitary conditions prevailed, and many succumbed to typhoid and other infectious diseases. In 1918 under conditions of poor sanitation for US forces, vaccinations proved ineffective in preventing “a high death-rate among the well vaccinated men.”

On March 28, 1919, an official report from the Chief Surgeon of the AEF in the US Public Health was titled, “Typhoid Vaccination no Substitute for Sanitary Precautions.”

Higgins quoted medical authorities admitting vaccination dangers and condemning their mandatory use. The 1913 edition of Osler’s Modern Medicine, Volume I stated:

“With the greatest care, however, certain (vaccination) risks are present and so it is unwise for the physician to force the operation upon those who are unwilling, or to give assurance of absolute harmlessness.”

In 1889, the English Commission on Vaccination exhaustively studied the issue, published its findings in 1896, concluded that vaccinations were dangerous, and said laws making them compulsory should be repealed or modified. An enacted “conscientious clause” subsequently let parents exempt their children. Yet, contrary to fears at the time, smallpox greatly declined because of improved sanitation and good hygiene practices.

As early as the mid-19th century, books about vaccine dangers included Dr. Charles Schieferdecker’s Dr. CGG Nittinger’s evils of vaccination (1856), William Tebb’s Sanitation, not Vaccination the True Protection against Small-Pox (1881), William White’s The Story of a Great Delusion (1885), Alfred Russel Wallace’s Vaccination Proved Useless & Dangerous (1889), Dr. Tenison Deane’s The Crime of Vaccination (1913), and many others.

In his book, Higgins referred to vaccinations as the cause of “great epidemics of deadly disease in animals and mankind….” and cited government reports he called “notorious public facts.”

“In October, November, and December, 1901, (a tetanus epidemic occurred) after vaccination(s were administered) in Camden, Philadelphia, and to a certain extent in near-by towns.” Higgins wrote the Secretary of War citing proof “that there was a distinct medical and logical relation between influenza and vaccination, and that many serious diseases, including smallpox and cowpox, commence like influenza….”

The “wholesale and repeated vaccinations in the military camps throughout the world (suggested) that this vaccine infection had escaped…and was running wild as a world-wide epidemic infection,” and to check it required all vaccinations be halted. He stressed what he called “no mere hypothesis or theory, but rather a hard fact” borne out by “foot and mouth disease” epidemics in cattle and other animals, “some of which originated from two of the largest vaccine factories in this country,” at the time in Philadelphia and Detroit.

He cited US Bureau of Animal Industry and US Department of Agriculture reports that clearly showed vaccine infection as the cause of the 1902 and 1908 epidemics, and the “strong suspicion” that later ones in 1914 and 1915 were as well.

He called for the abolition of “dangerous medical domination and monopoly which now controls our Departments,” which had long abused public power, that denied “Medical Truth, Freedom and Progress (and) which should no longer be tolerated.” He urged that compulsory army and navy personnel vaccinations be abolished, replaced solely by voluntary ones.

He said “the practice of inflicting on the human body a compulsory medical disease, which is dangerous to the health and life and causes many deaths every year, is obviously illegal and a medical crime on the people which must be suppressed.” On September 17, 1919, he asked President Wilson to put a stop to “vaccination horrors and medical mendacities.”

Vaccinations Given US Military Forces During Major Military Conflicts since 1775

From at least the 1770s to the present, inoculations were routinely used. From the American Revolution through the Spanish-American War, smallpox vaccinations were administered. In WW I, typhoid was added, and in WW II, shots were given for smallpox, typhoid, typhus, tetanus, cholera, diphtheria influenza, scarlet fever, plague, paratyphoid A and B, and yellow fever. The Korean War adopted the same regimen. Vietnam added immunizations for polio, tetanus-diphteria toxoids, measles and meningococcal.

For the Gulf War, still more were added for anthrax, botulinum, adenovirus types 4 and 7, hepatitis B, measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR), and rabies — a virtual toxic stew besides depleted uranium exposure that combined caused Gulf War syndrome, its devastating effects on many thousands of troops, yet the Pentagon denied it existed.

The Afghan and Iraq wars added varicella (chicken pox), hepatitis A, influenza, yellow fever, pneumococcal, plus the upcoming Swine Flu vaccine. In combination, US military forces now get a greater than ever toxic brew of up to 20 dangerous inoculations plus booster shots (including for diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis DTaP) that assure damage to (or destruction of) their immune systems followed by serious health problems later on.

In 1919, Higgins called smallpox and typhoid inoculations “medical barbarism.” Today it’s at an intolerable level.

Confessions of a Medical Heretic

On April 16, 1988, a portion of a brief New York Times obituary read:

On April 5, “Dr. Robert S. Mendelsohn, a physician, author and critic of the medical establishment, died after a brief illness….He was 61 years old.” Besides teaching at the University of Illinois and Northwestern University, he was best known as “The People’s Doctor” and for his 1979 bestseller, Confessions of a Medical Heretic, in which he cautioned against “the harmful impact upon your life of doctors, drugs and hospitals.”

In a November 1984 East West Journal article, he called immunizations a “medical time bomb,” and (as a paediatrician) said the “greatest threat to childhood diseases lies in the dangerous and ineffectual efforts made to prevent them.” He referred to deceptive marketing practices and called paediatricians objecting to their “bread and butter” the equivalent of a priest denying the infallibility of the Pope.

He urged parents to reject all inoculations for their children, but explained that in many states they’re mandatory. He administered them early in his practice, but later stopped “because of the myriad hazards they present.” He summarized his concerns as follows:

  • no evidence confirms that vaccinations eliminate childhood diseases;
  • the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines don’t work and cited Jonas Salk later admitting that mass inoculations caused an epidemic after 1961;
  • smallpox vaccinations are “the only source of smallpox-related deaths for three decades after the disease had disappeared;”
  • significant inoculation risks are real; parents should avoid them when possible;
  • doctors are derelict for not explaining their hazards and for “defend(ing) them to the death;”
  • a “myriad (of known) short-term hazards (exist but) no one knows the long-term consequences of injecting foreign (substances) into the bod(ies) of your child(ren);”
  • even more shocking is that “no one is making any structured effort to find out,” yet
  • suspicions now confirm that mass-inoculations dramatically increase autoimmune and neurological diseases, including leukemia, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, and numerous others ranging from annoying to lethal;
  • he asked: “Have we traded mumps and measles for cancer and leukemia,” and blamed vaccinations for their destructive harm, including thousands of annual SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) deaths; and
  • he said the best way to protect children is make sure they’re not vaccinated.

Doctors Speak Out on Vaccine Dangers

The Merck Manual (first published in 1899, now available in a Home Edition) warns individuals with B and/or T cell immunodeficiencies to avoid live-virus vaccines (the main ingredient in ones produced by Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, and perhaps others) due to the risk of severe or fatal infections. Immunodeficiencies include common food allergies, inhalant ones, eczema, dermatitis, neurological deterioration and heart disease. Vaccines may be lethal for people with these conditions because their immune systems can’t produce a healthy reaction to the viral assault on them. Getting it may induce illnesses they’re intended to prevent and many other potentially deadly ones.

It’s no surprise that many doctors, earlier and now, share Mendelsohn’s concerns and state them.

On April 2, 2002 in the London Telegraph, autism specialist Dr. Kenneth Aitken said: “When I was in training, one in 2,500 (children were autistic). Now it is one in 250. At the moment, the only logical explanation for this is MMR” immunizations.

On April 27, 1979, at the American Society of Microbiology meeting, a paper by Drs. Anthony Morris, John Chriss, and BG Young titled, “Occurrence of Measles in Previously Vaccinated Individuals” concluded that “By the (US) government’s own admission, there has been a 41% failure rate in persons who were previously vaccinated against the (measles) virus.”

A 1993 British Medical Journal article stated: “In 1993 a high court judge in the UK decided that it was impossible to know the exact contents of vaccines and that science had no idea what the cocktails of chemicals, contaminants and heavy metals contained in vaccines could do to the human body, or why they would work to prevent disease.”

Dr. J. Anthony Morris, former FDA Vaccine Control head said: “There is a great deal of evidence to prove that immunization of children does more harm than good.” He concluded that “There is no evidence that any influenza vaccine thus far developed is effective in preventing or mitigating any attack of influenza. The producers of these vaccines know that they are worthless, but they go on selling them anyway.”

Professor LC Vincent, Bioelectronics founder, said “Vaccines DO predispose to cancer and leukemia.”

In December 1985, Dr. Albert Sabin, discoverer of the oral polio vaccine, admitted that “Official data have shown that the large-scale vaccinations undertaken in the US have failed to obtain any significant improvement of the diseases against which they were supposed to provide protection.”

The National Institute of Health’s (NIH) Dr. James A. Shannon said that “The only wholly safe vaccine is a vaccine that is never used.”

Professor Ari Zukerman of the World Health Organization (WHO) stated: “Immunization against smallpox is more hazardous than the disease itself.”

Dr. Paul Frame in the Journal of Family Practice believes “There is insufficient evidence to support routine vaccination of healthy persons of any age.”

Dr. John B. Classen stated that his “data proves that the studies used to support immunization are so flawed that it is impossible to say if immunization provides a net benefit to anyone or to society in general.”

Dr. Gerhard Buchwald concluded from the results of 150 trials that “Vaccination is not necessary, not useful, (and) does not protect. There are twice as many casualties from vaccination as from AIDS.”

The Association of American Physicians & Surgeons stated that “Public policy regarding vaccines is fundamentally flawed. It is permeated by conflicts of interest. It is based on poor scientific methodology (and it’s) insulated from independent criticism.”

In his book, Health and Nutrition Secrets, Dr. Russell L. Blaylock wrote: “Multiple vaccinations, especially in newborns, are another major source of childhood mercury exposure because of the mercury-containing thimerosal preservative. Over twenty-two vaccinations are now recommended for children before the age of two! Effects of exposure can vary from subtle to major malformations but even minor degrees of maldevelopment can have unacceptable consequences.”

Blaylock called flu vaccinations, especially for the elderly, “criminal” because of known substance dangers in them, including methylmercury, phenylmercury, ethylmercury, and aluminum that remain in the nervous system for decades and damage it.

According to the WHO, “The best vaccine against common infectious diseases (is) and adequate diet” along with good sanitation and hygiene practices.

Dr. Rebecca Carley calls vaccinations “The True Weapons of Mass Destruction Causing VIDS, Vaccine Induced Diseases.”

Immunogeneticist Dr. Hugh Fudenberg concluded that individuals getting five consecutive flu shots between 1970 and 1980 (the time of his study) were 10 times more vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease than others receiving two or fewer shots. He cited dangerous mercury and aluminum ingredients that accumulate in the brain causing cognitive dysfunction.

Flu shots contain 25 micrograms of mercury. One microgram is considered toxic. By age two, most US children have received around 237 micrograms of mercury through vaccines alone.

Vaccines contain the following toxic and others substances:

  • thimerosal (mercury);
  • aluminum hydroxide and phosphate;
  • ammonium sulfate;
  • amphotericin B,
  • animal tissues and fluids, including horse blood, rabbit brain, dog kidney, monkey kidney, chick embryo, chicken egg, duck egg, pig blood, and porcine (pig) protein/tissue;
  • calf serum and fetal bovine serum;
  • betapropiolactone;
  • macerated cancer cells;
  • formaldehyde;
  • formalin;
  • synthetic phenol;
  • gelatin and hydrolyzed gelatin;
  • glycerol;
  • human diploid cells (from aborted human fetal tissue);
  • MSG;
  • the anti-biotics neomycin and neomycin sulfate;
  • phenol red indicator disinfectant dye;
  • phenoxyethanol (antifreeze);
  • potassium monophosphate;
  • polymyxin B;
  • polysorbate 20 and 80;
  • residual MRC5 proteins;
  • sorbitol;
  • sucrose;
  • tri(n)butylphosphate;
  • VERO cells, a continuous line of monkey kidney cells linked to the SV-40 virus known to cause leukemia; and
  • washed sheep red blood cells.

One or a combinations of theses substances can play havoc with the human immune and neurological systems and cause deadly autoimmune and other diseases.

On August 15, a UK Mail Online article linked Swine Flu vaccines to a deadly nerve disorder called Guillain-BarrĂ© Syndrome (GBS). It cited a leaked letter from Britain’s Health Protection Agency ahead of planned mass-vaccinations in the country. Sent to about 600 neurologists on July 29, it referred to America’s 1976 killer virus Swine Flu scare, the urging then that everyone be vaccinated, and the millions who did with these results:

  • people died from the vaccine (from respiratory failure after severe paralysis), not Swine Flu;
  • 500 GBS cases were detected;
  • experts said the vaccine increased the GBS risk level eight-fold;
  • once the link was established, vaccinations were halted, but the damage was done after about 10 weeks of inoculations; and
  • the US government paid hundreds of millions of dollars to settle damage claims from thousands of victims.

UK press coverage currently describes concern over the government releasing a vaccine “of unknown safety,” yet plans remain to proceed. According to Jackie Fletcher, founder of the vaccine support group Jabs: “The (UK) Government would not be anticipating (trouble) if they didn’t think there was a (GBS) connection. What we’ve got is a massive guinea-pig trial.”

In a July 26 rense.com article titled, “Startling New Evidence That The ‘Swine Flu’ Pandemic Is Man-Made,” Dr. A. True Ott cited evidence showing that Novartis Pharmaceuticals “conspired with corrupt ’scientists’ at the US Army Institute of Pathology, Ft. Detrick, Maryland, to create a ‘novel’ strain of weaponized ‘influenza’ virus by…’reverse engineering’ the deadly 1918 killer strain (then) maliciously and surreptitiously releas(ing it globally) in March and April 2009 for the primary purpose of creating a panic-stricken world-wide demand for Novartis vaccine material.”

Ott claims the vaccine will unleash “lethal waves of increasingly virulent and deadly disease, rather than to curtail and limit the existing outbreak” — for huge profits and “a massive and sudden (worldwide) depopulation” agenda.

He called the scheme much greater than Henry Kissinger’s 1974 NSSM-200 diabolical plan for “the immediate reduction of world population” in the hundreds of millions.

In 1987, Dr. Maurice Hillerman, prominent vaccine expert and head of Merck’s vaccine division admitted that mass inoculations in the 1950s and 1960s likely caused thousands of annual cancer deaths because the SV40 virus (from dead monkeys) contaminated the first polio vaccine. “According to Hillerman, MERCK KNEW THE VACCINES WERE INFECTED WITH SV40, but distributed them anyway.”

Many other examples show that “live viruses in vaccines SPREAD…disease very effectively. When combined with SQUALENE ADJUVANT the virus becomes many times more potent and lethal.”

Ott claims Novartis’ patent application reveals “smoking gun” evidence. The company admitted that “their ‘invented’ vaccine will be effective because of ADVANCE KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING THE ORIGINS OF THE PANDEMIC FLU STRAIN THAT WAS ‘REVERSE ENGINEERED’…. Clearly the pandemic virus was not an act of nature. (It’s) a conspiracy to commit mass murder” for profit.

Writing for Citizens for Legitimate Government (CLG), Dr. Andrew Bosworth sounded the alarm about “The Swine Flu Hoax,” admitted its mysterious origins, expressed concern that it might be lethal, and suggested that it was either accidently or deliberately released by corporate or government sources to cause a global epidemic for profit and power.

He cited suspicions of doctors and scientists that Swine Flu was man-made because of its unique combination of viruses from different parts of the world. He mentioned spurious media and official reports of Swine Flu deaths, perhaps from conventional flu, another cause, or an unrelated medical condition. He called the US government’s pandemic policy “ridiculous” and “repugnant,” leaving people terrified and uninformed enough to react adversely to their own well-being.

Current News from Jane Burgermeister’s theflucase.com

Burgermeister is the journalist who filed criminal charges against Baxter AG, Baxter International, and Avir Green Hills Biotechnology AG “for producing and distributing contaminated bird flu material this winter, alleging that this was a deliberate act to cause a pandemic, and also to profit” from it. In addition, she accused Austrian Health and other Ministry officials of knowledge and support of this practice, then later named Baxter, Novartis, Sanofi Aventis, world agencies (including the WHO, UN, and CDC), and high-level officials in Austria, other European countries, and America of conspiratorial involvement.

Her web site features the following recent reports:

– on August 25, the UK Daily Mail said “Up to half of (British) family doctors do not want to be vaccinated against swine flu,” and one-third of them said the vaccine was inadequately tested;

– in Australia, “Leading infectious disease experts have called on the Federal Government to abandon its mass swine-flu vaccination plan because of fears the vaccine is a contamination risk that could spread blood-borne diseases;”

– in Jacobson v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1905), the US Supreme Court ruled that the state could require people to be vaccinated for the common good; in April 2009, NECN.com reported that a possible new Massachusetts law (Bill 2028) will require compulsory vaccinations; those refusing face $1,000 a day fines or 30 days in prison; after the state senate unanimously passed it, Catherine Austin Fitts concluded that Boston’s money men must be “very scared about something,” given that the city is “the capital of equity investment;”

– on August 25, Health Minister Ulla Schmidt admitted on German TV that the Swine Flu vaccination campaign was a hoax and the largest ever inoculation experiment in history; and

– on August 22, Dr. Wolfgang Wogarg, chairman of the health committee in the German parliament and European Council, warned about potential Swine Flu vaccine safety. He said Novartis’ vaccine contained cancerous animal cells, and emphasized peoples’ fears over the disease from being inoculated. “It is a great business for the pharmaceutical industry,” he told Neuen Presse. Swine flu is not very different from conventional flu, but the vaccine can have dangerous side effects.

Lessons from the 1976 Swine Flu Outbreak

Soldiers at Fort Dix, NJ were affected. About 240 became ill. One death was reported, but the illness never spread beyond the base, so it’s curious why not. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention couldn’t explain why the disease was contained or how it was introduced.

More curious is the current hype over person-to-person transmission when it didn’t happen in 1976. Northwestern University’s Immunology Professor Robert Lamb explains that isolated swine flu cases in humans aren’t uncommon. “Every year, you will find some pig farmer somewhere who gets swine flu. But it usually doesn’t transmit to his family,” let alone to the surrounding area or beyond.

Several years ago, Texas A & M’s head of microbial and molecular pathogenesis, John Quarles, isolated a swine flu virus in a student on campus. He took samples from him and about 100 others close to him. Not a single one of them was affected, and according to Quarles: “That’s pretty classic for swine flu.”

In research conducted by Dr. Pascal James Imperato, dean at SUNY’s School of Public Health, he reported that “the 2009 H1N1 virus was less efficiently transmitted by droplet infection (inhalation of respiratory pathogens exhaled by someone infected) in ferrets compared to the seasonal human H1N1 virus. This is a significant finding as it indicates that the 2009 swine flu virus might not be as easily transmitted between humans as its seasonal counterpart” — unless it’s bioengineered to make it contagious and deadly.

Conclusion

Swine Flu is a virus-induced respiratory illness in pigs. Few succumb and die, and humans are rarely infected, except occasionally among people having direct contact with infected animals. For most who do, symptoms are generally mild. Medications and other treatments aren’t essential. The illness usually lasts from two to seven days, and most patients recover well on their own.

Currently, no global pandemic or public health emergency exists, nor does forensic evidence link H1N1 to reported deaths. Yet fear-mongering persists to convince people globally to submit voluntarily to dangerous, possibly deadly bioengineered, vaccines.

If large numbers of confirmed Swine Flu deaths occur, contrary to compelling scientific reasons why they should not, then serious investigation is called for to determine if inoculations, not H1N1, caused them, and whether corporate greed and government complicity are behind a sinister plot to distract world attention from a deepening global depression and enrichment of drug companies.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. Contact him at: lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM-1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests. All programs are archived for easy listening. Read other articles by Stephen, or visit Stephen's website.

Naomi Klein Disowns Winterbottom Adaptation of Shock Doctrine


Naomi Klein Disowns Winterbottom Adaptation of Shock Doctrine

Author and activist disagrees with documentary's take on her critique of 'disaster capitalism', to be screened on Channel 4

by Sam Jones

Naomi Klein has disowned Michael Winterbottom's forthcoming screen adaptation of her bestselling book, The Shock Doctrine, by asking to be removed from the credits of the documentary after serious differences arose between her and the British director.

[Naomi Klein has asked to be removed from the credits of Michael Winterbottom's documentary. Photograph: Pawe Kula/EPA]Naomi Klein has asked to be removed from the credits of Michael Winterbottom's documentary. Photograph: Pawe Kula/EPA
The Canadian journalist, activist and author of No Logo had originally been slated to narrate the film and act as a consultant.

But it is thought Klein became unhappy with Winterbottom's take on her critique of "disaster capitalism" and western economic cynicism after seeing early cuts of the film. She is understood to have felt the documentary - which accuses the US and other countries of exploiting natural and man-made catastrophes in developing countries to push through free-market reforms from which they stand to gain - would have benefited from more interviews and less narration.

Klein was not present for the film's premiere at the Berlin film festival and makes no mention of it on her website.

She told the Independent that serious differences in opinion had emerged between her, Winterbottom, and the film's co-director, Mat Whitecross.

"I can confirm that the original idea was for me to write and narrate the film," she told the newspaper. "For that to have worked out, however, there would have needed to be complete agreement between the directors and myself about the content, tone and structure of the film."

She added: "As often happens, we had different ideas about how to tell this story and build the argument. This is Michael's adaptation of my book, and I didn't want there to be any confusion about that. I wish the film success."

A spokeswoman for Channel 4, which will broadcast the film on 1 September, said the documentary "was always intended to be Michael Winterbottom's interpretation of Naomi Klein's thesis and she was closely consulted throughout the film-making process". She added that the broadcaster was "very happy with the final result".

Although an early review of the film by the Hollywood Reporter described it as "a rough, disjointed doc that fails to get across Naomi Klein's arguments against disaster capitalism", Variety found it superior to many contemporary musings on the same subject.

"Judged against the many other recent docus that also critique the machinations of modern capitalism, Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross's [film] looks eminently sober, polished and persuasive," it said.

The Shock Doctrine argues that big corporations in search of new markets benefit when governments import the neoliberal economic system, often as a result of pressure from the US, but that this often has catastrophic consequences for ordinary people. Political leaders have turned to "brutality and repression", it contends, to crush protests against their ideologically inspired programmes of privatisation, deregulation and tax cuts.

The Shock Doctrine was commissioned by More4 from Revolution Films/Renegade Pictures. Winterbottom's previous work includes 24 Hour Party People and Welcome to Sarajevo.

Friday, August 28, 2009

Blackwater Let 9/11 Hijackers into US, then Killed, Tortured the Remaining Witnesses


Democratic Underground



Edited on Fri Aug-21-09 03:33 PM by leveymg
We learn today from NYT reporters James Risen and Mark Mazzetti that Blackwater (Xe) started receiving CIA contracts in early 2002 to provide support and security to CIA missions in Afghanistan. See, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/us/21intel.html This follows reports that Blackwater was contracted by CIA to target and carry out assassinations worldwide as part of the Global War on Terrorism.

Blackwater Vice Chairman, Cofer Black, former Director of the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center from 1999-2002, again appears at the center of controversial CIA programs to assassinate, kidnap, and torture targeted figures. See, THE CIA OFFICER WHO OVERSAW TORTURE: Cofer Black , December 23, 2007,http://journals.democraticunderground.com/leveymg/337

After Black’s CIA retirement in May, 2002, he was appointed with Ambassadorial rank and diplomatic immunity to head the State Department’s counter-terrorism programs. Immediately upon the US occupation, Blackwater was given the primary contract for DOS security in Iraq. The NC-based company was then handed a no-bid contract to manage the Predator program in 2004. Black became Vice-Chairman of Blackwater International several months later.

Black was an early advocate for using drones to carry out targeted killings. He was in charge of CIA/CTC on February 4, 2002, when the armed Predator carried out its first lethal mission. That strike killed several Afghanis thought at the time to be Al-Qaeda figures, but allegations about the identities of the victims were disputed, and they may have been innocent villagers scavenging the remains of a battle field near Zawar Kili. (Boston Globe 02/15/2002)

First Confirmed Al-Qaeda Figure Killed by Predator was a U.S. Citizen

In November, 2002, a Predator attacked a vehicle in the desert of Yemen. That is the first successful confirmed targeted-killing of al-Qaeda using remotely controlled drone aircraft operated by the CIA. Among those known to be killed was an American citizen from upstate New York named Kamal Derwish. See, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...



In November 2002, the CIA used a Predator fitted with a five-foot-long Hellfire missile to kill a senior al Qaeda leader, Abu Ali al-Harithi, as he was riding in a car in the Yemeni desert. Also killed with Harithi, who was suspected of masterminding the October 2000 attack on the destroyer USS Cole, was a naturalized U.S. citizen, Kamal Derwish.

Derwish, it was determined later, was part of the Lackawanna, N.Y., group of Yemeni men who admitted to training in al Qaeda camps.

The CIA is permitted to operate the lethal Predator under presidential authority promulgated after the Sept. 11 attacks. Shortly after the attacks, Bush approved a "presidential finding" that allowed the CIA to write a set of highly classified rules describing which individuals could be killed by CIA officers. Such killings were defined as self-defense in a global war against al Qaeda terrorists.

The rules have been vetted by the White House, CIA and State Department lawyers. They allow CIA counterterrorism officials in the field to decide much more quickly when to fire, according to former intelligence officials involved in developing the rules.


Contradicts Claims that Blackwater Assassination Program Did Not Result in Casualties

Lethal attacks by the armed Predator program continued after Blackwater received its contract, most of these attacks taking place in Pakistan:


• On 13 May 2005, Haitham al-Yemeni, an al Qaeda explosives expert from Yemen, was killed in a village in northwest Pakistan near the Afghanistan border by a CIA-operated MQ-1 Predator aircraft firing a Hellfire missile.<30>
• On 3 December 2005, a US Predator UAV reportedly killed high-level Al Qaeda member Chief Abu Hamza Rabia in his sleep in Haisori, Pakistan. Four others were also killed.<31>
• On 13 January 2006, several US Predators conducted an airstrike on Damadola village in Pakistan where al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri was reportedly located. CIA Predators reportedly fired 10 missiles killing 18 civilians, including five women and five children. According to Pakistani authorities, the U.S. strike was based on faulty intelligence and al-Zawahiri was not present in the village. Pakistani officials nevertheless claimed that Midhat Mursi (Abu Khabab al-Masri) — al Qaeda's master bomb maker and chemical weapons expert, Khalid Habib — the al Qaeda operations chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Abdul Rehman al Magrabi — a senior operations commander for al Qaeda were all killed in the Damadola attack.<32><33> U.S. and Pakistani officials now say that none of those al Qaeda leaders perished in the strike and that only local villagers were killed.<34>
• On 30 October 2006, the Bajaur airstrike was conducted, targeting an alleged militant training camp and targeting al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The strike hit a religious school where militants were believed to be present. Eyewitness reports said that two explosions were heard following a missile being fired from an MQ-1 Predator. Pakistani intelligence officials have told western media that Predators were used in the strike, which utilized Hellfire missiles. Although Zawahiri does not appear to have been caught in the strike, Pakistani officials have stated that between two and five senior al Qaeda fighters, including the mastermind of the airliners plot in the UK, were killed in the raid.<35> While some reports state that the school was a religious training center, Pakistani authorities, including President Musharraf, have stated that the school provided military training to al Qaeda militants. Casualty figures range from 80 to 85 people killed.<36>
• On 29 January 2008 an MQ-1B killed Abu Laith al-Libi in Mir Ali. Wiki - Predator



This report of Blackwater/Xe operating the Predator program does not square with the claim heard elsewhere in today's news that nobody was actually killed by Blackwater's assassination program. It's gotta be one or the other, unless Blackwater was running multiple wet ops. See,

C.I.A. Sought Blackwater’s Help in Plan to Kill Jihadists
By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials.

Executives from Blackwater, which has generated controversy because of its aggressive tactics in Iraq, helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The C.I.A. spent several million dollars on the program, which did not capture or kill any terrorist suspects.




P.S. - Derwish has been identified as a possible double-agent who was in Afghanistan with bin Laden just weeks before the 9/11 attack. He was one of the first to be silenced. Derwish was a key figure in US intelligence surveillance of al-Qaeda cells inside the U.S., and provided a direct link between the bombings of the USS Cole and 9/11.

Derwish had trained in Afghanistan in 1992 and fought with the U.S.-backed Muslim Army in Bosnia. In the Spring of 2002, U.S. intelligence intercepted communications between him and two important al-Qaida figures, one of them involved in the USS Cole bombing. Derwish had been instrumental in organizing the the Lackawanna 6 into an al-Qaeda sleeper cell. Warrants were issued to conduct round-the-clock surveillance on members of the group.

The FBI monitored phone calls from Derwish in Yemen to some members of the group that appeared to be intended to assess their status or availability. It also intercepted e-mails from one of the group, Mukhtar al-Bakri, who was then in Bahrain. One of them appeared particularly suspicious. The e-mail was entitled "Big Meal" and read in English translation as follows:

"How are you my beloved, God willing you are fine. I would like to remind you of obeying God and keeping him in your heart because the next meal will be very huge. No one will be able to withstand it except those with faith. There are people here who had visions and their visions were explained that this thing will be very strong. No one will be able to bear it." 12


The phone calls and e-mails had the intense interest of the White House, the CIA and the FBI that the Lackawanna group was about to be activated for a major terrorist attack. At this point, the Buffalo FBI field office was required to send briefings on the results of their investigation to FBI Headquarters twice a day, and these were often passed on to the White House in the president's daily threat briefings.

At the request of the CIA, al-Bakri was detained by the Bahrain police, coincidentally on his wedding night. He admitted to having traveled to the Al Farooq camp in late spring and early summer and also gave the names of the rest of the Lackawanna group. Based on al-Bakri's testimony, the six Lackawanna men were arraigned in September, 2002, and charged with providing material support to Al-Qaeda. Somehow, despite the intense surveillance, Derwish was allowed to leave the U.S. and travelled to Yemen, where he was killed by a CIA Predator drone. See, http://www.rjhresearch.com/ADR/counterterrorism/Counter...


The problem here is that Blackwater is run by the same guys who let the 9/11 hijackers into the US


Former CIA Counter-terrorism Center (CTC) Director Cofer Black also directed the assassination targeting, along with rendition and torture programs that silenced the surviving al-Qaeda conspirators. Some targets, like Derwish, were done away with permanently, while others like KSM and Abu Zubyadeh - figures with long ties to US intelligence - were allowed to run around for a while before capture. The Al-Qaeda figures subjected to brainwahing and waterboarding that turned them into near-vegetables all had ties with the CIA during the 1990s in Bosnia and Chechnya.

Cofer Black was the Chief of CIA station in Khartoum when bin Laden and Abu Zubaydeh were there, running CIA-ISI-Saudi Jihadist operations against the Russians in Bosnia and Chechnya. Black admitted in testimony before Congress that he had contact with bin Laden in Sudan.

Basically, Cofer Black and some others got away with allowing the Flt. 77 hijackers (one of whom was also intimately involved with the Cole attack) into the country and these same CIA/CTC managers then were put in charge of the mopping-up operation.

Flushing Blackwater: Black Contracts Since at least 2002


Flushing Blackwater

by Jeremy Scahill

Blackwater, the private mercenary company owned by Erik Prince, has been thrust back into the spotlight by a series of stunning revelations about its role in covert US programs. Since at least 2002, Blackwater has worked for the CIA in Afghanistan and Pakistan on "black" contracts. On August 19, the New York Times revealed that the company was, in fact, a central part of a secret CIA assassination program that Dick Cheney allegedly ordered concealed from Congress. The paper then reported that Blackwater remains a key player in the widening air war in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where it arms drone aircraft. These disclosures follow allegations--made under oath by former Blackwater employees--that Prince murdered or facilitated the murder of potential government informants and that he "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe."

In addition, Blackwater is being investigated by the Justice Department for possible crimes ranging from weapons smuggling to manslaughter and by the IRS for possible tax evasion. It is being sued in federal courts by scores of Iraqi civilians for alleged war crimes and extrajudicial killings. Two of its men have pleaded guilty to weapons-smuggling charges; another pleaded guilty to the unprovoked manslaughter of an Iraqi civilian, and five others have been indicted on similar counts. The US military is investigating Blackwater's killing of civilians in Afghanistan in May, and reports are emerging that the company may be implicated in the CIA's extraordinary rendition program.

And yet, despite these black marks, the Obama administration continues to keep Blackwater on the government's payroll. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, Blackwater still works for the CIA, the State Department and the Defense Department to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, and its continuing presence is an indicator of just how entrenched private corporations are in the US war machinery. The United States now deploys more private forces (74,000) than uniformed soldiers (57,000) in Afghanistan. While the majority of these contractors are not armed, a sizable number carry weapons, and their ranks are swelling. A recent Defense Department census reports that as of June 30, armed DoD contractors in Afghanistan had increased by 20 percent from the first quarter of 2009.

With the exception of a few legislators, notably Representatives Henry Waxman and Jan Schakowsky, Congress has left the use of private military contractors largely unmonitored. But the recent disclosures of Blackwater's covert activities may finally force Congress to take action. At the very least, the Obama administration should be required to disclose current and past federal contracts with all of Prince's companies and affiliates, including those registered offshore.

Congress can take Schakowsky's lead and ask the Obama administration why it is continuing to work with Blackwater. Schakowsky has called on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to review all of the company's existing contracts and not to award any new ones to its many affiliates. Congressional intelligence committees should also conduct a wide-ranging investigation into Blackwater's involvement in the CIA assassination program. Were Blackwater operatives involved in actual killings? Who approved the company's involvement? Was Congress notified? How high up the chain of command did the covert relationship with the company go? Was Blackwater active on US soil? What role, if any, did/does Blackwater play in secretly transporting prisoners?

This investigation must include the sworn testimony of former top CIA officials who were later hired or paid by Blackwater. Among these are Alvin "Buzzy" Krongard, the former number-three man at the agency, who gave Blackwater its first CIA contract and then served on the company's board, and J. Cofer Black, the former head of the CIA's counterterrorism unit, which ran the assassination program. Black later became the vice chair of Blackwater and ran Total Intelligence Solutions, Prince's private CIA. Total Intelligence has been simultaneously employed by the US government, foreign governments and private companies, an arrangement that may have created conflicts of interest that the House and Senate intelligence committees are obliged to investigate. Congress should also ask if national security is compromised when the knowledge, contacts and access possessed by former high-ranking CIA officials like Black and Krongard are placed on the open market.

John Kerry, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has questioned whether Blackwater used its State Department clearance as cover to gather information for targeted killings. Kerry should hold hearings in which Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice would be compelled to testify on the matter. The oversight committees should probe allegations that Blackwater was involved in arms smuggling and extrajudicial killings in Iraq, while committees dealing with military affairs should investigate what impact Blackwater's actions in Iraq have had on the safety of US troops. An invaluable asset for these investigations could be the Commission on Wartime Contracting, established by Senators Jim Webb and Claire McCaskill. Finally, the Justice Department should probe the murder, smuggling and other allegations against Prince and his executives.

In all of this, Blackwater has proved itself to be a whack-a-mole: it keeps popping up. Despite the Iraqi government's ban on the company, its operatives remain in Iraq a full two years after the September 2007 Nisour Square massacre, in which seventeen Iraqi civilians were gunned down in Baghdad. This resilience means that the investigations into the company must be comprehensive and coordinated.

Lastly, it is a mistake to think that Blackwater is the only problem. In Iraq, for example, the Obama administration is replacing Blackwater with the private contractor Triple Canopy, which, in addition to hiring some of Blackwater's men, has its own questionable history, including allegations of shooting civilians and hiring forces from countries with a history of human rights abuses. Blackwater is but one fruit on the poisonous tree of military outsourcing. It is imperative that Congress confront the intimate linking of corporate profits to US wars and lethal, covert operations.

Jeremy Scahill is the author of the New York Times bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is currently a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at the Nation Institute.

Behemoth Banks Born of the Bailout Reduce Consumer Choice, Tempt Corporate Moral Hazard


Banks ‘Too Big to Fail’ Have Grown Even Bigger

Behemoths Born of the Bailout Reduce Consumer Choice, Tempt Corporate Moral Hazard

by David Cho

When the credit crisis struck last year, federal regulators pumped tens of billions of dollars into the nation's leading financial institutions because the banks were so big that officials feared their failure would ruin the entire financial system.

[MORAL HAZARD INDEED -- U.S. President Barack Obama walks alongside Robert Wolf, Chairman and CEO of UBS Group Americas, as the play golf at Farm Neck Golf Course at Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, August 24, 2009.  On the first day of his vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, President Obama spent five hours golfing with UBS executive Robert Wolf, an early financial backer of Obama’s presidential campaign. As the pair teed off, another UBS banker, Bradley Birkenfeld, had just been handed a forty-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to assisting a client evade taxes. It was the first sentence in a wider scandal that has seen UBS admit to helping wealthy Americans dodge their tax obligations. On his own initiative, Birkenfeld blew the whistle on UBS. His disclosure and cooperation with US authorities provided inside information into the bank’s conduct and sparked the massive federal investigation. REUTERS/Jason Reed]MORAL HAZARD INDEED -- U.S. President Barack Obama walks alongside Robert Wolf, Chairman and CEO of UBS Group Americas, as the play golf at Farm Neck Golf Course at Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, August 24, 2009. On the first day of his vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, President Obama spent five hours golfing with UBS executive Robert Wolf, an early financial backer of Obama’s presidential campaign. As the pair teed off, another UBS banker, Bradley Birkenfeld, had just been handed a forty-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to assisting a client evade taxes. It was the first sentence in a wider scandal that has seen UBS admit to helping wealthy Americans dodge their tax obligations. On his own initiative, Birkenfeld blew the whistle on UBS. His disclosure and cooperation with US authorities provided inside information into the bank’s conduct and sparked the massive federal investigation. REUTERS/Jason Reed
Today, the biggest of those banks are even bigger.

The crisis may be turning out very well for many of the behemoths that dominate U.S. finance. A series of federally arranged mergers safely landed troubled banks on the decks of more stable firms. And it allowed the survivors to emerge from the turmoil with strengthened market positions, giving them even greater control over consumer lending and more potential to profit.

J.P. Morgan Chase, an amalgam of some of Wall Street's most storied institutions, now holds more than $1 of every $10 on deposit in this country. So does Bank of America, scarred by its acquisition of Merrill Lynch and partly government-owned as a result of the crisis, as does Wells Fargo, the biggest West Coast bank. Those three banks, plus government-rescued and -owned Citigroup, now issue one of every two mortgages and about two of every three credit cards, federal data show.

A year after the near-collapse of the financial system last September, the federal response has redefined how Americans get mortgages, student loans and other kinds of credit and has made a national spectacle of executive pay. But no consequence of the crisis alarms top regulators more than having banks that were already too big to fail grow even larger and more interconnected.

"It is at the top of the list of things that need to be fixed," said Sheila C. Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. "It fed the crisis, and it has gotten worse because of the crisis."

Regulators' concerns are twofold: that consumers will wind up with fewer choices for services and that big banks will assume they always have the government's backing if things go wrong. That presumed guarantee means large companies could return to the risky behavior that led to the crisis if they figure federal officials will clean up their mess.

This problem, known as "moral hazard," is partly why government officials are keeping a tight rein on bailed-out banks -- monitoring executive pay, reviewing sales of major divisions -- and it is driving the Obama administration's efforts to create a new regulatory system to prevent another crisis. That plan would impose higher capital standards on large institutions and empower the government to take over a wide range of troubled financial firms to wind down their businesses in an orderly way.

"The dominant public policy imperative motivating reform is to address the moral hazard risk created by what we did, what we had to do in the crisis to save the economy," Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said in an interview.

The worry for consumers is that the bailouts skewed the financial industry in favor of the big and powerful. Fresh data from the FDIC show that big banks have the ability to borrow more cheaply than their peers because creditors assume these large companies are not at risk of failing. That imbalance could eventually squeeze out smaller competitors. Already, consumers are seeing fewer choices and higher prices for financial services, some senior government officials warn.

Those mergers were largely the government's making. Regulators pushed failing mortgage lenders and Wall Street firms into the arms of even bigger banks and handed out billions of dollars to ensure that the deals would go through. They say they reluctantly arranged the marriages. Their aim was to dull the shock caused by collapses and prevent confidence in the U.S. financial system from crumbling.

Officials waived long-standing regulations to make the deals work. J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo were each allowed to hold more than 10 percent of the nation's deposits despite a rule barring such a practice. In several metropolitan regions, these banks were permitted to take market share beyond what the Department of Justice's antitrust guidelines typically allow, Federal Reserve documents show.

"There's been a significant consolidation among the big banks, and it's kind of hollowing out the banking system," said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com. "You'll be left with very large institutions and small ones that fill in the cracks. But it'll be difficult for the mid-tier institutions to thrive."

"The oligopoly has tightened," he added.

Consumer Choice

Federal officials and advocacy groups are just beginning to study the impact of the crisis on consumers, but there is some evidence that the mergers are creating new challenges for ordinary Americans.

In the last quarter, the top four banks raised fees related to deposits by an average of 8 percent, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Striving to stay competitive, smaller banks lowered their fees by an average of 12 percent.

"None of us are saying dismember these institutions. But you do want to create a system that allows for others to grow, where no one has an oligopolistic power at the expense of others who might be able to provide financial services to consumers," said Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Normally, when faced with price increases, consumers simply switch. But industry officials said that is not so easy when it comes to financial services.

In Santa Cruz, Calif., Wells Fargo, Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase hold three-quarters of the deposit market. Each firm was given tens of billions of dollars in bailout funds to help it swallow other banks.

The rest of the market, which consists of a handful of tiny community banks, cannot match the marketing power of the bigger banks. Instead, presidents of the smaller companies said, they must offer more personalized service and adapt to technological changes more quickly to entice customers. Some acknowledged it can be a tough fight.

Wells Fargo is "really, really good at the way they cross-sell and get their tentacles around you," said Richard Hofstetter, president of Lighthouse Bank, whose only branch is in Santa Cruz. "Their customers have multiple areas of their financial life involved with Wells Fargo. If you have a checking account and an ATM and a credit card and a home-equity line and automatic bill payments . . . to change that is a major undertaking."

Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan and Bank of America declined to comment for this article.

Last October, when the Fed was arranging the merger between Wells Fargo and Wachovia, it identified six other metropolitan regions in which the combined company would either exceed the Justice Department's antitrust guidelines or hold more than a third of an area's deposits. But the central bank thought local competition in each of those places was sufficient to allow the merger to go through, documents show.

Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of America, said those comments reveal the government's preferential treatment of big banks. He doubted whether the Fed would approve the merger of community banks if the combined company ended up controlling more a third of the market.

"To favor one class of financial institutions over another class skews the market. You don't have a free market; you have a government-favored market," he said. "We will never have free markets again if you have the government picking winners and losers."

Moral Hazard

Before the crisis, many creditors thought that the big institutions were a relatively safe investment because they were diversified and thus unlikely to fail. If one line of business struggled, each bank had other ventures to keep the franchise afloat. And even if the entire house caught fire, wouldn't the government step in to cover the losses?

With executives comforted by that thinking, risk came unhinged from investment decisions. Wall Street borrowed to make money without having enough in reserves to cover potential losses. The pursuit of profit was put ahead of the regard for safety and soundness.

The federal bailouts only reinforced the thought that government would save big banks, no matter how horrible their decisions.

Today, even with the memory of the crisis fresh in their minds, creditors are granting big institutions more favorable treatment because they know the government is backing them, FDIC officials said.

Large banks with more than $100 billion in assets are borrowing at interest rates 0.34 percentage points lower than the rest of the industry. Back in 2007, that advantage was only 0.08 percentage points, according to the FDIC. Such differences can cause huge variance in borrowing costs given the massive amount of money that flows through banks.

Many of the largest banks reported a surge in profit during the most recent quarter, including J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. They are prospering while many regional and community banks are struggling. Nearly three dozen of the smaller institutions have failed since July 1, including Community Bank of Nevada and Alabama-based Colonial Bank just last week.

If the government continues to back big firms over small, regulators worry that reckless behavior could return to Wall Street.

The administration's regulatory reform plan takes aim at this problem by penalizing banks for being big. It would require large institutions to hold more capital and pay higher regulatory fees, as well as allow the government to liquidate them in an orderly way if they begin to fail. The plan also seeks to bolster nontraditional channels of finance to create competition for large banks. If Congress approves the proposal, Geithner said, it would be clear at launch which financial companies would face these measures.

Economists and officials debate whether these steps would address the too-big-to-fail problem. Some say, for instance, that determining the precise amount of capital big financial companies should hold in their reserves will be difficult.

Geithner acknowledged that difficulty but said the administration would probably lean toward being more strict. Taken together, the combination of reforms would be a powerful counterbalance to big banks, he said.

"Our system is not going to be significantly more concentrated than it is today," Geithner said. "And it's important to remember that even now, our system remains much less concentrated and will continue to provide more choice for consumers and businesses than any other major economy in the world."

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Guns That Talk


Guns That Talk

by Robert C. Koehler

It's like truth or dare. And it's legal.

Get your permit or whatever and you, too, can bring an assault rifle to the next presidential speech you attend. There's nothing the police can do — amazing! If only the Democrats, back when George Bush was president, had known there was a safe, legal way to protest presidential policy and register discontent with the direction the country was headed. Can you imagine?

I ponder the phenomenon of gun speech — the amplified malevolence of the inarticulate — and hope, pray that it fizzles out quickly in its current manifestation: as a presence at town hall meetings on health care, at appearances by President Obama, at any random venue in which the nation's future is being discussed. I fear, however, that this is going to catch on, and if it does, well . . . the line in the sand has been drawn. At what point did public sanity cease to be a value?

Consider what life was like, oh, let's say five years ago. Here's a slice of news from July 4, 2004:

Nicole and Jeff Rank were arrested in Charleston, W.Va. — handcuffed, hustled away, charged with trespassing — because they were wearing T-shirts that said "Love America, Hate Bush" on the grounds of the state capitol on the day George Bush was scheduled to make a speech there. The Charleston Gazette further reported that those who applied for tickets to hear Bush's speech "were required to supply their names, addresses, birth dates, birthplaces and Social Security numbers."

That was then: "Free speech zones" were the norm; protesters were routinely whisked out of sight at every Bush appearance, even though, you know, we have a First Amendment and all.

This is now: A dozen guys with guns gathered outside a convention center in Phoenix on Monday as President Obama spoke. At least two of them had assault rifles slung over their shoulders. "Phoenix police said the men carrying guns at Monday's event did not need permits, as the state of Arizona has an ‘open carry' law," the U.K. Telegraph reported. "No crimes were committed, and no one was arrested."

A few days earlier, in Portsmouth, N.H., a man with a pistol strapped to his leg, holding a sign that read "It is time to water the tree of liberty," stood outside the local high school where Obama addressed a town hall meeting on health care. Another man was, in fact, arrested in Portsmouth that day because he had a loaded, unlicensed gun in his parked truck.

And, oh yeah, on Aug. 5, at a town hall meeting sponsored by Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, at a supermarket in Douglas, Ariz., a guy carrying a holstered pistol beneath his armpit was escorted off the premises by police when the weapon fell to the floor and bounced as he bent over. He wasn't arrested.

This phenomenon has several layers of tangled complexity: The first concerns the motives of the gun toters. Why would they bring a lethal weapon to a public event? Surely not out of fear for their personal safety. (If you're that scared, just stay home, OK?) They're obviously making a point. The one I'm getting is: See this, punk? I'm not going to kill you, but I could. Yammer all you want, but just be aware that I'm the serious one here. (Those whose weapons were concealed may have been making the same point, but only for their own reassurance of self-worth.)

More troubling and puzzling is the official nonchalance with which these incidents are being met. Considering that, in the Bush era, security personnel at every level were quick to find laws that superseded free speech whenever the president showed his face in public, how can lethal firepower — more dangerous than a T-shirt — be tolerated in the vicinity of the president of the United States?

Is it that we fear words and ideas more than inarticulate rage? Is it that there's a soft spot in the American heart for racist simmer? Do armed he-men exhibitionists require maternal coddling? Have we forgotten that four American presidents have been assassinated? Have we crossed the line that separates debate and disagreement from civil war?

Just asking. I don't think we have, but I do think we could. Guns are, indeed, speech: Carry one and you can't help but make an aggressive statement about what you believe and what you are capable of doing. A gun that goes off is something else again, however. It hardly matters whether the firing is accidental or intentional, because the consequences always have the potential to eclipse, tragically, the limited intentions — the "speech" — of the shooter.

My prayer is that we find the courage to grope for our common future together, and that the invisible infrastructure of public respect remains intact. This means we must check our weapons, but not our ideas, as we enter the debate.

Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.

Searching for the Depression—And Finding It!


Searching for the Depression—And Finding It!

Economic Stress Is Hidden, But It’s There in a Recovery That Isn’t.

by Danny Schechter

Last week I was telling a visiting filmmaker from overseas about the financial crisis and how it was getting worse. He looked at me askance. The market had just gone up, he said, and the White House was talking about an emerging recovery.

“I have been in New York before, he said, and it looks the same.”

A lot of the pain is hidden, I told him, hidden behind the deceptive spin in our media or buried in the denial and delusions of many people on the streets who have not taken the trouble to try to understand the nature of the calamity they are living through.

On the elevator, we pass the offices of City Harvest, a charity that collects excess food from restaurants and distributes it to shelters and programs for the hungry. An employee explains that with the restaurant business way off, they have less to donate. What about the demand by the hungry, I ask? With a shrug, he tells me the need is way up. (AP is reporting, “The nation's food banks, struggling to meet demand in hard times, are turning to prison inmates for free labor to help feed the hungry.”)

Out in the street, you soon notice fewer cabs and town cars. More people are walking or using public transportation, even though the fares recently went up. Even that is deceptive because there are still a lot of tourists in Midtown to complicate the picture. New Yorkers have other things on their minds. There are retail vacancies on every block. Other stores are discounting everything. The fast food places have their specials going for $2-5 dollars. Many of the clothing stories look like good will shops. When a JC Penny opened a store in Midtown, 15,000 people applied for 500 jobs.

As we walked downtown, we passed nearly empty bars and restaurants, a sign that the most customers are staying away. Media reports are now confirming what I saw. The Wall Street Journal reports, “Major retailers reported that American consumers are continuing to hunker down, casting a cloud over the durability of the U.S. recovery and underscoring the importance of overseas demand in restoring the world economy to health. Retailers across the spectrum provided foreboding reports.”

Down where I live, you also pass new buildings with empty stores and unsold apartments. The foreclosure crisis is already hitting New York’s condos and co-ops. You just can’t see it from the street the way you can in a suburban tract. When you read the auction notices, you realize its real. A new wave of foreclosures is expected and not just in poor homes. The middle class and commercial real estate is affected.

Almost every block on 8th Avenue in Chelsea has a new bank branch. It’s like ATM heaven except most are not crowded. There was a report last week that banking industry opened 10,000 branches over the last five years. Most were based in shopping areas or concentrated in affluent neighborhoods. Only a small number are in poorer communities, especially those victimized by predatory subprime lending. The New York Times reported this week that 91,100 NY households hide their savings in closets, in pillows — even in brown paper lunch bags, just not at a bank

Meanwhile, every week, more banks are going bust and being taken over and sold by the FDIC. There are reports that the FDIC itself is insolvent.

And as for the markets, cooler heads prevailed when the wisemen realized that consumer demand has fallen up as defaults and delinquencies rise

Inequality is mounting in social and racial terms. Recent statistics: cited in a Times study: "From the first quarter in 2008 to the first quarter in 2009, the national unemployment rates for blacks rose from 8.9 percent to 13.6 percent, compared to a rise for whites of 4.8 percent to 8.2 percent. In NYC, it was even worse: from 5.7 percent to 14.7 percent, compared to 3.0 percent to 3.7 percent for whites.”

Remember these statistics notoriously undercount those not looking for jobs that are not there. Unless you are following the trajectory of this crisis you might not know that economist Nouriel Roubini, who was among the first to predict it, still sees it as far more serious that most of us realize:

“This is the worst US and global recession in 60 years. If the US recession were—as is most likely—to be over at the end of the year, it will have been three times as long and about fives times as deep—in terms of the cumulative decline in output—as the previous two.” Notice he is not quite predicting its end, using the “If” word to mask his own uncertainty. The Financial Times cautions against optimism taking refuge in the term “caution.”

Here in the Big Apple, The City’s top money man, Controller Bill Thompson says, “108,000 jobs evaporating citywide between August, 2008 and May, 2009. Typically, unemployment continues to climb even after the economy bottoms out and begins to recover. I expect the number of unemployed in New York City to reach 400,000 in 2010, for the first time in decades.”

Still invisible are the impact of cutbacks on city services and the educational system.

Income disparities are growing, according to a new study but how do I show that to my visitor since people with credit cards can still charge it even as credit limits are being cut back and interest rates rise. At the same time, A Bank of America Merrill study shows the Middle class is being hit hardest.

The LA Times reports, “The consumer debt problem in the economy really is a debt problem for the middle class. The need to work off a chunk of that debt will sap middle-class family spending power for perhaps years to come. By contrast, the upper 10% of income earners face a much smaller debt burden relative to income and net worth. Those people should have ample spending power to help fuel an economic recovery.”

And don’t think the end of the recession will bring back many of the jobs that are gone. Economists are now getting us used to a new term: “jobless recovery.”

Already employers are introducing compulsory furloughs, as the Christian Science Monitor reveals: “For millions of Americans, this might be the year of the furlough. Over the course of a month or so, workers—both white-collar and blue—may have to take several days off whether they want to or not. Call it a temporary pay cut—an action that is sold by management as a way to help save some jobs.”

Another new study finds, “Income inequality in the United States is at an all-time high, surpassing even levels seen during the Great Depression, according to a recently updated paper by University of California, Berkeley Professor Emmanuel Saez. The paper, which covers data through 2007, points to a staggering, unprecedented disparity in American incomes. On his blog, Nobel prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman called the numbers "truly amazing."

It's all amazing, all devastating to our lives and futures, and yet you can’t necessarily see it if you don’t look, or know what to look for. No one is talking about our economic pain—not the right or the left, perhaps because it is not an “event” that you can cover live at a town hall.

It’s there but, for many, it’s invisible and seen as a personal problem, not a social issue. This crisis didn’t just happen; it was caused. Will those responsible ever be held accountable? Out of sight is out of mind. The hope is that if we ignore it, it will go away.

If you think that, think again.

Mediahannel.org News Dissector Danny Schechter is finishing a book and film on the financial crisis as a crime story. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Gates arresting officer has track record of race-based complaints


raw story

Gates arresting officer has track record of race-based complaints

By Daniel Tencer

Published: August 19, 2009
Updated 23 minutes ago


Sergeant James Crowley, the Cambridge police officer who arrested Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in a highly publicized case last month, has a track record of civilian complaints against him, including two race-related complaints from black males, the Associated Press and the Boston Herald report.

Crowley was cleared of wrongdoing in all those cases, the Boston Herald says.

According to the paper, Crowley has been involved in 422 arrests during his career, as well as some 800 investigations. The eight complaints against him “represent less than one percent of his interactions with the public,” according to Cambridge, Massachusetts, Police Commissioner Robert Haas.

The police department released its internal-affairs files on Crowley after freedom-of-information requests from the Boston Globe and Boston Herald, AP reports.

In one incident, the files show a complaint from a young black male who said Crowley gave him a ticket after complaining that the officer “stopped young looking black men.” According to records, Crowley allegedly referred to the complainant as “homeboy.”

The Herald reports:

In another case from 2002, Crowley was investigating a robbery when he questioned two black men in a car and one filed a complaint criticizing “the lack of restraint the officers demonstrated in this situation.”

The man writes: “I am curious if the description of ‘Black Male’ immediately suspends the rights of all brown skinned individuals within a 10-block radius.”

Commissioner Haas pointed out in a letter to the Herald that not only was Crowley cleared of wrongdoing in all the instances where complaints were filed against him, he has received two commendations for his work on the force.

Crowley arrested Gates, a professor of African-American Studies at Harvard University, on July 16 while investigating a report of a burglary at Gates’ home. Gates had been unable to enter his home and was seen jimmying the front door to his house. After a loud confrontation between the two men, Crowley arrested Gates on a disorderly conduct charge. The police and prosecution later agreed to drop the charges.

Gates alleged that he was a victim of racial profiling; Crowley denies the claim.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Military Killer Robots 'Could Endanger Civilians'


Military Killer Robots 'Could Endanger Civilians'

Action on a global scale must be taken to curb the development of military killer robots that think for themselves, a leading British expert said.

"Terminator"-style machines that decide how, when and who to kill are just around the corner, warns Noel Sharkey, Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at the University of Sheffield.

[Terminator style killer robots could lead to a major escalation in civilian deaths, warns Prof Noel Sharkey  (Photo: WARNER BROS. PICTURES)]Terminator style killer robots could lead to a major escalation in civilian deaths, warns Prof Noel Sharkey (Photo: WARNER BROS. PICTURES)
Far from helping to reduce casualties, their use is likely to make conflict and war more common and lead to a major escalation in numbers of civilian deaths, he believes.

"I do think there should be some international discussion and arms control on these weapons but there's absolutely none," said Prof Sharkey.

"The military have a strange view of artificial intelligence based on science fiction. The nub of it is that robots do not have the necessary discriminatory ability. They can't distinguish between combatants and civilians. It's hard enough for soldiers to do that."

Iraq and Afghanistan have both provided ideal "showcases" for robot weapons, said Prof Sharkey.

The "War on Terror" declared by President George Bush spurred on the development of pilotless drone aircraft deployed against insurgents.

Initially used for surveillance, drones such as the Predator and larger Reaper were now armed with bombs and missiles.

The US currently has 200 Predators and 30 Reapers and next year alone will be spending 5.5 billion dollars (£3.29 billion) on unmanned combat vehicles.

Britain had two Predators until one crashed in Iraq last year.

At present these weapons are still operated remotely by humans sitting in front of computer screens. RAF pilots on secondment were among the more experienced controllers used by the US military, while others only had six weeks training, said Prof Sharkey. "If you're good at computer games, you're in," he added.

But rapid progress was being made towards robots which took virtually all their own decisions and were merely "supervised" by humans.

These would be fully autonomous killing machines reminiscent of those depicted in the "Terminator" films.

"The next thing that's coming, and this is what really scares me, are armed autonomous robots," said Prof Sharkey speaking to journalists in London. "The robot will do the killing itself. This will make decision making faster and allow one person to control many robots. A single soldier could initiate a large scale attack from the air and the ground.

"It could happen now; the technology's there."

A step on the way had already been taken by Israel with "Harpy", a pilotless aircraft that flies around searching for an enemy radar signal. When it thinks one has been located and identified as hostile, the drone turns into a homing missile and launches an attack - all without human intervention.

Last year the British aerospace company BAe Systems completed a flying trial with a group of drones that could communicate with each other and select their own targets, said Prof Starkey. The United States Air Force was looking at the concept of "swarm technology" which involved multiple drone aircraft operating together.

Flying drones were swiftly being joined by armed robot ground vehicles, such as the Talon Sword which bristles with machine guns, grenade launchers, and anti-tank missiles.

However it was likely to be decades before such robots possessed a human-like ability to tell friend from foe.

Even with human controllers, drones were already stacking up large numbers of civilian casualties.

As a result of 60 known drone attacks in Pakistan between January 2006 and April 2009, 14 al Qaida leaders had been killed but also 607 civilians, said Prof Sharkey.

The US was paying teenagers "thousands of dollars" to drop infrared tags at the homes of al Qaida suspects so that Predator drones could aim their weapons at them, he added. But often the tags were thrown down randomly, marking out completely innocent civilians for attack.

Prof Sharkey, who insists he is "not a pacifist" and has no anti-war agenda, said: "If we keep on using robot weapons we're going to put civilians at grave risk and it's going to be much easier to start wars. The main inhibitor of wars is body bags coming home.

"People talk about programming the 'laws of war' into a computer to give robots a conscience, so that if the target is a civilian you don't shoot. But for a robot to recognise a civilian you need an exact specification, and one of the problems is there's no specific definition of a civilian. Soldiers have to rely on common sense.

"I'm not saying it will never happen, but I know what's out there and it's not going to happen for a long time."


Sunday, August 2, 2009

War Defines Capitalism: Searching For Enemies


counterpunch

The Contours of Recent American Foreign Policy

Searching For Enemies

By GABRIEL KOLKO

War, from preparation for it through to its aftermath, has defined both the essential nature of the major capitalist nations and their relative power since at least 1914. War became the major catalyst of change for revolutionary movements in Russia, China, and Vietnam. While wars also created reactionary and fascistic parties, particularly in the case of Italy and Germany, in the longer run they brought about domestic social changes of far-reaching magnitude. The Bolshevik Revolution was the preeminent example of this ironic symbiosis of war and revolution.

Wars not only created social disorder within nations, producing revolutions on the right and left, they also reduced the ability of capitalist states to compete economically with each other. To a significant degree, the United States’ economic supremacy up to the Vietnam War was based on the economic consequences of the two World Wars for Europe. Europe made war while America produced war goods for them until it was ready to enter into war later on its own terms. After 1964, the pattern was reversed, as the US weakened itself through war while the Europeans and Japanese made consumer goods and prospered.

The policy choices made by the US and most other nations always depended on the health – or lack of it – of the economy. Economic necessities restrict the options policy-makers can consider. What a nation can afford is crucial in determining what it can do in the long run. The nature of a power structure – which individuals and classes have the most influence – in turn shapes the range of policies that decision-makers are likely to select from. The political role of the corporations with the most to gain in a nation has always been greatly disproportionate to their numbers. They have created a larger consensus among those who matter most in politics. They have provided, to a remarkable degree, the personnel and expertise essential for the evaluation and direction of foreign policy. All this may seem perfectly self-evident but it is worth reminding ourselves that – among other things but often principally – foreign policies reflect the nature of interested parties, which may be corporate (a constituency itself often very divided), or ethnic (constituencies no less divided by their conceptions of how best the US should relate to situations), or include other interest groups of every shape and variety.

Historically, the main capitalist nations maintained a consensus against all social revolutions in the Third World. This consensus, however, eroded and fell apart as national trade interests came to into play over rivalries for oil and critical raw materials, and as the desire to integrate ex-colonial nations (as artificial as many were) into spheres of influence became more pressing. As a result, there was an escalating power conflict between Western Europe, the United States, Japan, and, more recently, China. The war in Vietnam made the new assertiveness and real power of other nations possible, as the inflation- and deficit-ridden American economy saw the dollar weakened and the gold standard abandoned under Lyndon Johnson.

All that the US made certain was uncertainty itself, leading to a future marked by frequent crises in financial and foreign policy areas, depending on the interests involved. All of this seems self-evident, but is apparently not so to those who rule nations, largely because the interests at stake are always different and there are simply too many nuances to master.

Radical critics cannot draw up a timetable or predict the exact magnitude of future crises because their analytic perceptions are deficient, having lost their appeal and sounding increasingly hollow. But those who rule our political and economic institutions have the problem of resolving the challenges they inherit, and their past incapacity to do so without creating turmoil for some constituency of American society – generally the poor and underprivileged – bequeaths a dismal future to those who are likely to lose the most.

The problem of running a vast foreign and military policy, not just for the United States but also for other nations, is that all decisions on vital questions are filtered through the prism of ambition. Since men and women who aspire to attain influence and power very often give advice with a view to advancing their own careers, they are generally anything but objective assessors of options. Decisions are made to attain success; choices are rarely made with an eye on the facts. The war in Iraq was an example of this. In April 2008 the National Defense University report on the Iraq War, which called it “a major debacle,” was written by men who had originally fully supported the war in order to advance their careers, realizing later that it was essential to turn against since it was politically expedient to keep Congressional money flowing. Decisions, in short, ought to be arrived at without reference to the demands of the bureaucratic system or the calculations of individuals as to how a given decision will affect their personal future. But the current decision-making system is tainted. Errors may be made innocently, as they frequently are, by misjudging facts or being ignorant of vital information, but the system also has the problem of ambitious people. All rational expectation theories, including the schematic notions of Max Weber and the like in sociology, make very similar errors.

All of Bush’s major policies, especially his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the grandiose neoconservative agenda to make the US the dominant world power, failed, leaving a legacy of fear and hatred in the Middle East and much of the rest of the world, while making an enemy of Russia and weakening America’s traditional alliances. These policies also made Bush the most unpopular President in American history. Rather than vindicate the Pentagon’s power and succeed in extirpating terrorist evils, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have shown yet again that the US cannot impose its will on nations determined to resist it. They have also gravely destabilized the Muslim world, Pakistan, and the entire South Asia region, making nuclear proliferation a greater danger than ever. As with its attempt to destroy the Vietnamese communists, the US attack on Saddam Hussein’s regime again revealed the limits of its power. Worse yet, in the Middle East Bush’s war in Iraq has – as his father feared it would – left Iran as the dominant power in the region and transformed the balance of power in favor of a nation the US chose to make its enemy. Contradictions and disasters are the leitmotif of virtually everything the second George Bush did, but there is also a crucial continuity between his own Administration and that of his father from 1989 through 1992.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in August 1991 the US lacked an identifiable enemy. Now that the Cold War adversary was gone, the fear of communism had to be replaced by another mobilizing anxiety. President George H.W. Bush and most of his advisers wished to see the USSR survive in some form. “We have an interest in the stability of the Soviet Union,” Brent Scowcroft, the President’s National Security Adviser, told Bush. “Historical enemies would be less constrained by the bipolar Superpower alignments,” the US Joint Chiefs of Staff stated in 1991. Communism had been dangerous but predictable, and the danger now was “international deregulation.” What was essential was a new doctrine to replace fear of communism, one that would keep Congress and the American public ready to spend inordinate sums to sustain the US military as the strongest on earth.

The first President Bush assigned this definitional problem to his Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, who later became Vice-President under his son. Cheney published a grandiose picture of a dominant American military power so great and omnipotent – and expensive – globally that no nation could rival it. The policy was vague as to which nation or enemy it was directed against, but it included the abandonment of the doctrine of nuclear deterrence and a commitment to the use of nuclear weapons against lesser threats: weapons of mass destruction, menaces of an indefinable nature. It was never repudiated, in fact was essentially continued, by the Clinton Administration. It was later to form the basis of the neoconservative vision under the second Bush Administration. Indeed, it has not been repudiated by anyone, whether Republicans or Democrats, even to this day. When parts of Cheney’s vision were published in 1993 the Japanese and the Germans were already deemed to be, once again, potential challengers to American power. After the Gulf War of 1990, Iraq was considered an enemy but also strategically important to the US simply because Saddam Hussein – once a friend the US and recipient of billions of dollars of aid – effectively contained Iranian power. Who was the enemy? If this has remained unclear, it is today US policy that it is prepared to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear threats – abandoning deterrence for something far more amorphous in terms of its practical consequences.

The continuity between of the reigns of the two Presidents Bush is clear enough, as is the fact that the use of nuclear weapons to respond to non-nuclear threats, and the abandonment of deterrence, was also the policy of the Clinton Administration. They in turn were all part of a confrontation with the world that began under President Harry Truman. Cheney was scarcely an accident: he became Vice-President to fulfill a consummately ambitious doctrine committed to dangers, and although the senior Bush later regretted the way the policy was interpreted, he was also the author of what has proved the most grandiose of all efforts: articulating a mobilizing doctrine to replace the fear of communism with an indefinable enemy and threat that will justify the Pentagon’s immense and growing budget.

The United States’ problem is compounded today by the deepening disparity between its military doctrines and reality, and by much else. When we discuss US foreign policy we must differentiate between the ideology and the motives that have guided it in the Western Hemisphere, from as early as 1823 when the Monroe Doctrine excluded the colonial European powers from any further expansion and left the entire region to the US, which even then was eyeing great parts of Mexico and the Spanish empire for itself. (Even today, only 82 per cent of all Americans speak English. Most of the others speak Spanish.) The US interventions that came much later in Europe were ad hoc responses to the crises between European nations that emerged from the breakup of colonialism, or to fears of communism – sometimes real but often fictional and convenient. Many of these responses were unpredictable and involved everything from a need to ensure the “credibility” of military power – as in Vietnam – to sheer ideological fixation and a belief that firepower would solve political challenges quickly, as in the case of the present war in Iraq. Crises in the Western Hemisphere, like those that emerged elsewhere since 1947, may also have involved unpredictability, but the US role in the West has often, perhaps always, possessed a crucial geopolitical dimension that rarely, perhaps never, existed in Asia or the Middle East. Economically and strategically one must always look at crises in the Western Hemisphere through a prism that is much older – and more vital to the United States’ real interests. Less than a fifth of its petroleum today comes from the entire Persian Gulf, where it is fighting what has become a major war. Wars in the Eastern Hemisphere take the US away from its own interest and history.

But the United States seeks and finds other problems. The Korean War first revealed its inability to match a fighting and technological capacity directed against Soviet and centralized or urban targets – for which its atomic bombs and mobile armor were best suited – and the decentralized battlefields which it confronted in Korea and Vietnam, and later confronted in Iraq, to mention only the best known. The Vietnam War was a futile, expensive, and protracted effort to use high mobility and airpower – helicopters and B52s – to fight a jungle-based, highly decentralized guerilla army. There was even then growing doctrinal confusion, compounded by the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and today the US suffers an even more acute doctrinal crisis. Its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been costly beyond imagination, will endure long after those who began them leave Washington, and yet will end in failure. There is a rationale for higher Defense spending because it sustains arms builders who have tremendous power in Washington, but their promises of success have proven a chimera. Indeed, military contractors often simply want to sell arms, not use them. Some of them, indeed, may even be against the wars in which their products are employed.

The disparity between military technology and reality has also affected America’s allies, such as Israel. Today this gap between what its military arm can do and political reality poses an even graver problem for America than did the wars in Korea and Vietnam. The American military cannot organize sufficiently well for its missions because they are potentially limitless – taking in Asia, South and Central America, Eastern Europe and Russia, and the entire world. It was not able to fight successfully in either Korea or Vietnam, and its foreign and military policies are often an adventure. The US never fought a communist nation in Eastern Europe though it prepared to do so. It succeeds, if at all, only in very small nations where its proxies are not venal and corrupt. But communist Cuba has existed since 1959!

The problem for the United States is that communism for practical purposes has virtually ceased to exist – what passes as communism in China, Vietnam, or North Korea is increasingly no more than a pretentious fraud. They are de facto capitalist nations or Confucian tyrannies. The US does not know who its enemies are and has the military muscle, and technology, designed to fight only communism. So long as communism was the enemy a US-led alliance could be bound together by a unifying theme. When fear of communism disappeared, more particular interests took over and nations began finding their own way while distancing themselves from American leadership. History since 1991 has become far more complicated – a fact America’s leaders in Washington realized as soon as the USSR collapsed. The world has become far more unstable and unpredictable and the so-called “globalization” of the world economy has made it more rather than less precarious.

Now nations have power without ideology in the true sense of that term, leaving the US confused as never before. The ideological era is over, for capitalists as well as those descended from the Marxist tradition. “Terrorism” is no less confusing. Is it Islamic jihadist, secular nationalist, or what? US efforts against “terrorism” are often counterproductive, as in Afghanistan and Somalia, leaving its enemies stronger than ever. American foreign policy is in crisis because the world is now in transition, emerging from 70 years of Bolshevism into an amorphous political landscape in which a coherent, identifiable adversary can no longer be found.

Worse yet for the United States, its preoccupation with one nation or region – Vietnam and Iraq are perfect examples – means that it lacks the resources to destroy often far more serious opposition elsewhere. The US adventure in Vietnam meant that Castro’s Cuba had the time and space to consolidate. The Afghan and Iraq wars have likewise allowed a slew of Leftist regimes in South America virtual freedom to consolidate, even though ultimately the Western Hemisphere is far more important to the US, strategically at least, than are the wars it loses elsewhere. In a word, the US squanders its vast but ultimately limited resources capriciously. It cannot manage its power rationally.

Above all, its martial adventures abroad cost far more than the US can now afford. Now is an inauspicious moment to be an imperial power: the prices of the commodities the US imports are rising, its current account deficit is worsening, the value of the dollar is falling, while the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have become the most expensive in American history. The US began to fight in Afghanistan in October 2001, but has failed to capture Osama Bin Laden, perpetrator of the September 11 killing of 3,000 Americans in New York. Meanwhile, the Taliban is becoming stronger and the conflict has spread into northern Pakistan, destabilizing that nation’s politics. Since Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons, Washington feels there is a grave risk that Muslim extremists will acquire such a weapon and then be capable of destroying an American city, or all of Israel.

Everything is going wrong for the United States in terms of its power position globally. Russia – rich from selling gas and oil, while spending on its military less than a fifth of the US expenditure in 2006 – is still the US’s equal in terms of nuclear weapons, and outflanks the US in Central Asia, the Middle East, and much of the Islamic world. It sells sophisticated arms to many nations, has economic agreements with Arab and Muslim countries, and has become a growing obstacle to America’s influence and power. Russia is just as much a danger to the US as when Stalin ruled. Nuclear proliferation is now a grave problem, with an unpredictable but growing number of nations equipped with nuclear bombs and terrorists more and more likely to get hold of them. As for chemical and biological weapons, the US never even caught its anthrax killer soon after the September 11 attack. At the same time, the Bush Administration’s strategy on Iran is being undermined by rising oil and gas prices, which also have the effect of making the successors of the Soviet system even richer. There is a fatal, impossible contradiction between US goals – to eliminate the present Teheran regime and contain Russian power – and rising petroleum prices. American policy on Russia is a shambles.

In crucial ways, the basic approach and limits of US foreign policy are hardly unusual. The US suffers from the kind of problems that have affected many nations over the past centuries. The only difference is that the US had, and to a great degree still has, power even while undergoing a transition away from the omnipotence it enjoyed after 1945. That alone is its distinction. The existing system – whether American or not – has the fundamental problem that it cannot be run according to rational criteria, and like Marxism it has no “laws.” In every nation, in every branch of life – military, political, cultural – there are a sufficient number of adventurers, opportunists, egomaniacs, psychotics, or destructive individuals who create or accept disorder. In the case of the US, James V. Forrestal, the first Secretary of Defense, jumped out of the window of a naval hospital – to which he was confined for paranoia – in May 1949, allegedly because he believed war with the USSR was imminent. Other types – sheer opportunists such as the neoconservatives crucial in the Bush Administration – wish to accumulate power alone. Ideologies are very often merely a disguise for ambition. This limit, again, exists everywhere, not just the United States, and regardless of whether the party in power calls itself “socialist,” “capitalist,” or whatever.

Cynicism is prevalent, and often the only motive of political behavior. We can see it in Russia or Great Britain today. And this is the case not simply with respect to foreign policy, but in relation to every aspect of existing society.

People, whether theorists, administrators, or whatever, cannot regulate or predict systems run by ambitious individuals, and they frequently cannot regulate systems run by perfectly sincere people either – it is simply far too difficult. There is often an immense disparity between what politicians – whatever they call themselves and no matter which nation they belong to – do and what they say. What they do, not what they say, is crucial, because in countless places they have often betrayed their followers.

Gabriel Kolko is the leading historian of modern warfare. He is the author of the classic Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914, Another Century of War? and The Age of War: the US Confronts the World and After Socialism. He has also written the best history of the Vietnam War, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the US and the Modern Historical Experience. His latest book is World in Crisis, from which this essay has been excerpted.