Memorial Day: Recalling and Caring for Our Constant Brave

How shall we recall and care for these, our constant brave: the individuals who have volunteered, trained, and sacrificed so much in the name of America and its military?

First, let’s remember the solemn oath they have taken when inducted into the armed services. Here’s the Army enlistment oath:

I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

Millions of courageous men and women have taken this oath. When they did, they should have received the right to demand an oath in return from us, the American people: to support and protect them from elected officials who have allowed the flagrant expansion of a military-industrial complex which Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about.

Eisenhower saw the dangers of money and power turning America’s military missions into greedy, aggressive, endless war for the sake of the profit of a few, rather than the protection of many. On leaving the presidency in 1961, this greatest of World War II’s heroes, a Republican, said publicly:

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction...

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Are we “an alert and knowledgeable citizenry?”

Would an alert and knowledgeable citizenry allow a homeless population of over 600,000 to exist in the U.S., with one-third of them consisting of our military veterans?

Would we allow 18 U.S. veterans, men and women, to daily commit suicide, primarily due to psychiatric drugs? (ABC News)

Would we allow our dedicated warriors to be sent into an aggressive invasion based on a lie, and which our political leaders knew would turn into a quagmire?

Listen to Dick Cheney’s explaining in 1984 why George H.W. Bush refused to invade Iraq’s capitol of Baghdad, which would put our military irrationally in harm’s way:

It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq. 

The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families -- it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? 

Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right. 

Cheney didn’t get it right the second time on Iraq, when the U.S. invaded, resulting in the death of over 4,400 U.S. forces (as of Feb. 13) and nearly 32,000 wounded. Add to that over 16,600 Iraqi military and police, 26,000 Iraqi “insurgents” and over 66,000 civilian deaths.

All this, because George W. Bush lied to his electorate and the world about Weapons of Mass Destruction existing in Iraq. And Colin Powell carried that lie to the United Nations. Powell’s former chief of staff, U.S. Army Col. (ret.) Lawrence B. Wilkerson—

who helped prepare Powell for his U.N. speech—said Powell wasn’t aware of the falsehoods in his presentation, but it was a “hoax.” Wilkerson told PBS in 2006:

I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council. How do you think that makes me feel? Thirty-one years in the United States Army and I more or less end my career with that kind of a blot on my record? That's not a very comforting thing…

…we turned to the National Intelligence estimate as part of the recommendation of George Tenent and my agreement with. But even that turned out to be, in its substantive parts--that is stockpiles of chemicals, biologicals and production capability that was hot and so forth, and an active nuclear program. The three most essential parts of that presentation turned out to be absolutely false.

The Afghanistan invasion—prompted by 9/11, which appeared to be set up by the Bush administration (see Peculiar Progressive column “The Afghanistan Plan: A Pipeline, an Invasion, a Pipeline, and an “Exodus”)—followed by America’s Iraqi aggression both cost the U.S. over one trillion dollars. According to the Congressional Research Service report from March 29, 2011:

…based on DOD, State Department/USAID, and Department of Veterans Administration budget submissions, the cumulative total appropriated from the 9/11 for those war operations, diplomatic operations, and medical care for Iraq and Afghan war veterans is $1.283 trillion including:

$806 billion for Iraq;

$444 billion for Afghanistan;

$29 billion for enhanced security; and

$6 billion unallocated

While the decade-long quagmires have bled our brave military and our taxpayers, Cheney’s folks seem to have profited from the invasions. Before becoming vice-president, he was serving as CEO of Halliburton. That corporation and its subsidiaries, while Cheney was vice president, pulled in billions from work in Iraq and Afghanistan. While it’s difficult to get a total figure, sources list Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) getting $16 billion in contracts from 2004-06 alone. Politifact cites KBR government work for Iraq reconstruction from 2001-10 of $31 billion. Cheney was vice president from 2001-2008. Halliburton broke ties with KBR in 2007.

Halliburton, of course, wasn’t the only corporate profiteer benefiting from the efforts of our American brave.  In the sources listed at this column’s end, you can find links to the top 20 and top 100 defense contractors.

Eisenhower pointed out in his farewell address that the military-industrial complex was something new in the ’50s. America’s founding fathers opposed a standing army, and the U.S. basically didn’t have one until World War II when the Nazi onslaught required it.  America’s brave met that onslaught and defeated it.

In the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi leaders, the Army’s chief prosecutor Benjamin Ferenccz, told the court that the defendants’ chief crime was “aggressive war” which led to all other offences they committed. Sixty years later, in the summer of 2006, he claimed that Bush should be charged with the same crime:

The United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the United States, formulated by the United States, in fact, after World War II. It says that from now on, no nation can use armed force without the permission of the U.N. Security Council. They can use force in connection with self-defense, but a country can't use force in anticipation of self-defense. Regarding Iraq, the last Security Council resolution essentially said, ‘Look, send the weapons inspectors out to Iraq, have them come back and tell us what they've found -- then we'll figure out what we're going to do.’ The U.S. was impatient, and decided to invade Iraq -- which was all pre-arranged of course. So, the United States went to war, in violation of the charter.

But, of course, Congress refused to impeach Bush or Cheney, and reluctantly and rarely has prosecuted contractors. Only our brave warriors and their families are expected to suffer patriotically, with death, physical wounds, and psychological trauma. As are the civilian victims in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And the truth is, our military brave will suffer patriotically. They have dedicated and trained themselves to do so. Some do it without questioning. A few have challenged our government on its endless, aggressive war, and paid the consequences under military law.

This conniving by the military-industrial complex isn’t new. Our experience with the Vietnam quagmire surely should have taught us. Our young soldiers and sailors and airmen and women may not be old enough to remember it. But members of Congress are certainly aware of its history, as is the American taxpayer.

Now the White House is making war taunts toward Pakistan, Syria, and heavily toward Iran. Powell’s Col. Wilkerson, in the documentary “The Israel Lobby,” predicted that, if the U.S. attacks Iran, the American military will see a major exodus of veteran officers who oppose aggressive war.

How can we stop the military-industrial complex from embroiling us in future fiascos like Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq? We need to remove any president and Congress that continues the profiteering practice, and replace them. And we need to get Congress and the White House to truly regulate and break up the mammoth conglomerates that have taken control of government.

It will require the American voters to get organized, get educated and get active.  It will take work to become the “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” Eisenhower encouraged us to become. As citizens, at a minimum, we owe our brave military forces and veterans that much.

The Army enlistment oath: http://www.history.army.mil/html/faq/oaths.html

Eisenhower on military-industrial complex: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY&feature=related

Eisenhower’s full farewell address:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWiIYW_fBfY&feature=related

Details of the military-industrial complex:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex

Homeless American veterans: http://voices.yahoo.com/our-lost-soldiers-wandering-americas-10480585.html?cat=70

The New York Times articles on homeless: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/homeless_persons/index.html

Veterans’ suicides: http://www.cchrint.org/2011/06/04/18-u-s-veterans-commit-suicide-daily-largely-due-to-psychiatric-drugs/

Military women’s suicides: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/47556147/ns/today-today_health/#.T8EvF1Kdh8E

Cheney on Iraq in ’94: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BEsZMvrq-I

http://www.infowars.com/articles/iraq/cheney_video_1994_warning_of_iraq_invasion_quagmire.htm

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson interview about “hoax”:

http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/wilkerson.html

Total cost of Iraq and Afghanistan invasions:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf

http://costofwar.com/en/

Halliburton: http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=15

http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jun/09/arianna-huffington/halliburton-kbr-and-iraq-war-contracting-history-s/

Top defense contractors:

http://defensesystems.com/articles/2010/05/27/top-20-defense-contractors.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_defense_contractors

Nazi prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz on Iraq: http://www.alternet.org/world/38604/could_bush_be_prosecuted_for_war_crimes/

The Afghanistan Plan: A Pipeline, an Invasion, a Pipeline, and an “Exodus”

“Instead of liberating the people, I was liberating their oil fields,” the military veteran claimed before throwing his medal off the platform into the street.

“I have one word for this global war on terrorism medal, and it is shame,” another said, then turned and tossed away his award, as shown in the news film clip on Chicago’s local CBS affiliate.

The two speakers were in an anti-NATO group of some 50 military veterans who threw their medals in the street, protesting America’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. That was on Sunday near the NATO summit in Chicago.

Today, Monday, Barack Obama and other leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization announced they had agreed to an “irreversible transition” in Afghanistan, meaning they would finally bring to an end the violent invasion. After 2014, “this will not be a combat mission,” the NATO summit’s communiqué stated.

Can we believe them? Probably not. The international military-industrial complex must have endless, aggressive war, or else its purpose would cease to exist.

Also on Monday, Reuters reported this treacherous irony:

“Turkmenistan plans this week to sign a long-awaited agreement to supply natural gas to Pakistan and India through an ambitious U.S.-backed pipeline that would cross Afghanistan, a source in the Central Asian country's government told Reuters on Monday.”

Long-awaited indeed. Peculiar Progressive reported in the New York City-based Clyde Fitch Report two years ago about Western oil companies’ decades-long effort to secure a trans-Afghan pipeline. We cited the necessity for power and the pipeline as the U.S.’s chief reason for invading Afghanistan, supporting the report with the following facts:

Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor from 1977-81, has for decades espoused the need for America to control Eurasia: i.e. the uninterrupted landmass of Europe and Asia. To have this occur, he knew Russia needed to be weakened. He encouraged and got Carter to sign a directive to provide secret support to opponents of Afghanistan’s Soviet-supported regime, leading America’s chief foe to intervene in Afghanistan in 1979. Brzezinski has called that “Russia’s Vietnam,” meaning the aid to Russia’s decline through a military quagmire.

Brzezinski explained the plan in a 1998 interview in the French news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur:

According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahiddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap…The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: "We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war." Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Brzenzinski also has recognized the importance of controlling the flow of energy as the key to power in Eurasia. He reviews this within three paragraphs of his 1998 book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives:

About 75 per cent of the world's people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources. (p. 31)

The world's energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U.S. Department of Energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia's economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea. (p. 125)

America is now the only global superpower, and Eurasia is the globe's central arena. Hence, what happens to the distribution of power on the Eurasian continent will be of decisive importance to America's global primacy and to America's historical legacy. (p. 194)

Control of the flow of natural gas and oil was also of primary importance to America’s and other Western oil companies. As Larry Chin wrote in the March 3, 2002 issue of Online Journal:

As of 1992, 11 western oil companies controlled more than 50 percent of all oil investments in the Caspian Basin, including Unocal, Amoco, Atlantic Richfield, Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, Pennzoil, Texaco, Phillips and British Petroleum.

They also became actively involved in efforts to create a trans-Afghan pipeline that would carry natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India. And familiar American political names were associated with those Western oil companies. Chin notes:

The United States government, its affiliated transnational oil and construction companies, and the ruling elite of the West had coveted the same oil and gas transit route for years… Among the most active operatives for US efforts: Brzezinski (a consultant to Amoco, and architect of the Afghan-Soviet war of the 1970s), Henry Kissinger (advisor to Unocal), and Alexander Haig (a lobbyist for Turkmenistan), and Dick Cheney (Halliburton, US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce).

Even the Taliban, when ruling Afghanistan, had come close to an oil-companies contract to build a trans-Afghan pipeline, but that plan fell apart due to both a civil war and Bill Clinton’s August 1998 order for a missile strike in Afghanistan.

By the time George W. Bush entered the White House in 2000, he brought Cheney with him as his Vice President, along with Condoleezza Rice, who had sat on Chevron’s board, as his Secretary of State.

The Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon gave Bush the reason he needed to invade Afghanistan. But a week after those attacks, the BBC reported:

Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.

It would seem logical that those Bush officials would know that Naik would carry that information back and share it with Pakistan’s neighbor Afghanistan, setting up a pre-emptive strike on the U.S.

Once having invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, Bush set up a new government led by Hamid Karzai, who remains the current Afghan president.  By May 2002, Karzai was planning a $2 billion trans-Afghan pipeline. The continuing war has delayed those plans until the new plans this week.

Despite the NATO announcement today, look for continued U.S. and western military involvement in protecting the pipeline efforts, and America’s continued desire to control Eurasia.

(Peculiar Progressive will rejoin the New York City-based Clyde Fitch Report when it renews publication in early June.)

Veterans throw away medals:

http://news.yahoo.com/veterans-symbolically-discard-medals-anti-nato-rally-235355143.html

NATO leaders seal end to Afghan invasion:

http://news.yahoo.com/nato-signals-end-afghan-war-sight-west-195601871.html

Turkmenistan plans trans-Afghan pipeline:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/05/21/gas-turkmenistan-idUKL5E8GL0RA20120521

Zbigniew Brzezinski interview in Le Nouvel Observateur:

http://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interview

Larry Chin’s article on Afghan pipeline connections: http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHI203A.html

An Afghan pipeline ‘90s timeline: http://www.worldpress.org/specials/pp/pipeline_timeline.htm

BBC story on Bush plans to attack Afghanistan:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1550366.stm

Karzai’s 2002 pipeline plans:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1984459.stm

Making Your Mission Impossible Possible: Occupy the Presidency, Congress, and the Banks

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered...I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies...The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Last week, JPMorgan Chase reported losing $2 billion, which may go to $3 billion or more: a massive gamble reportedly on derivatives and credit default swaps, chief culprits in the 2008 world economic meltdown.

This week, news reports verify that Barack Obama has a private account with JPMorgan Chase between half a million to $1 million, according to his financial report. “This is a checking account used by the president and the first lady,” White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage told the press. "It is the equivalent of an interest-bearing checking account available at many other financial institutions.”

This week also, Obama calls JPMorgan Chase “one of the best managed banks there is.”

If Obama is accurate, and that’s the best managing a mammoth bank can do, then this is clear: the giant banks are not too big to fail. They are too big to remain. They are too big to be regulated. They need to be broken up.

Will that happen?

Not the way things are going. Last week, look what Reuters reported:

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday approved applications by three big Chinese government-controlled banks to set up branches and take stakes in U.S. banks after deciding they were adequately regulated in their home market.

Bank regulation, already in chaos, is about to fall even more at the mercy of the multinational corporate onslaught.

A majority of Congress consists of millionaires. From the latest report, Obama appears to be a millionaire, or close to it.

Knowing the above facts, do you really expect Congress and the president to legally change or regulate the banking system?

 

Nope. They’re obviously in government for the money.

YOU THE PEOPLE must create a major power shift.

You are going to have to toss out the president and Congress and elect fresh blood, courageous officials who aren’t a part of the insidious military-industrial complex, who will break it up and return America to a true democracy.  

You can start by demanding that Congress get rid of the bank holding companies, and separate the banks from their gambling racket they call “investment.” JPMorgan Chase is at the top of these bank holding companies.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission cited among the chief reasons for the 2008 meltdown “excessive borrowing, risky investments, and lack of transparency.” Its report specifically blamed trading in over-the-counter derivatives and credit default swaps, along with complex bundling of home mortgages.

In 2012, nothing has changed. Nor will it change, unless YOU change it.

That doesn’t mean voting for Mitt Romney, who is just another millionaire Wall Street crony.

It will mean voting for an alternative for president, and someone outside the ruling Democratic and Republican parties’ millionaires, someone who doesn't cozy to the military-banking-industrial elite.

Do you have the knowledge and courage to do that? Are you willing to get organized, get educated, and get active and take this country back? If not, then, as Edward R. Murrow used to say, “Goodnight, and good luck.”

But if you are, then you have the choice of voting for the smaller, alternative parties the major media won’t tell you about. Or you’ll have to organize an aggressive write-in campaign, perhaps for a nationally known alternative like Ron Paul, a maverick millionaire libertarian and a vocal opponent of the Federal Reserve, the banking system, and the military-industrial complex’s dedication to aggressive war. Surely others like him exist out there, who aren’t even millionaires.

Knowing how dishonest power in national politics works, the odds are against you.

But if Jefferson were here today, he would tell you about how beating impossible odds formed the United States of America. How an oppressed people, deprived of rights and fed up with dictatorship and repression by a military policing force, moved, and kept moving with faith and action. They overcame such a superior foe, against such insane odds, that Las Vegas today wouldn’t even risk putting them on the board.

But the American people did it. And you can do it, too. But you’ll have to quit being afraid. You’ll have to get real, get humble, and unite. Educate yourself to your choices. Then, as the young today love to say: BRING IT!

Thomas Jefferson quotes: http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/private-banks-quotation

JPMorgan Chase’s loss: http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2012/0515/JP-Morgan-loss-Did-US-regulators-know-what-CEO-Jamie-Dimon-apparently-didn-t-video

Obama’s JPMorgan Chase account: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/05/15/uk-jpmorgan-obama-idUKBRE84E1IX20120515

Chinese banks move in: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/09/usa-fed-china-banks-idUSL1E8G9G3720120509

Bank holding companies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_holding_company

The top bank holding companies: http://www.ffiec.gov/nicpubweb/nicweb/Top50Form.aspx

Financal Crisis Inquiry Commission Report: http://fcic.law.stanford.edu/report/

Your and Your Children’s Return to a Cold…or Hot…War

Ivo Daalder, the U.S. Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), last week seemed to be in a state of denial or ignorance when discussing a planned U.S.-led ballistic missile defense system’s effect on Russia. His position should be of particular concern to Americans, because implementing such a system grinds us directly into another cold war, if not a hot one. And it also directly affects America’s massive and growing deficit, which will plague our children and generations beyond.

In speaking at a gathering of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington last Monday, Daalder said that Moscow was wary of the proposed missile defense system, and even wanted legal assurances the system wouldn’t threaten Russia.

Daalder said that the missile system’s placement “doesn’t concern Russia” because its sights will be on the Middle East, which must mean Iran and Syria. Although Daalder didn’t mention those two countries specifically, the U.S. Defense Department in a May 3 briefing in Moscow did:

“Shorter-range threats within key regions are growing rapidly: Iran, Syria, and North Korea possess 1000s of short-and medium-range missiles, potentially threatening to U.S. forces, allies, and partners,” the PowerPoint briefing said in its opening point “Ballistic Missile Threat Continues to Advance.” Yet the briefing also said, while the U.S. will provide missile defense to protect itself and its European partners, the defense system isn’t aimed at Russia.

Here’s the problem with that rationale: for a long time, Russia has aligned itself with Iran. At one point, while visiting Iran along with other Middle-East countries’ reps—to discuss their mutual relationship regarding natural gas supplies and distribution—Russian President Vladimir Putin and the other nations agreed that an attack on any one of their natural-gas alliance members, including Iran, would be an attack on all of them.

More recently, in January 2012, Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s deputy prime minister and former envoy to NATO, said, “Iran is our close neighbor, just south of the Caucasus. Should anything happen to Iran, should Iran get drawn into any political or military hardships, this will be a direct threat to our national security.”

So, are Daalder, who represents the Obama administration and our country, and the Defense Department really not aware of these threatening goings-on? Are they in denial about Russia’s position? Or do they think America’s citizens who heard his question-answer session last Monday aren’t smart enough to catch the administration’s untruth, or can’t connect the dots between Russia and Iran’s relationship?

Daalder also told the Washington crowd that NATO is made up of 28 countries and is a Democratic organization in which each nation has a voice and vote in determining NATO policy and actions.

To anyone who understands money and power, that stance is hard to swallow. NATO receives funding from each of the nations, but four of those countries—the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and France—provide 60% of the funds. The U.S. contributes nearly 22%. Do you really think those major funders don’t decide the directions NATO takes?

We’ll get a clearer view of that later this month, when NATO holds its 25^th summit in Chicago May 20-21. The agenda will include Afghanistan’s future. Also, the media is speculating that France’s new socialist president Francois Hollande may want to pull his country out of NATO. That would mean a loss of 12% of NATO’s funding. If that happens, who do you suspect NATO would eye to make up that deficit, and increase ours?

Ivo Daalder Q&A:   http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Stepsfo

Funding NATO: http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_67655.htm

U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense briefing: http://photos.state.gov/libraries/russia/231771/PDFs/U_S_%20Ballistic%20Missile%20Defense%20Briefing%20ENG.pdf

Russia-Iran alliance: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/01/russia-should-anything-happen-to-iran-this-will-be-a-direct-threat-to-our-national-security.html

NATO Summit in Chicago: http://www.nato.int/cps/en/SID-18E5B832-418B2ED0/natolive/news_87077.htm

France and NATO:  http://www.iol.co.za/news/world/hollande-victory-rattles-nato-1.1290346

Ivo Daalder:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivo_Daalder

HOMELAND SECURITY AIMS AT INTERNET CONTROL

With the blessing of Barack Obama, the federal Department of Homeland Security (HLS) is planning to eventually take control of the Internet, according to an HLS counsel. Such a move by government logically would end citizens’ Constitutional right to freedom of expression, including limiting them to sharing only government-approved information.

Bruce McConnell, a senior cybersecurity counselor with HLS, reported to a cybersecurity gathering last Wednesday in Washington that HLS will establish “institutions” on the Internet to govern it, including working with other nations to determine what content is “proper.” McConnell led his presentation by explaining that Obama has instructed HLS to protect the Internet because it is a “civilian” agency.

Americans should voice two major concerns to their Congressional representatives regarding this HLS plan: (1) when government establishes an “institution,” it basically means it plans to become entrenched and take control; (2) government deciding what content is “proper” is called censorship, and, again, is opposed to the U.S. Constitution.

McConnell, in speaking on a three-person panel covering “Cybersecurity Across the Atlantic,” also noted that Internet control should be a “public-private partnership,” adding that HLS has successfully worked with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the past, thus indicating they would continue that process.

Which leads to a third major concern citizens should voice immediately to their U.S. senators: the Republican-controlled House just over a week ago approved the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). The proposed law will basically force technology and manufacturing companies to share Internet traffic information with the federal government.

Big business, including Facebook and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, support the legislation as a means of protecting against cyber threats. Microsoft had supported it, but turned against it in late April, citing privacy concerns.  Internet privacy and civil liberty advocates oppose the bill, saying it will allow government intrusion of individual Internet freedoms.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an international digital rights advocacy and legal group, has criticized CISPA:

 "CISPA would allow ISPs, social networking sites, and anyone else handling Internet communications to monitor users and pass information to the government without any judicial oversight," said EFF Activism Director Rainey Reitman. "The language of this bill is dangerously vague, so that personal online activity – from the mundane to the intimate – could be implicated."

In opposing CISPA, the American Civil Liberties Union—a legal nonprofit whose sole purpose is to defend Americans’ Constitutional rights—has offered this logical alternative to CISPA in an official release:

Rather than seeking more access to Americans’ private information in the name of cybersecurity, the government should be doing all it can to encourage private entities and government agencies to address security fundamentals. It simply does not make sense to undermine our freedoms in the pursuit of complex, expensive, and intrusive security policies when the most basic measures are not being implemented properly.

The ACLU noted, “According to a comprehensive forensic analysis by the U.S. Secret Service, Verizon, and the Dutch National High Tech Crime Unit, 96 percent of otherwise successful cyberattacks could have been avoided simply by using existing best practices and good cyber hygiene. Even the CIA’s Chief of Information Assurance has said that up to 90 percent of cybersecurity problems could be countered using due diligence. Yet, only 58 percent of North American corporations have a cybersecurity plan in place, and only 31 percent plan to increase spending on security.”

It’s not clear as of this writing when the Senate might vote on CISPA. And HLS’s McConnell indicated the agency’s working with other nations and private companies to take over the Internet was only in the planning stage.  Obama, while pushing HLS to "protect" the Internet, reportedly opposes CISPA.

So now’s the time for anyone concerned about continuing Internet freedom to get organized, get educated, and get active. And for Americans to contact their senators and oppose CISPA, then encourage all of Congress to stifle the administration’s effort to censor and control the Internet via HLS.

Here’s the link to last week’s panels on Transatlantic cybesecurity:   http://www.c-span.org/Events/Conference-Looks-at-Ways-to-Strengthen-Transatlantic-Cybersecurity/10737430366/

An article on Microsoft’s about-face regarding CISPA: http://news.cnet.com/8301-33062_3-57423580/microsoft-backs-away-from-cispa-support-citing-privacy/

The ACLU’s release on CISPA: https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-technology-and-liberty/cybersecurity-legislation-and-common-sense-still

The EFF’s alert on CISPA: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/04/cispa-national-security-and-nsa-ability-read-your-emails

Facebook defends its pro-CISPA stance: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403036,00.asp

(Peculiar Progressive will return as a column on the NYC-based Clyde Fitch Report

when it renews publication after Memorial Day.)

 

Forming America: Thoughts on John Adams’ Thoughts on Government

In the sweltering Philadelphia spring of 1776—before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and after Massachusetts’ John Adams had established himself as a leader in the Second Continental Congress—he wrote down his letter/essay Thoughts on Government: Applicable to the Present State of the American Colonies.

Delegates from other colonies had approached Adams requesting these thoughts. They were responding to efforts back home to form state constitutions.  

Adams wrote just under 3,000 words, a powerful philosophy which would lead the forming of several state documents and the Constitution of the United States. Within those words, he actually profiles and analyzes America’s federal government today—first, what it should be, and second, what it really is.

First, Adams stresses, “…the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best.”

Happiness. It’s a keyword his friend Thomas Jefferson also used in finalizing the Declaration of Independence, the Congress’s announcement to the world of an American Revolution that had already begun: “…endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” 

Adams notes that, to provide Happiness for its people, a government must possess “virtue”: “All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue,” says Adams in his letter/essay.

But then Adams quickly contrasts those requirements for good government to what existed at the time, and certainly flagrantly exists in our government today: 

Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.

But we Americans today have approved it, primarily by not educating ourselves to the basics of good government and a solid economy. And therefore we have let our federal government envelop us with such fear for our security and welfare, we seem helpless and prostrate before a military-industrial complex engaged in endless war, oligarchy, and media conglomerates that corroborate in dictatorial population control and crimes against humanity. We have a federal government that would rather invade foreign countries with aggressive war and build corporate empire than assure its own citizens’ economic and personal health, education, and individual freedom.

Just look at America, from the last six years’ lowest public opinion polls for presidents and Congress, to the state of the depressed economy, to the breedings for revolution rising in the Occupy Wall Street movement nationwide, to the growing police state’s response to it.

The degrading of America has been caused by men and women we have admitted to the presidency, Congress, and the laws they’ve approved allowing massive corporate, police, and military control.  If you don’t believe this, look at the causes of the economic meltdown; the over-aggressive police response to the Occupy movement; the massive proliferation of security cameras throughout the nation; spread of a nationwide federal surveillance operation through Homeland Security; the president’s recent signing of a defense appropriations bill which includes authority for the military to arrest and hold American citizens without trial; and a new law allowing for populating our country’s skies with unmanned drone planes designed  for surveillance, war and killing.

Adams emphasizes in his Thoughts: 

The principal difficulty lies, and the greatest care should be employed, in constituting this representative assembly. It should be in miniature an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them.

Does that sound like your Congress, made up of a majority of millionaires? Does that sound like your presidents who talk a good game of democracy but continue to move forward in effort to unravel individual rights and build empire? Does that sound like your banks and corporations which continue to merge to control markets, increase profits while holding down wages and attempting to limit or end employee benefits? These are not imaginations. Just read and heed, but you’d best be paying attention to writings and voices not under the major media’s control. You can start with the links below.

And you’d best follow John Adams’ and his cohorts’ lead in pressing for a free America, if not for your own good, at least for the happiness of your children and future generations.

In other words, get organized, get educated, and get active.

John Adams' Thoughts on Government:   http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=592&chapter=76854&layout=html&Itemid=27

The economic meltdown: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/money-power-wall-street/

The Occupy Movement:  http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/o/occupy_wall_street/index.html

Security cameras, drones, surveillance:  http://voices.yahoo.com/cameras-phone-taps-drones-oh-my-10374303.html

Drones in the U.S.:  http://www.texasobserver.org/cover-story/send-in-the-drones

Homeland Security and top-secret America:  http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/

Military indefinite detention of Americans:  http://www.salon.com/2011/12/16/three_myths_about_the_detention_bill/

The Millionaire Congress:  http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/11/47-of-congress-members-millionaires-a-status-shared-by-only-1-of-americans/

PBS “FRONTLINE”: YEOMAN EFFORT AT SOLVING FINANCIAL CRISIS’S JIGSAW PUZZLE

The Public Broadcasting System’s “Frontline” news program last night ended its four-hour exhaustive, detailed effort to connect the bones of America’s mammoth financial-meltdown skeleton: “Money, Power, and Wall Street.” Overall, it was a yeoman’s effort, piecing together a chronology to the economy’s collapse and the major factors involved. The producers also lined up an extensive gallery of players ranging from Wall Street execs, bankers, politicians, lawyers, and economists involved in the quagmire.

The news broadcast took pains to simplify a financial network that endlessly pushes to expand in complexity and opaqueness, control the economy and government, and avoid regulation. The program also strove to clarify the major reasons for the meltdown.

Basically, “Frontline” identified the same fault lines laid out by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the 10-member government-appointed panel that investigated and reported on the meltdown’s causes. 

The commission listed 10 conclusions, including widespread failures in financial regulation and supervision; dramatic failures of corporate governance and risk management at many systemically important financial institutions; a combination of

excessive borrowing, risky investments, and lack of transparency; government being ill-prepared and inconsistent in its response; collapsing mortgage-lending standards, and massive marketing of over-the-counter derivatives.

The program could have spent more time with the commission’s chairman, Phil Angelides, former California state treasurer. He seemed to be one of the few interviewees without a direct stake in the financial-political-legal ramifications of the meltdown mess, even though his panel was surely political. In other words, his brief snippets of interview just seemed to make objective sense.

The other interviews, for the most part, possessed hedges, as investment types, politicians, and administrative officials constantly performed to “inform” while covering their posteriors.  The absence of interviews with the major players—George W. Bush, his treasury secretary Henry Paulson, Barack Obama and his treasurer Timothy Geithner—kept the program from cresting, shielding them from direct accountability to the public.  

But the extensive report showed that both Bush and Obama proved lightweights in facing the Wall Streeters and bankers, and that Geithner, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, remains a cohort of Wall Street.

As does Congress, who has avoided any major effort at reforming a financial system mired in greed, manipulation, and void of ethics—which, come to think of it, is a pretty good description of Congress itself. “Frontline,” when describing efforts at financial-reform legislation, constantly referred to Wall Street’s lobbyists killing or stifling bills. But lobbyists, under the Constitution, don’t have the responsibility for writing, amending and approving legislation. Congress has that. If Congress gives that up to lobbyists, then voters need to protect themselves from such cowards by kicking them out of office.

The program, in seeking some reasonable solution to the meltdown mess, did seem to find a common recommendation from economists and lawyers: separate the banks from being involved in both securities trading and regular banking services—basically as banks had to perform before being given a free hand in the ‘90s. That’s when Bill Clinton, his treasury secretary Robert Rubin, and Congress scrapped the Glass-Steagall Act, the post-1929 Stock Market Crash legislation meant to protect the public’s bank investments from speculation.

Perhaps the “Frontline” report’s most poignant moment: interviews with young, former Wall Street employees—intelligent, highly educated, sensitive—who decided to abandon the Greed Breed and join Occupy Wall Street. One scene even showed them meeting together, sincerely attempting to draw up suggested Congressional legislation which might bring true reform.

That brief segment, for any aware audience, should inspire citizens to get organized, get educated, and get active.

The link to Frontline’s “Money, Power and Wall Street”:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/money-power-wall-street/

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission’s site:

http://fcic.law.stanford.edu/

An overview of the Glass-Steagall Act:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act

“60 Minutes” ‘News’ Broadcast Markets Book on CIA Torture From CBS’s Own Publisher

On Sun., April 29 the CBS “news” program “60 Minutes” spent a half hour marketing its

own corporation’s new book: Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives by former CIA operative Jose Rodriguez. 

The publisher, we find out late in the broadcast, is CBS-owned Simon and Schuster. So, in fact, CBS subjected its some 18 million viewers to a 30-minute infomercial covering facts and government propaganda the nation has heard since as far back as 2002.

Rodriguez, former head of the CIA’s Clandestine Service, dramatically referred to as “the dark side”--as if to align it with a Harry Potter fairytale--insists that George W. Bush’s  Justice Department constantly assured him and his cohorts that their “enhanced interrogation techniques” were legal. And Leslie Stahl, the “60 Minutes” interviewer, challenges that with a tone more of powder-puff football than investigative-reporting hardball.

For example, she doesn’t point out this: while the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, i.e., John Yoo, issued a memo in 2002 classifying techniques like waterboarding as legal—the memo was rescinded in 2004.  That’s when Yoo’s replacement in Justice read Yoo’s material and challenged the White House on the CIA’s torture practices—actions condemned by the United Nations as torture since 1975.

The year 2004 is also when, according to The New York Times, the Bush Administration began calling torture “abhorrent,” a legally savvy position for Bush to take if he didn’t want to be tried for war crimes.

Stahl, in her interview, does point out that the FBI disagrees with Rodriguez on the successful results of torture in obtaining vital information. She quotes to him what the FBI told her, but she doesn’t interview anyone on camera—from the FBI, Obama White House, accused terrorists’ attorneys, the United Nations, the American Civil Liberties Union, or anywhere else—to refute Rodriguez’s claims and bring balance to the broadcast.

To bring forth voices of reasonable opposition to Rodriguez could, of course, negatively affect the new book’s marketability, i.e., book sales. And, please, let’s not have a news program negatively affect the corporation’s bottom line. We learned the detrimental effect of that in Paddy Chayefsky’s “Network,” didn’t we?

Last year, in the Peculiar Progressive column published by the Clyde Fitch Report out of New York City, we criticized “60 Minutes” in its one-sided report on the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s apprehending Victor Bout, who was accused of illegal gun sales with intent to kill American agents. CBS News Chief Investigative Correspondent Armen Keteyian interviewed U.S. government sources for his story, but showed no effort to balance the story by interviewing Bout’s American lawyer, nor did he mention any effort to interview Bout himself. This program aired before Bout’s federal court trial, with Keteyian basically judging him as guilty, and honoring the federal agency that arrested him. That’s more a role, wouldn’t you say, for a government official rather than a major TV network’s news organization?

Both of these, Stahl’s and Keteyian’s reports, continue a dangerous practice of basically feeding the public one-sided stories which serve what President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about: the rising military-industrial complex. And, let’s face it, the federal government and the major media conglomerates now stand at the center of that.

(Peculiar Progressive is scheduled to return to The Clyde Fitch Report when it resumes publication after Memorial Day.)