Saturday, December 5, 2009
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Letter To The President - By Cynthia Mckinney (23/11/09)
Cynthia Mckinney
Monday, 23 November 2009 08:42
Mr. President:
I are writing to urge you to announce an immediate cease-fire followed by a withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan in the fastest way consistent with the safety of our forces.
I urge you to end the use of Predator drones that kill civilians.
I call upon you to cease all covert operations in Africa, Asia, and North and South America.
Too many of your military advisors are implicated in torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against the peace. Your Justice Department operates at the zenith of injustice, defending Bush Administration criminality in U.S. Courtrooms.
I wrote to you earlier suggesting that if you did not investigate the crimes of the Bush Administration, you would be viewed as their accessory. Sadly, war crimes and torture are now committed with your name on them.
Please bring our troops home now."
Cynthia Mckinney
http://futurefastforward.com/feature-articles/2830-letter-to-the-president-by-cynthia-mckinney-231109
Monday, 23 November 2009 08:42
Mr. President:
I are writing to urge you to announce an immediate cease-fire followed by a withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan in the fastest way consistent with the safety of our forces.
I urge you to end the use of Predator drones that kill civilians.
I call upon you to cease all covert operations in Africa, Asia, and North and South America.
Too many of your military advisors are implicated in torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against the peace. Your Justice Department operates at the zenith of injustice, defending Bush Administration criminality in U.S. Courtrooms.
I wrote to you earlier suggesting that if you did not investigate the crimes of the Bush Administration, you would be viewed as their accessory. Sadly, war crimes and torture are now committed with your name on them.
Please bring our troops home now."
Cynthia Mckinney
http://futurefastforward.com/feature-articles/2830-letter-to-the-president-by-cynthia-mckinney-231109
Oppose Obama’s escalation of the Afghan-Pakistan war! Withdraw all troops now!
2 December 2009
Obama’s speech last night, which packaged the deployment of an additional 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan as the prelude to withdrawal, was a cynical exercise in evasion, double-talk and falsification.
The new deployment is a major escalation of an unpopular war that will lead to the deaths of countless thousands of Afghans and Pakistanis and a significant rise in US casualties. Indeed, many of the West Point cadets who were assembled to listen to the president’s speech will be sent to Afghanistan to fight in a war that the majority of Americans oppose.
Obama’s invocation of the attacks of September 11, 2001 to portray the war as a defense against terrorism is a fraud. The real reason for the occupation of Afghanistan—widely discussed within the foreign policy establishment—is to maintain a dominant position in oil-rich Central Asia in the interests of the global strategy of American imperialism.
This month marks the 30th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which then-president Jimmy Carter denounced as an illegal act of international aggression. What was not widely known at the time is that the US deliberately provoked Moscow to undertake its military adventure by financing and arming Mujahedeen guerrillas opposed to the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. Among those on the CIA payroll were Osama bin Laden and current leaders of the Taliban.
The result of this imperialist policy, authored by then-national security adviser and current foreign policy adviser to Obama, Zbigniew Brzezinski, has been three decades of war, civil war and social devastation. The Obama administration is intensifying this colonialist enterprise.
No credibility can be given to Obama’s talk of beginning the withdrawal of troops in July of 2011. This supposed timeline was hedged by references to “conditions on the ground.” Moreover, it was followed by statements to the effect that the war in Afghanistan is only one of many military interventions to come.
“The struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly,” Obama said, “and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Calling this struggle an “enduring test,” Obama went on to speak of “disorderly regions and diffuse enemies,” mentioning by name Somalia and Yemen.
In reality, the US colonial enterprise in Central Asia is open-ended. The Washington Post on Monday cited a US official as saying, “Our game is to convince them [the Pakistani military] that our commitment to Afghanistan and the region is long-term. We’re not going to pack up our bags and leave them as soon as we’re done.”
Far from Obama’s escalation hastening an end to the war, it creates the conditions for new and even greater military conflagrations. The injection of additional troops will further inflame tensions in the region and beyond—between Pakistan and India, India and China, Iran and the US, Russia and China and the US.
Perhaps the biggest lie is the claim that the war is being waged to protect the Afghan people. They overwhelmingly oppose the US-led foreign occupation.
Obama’s decision means that 2010 will be a year of increased death and destruction in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. A central focus of the new US deployment is to “lock down” Kandahar, a center of insurgent opposition to the US-NATO occupation. This can only mean a drive to terrorize the local population and kill as many insurgents and ordinary Afghans suspected of sympathizing with the resistance as possible.
At the same time, the US is threatening to launch ground operations on Pakistani soil, in addition to the drone missile attacks that are killing hundreds of Pakistani civilians. The Washington Post, reporting Monday on the recent visit to Islamabad by Obama’s national security adviser, retired Marine General James L. Jones, cited an American official as saying, “If Pakistan cannot deliver, he [Jones] warned, the United States may be impelled to use any means at its disposal to rout insurgents based along Pakistan’s western and southern borders with Afghanistan.”
The cost to the peoples of Central Asia is incalculable. The American people are to pay for the war policy of the US ruling elite with the loss of thousands more lives, the squandering of trillions in resources, unprecedented attacks on social services, and the further erosion of democratic rights.
The most glaring contradiction in a speech shot through with contradictions was Obama’s attempt to disentangle the war in Afghanistan from the war in Iraq. “I opposed the war in Iraq,” he said, “precisely because I believe that we must exercise restraint in the use of military force …” But he was unable to establish any essential difference between that criminal enterprise and his war in Afghanistan.
Obama’s escalation is yet another flagrant violation of the will of the American people. In one election after another, they have gone to the polls to express their hostility to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In every case, their will has been ignored and the wars have been expanded.
Obama won the presidency by running as an opponent of the Iraq war and appealing to popular opposition to militarism. Once in office, he quickly increased the US deployment in Afghanistan by 21,000, while reneging on his promise to carry out a rapid withdrawal from Iraq. Now he is increasing the total US troop level in Afghanistan to 100,000, more than double the level under Bush.
As with his pro-Wall Street economic policy and his assault on democratic rights, Obama, in his military and foreign policy, is continuing and deepening the reactionary program of Bush. The decision to expand the war in Central Asia is a devastating exposure of the entire US political system. Both parties and Congress are instruments of a ruling financial aristocracy, whose interests they defend in opposition to the needs and views of the working class, the vast majority of the population.
Of immense significance is the international line-up of imperialist powers behind the US-led war. The participation of Britain, Germany, France and other powers in the war constitutes an international onslaught aimed at subordinating the entire region to imperialist interests. Every one of these governments is acting in defiance of the antiwar sentiments of its population.
This underscores that the fight against war requires an international struggle of the working class against world imperialism and the capitalist system, which is the root cause of war.
In the United States, the fight against war can be waged only as a struggle against the Obama administration, the two-party system and the American financial oligarchy. It must be based on a socialist and internationalist program, and the building of a new leadership in the working class to fuse the fight against war, unemployment, poverty and attacks on democratic rights into an independent political struggle for a workers’ government.
This is the program of the Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International. All those who are opposed to imperialist war should make the decision to join and build the SEP as the new revolutionary leadership of the working class.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/pers-d02.shtml
Obama’s speech last night, which packaged the deployment of an additional 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan as the prelude to withdrawal, was a cynical exercise in evasion, double-talk and falsification.
The new deployment is a major escalation of an unpopular war that will lead to the deaths of countless thousands of Afghans and Pakistanis and a significant rise in US casualties. Indeed, many of the West Point cadets who were assembled to listen to the president’s speech will be sent to Afghanistan to fight in a war that the majority of Americans oppose.
Obama’s invocation of the attacks of September 11, 2001 to portray the war as a defense against terrorism is a fraud. The real reason for the occupation of Afghanistan—widely discussed within the foreign policy establishment—is to maintain a dominant position in oil-rich Central Asia in the interests of the global strategy of American imperialism.
This month marks the 30th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which then-president Jimmy Carter denounced as an illegal act of international aggression. What was not widely known at the time is that the US deliberately provoked Moscow to undertake its military adventure by financing and arming Mujahedeen guerrillas opposed to the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. Among those on the CIA payroll were Osama bin Laden and current leaders of the Taliban.
The result of this imperialist policy, authored by then-national security adviser and current foreign policy adviser to Obama, Zbigniew Brzezinski, has been three decades of war, civil war and social devastation. The Obama administration is intensifying this colonialist enterprise.
No credibility can be given to Obama’s talk of beginning the withdrawal of troops in July of 2011. This supposed timeline was hedged by references to “conditions on the ground.” Moreover, it was followed by statements to the effect that the war in Afghanistan is only one of many military interventions to come.
“The struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly,” Obama said, “and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Calling this struggle an “enduring test,” Obama went on to speak of “disorderly regions and diffuse enemies,” mentioning by name Somalia and Yemen.
In reality, the US colonial enterprise in Central Asia is open-ended. The Washington Post on Monday cited a US official as saying, “Our game is to convince them [the Pakistani military] that our commitment to Afghanistan and the region is long-term. We’re not going to pack up our bags and leave them as soon as we’re done.”
Far from Obama’s escalation hastening an end to the war, it creates the conditions for new and even greater military conflagrations. The injection of additional troops will further inflame tensions in the region and beyond—between Pakistan and India, India and China, Iran and the US, Russia and China and the US.
Perhaps the biggest lie is the claim that the war is being waged to protect the Afghan people. They overwhelmingly oppose the US-led foreign occupation.
Obama’s decision means that 2010 will be a year of increased death and destruction in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. A central focus of the new US deployment is to “lock down” Kandahar, a center of insurgent opposition to the US-NATO occupation. This can only mean a drive to terrorize the local population and kill as many insurgents and ordinary Afghans suspected of sympathizing with the resistance as possible.
At the same time, the US is threatening to launch ground operations on Pakistani soil, in addition to the drone missile attacks that are killing hundreds of Pakistani civilians. The Washington Post, reporting Monday on the recent visit to Islamabad by Obama’s national security adviser, retired Marine General James L. Jones, cited an American official as saying, “If Pakistan cannot deliver, he [Jones] warned, the United States may be impelled to use any means at its disposal to rout insurgents based along Pakistan’s western and southern borders with Afghanistan.”
The cost to the peoples of Central Asia is incalculable. The American people are to pay for the war policy of the US ruling elite with the loss of thousands more lives, the squandering of trillions in resources, unprecedented attacks on social services, and the further erosion of democratic rights.
The most glaring contradiction in a speech shot through with contradictions was Obama’s attempt to disentangle the war in Afghanistan from the war in Iraq. “I opposed the war in Iraq,” he said, “precisely because I believe that we must exercise restraint in the use of military force …” But he was unable to establish any essential difference between that criminal enterprise and his war in Afghanistan.
Obama’s escalation is yet another flagrant violation of the will of the American people. In one election after another, they have gone to the polls to express their hostility to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In every case, their will has been ignored and the wars have been expanded.
Obama won the presidency by running as an opponent of the Iraq war and appealing to popular opposition to militarism. Once in office, he quickly increased the US deployment in Afghanistan by 21,000, while reneging on his promise to carry out a rapid withdrawal from Iraq. Now he is increasing the total US troop level in Afghanistan to 100,000, more than double the level under Bush.
As with his pro-Wall Street economic policy and his assault on democratic rights, Obama, in his military and foreign policy, is continuing and deepening the reactionary program of Bush. The decision to expand the war in Central Asia is a devastating exposure of the entire US political system. Both parties and Congress are instruments of a ruling financial aristocracy, whose interests they defend in opposition to the needs and views of the working class, the vast majority of the population.
Of immense significance is the international line-up of imperialist powers behind the US-led war. The participation of Britain, Germany, France and other powers in the war constitutes an international onslaught aimed at subordinating the entire region to imperialist interests. Every one of these governments is acting in defiance of the antiwar sentiments of its population.
This underscores that the fight against war requires an international struggle of the working class against world imperialism and the capitalist system, which is the root cause of war.
In the United States, the fight against war can be waged only as a struggle against the Obama administration, the two-party system and the American financial oligarchy. It must be based on a socialist and internationalist program, and the building of a new leadership in the working class to fuse the fight against war, unemployment, poverty and attacks on democratic rights into an independent political struggle for a workers’ government.
This is the program of the Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International. All those who are opposed to imperialist war should make the decision to join and build the SEP as the new revolutionary leadership of the working class.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/pers-d02.shtml
ECONOMY: Neo-liberalism Preys on Nordic Welfare Systems
By Linus Atarah
HELSINKI, Dec 2 (IPS) - Nordic welfare state systems, often held up as model in the developed world, are crumbling under the assault of neo-liberal economic policies, say economic experts.
All five of the Nordic countries, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Denmark are experiencing rising poverty, long considered eradicated but now causing concern to policy-makers.
"It is true that in the 1970s poverty was more or less eradicated but now we have come back to a situation where 10 - 13 percent of the population is poor and that raises a lot of concerns,’’ Asbjorn Wahl, a trade union advisor, said at a seminar here on ‘Poverty in the Nordic Countries’, organised by the Nordic Institute in Finland (NiFin).
The seminar, late November, brought together economy and poverty researchers from Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland in a bid to shed light on some of the underlying causes of rising poverty in these countries. They were addressing relative poverty rather than absolute poverty.
"It doesn’t mean that you don’t have food the next day but it means you live differently from the average citizen in not being able to attend social events, and your children cannot take part in anything that costs money. It eventually leads to and is a prime cause of social exclusion,’’ Wahl, who is Coordinator of the Campaign for the Welfare State in Norway told IPS.
Hidden from public view there is apparently a sweeping undercurrent of social exclusion affecting large sections of populations in the Nordic countries.
All of the Nordic have been hit by rising unemployment with the possible exception of Norway which has been spared the worst of the global financial recession with an unemployment rate of less than three per cent.
Sweden’s unemployment rate rose from 6.2 percent in 2007 to 7.3 percent in 2009. Finland’s unemployment similarly rose from a little over 6 percent to 8.2 as of October 2009. Iceland whose economy essentially collapsed in the financial crisis had unemployment rising from 1.6 percent in 2008 to 9.4 per cent in February 2009.
According to Wahl, the poverty rate in Norway is 12 percent if one goes by the European Union’s definition of poverty which means earning less than 60 percent of the median income in the society.
Oil-rich Norway with fewer than five million inhabitants has had a booming economy for the decade preceding the global financial crisis.
"So Norwegian society is getting wealthier while there is increasing poverty", Wahl told IPS.
The situation is similar in Finland. The previously low rate of relative poverty has doubled among adults and tripled among children, said Markus Jäntti professor of economics at the Institute of Social Research at Stockholm University.
"It is a great achievement of the social democratic parties which were responsible for eradicating poverty but are also the very ones who have reintroduced poverty" remarked Jäntti.
In 1995 the rate of poverty among all Finnish children was five percent but by 2007 the corresponding figure was 14 percent, close to three times the figure in 1995, Jäntti told IPS.
Part of the reason for the rise in poverty rate is that the Finnish government in the late 1990s, in an effort to increase work incentives, dramatically reduced the unemployment benefits of those not working.
However, the overall consequences was that it did get a few people to work but the incomes level actually fell and so children whose parents did not secure work were left with lower employment benefits, thus leading to increased poverty among those children, said Jäntti.
"The work incentive programme was essentially driven by neo-liberalism or by right-wing populism but there is little evidence that it produced any increase in work attachment. But since the programme failed to work no one is drawing the obvious conclusion that there is something wrong with our social policy", he said.
The controversial work incentive programme - also known as workfare, and first introduced in the United States which viewed unemployment as stemming from people’s inherent unwillingness to work - has now become the reigning model in most European countries. Critics say it deliberately keeps people under the poverty line and does not address the root causes of unemployment-related poverty.
"The problem of poverty is to be studied first at its sources and secondly in its manifestations", said Wahl, quoting the prominent British economic historian, Richard Tawney, in 1931.
So there should be less of mere campaigning by governments on poverty in the form of ineffectual anti-poverty programmes and more on fighting the underlying unequal power relations in society by broad social mobilisation, Wahl said.
In the immediate post-World War II period, according to Wahl, the well developed Nordic welfare states came into being as a result of social struggles based on popular mobilisation in confrontation with the counter-forces which led to a great part of the economy taken off the market and made subject to democratic control.
Capital was tightly regulated, labour legislation was introduced, there was regulation of investment, credit control and the maintenance of a huge public sector, as well as a fixed exchange rate.
But in the 1970s up to the 1990s all that changed with the emergence of neo-liberalism. There was redistribution of wealth from the public into private hands and from the poor to the rich – characterised by a growing gap between high and low income earners - and a source of discontent among the population.
When the neo-liberal offensive was launched in the 1980s and 1990s the left political parties which were responsible for the welfare reforms also drifted to the right.
All of these Nordic countries are currently under right-wing political parties, except in Norway where the ruling coalition is made of Centre Left parties - the so-called Red-Green coalition.
"The social democratic parties started moving to the right and became soft neo-liberal parties and so they lost the support of the electorate and people began moving back and forth between parties", said Wahl.
This was exacerbated by the emergence of right-wing populist parties who have been clever at supporting all kinds of dissatisfactions and have been successful in channelling these dissatisfactions into making people vote other groups instead of focusing on the economic system.
In Finland, Denmark and Norway, as across many parts of Europe, these right-wing parties have suddenly emerged as formidable electoral forces, even gaining entry into the European Parliament for the first time.
Observers note that the Nordic countries, however, still have a wide range of free public services such as free school lunch - and in the case of Finland also during summer holidays - which has blunted the severity of poverty.
Also children prefer to leave home early as soon as they become young adults thus sacrificing parental financial dependence for individual freedom but which cannot be accounted for in purely monetary terms.
Nevertheless Wahl maintains that "the only way to fight poverty is to start a new way of mobilisation to change the power relations in society and the current financial crisis has helped a great deal in that aspect because people are becoming convinced that the neo-liberal experiment has failed.''
(END/2009)
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49497
HELSINKI, Dec 2 (IPS) - Nordic welfare state systems, often held up as model in the developed world, are crumbling under the assault of neo-liberal economic policies, say economic experts.
All five of the Nordic countries, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Denmark are experiencing rising poverty, long considered eradicated but now causing concern to policy-makers.
"It is true that in the 1970s poverty was more or less eradicated but now we have come back to a situation where 10 - 13 percent of the population is poor and that raises a lot of concerns,’’ Asbjorn Wahl, a trade union advisor, said at a seminar here on ‘Poverty in the Nordic Countries’, organised by the Nordic Institute in Finland (NiFin).
The seminar, late November, brought together economy and poverty researchers from Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland in a bid to shed light on some of the underlying causes of rising poverty in these countries. They were addressing relative poverty rather than absolute poverty.
"It doesn’t mean that you don’t have food the next day but it means you live differently from the average citizen in not being able to attend social events, and your children cannot take part in anything that costs money. It eventually leads to and is a prime cause of social exclusion,’’ Wahl, who is Coordinator of the Campaign for the Welfare State in Norway told IPS.
Hidden from public view there is apparently a sweeping undercurrent of social exclusion affecting large sections of populations in the Nordic countries.
All of the Nordic have been hit by rising unemployment with the possible exception of Norway which has been spared the worst of the global financial recession with an unemployment rate of less than three per cent.
Sweden’s unemployment rate rose from 6.2 percent in 2007 to 7.3 percent in 2009. Finland’s unemployment similarly rose from a little over 6 percent to 8.2 as of October 2009. Iceland whose economy essentially collapsed in the financial crisis had unemployment rising from 1.6 percent in 2008 to 9.4 per cent in February 2009.
According to Wahl, the poverty rate in Norway is 12 percent if one goes by the European Union’s definition of poverty which means earning less than 60 percent of the median income in the society.
Oil-rich Norway with fewer than five million inhabitants has had a booming economy for the decade preceding the global financial crisis.
"So Norwegian society is getting wealthier while there is increasing poverty", Wahl told IPS.
The situation is similar in Finland. The previously low rate of relative poverty has doubled among adults and tripled among children, said Markus Jäntti professor of economics at the Institute of Social Research at Stockholm University.
"It is a great achievement of the social democratic parties which were responsible for eradicating poverty but are also the very ones who have reintroduced poverty" remarked Jäntti.
In 1995 the rate of poverty among all Finnish children was five percent but by 2007 the corresponding figure was 14 percent, close to three times the figure in 1995, Jäntti told IPS.
Part of the reason for the rise in poverty rate is that the Finnish government in the late 1990s, in an effort to increase work incentives, dramatically reduced the unemployment benefits of those not working.
However, the overall consequences was that it did get a few people to work but the incomes level actually fell and so children whose parents did not secure work were left with lower employment benefits, thus leading to increased poverty among those children, said Jäntti.
"The work incentive programme was essentially driven by neo-liberalism or by right-wing populism but there is little evidence that it produced any increase in work attachment. But since the programme failed to work no one is drawing the obvious conclusion that there is something wrong with our social policy", he said.
The controversial work incentive programme - also known as workfare, and first introduced in the United States which viewed unemployment as stemming from people’s inherent unwillingness to work - has now become the reigning model in most European countries. Critics say it deliberately keeps people under the poverty line and does not address the root causes of unemployment-related poverty.
"The problem of poverty is to be studied first at its sources and secondly in its manifestations", said Wahl, quoting the prominent British economic historian, Richard Tawney, in 1931.
So there should be less of mere campaigning by governments on poverty in the form of ineffectual anti-poverty programmes and more on fighting the underlying unequal power relations in society by broad social mobilisation, Wahl said.
In the immediate post-World War II period, according to Wahl, the well developed Nordic welfare states came into being as a result of social struggles based on popular mobilisation in confrontation with the counter-forces which led to a great part of the economy taken off the market and made subject to democratic control.
Capital was tightly regulated, labour legislation was introduced, there was regulation of investment, credit control and the maintenance of a huge public sector, as well as a fixed exchange rate.
But in the 1970s up to the 1990s all that changed with the emergence of neo-liberalism. There was redistribution of wealth from the public into private hands and from the poor to the rich – characterised by a growing gap between high and low income earners - and a source of discontent among the population.
When the neo-liberal offensive was launched in the 1980s and 1990s the left political parties which were responsible for the welfare reforms also drifted to the right.
All of these Nordic countries are currently under right-wing political parties, except in Norway where the ruling coalition is made of Centre Left parties - the so-called Red-Green coalition.
"The social democratic parties started moving to the right and became soft neo-liberal parties and so they lost the support of the electorate and people began moving back and forth between parties", said Wahl.
This was exacerbated by the emergence of right-wing populist parties who have been clever at supporting all kinds of dissatisfactions and have been successful in channelling these dissatisfactions into making people vote other groups instead of focusing on the economic system.
In Finland, Denmark and Norway, as across many parts of Europe, these right-wing parties have suddenly emerged as formidable electoral forces, even gaining entry into the European Parliament for the first time.
Observers note that the Nordic countries, however, still have a wide range of free public services such as free school lunch - and in the case of Finland also during summer holidays - which has blunted the severity of poverty.
Also children prefer to leave home early as soon as they become young adults thus sacrificing parental financial dependence for individual freedom but which cannot be accounted for in purely monetary terms.
Nevertheless Wahl maintains that "the only way to fight poverty is to start a new way of mobilisation to change the power relations in society and the current financial crisis has helped a great deal in that aspect because people are becoming convinced that the neo-liberal experiment has failed.''
(END/2009)
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49497
The hidden meaning of the hidden Starbucks logo
16:26 November 27th, 2009
Bryant Simon
– Bryant Simon is professor of history and director of American Studies at Temple University. He is the author of “Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks”. The views expressed are his own. –
Last week, Roy Street Coffee and Tea, located at the corners of Roy Street and Broadway in Seattle, opened. This is another one of those stealth Starbucks – Starbucks stores without the Starbucks name over the front door – the coffee giant has been opening in its hometown and in London as of late. Like the other shops of this new vintage, this one is appointed with antique-style furniture, retro lighting, and a distressed looking table top salvaged from an old ship.
The rough-hewed interiors of these not Starbucks Starbucks haven’t really mattered to the journalists and bloggers who have been writing about them. They talk only about the naming patterns in Starbucks’ most recent branding strategy.
To them, the names of the stores represent a brand crisis. Quite rightly, they point out, when a brand hides its own identity, it is in some ways admitting defeat, saying that its name – a central part of any brand – has lost value. When it comes to Starbucks, all of this is true, but the question is why? Why has the Starbucks brand lost so much value that it has to hide from customers and act like a small business? The answer to these questions rests with communities and consumers, what they care about and desire the most these days.
Over the last several years, a quiet but decided shift in buying patterns has taken place. Really, there is something of a velvet revolt or a quiet rejection of brands going on.
In the early years of this century, the then mayor of Baltimore Martin O’Malley begged Starbucks to come to his city. He thought these big name stores would lend his de-industrializing hometown a much needed upper-middle-class sheen. Same with the residents of Landsdowne, Pennsylvania. In 2004, the town had several mom and pops diners and coffee shops. One day, though, a team of local residents lined up in three rows of forty in an empty lot where a 7-11 used to be. When the photographer gave them the sign, they turned over the letters. Their message read: “Got Location! Need Starbucks!” Afterwards, the Greater Lansdowne Civic Association sent this “visual petition” to Starbucks headquarters. Landsdowne never got a Starbucks, but Benicia, California and a lot of other towns got plenty of Starbucks.
By 2007, Benicia didn’t want them anymore. When Starbucks tried to open a fifth store in the northern California coastal town some residents balked. “It’s a serious problem,” a former city councilor and owner of an independent coffee house, told the Contra Costa Times (By Danielle Samaniego, “Benicia Looks at Limiting Chain Stores,” Contra Costa Times, Feb. 16, 2007). “People need to wake up to it,” she proclaimed, “When you drive through a town and everything is so homogenized that you can’t tell where you are anymore, that’s a problem.” She had an idea. Limit the number of chains. Ban them even. Encourage, instead, small, one-of-a-kind businesses. Soon her idea gained the support of local officials looking for ways to curtail the opening of more chain stores without violating state and federal laws. When the city council started to debate a ban on all “formula” businesses, a city official told the Contra Costa Times, “it’s about protecting the unique character of the commercial areas of Benicia, and there’s nothing unique about a store that has the same look and style, not just here, but everywhere.” (By Rachel Raskin-Zrihen, “Officials Look at Ways to Prevent Starbucks Overflow,” Contra Costa Times, Feb. 9, 2007)
BRAND AVOIDANCE
This wasn’t just about Starbucks. This was about a growing resistance to brands, and their dominance of the landscape, symbolized by Starbucks. With their feet and their purchases, individual consumers are revolting as well. Scholars have started to call this trend, “brand avoidance,” as consumers worried about the larger social and economic impact of brands on society look for other options, even if those options cost a bit more. In growing numbers, buyers are choosing the local over the brand, the farmers market over the supermarket, the Main Street strip over the mall. Same with coffee.
While Starbucks closed down outlets in 2008, citing the New Recession as the cause, independent coffee houses, the Seattle Times noted, brought in new customers and they didn’t cut prices. Over the last few years, in fact, the number of independent coffee houses in the U.S. has jumped past the number of chain store outlets, and now represent 54 percent of the coffee market.
How can we explain these consumer choices and the growth of these smaller business sectors? Consumers, just like the towns they live in, are starting to think that going to the branded store – to Starbucks or Cosi or Chipotle – costs too much. It makes them look too ordinary and too much like everyone else.
This is what those not Starbucks Starbucks stores tacitly acknowledge. By hiding their logos, they speak to the growing appeal of the locally owned small businesses. (Remember the stealth Starbucks stores are individually designed and named after the streets they are on – the places themselves.)
Apparently the experiment isn’t working. A former Starbucks insider said that Seattle’s 15th Ave. Coffee and Tea – the first of the new not Starbucks stores (its website, by the way, is called www.streetlevelcoffee.com) – is doing only a third of the business of the regular green-logoed Starbucks store that used be at that site.
Perhaps consumer really do want something more than branded artifice; they want something genuinely local.
The revolt against sameness may actually be real, too real for a fake Starbucks. And certainly this growing rejection of brands presents an opportunity for entrepreneurs and small business owners to create something authentically local for their customers.
http://blogs.reuters.com/small-business/2009/11/27/the-hidden-meaning-of-the-hidden-starbucks-logo/
Bryant Simon
– Bryant Simon is professor of history and director of American Studies at Temple University. He is the author of “Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks”. The views expressed are his own. –
Last week, Roy Street Coffee and Tea, located at the corners of Roy Street and Broadway in Seattle, opened. This is another one of those stealth Starbucks – Starbucks stores without the Starbucks name over the front door – the coffee giant has been opening in its hometown and in London as of late. Like the other shops of this new vintage, this one is appointed with antique-style furniture, retro lighting, and a distressed looking table top salvaged from an old ship.
The rough-hewed interiors of these not Starbucks Starbucks haven’t really mattered to the journalists and bloggers who have been writing about them. They talk only about the naming patterns in Starbucks’ most recent branding strategy.
To them, the names of the stores represent a brand crisis. Quite rightly, they point out, when a brand hides its own identity, it is in some ways admitting defeat, saying that its name – a central part of any brand – has lost value. When it comes to Starbucks, all of this is true, but the question is why? Why has the Starbucks brand lost so much value that it has to hide from customers and act like a small business? The answer to these questions rests with communities and consumers, what they care about and desire the most these days.
Over the last several years, a quiet but decided shift in buying patterns has taken place. Really, there is something of a velvet revolt or a quiet rejection of brands going on.
In the early years of this century, the then mayor of Baltimore Martin O’Malley begged Starbucks to come to his city. He thought these big name stores would lend his de-industrializing hometown a much needed upper-middle-class sheen. Same with the residents of Landsdowne, Pennsylvania. In 2004, the town had several mom and pops diners and coffee shops. One day, though, a team of local residents lined up in three rows of forty in an empty lot where a 7-11 used to be. When the photographer gave them the sign, they turned over the letters. Their message read: “Got Location! Need Starbucks!” Afterwards, the Greater Lansdowne Civic Association sent this “visual petition” to Starbucks headquarters. Landsdowne never got a Starbucks, but Benicia, California and a lot of other towns got plenty of Starbucks.
By 2007, Benicia didn’t want them anymore. When Starbucks tried to open a fifth store in the northern California coastal town some residents balked. “It’s a serious problem,” a former city councilor and owner of an independent coffee house, told the Contra Costa Times (By Danielle Samaniego, “Benicia Looks at Limiting Chain Stores,” Contra Costa Times, Feb. 16, 2007). “People need to wake up to it,” she proclaimed, “When you drive through a town and everything is so homogenized that you can’t tell where you are anymore, that’s a problem.” She had an idea. Limit the number of chains. Ban them even. Encourage, instead, small, one-of-a-kind businesses. Soon her idea gained the support of local officials looking for ways to curtail the opening of more chain stores without violating state and federal laws. When the city council started to debate a ban on all “formula” businesses, a city official told the Contra Costa Times, “it’s about protecting the unique character of the commercial areas of Benicia, and there’s nothing unique about a store that has the same look and style, not just here, but everywhere.” (By Rachel Raskin-Zrihen, “Officials Look at Ways to Prevent Starbucks Overflow,” Contra Costa Times, Feb. 9, 2007)
BRAND AVOIDANCE
This wasn’t just about Starbucks. This was about a growing resistance to brands, and their dominance of the landscape, symbolized by Starbucks. With their feet and their purchases, individual consumers are revolting as well. Scholars have started to call this trend, “brand avoidance,” as consumers worried about the larger social and economic impact of brands on society look for other options, even if those options cost a bit more. In growing numbers, buyers are choosing the local over the brand, the farmers market over the supermarket, the Main Street strip over the mall. Same with coffee.
While Starbucks closed down outlets in 2008, citing the New Recession as the cause, independent coffee houses, the Seattle Times noted, brought in new customers and they didn’t cut prices. Over the last few years, in fact, the number of independent coffee houses in the U.S. has jumped past the number of chain store outlets, and now represent 54 percent of the coffee market.
How can we explain these consumer choices and the growth of these smaller business sectors? Consumers, just like the towns they live in, are starting to think that going to the branded store – to Starbucks or Cosi or Chipotle – costs too much. It makes them look too ordinary and too much like everyone else.
This is what those not Starbucks Starbucks stores tacitly acknowledge. By hiding their logos, they speak to the growing appeal of the locally owned small businesses. (Remember the stealth Starbucks stores are individually designed and named after the streets they are on – the places themselves.)
Apparently the experiment isn’t working. A former Starbucks insider said that Seattle’s 15th Ave. Coffee and Tea – the first of the new not Starbucks stores (its website, by the way, is called www.streetlevelcoffee.com) – is doing only a third of the business of the regular green-logoed Starbucks store that used be at that site.
Perhaps consumer really do want something more than branded artifice; they want something genuinely local.
The revolt against sameness may actually be real, too real for a fake Starbucks. And certainly this growing rejection of brands presents an opportunity for entrepreneurs and small business owners to create something authentically local for their customers.
http://blogs.reuters.com/small-business/2009/11/27/the-hidden-meaning-of-the-hidden-starbucks-logo/
Elsa Rassbach interviews Zoya of the Foreign Committee of RAWA
By Zoya
May 24, 2009
What is RAWA's position regarding the U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan?
In 2001, the U.S. and its allies occupied Afghanistan under the beautiful slogans of "war on terror," "women's rights," "liberation" and "democracy." But when they installed the brutal and criminal warlords after the fall of the Taliban, everyone knew that Afghanistan had once again become a chessboard for world powers. They have their long-term plans in Afghanistan, and the plight of our people, and especially of women, has been misused to legitimize the foreign military presence in our country.
The U.S. invaded Afghanistan to fulfill its geo-political, economic and regional strategic interests and to transform Afghanistan into a strong military base in the region. In the past seven years, these troops have even further complicated the situation of Afghanistan. Not only have they pumped millions of dollars into the pockets of savage warlords but the Taliban and other terrorist groups are more powerful today. They have turned Afghanistan into the opium capital of the world, and one of the reasons for invading Afghanistan was to get hold of this multi-billion-dollar drug business.
Afghan people have been badly betrayed by the U.S. and NATO in the past few years. Despite billions in of aid, Afghan people are living under awful conditions that are worse than they were under the Taliban medieval rule. Afghanistan still faces a women's rights tragedy, and the everyday hardships of our masses are beyond imagination.
The U.S. and NATO have imposed a corrupt mafia, puppet government on the Afghan people, a government which is mostly comprised of warlords and drug lords. And now efforts are underway to share power with the Taliban and Islamic Party of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
The U.S. and NATO are killing thousands of our innocent people, while at the same time their operations have no impact on the Taliban, because as they are not really interested in peace and in stability in Afghanistan. The presence of the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups is in fact necessary for the U.S. and NATO in order to have a reason for their permanent presence in Afghanistan. Everyone knows that the U.S., a superpower, together with the biggest military pact in the world, NATO, could it is a matter of days, if not hours, defeat the Taliban and arrest Mullah Omer and Osama. But today they need such enemies to justify keeping their military machine in Afghanistan.
But even the foreign soldiers are the victims of the governments that send them to Afghanistan to be killed for nothing but guarding the benefits of multi-national corporations. These governments not only betray Afghans, but also their own citizens. They put in danger their own soldiers and spend taxpayers' money to push the region and the world towards more war and dangers. Here in Germany, I met a U.S. veteran who had been in Afghanistan. I told him that it would be important to the whole world that he tell his story. He cried and said, "Because of you, I'll go and talk." Many former U.S. veterans have shocking stories about on how they witnessed that in the name of "liberation," these troops have been committing war crimes.
The troops should be withdrawn as soon as possible. This is the first step. They should adopt less bloody alternatives. We don't want their so-called liberation and democracy. If these troops do not withdraw, we are sure that the Afghan people will have no other option but to rise up against them. Our people are already deeply fed up with the situation. The jokes being made in Afghanistan are that the Taliban are getting the most from this situation.
Would you not be afraid of a civil war if the U.S. and NATO withdrew from Afghanistan?
RAWA supports the call for the withdrawal of the U.S. and NATO troops because occupation is not a solution. They are constantly killing civilians, even at a wedding party. Do you think we are not human beings and don't have hearts? What would Americans do if an occupier were killing so many civilians in the U.S.?
We have a good history in Afghanistan of throwing out occupiers, and this is a source of pride. But we have lost pride. Over 40 countries have invaded us. People are frustrated, and they think the first step is to get the invaders out. Some may not agree with the Taliban, but some are paid to fight, and often they are starving; others are brainwashed, for example in the religious schools.
If there is a withdrawal, there will probably be a civil war between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban, but that would not be any worse than what is going on now. When these troops pull out at least we will then no more be an occupied country. It is the duty of Afghan people to get rid of the internal enemies, but today, our internal enemies are backed and supported by the external enemies that are the U.S. and NATO.
The reason the fundamentalists are powerful is because they are always being supported by the U.S., which has given billions of dollars to the Northern Alliance, money that has gone into the pockets of warlords and drug lords. Today people are crying of hunger, selling their children for $5, but where did the billions go?
What solutions would RAWA propose?
The withdrawal of military troops must be accompanied by other actions by governments, if they really want to help us as they claim. They must stop supporting any terrorist groups, including the Northern Alliance that destroyed Afghanistan before the Taliban came. There should also be sanctions on governments that support the Taliban, like Iran and Pakistan. Warlords should be brought to the International Court for crimes against humanity.
If they really have genuine concern for Afghanistan and want peace and stability in the country, the solution would be to support the democratic-minded organizations and individuals in Afghanistan, but in the past few years, much pressure has been put on such groups to give up. Today the democratic organizations are weak because no one helps them. If they received support, they would grow strong. And the democratic forces need to unite and fight against the fundamentalists.
The message of RAWA to freedom-loving people is to support the democratic organizations of Afghanistan. Freedom, democracy and justice cannot be enforced at gunpoint by a foreign country; they are the values that can be achieved only by our people and democracy-loving forces through a hard, decisive and long struggle. Those who claim to donate these values to the Afghan people through force will only push our country into slavery. It is our responsibility to stand up to fundamentalists and occupations.
What is RAWA?
RAWA was first established in 1977 by Afghan intellectual women, headed by Meena, to fight for equality of men and women and against male chauvinism that was and is being practiced in our society. Most women were illiterate and took literacy courses and then decided to work with RAWA. Poor, uneducated women such as farmers' widows come to RAWA for help. We encourage them to fight for their rights and get political education.
In 1979 RAWA fought against the Russians and to expose the Russian puppet government through demonstrations, leaflets, and strikes. In 1987, RAWA's leader, Meena, was killed by agents of KHAD (Afghanistan branch of KGB) with direct help of the Islamic Party of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Our demonstrations were attacked, even in Pakistan. We had to live in a clandestine way. From 1992 to the present, we have fought any brand of Islamic fundamentalists, who are the main cause of our miseries and problems.
Now RAWA has hundreds of members as well as a large number of supporters, not only in Afghanistan, but all around the world. Being strongly against the fundamentalist warlords, the Taliban and the puppet government of Hamid Karzai, we still can't work publicly in Afghanistan, and we continue to work semi-underground. In Afghanistan, we don't use the name RAWA for orphanages, literacy programs for women, handicraft centers for widows, or health care centers. The Afghan intelligence agency, which is run by warlords, follows us everywhere and creates problems for our members and supporters. Some of our supporters have been imprisoned and tortured for just having copies of our magazine with them.
The U.S. government has never supported democratic organizations like RAWA. Up until now, we have received not a penny from the U.S. or any other government. At the same time, we have the honor of being supported by the peace-loving people of the U.S. and other Western countries. We have received donations of $5 and even $1000 for orphanages, schools and political work. We are proud to rely on the small donations of our supporters and well wishers in Afghanistan and abroad, which have a huge value for us. We have groups of dedicated supporters in many countries that really work hard to raise awareness and funds for RAWA projects.
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/21539
May 24, 2009
What is RAWA's position regarding the U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan?
In 2001, the U.S. and its allies occupied Afghanistan under the beautiful slogans of "war on terror," "women's rights," "liberation" and "democracy." But when they installed the brutal and criminal warlords after the fall of the Taliban, everyone knew that Afghanistan had once again become a chessboard for world powers. They have their long-term plans in Afghanistan, and the plight of our people, and especially of women, has been misused to legitimize the foreign military presence in our country.
The U.S. invaded Afghanistan to fulfill its geo-political, economic and regional strategic interests and to transform Afghanistan into a strong military base in the region. In the past seven years, these troops have even further complicated the situation of Afghanistan. Not only have they pumped millions of dollars into the pockets of savage warlords but the Taliban and other terrorist groups are more powerful today. They have turned Afghanistan into the opium capital of the world, and one of the reasons for invading Afghanistan was to get hold of this multi-billion-dollar drug business.
Afghan people have been badly betrayed by the U.S. and NATO in the past few years. Despite billions in of aid, Afghan people are living under awful conditions that are worse than they were under the Taliban medieval rule. Afghanistan still faces a women's rights tragedy, and the everyday hardships of our masses are beyond imagination.
The U.S. and NATO have imposed a corrupt mafia, puppet government on the Afghan people, a government which is mostly comprised of warlords and drug lords. And now efforts are underway to share power with the Taliban and Islamic Party of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
The U.S. and NATO are killing thousands of our innocent people, while at the same time their operations have no impact on the Taliban, because as they are not really interested in peace and in stability in Afghanistan. The presence of the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups is in fact necessary for the U.S. and NATO in order to have a reason for their permanent presence in Afghanistan. Everyone knows that the U.S., a superpower, together with the biggest military pact in the world, NATO, could it is a matter of days, if not hours, defeat the Taliban and arrest Mullah Omer and Osama. But today they need such enemies to justify keeping their military machine in Afghanistan.
But even the foreign soldiers are the victims of the governments that send them to Afghanistan to be killed for nothing but guarding the benefits of multi-national corporations. These governments not only betray Afghans, but also their own citizens. They put in danger their own soldiers and spend taxpayers' money to push the region and the world towards more war and dangers. Here in Germany, I met a U.S. veteran who had been in Afghanistan. I told him that it would be important to the whole world that he tell his story. He cried and said, "Because of you, I'll go and talk." Many former U.S. veterans have shocking stories about on how they witnessed that in the name of "liberation," these troops have been committing war crimes.
The troops should be withdrawn as soon as possible. This is the first step. They should adopt less bloody alternatives. We don't want their so-called liberation and democracy. If these troops do not withdraw, we are sure that the Afghan people will have no other option but to rise up against them. Our people are already deeply fed up with the situation. The jokes being made in Afghanistan are that the Taliban are getting the most from this situation.
Would you not be afraid of a civil war if the U.S. and NATO withdrew from Afghanistan?
RAWA supports the call for the withdrawal of the U.S. and NATO troops because occupation is not a solution. They are constantly killing civilians, even at a wedding party. Do you think we are not human beings and don't have hearts? What would Americans do if an occupier were killing so many civilians in the U.S.?
We have a good history in Afghanistan of throwing out occupiers, and this is a source of pride. But we have lost pride. Over 40 countries have invaded us. People are frustrated, and they think the first step is to get the invaders out. Some may not agree with the Taliban, but some are paid to fight, and often they are starving; others are brainwashed, for example in the religious schools.
If there is a withdrawal, there will probably be a civil war between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban, but that would not be any worse than what is going on now. When these troops pull out at least we will then no more be an occupied country. It is the duty of Afghan people to get rid of the internal enemies, but today, our internal enemies are backed and supported by the external enemies that are the U.S. and NATO.
The reason the fundamentalists are powerful is because they are always being supported by the U.S., which has given billions of dollars to the Northern Alliance, money that has gone into the pockets of warlords and drug lords. Today people are crying of hunger, selling their children for $5, but where did the billions go?
What solutions would RAWA propose?
The withdrawal of military troops must be accompanied by other actions by governments, if they really want to help us as they claim. They must stop supporting any terrorist groups, including the Northern Alliance that destroyed Afghanistan before the Taliban came. There should also be sanctions on governments that support the Taliban, like Iran and Pakistan. Warlords should be brought to the International Court for crimes against humanity.
If they really have genuine concern for Afghanistan and want peace and stability in the country, the solution would be to support the democratic-minded organizations and individuals in Afghanistan, but in the past few years, much pressure has been put on such groups to give up. Today the democratic organizations are weak because no one helps them. If they received support, they would grow strong. And the democratic forces need to unite and fight against the fundamentalists.
The message of RAWA to freedom-loving people is to support the democratic organizations of Afghanistan. Freedom, democracy and justice cannot be enforced at gunpoint by a foreign country; they are the values that can be achieved only by our people and democracy-loving forces through a hard, decisive and long struggle. Those who claim to donate these values to the Afghan people through force will only push our country into slavery. It is our responsibility to stand up to fundamentalists and occupations.
What is RAWA?
RAWA was first established in 1977 by Afghan intellectual women, headed by Meena, to fight for equality of men and women and against male chauvinism that was and is being practiced in our society. Most women were illiterate and took literacy courses and then decided to work with RAWA. Poor, uneducated women such as farmers' widows come to RAWA for help. We encourage them to fight for their rights and get political education.
In 1979 RAWA fought against the Russians and to expose the Russian puppet government through demonstrations, leaflets, and strikes. In 1987, RAWA's leader, Meena, was killed by agents of KHAD (Afghanistan branch of KGB) with direct help of the Islamic Party of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Our demonstrations were attacked, even in Pakistan. We had to live in a clandestine way. From 1992 to the present, we have fought any brand of Islamic fundamentalists, who are the main cause of our miseries and problems.
Now RAWA has hundreds of members as well as a large number of supporters, not only in Afghanistan, but all around the world. Being strongly against the fundamentalist warlords, the Taliban and the puppet government of Hamid Karzai, we still can't work publicly in Afghanistan, and we continue to work semi-underground. In Afghanistan, we don't use the name RAWA for orphanages, literacy programs for women, handicraft centers for widows, or health care centers. The Afghan intelligence agency, which is run by warlords, follows us everywhere and creates problems for our members and supporters. Some of our supporters have been imprisoned and tortured for just having copies of our magazine with them.
The U.S. government has never supported democratic organizations like RAWA. Up until now, we have received not a penny from the U.S. or any other government. At the same time, we have the honor of being supported by the peace-loving people of the U.S. and other Western countries. We have received donations of $5 and even $1000 for orphanages, schools and political work. We are proud to rely on the small donations of our supporters and well wishers in Afghanistan and abroad, which have a huge value for us. We have groups of dedicated supporters in many countries that really work hard to raise awareness and funds for RAWA projects.
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/21539
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Military Doublespeak
by Laurence M. Vance
In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the government had three slogans emblazoned on The Ministry of Truth building: war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. True, the dystopian society depicted by Orwell existed only in his mind. Yet, the doublespeak that existed in that made-up society has increasingly been adopted by governments – our government.
It is a tragic thing that the U.S. government employs doublespeak to deceive the American people; it is even more tragic that most Americans accept government doublespeak as the gospel truth.
There is no greater instance of government doublespeak than when it comes to the military. Here are some examples:
* Serving in the military: getting money for college from the taxpayers.
* Deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan: occupying a sovereign country.
* The global war on terrorism: a cash machine for privileged government contractors.
* Conscription: slavery.
* Stop-loss policy: backdoor draft.
* Dress blues: government-issued costume.
* Troop surge: escalation of a war we are losing.
* Flying sorties: bombing civilians and their property.
* Stationed overseas: helping to maintain the U.S. global empire of troops and bases.
* Enhanced interrogation techniques: torture by the United States.
* Extraordinary rendition: U.S. sanctioned torture by other countries.
* Fighting terrorism: making terrorists.
* Fighting our enemies: making more enemies.
* Defending our freedoms: destroying our freedoms.
* Insurgents: foreigners who resent having their country invaded or occupied.
* Sanctions: killing children without bombs and bullets.
* Military chaplain: trying to serve two masters.
* Military appreciation service: idolatry.
* Praying "God bless our troops": blasphemy.
* Supporting the troops: supporting foreign invasions and occupations.
* Precision bombing: civilian killer.
* Cluster bomb: child civilian killer.
* Land mine: American IED.
* Terrorist: someone who plants a bomb that doesn’t wear an Air Force uniform.
* Enemies of the United States: countries that oppose U.S. hegemony.
* Enemy combatant: someone turned over to U.S. troops in Afghanistan by someone eager to collect a bounty.
* Axis of evil: countries with oppressive governments that our oppressive government doesn’t like.
* Allies: countries with oppressive governments that our oppressive government likes.
* Anti-Semite: someone who opposes U.S. military intervention in the Middle East.
* Military recruiter: pimp for duped young men who want to sell their services to the government.
* Bomber pilot: long-distance killer.
* Persistent conflict: perpetual warfare.
* U.S. interests: an excuse to police the world.
* U.S. foreign policy: imperialism.
* National security: national police state.
* Collateral damage: the slaughter of unarmed civilians by American bullets and bombs.
* Die for our freedoms: die for a lie.
* War hawk: warmonger.
* Regime change: meddling in the affairs of other countries.
* Congressional supporters of large military budgets: pimps to hook up government and defense contractors.
* Military spokesman: military propagandist.
* Commander in chief: the chief war criminal.
I’m sure there are other words and terms that have been or will be devised or brought to bear to justify the actions of the U.S. military. Reject them, and denounce them for what they are: military doublespeak.
November 19, 2009
Laurence M. Vance [send him mail] writes from Pensacola, FL. He is the author of Christianity and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State and The Revolution that Wasn't. His newest book is Rethinking the Good War. Visit his website.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance188.html
In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the government had three slogans emblazoned on The Ministry of Truth building: war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. True, the dystopian society depicted by Orwell existed only in his mind. Yet, the doublespeak that existed in that made-up society has increasingly been adopted by governments – our government.
It is a tragic thing that the U.S. government employs doublespeak to deceive the American people; it is even more tragic that most Americans accept government doublespeak as the gospel truth.
There is no greater instance of government doublespeak than when it comes to the military. Here are some examples:
* Serving in the military: getting money for college from the taxpayers.
* Deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan: occupying a sovereign country.
* The global war on terrorism: a cash machine for privileged government contractors.
* Conscription: slavery.
* Stop-loss policy: backdoor draft.
* Dress blues: government-issued costume.
* Troop surge: escalation of a war we are losing.
* Flying sorties: bombing civilians and their property.
* Stationed overseas: helping to maintain the U.S. global empire of troops and bases.
* Enhanced interrogation techniques: torture by the United States.
* Extraordinary rendition: U.S. sanctioned torture by other countries.
* Fighting terrorism: making terrorists.
* Fighting our enemies: making more enemies.
* Defending our freedoms: destroying our freedoms.
* Insurgents: foreigners who resent having their country invaded or occupied.
* Sanctions: killing children without bombs and bullets.
* Military chaplain: trying to serve two masters.
* Military appreciation service: idolatry.
* Praying "God bless our troops": blasphemy.
* Supporting the troops: supporting foreign invasions and occupations.
* Precision bombing: civilian killer.
* Cluster bomb: child civilian killer.
* Land mine: American IED.
* Terrorist: someone who plants a bomb that doesn’t wear an Air Force uniform.
* Enemies of the United States: countries that oppose U.S. hegemony.
* Enemy combatant: someone turned over to U.S. troops in Afghanistan by someone eager to collect a bounty.
* Axis of evil: countries with oppressive governments that our oppressive government doesn’t like.
* Allies: countries with oppressive governments that our oppressive government likes.
* Anti-Semite: someone who opposes U.S. military intervention in the Middle East.
* Military recruiter: pimp for duped young men who want to sell their services to the government.
* Bomber pilot: long-distance killer.
* Persistent conflict: perpetual warfare.
* U.S. interests: an excuse to police the world.
* U.S. foreign policy: imperialism.
* National security: national police state.
* Collateral damage: the slaughter of unarmed civilians by American bullets and bombs.
* Die for our freedoms: die for a lie.
* War hawk: warmonger.
* Regime change: meddling in the affairs of other countries.
* Congressional supporters of large military budgets: pimps to hook up government and defense contractors.
* Military spokesman: military propagandist.
* Commander in chief: the chief war criminal.
I’m sure there are other words and terms that have been or will be devised or brought to bear to justify the actions of the U.S. military. Reject them, and denounce them for what they are: military doublespeak.
November 19, 2009
Laurence M. Vance [send him mail] writes from Pensacola, FL. He is the author of Christianity and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State and The Revolution that Wasn't. His newest book is Rethinking the Good War. Visit his website.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance188.html
The U.S. Global Empire
There
is a new empire in town, and its global presence is increasing every
day.
is a new empire in town, and its global presence is increasing every
day.
The
kingdom of Alexander the Great reached all the way to the borders
of India. The Roman Empire controlled the Celtic regions of Northern
Europe and all of the Hellenized states that bordered the Mediterranean.
The Mongol Empire, which was the largest contiguous empire in history,
stretched from Southeast Asia to Europe. The Byzantine Empire spanned
the years 395 to 1453. In the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire
stretched from the Persian Gulf in the east to Hungary in the northwest;
and from Egypt in the south to the Caucasus in the north. At the
height of its dominion, the British Empire included almost a quarter
of the world’s population.
Nothing,
however, compares to the U.S. global empire. What makes U.S. hegemony
unique is that it consists, not of control over great land masses
or population centers, but of a global presence unlike that of any
other country in history.
The
extent of the U.S. global empire is almost incalculable. The latest
"Base
Structure Report" of the Department of Defense states that
the Department’s physical assets consist of "more than 600,000
individual buildings and structures, at more than 6,000 locations,
on more than 30 million acres." The exact number of locations
is then given as 6,702 – divided into large installations (115),
medium installations (115), and small installations/locations (6,472).
This classification can be deceiving, however, because installations
are only classified as small if they have a Plant Replacement Value
(PRV) of less than $800 million.
Although
most of these locations are in the continental United States, 96
of them are in U.S. territories around the globe, and 702 of them
are in foreign countries. But as Chalmers
Johnson has documented,
the figure of 702 foreign military installations is too low, for
it does not include installations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel,
Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan. Johnson estimates
that an honest count would be closer to 1,000.
The
number of countries that the United States has a presence in is
staggering. According the U.S. Department of State’s list of "Independent
States in the World," there are 192 countries in the world,
all of which, except Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea, have diplomatic
relations with the United States. All of these countries except
one (Vatican City) are members of the United
Nations. According to the Department of Defense publication,
"Active
Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country,"
the United States has troops in 135 countries. Here is the list:
| Afghanistan
Albania Algeria Antigua Argentina Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belgium Belize Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Burma Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Chad Chile China Colombia Congo Costa Rica Cote D’lvoire Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominican Republic East Timor Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Fiji |
Finland
|
Niger
Nigeria North Korea Norway Oman Pakistan Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Qatar Romania Russia Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia and Montenegro Sierra Leone Singapore Slovenia Spain South Africa South Korea Sri Lanka Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syria Tanzania Thailand Togo Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom Uruguay Venezuela Vietnam Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe |
This
means that the United States has troops in 70 percent of the world’s
countries. The average American could probably not locate half of
these 135 countries on a map.
To
this list could be added regions like the Indian Ocean territory
of Diego Garcia, Gibraltar, and the Atlantic Ocean island of St.
Helena, all still controlled by Great Britain, but not considered
sovereign countries. Greenland is also home to U.S. troops, but
is technically part of Denmark. Troops in two other regions, Kosovo
and Hong Kong, might also be included here, but the DOD’s "Personnel
Strengths" document includes U.S. troops in Kosovo under Serbia
and U.S. troops in Hong Kong under China.
Possessions
of the United States like Guam, Johnston Atoll, Puerto Rico, the
Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, and the Virgin Islands are
likewise home to U.S. troops. Guam has over 3,200.
Regular
troop strength ranges from a low of 1 in Malawi to a high of 74,796
in Germany. At the time the most recent "Personnel Strengths"
was released by the government (September 30, 2003), there were
183,002 troops deployed to Iraq, an unspecified number of which
came from U.S. forces in Germany and Italy. The total number of
troops deployed abroad as of that date was 252,764, not including
U.S. troops in Iraq from the United States. Total military personnel
on September 30, 2003, was 1,434,377. This means that 17.6 percent
of U.S. military forces were deployed on foreign soil, and certainly
over 25 percent if U.S. troops in Iraq from the United States were
included. But regardless of how many troops we have in each country,
having troops in 135 countries is 135 countries too many.
The
U. S. global empire – an empire that Alexander the Great, Caesar Augustus,
Genghis Khan, Suleiman the Magnificent, Justinian, and King George
V would be proud of.
March
16, 2004
Laurence
M. Vance [send him mail]
is a freelance writer and an adjunct instructor in accounting and
economics at Pensacola Junior College in Pensacola, FL. Visit his
website.
Obama Quietly Backs Renewing Patriot Act Surveillance Provisions
By Willam Fisher, IPS News
Posted on November 24, 2009, Printed on December 1, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144170/
NEW YORK, 23 Nov (IPS) - With the health care debate preoccupying the mainstream media, it has gone virtually unreported that the Barack Obama administration is quietly supporting renewal of provisions of the George W. Bush-era USA Patriot Act that civil libertarians say infringe on basic freedoms.
And it is reportedly doing so over the objections of some prominent Democrats.
When a panicky Congress passed the act 45 days after the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, three contentious parts of the law were scheduled to expire at the end of next month, and opponents of these sections have been pushing Congress to substitute new provisions with substantially strengthened civil liberties protections.
But with the apparent approval of the Obama White House and a number of Republicans -- and over the objections of liberal Senate Democrats including Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Dick Durbin of Illinois -- the Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to extend the three provisions with only minor changes.
Those provisions would leave unaltered the power of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to seize records and to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail in the course of counterterrorism investigations.
The parts of the act due to expire on Dec. 31 deal with:
National Security Letters (NSLs)
The FBI uses NSLs to compel Internet service providers, libraries, banks, and credit reporting companies to turn over sensitive information about their customers and patrons. Using this data, the government can compile vast dossiers about innocent people.
The 'Material Support' Statute
This provision criminalizes providing "material support" to terrorists, defined as providing any tangible or intangible good, service or advice to a terrorist or designated group. As amended by the Patriot Act and other laws since Sep. 11, this section criminalizes a wide array of activities, regardless of whether they actually or intentionally further terrorist goals or organizations.
FISA Amendments Act of 2008
This past summer, Congress passed a law that permits the government to conduct warrantless and suspicion-less dragnet collection of U.S. residents' international telephone calls and e-mails.
Asked by IPS why committee chairman Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and other Democrats chose to make only minor changes, Chip Pitts, president of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, referred to "the secret and hypocritical lobbying by the Obama administration against reforms -- while publicly stating receptiveness to them." White House pressure, he speculated, "was undoubtedly a huge if lamentable factor".
He added that some committee members were cautious because of the recent arrests of Najibullah Zazi and others.
Zazi , a citizen of Afghanistan and a legal U.S. resident, was arrested in September as part of a group accused of planning to carry out acts of terrorism against the U.S. Zazi is said by the FBI to have attended courses and received instruction on weapons and explosives at an al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan.
Leahy acknowledged that, in light of these incidents, "This is no time to weaken or undermine the tools that law enforcement relies on to protect America."
Pitts told IPS, "Short-term and political considerations driven by dramatic events once again dramatically affected the need for a more sensible long-term, reasoned, rule-of-law approach."
"In the eight years since passage of the original Patriot Act, it's become clear that the escalating political competition to appear tough on terror -- and avoid being accused of being "soft on terror" -- brings perceived electoral benefits with few costs, with vital but fragile civil liberties being easily sacrificed," he added.
In contrast to the Senate, the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee approved a version of the legislation containing several significant reforms. In a 16-10 party-line vote, the committee's version curbs some of the government's controversial surveillance powers.
The Patriot Act, passed by a landslide after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to provide law enforcement and intelligence agencies additional powers to thwart terrorist activities, was reauthorized in 2005.
The legislation has been criticized by many from across the ideological spectrum as a threat to civil liberties, privacy and democratic traditions. Sections of the original act have been ruled unconstitutional, with certain provisions violating protected rights.
Judiciary Chair John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, said the goal of the new legislation was to "craft a law that preserves both our national security and our national values".
The proposed new legislation would permit the so-called "lone wolf" provision to sunset. This authority removed the requirement that an individual needed to be an agent of a foreign power to be placed under surveillance by intelligence officials and permitted surveillance of individuals with a much lower evidentiary threshold than allowed under criminal surveillance procedures.
It was intended to allow the surveillance of individuals believed to be doing the bidding of foreign governments or terrorist organizations, even when the evidence of that connection was lacking.
The Justice Department maintains that the "lone wolf" authority is necessary, even though there is no evidence that it has been used. Its opponents believe that existing authorities are sufficient to achieve the goals of the lone wolf provision while more effectively protecting the rights of innocent citizens.
The proposed new House legislation would also restrict the use of national security letters. According to a Congressional Research Service report, "National security letters (NSL) are roughly comparable to administrative subpoenas. Intelligence agencies issue them for intelligence gathering purposes to telephone companies, Internet service providers, consumer credit reporting agencies, banks, and other financial institutions, directing the recipients to turn over certain customer records and similar information."
Under current law, intelligence agencies have few restrictions on the use of NSLs, and in numerous cases, have abused the authority. An FBI inspector general report in 2007 "found that the FBI used NSLs in violation of applicable NSL statutes, Attorney General Guidelines, and internal FBI policies". The reform provisions seek to create greater judicial scrutiny of NSL use.
The bill approved in the Senate contains much more modest reforms. It would retain the lone wolf provision, and is, in general, much more in line with the wishes of the administration. Should both bills pass and go into conference to be reconciled, it is unclear which approach would prevail.
House and Senate versions still need to be voted on by each body separately and then reconciled into a single bill to send to the president for signature.
Pitts told IPS, "President Obama's flip-flop on Patriot Act issues does as much damage as did his flip-flop on the FISA Amendments Act and telecom immunity last year. But it's imperative that we fight, while we still can, to comprehensively reinsert requirements for fact-based, individualized suspicion, checks and balances, and meaningful judicial review prior to government intrusions."
In a report on the Patriot Act, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said, "More than seven years after its implementation there is little evidence that the Patriot Act has been effective in making America more secure from terrorists. However, there are many unfortunate examples that the government abused these authorities in ways that both violate the rights of innocent people and squander precious security resources."
William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia for the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
© 2009 IPS News All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/144170/
Posted on November 24, 2009, Printed on December 1, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144170/
NEW YORK, 23 Nov (IPS) - With the health care debate preoccupying the mainstream media, it has gone virtually unreported that the Barack Obama administration is quietly supporting renewal of provisions of the George W. Bush-era USA Patriot Act that civil libertarians say infringe on basic freedoms.
And it is reportedly doing so over the objections of some prominent Democrats.
When a panicky Congress passed the act 45 days after the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, three contentious parts of the law were scheduled to expire at the end of next month, and opponents of these sections have been pushing Congress to substitute new provisions with substantially strengthened civil liberties protections.
But with the apparent approval of the Obama White House and a number of Republicans -- and over the objections of liberal Senate Democrats including Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Dick Durbin of Illinois -- the Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to extend the three provisions with only minor changes.
Those provisions would leave unaltered the power of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to seize records and to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail in the course of counterterrorism investigations.
The parts of the act due to expire on Dec. 31 deal with:
National Security Letters (NSLs)
The FBI uses NSLs to compel Internet service providers, libraries, banks, and credit reporting companies to turn over sensitive information about their customers and patrons. Using this data, the government can compile vast dossiers about innocent people.
The 'Material Support' Statute
This provision criminalizes providing "material support" to terrorists, defined as providing any tangible or intangible good, service or advice to a terrorist or designated group. As amended by the Patriot Act and other laws since Sep. 11, this section criminalizes a wide array of activities, regardless of whether they actually or intentionally further terrorist goals or organizations.
FISA Amendments Act of 2008
This past summer, Congress passed a law that permits the government to conduct warrantless and suspicion-less dragnet collection of U.S. residents' international telephone calls and e-mails.
Asked by IPS why committee chairman Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and other Democrats chose to make only minor changes, Chip Pitts, president of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, referred to "the secret and hypocritical lobbying by the Obama administration against reforms -- while publicly stating receptiveness to them." White House pressure, he speculated, "was undoubtedly a huge if lamentable factor".
He added that some committee members were cautious because of the recent arrests of Najibullah Zazi and others.
Zazi , a citizen of Afghanistan and a legal U.S. resident, was arrested in September as part of a group accused of planning to carry out acts of terrorism against the U.S. Zazi is said by the FBI to have attended courses and received instruction on weapons and explosives at an al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan.
Leahy acknowledged that, in light of these incidents, "This is no time to weaken or undermine the tools that law enforcement relies on to protect America."
Pitts told IPS, "Short-term and political considerations driven by dramatic events once again dramatically affected the need for a more sensible long-term, reasoned, rule-of-law approach."
"In the eight years since passage of the original Patriot Act, it's become clear that the escalating political competition to appear tough on terror -- and avoid being accused of being "soft on terror" -- brings perceived electoral benefits with few costs, with vital but fragile civil liberties being easily sacrificed," he added.
In contrast to the Senate, the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee approved a version of the legislation containing several significant reforms. In a 16-10 party-line vote, the committee's version curbs some of the government's controversial surveillance powers.
The Patriot Act, passed by a landslide after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to provide law enforcement and intelligence agencies additional powers to thwart terrorist activities, was reauthorized in 2005.
The legislation has been criticized by many from across the ideological spectrum as a threat to civil liberties, privacy and democratic traditions. Sections of the original act have been ruled unconstitutional, with certain provisions violating protected rights.
Judiciary Chair John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, said the goal of the new legislation was to "craft a law that preserves both our national security and our national values".
The proposed new legislation would permit the so-called "lone wolf" provision to sunset. This authority removed the requirement that an individual needed to be an agent of a foreign power to be placed under surveillance by intelligence officials and permitted surveillance of individuals with a much lower evidentiary threshold than allowed under criminal surveillance procedures.
It was intended to allow the surveillance of individuals believed to be doing the bidding of foreign governments or terrorist organizations, even when the evidence of that connection was lacking.
The Justice Department maintains that the "lone wolf" authority is necessary, even though there is no evidence that it has been used. Its opponents believe that existing authorities are sufficient to achieve the goals of the lone wolf provision while more effectively protecting the rights of innocent citizens.
The proposed new House legislation would also restrict the use of national security letters. According to a Congressional Research Service report, "National security letters (NSL) are roughly comparable to administrative subpoenas. Intelligence agencies issue them for intelligence gathering purposes to telephone companies, Internet service providers, consumer credit reporting agencies, banks, and other financial institutions, directing the recipients to turn over certain customer records and similar information."
Under current law, intelligence agencies have few restrictions on the use of NSLs, and in numerous cases, have abused the authority. An FBI inspector general report in 2007 "found that the FBI used NSLs in violation of applicable NSL statutes, Attorney General Guidelines, and internal FBI policies". The reform provisions seek to create greater judicial scrutiny of NSL use.
The bill approved in the Senate contains much more modest reforms. It would retain the lone wolf provision, and is, in general, much more in line with the wishes of the administration. Should both bills pass and go into conference to be reconciled, it is unclear which approach would prevail.
House and Senate versions still need to be voted on by each body separately and then reconciled into a single bill to send to the president for signature.
Pitts told IPS, "President Obama's flip-flop on Patriot Act issues does as much damage as did his flip-flop on the FISA Amendments Act and telecom immunity last year. But it's imperative that we fight, while we still can, to comprehensively reinsert requirements for fact-based, individualized suspicion, checks and balances, and meaningful judicial review prior to government intrusions."
In a report on the Patriot Act, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said, "More than seven years after its implementation there is little evidence that the Patriot Act has been effective in making America more secure from terrorists. However, there are many unfortunate examples that the government abused these authorities in ways that both violate the rights of innocent people and squander precious security resources."
William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia for the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
© 2009 IPS News All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/144170/
US imperialism, 9/11 and the Iraq war
28 November 2009
While the American corporate media has given little attention to it, an official British inquiry into the war with Iraq has brought to light damning testimony about the Bush administration’s deliberate launching of an invasion to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein and subjugate Iraq to American domination.
Former British diplomats and security officials from the 2001-2003 period began testifying this week under oath before a panel headed by Sir John Chilcot, charged with examining the entire course of the war, from its origins to the final British pullout in June 2009.
More than enough evidence has already been produced to indict top Bush administration leaders, including Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice, on the same charge for which Nazi leaders were convicted at the 1946 Nuremberg Tribunal—deliberately waging an aggressive war.
Jeremy Greenstock, British ambassador to the United Nations from 1998 to 2003, described the Bush administration as “hell bent” for a war with Iraq for more than a year before the actual invasion in March 2003. He described the US and British diplomacy to obtain a UN resolution that could be used as a pretext for war, and the impatience of US officials with the delays imposed by maneuvering at the UN Security Council.
The feedback from Washington “included noises about ‘this is a waste of time, what we need is regime change, why are we bothering with this, we must sweep this aside and do what’s going to have to be done anyway—and deal with this with the use of force,’” Greenstock testified.
The sole effect of British diplomacy was to delay the invasion by two weeks, he said. “The momentum for earlier action in the United States was much too strong for us to counter,” he said in a written statement to the inquiry.
Greenstock claimed that the US-led invasion was legal under international law, but admitted that it was of “questionable legitimacy” and did not have “democratically observable backing” either among the member states of the UN, or from the population of Great Britain. Some two million people marched in protest of the war in London in February 2003, the largest demonstration in at least a generation, and perhaps in British history.
Both Greenstock and Christopher Meyer, former British ambassador to the United States, told the inquiry that a meeting between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas was the key decision point for war. This took place in April 2002, nearly a year before the invasion and well before the discussions at the United Nations Security Council in the fall of 2002.
Their testimony confirms the notorious “Downing Street Memo,” leaked to the press in 2005, which pinpointed the April 2002 meeting and declared that all subsequent US and British diplomacy was merely posturing to delude public opinion.
Even more important is the testimony from senior British security officials that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was being openly discussed in British-US talks two years before the invasion, even before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Sir Peter Ricketts, then chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, said that while regime change was discussed as desirable, an invasion for that purpose “was something that we thought there could be no legal basis for.” He said that US and British officials were concerned that the sanctions regime against Iraq was collapsing and that more direct action would be required to oust Saddam Hussein.
Ricketts added that he was “conscious that there were other voices in Washington, some of whom were talking about regime change,” citing in particular an academic article written in 2000 by President Bush’s National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, which warned that “nothing will change” in Iraq until Saddam was removed from power.
Sir William Patey, a former Foreign Office official, said that he had commissioned the drafting of a paper on regime change as one of a variety of options in dealing with Iraq. He said the references to regime change were removed as the paper was moved up to the Cabinet level, because this option “was dismissed at the time as having no basis in law.”
He added that the main change brought about by the 9/11 attacks was that responsibility for US policy towards Iraq was shifted from the State Department to the Pentagon, headed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a hardline supporter of war with Iraq.
Former ambassador Meyer described a conversation with then US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, on September 11, 2001, in which she first suggested that Saddam Hussein might be connected to the terrorist attacks—one of the principal lies used by the Bush administration to justify the US invasion.
The other major lie was that Iraq possessed vast stockpiles of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMD). But Sir William Ehrman, director of international security for the Foreign Office from 2000 to 2002 and director-general of defense and intelligence from 2002 to 2004, told the inquiry that British intelligence was aware, before the US-British invasion, that Saddam Hussein’s regime had dismantled its chemical and biological weapons and hence had no WMD capability.
Meyer added that US officials also cited the anthrax-contaminated letters, which killed five people in the eastern United States in the months after 9/11, as further reason for targeting Saddam Hussein. Bush “just wanted to get over there and kick Saddam out,” he said. “The US military timetable was already in place before the weapons inspectors went in.”
In other words, the Bush administration came into office with a preconceived foreign policy agenda, which included an aggressive push for regime change in Iraq, to “finish the job” begun in the first Gulf War. The 9/11 attacks—carried out by a group formed out of the CIA-organized Islamic fundamentalist guerillas in Afghanistan—was seized on as a useful pretext for justifying an open-ended program of military aggression.
None of this will come as a shock to long-time readers of the World Socialist Web Site. From the inception of the Bush administration propaganda campaign for war with Iraq, the WSWS exposed and denounced the lies about an Iraqi role in the 9/11 attacks, Saddam’s alleged ties to Al Qaeda, and the “danger” of Iraqi WMD—this coming from the country with by far the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction on the planet.
But this record is worth pondering as Bush’s successor prepares to make his propaganda case for another unprovoked imperialist war of aggression—the US war against Afghanistan. Barack Obama goes on national television next Tuesday to claim that—more than eight years after September 11, 2001—tens of thousands more American troops must be sent to Afghanistan to fight those responsible for the 9/11 attacks. At the same time, the occupation of Iraq continues and none of those responsible for launching this war crime have been held accountable.
Millions voted for Obama in the illusion that he would put an end to the militaristic foreign policy of the Bush administration. Instead, more American troops are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan than at the height of the Bush “surge” in Iraq. The “commander-in-chief” is different, the lies have been somewhat refined, but the axis of imperialist foreign policy remains: the defense of the strategic and economic interests of the financial aristocracy that rules America, served by Obama no less than by Bush.
On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, the WSWS warned: “The war itself represents a devastating failure of American democracy. A small cabal of political conspirators—working with a hidden agenda and having come to power on the basis of fraud—has taken the American people into a war that they neither understand nor want. But there exists absolutely no established political mechanism through which the opposition to the policies of the Bush administration—to the war, the attack on democratic rights, the destruction of social services, the relentless assault on the living standards of the working class—can find expression. The Democratic Party—the stinking corpse of bourgeois liberalism—is deeply discredited. Masses of working people find themselves utterly disenfranchised.” (“The crisis of American capitalism and the war against Iraq,” March 21, 2003)
Six and a half years later, this perspective has been fully vindicated. The struggle against imperialist war cannot be conducted through the election of Democrats or through putting pressure on the twin parties of big business. Putting an end to war is the task of the working class, in the United States and internationally, which must carry out an independent political struggle on the basis of a socialist program.
Patrick Martin
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/nov2009/pers-n28.shtml
While the American corporate media has given little attention to it, an official British inquiry into the war with Iraq has brought to light damning testimony about the Bush administration’s deliberate launching of an invasion to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein and subjugate Iraq to American domination.
Former British diplomats and security officials from the 2001-2003 period began testifying this week under oath before a panel headed by Sir John Chilcot, charged with examining the entire course of the war, from its origins to the final British pullout in June 2009.
More than enough evidence has already been produced to indict top Bush administration leaders, including Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice, on the same charge for which Nazi leaders were convicted at the 1946 Nuremberg Tribunal—deliberately waging an aggressive war.
Jeremy Greenstock, British ambassador to the United Nations from 1998 to 2003, described the Bush administration as “hell bent” for a war with Iraq for more than a year before the actual invasion in March 2003. He described the US and British diplomacy to obtain a UN resolution that could be used as a pretext for war, and the impatience of US officials with the delays imposed by maneuvering at the UN Security Council.
The feedback from Washington “included noises about ‘this is a waste of time, what we need is regime change, why are we bothering with this, we must sweep this aside and do what’s going to have to be done anyway—and deal with this with the use of force,’” Greenstock testified.
The sole effect of British diplomacy was to delay the invasion by two weeks, he said. “The momentum for earlier action in the United States was much too strong for us to counter,” he said in a written statement to the inquiry.
Greenstock claimed that the US-led invasion was legal under international law, but admitted that it was of “questionable legitimacy” and did not have “democratically observable backing” either among the member states of the UN, or from the population of Great Britain. Some two million people marched in protest of the war in London in February 2003, the largest demonstration in at least a generation, and perhaps in British history.
Both Greenstock and Christopher Meyer, former British ambassador to the United States, told the inquiry that a meeting between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas was the key decision point for war. This took place in April 2002, nearly a year before the invasion and well before the discussions at the United Nations Security Council in the fall of 2002.
Their testimony confirms the notorious “Downing Street Memo,” leaked to the press in 2005, which pinpointed the April 2002 meeting and declared that all subsequent US and British diplomacy was merely posturing to delude public opinion.
Even more important is the testimony from senior British security officials that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was being openly discussed in British-US talks two years before the invasion, even before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Sir Peter Ricketts, then chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, said that while regime change was discussed as desirable, an invasion for that purpose “was something that we thought there could be no legal basis for.” He said that US and British officials were concerned that the sanctions regime against Iraq was collapsing and that more direct action would be required to oust Saddam Hussein.
Ricketts added that he was “conscious that there were other voices in Washington, some of whom were talking about regime change,” citing in particular an academic article written in 2000 by President Bush’s National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, which warned that “nothing will change” in Iraq until Saddam was removed from power.
Sir William Patey, a former Foreign Office official, said that he had commissioned the drafting of a paper on regime change as one of a variety of options in dealing with Iraq. He said the references to regime change were removed as the paper was moved up to the Cabinet level, because this option “was dismissed at the time as having no basis in law.”
He added that the main change brought about by the 9/11 attacks was that responsibility for US policy towards Iraq was shifted from the State Department to the Pentagon, headed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a hardline supporter of war with Iraq.
Former ambassador Meyer described a conversation with then US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, on September 11, 2001, in which she first suggested that Saddam Hussein might be connected to the terrorist attacks—one of the principal lies used by the Bush administration to justify the US invasion.
The other major lie was that Iraq possessed vast stockpiles of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMD). But Sir William Ehrman, director of international security for the Foreign Office from 2000 to 2002 and director-general of defense and intelligence from 2002 to 2004, told the inquiry that British intelligence was aware, before the US-British invasion, that Saddam Hussein’s regime had dismantled its chemical and biological weapons and hence had no WMD capability.
Meyer added that US officials also cited the anthrax-contaminated letters, which killed five people in the eastern United States in the months after 9/11, as further reason for targeting Saddam Hussein. Bush “just wanted to get over there and kick Saddam out,” he said. “The US military timetable was already in place before the weapons inspectors went in.”
In other words, the Bush administration came into office with a preconceived foreign policy agenda, which included an aggressive push for regime change in Iraq, to “finish the job” begun in the first Gulf War. The 9/11 attacks—carried out by a group formed out of the CIA-organized Islamic fundamentalist guerillas in Afghanistan—was seized on as a useful pretext for justifying an open-ended program of military aggression.
None of this will come as a shock to long-time readers of the World Socialist Web Site. From the inception of the Bush administration propaganda campaign for war with Iraq, the WSWS exposed and denounced the lies about an Iraqi role in the 9/11 attacks, Saddam’s alleged ties to Al Qaeda, and the “danger” of Iraqi WMD—this coming from the country with by far the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction on the planet.
But this record is worth pondering as Bush’s successor prepares to make his propaganda case for another unprovoked imperialist war of aggression—the US war against Afghanistan. Barack Obama goes on national television next Tuesday to claim that—more than eight years after September 11, 2001—tens of thousands more American troops must be sent to Afghanistan to fight those responsible for the 9/11 attacks. At the same time, the occupation of Iraq continues and none of those responsible for launching this war crime have been held accountable.
Millions voted for Obama in the illusion that he would put an end to the militaristic foreign policy of the Bush administration. Instead, more American troops are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan than at the height of the Bush “surge” in Iraq. The “commander-in-chief” is different, the lies have been somewhat refined, but the axis of imperialist foreign policy remains: the defense of the strategic and economic interests of the financial aristocracy that rules America, served by Obama no less than by Bush.
On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, the WSWS warned: “The war itself represents a devastating failure of American democracy. A small cabal of political conspirators—working with a hidden agenda and having come to power on the basis of fraud—has taken the American people into a war that they neither understand nor want. But there exists absolutely no established political mechanism through which the opposition to the policies of the Bush administration—to the war, the attack on democratic rights, the destruction of social services, the relentless assault on the living standards of the working class—can find expression. The Democratic Party—the stinking corpse of bourgeois liberalism—is deeply discredited. Masses of working people find themselves utterly disenfranchised.” (“The crisis of American capitalism and the war against Iraq,” March 21, 2003)
Six and a half years later, this perspective has been fully vindicated. The struggle against imperialist war cannot be conducted through the election of Democrats or through putting pressure on the twin parties of big business. Putting an end to war is the task of the working class, in the United States and internationally, which must carry out an independent political struggle on the basis of a socialist program.
Patrick Martin
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/nov2009/pers-n28.shtml
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