Friday, December 31, 2010

Chris Floyd's Empire Burlesque

Obama's Selective Outrage: Rage Against Russia, Silence at Indian Injustice
Written by Chris Floyd   
Thursday, 30 December 2010 19:09
The sham trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Russia is rightly being protested by those who have a right to do so: Russians in Russia, where more than a thousand people braved the batons of Kremlin storm-troopers to decry the travesty of justice in his recent conviction on more trumped-up charges. You do not have to warm to Khodorkovsky himself, a former oil oligarch who fell out with the power structure that enriched him, in order to denounce the thuggish authoritarianism that his persecution represents. I have courageous friends among those standing up in public against this injustice, putting their own bodies and livelihoods on the line, and I salute them, and all those standing with them.

There are, however, those denouncing the injustice of the Khodorkovsky trial who have absolutely no right to do so. Prominent among these, of course, is the Obama Administration, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the lead. Clinton, the foreign policy spokesperson for a government now raining death by drone on hundreds of civilians inside the sovereign territory of an American ally (among many other unjust and inhumane acts), thundered against the Kremlin for allowing "the rule of law [to be] overshadowed by political considerations."

The grand poo-bahs of the Potomac lined up to condemn the Russian government for its barbaric treatment of Khodorkovsky -- even while their own government was subjecting a 23-year-old soldier to KGB-style torture for the "crime" of telling the truth about outrageous atrocities committed by the American government in the course of an act of aggression that unleashed -- and empowered -- a living hell that has left more than a million people dead, and is still killing around 4,000 innocent civilians every year. Hillary Clinton voted to authorize this act of hyper-barbarism; Barack Obama has called the "surge"  of death squads and ethnic cleansing that kept the war going "an extraordinary achievement."

The brave citizens and residents of Moscow who came out to denounce Khodorkovsky's show trial deserve all praise for their moral courage; but these bloodstained hacks of the Beltway have no standing whatsoever to inveigh against the offenses of other regimes.

The Obama administration has been loud in its denunciations of the Kremlin's perversion of justice to carry out a political vendetta. But what have these stalwart champions of human rights said about the life sentence given last week to Indian human rights activist Binayak Sen? What have we heard from the Nobel Peace Laureate, Barack Obama? What have we heard from Hillary Clinton? Not a single word.

As the Guardian reports, Sen is a "celebrated human rights activist and medical doctor, has worked for more than three decades as a doctor in the tribal-dominated areas of the state of Chhattisgarh in central India, working for people denied many of the basic services that the state should provide, such as health and education." The people he works among are among the poorest on earth. Sen is also an avowed practitioner of non-violence, walking in the path of Gandhi.

Sen is also a leading civil rights activist, who has spoken out repeatedly and forcefully against the depredations of the state government, which has launched savage "counterterrorism" operations the Maoist movement spawned by the dire poverty. These "counterterror" methods include the creation of a deadly paramilitary force, the Salwa Judum, or "Purification Hunt.'

As Jawed Naqvi reports in Dawn, "the Judum was founded not so much to track or hunt down Maoist rebels as to clear the passage of local resistance groups to enable corporate access to Chhattisgarh’s largely untapped mineral resources." Sen's chief "crime" seems to have been his vocal opposition to the state-run militia's atrocities. The official charge was that he visited an elderly prisoner who is alleged to be a Communist, and carried letters from the prison for him. As Naqvi notes, the "evidence" against Sen was threadbare, circumstantial and in some cases obviously fabricated, just as in the Khodorkovsky case.

What's more, Sen was charged under an ancient law originally imposed on India by its British colonial masters. As Kalpana Sharma notes in the Guardian:

More than 150 years ago, the British introduced a law in India designed to check rebellious natives. In 2010 this law has been used by an independent India to check activists who question government policy.

Section 124A of the Indian penal code was introduced in 1870 by the British to deal with sedition. It was later used to convict Mahatma Gandhi. ..Sen worked among the poorest and most deprived people in India, the Adivasis. The Maoists have also established their base in the tribal belt stretching through the heart of India. Their concerns are similar; their strategies diametrically opposite.

..Denied bail for two years, Sen was finally allowed out on bail last year. On December 24, a case that on all counts was weak and based on hearsay and circumstantial evidence, concluded. Sen was found guilty of sedition and other charges, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

They gave a life sentence to a man who has never raised a violent hand against the state or another human being. (He only narrowly avoided a death sentence for another charge: "waging war against the state.") A life sentence -- under a colonial law. This is the "democracy" praised by Barack Obama just a few weeks ago during a state visit to India, where he made sure to be seen paying homage to Gandhi -- whose mantle of moral courage Obama himself claimed during his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, declaring:

As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life's work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there is nothing weak, nothing passive, nothing naive in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.

But moral force means nothing when there is money to be made -- from the corporate exploitation of Chhattisgarh's resources or, in Obama's case, from hawking $5 billion worth of death machinery from America's war profiteers to the Indian government.

Protests against Sen's sentence have broken out all over India. The injustice has also provoked denunciations across the world. Even the imperial house organ, the Washington Post, published a decent news story about the case on Wednesday. (Obviously the main editors are still off enjoying the holidays.) The article, by Emily Wax, actually provides some good context to the Sen case, the larger machinations behind it, and even -- gasp! -- some understanding of how generations of poverty, despair and exploitation can give rise to an "insurgency":

In a case that has prompted denunciations by international human rights groups and scholars, prosecutors said Binayak Sen, 60, had aided Maoist rebels in rural India, visiting Maoist leaders in jail and opening a bank account for a Maoist, charges that Sen denies. Human rights activists allege that police planted evidence and manufactured testimonies, and Indian judges have criticized the Dec. 24 judgment.

Soli Sorabjee, a former attorney general, called the ruling shocking. "Binayak Sen has a fine record," he said. "The evidence against him seems flimsy. The judge has misapplied the section. And in any case, the sentence is atrocious, savage."

Sen, a pediatrician, has worked for decades to help people displaced by violence and government land seizures in India's mineral-rich regions. Despite the country's booming economy, hundreds of millions of Indians remain mired in poverty - a stubborn inequality that has helped fuel a deadly Maoist insurgency in as many as 20 of India's 28 states.

...en, who was arrested in 2007 and was not granted bail for two years, says he was targeted solely because he was a vocal critic of the government's use of armed groups to push villagers out of mineral-rich forest areas. His sentencing comes as major economies, including the United States and China, are seeking access to India's growing markets - a sign of the country's emergence as an economic superpower.

I'm afraid if Ms Wax keeps writing like this, addressing actual realities, she will soon find herself out of a job. For it is surely the pursuit of "access to India's growing markets" -- for well-connected elites, of course -- that has led to the Peace Laureate's voluminous silence on the case of Dr. Sen, and to the lack of reaction from the world's scolding schoolmarm, Hillary Clinton.

Wax even slips this passage into the article: an observation that has growing resonance not only in India:

"Anyone in India who dissents or questions the superpower script is ostracized," said Kavita Srivastava, national secretary of the People's Union for Civil Liberties, of which Sen is a vice president. "Sen's arrest is happening because this government is extremely anti-poor. Our much-praised 9 percent growth is coming at the cost of displacing millions of people with land that is being given away for mining and corporate development."
Wax concludes her piece with these damning quotes:

"Binayak Sen has never fired a gun. He probably does not know how to hold one," historian Ramachandra Guha wrote in the Hindustan Times. "He has explicitly condemned Maoist violence, and even said of the armed revolutionaries that theirs is an invalid and unsustainable movement. His conviction will and should be challenged."

Sen's wife, also a doctor, said in an interview that she is launching an international campaign to do just that.

"He is a person who has worked for the poor of the country for 30 years," Ilina Sen said. "If that person is found guilty of sedition activities when gangsters and scamsters are walking free, well, that's a disgrace to our democracy."

Yes, when gangsters and scamsters -- and brazen war criminals -- walk free, it is indeed a disgrace to democracy. A disgrace in India, a disgrace in the thug state of Russia -- and a damnable disgrace in the United States of America, where hypocritical poltroons mouth empty pieties in their highly selective protests against injustices that pale before the crimes they are committing.

Thirteen Ways to Raise a Nonreader

More animal carcasses found in Deer Park pet rescue

More animal carcasses found in Deer Park pet rescue

Police find piles of excrement, dog skeletons; owner charged with 32 counts of animal cruelty this week

By Ruth Fuller, Special to the Tribune
6:29 PM CST, December 30, 2010


Donning gas masks and protective jumpsuits, Lake County and Kildeer officials took on the grim task Thursday of removing the bodies of animals that perished inside a Deer Park pet rescue operation — and discovered more remains in the process.

One by one, officials retrieved carcasses of 18 dogs, three birds and an opossum from the dilapidated home that was also the base for the Muddy Paws Dog Rescue.


Its operator, Diane Eldrup, was arrested on Dec. 16 on four counts of animal cruelty and animal torture, but 28 more counts were added this week as authorities revealed more about the gruesome scene they found there — including dogs left to starve to death in cages, mounds of excrement, and a refrigerator still filled with food but covered with maggots.
Among the remains removed from the home on the 20400 block of North Rand Road — adjacent to a busy shopping area — were those of a rat terrier that had apparently been consumed by other dogs and cats to fend off starvation, Lake County Assistant State's Attorney Michael Mermel said. The carcass of another dog had virtually nothing but its spine remaining, he said.

Yet another small brown mutt ended up strangling itself when it tried to escape its cage. "Hopefully, he died quickly," Mermel said.

At the time of her arrest, Eldrup, 48, was believed to have been living at the Deer Park pet rescue with her 8-year-old son. Though she later indicated in court that she'd been staying in Wauconda, a child's toys, clothing and furniture — including a small bed with a stuffed Mickey Mouse toy atop it — were found in the home.

"This little bed was afloat in a sea of urine, blood, feces and maggots," Mermel said.
Eldrup's estranged husband, Kurt Eldrup, was granted temporary custody of the boy after her arrest, Kurt Eldrup's attorney, John Joanem, said.

Kurt Eldrup has said that the couple had run a kennel and grooming business from the home for many years, but that more recently the operation has made a transition into a what was meant to be a "no-kill" pet rescue. It's unclear when or why the property descended into its squalid condition, though Kurt Eldrup said his wife became overwhelmed by financial, health and marriage woes.

Kildeer police, who have jurisdiction over Deer Park, had not received any complaints about the rescue operation before being called to the home by Kurt Eldrup in mid-December, said Cmdr. Mike Bratko. Police had been to the home for a domestic dispute about two years ago, but there were no other signs of trouble at that time and the home was not in disarray, he said.

Diane Eldrup was released from jail after John Breseman of Algonquin put up her $25,000 bail, $8,000 of which was paid in cash, according to court records. Mermel has requested that the source of that money be investigated since Breseman had filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy just three days before, according to court records and Mermel. Breseman could not be reached for comment.


Eldrup's attorney also withdrew from the case this week.

Among the officials at the site Thursday was Waukegan police Sgt. Charlie Burleson, who came on her day off to volunteer to help. Burleson said she has worked many animal crimes and felt the need to help on what she called one of the worst cases she's encountered.
"This is a horrible case of animal torture," she said. "When you see their skeletons, you know they went for so long with no food. It is horrific."

Wisconsin man gets 25 years for road-rage murder on Edens

Killer stabbed fellow trucker in fight on expressway's shoulder

By Brian Cox, Special to the Tribune
6:42 PM CST, December 30, 2010
Advertisement
The Wisconsin man who killed a fellow trucker on the side of the Edens Expressway after the two sparred over their CB radios and cut each off in traffic was sentenced to 25 years in prison Thursday.

David Seddon apologized in the Skokie courtroom to the victim's family, who appealed for the maximum sentence of 60 years for the Jan. 15 road rage attack, in which Seddon stabbed Alan Lauritzen to death near Northbrook.

Lauritzen's widow, Lauren, tearfully told Seddon during the hearing that "you have taken my best friend, my soul mate."

Statements were also read from the couple's two teenage children, who attended the hearing.

"I wish heaven had a phone so I can hear your voice again," Lauritzen's daughter, Britani, 16, wrote of her father, in a statement read by prosecutor Cathy Crowley.

In his statement, Lauritzen's son, Alexander, 18, wrote of how he's struggled to come to terms with his father's death.

"I don't want to get out of bed in the morning because I'm scared something bad will happen to my family because of what happened to my dad," he wrote. "I wish he was here with me now. I also wish you never see the light of day again."

Seddon, 49, of Racine, said he regrets he "can't go back and change what I did. The biggest problem is that there was too much testosterone involved … stupid human pride."

Yet he and his lawyer both said they didn't think his action rose to first-degree murder, the crime for which he was convicted on Nov. 18.

Authorities have said Seddon and Lauritzen dueled for about 11 miles along the Edens until one of them yelled into his CB: "Let's do it!" They pulled over and got into a fistfight that ended with Seddon stabbing Lauritzen, 40, of Sparta, Wis.

Cook County Circuit Judge Larry Axelrood, who convicted Seddon after a two-day bench trial, called him "a fundamentally good man who made a catastrophic decision."

"I don't think you did this casually," the judge said. "I think this was the worst decision of your life."

The holiday season of generous giving is upon us

Homeless twins no longer homeless

Donor pays for temporary housing for 1 twin; brother remains hospitalized

By Kristen Schorsch, Tribune reporter
December 31, 2010


A 34-year-old businessman moved by a Tribune story about homeless twin brothers is paying for a week's hotel stay for one brother while the other remains hospitalized.

The west suburban businessman, who wishes to remain anonymous, said he was looking for an opportunity to help and do something more than put a check in the mail.

"A lot of people talk the talk, including myself," he said. "But walking the walk is another story."

On Thursday night, he met Frank Nowotnik at the Summit Motel, in Chicago's Lincoln Square community, and paid for Nowotnik to stay there until Jan. 7, when a spot at the Lakeview YMCA is scheduled to open for him and his brother, Anthony.

Anthony and Frank, 42, have been sleeping underneath a bridge at California Avenue and the Kennedy Expressway. Anthony was offered housing last month at the YMCA, but he refused to move without Frank, who can't get in until Jan. 7.

Anthony said city workers and police officers on Monday arrived with a garbage truck and tried to move them from the sidewalk. When he tried to stand, Anthony said, he struggled to breathe and he spit up blood. He has been hospitalized ever since with a blood clot in his lung at St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital Center in Ukrainian Village.

City officials couldn't confirm whether workers had tried to move the brothers.

After the alleged incident, social workers couldn't find Frank. His sister Carmella Nowotnik and her husband, Raul Chacon, found him Wednesday, sleeping under a blanket around California and Diversey avenues, and put him up at the Diplomat Motel, also in Lincoln Square, for the night.

They picked up Frank on Thursday, dined at McDonald's and bought him pants, socks and a shirt from the Salvation Army.

Chacon said money is tight for his family, which includes four children, and he's grateful for the businessman's generosity.


"What kind of person reaches in their own pocket?" Chacon said. "It's amazing."
klschorsch@tribune.com

Rosie "The Riveter" Dies

Geraldine Hoff Doyle dies at 86; inspiration behind a famous wartime poster

A news service photo of Doyle is believed to have been the model for the 'We Can Do It!' poster, a Rosie the Riveter image from World War II.

By Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times
December 31, 2010



Geraldine Hoff Doyle, a World War II factory worker whose bandana-wearing image in a wire-service photo is said to have been the model for the woman depicted in the 1942 "We Can Do It!" poster, has died. She was 86. The iconic wartime poster became an enduring symbol of women's power from the Rosie the Riveter era.


Doyle died of age-related causes Sunday at Hospice House of Mid-Michigan in Lansing, said her daughter Stephanie Gregg.

Doyle was a 17-year-old high school graduate when she took a job at the American Broach & Machine Co. in her hometown of Ann Arbor, Mich., in 1942, a time when millions of women across the country were going to work to replace men who had gone to war.

"She had just graduated, and some of the young men had left school to volunteer to fight," Gregg said. "A couple had been killed, and she felt she wanted to do something for the war effort."

Doyle was operating a metal-stamping machine when a United Press photographer took a picture of the tall, slender and glamorously beautiful brunet wearing a polka-dot bandana over her hair.

Her photo, according to an account on the Pop History Dig website, was seen by Pittsburgh artist J. Howard Miller, who was commissioned by the Westinghouse War Production Coordinating Committee to create a series of morale-building posters to inspire Westinghouse factory workers.

Miller's "We Can Do It!" poster portrays a woman in a red-and-white polka-dot bandana and a blue uniform, rolling up a sleeve over a flexed right bicep.

Gregg said her mother, who was not as muscular as the woman depicted in the poster, had no idea her photograph had been used as a model for Miller's poster until the mid-1980s.

"She was tickled to recognize that she was the inspiration for so many women," said her daughter.

Doyle, who was born July 31, 1924, in Inkster, Mich., actually worked in the factory only a couple of weeks; a cello player, she quit after learning that the woman she had replaced had injured her hand on the metal press, her daughter said.

She then got a job at a bookstore in Ann Arbor, where she soon met her future husband, Leo H. Doyle, who was in dental school. They were married in 1943 and had six children. Doyle also worked as the office manager at her husband's dental office until she was 75.

The "We Can Do It!" poster image has been reproduced frequently in recent decades on a variety of items, including on a U.S. postage stamp issued in 1992.

"You're not supposed to have too much pride, but I can't help to have some in that poster," Doyle told the Lansing State Journal in 2002 after she was invited to speak at the Michigan state Senate.

"It's just sad I didn't know it was me sooner," Doyle said. "Maybe it's a good thing. I couldn't have handled all the excitement then."

Doyle appeared at a number of poster signings and events at the Michigan Women's Historical Center and Hall of Fame over the years.

"She was a very gracious woman," said former executive director Gladys Beckwith.

The poster, Beckwith said, "represents Rosie the Riveter, a really strong woman who has taken on a non-traditional role and is happy in it and is contributing to the war effort. It's a very significant image, one that has endured."

Doyle's husband of 66 years died in February. A son, Gary, died in 1980.

In addition to her daughter Stephanie, Doyle is survived by her other daughters, Jacqueline Drewes, Deidre Doyle and Lauretta Doyle; her son, Brian Doyle; her sister, Virginia Watson; her brother, Clifford Hoff; 18 grandchildren; and 25 great-grandchildren.

dennis.mclellan@latimes.com

Considering Viet Nam & the war the Americans waged upon its peoples - III





Considering Viet Nam & the war the Americans waged upon its peoples - II


Considering Viet Nam & the war the Americans waged upon its peoples


Thursday, December 30, 2010

December 30, 2010

Get Your Wheelbarrows Ready!

Capitalism in Crisis

By MARY LYNN CRAMER

Creating jobs is not the raison d'ĂŞtre nor the primary goal of a Capitalist economy. Creating profits for the purpose of Capital accumulation and expansion is the sine qua non and essential function of Capitalism.

Often larger profits can be made by increasing the productivity of workers and upping overall output. When such efforts are not possible or do not result in an increased rate of profit, some Capitalists---especially those who own and control vital resources---can limit real production, thus creating shortages of that essential product. They then raise prices without increasing production and thereby increase the profits of their particular enterprise. (Or, in the case of the US and British oil companies, they can support the creation of a foreign organization like OPEC that will cooperate in restricting output in ways that would be illegal in the US or Great Britain.) This hurts the "bottom-line" or profits of those other industries dependent upon the restricted resource; and, therefore, is not a long-run solution for correcting crises in profitability for the Capitalist system as a whole.

If profits cannot be increased through new investment in updated labor-saving technology, then those Capitalists who can may increase the hours of their workers, as well as cut their wages and benefits in order to increase company profits.

If investment in more modern plant and equipment is not deemed profitable, then Capitalists 
will invest their profits in things other than expanding real material production. Besides satisfying their own appetite for increased consumption of luxury goods, they turn to speculation in all forms of financial "instruments" (paper) that result in profits for the "winners" and enormous government bailouts for the so-called losers who are "too big to fail." No expansion of the real economy---i.e., no increased production of material goods, nor additional jobs---results from these high stakes gambling activities.

In sum, a rate of profit sufficient to attract investment in expanded Capital accumulation is what is necessary for increased Capitalist production in the real economy... the real economy of material production that is also the foundation for all other forms of exploitation and speculation. Increased consumption by exploited wage labor is contrary to the needs of Capitalism during periods of "economic down turns," and particularly during the global economic crisis we are experiencing today. Increasing the labor force in order to produce more "consumer" goods is not on the agenda.

Yet, the myth persists. Bourgeois theorists will insist that consumer demand of the working population is what drives Capitalist production. It is clear that after many of these well intentioned spokespersons actually believe what they are saying. (Even though they may also insist, within the same sound bite, that economic growth and stability depends upon "consumers" saving more.) The simple lay person, the professionals concede sympathetically, finds it difficult to understand often complex and contradictory theories of economics. Well, let me share with you one admittedly simple little thought that I often toy with: If a feudal lord were to have told his serf, that the sole purpose of his exploitation was to enable his lord to provide the serf with the material goods necessary to maintain an acceptable level of poverty, the serf would have thought the lord insane. Likewise, if an African slave had been told by the American plantation owner that his enslavement and low standard of living was necessary so that the plantation could produce what the slave needed to survive, she would have thought her master crazy. But for some reason, wage labor exploited by Capitalists are suppose to believe that all the accumulation of vast resources, enormous factories, state-of-the art ports, refineries, etc., etc., owned by the Capitalists are necessary for, and simply serve the purpose of producing what working people need to survive and maintain an acceptable standard of living. It is all done for us, and it all comes back to us working people. If that sounds absurd to you, maybe the following will more clearly reflect your reality:

Yes, under the Capitalist system of distribution, "consumer goods" sufficient for the the employed labor force to survive (at an acceptable standard of living), is necessary. However, Capital expansion and production of real, material "producer goods"--- such as industrial machinery, factories, infrastructure, technology, planes, company limos, corporate cars, trucks, freight trains, ships, docks, commercial ports and transport of all kinds, along with the communications centers, security apparatus, administrative compounds, together with the pipelines, refineries, natural resources, raw materials and fuel to operate this enormous, global empire---make up the larger part of material production and privately-owned accumulated wealth in this nation and globally; and these tremendous means of production are neither consumed by nor owned by the workers who produce them. Under a system of Capitalist production, exploitation of a labor force that produces much more than it consumes is the essential source of real profits. It is production and expansion of the enormous, modern industrial Capitalist empire that is the aim of Capitalism (and all those who identify as successful competitive players in this deadly game), not increased consumption of goods and services for working people. The latter is the necessary "spin-off" so to speak, until those workers themselves are no longer deemed "necessary."

If Capital expansion and accumulation can be periodically accomplished profitably with a smaller workforce, then that is incentive enough for Capitalism to ignore or eliminate, directly or indirectly, the "useless eaters" and the "unproductive" members of society (that is, those who cannot contribute to the profitability of Capitalist production)---like the old, the mentally and physically disable, and others unemployable*

We have witnessed today (and throughout history) the standard methods of increasing productivity in pursuit of profits without increasing consumption or improving the standard of living of working people. Most economists now are in agreement that the average wage of the American worker has not increased in real value since 1970. During the same time period, American manufacturing jobs have gone abroad in search of better rates of profit, and major American industries like steel and auto manufacturing plants have been closed and abandoned. During times like these, the most common Capitalist remedies to falling rates of profit include (1) demanding employees work longer hours for the same or less pay; (2) raising prices without increasing production so that the value of real wages fall, workers' are forced to consume less, and the portion of value produced that goes to the Capitalist in form of profits increases; (3) requiring increased involvement of the federal government in the process of redistributing value and resources away from the "consumer" and into the bank accounts of Capitalists.

Social programs are cut, money is made available to Capitalists at 0% interest rates (while those on fixed incomes get just about 0% interest on their retirement and savings accounts ); and public services are discontinued or privatized as for-profit programs. Witness the $500 billion cut in government funding of Medicare Advantage HMO programs. These HMO programs---the most popular Medicare programs among low-income elderly---were determined to be the most efficient and least costly of all the Medicare programs according to the 2009 and 2010 Report to Congress on Medicare Spending. Nevertheless, private insurance CEO's agreed to Obama's huge cut in these programs, in exchange for a much more lucrative scheme forcing all "consumers" to purchase private, for-profit, health insurance plans. As mentioned above, transferring trillions of dollars to banks for lending, interest free, to large Capitalist corporations while allowing the foreclosure on home mortgages held by poor and middle class workers, is just one more example of how the government facilitates the cut in workers' consumption while increasing the Capitalists' piece of the pie--- all in the name of getting the economy going again. Nota Bene: It is not working this time.

The stockpiled banking and manufacturing trillions are not going into increased production and more jobs. The Obama administration complains that the banks are not making loans, and big manufacturers--- rather than invest in expanded production and employment---are just sitting on top of billions in record profits. No, they are not! Guess what they are doing with it...again. (Hint: Can you sing "I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air.")
John Maynard Keynes, the sweetheart of the liberal left, made it crystal clear that the use of inflation is a much better economic tool for lowering workers real wages and consumption than direct wage cuts by employers. He explained that angry workers could be a threat to individual Capitalists, whereas employing workers in government-funded industries and projects that did not produce consumer goods would cause generalized inflation, but make it hard for workers to know whom to blame for the diminished value of their wages, their declining standard of living and lower consumption. Government transferring labor and material into war production, while rationing consumer goods for working people, was greatly facilitated in the 1930's by nationalist propaganda justifying the US entry into WWII and patriotic sacrifices.

What a magnificent booty was gained from America's participation in that fight for democracy and freedom overseas! And the Depression ended! The usual manner of correcting serious economic depressions is through wide-spread unemployment that lowers wages, causes bankruptcies of the less competitive companies, and facilitates the take over of devalued plant and equipment by larger corporations. This reorganization of Capitalist production on the basis of cheaper labor and cheaper materials all around, allows the surviving, enlarged and more "efficient" Capitalists to renew production at a rate of profit and Capitalist expansion of production and employment even greater than before the downward dive in the "business cycle." Prior to "the war effort," this usual process was underway but had not gotten the economy going again.

However, the riches plundered in times of war---the take over and reorganization of conquered nations' entire material wealth, equipment, cheap labor, factories, and infrastructure---are vastly more profitable than is the process of domestic bankruptcies and economic rebuilding at home. Keynes knew this. Roosevelt (whom Keynes complained did not understand anything he told him) did not have to be told this. As FDR said, the model he followed had already been proven effective in Communist Russia, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany under those "command economies."

What Keynes and Roosevelt could not have anticipated is the enormity of the current global depression . This time around, government-assisted attempts at redistribution of wealth, resources and cheaper labor does not appear to be adequate to the task of increasing U.S. Capitalists profitability sufficiently to encourage investment in the expansion of real material production domestically, and certainly not sufficient to attract private investment in overhauling existing, antiquated means of production. Waging wars this time has not provided a solution, although the economy is now dependent upon production and marketing of weapons, military equipment and related technology.

China and India with large numbers of starving displaced peasants and an abundance of slave labor may be able to increase profitability sufficiently to initiate the larger Capital goods production necessary to dominate the global economy, setting off yet another round of expanded global competition, depressions and war. A more likely scenario, given the authoritarian methods increasingly used throughout the world in an attempt to control all real and imagined forms of threat to those who had fancied themselves in control of global Capitalism, would be a world-wide economic collapse that could give birth to new forms of barbarism beyond what we have known in Fascist and Nazi attempts to overcome economic collapse. Get your wheel barrels ready.**

Our solution is not to give up on demanding an end to the wars, or more jobs with good wages and benefits, universal health care, the preservation of social security, continued funding of public schools, or respect for civil rights and human rights. But our solution must address the larger context within which all these individual issues and concerns exist. When we work to "Stop Global Warming," we need to recognize that business and industry, by their own accounting, use over 80% of the energy sources that are polluting the atmosphere. And the military is the biggest polluter of all. Capitalist industries and the military are fighting globally to protect the profitability of the system that benefits and empowers them. That system is suffering a global depression. The battle to sustain it leaves no room or resources for reorganizing Capitalist production to meet the needs of sound ecological production, let alone to provide for a better standard of living and increased consumption for working people. As mad as it sounds to the average normal person, increasing profits and maintaining positions of power are more meaningful to those who benefit from the militarized economy than is survival of the planet and the human race. Our solution will require a revolution in creative thinking about what are "economic problems," who can solve them, and how.
*Elderly, mentally and physically ill hospital patients were the first victims of Hitler's furnaces at Dachau. Children from the village laughed and shouted when they saw the bus loads of patients approaching: "You're going to the furnaces!" they taunted. When the parents of those same children complained to local officials of the Third Reich that the stench was too much, they were to told to shut up or they themselves would soon become fuel for the fires. This plan for exterminating the "unproductive consumers" was carried out sometime before the Communists, "Marxists," dissidents, and "Jews," became targeted victims of Third Reich concentration camps, gas chambers and incinerators.

**After WWI, Germans were reported to wander streets pushing wheel barrels filled with worthless Reich currency in attempt to purchase a loaf of bread.
Recommended Reading:
Economics, Politics, and the Age of Inflation, by Paul Mattick (1978)
Fascism and Big Business, by Daniel Guerin (1973)
The Coming of the Third Reich, by Richard J. Evans (2003)
Bound Upon a Wheel of Fire, by John V. H. Dippel (1996)
Mary Lynn Cramer has dedicated over twenty-five years to low paying "applied economics," working as a bilingual child and family social worker, and more recently doing "field research" among the elderly living on social security, food stamps and subsidized housing. She has degrees in economic history, economic theory and social work. She can be reached at: mllynn2@yahoo.com

One Kidney and 19 Years for an $11 Robbery

December 30, 2010

Scott Sisters Freed!

One Kidney and 19 Years for an $11 Robbery

By ANTHONY PAPA

At long last the Scott sisters will be free! Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour in a totally bizarre act of compassion, based on public pressure, used his commutation powers to grant the sisters their freedom.

Governor Haley Barbour suspended the life sentences of Gladys and Jamie Scott, two African-American sisters who had served 16 years in prison for taking part in an $11 armed robbery. The women have always maintained their innocence. For many years civil rights advocates have called for the release the sisters. The case was brought to my attention a few years ago by Nancy Lockart, who spearheaded the campaign to free the Scott sisters.

Although I give thanks to the Governor for this act I have to question the stipulation that in order for Jamie Scott to be free she must donate a kidney to her ailing sister. An estimation was made that determined that dialysis treatments would cost the state of Mississippi $200,000 a year which did not include other treatments. If the operation could not be performed because of medical reasons they would revisit Jamie's stipulation but she would not go back to prison. In a radio interview Barbour described the suspension of sentences as the equivalent of parole. Any violation of the law could therefore land them back in prison.

So, in my view the act of compassion turns out to be a cost efficient way of ridding Mississippi with an astronomical medical bill. Gov. Barbour, who by the way aspires to run for President of the United States confirmed my thoughts by saying "The Mississippi Department of Corrections believes the sisters no longer pose a threat to society, Their incarceration is no longer necessary for public safety or rehabilitation, and Jamie Scott's medical condition creates a substantial cost to the State of Mississippi."

Bob Herbert of the NY Times recently wrote about the case of the Scott Sisters in a piece titled "'So Utterly Inhumane." He said, "This is Mississippi we're talking about, a place that in many ways has not advanced much beyond the Middle Ages." I agree one hundred percent. instead of giving the Scott Sisters their freedom through a true compassionate act of clemency, Governor Barbour instead used the barbaric stipulation that freedom in this case is the cost of a kidney.

I wish the Scott Sisters the best in their regaining their freedom and hope they lead fruitful and productive lives. And I pray that Governor Barbour does not use the freedom for organs tradeoff anymore in the future to save the state of Mississippi tax dollars.

Anthony Papa is the author of 15 Years to Life: How I Painted My Way to Freedom and Communications Specialist for Drug Policy Alliance. He can be reached at: anthonypapa123@yahoo.com

How Corporate America is Robbing Workers

December 30, 2010

How Corporate America is Robbing Workers

Serfing USA

By DAVE LINDORFF

Along with the staggering theft in broad daylight of Americans' assets that has occurred in the course of the ongoing financial crisis, as taxpayers funded multi-trillion bank bailouts and banks stole homes through foreclosures with the help of fraudulent paperwork, American companies have also been picking the pockets of workers more directly.

This second round of paycheck theft has come in the form of stolen productivity gains.

Historically, the relatively high and rising standard of living of American workers--both blue and white-collar--, which once gave the US one of the highest standards of living in the world, has come courtesy of rising productivity, which has allowed US companies to produce more goods with less labor, and to then pass some of the enhanced profits on to workers in the form of higher wages, without having to raise prices. That has been important because, when higher wages are financed by higher prices, it tends to be a kind of zero-sum game: higher wages cancelled out by inflation.

But beginning in 2000, the old system, already creaky, broke down.
The corporate onslaught against trade unions and against the minimum wage, which began with the Nixon administration in 1968, combined with so-called "free-trade" deals that allowed US companies to shift production overseas and then to freely import the products of their overseas production facilities back for sale to Americans at home, by weakening the power of workers to demand higher wages, has led to a situation where companies can just pocket all the profits from productivity gains, leaving wages stagnant, or even driving them down.

The recession that began in late 2007 has only made matters worse, giving owners and managers to opportunity to really hammer employees. With real unemployment and underemployment now running at close to 20%, employees are in no position to press for higher wages, even as those who are still working are putting in extra effort to keep their jobs, thus pushing productivity gains even higher.

The figures speak for themselves.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, productivity gains during the 1990-1999 decade averaged just 2.1% per year. The prior decade, from 1980-1989, the average productivity gain was 1.5% per year. But between 2000 and 2009, when the economy suffered two recessions, the average annual productivity gain has been 2.9%, almost 50% higher than the prior decade, and almost double the rate in the 1980s.

During this same period, however, wages have actually declined. According to the BLS, wages in 2010 rose 0.1%, but inflation, running at an official (and grossly under-measured) 1%, more than ate that up. According to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, for the whole decade from 2000 through 2009, wages actually sank for most people. In 2000, the median weekly wage for a high school graduate was $629. By the end of 2009, high school graduates were earning a median weekly wage, in inflation-adjusted dollars, of just $626--three dollars a week less than a decade earlier. A college degree didn't change things, either. In 2000, the median weekly wage for a college grad was $1030, but that had fallen to $1025 by the end of 2009.

Remember, all during that decade, companies were seeing productivity gains averaging almost 3% per year. If 50% of that gain in productivity annually had gone to workers, as might have been typical back 30 years ago when unions were stronger and before Congress gave away the store by signing onto the World Trade Organization and the North American Free Trade Act and similar trade agreements, that high school grad would have been earning $729 a week in inflation-adjusted dollars by 2009, while the college grad would have been earning $1,195.

Of course as a whole, Americans have been doing even worse, because these are just the mean wages of people who are working full weeks. In fact, many companies have been laying off workers, and making the remaining workers, desperate to hang on to their jobs, work harder to produce the same amount of product, meaning that besides not getting any pay increase, they are producing much more profit for the boss. Many workers who are still hanging onto their jobs are actually working fewer hours, and thus are taking home smaller paychecks, all of which goes into that higher productivity figure for output per worker the government is reporting.

Indeed, the Wall Street Journal today reported glowingly that US production of goods and services had returned to its 2007 pre-recession level, but this is with unemployment running at an official rate of 9.8 percent, and an actual rate of about 19 percent.

What we're witnessing is a massive national "speed-up" which is enriching the owners of capital, while the workers are getting stiffed. It is the payoff to the ruling class of decades of hammering of trade unions, and also of trade unions cutting deals with the Democratic Party, which in turn has refused to defend workers' interests. Look at the sell-out of Labor during the first two years of the Obama administration. The union movement's one big issue--restoring some measure of fairness to the Labor Relations Act, so that it would be at least possible to organize unions and to win contracts and improved wages and working conditions--was dropped without even a fight by the Obama administration and the leadership of the House and Senate. The government, fully in the hands of Democrats, has also continued to sign trade agreements, most recently with Korea, that further shift jobs overseas, thus further weakening the position of workers here at home.

A cynic might speculate that this is also why the Democrats have refused for over three years now to come up with any real public jobs program despite the desperate straits of tens of millions of jobless people who have been without work for more than a year. The Democrats, in thrall to corporate interests, would on the evidence much rather spend $50 billion on a program of extended unemployment benefits that leaves those millions of people hungry for any real job, than spend that same sum on providing them with government jobs, as that would actually reduce unemployment and increase the bargaining power of all workers vis-a-vis employers.

Meanwhile, the national corporate media, itself viciously anti-union, continue to skew news coverage to portray unions as corrupt and greedy, so that the 90 percent of American workers who are not in a union don't even realize that any pay gains or benefits they get are because employers are trying to avoid unionization of their workforce.

Unless Americans wake up soon to how this process is impoverishing us all, we will see this shifting income and wealth to the top strata of the population continue until most of us are little more than modern-day serfs.
A start would be for people to at least recognize that this stagnation and decline in incomes we're witnessing is not some natural phenomenon. It is, no less than the fat salaries, perks and bonuses paid by corporate managers to themselves, simply another manifestation of corporate greed gone wild.

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). He can be reached at dlindorff@mindspring.com

Out Lickspittle Press

Doorkeepers to the House of Lies

Out Lickspittle Press

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Anyone who doesn’t believe that the US is an incipient fascist state needs only to consult the latest assault on civil liberty by Fox News (sic). Instead of informing citizens, Fox News  informs on citizens. Jason Ditz reports on antiwar.com  that Fox News  “no longer content to simply shill for a growing police state,” turned in a grandmother to the Department of Homeland Security for making “anti-American comments.”

The media have segued into the police attitude, which regards insistence on civil liberties and references to the Constitution as signs of extremism, especially when the Constitution is invoked in defense of dissent or privacy or placarded on a bumper sticker. President George W. Bush set the scene when he declared:  “you are with us or against us.”

Bush’s words demonstrate a frightening decline in our government’s respect for dissent since the presidency of John F. Kennedy.  In a speech to the Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961, President Kennedy said:

 “No president should fear public scrutiny of his program, for from that scrutiny comes understanding, and from that understanding comes support or opposition; and both are necessary.  . . .  Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed, and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian law makers once decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment.”      

The press is not protected, Kennedy told the newspaper publishers, in order that it can amuse and entertain, emphasize the trivial, or simply tell the public what it wants to hear. The press is protected so that it can find and report facts and, thus, inform, arouse “and sometimes even anger public opinion.”       

In a statement unlikely to be repeated by an American president, Kennedy told the newspaper publishers: “I’m not asking your newspapers to support an administration, but I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people, for I have complete confidence in the response and dedication of our citizens whenever they are fully informed.”       The America of Kennedy’s day and the America of today are two different worlds. In America today the media are expected to lie for the government in order to prevent the people from finding out what the government is up to.  

If polls can be believed, Americans brainwashed and programmed by O’Reilly, Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh want Bradley Manning and Julian Assange torn limb from limb for informing Americans of the criminal acts of their government. Politicians and journalists are screeching for their execution.       

President Kennedy told the Newspaper Publishers Association that “it is to the printing press, the recorder of man’s deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news, that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: Free and Independent.”  Who can imagine a Bill Clinton, a George W. Bush, or a Barack Obama saying such a thing today?      

Today the press is a propaganda ministry for the government. Any member who departs from his duty to lie and spin the news is expelled from the fraternity.  A public increasingly unemployed, broke and homeless is told that they have vast enemies plotting to destroy them in the absence of annual trillion dollar expenditures for the military/security complex, wars lasting decades, no-fly lists, unlimited spying and collecting of dossiers on citizens supplemented by neighbors reporting on neighbors, full body scanners at airports, shopping centers, metro and train stations, traffic checks, and the equivalence of treason with the uttering of a truth.      

Two years ago when he came into office President Obama admitted that no one knew what the military mission was in Afghanistan, including the president himself, but that he would find a mission and define it. On his recent trip to Afghanistan, Obama came up with the mission: to make the families of the troops safe in America, his version of Bush’s “we have to kill them over there before they kill us over here.”      

No one snorted with derision or even mildly giggled. Neither the New York Times nor Fox News dared to wonder if perhaps, maybe, murdering and displacing large numbers of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen and US support for Israel’s similar treatment of Lebanese and Palestinians might be creating a hostile environment that could breed terrorists. If there still is such a thing as the Newspaper Publishers Association, its members are incapable of such an unpatriotic thought.      

Today no one believes that our country’s success depends on an informed public and a free press. America’s success depends on its financial and military hegemony over the world. Any information inconsistent with the indispensable people’s god-given right to dominate the world must be suppressed and the messenger discredited and destroyed.

Now that the press has voluntarily shed its First Amendment rights, the government is working to redefine free speech as a privilege limited to the media, not a right of citizens. Thus, the insistence that WikiLeaks is not a media organization and Fox News turning in a citizen for exercising free speech.

Washington’s assault on Assange and WikiLeaks is an assault on what remains of the US Constitution. When we cheer for WikiLeaks’ demise, we are cheering for our own.

Online petition against releasing GM mosquitoes

Online petition against releasing GM mosquitoes
By G Vinod
Mon, 13 Dec 2010


PETALING JAYA: Concerned citizens who are against the proposed release of genetically modified (GM) male mosquitoes in certain parts of the country have started an online petition campaign to get their message across the nation.

The online petition, titled "No to the release of GM mosquitoes in Bentong and Alor Gajah", was initiated by Cheah Hooi Giam from Penang and has so far garnered 290 signatories.

Calling on the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment to reconsider its planned release, Cheah said that no independent scientific data or evidence had been produced to prove that GM mosquitoes would effectively combat the dengue menace.

"Besides, no developed country had allowed the release of GM mosquitoes so far. What is the rationale of Malaysia, with limited scientific resources, rushing to be among the first to use this untested and unknown biological control?

"The Malaysian government must not favour commercial interests at the expense of the welfare, health and safety of the public and the environment," said Cheah.

She added that within the context of Malaysia's Biosafety Act (which governs the release of GM mosquitoes), the issues of redress and liability were clearly absent. This has raised public concerns over who would be responsible if anything detrimental to humans and the environment happened.

Based on a random check, most signatories echoed Cheah's concerns that no compelling evidence had been provided to the public on the plan's effectiveness and its long-term effects to the environment.

"Show us more convincing studies that tell us there is no impact on the environment,"says YP Wong of Cyberjaya.

Fearing that the mosquitoes may mutate, Grace Liew of Kuala Lumpur asked whether the government can guarantee that the GM mosquitoes or their larvae would not mutate into a new strain.

"Besides, has the government obtained the permission of the locals in Bentong and Alor Gajah before releasing the mosquitoes?" she asked.

Control rather than eradicate

Another signatory, Mok Shao Feng of Bentong proposed that the government study the Taiwan method of combating the Aedes menace – by controlling the mosquitoes rather than trying to eradicate them.

"We should not release them (GM mosquitoes) directly into wild, but rather release them into large controlled area for monitoring. We should perform this with extreme caution,"says Mok, who claimed to be a biotechnology student.

Another signatory, Cheay Lay Ping, sarcastically urged the authorities to release the mosquitoes at the minister's residence to allay public fears.

"Please release the GM mosquitoes at the houses of Najib Tun Razak (Prime Minister) and all the other ministers.... prove to us that it is safe; then only can you convince us that it would not harm us,"says Cheah.

On a more comical note, Khoo Soo Hay of Penang urged the ministry to provide evidence that the GM male mosquitoes will actually mate with the "right" gender upon release.

"Ask the patent owner to prove that the GM male mosquitoes will pick the 'right' gender when dusk falls," said Khoo.

Malaysia's National Biosafety Board (NBB) plans to release between 3,000 and 4,000 of the GM male mosquitoes in Bentong, Pahang and Alor Gajah, Malacca soon in a trial to reduce the Aedes population.

The progeny of the GM male mosquitoes is expected to die before they can hatch, thus preventing the spread of the lethal dengue virus.

However, the move by NBB has come under criticism by several concerned groups such as the Third World Network.

*********************************************************************

"Separating Terror from Terrorism is republished with permission of STRATFOR."

Separating Terror from Terrorism

December 30, 2010

By Scott Stewart

On Dec. 15, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent a joint bulletin to state and local law enforcement agencies expressing their concern that terrorists may attack a large public gathering in a major U.S. metropolitan area during the 2010 holiday season. That concern was echoed by contacts at the FBI and elsewhere who told STRATFOR they were almost certain there was going to be a terrorist attack launched against the United States over Christmas.
A lot of things MAY happen.  Only one more holiday until 2010 holiday season ends.

Certainly, attacks during the December holiday season are not unusual. There is a history of such attacks, from the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 on Dec. 21, 1988, and the thwarted millennium attacks in December 1999 and January 2000 to the post-9/11 airliner attacks by shoe bomber Richard Reid on Dec. 22, 2001, and by underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on Dec. 25, 2009. Some of these plots have even stemmed from the grassroots. In December 2006, Derrick Shareef was arrested while planning an attack he hoped to launch against an Illinois shopping mall on Dec. 22.
WAIT a fucking minute! A thwarted millenium attack is NOT an attack.  The attacks by the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber are so comical as to not even rise to the level of consideration.; A hoped for attack is NOT an attack either. Sheesh!

Mass gatherings in large metropolitan areas have also been repeatedly targeted by jihadist groups and lone wolves. In addition to past attacks and plots directed against the subway systems in major cities such as Madrid, London, New York and Washington, 2010 saw failed attacks against the crowds in New York’s Times Square on May 1 and in Pioneer Courthouse Square in downtown Portland, Ore., on Nov. 26.

With this history, it is understandable that the FBI and the DHS would be concerned about such an attack this year and issue a warning to local and state law enforcement agencies in the United States. This American warning also comes on the heels of similar alerts in Europe, warnings punctuated by the Dec. 11 suicide attack in Stockholm.

So far, the 2010 holiday season has been free from terrorist attacks, but as evidenced by all the warnings and concern, this season has not been free from the fear of such attacks, the psychological impact known as “terror.” In light of these recent developments, it seems appropriate discuss the closely related phenomena of terrorism and terror.

Propaganda of the Deed

Nineteenth-century anarchists promoted what they called the “propaganda of the deed,” that is, the use of violence as a symbolic action to make a larger point, such as inspiring the masses to undertake revolutionary action. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, modern terrorist organizations began to conduct operations designed to serve as terrorist theater, an undertaking greatly aided by the advent and spread of broadcast media. Examples of attacks designed to grab international media attention are the September 1972 kidnapping and murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics and the December 1975 raid on OPEC headquarters in Vienna. Aircraft hijackings followed suit, changing from relatively brief endeavors to long, drawn-out and dramatic media events often spanning multiple continents.
Today, the proliferation of 24-hour television news networks and the Internet have allowed the media to broadcast such attacks live and in their entirety. This development allowed vast numbers of people to watch live as the World Trade Center towers collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001, and as teams of gunmen ran amok in Mumbai in November 2008.

This exposure not only allows people to be informed about unfolding events, it also permits them to become secondary victims of the violence they have watched unfold before them. [SECONDARY VICTIM OF VIOLENCE .. holy shit .. what a howler .. you can't make this shit up] As the word indicates, the intent of “terrorism” is to create terror in a targeted audience, and the media allow that audience to become far larger than just those in the immediate vicinity of a terrorist attack. I am not a psychologist, but even I can understand that on 9/11, watching the second aircraft strike the South Tower, seeing people leap to their deaths from the windows of the World Trade Center Towers in order to escape the ensuing fire and then watching the towers collapse live on television had a profound impact on many people. A large portion of the United State was, in effect, victimized, [victimized so badly they let the Cheney administration invade and occupy Iraq at the loss of 1,000's of US troops and trillions of US $s. That's the kind of vicitmization that sounds very much self-inflicted; which isn't really victimization .. just ignorant and dumb]as were a large number of people living abroad, judging from the statements of foreign citizens and leaders in the wake of 9/11 that “We are all Americans.”

During that time, people across the globe became fearful, and almost everyone was certain that spectacular attacks beyond those involving the four aircraft hijacked that morning were inevitable [it never occuring to anyone that Al-Qaeda had fired its best and only shot ... bad freakin intl]— clearly, many people were shaken to their core by the attacks. A similar, though smaller, impact was seen in the wake of the Mumbai attacks. People across India were fearful of being attacked by teams of Lashkar-e-Taiba gunmen, and concern spread around the world about Mumbai-style terrorism. Indeed, this concern was so great that we felt compelled to write an analysis emphasizing that the tactics employed in Mumbai were not new and that, while such operations could kill people, the approach would be less successful in the United States and Europe than it was in Mumbai.

Terror Magnifiers

These theatrical attacks have a strange hold over the human imagination and can create a unique sense of terror that dwarfs the normal reaction to natural disasters that are many times greater in magnitude. For example, in the 2004 Asian tsunami, more than 227,000 people died, while fewer than 3,000 people died on 9/11. Yet the 9/11 attacks produced not only a sense of terror but also a geopolitical reaction that has exerted a profound and unparalleled impact upon world events over the past decade. [because most readers of newspapers and academic treatises are numerically retarded] Terrorism clearly can have a powerful impact on the human psyche — so much so that even the threat of a potential attack can cause fear and apprehension, as seen by the reaction to the recent spate of warnings about attacks occurring over the holidays. [Try living in Gaza ... shit, bunch of thumb-suckin momma's boy cowards running the show.]

As noted above, the media serve as a magnifier of this anxiety and terror. Television news, whether broadcast on the airwaves or over the Internet, allows people to remotely and vicariously experience a terrorist event, and this is reinforced by the print media. While part of this magnification is due merely to the nature of television as a medium and the 24-hour news cycle, bad reporting and misunderstanding can also help build hype and terror. For example, when Mexican drug cartels began placing small explosive devices in vehicles in Ciudad Juarez and Ciudad Victoria this past year, the media hysterically reported that the cartels were using car bombs. Clearly, the journalists failed to appreciate the significant tactical and operational differences between a small bomb placed in a car and the far larger and more deadly vehicle-borne explosive device.

The traditional news media are not alone in the role of terror magnifier. The Internet has also become an increasingly effective conduit for panic and alarm. [but only to people with access TO the internet .. and , not really all, or ever perhaps a intersting %age of those] From breathless (and false) claims in 2005 that al Qaeda had pre-positioned nuclear weapons in the United States and was preparing to attack nine U.S. cities and kill 4 million Americans in an operation called “American Hiroshima” to claims in 2010 that Mexican drug cartels were still smuggling nuclear weapons for Osama bin Laden, a great deal of fearmongering can spread over the Internet. Website operators who earn advertising revenue based on the number of unique visitors who read the stories featured on their sites have an obvious financial incentive for publishing outlandish and startling terrorism claims. The Internet also has produced a wide array of other startling revelations, including the oft-recycled e-mail chain stating that an Israeli counterterrorism expert has predicted al Qaeda will attack six, seven or eight U.S. cities simultaneously “within the next 90 days.” This e-mail was first circulated in 2005 and has been periodically re-circulated over the past five years. Although it is an old, false prediction, it still creates fear every time it is circulated.

Sometimes a government can act as a terror magnifier. Whether it is the American DHS raising the threat level to red or the head of the French internal intelligence service stating that the threat of terrorism in that country has never been higher, such warnings can produce widespread public concern. As we’ve noted elsewhere, there are a number of reasons for such warnings, from trying to pre-empt a terrorist attack when there is incomplete intelligence to a genuine concern for the safety of citizens in the face of a known threat to less altruistic motives such as political gain or bureaucratic maneuvering (when an agency wants to protect itself from blame in case there is an attack). As seen by the public reaction to the many warnings in the wake of 9/11, including recommendations that citizens purchase plastic sheeting and duct tape to protect themselves from chemical and biological attack, such warnings can produce immediate panic, although, over time, as threats and warnings prove to be unfounded, this panic can turn into threat fatigue.  [Oh, woe is we!]

Those seeking to terrorize can and do use these magnifiers to produce terror without having to go to the trouble of conducting attacks. The empty threats made by bin Laden and his inner circle that they were preparing an attack larger than 9/11 — threats propagated by the Internet, picked up by the media and then reacted to by governments — are prime historical examples of this.

In recent weeks, we saw a case where panic was caused by a similar confluence of events. In October, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) issued the second edition of Inspire, its English-language magazine. As we discussed in our analysis of the magazine, its Open Source Jihad section pointed out a number of ways that attacks could be conducted by grassroots jihadists living in the West. In addition to the suggestion that an attacker could weld butcher knives onto the bumper of a pickup truck and drive it through a crowd, or use a gun as attackers did in Little Rock and at Fort Hood, another method briefly mentioned was that grassroots operatives could use ricin or cyanide in attacks. In response, the DHS decided to investigate further and even went to the trouble of briefing corporate security officers from the hotel and restaurant industries on the potential threat. CBS news picked up the story and ran an exclusive report compete with a scary poison logo superimposed over photos of a hotel, a dinner buffet and an American flag. The report made no mention of the fact that the AQAP article paid far less attention to the ricin and cyanide suggestion than it did to what it called the “ultimate mowing machine,” the pickup with butcher knives, or even the more practical — and far more likely — armed assault.

This was a prime example of terror magnifiers working with AQAP to produce fear.

Separation

Groups such as al Qaeda clearly recognize the difference between terrorist attacks and terror. [funny - most politicians and military leaders don't, sacre bleue] This is seen not only in the use of empty threats to sow terror but also in the way terrorist groups claim success for failed attacks. For example, AQAP declared the failed Christmas Day 2009 “underwear” bombing to be a success due to the effect it had on the air-transportation system. In a special edition of Inspire magazine published in November following the failed attack against cargo aircraft, AQAP trumpeted the operation as a success, citing the fear, disruption and expense that resulted. AQAP claimed the cargo bomb plot and the Christmas Day plot were part of what it called “Operation Hemorrhage,” an effort to cause economic damage and fear and not necessarily kill large numbers of people.

As we’ve noted before, practitioners of terrorism lose a great deal of their ability to create terror if the people they are trying to terrorize adopt the proper mindset. A critical part of this mindset is placing terrorism in perspective. Terrorist attacks are going to continue to happen because there are a wide variety of militant groups and individuals who seek to use violence as a means of influencing a government — either their own or someone else’s.

There have been several waves of terrorism over the past century, but it has been a fairly constant phenomenon, especially over the past few decades. While the flavors of terror may vary from Marxist and nationalist strains to Shiite Islamist to jihadist, it is certain that even if al Qaeda and its jihadist spawn were somehow magically eradicated tomorrow, the problem of terrorism would persist.

Terrorist attacks are also relatively easy to conduct, especially if the assailant is not concerned about escaping after the attack. As AQAP has noted in its Inspire magazine, a determined person can conduct attacks using a variety of simple weapons, from a pickup to a knife, axe or gun. And while the authorities in the United States and elsewhere have been quite successful in foiling attacks over the past couple of years, there are a large number of vulnerable targets in the open societies of the West, and Western governments simply do not have the resources to protect everything — not even authoritarian police states can protect everything. This all means that some terrorist attacks will invariably succeed.

How the media, governments and populations respond to those successful strikes will shape the way that the attackers gauge their success. Obviously, the 9/11 attacks, which caused the United States to invade Afghanistan (and arguably Iraq) were far more successful than bin Laden and company could ever have hoped. The London bombings on July 7, 2005, where the British went back to work as usual the next day, were seen as less successful.

In the final analysis, the world is a dangerous place. Everyone is going to die, and some people are certain to die in a manner that is brutal or painful. In 2001, more than 42,000 people died from car crashes in the United States and hundreds of thousands of Americans died from heart disease and cancer. The 9/11 attacks were the bloodiest terrorist attacks in world history, and yet even those historic attacks resulted in the deaths of fewer than 3,000 people, a number that pales in comparison to deaths by other causes. This is in no way meant to trivialize those who died on 9/11, or the loss their families suffered, but merely to point out that lots of people die every day and that their families are affected, too.

If the public will take a cue from groups like AQAP, it too can separate terrorism from terror. Recognizing that terrorist attacks, like car crashes and cancer and natural disasters, are a part of the human condition permits individuals and families to practice situational awareness and take prudent measures to prepare for such contingencies without becoming vicarious victims. This separation will help deny the practitioners of terrorism and terror the ability to magnify their reach and power.




"Separating Terror from Terrorism is republished with permission of STRATFOR."