By Lin Noueihed and Frederik Richter
MANAMA (Reuters) - Bahrain's king declared martial law on Tuesday as his government struggled to quell an uprising by the island's Shi'ite Muslim majority that has drawn in troops from fellow Sunni-ruled neighbour Saudi Arabia.
The three-month state of emergency will hand wholesale power to Bahrain's security forces, which are dominated by the Sunni Muslim elite, stoking sectarian tensions in one of the Gulf's most politically volatile nations.
Disturbances shook the kingdom through the day. A hospital source said two men, one Bahraini and the other Bangladeshi, were killed in clashes in the Shi'ite area of Sitra and more than 200 people were wounded in various incidents.
State television said a Bahraini policeman was also killed, denying media reports that a Saudi soldier had been shot dead.
The United States, a close ally of both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, said it was concerned about reports of growing sectarianism in the country, home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet. It dispatched Assistant Secretary of State Jeff Feltman to Bahrain to push for dialogue to resolve the crisis.
Speaking in Cairo, U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said she had told her Saudi counterpart to promote talks to resolve the situation.
It was not clear if a curfew would be imposed or whether there would be any clampdown on media or public gatherings.
"In order for the situation to return to normal we have to establish order and security and ... stop the violations which have spread disturbances among the people of our dear country," said Interior Minister Sheikh Rashed al-Khalifa.
Bahraini state media have said Shi'ite opposition activists, who complain the state has been naturalising Sunni foreigners to tip the sectarian balance, are targeting foreigners.
The opposition says the security forces are full of naturalised foreigners willing to use force against protesters.
SAUDI ANXIETY
On Monday, more than 1,000 Saudi troops rolled into the kingdom at the request of Bahrain's Sunni rulers. The United Arab Emirates and Qatar have said they would also send police.
Thousands of Bahrainis marched on the Saudi embassy in Manama on Tuesday to protest against the intervention.
"People are angry, we want this occupation to end. We don't want anybody to help the al-Khalifa or us," said a protester who gave his name as Salman, referring to the ruling family.
Analysts said the troop movement showed concern in Saudi Arabia that any concessions in Bahrain could inspire the kingdom's own Shi'ite minority.
Over 60 percent of Bahrainis are Shi'ites who complain of discrimination at the hands of the Sunni royal family. Calls for the overthrow of the monarchy have alarmed the Sunni minority, which fears that unrest could serve non-Arab Shi'ite power Iran.
Iran, which sits across the Gulf from Bahrain, criticised the decision to send in Saudi troops.
"The presence of foreign forces and interference in Bahrain's internal affairs is unacceptable and will further complicate the issue," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said at his weekly news conference in Tehran.
A Bahraini foreign ministry official called the remarks "blatant interference in Bahrain's internal affairs," the state news agency BNA said, adding that Manama had recalled its ambassador to Iran for consultations.
SECTARIAN CLASHES
Bahrain has been gripped by its worst unrest since the 1990s after protesters took to the streets last month, inspired by uprisings that toppled the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia.
Unlike those countries, where the mainly Sunni populations united against the regime, Bahrain is split along sectarian lines, raising the risk of a slide into civil conflict.
Violent clashes between youths wielding clubs, knives and rocks have become daily occurrences, forcing Bahrain University and many schools to close in order to avoid further trouble.
The United Nations and Britain echoed the U.S. call for restraint and the Group of Eight powers expressed concern, though analysts said the escalation showed the limits of U.S. influence when security was threatened.
Amnesty International urged Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to restrain their forces after witnesses said protesters were shot.
"The king's declaration of a state of emergency must not be used as a cover for repression," said Malcolm Smart.
The disturbances are a major blow to the economy in Bahrain, whose oil reserves dwindling. Shops and offices were closed on Tuesday and the streets were deserted.
Fitch cut Bahrain's credit ratings by two notches to BBB for A-minus and said more downgrades were possible in the short term as political risk soared in the country.
The largest Shi'ite opposition group, Wefaq, condemned the imposition of martial law and urged international intervention.
In a sign that security could deteriorate, the U.S. State Department advised against all travel to Bahrain due to a "breakdown in law and order."
Armed youths attacked the printing press of Bahrain's only opposition newspaper Al Wasat overnight in an effort to stop its publication.
Metal barricades and piles of sand and rocks blocked the main road to the financial district and most shops were shut.
Around Bahrain, residents have placed skips, bins and pieces of metal on the road, to prevent strangers from entering their neighbourhoods. Young men, some wearing masks and carrying sticks, guarded the entrances to their areas.
(Reporting by Robin Pomeroy in Iran, Firouz Sedarat in Dubai, Walter Brandimarte in New York and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva)
(Editing by Ralph Boulton)
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
In the Wake of Japan's Earthquake, A Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe
By Yoichi Shimatsu
Emergency Special Report I
The Wave, reminiscent of Hokusai's masterful woodblock print, blew past Japan's shoreline defenses of harbor breakwaters and gigantic four-legged blocks called tetrapods, lifting ships to ram through seawalls and crash onto downtown parking lots. Seaside areas were soon emptied of cars and houses dragged up rivers and back out to sea. Wave heights of up to10 meters (33
feet) are staggering, but before deeming these as unimaginable, consider the historical Sanriku tsunami that towered to 15 meters (nearly 50 feet) and killed 27,000 people in 1896.
Nature's terrifying power, however we may dread it, is only as great as the human-caused vulnerability of our civilization. Soon after Christmas 2004, I volunteered for the rescue operation on the day after the Indian Ocean tsunami and simultaneously did an on-site field study on the causes of fatalities in southern Thailand.
The report, issued by Thammasat and Hong Kong Universities, concluded that high water wasn't the sole cause of the massive death toll. No, it's buildings that kill - to be specific, badly designed structures without escape routes onto roofs or, in our greed for real estate, situated inside drained lagoons and riverbeds, or on loose landfill. In the Tohoku disaster, an ultramodern Sendai Airport sat helplessly flooded on all sides while nearby a monstrous black torrent swept entire houses upstream.
Other threats are built into the vulnerabilities of our critical infrastructure and power systems. The balls of orange flames churning out of huge gas storage tanks in Ichihara, Chiba, should never have happened if technical precautions had been properly carried out.
Whenever things go wrong, underlying risks had led to a liability and, in a responsible society, accountability.
Most people assume that the meticulous Japanese are among the world's most responsible citizens. As an investigative journalist who has covered the Hanshin
(Kobe) earthquake and the Tokyo subway gassing, I beg to differ. Japan is just better than elsewhere in organizing official cover-ups.
Hidden nuclear crisis
The recurrent tendency to deny systemic errors - "in order to avoid public panic" - is rooted in the determination of an entrenched bureaucracy to protect itself rather than in any stated purpose of serving the nation or its people. That's the unspoken rule of thumb in most governments, and the point is that Japan is no shining exception. So what today is being silenced on orders from the Tokyo government? The official mantra is that all five nuclear power plants in the northeast are locked down, safe and not leaking. The cloaked reality is that at least one of those - Tepco's Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant - is under an emergency alert at a level indicative of a quake-caused internal rupture. The Fukushima powerhouse is one of the world's largest with six boiling-water reactors.
Over past decades, the Japanese public has been reassured by the Tokyo Electric Power Company that its nuclear reactors are prepared for any eventuality. Yet the mystery in Fukushima is not the first unreported problem with nuclear power, only the most recent. Back in 1996 amid a reactor accident in Ibaraki province, the government never admitted that radioactive fallout had drifted over the northeastern suburbs of Tokyo. Our reporters got confirmation from monitoring stations, but the press was under a blanket order not to run any alarming news, the facts be damned. For a nation that's lived under the atomic cloud of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, total denial becomes possible now only because the finger on the button is our own.
People are the best defense
Despite the national addiction to nuclear power that keeps the neon lights bright over Shibuya's famous corner, Japan still remains the most prepared of all societies for earthquakes, tsunami, conflagrations and other disasters. Every work unit, large or small, has an emergency response plan. The Tohoku quake hit on a workday afternoon, meaning the staff in every factory and office could act as a team to quell small fires, shut the gas lines, render first aid and restore their communication system. Even in most homes, residents have a rechargeable flashlight plugged into a socket and emergency bottles of water.
Northeast Japan is better prepared than other localities because in the wake of the Kobe quake in 1995, the regional Keidanren, or federation of industrial organizations, sponsored a thorough risk-management and crisis response study. Tohoku Keidanren staffers, who had known of my reporting on the San Francisco and Kobe quakes, asked me to write an article prioritizing disaster preparedness.
First on my list was a people-based communications network such as the citizen's band radio that enabled Northern Californians to self-organize despite power blackouts. That point directly led to the fast licensing of new mobile phone towers equipped with back-up batteries. Second was independent power generation inside all major factories so that these large facilities could recharge batteries, provide lighting and pump water for their neighborhoods and, if necessary, offer shelter, sanitation and medical care.
These systems must be routinely used at least on weekends so that the equipment is regularly checked and the staff stay familiar with their operation.
Third, and most important, is the ability of individuals to rally as a self-sustaining community. In Kobe, society collapsed under a sense of personal defeat. In San Francisco, by contrast, neighbors reached out as friends and opened their doors, food stocks and hearts to victims and their kin. Without compassion, each of us is very much alone indeed.
As participants in communities, who can suddenly find themselves naked before unthinkable hazards, we must act to defuse the deadly "bomb" that provides us lighting, energy for appliances and air-con. Prevention of the next Chernobyl or Three Mile Island begins when we stop naively believing in the cost efficiency of uranium, and for that matter the cleanliness and healthiness of "clean" coal.
Japan has vast untapped reserves of offshore wind energy, the only practical alternative to nuclear power and fossil fuel. Yet the nuclear lobby, coal companies and oil majors have strong-armed the government and industry to stubbornly refuse to invest in advanced and efficient turbine engineering, including magnetic-levitation rotors that eliminate the need for energy-sapping bearings.
At certain stages of societal evolution, there arrives an unmistakable message to leave behind our worn-out security blanket and surf the wave of the future. The tsunami is just such a signal arising from the ocean's depths to awaken Japan, as a global technology leader, to push much faster into a cleaner, greener and safer world.
Emergency Special Report II
Quake Monitor: Meltdown has started - Saturday 12 March (noon Japan time zone)
Meltdown is underway. Japan's Industrial Nuclear Safety Agency reported that the radioactive isotopes cesium and iodine were detected by a monitoring station in the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant. The presence of these substances in air samples is a sure indicator that an uncontrolled chain reaction has started.
Overheated uranium rods have eaten through their protective metal casings and have started nuclear fission. The regulatory agency's announcement overturns the earlier claim of plant operator TEPCO that all uranium rods were intact.
The National Institute of Radiological Science, in Chiba outside Tokyo, has flown a team of doctors and nurses by helicopter to a health center 5 km from the Fukushima plant to monitor nuclear exposure in workers, emergency crew and local residents.
Nuclear workers, who this morning restarted the pumping of cold water into the reactor, are being hampered by aftershocks of larger than Richter 6. Plant operator TEPCO ordered the release of steam from the overheated reactor this morning because internal pressure is twice higher than the allowable limits of the original facility design. Plant officials say that the steam is being filtered of radioactive particle. Outside the plant, however, the monitoring station detected outdoor radiation levels 8 times higher than normal, indicating either leakage or filter malfunction.
Three of the six reactors of the TEPCO Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, were operating at the time of the Tohoku quake. The failure of back-up generators caused significant rise in temperatures inside No.1 (46 MW
output) and No.2 (784 MW) reactors.
The Japanese government overnight dispatched truck-mounted power generators to both plants in order to restart cooling pumps. On-site back-up batteries that run the control system were depleted of power within 8 hours of the blackout. Authorities are now locating robots to dispatch for remote control repairs to the reactors because the interior is unsafe for human employees.
Impact on North America:
The Pacific jetstream is currently flowing due east directly toward the United States. In the event of a major meltdown and continuous large-volume radioactive release, airborne particles will be carried across the ocean in bands that will cross over the southern halves of Oregon, Montana and Idaho, all of California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, the Dakotas, northern Nebraska and Iowa and ending in Wisconsin and Illinois, with possible further eastward drift depending on surface wind direction.
Most of the particles can be expected to travel high in the atmosphere, with fallout dependent on low pressure zones, rainfall and temperatures over the US. If a meltdown can be contained in Fukushima, a small amount of particles would be dispersed in the atmosphere with little immediate effect on human and animal health.
Another climate factor to be taken into account is the potential for an El Nino Variable bulging the jetstream further northward, causing fallout over western Canada and a larger number of American states.
Seasonal rainfall over Japan does not normally begin until mid-April and does not become significant until early June.
If very high radiation releases are detected at some point, a potential tactic to lessen contamination of North America is for the US, Canadian and Russian air forces to seed clouds over the northwest Pacific to create a low pressure front and precipitation to minimize particle mass reaching North America.
Emergency Special Report III
Ohoku Quake and Tsunami Monitor 2:
"The Good News Guys"
Sunday 13 March 2011 (0800 hrs Tokyo Time) Following a high-level meeting called by the lame-duck prime minister, Japanese agencies are no longer releasing independent reports without prior approval from the top. The censorship is being carried out following the imposition of the Article 15 Emergency Law. Official silencing of bad news is a polite way of reassuring the public.According to the chief Cabinet Secretary, reactor heat is being lowered and radiation levels are coming down. The Unit 1 reactor container is not cracked despite the explosion that destroyed its building. The explosion did not erupt out of the reactor. So what caused the explosion that blasted away the reinforced concrete roof and walls? Silence. Yes, there's nothing to worry about if residents just stay indoors, turn off their air-cons and don't breathe deeply. Everyone, go back to sleep.
The radiation leak at Fukushima No.1 nuclear plant is now officially designated as a "4" on the international nuclear-events scale of 7. This is the same criticality rating at an earlier minor accident at Tokaimura plant in Ibaraki. Technically, there is no comparison. Tokaimura did not experience a partial meltdown.
Enough of the Good News
The mayor of Tsuruga City, home of the trouble-plagued Monju plutonium-breeder reactor in Fukui Prefecture, isn't buying Tokyo's weak explanation about the Fukushima 1 blast and demanded the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency to conduct an all-points investigation immediately.
A specialist medical team from the National Radiology Health Institute, flown by helicopter from Chiba to a field center 5 km from the No.1 Nuclear Plant, found radiation illness in 3 residents out of a sample group of 90. Overnight that number of civilian-nuclear "hibakusha" shot up to 19, but in other counts to 160.
The evacuation zone has been further widened from 10 km to 20 km.
A third reactor, Unit 6, has lost its cooling system and is overheating along with Reactors 1 and 2.
Fukushima No.2 plant, further south, is ringed by a wall of silence as a quiet evacuation is being conducted.
Firefighters are pumping seawater into the three overheated Fukushima 1 reactors. The mandatory freshwater supply is missing, presumably due to tsunami contamination from surging ocean waves. An American nuclear expert has called this desperation measure the equivalent of a "Hail Mary pass"..
So, the Prime Minister should be hoping that Japan's tiny Christian community is feverishly praying. Because right now, Japan and much of the world are living on a prayer.
Players not prayers
USA: The White House sent in a team to consult withe US-friendly Naoto Kan government. Instead of dispatching in experts from the Department of Energy, Nuclear Safety Agency and Health Department, President Obamas sent representatives of USAID, which is cover for the CIA.
The presence of these paranoiac bumblers only confirms suspicions of a top-level cover up. Why would the Agency be worried about the disaster? There are security considerations, such as regional "enemies"
Pyongyang, Beijing and Moscow taking advantage of the crisis. To the contrary, China and Russia have both offered carte blanche civilian aid.
Second, to coordinate a pro-American public campaign synchronized with the US relief effort from the nuclear carrier USS Ronald Reagan. Many Japanese might actually be alarmed by Navy ships offshore, reminding them of the firebombing campaign in the big war, and US helicopters rumbling overhead as if Sendai was Danang Vietnam 1968. The whole "aid" exercise smacks of a con job aimed at keeping US military bases in Okinawa and surreptitiously at a Japanese Self-Defense Force firing range at the foot of Mount Fuji.
Third, to ensure the safekeeping of Misawa Air Force Base in quake-hit Iwate Prefecture. Misawa, the hub of US electronic warfare and high-tech espionage in East Asia with its fleet of P-3 Orions and an ECHELON eavesdropping antennae.
PRC: In contrast to Washington's ulterior motives, China in an unprecedented move has sent in an emergency team into Japan. Unbeknownst to the world, China has world-leading expertise in extinguishing nuclear meltdowns and blocking radiation leaks at their uranium mines and military nuclear plants. This was discovered on a 2003 visit to a geological research center in the uranium-rich Altai mountain region of Xinjiang, where a scientist disclosed "off the record"
China's development of mineral blends that block radiation "much more than 90 percent, nearly totally".
When asked why the institute doesn't commercialize their formulas, he responded: "We've never thought about that." That's too bad because if one of China's exports was ever needed, it's their radiation blanket.
Russia: Moscow too, is offering unconditional aid, despite ongoing territorial conflict with Japan over four northern islands. The Russian Air Force, from bases in Kamchatka and the Kuriles, could play a key role in cloud-seeding to prevent radioactive particles from drifting over to the United States. Americans should learn how to act as team players in an international community, especially now their own children's lives will be at stake in the event of a total meltdown in Fukushima.
Canada: Meteorology is becoming evermore interesting, despite the "what me worry" attitudes of the global-warming skeptics. A freak of nature called El Nino Variable, if it occurs later this spring, could push the Pacific jet stream northward, meaning western Canada and more U.S. states could find themselves along a winding stream of radiation fallout from Japan.
Correction to Monitor 1: In our haste, we blurred over some important details on the use of potassium iodide tablets. These are taken to block radioactive
iodine-131 from affecting the human thyroid gland, thus lowering the risk of cancer and other disorders.
Yoichi Shimatsu currently with Fourth Media (China) is former editor of the Japan Times Weekly, has covered the earthquakes in San Francisco and Kobe, participated in the rescue operation immediately after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and led the field research for an architectural report on structural design flaws that led to the tsunami death toll in Thailand.
Global Research Articles by Yoichi Shimatsu
Emergency Special Report I
The Wave, reminiscent of Hokusai's masterful woodblock print, blew past Japan's shoreline defenses of harbor breakwaters and gigantic four-legged blocks called tetrapods, lifting ships to ram through seawalls and crash onto downtown parking lots. Seaside areas were soon emptied of cars and houses dragged up rivers and back out to sea. Wave heights of up to10 meters (33
feet) are staggering, but before deeming these as unimaginable, consider the historical Sanriku tsunami that towered to 15 meters (nearly 50 feet) and killed 27,000 people in 1896.
Nature's terrifying power, however we may dread it, is only as great as the human-caused vulnerability of our civilization. Soon after Christmas 2004, I volunteered for the rescue operation on the day after the Indian Ocean tsunami and simultaneously did an on-site field study on the causes of fatalities in southern Thailand.
The report, issued by Thammasat and Hong Kong Universities, concluded that high water wasn't the sole cause of the massive death toll. No, it's buildings that kill - to be specific, badly designed structures without escape routes onto roofs or, in our greed for real estate, situated inside drained lagoons and riverbeds, or on loose landfill. In the Tohoku disaster, an ultramodern Sendai Airport sat helplessly flooded on all sides while nearby a monstrous black torrent swept entire houses upstream.
Other threats are built into the vulnerabilities of our critical infrastructure and power systems. The balls of orange flames churning out of huge gas storage tanks in Ichihara, Chiba, should never have happened if technical precautions had been properly carried out.
Whenever things go wrong, underlying risks had led to a liability and, in a responsible society, accountability.
Most people assume that the meticulous Japanese are among the world's most responsible citizens. As an investigative journalist who has covered the Hanshin
(Kobe) earthquake and the Tokyo subway gassing, I beg to differ. Japan is just better than elsewhere in organizing official cover-ups.
Hidden nuclear crisis
The recurrent tendency to deny systemic errors - "in order to avoid public panic" - is rooted in the determination of an entrenched bureaucracy to protect itself rather than in any stated purpose of serving the nation or its people. That's the unspoken rule of thumb in most governments, and the point is that Japan is no shining exception. So what today is being silenced on orders from the Tokyo government? The official mantra is that all five nuclear power plants in the northeast are locked down, safe and not leaking. The cloaked reality is that at least one of those - Tepco's Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant - is under an emergency alert at a level indicative of a quake-caused internal rupture. The Fukushima powerhouse is one of the world's largest with six boiling-water reactors.
Over past decades, the Japanese public has been reassured by the Tokyo Electric Power Company that its nuclear reactors are prepared for any eventuality. Yet the mystery in Fukushima is not the first unreported problem with nuclear power, only the most recent. Back in 1996 amid a reactor accident in Ibaraki province, the government never admitted that radioactive fallout had drifted over the northeastern suburbs of Tokyo. Our reporters got confirmation from monitoring stations, but the press was under a blanket order not to run any alarming news, the facts be damned. For a nation that's lived under the atomic cloud of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, total denial becomes possible now only because the finger on the button is our own.
People are the best defense
Despite the national addiction to nuclear power that keeps the neon lights bright over Shibuya's famous corner, Japan still remains the most prepared of all societies for earthquakes, tsunami, conflagrations and other disasters. Every work unit, large or small, has an emergency response plan. The Tohoku quake hit on a workday afternoon, meaning the staff in every factory and office could act as a team to quell small fires, shut the gas lines, render first aid and restore their communication system. Even in most homes, residents have a rechargeable flashlight plugged into a socket and emergency bottles of water.
Northeast Japan is better prepared than other localities because in the wake of the Kobe quake in 1995, the regional Keidanren, or federation of industrial organizations, sponsored a thorough risk-management and crisis response study. Tohoku Keidanren staffers, who had known of my reporting on the San Francisco and Kobe quakes, asked me to write an article prioritizing disaster preparedness.
First on my list was a people-based communications network such as the citizen's band radio that enabled Northern Californians to self-organize despite power blackouts. That point directly led to the fast licensing of new mobile phone towers equipped with back-up batteries. Second was independent power generation inside all major factories so that these large facilities could recharge batteries, provide lighting and pump water for their neighborhoods and, if necessary, offer shelter, sanitation and medical care.
These systems must be routinely used at least on weekends so that the equipment is regularly checked and the staff stay familiar with their operation.
Third, and most important, is the ability of individuals to rally as a self-sustaining community. In Kobe, society collapsed under a sense of personal defeat. In San Francisco, by contrast, neighbors reached out as friends and opened their doors, food stocks and hearts to victims and their kin. Without compassion, each of us is very much alone indeed.
As participants in communities, who can suddenly find themselves naked before unthinkable hazards, we must act to defuse the deadly "bomb" that provides us lighting, energy for appliances and air-con. Prevention of the next Chernobyl or Three Mile Island begins when we stop naively believing in the cost efficiency of uranium, and for that matter the cleanliness and healthiness of "clean" coal.
Japan has vast untapped reserves of offshore wind energy, the only practical alternative to nuclear power and fossil fuel. Yet the nuclear lobby, coal companies and oil majors have strong-armed the government and industry to stubbornly refuse to invest in advanced and efficient turbine engineering, including magnetic-levitation rotors that eliminate the need for energy-sapping bearings.
At certain stages of societal evolution, there arrives an unmistakable message to leave behind our worn-out security blanket and surf the wave of the future. The tsunami is just such a signal arising from the ocean's depths to awaken Japan, as a global technology leader, to push much faster into a cleaner, greener and safer world.
Emergency Special Report II
Quake Monitor: Meltdown has started - Saturday 12 March (noon Japan time zone)
Meltdown is underway. Japan's Industrial Nuclear Safety Agency reported that the radioactive isotopes cesium and iodine were detected by a monitoring station in the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant. The presence of these substances in air samples is a sure indicator that an uncontrolled chain reaction has started.
Overheated uranium rods have eaten through their protective metal casings and have started nuclear fission. The regulatory agency's announcement overturns the earlier claim of plant operator TEPCO that all uranium rods were intact.
The National Institute of Radiological Science, in Chiba outside Tokyo, has flown a team of doctors and nurses by helicopter to a health center 5 km from the Fukushima plant to monitor nuclear exposure in workers, emergency crew and local residents.
Nuclear workers, who this morning restarted the pumping of cold water into the reactor, are being hampered by aftershocks of larger than Richter 6. Plant operator TEPCO ordered the release of steam from the overheated reactor this morning because internal pressure is twice higher than the allowable limits of the original facility design. Plant officials say that the steam is being filtered of radioactive particle. Outside the plant, however, the monitoring station detected outdoor radiation levels 8 times higher than normal, indicating either leakage or filter malfunction.
Three of the six reactors of the TEPCO Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, were operating at the time of the Tohoku quake. The failure of back-up generators caused significant rise in temperatures inside No.1 (46 MW
output) and No.2 (784 MW) reactors.
The Japanese government overnight dispatched truck-mounted power generators to both plants in order to restart cooling pumps. On-site back-up batteries that run the control system were depleted of power within 8 hours of the blackout. Authorities are now locating robots to dispatch for remote control repairs to the reactors because the interior is unsafe for human employees.
Impact on North America:
The Pacific jetstream is currently flowing due east directly toward the United States. In the event of a major meltdown and continuous large-volume radioactive release, airborne particles will be carried across the ocean in bands that will cross over the southern halves of Oregon, Montana and Idaho, all of California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, the Dakotas, northern Nebraska and Iowa and ending in Wisconsin and Illinois, with possible further eastward drift depending on surface wind direction.
Most of the particles can be expected to travel high in the atmosphere, with fallout dependent on low pressure zones, rainfall and temperatures over the US. If a meltdown can be contained in Fukushima, a small amount of particles would be dispersed in the atmosphere with little immediate effect on human and animal health.
Another climate factor to be taken into account is the potential for an El Nino Variable bulging the jetstream further northward, causing fallout over western Canada and a larger number of American states.
Seasonal rainfall over Japan does not normally begin until mid-April and does not become significant until early June.
If very high radiation releases are detected at some point, a potential tactic to lessen contamination of North America is for the US, Canadian and Russian air forces to seed clouds over the northwest Pacific to create a low pressure front and precipitation to minimize particle mass reaching North America.
Emergency Special Report III
Ohoku Quake and Tsunami Monitor 2:
"The Good News Guys"
Sunday 13 March 2011 (0800 hrs Tokyo Time) Following a high-level meeting called by the lame-duck prime minister, Japanese agencies are no longer releasing independent reports without prior approval from the top. The censorship is being carried out following the imposition of the Article 15 Emergency Law. Official silencing of bad news is a polite way of reassuring the public.According to the chief Cabinet Secretary, reactor heat is being lowered and radiation levels are coming down. The Unit 1 reactor container is not cracked despite the explosion that destroyed its building. The explosion did not erupt out of the reactor. So what caused the explosion that blasted away the reinforced concrete roof and walls? Silence. Yes, there's nothing to worry about if residents just stay indoors, turn off their air-cons and don't breathe deeply. Everyone, go back to sleep.
The radiation leak at Fukushima No.1 nuclear plant is now officially designated as a "4" on the international nuclear-events scale of 7. This is the same criticality rating at an earlier minor accident at Tokaimura plant in Ibaraki. Technically, there is no comparison. Tokaimura did not experience a partial meltdown.
Enough of the Good News
The mayor of Tsuruga City, home of the trouble-plagued Monju plutonium-breeder reactor in Fukui Prefecture, isn't buying Tokyo's weak explanation about the Fukushima 1 blast and demanded the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency to conduct an all-points investigation immediately.
A specialist medical team from the National Radiology Health Institute, flown by helicopter from Chiba to a field center 5 km from the No.1 Nuclear Plant, found radiation illness in 3 residents out of a sample group of 90. Overnight that number of civilian-nuclear "hibakusha" shot up to 19, but in other counts to 160.
The evacuation zone has been further widened from 10 km to 20 km.
A third reactor, Unit 6, has lost its cooling system and is overheating along with Reactors 1 and 2.
Fukushima No.2 plant, further south, is ringed by a wall of silence as a quiet evacuation is being conducted.
Firefighters are pumping seawater into the three overheated Fukushima 1 reactors. The mandatory freshwater supply is missing, presumably due to tsunami contamination from surging ocean waves. An American nuclear expert has called this desperation measure the equivalent of a "Hail Mary pass"..
So, the Prime Minister should be hoping that Japan's tiny Christian community is feverishly praying. Because right now, Japan and much of the world are living on a prayer.
Players not prayers
USA: The White House sent in a team to consult withe US-friendly Naoto Kan government. Instead of dispatching in experts from the Department of Energy, Nuclear Safety Agency and Health Department, President Obamas sent representatives of USAID, which is cover for the CIA.
The presence of these paranoiac bumblers only confirms suspicions of a top-level cover up. Why would the Agency be worried about the disaster? There are security considerations, such as regional "enemies"
Pyongyang, Beijing and Moscow taking advantage of the crisis. To the contrary, China and Russia have both offered carte blanche civilian aid.
Second, to coordinate a pro-American public campaign synchronized with the US relief effort from the nuclear carrier USS Ronald Reagan. Many Japanese might actually be alarmed by Navy ships offshore, reminding them of the firebombing campaign in the big war, and US helicopters rumbling overhead as if Sendai was Danang Vietnam 1968. The whole "aid" exercise smacks of a con job aimed at keeping US military bases in Okinawa and surreptitiously at a Japanese Self-Defense Force firing range at the foot of Mount Fuji.
Third, to ensure the safekeeping of Misawa Air Force Base in quake-hit Iwate Prefecture. Misawa, the hub of US electronic warfare and high-tech espionage in East Asia with its fleet of P-3 Orions and an ECHELON eavesdropping antennae.
PRC: In contrast to Washington's ulterior motives, China in an unprecedented move has sent in an emergency team into Japan. Unbeknownst to the world, China has world-leading expertise in extinguishing nuclear meltdowns and blocking radiation leaks at their uranium mines and military nuclear plants. This was discovered on a 2003 visit to a geological research center in the uranium-rich Altai mountain region of Xinjiang, where a scientist disclosed "off the record"
China's development of mineral blends that block radiation "much more than 90 percent, nearly totally".
When asked why the institute doesn't commercialize their formulas, he responded: "We've never thought about that." That's too bad because if one of China's exports was ever needed, it's their radiation blanket.
Russia: Moscow too, is offering unconditional aid, despite ongoing territorial conflict with Japan over four northern islands. The Russian Air Force, from bases in Kamchatka and the Kuriles, could play a key role in cloud-seeding to prevent radioactive particles from drifting over to the United States. Americans should learn how to act as team players in an international community, especially now their own children's lives will be at stake in the event of a total meltdown in Fukushima.
Canada: Meteorology is becoming evermore interesting, despite the "what me worry" attitudes of the global-warming skeptics. A freak of nature called El Nino Variable, if it occurs later this spring, could push the Pacific jet stream northward, meaning western Canada and more U.S. states could find themselves along a winding stream of radiation fallout from Japan.
Correction to Monitor 1: In our haste, we blurred over some important details on the use of potassium iodide tablets. These are taken to block radioactive
iodine-131 from affecting the human thyroid gland, thus lowering the risk of cancer and other disorders.
Yoichi Shimatsu currently with Fourth Media (China) is former editor of the Japan Times Weekly, has covered the earthquakes in San Francisco and Kobe, participated in the rescue operation immediately after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and led the field research for an architectural report on structural design flaws that led to the tsunami death toll in Thailand.
Global Research Articles by Yoichi Shimatsu
Monday, March 14, 2011
Bahrain imports Gulf military force
(UKPA)
Troops from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations have moved into Bahrain to back up its Sunni rulers in the face of escalating Shiite-led protests seeking to break the monarchy's hold on power.
Bahrain's main opposition groups immediately denounced the intervention as an "occupation" that pushed the tiny Gulf kingdom dangerously close to a state of war.
It also marked the first cross-border military operations to try to quell unrest since the Arab world's rebellions began in December and underscores the Gulf leaders' worries about their own standing and fears that instability in Bahrain could give a foothold for Shiite powerhouse Iran.
The strife in Bahrain began to dramatically escalate over the weekend just as the US defence secretary arrived to urge its leaders - key Washington allies - to heed at least some of the demands for change.
A Saudi security official said the Gulf units dispatched to Bahrain are from a special force within the six-nation Gulf Co-operation Council.
The 1,000 strong force was deployed by air and road and to help protect key buildings.
The GCC members are Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
Its arrival force comes a day after some of the most widespread chaos in the month-long series of protests and clashes that have left seven dead and the nation deeply divided.
A group of pro-government MPs has urged Bahrain's king to impose martial law and claimed "extremist movements" were trying to disrupt the country and push it toward sectarian conflict.
A coalition of seven Shiite-led opposition factions pledged to demand a UN investigation into the Gulf leaders' decision to send in the special force for an internal conflict. The unit had been deployed in the past to Kuwait, including during the 1991 US-led campaign to drive out Saddam Hussein's troops and before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Troops from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations have moved into Bahrain to back up its Sunni rulers in the face of escalating Shiite-led protests seeking to break the monarchy's hold on power.
Bahrain's main opposition groups immediately denounced the intervention as an "occupation" that pushed the tiny Gulf kingdom dangerously close to a state of war.
It also marked the first cross-border military operations to try to quell unrest since the Arab world's rebellions began in December and underscores the Gulf leaders' worries about their own standing and fears that instability in Bahrain could give a foothold for Shiite powerhouse Iran.
The strife in Bahrain began to dramatically escalate over the weekend just as the US defence secretary arrived to urge its leaders - key Washington allies - to heed at least some of the demands for change.
A Saudi security official said the Gulf units dispatched to Bahrain are from a special force within the six-nation Gulf Co-operation Council.
The 1,000 strong force was deployed by air and road and to help protect key buildings.
The GCC members are Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
Its arrival force comes a day after some of the most widespread chaos in the month-long series of protests and clashes that have left seven dead and the nation deeply divided.
A group of pro-government MPs has urged Bahrain's king to impose martial law and claimed "extremist movements" were trying to disrupt the country and push it toward sectarian conflict.
A coalition of seven Shiite-led opposition factions pledged to demand a UN investigation into the Gulf leaders' decision to send in the special force for an internal conflict. The unit had been deployed in the past to Kuwait, including during the 1991 US-led campaign to drive out Saddam Hussein's troops and before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Bahrain Protests Throw Kingdom Into Chaos
NPR Staff and Wires
Thousands of anti-government demonstrators cut off Bahrain's financial center and drove back police trying to push them from the capital's central square shaking the tiny island kingdom Sunday with the most disruptive protests since calls for more freedom erupted a month ago.
Demonstrators also clashed with security forces and government supporters on the campus of the main university in the Gulf country, the home of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet.
The clashes fueled fears that Bahrain's political crisis could be stumbling toward open sectarian conflict between the ruling minority Sunnis and Shiites, who account for 70 percent of the nation's 525,000 people.
Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al Khalifa said the government is willing to discuss reforming its semi-democratic parliamentary system. But protesters like Hassan al-Mubarak are in no mood to talk
"This government, we've been giving them a chance for 230 years," he said. "They don't want to change."
The opposition is split between those who favor confronting the regime and others who are looking to negotiate.
In some neighborhoods, vigilantes set up checkpoints to try to keep outsiders from entering. Bahrain's interior ministry warned Saturday that the "social fabric" of the nation was in peril.
A day after visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged quick progress toward reform, thousands of protesters gathered before dawn to block King Faisal Highway, a four-lane expressway leading to Bahrain's main financial district in downtown Manama, causing huge traffic chaos during morning rush hour and preventing many from reaching their offices on the first day of the work week.
"No one was able to go to work today. Thugs and protesters were blocking the highway," complained Sawsan Mohammed, 30, who works in the financial district. "I am upset that Bahrain is no longer a stable place."
Security forces dispersed about 350 protesters "by using tear gas," the government said. But traffic was clogged until late morning and many drivers sent messages of rage and frustration to social media sites.
"I blame the protesters for what's happened in Bahrain today," said Dana Nasser, 25, who was caught in the traffic chaos and never made it to her office.
About 2 miles away, police at the same time moved in on Pearl traffic circle, site of a monthlong occupation by members of Bahrain's Shiite majority calling for an elected government and equality with Bahrain's Sunnis.
Many protesters in recent days have pressed their demands further to call for the ouster of the Sunni dynasty that has held power for more than two centuries.
Witnesses said security forces surrounded the protests' tent compound, shooting tear gas and rubber bullets at the activists in the largest effort to clear the protesters since a deadly crackdown last month that left four dead.
Activists tried to stand their ground and chanted "Peaceful! peaceful!"
The crowd swelled into thousands with protesters streaming to the square to reinforce the activists' lines as police continued firing tear gas. By early afternoon, police pulled back from the square, eyewitnesses said.
At Bahrain University, Shiite demonstrators and government supporters held competing protests that descended into violence when plainclothes pro-government backers and security forces forced students who had been blocking the campus main gate to seek refuge in classrooms and lecture halls, said Layla al-Arab, an employee at the Arts Collage.
Two protesters sustained serious head injures and hundreds looked for medical help, mostly with breathing problems from tear gas, hospital officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
The Gulf kingdom holds particular importance to Washington as the host of the main American military counterweight to Iran's efforts to expand its armed forces and reach into the Gulf.
Bahrain has also tried hard to position itself as an attractive investment destination and Middle East banking center. Even the passport stamps issued to incoming visitors declare the kingdom as "Business-friendly Bahrain."
Thousands of anti-government demonstrators cut off Bahrain's financial center and drove back police trying to push them from the capital's central square shaking the tiny island kingdom Sunday with the most disruptive protests since calls for more freedom erupted a month ago.
Demonstrators also clashed with security forces and government supporters on the campus of the main university in the Gulf country, the home of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet.
The clashes fueled fears that Bahrain's political crisis could be stumbling toward open sectarian conflict between the ruling minority Sunnis and Shiites, who account for 70 percent of the nation's 525,000 people.
Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al Khalifa said the government is willing to discuss reforming its semi-democratic parliamentary system. But protesters like Hassan al-Mubarak are in no mood to talk
"This government, we've been giving them a chance for 230 years," he said. "They don't want to change."
The opposition is split between those who favor confronting the regime and others who are looking to negotiate.
In some neighborhoods, vigilantes set up checkpoints to try to keep outsiders from entering. Bahrain's interior ministry warned Saturday that the "social fabric" of the nation was in peril.
A day after visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged quick progress toward reform, thousands of protesters gathered before dawn to block King Faisal Highway, a four-lane expressway leading to Bahrain's main financial district in downtown Manama, causing huge traffic chaos during morning rush hour and preventing many from reaching their offices on the first day of the work week.
"No one was able to go to work today. Thugs and protesters were blocking the highway," complained Sawsan Mohammed, 30, who works in the financial district. "I am upset that Bahrain is no longer a stable place."
Security forces dispersed about 350 protesters "by using tear gas," the government said. But traffic was clogged until late morning and many drivers sent messages of rage and frustration to social media sites.
"I blame the protesters for what's happened in Bahrain today," said Dana Nasser, 25, who was caught in the traffic chaos and never made it to her office.
About 2 miles away, police at the same time moved in on Pearl traffic circle, site of a monthlong occupation by members of Bahrain's Shiite majority calling for an elected government and equality with Bahrain's Sunnis.
Many protesters in recent days have pressed their demands further to call for the ouster of the Sunni dynasty that has held power for more than two centuries.
Witnesses said security forces surrounded the protests' tent compound, shooting tear gas and rubber bullets at the activists in the largest effort to clear the protesters since a deadly crackdown last month that left four dead.
Activists tried to stand their ground and chanted "Peaceful! peaceful!"
The crowd swelled into thousands with protesters streaming to the square to reinforce the activists' lines as police continued firing tear gas. By early afternoon, police pulled back from the square, eyewitnesses said.
At Bahrain University, Shiite demonstrators and government supporters held competing protests that descended into violence when plainclothes pro-government backers and security forces forced students who had been blocking the campus main gate to seek refuge in classrooms and lecture halls, said Layla al-Arab, an employee at the Arts Collage.
Two protesters sustained serious head injures and hundreds looked for medical help, mostly with breathing problems from tear gas, hospital officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
The Gulf kingdom holds particular importance to Washington as the host of the main American military counterweight to Iran's efforts to expand its armed forces and reach into the Gulf.
Bahrain has also tried hard to position itself as an attractive investment destination and Middle East banking center. Even the passport stamps issued to incoming visitors declare the kingdom as "Business-friendly Bahrain."
Friday, March 11, 2011
Then They Came for the Trade Unionists
by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wisconsin) is under fire for his budget proposal that eliminates collective bargaining rights for public sector union workers. (Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Megan McCormick / Flickr)
On this day, it behooves us to remember the words of Martin Niemoller.
"First they came for the communists," he wrote, "and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me."
I am a trade unionist, and yesterday in Wisconsin, they came for me. They came for you. They came for every working person in America, and their intent could not be more clear. Governor Scott Walker, along with the Koch Brothers and the right-wing radicals of the Republican Party, moved in darkness and with shameless deceit to gut the ability of dedicated laborers to bargain on an equal footing for the right to earn a living wage and to have access to decent health care.
Among other things, the bill as passed allows the state to fire anyone who participates in a strike. The story of the 20th century was written by workers who dared to face the truncheon in order to fight for their basic rights, and the strike was integral to that struggle. Any Wisconsin worker who dares to stand in defiance of The Bosses now faces personal annihilation, not just for themselves, but for their family. America was made in the struggle of union workers standing shoulder to shoulder in defiance of the idea that being rich means being right. That struggle is now in mortal peril, and the outcome affects all of us.
Fairness and the rule of law had no place in Wednesday's filthy action. This move was done in secret, without notice or announcement as required by Wisconsin law, and bears the stamp of the cowards and cretins who are responsible. Similar anti-worker legislation has been unfolding in Ohio, Indiana, Florida and more than a dozen other states. Those responsible claim such actions are necessary because of economic concerns, but the Wisconsin perpetrators tipped their hand. They stripped the bill in question of anything having to do with the state budget, so as to give them the chance to vote without a quorum...but the entire premise of their anti-union attack was that the destruction of collective bargaining was needed to salvage the state's financial situation. By gutting the bill of any semblance of budgetary issues, all they were left with is what they were after in the first place: the end of collective bargaining, the end of unions altogether, and by proxy, the end of the Democratic Party.
Eric Kleefeld, the excellent reporter for TalkingPointsMemo, and a Wisconsin native, exposed the endgame thusly:
The Democratic Party in Wisconsin is, to an extent that is not true in most other states, a genuine labor party -- a party that is intertwined with unions at the institutional level, with many politicians who have also been union officials or done legal work with unions, and which speaks for organized labor in key debates. They in turn compete with the Republican Party, which represents business interests as embodied by the state's Chamber group, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, in what has until now been a sometimes uneasy but nevertheless predictable political system.
In short, unions in Wisconsin are not just economic organizations made up of their respective workers - they are political institutions that are a major part of the state. As such, a change to the state's union laws that would threaten the existence of organized labor would in turn threaten the existence of the Democratic Party itself in Wisconsin, as people have known it for over half a century -- something that state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) may have accidentally alluded to earlier today.
On top of that, the class consciousness was especially ignited by Walker's phone call two weeks ago with blogger Ian Murphy, who was posing as Republican financier David Koch. During that call, Walker discussed his ideas for tricking the Democrats into coming back by pretending to negotiate, his ambition to bust the public employee unions in the mold of President Reagan firing the air traffic controllers, and that he had considered (but ruled out) planting troublemakers in the crowds of protesters. But beyond the specifics, the optics alone were amazing: The state's governor was seen buddying up to someone he believed to be a mega-rich donor from out of state.
Say what you will about the Democratic Party. For my part, I can say plenty, especially about President Obama's total absence during the three weeks this struggle has been going on, and about the White House's angry insistence that the fight in Wisconsin is merely "a distraction."
All Party nonsense aside, this is about a governor attacking people who work for a living, because they have the gall to believe standing together to fight for simple things like fair wages and basic health care is more important than a failing governor's ego or political aspirations.
The fact of the matter is that Governor Walker has unleashed a frontal assault on working people in his state because wealthy corporatists believe "Because I Say So" is enough. Make no mistake, friends. This is class warfare. It is brazen, unmistakable, and now out in the open. They have so much, but they want more. It has been made all too clear that they will gut your life, your rights, your everything, in order to get what they want, and what they want is absolute and total control.
Mr. Niemoller wrote his poem decades ago. It might read like this today:
First they declared corporations were "people," and I didn't complain because I'm already a person.
Then they made unlimited money "speech," and I didn't complain because the American Dream says I'll be rich someday, too.
Then they commandeered the means of production by shipping our greatest strength - manufacturing - overseas, because they don't have bothersome unions over there, and I didn't complain because WalMart has cheap stuff.
Then they bought Congress so they could write the laws, and I didn't complain because I can’t be bothered to vote.
Then they bought the Supreme Court so they could cement their rule, and I didn't complain because I don't have time to pay attention.
Then they bought the news so they could convince everyone it's always been this way, and I didn't complain because it's always been this way.
Then they manhandled an election and I didn't complain because I'm not from Florida.
Then they lied us into wars and I didn't complain because I'm not a soldier, or an Iraqi, or an Afghani.
Then millions died for profit and I didn't complain because the graphics on the news were totally awesome.
Then they started locking people up because they said they could and I didn't complain because nobody locked me up.
Then they started spying on everyone because they said they could and I didn't complain because I'm a real American.
Then they came for the worker, but thanks to supply-side trickle-down economics, I don't have a job.
This truth is self-evident.
They are coming for you, and they are relentless.
Stand up.
For your country, for your family, for yourself.
Stand up.
Be heard.
Strike!
Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wisconsin) is under fire for his budget proposal that eliminates collective bargaining rights for public sector union workers. (Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Megan McCormick / Flickr)
On this day, it behooves us to remember the words of Martin Niemoller.
"First they came for the communists," he wrote, "and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me."
I am a trade unionist, and yesterday in Wisconsin, they came for me. They came for you. They came for every working person in America, and their intent could not be more clear. Governor Scott Walker, along with the Koch Brothers and the right-wing radicals of the Republican Party, moved in darkness and with shameless deceit to gut the ability of dedicated laborers to bargain on an equal footing for the right to earn a living wage and to have access to decent health care.
Among other things, the bill as passed allows the state to fire anyone who participates in a strike. The story of the 20th century was written by workers who dared to face the truncheon in order to fight for their basic rights, and the strike was integral to that struggle. Any Wisconsin worker who dares to stand in defiance of The Bosses now faces personal annihilation, not just for themselves, but for their family. America was made in the struggle of union workers standing shoulder to shoulder in defiance of the idea that being rich means being right. That struggle is now in mortal peril, and the outcome affects all of us.
Fairness and the rule of law had no place in Wednesday's filthy action. This move was done in secret, without notice or announcement as required by Wisconsin law, and bears the stamp of the cowards and cretins who are responsible. Similar anti-worker legislation has been unfolding in Ohio, Indiana, Florida and more than a dozen other states. Those responsible claim such actions are necessary because of economic concerns, but the Wisconsin perpetrators tipped their hand. They stripped the bill in question of anything having to do with the state budget, so as to give them the chance to vote without a quorum...but the entire premise of their anti-union attack was that the destruction of collective bargaining was needed to salvage the state's financial situation. By gutting the bill of any semblance of budgetary issues, all they were left with is what they were after in the first place: the end of collective bargaining, the end of unions altogether, and by proxy, the end of the Democratic Party.
Eric Kleefeld, the excellent reporter for TalkingPointsMemo, and a Wisconsin native, exposed the endgame thusly:
The Democratic Party in Wisconsin is, to an extent that is not true in most other states, a genuine labor party -- a party that is intertwined with unions at the institutional level, with many politicians who have also been union officials or done legal work with unions, and which speaks for organized labor in key debates. They in turn compete with the Republican Party, which represents business interests as embodied by the state's Chamber group, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, in what has until now been a sometimes uneasy but nevertheless predictable political system.
In short, unions in Wisconsin are not just economic organizations made up of their respective workers - they are political institutions that are a major part of the state. As such, a change to the state's union laws that would threaten the existence of organized labor would in turn threaten the existence of the Democratic Party itself in Wisconsin, as people have known it for over half a century -- something that state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) may have accidentally alluded to earlier today.
On top of that, the class consciousness was especially ignited by Walker's phone call two weeks ago with blogger Ian Murphy, who was posing as Republican financier David Koch. During that call, Walker discussed his ideas for tricking the Democrats into coming back by pretending to negotiate, his ambition to bust the public employee unions in the mold of President Reagan firing the air traffic controllers, and that he had considered (but ruled out) planting troublemakers in the crowds of protesters. But beyond the specifics, the optics alone were amazing: The state's governor was seen buddying up to someone he believed to be a mega-rich donor from out of state.
Say what you will about the Democratic Party. For my part, I can say plenty, especially about President Obama's total absence during the three weeks this struggle has been going on, and about the White House's angry insistence that the fight in Wisconsin is merely "a distraction."
All Party nonsense aside, this is about a governor attacking people who work for a living, because they have the gall to believe standing together to fight for simple things like fair wages and basic health care is more important than a failing governor's ego or political aspirations.
The fact of the matter is that Governor Walker has unleashed a frontal assault on working people in his state because wealthy corporatists believe "Because I Say So" is enough. Make no mistake, friends. This is class warfare. It is brazen, unmistakable, and now out in the open. They have so much, but they want more. It has been made all too clear that they will gut your life, your rights, your everything, in order to get what they want, and what they want is absolute and total control.
Mr. Niemoller wrote his poem decades ago. It might read like this today:
First they declared corporations were "people," and I didn't complain because I'm already a person.
Then they made unlimited money "speech," and I didn't complain because the American Dream says I'll be rich someday, too.
Then they commandeered the means of production by shipping our greatest strength - manufacturing - overseas, because they don't have bothersome unions over there, and I didn't complain because WalMart has cheap stuff.
Then they bought Congress so they could write the laws, and I didn't complain because I can’t be bothered to vote.
Then they bought the Supreme Court so they could cement their rule, and I didn't complain because I don't have time to pay attention.
Then they bought the news so they could convince everyone it's always been this way, and I didn't complain because it's always been this way.
Then they manhandled an election and I didn't complain because I'm not from Florida.
Then they lied us into wars and I didn't complain because I'm not a soldier, or an Iraqi, or an Afghani.
Then millions died for profit and I didn't complain because the graphics on the news were totally awesome.
Then they started locking people up because they said they could and I didn't complain because nobody locked me up.
Then they started spying on everyone because they said they could and I didn't complain because I'm a real American.
Then they came for the worker, but thanks to supply-side trickle-down economics, I don't have a job.
This truth is self-evident.
They are coming for you, and they are relentless.
Stand up.
For your country, for your family, for yourself.
Stand up.
Be heard.
Strike!
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Madison a Foretaste of Things to Come: The Next Big Occupation Could Be Boomers Taking Over the Capitol Building
by: Dave Lindorff | This Can't Be Happening | News Analysis
Union supporters demonstrate outside the State Capitol as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker prepares to speak about the state budget at a joint session of the Legislature in Madison, Wis.(Photo: Nicole Bengiveno / The New York Times)
The dramatic and inspiring occupation of the Wisconsin Statehouse in Madison by angry public workers and their supporters over the past few weeks is an exciting preview of what we can expect to see in the halls of Congress before long, as right-wing forces, funded by corporate lobbies and corporate-funded think-tanks push hard for cutbacks in Social Security and Medicare.
The drive to undermine these two critically important social programs is moving into high gear as the 79-million Baby Boomers this year start to reach eligibility, even as their other assets--their homes and their investment portfolios--are still shriveled by the Wall Street heist known as the “fiscal crisis” and Great Recession.
For years, the right has been gravely warning of the supposedly looming “bankruptcy” of Social Security and the even more imminent “bankruptcy” of Medicare, as though these twin disasters for the elderly were an actuarial imperative. In fact, both programs are political creations, whose problems have political causes and political solutions.
Social Security is starting to draw down the huge reserves it had built up, not because of an increase in retirees (the bulge in retirees hasn't hit yet), but because the share of national income that is subject to the Social Security FICA tax has fallen, from 90% back in the 1980s to just 84% now, as the wealthy have appropriated an increasingly large share of the total national income. If more of the income of the rich were slapped with the FICA tax, to bring the total share of income subject to FICA back to 90%, there would be plenty of money to pay promised benefits into the foreseeable future. The same can be said of Medicare. More taxes on the rich would ensure the funding of that program too.
There is no inherent reason why only the first $106,000 of a person’s income should be subject to the FICA tax. It could be the first $200,000, or the first $500,000, and if it were the latter, we could be talking about improving benefits for retirees, or lowering the retirement age, not just preserving current levels. Benefits could be better still if investment income were no longer exempted from a FICA tax (and the Medicare tax).
But here’s the big point: Corporate America, and its political lackeys in the Republican and Democratic Parties, know that they are about to confront a dramatically more powerful protagonist in their campaign to kill Social Security and Medicare: the Boomer Retirees.
The so-called Senior Lobby is already enormously powerful. That’s why Social Security has so far largely defied concerted efforts by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush to undermine it, and it’s why Republicans and conservative Democrats running for national office always hasten to claim they are not going to threaten Social Security or Medicare, or at least that they won’t threaten “current beneficiaries.” It’s why they call Social Security the “third rail” of American politics: touch it and you die (for those of you unfortunate enough to live where there are no subways, the third rail is the “hot” rail that carries the electricity to power the electric trains).
But a Boomer retiree population will be two times the size of the current retiree population. That means that just in terms of the number of potential voters, it will be two times as powerful. But that’s only part of the story. The new generation of retirees are the people who came of political age in the late 1950s during the Civil Rights movement, and the 1960s and ‘70s during the anti-war movement and the feminist movement. We are veterans of both engaged electoral politics (witness that support our generation gave to the insurgent campaigns of Eugene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy and George McGovern, as well as a host of more successful Congressional campaigns), and of powerful and of successful militant street politics.
What we showed back then in our youth and our formative young-adult years was that when our interests were on the line, as they were with the draft, or when we saw a gross injustice, as was the case with Jim Crow, we knew how to fight politically. I'm not suggesting that the people born in the decade and a half after World War II are particularly radical, but I am suggesting that when this age cohort gets riled and the right issue or issues sets the spark, we've got the spirit and experience to take that struggle to the streets and the halls of Congress. And both our personal interests and our sense of justice are certainly on the line when it comes to the growing attack on Social Security and Medicare.
Just one example. I spent a year teaching at Alfred University, a little liberal arts school in the middle of nowhere in western New York State. It was the 1990-91 school year--the year the US invaded Iraq and "liberated" Kuwait. Students who opposed the war came to me and asked me what to do. I didn't want to "lead" them, but they just had no idea where to start. "How can we get students here to wake up?" these kids asked me. I said, "What are you thinking of doing? They said they thought they might go down to the main street (the only street!) that runs through the little town of Alfred, and hold signs against the war. "How will that get the students to come out and join you?" I asked. They agreed it wouldn't help. It was winter, and who'd even be down there? So finally I asked, "What if you marched through campus, calling the kids to leave class and join you?" The kids looked shocked. "March through the campus? Outside? or in the buildings?" I said, "You have to decide." Again they looked shocked. But that was what was decided. They began marching the next day, with anti-war signs, crying "Join us!" Their numbers swelled. Eventually there were hundreds of them, and so they marched down to Main Street, but instead of just standing on the sidewalk with their signs, they took over the street and shut it down! My role, small enough, was just to remind them of what was possible. They took it from there.
My prediction: As the number of Boomers nearing or entering retirement soars, and the number anticipating or signing up for Medicare soars over the next few years, we will see massive national campaigns grow around not just saving these programs but expanding and improving them. With traditional pensions vanishing, and with IRAs and 401(k) plans having been exposed as the shams they are, we are going to see an irresistable demand grow for Social Security benefits to be raised, particularly for poorer retirees, so that all Americans can have a secure old age. And we will see another irresistable political drive to have Medicare not just improved but broadened to cover all Americans, as we Boomers recognize that it makes no sense at all to have a program that only covers the oldest and sickest of Americans, and not the younger and healthier population (our own kids and grandkids!). We will realize that it is in our interest to have all Americans invested fully in supporting a well-funded national Medicare program.
And if we don’t get it, we will be ready and willing to do what the public employees of Wisconsin are doing now--or more.
Hold on to your seats (and your walkers)! The new Boomer retirees are coming!
Union supporters demonstrate outside the State Capitol as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker prepares to speak about the state budget at a joint session of the Legislature in Madison, Wis.(Photo: Nicole Bengiveno / The New York Times)
The dramatic and inspiring occupation of the Wisconsin Statehouse in Madison by angry public workers and their supporters over the past few weeks is an exciting preview of what we can expect to see in the halls of Congress before long, as right-wing forces, funded by corporate lobbies and corporate-funded think-tanks push hard for cutbacks in Social Security and Medicare.
The drive to undermine these two critically important social programs is moving into high gear as the 79-million Baby Boomers this year start to reach eligibility, even as their other assets--their homes and their investment portfolios--are still shriveled by the Wall Street heist known as the “fiscal crisis” and Great Recession.
For years, the right has been gravely warning of the supposedly looming “bankruptcy” of Social Security and the even more imminent “bankruptcy” of Medicare, as though these twin disasters for the elderly were an actuarial imperative. In fact, both programs are political creations, whose problems have political causes and political solutions.
Social Security is starting to draw down the huge reserves it had built up, not because of an increase in retirees (the bulge in retirees hasn't hit yet), but because the share of national income that is subject to the Social Security FICA tax has fallen, from 90% back in the 1980s to just 84% now, as the wealthy have appropriated an increasingly large share of the total national income. If more of the income of the rich were slapped with the FICA tax, to bring the total share of income subject to FICA back to 90%, there would be plenty of money to pay promised benefits into the foreseeable future. The same can be said of Medicare. More taxes on the rich would ensure the funding of that program too.
There is no inherent reason why only the first $106,000 of a person’s income should be subject to the FICA tax. It could be the first $200,000, or the first $500,000, and if it were the latter, we could be talking about improving benefits for retirees, or lowering the retirement age, not just preserving current levels. Benefits could be better still if investment income were no longer exempted from a FICA tax (and the Medicare tax).
But here’s the big point: Corporate America, and its political lackeys in the Republican and Democratic Parties, know that they are about to confront a dramatically more powerful protagonist in their campaign to kill Social Security and Medicare: the Boomer Retirees.
The so-called Senior Lobby is already enormously powerful. That’s why Social Security has so far largely defied concerted efforts by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush to undermine it, and it’s why Republicans and conservative Democrats running for national office always hasten to claim they are not going to threaten Social Security or Medicare, or at least that they won’t threaten “current beneficiaries.” It’s why they call Social Security the “third rail” of American politics: touch it and you die (for those of you unfortunate enough to live where there are no subways, the third rail is the “hot” rail that carries the electricity to power the electric trains).
But a Boomer retiree population will be two times the size of the current retiree population. That means that just in terms of the number of potential voters, it will be two times as powerful. But that’s only part of the story. The new generation of retirees are the people who came of political age in the late 1950s during the Civil Rights movement, and the 1960s and ‘70s during the anti-war movement and the feminist movement. We are veterans of both engaged electoral politics (witness that support our generation gave to the insurgent campaigns of Eugene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy and George McGovern, as well as a host of more successful Congressional campaigns), and of powerful and of successful militant street politics.
What we showed back then in our youth and our formative young-adult years was that when our interests were on the line, as they were with the draft, or when we saw a gross injustice, as was the case with Jim Crow, we knew how to fight politically. I'm not suggesting that the people born in the decade and a half after World War II are particularly radical, but I am suggesting that when this age cohort gets riled and the right issue or issues sets the spark, we've got the spirit and experience to take that struggle to the streets and the halls of Congress. And both our personal interests and our sense of justice are certainly on the line when it comes to the growing attack on Social Security and Medicare.
Just one example. I spent a year teaching at Alfred University, a little liberal arts school in the middle of nowhere in western New York State. It was the 1990-91 school year--the year the US invaded Iraq and "liberated" Kuwait. Students who opposed the war came to me and asked me what to do. I didn't want to "lead" them, but they just had no idea where to start. "How can we get students here to wake up?" these kids asked me. I said, "What are you thinking of doing? They said they thought they might go down to the main street (the only street!) that runs through the little town of Alfred, and hold signs against the war. "How will that get the students to come out and join you?" I asked. They agreed it wouldn't help. It was winter, and who'd even be down there? So finally I asked, "What if you marched through campus, calling the kids to leave class and join you?" The kids looked shocked. "March through the campus? Outside? or in the buildings?" I said, "You have to decide." Again they looked shocked. But that was what was decided. They began marching the next day, with anti-war signs, crying "Join us!" Their numbers swelled. Eventually there were hundreds of them, and so they marched down to Main Street, but instead of just standing on the sidewalk with their signs, they took over the street and shut it down! My role, small enough, was just to remind them of what was possible. They took it from there.
My prediction: As the number of Boomers nearing or entering retirement soars, and the number anticipating or signing up for Medicare soars over the next few years, we will see massive national campaigns grow around not just saving these programs but expanding and improving them. With traditional pensions vanishing, and with IRAs and 401(k) plans having been exposed as the shams they are, we are going to see an irresistable demand grow for Social Security benefits to be raised, particularly for poorer retirees, so that all Americans can have a secure old age. And we will see another irresistable political drive to have Medicare not just improved but broadened to cover all Americans, as we Boomers recognize that it makes no sense at all to have a program that only covers the oldest and sickest of Americans, and not the younger and healthier population (our own kids and grandkids!). We will realize that it is in our interest to have all Americans invested fully in supporting a well-funded national Medicare program.
And if we don’t get it, we will be ready and willing to do what the public employees of Wisconsin are doing now--or more.
Hold on to your seats (and your walkers)! The new Boomer retirees are coming!
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Isolation: “The Ideal Way Of ‘Breaking Down’ A Prisoner”
By: Jeff Kaye
The isolation and degradation of Bradley Manning by the Marine Corps penal authorities at the Quantico brig represents a significant acceleration of government torture policy, as it is meant, among other things, to further desensitize the U.S. population to the use of torture. Torture will be used on political dissidents in this country, that is clear now, and PFC Manning is the first, but there will be others.
How bad is isolation? Bad enough that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld himself felt it warranted a “caution” in his April 16, 2003 memo authorizing certain aggressive forms of interrogation, i.e., torture.
Caution: the use of isolation as an interrogation technique requires detailed implementation instructions, including specific guidelines regarding the length of isolation, medical and psychological review, and approvals for extension of the length of by the appropriate level in the chain of command. This technique is not known to have been generally used for interrogation purposes for longer than 30 days. Those nations that believe that detainees are subject to POW protections may view use of this technique as inconsistent with the requirements of Geneva III, Article 13 which provides that POWs must be protected against acts of intimidation; Article 14 which provides that POWs are entitled to respect for their person; Article 34 which prohibits coercion and Article 126 which ensures access and basic standards of treatment. Although the provisions of Geneva are not applicable to the interrogation of unlawful combatants, consideration should be given to these views prior to application of this technique.
Rumsfeld — bureaucrat that he is — concentrates on the legal obstacles to the use of isolation. But the psychological components have been well studied for decades. The following is from a 1961 article on use of isolation for interrogations written by Lawrence Hinkle, then a psychiatrist at Cornell Medical Center, and a CIA consultant (link to quote can be found here, emphasis in quote is mine):
It is well known that prisoners, especially if they have not been isolated before, may develop a syndrome similar in most of its features to the “brain syndrome”…. They become dull, apathetic, and in due time they become disoriented and confused; their memories become defective and they experience hallucinations and delusions…. their ability to impart accurate information may be as much impaired as their capacity to resist an interrogator….From the interrogator’s viewpoint it has seemed to be the ideal way of “breaking down” a prisoner, because, to the unsophisticated, it seems to create precisely the state that the interrogator desires: malleability and the desire to talk, with the added advantage that one can delude himself that he is using no force or coercion…. However, the effect of isolation on the brain function of the prisoner is much like that which occurs if he is beaten, starved, or deprived of sleep.
In the Camp Delta Guantanamo camp-wide SOP, declassified a few years ago, isolation was described as a tactic meant “to enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee” by isolating him or her in a Maximum Security cell, without even access to Red Cross or religious personnel, for at least the first four weeks upon arrival. Such isolation is meant to deprive the prisoner of all social support and “ability to resist.”
Indeed, it appears that the Marines are implementing the SERE “Coercive Management Techniques,” themselves modeled after Albert Biderman’s Chart of Coercion, which was taught to interrogators at Guantanamo. What are these “coercive management techniques”? I outlined them in an article in June 2008, which also examined the ways JPRA/SERE personnel taught their techniques to Guantanamo interrogators and “behavioral consultants”:
1. Isolation: This deprives the prisoner of all social support and “ability to resist”. While turning the prisoner upon his own resources, it “makes victim dependent upon interrogator” (quotes are from the SERE version). Furthermore, isolation can be complete, semi, or “group isolation”.
2. Monopolisation of Perception: This means again “physical isolation. Darkness or bright light. Barren environment. Restricted movement. Monotonous food.” The goal? To fixate the prisoner upon his “immediate predicament”, the technique also “eliminates stimuli competing with those controlled by captor,” frustrating all action “not consistent with compliance.”
3. Induced Debilitation and Exhaustion: This is what it seems to be, i.e., a method to weaken a prisoners’ “mental and physical ability to resist.” Techniques include: “Semi-starvation. Exposure. Exploitation of wounds. Induced illness. Sleep deprivation. Prolonged constraint. Prolonged interrogation” and “over-exertion”, among other practices (tortures!)
4. Threats: Which “cultivates anxiety and despair”, including threats of death, non return, “endless interrogation and isolation”, threats against family, and “mysterious changes of treatment”.
5. Occasional indulgences: To provide positive motivation for compliance, it also has the effect of hindering “adjustment to deprivation.”
6. Demonstrating “Omnipotence” and “Omniscience”: The purpose of this is said to suggest to the prisoner the “futility of resistance”. How is this done? By “demonstrating complete control over victim’s fate”. (And this, by the way, is a crucial way that the ban on habeas corpus for these prisoners, recently overturned by the Supreme Court, fed into the military’s torture program, by demonstrating that there was no appeal to anyone.)
7. Degradation: This is where one finds the prevention of personal hygiene, the insults, taunts, “demeaning punishments” and “denial of privacy”. The goal was to damage prisoner self esteem, making “capitulation” a lesser evil. It also “reduces the prisoner to ‘animal level’ concerns.” [Forced nakedness or stripping of the prisoner would come under this category. In fact, "stripping" or "forceful removal of detainee's clothing" was part of the 2002 SERE SOP "coercive management techniques, "used to demonstrate the omnipotence of the captor or to debilitate the detainee."]
8. Enforcing Trivial Demands: Again the point is to develop compliance in the captive, and takes place through “enforcement of minute rules.”
So there you have it, these are the “principles” the SERE instructors insisted future trainers for interrogators at Guantanamo (and since SERE instruction migrated to Iraq and Afghanistan as well, we can presume there as well) “be thoroughly prepared to discuss and explain”.
I suppose we can say these techniques have now migrated to Quantico as well, and so the torture virus enters the domestic body bloodstream, through its military vector.
Make no mistake, we are living in a totally lawless world, where there is no accountability for great crimes, whether those crimes be the torture of countless thousands, the aggressive bombing and devastation of non-attacking countries, violations of privacy against ordinary citizens, or the rape and pillage of the economies of the world for the benefit of a privileged few.
The isolation and degradation of Bradley Manning by the Marine Corps penal authorities at the Quantico brig represents a significant acceleration of government torture policy, as it is meant, among other things, to further desensitize the U.S. population to the use of torture. Torture will be used on political dissidents in this country, that is clear now, and PFC Manning is the first, but there will be others.
How bad is isolation? Bad enough that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld himself felt it warranted a “caution” in his April 16, 2003 memo authorizing certain aggressive forms of interrogation, i.e., torture.
Caution: the use of isolation as an interrogation technique requires detailed implementation instructions, including specific guidelines regarding the length of isolation, medical and psychological review, and approvals for extension of the length of by the appropriate level in the chain of command. This technique is not known to have been generally used for interrogation purposes for longer than 30 days. Those nations that believe that detainees are subject to POW protections may view use of this technique as inconsistent with the requirements of Geneva III, Article 13 which provides that POWs must be protected against acts of intimidation; Article 14 which provides that POWs are entitled to respect for their person; Article 34 which prohibits coercion and Article 126 which ensures access and basic standards of treatment. Although the provisions of Geneva are not applicable to the interrogation of unlawful combatants, consideration should be given to these views prior to application of this technique.
Rumsfeld — bureaucrat that he is — concentrates on the legal obstacles to the use of isolation. But the psychological components have been well studied for decades. The following is from a 1961 article on use of isolation for interrogations written by Lawrence Hinkle, then a psychiatrist at Cornell Medical Center, and a CIA consultant (link to quote can be found here, emphasis in quote is mine):
It is well known that prisoners, especially if they have not been isolated before, may develop a syndrome similar in most of its features to the “brain syndrome”…. They become dull, apathetic, and in due time they become disoriented and confused; their memories become defective and they experience hallucinations and delusions…. their ability to impart accurate information may be as much impaired as their capacity to resist an interrogator….From the interrogator’s viewpoint it has seemed to be the ideal way of “breaking down” a prisoner, because, to the unsophisticated, it seems to create precisely the state that the interrogator desires: malleability and the desire to talk, with the added advantage that one can delude himself that he is using no force or coercion…. However, the effect of isolation on the brain function of the prisoner is much like that which occurs if he is beaten, starved, or deprived of sleep.
In the Camp Delta Guantanamo camp-wide SOP, declassified a few years ago, isolation was described as a tactic meant “to enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee” by isolating him or her in a Maximum Security cell, without even access to Red Cross or religious personnel, for at least the first four weeks upon arrival. Such isolation is meant to deprive the prisoner of all social support and “ability to resist.”
Indeed, it appears that the Marines are implementing the SERE “Coercive Management Techniques,” themselves modeled after Albert Biderman’s Chart of Coercion, which was taught to interrogators at Guantanamo. What are these “coercive management techniques”? I outlined them in an article in June 2008, which also examined the ways JPRA/SERE personnel taught their techniques to Guantanamo interrogators and “behavioral consultants”:
1. Isolation: This deprives the prisoner of all social support and “ability to resist”. While turning the prisoner upon his own resources, it “makes victim dependent upon interrogator” (quotes are from the SERE version). Furthermore, isolation can be complete, semi, or “group isolation”.
2. Monopolisation of Perception: This means again “physical isolation. Darkness or bright light. Barren environment. Restricted movement. Monotonous food.” The goal? To fixate the prisoner upon his “immediate predicament”, the technique also “eliminates stimuli competing with those controlled by captor,” frustrating all action “not consistent with compliance.”
3. Induced Debilitation and Exhaustion: This is what it seems to be, i.e., a method to weaken a prisoners’ “mental and physical ability to resist.” Techniques include: “Semi-starvation. Exposure. Exploitation of wounds. Induced illness. Sleep deprivation. Prolonged constraint. Prolonged interrogation” and “over-exertion”, among other practices (tortures!)
4. Threats: Which “cultivates anxiety and despair”, including threats of death, non return, “endless interrogation and isolation”, threats against family, and “mysterious changes of treatment”.
5. Occasional indulgences: To provide positive motivation for compliance, it also has the effect of hindering “adjustment to deprivation.”
6. Demonstrating “Omnipotence” and “Omniscience”: The purpose of this is said to suggest to the prisoner the “futility of resistance”. How is this done? By “demonstrating complete control over victim’s fate”. (And this, by the way, is a crucial way that the ban on habeas corpus for these prisoners, recently overturned by the Supreme Court, fed into the military’s torture program, by demonstrating that there was no appeal to anyone.)
7. Degradation: This is where one finds the prevention of personal hygiene, the insults, taunts, “demeaning punishments” and “denial of privacy”. The goal was to damage prisoner self esteem, making “capitulation” a lesser evil. It also “reduces the prisoner to ‘animal level’ concerns.” [Forced nakedness or stripping of the prisoner would come under this category. In fact, "stripping" or "forceful removal of detainee's clothing" was part of the 2002 SERE SOP "coercive management techniques, "used to demonstrate the omnipotence of the captor or to debilitate the detainee."]
8. Enforcing Trivial Demands: Again the point is to develop compliance in the captive, and takes place through “enforcement of minute rules.”
So there you have it, these are the “principles” the SERE instructors insisted future trainers for interrogators at Guantanamo (and since SERE instruction migrated to Iraq and Afghanistan as well, we can presume there as well) “be thoroughly prepared to discuss and explain”.
I suppose we can say these techniques have now migrated to Quantico as well, and so the torture virus enters the domestic body bloodstream, through its military vector.
Make no mistake, we are living in a totally lawless world, where there is no accountability for great crimes, whether those crimes be the torture of countless thousands, the aggressive bombing and devastation of non-attacking countries, violations of privacy against ordinary citizens, or the rape and pillage of the economies of the world for the benefit of a privileged few.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Anonymous actively probing Koch brothers' corporate networks
By Crystal Chatham, AP
There was nothing terribly sophisticated about the denial-of-service attack executed by the activist hackers at Anonymous to temporarily knock out the website of Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group backed by billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch.
But the senior execs at Georgia Pacific and other corporate holdings controlled by the Koch brothers ought to be very nervous. Anonymous, best known for similarly crippling websites of firms hostile to WikiLeaks, says it has begun actively probing for network weaknesses in Georgia Pacific and other Koch brothers' holdings.
Should the activist hackers succeed in cracking into any of the Koch brothers' corporate networks, Anonymous could solidify its emerging persona as a digital-age Robin Hood, says Josh Shaul, chief technology officer of network security company Application Security.
"These guys have so much attitude and spunk," says Shaul. " Anonymous is coming out of its shell and seems to be saying, 'Hey, we'll be the voice of the people, we'll be the Robin Hood fighting for the poor against the powerful.' "
In this statement, Anonymous accuses the Koch brothers of "fabricating grass-roots organizations and advertising campaigns to sway voters based on their falsehoods." The statement concludes:
Anonymous hears the voice of the downtrodden American people, whose rights and liberties are being systematically removed one by one, even when their own government refuses to listen or worse -- is complicit in these attacks. We are actively seeking vulnerabilities, but in the meantime we are calling for all supporters of true Democracy, and Freedom of The People, to boycott all Koch Industries' paper products. We welcome unions across the globe to join us in this boycott to show that you will not allow big business to dictate your freedom.
The group's highest-profile hack to date shows what it is capable of. On Feb. 5, a group of five elite hackers gained deep access to data intelligence firm HBGary, defaced and damaged most if its systems, and stole 77,000 e-mails from the Google Enterprise cloud-based service used by the company.
Upon being made public on the Internet, the stolen e-mails were pored over by reporters and activists; they revealed stunning details of how high-stakes, corporate-backed disinformation campaigns get birthed.
Click here to read about the pivotal role a 16-year-old girl played in that hack. The lightning rod in that caper -- HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr -- on Monday announced his resignation. Barr will go down in tech history as the disinformation expert who stirred Anonymous into a higher gear -- by bragging that he had identified the group's leaders and planning to expose them on Valentine's Day at the Security B-Sides conference in San Francisco.
Though corporations have spent billions shoring up network perimeter defenses, determined hackers routinely gain deep access into corporate systems. They do so by combining simple social-engineering trickery with proven hacking tools.
We recently published this news story about how one cybergang stole more than $50 million by setting up an elaborate series of stings of European companies participating in Europe's carbon-credits exchange. Another gang got deep into Nasdaq's Directors Desk cloud collaboration tool for senior executives, where they lurked for more than a year before recently being detected.
The activist hackers at Anonymous have demonstrated knowledge and skills of the techniques used by top hacking groups that concentrate on breaking into corporate networks for profit.
"They better be concerned," Shaul says of the Koch brothers. "What Anonymous is saying is, 'We're getting ready to execute whatever attack we can, so you better be worried. In the meantime, we're going to be a big pain.' "
Update: 5:50 p.m Eastern. A Michael Goldfarb called Technology Live and identified himself as a spokesman for Koch Industries. Goldfarb requested to go off the record for a "substantive discussion." We declined. The caller declined to comment on the Anonymous attack.
There was nothing terribly sophisticated about the denial-of-service attack executed by the activist hackers at Anonymous to temporarily knock out the website of Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group backed by billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch.
But the senior execs at Georgia Pacific and other corporate holdings controlled by the Koch brothers ought to be very nervous. Anonymous, best known for similarly crippling websites of firms hostile to WikiLeaks, says it has begun actively probing for network weaknesses in Georgia Pacific and other Koch brothers' holdings.
Should the activist hackers succeed in cracking into any of the Koch brothers' corporate networks, Anonymous could solidify its emerging persona as a digital-age Robin Hood, says Josh Shaul, chief technology officer of network security company Application Security.
"These guys have so much attitude and spunk," says Shaul. " Anonymous is coming out of its shell and seems to be saying, 'Hey, we'll be the voice of the people, we'll be the Robin Hood fighting for the poor against the powerful.' "
In this statement, Anonymous accuses the Koch brothers of "fabricating grass-roots organizations and advertising campaigns to sway voters based on their falsehoods." The statement concludes:
Anonymous hears the voice of the downtrodden American people, whose rights and liberties are being systematically removed one by one, even when their own government refuses to listen or worse -- is complicit in these attacks. We are actively seeking vulnerabilities, but in the meantime we are calling for all supporters of true Democracy, and Freedom of The People, to boycott all Koch Industries' paper products. We welcome unions across the globe to join us in this boycott to show that you will not allow big business to dictate your freedom.
The group's highest-profile hack to date shows what it is capable of. On Feb. 5, a group of five elite hackers gained deep access to data intelligence firm HBGary, defaced and damaged most if its systems, and stole 77,000 e-mails from the Google Enterprise cloud-based service used by the company.
Upon being made public on the Internet, the stolen e-mails were pored over by reporters and activists; they revealed stunning details of how high-stakes, corporate-backed disinformation campaigns get birthed.
Click here to read about the pivotal role a 16-year-old girl played in that hack. The lightning rod in that caper -- HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr -- on Monday announced his resignation. Barr will go down in tech history as the disinformation expert who stirred Anonymous into a higher gear -- by bragging that he had identified the group's leaders and planning to expose them on Valentine's Day at the Security B-Sides conference in San Francisco.
Though corporations have spent billions shoring up network perimeter defenses, determined hackers routinely gain deep access into corporate systems. They do so by combining simple social-engineering trickery with proven hacking tools.
We recently published this news story about how one cybergang stole more than $50 million by setting up an elaborate series of stings of European companies participating in Europe's carbon-credits exchange. Another gang got deep into Nasdaq's Directors Desk cloud collaboration tool for senior executives, where they lurked for more than a year before recently being detected.
The activist hackers at Anonymous have demonstrated knowledge and skills of the techniques used by top hacking groups that concentrate on breaking into corporate networks for profit.
"They better be concerned," Shaul says of the Koch brothers. "What Anonymous is saying is, 'We're getting ready to execute whatever attack we can, so you better be worried. In the meantime, we're going to be a big pain.' "
Update: 5:50 p.m Eastern. A Michael Goldfarb called Technology Live and identified himself as a spokesman for Koch Industries. Goldfarb requested to go off the record for a "substantive discussion." We declined. The caller declined to comment on the Anonymous attack.
Walker must go! For a general strike in Wisconsin!
By David North
The budget presented by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker on Tuesday has caused profound shock and outrage among workers throughout the state. It has now become clear to hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin workers and their families that they are confronted with a ruthless attempt to drastically lower their living standards, eviscerate crucial social services and benefits, and strip away their democratic rights.
Walker is demanding cuts of at least $1.5 billion from the state’s budget to close a deficit that has been created, to a great extent, by his recent massive reduction of tax rates for large corporations.
These cuts include:
$1.25 billion in cuts to school aid and local government, including a reduction of more than $900 million in education funding statewide, which translates into a cut of approximately $500 per pupil.
$500 million in cuts from Medicaid, which finances critical state health programs for more than one million Wisconsin residents. The impact on low-income and uninsured adults and families with children will be devastating.
$250 million will be cut from funding for the University of Wisconsin. Moreover, as part of a privatization scheme that will serve the interests of wealthy investors, the Madison branch of the University of Wisconsin will be carved off from the state system. This will cost the jobs of at least 17,000 UW workers and lead to a sharp increase in college tuition costs over the next two years.
The Walker budget document is a declaration of war. His inclusion of further demands for the elimination of collective bargaining follows logically from his budget proposals. The cuts that he is calling for make a mockery of “bargaining,” because his budget proposals require, by their very nature, the complete surrender by workers to his unilateral demands.
The oft-repeated position of union officials—that they are prepared to accept Walker’s budget cuts if only he steps back from his demand for an end to collective bargaining—is not only cowardly, it represents a dangerous evasion of the political reality that exists in Wisconsin.
The term “collective bargaining” means nothing at all if unions are prepared to accept the dictates of state governments, which are acting in the interests of the capitalist bosses of the banks and industry. Collective bargaining did not emerge in the form of a permission slip granted by generous corporations to the workers. It was wrested from the capitalist class in the course of decades of bitter conflict for social and democratic rights, in which countless thousands of workers’ lives were lost. In the final analysis, collective bargaining existed only to the extent that workers were prepared to exercise the weapon of the strike to overcome the intransigence of the capitalist class and its political hirelings in local, state and federal government.
Walker’s budget signifies in practice, if not yet in law, the collapse of collective bargaining. His administration is ramming a brutal and socially destructive budget down the throats of Wisconsin working people and their families.
How should the working class in Wisconsin respond to this political reality?
In recent days, there has been a growing realization among working people throughout Wisconsin that protests in the state capital are insufficient and that they must escalate their struggle.
Sentiment is building for a general strike by the working class. Wisconsin workers, in ever greater numbers, are coming to realize that nothing short of a massive mobilization of their collective strength will be sufficient to beat back the attack of the Walker administration.
This sentiment is justified and corresponds to the political reality that exists in Wisconsin and, increasingly, throughout the United States. The collapse of collective bargaining-—that is, the attempt of the state to impose, with the implicit threat of force, intolerable and unacceptable demands upon workers—has a profound objective significance. The ruling class is telling working people: “We do not negotiate. We demand. You must accept our terms.”
This signifies, in effect, the end of compromise between the classes. The growing recognition of this political reality among workers lies behind the rising sentiment for a general strike.
It is necessary for workers who have come to this conclusion to build the momentum for a general strike. Talk about a general strike must turn toward its actual preparation.
In every work place, meetings should be called to discuss, debate and vote on a resolution for a general strike. Wherever substantial support exists for a general strike, rank-and-file committees, independent of union officials, should be formed to prepare for this action.
This movement should base the call for a general strike on the following demands:
* Total rejection of all economic concessions by the Wisconsin workers. Instead, social spending should be increased to meet the pressing problems created by three years of recession caused by the criminal speculative activities of the banks.
* Unequivocal rejection of any and all restrictions on the legal right of workers to negotiate and, when they so decide, strike to defend and improve their standard of living.
* For a substantial increase in taxes on corporate profits and the very rich to cover the budget deficit and the costs of new and essential social spending.
* For the immediate resignation of Governor Walker and his reactionary administration. Walker has deliberately made himself the political spearhead of the corporate attack on the working class and the use of dictatorial methods. The demand for his removal from office arises from the recognition that the struggle of Wisconsin workers against this budget is, in essence, a political struggle.
The call for Walker’s removal does not imply a vote of confidence in the Democratic Party. Beyond the borders of Wisconsin there are Democratic Party governors and mayors who are calling for budget cuts no less draconian than those sought by Walker. The Obama administration is collaborating with the state governors and the Congress in Washington in the implementation of budget cuts that will wreak havoc on the lives of workers throughout the country.
However, inspired by the example set by Wisconsin workers, the fight against the attacks on workers’ rights will expand from state to state and across the country as a whole, in opposition to all the political representatives of the capitalist class.
Thus, the demand for Walker’s removal raises the most important issue of all—the necessity for workers to create their own, independent, socialist alternative to the corporate-controlled Republican and Democratic parties.
The Socialist Equality Party supports and encourages the movement for a general strike against the Walker administration and its reactionary budget. The growing sentiment among workers that such action is necessary testifies to the intensity of social conflict in the United States. However, we urge workers to recognize that they are fighting not just one governor, but the capitalist class as a whole and the profit system upon which its rule is based.
The budget presented by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker on Tuesday has caused profound shock and outrage among workers throughout the state. It has now become clear to hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin workers and their families that they are confronted with a ruthless attempt to drastically lower their living standards, eviscerate crucial social services and benefits, and strip away their democratic rights.
Walker is demanding cuts of at least $1.5 billion from the state’s budget to close a deficit that has been created, to a great extent, by his recent massive reduction of tax rates for large corporations.
These cuts include:
$1.25 billion in cuts to school aid and local government, including a reduction of more than $900 million in education funding statewide, which translates into a cut of approximately $500 per pupil.
$500 million in cuts from Medicaid, which finances critical state health programs for more than one million Wisconsin residents. The impact on low-income and uninsured adults and families with children will be devastating.
$250 million will be cut from funding for the University of Wisconsin. Moreover, as part of a privatization scheme that will serve the interests of wealthy investors, the Madison branch of the University of Wisconsin will be carved off from the state system. This will cost the jobs of at least 17,000 UW workers and lead to a sharp increase in college tuition costs over the next two years.
The Walker budget document is a declaration of war. His inclusion of further demands for the elimination of collective bargaining follows logically from his budget proposals. The cuts that he is calling for make a mockery of “bargaining,” because his budget proposals require, by their very nature, the complete surrender by workers to his unilateral demands.
The oft-repeated position of union officials—that they are prepared to accept Walker’s budget cuts if only he steps back from his demand for an end to collective bargaining—is not only cowardly, it represents a dangerous evasion of the political reality that exists in Wisconsin.
The term “collective bargaining” means nothing at all if unions are prepared to accept the dictates of state governments, which are acting in the interests of the capitalist bosses of the banks and industry. Collective bargaining did not emerge in the form of a permission slip granted by generous corporations to the workers. It was wrested from the capitalist class in the course of decades of bitter conflict for social and democratic rights, in which countless thousands of workers’ lives were lost. In the final analysis, collective bargaining existed only to the extent that workers were prepared to exercise the weapon of the strike to overcome the intransigence of the capitalist class and its political hirelings in local, state and federal government.
Walker’s budget signifies in practice, if not yet in law, the collapse of collective bargaining. His administration is ramming a brutal and socially destructive budget down the throats of Wisconsin working people and their families.
How should the working class in Wisconsin respond to this political reality?
In recent days, there has been a growing realization among working people throughout Wisconsin that protests in the state capital are insufficient and that they must escalate their struggle.
Sentiment is building for a general strike by the working class. Wisconsin workers, in ever greater numbers, are coming to realize that nothing short of a massive mobilization of their collective strength will be sufficient to beat back the attack of the Walker administration.
This sentiment is justified and corresponds to the political reality that exists in Wisconsin and, increasingly, throughout the United States. The collapse of collective bargaining-—that is, the attempt of the state to impose, with the implicit threat of force, intolerable and unacceptable demands upon workers—has a profound objective significance. The ruling class is telling working people: “We do not negotiate. We demand. You must accept our terms.”
This signifies, in effect, the end of compromise between the classes. The growing recognition of this political reality among workers lies behind the rising sentiment for a general strike.
It is necessary for workers who have come to this conclusion to build the momentum for a general strike. Talk about a general strike must turn toward its actual preparation.
In every work place, meetings should be called to discuss, debate and vote on a resolution for a general strike. Wherever substantial support exists for a general strike, rank-and-file committees, independent of union officials, should be formed to prepare for this action.
This movement should base the call for a general strike on the following demands:
* Total rejection of all economic concessions by the Wisconsin workers. Instead, social spending should be increased to meet the pressing problems created by three years of recession caused by the criminal speculative activities of the banks.
* Unequivocal rejection of any and all restrictions on the legal right of workers to negotiate and, when they so decide, strike to defend and improve their standard of living.
* For a substantial increase in taxes on corporate profits and the very rich to cover the budget deficit and the costs of new and essential social spending.
* For the immediate resignation of Governor Walker and his reactionary administration. Walker has deliberately made himself the political spearhead of the corporate attack on the working class and the use of dictatorial methods. The demand for his removal from office arises from the recognition that the struggle of Wisconsin workers against this budget is, in essence, a political struggle.
The call for Walker’s removal does not imply a vote of confidence in the Democratic Party. Beyond the borders of Wisconsin there are Democratic Party governors and mayors who are calling for budget cuts no less draconian than those sought by Walker. The Obama administration is collaborating with the state governors and the Congress in Washington in the implementation of budget cuts that will wreak havoc on the lives of workers throughout the country.
However, inspired by the example set by Wisconsin workers, the fight against the attacks on workers’ rights will expand from state to state and across the country as a whole, in opposition to all the political representatives of the capitalist class.
Thus, the demand for Walker’s removal raises the most important issue of all—the necessity for workers to create their own, independent, socialist alternative to the corporate-controlled Republican and Democratic parties.
The Socialist Equality Party supports and encourages the movement for a general strike against the Walker administration and its reactionary budget. The growing sentiment among workers that such action is necessary testifies to the intensity of social conflict in the United States. However, we urge workers to recognize that they are fighting not just one governor, but the capitalist class as a whole and the profit system upon which its rule is based.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Army of Fake Social Media Friends to Promote Propaganda
By Darlene Storm, Computerworld Feb 23, 2011 2:03 pm
It's recently been revealed that the U.S. government contracted HBGary
Federal for the development of software which could create multiple fake
social media profiles to manipulate and sway public opinion on
controversial issues by promoting propaganda. It could also be used as
surveillance to find public opinions with points of view the powers-that-be
didn't like. It could then potentially have their "fake" people run smear
campaigns against those "real" people. As disturbing as this is, it's not
really new for U.S. intelligence or private intelligence firms to do the
dirty work behind closed doors.
EFF previously warned that Big Brother wants to be your friend for social
media surveillance. While the FBI Intelligence Information Report Handbook
(PDF) mentioned using "covert accounts" to access protected information,
other government agencies endorsed using security exploits to access
protected information.
It's not a big surprise that the U.S. military also wants to use social
media to its benefit. Last year, Public Intelligence published the U.S. Air
Force social media guide which gave 10 tips for social media such as, "The
enemy is engaged in this battlespace and you must engage there as well."
Number three was "DON'T LIE. Credibility is critical, without it, no one
cares what you have to say...it's also punishable by the UCMJ to give a
false statement." The Air Force used the chart below to show how social
media influences public opinion.
The 6th Contracting Squadron at MacDill Air Force Base sought the
development of Persona Management Software which could be used for creating
and managing fake profiles on social media sites to distort the truth and
make it appear as if there was a generally accepted agreement on
controversial issues. "Personas must be able to appear to originate in
nearly any part of the world and can interact through conventional online
services and social media platforms." What happened to don't lie and the
Uniform Code of Military Justice?
Everything revealed after Anonymous leaked emails from private security
firm HBGary Federal is disturbing on many levels. However, the Daily Kos
said with the Persona Management Software it would take very few people to
create "an army of sockpuppets" which could distort the truth while
appearing to be "an entire Brooks Brothers riot online."
So again I ask, what happened to number three . . . the rule about not
lying that was also "punishable by the UCMJ to give a false statement"?
President and CEO of Plessas Experts Network, Inc, Kirby Plessas pointed
out some of the unethical and potentially illegal activities that Aaron
Barr's leaked emails suggested like "Chumming and baiting" which sounded
like "entrapment of some sort." There would be no warrant for the data
collected on individuals which could then be stored for how long? "THIS is
the entire reason Intelligence Oversight was created - to avoid this sort
of thing from ever happening again."
According to Redacted News, the leaked emails showed how names can be
cross-referenced across social media sites to collect information on people
and then used to gain access to those social ciricles. The emails also
talked of how Facebook could be used to spread government messages:
Even the most restrictive and security conscious of persons can be
exploited. Through the targeting and information reconnaissance phase, a
person's hometown and high school will be revealed. An adversary can create
a classmates.com account at the same high school and year and find out
people you went to high school with that do not have Facebook accounts,
then create the account and send a friend request.
Under the mutual friend decision, which is where most people can be
exploited, an adversary can look at a targets friend list if it is exposed
and find a targets most socially promiscuous friends, the ones that have
over 300-500 friends, friend them to develop mutual friends before sending
a friend request to the target. To that end friend's accounts can be
compromised and used to post malicious material to a targets wall. When
choosing to participate in social media an individual is only as protected
as his/her weakest friend.
Lots of people have multiple online aliases, Facebook or Twitter accounts
for both business and private life. What most bothers me is the lying and
seemingly unethical means to an end. Although the government says it
doesn't approve of censorship, etc, when its secrets come to light, it
seems to be Okay with recommending underhanded tactics.
Secretary Clinton delivered a speech called, "Internet Rights and Wrongs:
Choices and Challenges In A Networked World." To help promote and support
Internet freedom, the State Department intends to award $25 million in
grants. While that is great news, the EFF reported, "For every strong
statement about preserving liberty, freedom of expression, and privacy on
the global Internet, there exists a countervailing example of the United
States attempting to undermine those same values."
Secretary Clinton later told "This Week" anchor Christiane Amanpou that
most Americans "are in favor of human rights, freedom, democracy. We know
that ultimately the most progress that can be made on behalf of human
beings anywhere is when those individuals are empowered, when they have
governments that are responsive." Clinton added, "At the same time, we
recognize that this process can be hijacked. It can be hijacked by both
outside and inside elements within any country."
So while the U.S. government can talk a good talk, what it does and what it
says often doesn't seem to jive. Gasp, I know, it's not a big shocker but
sometimes I find that utterly frustrating. The President wanted an Internet
Kill Switch, the FBI keeps pushing for backdoors on all-things-Net. What
happened to a code of ethics? Does it disappear behind closed doors, dirty
deeds done in the dark and used against the American people who are
supposed to be free to express themselves?
It's recently been revealed that the U.S. government contracted HBGary
Federal for the development of software which could create multiple fake
social media profiles to manipulate and sway public opinion on
controversial issues by promoting propaganda. It could also be used as
surveillance to find public opinions with points of view the powers-that-be
didn't like. It could then potentially have their "fake" people run smear
campaigns against those "real" people. As disturbing as this is, it's not
really new for U.S. intelligence or private intelligence firms to do the
dirty work behind closed doors.
EFF previously warned that Big Brother wants to be your friend for social
media surveillance. While the FBI Intelligence Information Report Handbook
(PDF) mentioned using "covert accounts" to access protected information,
other government agencies endorsed using security exploits to access
protected information.
It's not a big surprise that the U.S. military also wants to use social
media to its benefit. Last year, Public Intelligence published the U.S. Air
Force social media guide which gave 10 tips for social media such as, "The
enemy is engaged in this battlespace and you must engage there as well."
Number three was "DON'T LIE. Credibility is critical, without it, no one
cares what you have to say...it's also punishable by the UCMJ to give a
false statement." The Air Force used the chart below to show how social
media influences public opinion.
The 6th Contracting Squadron at MacDill Air Force Base sought the
development of Persona Management Software which could be used for creating
and managing fake profiles on social media sites to distort the truth and
make it appear as if there was a generally accepted agreement on
controversial issues. "Personas must be able to appear to originate in
nearly any part of the world and can interact through conventional online
services and social media platforms." What happened to don't lie and the
Uniform Code of Military Justice?
Everything revealed after Anonymous leaked emails from private security
firm HBGary Federal is disturbing on many levels. However, the Daily Kos
said with the Persona Management Software it would take very few people to
create "an army of sockpuppets" which could distort the truth while
appearing to be "an entire Brooks Brothers riot online."
So again I ask, what happened to number three . . . the rule about not
lying that was also "punishable by the UCMJ to give a false statement"?
President and CEO of Plessas Experts Network, Inc, Kirby Plessas pointed
out some of the unethical and potentially illegal activities that Aaron
Barr's leaked emails suggested like "Chumming and baiting" which sounded
like "entrapment of some sort." There would be no warrant for the data
collected on individuals which could then be stored for how long? "THIS is
the entire reason Intelligence Oversight was created - to avoid this sort
of thing from ever happening again."
According to Redacted News, the leaked emails showed how names can be
cross-referenced across social media sites to collect information on people
and then used to gain access to those social ciricles. The emails also
talked of how Facebook could be used to spread government messages:
Even the most restrictive and security conscious of persons can be
exploited. Through the targeting and information reconnaissance phase, a
person's hometown and high school will be revealed. An adversary can create
a classmates.com account at the same high school and year and find out
people you went to high school with that do not have Facebook accounts,
then create the account and send a friend request.
Under the mutual friend decision, which is where most people can be
exploited, an adversary can look at a targets friend list if it is exposed
and find a targets most socially promiscuous friends, the ones that have
over 300-500 friends, friend them to develop mutual friends before sending
a friend request to the target. To that end friend's accounts can be
compromised and used to post malicious material to a targets wall. When
choosing to participate in social media an individual is only as protected
as his/her weakest friend.
Lots of people have multiple online aliases, Facebook or Twitter accounts
for both business and private life. What most bothers me is the lying and
seemingly unethical means to an end. Although the government says it
doesn't approve of censorship, etc, when its secrets come to light, it
seems to be Okay with recommending underhanded tactics.
Secretary Clinton delivered a speech called, "Internet Rights and Wrongs:
Choices and Challenges In A Networked World." To help promote and support
Internet freedom, the State Department intends to award $25 million in
grants. While that is great news, the EFF reported, "For every strong
statement about preserving liberty, freedom of expression, and privacy on
the global Internet, there exists a countervailing example of the United
States attempting to undermine those same values."
Secretary Clinton later told "This Week" anchor Christiane Amanpou that
most Americans "are in favor of human rights, freedom, democracy. We know
that ultimately the most progress that can be made on behalf of human
beings anywhere is when those individuals are empowered, when they have
governments that are responsive." Clinton added, "At the same time, we
recognize that this process can be hijacked. It can be hijacked by both
outside and inside elements within any country."
So while the U.S. government can talk a good talk, what it does and what it
says often doesn't seem to jive. Gasp, I know, it's not a big shocker but
sometimes I find that utterly frustrating. The President wanted an Internet
Kill Switch, the FBI keeps pushing for backdoors on all-things-Net. What
happened to a code of ethics? Does it disappear behind closed doors, dirty
deeds done in the dark and used against the American people who are
supposed to be free to express themselves?
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Canada, U.S. agree to use each other’s troops in civil emergencies
Canada and the U.S. have signed an agreement that paves the way for the militaries from either nation to send troops across each other’s borders during an emergency, but some are questioning why the Harper government has kept silent on the deal.
Neither the Canadian government nor the Canadian Forces announced the new agreement, which was signed Feb. 14 in Texas.
The U.S. military’s Northern Command, however, publicized the agreement with a statement outlining how its top officer, Gen. Gene Renuart, and Canadian Lt.-Gen. Marc Dumais, head of Canada Command, signed the plan, which allows the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a civil emergency.
The new agreement has been greeted with suspicion by the left wing in Canada and the right wing in the U.S.
The left-leaning Council of Canadians, which is campaigning against what it calls the increasing integration of the U.S. and Canadian militaries, is raising concerns about the deal.
“It’s kind of a trend when it comes to issues of Canada-U.S. relations and contentious issues like military integration. We see that this government is reluctant to disclose information to Canadians that is readily available on American and Mexican websites,” said Stuart Trew, a researcher with the Council of Canadians.
Trew said there is potential for the agreement to militarize civilian responses to emergency incidents. He noted that work is also underway for the two nations to put in place a joint plan to protect common infrastructure such as roadways and oil pipelines.
“Are we going to see (U.S.) troops on our soil for minor potential threats to a pipeline or a road?” he asked.
Trew also noted the U.S. military does not allow its soldiers to operate under foreign command so there are questions about who controls American forces if they are requested for service in Canada. “We don’t know the answers because the government doesn’t want to even announce the plan,” he said.
But Canada Command spokesman Commander David Scanlon said it will be up to civilian authorities in both countries on whether military assistance is requested or even used.
He said the agreement is “benign” and simply sets the stage for military-to-military co-operation if the governments approve.
“But there’s no agreement to allow troops to come in,” he said. “It facilitates planning and co-ordination between the two militaries. The ‘allow’ piece is entirely up to the two governments.”
If U.S. forces were to come into Canada they would be under tactical control of the Canadian Forces but still under the command of the U.S. military, Scanlon added.
News of the deal, and the allegation it was kept secret in Canada, is already making the rounds on left-wing blogs and Internet sites as an example of the dangers of the growing integration between the two militaries.
On right-wing blogs in the U.S. it is being used as evidence of a plan for a “North American union” where foreign troops, not bound by U.S. laws, could be used by the American federal government to override local authorities.
“Co-operative militaries on Home Soil!” notes one website. “The next time your town has a ‘national emergency,’ don’t be surprised if Canadian soldiers respond. And remember — Canadian military aren’t bound by posse comitatus.”
Posse comitatus is a U.S. law that prohibits the use of federal troops from conducting law enforcement duties on domestic soil unless approved by Congress.
Scanlon said there was no intent to keep the agreement secret on the Canadian side of the border. He noted it will be reported on in the Canadian Forces newspaper next week and that publication will be put on the Internet.
Scanlon said the actual agreement hasn’t been released to the public as that requires approval from both nations. That decision has not yet been taken, he added.
Neither the Canadian government nor the Canadian Forces announced the new agreement, which was signed Feb. 14 in Texas.
The U.S. military’s Northern Command, however, publicized the agreement with a statement outlining how its top officer, Gen. Gene Renuart, and Canadian Lt.-Gen. Marc Dumais, head of Canada Command, signed the plan, which allows the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a civil emergency.
The new agreement has been greeted with suspicion by the left wing in Canada and the right wing in the U.S.
The left-leaning Council of Canadians, which is campaigning against what it calls the increasing integration of the U.S. and Canadian militaries, is raising concerns about the deal.
“It’s kind of a trend when it comes to issues of Canada-U.S. relations and contentious issues like military integration. We see that this government is reluctant to disclose information to Canadians that is readily available on American and Mexican websites,” said Stuart Trew, a researcher with the Council of Canadians.
Trew said there is potential for the agreement to militarize civilian responses to emergency incidents. He noted that work is also underway for the two nations to put in place a joint plan to protect common infrastructure such as roadways and oil pipelines.
“Are we going to see (U.S.) troops on our soil for minor potential threats to a pipeline or a road?” he asked.
Trew also noted the U.S. military does not allow its soldiers to operate under foreign command so there are questions about who controls American forces if they are requested for service in Canada. “We don’t know the answers because the government doesn’t want to even announce the plan,” he said.
But Canada Command spokesman Commander David Scanlon said it will be up to civilian authorities in both countries on whether military assistance is requested or even used.
He said the agreement is “benign” and simply sets the stage for military-to-military co-operation if the governments approve.
“But there’s no agreement to allow troops to come in,” he said. “It facilitates planning and co-ordination between the two militaries. The ‘allow’ piece is entirely up to the two governments.”
If U.S. forces were to come into Canada they would be under tactical control of the Canadian Forces but still under the command of the U.S. military, Scanlon added.
News of the deal, and the allegation it was kept secret in Canada, is already making the rounds on left-wing blogs and Internet sites as an example of the dangers of the growing integration between the two militaries.
On right-wing blogs in the U.S. it is being used as evidence of a plan for a “North American union” where foreign troops, not bound by U.S. laws, could be used by the American federal government to override local authorities.
“Co-operative militaries on Home Soil!” notes one website. “The next time your town has a ‘national emergency,’ don’t be surprised if Canadian soldiers respond. And remember — Canadian military aren’t bound by posse comitatus.”
Posse comitatus is a U.S. law that prohibits the use of federal troops from conducting law enforcement duties on domestic soil unless approved by Congress.
Scanlon said there was no intent to keep the agreement secret on the Canadian side of the border. He noted it will be reported on in the Canadian Forces newspaper next week and that publication will be put on the Internet.
Scanlon said the actual agreement hasn’t been released to the public as that requires approval from both nations. That decision has not yet been taken, he added.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Indiana Official: "Use Live Ammunition" Against Wisconsin Protesters
By Adam Weinstein
On Saturday night, when Mother Jones staffers tweeted a report that riot police might soon sweep demonstrators out of the Wisconsin capitol building—something that didn't end up happening—one Twitter user sent out a chilling public response: "Use live ammunition."
From my own Twitter account, I confronted the user, JCCentCom. He tweeted back that the demonstrators were "political enemies" and "thugs" who were "physically threatening legally elected officials." In response to such behavior, he said, "You're damned right I advocate deadly force." He later called me a "typical leftist," adding, "liberals hate police."
Only later did we realize that JCCentCom was a deputy attorney general for the state of Indiana.
As one of 144 attorneys in that office, Jeff Cox has represented the people of his state for 10 years. And for much of that time, it turns out, he's vented similar feelings on Twitter and on his blog, Pro Cynic. In his nonpolitical tweets and blog posts, Cox displays a keen litigator's mind, writing sharply and often wittily on military history and professional basketball. But he evinces contempt for political opponents—from labeling President Obama an "incompetent and treasonous" enemy of the nation to comparing "enviro-Nazis" to Osama bin Laden, likening ex-Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Service Employees International Union members to Nazi "brownshirts" on multiple occasions, and referring to an Indianapolis teen as "a black teenage thug who was (deservedly) beaten up" by local police. A "sensible policy for handling Afghanistan," he offered, could be summed up as: "KILL! KILL! ANNIHILATE!"
Early Sunday, Mother Jones sent an email to Cox's work address at the Indiana attorney general's office, asking if the Twitter and blog comments were his, and if he could provide context for some of them. He responded shortly after from a personal email address: "For 'context?' Or to silence me? All my comments on twitter & my blog are my own and no one else's. And I can defend them all.
"[Y]ou will probably try to demonize me," he wrote, "but that comes with the territory."
To be sure, in the current political climate, partisan rhetoric has run hot online—and the Constitution guarantees everyone's right to such rhetoric. Nonetheless, a spokesman for the Indiana attorney general's office, Bryan Corbin, told Mother Jones that Cox's statements were "inflammatory," and he promised "an immediate review" of the matter. "We do not condone any comments that would threaten or imply violence or intimidation toward anyone," Corbin added.
The incident seems all the more troubling now that the public-sector union fight playing out in Wisconsin is now headed to other states—including Indiana, where GOP senators Tuesday passed a bill that would abolish collective bargaining for state teachers. (Indiana's Republican governor walked back his support of the measure Tuesday after taking stock of the opposition.) Cox's public writings made it clear that he isn't a member of a public-service union, and he has no love for those who are.
"Individuals have the First Amendment right to post their own personal views in online forums on their own time," Corbin wrote to Mother Jones, "but as public servants, state employees also should strive to conduct themselves with professionalism and appropriate decorum in their interactions with the public." Cox had been contacted by the office, Corbin added: "We have reiterated to the employee the standards of professional conduct expected for all licensed attorneys and for employees of the Indiana Attorney General's Office. After all the relevant information is obtained, this agency then will determine whether there has been any violation of the personnel handbook."
In the meantime, we hoped to give Cox a chance to explain his thoughts in greater detail. In his initial email to Mother Jones, Cox had written, "Ask what questions you want & I will do my best to answer. Maybe you'll learn something. Maybe I'll learn something." So we emailed him a list of questions:
What did he mean when he tweeted: "Planned Parenthood could help themselves if the only abortions they performed were retroactive"?
In referring to President Obama, why did he use a George W. Bush line once directed at the Iraqi people: "Your enemy is not surrounding your country, your enemy is ruling your country"?
Were members of the SEIU really like Hitler's Sturmabteilung, and did he stand by his headline, "Putting the 'Reich' in Robert Reich"?
We never heard back.
Adam Weinstein is Mother Jones' copy editor.
On Saturday night, when Mother Jones staffers tweeted a report that riot police might soon sweep demonstrators out of the Wisconsin capitol building—something that didn't end up happening—one Twitter user sent out a chilling public response: "Use live ammunition."
From my own Twitter account, I confronted the user, JCCentCom. He tweeted back that the demonstrators were "political enemies" and "thugs" who were "physically threatening legally elected officials." In response to such behavior, he said, "You're damned right I advocate deadly force." He later called me a "typical leftist," adding, "liberals hate police."
Only later did we realize that JCCentCom was a deputy attorney general for the state of Indiana.
As one of 144 attorneys in that office, Jeff Cox has represented the people of his state for 10 years. And for much of that time, it turns out, he's vented similar feelings on Twitter and on his blog, Pro Cynic. In his nonpolitical tweets and blog posts, Cox displays a keen litigator's mind, writing sharply and often wittily on military history and professional basketball. But he evinces contempt for political opponents—from labeling President Obama an "incompetent and treasonous" enemy of the nation to comparing "enviro-Nazis" to Osama bin Laden, likening ex-Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Service Employees International Union members to Nazi "brownshirts" on multiple occasions, and referring to an Indianapolis teen as "a black teenage thug who was (deservedly) beaten up" by local police. A "sensible policy for handling Afghanistan," he offered, could be summed up as: "KILL! KILL! ANNIHILATE!"
Early Sunday, Mother Jones sent an email to Cox's work address at the Indiana attorney general's office, asking if the Twitter and blog comments were his, and if he could provide context for some of them. He responded shortly after from a personal email address: "For 'context?' Or to silence me? All my comments on twitter & my blog are my own and no one else's. And I can defend them all.
"[Y]ou will probably try to demonize me," he wrote, "but that comes with the territory."
To be sure, in the current political climate, partisan rhetoric has run hot online—and the Constitution guarantees everyone's right to such rhetoric. Nonetheless, a spokesman for the Indiana attorney general's office, Bryan Corbin, told Mother Jones that Cox's statements were "inflammatory," and he promised "an immediate review" of the matter. "We do not condone any comments that would threaten or imply violence or intimidation toward anyone," Corbin added.
The incident seems all the more troubling now that the public-sector union fight playing out in Wisconsin is now headed to other states—including Indiana, where GOP senators Tuesday passed a bill that would abolish collective bargaining for state teachers. (Indiana's Republican governor walked back his support of the measure Tuesday after taking stock of the opposition.) Cox's public writings made it clear that he isn't a member of a public-service union, and he has no love for those who are.
"Individuals have the First Amendment right to post their own personal views in online forums on their own time," Corbin wrote to Mother Jones, "but as public servants, state employees also should strive to conduct themselves with professionalism and appropriate decorum in their interactions with the public." Cox had been contacted by the office, Corbin added: "We have reiterated to the employee the standards of professional conduct expected for all licensed attorneys and for employees of the Indiana Attorney General's Office. After all the relevant information is obtained, this agency then will determine whether there has been any violation of the personnel handbook."
In the meantime, we hoped to give Cox a chance to explain his thoughts in greater detail. In his initial email to Mother Jones, Cox had written, "Ask what questions you want & I will do my best to answer. Maybe you'll learn something. Maybe I'll learn something." So we emailed him a list of questions:
What did he mean when he tweeted: "Planned Parenthood could help themselves if the only abortions they performed were retroactive"?
In referring to President Obama, why did he use a George W. Bush line once directed at the Iraqi people: "Your enemy is not surrounding your country, your enemy is ruling your country"?
Were members of the SEIU really like Hitler's Sturmabteilung, and did he stand by his headline, "Putting the 'Reich' in Robert Reich"?
We never heard back.
Adam Weinstein is Mother Jones' copy editor.
Scott Walker Runs on Koch Money
by: Lisa Graves | PR Watch | Report
Madison, Wisconsin - A new investigation by the Center for Media and Democracy documents the big money funneled by one of the richest men in America and one of the richest corporations in the world to put controversial Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in office.
The Republican Governors Association and the Kochs' Investment in Scott Walker
Walker was elected just over three months ago on the heels of an exceptionally expensive gubernatorial race in the Badger State, fueled by groups funded by the Koch brothers, David and Charles. David Koch, the son of a radical founding member of the John Birch Society, which has long been obsessed with claims about socialism and advocated the repeal of civil rights laws, personally donated $1 million to the Republican Governors Association (RGA) in June of last year. This was the most he had ever personally given to that group. (Fellow billionaire Rupert Murdoch matched Koch's donation to the RGA with a $1 million donation from his company News Corporation, parent company of FOX "News" Channel.)
The RGA in turn spent $5 million in the race, mostly on TV ads attacking Walker's political opponent, Democratic Mayor Tom Barrett. As this photo shows, the RGA described itself as a "key investor" in Walker's victory. In its congratulations, the RGA notes that it "ran a comprehensive campaign including TV and internet ads and direct mail. The series of ads were devastating to Tom Barrett ... All told, RGA ran 8 TV ads and sent 8 pieces of mail for absentee, early voting, and GOTV, totaling 2.9 million pieces."
The Center for Media and Democracy reported on some of the RGA's spin-filled ads last November, including the ads against Barrett, and filed a snapshot report this week. As the RGA takes credit, its multi-million dollar negative ad campaign probably did help make the difference between the 1.1 million votes cast for Walker against Barrett's 1 million votes. According to Open Secrets, Koch Industries was one of the top ten donors to the RGA in 2010, giving $1,050,450 to help with governors' races, like Walker's.
As Mother Jones has noted, the Koch Industries' political action committee, KochPAC, gave Walker's campaign $43,000 directly (according to the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board). It may seem like a small amount compared with the millions the Kochs are spending funding the RGA and other groups, but that donation was one of the larger individual donations to Walker not from an expressly-named partisan PAC. It is, however, a drop in the bucket compared with the impact of a million-dollar negative ad campaign, especially because the candidate promoted by the mud-slingers does not have to get his hands dirty.
The Kochs' Investment in Americans for Prosperity
The laundering of Koch dollars through the RGA dwarfs the Kochs' direct donations to Walker, and it also does not tell the whole story. As the Center for Media and Democracy has been documenting on its SourceWatch site for several years, David Koch was the founder and chairman of a front group called Citizens for a Sound Economy, which received at least $12 million from the Koch Family Foundations and which is the predecessor of the group Americans for Prosperity.
As Jane Mayer reported in the New Yorker, the Kochs do not deny funding Americans for Prosperity (the amount is not disclosed) but assert that they provide no funding "specifically to support the tea parties." "Specifically" is the key word in that sentence that does not deny what is known in the non-profit world as "general support," meaning general funding or endowments, for an organization's operations and overall mission. As Mayer noted, Peggy Venable -- who helps the Americans for Prosperity Foundation train Tea Party activists and "target elected officials" -- "said of the Kochs, 'They're certainly our people. David's the chairman of our board. I've certainly met with them, and I'm very appreciative of what they do.'"
Americans for Prosperity provided “Tea Party Talking Points” as the Tea Party was launched around tax day in 2009, and this weekend it is providing talking points to those coming to Madison for a pro-Walker protest it is helping to stage. Media watchers can expect to hear Americans for Prosperity protesters get equal time on the news, and more than equal time on FOX, using phrases to cloak union-busting as merely getting workers to accept "paying a fair share" through "modest but critical reforms" that end "strong-arming politicians for exorbitant benefits." The spin will also likely include a trumped up statistic claiming that private sector employees in Wisconsin earn 74 cents for every dollar paid to "overpaid" state union members--you know, teachers, firefighters, police, social workers, nurses, and other civil servants. An "unofficial" theme, a drumbeat of the Bircher baby propaganda efforts bankrolled by the Kochs, is calling opponents "socialists," a smear heard with increasing frequency as the Kochs' influence has expanded in the past two years.
Americans for Prosperity's Investment in Scott Walker
Notably, Americans for Prosperity bragged that it was going to spend nearly $50 million across the country in the November elections. As one of the groups exploiting the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision to allow unlimited spending by corporations to influence election outcomes, it does not disclose its donors and it does not report its expenditures on so-called "issue ads." It did run such ads in Wisconsin last fall.
Americans for Prosperity has actively supported and promoted Scott Walker in a variety of ways. It featured him at its tea party rally in Wisconsin in September 2009, when he was running for the Republican nomination for governor. Americans for Prosperity also ran millions of dollars in ads on a "spending crisis" (a crisis it did not run ads against when Republicans were spending the multi-billion dollar budget surplus into a multi-trillion dollar deficit), and it selected Wisconsin as one of the states for those ads in the months before the election. It also funded a "spending revolt" tour in Wisconsin last fall through its state "chapter."
Just how much money has Americans for Prosperity and its Wisconsin counterpart spent on issue ads or promoting Walker over the past two years is one of the questions for this weekend's orchestrated "Stand with Walker" event.
The Return on Investment?
Some things are known, though. Koch money helped get Scott Walker the governor's seat in Wisconsin. And now a major Koch-related group is spearheading the defense of Walker's radical plan to kill public employees' right to organize in Wisconsin. The question is whether an actual majority of Wisconsin citizens want two of the richest men in the world, who do not live here -- and who, as Lee Fang has pointed out, have eliminated jobs in this state -- to be playing such an influential role in the rights of working people here.
The Kochs assert that they do not "direct" the activities of Americans for Prosperity or the Tea Party. No, they just fuel them with their riches from the oil business they inherited from their daddy.
And they did not vote for Scott Walker in the traditional sense in a democracy. Rather, as the Republican Governors Association spells out, they "invested" in him.
What is the return desired for their investment? It looks like the first dividend Walker wants to pay, through the help of the Koch-subsidized cheerleaders from Americans for Prosperity, is a death knell for unions and the rights of workers to organize. But tens of thousands of Wisconsin citizens have stood up this week to say this ROI will not be paid, that their rights will not be the price Walker exacts from them in return for the largess the Kochs have shown him as the anointed instrument of their agenda in this state.
Lisa Graves is Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy, the publisher of PRWatch.org, SourceWatch.org, and BanksterUSA.org. She formerly served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice, as Chief Counsel for Nominations for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, and as Deputy Chief of the Article III Judges Division of the U.S. Courts.
Madison, Wisconsin - A new investigation by the Center for Media and Democracy documents the big money funneled by one of the richest men in America and one of the richest corporations in the world to put controversial Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in office.
The Republican Governors Association and the Kochs' Investment in Scott Walker
Walker was elected just over three months ago on the heels of an exceptionally expensive gubernatorial race in the Badger State, fueled by groups funded by the Koch brothers, David and Charles. David Koch, the son of a radical founding member of the John Birch Society, which has long been obsessed with claims about socialism and advocated the repeal of civil rights laws, personally donated $1 million to the Republican Governors Association (RGA) in June of last year. This was the most he had ever personally given to that group. (Fellow billionaire Rupert Murdoch matched Koch's donation to the RGA with a $1 million donation from his company News Corporation, parent company of FOX "News" Channel.)
The RGA in turn spent $5 million in the race, mostly on TV ads attacking Walker's political opponent, Democratic Mayor Tom Barrett. As this photo shows, the RGA described itself as a "key investor" in Walker's victory. In its congratulations, the RGA notes that it "ran a comprehensive campaign including TV and internet ads and direct mail. The series of ads were devastating to Tom Barrett ... All told, RGA ran 8 TV ads and sent 8 pieces of mail for absentee, early voting, and GOTV, totaling 2.9 million pieces."
The Center for Media and Democracy reported on some of the RGA's spin-filled ads last November, including the ads against Barrett, and filed a snapshot report this week. As the RGA takes credit, its multi-million dollar negative ad campaign probably did help make the difference between the 1.1 million votes cast for Walker against Barrett's 1 million votes. According to Open Secrets, Koch Industries was one of the top ten donors to the RGA in 2010, giving $1,050,450 to help with governors' races, like Walker's.
As Mother Jones has noted, the Koch Industries' political action committee, KochPAC, gave Walker's campaign $43,000 directly (according to the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board). It may seem like a small amount compared with the millions the Kochs are spending funding the RGA and other groups, but that donation was one of the larger individual donations to Walker not from an expressly-named partisan PAC. It is, however, a drop in the bucket compared with the impact of a million-dollar negative ad campaign, especially because the candidate promoted by the mud-slingers does not have to get his hands dirty.
The Kochs' Investment in Americans for Prosperity
The laundering of Koch dollars through the RGA dwarfs the Kochs' direct donations to Walker, and it also does not tell the whole story. As the Center for Media and Democracy has been documenting on its SourceWatch site for several years, David Koch was the founder and chairman of a front group called Citizens for a Sound Economy, which received at least $12 million from the Koch Family Foundations and which is the predecessor of the group Americans for Prosperity.
As Jane Mayer reported in the New Yorker, the Kochs do not deny funding Americans for Prosperity (the amount is not disclosed) but assert that they provide no funding "specifically to support the tea parties." "Specifically" is the key word in that sentence that does not deny what is known in the non-profit world as "general support," meaning general funding or endowments, for an organization's operations and overall mission. As Mayer noted, Peggy Venable -- who helps the Americans for Prosperity Foundation train Tea Party activists and "target elected officials" -- "said of the Kochs, 'They're certainly our people. David's the chairman of our board. I've certainly met with them, and I'm very appreciative of what they do.'"
Americans for Prosperity provided “Tea Party Talking Points” as the Tea Party was launched around tax day in 2009, and this weekend it is providing talking points to those coming to Madison for a pro-Walker protest it is helping to stage. Media watchers can expect to hear Americans for Prosperity protesters get equal time on the news, and more than equal time on FOX, using phrases to cloak union-busting as merely getting workers to accept "paying a fair share" through "modest but critical reforms" that end "strong-arming politicians for exorbitant benefits." The spin will also likely include a trumped up statistic claiming that private sector employees in Wisconsin earn 74 cents for every dollar paid to "overpaid" state union members--you know, teachers, firefighters, police, social workers, nurses, and other civil servants. An "unofficial" theme, a drumbeat of the Bircher baby propaganda efforts bankrolled by the Kochs, is calling opponents "socialists," a smear heard with increasing frequency as the Kochs' influence has expanded in the past two years.
Americans for Prosperity's Investment in Scott Walker
Notably, Americans for Prosperity bragged that it was going to spend nearly $50 million across the country in the November elections. As one of the groups exploiting the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision to allow unlimited spending by corporations to influence election outcomes, it does not disclose its donors and it does not report its expenditures on so-called "issue ads." It did run such ads in Wisconsin last fall.
Americans for Prosperity has actively supported and promoted Scott Walker in a variety of ways. It featured him at its tea party rally in Wisconsin in September 2009, when he was running for the Republican nomination for governor. Americans for Prosperity also ran millions of dollars in ads on a "spending crisis" (a crisis it did not run ads against when Republicans were spending the multi-billion dollar budget surplus into a multi-trillion dollar deficit), and it selected Wisconsin as one of the states for those ads in the months before the election. It also funded a "spending revolt" tour in Wisconsin last fall through its state "chapter."
Just how much money has Americans for Prosperity and its Wisconsin counterpart spent on issue ads or promoting Walker over the past two years is one of the questions for this weekend's orchestrated "Stand with Walker" event.
The Return on Investment?
Some things are known, though. Koch money helped get Scott Walker the governor's seat in Wisconsin. And now a major Koch-related group is spearheading the defense of Walker's radical plan to kill public employees' right to organize in Wisconsin. The question is whether an actual majority of Wisconsin citizens want two of the richest men in the world, who do not live here -- and who, as Lee Fang has pointed out, have eliminated jobs in this state -- to be playing such an influential role in the rights of working people here.
The Kochs assert that they do not "direct" the activities of Americans for Prosperity or the Tea Party. No, they just fuel them with their riches from the oil business they inherited from their daddy.
And they did not vote for Scott Walker in the traditional sense in a democracy. Rather, as the Republican Governors Association spells out, they "invested" in him.
What is the return desired for their investment? It looks like the first dividend Walker wants to pay, through the help of the Koch-subsidized cheerleaders from Americans for Prosperity, is a death knell for unions and the rights of workers to organize. But tens of thousands of Wisconsin citizens have stood up this week to say this ROI will not be paid, that their rights will not be the price Walker exacts from them in return for the largess the Kochs have shown him as the anointed instrument of their agenda in this state.
Lisa Graves is Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy, the publisher of PRWatch.org, SourceWatch.org, and BanksterUSA.org. She formerly served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice, as Chief Counsel for Nominations for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, and as Deputy Chief of the Article III Judges Division of the U.S. Courts.
What Conservatives Really Want
by: George Lakoff, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
The central issue in our political life is not being discussed. At stake is the moral basis of American democracy.
The individual issues are all too real: assaults on unions, public employees, women's rights, immigrants, the environment, health care, voting rights, food safety, pensions, prenatal care, science, public broadcasting and on and on.
Budget deficits are a ruse, as we've seen in Wisconsin, where the Governor turned a surplus into a deficit by providing corporate tax breaks, and then used the deficit as a ploy to break the unions, not just in Wisconsin, but seeking to be the first domino in a nationwide conservative movement.
Deficits can be addressed by raising revenue, plugging tax loopholes, putting people to work and developing the economy long-term in all the ways the president has discussed. But deficits are not what really matter to conservatives.
Conservatives really want to change the basis of American life, to make America run according to the conservative moral worldview in all areas of life.
In the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama accurately described the basis of American democracy: empathy — citizens caring for each other, both social and personal responsibility — acting on that care, and an ethic of excellence. From these, our freedoms and our way of life follow, as does the role of government: to protect and empower everyone equally. Protection includes safety, health, the environment, pensions. Empowerment starts with education and infrastructure. No one can be free without these, and without a commitment to care and act on that care by one's fellow citizens.
The conservative worldview rejects all of that.
Conservatives believe in individual responsibility alone, not social responsibility. They don't think government should help its citizens. That is, they don't think citizens should help each other. The part of government they want to cut is not the military (we have 174 bases around the world), not government subsidies to corporations, not the aspect of government that fits their worldview. They want to cut the part that helps people. Why? Because that violates individual responsibility.
But where does that view of individual responsibility alone come from?
The way to understand the conservative moral system is to consider a strict father family. The father is The Decider, the ultimate moral authority in the family. His authority must not be challenged. His job is to protect the family, to support the family (by winning competitions in the marketplace), and to teach his kids right from wrong by disciplining them physically when they do wrong. The use of force is necessary and required. Only then will children develop the internal discipline to become moral beings. And only with such discipline will they be able to prosper. And what of people who are not prosperous? They don't have discipline, and without discipline they cannot be moral, so they deserve their poverty. The good people are hence the prosperous people. Helping others takes away their discipline, and hence makes them both unable to prosper on their own and function morally.
The market itself is seen in this way. The slogan, "Let the market decide" assumes the market itself is The Decider. The market is seen as both natural (since it is assumed that people naturally seek their self-interest) and moral (if everyone seeks their own profit, the profit of all will be maximized by the invisible hand). As the ultimate moral authority, there should be no power higher than the market that might go against market values. Thus the government can spend money to protect the market and promote market values, but should not rule over it either through (1) regulation, (2) taxation, (3) unions and worker rights, (4) environmental protection or food safety laws, and (5) tort cases. Moreover, government should not do public service. The market has service industries for that.
Thus, it would be wrong for the government to provide health care, education, public broadcasting, public parks and so on. The very idea of these things is at odds with the conservative moral system. No one should be paying for anyone else. It is individual responsibility in all arenas. Taxation is thus seen as taking money away from those who have earned it and giving it to people who don't deserve it. Taxation cannot be seen as providing the necessities of life for a civilized society, and, as necessary, for business to prosper.
In conservative family life, the strict father rules. Fathers and husbands should have control over reproduction; hence, parental and spousal notification laws and opposition to abortion. In conservative religion, God is seen as the strict father, the Lord, who rewards and punishes according to individual responsibility in following his Biblical word.
Above all, the authority of conservatism itself must be maintained. The country should be ruled by conservative values, and progressive values are seen as evil. Science should have authority over the market, and so the science of global warming and evolution must not be denied. Facts that are inconsistent with the authority of conservatism must be ignored or denied or explained away. To protect and extend conservative values themselves, the devil's own means can be used against conservatism's immoral enemies, whether lies, intimidation, torture or even death, say, for women's doctors.
Freedom is defined as being your own strict father - with individual, not social, responsibility, and without any government authority telling you what you can and cannot do. To defend that freedom as an individual, you will, of course, need a gun.
This is the America that conservatives really want. Budget deficits are convenient ruses for destroying American democracy and replacing it with conservative rule in all areas of life.
What is saddest of all is to see Democrats helping them.
Democrats help radical conservatives by accepting the deficit frame and arguing about what to cut. Even arguing against specific "cuts" is working within the conservative frame. What is the alternative? Pointing out what conservatives really want. Point out that there is plenty of money in America, and in Wisconsin. It is at the top. The disparity in financial assets is un-American - the top one percent has more financial assets than the bottom 95 percent. Middle-class wages have been flat for 30 years, while the wealth has floated to the top. This fits the conservative way of life, but not the American way of life.
Democrats help conservatives by not shouting out loud, over and over, that it was conservative values that caused the global economic collapse: lack of regulation and a greed-is-good ethic.
Democrats also help conservatives by what a friend has called "Democratic Communication Disorder." Republican conservatives have constructed a vast and effective communication system, with think tanks, framing experts, training institutes, a system of trained speakers, vast holdings of media and booking agents. Eighty percent of the talking heads on TV are conservatives. Talk matters, because language heard over and over changes brains. Democrats have not built the communication system they need, and many are relatively clueless about how to frame their deepest values and complex truths.
And Democrats help conservatives when they function as policy wonks — talking policy without communicating the moral values behind the policies. They help conservatives when they neglect to remind us that pensions are deferred payments for work done. "Benefits" are pay for work, not a handout. Pensions and benefits are arranged by contract. If there is not enough money for them, it is because the contracted funds have been taken by conservative officials and given to wealthy people and corporations instead of to the people who have earned them.
Democrats help conservatives when they use conservative words like "entitlements" instead of "earnings" and speak of government as providing "services" instead of "necessities."
Is there hope?
I see it in Wisconsin, where tens of thousands citizens see through the conservative frames and are willing to flood the streets of their capital to stand up for their rights. They understand that democracy is about citizens uniting to take care of each other, about social responsibility as well as individual responsibility, and about work - not just for your own profit, but to help create a civilized society. They appreciate their teachers, nurses, firemen, police and other public servants. They are flooding the streets to demand real democracy - the democracy of caring, of social responsibility and of excellence, where prosperity is to be shared by those who work and those who serve.
The central issue in our political life is not being discussed. At stake is the moral basis of American democracy.
The individual issues are all too real: assaults on unions, public employees, women's rights, immigrants, the environment, health care, voting rights, food safety, pensions, prenatal care, science, public broadcasting and on and on.
Budget deficits are a ruse, as we've seen in Wisconsin, where the Governor turned a surplus into a deficit by providing corporate tax breaks, and then used the deficit as a ploy to break the unions, not just in Wisconsin, but seeking to be the first domino in a nationwide conservative movement.
Deficits can be addressed by raising revenue, plugging tax loopholes, putting people to work and developing the economy long-term in all the ways the president has discussed. But deficits are not what really matter to conservatives.
Conservatives really want to change the basis of American life, to make America run according to the conservative moral worldview in all areas of life.
In the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama accurately described the basis of American democracy: empathy — citizens caring for each other, both social and personal responsibility — acting on that care, and an ethic of excellence. From these, our freedoms and our way of life follow, as does the role of government: to protect and empower everyone equally. Protection includes safety, health, the environment, pensions. Empowerment starts with education and infrastructure. No one can be free without these, and without a commitment to care and act on that care by one's fellow citizens.
The conservative worldview rejects all of that.
Conservatives believe in individual responsibility alone, not social responsibility. They don't think government should help its citizens. That is, they don't think citizens should help each other. The part of government they want to cut is not the military (we have 174 bases around the world), not government subsidies to corporations, not the aspect of government that fits their worldview. They want to cut the part that helps people. Why? Because that violates individual responsibility.
But where does that view of individual responsibility alone come from?
The way to understand the conservative moral system is to consider a strict father family. The father is The Decider, the ultimate moral authority in the family. His authority must not be challenged. His job is to protect the family, to support the family (by winning competitions in the marketplace), and to teach his kids right from wrong by disciplining them physically when they do wrong. The use of force is necessary and required. Only then will children develop the internal discipline to become moral beings. And only with such discipline will they be able to prosper. And what of people who are not prosperous? They don't have discipline, and without discipline they cannot be moral, so they deserve their poverty. The good people are hence the prosperous people. Helping others takes away their discipline, and hence makes them both unable to prosper on their own and function morally.
The market itself is seen in this way. The slogan, "Let the market decide" assumes the market itself is The Decider. The market is seen as both natural (since it is assumed that people naturally seek their self-interest) and moral (if everyone seeks their own profit, the profit of all will be maximized by the invisible hand). As the ultimate moral authority, there should be no power higher than the market that might go against market values. Thus the government can spend money to protect the market and promote market values, but should not rule over it either through (1) regulation, (2) taxation, (3) unions and worker rights, (4) environmental protection or food safety laws, and (5) tort cases. Moreover, government should not do public service. The market has service industries for that.
Thus, it would be wrong for the government to provide health care, education, public broadcasting, public parks and so on. The very idea of these things is at odds with the conservative moral system. No one should be paying for anyone else. It is individual responsibility in all arenas. Taxation is thus seen as taking money away from those who have earned it and giving it to people who don't deserve it. Taxation cannot be seen as providing the necessities of life for a civilized society, and, as necessary, for business to prosper.
In conservative family life, the strict father rules. Fathers and husbands should have control over reproduction; hence, parental and spousal notification laws and opposition to abortion. In conservative religion, God is seen as the strict father, the Lord, who rewards and punishes according to individual responsibility in following his Biblical word.
Above all, the authority of conservatism itself must be maintained. The country should be ruled by conservative values, and progressive values are seen as evil. Science should have authority over the market, and so the science of global warming and evolution must not be denied. Facts that are inconsistent with the authority of conservatism must be ignored or denied or explained away. To protect and extend conservative values themselves, the devil's own means can be used against conservatism's immoral enemies, whether lies, intimidation, torture or even death, say, for women's doctors.
Freedom is defined as being your own strict father - with individual, not social, responsibility, and without any government authority telling you what you can and cannot do. To defend that freedom as an individual, you will, of course, need a gun.
This is the America that conservatives really want. Budget deficits are convenient ruses for destroying American democracy and replacing it with conservative rule in all areas of life.
What is saddest of all is to see Democrats helping them.
Democrats help radical conservatives by accepting the deficit frame and arguing about what to cut. Even arguing against specific "cuts" is working within the conservative frame. What is the alternative? Pointing out what conservatives really want. Point out that there is plenty of money in America, and in Wisconsin. It is at the top. The disparity in financial assets is un-American - the top one percent has more financial assets than the bottom 95 percent. Middle-class wages have been flat for 30 years, while the wealth has floated to the top. This fits the conservative way of life, but not the American way of life.
Democrats help conservatives by not shouting out loud, over and over, that it was conservative values that caused the global economic collapse: lack of regulation and a greed-is-good ethic.
Democrats also help conservatives by what a friend has called "Democratic Communication Disorder." Republican conservatives have constructed a vast and effective communication system, with think tanks, framing experts, training institutes, a system of trained speakers, vast holdings of media and booking agents. Eighty percent of the talking heads on TV are conservatives. Talk matters, because language heard over and over changes brains. Democrats have not built the communication system they need, and many are relatively clueless about how to frame their deepest values and complex truths.
And Democrats help conservatives when they function as policy wonks — talking policy without communicating the moral values behind the policies. They help conservatives when they neglect to remind us that pensions are deferred payments for work done. "Benefits" are pay for work, not a handout. Pensions and benefits are arranged by contract. If there is not enough money for them, it is because the contracted funds have been taken by conservative officials and given to wealthy people and corporations instead of to the people who have earned them.
Democrats help conservatives when they use conservative words like "entitlements" instead of "earnings" and speak of government as providing "services" instead of "necessities."
Is there hope?
I see it in Wisconsin, where tens of thousands citizens see through the conservative frames and are willing to flood the streets of their capital to stand up for their rights. They understand that democracy is about citizens uniting to take care of each other, about social responsibility as well as individual responsibility, and about work - not just for your own profit, but to help create a civilized society. They appreciate their teachers, nurses, firemen, police and other public servants. They are flooding the streets to demand real democracy - the democracy of caring, of social responsibility and of excellence, where prosperity is to be shared by those who work and those who serve.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Madison Area AFL CIO Votes to Prepare For General Strike
By Mike Elk
This evening in a press release from IBEW Local 2304 President Dave Pokilinski, I received word that the 45,000 member Southern Central Federation of Labor, the local chapter of the AFL-CIO for the Madison and Southern Central Wisconsin area, has voted to make preparations for a general strike.
The press release reads as follows:
Around 10:50PM Wisconsin Time on February 21st the South Central Federation of Labor endorsed the following motions:
Motion 1: The SCFL endorses a general strike, possibly for the day Walker signs his “budget repair bill,” and requests the Education Committee immediately begin educating affiliates and members on the organization and function of a general strike.
Motion 2: The SCFL goes on record as opposing all provisions contained in Walker’s “budget repair bill,” including but not limited to, curtailed bargaining rights and reduced wages, benefits, pensions, funding for public education, changes to medical assistance programs, and politicization of state government agencies.
It’s important to note that this is just a threat and not actually going out on a general strike. Under the Taft-Hartley Act a general strike in support of other workers is illegal; therefore the key word is the phrase “begin educating affiliates and members on the organization and function of a general strike”. In addition, only individual unions, not the central labor federation has the ability to call a strike.
Many private sector unions would not go out on a general strike out of fear of being of sued by their employers. However, local labor observers say many public sector unions and some of the construction unions would go out on a strike. Threatening a general strike creates even more pressure for Scott Walker in the business community. The business community in Wisconsin already appears to bucking under the intense pressure of the mass labor mobilization.
This evening in a press release from IBEW Local 2304 President Dave Pokilinski, I received word that the 45,000 member Southern Central Federation of Labor, the local chapter of the AFL-CIO for the Madison and Southern Central Wisconsin area, has voted to make preparations for a general strike.
The press release reads as follows:
Around 10:50PM Wisconsin Time on February 21st the South Central Federation of Labor endorsed the following motions:
Motion 1: The SCFL endorses a general strike, possibly for the day Walker signs his “budget repair bill,” and requests the Education Committee immediately begin educating affiliates and members on the organization and function of a general strike.
Motion 2: The SCFL goes on record as opposing all provisions contained in Walker’s “budget repair bill,” including but not limited to, curtailed bargaining rights and reduced wages, benefits, pensions, funding for public education, changes to medical assistance programs, and politicization of state government agencies.
It’s important to note that this is just a threat and not actually going out on a general strike. Under the Taft-Hartley Act a general strike in support of other workers is illegal; therefore the key word is the phrase “begin educating affiliates and members on the organization and function of a general strike”. In addition, only individual unions, not the central labor federation has the ability to call a strike.
Many private sector unions would not go out on a general strike out of fear of being of sued by their employers. However, local labor observers say many public sector unions and some of the construction unions would go out on a strike. Threatening a general strike creates even more pressure for Scott Walker in the business community. The business community in Wisconsin already appears to bucking under the intense pressure of the mass labor mobilization.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Tea Party Leader Plans to Infiltrate Union "Goons"
By Adam Weinstein
Last year, Mark Williams was tossed out of the Tea Party Express for his racially insensitive NAACP parody. (Three weeks later, he took the helm of an upstart tea party group.) Now, he wants to sow mayhem among "the union goons in Wisconsin" and elsewhere. According to a post on his blog today, Williams is seeking volunteers to pose with him as members of the Service Employees International Union at a Sacramento, California, rally, to act like angry fools and get the union workers bad publicity from "lazy reporters":
we are going to target the many TV cameras and reporters looking for comments from the members there (5) we will approach the cameras to make good pictures… signs under our shirts that say things like “screw the taxpayer!” and “you OWE me!” to be pulled out for the camera (timing is important because the signs will be taken away from us) (6) we will echo those slogans in angry sounding tones to the cameras and the reporters.
Williams later updated the post to report that tea partiers in multiple states, including Iowa, Colorado, and Massachusetts, were calling in to plan "their own creative ruses" for embarrasing the union demonstrators. "Several have also reminded me that we have a distinct advantage in that the SEIU primarily represents non-English speaking illegal aliens so we will be the ones whose comments will make air!!!!" he wrote:
Our goal is to make the gathering look as greedy and goonish as we know that it is, ding their credibility with the media and exploit the lazy reporters who just want dramatic shots and outrageous quotes for headlines. Even if it becomes known that we are plants the quotes and pictures will linger as defacto truth.
Thus far, demonstrations and counterdemonstrations in Madison, Wisconsin, have been peaceful, according to reporting by MJ's own Andy Kroll. Anti-union protesters, led by media mogul Andrew Breitbart, GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, and "Joe the Plumber," largely fizzled after a rally on Saturday. And the image of union workers that Williams seeks to portray seems to run uphill against the images of the employees' leaders seen thus far. But as labor disputes spread to other states, it remains to be seen whether tactics like those proposed by Williams will be effective in embarassing the public employees...or embarrasing the tea party "plants" themselves.
Last year, Mark Williams was tossed out of the Tea Party Express for his racially insensitive NAACP parody. (Three weeks later, he took the helm of an upstart tea party group.) Now, he wants to sow mayhem among "the union goons in Wisconsin" and elsewhere. According to a post on his blog today, Williams is seeking volunteers to pose with him as members of the Service Employees International Union at a Sacramento, California, rally, to act like angry fools and get the union workers bad publicity from "lazy reporters":
we are going to target the many TV cameras and reporters looking for comments from the members there (5) we will approach the cameras to make good pictures… signs under our shirts that say things like “screw the taxpayer!” and “you OWE me!” to be pulled out for the camera (timing is important because the signs will be taken away from us) (6) we will echo those slogans in angry sounding tones to the cameras and the reporters.
Williams later updated the post to report that tea partiers in multiple states, including Iowa, Colorado, and Massachusetts, were calling in to plan "their own creative ruses" for embarrasing the union demonstrators. "Several have also reminded me that we have a distinct advantage in that the SEIU primarily represents non-English speaking illegal aliens so we will be the ones whose comments will make air!!!!" he wrote:
Our goal is to make the gathering look as greedy and goonish as we know that it is, ding their credibility with the media and exploit the lazy reporters who just want dramatic shots and outrageous quotes for headlines. Even if it becomes known that we are plants the quotes and pictures will linger as defacto truth.
Thus far, demonstrations and counterdemonstrations in Madison, Wisconsin, have been peaceful, according to reporting by MJ's own Andy Kroll. Anti-union protesters, led by media mogul Andrew Breitbart, GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, and "Joe the Plumber," largely fizzled after a rally on Saturday. And the image of union workers that Williams seeks to portray seems to run uphill against the images of the employees' leaders seen thus far. But as labor disputes spread to other states, it remains to be seen whether tactics like those proposed by Williams will be effective in embarassing the public employees...or embarrasing the tea party "plants" themselves.
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