AlterNet, September 17, 2007
Title: “Iraq death toll rivals Rwanda genocide, Cambodian killing fields”
Author: Joshua Holland

Reuters (via AlterNet), January 7, 2008
Title: “Iraq conflict has killed a million, says survey”
Author: Luke Baker

Inter Press Service, March 3, 2008
Title: “Iraq: Not our country to Return to”
Authors: Maki al-Nazzal and Dahr Jamail

Student Researchers: Danielle Stanton, Tim LeDonne, and Kat Pat Crespán
Faculty Evaluator: Heidi LaMoreaux, PhD

Over one million Iraqis have met violent deaths as a result of the 2003 invasion, according to a study conducted by the prestigious British polling group, Opinion Research Business (ORB). These numbers suggest that the invasion and occupation of Iraq rivals the mass killings of the last century—the human toll exceeds the 800,000 to 900,000 believed killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and is approaching the number (1.7 million) who died in Cambodia’s infamous “Killing Fields” during the Khmer Rouge era of the 1970s.

ORB’s research covered fifteen of Iraq’s eighteen provinces. Those not covered include two of Iraq’s more volatile regions—Kerbala and Anbar—and the northern province of Arbil, where local authorities refused them a permit to work. In face-to-face interviews with 2,414 adults, the poll found that more than one in five respondents had had at least one death in their household as a result of the conflict, as opposed to natural cause.

Authors Joshua Holland and Michael Schwartz point out that the dominant narrative on Iraq—that most of the violence against Iraqis is being perpetrated by Iraqis themselves and is not our responsibility—is ill conceived. Interviewers from the Lancet report of October 2006 (Censored 2006, #2) asked Iraqi respondents how their loved ones died. Of deaths for which families were certain of the perpetrator, 56 percent were attributable to US forces or their allies. Schwartz suggests that if a low pro rata share of half the unattributed deaths were caused by US forces, a total of approximately 80 percent of Iraqi deaths are directly US perpetrated.

Even with the lower confirmed figures, by the end of 2006, an average of 5,000 Iraqis had been killed every month by US forces since the beginning of the occupation. However, the rate of fatalities in 2006 was twice as high as the overall average, meaning that the American average in 2006 was well over 10,000 per month, or over 300 Iraqis every day. With the surge that began in 2007, the current figure is likely even higher.

Schwartz points out that the logic to this carnage lies in a statistic released by the US military and reported by the Brookings Institute: for the first four years of the occupation the American military sent over 1,000 patrols each day into hostile neighborhoods, looking to capture or kill “insurgents” and “terrorists.” (Since February 2007, the number has increased to nearly 5,000 patrols a day, if we include the Iraqi troops participating in the American surge.) Each patrol invades an average of thirty Iraqi homes a day, with the mission to interrogate, arrest, or kill suspects. In this context, any fighting age man is not just a suspect, but a potentially lethal adversary. Our soldiers are told not to take any chances (see Story #9).

According to US military statistics, again reported by the Brookings Institute, these patrols currently result in just under 3,000 firefights every month, or just under an average of one hundred per day (not counting the additional twenty-five or so involving our Iraqi allies). Thousands of patrols result in thousands of innocent Iraqi deaths and unconscionably brutal detentions.

Iraqis’ attempts to escape the violence have resulted in a refugee crisis of mammoth proportion. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration, in 2007 almost 5 million Iraqis had been displaced by violence in their country, the vast majority of which had fled since 2003. Over 2.4 million vacated their homes for safer areas within Iraq, up to 1.5 million were living in Syria, and over 1 million refugees were inhabiting Jordan, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, and Gulf States. Iraq’s refugees, increasing by an average of almost 100,000 every month, have no legal work options in most host states and provinces and are increasingly desperate.1

Yet more Iraqis continue to flee their homes than the numbers returning, despite official claims to the contrary. Thousands fleeing say security is as bad as ever, and that to return would be to accept death. Most of those who return are subsequently displaced again.

Maki al-Nazzal and Dahr Jamail quote an Iraqi engineer now working at a restaurant in Damascus, “Return to Iraq? There is no Iraq to return to, my friend. Iraq only exists in our dreams and memories.”

Another interviewee told the authors, “The US military say Fallujah is safe now while over 800 men are detained there under the worst conditions. . . . At least 750 out of the 800 detainees are not resistance fighters, but people who refused to collaborate with occupation forces and their tails.” (Iraqis who collaborate with occupation forces are commonly referred to as “tails of the Americans.”)

Another refugee from Baghdad said, “I took my family back home in January. The first night we arrived, Americans raided our house and kept us all in one room while their snipers used our rooftop to shoot at people. I decided to come back here [Damascus] the next morning after a horrifying night that we will never forget.”

Citation

1. “The Iraqi Displacement Crisis,” Refugees International, March 3, 2008.

UPDATE BY MICHAEL SCHWARTZ

The mortality statistics cited in “Is the United States Killing 10,000 Iraqis Every Month?” were based on another article suitable for Project Censored recognition, a scientific investigation of deaths caused by the war in Iraq. The original article, published in Lancet in 2006, received some dismissive coverage when it was released, and then disappeared from view as the mainstream media returned to reporting biased estimates that placed Iraqi casualties at about one-tenth the Lancet estimates. The corporate media blackout of the original study extended to my article as well, and has continued unabated, though the Lancet article has withstood several waves of criticism, while being confirmed and updated by other studies (Censored 2006, #2).

By early 2008, the best estimate, based on extrapolations and replications of the Lancet study, was that 1.2 million Iraqis had died as a consequence of the war. This figure has not, to my knowledge, been reported in any mass media outlet in the United States.

The blackout of the casualty figures was matched by a similar blackout of other main evidence in my article: that the Bush administration military strategy in Iraq assures vast property destruction and lethality on a daily basis. Rules of engagement that require the approximately one thousand US patrols each day to respond to any hostile act with overwhelming firepower—small arms, artillery, and air power—guarantee that large numbers of civilians will suffer and die. But the mainstream media refuses to cover this mayhem, even after the Winter Soldier meetings in March 2008 featured over one hundred Iraq veterans who testified to their own participation in what they call “atrocity producing situations.” (see Story #9)

The effectiveness of the media blackout is vividly illustrated by an Associated Press poll conducted in February 2007, which asked a representative sample of US residents how many Iraqis had died as a result of the war. The average respondent thought the number was under 10,000, about 2 percent of the actual total at that time. This remarkable mass ignorance, like so many other elements of the Iraq War story, received no coverage in the mass media, not even by the Associated Press, which commissioned the study.

The Iraq Veterans Against the War has made the brutality of the occupation their special activist province. The slaughter of the Iraqi people is the foundation of their demand for immediate and full withdrawal of US troops, and the subject of their historic Winter Soldier meetings in Baltimore. Though there was no mainstream US media coverage of this event, the live streaming on Pacifica Radio and on the IVAW website reached a huge audience—including a vast number of active duty soldiers—with vivid descriptions of atrocities committed by the US war machine. A growing number of independent news sites now feature regular coverage of this aspect of the war, including Democracy Now!, Tom Dispatch, Dahr Jamail’s MidEast Dispatches, Informed Comment, Antiwar.com, and ZNet.

UPDATE BY MAKI AL-NAZZAL AND DAHR JAMAIL

The promotion of US general David Petraeus to head CENTCOM, and General Raymond Odierno to replace Petraeus as commanding general of the Multi-National Force in Iraq, provoked a lot of anger amongst Iraqis in both Syria and Jordan. The two generals who convinced US and international society of improvement in Iraq do not seem to have succeeded in convincing Iraqi refugees of their success.

“Just like the Bush Administration decorated Paul Bremer (former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority), they are rewarding others who participated in the destruction to Iraq,” stated Muhammad Shamil, an Iraqi journalist who fled Iraq to Syria in 2006. “What they call violence was concentrated in some parts of Iraq, but now spread to be all over the country, thanks to US war heroes. People are getting killed, evicted or detained by the thousands, from Basra (South) to Mosul (North).”

Other Iraqi refugees seem to have changed attitudes regarding their hopes to return. Compared to when this story was published in March 2008, the refugee crisis continues to deepen. This is exacerbated by the fact that most Iraqis have no intention of returning home. Instead, they are looking for permanent residence in other countries.

“I decided to stop dreaming of going back home and find myself a new home anywhere in the world if I could,” said thirty-two-year-old Maha Numan in Syria, “I have been a refugee for three years now living on the dream of return, but I decided to stop dreaming. I have lost faith in all leaders of the world after the surges of Basra, Sadr City and now Mosul. This seems to be endless and one has to work harder on finding a safe haven for one’s family.”

Iraqis in Syria know a lot more of the news about their country than most journalists. At an Internet café in Damascus, each of them calls his hometown and reports the happenings of the day to other Iraqi refugees. News of ongoing violence across much of Iraq convinces them to remain abroad.

“There were four various explosions in Fallujah today,” said Salam Adel, who worked as a translator for US forces in Fallujah in 2005. “And they say it is safe to go back! Damn them, go back for what? For roadside bombs or car bombs?”

It has been important, politically, for the Bush administration to claim that the situation in Iraq is improving. This claim has been assisted by a complicit corporate media. However, the 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria, and over 750,000 in Jordan, will tell you differently. Otherwise, they would not remain outside of Iraq.

To obtain updated information on the refugee crisis, see http://www.irinnews.org/IRIN-ME.aspx, http://www.iraqredcrescent .org/, http://www.refugeesinternational.org/section/waystohelp, http://www.unhcr.org/iraq.html, and http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/.

Global Research, July 19, 2007
Title: “The Militarization and Annexation of North America”
Author: Stephen Lendman

Global Research, August 2, 2007
Title: “North American Union: The SPP is a ‘hostile takeover’ of democratic government and an end to the Rule of Law”
Author: Constance Fogal

Student Researchers: Rebecca Newsome and Andrea Lochtefeld

Faculty Evaluator: Ron Lopez, PhD

Leaders of Canada, the US, and Mexico have been meeting to secretly expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with “deep integration” of a more militarized tri-national Homeland Security force. Taking shape under the radar of the respective governments and without public knowledge or consideration, the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP)—headquartered in Washington—aims to integrate the three nations into a single political, economic, and security bloc.

The SPP was launched at a meeting of Presidents George W. Bush and Vicente Fox, and Prime Minister Paul Martin, in Waco, Texas, on March 31, 2005. The official US web page describes the SPP as “. . . a White House-led initiative among the United States and Canada and Mexico to increase security and to enhance prosperity . . .” The SPP is not a law, or a treaty, or even a signed agreement. All these would require public debate and participation of Congress.

The SPP was born in the “war on terror” era and reflects an inordinate emphasis on US security as interpreted by the Department of Homeland Security. Its accords mandate border actions, military and police training, modernization of equipment, and adoption of new technologies, all under the logic of the US counter-terrorism campaign. Head of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, along with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Finance Carlos Gutierrez, are the three officials charged with attending SPP ministerial conferences.

Measures to coordinate security have pressured Mexico to militarize its southern border. US military elements already operate inside Mexico and the DEA and the FBI have initiated training programs for the Mexican Army (now involved in the drug war), federal and state police, and intelligence units. Stephen Lendman states that a Pentagon briefing paper hinted at a US invasion if the country became destabilized or the government faced the threat of being overthrown because of “widespread economic and social chaos” that would jeopardize US investments, access to oil, overall trade, and would create great numbers of immigrants heading north.

Canada’s influential Department of National Defence; its new Chief of Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier; and Defense Minister Gordon O’Connor are on board as well. They’re committed to ramping up the nation’s military spending and linking with America’s “war on terror.”

The SPP created the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) that serves as an official tri-national SPP working group. The group is composed of representatives of thirty giant North American companies, including General Electric, Ford Motors, General Motors, Wal-Mart, Lockheed-Martin, Merck, and Chevron.

NACC’s recommendations centered on “private sector involvement” being “a key step to enhancing North America’s competitive position in global markets and is the driving force behind innovation and growth.” The NACC stressed the importance of establishing policies for maximum profits.

The US-guided agenda prioritizes corporate-friendly access to resources, especially Canadian and Mexican oil and water. The NACC’s policy states that “the prosperity of the United States relies heavily on a secure supply of imported energy.” US energy security is seen as a top priority encouraging Canada and Mexico to allow privatization of state-run enterprises like Mexico’s nationalized oil company, PEMEX. In January 2008, Halliburton signed a $683 million contract with PEMEX to drill fifty-eight new test holes in Chiapas and Tabasco and take over maintenance of pipelines. This is the latest of $2 billion in contracts Halliburton has received from PEMEX during Fox’s and current Mexican president Felipe Calderone’s administrations, which the opposition warns has become the public front for US monopoly capital privatization.1 US policy seeks to insure America gets unlimited access to Canada water as well.

Connie Fogal of Canadian Action Party says, “The SPP is the hostile takeover of the apparatus of democratic government . . . a coup d’etat over the government operations of Canada, US and Mexico.”

Citation

1. “Mexican Farmers Protest NAFTA Hardships,” People’s Weekly World, February 7, 2008.

UPDATE BY STEPHEN LENDMAN

A fourth SPP summit was held in New Orleans from April 22 to 24, 2008. George Bush, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon attended. Protesters held what they called a “people’s summit.” They were in the streets and held workshops to inform people how destructive SPP is, strengthen networking and organizational ties against it, maintain online information about their activities, promote efforts and build added support, and affirm their determination to continue resisting a hugely repressive corporate-sponsored agenda.

Opponents call the “Partnership” NAFTA on steroids. Business-friendly opposition also exists. The prominent Coalition to Block the North American Union (NAU) is backed by the Conservative Caucus, which has a “NAU War Room,” a “headquarters of the national campaign to expose and halt America’s absorption into a North American Union with Canada and Mexico.” It opposes building “a massive, continental ‘NAFTA Superhighway.’”

This coalition has congressional allies, and on January 2007, Rep. Virgil Goode and six co-sponsors introduced House Concurrent Resolution 40, which expresses “the sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in (building a NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a NAU with Mexico and Canada.”

The April summit reaffirmed SPP’s intentions—to create a borderless North America, dissolve national sovereignty, put corporate giants in control, and assure big US companies most of it. It’s also to create fortress-North America by militarizing the continent under US command.

SPP maintains a website. Its “key accomplishments” since August 2007 are updated as of April 22, 2008. The information is too detailed for this update, but can be accessed from the following link: http://www.spp.gov/pdf/key_accomplishments_since_august_2007.pdf.

The website lists principles agreed to; bilateral deals struck; negotiations concluded; study assessments released; agreements on the “Free Flow of Information”; law enforcement activities; efforts related to intellectual property, border and long-haul trucking enforcement; import licensing procedures; food and product safety issues; energy issues (with special focus on oil); infrastructure development; emergency management; and much more. It’s all laid out in deceptively understated tones to hide its continental aim—to enable enhanced corporate exploitation with as little public knowledge as possible.

Militarization includes the US Northern Command (NORTHCOM), established in October 2002, which has air, land, and sea responsibility for the continent regardless of Posse Comitatus limitations that no longer apply or sovereign borders that are easily erased. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) also have large roles. So does the FBI, CIA, all US spy agencies, militarized state and local police, National Guard forces, and paramilitary mercenaries like Blackwater USA.

They’re headed anywhere on the continent with license to operate as freely as in Iraq and New Orleans post-Katrina. They’ll be able to turn hemispheric streets into versions of Baghdad and make them unfit to live on if things come to that.

Consider other militarizing developments as well. On February 14, 2008, the US and Canada agreed to allow American troops inside Canada. Canadians were told nothing of this agreement, which was drafted in 2002. Neither was it discussed in Congress or in the Canadian House of Commons. The agreement establishes “bilateral integration” of military command structures in areas of immigration, law enforcement, intelligence, or whatever else the Pentagon or Washington wishes. Overall, it’s part of the “war on terror” and militarizing the continent to make it “safer” for business and being prepared for any civilian opposition.

Mexico is also being targeted, with a “Plan Mexico” that was announced in October 2007. It’s a Mexican and Central American security plan called the Merida Initiative, supported by $1.4 billion in allocated aid. Congress will soon vote on this initiative, likely well before this is published. It’s a “regional security cooperation initiative” similar to Plan Colombia and presented as an effort to fight drug trafficking.

In fact, the Merida Initiative is part of SPP’s militarization of Mexico and gives Washington more control of the country. Most of the aid goes to Mexico’s military and police forces, with a major portion earmarked for US defense contractors for equipment, training, and maintenance. The touchy issue of deploying US troops will be avoided by instead employing private US security forces, i.e., Blackwater and DynCorp.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org, Mondays from 11 am to 1 pm CT.

Student Researchers: Chris Armanino and Sarah Maddox

Faculty Evaluator: Josh Meisel, PhD

More than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to collect and provide information on fellow Americans. In return, members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public, and at times before elected officials. “There is evidence that InfraGard may be closer to a corporate Total Information Awareness program (TIPS), turning private-sector corporations—some of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customers—into surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI,” according to an ACLU report titled “The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: How the American Government Is Conscripting Businesses and Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society.”

InfraGard, with members from 350 companies of the Fortune 500, started in Cleveland back in 1996, when the private sector there cooperated with the FBI to investigate cyber threats. “Then the FBI cloned it,” says Phyllis Schneck, chairman of the board of directors of the InfraGard National Members Alliance, and the prime mover behind the growth of InfraGard over the last several years.

FBI Director Robert Mueller addressed an InfraGard convention on August 9, 2005. “To date, there are more than 11,000 members of InfraGard . . . from our perspective, that amounts to 11,000 contacts . . . and 11,000 partners in our mission to protect America.” He added a little later, “Those of you in the private sector are the first line of defense.”

On May 9, 2007, George Bush issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 entitled “National Continuity Policy.” In it, he instructed the Secretary of Homeland Security to coordinate with “private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure, as appropriate, in order to provide for the delivery of essential services during an emergency.”

“They’re very much looped into our readiness capability,” says Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the DHS. “We provide speakers, as well as joint presentations [with the FBI]. We also train alongside them, and they have participated, sometimes hundreds at a time, in national preparation drills.” According to more than one interviewed member, an additional benefit to InfraGard membership is permission to shoot to kill in the event of martial law, without fear of prosecution.

“We get very easy access to secure information that only goes to InfraGard members,” Schneck says. “If you had to call 1-800-FBI, you probably wouldn’t bother,” she says. “But if you knew Joe from the local meeting you had with him over a donut, you might call. Either to give or to get [information]. We want everyone to have a little black book.”

Jay Stanley, public education director of the ACLU’s technology and liberty program, warns that, “The FBI should not be creating a privileged class of Americans who get special treatment. There’s no ‘business class’ in law enforcement. If there’s information the FBI can share with 22,000 corporate bigwigs, why don’t they just share it with the public? That’s who their real ‘special relationship’ is supposed to be with. Secrecy is not a party favor to be given out to friends. . . . This bears a disturbing resemblance to the FBI’s handing out ‘goodies’ to corporations in return for folding them into its domestic surveillance machinery.”

InfraGard is not readily accessible to the general public. Its communications with the FBI and DHS are beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act under the “trade secrets” exemption, its website says. And any conversation with the public or the media is to be carefully rehearsed.

UPDATE BY MATT ROTHSCHILD

The Progressive sent out a press release on the InfraGard story, and I was interviewed on Air America, Democracy Now! and lots of other alternative radio shows. But the mainstream media have ignored this story, with the exception of one small wire service report. The FBI hasn’t ignored it, though.

On February 15, the FBI issued a press release denouncing our article.

“The article’s claims are patently false,” said the FBI’s Cyber Division Assistant Director Shawn Henry. “InfraGard members have no extraordinary powers and have no greater right to ‘shoot to kill’ than other civilians.”

“No greater right”? That’s odd language, isn’t it? It reminded me of a quote in my article from Curt Haugen, CEO of S’Curo Group, and a proud InfraGard member. When I asked him about whether the FBI or Homeland Security agents had told InfraGard members they could use lethal force in an emergency, he said: “That much I cannot comment on. But as a private citizen, you have the right to use force if you feel threatened.”

Note that the FBI did not deny that it ever told InfraGard members that they could “shoot to kill.” All that Henry said was that InfraGard members “have no greater right.” That doesn’t exactly blow a hole in my story.

The FBI seemed put out that I did not give enough information about the meeting the whistleblower attended. “Unfortunately, the author of the Progressive article refused even to identify when or where the claimed ‘small meeting’ occurred in which issues of martial law were discussed,” Henry said in the press release. “If we get that information, the FBI certainly will follow up and clarify any possible misunderstandings.”

The reason I didn’t identify where or when the meeting took place is obvious: I didn’t want to reveal anything that would expose my whistleblower.

Incidentally, the press release fails to mention that I received confirmation about discussions of “lethal force” from another member of InfraGard, whom I did name.

I stick by every single word of my story. And I call on Congress to investigate InfraGard and to inspect the plans that the FBI may have in store, not only for InfraGard, but for all of us in times of an emergency.

One final note: since the story appeared, I’ve received several new leads, including one confirming that a private company has been given “lethal powers.”

NACLA Report on the Americas, March/April 2008
Title: “Another SOA?: A Police Academy in El Salvador Worries Critics”
Author: Wes Enzinna

CISPES, March 15, 2007
Title: “ILEA Funding Approved by Salvadoran Right Wing Legislators”
Author: Community in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador

AlterNet, August 31, 2007
Title: “Is George Bush Restarting Latin America’s ‘Dirty Wars’?”
Author: Benjamin Dangl

Student Researchers: Courtney Snow, Erica Elkinton, and April Pearce
Faculty Evaluator: Jessica Taft, PhD, and Jeffrey Reeder, PhD

A resurgence of US-backed militarism threatens peace and democracy in Latin America. By 2005, US military aid to Latin America had increased by thirty-four times the amount spent in 2000. In a marked shift in US military strategy, secretive training of Latin American military and police personnel that used to just take place at the notorious School of the Americas, in Fort Benning, Georgia—including torture and execution techniques—is now decentralized. The 2008 US federal budget includes $16.5 million to fund an International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in El Salvador, with satellite operations in Peru. With provision of immunity from charges of crimes against humanity, each academy will train an average of 1,500 police officers, judges, prosecutors, and other law enforcement officials throughout Latin America per year in “counterterrorism techniques.”

The academy in El Salvador is part of a network of ILEAs created in 1995 under President Bill Clinton, who touted the training facilities as a series of US schools “throughout the world to combat international drug trafficking, criminality, and terrorism through strengthened international cooperation.” There are ILEAs in Budapest, Hungary; Bangkok, Thailand; Gaborone, Botswana; and Roswell, New Mexico.

According to ILEA directors, the facility in El Salvador is designed to make Latin America “safe for foreign investment” by “providing regional security and economic stability and combating crime.” Most instructors come from US agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the FBI, the latter of which has had a remarkably large presence in El Salvador since opening its own office there in 2005. Most of the school’s expenses are paid with US tax payers’ dollars.

Salvadorans refer to the ILEA as a new School of the Americas (SOA) for police. Suspicions are exacerbated by comparable policies of secrecy. As with SOA, the ILEA list of attendees and graduates is classified, as is course content. Many observers are troubled by this secrecy, considering how SOA atrocities came to light with Washington Post reporter Dana Priest’s discovery, in September 1996, of SOA torture training manuals, and later with the acquisition by the founder of SOA Watch, Father Roy Bourgeois, of a previously classified list of SOA graduates, many of whom were recognized as leaders of death squads and notorious counterinsurgency groups.

After Condoleezza Rice announced plans for the ILEA in San Salvador at a June 2005 Organization of American States meeting in Miami, Father Roy wrote, “The legacy of US training of security forces at the SOA and throughout Latin America is one of bloodshed, of torture, of the targeting of civilian populations, of desaparecidos . . . Rice’s recent announcement about plans for the creation of an international law enforcement academy in El Salvador should raise serious concerns for anyone who cares about human rights.”

Suspicions are further aggravated by the US-mandated immunity clause that exempts ILEA personnel from crimes against humanity.

Though lack of transparency makes it impossible to know the content of courses, the conduct of the Salvadoran police—who compose 25 percent of the academy’s graduates—has shown an alarming turn for the worse since the ILEA was inaugurated. In early May 2007, the Archbishop’s Legal Aid and Human Rights Defense Office (Tutela Legal) released a report implicating the Salvadoran National Police (PNC) in eight death squad–style assassinations in 2006 alone. Meanwhile, the Salvadoran Human Rights Defense Office has also published reports connecting the PNC to death squads and repeated cases of corruption and misconduct.

While US interest in ILEAs is to ensure an environment that protects free trade and US economic interests, the PNC has played an active role in a crackdown against civil liberties, aimed at curbing both crime and social protest. Free trade agreements like CAFTA have been highly contentious, and President Saca’s administration has gone to significant lengths to ensure that they succeed—including passing an anti-terror law in September 2006, modeled on the USA PATRIOT Act, that has been used to arrest everyone from anti-water-privatization activists to street venders who violate CAFTA’s intellectual property rules (see Story #11).

As ILEA graduates are employed throughout Latin America, the US military is establishing similar mechanisms of cooperation throughout the region as well. The ILEA joins a host of other police and military training facilities that are run by US agencies such as the FBI, ICE, and the DEA, as well as programs run by private US security companies like DynCorp International and Blackwater.

Ben Dangl notes that in carrying on the legacy of Latin America’s “Dirty Wars” of the 1970s and 1980s, in which kidnapping, torture, and murder were used to squash dissent and political opponents, Colombia and Paraguay also illustrate four characteristics of right-wing militarism in South America: joint exercises with the US military in counterinsurgency training; monitoring potential dissidents and social organizations; the use of private mercenaries for security; and the criminalization of social protest through “anti-terrorism” tactics and legislation.

UPDATE BY WES ENZINNA

On May 22, the US Congress approved the “Merida Initiative,” which, as part of a $450 million package for anti-gang and anti-crime programs in Mexico and Central America, provides $2 million for the ILEA San Salvador’s 2009 budget. With these new funds the academy will step up its efforts, training police from throughout the hemisphere, without public oversight or transparency as to the academy’s operations or curriculum. What exactly is taught at the school remains a secret, and the involvement of the National Civilian Police (PNC) at the academy continues unabated, as does alleged PNC abuse.

While Instituto de Derechos Humanos de la Universidad Centroamericana (IDHUCA) director Benjamin Cuellar’s presence at the school has been the source of scorn and criticism in El Salvador—a topic I focused on in my article—a US human rights organization, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), has publicly come to Cuellar’s defense. At the same time, WOLA is currently negotiating with the State Department to work jointly with Cuellar and IDHUCA to monitor the ILEA. While WOLA’s logic is that they hope “to press for greater transparency and accountability within the institution,” they have not articulated a plan for how exactly they are going to accomplish what Cuellar has been unable to achieve (making the school more transparent, making the curriculum public), nor have they addressed the way in which their presence at the school, like Cuellar’s, might offer legitimacy to the ILEA’s activities without actually producing any changes in the way the academy operates. As Lesley Gill pointed out in my original piece, the use of human rights discourse and the co-optation of human rights advocates by US military and police institutions in Latin America is a tried-and-true public relations strategy pioneered at the infamous School of the Americas, and it is not, Gill reminds us, “indicative of any effort by the US to reform the military or police forces they are involved with.”

Only time will tell whether or not WOLA’s planned partnership with the State Department to monitor the ILEA will help make the school more transparent, or whether it will lend legitimacy to an academy that continues to be linked to copious human rights abuses.

The signs, however, are not promising. In March, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made by this writer for ILEA course materials was rejected because, as the rejection letter states, “disclosure of these training materials could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law. Additionally, the techniques and procedures at issue are not well known to the public.”

Since publication of my article, PNC abuse and political assassinations in El Salvador have continued, and ILEA secrecy appears only to have become more entrenched, despite Cuellar and IDHUCA’s involvement and despite increased international protest. It is still unclear whether or not the ILEA will turn out to be “another School of Assassins,” as critics call the academy. If the present situation is any indication, however, these critics may prove to be correct.

UPDATE BY BENJAMIN DANGL

A number of recent developments have dramatically changed the military and political landscape of Latin America. While some electoral victories in Latin America signal a regional shift to the left, Washington continues to expand its military and navy presence throughout the hemisphere.

On April 20, 2008, left-leaning Fernando Lugo was elected president of Paraguay. His victory broke the right-wing Colorado Party’s sixty-one-year rule. Lugo, a former bishop who endorses Liberation Theology, joins a growing list of left-of-center leaders throughout the region and has pledged to crack down on Paraguay’s human rights violations linked to US–Paraguayan military relations. Shortly after his victory, Lugo told reporters that Washington must acknowledge the new regional environment in which Latin American governments “won’t accept any type of intervention from any country, no matter how big it is.”

In neighboring Bolivia, leftist indigenous president Evo Morales has faced increased resistance from the right-wing opposition. US government documents and interviews on the ground in Bolivia prove that Washington has been spending millions of dollars to empower the Bolivian right through the US Agency for International Development and the National Endowment for Democracy. (For more on this topic, see “Undermining Bolivia,” The Progressive, February 2008, http://www.progressive.org/mag_dangl0208.)

On March 1, 2008, the Colombian military bombed an encampment of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on Ecuadorian soil, sparking a regional crisis. This attack was part of a decades-long conflict fueled by US military training and funding of the Colombian military.

The following month, on April 24, the Pentagon announced that the US Navy’s Fourth Fleet would be repositioned to monitor activity in the Caribbean and Central and South America. The Fourth Fleet hadn’t been operating in the area since 1950. Analysts in the region suggest that the Fourth Fleet’s reactivation is a warning to Latin American leaders, such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, that are working to build a progressive regional bloc outside of Washington’s influence.

Though Washington continues to expand its reach throughout an increasingly leftist Latin America, regional alliances such as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas are growing between progressive Latin American leaders. Such political, economic, and military cooperation is effectively countering US hegemony. At the same time, the future of US–Latin American relations will depend largely on how the next US president interacts with this radically transformed region.

While most corporate media ignores Latin America, their reporting on the region is usually biased against the region’s leftist leaders and social movements. Two online publications that provide ongoing reporting and analysis on the region are UpsideDownWorld.org, a website covering activism and politics in Latin America, and TowardFreedom.com, a progressive perspective on world events. Activists interested in confronting US military aggression in Latin America could visit the School of the Americas Watch website: soaw.org. For information on US military operations in the region and the hopeful response among progressive governments and social movements, see my book, The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia (AK Press).

Sources:
Global Research, July 2007
Title: “Bush Executive Order: Criminalizing the Antiwar Movement”
Author: Michel Chossudovsky

The Progressive, August 2007
Title: “Bush’s Executive Order Even Worse Than the One on Iraq”
Author: Matthew Rothschild

Student Researchers: Chris Navarre and Jennifer Routh
Faculty Evaluator: Amy Kittlestrom, PhD

President Bush has signed two executive orders that would allow the US Treasury Department to seize the property of any person perceived to, directly or indirectly, pose a threat to US operations in the Middle East.

The first of these executive orders, titled “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq,” signed by Bush on July 17, 2007, authorizes the Secretary of Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, to confiscate the assets of US citizens and organizations who “directly or indirectly” pose a risk to US operations in Iraq. Bush’s order states:

I have issued an Executive Order blocking property of persons determined 1) to have committed, or pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq or undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq . . . or 2) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order . . .

Section five of this order announces that, “because of the ability to transfer funds or other assets instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual. I therefore determine . . . there need be no prior notice of listing or determination [of seizure] . . .”

On August 1, Bush issued a similar executive order, titled “Blocking Property of Persons Undermining the Sovereignty of Lebanon or Its Democratic Processes and Institutions.” While the text in this order is, for the most part, identical to the first, the order regarding Lebanon is more severe.

While both orders bypass the Constitutional right to due process of law in giving the Secretary of Treasury authority to seize properties of those persons posing a risk of violence, or in any vague way assisting opposition to US agenda, the August 1 order targets any person determined to have taken, or to pose a significant risk of taking, actions—violent or nonviolent—that undermine operations in Lebanon. The act further authorizes freezing the assets of “a spouse or dependent child” of any person whose property is frozen. The executive order on Lebanon also bans providing food, shelter, medicine, or any humanitarian aid to those whose assets have been seized—including the “dependent children” referred to above.

Vaguely written and dangerously open to broad interpretation, this unconstitutional order allows for the arbitrary targeting of any American for dispossession of all belongings and demands ostracism from society. Bruce Fein, a constitutional lawyer and former Justice Department official in the Reagan administration says of the order, “This is so sweeping it’s staggering. I have never seen anything so broad. It expands beyond terrorism, beyond seeking to use violence or the threat of violence to cower or intimidate a population.”

In an editorial for the Washington Times, Fein states, “The person subject to an asset freeze is reduced to a leper. The secretary’s financial death sentences are imposed without notice or an opportunity to respond, the core of due process. They hit like a bolt of lightning. Any person whose assets are frozen immediately confronts a comprehensive quarantine. He may not receive and benefactors may not provide funds, goods, or services of any sort. A lawyer cannot provide legal services to challenge the secretary’s blocking order. A doctor cannot provide medical services in response to a cardiac arrest.” Fein adds, “The Justice Department is customarily entrusted with vetting executive orders for consistency with the Constitution. Is the Attorney General sleeping?”1 (see Story #8).

Citation

1. Bruce Fein, “Our Orphaned Constitution,” Washington Times, August 7, 2007.

UPDATE BY MATT ROTHSCHILD

This is a story that went virtually nowhere that I know of in the mainstream press. When I traveled around the country giving speeches last summer and brought up the subject of this executive order, people couldn’t believe it and wondered why they hadn’t heard about it. I’m still wondering that myself.

Here are a couple of good places to check for issues related to this story:

The American Civil Liberties Union, http://www.aclu.org.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, http://www.ccrjustice.org.

In These Times, November 2007
Title: “Examining the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act”
Author: Lindsay Beyerstein

Truthout, November 29, 2007
Title: “The Violent Radicalization Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007”
Author: Matt Renner

Student Researchers: Dan Bluthardt and Cedric Therene
Faculty Evaluator: Robert Proctor, PhD

In a startling affront to American freedoms of expression, privacy, and association, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (H.R. 1955) passed the House on October 23, 2007, by a vote of 404–6. The Senate is currently considering a companion bill, S. 1959. The act would establish a national commission and a university-based “Center for Excellence” to study and propose legislation to prevent the threat of “radicalization” of Americans.

Author of the bill Jane Harman (D-CA) explains, “We’re studying the phenomenon of people with radical beliefs who turn into people who would use violence.”

The act states, “While the United States must continue its vigilant efforts to combat international terrorism, it must also strengthen efforts to combat the threat posed by homegrown terrorists based and operating within the United States. Understanding the motivational factors that lead to violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence is a vital step toward eradicating these threats in the United States.”

The act’s purpose goes beyond academic inquiry, however. In a press release Harman stated, “The National Commission will propose to both Congress and [Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael] Chertoff initiatives to intercede before radicalized individuals turn violent.”

The act states, “Preventing the potential rise of self radicalized, unaffiliated terrorists domestically cannot be easily accomplished solely through traditional Federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts, and can benefit from the incorporation of State and local efforts.”

Harman, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment, also has close ties to the RAND Corporation, a right-wing think tank, which appears to have influenced the bill. Two weeks prior to the introduction of H.R. 1955 on April 19, 2007, Brian Michael Jenkins of RAND delivered testimony on “Jihadist Radicalization and Recruitment” to Harman’s subcommittee.

In June, Jenkins was back before Harman’s subcommittee discussing the role of the National Commission. “Homegrown terrorism is the principal threat that we face as a country and it will likely be the principal threat that we face for decades. . . . Unless a way of intervening in the radicalization process can be found, we are condemned to stepping on cockroaches one at a time,” he stated. In a 2005 RAND report titled “Trends in Terrorism,” one chapter is devoted entirely to a non-Muslim “homegrown terrorist” threat—the threat of anti-globalists.

In an effort to prevent people from becoming “prone to” radicalization, this preemptive measure of policing thought specifically identifies the Internet as a tool of radicalization: “The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens,” says Harman.

The legislation authorizes a ten-member National Commission (the Senate bill calls for twelve members) appointed by the President, the Secretary of Homeland Security, congressional leaders, and the chairpersons of both the Senate and House committees on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

After convening, the Commission is to submit reports at six-month intervals for eighteen months to the President and Congress, stating its findings, conclusions, and legislative recommendations “for immediate and long-term countermeasures . . . to prevent violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism and ideologically based violence.”

This commission has disturbing similarities to the Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO), which was investigated by a US Senate select committee on intelligence activities (the Church Committee), in 1975. The Church Committee found that from 1956 to 1971, “The Bureau [FBI] conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.”

H.R. 1955 would give the DHS secretary power to establish a “Center of Excellence,” a university-based research program to “bring together leading experts and researchers to conduct multidisciplinary research and education for homeland security solutions.” the DHS currently has eight Centers at academic institutions across the country, strengthening what many see as a growing military-security-academic complex. Harman, in an October 23 press release, stated that the Center would “examine the social, criminal, political, psychological and economic roots of domestic terrorism.”

Hope Marston, regional organizer with the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) warns against the danger of vaguely defined terms in this legislation, which, open to very broad interpretation, mirrors a historical pattern of sweeping government repression.

Jules Boykoff, author and professor of politics and government at Pacific University, is alarmed by the circular definition, for example, of “ideologically based violence,” which itself fails to define the terms “threat,” “force,” or “violence.” Boykoff commented that the bill used the terms “extremism” and “radicalism” interchangeably. “The word ‘radical’ shares the etymological root to the word ‘radish,’ which means to get to the root of the problem,” he says. “So, if the government wants to get at the actual root of terrorism, then let’s really talk about it. We need to talk about the economic roots, the vast inequalities in wealth between the rich and poor.”

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington Legislative Office of the American Civil Liberties Union, says of the Act, “Law enforcement should focus on action, not thought. We need to worry about the people who are committing crimes rather than those who harbor beliefs that the government may consider to be ‘extreme.’”

UPDATE BY JESSICA LEE

While civil liberties and religious freedom groups credit independent journalists and grassroots activists with helping to stall the passage of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, some members of Congress continue to push for Internet censorship and racial profiling as necessary to prevent “homegrown terrorism.”

The House of Representatives approved the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act in October 2007 by a 404-6 vote, but widespread opposition forced the Senate to shelve the bill. As of June 1, 2008, no vote was scheduled or expected during the current legislative year.

I became aware of the Act in early November 2007. Other than an article by Lindsay Beyerstein, “Examining the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act,” (In These Times, November 1, 2007), no major media outlet had reported on the bill despite the dangers it posed to civil liberties, privacy, and Muslim and Arab communities in the United States. Nonetheless, I did discover active online discussion about the bill, mainly on blogs and videos posted to YouTube.com.

Isabel Macdonald, communications director for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, commented: “Perhaps due to the symbiotic relationship between corporate media outlets and government officials, the corporate media has shown a consistent aversion to offering critical coverage of the erosion of civil liberties. The independent media—and specifically The Indypendent—played a critical role in breaking the story of this bill, and, through coverage in blogs and on Democracy Now!, keeping the story alive.”

Within a month of The Indypendent article, rallies were held from Maine to California, and numerous civil liberties, religious freedom and American Muslim and Arab organizations issued action alerts encouraging people to contact their congressional representatives in an effort to stop the US Senate companion bill, S. 1959.

According to civil rights lobbyists, the public outcry forced Senate committee chair Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) to put the bill on the backburner. However, Lieberman and committee ranking minority leader Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) continue to claim “homegrown terrorism” by Islamists is a grave menace, and on May 8, 2008, issued their own report, without public backing by other committee members, that warned “the threat of homegrown terrorism is on the rise, aided by the Internet’s capacity to spread the core recruitment and training message of violent Islamist terrorist groups.”

In response, more than thirty civil liberties and religious freedom groups sent a letter to the Senate committee on May 30, expressing concern that the report could impinge on freedom of expression, unjustly target Muslims, and define the Internet as a “weapon.”

A group of organizations representing American Muslim and Arab communities also submitted a letter in response to the report and the Senate hearings charging that they have been largely excluded from the legislative process and that the report relies on a discredited 2007 New York Police Department report that attempts to explain the process of “violent radicalization” of Muslim individuals.

Shortly after issuing the report, Lieberman demanded that Google remove YouTube videos produced by “terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda.” Google responded May 19 by removing eighty videos that the company agreed violated YouTube’s Community Guidelines, which depict gratuitous violence, advocated violence or used hate speech. Google, however, refused to meet all of Lieberman’s demands, which included censoring all videos mentioning or featuring groups listed by the US State Department as foreign terrorist organizations, such as al-Qaeda.

“Senator Lieberman stated his belief . . . that all videos mentioning or featuring these groups should be removed from YouTube—even legal nonviolent or non-hate speech videos,” Google said. “YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view.”

Chip Berlet, senior analyst at the Boston-based Political Research Associates, said that he believes Lieberman’s actions are a “political dirty trick” with the motive of trying to push the presidential candidates towards accepting a more aggressive stance in the Middle East.

Organizations leading the effort to oppose the legislation include Defending Dissent Foundation (http://www.defendingdissent.org), the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (http://www.bordc.org), the Center for Constitutional Rights (http://www.ccrjustice.org), the American Civil Liberties Union (http://www.aclu.org), and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (http://www.cair.com).

UPDATE BY LINDSAY BEYERSTEIN

The Homegrown Terrorism bill has been bogged down in the Senate since last October. The bill sailed through the House with little public comment but subsequently encountered stiff opposition from across the political spectrum. Until recently, it appeared that civil liberties groups and Muslim civic organizations had successfully blocked the Senate version of the bill.

The bill seemed destined to die in committee—that is, until Sen. Joe Lieberman, the chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, signaled his eagerness to revisit the issue by releasing a new report and picking a fight with YouTube.

On May 8, Chairman Lieberman and ranking member Susan Collins (R-ME) released “Violent Islamist Extremism, The Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat,” a bipartisan report based on hearings before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security.

Even before it was released to the public, the report drew fire from a coalition of civil liberties organizations spearheaded by the ACLU. The coalition outlined its concerns about the report in a May 7 memo to committee members.

“Our concern is that this focus on the Internet could be a precursor to proposals to censor and regulate speech on the Internet. Indeed, some policy makers have advocated shutting down objectionable websites,” the memo said.

Lieberman reinforced those misgivings on May 19 when he wrote to the CEO of Google (YouTube’s parent company) demanding that an unspecified number of Islamic propaganda videos be removed from the popular video-sharing site. Lieberman alleged in the letter that the clips were the work of a sophisticated Islamic propaganda network discussed in his committee’s recent report. He also claimed that these videos violated YouTube’s community guidelines.

YouTube rules expressly forbid gratuitous violence, hate speech, threats, harassment, and depictions of crimes such as bomb-making. Hundreds of thousands of videos are uploaded to the site daily. Rather than prescreening the content, YouTube relies on users to flag material that violates community standards. Content that breaks the rules is routinely removed.

After reviewing the clips, YouTube refused to remove the bulk of the material flagged by Lieberman’s staff. A handful of clips that violated community standards were taken down, but the rest stayed up.

“Most of the videos, which did not contain violent or hate speech content, were not removed because they do not violate our Community Guidelines,” read a statement issued by the YouTube Team. The statement went on to affirm the right of YouTube users to express unpopular points of view.

Lieberman was not satisfied with the response.

“No matter what their content, videos produced by terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda that are committed to attacking America and killing Americans should not be tolerated. Google must reconsider its policy,” Lieberman stated on May 20.

No vote has been scheduled, but Lieberman’s fight with Google has pushed the Homegrown Terrorism bill back into the spotlight. After months of silence, the established media are finally beginning to ask questions about the government’s increasing enthusiasm for monitoring “radical” speech online. The New York Times sharply criticized Lieberman and the bill in a May 25 editorial. The op/ed called Lieberman a “would-be censor” whose efforts to restrict constitutionally protected speech on YouTube “contradict fundamental American values.”

Readers can make their views on the Homegrown Terrorism bill known by contacting their senators and the members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security. The two frontrunners in the 2008 presidential race are senators. Now is a good time for voters to pressure the presidential candidates to take clear positions on the Homegrown Terrorism bill. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) sits on the Homeland Security Committee, but did not contribute to the report. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is closely allied with Sen. Lieberman, especially on issues pertaining to terrorism.

UPDATE BY MATT RENNER

A controversial plan to study and profile domestic terrorism was scrapped after popular push back, but the spirit of the legislation lives on in Senator Joe Lieberman’s office.

H.R. 1955, “The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007” passed the House in October 2007 with almost unanimous support. The bill immediately came under fire from civil liberties watchdogs because of what many saw as a deliberate targeting of Muslims and Arabs and the possible chilling effect it might have on free speech.

The original bill intended to set up a government commission to investigate the supposed threat of domestically produced terrorists and the ideologies that underpin their radicalization. The ten-member commission was to be empowered to “hold hearings and sit and act at such times and places, take such testimony, receive such evidence, and administer such oaths as the Commission considers advisable to carry out its duties.” The bill also singled out the Internet as a vehicle for terrorists to spread their ideology with the intention of recruiting and training new terrorists.

After significant public pressure, the bill stalled in the Senate. However, Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT), the current chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, embraced the thrust of the legislation and has been working to push forward some of the goals of the original bill, including an attempt to weed out terrorist propaganda from the Internet.

On May 19, Lieberman sent a letter to Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt demanding that YouTube’s parent company Google “immediately remove content produced by Islamist terrorist organizations from YouTube.”

“By taking action to curtail the use of YouTube to disseminate the goals and methods of those who wish to kill innocent civilians, Google will make a singularly important contribution to this important national effort,” Lieberman wrote.

Google fired back, refusing to take off material that did not violate the site’s code of conduct. “While we respect and understand his views, YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view,” Schmidt said in response, adding, “we believe that YouTube is a richer and more relevant platform for users precisely because it hosts a diverse range of views, and rather than stifle debate, we allow our users to view all acceptable content and make up their own minds.”

Google removed some of the videos that violated their rules against posting violence and hate speech, but made a point to write, “most of the videos, which did not contain violent or hate speech content, were not removed because they do not violate our Community Guidelines.”

According to civil liberties activists, Chairman Lieberman has been spearheading an effort to censor speech on the Internet. His committee recently released a report titled “Violent Islamist Extremism, The Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat,” a report detailing the use of web sites and Internet tools to spread pro-terrorism propaganda.

The report repeatedly blames websites and chat rooms for “radicalization,” calling the websites “portals” through which potential terrorists can “participate in the global violent Islamist movement and recruit others to their cause.” As civil liberties groups have pointed out, the report focuses solely on terrorism seen as associated with Islam.

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington, DC, legislative office, said that Lieberman “is trying to decide what he thinks should go on the Internet,” which, she said, “reeks of an interest in censoring all sorts of different dialogs.”

“If someone criticizes Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and favors Hamas, should that be censored?” Fredrickson asked.

Links:

“Violent Islamist Extremism, The Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat”: http://hsgac.senate .gov/public/_files/ IslamistReport.pdf.

New York Times editorial on Lieberman’s attempt to censor YouTube: http://www.nytimes.com/ 2008/05/25/opinion/25sun1.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin.

Lieberman’s response to the New York Times editorial: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/opinion/ 25sun1.html?_r=1&ref=opinion &oref=slogin.

COMMENT BY MICKEY S. HUFF, author of Chapter 14

The coverage of this story by these journalists is highly commendable. However, another element that appears to have been censored regarding the possible application of H.R. 1955 and S. 1959, even in the independent and progressive press coverage, is the specificity of possible domestic activists mentioned in the hearings Representative Jane Harman held in Washington, DC. While the aforementioned authors allude to animal rights activists and anti-globalists as potential targets of these bills, none mention 9/11 Truth activists and scholars even though they were mentioned by name in the Harman hearings at the Capitol. (For possible explanations, see Censored 2008, Chapter 7, for more on the propaganda model inside left progressive press.)

Among the claims of those testifying to Congress about the “need” for H.R. 1955 was that anyone who questions the official government line on 9/11 is akin to a terrorist or a material supporter to terrorism. One speaker, Mark Weitzman of the Wiesenthal Center (ironically founded by Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal to educate the public about war crimes), claimed that architects, engineers, and scientists that question the official 9/11 narrative are the same as alleged violent jihadist groups. This was further implied in a Powerpoint presentation in which Weitzman showed architect Richard Gage’s website, http://AE911Truth.org, alongside alleged violent jihadist sites. Gage has criticized the 9/11 official story about the destruction of the Twin Towers and WTC7. On the basis of his professional expertise of steel frame buildings, Gage contends the buildings could not have been brought down the way the government has explained and offers alternative theories supported by evidence. Regardless of whether one believes the counterarguments about the events of 9/11, free speech and questioning of the government on such crucial issues should not be criminalized.

This is the latest round of official conflation between terrorists and activists in the US. Is there a proven link between these aforementioned groups? No, there is not. But that didn’t stop people from simply saying so on the public record while providing no evidence. And Jane Harman, Democratic cosponsor of the bill, didn’t ask for any, nor did she invite rebuttal. This is reminiscent of McCarthyism of the Red Scare period of the 1950s.

I originally wrote about this issue here:

http://mythinfo.blogspot.com/2007/11/state-terror-hr-1955-weapon-of-mass.html

http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=2007112285903892.

For C-Span video footage of the hearing (just after thirty-nine minutes), see:
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product _video_info&products_id=202123-1.

The Nation, June 25, 2007
Title: “Coming to America”
Author: Felicia Mello

Times of India, March 10, 2008
Title: “Trafficking racket: Indian workers file case against US employer”
Author: Chidanand Rajghatta

Student Researchers: Cedric Therene, Sam Burchard, April Pearce, and Marley Miller

Faculty Evaluator: Francisco Vazquez, PhD

While the guest worker program in the United States has been praised and recommended for expansion by President Bush, and is likely to be considered by Congress as a template for future immigration reform, human rights advocates warn that the system seriously victimizes immigrant workers. Workers, labor organizers, lawyers, and policy makers say that the program, designed to open up the legal labor market and provide a piece of the American dream to immigrants, has instead locked thousands into a modern-day form of indentured servitude. Congressman Charles Rangel has called the guest worker program “the closest thing I’ve ever seen to slavery.”

In the process of attaining a H-2 guest worker visa, workers typically fall victim to bait-and-switch schemes that force them to borrow huge sums of money at high interest rates (often leveraging family homes) in order to land short-term, low-wage jobs that all too often end up shorter-term and lower-waged than promised. Under crushing debt, and legally bound to work only for the employer who filed petition for them, these workers often face the most dangerous and harsh of working conditions in places like shipyards, the forestry department, or construction, with no medical benefits for on-the-job injuries or access to legal services. Bosses often hold workers’ documents to make sure they don’t “jump jobs.”

There are two levels of the current guest worker program—H-2a for agricultural work, and H-2b for non-agricultural work. Though the H-2a program provides legal protections for foreign farm workers—such as a guarantee of at least three quarters of the total employment hours promised, free housing, transportation compensation, medical benefits, and legal representation—many of these protections exist only on paper. H-2b workers, on the other hand, have no rights or protections.

The exploitation of guest workers begins with the initial recruitment in their home country—a process that often leaves them in a precarious economic state and therefore extremely vulnerable to abuse by unscrupulous employers in this country. US employers almost universally rely on private agencies to find and recruit guest workers in their home countries.

These labor recruiters usually charge fees to the worker—sometimes many thousands of dollars to cover travel, visas, and other costs, including profit for the recruiters. The workers, most of whom live in poverty, frequently obtain high-interest loans to come up with the money to pay the fees. In addition, recruiters sometimes require them to leave collateral, such as the deed to their house or car, to ensure that they fulfill the terms of their individual labor contract.

The entirely unregulated recruiting business is quite lucrative. With more than 121,000 workers recruited in 2005 alone, tens of millions of dollars in recruiting fees are at stake. This financial bonanza provides a powerful incentive for recruiters and agencies to import as many workers as possible, with little or no regard to the impact on individual workers and their families.

Though Southern Poverty Law Center reports that the H-2 program brought about 121,000 guest workers into the US in 2005, with approximately two thirds of those in the H-2b section, the Nation’s Felicia Mello reports that the number rose to more than 150,000 by June 2007. And while participation in the H-2a program, with its housing requirements and wage guarantees, has remained almost flat in recent years, the more laissez-faire H-2b system has flourished, with the government adjusting the cap several times to cope with skyrocketing employer demand.

“The tendency has been for the H-2 program . . . to devolve into a system that approximates the exploitative, illegal, underground labor market it was (in part) designed to replace,” writes anthropologist David Griffith in his 2006 book American Guestworkers. “Indeed, there is some evidence that without this downward trend in conditions . . . legal guestworkers become less attractive to US employers.”

In March 2008, more than 500 shipyard workers from India filed a class action suit against the Northrop Grumman subsidiary Signal International in Louisiana and Mississippi, and against recruiters in India and the US, on charges of forced labor, human trafficking, fraud, and civil rights violations. The workers claim they were caught up in a trafficking racket within the federal government’s H-2b guest worker program. In a typical bait and switch scheme that occurred in 2006, over 600 Indians paid up to $25,000 each for a promise of green cards and permanent US residency. They instead found themselves trapped in squalid and dangerous conditions, bonded through the H-2b guest worker program to an employer under what is being called “twenty-first century slavery.” In one incident of protest, Signal sent in armed guards to apprehend protesters in a pre-dawn raid. Plaintiffs, as they press their class action lawsuit, have asked the Indian government to protect their families in India from vengeful recruiters.

When Mello asked an African-American Katrina survivor who supported the guest workers’ grievance how he justified comparing guest work to slavery, he responded, “Do you know the story of the Middle Passage? . . . In slavery, you send a slave catcher, they go to the chiefs and make a deal. They say, We’re going to take your people to heaven, and they show them a few pretty things from heaven. You load them onto the ships and only when they get out to sea do they know they’re slaves. You take them to one owner, and if they leave they’re a runaway. Well, with guest workers . . .” He trails off, says Mello, his meaning clear.

UPDATE BY MARY BAUER

In the year since “Close to Slavery” was published, conditions for guest workers in the US have not improved. A case recently filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center illustrates this in compelling terms.

Hundreds of guest workers from India, lured by false promises of permanent US residency, paid tens of thousands of dollars each to obtain temporary jobs at Gulf Coast shipyards only to find themselves forced into involuntary servitude and living in overcrowded, guarded labor camps, according to the class action lawsuit filed in March of 2008.

Signal International LLC and a network of recruiters and labor brokers engineered a scheme to defraud the workers and force them to work against their will in Signal facilities. Signal is a marine and fabrication company with shipyards in Mississippi and Texas. It is a subcontractor for global defense company Northrop Grumman Corp.

Several of the workers were illegally detained by company security guards during a pre-dawn raid of their quarters after some began organizing other workers to complain about abuses they faced.

After Hurricane Katrina scattered its workforce, Signal used the federal H-2b guest worker program to import employees to work as welders, pipefitters, shipfitters, and in other positions. Hundreds of Indian men mortgaged their futures in late 2006 to pay recruiters as much as $20,000 or more for travel, visa, recruitment, and other fees after they were told it would lead to good jobs, green cards, and permanent US residency.

Many of the workers gave up other jobs and sold their houses, family farms, jewelry, and other valuables to come up with the money. Many were also told that for an extra $1,500-per person fee, they could bring their families to live in the United States.

When the men arrived in early 2007, they discovered they wouldn’t receive the green cards as promised, but only ten-month, H-2b guestworker visas. They were forced to pay $1,050 a month to live in crowded company housing in isolated, fenced labor camps where as many as twenty-four men shared a trailer with only two toilets. When they tried to find their own housing, Signal officials told them they would still have the rent deducted from their paychecks. With the exception of rare occasions, such as Christmas, visitors were not allowed into the camps, which were enclosed by fences. Company employees regularly searched the workers’ belongings.

Workers who complained about the conditions they faced were threatened with deportation. By March 9, 2007, the workers had started organizing. Signal responded with an early morning raid by armed guards on the labor camp in Pascagoula, Mississipi. Three of the organizers were locked in a room for hours. They were told they would be fired and deported. One of the workers, Sabulal Vijayan, who had sold his wife’s jewelry and borrowed from friends to build a better life in America, slit his wrist in desperation. He recovered after being hospitalized. The incident prompted hundreds of workers to strike. Signal fired the organizers.

UPDATE BY FELICIA MELLO

A year after “Coming to America” detailed the plight of guest workers in the H-2a and H-2b programs, Congress has failed to enact any expansion of the programs, despite urging from business groups and the Bush administration. Yet the immigration issue continues to occupy the national stage.

In a nationwide crackdown, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested over 30,000 allegedly undocumented immigrants last year, double the number for 2006. While ICE agents say they are simply enforcing the law, some immigrant advocates believe the raids are designed to increase support for a new guest worker plan.

In February, President Bush proposed changes to the H-2a program that would make it quicker and easier for growers to import farm workers, but do little to protect the workers’ rights. Under Bush’s plan, farmers could offer housing vouchers instead of directly providing shelter to workers—a method unlikely to work in areas with housing shortages—and would no longer be required to prove that they tried to hire US workers first. The formula used to calculate H-2a visa holders’ wages would also change to one advocates believe would result in lower salaries.

The two-pronged approach of stricter enforcement and support for guest worker programs is also gaining ground at the state level. Arizona, which has enacted some of the strictest sanctions in the country against hiring undocumented immigrants, is now considering starting its own independent guest worker scheme to ease a shortage of farm labor in the state.

Meanwhile, guest workers and their allies are stepping up their organizing. The Indian workers who paid recruiters up to $20,000 for jobs at ship builder Signal International sued the company in March, saying it committed fraud by promising them permanent residency and deducted exorbitant rent from their paychecks while housing them in cramped trailers.

Two months later, twenty of the workers went on a month-long hunger strike, camping out near the Indian embassy in Washington, DC. They demanded the right to remain in the country while they pursue their case, Congressional hearings into abuse of guest workers, and bilateral negotiations between the US and India on the rights of Indian guest workers. The Justice Department has since launched an investigation into their claims.

The murder of union organizer Santiago Rafael Cruz, who helped Mexican guest workers challenge exploitation by recruitment firms, remains unsolved.

Sources:
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse website, December 7, 2007
Title: “In FISA Speech, Whitehouse Sharply Criticizes Bush Administration’s Assertion of Executive Power”
Author: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse

The Guardian, December 26, 2007
Title: “The Rabbit Hole”
Author: Marcy Wheeler

Student Researchers: Dana Vaz and Bill Gibbons

Faculty Evaluator: Noel Byrne, PhD

On December 7, 2007, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, disclosed on the floor of the US Senate that he had declassified three legal documents of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) within the Department of Justice that state:

1. An executive order cannot limit a president. There is no constitutional requirement for a president to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the president has instead modified or waived it.

2. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.

3. The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.

Whitehouse discovered the OLC’s classified legal opinions while researching the Protect America Act legislation passed in August 2007, which Whitehouse warns will allow the administration to bypass Congress and the Courts in order to facilitate unchecked spying on Americans. He noted that for years under the Bush administration, the Office of Legal Council has been issuing highly classified secret legal opinions related to surveillance.

The senator warned of the danger of the poorly written Protect America Act legislation, which provides no statutory restrictions on government wiretapping of Americans and eliminates checks and balances from the legislative and judicial branches. The only restriction on government eavesdropping on Americans is an executive order that limits surveillance to those who the attorney general determines to be agents of a foreign power. However, in light of the first declassified OLC proclamation that the president can secretly change his signing statements at will, we are left exposed to the whims of a secret, unchecked executive agenda.

Of the second OLC legal determination, Whitehouse reminded Senate that Marbury v. Madison, written by Chief Justice John Marshall in 1803, established the proposition that it is “emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” Yet the OLC, operating out of the judicial department, has declared that it is now the president who decides the legal limits of his own power.

Lastly, Whitehouse repeated the third of these legal declarations several times as if in disbelief, asking members of Senate to allow the assertion to sink in: “The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.”

Whitehouse said, “These three Bush administration legal propositions boil down to this: one, ‘I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them’; two, ‘I get to determine what my own powers are’; and three, ‘The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is, I tell the Department of Justice what the law is.’”

Whitehouse closed his address to Senate with the statement, “When the Congress of the United States is willing to roll over for an unprincipled president, this is where you end up. We should not even be having this discussion. But here we are. I implore my colleagues: reject these feverish legal theories. I understand political loyalty, trust me, I do. But let us also be loyal to this great institution we serve in the legislative branch of our government. Let us also be loyal to the Constitution we took an oath to defend, from enemies foreign and domestic. And let us be loyal to the American people who live each day under our Constitution’s principles and protections. . . . The principles of congressional legislation and oversight, and of judicial approval and review, are simple and longstanding. Americans deserve this protection . . .”

UPDATE BY MARCY WHEELER

The president’s claimed authority to be able to ignore his own executive orders without revising the orders themselves—reported in “The Rabbit Hole”—was one of several issues discussed in an April 29, 2008, Senate Judiciary Hearing on “Secret Laws and the Threat to Democratic and Accountable Government.”

In that hearing, the Office of Legal Counsel Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Elwood confirmed the proposition that “The activities authorized by the President cannot violate an executive order in any legally meaningful sense.” Effectively, the Department of Justice’s key advisory lawyers confirmed they believe the President can act contrary to his own executive orders without formally changing those executive orders.

The hearing attracted some new media attention to this story. In the New York Times’ reporting of the hearing, Scott Shane and David Johnston referred to the “previously unpublicized method to cloak government activities,” for example. In addition, commentator Nat Hentoff wrote a column on the hearing as a whole.

The hearing did not answer one question raised in “The Rabbit Hole”: whether the President had altered the executive order on classification (12958, as amended by 13292) as well as the executive order on intelligence activities (12333) that Senator Whitehouse cited in his first comments on the OLC opinion. But Bill Leonard, the former head of the Information Security Oversight Office who testified at the hearing, did reveal that top administration lawyers were seemingly violating that executive order with regards to a key opinion on torture even as they were revising the order itself.

What is most disturbing is that at the exact time these officials were writing, reviewing, and being briefed on the classified nature of this memorandum [on enhanced interrogation], they were also concurring with the president’s reaffirmation of the standards for proper classification, which was formalized the week after the OLC memo was issued when the president signed his amended version of the executive order governing classification.

In other words, it remains unclear whether the administration has “altered” this executive order, or whether it is simply ignoring it when convenient.

And that remains the significance of this story. The Yoo Memo on torture, by all accounts, should have been released to the public in 2003. Had it been, the US’s policy on torture—and the dubious opinions on which that policy is based—would have been exposed five years earlier. But for some reason, it wasn’t. In the arbitrary world where the president can ignore his own executive orders, we have no way of knowing what to expect.

For information on Senator Whitehouse, see http://whitehouse.senate.gov/.

For the Senate Hearing (including the statements of witnesses), see http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearing.cfm?id=3305.

For Leonard’s statement, see http://judiciary.senate.gov/testimony.cfm?id=3305&wit_id=7148.

For Nat Hentoff’s article, see http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/may/12/let-the-sunshine-in/.

For the New York Times coverage, see
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/ 05/01/washington/01justice.html?_r=1&oref =slogin.

War Comes Home, Pacifica Radio, March 14–16, 2008
Title: “Winter Soldier 2008 Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations”
Co-hosts: Aaron Glantz, Aimee Allison, and Esther Manilla

One World, March 19, 2008
Title: “US Soldiers ‘Testify’ About War Crimes”
Author: Aaron Glantz

The Nation, July 30, 2007
Title: “The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness”
Authors: Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian

Student Researchers: April Pearce, Erica Elkington, and Kat Pat Crespán

Community Evaluator: Bob Alpern

Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are coming forward to recount the brutal impact of the ongoing occupations. An investigation by the Nation (July 2007) and the Winter Soldier hearings in Silver Spring, Maryland, in March 2008, which was organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War and brought together over 300 veterans, have made their experiences public. Soldiers’ harrowing testimony of atrocities they witnessed or participated in directly indicate a structural problem in the US military that has created an environment of lawlessness. Some international law experts say the soldiers’ statements show the need for investigations into potential violations of international law by high-ranking officials in the Bush administration and the Pentagon. Though BBC predicted that the Winter Soldier event would dominate headlines around the world that week, there was a near total back-out on this historic news event by the US corporate media.1

Dozens of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan occupation publicly testified at the four-day Winter Soldier gathering about crimes they committed during the course of battle—many of which were prompted by the orders or policies laid down by superior officers. Such crimes include targeting innocent, unarmed civilians for murder and detention, destroying property, desecrating corpses, severely abusing detainees (often torturing to death), and using corpses for medical practice.

Winter Soldier 2008 was organized to demonstrate that well-publicized incidents of US brutality, including the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the massacre of an entire family of Iraqis in the town of Haditha, were not isolated incidents perpetrated by “a few bad apples,” as many politicians and military leaders have claimed. They are part of a pattern, the organizers said, of “an increasingly bloody occupation.” The veterans also stressed the similarities between the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, “. . . units that are getting the exact same training and the exact same orders are being sent to both Iraq and Afghanistan,” explains a former US Army Medic.

The Nation investigation vividly documents the experiences of fifty combat veterans of the Iraq occupation. Their testimonies reveal that American troops lack the training and support to communicate with or even understand Iraqi civilians. They were offered little to no cultural or historical education about the country they control. Translators are in short supply and often unqualified. Interviewed vets said stereotypes about Islam and Arabs that soldiers and marines arrive with tend to solidify rapidly in the close confines of the military and the risky streets of Iraqi cities into a crude racism. Veterans said the culture of this counterinsurgency war, in which most Iraqi civilians were assumed to be hostile, made it difficult for soldiers to sympathize with their victims—at least until they returned home and had a chance to reflect. Former US Army Sergeant Logan Laituri argues, “The problem that we face in Iraq is that policymakers in leadership have set a precedent of lawlessness where we don’t abide by the rule of law, we don’t respect international treaties, so when that atmosphere exists it lends itself to criminal activity.”

International law expert Benjamin Ferencz, who served as chief prosecutor of Nazi War Crimes at Nuremberg after World War II, told OneWorld that none of the veterans who testified at Winter Soldier should be prosecuted for war crimes. Instead, he said, President Bush should be sent to the dock for starting an “aggressive” war. “Nuremberg declared that aggressive war is the supreme international crime.” He said the United Nations charter, which was written after the carnage of World War II, contains a provision that no nation can use armed force without the permission of the UN Security Council.

Many Iraq and Afghanistan veterans return home deeply disturbed by the disparity between the reality of the occupations and the way they are portrayed by the US government and American media. The occupation the vets describe is a dark and even depraved enterprise, one that bears a powerful resemblance to other misguided and brutal colonial wars and occupations, from the French occupation of Algeria to the American war in Vietnam and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Although international and independent US media covered Winter Soldier ubiquitously, there was an almost complete media blackout on this event by US mainstream media (see Chapter 12).

Citation

1. “Why Are Winter Soldiers Not News?” Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, March 19, 2008.

UPDATE BY AARON GLANTZ, AIMEE ALLISON,
AND ESTHER MANILLA

The veterans who spoke at Winter Soldier could have stayed silent. They could have accepted parades and accolades of heroism and blended back into society, and the world would have never known about the terrible atrocities they committed or witnessed in Iraq or Afghanistan. By coming forward to share their stories at considerable risk to their honor, however, these veterans have done a great service, permanently changing the historical record of “what happened” in the war zones.

While their testimony continues to be largely ignored by the mainstream media (to date the New York Times, CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS have failed to cover it), their words were not in vain. Our three-day broadcast lead to a Capitol Hill hearing in front of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. During our March broadcast, we brought on the Caucus’s co-chair, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, as a guest by phone from California and allowed two veterans to join us in conducting the interview. In opening remarks at Winter Soldier on the Hill, Lee referenced that interview.

“I remember one of the persons I talked with wanted to know why there weren’t any members of Congress there,” she said. “And someone asked me over the interview ‘Well, what about having a hearing in Washington, DC?’ And I said ‘Right.’”

On May 15, 2008, nine Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans stood before the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which is co-chaired by Lee and Congresswomen Lynne Woolsey. A half dozen other Congress members also participated and or listened to the three-hour testimony. Many of the representatives in attendance were visibly moved by it and Congresswoman Maxine Waters applauded the veterans for their bravery. KPFA and Pacifica Radio broadcast the hearing live.

Just as importantly, our three-day live broadcast showed many veterans they were not alone. During the course of both broadcasts, we were deluged with phone calls, e-mails, and blog posts from service members, veterans, and military families thanking us for breaking a cultural norm of silence about the reality of war. Since then, we have heard from many veterans about the importance our broadcast and how it impacted them personally. One soldier, Sergeant Matthis Chiroux, said learning about Winter Soldier caused him to refuse his orders to deploy to Iraq.

Before Winter Soldier, Chiroux said he was suicidal. “I just sat in my room reading news about Iraq and feeling completely hopeless, like I would be forced to go and no one would ever know how I felt,” he said. “I was getting looped into participating in a crime against humanity and all with the realization that I never wanted to be there in the first place.”

The turning point, Chiroux said, came when one of his professors at Brooklyn College in New York suggested he listen to a broadcast of March’s Winter Soldier hearings. “Here’s an organization of soldiers and veterans who feel like me,” he said. “All this alienation and depression that I feel started to ease. I found them, and I’ve been speaking out with them ever since.”

Since Silver Spring in March, regional Winter Soldier hearings have been organized across the country. New veterans are stepping forward to tell their stories and those who spoke in Maryland are revealing more about the reality of their service. To date, regional hearings have been held in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Gainesville, Florida. In Seattle, 800 people gathered to hear veterans’ testimonies. Many more are expected to be organized in the future. With their continued testimony, veterans’ stories have become their most powerful weapon.

For more information and to listen to the testimonies from March and May 2008, please visit http://www.warcomeshome.org or http://www.ivaw.org.

Vanity Fair, July 17, 2007
Title: “Rorschach and Awe”
Author: Katherine Eban

Democracy Now!, August 20, 2007
Titles: “American Psychological Association Rejects Blanket Ban on Participation in Interrogation of US Detainees,” “APA Interrogation Task Force Member Dr. Jean Maria Arrigo Exposes Group’s Ties to Military,” “Dissident Voices: Ex-Task Force Member Dr. Michael Wessells Speaks Out on Psychologists and Torture,” and “APA Members Hold Fiery Town Hall Meeting on Interrogation, Torture”

Student Researchers: Dan Anderson, Corey Sharp-Sabatino, Lindsey Lucia, and Andrea Lochtefeld

Faculty Evaluator: David Van Nuys, PhD

When in 2005 news reports exposed the fact that psychologists were working with the US military and the CIA to develop brutal interrogation methods, American Psychological Association (APA) leaders assembled a task force to examine the issue. After just two days of deliberations, the ten-member task force concluded that psychologists were playing a “valuable and ethical role” in assisting the military. A high level of secrecy surrounding the task force prohibited disclosure of the proceedings and of members and attendees. It wasn’t until a year later that the membership was finally published on Salon.com, revealing that six of nine voting members were from the military and intelligence agencies with direct connections to interrogations at Guantánamo and CIA black sites that operate outside of Geneva Conventions.

The Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) task force was assembled in response to growing evidence that psychologists were not only taking part in procedures that have shocked the senses of humanity around the world, but were in fact in charge of designing those brutal tactics and training interrogators in those techniques.

Two psychologists in particular played a central role: James Elmer Mitchell, who was contracted to the CIA, and his colleague Bruce Jessen. Both worked in the classified military training program for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE)—which conditions soldiers to endure captivity in enemy hands. In a very quasi-scientific manner, according to psychologists and others with direct knowledge of their activities, Mitchell and Jessen reverse-engineered the tactics inflicted on SERE trainees for use on detainees in the “global war on terror.”

With complete adoption of SERE interrogative techniques by the US Military, the CIA put Mitchell and Jessen in charge of training interrogators in the brutal techniques, including waterboarding, in its network of black sites. Meanwhile it is increasingly clear that the US has sacrificed its conscience and its global image for tactics that are at best ineffective.

With close to 150,000 members, the APA is the largest body of psychologists in the world. Unlike the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association who, since 2006, have completely barred doctors from participation, the APA continues to allow its members to participate in detainee interrogations, arguing that their presence keeps interrogations safe and prevents abuse.

Dr. Jean Maria Arrigo, one of the three civilian members of the 2005 PENS task force, whose task was to consider the appropriateness of psychologists’ involvement in harsh methods of interrogations, claims that the highest levels in the Department of Defense (DOD) preordained the task force’s conclusions.

Citing a series of irregularities, including haste, intimidation, and secrecy, Arrigo contends that the task force was far from balanced or independent. She discloses that APA President Gerald Koocher exerted strong control over task force decisions and censured dissidents. Six of the ten members were highly placed in the DOD, clearly in attendance to represent decisions that had already been made. Those were a) the adoption of the permissive definition of torture in US law as opposed to the strict definition in international law, and b) the participation of military psychologists in interrogation settings.

Many angry psychologists insist that the APA policy has made the organization an enabler of torture.

At the annual APA convention in August 2007, members presented the APA Council of Representatives with a moratorium amendment to the APA resolution, stating,

Be it resolved that the objectives of the APA shall be to advance psychology as a science and profession and as a means of promoting health, education and welfare. And therefore the roles of psychologists in settings in which detainees are deprived of adequate protection of their human rights should be limited as health personnel to the provision of psychological treatment.

The Council voted overwhelmingly to reject this measure that would have banned its members from participating in abusive interrogation of detainees.

In a fiery town hall meeting that followed the convention, dozens of infuriated psychologists testified. Among them, Dr. Steven Reisner, a member of the Coalition for an Ethical APA, asked why the Council of Representatives voted to reject the moratorium in such clear contradiction to the convictions of a vast majority of APA membership.

Reisner reflected on the lack of ethical standards essential to such an association and its members, “This goes to the essence of who we are as ethical psychologists. If we cannot say, ‘No, we will not participate in enhanced interrogations at CIA black sites,’ I think we have to seriously question what we are as an organization and, for me, what my allegiance is to this organization, or whether we might have to criticize it from outside at this point.”

UPDATE BY MARK BENJAMIN

A month after Salon published “The CIA’s Torture Teachers,” Vanity Fair followed in July 2007 with an in-depth article revealing more details about the same small cabal of psychologists who helped create the CIA’s brutal interrogation program: a model that would metastasize at Guantánamo Bay, Afghanistan, and in Iraq at places like Abu Ghraib.

By December, I was taking readers on an insider’s tour of the CIA’s secret “black sites,” when Salon published the first in-depth interview with a former prisoner of the agency, Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah. Bashmilah even provided chilling drawings of his barren cells. Apparently the Yemeni man was guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time: the CIA released him after nineteen months of grueling imprisonment. “Whenever I saw a fly in my cell, I was filled with joy,” he told me about the crushing sensory deprivation and isolation. “Although I would wish for it to slip from under the door so it would not be imprisoned itself.”

On April 22, 2008, the Washington Post published an article suggesting that the US government had gone beyond abusing detainees with stress positions, sleep deprivation, and sexual humiliation and may have resorted to mind-altering drugs to further disorient prisoners. Somehow, it seemed, the agency believed this would result in squeezing out reliable information. At the end of that month, Senators Joe Biden, Jr. (D-DE), Carl Levin (D-MI), and Chuck Hagel (R-NE), asked the inspectors general at the Pentagon and CIA to look into the story.

In May 2008, the Department of Justice inspector general released a separate report showing that for years, FBI agents had complained about the rough interrogation tactics employed by the CIA and the Pentagon. That concern fell on deaf ears at the National Security Council.

It would be great to say that justice will prevail in the end. When it comes to torture, however, most of the efforts by Congress to look into the behavior of the CIA and the military have been anemic at best.

On paper at least, at the time of this writing the Senate Armed Services Committee was still looking into the activities of James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the two psychologists first identified by Salon who allegedly helped the government reverse-engineer tactics devised to help elite soldiers resist torture into interrogation techniques. The House Judiciary Committee is probing into this as well.

But few expect anyone in the administration to be frog marched in front of any kind of a tribunal. And with a White House utterly convinced that abuse is an effective interrogation tactic—and equally committed to protecting those who traffic in it—few experts think justice will be served. That goes for the psychologists who set up the diabolical program, and those who gave them the authority to carry it out.

Physician for Human Rights has consistently chased this story. You can learn more about that organization and how you can get involved at http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/.

Censored Web Update

Psychologists Vote to End Interrogation Consultations

by Benedict Carey
September 18, 2008 by The New York Times

Members of the American Psychological Association have voted to prohibit consultation in the interrogations of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, or so-called black sites operated by the Central Intelligence Agency overseas, the association said on Wednesday.

The vote, 8,792 to 6,157 in a mail-in balloting concluded Monday, may help to settle a long debate within the profession over the ethics of such work. Psychologists have helped military and C.I.A. interrogators evaluate detainees, plan questioning strategy and judge its psychological costs. The association’s ethics code, while condemning a list of coercive techniques adopted in the Bush administration’s antiterrorism campaign, has allowed some consultation “for national security-related purposes.”

The referendum, first posted on the Internet as a petition in May, prohibits psychologists from working in settings where “persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the U.N. Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the U.S. Constitution, where appropriate,” unless they represent a detainee or an independent third party. The association’s bylaws require that it institute the policy at the next annual meeting, in August 2009.

“The good part of this is that the membership has spoken, the process worked, and we’re going to follow it,” said Alan E. Kazdin, the association’s president and a psychologist at Yale University. “Will everyone be happy? Well, it’s a typical human enterprise, and there are nuanced positions on both sides. So, we’ll see.”

Steven Reisner, a New York psychoanalyst running for the association presidency on the issue, called the vote “fabulous news.”

“The membership has sent a strong message to the leadership of the association that it wants to see this ethical prohibition as policy,” Dr. Reisner said, “and now it has to be policy.”

He added that the association should add the ban to its ethics code immediately and work out details of its enactment in the coming months. “This is a major step, but it’s a first step,” he said.

Like other professional groups, the association has little direct authority to restrict members’ ability to practice. But state licensing boards that can suspend or revoke a psychologist’s license often take violations of the association’s code into consideration.

Many military and civilian psychologists have resisted a prohibition, arguing that consultants provide some accountability, making sure that questioning does not become abusive, for example. The association, these experts contend, should focus on the behavior of individual psychologists, rather than abandon the work altogether.

The Nation, December 31, 2007
Title: “GWOT: El Salvador”
Author: Wes Enzinna

Peacework, September 2007
Title: “Salvadoran Activists Targeted with US-Style Repression”
Author: Chris Damon

In These Times, November 13, 2007
Title: “El Salvador’s Patriot Act”
Author: Jacob Wheeler

Inter Press Service, August 19, 2007
Title: “El Salvador: Spectre of War Looms After 15 Years of Peace”
Author: Raul Gutierrez

Student Researchers: Juana Som and Andrea Lochtefeld

Faculty Evaluator: Jeffrey Reeder, PhD

Salvadoran police violently captured community leaders and residents at a July 2007 demonstration against the privatization of El Salvador’s water supply and distribution systems. Close range shooting of rubber bullets and tear gas was used against community members for protesting the rising cost, and diminishing access and quality, of local water under privatization. Fourteen were arrested and charged with terrorism, a charge that can hold a sixty-year prison sentence, under El Salvador’s new “Anti-terrorism Law,” which is based on the USA PATRIOT Act. While criminalization of political expression and social protest signals an alarming danger to the peace and human rights secured by Salvadorans since its brutal twelve-year civil war, the US government publicly supports the Salvadoran government and the passage of the draconian anti-terrorism law that took effect October 2006.

Salvadorans, however, maintain that fighting for water is a right, not a crime.

The conflict that confronted the small community of Santa Eduviges over their demand that their water system be de-privatized and put under the National Water and Sewage Administration’s (ANDA) control stands to be repeated now that right-wing deputies in El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly are threatening to pass a controversial General Water Law. The legislation calls for water administration to shift from the national to the municipal level and requires local governments to sign over water management through “concessions”—or contracts with private firms—for up to fifty years. The proposed law has become a lightning rod for opposition from community groups and social organizations who say it amounts to a privatization of the country’s water system.

El Salvador’s water workers union (SETA) accuses the government of engaging in a plan to discredit the state agency in order to justify privatization. ANDA’s budget was slashed by 15 percent in 2005, falling to its lowest level in a decade, a perplexing reduction in a country where 40 percent of rural Salvadorans have no access to potable water.

SETA took out half-page ads in the nation’s two biggest daily newspapers opposing the General Water Law, which according to the ad “would privatize water and condemn thousands of our compatriots to suffer thirst for the inability to pay.”

SETA members point to the devastating results of the recent privatizations of the country’s telecommunications and electricity sectors, which led to the firing of thousands of workers. Many of these workers were forced to re-apply for the same jobs at half the pay with none of the state-provided benefits.

Privately run water concessions in Latin America have a terrible track record. The most notorious example occurred with a project imposed by the World Bank in Cochabamba, Bolivia. The Bank made delivery of a loan conditional on the privatization of the country’s largest water systems. When the Cochabamba water services concession ran by the US-based Bechtel Corporation raised household water bills by 200 percent, it sparked a civil uprising that forced the company to leave the country and the water system to be put under public control (Censored 2001, #1).

After Cochabamba, the World Bank retired the word “privatization” and replaced it with terms like “concessions” and “decentralization,” or “private sector participation.” But critics say whatever the euphemism, the end result is the same: higher rates, lower quality, and less access.

Outcry from international human rights organizations led to the release of the Santa Eduviges activists, after nearly a month of imprisonment. But instead of loosening their grip, in August of 2007, President Saca and his ultra right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance Party (ARENA) pushed through penal code reforms that changed disorderly conduct from a misdemeanor to a felony. Three weeks later, the government arrested eight leaders of a nurses’ trade union for striking against the privatization of healthcare services and lack of medicine. If convicted, the union leaders could face eight years in prison under El Salvador’s new “Patriot Act.”

“The objective of these anti-terrorist laws isn’t to fight terrorism, because there haven’t been acts of terrorism here in many years,” says Pedro Juan Hernandez, a professor of economics at the University of El Salvador and an activist. He says the new law’s objective is to “criminalize the social movement and imprison community leaders.”

The Salvadoran social activists fighting for water access, healthcare and education, and now the right to protest, have seen enough war, says Hernandez. “But the origins of the violence are in the politics, the unemployment, and the government’s policies against the population,” he explains. “We are back to the level we were when the armed conflict began.”

Washington’s support for these repressive measures comes at a time when El Salvador is the only Latin American country with troops still in Iraq and was the first to sign the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Adoption of a US-based Patriot Act and the housing of the controversial US-run International Law Enforcement Academy (see Story #4) establish Saca as a strong US ally in the increasingly militarized neo-liberal agenda in Latin America—sometimes understandably confused with the Global War on Terror.

UPDATE BY JACOB WHEELER

So much of the destruction wrought upon the people of El Salvador during the second half of the twentieth century originated in Washington—corporate land grabs, environmental destruction, abuse of workers, death squads and counterinsurgency, harmful trade pacts and stunted democratic movements—and yet, a positive new chapter to El Salvador’s history may be written in early 2009. For the first time since the Peace Accords were signed in 1992, ending El Salvador’s brutal, twelve-year civil war, the progressive Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) party has a reasonable shot at winning power in national elections (the parliamentary election will take place in January 2009, followed by the presidential election in March). As of late spring 2008, the FMLN held a comfortable lead over the incumbent, right-wing ARENA party, which has perpetuated the same harmful policies that led to civil war in 1980.

If it gains power, FMLN is expected to stop the disastrous privatization of healthcare and water access, restore workers’ rights, fight to amend trade deals so that they benefit more than just wealthy corporations, end El Salvador’s participation in the occupation of Iraq, and, in general, follow the path paved by pragmatically progressive Latin American governments—such as those of Lula in Brazil and Correa in Ecuador, instead of the fiery, combative style of Chávez in Venezuela. FMLN presidential candidate Mauricio Funes has made one thing clear: Washington is not going anywhere, and despite the scars of the past, he’s willing to work with George W. Bush’s successor.

I’ll be penning a series of stories in late 2008 and early 2009 about El Salvador’s upcoming elections for In These Times. In them I hope to broadcast the voices of those who are rarely heard, chronicle the evolution of the Salvadoran progressive movement—from guerilla rebels, to grassroots organizers, to politicians ready to seize San Salvador—and influence the way both independent and mainstream media in the United States cover these important elections. Please look for future coverage of El Salvador in our magazine and at http://www.InTheseTimes.com.

UPDATE BY WES ENZINNA

Since the publication of my article, and following an international outcry by human rights observers, the charges against the thirteen protestors arrested in Suchitoto have been dropped. The judge presiding over the case, Ana Lucila Fuentes de Paz—who I later discovered had been trained at the US-run International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in San Salvador—ruled that there was not enough evidence to convict the protestors. Under the “Special Law Against Acts of Terrorism,” the protestors faced up to eighty years in prison.

Despite this positive ruling, however, the story of the Suchitoto 13 does not end happily.  On May 3, nineteen-year-old Hector Antonio Ventura—one of the thirteen arrested and charged in the Suchitoto case—was murdered in the town of Villa Verde. Ventura was beaten in the head and fatally stabbed in the heart by unknown assailants.

There is considerable suspicion that the killing was politically motivated, and Ventura’s murder followed a spate of political assassinations against leftist activists in El Salvador, among them the January slaying of FMLN mayor Wilber Funes. Further, the killing occurred just two days after Ventura had agreed to give testimony of his experience at a public ‘Day Against Impunity,’ planned for July 2, 2008, by the mayor of Suchitoto. “Given his role as one of the accused in the high-profile anti-terrorism case,” writes a member of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), “Ventura’s death could likely be politically motivated.”

Members of the Salvadoran human rights community are demanding a full investigation of Ventura’s death, yet the government has not been forthcoming about such an investigation. Political crimes often go uninvestigated in El Salvador, and many critics say that ARENA has contributed to the climate of impunity by prosecuting leftist activists, such as the vendors and Suchitoto 13, while ignoring cases of alleged political violence.

The 2009 presidential election represents the biggest possibility for the Salvadoran public to reject by electoral means ARENA’s “iron fist” policies. Indeed, many analysts predict an FMLN victory in March. However, while many observers look hopefully toward the March elections, other critics claim ARENA has been engaged in electoral fraud. In particular, the ruling party has been accused of manipulating census numbers in FMLN strongholds such as Santa Tecla, Soyapango, and Las Vueltas, in order to deny FMLN candidates of government funds. Further, on May 9, 2008, Walter Aruajo, ARENA representative and head of El Salvador’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal, announced new restrictions for international election observers. The new restrictions, Aruajo explained, “intend to regulate that no group of observers come and take part in political activity in the country.” “Meddling in the electoral process,” he continued, will result in expulsion from the country.

Critics worry the absence of a clear definition of “meddling” could leave the door open for the arbitrary application of these new restrictions, and more generally, they worry that these moves foreshadow an effort by ARENA to protect its electoral power through the creation and enforcement of self-serving and constitutionally questionable laws.

UPDATE BY CHRIS DAMON

In the year following the arrest of fourteen social movement activists in Suchitoto, there have been gains for the Salvadoran social movement, which launched unified, concerted actions to overturn the law and to achieve the unconditional liberty of the detainees; however, there have also been significant losses.

Thirteen of the original fourteen activists arrested spent twenty-six days under detention in the main men’s and women’s prisons. As a result of prison overcrowding, for some this meant going without a bed and having to purchase water for bathing and drinking. The thirteen were released July 27, 2007, under conditional terms that prevented them from traveling outside the country pending the presentation of further evidence against them by the state.

This waiting period extended for seven months, finally ending on February 8, 2008, at which point the state attempted to quietly change the charges from “Acts of Terrorism” to “Public Disorder and Aggravated Damages.” Given this change, the Special Tribune appointed to handle terrorism charges transferred the case to the regular judicial system. An audience was held February 19 for which the States Attorney’s office failed to show up to present their case leading the presiding judge to grant definitive liberty to all fourteen defendants due to the lack of charges or evidence presented. Despite an appeal by the States Attorney, the ruling was upheld on April 4.

Jubilation over these victories was short lived, given that on the night of May 2 one of the former defendants, Hector Antonio Ventura, was murdered as he slept in his small village of Valle Verde, Suchitoto.

While no one has been arrested or charged in the murder, both the media and authorities have characterized the death as related to the epidemic of gang crime which plagues the country, the most violent in Latin America.

However, the murders of activists like Ventura have caused human rights organizations to take notice. On May 12, the Foundation for the Study of Law Application (FESPAD), together with other social movement organizations, presented the case as the central element of a formal request to the States Attorney’s office to investigate this and fourteen other murders that they argue may represent the use of gang elements to commit political assassinations. They cite the “Combined Group for the Investigation of Illegal Armed Groups with Political Motivations” (1994), which established criteria for determining the probability of political motivation in a given crime: modus operandi, characteristics of the victim, and level of impunity achieved by the authors. Since the initial release of FESPAD’s list of fifteen suspicious murders, the list has been expanded to nineteen.

As of yet there has been no official response to these demands. And the controversial Anti-Terrorism Legislation remains in effect.

UPDATE BY RAUL GUTIERREZ

I strongly believe that it is important for Salvadoran society to be informed adequately on developments such as those that happened in Suchitoto on July 2, 2007, since that confrontation represented a strong risk for the country’s political stability and democratic coexistence—particularly after the achievement of 1992 peace accords that left behind twelve years of war, 75,000 deaths, and 8,000 disappeared.

From my perspective, independent journalism should provide Salvadorans in-depth information and analysis on the national reality based above all on ethics, giving voice to those mostly unheard.

Meanwhile, the assassination of Héctor Ventura—one of those arrested during the protest in Suchitoto—on May 2 has added more fear among those detained in Suchitoto, according to David Morales, one of the accused defendants, who then worked for Tutela Legal (Legal Guardians), a human rights agency of the Roman Catholic Church, and now is member of the Foundation for the Study of Law Application (FESPAD).

The fourteen detainees who were arrested during the demonstration spent twenty-seven days in jail under charges of “acts of terrorism.”

Lorena Martínez, president of the Association for Development in El Salvador (CRIPDES) and one of those jailed, reported that Ventura was stabbed in his heart while visiting a friend near Suchitoto. Ventura’s friend was also injured during the attack but now is recuperating.

“We believe this was a political attack; first of all, we were accused of being terrorists and during detention our human rights were cynically violated,” stated Martínez. When asked if the crime could be part of the country’s circle of violence, she replied: “It could be.”

The community leader said that the charges against the fourteen protesters went on for nine months and finally on April 16, a court dropped the charges against all the accused.

“It was a very tough experience; I could never have imagined being in jail in time of peace without committing any crime whatsoever,” Martínez explained, and added that mass detention “was part of the Salvadoran Government plan to criminalize social unrest which seeks to intimidate people.”

On the other hand, it seems there was no direct response to the article published on Inter Press Service. Nevertheless, I have to point out that most mainstream media coverage was biased, and in most cases only used government accounts of the confrontation. Further, some media did not cover police aggressions against protesters, journalists, and town residents not participating in the demonstration. The detention of Haydé Chicas, press officer of CRIPDES, while documenting the arrest of three coworkers, was aired by some media implying that she had been part of a protest that had blocked the road minutes before.

Anyone wanting further information regarding Suchitoto developments may contact the following persons:

Lorena Martínez, president of the Association for the Development of El Salvador; (503) 226-3717; http://www.cripdes.org

David Morales, defendant of those arrested in Suchitoto; (503) 236-1888; davidmorales@fespad.org.sv davidmorales@fespad.org.sv

Researchers: Alan Scher and Sam Burchard

Faculty Evaluator: Karen Grady, PhD

The architect of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), President Bush’s first senior education advisor, Sandy Kress, has turned the program, which has consistently proven disastrous in the realm of education, into a huge success in the realm of corporate profiteering. After ushering NCLB through the US House of Representatives in 2001 with no public hearings, Kress went from lawmaker—turning on spigots of federal funds—to lobbyist, tapping into those billions of dollars in federal funds for private investors well connected to the Bush administration.

A statute that once promised equal access to public education to millions of American children now instead promises billions of dollars in profits to corporate clients through dubious processes of testing and assessment and “supplemental educational services.” NCLB—the Business Roundtable’s revision of Lyndon Johnson’s Education and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)—created a “high stakes testing” system through which the private sector could siphon federal education funds. The result has been windfall corporate profit. What was once a cottage industry has become a corporate giant. “Millions of dollars are being spent,” says Jack Jennings, director of the Center on Education Policy, “and nobody knows what’s happening.”

The wedding of big business and education benefits not only the interests of the Business Roundtable, a consortium of over 300 CEOs, but countless Bush family loyalists. Sandy Kress, chief architect of NCLB; Harold McGraw III, textbook publisher; Bill Bennett, former Reagan education secretary; and Neil Bush, the president’s youngest brother, have all cashed in on the Roundtable’s successful national implementation of “outcome-based education.” NCLB’s mandated system of state standards, state tests, and school sanctions has together transformed our public school system into a for-profit frenzy.

Kress, former president of the Dallas School Board, began “A Draft Position for George W. Bush on K-12 Education” as early as 1999. Working successfully with then-Governor Bush in Texas for years, the Democrat bolstered bipartisan support behind the compassionate marketing promise to “leave no child behind” through the adoption of high state standards measuring school performance. Signed into law in early 2002, NCLB dramatically extended the federal role in public education, mandating annual testing of children in Grades 3 to 8, providing tutoring for children in persistently failing schools, and setting a twelve-year timetable for closing chronic gaps in student achievement. Having then crafted the legislation, Kress transitioned from public servant to corporate lobbyist, guiding clients to the troth of federal funds. By 2005 he had made upwards of $4 million from lobbying contracts.

While the Business Roundtable maintains that the high-stakes tests administered nationwide hold schools accountable to “Adequate Yearly Progress,” NCLB has instead benefited the testing industry in the amount of between $1.9 and $5.3 billion a year. NCLB requires states to produce “interpretive, descriptive, and diagnostic reports,” all of which are provided at a price by members of the industry. Among these are the top four or five players in the textbook market, including the Big Three—McGraw-Hill, Houghton-Mifflin, and Harcourt General—who have, since the passage of NCLB, come to dominate the testing market. Identified by Wall Street analysts in the wake of the 2000 election as “Bush stocks,” all three represent owners like Harold McGraw III, who has longstanding ties to the Bush administration and the lobbying efforts of Sandy Kress.

Other Kress clients, including Ignite! Learning, a company headed by Neil Bush, and K12 Inc., a for-profit enterprise owned by Bill Bennett, tailored themselves to vie for NCLB dollars.

Under NCLB, as school districts receive federal funding they are required by law to hold 20 percent of those funds aside, anticipating that its schools will fail to meet its Annual Yearly Progress formula. When that “failure” is certified by test scores, the district is required to use those set-aside federal funds to pay supplemental education service (SES) providers. Ignite! has placed products in forty US school districts, and K12 offers a menu of services “as an option to traditional brick-and-mortar schools,” including computer-based “virtual academies,” that have qualified for over $4 million in federal grants. Under NCLB, supplemental educational services, whose results are being increasingly challenged, reap $2 billion annually.

Nationally, there are over 1,800 approved providers of supplemental educational services, but little in the way of regulation. To the contrary, Michael Petrilli, former member of the Department of Education, purports, “We want as little regulation as possible so the market can be as vibrant as possible.” To that end, Kress is currently lobbying on behalf of another bipartisan coalition to win reauthorization of NCLB for another six years.

Sources:
Nuclear Information and Resource Service, May 14, 2007
Title: “Nuclear Waste in Landfills”
Author: Diane D’Arrigo

Environment News Service, May 14, 2007
Title: “US Allows Radioactive Materials in Ordinary Landfills”
Author: Sunny Lewis

Environment News Service, February 4, 2008
Title: “US Company Seeks Permit to Import Nuclear Waste”
Author: Sunny Lewis

Student Researchers: Derek Harms and Cedric Therene

Faculty Evaluator: Noel Byrne, PhD

Radioactive materials from nuclear weapons production sites are being dumped into regular landfills, and are available for recycling and resale. The Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) has tracked the Department of Energy’s (DOE) release of radioactive scrap, concrete, equipment, asphalt, chemicals, soil, and more, to unaware and unprepared recipients such as landfills, commercial businesses, and recreation areas. Under the current system, the DOE releases contaminated materials directly, sells them at auctions or through exchanges, or sends the materials to processors who can release them from radioactive controls. The recycling of these materials—for reuse in the production of everyday household and personal items such as zippers, toys, furniture, and automobiles, or to build roads, schools, and playgrounds—is increasingly common.

The NIRS report, “Out of Control on Purpose: DOE’s Dispersal of Radioactive Waste into Landfills and Consumer Products,” tracks the laws, methods, and justifications used by the DOE to expedite the mandatory cleanup of the environmental legacy being created by the nation’s nuclear weapons program and government-sponsored nuclear energy research. One of the largest and most technically complex environmental cleanup programs in the world, the effort includes cleanup of 114 sites across the country to be completed by the end of 2008.

The DOE has unilaterally chosen allowable radioactive contamination and public exposure levels to facilitate “clean-up” of these sites. Pressure is increasing to allow clearing radioactivity from control in order to legalize the dispensing and disbursing of nuclear waste.

In 2000, the Secretary of Energy banned the commercial recycling of potentially radioactive metal. However, the ban does not apply to the disposal, reuse, or recycling of metal equipment, components, and pipes, or of other materials.

Seven sites of importance were investigated for the NIRS report: Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Rocky Flats, Colorado; Los Alamos, New Mexico; Mound and Fernald, Ohio; West Valley, New York; and Paducah, Kentucky. Of these, Tennessee is said to be the main funnel that pours nuclear weapon and power waste from around the country into landfills and recycling facilities without public knowledge. “People around regular trash landfills will be shocked to learn that radioactive contamination from nuclear weapons production is ending up there, either directly released by DOE or via brokers and processors,” says author Diane D’Arrigo, NIRS’s Radioactive Waste Project director.

EnergySolutions, the company that operates the only private low-level radioactive waste disposal business in the US, disposes of more than 90 percent of the low-level radioactive waste generated in the US. It operates waste processing and disposition facilities in Tennessee, South Carolina, and Utah. The company also operates low-level radioactive waste disposal facilities, vaults, and landfills on the DOE Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee.

Amazingly, as the DOE struggles through desperate and irresponsible measures to “disappear” this nation’s nuclear waste by the end of 2008, EnergySolutions has applied for a license in Tennessee to process nuclear waste from Italy.

This application marks the first time in the history of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that a company has asked to dispose of large amounts of foreign-generated low-level radioactive waste in the United States.

In February 2008, Bart Gordon, the Tennessee Democrat who chairs the House Committee on Science and Technology, asked the Northwest Interstate Compact of Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management to withhold licensing that he says would put the US on a path to becoming “the world’s nuclear garbage waste dump.”

In an understatement, Gordon argued, “The US already faces capacity issues and other challenges in treating and disposing of radioactive waste produced domestically. We should be working on solving this problem at home before taking dangerous waste from around the world.”

UPDATE BY DIANE D’ARRIGO

The nuclear power and weapons industry and the government agencies that promote, oversee, and regulate nuclear activities are trying to save money by allowing large amounts of man-made, radioactively contaminated materials and property to be redefined as not radioactive. They don’t want to pay to try to isolate nuclear waste, including metal, concrete, asphalt, plastic, soil, equipment, and buildings, so they have developed ways to send the waste to regular landfills or even into commercial recycling that could end up in daily-use items the public makes contact with regularly.

This story is increasingly important as old nuclear weapons sites and power reactors close and the companies seek relief from responsibility and liability for the long-lasting nuclear waste they generated. It is especially dangerous as new nuclear power and weapons facilities are proposed, which will dramatically increase the amount of waste generated that could get into the public realm.

Although the US federal agencies have not generally allowed nuclear waste to be released from controls, they are still working on it. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have proposed rules in the wings, likely to emerge at any time. NRC is encouraging case by case releases of nuclear waste. The DOE has procedures to allow some radioactive waste out of controls but claims to be preventing radioactive metal from getting into the commercial metal market. A programmatic environmental review could overturn that prohibition, and internally DOE has many loopholes to let nuclear wastes out.

The story wasn’t covered much in the mainstream news. One notable exception was the investigative team led by Demetria Kalodimos on Channel 4 WSMV, Nashville’s NBC affiliate, who reported on the story and did over twenty follow-ups in the Nashville area (see http://www.nirs.org for links). Public awareness led to legislative attention and a commitment by the landfill operator who was taking nuclear waste to stop taking it. Kalodimos received three journalism awards for reporting and following up on the story herself.

The community is not satisfied with this voluntary commitment, because the Tennessee State Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) still allows nuclear waste to be released from controls. TDEC licenses companies to import nuclear waste from around the country and world for “processing,” including incineration and metal melting and reuse.

The report identified TDEC and Tennessee as leaders in releasing nuclear waste out of control.

The situation has worsened since last year. One of the processors is proposing to import a huge portion of Italy’s nuclear power waste to burn, process, melt and dump in the US (Tennessee and Utah).

Action against this can be taken by contacting your state governors to oppose it and by supporting federal legislation that would prohibit the US from importing foreign nuclear waste.

Citizens can also contact their state officials to find out if their state is allowing nuclear waste into the solid waste streams in their communities.

Contact dianed@nirs.org dianed@nirs.org for more information.

There are "more slaves alive today than all the people stolen from Africa in the time of the Transatlantic Slave trade" - That from Doctor Kevin Bales, a leading expert on modern slavery. You may find it unsettling to learn that 27-Million slaves exist in the world today....more than any time in human history. Between 5 and 6 million of those....are children.

Globalization, poverty, violence and just plan greed facilitate the growth of slavery...

Behind the façade in any major town or city in the world today, one is likely to find a thriving commerce in human beings. This commerce in suffering can be found in our own backyard....Bay Area residents were shocked when, in 2000, Berkeley landlord and a restaurateur was charged with smuggling minors into the United States and keeping them as sex slaves. That case involved at least 25 girls over a period of 15 years.

On any given day, according to a 2005 report by the campus Human Rights Center, more than 10,000 men, women, and children in the United States are being forced to work as prostitutes, agricultural and sweatshop laborers, or restaurant and domestic workers. The center identified 57 forced-labor operations based in major urban areas in California alone, San Francisco among them.

Attorneys from the Department of Justice have prosecuted ninety-one slave trade cases in cities across the United States and in nearly every state of the nation. In September 2005, California enacted its first anti-trafficking law to make human trafficking a felony in this state.

Sources:
Sojourners, March 15, 2007
Title: “From Sex Workers to Restaurant Workers, the Global Slave Trade Is Growing”
Author: David Batstone

Foreign Policy, March/April 2008
Title: “A World Enslaved”
Author: E. Benjamin Skinner

Student Researcher: Brandon Leahy

Faculty Evaluator: David McCuan, PhD

Twenty-seven million slaves exist in the world today, more than at any time in human history. Globalization, poverty, violence, and greed facilitate the growth of slavery, not only in the Third World, but in the most developed countries as well. Behind the façade in any major town or city in the world today, one is likely to find a thriving commerce in human beings.

As many as 800,000 are trafficked across international borders annually, and up to 17,500 new victims are trafficked across US borders each year, according to the US Department of Justice (DOJ). More than 30,000 additional slaves are transported through the US on their ways to other international destinations. Attorneys from the DOJ have prosecuted ninety-one slave trade cases in cities across the United States and in nearly every state of the nation.

Commerce in human beings today rivals drug trafficking and the illegal arms trade for top criminal activity on the planet. The slave trade sits at number three on the list, but the gap is closing. According to the US State Department’s 2004 Trafficking in Persons Report, the FBI projects that the slave trade generates $9.5 billion in revenue each year. A report put out by the International Labor Office in 2005, titled “Global Alliance Against Forced Labor,” estimates that figure to be closer to $32 billion annually.

Like the slaves who came to America’s shores over 200 years ago, today’s slaves are not free to pursue their own destinies. They are coerced to perform work for the personal gain of those who subjugate them. If they try to escape the clutches of their masters, modern slaves risk personal violence or reprisals to their families.

Increasingly severe and widespread poverty and social inequality ensure a growing pool of recruits. Parents in desperate straits may sell their children or at least be susceptible to scams that will allow the slave trader to take control over the lives of their sons and daughters. Young women in poverty-ridden communities are more likely to take risks on job offers in faraway locations. The poor are apt to accept loans that slave traders can later manipulate to steal their freedom. Thousands of traffickers lure children from impoverished rural parents with promises of scholarships, free schooling, and a better life. All of these paths carry unsuspecting recruits into the supply chains of slavery.

Though modern day forms of slavery are emerging to suit global markets, bonded labor continues to be the most common form of slavery in the world. In a typical scenario, an individual falls under the control of a wealthy patron after taking a small loan. The patron adds egregious rates of interest and inflated expenses to the original principal so that the laborer finds it impossible to repay. Debt slaves may spend their entire lives in service to a single slaveholder, and their “obligation” may be passed on to their children. Bondage, with no legal standing, is typically established through fraud and maintained through violence.

The United Nations, whose founding principles call for it to fight bondage in all its forms, has done little to combat modern slavery. And though since 1817 nations have signed more than a dozen international antislavery resolutions, very little effect has been realized.

Authors David Batstone and E. Benjamin Skinner are, however, impressed and heartened by the effectiveness of nongovernmental abolitionists around the world involved not only in brave acts of liberating slaves, but in launching transitional schools and training facilities for those recently freed.

UPDATE BY BENJAMIN SKINNER

When Foreign Policy published “A World Enslaved” in March 2008, they dropped a rock in a pool. There were few ripples. The mainstream media seems to have trouble grasping and presenting the concept that there are more slaves today than at any point in human history. And for understandable reasons: legal slavery was buried in most countries a long time ago. On a positive note, in its June 4 Trafficking in Persons Report the US State Department began to seriously address forms of slavery other than sex slavery. But the media seems to find little of interest in the bondage of millions who are enslaved in industries other than commercial sex. And such a narrow presentation means that the struggle against slavery in all its forms remains hidden and underfunded.

Despite the media abandonment, a handful of American citizens who had never been exposed to the issue before got involved after reading A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern Day Slavery, the book that the Foreign Policy piece excerpted. A plastic surgeon in Missouri offered his services pro bono to those survivors who had scars as a result of their slavery; a woman from North Carolina lobbied her elected officials to stop slavery in Romania; a famous visual artist is working on a series of pieces about modern-day slavery, and has offered to give the proceeds from the sales to Free The Slaves, the most effective organization working to combat slavery worldwide; other readers made their own contributions to Free The Slaves or to domestically-focused antislavery organizations like the DC-based Polaris Project. Those few Americans have made commitments that will help turn the tide against modern-day slavery—and carry on the struggle of our ancestors who were slaves and abolitionists.

Source:
International Trade Union Confederation website, September 2007
Title: “2007 Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights”

Student Researchers: Carmela Rocha and Elizabeth Allen

Faculty Evaluator: Robert Girling, PhD

The first Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights to be published by the year-old International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) documents enormous challenges to workers rights around the world. The 2007 edition of the survey, covering 138 countries, shows an alarming rise in the number of people killed as a result of their trade union activities, from 115 in 2005 to 144 in 2006. Many more trade unionists around the world were abducted or “disappeared.” Thousands were arrested during the year for their parts in strike action and protests, while thousands of others were fired in retaliation for organizing. Growing numbers of trade union activists in Africa, the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific are facing police brutality and murder as unions are viewed as opponents of corporatist governments.

Colombia is still the deadliest country in the world for trade unionists. In 2006, seventy-eight people were murdered because of their union activities, an increase of eight from the previous year. There is strong and disturbing evidence of government involvement in these killings. Of 1,165 recorded crimes against trade unionists in Colombia, just fifty-six went before the courts, and only ten resulted in sentences.

In Mexico, two miners died and forty-one were injured when 800 police officers were sent to confront 500 striking miners and began a brutal evacuation of the mining company’s premises. Violent scenes erupted in Ecuador when police and the army aggressively repressed a union-organized protest against the negotiation of a free trade agreement with the US, leaving fifteen seriously injured.

Employers in the Export Processing Zones (EPZ) of Central America have managed thus far to thwart workers’ efforts to organize.

In the United States, a National Labor Relations Board ruling deprived millions of the right to organize by expanding the definition of the term “supervisor.”

Across Africa, the use of disproportionate force and mass dismissals in retaliation for strike action were a frequent occurrence in 2007. In Kenya, over 1,000 workers on a flower plantation were dismissed after going on strike over workplace injuries and discrimination. Mass dismissals were also reported at a diamond mine in Botswana and at a road-construction site in Cameroon. In Egypt, Libya, and Sudan, the single trade union system prohibits effective bargaining or representation, while in Equatorial Guinea the dictatorship is too absolute to allow organizing.

In the Middle East, some governments took steps towards the recognition of trade union rights, but overall, workers in the region still have fewer rights than anywhere in the world. For example, in Jordan, Kuwait, Yemen, and Syria, laws impose an ineffective single trade union system. In Palestine, hostilities with Israel have made the organizing of trade unions virtually impossible. Migrant workers still make up the most vulnerable group in the region. At least twenty migrant workers at two factories in Jordan were arrested and deported for demanding improved wages and working conditions. In Saudi Arabia, the total lack of workers’ rights and protection means that migrant workers, particularly women, are frequently subjected to blatant abuse, such as nonpayment of wages, forced confinement, rape, and other physical violence.

There were more mass dismissals and arrests in response to collective action in Asia than in any other region in the world in 2007. In Bangladesh, the phased introduction of (limited) trade union rights in EPZs got off to a poor start, as employers routinely harassed, suspended, and fired leaders of Workers’ Representation and Welfare Committees during the year. In one incident, police opened fire on strikers at an EPZ garment factory, killing one worker and injuring others. In Malaysia police used batons, dogs, and water cannons to disperse a workers’ protest. The Philippines stand out as the most violent country in the region. In an attempt to crush popular protests against the president’s rule, labor leaders were among those targeted as “enemies of the state.”

There was no change in China where the law does not allow for any independent trade union activity. Over one hundred workers were arrested and detained for involvement in collective protest, while the official “trade union” did nothing to protect them.

A recent report published by the social audit company Vigeo, based on a study of 511 enterprises in seventeen European countries, shows that less then 10 percent of European companies are committed to freedom of association and the promotion of collective bargaining. Changes in labor legislation in several countries added to existing restrictions on trade union rights. The most serious change was announced in Belarus, where a draft trade union law would make it virtually impossible to establish trade unions outside the state-controlled Federation of Trade Unions of Belarus.

Despite all these difficulties, millions of women and men remain firm in their commitment to, or are discovering the benefits of, trade union action.

Sources:
One World, September 14, 2007
Title: “UN Adopts Historic Statement on Native Rights”
Author: Haider Rizvi

BSNorrell.blogspot.com, December 11, 2007
Title: “Indigenous Peoples Protest World Bank Carbon Scam in Bali”
Author: Brenda Norrell

Common Dreams, December 12, 2007
Title: “Indigenous Peoples Shut Out of Climate Talks, Plans”
Author: Haider Rizvi

Forest Peoples Programme, November 30, 2007
Title: “NGO Statement on the World Bank’s Proposed Forest Carbon Partnership Facility”
Author: Tom Griffiths

Student Researchers: Jessica Read, Andrea Lochtefeld, and Christina Long

Faculty Evaluator: John Wingard, PhD

In September 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The resolution called for recognition of the world’s 370 million indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination and control over their lands and resources. The adoption of this resolution comes after twenty-two years of diplomatic negotiations at the United Nations (UN) involving its member states, international civil society groups, and representatives of the world’s aboriginal communities.

The declaration emphasizes the rights of indigenous peoples to maintain and strengthen their institutions, cultures, and traditions, and to pursue their development in keeping with their own needs and aspirations. The declaration was passed by an overwhelming majority vote of 143–4. Only the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand voted against the resolution, expressing the view that strong emphasis on rights to indigenous self-determination and control over lands and resources would hinder economic development and undermine “established democratic norms.”

Three months following the passage of the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, however, a delegation of indigenous peoples were forcibly barred from entering the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Bali, despite the fact that the delegation was invited to attend. Indigenous peoples from around the world protested the exclusion from the climate negotiations.

The indigenous delegates went to Bali to denounce what they contend are false solutions to climate change proposed by the UN—such as carbon trading, agrofuels, and so-called “avoided deforestation.”

The World Bank initiative, Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), was launched in Bali as part of the discussions on Reducing Emissions Through Deforestation in Developing Countries (REDD), despite indigenous disapproval and the fact that 18–20 percent of annual global carbon emissions are caused by deforestation. The initiative, which allows tropical forests to be included in carbon offsetting schemes, fails to combat climate change, the groups say, because it allows industrialized countries and companies to buy their way out of emission reduction. The bank, which has a vested interest in carbon trading, has a particularly appalling track record in relation to funding deforestation and carbon emission projects.

The nongovermental organization (NGO) Statement on the World Bank’s proposed FCPF, endorsed by eighty-four organizations on November 30, 2007, pointed to shortcomings in the World Bank’s proposal: “As the World Bank Group positions itself to become a lead agency on climate change mitigation and the central administrative body of the proposed FCPF, we are concerned that the Bank risks losing sight of its central mission of reducing poverty as it adopts a narrow focus on carbon accounting. We note also that the Bank continues to undermine its own climate change mitigation efforts by persisting in funding fossil fuel industries on a global scale and enabling deforestation.”

The statement continues, “We are alarmed that to date the FCPF plans have been developed in a rushed way with little public discussion. Only weeks before it proposes to launch the FCPF at the 13th COP [Conference of Parties] of the UNFCCC in Bali, potentially affected forest peoples in tropical and sub-tropical countries have not been properly consulted about the design and objectives of the FCPF. It remains unclear who benefits from this accelerated timeline . . . The proposed governance mechanisms confine decision-making to governmental and commercial participants. They do not allow opportunities for civil society and affected forest peoples to take part in decision-making regarding readiness plans, packages and implementation, eligibility, and REDD strategies and transactions.”

Jihan Gearon, of the indigenous Environmental Network, responded to the ban on Indigenous participation by stating, “Our communities and livelihoods are the first affected by climate change. We are also the most affected by the unsustainable solutions being proposed to solve climate change. . . . This past September 13, the UN General Assembly adopted the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which protects the rights of Indigenous Peoples to their lands, territories, and environment. Yet through the faulty process and false climate change solutions of the UNFCCC, these fundamental human rights are being violated.”

Sandy Gauntlett of the Global Forest Coalition and chairman of the Pacific Indigenous Peoples Environment Coalition said, “With this proposal, the World Bank is violating the principle of Prior Informed Consent, which is enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Indigenous peoples should not just be consulted on this facility. Without their full and prior informed consent this facility should be disbanded.”

UPDATE BY BRENDA NORRELL

Indigenous peoples continue to expose carbon credits as a scam for profiteering corporations and the World Bank, fueled by the easily manipulated news media. While carbon brokers become millionaires, the reality of the carbon credit scheme hits indigenous peoples around the world with full force, particularly in South America, India, and Africa.

While the carbon credit scam is designed to be vague and lack accountability, Tom Goldtooth, Navajo and executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), said the carbon scheme serves as a means of relieving guilt for the rich, but is a fictional concept.

“It allows the polluter to continue to pollute and actually pays them to pollute,” said Goldtooth, while continuing IEN’s education campaign on carbon credits in 2008.

While the goal of carbon credits is reduction of greenhouse gasses, Goldtooth said there is no assurance that the schemes ever become reality. For example, Goldtooth said there is no guarantee that a tree planted today will live until maturity, without being chopped down, and then offset deforestation and fossil fuel gasses.

The promotion of carbon trading was a focus of caucuses of the 7th Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in April 2008.

At the United Nations in New York, many indigenous peoples voiced outrage when the Permanent Forum’s final report praised the World Bank funded carbon trading, including the Clean Development Mechanism, without exposing human rights violations and environmental destruction.

Florina Lopez, coordinator of the Indigenous Women’s Biodiversity Network of Abya Yala, urged the forum to affirm the rejection of carbon trading mechanisms and concerns over specific implementations. Over thirty organizations called for the final report to include a section outlining their concerns.

The grave problems with carbon trading include violations of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. For example, those objecting to carbon trade promotion said the Wayuu people in Colombia did not give free, prior, and informed consent for construction of the Jepirachi Wind Project in their sacred territory. In fact, they were unaware of the project.

More than 200 Wayuu were assassinated prior to clearing the land for implementation of wind projects in the area, according to indigenous peoples at the forum. Further, the energy generated from the wind farm is used to power the mega coalmine, Cerrejon mine.

Goldtooth said the carbon market is a huge contradiction, which ultimately funds the nuclear power and fossil fuel industries. Citing human rights violations, Goldtooth said indigenous peoples do not want to be “seduced by the World Bank’s money.”

“In promoting the clean development mechanism projects and carbon trading, the Permanent Forum is allowing oil companies, who are the biggest emitters for greenhouse gases, to continue to pollute,” Goldtooth said. “Promoting the commodification of the air is a corruption of our traditional teachings and violates the original instructions of Indigenous Peoples. We have to make the transition to alternative energy solutions.”

For more information, see the Indigenous Environmental Network (http://www.ienearth.org), Censored News (http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com), and Earthcycles (http://www.earthcycles.net).

UPDATE BY TOM GRIFFITHS

Since the NGO statement expressing serious concerns about the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) presented to the World Bank forest carbon team and several governments in a World Bank meeting in Washington, DC, in November 2005, things have gone from bad to worse.

First, the bank ignored the plea to withhold activation of the facility until public concerns were addressed. The bank plowed ahead with the public launch of the facility at the 13th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change held in Bali in December 2007, generating a storm of loud protest by indigenous peoples and civil society representatives outside the meeting room. Inside the meeting room, Vicky Corpuz, chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, made a strong statement condemning the bank’s failure to consult properly with indigenous peoples about global climate and forest initiatives that may affect their communities and lands directly.

In response to these intense criticisms, the bank announced that it would conduct “retroactive consultation” with indigenous peoples on its FCPF plans. Bank meetings with indigenous peoples’ representatives went ahead in February and March 2008 through three meetings in Asia (Katmandu), Africa (Bujumbura) and Latin America (La Paz).

In Asia, indigenous participants presented a series of concerns about rights and accountability problems in the FCPF charter and proposed governance structure that bank staff could not address and only agreed to take away to study further. Some replies given to the participants were arguably misleading, suggesting that the bank’s safeguards would apply to the FCPF when the bank’s legal department in November had already confirmed that the safeguards do not apply in any binding way to FCPF activities unless monies are to be disbursed to specific projects through the facility (while much of its work will not be based on bank-funded projects, but rather policy making and strategy formulation).

In Africa, the same potentially confusing information on the bank’s safeguard policies was presented to meeting participants, and many answers to concerns raised were vague or very general.

In Latin America, some national indigenous organizations have complained that they were not invited to the bank meeting, and those that did attend on the first day rejected the meeting as a non-consultation and obliged the bank to acknowledge that the meeting was only an “information sharing” activity (as dissemination of complete information prior to the meeting, to properly prepare participants, had not taken place). In the same meeting, a statement by indigenous leaders was read aloud, condemning top-down climate change mitigation policies that have not been developed with indigenous peoples, like REDD and the FCPF.

Forest People’s Programme asked for clarification on the vital safeguards issue in May 2008, and was advised by the bank’s FCPF team that this issue is “still being discussed internally within the Bank.” The draft FCPF charter likewise remains inside a black box in the bank, and it is not clear if FPP and civil society concerns about the draft charter have been taken up in any revised legal instrument establishing this controversial forest carbon fund.

In short, the whole question of proper safeguards and accountability of the FCPF to affected citizens and communities and whether or not there will be guarantees for full FCPF conformity with international human rights and environmental law remains unresolved.

At the same time, the bank has pushed forward with even bigger plans on forest and climate change and now proposes to establish a mega forest funds called the Forest Investment Fund (FIF) with a possible budget of $2 billion USD.

It seems that the World Bank just cannot learn lessons: this new FIF is being developed in 2008 without meaningful consultation with forest peoples in developing countries and is coming under increasing public criticism for the lack of transparency in its formulation.

For further information on this news topic in briefings issued by FPP in February 2008, see http://www.forestpeoples.org/documents/forest_issues/bases/forest_issues.shtml. Check this website for more news and ongoing controversy over the bank’s forest carbon funds.

Also contact tom@forestpeoples.orgtom@forestpeoples.org tom@forestpeoples.org and amarantha@forestpeoples.orgamarantha@forestpeoples.org amarantha@forestpeoples.org, or call 44 1608 652893, for more information.

Other useful sources for information include http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/, http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/, http://www.ifiwatchnet.org/, http://www.sinkswatch.org/, http://www.foei.org/en/campaigns/climate, and http://www.globalforestcoalition.org/paginas/view/32.

Children who break the law are subject to a different judicial system....one that's meant to be safe and protected from the hardened criminals that fill the prison systems.....but what if those abusers were the authorities meant to protect you? In states across the country, child advocates have condemned the conditions which young offenders are housed. Conditions that involve sexual abuse, physical abuse...and even death. The US Justice Department (DOJ) has filed lawsuits against facilities in eleven states for supervision that is either abusive or harmfully negligent.

In 2006, reported conditions in California juvenile halls included severe overcrowding....teenagers were sleeping on the floors with no educational opportunities or mental health care. Some of these kids were put in isolation 24 hours a day for months at a time. Excessive force was witnessed, including beatings and pepper sprayings; and inappropriate administration of medications.

Just how many of these kids have been subject to this neglect?

In a nationally conducted survey, the Associated Press contacted each state agency that oversees juvenile correction centers. According to the survey, more than 13,000 claims of abuse were identified in juvenile correction centers around the country.

While the DOJ lacks the power to shut down juvenile correction facilities, through litigation it can force a state to improve its detention centers and protect the civil rights of jailed youth.

Source:
Associated Press, March 2, 2008
Title: “13,000 Abuse Claims in Juvie Centers”
Author: Holbrook Mohr

Student Researcher: Sarah Maddox

Faculty Evaluator: Barbara Bloom, PhD

In states across the country, child advocates have harshly condemned the conditions under which young offenders are housed—conditions that involve sexual abuse, physical abuse, and even death. The US Justice Department (DOJ) has filed lawsuits against facilities in eleven states for supervision that is either abusive or harmfully negligent. While the DOJ lacks the power to shut down juvenile correction facilities, through litigation it can force a state to improve its detention centers and protect the civil rights of jailed youth.

Lack of oversight and nationally accepted standards of tracking abuse make it difficult to know exactly how many youngsters have been assaulted or neglected.

In a nationally conducted survey, the Associated Press contacted each state agency that oversees juvenile correction centers and asked for information on the numbers of deaths as well as the numbers of allegations and confirmed cases of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse by staff members since January 1, 2004. According to the survey, more than 13,000 claims of abuse were identified in juvenile correction centers around the country from 2004 through 2007—a remarkable total given that the total population of detainees was about 46,000 at the time the states were surveyed in 2007.

The worst physical confrontations have ended in death. At least five juveniles died after being forcibly placed in restraints in facilities run by state agencies or private facilities with government contracts since January 1, 2004.

The use of restraint techniques and devices and their too-aggressive application have long been controversial and came under intense scrutiny last year after the death of fourteen-year-old Martin Lee Anderson. A grainy video taken at a Florida boot camp in January 2006 showed several guards striking the teen while restraining him. On October 12, 2006, six guards and a nurse were acquitted of manslaughter charges after defense attorneys argued that the guards used acceptable tactics.

In Maryland, seventeen-year-old Isaiah Simmons lost consciousness and died after he was held to the floor face down at a privately owned facility that was contracted by the state. Prosecutors say the staff waited forty-one minutes after the boy was unresponsive to call for help. An attorney for one of the counselors said the men were only trying to prevent Simmons from hurting himself or someone else. A judge dismissed misdemeanor charges against five counselors. The state has appealed.

Other restraint-related deaths involve three boys—seventeen, fifteen, and thirteen years of age—in facilities in Tennessee, New York, and Georgia, respectively. At least twenty-four other juveniles died in correction centers between 2004 and 2007 from suicide and natural causes or preexisting medical conditions.

A drive to reform California’s juvenile justice system follows successful landmark litigation against the California Youth Authority (CYA) in April 2006. During litigation, advocates learned that conditions in many California county juvenile halls were as bad as those in the state CYA facilities. Yet as the appalling conditions in the CYA were revealed, officials shifted much of the population from the CYA facilities to the county juvenile halls.

In 2006, reported conditions in California juvenile halls included severe overcrowding, with teenagers sleeping floors; nonexistent educational opportunity; nonexistent mental healthcare or rehabilitative programs; isolation for over twenty-three hours a day for months straight; use of excessive force, including beatings and pepper sprayings; and inappropriate administration of medications.

Attorney Richard Ulmer states, “California law expressly requires that a juvenile hall not be regarded as a penal institution, but rather be a safe and supportive homelike environment. But many juvenile halls in the state are more like penitentiaries than homes.”1

Similar crises of institutional abuse against troubled youth are occurring in states across the nation.

Citation:

1.  Richard Ulmar, “California Juvenile Justice System in Crisis; Lawsuits to End Abuses Against Children,” PR Newswire, April 19, 2006.

Sources:
Trade BioRes, September 21, 2007
Title: “Conference Agrees Steps to Safeguard Farm Animal Diversity”
Author: The International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development

La Via Campesina, September 11, 2007
Title: “Wilderswil Declaration on Livestock Diversity”
Authors: Representatives of pastoralists, indigenous peoples, and smallholder farmers

Student Researchers: Maureen Santos, Andrew Kochevar, and Stephanie Smith

Faculty Evaluator: Nick Geist, PhD

The industrial model of livestock production is causing the worldwide destruction of animal diversity. At least one indigenous livestock breed becomes extinct each month as a result of overreliance on select breeds imported from the United States and Europe, according to the study, “The State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources,” conducted by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Since research for the report began in 1999, 2,000 local breeds have been identified as at risk.

The industrial livestock breeding and production system that is being imposed on the world requires high levels of investment in technology and receives subsidies and other resources that have distorted the market.

Consequences of the livestock industry’s globalization include the threat to sustainable development and global food security, destruction of the livelihoods of over one billion people worldwide, smallholder bankruptcies and suicides, and the extinction of some of the world’s hardiest breeds of animals.

The FAO report, which the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) contributed to, surveyed farm animals in 169 countries, and found that nearly 70 percent of the world’s entire remaining unique livestock are bred in developing countries. The findings were presented to over 300 policy makers, scientists, breeders, and industrialized livestock keepers at the First International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources, held in Interlaken, Switzerland, from September 3 to 7, 2007.

In response to these findings, scientists from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, ILRI’s supporting organization, have called for the rapid establishment of gene banks to conserve the sperm and ovaries of key animals critical for the survival of global animal populations. Over the past six years, ILRI has built a detailed database, called the Domestic Animal Genetic Resoures Information System, containing research-based information on the distribution, characteristics, and statuses of 669 breeds of cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens indigenous to Africa and Asia.

Meanwhile, concurrent with the Interlaken summit, around 300 representatives from thirty organizations of pastoralists, indigenous peoples, smallholder farmers, and NGOs from twenty-six countries met in a parallel conference, to establish opposition to globalized industrial livestock production. The Livestock Diversity Forum to Defend Food Sovereignty and Livestock Keepers’ Rights met in Wilderswil, Switzerland, and presented an alternative Declaration on Livestock Diversity on September 6, 2007.

The Wilderswil Declaration maintains that while the FAO report contains good analysis and squarely points to the industrial livestock system as one of the main forces behind destruction of diversity, the FAO Global Plan of Action contains nothing that addresses these causes.

The Declaration states:

It is totally unacceptable that governments agree on a plan that does not challenge the policies that cause the loss of diversity . . .

Defending livestock diversity is not a matter of [privatized] genes but of collective rights.

The social organizations of pastoralists, herders, and farmers have no interest in participating in a plan which does not address the central causes behind the destruction of livestock diversity, but rather provides crutches and weak support for a collapsing global livestock production system. Because the Global Plan of Action does not challenge industrial livestock production, we reinforce our commitment to organize ourselves to save livestock diversity and to counter the negative forces bearing on us.

This peoples’ proposal asserts that it is not possible to conserve animal diversity without protecting and strengthening the local communities that currently maintain and nurture such diversity. These livestock keepers maintain that governments should accept and guarantee collective rights and community control over natural resources, including communal grazing lands and migration routes, water, and livestock breeds.

The Declaration further states:

Local knowledge and biodiversity can only be protected and promoted through collective rights. Collective knowledge is intimately linked to cultural diversity, particular ecosystems, and biodiversity, and cannot be dissociated from any of these other three aspects. Any definition and implementation of the rights of livestock keepers should take this fully into account. It is clear that the rights of livestock keepers are not compatible with intellectual property rights systems [i.e., gene banks] because these systems enable exclusive and private monopoly control. There must be no patents or other forms of intellectual property rights on biodiversity and the knowledge related to it.

The organization maintains that they want livestock keeping that is on a human scale, based on the health and wellbeing of humankind not industrial profit. They point out that the dominant model of production is based on a dangerously narrow genetic base of livestock that is propped up by the widespread use of veterinary drugs. Yet this risky and high-cost system is providing more and more of our food: globally, one third of pigs, one half of eggs, two thirds of milk, and three quarters of the world’s chickens are produced from industrial breeding lines.

Sources:
Marijuana Policy Project, September 27, 2007
Title: “Marijuana Arrests Set New Record for Fourth Year in a Row”
Author: Bruce Mirken

National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws, September 24, 2007
Title: “Marijuana Arrests for Year 2006—829,625 Tops Record High”
Author: Paul Armentano

Student Researchers: Ben Herzfeldt and Caitlyn Ioli

Faculty Advisor: Pat Jackson, PhD

For the fourth year in a row, US marijuana arrests set an all-time record, according to 2006 FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Marijuana arrests in 2006 totaled 829,627, an increase from 786,545 in 2005. At current rates, a marijuana smoker is arrested every thirty-eight seconds, with marijuana arrests comprising nearly 44 percent of all drug arrests in the United States. According to Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), over 8 million Americans have been arrested on marijuana charges during the past decade, while arrests for cocaine and heroine have declined sharply.

The number of arrests in 2006 increased more than 5.5 percent from 2005. Of the 829,627 arrests, 89 percent were for possession, not sale or manufacture. Possession arrests exceeded arrests for all violent crimes combined, as they have for years. The remaining offenders, including those growing for personal or medical use, were charged with sale and/or manufacturing.

A study of New York City marijuana arrests conducted by Queens College, released in April 2008, reports that between 1998 and 2007 the New York police arrested 374,900 people whose most serious crime was the lowest-level misdemeanor marijuana offense. That number is eight times higher than the number of arrests (45,300) from 1988 to 1997. Nearly 90 percent arrested between 1998 and 2007 were male, despite the fact that national studies show marijuana use roughly equal between men and women. And while national surveys show Whites are more likely to use marijuana than Blacks and Latinos, the New York study reported that 83 percent of those arrested were Black or Latino. Blacks accounted for 52 percent of the arrests, Latinos and other people of color accounted for 33 percent, while Whites accounted for only 15 percent.1

Over the years, roughly 30 percent of those arrested nationally have been under the age of twenty. The Midwest accounts for 57 percent of all marijuana-related arrests, while the region with the fewest arrests is the West, with 30 percent. This is possibly a result of the decriminalization of marijuana in western states, such as California, on the state and local level over the past several years.

“Enforcing marijuana prohibition . . . has led to the arrests of nearly 20 million Americans, regardless of the fact that some 94 million Americans acknowledge having used marijuana during their lives,” says St. Pierre.

In the last fifteen years, marijuana arrests have increased 188 percent, while public opinion is increasingly one of tolerance, and self-reported usage is basically unchanged. “The steady escalation of marijuana arrests is happening in direct defiance of public opinion,” according to Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, DC, “Voters in communities all over the country—from Denver to Seattle, from Eureka Springs, Arkansas to Missoula County, Montana—have passed measures saying they don’t want marijuana arrests to be priority. Yet marijuana arrests have set an all-time record for four years running . . .”

Meanwhile, enforcing marijuana laws costs between $10 and $12 billion a year.

Citation

1. Jim Dwyer, “On Arrests, Demographics, and Marijuana,” New York Times, April 30, 2008.

UPDATE BY BRUCE MIRKEN

This story was essentially a subset of a larger annual story, the FBI’s yearly Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), and the 2006 report, released in September 2007, marked the fourth year in a row that marijuana arrests set a new record. While the UCR, as usual, got wide mainstream coverage, the only major mainstream outlet to note the marijuana arrest record was the Reuters wire service. Marijuana Policy Project staffers also did two or three local radio interviews, and the story was picked up in one form or another by a handful of other outlets—most notably Bill Steigerwald’s column in the conservative Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, an article on AlterNet, and Andrew Sullivan’s blog, The Daily Dish.

This is typical of the mass media tendency to view marijuana policy through the lens of Cheech-and-Chong stereotypes—as a trivial story of minor importance, more a curiosity than serious news. But the sheer numbers suggest it deserves more attention. Nearly 830,000 marijuana arrests are made annually, about 89 percent of them for simple possession, not sales or trafficking. That’s one marijuana arrest every thirty-eight seconds, and more arrests for marijuana possession than for all violent crimes combined. Put another way, it’s the equivalent of arresting every man, woman, and child in the state of North Dakota plus every man, woman, and child in Des Moines, Iowa, in one year—and doing the same thing every year, year after year. All of this comes at a total cost to taxpayers estimated at anywhere from $14 billion to $42 billion per year.

New national arrest statistics won’t be out until about the time this book is published, but scientific data continue to emerge that demolish the intellectual underpinnings of marijuana prohibition. Studies continue to find marijuana far less toxic or addictive than such legal drugs as alcohol and tobacco, while in Britain, where most marijuana possession arrests were discontinued in January 2004, marijuana use has steadily declined since arrests stopped, according to official government surveys. Sadly, even though the British government’s scientific advisors urge continuation of the no-arrest policy, as of this writing in May 2008, Prime Minister Gordon Brown appears determined to launch a new crackdown.

In the US, the clearest signs of progress have come from efforts to permit medical use of marijuana. Twelve states now have medical marijuana laws, and a medical marijuana initiative on Michigan’s November 2008 ballot was ahead by nearly two to one in the only public poll released so far. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has indicated he would end the federal war on these state medical marijuana laws, and fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton has also indicated some willingness to rethink federal policy. Republican John McCain has expressed support for current federal law.

Extensive information about marijuana policy and efforts to change our current laws is available from the Marijuana Policy Project, http://www.mpp.org or (202) 462-5747. A more wide-ranging newsletter on drug policy issues is the Drug War Chronicle, at stopthedrugwar.org.

UPDATE BY PAUL ARMENTANO

Since beginning my tenure at NORML in the mid-1990s, I’ve observed the growth of the annual number of Americans arrested for minor marijuana violations from a low of 288,000 in 1991 to a record 830,000 in 2006. Yet despite this nearly 300 percent increase in minor pot busts (nearly 90 percent of all marijuana arrests are for possession offenses), mainstream media coverage of these skyrocketing arrest rates remains nominal.

The media’s disinterest in this subject is uniquely troubling, given that the arrest data is derived from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, and that other aspects of this report (for example: has the violent crime rate risen or fallen?) traditionally generate hundreds of major news stories each year. Equally troubling is the media’s habit of improperly attributing these marijuana arrest figures to NORML rather than to the FBI, the law enforcement organization that actually tracks and reports said data.

Arguably, the most disturbing result of these rising arrests is that record numbers of Americans are now being ordered by the courts to attend ‘drug treatment’ programs for marijuana—regardless of whether they require treatment (most don’t) or not.

According to the most recent state and national statistics, up to 70 percent of all individuals in drug treatment for pot are now placed there by the criminal justice system. Of those enrolled in treatment, more than one in three hadn’t even used marijuana in the thirty days prior to their admission. Yet, disingenuously, the White House argues that these rising admission rates justify the need to continue arresting cannabis users—despite the fact that it is the policy, not the drug itself—that is actually fueling the spike in drug treatment.

Finally, it must be emphasized that criminal marijuana enforcement disproportionately impacts citizens by age—an all too often overlooked fact that has serious implications for those of us who work in drug policy reform. According to a 2005 study commissioned by the NORML Foundation, 74 percent of all Americans busted for pot are under age thirty, and one out of four are age eighteen or younger. Though these young people suffer the most under our current laws, they lack the financial means and political capital to effectively influence politicians to challenge them. Young people also lack the money to adequately fund the drug law reform movement at a level necessary to adequately represent and protect their interests. As a result, marijuana arrests continue to climb unabated, and few in the press—and even fewer lawmakers—feel any need or sufficient political pressure to address it.

(Paul Armentano is the deputy director of NORML and the NORML Foundation in Washington, DC.)

It's a sound you certainly never forget should you grow up in a war zone. Or, of course, there was the unrelenting fear of a nuclear attack back in the 1950's.

The 150-page manuscript was authored by the former armed force chiefs from the U.S, Britian, Germany, France and the Netherlands and in the Guardian article....The bottom line was that NATO should be prepared to strike first in the use of nuclear weapons and that would be the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction. In the actual document, it does state concern over the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran, but stresses a more peaceful urging of those regions to adhere to the existing multi lateral non proliferation agreements, such as the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, and call for universal compliance.

Reserving the right to initiate nuclear attack was a central element of the West’s Cold War strategy against the Soviet Union. Critics argue that what was once a method used to face down a nuclear superpower is no longer appropriate.

The Alliance has reduced both its conventional forces significantly from Cold War levels and has reduced nuclear weapons assigned to NATO by over 90%. Allies have also reduced their nuclear arsenals.

Source:
The Guardian, January 22, 2008
Title: “Pre-emptive nuclear strike a key option, NATO told”
Author: Ian Traynor

Student Researchers: Stephanie Smith and Sarah Maddox

Faculty Evaluator: Robert McNamara, PhD

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) officials are considering a first strike nuclear option to be used anywhere in the world a threat may arise. Former armed force chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France, and the Netherlands authored a 150-page blueprint calling for urgent reform of NATO, and a new pact drawing the US, NATO, and the European Union (EU) together in a “grand strategy” to tackle the challenges of an “increasingly brutal world.” The authors of the plan insist that “the first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction.” The manifesto was presented to the Pentagon in Washington and to NATO’s secretary general in mid-January 2008. The proposals are likely to be discussed at a NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008.

The authors—General John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff and NATO’s ex-supreme commander in Europe; General Klaus Naumann, Germany’s former top soldier and ex-chairman of NATO’s military committee; General Henk van den Breemen, a former Dutch chief of staff; Admiral Jacques Lanxade, a former French chief of staff; and Lord Inge, field marshal and ex-chief of the general staff and the defense staff in the UK—paint an alarming picture of the threats and challenges confronting the West in the post-9/11 world and deliver a withering verdict on the ability to cope. The five commanders argue that the West’s values and way of life are under threat, while the West is struggling to summon the will to defend them.

They claim that the following are key threats:

• Political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism
• The “dark side” of globalization, meaning international terrorism, organized crime and the spread of weapons of mass destruction
• Climate change and energy insecurity, entailing a contest for resources and potential “environmental” migration on a mass scale
• The weakening of the nation state as well as of organizations such as the UN, NATO and the EU.

To prevail, the generals call for an overhaul of NATO decision-making methods, a new “directorate” of US, European, and NATO leaders to respond rapidly to crises, and an end to EU “obstruction” of, and rivalry with, NATO. Among the most radical changes demanded are the following:

• A shift from consensus decision-making in NATO bodies to majority voting, resulting in faster action through an end to national vetoes
• The abolition of national caveats in NATO operations of the kind that plague the Afghan campaign
• No role in decision-making on NATO operations for alliance members who are not taking part in the operations
• Use of force without UN Security Council authorization when “immediate action is needed to protect large numbers of human beings.”

Reserving the right to initiate nuclear attack was a central element of the West’s Cold War strategy against the Soviet Union. Critics argue that what was once a method used to face down a nuclear superpower is no longer appropriate.

UPDATE BY IAN TRAYNOR

I was the only person to write about this and nothing much has really happened since.

Sources:
Inter Press Service, July 23, 2007
Title: “Mutiny Shakes US Food Aid Industry”
Author: Ellen Massey

Revolution Magazine, October 1, 2007
Title: “Starvation, Aid Agencies and the Benevolence of the Imperialists”
Author: Revolution Cooperative

Student Researchers: Susanna Gibson, Cedric Therene, and Chris Armanino

Faculty Evaluator: Keith Gouveia, JD

In August 2007, one of the biggest and best-known American charity organizations, CARE, announced that it was turning down $45 million a year in food aid from the United States government. CARE claims that the way US aid is structured causes rather than reduces hunger in the countries where it is received. The US budgets $2 billion a year for food aid, which buys US crops to feed populations facing starvation amidst crisis or enduring chronic hunger.

The organization’s announcement prompted argument about the forms and objectives of the aid given by the US and other big powers to third world countries and the role that most charity organizations are playing. The reasoning behind CARE’s decision is part of a years-long debate that has influenced everything from US trade and domestic legislation to the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization talks.

CARE’s 2006 report, “White Paper on Food Aid Policy,” points out that the current food aid program is motivated by profit rather than altruism. The policy, which dictates that donated money be used to purchase food in the home country, results in a program driven by “the export and surplus disposal objectives of the exporting country” and not the needs of people in hunger.

The US policy implements the practice of monetization, a food aid policy in which the US government buys surplus food from American agribusinesses that have already been heavily subsidized, and ships it via US shipping lines (generating transport costs that eat up much of the $2 billion annual food aid provided by the US government) to aid organizations working around the world. The aid organizations then sell the US-grown crops to local populations, at a dramatically reduced cost. The aid organizations use proceeds from these sales to fund their development and anti-poverty programs. But several groups, with CARE at the forefront, have pointed out that this policy has the effect of undermining local farmers and destabilizing the very food production systems that aid organizations are working to strengthen.

A policy that puts local farmers out of commission and undermines agriculture in developing countries becomes part of a process by which those countries lose the means to develop—and thus grow more dependent on the stronger and more dominant nations. These countries become more vulnerable in every sphere, not only economically but politically as well. The result is likely to be more hunger and less sovereignty as countries are tied ever more tightly to the world market.

“We are not against emergency food aid for things like drought and famine,” CARE spokeswoman Alina Labrada said, “but local farmers are being hurt instead of helped by this mechanism.”

The European Union has also been critical of the US food aid program. European countries all but phased out the practice of monetization in the 1990s. Only 10 percent of their budgeted food aid is reserved for crops grown in Europe. Suspicions remain that the US uses monitized food aid programs to avoid limits on its universally contested farm subsidies.

The UN World Food Programme, the largest distributor of food aid in the world, has rejected the practice of monetization and does not allow its grain to be sold by NGOs.

The past two US congressional farm bills presented proposals to shift portions of the food aid budget from grain to cash donations, to be made available for people in need to buy locally grown crops. Both attempts were voted down.

The selling of sickness is big business in this country.

You can't sit down in front of the television at night without seeing a half-dozen of these drug-company commercials.

Each year, drug company executives spend four billion dollars on prescription drug ads, for pills that they say will make you feel happier, sleep better, and improve your sex life. 

The ads are not educational and do not promote public health, yet they can be extremely dangerous.

While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is turning a blind eye, drug companies are making false, unsubstantiated and misleading claims in their advertising, often withholding mandated disclosure of dangerous side effects. 

A Government Accountability Office report released in November 2006 found the FDA reviews only a small portion of the advertisements it receives, and does not review them using consistent criteria.  

Claiming lack of funds, the FDA is asking Congress to charge fees to  drug companies, in order to fund FDA review of the advertisements. 

Consumer advocates say that gives the pharmaceutical industry just too much leverage over the FDA, and that has resulted in the rushing of drugs to market. 

What can you do to stop the selling of sickness in America?

Commercial Alert runs a prescription drug ad campaign that is currently working to raise support for the Public Health Protection Act, which would ban drug ads designed for the public.  They're online at www.commercialalert.org.




Source:
NewStandard, April 20, 2007
Title: “FDA Complicit in Pushing Prescription Drugs, Ad Critics Say”
Author: Shreema Mehta

Student Researchers: Lauren Anderson, Corey Sharp-Sabatino, and Marie Daghlian

Faculty Evaluator: Noel Byrne, PhD

While the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) turns a blind eye, drug companies are making false, unsubstantiated, and misleading claims in their advertising, often withholding mandated disclosure of dangerous side effects. Though companies are required to submit their advertisements to the FDA, the agency does not review them before they are released to the public. A Government Accountability Office report released November 2006 found that the FDA reviews only a small portion of the advertisements it receives, and does not review them using consistent criteria.

Claiming lack of funds and resources necessary to impose effective regulations on drug marketing, the FDA is asking Congress to charge drug companies fees in order to fund FDA review of advertisements before they go public as part of renewing the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA). PDUFA has come under fire from consumer advocates who say it gives the pharmaceutical industry too much leverage over the FDA and has resulted in rushing drugs to market. But the FDA hopes that if Congress approves the plan, it will raise more than $6 million annually through “user fees” to review advertisements.

Although Congress may approve the plan, author Shreema Mehta says a range of public-interest groups, from ad critics at Commercial Alert to senior advocates at Gray Panthers, want an outright ban on all prescription drug advertisements. Public Citizen and Consumers Union warn that the FDA review of drug advertisements will likewise be tainted if funded by the very companies the FDA is charged with scrutinizing. Critics are calling for stricter regulations over drug companies and they say eliminating the financial ties between the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry should be the first step.

But the pharmaceutical industry is not the only industry that benefits from inconsistent FDA reviews and inadequate investigations of advertising claims. One of the nation’s biggest infant bottled water companies, Nursery Water, is misleading parents with erroneous information and false health claims on its website and in advertising materials, touting the safety and benefits of fluoride in infant bottled water, in clear violation of Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and FDA rules.

A letter sent from scientists at the Environmental Working Group (EWG) to officials at the FDA and FTC uncovers EWG’s extensive review of Nursery Water’s claims that both misrepresent the position of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which states, “supplementary fluoride should not be provided during the first six months of life” (AAP 2005), and contradict the official position of the FDA, which states, “the health claim [for fluoride] is not intended for use on bottled water products specifically marketed for use by infants” (FDA 2006).1

Mehta reports that representatives from the food and pharmaceutical industries say banning ads would violate the First Amendment. “In our system of jurisprudence we have a very high threshold that protects the right to free speech, whether it’s political or commercial,” Jim Davidson, attorney for the drug-company-funded Advertising Coalition, told the Associated Press.

Mehta warns of the increased leverage food and drug companies may have over the FDA should Congress approve the fee plan. She reports that in 2005, pharmaceutical companies spent about $4.2 billion in advertisements aimed at the public, known as “direct-to-consumer” ads, up from about $2.5 billion in 2000 and $1.1 billion in 1997. And the promoting of drugs to physicians, with almost $7.2 billion spent in 2005, dwarfs advertising to the public. At the same time, public spending on prescription drugs has steadily increased, reaching about $140 billion in 2001, more than tripling since 1990.

Meanwhile, Mehta reports that it’s not clear whether the FDA reviews most advertisements at all. The agency can direct drug companies to change their advertisements after they are released to the public if it finds they violate regulations, but does no screening before the release of ads that may be dangerously deceptive.

Citation

1. Anila Jacob, M.D., M.P.H. and Jane Houlihan, “EWG calls for Investigation of Nursery Water,” Environmental Working Group, February 1, 2008.

UPDATE BY SHREEMA MEHTA

Americans are taking more prescription drugs than ever before, leading the world in drug consumption and reaping huge profits for pharmaceutical companies. America is also one of the few countries that allow public advertising of prescription drugs. This is not a coincidence. Many doctors and consumer advocates have criticized advertisements featuring beaming people explaining how Valtrex changed their lives as deceptive, inaccurate, and invasive to the doctor-patient relationship. Many activists favor an outright ban on prescription drug ads; others call for strict regulation. This article dealt with the FDA’s ties to the pharmaceutical industry and its proposal to regulate what critics feel is dangerously deceptive advertising by charging drug companies to review their commercials.

A few months after this article ran, President Bush renewed the Prescription Drug User Fee, which includes the industry-funded review process of drug advertisements, putting into effect what critics argue is yet another conflict of interest in the agency.

Though the Washington Post ran several articles on PDUFA, few explored the importance of the new proposal for company-funded advertisement regulation. Though press coverage of the problems of drug advertising is slim, advocacy groups remain active on the issue.

Commercial Alert runs a prescription drug ad campaign that is currently working to raise support for the Public Health Protection Act, which would ban drug ads designed for the public. They are on the web at http://www.commercialalert.org/. The Consumers Union also supports this bill. Learn more about their campaign at https://secure.consumersunion.org/site/Advocacy?JServSessionIdr009=vjqvq0rk51.app44a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1889.

While al-Qaeda involvement in the planning of 9/11 attacks has long been widely accepted, not everyone agrees. Prominent among those questioning the actual story is a member of the Japanese Parliament, Yukihisa Fujita.

In testimony broadcast live on Japanese television in January of this year, Yukihisa challenged both the premise and the validity of the Global War on Terror through a debate on the ethics of renewing Japan’s "anti-terror law." That law had committed Japan to providing logistical support for coalition forces operating in Afghanistan.

Many of the points raised by Yukihisa are mirrored by conspiracy theorists:

But Yukihisa laid them out in the Parliamentary hearings and raised sufficient concern among fellow lawmakers that extension of Japan’s anti-terror law was blocked. But only temporarily.

Following the defeat of the bill in the Upper House, the Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda took control and resubmitted the bill to the Lower House. It is there that the ruling conservative party holds the majority. They readily passed the measure and it became law, in effect nullifying the Upper House veto……

It was the first time in half a century that a Japanese government has undertaken such tactics. In a land renowned for respectful and civil discourse, this is considered a drastic measure. And a series of events which has received little press attention.

Our thanks to author Benjamin Fulford who wrote the material from which we culled this report and to student researchers: Kyle Corcoran, Alan Scher, Bill Gibbons, and Elizabeth Rathbun

Source:
Rense.com and Rock Creek Free Press, January 14, 2008
Title: “Transcript Of Japanese Parliament’s 911 Testimony”
Author: Benjamin Fulford

Student Researchers: Kyle Corcoran, Alan Scher, Bill Gibbons, and Elizabeth Rathbun

Faculty Evaluator: Mickey S. Huff, MA

Testimony in the Japanese parliament, broadcast live on Japanese television in January 2008, challenged the premise and validity of the Global War on Terror. Parliament member Yukihisa Fujita insisted that an investigation be conducted into the war’s origin: the events of 9/11.

In a parliament Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee session held to debate the ethics of renewing Japan’s “anti-terror law,” which commits Japan to providing logistical support for coalition forces operating in Afghanistan, Fujita opened the session by stating, “I would like to talk about the origin of this war on terrorism, which was the attacks of 9/11, . . . When discussing these anti-terror laws we should ask ourselves, what was 9/11? And what is terrorism?”

Fujita pointed out that, “So far the only thing the government has said is that we think it was caused by al-Qaeda because President Bush told us so. We have not seen any real proof that it was al-Qaeda.” He reminded parliament that twenty-four Japanese citizens were killed on 9/11, yet the mandate of a criminal investigation by the Japanese government never followed. “This is a crime so surely an investigation needs to be carried out,” said Fujita (Censored 2008, #16).

Fujita went on extensively to ask “about the suspicious information being uncovered and the doubts people worldwide are having about the events of 9/11.”

The Japanese parliament viewed several slides from the Pentagon and World Trade Center (WTC) sites as Fujita explained each. The slides showed evidence inconsistent with official explanation: damage in and around the Pentagon was not consistent with the damage a 757 airplane would cause. Fujita noted, “Also, there were more than eighty security cameras at the Pentagon, but officials have refused to release the footage. In any case, as you have just seen, there is no picture of the airplane or of its wreckage in any of these photographs. It is very strange that no such pictures have been shown to us.” A US Air Force official corroborated the fact that the plane executed a U-turn and avoided the Defense Secretary’s office, a feat that would be impossible for an unskilled first-time pilot to maneuver; and no air defense was made in the ninety-minute interval between the initial impact of the planes at the WTC and the Pentagon. Fujita added, “It is baffling that no flight records were found at any of four sites.” On the ground at the WTC sites, both sounds and visual evidence from explosions were verified. Flying debris shot out as far as 150 meters consistent with buildings exploding. A New York fireman during rescue operations confirmed that a series of explosions resembled a professional demolition, and a Japanese survivor heard explosions while fleeing the site. The World Trade Center Building 7 (WTC 7), forty-seven stories high and located one block away, collapsed into its footprint, seven hours after the main WTC buildings were attacked, in five or six seconds, although no plane struck it and it had minimal fire damage. Not only did the 9/11 Commission fail to mention WTC 7, but the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) made no mention of it in their reports.

Fujita went on to detail proof of insider trading from September 6 through 8, when investors executed “put options” to sell stock in United and American Airlines at a fixed price. Finance specialist Keiichiro Asao responded with confirmation that such complex transaction would be the work of insiders rather than al-Qaeda.

Fujita then addressed Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, “I would like to know why the Prime Minister thinks it was the Taliban who was responsible for 9/11.” He continued, “We need to go back to the beginning and not just simply and blindly trust the US government explanation and indirect information provided by them. . . . We need to look at this evidence and ask ourselves what the war on terrorism really is. . . . We need to ask who the real victims of this war on terrorism are. I think the citizens of the world are its victims.”

“Prime Minister,” Fujita continued, “what about the origin of the War on Terror and the idea of whether it is right or wrong to participate in it? Is there really a reason to participate in this War on Terror?”

Fujita received support for concluding that the reason for participating in the US War on Terror needs to be investigated and analyzed. Opposition blocked the extension of Japan’s anti-terror law and colleagues acknowledged his bravery with congratulatory phone calls.

This came to an end in mid-January when, after months of parliamentary debates and the opposition of at least 50 percent of the Japanese public, Fukuda rammed the anti-terror bill through parliament. After the bill was voted down by opposition in the Upper House plenary session on January 12, the government resubmitted it later that same day to the Lower House, where the ruling conservative party holds the majority, and turned a bill into a law. Thus, they overturned a veto in the Upper House.

This is the first time in half a century that a Japanese government has resorted to such tactics—deemed a drastic measure by Japanese standards.1

According to Christopher W. Hughes, professor of politics and international studies at University of Warwick, “Fukuda’s government was under a lot of US pressure to re-deploy ships, and even if he was always somewhat doubtful about the importance of the mission in military terms and the whole US War on Terror, he perceived passing the bill as very important to US-Japan relations. This was also impressed upon him by a personal meeting with US President Bush.”

Citation

1. Axel Berkofsky, “Japan: The Deployment Dilemma,” International Relations and Security Network, January 24, 2008.

UPDATE BY BENJAMIN FULFORD

If you still believe that the English language corporate media is free, take a look behind the scenes at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan (FCCJ) and think again.

I was a member of that club for over two decades, but I had no clue about what it really represented until I tried to stage a press conference about 9/11. From that point on all sorts of nasty things started to happen and I suddenly realized the place seemed more like a nest of spies than a club for journalists.

For example, people I did not know tried to have me evicted from the club, e-mails vanished from my inbox before I got to read them, and people started to spread the word that I had mental issues.

The list of insults to press freedom at the club since that initial conference is too long to write about in detail here, so I will merely cite the most recent example.

Yukihisa Fujita, a member of parliament for the opposition Democratic Party, in a parliamentary debate broadcast nationwide on NHK, asked Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda about many of the glaring discrepancies in the official US government explanation of what happened on 9/11. A member of parliament in Japan, a US ally, showed powerful evidence on national TV that the US government murdered 3,000 of its own citizens as well as people from Japan and many other nations. I suggested we call him for a press conference, and nine working journalists—representing a potential audience of billions—agreed. Usually, only three or more yes votes from working journalists is enough for an event to go ahead. Despite this, the Wall Street Journal’s James Sims, head of the Professional Activities Committee (PAC), in confederation with FCCJ President Martyn Williams, vetoed the event even though it was subject matter that they, as technical journalists, do not cover. They vetoed it in violation of Article 3 of the club bylaws that call for press freedom. Not only that, they kicked me off the PAC in a blatant attempt to shut me up.

Fujita has since been invited to speak to the EU parliament and many other venues. Fujita has been given a chance to ask more questions in parliament, and many Japanese news magazines have written about his activities. Books about 9/11 are also selling well in Japan. A growing group of Japanese politicians has become aware of what really happened on that day. The Japanese government itself actually knows the truth and is starting to affect the US–Japan alliance in fundamental ways. The Japanese government’s formal replies to Fujita’s questions show it is becoming increasingly suspicious that the US government murdered over twenty Japanese citizens. The long-term repercussions for US security could be huge.

Global Research, March 17, 2008
Title: “Why the Bush Administration ‘Watergated’ Eliot Spitzer”
Author: F. William Engdahl

Student Researchers: Rob Hunter, Elizabeth Rathbun, and Rebecca Newsome

Faculty Evaluator: Mickey S. Huff, MA

The exposure of New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer’s tryst with a luxury call girl had little to do with the Bush administration’s high moral standards for public servants. Author F. William Engdahl advises that, “in evaluating spectacular scandals around prominent public figures, it is important to ask what and who might want to eliminate that person.” Timing suggests that Spitzer was likely a target of a White House and Wall Street operation to silence one of its most dangerous and vocal critics of their handling of the current financial market crisis.

Spitzer had become increasingly public in blaming the Bush administration for the subprime crisis. He testified in mid-February before the US House of Representatives Financial Services subcommittee and later that day, in a national CNBC interview, laid blame squarely on the administration for creating an environment ripe for predatory lenders.

On February 14, the Washington Post published an editorial by Spitzer titled, “Predatory Lenders’ Partner in Crime: How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help Consumers,” which charged, “Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.”

In this editorial, Spitzer explained:

The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers.

In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government’s actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.

But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.”

The editorial appeared the day after Spitzer’s ill-fated rendezvous with the prostitute at the Mayflower Hotel. With that article, some Washington insiders believe, Spitzer signed his own political death warrant.

On March 4, 2008, Spitzer furthermore proposed legislation that would have imposed penalties for mortgage fraud and predatory lending.1

Curiously, Spitzer, who had been elected governor in 2006, defeating a Republican by winning nearly 70 percent of the vote, has been not charged with any crime. His case went into the hands of Washington and not those of New York State authorities, underscoring the clear political nature of Spitzer’s “offense.” New York Assembly Republicans immediately announced plans to impeach Spitzer or put him on public trial if he were to refuse resignation. Although prostitution is illegal in most US states, clients of prostitutes are almost never charged, nor are their names typically released while a case is in process.

Spitzer’s editorial concluded, “When history tells the story of the sub-prime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners, the Bush administration will not be judged favorably . . . it will be judged as a willing accomplice to the lenders who went to any lengths in their quest for profits. The administration was so willing, in fact, that it used the power of the federal government in an unprecedented assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general and anyone else on the side of consumers.”

Citation

1. “Governor Spitzer Proposes Legislation to Address Sub-prime Mortgage Crisis,” New York State website, March 4, 2008.