You are on page 1of 64

dsuhdududuyducy duc ducudcud chgdchd h gdhcg hd

INSIDE: TAX THE RICH! ● PORTRAITS OF GREED


● THE NEW DEVIL’S ISLAND ● EDUCATION AT
GUNPOINT ● DEATH SQUADS V. DEMOCRACY
ColdType

TheREADER
WRITING WORTH READING ● ISSUE 52 ● JANUARY 2010

Smile!
(Big Brother is Watching)
ColdType

TheREADER
ISSUE 52 JANUARY 2011
THE COVER
3. BRAVE NEW DYSTOPIA Chris Hedges
7. HAPPY NEW YEAR, 2030 David Michael Green
11. THE ‘TOTAL CONTROL SOCIETY’ IS HERE John W. Whitehead

Editor: Tony Sutton


(editor@coldtype.net) THE ECONOMY
15. TAX THE RICH! Michael I. Niman
To subscribe,
19. THE FEW, THE PROUD, THE FILTHY RICH Alan Maas
send an email to:
jools@coldtype.net 23. PORTRAITS OF GREED Sam Pizzigati
(Write subscribe in the
28. THE UK’S ODIOUS DEBT George Monbiot
subject line)

THE REST
30. THE TECHNO‒FANTASIES OF EVO MORALES Chellis Glendinning
34. WHY ARE WARS NOT REPORTED HONESTLY? John Pilger
37. THE TORTURERS REVISITED Paul Balles
39. EX‒SPOOKS V. ASSANGE Sherwood Ross
41. DEATH SQUADS V. DEMOCRACY Michael Keefer
45. LITERARY OUTSIDER Philip Kraske
47. BERLIN, 1934 Fred Reed
49. MEDIA HIT OF THE YEAR Danny Schechter
45. EDUCATION AT GUNPOINT Ramzy Baroud
57. AVOIDING THE NEW DEVIL’S ISLAND William Blum

Opinions expressed in The ColdType Reader are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher

2 TheREADER | January 2011


COVER STORY / 1

Brave New Dystopia


Chris Hedges warns of a future that is moving quickly
to a state of repressive corporate totalitarianism

he two greatest visions of a fu- we find ourselves transported from Brave We have been

T ture dystopia were George Or-


well’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s
Brave New World. The debate,
between those who watched our descent
towards corporate totalitarianism, was who
New World to 1984. The state, crippled by
massive deficits, endless war and corporate
malfeasance, is sliding toward bankruptcy.
It is time for Big Brother to take over from
Huxley’s feelies, the orgy-porgy and the
gradually
disempowered by
a corporate state
that, as Huxley
foresaw, seduced
was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, centrifugal bumble-puppy. We are moving and manipulated
dominated by a repressive surveillance and from a society where we are skillfully ma- us through sensual
security state that used crude and violent nipulated by lies and illusions to one where gratification,
forms of control? Or would we be, as Hux- we are overtly controlled. cheap mass-
ley envisioned, entranced by entertainment Orwell warned of a world where books produced goods,
and spectacle, captivated by technology and were banned. Huxley warned of a world boundless credit,
seduced by profligate consumption to where no one wanted to read books. political theater
embrace our own oppression? It Orwell warned of a state of per- and amusement
turns out Orwell and Huxley manent war and fear. Huxley
were both right. Huxley saw warned of a culture diverted
the first stage of our enslave- by mindless pleasure. Orwell
ment. Orwell saw the sec- warned of a state where ev-
ond. ery conversation and thought
We have been gradually was monitored and dissent
disempowered by a corpo- was brutally punished. Huxley
rate state that, as Huxley fore- warned of a state where a popu-
saw, seduced and manipulated us lation, preoccupied by trivia and
through sensual gratification, cheap gossip, no longer cared about truth or
mass-produced goods, boundless credit, information. Orwell saw us frightened into
political theater and amusement. While we submission. Huxley saw us seduced into
were entertained, the regulations that once submission. But Huxley, we are discovering,
kept predatory corporate power in check was merely the prelude to Orwell. Huxley
were dismantled, the laws that once pro- understood the process by which we would
tected us were rewritten and we were impov- be complicit in our own enslavement. Or-
erished. Now that credit is drying up, good well understood the enslavement. Now that
jobs for the working class are gone forever the corporate coup is over, we stand naked
and mass-produced goods are unaffordable, and defenseless. We are beginning to under-

January 2011 | TheREADER 3


COVER STORY / 1

We busy ourselves stand, as Karl Marx knew, that unfettered society, devours us from the inside out. It
buying products and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and owes no allegiance to us or the nation. It
that promise revolutionary force that exploits human be- feasts upon our carcass.
to change our ings and the natural world until exhaustion The corporate state does not find its ex-
lives, make us or collapse. pression in a demagogue or charismatic
more beautiful, “The Party seeks power entirely for its leader. It is defined by the anonymity and
confident or own sake,” Orwell wrote in 1984. “We are facelessness of the corporation. Corpora-
successful as not interested in the good of others; we are tions, who hire attractive spokespeople like
we are steadily interested solely in power. Not wealth or Barack Obama, control the uses of science,
stripped of rights, luxury or long life or happiness: only pow- technology, education and mass communi-
money er, pure power. What pure power means you cation. They control the messages in movies
and influence will understand presently. We are different and television. And, as in Brave New World,
from all the oligarchies of the past, in that they use these tools of communication to
we know what we are doing. All the oth- bolster tyranny. Our systems of mass com-
ers, even those who resembled ourselves, munication, as Wolin writes, “block out,
were cowards and hypocrites. The German eliminate whatever might introduce quali-
Nazis and the Russian Communists came fication, ambiguity, or dialogue, anything
very close to us in their methods, but they that might weaken or complicate the holis-
never had the courage to recognize their tic force of their creation, to its total impres-
own motives. They pretended, perhaps they sion.”
even believed, that they had seized power
unwillingly and for a limited time, and that Irrelevant cranks
just round the corner there lay a paradise The result is a monochromatic system of
where human beings would be free and information. Celebrity courtiers, masquer-
equal. We are not like that. We know that ading as journalists, experts and specialists,
no one ever seizes power with the intention identify our problems and patiently explain
of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it the parameters. All those who argue outside
is an end. One does not establish a dictator- the imposed parameters are dismissed as ir-
ship in order to safeguard a revolution; one relevant cranks, extremists or members of
makes the revolution in order to establish a radical left. Prescient social critics, from
the dictatorship. The object of persecution Ralph Nader to Noam Chomsky, are ban-
is persecution. The object of torture is tor- ished. Acceptable opinions have a range of
ture. The object of power is power.” A to B. The culture, under the tutelage of
The political philosopher Sheldon Wo- these corporate courtiers, becomes, as Hux-
lin uses the term “inverted totalitarianism” ley noted, a world of cheerful conformity, as
in his book Democracy Incorporated to de- well as an endless and finally fatal optimism.
scribe our political system. It is a term that We busy ourselves buying products that
would make sense to Huxley. In inverted promise to change our lives, make us more
totalitarianism, the sophisticated technolo- beautiful, confident or successful as we are
gies of corporate control, intimidation and steadily stripped of rights, money and influ-
mass manipulation, which far surpass those ence. All messages we receive through these
employed by previous totalitarian states, are systems of communication, whether on the
effectively masked by the glitter, noise and nightly news or talk shows like “Oprah,”
abundance of a consumer society. Political promise a brighter, happier tomorrow. And
participation and civil liberties are gradually this, as Wolin points out, is “the same ide-
surrendered. The corporation state, hiding ology that invites corporate executives to
behind the smokescreen of the public rela- exaggerate profits and conceal losses, but
tions industry, the entertainment industry always with a sunny face.” We have been
and the tawdry materialism of a consumer entranced, as Wolin writes, by “continuous

4 TheREADER | January 2011


COVER STORY / 1

technological advances” that “encourage to face some very unpleasant truths. The The few who raise
elaborate fantasies of individual prowess, good-paying jobs are not coming back. The voices of dissent,
eternal youthfulness, beauty through sur- largest deficits in human history mean that who refuse to
gery, actions measured in nanoseconds: we are trapped in a debt peonage system engage in the
a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding that will be used by the corporate state to corporate happy
control and possibility, whose denizens are eradicate the last vestiges of social protec- talk, are derided
prone to fantasies because the vast majority tion for citizens, including Social Security. by the corporate
have imagination but little scientific knowl- The state has devolved from a capitalist de- establishment
edge.” mocracy to neo-feudalism. And when these as freaks
Our manufacturing base has been dis- truths become apparent, anger will replace
mantled. Speculators and swindlers have the corporate-imposed cheerful conformity.
looted the US Treasury and stolen billions The bleakness of our post-industrial pock-
from small shareholders who had set aside ets, where some 40 million Americans live
money for retirement or college. Civil liber- in a state of poverty and tens of millions in
ties, including habeas corpus and protec- a category called “near poverty,” coupled
tion from warrantless wiretapping, have with the lack of credit to save families from
been taken away. Basic services, including foreclosures, bank repossessions and bank-
public education and health care, have been ruptcy from medical bills, means that in-
handed over to the corporations to exploit verted totalitarianism will no longer work.
for profit. The few who raise voices of dis- We increasingly live in Orwell’s Oceania,
sent, who refuse to engage in the corporate not Huxley’s The World State. Osama bin
happy talk, are derided by the corporate es- Laden plays the role assumed by Emmanuel
tablishment as freaks. Goldstein in “1984.” Goldstein, in the novel,
Attitudes and temperament have been is the public face of terror. His evil machina-
cleverly engineered by the corporate state, tions and clandestine acts of violence domi-
as with Huxley’s pliant characters in Brave nate the nightly news. Goldstein’s image
New World. The book’s protagonist, Bernard appears each day on Oceania’s television
Marx, turns in frustration to his girlfriend screens as part of the nation’s “Two Minutes
Lenina: of Hate” daily ritual. And without the inter-
“Don’t you wish you were free, Lenina?” vention of the state, Goldstein, like bin Lad-
he asks. en, will kill you. All excesses are justified in
“I don’t know that you mean. I am free, the titanic fight against evil personified.
free to have the most wonderful time. Ev- The psychological torture of Pvt. Bradley
erybody’s happy nowadays.” Manning – who has now been imprisoned
He laughed, “Yes, ‘Everybody’s happy for seven months without being convict-
nowadays.’ We have been giving the chil- ed of any crime – mirrors the breaking of
dren that at five. But wouldn’t you like to be the dissident Winston Smith at the end of
free to be happy in some other way, Lenina? “1984.” Manning is being held as a “maxi-
In your own way, for example; not in every- mum custody detainee” in the brig at Ma-
body else’s way.” rine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia. He
“I don’t know what you mean,” she re- spends 23 of every 24 hours alone. He is
peated. denied exercise. He cannot have a pillow or
sheets for his bed. Army doctors have been
Crumbling facade plying him with antidepressants. The crud-
The façade is crumbling. And as more and er forms of torture of the Gestapo have been
more people realize that they have been replaced with refined Orwellian techniques,
used and robbed, we will move swiftly largely developed by government psycholo-
from Huxley’s Brave New World to Orwell’s gists, to turn dissidents like Manning into
1984. The public, at some point, will have vegetables. We break souls as well as bod-

January 2011 | TheREADER 5


COVER STORY / 1

The draconian ies. It is more effective. Now we can all be constantly urge us to report suspicious ac-
security measures taken to Orwell’s dreaded Room 101 to be- tivity. The enemy is everywhere.
used to cripple come compliant and harmless. These “spe- Those who do not comply with the dic-
protests at the cial administrative measures” are regularly tates of the war on terror, a war which, as
G-20 gatherings imposed on our dissidents, including Syed Orwell noted, is endless, are brutally si-
in Pittsburgh Fahad Hashmi, who was imprisoned under lenced. The draconian security measures
and Toronto similar conditions for three years before used to cripple protests at the G-20 gather-
were wildly going to trial. The techniques have psycho- ings in Pittsburgh and Toronto were wildly
disproportionate logically maimed thousands of detainees in disproportionate for the level of street ac-
for the level of our black sites around the globe. They are tivity. But they sent a clear message – DO
street activity. But the staple form of control in our maximum NOT TRY THIS. The FBI’s targeting of an-
they sent a clear security prisons where the corporate state tiwar and Palestinian activists, which in
message – DO makes war on our most politically astute late September saw agents raid homes in
NOT TRY THIS underclass – African-Americans. It all pres- Minneapolis and Chicago, is a harbinger of
ages the shift from Huxley to Orwell. what is to come for all who dare defy the
“Never again will you be capable of ordi- state’s official Newspeak. The agents – our
nary human feeling,” Winston Smith’s tor- Thought Police – seized phones, comput-
turer tells him in 1984. “Everything will be ers, documents and other personal belong-
dead inside you. Never again will you be ca- ings. Subpoenas to appear before a grand
pable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, jury have since been served on 26 people.
or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or in- The subpoenas cite federal law prohibiting
tegrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze “providing material support or resources to
you empty and then we shall fill you with designated foreign terrorist organizations.”
ourselves.” Terror, even for those who have nothing to
do with terror, becomes the blunt instru-
Era of oppression ment used by Big Brother to protect us from
The noose is tightening. The era of amuse- ourselves.
ment is being replaced by the era of repres- “Do you begin to see, then, what kind of
sion. Tens of millions of citizens have had world we are creating?” Orwell wrote. “It is
their e-mails and phone records turned the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic
over to the government. We are the most Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A
monitored and spied-on citizenry in human world of fear and treachery and torment,
history. Many of us have our daily routine a world of trampling and being trampled
caught on dozens of security cameras. Our upon, a world which will grow not less but
proclivities and habits are recorded on the more merciless as it refines itself.” CT
Internet. Our profiles are electronically
generated. Our bodies are patted down at Chris Hedges is a senior fellow at The
airports and filmed by scanners. And pub- Nation Institute. His newest book is “Death
lic service announcements, car inspection of the Liberal Class,” an excerpt from which
stickers, and public transportation posters appeared recently at www.coldtype.net

READ THE BEST OF TOM ENGELHARDT


http://coldtype.net/tom.html

6 TheREADER | January 2011


COVER STORY / 2

Happy New Year, 2030


David Michael Green delivers a message from
your boss 25 years hence

ood Morning, Worker Bees! Hap- before you think it, anyhow, because our No one dares

G py New Year!
And what a year it promises
to be, too! We have lots of hard
work in store for you. More than ever!
Now that our two-generation-long pro-
American Stasi Service is so powerful and
omnipresent. If you were stupid enough to
even utter the ‘R’ word, your well-trained
child or spouse will have you turned in
before you finish your sentence, and we’ll
rock the boat, lest
the mere scrap
of an allowance
we grant you in
exchange for your
gram of economic restructuring has finally have you in chains thirty seconds later. Try labors were to
made it to full fruition, I feel it only right building a revolutionary movement under vanish in a puff
and proper to celebrate our achievement those conditions, pal. of smoke
with you by recapitulating the events of this Even if you could, we have some very nas-
greatest historical process in our country’s ty riot police ready to go if we see you on the
history. streets without proper authorization. These
Normally, of course, plutocrats such as cops actually are no different than you
myself would be loath to reveal such
uch – they’re just ggiven a slightly big-
secrets to those whom we exploitt ration than the rest of
ger food rati
so thoroughly. If this was the you proles.
proles We find that one
late eighteenth century, per- can get human beings to
haps you’d even rise up and do almost
almo anything using
sweep us away in some sort of these conditions.
co And, be
revolution. assured, we do.
Alas, that is hardly a con- Of cou
course, revolution is
cern anymore, for at least a half- the furthest
furthes thing from your
dozen good reasons. mind anyho
anyhow, because we’ve
For one thing, we’ve made sure turned worship of the existing
tate of per-
that all of you are stuck in a state class structure into this society’s religion,
petual economic precariousnesss (at best). and we’ve made quite fervent
fe little parish-
This has made you as docile as llambs. b N No ioners
i off you all,
ll hhaven’t we? Some fools
one dares rock the boat, lest the mere scrap doubted this could be done, but we knew
of an allowance we grant you in exchange back in the 70s that if one could twist Jesus
for your labors were to vanish in a puff of the socialist – who talks in bold print about
smoke. We hold you hostage and demand money-changers and camels going through
your acquiescence. You give it to us. eyes of needles – into a champion of greedy
Second, we know everything you think capitalism, one could sell anything. And we

January 2011 | TheREADER 7


COVER STORY / 2

Coupled to the did.We’ve also supplemented your excel- a modicum of relief for the poor. It wasn’t
new plutocrat- lent cultural programming with some very Sweden, I assure you (not that you’d know
serving orthodoxy potent pharmaceuticals to keep you nice what I mean by that anyhow), but it was a
of the Purchased and docile. You have much to be angry and big change from our glory days.
Party we added depressed about, but your happy pills keep Even worse, these liberal bastards ad-
a hallucinatory you properly focused. We like that. vanced an egalitarian ethos which sold the
hagiography of Finally, we don’t worry about you con- public on the idea that everyone should
Ronald J. Christ, ducting some sort of revolution, because share in the benefits of economic growth,
The Patron Saint we’ve made sure that you’ve never even and that banana-republic-style concentra-
of Tax Giveaways heard of such a concept. You have the worst tion of wealth in the hands of a few oli-
education that we could possibly imagine, garchs was not healthy for society at large,
and trust me, our imaginations are quite not healthy for democracy, and not healthy
fertile. You’ve never heard of revolutions, or for 99 percent of the nation. That’s a dan-
economic classes, or slave revolts or labor gerous set of ideas. Next stop is commu-
unions or any other such claptrap. If you’ve nism, buddy.
never heard of it before, it’s almost impos- So we decided that enough was enough,
sible for you to conceive of it on your own. and we came up with a plan.
By erasing history we have restarted history. The first step was to capture one of the
And this time it’s going to play out in a lot only two viable political parties in America.
more controlled fashion than it did even That wasn’t exactly difficult. The Repub-
last time. licans were already halfway there. All that
was left was to buy-off the old-school mod-
Incapable of response erates who had come to terms with the New
And so my dear sheeple, no, as a matter of Deal and crush any of those who couldn’t
fact, I don’t worry about divulging the truth be bought. This process was begun in the
to you about what we’ve done these last fif- 1980s and accelerated in the subsequent
ty years. You won’t understand it any more two decades, to the point where by 2010 the
than you understand what I’m saying now. concept of a moderate Republican more or
And even if you did, you are completely in- less only existed as some bizarre notional
capable of mounting any sort of response to idea anymore, like string theory in physics.
the pitiless and intractable system we have Coupled to the new plutocrat-serving ortho-
created. Even if you could, we would crush doxy of the Purchased Party we added a hal-
you instantly, grind you into hamburger, lucinatory hagiography of Ronald J. Christ,
and feed you to our pet piranha. The Patron Saint of Tax Giveaways. All had
So, here’s what happened. to give praise to The Lord Gumby, and all
We (by which I mean us nice folks in the did, yea, for generations hence.
owning class) suffered through fifty years It was also important to capture the oth-
of the New Deal-inspired liberal America. It er party as well (not to mention maintain-
sucked. Instead of having nearly all the na- ing the absence of any viable third or fourth
tional wealth concentrated into the hands of choices), and this was likewise duly accom-
the few of us, as had been the case for at least plished. It was slightly tougher to take over
the century or so since America’s industrial the party of FDR and LBJ, but in the end not
revolution, we possessed only most of it. really so hard. The trick was to find some
Unthinkable! Traitors like both Roosevelts, dolled-up whores with lots of charisma and
Kennedy and Johnson enacted progressive let them do the work. There was this guy
policies that resulted in a vast diminish- named Clinton, and another called Obama,
ment of our concentration of wealth, that who played their parts quite skillfully.
created a massive middle class for the first Many devoted Democrats loved these DI-
time in American history, and that provided NOs, though they couldn’t exactly say why.

8 TheREADER | January 2011


COVER STORY / 2

Didn’t matter in the end. By the time we supposedly possessed of a liberal bias, we Hating a
were finished, voters could choose between got them to self-censor what pathetically government that
the Party of Wall Street or the Other Party of little authentic reporting there had ever you simultaneously
Wall Street. Guess which one they picked? once been in that domain. adore when it dons
Our assault on your wallets – and, in- It was also necessary to get people to military uniforms
deed, even upon your health and longevity hate government (except when we didn’t and slaughters
– was as sophisticated in its execution as it want them to, of course), so that they could foreigners is
was thorough in its strategy. That’s why we never see it as a solution to the obvious manifestly absurd,
understood from the beginning that it was problems that beset them individually and of course, but
necessary to control the cognitive landscape collectively. Hating a government that you you’d be surprised
of the country at the same time we were simultaneously adore when it dons mili- how illogical
driving effective electoral choice down to tary uniforms and slaughters foreigners is people can be,
zero. People had to understand – albeit, not manifestly absurd, of course, but you’d be especially when
consciously – that there were no choices at surprised how illogical people can be, espe- you incentivize
all, and that any apparent ones they might cially when you incentivize stupidity with stupidity with som
perceive were inherently lacking in legiti- some little carrot here or some little stick
macy and therefore dangerous to adopt. there. Anyhow, if you say that “government
There were many implications to this im- is the enemy” enough times – despite the
perative. To start with, there had to be some fact that you’re always talking about the
pseudo-intellectual air cover for the sacking joys and wonders of democracy, which is,
of the body politic. We thus created ‘think’ um, a system in which people pick their
tanks like the Heritage Foundation or the government – the public will indeed grow to
American Enterprise Institute, and funded hate their own government. Better yet, just
them lavishly. We would have told them in case some fool was still left somewhere,
precisely what their studies were to con- running around talking about regulation or
clude, but in fact we never needed to. They taxing rich people or single-payer health
knew their purpose in life, and they knew care, all you have to do is shout “Big govern-
who signed their paychecks. ment!” and you’ve shot it down completely.
A new media also had to be created, and Needless to say, we did.
we were spectacularly successful at this.
Right-wing ranters on the radio had enor- Fear helps
mous appeal to those who hadn’t yet been Incessant fear can also be quite handy when
dumbed down enough not to be angry, but it comes to quietly looting 300 million peo-
were sufficiently idiotic not to know the ple, so we made sure there was plenty of
source of their consternation. To those we that. Fear of evil foreign leaders was always
added a network of television and radio handy. Never mind that they had almost al-
outlets that were supposedly mainstream ways been on the CIA’s payroll for decades.
and dispassionate, but in fact were driving Never mind that we secretly did business
a corporate agenda from top to bottom, and with them at the same time the government
were joined at the hip with the Republican was publicly demonizing them and impos-
Party. Those of you who are old enough ing embargos and sanctions for other folks.
will remember this as Fox News. Today, of Never mind that these bogeymen were pa-
course, we just call it the Daily Instruction thetic, two-bit, local-yokel bully boys com-
Network. In any case, another crucial aspect pared to a Hitler, Stalin or Mao. No matter.
to this process was the pressure that these If you say it loud enough and often enough,
outlets placed upon the so-called main- everybody falls into line pretty quickly. Plus,
stream media to conform to the corporat- it’s easy to instantly smash any naysayers to
ism. Along with the ceaseless pull of profit, bits just by questioning their patriotism.
and the constant battering of the media as Brown people also make pretty good di-

January 2011 | TheREADER 9


COVER STORY / 2

By packing all your versionary demons. Or anyone else who’s smashed unions, but even the pensions that
jobs off to Mexico, a bit different. Women. Muslims. Gays. Im- union workers had earned over the span of
and then China migrants. The homeless. Whatever. All we entire lifetimes. You didn’t say a word as we
and India, and later basically had to do was make them lower let infrastructure crumble and defunded
Africa, we put you in stature than you all and then trash them education. We told you that none of that
firmly under the endlessly. Not only did that make you feel stuff could be afforded anymore. It never
heavy jackboot gratified, having someone you could stand occurred to you to ask why millionaires and
of economic over and piss down on, it also kept you billionaires and corporations essentially no
insecurity from noticing the sea of oligarchical urine longer paid taxes. Or why it was necessary
in which you were yourself drowning at that for your country to spend a sum equal to
very same moment. Very effective stuff. Pub- that of every other country in the world –
lic manipulation for fun and profit. Psych combined – on a massive military that es-
101. Easy and amusing. You can’t imagine sentially had no enemies.
the laughs we had. You went for it. All. And every time we
From there it was generally just a matter gave you a chance to say no at the ballot
of incessant squeezing. We sold you a ridic- box, you instead begged us for more.
ulously counterintuitive bunch of bullshit And so we cut and we chopped, and we
about the joys of ‘free trade’. You went for it, slashed and we burned. Mostly, though, we
and we made obscene amounts of money by just looted and pillaged.
shrinking labor costs down to nothing and With your help, of course. Thanks for
pocketing the difference in profits. More that. It was so much cleaner and quicker
importantly, by packing all your jobs off to and more thorough that way.
Mexico, and then China and India, and later All in all, I think you would have to agree
Africa, we put you firmly under the heavy that we came up with a pretty successful
jackboot of economic insecurity. That’s a little program for taking the money that
dividend that has never stopped paying off used to be in your pockets and sticking it
very handsomely, ever since. in ours.
That is, you would have to agree had we
Tax cuts – ours, not yours not rendered you too ignorant, too brain-
Once we had you sinking economically, we washed, too frightened, too prejudiced, too
could sell you on whatever supposed rem- distracted, too sick, too doped up and too
edy du jour we decided to hawk next. Tax dead to notice.
cuts, which actually ultimately increased Sorry about all that.
your taxes and cut ours, seemed like a life- We just wanted your money.
boat to a struggling middle class. In fact, Thanks, Fool. CT
they produced massive deficits, which we
could then use to sell you on the necessity David Michael Green is a professor of
of slashing your meager safety net programs political science at Hofstra University in New
like Social Security and Medicare. We also York. More of his work can be found at his
got you to line up behind us as we not only website, www.regressiveantidote.net.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE READER – IT’S FREE!


Contact: subs@coldtype.net

10 TheREADER | January 2011


COVER STORY / 3

The ‘Total Control


Society’ is here
The government and corporations are introducing new
technology that will enable them to keep an even closer eye
on what you’re doing, writes John W. Whitehead

“In the future, whether it’s entering your viduals with the exact same DNA. It is read In fact, the latest
home, opening your car, entering your by projecting infra-red light directly into the generation of iris
workspace, getting a pharmacy prescription eye of the individual. scanners can even
refilled, or having your medical records The perceived benefits of iris scan tech- capture scans
pulled up, everything will come off that nology, we are told, include a high level of on individuals in
unique key that is your iris. Every person, accuracy, protection against identity theft motion who are
place, and thing on this planet will be and the ability to quickly search through a six feet away. And
connected [to the iris system] within the database of the digitized iris information. It as these devices
next 10 years.” – Jeff Carter, CDO of Global also provides corporations and the govern- become more
Rainmakers ment – that is, the corporate state – with a sophisticated, they
streamlined, uniform way to track and ac- will only become
he US government and its corpo- cess all of the information amassed about more powerfully

T rate allies are looking out for you


– literally – with surveillance tools
intended to identify you, track
your whereabouts, monitor your activities
and allow or restrict your access to people,
us, from our financial and merchant records,
to our medical history, activities, interests,
travels and so on. In this way, iris scans be-
come de facto national ID cards, which can
be implemented without our knowledge or
invasive

places or things deemed suitable by consent. In fact, the latest generation


the government. This is all the he of iris scanne
scanners can even capture
more true as another invasive scans on in individuals in motion
technology, the iris scanner, who are ssix feet away. And as
is about to be unleashed on these de devices become more
the American people. sophistic
sophisticated, they will only
Iris scanning relies on become more powerfully in-
biometrics, which uses vasive.
physiological (fingerprint, At the forefront of this ef-
face recognition, DNA, iris fort is the American biometrics
recognition, etc.) or behav- av- firm Global R Rainmakers Inc. (GRI),
ioral (gait, voice) characteristics
tics to which has partn
partnered with the city of
uniquely identify a person. The he technology Leon – one of the larglargest cities in Mexico –
works by reading the unique pattern found to create “the most secsecure city in the world.”
on the iris, the colored part of the eyeball GRI plans to achieve this goal by installing
This pattern is unique even among indi- iris scanners throughout the city, thus cre-

January 2011 | TheREADER 11


COVER STORY / 3

The goal of the ating a virtual police state in Leon. There’s even an iPhone app in the works
corporate state, The eye scanners, which can scan the that will allow police officers to use their
of course, is to irises of 30-50 people per minute, will first iPhones for on-the-spot, on-the-go iris scan-
create a total be made available to law enforcement facili- ning of American citizens. The manufactur-
control society ties, security check-points, police stations, er, B12 Technologies, has already equipped
– one in which detention areas, jails and prisons, followed police with iPhones armed with facial rec-
the government by more commercial enterprises such as ognition software linked to a statewide da-
is able to track mass transit, medical centers and banks tabase which, of course, federal agents have
the movements of and other public and private locations. As access to. (Even Disney World has gotten
people in real time the business and technology magazine Fast in on the biometrics action, requiring fin-
and control who Company reports: gerprint scans for anyone entering its four
does what, when “To implement the system, the city is cre- Orlando theme parks. How long before this
and where ating a database of irises. Criminals will au- mega-corporation makes the switch to iris
tomatically be enrolled, their irises scanned scans and makes the information available
once convicted. Law-abiding citizens will to law enforcement? And for those who
have the option to opt-in.” have been protesting the whole-body imag-
However, as Fast Company points out, ing scanners at airports as overly invasive,
soon no one will be able to opt out: just wait until they include the iris scans in
“When these residents catch a train or their security protocol. The technology has
bus, or take out money from an ATM, they already been tested in about 20 US airports
will scan their irises, rather than swiping a as part of a program to identify passen-
metro or bank card. Police officers will mon- gers who could skip to the front of security
itor these scans and track the movements lines.)
of watch-listed individuals. ‘Fraud, which The goal of the corporate state, of course,
is a $50 billion problem, will be completely is to create a total control society – one
eradicated,’ says Carter. Not even the ‘dead in which the government is able to track
eyeballs’ seen in Minority Report could trick the movements of people in real time and
the system, he says. ‘If you’ve been convict- control who does what, when and where.
ed of a crime, in essence, this will act as a In exchange, the government promises to
digital scarlet letter. If you’re a known shop- provide security and convenience, the two
lifter, for example, you won’t be able to go highly manipulative, siren-song catchwords
into a store without being flagged. For oth- of our modern age
ers, boarding a plane will be impossible.’” Again, as Fast Company reports:
Mark my words: the people of Leon, “For such a Big Brother-esque system,
Mexico, are guinea pigs, and the American why would any law-abiding resident ever
people are the intended control subjects. volunteer to scan their irises into a public
In fact, iris scanning technology is al- database, and sacrifice their privacy? GRI
ready being implemented in the US For hopes that the immediate value the system
example, the Department of Homeland Se- creates will alleviate any concern. ‘There’s a
curity ran a two-week test of the iris scan- lot of convenience to this – you’ll have noth-
ners at a Border Patrol station in McAllen, ing to carry except your eyes,’ says Carter,
Texas, in October 2010. That same month, claiming that consumers will no longer be
in Boone County, Missouri, the sheriff’s of- carded at bars and liquor stores. And he has
fice unveiled an Iris Biometric station pur- a warning for those thinking of opting out:
chased with funds provided by the US De- ‘When you get masses of people opting-in,
partment of Justice. Unknown by most, the opting out does not help. Opting out actu-
technology is reportedly already being used ally puts more of a flag on you than just be-
by law enforcement in 40 states throughout ing part of the system. We believe everyone
the country. will opt-in.’”

12 TheREADER | January 2011


COVER STORY / 3

So who’s the real culprit here? While we may not be strong enough nor wise enough Our so-
all have a part to play in laying the foun- nor moral enough to cope with the kind of called elected
dations for this police state – the American power we have learned to amass. That warn- representatives
people due to our inaction and gullibility; ing vibrates powerfully when we allow our- could and should
the corporations, who long ago sold us out selves to sit still and think carefully about have provided
for the profit they could make on us; the fed- orbiting satellites that can read the license oversight on these
eral government, for using our tax dollars to plates in a parking lot and computers that technologies in
fund technologies aimed at entrapping us; can read into thousands of telephone calls order to limit their
lobbyists who have greased the wheels of and telex transmissions at once and other wide-spread use
politics in order to ensure that these tech- computers that can do our banking and by corporations
nologies are adopted by government agen- purchasing, can watch the house and tell a and government
cies; the courts, for failing to guard our lib- monitoring station what television program agencies
erties more vigilantly; the president, for us- we are watching and how many people there
ing our stimulus funds to fatten the pockets are in a room. We think of Orwell when we
of technology execs at the expense of our read of scientists who believe they have lo-
civil liberties – it’s Congress that bears the cated in the human brain the seats of be-
brunt of the blame. Our so-called elected havioral emotions like aggression, or learn
representatives could and should have pro- more about the vast potential of genetic
vided oversight on these technologies in or- engineering. And we hear echoes of that
der to limit their wide-spread use by corpo- warning chord in the constant demand for
rations and government agencies. Yet they greater security and comfort, for less risk in
have done nothing to protect us from the our societies. We recognize, however dimly,
encroaching police state. In fact, they have that greater efficiency, ease, and security
facilitated this fast-moving transition into a may come at a substantial price in freedom,
suspect society. that ‘law and orderl can be a doublethink
Ultimately, it comes back to power, mon- version of oppression, that individual liber-
ey and control – “how it is acquired and ties surrendered for whatever good reason
maintained, how those who seek it or seek are freedoms lost.” CT
to keep it tend to sacrifice anything and ev-
erything in its name” – the same noxious Constitutional attorney and author John
mix that George Orwell warned about in his W. Whitehead is founder and president of
chilling, futuristic novel 1984. It is a warning The Rutherford Institute. His new book The
we have failed to heed. As veteran journalist Freedom Wars (TRI Press) is available online
Walter Cronkite observed in his preface to a at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted
commemorative edition of 1984: at johnw@rutherford.org. Information about
“1984 is an anguished lament and a The Rutherford Institute is available at www.
warning that vibrates powerfully when we rutherford.org

READ THE BEST OF JOE BAGEANT


http://coldtype.net/joe.html

January 2011 | TheREADER 13


Writer Sam Walker revealed that one woman
gamed the last presidential election… She ended
up a national hero… Call it Mockery …

MOCKERY
A NOVEL OF POLITICS AND TRUTH
BY PHILIP KRASKE
“...blows the lid off our simplistic vision of the
democratic process of U.S. elections.”
– Graham Kelsey, Anarchosyndicalism

Buy it in Kindle, PDF, or at B&N for the best


price in paper
Read about the author and see more of his work at http://www.philipkraske.com

FOR KINDLE: http://www.amazon.com/Mockery-ebook/dp/B0040GJGU0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=A317O7WZ1


CN6AQ&s=digital-text&qid=1282753376&sr=8-1
FOR THE PDF VERSION: http://encompasseditions.com/MOCKERYframeset.htm
FOR B&N: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Mockery/Philip-Kraske/e/9780986520310/?itm=2&USRI=phili
p+kraske

SUBSCRIBE
TO COLDTYPE
If you enjoy The Reader
subscribe to future issues
– it’s free!
E-mail: subs@coldtype.net

14 TheREADER | January 2011


THE ECONOMY / 1

Tax the rich!


Fed up seeing your life become increasingly stressed
with more debt and less cash in your pocket?
Michael I. Niman has the answer, in three words

t’s hard to organize a political move- ers, but one that would put Americans back For our Tax the

I ment in the age of one-minute news


stories and seven-second sound bites.
Reality is just too damned complex
for our degraded communications culture.
Vote for the politician with the flag and
to work? Just tax the rich. Worried about
the deficit? Tax the rich! Want to rebuild
our nation’s crumbling infrastructure? Tax
the rich! How about creating green jobs and
stimulating a green economy? Tax the rich!
Rich coalition
to work, it’s got
to be a broad-
based movement
focusing on one
the baby, who will cut your taxes and buy Want to guarantee each American child the and only one issue:
you a new car. Stories about how casino right to a quality education and affordable taxing the rich
capitalists empowered by neoconservative college tuition? Tax the rich!
market deregulation took down the global
economy with toxic assets, and how hege- Tax the Rich!
monic market relationships shifted the pain For our Tax the Rich coalition to work, it’s
of economic collapse to the poorest nations got to be a broad-based movement focusing
and people, resulting in accelerated pat- on one and only one issue: taxing the rich.
terns of upward wealth redistribution and For or against abortion rights, marijuana le-
the subsequent uptick in violent conflicts, galization, nuclear power, gay marriage or
just don’t fit into this news model. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell? It doesn’t matter, we
It’s also difficult to propose realistic so- all want to tax the rich. For or against New
lutions to such problems when, on those York’s Rockefeller Drug Laws, California’s
rare occasions the news media actually does Three Strikes law, or Texas’s quest to jail ev-
allow a dissident voice, they only get seven eryone forever? It doesn’t matter. We can all
seconds of airtime or two lines of newsprint. agree that the $50,000-per-year bill to lock
But I think I’ve got the sound bite that ad- people up, whether we think they should be
dresses a fix for almost all of our social, eco- in jail or not, should be paid by taxing the
nomic and environmental problems: Tax rich.
the rich!” For or against the War on Terror, the
It doesn’t take seven seconds to say. Per- Drug War, the Afghanistan War or the Iraq
haps two. And I can write it 13 times in two War? We’ll have that argument someplace
lines. Try it. Write it. Shout it. Tax the rich! else. Right now we’re talking about tax-
Though seemingly mind-numbingly sim- ing the rich. Right or wrong, someone has
ple, it’s a universal fix. Worried about how to to pay the outstanding bill for these wars.
pay for an economic stimulus plan – not a Our current plan of borrowing from China
namby-pamby one that just bails out bank- and Saudi Arabia borders on economic trea-

January 2011 | TheREADER 15


THE ECONOMY / 1

’m not arguing son. During World War II, we paid for the gest cut every time you hit the buy button
here for or against military by raising the maximum tax rate, on iTunes. Again, I’m not arguing here for
the concept of paid only by the rich, to 94 percent. Hell, or against intellectual property laws. Let’s
private property. they’re the ones who profited from the war. keep our coalition broad. I think we can all
I’m just saying And they’re the only ones who were able to agree, however, that if we have such laws,
the people who both pay for the war and still have money we should tax the rich to pay for their en-
own most of our left over to support their lavish lifestyles. So forcement.
nation’s wealth we taxed the rich. The taxpayer-funded criminal justice
should be the ones This is a simple concept. Even 15 years system, in addition to protecting the wealth
paying to protect after World War II ended, during the Repub- and private property of the rich, also abets
their alleged rights lican Eisenhower administration, we kept the rich in their chronic theft from the poor.
to that ownership their top tax rate at 91 percent, so we could If you stop paying the 28-percent interest on
pay off the bills for that war, the Korean your credit card debt, or steal unaffordable
War, and the incubating Cold War. medications from a drugstore, you’ll wind
up in a taxpayer-funded court. If your mort-
Tax the Rich! gage adjusts upward to the point where you
Our current economic model essentially can no longer afford to pay it, you’ll wind up
uses the tax system to take money from in taxpayer-funded court. Why not pay for
working- and middle-class people and re- these courts by taxing the rich?
distribute it to the rich in the form of cor- The same principle holds true when we
porate welfare, tax-free loans and bailouts, fight wars to protect property the rich claim
and subsidies for building and operating to own, or to acquire resources the rich will
the infrastructure the rich use in both mak- soon own. And who should pay the bill for
ing and keeping their money. Try this sim- police to protect the estates of the rich, the
ple political theory on for size: The primary banks the rich own, their Bentleys and their
purpose of civil government is to protect yachts? The reality is, if you steal from the
private property. Want to squat an empty poor, you will likely get away with it. If you
building, stay in your foreclosed home, or steal from the rich, if you rob a bank, you
grow tomatoes and squash on the edge of will go to jail. So why not tax the rich to pay
some rich person’s estate? Taxpayer-funded for this criminal justice system? They al-
police will enforce trespass laws and drag ready seem to own it.
your butt off to a taxpayer-funded jail. I’m
not arguing here for or against the concept Tax the Rich!
of private property. I’m just saying the peo- It also turns out that taxing the rich helps
ple who own most of our nation’s wealth grow the economy. Again, the theory is
should be the ones paying to protect their painfully simple: Put money in the hands
alleged rights to that ownership. This is of rich people and they invest or spend it ei-
conservative, libertarian economic philoso- ther abroad or on luxury goods that provide
phy: Tax the rich. few jobs per dollar spent. Put money in the
Want to print your own Swoosh shirts? hands of the poor and they’ll immediately
Nike will have you arrested. Ditto for Dis- pump all of it back into the economy. If you
ney and Mickey Mouse, or your beloved want to stimulate the economy, take money
football team and its registered logo. See from the rich and give it to the poor. The
what happens when you offer your new poor will just give it back to the rich any-
Amber Swift album up for file-sharing, or way, but at least it will pass through a few
try selling a homemade copy of Toy Story 3 middle-class hands on the way.
on eBay. Taxpayers subsidize this govern- In the 1950s and 1960s, when we actu-
ment enforcement of intellectual property ally taxed the rich, we were able to build the
laws that benefit the rich, who take the big- interstate highway system, wage an expen-

16 TheREADER | January 2011


THE ECONOMY / 1

sive war, and fund a welfare state. Economic the poor. After 30 years of this experiment, they’ve
growth, stimulated heavily by government the data showing otherwise is overwhelm- bastardized
and poor people’s spending, allowed the ing. But you’d never know this from read- the language to
“liberal” Kennedy and Johnson administra- ing, watching, or listening to the American describe their
tions to cut the tax rate for the rich by 21 media. They’ll say anything to avoid taxing endless campaign
percent, lowering their rate to 70 percent. the rich. to pass the
Then greed got the better of America. To- responsibility
day’s top tax rate for individuals “earning” Tax the Rich! of paying off
over $373,650, is 35 percent, while the rate Let’s embrace a bit of complexity for a mo- government debt
on “unearned income” from passive invest- ment. When rich people in developed coun- to the middle class
ments is capped at 15 percent – which is 10 tries get tax cuts, their take-home income as “tax relief”
percent less than someone earning $34,000 soars, leaving them with a surplus of mon-
per year would pay on their “earned” in- ey, which history has shown they will wildly
come. and irresponsibly invest in speculative as-
We financed this historically unprece- sets, creating various market “bubbles.”
dented wealth transfer with deficit spending Then markets correct and these bubbles
and cuts to government services. These cuts spectacularly burst, creating radical disrup-
led to increases in public university tuitions, tions that crash economies. In the roaring
a plethora of fees and sales taxes, and local 1920s, when the tax rates for the richest
and state taxes, at the same time our pub- Americans decreased from 73 percent to
lic infrastructure began to decay and food, 25 percent, the rich invested wildly, driv-
medical, and education assistance to the ing stock prices up to unsustainable levels.
poorest Americans was cut. We didn’t cut When that market corrected, it gave us the
any of the government services that protect “Great Crash” of 1929 and the subsequent
the rich’s monopoly on wealth, however. “Great Depression.” The next major crash
The Great Society gave way to the McMan- came a few years after Reagan halved the
sion when we stopped taxing the rich. maximum tax rates, creating another bub-
This stuff is simple, but you’d never ble-bust cycle. The ensuing years between
know it since rich people own our media these crashes, when taxes on the rich were
and our politicians. They’ve linguistically in the 70 to 90 percent range, saw a his-
transformed their obligation to contribute torically unprecedented period of economic
to society by paying taxes into a “tax bur- stability. Bush Senior held Reagan’s line on
den.” And likewise, they’ve bastardized the taxes, and the economy floundered. Bush
language to describe their endless campaign Junior cut taxes further, and we got another
to pass the responsibility of paying off gov- bubble, followed by another big crash.
ernment debt to the middle class as “tax Get the picture? We can prevent this
relief.” Call it what you will, those who reap mayhem by taxing the rich.
most of the material benefits of our society When taxes are higher, income for work-
should also shoulder most of the “burden.” ing- and middle-class taxpayers also rises,
So let’s tax the rich. even adjusted for inflation, since the labor
The corporate media also tell us that market is modulated by real after-tax in-
economics is far too complex for us to come. Inversely, when taxes are cut, real in-
wrap our little working- and middle-class come for these same working people tends
minds around. They even manufacture to drop. The opposite, however, has histori-
“think tanks” to lend a bought-and-paid- cally held true for the rich, whose income
for academic veneer to their economic pro- drops drastically when taxes rise, and rises
paganda. But their “trickle-down” meme at a similar rate when taxes are cut. Hence,
is even simpler than mine. Money we give they have a vested interest in keeping taxes
to the rich will supposedly trickle down to low, while the rest of us have a vested inter-

January 2011 | TheREADER 17


THE ECONOMY / 1

Our elections are est in seeing taxes rise. The rich, however, But why don’t we-the-people want to tax
little more than can back up their interests with money, the rich? The bottom line is that we do want
auction blocks which they often invest in buying media to tax the rich. Ask your friends. Who really
where the rich can organizations, which parrot their anti-tax doesn’t want to tax the rich? We just need
afford to sponsor mantras. to ignore the media messages that say we
candidates they This is why the Founding Fathers warned don’t.
like and destroy against allowing a super-wealthy class to Here’s a strategy for a broad-based Tax
ones they don’ty emerge, and until the late 19th century, the Rich political movement. Call or email
even after adjusting income into today’s your representatives and tell them to tax
dollars, there were no billionaires. The the rich. Call them out when they refuse to
fear was that such a class would have the tax the rich. Petition for ballot lines around
financial resources to dominate a political the country for a Tax the Rich party, and
system, rendering democracy obsolete. Po- endorse candidates with the strongest tax-
litical scientists point out that you cannot the-rich commitments or track records, and
have both massive economic inequality and oppose those who refuse to tax the rich.
democracy. It fits on buttons, bumper stickers, t-
The best way to prevent, or reverse, such shirts, railroad bridges, abandoned build-
inequality, and to salvage our democracy, is ings, and highway overpasses. You can work
to tax the rich! it into conversations. You can post it to your
Facebook profile, Tweet it, shout it out your
Tax the Rich! window, tattoo it on your arm. But we’ve
Of course our political class will not tax the got to get the message out loud and clear:
rich for us. Politicians are deathly afraid that Tax the damned rich! CT
the rich will punish them. Our elections are
little more than auction blocks where the Michael I. Niman is a professor of
rich can afford to sponsor candidates they Journalism and Media Studies at Buffalo
like and destroy ones they don’t. State College.

“David Swanson writes in the tradition of Howard Zinn. War


Is A LIe is as clear as the title. Wars are all based on lies,
could not be fought without lies, and would not be fought
at all if people held their governments to any reasonable
standard of honesty.” — Charles M. Young.

“David Swanson is an antidote to the toxins of complacency


and evasion. He insists on rousing the sleepwalkers,
confronting the deadly prevaricators and shining a bright
light on possibilities for a truly better world.” — Norman
Solomon, author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and
Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death

WAR IS A LIE
DAVID SWANSON
Available now at www.warisalie.org

18 TheREADER | January 2011


THE ECONOMY / 2

The few, the proud,


the fifthy rich
The holidays were tough for millions and millions
of people suffering the effects of the Great Recession – but,
as Alan Maass reports, Wall Street had lots to celebrate

e’s number 69 on the latest the extermination camps for Jews, Roma, This was the

H Forbes 400 list of richest Amer-


icans and head of Blackstone
Group, the world’s largest pri-
vate equity firm specializing in corporate
takeovers. He lives in a 35-room triplex on
socialists, communists and others.
And yet Schwarzman’s out-of-control
ranting isn’t so out of the ordinary for Cor-
porate America these days. Big business
seems to have adopted a motto from the
seventh straight
quarter of rising
profits, and at one
of the fastest clips
in recent histor
Park Avenue in Manhattan, with second Marine Corps: The few, the proud, the filthy
“homes” – mansions, really – in the Hamp- rich – and the rest of you can go to hell.
tons, Palm Beach and Jamaica. His private The profits of US businesses hit another
chef regularly spends $3,000 for a week- record in the third quarter of 2010, clock-
end’s feasting for him and his wife, includ- ing in at $1.659 trillion at an annual rate,
ing those stone crabs he loves at $400 each. according to the Commerce Department –
Which works out to $40 a claw. the highest figure in non-inflation-adjusted
But comfortable as his life is, Stephen dollars since the government started keep-
Schwarzman isn’t the kind of guy to allow ing track more than 60 years ago. This was
tyranny to go unopposed. “It’s a war,” he the seventh straight quarter of rising prof-
declared in July at the board meeting of a its, and at one of the fastest clips in recent
nonprofit organization, according to News- history.
week. “It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland Meanwhile, unemployment has hung on
in 1939.” stubbornly at twice its pre-crisis level, and
And what cruel injustice was Schwarzman one in six Americans – including one in four
standing against? children – is at risk of hunger, according to
Turns out it’s all those people who want the latest government statistics.
to tax him to death. Schwarzman was talk- But don’t expect any humility from
ing about a widely supported Democratic the US Chamber of Commerce. The busi-
proposal – now abandoned, naturally – to ness federation is spoiling for a new fight
close a loophole that allows private equity – against a “regulatory tsunami of unprec-
firms like Blackstone to pay taxes at less edented force” allegedly coming from the
than half the rate of normal corporations. Obama administration. The Chamber’s
Which, when you think about it, is not Chief Executive Thomas Donahue says the
really in any way like the Nazi blitzkrieg White House is plotting “thousands of new
that killed hundreds of thousands of Poles and questionable regulatory rulemakings.”
in a country that would become the site of Any bets on the outcome of that one?

January 2011 | TheREADER 19


THE ECONOMY / 2

In the first nine On Wall Street, the top three dozen pub- for a few weeks next year.
months of the licly held banks, hedge funds and invest- It isn’t just New York City, of course. The
year, the big six ment firms plan to pay $144 billion in com- vast gap between rich and poor has grown
banks in the US – pensation and benefits this year, according even larger during the Great Recession. To-
Bank of America, to the Wall Street Journal’s survey – the sec- day, the richest 1 percent of Americans takes
JPMorgan Chase, ond-straight record-setting year. nearly 24 percent of overall income – nearly
Citigroup, Wells But ask any banker, and they’ll tell you tripling their share since 1976 and the most
Fargo, Goldman sums like that aren’t much comfort when extreme level of inequality since statistics
Sachs and Morgan people are just...so...mean. started being kept.
Stanley – cleared “We’ve been ostracized,” one unnamed One reason for this, of course, is that the
$35 billion in executive told the Observer newspaper. US financial system is up to its old tricks
profits “I went to jury duty about a year ago, and – as if the cataclysmic crisis of 2008 never
when I said I’m in investment banking, the happened.
people in the jury room were making ugh In the first nine months of the year, the
sounds. And I’m like, fuck you. I’m proud of big six banks in the US – Bank of America,
what I do. And I think this firm did a lot to JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo,
get the recovery going. Ranked somewhere Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley –
below a pimp and an oil well operator isn’t cleared $35 billion in profits. Thanks to the
right.” way the bankers reward themselves, a lot of
Corporate America is snarling – rather that money will end up being paid out as
than laughing – all the way to bank. The bonuses.
Wall Street parasites who set off the crisis And it’s mostly on the government’s
with their gambling are swimming in mon- dime, to boot. Not only did the federal gov-
ey again, while businesses turn the screws ernment save them with a multibillion-dol-
tighter and tighter – throwing people out of lar rescue when the crisis hit, but the bank-
work, slashing government programs that ers are still taking advantage of the Federal
the poor depend on, and forcing those who Reserve Bank’s policy of pumping money
still have a job to work harder for less. into the economy by lending to financial
And all the while acting like they are the institutions at effective 0 percent interest
persecuted ones. rates.
Some of that free cash is fueling a revival
Back to spendthriftiness in the market for speculative investments
The got-it-flaunt-it rule is back for the su- known as derivatives – the very thing that
per-rich after a few difficult years of cash set off the Wall Street crash of 2008. But a
flow problems. healthy portion is being lent back to the
At Christie’s and other New York auction government through the purchase of Trea-
houses that peddle art to the highest bid- sury bills at 3 percent interest. It’s a guaran-
der, the first two weeks of November were teed profit for the banks, without the bother
among the most lucrative in history. Dr. and risk of making loans for something that
Francesca Fusco reports that her Manhattan might be productive for the rest of society.
cosmetic surgery business is booming again The financial sector of the economy ac-
– ”Wall Street is back spending as much if counts for more than a quarter of the profits
not more than before,” she gushes. of US businesses, up from around one-sev-
And the bidding action for rentals next enth 25 years ago. As Paul Wooley, a veteran
summer in the posh Hamptons on Long Is- of the British financial system-turned-critic
land is “hotter and heavier” than ever, says of the banks, said, “It’s like a cancer that is
Dolly Lenz of Prudential Douglas Elliman. growing to infinite size, until it takes over
She has three people ready to pony up more the entire body.
than $400,000 to put a roof over their heads But then again, Corporate America as a

20 TheREADER | January 2011


THE ECONOMY / 2

whole isn’t acting any differently from the big business is going to be plenty happy as That statistic
banks. long as profits roll in without making new reveals the old-
Business profits as an overall dollar investments in jobs and higher wages – fashioned secret
amount hit a new record in the third quar- something the Federal Reserve recognized of the profit boom
ter. Calculated as a percentage of the gross when it revised its prediction last month – corporations are
domestic product – the total production of to project official unemployment staying making workers
goods and services in the economy – profits above 9 percent throughout 2011 and above work harder for
reached 11.2 percent, close to the high point 8 percent for the election year that follows. less
of the 2000s boom. In other words, for ev-
ery $9 produced in the US economy today, Playing the victim
the ruling class is pocketing $1. And still Corporate America’s filthy rich few
But the corporate profit boom isn’t lead- play the victim – like Schwarzman with his
ing to an investment boom, at least not outbursts against “big government” and the
investment in the US Earlier this year, the terrible injustice of being made to pay taxes
Federal Reserve estimated that non-finan- at something closer to the rate that working
cial corporations were sitting on $1.8 trillion people do.
in cash and other so-called liquid assets, up Only...it turns out that Stephen
26 percent from the year before, the fast- Schwarzman isn’t opposed to all “big gov-
est increase for cash on hand since records ernment.”
started being kept in 1952. The Blackstone Group’s last big deal be-
This is the reason for the anemic jobs re- fore the Wall Street crash in 2008 was the
ports issued each month by the government. takeover of the Hilton Hotel chain. Black-
In most months this past year, private-sec- stone and a group of investors agreed to
tor employment crept upward, though it pay $26 billion for the company. They put
was offset several times by job losses in the in $5.6 billion of their own money and bor-
public sector. But in any case, the increases rowed over $20 billion from a group of sev-
are too small to keep up with the rise in the en banks.
working-age population, much less replace That’s how buyout firms work: They fi-
the jobs lost during the recession. nance their massive purchases with huge
Since December 2007, the US economy loans, they then cut costs ruthlessly – mean-
has lost 5.4 percent of non-farm payroll ing they lay off workers and close factories
jobs – roughly one lost out of every 19. And – and they sell what’s left as quickly as pos-
with Corporate America banking its profits, sible, leaving the takeover target saddled
there’s no sign of that collapse being made with the debts.
up soon. At the same time as profits for the In the case of Hilton, though, the reces-
third quarter jumped 28 percent over the sion made it difficult to find a buyer for
year before, business spending on compen- the restructured company or to refinance
sation for employees rose only 7.6 percent, the massive loans from the 2007 purchase.
or about one-quarter as fast. Only this year was Blackstone able to reach
That statistic reveals the old-fashioned a deal with banks that reduced its debt load
secret of the profit boom – corporations are by about $4 billion – by extending some of
making workers work harder for less. Ac- the loans and paying for others at a steep
cording to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, discount over what they had been worth.
the output of the US economy rose 4.1 per- But one of the lenders in the Blackstone
cent in the third quarter compared to the deal for Hilton was under slightly different
year before, the number of hours worked in- management.
creased by 1.6 percent, and unit labor costs The investment bank Bear Stearns had
fell by nearly 2 percent. contributed about $4 billion in loans for the
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Hilton takeover. Less than a year later, when

January 2011 | TheREADER 21


THE ECONOMY / 2

Almost a year and Bear was careening toward bankruptcy, the cago’s downtown during a three-day strike
a half after the Federal Reserve Bank of New York took by UNITE HERE in October. The workers
union contract over those Hilton debts – at full value – in carried signs reading “Taxpayers on Strike.”
expired, the order to entice JPMorgan Chase to buy the Probably the worst among Hilton/Black-
Blackstone-owned collapsing Bear. stone’s demands is the speedup – manage-
chain is demanding So when Schwarzman and Co. wanted ment wants housekeepers to clean 20 rooms
that workers to refinance, they were negotiating in part a day, a 40 percent increase in work that is
represented with the federal government, in the form of already physically exhausting.
by UNITE the New York Fed. Which graciously agreed That’s why Xiomara Cruz is worrying not
HERE accept to sell back $320 million of the total Hilton about the invasion of Poland, but Hilton’s
concessions debt at a cost to Blackstone of $142 million. war on her health. As the room cleaner in
In other words, Blackstone and Hilton San Francisco told SocialistWorker.org’s Ra-
got a gift of $178 million from their friends gina Johnson in October: “I have numbness
at the Fed – the equivalent of 10 percent of in my fingers, shoulder and back problems.
Blackstone’s revenue in all of 2009. Everyone has back and shoulder pain and
Not that they were hurting, mind you. numbness in their fingers. We are supposed
“We were in good shape before,” Hilton to have two breaks and a dinner break. I am
CEO Chris Nassetta said of the effect of the not taking time for dinner and breaks be-
debt deal, “and we’re in exceptionally good cause there’s too much work, but we have
shape now.” to sign off on the sheet saying we took our
Workers at Hilton, on the other hand, breaks, even when we didn’t.”
aren’t in such “exceptionally good shape.” It’s a crime that union workers like Cruz
Almost a year and a half after the union con- are being told that they have to work hard-
tract expired, the Blackstone-owned chain er for less because Hilton doesn’t have the
is demanding that workers represented by money – at the same time as its owners at
UNITE HERE accept concessions – $200 a Blackstone are proudly predicting a 50 per-
month toward their health care plan, and a cent increase in revenues for 2010. But for
freeze on pension contributions. the filthy rich in Corporate America, crimes
“They got all this money from the federal like that pay – very, very well. CT
government, and yet they won’t give us a
contract,” said Gloria King, who was among Alan Maas is the editor of SocialistWorker –
four dozen workers picketing outside a Hil- www.socialistworker.org – where this article
ton in the posh shopping district near Chi- first appeared.

DOWNLOAD AND
READ THE FIRST 52 ISSUES OF
The READER
www.coldtype/net/reader.html

22 TheREADER | January 2011


THE ECONOMY / 3

Portraits of greed
Sam Pizzigati’s annual list of the 10 greediest
corporate executives in America

ard times can be good times – colleges in the state to up tuition as much Massive layoffs

H for the aggressively avaricious.


Where others see pain, they see
opportunity. In desperation,
they delight. The grimmer the economic
outlook, the more ghastly their grabbing.
as 23 percent. The state’s overall education
budget dropped 9.5 percent in 2010, and lo-
cal school boards now see no way to “avoid
major layoffs.”
Saban, for his part, has been blasting the
would soon
slash the chain’s
workforce by 19
percent. Schultz
would feel the pain
And who grabbed the most outrageously “greed” of sports agents who sneak college
in 2010? We offer below our annual take on athletes cash in hopes of cashing out big
America’s ten greediest of the year. themselves when the athletes turn pro. In
August, Saban called these agents no better
10. Nick Saban: A coach’s fabulous “than a pimp.”
crimson ride A pimp, responded one national sports
America’s college football coaches seem to writer, displays a “willingness to physically
have made an end run around the Great exploit young people” the pimp claims “to
Recession. In 2006, only 10 of the about protect” and, “above all, a love of money.”
120 big-time college football coaches took That definition, continued Fox Sports ana-
home at least $2 million a year. The 2010 lyst Mark Kriegel, just might fit Nick Saban,
total: 38. Alabama’s most “highly paid state employ-
The king of them all: the University of Al- ee.”
abama’s Nick Saban, with a 2010 takehome
at $6,087,349, six times the college football 9. Howard Schultz: How to brew a bigger
coaching average. Only five coaches in all of fortune
professional sports will this year make more A decade ago, after running coffee giant Star-
than Saban. bucks for 13 years, Howard Schultz stepped
Forbes has labeled Saban the “most pow- down as CEO to take life a bit easier as the
erful coach in sports,” and his many perks company’s “chief global strategist.” Early in
– everything from two cars to a contract 2008, with Starbucks struggling mightily in
clause that lets him exit Alabama at any the marketplace, Schultz took back his CEO
time without taking a financial penalty – slot.
amply confirm that assessment. The struggles continued. Massive layoffs
Financial penalties, meanwhile, are would soon slash the chain’s workforce by
abounding throughout the rest of Alabama’s 19 percent. Schultz would feel the pain. He
public sector. Budget cuts have forced some started trumpeting “the shared sacrifice I

January 2011 | TheREADER 23


THE ECONOMY / 3

New assembly line want to make” – and pledged to take almost oner, was raking in a much more “competi-
workers at GM, no personal salary. tive” $10.2 million.
for their part, But CEOs, wink, wink, only get a small “Competitive” might not actually be the
are now making fraction of their total pay from straight sal- right word here. In the year Wagoner all by
only $14 an hour, ary. The Starbucks corporate board, behind himself was collecting $10.2 million, Toy-
half the rate they the sacrificing scenes, was actually turbo- ota’s top 32 execs – a group that included
would have been charging the Schultz pay package with a CEO Katsuaki Watanabe – were together
making before mammoth grant of stock options, delivered pulling in only $19.9 million.
GM’s meltdown at just the moment Starbucks shares were
hovering at a rock-bottom low. 7. Don Blankenship: Dirty business as
Starbucks valued those options, at the usual
time of their granting, at $12.4 million. By Outside the nation’s coal fields, few Ameri-
May 2010, after a Wall Street mini-boom, cans knew Don Blankenship, the CEO at
the value of the shares had soared to $46.8 Massey Energy, before last April. But that all
million. More good news for Schultz: He changed after an explosion that month left
scored another $26 million last year exercis- 29 Massey miners dead. Reporters would
ing options he had been granted way back soon grill Blankenship about the mine’s
in 1998 and 1999. long history of safety violations, over 500 in
And what about Starbucks sharehold- 2009 alone.
ers? Those who bought their shares in 2007, “Violations,” the Massey chief coldheart-
right before the Great Recession, still have edly retorted, “are unfortunately a normal
no gain to show for their investment. part of the mining process.”
Almost as normal as windfall paychecks
8. Daniel Akerson: Competing at a mythic for Don Blankenship. The Massey CEO took
level home nearly $34 million in 2005, about
The chief executive of General Motors since quadruple the industry standard. Over the
this past September, Daniel Akerson gave last three years, he has waltzed away from
his first “high-profile speech” as the auto- his office with another $38.2 million. But
maker’s CEO. The prime takeaway from his the real waltzing is only now beginning.
address? The feds, said Akerson, need to The 60-year-old Blankenship is retiring
ease up on the bailout pay limits still in ef- at the end of this year with a pension valued
fect for his fellow top GM executives. at $5.7 million, another $12 million in sever-
“We have to be competitive,” Akerson ance, still another $27.2 million in deferred
told the Economic Club of Washington, pay, title to a company-owned house, and
D.C. “We have to be able to attract good a two-year consulting agreement that pays
people.” $5,000 a month for no more than 32 hours
Getting “good people” to fill jobs below work.
GM’s executive level, on the other hand, ap- Blankenship may even exit, once all this
parently doesn’t matter all that much. GM year’s stats have come in, with a 2010 “per-
salaried employees, Akerson has decided, formance” bonus that factors in safety.
will not see any increases this coming year in How can a coal company CEO with 29
their base salaries. New assembly line work- dead miners get a safety bonus? Massey’s
ers at GM, for their part, are now making flagship safety standard, “Non-Fatal Days
only $14 an hour, half the rate they would Lost,” merely multiplies “the number of
have been making before GM’s meltdown. employee work-related accidents times
Akerson is currently making $1.7 million 200,000 hours, divided by the total employ-
in cash annually, on top of $5.3 million in ee hours worked.” Death doesn’t factor in.
stock for the next three years. Before GM’s
meltdown, the automaker’s CEO, Rick Wag- 6. David Cote: King of America’s

24 TheREADER | January 2011


THE ECONOMY / 3

corporate political cash Tepper is currently doing his best to Cote’s agenda?
Coal can kill. Uranium, too. Workers who single-handedly reboot America’s still de- Making sure the
handle uranium, notes labor journalist Mike pressed residential real estate market. In budget-cutters in
Elk, “suffer rates of cancer 10 times higher June, he spent $43.5 million to pick up a Washington keep
than the general public.” summer home in the Hamptons that used hands off defense
That’s one big reason why the union lo- to belong to former New Jersey governor contracts
cal that represents workers at a Honeywell and Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine. The
uranium facility in Illinois this past June re- 6.5-acre beachfront spread sports six bed-
jected a management proposal to eliminate rooms, a tennis court, and a heated pool –
retiree medical care and boost – to $8,500 and rented last summer for $900,000.
a year – the out-of-pocket health care costs The $43.5 million Tepper shelled out
active workers have to pay. ended up the highest price paid this year for
A disappointed Honeywell, one of the a Hamptons home. The total also amount-
nation’s top defense contractors, promptly ed to about half the record $88 million the
locked the Illinois uranium workers out. hedge fund industry raised for the homeless
Those workers, ever since then, have been this past May at the 2010 Robin Hood Foun-
trying to meet face to face with Honeywell dation dinner, Wall Street’s single biggest
CEO David Cote. annual charity gala.
The week after Thanksgiving, the locked- One official at the foundation dubbed
out workers even traveled to Washington, that $88 million an act of “extraordinary
D.C., where Cote, a member of President generosity.” Others might define “extraor-
Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal dinary” a bit differently. David Tepper and
Responsibility, was discussing with his fel- the rest of the hedge fund industry’s top
low commissioners a variety of proposals to 25 last year together pocketed $25.3 billion.
slash federal spending. They averaged, each and every business day,
Cote, who took home $13.2 million last over $100 million.
year and $28.7 million the year before, has
been spending big himself – on political 4. Lloyd Blankfein: Getting the most from
contributions. Under his direction, Honey- our tax dollars
well has emerged as the nation’s top corpo- Lloyd Blankfein, the chief exec at Wall
rate political giver. Street’s biggest bank, has had a stunning
Cote’s agenda? Making sure the budget- century. Since 2000, Bloomberg News cal-
cutters in Washington keep hands off de- culates, Blankfein has earned a whopping
fense contracts. As one alternative, press $125 million in cash bonuses and enough
reports indicate, he’s pushing a freeze on additional stock awards to leave him with
the pay that goes to America’s servicemen a personal stash of Goldman shares worth
and women. over $300 million.
And the goodies keep coming. This Janu-
5. David Tepper: This hedge needs ary, Blankfein will pick up another $24.3
clipping million in stock, as a delayed payout from
Nobody made more money last year than previous years. He’ll also pick up millions
America’s top hedge fund managers, and more in soon-to-be-announced bonuses for
no hedge fund manager made more than 2010.
David Tepper. This 53-year-old former junk News of these bonuses, Wall Street ana-
bond trader at Goldman Sachs hit a $4 bil- lyst Jeanne Branthover predicts, will leave
lion jackpot essentially betting, in the mid- the public “outraged” and Wall Streeters
dle of the global financial meltdown, that “excited” – that “there’s still a reason to be
Uncle Sam wouldn’t let Wall Street’s biggest working so hard.”
banks go under. How hard is Lloyd Blankfein working?

January 2011 | TheREADER 25


THE ECONOMY / 3

The truth turned He simply never misses an opportunity, million – and a boss, Oracle CEO Larry El-
out to be anything however small, to make a buck off taxpay- lison, who just happens to be his buddy.
but. Five months ers. This year’s prime example: the fees that
later, with no Goldman Sachs has fixed on Build America 2. Larry Ellison: How dare we call him
fanfare, an Oracle Bonds, the federal program that’s helping ruthless
filing with the states and localities raise money for con- Mark Hurd has shown himself to be a whiz
federal Securities struction job projects. at the merge-and-purge corporate CEO two-
and Exchange Local governments, in tough times, often step. But the master of that merger two-
Commission have to cut back on such projects because step – snatch a rival’s customers, then fire
revealed that the they can’t afford to pay the interest on new its workers – has always been Oracle chief
company was bond offerings. With Build America Bonds, executive Larry Ellison, the third-richest
taking a huge the federal government is paying 35 percent man in America.
severance write- of this interest. Oracle has bought out 66 companies over
off for personnel Investment banks charge municipalities the years, and Ellison, the Wall Street Jour-
reductions fees to bring their bonds to investors. Gold- nal estimates, has collected $1.84 billion in
man’s fees typically range up to 0.625 per- compensation just the last ten years alone.
cent of each bond issue. But Goldman has But Oracle’s chief started this past year out
been charging, on Build America Bonds, up vowing to change his ways.
to 0.875 percent. Why so much? Goldman, In January, after consummating a $7.4
Blankfein told Congress, had to “educate billion takeover of Sun Microsystems, El-
the market.” lison had “We’re Hiring” buttons handed
out at the news conference to announce the
3. Mark Hurd: Unfurling a platinum deal – and then royally denounced a news
parachute report that Oracle would be axing half of
The truly greedy don’t just grab – at the Sun’s 27,600 workers.
expense of those they overpower. And the “Those who wrote this should be ashamed
truly greedy don’t just feel entitled to grab of themselves,” Ellison ranted. “The truth is,
all they can get. The truly greedy feel invin- we are going to hire about 2,000 new people
cible while they’re grabbing away, just like to beef up the Sun businesses – about twice
former Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd. as many as we will let go.”
Hurd gained the HP reins in 2005. He The truth turned out to be anything but.
proceeded to pocket $134.2 million, through Five months later, with no fanfare, an Ora-
2009, mainly by wheeling and dealing his cle filing with the federal Securities and Ex-
way through dozens of mergers that killed change Commission revealed that the com-
nearly 40,000 jobs. pany was taking a huge severance write-off
HP’s board cheered Hurd on, every step for personnel reductions. As many as 8,600
of the way, until this past August when news jobs, one analyst calculated, would be his-
surfaced that the married CEO had wined tory.
and dined a former erotic actress, handed
her a huge and undeserved marketing con- 1. Andrew Clark: Education really does
tract, and then fudged HP’s books to cover pay
up his indiscretions. Just a few years ago, at the height of Amer-
That arrogance would cost Hurd his job, ica’s subprime frenzy, bankers and mort-
but not much else. Hurd left HP with a sev- gage lenders were making mega millions
erance package that may total $40 million hoodwinking vulnerable old people into
and almost immediately landed a comfy refinancing their homes at unconscionably
new gig as president of business software high interest rates.
giant Oracle. His new contract will bring Today, in an economy still reeling from
Hurd, in his first Oracle year, as much as $11 that fraud, a new high-growth industry –

26 TheREADER | January 2011


THE ECONOMY / 3

the for-profit higher ed sector – is hood- just 329 three years earlier. If students do
winking vulnerable young people into Overall, the New York Times recently fail or drop
taking on taxpayer-financed student loans reported, Andrew Clark’s Bridgepoint last out, no prob.
they can’t possibly repay. year spent more on marketing and promo- The for-profits
And now this industry, facing federal tion than on educating its students. get to keep the
regulations that aim to rein in its deceit, is For-profit colleges have hit upon an tuition, courtesy
waging a massive media campaign based enormously lucrative business model: of America’s
on the phony premise that Washington Promise vets – and other potential students taxpayers
wants to make it “harder to get the educa- – anything to get them to enroll, even if
tion” students “need to succeed.” that means signing them up for courses of
No one is personally profiting more from little real value or classes, the Times notes,
this for-profit higher ed industry chutzpah they would be “all but certain” to fail. If
than the CEO of the San Diego-based students do fail or drop out, no prob. The
Bridgepoint Education, an enterprise that for-profits get to keep the tuition, courtesy
specializes, of late, in going after return- of America’s taxpayers.
ing military veterans. That CEO, Andrew Plenty of America’s power suits, to be
Clark, last year took home $20.5 million. sure, are making more money than An-
For-profit colleges didn’t pay any par- drew Clark. But none are grabbing with
ticular attention to military vets until 2008. any more gusto. CT
But Congress that year gave veteran tuition
benefits a significant hike, and the for-prof- Sam Pizzigati is the editor of the online
its rushed to gobble up the newly available weekly Too Much – www.toomuchonline.org
tuition dollars. Bridgepoint’s military en- – and an associate fellow at the Institute for
rollment soared to 9,200 in 2009, up from Policy Studies.

AUTHORITATIVE.
EYE-OPENING.
PROVOCATIVE.
From award-winning journalist and bestselling author
Linda McQuaig, with tax law professor and author
Neil Brooks, comes a BITING COMMENTARY
on wealth in Canada that will make you ask
WHAT KIND OF SOCIETY YOU WANT TO LIVE IN.

“Splendidly written.”
—Toronto Star

January 2011 | TheREADER 27


THE ECONOMY / 4

The UK’s odious debts


George Monbiot says many of Britain’s PFI deals
were undemocratic and against the national interest
and it’s time the government stopped honouring them

If a hospital no ou’ve been told that nothing is obsolete in 10 or 20 years’ time, but for which
longer requires
the services it
contracted to buy,
tough. If clinical
needs or local
Y sacred; that no state spending
is safe from being cut or eroded
through inflation. You’ve been
misled. As the new public spending data re-
leased by the government show, a £267bn
it will still have to pay for 30 years or more.”
No one’s celebrating being proved right.
This summer Edinburgh Royal Infirmary,
thanks to the extortionate terms of its PFI
contract, found itself with a shortfall of £70m.
demographics bill has been both ring-fenced and index- Under other circumstances it would suspend
change, tough linked. This sum, spread over 50 years or so, maintenance work and cut ancillary services
guarantees the welfare not of state pension- until the crisis had passed. But its contract
ers or children or the unemployed, but of a demands that it does the opposite: it must
different class of customer. To make way, ev- protect non-clinical services by cutting doc-
erything else must be cut, further and faster tors, nurses and beds.
than it would otherwise have been. If a hospital no longer requires the ser-
This is the money the state now owes to vices it contracted to buy, tough. If clinical
private corporations: the banks, construc- needs or local demographics change, tough.
tion and service companies which built in- Where hospitals can’t pay the massive penal-
frastructure under the Private Finance Initia- ty clauses said to lurk in the agreements, the
tive. In September 1997 the Labour govern- NHS must be re-shaped around contractual,
ment gave companies a legal guarantee that not clinical, needs.
their payments would never be cut. When-
ever there was a conflict between the needs An outrageous racket
of patients or pupils and PFI payments, it The cost and inflexibility of PFI is an out-
would thenceforth be resolved in favour of rage, a racket, the legacy of 13 years of New
the consortia. The NHS now owes private Labour appeasement, triangulation and
companies £50bn for infrastructure that cost false accounting. At first sight, it looks as
only £11bn to build, plus £15bn for mainte- if nothing can be done: contracts are con-
nance charges. tracts. What I’m about to propose is a wild
PFI contracts typically last for 25 or 30 shot, but I hope it deserves, at least, to be
years; in one case (Norfolk and Norwich Uni- discussed. I contend that the money we owe
versity Hospitals) for 60 years. In 1997 the to the PFI consortia should be considered
British Medical Association warned that “the odious debt.
NHS could find itself with a facility which is Odious debt is a legal term usually applied

28 TheREADER | January 2011


THE ECONOMY / 4

to the endowments of dictators in the devel- vate investors”. To get their new buildings or To this day, PFI
oping world. It means debt incurred without services, public bodies had to show that PFI contracts remain
the consent of the people and against the na- was cheaper than public procurement. The commercially
tional interest. While the concept is not ac- system was rigged to make this easy. They confidential. You
cepted by all legal scholars, it has some trac- could choose their own value for “optimism can’t read them;
tion. In 2008 Ecuador refused to pay debts bias” in public procurement, which means MPs can’t read
which, it argued, had been illegitimately ac- the amount by which they guessed that a them. We don’t
quired by previous governments. I believe it public project might overrun its budget. But, know what we are
applies to at least some of our PFI liabilities. by official decree, optimism bias was deemed being stung for or
PFI was a Tory invention but became a not to exist in private procurement. whether the costs
Labour doctrine. The 1997 Labour manifesto They could also attach whatever price are justified
announced that the party would “reinvigo- they wanted to the risk ostensibly being
rate the Private Finance Initiative”. But it was transferred to the private sector. A paper
vague about the detail. Labour front-bench- published in the British Medical Journal
ers had announced that some areas of public shows that, before risk transfer was costed,
provision were off-limits. For example, John the hospital schemes it studied would have
Prescott pledged that “Labour will take back been built more cheaply with public money.
private prisons into public ownership”. Jack After the risk was estimated, they all tipped
Straw promised to “bring these prisons into the other way; in some cases by less than
proper public control and run them directly 0.1%.
as public services.” But within two months These valuation exercises were notional
of taking office, Straw had renewed one pri- anyway, because as soon as a preferred bidder
vate prison contract and announced two for the contract had been chosen, the agreed
new ones. There was no democratic mandate prices were junked. The winning consortium
for this policy, which appears to have arisen had the public authority over a barrel, and
from secret talks with companies. could renegotiate at leisure. Desperate public
Secrecy surrounded the whole scheme. To bodies were gulled and outmanoeuvred with
this day, PFI contracts remain commercially the blessing of central government, which
confidential. You can’t read them; MPs can’t sought only to keep the corporations off its
read them. We don’t know what we are being back and the liabilities off its balance sheets.
stung for or whether the costs are justified. Was this a legitimate means of loading our
But there are some powerful clues. schools and hospitals with debt? I don’t
Blair’s administration gave public bodies think so.
no choice: if they wanted new projects, they I know that the chances of getting any of
had to use the private finance initiative. In this debt recognised as odious, especially by
some cases private companies weren’t in- the current government, are small to say the
terested, so the schemes had to be reverse- least. But where else do we go with this? I’ve
engineered to attract them. In Coventry, for been writing about inflexible PFI contracts
example, NHS bosses originally sought £30m since 1998. I’ve wasted months on this mis-
of public money to refurbish the city’s two sion, trying to understand and explain the
hospitals. When the government told them most complex issue in public life. For all the
it was “PFI or bust”, the refurbishment plan good it’s done, I might as well have gone
was dropped in favour of a scheme to knock fishing. Now I see corporations squatting
down both hospitals and build a new one – like great cuckoos on our public services,
with fewer beds and doctors and nurses – at while officials pour the money which should
an eventual, corporate-friendly cost of £410m. have been spent on nurses and teachers into
A report commissioned by the local health their widening bills. Yes, I’m bitter. Yes, I’m
authority found that the scheme had been clutching at straws. But have you got a better
“progressively tailored to fit the needs of pri- idea? CT

January 2011 | TheREADER 29


SOUTH AMERICA

The techno-fantasies
of Evo Morales
Chellis Glendinning tells a story about the consequences
of modernisation in Bolivia

O
Perhaps the tip- n 22 January 2006, Bolivia’s nological expansion arose when billboards
off came when newly-inaugurated President leading into the tiny agricultural town of
President Morales Evo Morales made his exu- Tiquipaya were abruptly changed from “EL
proclaimed via his berant procession through the CAPITÁL DE FLORES” to “EL CAPITÁL DEL
government TV streets of La Paz to join the throngs of sup- PROGRESO” – and high-rise apartments
station that the porters awaiting him in the Plaza de los and office buildings, suddenly and without
goal was to make Héroes. To the excited crowds, Uruguayan local input, began to tower over tin-roofed
Bolivia’s economy writer Eduardo Galeano announced that shanties and women hawking papayas on
like that of Brazil, the historic event signaled “the end of the Reducto.
which is currently fear.” Vice-president Álvaro Garcia Linera Or perhaps the tip-off came when Presi-
viewed as the shouted that, in the new government, poor dent Morales proclaimed via his govern-
#1 country in Bolivianos would be given equality at last. ment TV station that the goal was to make
Latin America And President Morales proclaimed, “Our Bolivia’s economy like that of Brazil, which
to invest in job is to finish the work of Che Guevara!” is currently viewed as the #1 (and, accord-
It was a triumphant day – for the most ing to financial advisers in the US, only)
destitute country in South America had country in Latin America to invest in.
finally risen above the centuries of oligar- Or perhaps it surfaced when he claimed
chies and dictatorships to elect one of its access to wireless Banda Ancha/Universal
own: the first indígena to lead the nation in Broadband as a “human right” – despite
500 years. that international scientists have proven
But who, at that peak moment, was re- that electromagnetic emissions can cause
membering that Che Guevara was not just sleeplessness, anxiety disorders, depres-
the hero of courage and confrontation sion, cancer, genetic breakage, heart dis-
whose life’s work lay unfinished due to as- orders, immunological deterioration, and
sassination in Bolivia? He was also Cuba’s other health problems.
great pusher of industry, development, and The discovery of lithium was the big-
modernization. gest boon to Morales’ urge to emulate Bra-
And so, true to his words, Morales has zil’s rise to economic potency. The rarity
pursued industry, development, and mod- of the “gold of the 21st century” – with its
ernization. importance to the up-and-coming electric-
car battery industry, as well as to nuclear
From Flores to Progreso weaponry – has put Bolivia in the running
Perhaps the tip-off to this lunge toward tech- to build a Saudi-Arabia-size bank account,

30 TheREADER | January 2011


SOUTH AMERICA

with battery sales between 2011 and 2014 la Tunari-San Ignacio de Moxos highway Local communities
slated to top $902 million and total sales promises to create environmental havoc; are protesting
possibly reaching $515 billion. At the same foster development in the form of motels, these projects by
time, partnerships with the likes of Mitsubi- gas stations, and entertainment centers – all demanding the
shi and South Korea have traditional com- the while emanating a swath of electromag- autonomy and
munities nervous about any possibility of netic radiation. And this is not to mention local decision-
local input – as does the inevitable contam- how industrial thoroughfares historically making that
ination of air, water, and soil via leeching, enhance prostitution and narco-trafficking, President Morales
leaks, spills, and emissions. both of which already pose problems in the daily promises
The Morales administration is likewise area. via his Estado
building multi-million-dollar hydro-electric Local communities are protesting these Plurinacional de
dams whose construction is requiring the projects by demanding the autonomy and Bolivia
displacement of entire villages. The presi- local decision-making that President Mo-
dent is allowing Brazil to build two dams rales daily promises via his Estado Plurina-
near the border that will outsize the Hoover cional de Bolivia. But just as political sci-
Dam by 300 percent, just as Brazil is pitching entist Langdon Winner pointed out in Au-
in $1.5 billion toward Bolivia’s hydrocarbon tonomous Technology: Technics as a Theme
industry, with an emphasis on petrochemi- in Political Thought (1977), the pursuit of
cals. Energía Argentina is erecting a 900- technology – which always springs from po-
mile pipeline through Bolivia for importing litical urges and always has political effects
natural gas to Argentina, while the admin- – escapes the democratic process because it
istration has signed a contract with Jindal is viewed as an inevitable aspect of “prog-
corporation of India to construct one of the ress.”
largest iron mines in the world near Santa Despite his Aymará origins, it seems, Evo
Cruz. In August 2010, Morales announced Morales has been captured by said fantasy.
plans for an international state-of-the-tech
airport in Oruro that will increase toxic con- Borrachero del Poder
tamination, while providing access to inter- The truth about Bolivia’s flurry of noveau-
national corporations partnering in mining tech modernization is that, while such a
deals. And in September the administration pursuit may have appeared to be the means
verified that caches of uranium exist in the toward sustainability and defense for an is-
hills of Potosí and the country would part- land like Cuba, under attack by the world’s
ner with Iran to explore excavation. By Oc- most potent nation-state in the 1960’s – to-
tober, after a quick trip to Iran, Morales an- day’s ecologists, environmentalists, social-
nounced his desire to build nuclear plants movement activists, and traditional peoples
in Bolivia. assert that exploitation/expansion-based
Then there’s his pet mega-project. development can no longer be the way up
The Initiative for the Integration of Re- and out.
gional Infrastructure in South America Writing in mid-20th century, US philoso-
aims to construct mega-high-tech-indus- pher Lewis Mumford and French sociolo-
trial-highway-telecommunications-corridor gist Jacques Ellul were among the earliest
networks throughout the continent, and to apply a systemic analysis to technologi-
Bolivia’s part has already been started: a cal society, noting that the Machine itself
300-kilometer highway that will bust had become its template, infiltrating ev-
through a national eco-reserve, slashing the ery thought, act, agency, architecture, and
forestlands of at least 11 endangered animals institution. Their breakthrough insights
and 60 indigenous communities, some of were followed in late century by such intel-
whom are the last to live according to their lects as political scientist Langdon Winner,
traditional hunter-gatherer ways. The Vil- physicist Vandana Shiva, historian Kirk-

January 2011 | TheREADER 31


SOUTH AMERICA

Grabbed by such patrick Sale, farmer-poet Wendell Berry, pioned by activists the world over as some-
contradictions, community activist Gustavo Esteva, and thing of a modern-day Che Guevara.
in August 2010, others – all of whom agree on the essential His screw-you-Copenhagen Cumbre
Morales’ own dysfunction of industrial technologies and Mundial de los Pueblos Sobre el Cambio
Minister of the the mega-machine-scale society they foster. Climático held in Cochabamba in April
Environment, Juan And their work has been substantiated by 2010 was a rare opportunity for global cli-
Pablo Ramos, a cavalcade of witnesses to the impossibil- mate-change activists to gather their ener-
resigned his ity of continued technological development gies toward real progress on addressing the
post – “out of a la late-stage-mass society – to name just environmental problems foisted by techno-
conscience.” a few: Peak-Oil expert Richard Heinberg, capitalist excesses
ecologist Stephanie Mills, journalist Danny But little was it known – amongst all
Schechter, and biologist E.O. Wilson. the excitement, sunrise ceremonies, Aztec
For all his attention to international dancers, and marches by local indigenous
consultants, President Morales has made groups – that Morales’s government had
zero use of the perspectives drawn by such actually tarped over the all-pervasive car-
voices – who curiously share with him a casses of fresh-cut ancient trees in wood
fundamental critique of capitalism and the lots around Cochabamba. Little was it no-
dominant civilization, as well as respect ticed that they had installed a flashy, multi-
for the traditional wisdoms of indigenous storied, conference-ready, Wi-Fied-to-the-
cultures. Not to mention the myriad intel- Max, luxury hotel – for the occasion – in the
lectuals, social-movement comrades, and rock-dusted-nowhere-shanty town of Tiq-
indígena thinkers within Bolivia, many of uipaya where most people live in adobe-tin
whom have become cynical about that glo- huts. Or that the government had unilater-
rious hope surging through the Plaza de los ally thrown up a barrage of cell towers for
Héroes in 2006. global activists’ Blackberries, for which lo-
One of those is the president of the Na- cal residents would have little use, but from
tional Council of Ayllus and Markas of Qul- which they would bear the health brunt for
lasuyu, Rafael Quispe, who is demanding years to come.
a moratorium on extractive projects. An- Plus, Morales made hay with the global
other is theologist/government-insider Ra- spotlight right before the conference, an-
fael Puente, who describes 2010 as the start nouncing his intent to launch Bolivia’s very
of the “Borrachero del Poder”/”Drunk with own telecommunications satellite whose
Power” phase of the administration. Co- purpose is to splay electromagnetic radia-
chabamba’s Water War leader Oscar Olivera tion over the unwitting countryside – and,
holds to the notion that true power resides ironically, whose name will be Tupak Ka-
“in the plaza, not in the palace,” while his tari, after the great Andean freedom fighter.
sister, water activist Marcela Olivera, claims When local activists tried to enter the meet-
she is witness to two different Evo Morales’: ing hall with banners in protest, the mili-
the one who makes international eco- tary threw them out.
proclamations and the one, at home, who Now President Morales has inspired ac-
is pushing dams, uranium excavation, cell tivists around the world again, in Cancún,
towers, and mega-highways. with his gritos of “¡Planeta o Muerte!” and
Grabbed by such contradictions, in Au- “¡Venceremos!” brilliantly bringing to mind
gust 2010, Morales’ own Minister of the En- earlier, perhaps more-empowering times.
vironment, Juan Pablo Ramos, resigned his Surely today’s world – perched as it is on
post – “out of conscience.” the edge of ecological/social/economic/cul-
tural collapse – presents a wild ride through
Contradictions and Ironies ironies and contradictions. Speaking on
The irony is that President Morales is cham- “Democracy Now,” the president quipped,

32 TheREADER | January 2011


SOUTH AMERICA

“What is Bolivia going to live off? Let’s be tation, or bullying-up – play too. Morales appears
realistic.” For all his sincerity, good intentions, and to be allowing
The sad lesson of the slashed hopes of the love of charango music, Morales appears to himself – and
decolonization movements that took the be allowing himself – and his country – to his country – to
planet by storm after World War II was that become victims of situation by traveling a become victims
the set-up of power relations resulting from superhighway paved in what some might of situation
centuries of empires is a predicament that call a state-of-the-past fantasy. CT by traveling a
fosters contradiction: how to recover local superhighway
dignity and equality in a world demanding Chellis Glendinning is the author of five paved in what
full-tilt participation in global power poli- books, including When Technology Wounds some might call a
tics. One can reflect on the sabiduria/wis- and the award-winning Off the Map: state-of-the-past
dom of the writer Andrew Schmookler in An Expedition Deepinto Empire and the fanta
his 1984 The Parable of the Tribes, in which Global Economy. She is Writer-in-Residence
he points out that as long as one bully is at Asociación Jakaña in Cochabamba,
playing the field, all other players must in Bolivia. Her web site is
some way – whether by submission, co-op- www.chellisglendinning.org

GRAND CENTRAL
WINTER
LEE STRINGER

THE ANTI-AMERICAN
MANIFESTO
TED RALL

January 2011 | TheREADER 33


MEDIA BEATEN

Why are wars not


reported honestly?
The public needs to know the truth about wars.
So why have journalists colluded with governments
to hoodwink us? asks John Pilger

Never has so much n the US Army manual on counterin- the interrogation methods that have led to
official energy
been expended
in ensuring
journalists collude
with the makers
I surgency, the American commander
General David Petraeus describes
Afghanistan as a “war of perception
… conducted continuously using the news
media”. What really matters is not so much
a public inquiry into British military torture
in Iraq. Disinformation and the barbarity of
colonial war have much in common.
Of course, only the jargon is new. In
the opening sequence of my film, The War
of rapacious wars the day-to-day battles against the Taliban You Don’t See, there is reference to a pre-
which, say the as the way the adventure is sold in America WikiLeaks private conversation in Decem-
media-friendly where “the media directly influence the at- ber 1917 between David Lloyd George, Brit-
generals, are now titude of key audiences”. Reading this, I was ain’s prime minister during much of the
“perpetual” reminded of the Venezuelan general who first world war, and CP Scott, editor of the
led a coup against the democratic govern- Manchester Guardian. “If people really knew
ment in 2002. “We had a secret weapon,” he the truth,” the prime minister said, “the war
boasted. “We had the media, especially TV. would be stopped tomorrow. But of course
You got to have the media.” they don’t know, and can’t know.”
Never has so much official energy been In the wake of this “war to end all wars”,
expended in ensuring journalists collude Edward Bernays, a confidante of President
with the makers of rapacious wars which, Woodrow Wilson, coined the term “public
say the media-friendly generals, are now relations” as a euphemism for propaganda
“perpetual”. In echoing the west’s more “which was given a bad name in the war”.
verbose warlords, such as the waterboard- In his book, Propaganda (1928), Bernays
ing former US vice-president Dick Cheney, described PR as “an invisible government
who predicated “50 years of war”, they plan which is the true ruling power in our coun-
a state of permanent conflict wholly depen- try” thanks to “the intelligent manipulation
dent on keeping at bay an enemy whose of the masses”. This was achieved by “false
name they dare not speak: the public. realities” and their adoption by the media.
At Chicksands in Bedfordshire, the Min- (One of Bernays’s early successes was per-
istry of Defence’s psychological warfare suading women to smoke in public. By as-
(Psyops) establishment, media trainers de- sociating smoking with women’s liberation,
vote themselves to the task, immersed in a he achieved headlines that lauded cigarettes
jargon world of “information dominance”, as “torches of freedom”.)
“asymmetric threats” and “cyberthreats”. I began to understand this as a young re-
They share premises with those who teach porter during the American war in Vietnam.

34 TheREADER | January 2011


MEDIA BEATEN

During my first assignment, I saw the re- and it is the liberation of Europe all over On the walls
sults of the bombing of two villages and the again. The Iraqi people are distant, fleeting of the Saigon
use of Napalm B, which continues to burn bit players; John Wayne had risen again. bureaus of major
beneath the skin; many of the victims were The apogee was the victorious entry into American news
children; trees were festooned with body Baghdad, and the TV pictures of crowds organisations
parts. The lament that “these unavoidable cheering the felling of a statue of Saddam were often
tragedies happen in wars” did not explain Hussein. Behind this façade, an American displayed horrific
why virtually the entire population of South psyops team successfully manipulated what photographs
Vietnam was at grave risk from the forces an ignored US army report describes as a that were never
of their declared “ally”, the United States. “media circus [with] almost as many report- published and
PR terms like “pacification” and “collateral ers as Iraqis”. Rageh Omaar, who was there rarely sent
damage” became our currency. Almost no for the BBC, reported on the main evening because it
reporter used the word “invasion”. “Involve- news: “People have come out welcoming was said they
ment” and later “quagmire” became staples [the Americans], holding up V-signs. This were would
of a news vocabulary that recognised the is an image taking place across the whole “sensationalise”
killing of civilians merely as tragic mistakes of the Iraqi capital.” In fact, across most of the war by
and seldom questioned the good intentions Iraq, largely unreported, the bloody con- upsetting readers
of the invaders. quest and destruction of a whole society and viewers and
On the walls of the Saigon bureaus of ma- was well under way. therefore were not
jor American news organisations were often In The War You Don’t See, Omaar speaks “objective”
displayed horrific photographs that were with admirable frankness. “I didn’t really do
never published and rarely sent because it my job properly,” he says. “I’d hold my hand
was said they were would “sensationalise” up and say that one didn’t press the most
the war by upsetting readers and viewers uncomfortable buttons hard enough.” He
and therefore were not “objective”. The My describes how British military propaganda
Lai massacre in 1968 was not reported from successfully manipulated coverage of the
Vietnam, even though a number of report- fall of Basra, which BBC News 24 reported
ers knew about it (and other atrocities like as having fallen “17 times”. This coverage,
it), but by a freelance in the US, Seymour he says, was “a giant echo chamber”.
Hersh. The cover of Newsweek magazine The sheer magnitude of Iraqi suffering in
called it an “American tragedy”, implying the onslaught had little place in the news.
that the invaders were the victims: a purg- Standing outside 10 Downing St, on the
ing theme enthusiastically taken up by Hol- night of the invasion, Andrew Marr, then
lywood in movies such as The Deer Hunter the BBC’s political editor, declared, “[Tony
and Platoon. The war was flawed and tragic, Blair] said that they would be able to take
but the cause was essentially noble. More- Baghdad without a bloodbath and that in
over, it was “lost” thanks to the irresponsi- the end the Iraqis would be celebrating, and
bility of a hostile, uncensored media. on both of those points he has been proved
Although the opposite of the truth, such conclusively right . . .” I asked Marr for an in-
false realties became the “lessons” learned terview, but received no reply. In studies of
by the makers of present-day wars and by the television coverage by the University of
much of the media. Following Vietnam, Wales, Cardiff, and Media Tenor, the BBC’s
“embedding” journalists became central coverage was found to reflect overwhelm-
to war policy on both sides of the Atlan- ingly the government line and that reports
tic. With honourable exceptions, this suc- of civilian suffering were relegated. Media
ceeded, especially in the US. In March 2003, Tenor places the BBC and America’s CBS
some 700 embedded reporters and camera at the bottom of a league of western broad-
crews accompanied the invading American casters in the time they allotted to opposi-
forces in Iraq. Watch their excited reports, tion to the invasion. “I am perfectly open to

January 2011 | TheREADER 35


MEDIA BEATEN

“If we who are the accusation that we were hoodwinked,” ness happening again?”
meant to find out said Jeremy Paxman, talking about Iraq’s Cameron could not have imagined a
what the bastards non-existent weapons of mass destruction modern phenomenon such as WikiLeaks
are up to, if we to a group of students last year. “Clearly we but he would have surely approved. In the
don’t report what were.” As a highly paid professional broad- current avalanche of official documents,
we find, if we don’t caster, he omitted to say why he was hood- especially those that describe the secret
speak up,” he told winked. machinations that lead to war – such as the
me, “who’s going Dan Rather, who was the CBS news an- American mania over Iran – the failure of
to stop the whole chor for 24 years, was less reticent. “There journalism is rarely noted. And perhaps the
bloody business was a fear in every newsroom in America,” reason Julian Assange seems to excite such
happening again?” he told me, “a fear of losing your job . . . hostility among journalists serving a vari-
the fear of being stuck with some label, un- ety of “lobbies”, those whom George Bush’s
patriotic or otherwise.” Rather says war has press spokesman once called “complicit en-
made “stenographers out of us” and that ablers”, is that WikiLeaks and its truth-tell-
had journalists questioned the deceptions ing shames them. Why has the public had
that led to the Iraq war, instead of ampli- to wait for WikiLeaks to find out how great
fying them, the invasion would not have power really operates?
happened. This is a view now shared by a As a leaked 2,000-page Ministry of De-
number of senior journalists I interviewed fence document reveals, the most effective
in the US. journalists are those who are regarded in
In Britain, David Rose, whose Observer places of power not as embedded or club-
articles played a major part in falsely link- bable, but as a “threat”. This is the threat
ing Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida and 9/11, of real democracy, whose “currency”, said
gave me a courageous interview in which Thomas Jefferson, is “free flowing informa-
he said, “I can make no excuses . . . What tion”.
happened [in Iraq] was a crime, a crime on In my film, I asked Assange how
a very large scale . . .” WikiLeaks dealt with the draconian secrecy
“Does that make journalists accomplic- laws for which Britain is famous. “Well,” he
es?” I asked him. said, “when we look at the Official Secrets
“Yes . . . unwitting perhaps, but yes.” Act labelled documents, we see a statement
What is the value of journalists speak- that it is an offence to retain the informa-
ing like this? The answer is provided by the tion and it is an offence to destroy the infor-
great reporter James Cameron, whose brave mation, so the only possible outcome is that
and revealing filmed report, made with we have to publish the information.” These
Malcolm Aird, of the bombing of civilians are extraordinary times. CT
in North Vietnam was banned by the BBC.
“If we who are meant to find out what the John Pilger’s latest film, The War You
bastards are up to, if we don’t report what Don’t See, is now available on
we find, if we don’t speak up,” he told me, DVD at Amazon.co.uk. His web site is
“who’s going to stop the whole bloody busi- www.johnpilger.com

READ THE BEST OF FRONTLINE MAGAZINE


http://coldtype.net/frontline.html

36 TheREADER | January 2011


BACK TO KAFKA

The torturers revisited


Read Kafla if you want to understand the modern world,
writes Paul Balles

he Trial is a novel by Franz Kafka, to be whistled for when the execution was One can easily

T first published in 1925. One of Kaf-


ka’s best-known works, it tells the
story of a man arrested and pros-
ecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority,
with the nature of his crime never revealed
due to begin,” says the story’s narrator.
One can easily imagine the jailers at Abu
Ghraib making such psycho comments as
they attached electric wires to their prison-
ers’ fingers or forcing a prisoner to remain
imagine the jailers
at Abu Ghraib
making such
psycho comments
as they attached
either to him or the reader. nude while dogs attacked him. electric wires to
The theme developed a familiar ring to That was when cell phones and camcord- their prisoners’
it following the imprisonment of “enemy ers made it possible to record the sick psy- fingers or forcing a
combatants” in Guantanamo. Echoes of chotic joys of torturing for jailers or their prisoner to remain
such places come from another Kafka story, remote commandants. nude while dogs
In the Penal Colony, where everyone is guilty As for commandants, GW Bush recalls in attacked him
simply because they’re there. If they weren’t his memoir that when the CIA asked him
guilty, they wouldn’t be there. whether they could proceed with water-
This was the kind of assumption made boarding of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the
by the torturers at Abu Ghraib or the jail- alleged plotter of the 9/11 attacks, Bush re-
ers in secret CIA prisons around the world plied “Damn right,” reported the Washing-
or the guards at Guantanamo. You can be ton Post.
sentenced without trial or defence. It’s Kafkaesque to imagine this scenario
In the Penal Colony describes the last use in Guantanamo as they set up the water-
of an elaborate torture and execution device board to nearly drown their captives. CIA
that carves the sentence of the condemned interrogators used the controversial wa-
prisoner on his skin in a script before letting terboarding technique 183 times on Khalid
him die, all in the course of twelve hours. Sheikh Mohammed.
“It’s a remarkable piece of apparatus,” Former Vice President Dick Cheney has
says the officer in In the Penal Colony to the also acknowledged supporting torture. “I
explorer and surveyed with a certain air of was a big supporter of waterboarding,” he
admiration of the apparatus which was after boasted in a television interview in Febru-
all quite familiar to him. ary.
“In any case, the condemned man looked One must wonder whether they were en-
so like a submissive dog that one might joying, like Kafka’s officer or commandant,
have thought he could be left to run free on remote thoughts about their minions inflict-
the surrounding hills and would only need ing pain on untried “enemy combatants”.

January 2011 | TheREADER 37


BACK TO KAFKA

Echoes of Kafka, On November 5th Al Jazeera reported buttressed with video recordings.”
Abu Ghraib, that Council members in Geneva, Switzer- Echoes of Kafka, Abu Ghraib, Guantana-
Guantanamo land, levelled a barrage of criticisms at the mo and the CIA’s black holes of extraordi-
and the CIA’s US administration calling for the closure of nary rendition reverberate from the UK.
black holes of the Guantanamo Bay prison and for inves- The US administration continues to deny
extraordinary tigations into alleged torture by US troops that torture is torture. “Let there be no
rendition abroad. doubt, the United States does not torture
reverberate Torturing untried prisoners is by no and it will not torture,” says Harold Koh,
from the UK means an exclusive province of America. legal adviser at the US State Department.
On November 6th, the New York Times re- CT
ported that a lawyer for 200 Iraqis demand-
ed a public inquiry into what they described Kafka should be a must read for all
as brutal mistreatment by British soldiers in government officials, prison staff, members
a secret detention centre near Basra. of the military and responsible citizens.Paul
The lawyer “told the High Court in Lon- J. Balles is a retired American university
don on Friday that the abuse amounted to professor and freelance writer who has lived
‘Britain’s Abu Ghraib.’ The assertion was in the Middle East for many years.

FRAMING
INNOCENCE
A Mother’s Photographs, a
Prosecutor’s Zeal, and a Small
Town’s Response
LYNN POWELL
The story of how innocent photographs
taken by a mother of her child became
the heart of a wrenching legal battle
“A fascinating cautionary tale. . . . Powell is a
facile writer, and her closeness to the material
adds a subjective element to the story that
makes it more immediate and compelling.” –
Booklist

www.thenewpress.com

38 TheREADER | January 2011


THOUGHTS ON ASSANGE / 1

Ex-spooks
v Assange
It’s not Julian Assange whom we should be afraid of, writes
Sherwood Ross, better to look into the activities of the CIA

wo writers with close ties to US call for blood. The CIA’s covert

T intelligence agencies published


a shocking article Dec. 23rd in
the Miami Herald asserting that
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is “a
narcissistic nut” with “blood on his hands”
Pardon me for suspecting this hysterical
screech for Assange’s scalp was published
with the blessing of the Central Intelligence
Agency(CIA). Rustmann spent 24 years as
a CIA payroller and was an instructor in its
killers, who do
things globally,
triggered a
slaughter of 75,000
folks just in El
and President Obama should do “whatever covert training center, so he would know, if Salvador alone in
it takes to shut down WikiLeaks.” Without anybody, how to stick Assange’s feet into a the 1980s.
giving a single example of how Assange’s block of cement and dump him in the Ev-
disclosures caused blood to flow, co-authors erglades. (Hollywood might even make a
Thomas Spencer and F. W. Rustmann warn, movie about it, with Rustmann’s intoning,
“No nation can operate without secrets. “He sleeps with the alligators.”) As for Her-
Unless we adopt an aggressive plan, adopt ald co-author Spencer, he is a lawyer who
new tough laws and take immediate action represents intelligence officers and is a Life
– overt and covert – we face disaster.” The Member in the Association of Former Intel-
authors go on to state the president should ligence Officers.
be joined in this suppression of the press by Rustmann’s former CIA employer, by the
“Congress and our entire intelligence, mili- way, probably could have taught gangster Al
tary and law-enforcement communities” Capone a thing or two. Capone’s record for
because “(our)lives are depending” on it. murders at a single “massacre” was a mea-
While the above is vaguely worded it sly seven, famously achieved in Chicago on
does appear that Spencer and Rustmann Saint Valentine’s Day, 1929. The CIA’s covert
are calling for “immediate” and “covert” ac- killers, who do things globally, triggered a
tion – -to put a stop to Assange’s activities. slaughter of 75,000 folks just in El Salvador
In short, they appear to be saying Obama alone in the 1980s. By some estimates, the
& Co. have the right to terminate Assange CIA has been responsible for overthrow-
covertly, that is to say, secretly, and, as the ing a score of governments resulting in the
word has come to mean in CIA parlance, murders of millions of people around the
“violently” as well. It is no surprise that two world.
writers closely tied to US spy agencies ap- Apparently, Spencer and Rustmann
pear to be advocating covert action against weren’t paying attention to former CIA Di-
Assange, but it is a bit of a shock that the rector Robert Gates, now our Secretary of
Miami Herald would publish this seeming Defense, who conceded there was no proof

January 2011 | TheREADER 39


THOUGHTS ON ASSANGE / 1

Herald writers that Assange has blood on his hands. As of torture and murder that killed more than
Rustmann and Scott Horton pointed out in Harper’s: “When 200,000 people.
Spencer seemingly pressed by the Senate Armed Services Com- The Congo: The CIA was involved in
want to silence mittee, Secretary Gates was forced to admit the assassination of Patrice Lumumba and
Assange the same that these claims were hyperbole – ‘the it pushed Mobutu Sese Seko into power
way the CIA has leak… did not disclose any sensitive intel- “whose corruption and cruelty,” Blum
often silenced ligence sources or methods.’ Gates went on wrote, “shocked even his CIA handlers.”
its enemies to acknowledge that there was no evidence Ghana: In 1966, the CIA backed the mili-
of any informant being killed or threatened tary to overthrow Kwame Nkrumah.
or even requesting protection as a result of Bolivia: The CIA helped the military
the WikiLeaks publications.” in 1964 overthrow President Victor Paz by
In fact, the charge Rustmann and Spen- force and violence.
cer make about Assange having “blood on CIA lies to its own government have re-
his hands” is true not of WikiLeaks but is sulted in horrific wars in which thousands
true over and over again of the CIA. It is the died. As Tim Weiner writes in his book,
world’s No. 1 gangster organization and it Legacy of Ashes: The History of The CIA (An-
operates at the direction of the White House, chor), on August 9, 1974, Secretary of State
and has done so for years. Only on Dec. 21st, Henry Kissinger received information that
the Associated Press reported from Santiago “the CIA had been lying about what it had
that “A Chilean government lawyer is seek- been doing in Athens, deliberately mislead-
ing to arrest four retired army officers for ing the American government – -and those
the killing of renowned folk singer Victor lies had helped start the war consuming
Jara during the 1973 coup.” And which US Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus, a war in which
Agency was behind that violent overthrow? thousands died.” Blood on whose hands?
At least 3,000 innocent Chileans were tor- Herald writers Rustmann and Spencer
tured and executed by the generals with the seemingly want to silence Assange the same
support of the CIA. And Spencer and Rust- way the CIA has often silenced its enemies.
mann want WikiLeaks shut down? It is the During my college days, when I worked on
CIA that needs to be abolished. the Herald, it would have been unthinkable
While Rustmann and Spencer do not for any editor to allow a contributor to ad-
cite a single instance of blood on Assange’s vocate “covertly” attacking another individ-
hands, investigative journalist William ual in the pages of a newspaper. Apparently,
Blum in Rogue State (Common Courage times have changed.
Press) reels off a long list of CIA violent ac- Today, as the CIA overthrows one govern-
tions more than 20 pages long. Here are just ment after another, it follows the philosophy
a few: of Karl Marx, who declared, “Force is the
Greece: The CIA set up an internal secu- midwife of every old society pregnant with
rity agency for the neo-fascist government a new one.” And as the CIA illegally ships
in 1949 that engaged in widespread torture. weapons to its friendly dictators around the
Philippines: The CIA interfered in the world, it advances the famous thesis of Red
elections, culminating in the dictatorship of China’s Mao Tse-tung, who believed “politi-
Ferdinand Marcos, the torture tyrant. cal power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
Sherwood Ross is a Iran: In 1953, the CIA overthrew a dem- Abolishing the CIA, which has now adopted
Miami-based writer ocratically-elected government. Thousands the old violent Communist approach in its
who once worked were subsequently tortured and killed. operations, and transferring its budget to
for The Miami (Wonder why the Iranians hate the US to- the Peace Corps, is a step that would cause
Herald. Today, he day?) bells to ring around the world. Meanwhile,
runs the Anti-War Guatemala: A CIA-led coup overthrew Assange might do well to hire a few body
News Service Jacobo Arbenz in 1953, ticking off 40 years guards. CT

40 TheREADER | January 2011


THOUGHTS ON ASSANGE / 2

Death squads
v democracy
Michael Keefer on Julian Assange, Wikileaks and
Canada’s right to know what its government is up to

om Flanagan, University of Cal- were seriously intended, he wrapped up his “Well, I think

T gary political science professor,


right-wing pundit, and men-
tor and former senior advisor to
Prime Minister Harper, has earned himself
more international media attention during
contribution to the program with a part-
ing shot: “I wouldn’t feel unhappy if As-
sange disappeared.” This sounds rather as
though, after proposing a murder contract
and a drone attack, he was offering Obama
Assange should
be assassinated,
actually. I think
Obama should put
out a contract and
the past month than even he may have an a third form of assassination: how about maybe use a drone
appetite for. a death-squad “disappearance”? Solomon or something”
On November 30th, Flanagan spoke as responded, echoing his earlier feebleness:
one of the regular panelists on CBC Televi- “Well, I’ve gotta say, Tom Flanagan calling
sion’s national political analysis program, for that, that’s pretty strong stuff....”
Power and Politics with Evan Solomon. Star- One of the most lucid comments to date
ing into the camera, while across the bottom on this disgusting episode has come from
of the television screen there appeared a Calgary Herald journalist and University of
banner reading “WIKILEAKS LATEST: New Calgary alumnus Kris Kotarski, in a public
document mentions PM Stephen Harper,” letter calling on Dr. Elizabeth Cannon, the
Flanagan had this to say about Julian As- university’s President, “to condemn Dr.
sange, the founder and editor of Wikileaks: Flanagan in the harshest possible terms.”
“Well, I think Assange should be assas- “Better than most,” Kotarski writes, “a
sinated, actually. I think Obama should put professor of political science should under-
out a contract and maybe use a drone or stand that academic freedom is not possible
something.” without political freedom, and that political
Evan Solomon’s reaction was delayed – freedom cannot survive in a climate where
and when it finally came, thumpingly stu- journalists and opponents of a ruling re-
pid. After letting Flanagan outline for nearly gime hear public intellectuals advocate for
ten seconds his reasons for advocating po- their assassination on the nightly news. If
litical murder, he broke in at last, saying: this were a Russian, Chinese or Iranian in-
“Tom, that’s pretty harsh stuff, just for the tellectual calling for the murder of a regime
record, that’s pretty harsh stuff.” opponent, Canadians would be appalled.
Flanagan responded to this interrup- Considering Canada’s proud tradition of po-
tion with what appears to have been a litical freedom, it is all the more offensive
joke: “Well, I’m feeling very manly today.” to hear an active member of the University
But making it clear that his initial remarks of Calgary faculty and the former chief of

January 2011 | TheREADER 41


THOUGHTS ON ASSANGE / 2

In an age in which staff and campaign manager for the sitting routinely deleted by media corporations,
the “memory Prime Minister do the same” (http://cen- both from their online archives and from
hole” imagined by sureflanagan.wordpress.com/). their indexes, leaving behind nothing but a
George Orwell in As one would expect, there have been “document not found” message for search-
his dystopian novel attempts both by Flanagan and by his sup- engine inquiries; while in the UK some 300
1984 has become porters in the media to explain his remarks news stories, including one about a deliber-
a literal reality, the away as an ill-judged attempt at humour. ate chemical spill that injured over 100,000
work of Wikileaks For example, Sarah Petz has written in Ma- people, are currently smothered by court
is crucial cleans magazine: “Joking about the assas- orders that make it illegal even to mention
sination of a major public figure is terrible the existence of a court order blocking pub-
[...]. However, considering it was obviously lication of the facts.
a bad joke and not a serious incitation to Moreover, the US government has been
commit violence, maybe it’s time for every- moving steadily toward a situation in which
one to move on.” its agencies possess something approaching
Petz likens Flanagan’s comments in the what Admiral John Poindexter called “to-
video footage to “something your conser- tal intelligence awareness,” while citizens
vative uncle would say in a drunken ar- are increasingly confined to a correspond-
gument over an awkward family dinner” ing state of ignorance on all matters of im-
(“Let Flanagan’s remarks die,” Macleans portance. Lawrence Davidson explains the
[4 December 2010]). But while there may strategy:
have been a note of brutal flippancy in his “Democratic elites have learned that they
tone, Flanagan was stone-cold sober. The do not need to rely on the brute force char-
only jest in his statement was the inane acteristic of dictatorships as long as they
Neo-Con in-joke about “feeling very manly can sufficiently control the public media
today.” Some people of Flanagan’s political environment. You restrict meaningful free
leanings – men like Dick Cheney, John Bol- speech to the fringes of the media, to the
ton, and George W. Bush – seem to find the ‘outliers’ along the information bell curve.
quasi-erotic charge they get from making You rely on the sociological fact that the
threats of violence invigorating, even amus- vast majority of citizens will either pay no
ing. Others might wonder how manly it is attention to that which they find irrelevant
to find one’s pleasure in bullying and ter- to their immediate lives, or else they will be-
rorizing people. lieve the official story line about places and
It’s perhaps just as well that the video happenings of which they are otherwise
footage of this CBC program has gone glob- ignorant. Once you have identified the of-
al, together with explanations of Flanagan’s ficial story line with the official policy be-
close links to our current Prime Minister. Ju- ing pursued, loyalty to the policy comes to
lian Assange, let us remind ourselves, is not equate with patriotism. It is a shockingly
just the “major public figure” that Macleans simple formula and it usually works.” (“On
calls him: he has for several years taken a the Historical Necessity of Wikileaks,” MWC
leading role in what is arguably the most News [4 December 2010], http://mcwnews.
courageous and the most significant jour- net/focus/editorial/7045-historical-necessi-
nalistic work currently ongoing anywhere ty-of-wikileaks.html)
in the world. While it is undoubtedly embarrassing
In an age in which the “memory hole” for American elites (whom one hesitates to
imagined by George Orwell in his dystopi- grace with the word “democratic”) to have
an novel 1984 has become a literal reality, the dirty linen of their diplomatic double-
the work of Wikileaks is crucial. Assange dealings exposed to the world, their most
has himself pointed out in public lectures urgent concern seems to be to ensure that
and interviews that news reports are now as little as possible of the Wikileaks mate-

42 TheREADER | January 2011


THOUGHTS ON ASSANGE / 2

rial becomes known in any organized way central role in the overthrow of Haiti’s duly Canada’s
to the American public. Hence the censor- elected democratic government in February standards of
ship being exercised by the New York Times 2004, or about the role of Canada’s military public discourse
(in contrast to the manner in which the in facilitating – or at the very least doing have decayed
Guardian and Der Spiegel are releasing the nothing to prevent – the campaigns of polit- to the point at
material that they all possess) – and hence ical terror, massacre and rape that followed which our national
also the vitriolic hatred expressed toward the coup? Or about the fact that Canada broadcaster is not
Julian Assange by Hillary Clinton, Newt exercised effective control over a post-coup ashamed to carry
Gingrich, and Bill O’Reilly, and the death- prison system in Haiti that even the Orga- an open incitement
threats issued against him by Sarah Palin, nization of American States condemned as to political murder
Mike Huckabee, and William Kristol. horrifying? (The Deputy Minister of Justice made by the
Noam Chomsky has remarked that “Per- who ran that system was both appointed leading ideologue
haps the most dramatic revelation [of the and paid by the Canadian International De- of the governing
leaked cables] is the bitter hatred of democ- velopment Agency.) Or about the role of the party, a former
racy that is revealed both by the US govern- RCMP in providing training and tutelage for and for all we
ment – Hillary Clinton, [and] others – and a reconstituted Haitian National Police that know continuing
also by the diplomatic service” (http:// engaged in documented death-squad ac- close associate
chomsky.info/interviews/20101130.htm). tivities against civilians between 2004 and of Prime Minister
The paroxysms of loathing now being di- at least 2006, and is suspected of involve- Harper
rected at Julian Assange are another expres- ment in such crimes as the “disappearance”
sion of that same hatred of democracy. of human rights activist Lovinsky Pierre-
While most Canadians are already aware Antoine in August 2007? (Should we not
of our own government’s repeated dem- feel some degree of responsibility for these
onstrations of contempt for democratic crimes? Might it be in any way significant
principles and practice, understanding the that Lovinsky was “disappeared” just three
implications of Tom Flanagan’s behaviour weeks after having annoyed Canadian au-
remains important. Canada’s standards of thorities in Haiti by trying to organize a
public discourse have decayed to the point demonstration against Stephen Harper’s
at which our national broadcaster is not brief visit to the island in July?)
ashamed to carry an open incitement to The Wikileaks cables apparently include
political murder made by the leading ideo- more than 1,800 documents emanating from
logue of the governing party, a former and Ottawa (whether from American diplomats
for all we know continuing close associate posted there or from Canadian authorities
of Prime Minister Harper. It is dismaying to communicating with the US is unclear).
recognize that our media system includes, Their contents may be entirely confined to
at its centre, people for whom the open- banal and routine matters. Or they may per-
eyed advocacy of lawless violence is some- haps provide further substantiation of the
thing merely to shrug off, like an off-colour fact that crimes of state terror of the kind
joke, as “pretty strong stuff.” Tom Flanagan thought it appropriate to rec-
But acceptance of that kind of dismissal ommend on CBC Television – far from being
is only possible so long as Canadians contin- mere rhetoric, let alone a “joke” – touch Ca-
ue to believe that our governing elites have nadians more closely than most of us have
always operated at a safe distance from such been able to recognize.
totalitarian tactics as those recommended Should the Wikileaks cables turn out to
by Tom Flanagan. Is that in fact the case, contain material of this kind, we might ex-
or is our belief perhaps conditioned by ef- pect to hear angry denunciations of Julian
fective control of what Davidson calls the Assange from Liberal as well as from Con-
“public media environment”? servative quarters – for Canada’s participa-
How many of us know about Canada’s tion in the Haitian coup of 2004 was decid-

January 2011 | TheREADER 43


HEADER ON ASSANGE / 2
THOUGHTS

“If we value ed and acted upon by the governments of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, Straight.com [4
freedom of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, whose poli- December 2010], http://www.straight.com/
information, cies the Harper Conservatives have in this article-362941/vancouver/lawyer-files-
transparency, respect merely continued. criminal-flanagan-assassination-wikileaks-
openness, and One may hope that in such a case, Ca- julian-assan). I’m happy to endorse a com-
democracy, we nadian public opinion would respond with ment posted by ‘Delmazio’ in response to
ought to praise a firm defence of our democratic right to this news:
not to condemn know about and to control the doings of our “We need more people like Mr. Julian
such efforts” elected representatives and public servants Assange who are willing to speak truth to
– and to ensure that their actions remain in power, and encourage the free flow of infor-
conformity with domestic and international mation which directly affects public policy
law. decisions. If we value freedom of informa-
As for the present, I note with interest tion, transparency, openness, and democra-
that Vancouver lawyer Gail Davidson has cy, we ought to praise not to condemn such
filed a complaint against Tom Flanagan efforts.” CT
with the Vancouver police and the RCMP
(see Charlie Smith, “Police complaint filed Michael Keefer is professor of English at the
after Tom Flanagan calls for assassination of University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada

The new work from Chris Hedges,


bestselling author of Empire of Illusion
“Liberals conceded too much to the power
elite. The tragedy of the liberal class and the
institution it controls is that it succumbed to
opportunism and finally to fear. It abrogated
its moral role. It did not defy corporate abuse
when it had the chance. It exiled those within
its ranks who did. And the defanging
of the liberal class not only removed
all barriers to neofeudalism and
corporate abuse but also ensured
that the liberal class will, in its turn,
be swept aside.”

NATION BOOKS
Nationbooks.org

44 TheREADER | January 2011


LITERARY LIFE

Literary outsider
Writing a good novel is much easier than finding
a bad agent, writes Philip Kraske

ack in the 80s I heard about a fic- you “typed” back then, dear reader; not If you mislay

B tion writer who, disgusted by the


endless rejections to his work,
typed up William Faulkner’s Ab-
salom, Absalom, put his own name on it, and
sent it out to agents and publishers. To his
keyed in, not copied and pasted – 22 lines,
change the paper, and type 22 more, on and
on all the way to the end of someone else’s
famous novel, and then send it out at ten
bucks a package, plus return postage. No,
one of these
masterpieces
while changing
flights in O’Hare,
no matter. You
immense satisfaction, the manuscript did for anyone smarter than the average bear, can always buy
no better than his own did – although one a walk through the bookstore will do to see another, turn to
editor wrote back, “I never liked Faulkner in what the fiction market is all about. roughly the same
college, and I still don’t.” Here are Clancy and Silva and Forsythe point in the book,
I’ve remembered that writer many times pouring out the feed – hackneyed charac- and pick up where
as I hobbled along my own Via Dolorosa ters, sand-and-cement writing – to their you left off
through Publishing America. The closest I baa-ing readerships. There stands the air-
ever got to a book acceptance was an agent port-thriller bookrack, bristling with terror-
who liked the three chapters of my (soon- ists and those who foil them between one
to-be-self-published) novel, The Magnificent bedroom joust and the next. If you mislay
Mary Ann. She asked to see the entire man- one of these masterpieces while changing
uscript, kept it for six months, then wrote flights in O’Hare, no matter. You can always
back and said she had finally been able to buy another, turn to roughly the same point
read it, but, alas (that’s always the word in the book, and pick up where you left off.
agents use; it connotes grace, erudition, Then there is the flavor of the season:
and heartlessness), she didn’t feel strongly Lisbeth Salander, star of Steig Larsson’s Mil-
enough about “Marianne” to represent it lenium series. She is a computer genius, a
for me. Lest you wonder, the name of the math genius, a chess genius, a speed-reader
main character is mentioned 672 times in capable of absorbing hundreds of pages an
the text. hour, and has a photographic memory. Is
The story about the frustrated writer, Lisbeth from Sweden or Krypton? Despite
however, taught me two lessons. First, the an education that stopped well short of high
obvious one – that good writing is no guar- school, Lisbeth is capable of electronically
antee of a publishing contract. Second, that stealing and then hiding hundreds of mil-
in order to publish, it helps not to be an lions of Swedish kronor in the world bank-
dummy. ing system, especially in Gibraltar. All right,
For only a dummy would type out – yes, let’s give her a pass on that one: maybe her

January 2011 | TheREADER 45


LITERARY LIFE

When it’s my seventh-grade history teacher, in discuss- manuscript, they know from the get-go
turn under the ing the Treaty of Utrecht, mentioned that it that the PR effort will cost the moon. And
editor’s lamp, it’s eventually turned into a fiscal paradise, and if they get huffy about it, the bottom-line
immediately clear was still a pain in the Spanish patootie. boys quickly remind them that, well, there
that my writing Never mind: Larsson sells millions. So is a recession on, and the company does lose
demands greater what are publishers looking for? The next money on nearly every new author it pub-
engagement by Larsson, a new Grisham, or another _____. lishes.
the reader; the Fill in the blank yourself – it’s easy. For Hence the rejection: alas.
sheep baa in fear many are the choices in the Häagen-Dazs So you won’t find me trying my luck in
at words like of literary cholesterol. Book agents – those the market with Absalom, Absalom. But you
“connote” guardians of the publishing gates, as editors won’t find me giving up, either. In addition
wouldn’t touch the rabble of actual writers to punditing politically progressive pomp
with a ten-foot pica ruler – weave fantasies from my website, www.philipkraske.com,
for anxious publishers: I’ve found The Next I will soon bring out The Magnificent Mary
Steig who will make the sheep baa, the prof- Ann, my third novel, which combines a love
its fatten, the stock rise. story with a business thriller. Novel number
Which is to say, they haven’t found me. four – which takes place where no man of
And they had their chance: I wrote – pined letters has gone before, Quito, Ecuador – is
– to every single one of them in America just a few drafts from completion. Number
and many in the UK. Zilch. five is fighting its way out of the cocoon. By
What’s the problem? My thrillers are of the time it is finished, I predict that total
the literary type, more on the line of John sales will have reached three figures – but
le Carré: full characters, chiselled dialogue, don’t quote me.
vivid description, a moral perspective. I That’s the great thing about writing good
don’t write airport-bookrack tumbleweeds. fiction today: there’s no money in it. You do
Le Carré, in fact, is an excellent exam- it for love of the art, pure and simple – as
ple of how good writing can evolve in to- does my publisher, Encompass Editions,
day’s market. Look at his superb mid-70s which produces a beautiful book. Maybe if
thriller about the hunt for a Palestinian I generate a little buzz, a mainstream pub-
mail-bomber, The Little Drummer Girl: long lisher will buy in. But till then, I self-publish
descriptions of Palestinian refugee camps, and I don’t care who knows it. I write as I
colourful background on his main charac- please, I treat my readers as cultured com-
ters, twenty-line paragraphs. Nowadays his rades, and I don’t have to pull hair with
paragraphs are short, his descriptions just some damn sales exec who thinks chapter
as beautiful but more concise, his charac- two needs a sex scene.
ters described deftly through action and Granted, sales don’t go much beyond
dialogue. Graceful writing for the modern family and (blackmailed) friends, but satis-
reader. Bravo, John! faction – ah, pass me that cold beer – satis-
But of course, le Carré’s type of stuff sells faction is golden. CT
because people have read his previous work.
And there’s rub. When it’s my turn under Philip Kraske is the author of three novels,
the editor’s lamp, it’s immediately clear that the second of which is Mockery, which
my writing demands greater engagement by ColdType’s editor says is the best political
the reader; the sheep baa in fear at words fiction he has read in the past year. Read the
like “connote.” Even if the editors love the first chapter at www.coldtype.net this month.

READ THE BEST OF JOE BAGEANT


http://coldtype.net/joe.html

46 TheREADER | January 2011


FASCISM CALLING

Berlin, 1934
Fred Reed awaits the thud of jackboots in northern streets

lags. These are always a bad sign. anger in search of focus, a sense of a birth- You can’t spend a

F Hardly a politician appears on


television who doesn’t stand in
front of an American flag, some-
times three American flags. A venomous
nationalism now poisons the air, and grows.
right being stolen as preeminence drifts
across the Pacific. Here is fertile soil for
some strange crop not yet clearly seen.
It will play out against a backdrop of to-
talitarian watchfulness all too imaginable. A
dollar, take a flight,
or send an email
without a federal
federal office
watching. It is
We are off and rolling. digital world lends itself to tyranny, making getting worse and
The trappings of fascism spread. General it, I think, inescapable. For practical pur- cannot be stopped.
David Petraeus, commander of the East- poses, the capacity to store data is infinite, Surveillance
ern Front, poses with the President in the to network it across the world, to track, to is too easy
White House in combat fatigues. The coun- scan, to watch. This is not the place for a
try is now the Homeland, reminiscent of the disquisition on the technology of surveil-
Nazi Fatherland and the Soviet Motherland. lance. Just note that the machinery exists
We hear of American Exceptionalism, the for a totalitarian watchfulness beyond Sta-
ritual self-idolizaton beloved of pathologi- lin’s wettest dreams. The government wants
cal nationalism. Blood and Soil. The Ameri- this, pushes for it daily, and gets it. You can’t
can Dream. Ubermenschen. All we need is a spend a dollar, take a flight, or send an email
short Austrian. without a federal federal office watching. It
We may get one. The times ripen for is getting worse and cannot be stopped. Sur-
a man on a horse. (Or perhaps a woman: veillance is too easy.
Twitler of Alaska looms.) An ignorant popu- We will be told, are being told, that to be
laton, unread, unfamiliar with the outside safe we must submit, that enemies within
world, focuses its anxieties on troubling and without are upon us, that terrorists
dark things lurking abroad, the brown spawn plots everywhere. Where commu-
hordes from the south, the rising Chinese, nists once hid in every closet and the House
inexplicable Moslems who want to kill all Unamerican Activities Committee, HUAC,
Christians. Sooner rather than later such a hunted them, now we have Islamo-terror-
mob finds solace in an angry unity. From an ists hunted by Homeland Security.
unhappy lower middle-class spring Brown What matter civil rights when the Mos-
Shirts. Wait. lem is at our throats? The price of liberty
Things come together: Falling standards is eternal vigilance, and the vigilance ends
of living across a country in irremediable liberty. Hysteria darkly flowers. Homeland
decline, diminishing expectations, growing Security now wants to train us in how to re-

January 2011 | TheREADER 47


FASCISM CALLING

Shortly we will act to a nuclear attack, a la 1950. Scare ’em, controlled by the government. But the real
hear the death keep ’em scared, tell them you are protect- power in America rests with the big corpo-
rattle of free ing them, and they will kiss your boots. An rations and their lobbies, with Wall Street,
expression. No Australian publishes embarrasing cable whose personnel move in and out of the
government sees traffic from American embassies, and poli- formal government at will. All of the tradi-
an advantage ticians call for him to be killed by the CIA. tional media, radio, newspapers, and televi-
to itself in a The agency is revered as a sort of clandestine sion, are owned by large corporations. How
free press, Batman and Robin, defending America se- curious that they do not question large cor-
though countries cretly where evil swirls in the coming night. porations.
with decent Kill, kill. On subways we are told to watch The only free press in America is the in-
governments each other, to report curious behavior to the ternet, and the government does not like it.
feel much less authorities. Nothing can stop this. Washington now moves to “regulate” it. To
threatened Constitutionality becomes a fading promote fairness, you see, to prevent piracy,
memory. Random searches in train sta- and to maintain national security. Then it
tions, genital examinations in airports, the will be found necessary to suppress “hate
decline of habeas corpus, the evasion of the sites.” How will this play out? America re-
duty of Congress to declare wars, on and on. treats behind its emotional borders, gazes
The government does what it wants. There over the ramparts, frightened and hostile.
is no recourse. We are told that it is to make In those outlets of the media that pander
us safe. I haven’t asked to be made safe. to The Heartland, to the manipulable un-
The genius of American politics is to lettered, the nationalist drumbeat grows
espouse democracy while keeping politi- apace. That America’s bankrupty results
cal power from the people. The trick is to from America’s economic policies, that the
have barely distinguishable candidates for country is everywhere hated because of wil-
the presidency who carefully avoid men- fully chosen behavior – this does not occur
tion of substance – the wars, for example, to people who do not read, who do not so
or affirmative action, guns, abortion. These much as know the dates of World War II.
elections, if so they be, allow people to wave They will find someone else to blame. Lib-
placards, roar invective about throwing erals. Mohammedans. Mexicans.
the rascals out and returning to traditional A danger is that the country will lash
American etc. The dust settles and things out abroad, ever more feebly as the econ-
remain as they were. omy declines, at nations that no will longer
Governance does not rest with the peo- pay attention to it. Washington says that it
ple. Today, decree replaces legislation, and “will not tolerate a nuclear Iran,” and Iran
must, for our safety. If Homeland Security ignores the admonition. You cannot not tol-
says you must go through a CAT scan, na- erate what you can’t prevent. The Pentagon
ked, and singing the Star Spangled Banner, sends the carriers to steam ferally in circles
then you have to do it. There is no recourse. off North Korea, which ignores them. The
You can unelect an elected official, but there consequences of wounded vanity are not
is no way to get at a bureaucrat. If you do trivial in world affairs, as anyone knows
not submit, you go to jail. who has a familiarity with the Treaty of Ver-
Shortly we will hear the death rattle of sailles. But who does?
free expression. No government sees an It serves nothing to raise alarums, to pen
advantage to itself in a free press, though Philippics, to gnash hands and wring teeth.
countries with decent governments feel Minor political currents can be diverted by
much less threatened. Our government protest, but this one is the torrent subse-
fears nothing more. quent to a broken dam. It will go where it
America has a carefully controlled press will, as the Thirties went where they would.
that appears free because it is not explicitly Hold on tight. CT

48 TheREADER | January 2011


CRUCIFYING HELEN

Media hit of the year


Our media experienced a few highs and many lows in 2010,
but nothing as disgraceful as the vitriol against Helen Thomas,
says Danny Schechter

n 1960, I co-founded a student mag- White House Correspondents Association. Once you are

I azine at Cornell University called


Dialogue. I was a wannabe journal-
ist, fixated on emulating the coura-
geous media personalities of the times from
Edward R. Murrow to a distinctive figure I
Yet, beneath her establishment creden-
tials and status, she was always an outsider
too – -one of nine children born to a fam-
ily of Lebanese immigrants in Winchester,
Kentucky, who despite their Middle East
labeled and
stereotyped,
especially if you
are denounced as
an anti-Semite,
came to admire at Presidential press confer- origins, were Christians in the Greek Ortho- you are relegated
ences, a wire service reporter named Helen dox Church. to the fringes,
Thomas. She became a pioneering woman, a mod- pronounced a
In recent years, my faith in the power of ern day Helen of Troy, who broke the glass hater beyond
dialogue in politics has been severely tested ceiling, infiltrating the clubby, mostly male, redemption,
– as, no doubt has hers – in an age where di- inside-the-beltway world of big egos and even beyond
atribes and calculated demonization chills self-important media prima donnas, most explanation
debate and exchanges of opposing views. supplicants to power, not challengers of it.
Once you are labeled and stereotyped, Her origins were more modest. She grew
especially if you are denounced as an anti- up in an ethnic neighborhood in Detroit,
Semite, you are relegated to the fringes, pro- a city I later worked in, as an intern in the
nounced a hater beyond redemption, even Mayor’s office (I was in a Ford Foundation
beyond explanation. education in politics program in the sixties
You have been assigned a scarlet letter as that also boasted a fellow fellow in another
visible as the Star of David the Nazis made city, Richard B. Cheney. Yes, the one and the
Jews wear. same.)
My career path took me from covering Helen received her batchelor’s degree
civil rights activism in the streets to later from Wayne State University in 1942, the
working in the suites of network power. I year I was born. Earlier this year, her alma
went from the underground press to rock mater which had taken so much pride in
and roll radio to TV reporting and produc- her achievements, withdrew an award in
ing at CNN and ABC. her name in a striking gesture of cowardice
As a member in good standing of an ac- and submission to an incident blown out of
tivist generation, I saw myself more as an all proportions that instantly turned Helen
outsider in contrast to Helen’s distinctive from a shero to a zero in a quick media sec-
credentials as an insider, as a White House ond.
bureau chief and later as the dean of the The Simon Wiesenthal Center – not, by

January 2011 | TheREADER 49


CRUCIFYING HELEN

I didn’t know until the way, linked to the legendary Nazi Hunt- In Media voted by my colleagues on Media-
she told me that er (who was unhappy with its work), put channel.org. She was an institution, an icon
she had also been her on their top-ten list of anti-Semites after of honor. We were impressed by her history
hounded for years angry remarks she made about Israel went of asking tough questions even when they
by Abe Foxman, viral and blew up into one of the major me- embarrassed Presidents.
a leader of the dia stories of 2010. Then, suddenly, last June, I like every-
Anti-Defamation President Barack Obama who cheerfully one in the world of media, was stunned to
League, who brought her a birthday cake, hailing her long witness her public fall from grace, partly
demanded years of service to the American people, lat- self-inflicted, perhaps because of inelegant
she explain 25 er labeled her remarks “reprehensible.” You language used in response to an ambush
questions she would think that given all the vicious slurs, interview by provocateur father-son Israeli
asked Presidents Hitler comparisons and putdowns directed advocates posing as journalists
over the decades at him, he would be more cautious tossing They were following in the footsteps of
slurs at others. the vicious comments by Ann (“You will
But no, all politicians pander to deflect find liberals always rooting for savages
criticism whenever they fear the winds of against civilization”) Coulter who earlier de-
enmity will blow their way. nounced her as an “old Arab” sitting yards
But now it was Helen who was being from the President as if she was threatening
compared to Hitler in a new furor over the him. She refused to dignify that smear with
Fuhrer even though she says she grew up in a response.
a home that despised him, and from which I didn’t know until she told me that she
her two brothers joined the army in World had also been hounded for years by Abe
War ll. She says now “We didn’t do enough Foxman, a leader of the Anti-Defamation
to expose Hitler early on. He was not just League, who demanded she explain 25 ques-
anti Jewish. He was anti-American!” tions she asked Presidents over the decades,
I might add if I considered it necessary, “I didn’t answer,” “she told me, “because I
that I grew up in a Jewish family and am don’t respond to junk mail.”
proud of that identity, our culture and tra- Foxman then sent the questions to her
ditions. But that was no big thing to Helen employer trying to get her fired, she says.
who worked alongside Jews all of her life in Later, he recruited former Bush Press Secre-
the media world, many as close friends. Her tary Ari Fleisher in his crusade against her.
main concern as a child was with non-Jews Ari and his boss disliked her “hostile” ques-
who baited her in school as a “garlic eater,” tions about Iraq on official claims that have
a foreigner. since been unmasked as lies.
She may be a critic of Israel but never a Helen always stuck to her guns. She was
hater of Jews, a distinction the world rec- considered the grand dame of White House
ognizes, but that right-wing backers of the journalists. Presidents respected her. She
Israel lobby (and the media that backs it) went to China with Nixon. You don’t sur-
refuse to accept in the name of a black/ vive in that highly visible pit of presidential
white ‘you are with us or ag’in us” ideologi- polemics for as long as she did by backing
cal agenda which has no tolerance for crit- down. Many correspondents assigned there
ics, differences of opinion or the anger of turn into bulldogs for the camera. May-
the dispossessed. be that’s why Helen can appear abrupt at
They only see themselves as victims, times.
never the people they victimize. Prejudice She has, however, always been polite
often infects those who live in glass houses enough to try to answer questions from
and who are quick to condemn others. strangers without always realizing who she
For many years, I admired Helen from was dealing with in a new world of media
afar, and later gave her an award for Truth hit jobs, where “GOTCHA” YouTube videos

50 TheREADER | January 2011


CRUCIFYING HELEN

thrive on recording embarrassing moments, that relishes stories of personal destruction She had no choice
what we used to call “bloopers.’ and missteps. It’s the old ‘the Media builds but to resign after
In her senior years, she was brought down you up before they tear you down’ routine. her company, her
by a kid looking for a marketable soundbyte As blogger Jamie Frieze wrote, “I don’t agent, her co-
like the one he extracted – as if he was a big think she should have been forced to resign. author and many
game hunter in Africa who bagged a lion- After all, the freedom of speech doesn’t “friends” started
ess. She had been baited and took the bait. come with the right to be comfortable. In treating her like a
Unaware of how the video could be used, other words, the fact that you’re uncom- pariah
she ventilated and then regretted doing so. fortable doesn’t trump my free speech.
It was too late. That one media hit job trig- Thomas made people uncomfortable, but
gered millions of online video hits. that doesn’t mean her speech should be
Helen later apologized for how she said punished.”
what she did without retracting the essence But punished she was
of her convictions. But by then, it was too As a veteran of one kind of real journal-
late. Her long career was instantly terminat- ism, she may have been inexperienced in
ed. The perception became everything; the dealing with our volatile media culture that
context nothing. now thrives on hostile ‘drive by’ attacks and
She tried to be conciliatory, saying, “I putdowns.
deeply regret my comments I made last When I called Helen Thomas to ask if
week regarding the Israelis and the Pales- she might be willing to share some of her
tinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt be- thoughts on what happened, I found her as
lief that peace will come to the Middle East eloquent as ever, supportive of Wikileaks,
only when all parties recognize the need for critical of Grand Jury harassment in the
mutual respect and tolerance. May that day Middle West against Palestinian support-
come soon.” ers and angry with President Obama for his
Those remarks were derided and dis- many right turns and spineless positions.
missed, with the pundits and papers de- This clearly was not a mea culpa moment
manding her scalp. She had no choice but for her, but what has she learned from this
to resign after her company, her agent, her ordeal?
co-author and many “friends” started treat- While she hasn’t written about the inci-
ing her like a pariah. dent she did speak to me about it for pub-
“You cannot criticize Israel in this coun- lication.
try and survive,” she says now. She believes I first asked her for her view about what
the Israel lobby controls the discourse on happened?
Israel. She cited, as an example, CNN firing She was, she said, on a path outside the
a veteran editor in Lebanon for praising a White House on a day in which Jewish lead-
popular cleric for his support for women af- ers were being honored inside, at American
ter he died. (CNN had no problems hiring Jewish Heritage Celebration Day, an event
Wolf Blitzer, a former executive director of she said she was unaware of. A rabbi, Da-
AIPAC.) vid Nesenoff, asked to speak to her, and in-
I didn’t ask her but I am sure she is sym- troduced his two sons who he said wanted
pathetic to President Carter for speaking to become Journalists. (One was actually a
out on the issue the way he has, despite the friend of his son Adam, also his webmas-
way he was later dumped on. Once under ter.)
predictable vitriolic attack began, even he “People seeking advice come to me a
was forced to back down away from some lot,” she explained, “and I told them about
of his positions. my love of journalism and that they should
She was forced into retirement and pursue their goals. I was gracious, and told
thrown to the wolves in a media culture them to go for it.”

January 2011 | TheREADER 51


CRUCIFYING HELEN

There was also Then the subject abruptly changed. order to speak more candidly, added that
anger at President “What you think of Israel?,” they asked for the first time Israel’s legitimacy is being
Obama for not next. It was all very pleasant and I don’t questioned by many in the international
denouncing Israel’s blame them for asking,” she told me. But, community.
intervention on then, she admitted, she didn’t know the “The official believes the lack of a viable
the high seas. people who she then said, “shoved a micro- peace process, combined with last week’s
But, by that time, phone in my face like a jack knife.” Gaza-bound flotilla incident, which killed
Helen Thomas was It wasn’t just any Rabbi making conversa- nine, has brought Israel to this situation.
silenced and silent tion. Nessensoff is an ardent pro-Israel sup- The Israeli public doesn’t understand the
porter who runs a website called Rabbi Live severity of the situation, according to the
and can be a flamboyant self-promoter. He politician. The official believes that Israelis
says, “even though I was born in Glen Cove should not react in a nationalistic way to
and grew up in Syosset Long Island, Israel is recent events, because it is only weakening
my Jewish homeland. It is the homeland for the Jewish state in this process.”
all Jewish people.” I don’t know If any of this was weighing
The Jewish Forward newspaper would on Helen’s mind but I do know that criti-
later report, cism of Israel was soon at an all time fever
“Nesenoff came under scrutiny for ap- pitch because of the Gaza Aid Flotilla which
pearing in a video depicting a man of Mexi- left Turkey on the day of the “interview.”
can descent pretending to give a weather Supporters of the humanitarian project
forecast while a bearded rabbi in a black hat feared Israel would attack the ships as they
and coat stands nearby. soon did. For media spin, Tel Aviv righteous-
“The four-and-a-half-minute video, titled ly and loudly defended its violent intercep-
Holy Weather, features Nesenoff dressed as tion of the non-violent convoy as an act of
‘Father Julio Ramirez,’ an outsize caricature legitimate self-defense but, later, quietly,
of a Mexican priest. The rabbi makes state- paid compensation to the victims when the
ments that fuel stereotypes, painting Mexi- world media turned against them.
can laborers as dishwashers. He speaks in Soon, there would protests worldwide
an exaggerated rasp of a Mexican accent, and furious exchanges in the media. Much
saying, among other things, ‘The last time of it was very emotional. There was also an-
I saw a map like that I was in an immigra- ger at President Obama for not denouncing
tion office with three gringos down on the Israel’s intervention on the high seas. But,
Mexican border, you know, right near New by that time, Helen Thomas was silenced
Mexico.’ Fractured Spanish pops up from and silent.
time to time, as when Nesenoff says the (In some outlets, the incident “outing”
rabbi’s tendency to get better assignments Helen was used, bizarrely, as pro-Israel “bal-
is ‘no mucho bueno picnic.’ ance” to show why Israel must act tough.)
“Though some critics used the skit as Back at the North Lawn that day at the
ammunition to portray him as a hypocrite White House, Helen, who must have been
and a racist, Nesenoff said he was dressed following these evolving events, blew a
up because it was Purim.” fuse, or at least lost her usually professional
God, he said, likes humor. demeanor. Here’s the now infamous ex-
Israeli officials were not in a laughing change videotaped by an amateur camera-
mood during this period for other reasons. man, offering a deliberately unflattering
Fox News reported: “A senior Israeli politi- and extreme tight close up of an 89 year-old
cian tells Fox News that Israel is currently woman.
in the midst of its worst international crisis Nesenoff: Any comments on Israel?
since the creation of the Jewish state. The We’re asking everybody today, any com-
politician, who asked not to be named in ments on Israel?

52 TheREADER | January 2011


CRUCIFYING HELEN

Thomas: Tell them to get the hell out of tify expelling Palestinians in biblical terms Helen told me her
Palestine. and are supported by Christian Evangelicals thinking on this
Nesenoff: Oooh. Any better comments in saying so. subject goes back
on Israel? That’s ironic, isn’t it, because in our me- to being moved by
Thomas: Remember, these people are dia, fanatical fundamentalists are only pic- a Rabbi who spoke
occupied and it’s their land. It’s not Ger- tured as Muslims, rarely as Jews. alongside Martin
man, it’s not Poland ... Her historic memory was clearly triggered Luther King Jr
Nesenoff: So where should they go, what although her views are hardly extreme. She at the March on
should they do? says Israel has a right to exist, and so do Washington in
Thomas: They go home. Jews “like all people. But not the right to 1963
Nesenoff: Where’s the home? seize others’ lands.” She says Israel has de-
Thomas: Poland, Germany and America fied 65 UN resolutions on these issues. She
and everywhere else was frustrated when so many Presidents
Nesenoff: So you’re saying the Jews go danced around the issues and in her view,
back to Poland and Germany? “caved” on human rights.
Thomas: And America and everywhere To Nesenoff and many viewers oriented
else. Why push people out of there who to see the world only through a unflinching
have lived there for centuries? See? pro-Israel narrative, Helen had crossed the
Nesenoff does not repeat her use of line from being anti-Israel to being anti-se-
America, but only to Poland and German. metic. The reason: the inclusion of Poland
He has nothing to say about her reference and Germany into the mix were considered
to occupation, “obviously anti-Semetic.”
Clearly, the question triggered something She agrees that by citing Germany, she
deeper in Helen, feelings that she had per- opened the door to accusations of insen-
haps bottled up for many years in the White sitivity, lumping her in with holocaust de-
House where every reporter has a built in niers, but denies being one or hating Jews.
radar that teaches them to be careful about She says she was startled by that charge
what they say and how they say it, especial- because she is, she says, a Semite so how
ly on a subject like Israel that Helen consid- can she be ant-Semetic? (Another irony:
ers a “third rail,” almost an “untouchable is- Jewish emigration to today’s Germany has
sue.” She earlier told one college audience, increased 10 fold since the fall of the Berlin
“I censored myself for 50 years when I was a Wall to 200,000 with many leaving Israel.
reporter.” (She was then an opinion colum- This “reverse exodus” troubles Israeli offi-
nist and perhaps freer to speak her mind,) cials.)
Israel was not a new subject for her to Helen told me her thinking on this sub-
comment on either. Anyone from the Arab ject goes back to being moved by a Rabbi
world tends to have a very different under- who spoke alongside Martin Luther King Jr
standing of the history there, a perspective at the March on Washington in 1963. I was
that we rarely hear or see. It’s a narrative there also, and heard him speak too, and so
driven by anger at unending Palestinian I looked him up,
victimization. It was Joachim Prinz of the American
She told me she had been in Israel in 1954 Jewish Congress who made a speech that in-
and visited the Palestinian village of Kibia fluenced a younger Helen Thomas. He said,
that was invaded by Israel in which local “When I was the rabbi of the Jewish com-
residents were driven out and many killed. munity in Berlin under the Hitler regime, I
She told me she personally met many Pales- learned many things. The most important
tinians forced from their homes. She is not thing that I learned under those tragic cir-
the only one angry about this often hidden cumstances was that bigotry and hatred are
legacy, especially because many Israelis jus- not .the most urgent problem. The most ur-

January 2011 | TheREADER 53


CRUCIFYING HELEN

But, to this gent, the most disgraceful, the most shame- Helen Thomas is not in that category.
day, there has ful and the most tragic problem is silence.” Yet, many of those “fallen” are back in
been almost no Helen says her whole career has been action, tarnished perhaps, but allowed to
compassion, about combating the sin of silence. She recant, to work and then appear in the me-
empathy or says she has now been liberated to speak dia.
respect shown out. And “all I would like is for people to But, to this day, there has been almost no
for one of our know what I was trying to say, that Palestin- compassion, empathy or respect shown for
great journalists, ians are living under tyranny and that their one of our great journalists, Helen Thom-
Helen Thomas, rights are being violated. All I want is some as, who has been presumed guilty and
who has been sympathy for Palestinians.” sentenced to oblivion with barely a word
presumed guilty Had she said it like that, if she had per- spoken in her defense. She admittedly mis-
and sentenced haps made a distinction between Israel as a spoke and is now officially “Missing” like
to oblivion with State and its settlers on occupied lands, she some disappeared priest in Argentina
barely a word might still have her job. Unfortunately, what A whole world may be critical of Israel.
spoken in her she did say, and how she said it, brought all Millions may believe that the occupiers
defense the attention on her, not the issues she was should withdraw or that that Israeli rejec-
trying to expose. tionism of the peace process must end. But
Now it’s the holiday season, allegedly a when a “mainstream” American reporter of
time of peace and forgiveness when Presi- great stature touches these sentiments, she
dents issue pardons to convicted criminals is consigned to Dante’s inferno, and turned
and reflection is theoretically permitted, a into a non-person.
time when its been suggested that even a How can we expect Israelis and Palestin-
State Department hawk like Richard Hol- ians to reconcile if our media won’t set an
brooke could, on his deathbed call for an example by reconciling with Helen Thom-
end to the Afghan war that he had dogmati- as? CT
cally supported.
We have watched the rehabilitation of News Dissector Danny Schechter blogs
so many politicians over recent years who for and edits Mediachannel.org. His latest
have stumbled, taken money or disgraced film is Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. –
themselves in sex scandals, including Sena- Plunderthecrimeofourtime.com
tors, even Presidents.

SUBSCRIBE
TO COLDTYPE
If you enjoy The Reader
subscribe to future issues
– it’s free!
E-mail: subs@coldtype.net

54 TheREADER | January 2011


GAZA MEMORY

Education at gunpoint
Ramzy Baroud remembers an essay he wrote at school in Gaza

recall the first sentence of my fifth as true for me now as it ever was. The problems

I grade essay on “Education and Youth”.


Written with the occasional aid of my
father, and dotted with clichés, it read
something like this:
“Youth is the backbone of any nation,
I remembered my essay as I read about
the first World Education Forum (WEF) in
Palestine, which took place in several re-
gions throughout historic Palestine, includ-
ing Jerusalem, Nazareth, Jaffa, Bethlehem
faced by the
education system
in Palestine
were difficult
enough during
and education is essential to arm the youth and the Gaza Strip. Those who were denied my childhood.
with the knowledge they need to lead their access by Israeli authorities had their own Now they have
societies toward change, progress and pros- conference in Lebanon. The event, which compounded to
perity.” started on October 28, lasted four days. unforeseen levels
The grayish blue pencil I used to write my The problems faced by the education
essay with was one of several items handed system in Palestine were difficult enough
annually by United Nations Relief and Works during my childhood. Now they have com-
Agency (UNRWA) staff to refugee children pounded to unforeseen levels, with the edu-
in many schools scattered throughout the cational sector divided between two educa-
Gaza Strip. My Arabic teacher was Abu Ka- tional ministries in Gaza and the West Bank,
mal al-Hanafi, a wonderful man with a ter- the former under Israeli siege and the latter
rible temper, who was also the Imam of the under military occupation. Were it not for
local mosque. My classroom had exactly UNRWA, the already severe obstacles would
62 students. My desk was as old as the Is- have become completely insurmountable
raeli occupation of Gaza, if not older. The long ago. But today even UNRWA is strug-
roof was filled with holes, creating an excit- gling with depleting funds and political
ing spectacle as birds flew in and out, often haggling between competing Palestinian
nesting in available spaces. Watching these authorities and an ever atrocious Israeli oc-
scenes made the brutish Arabic grammar cupation.
lessons bearable, and eased the fear caused According to statistics provided by the
by Abu Kamal’s bouts of anger and the oc- United Nations IRIN news agency and re-
casional Israeli gunfire in and around the cently cited by IPS, 39,000 children in Gaza
refugee camp. had no available school to attend following
While the introduction to my “Education the recent Israeli war. The United Nations
and Youth” essay was clichéd and I may not has put the number of schools and kin-
have known what many of the terms actual- dergartens that were destroyed or severely
ly meant, its overriding sentiment remains damaged by the Israeli onslaught during the

January 2011 | TheREADER 55


GAZA MEMORY

With every 2008-2009 war at 280. Considering earlier are held back - from school, from opportu-
extra mile problems of a barely standing educational nities, from a better life.
added to Israel’s infrastructure, malnourished pupils and Palestinians living in third class status in
already gigantic devastated family incomes, one can only today’s Israel, struggling against constant
annexation wall, imagine the impact of the latest blow. attacks on their identity and history also
and with every As if the damage caused by Israel was not have numerous challenges to overcome.
new military enough, the Palestinian Authority has also On top of the problems created by mili-
checkpoint, done its fair share of harm. tary occupation, discrimination and po-
more and more According to the Palestine Monitor, the litical factionalism, other challenges, which
Palestinian head of the Ministry of Education pro- also exist in other Middle Eastern societies,
students in the claimed in his message to the conference: such as adult literacy and gender equality,
West Bank are “Through education we will become a pros- are also very much relevant in Palestine.
held back - from perous nation, and will obtain a life that al- These too need to be addressed.
school, from lows us to live in freedom. We are a people The World Education Forum confer-
opportunities, who can live and learn despite the problems ences were accurately named “Education
from a better life we encounter. We will continue to improve for Change.” But in order for this change to
education, so that future generations can take place, rival Palestinian factions must
live peacefully.” not politicize education. If complete unity
I can humbly concede that this statement eludes them at the moment, they should
is much more impressive than my fifth at least unify their ministries of education,
grade proclamations. But as well-meaning even if temporarily, under the auspices of a
and accurate as the assessment sounds, one third Palestinian party.
can hardly absolve the Palestinian leader- Needless to say, the Israeli occupation
ship of its own share of the blame. and the siege must end. No healthy educa-
Following the clashes between Fatah and tional system can ever be fostered under the
Hamas, which lead to the ousting of Fatah boots of soldiers and at gunpoint.
from Gaza in 2007, thousands of teachers More, regional and international solidar-
refused to return to work. They were paid ity is essential to help Palestinians achieve a
by the West Bank leadership and resuming semblance of normalcy in their educational
work under Hamas might have meant the system under the current difficult circum-
freezing of their salaries by rival Fatah. The stances.
Hamas government wws left with the formi- The good news is that I got a full mark on
dable task of filling the vacant posts at very my Arabic essay on “Education and Youth”.
short notice. Many schools were also de- Whether the parties involved will ever agree
stroyed during the war, and many teachers that “education is essential to arm the youth
and students were killed or wounded. Since with the knowledge they need to lead their
the families of most students were poorer societies toward change, progress and pros-
than ever under a harsh Israeli siege, bring- perity” remains to be seen. Personally, I will
ing the educational system in Gaza back to maintain my fifth grade position. I now un-
its old status was almost impossible. derstand what it means. CT
Gaza might be the most referenced ex-
ample, for obvious reasons, but the educa- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net)
tion debacle in Palestine hardly stops there. is an internationally-syndicated columnist
With every extra mile added to Israel’s al- and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com.
ready gigantic annexation wall, and with His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom
every new military checkpoint, more and Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press,
more Palestinian students in the West Bank London), now available on Amazon.com.

56 TheREADER | January 2011


ANTI EMPIRE REPORT

Avoiding the new


Devil’s Island
William Blum on Wikileaks, Sweden and Julian Assange’s
biggest fear

t’s December 16, 2010. I’m standing in gression”. The United States

I the snow in front of the White House


... Standing with Veterans for Peace ...
I’m only a veteran of standing in front
of the White House; the first time was Feb-
ruary 1965, handing out flyers against the
On that same snowy day last month Ju-
lian Assange of Wikileaks was freed from
prison in London and told reporters that he
was more concerned that the United States
might try to extradite him than he was
is the new Devil’s
Island of the
Western world

war in Vietnam. I was working for the State about being extradited to Sweden, where he
Department at the time and my biggest fear presumably faces “sexual” charges. 1
was that someone from that noble institu- That’s a fear many political and drug
tion would pass by and recognize me. prisoners in various countries have ex-
Five years later I was still protesting Viet- pressed in recent years. The United States is
nam, although long gone from the State De- the new Devil’s Island of the Western world.
partment. Then came Cambodia. And Laos. From the mid-19th century to the mid-20th,
Soon, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Then Pan- political prisoners were shipped to that god-
ama was the new great threat to America, to forsaken strip of French land off the eastern
freedom and democracy and all things holy coast of South America. One of the current
and decent, so it had to be bombed without residents of the new Devil’s Island is Brad-
mercy. Followed by the first war against the ley Manning, the former US intelligence an-
people of Iraq, and the 78-day bombing of alyst suspected of leaking diplomatic cables
Yugoslavia. Then the land of Afghanistan to Wikileaks. Manning has been imprisoned
had rained down upon it depleted uranium, for seven months, first in Kuwait, then at a
napalm, phosphorous bombs, and other military base in Virginia, and faces virtual
witches’ brews and weapons of the chemi- life in prison if found guilty, of something.
cal dust; then Iraq again. And I’ve skipped a Without being tried or convicted of any-
few. I think I hold the record for most times thing, he is allowed only very minimal con-
picketing the White House by a right-hand- tact with the outside world; or with people,
ed batter. daylight, or news; among the things he is
And through it all, the good, hard-work- denied are a pillow, sheets, and exercise;
ing, righteous people of America have be- his sleep is restricted and frequently inter-
lieved mightily that their country always rupted. See Glenn Greenwald’s discussion
means well; some even believe to this day of how Manning’s treatment constitutes
that we never started a war, certainly noth- torture. 2
ing deserving of the appellation “war of ag- A friend of the young soldier says that

January 2011 | TheREADER 57


ANTI EMPIRE REPORT

The Wikileaks many people are reluctant to talk about every day they are adding to the steady,
documents may Manning’s deteriorating physical and men- gradual erosion of people’s belief in the
not produce any tal condition because of government ha- US government’s good intentions, which is
world-changing rassment, including surveillance, seizure necessary to overcome a lifetime of indoc-
revelations, but of their computer without a warrant, and trination. Many more individuals over the
every day they even attempted bribes. “This has had such years would have been standing in front
are adding to the an intimidating effect that many are afraid of the White House if they had had access
steady, gradual to speak out on his behalf.” 3 A developer of to the plethora of information that floods
erosion of people’s the transparency software used by Wikileaks people today; which is not to say that we
belief in the US was detained for several hours last summer would have succeeded in stopping any of
government’s by federal agents at a Newark, New Jersey the wars; that’s a question of to what extent
good intentions airport, where he was questioned about his the United States is a democracy.
connection to Wikileaks and Assange as One further consequence of the release
well as his opinions about the wars in Af- of the documents may be to put an end to
ghanistan and Iraq. 4 the widespread belief that Sweden, or the
This is but a tiny incident from the near- Swedish government, is peaceful, progres-
century buildup of the American police sive, neutral and independent. Stockholm’s
state, from the Red Scare of the 1920s to the behavior in this matter and others has been
McCarthyism of the 1950s to the crackdown as American-poodle-like as London’s, as
against Central American protesters in the it lined itself up with an Assange-accuser
1980s ... elevated by the War on Drugs ... who has been associated with right-wing
now multiplied by the War on Terror. It’s anti-Castro Cubans, who are of course US-
not the worst police state in history; not government-supported. This is the same
even the worst police state in the world to- Sweden that for some time in recent years
day; but nonetheless a police state, and cer- was working with the CIA on its torture-
tainly the most pervasive police state ever rendition flights and has about 500 soldiers
– a Washington Post study has just revealed in Afghanistan. Sweden is the world’s larg-
that there are 4,058 separate federal, state est per capita arms exporter, and for years
and local “counterterrorism” organizations has taken part in US/NATO military exer-
spread across the United States, each with its cises, some within its own territory. The left
own responsibilities and jurisdictions. 5 The should get themselves a new hero-nation.
police of America, of many types, generally Try Cuba.
get what and who they want. If the United There’s also the old stereotype held by
States gets its hands on Julian Assange, un- Americans of Scandinavians practicing a so-
der any legal pretext, fear for him; it might phisticated and tolerant attitude toward sex,
be the end of his life as a free person; the an image that was initiated, or enhanced,
actual facts of what he’s done or the actual by the celebrated 1967 Swedish film I Am
wording of US laws will not matter; hell Curious (Yellow), which had been banned
hath no fury like an empire scorned. for awhile in the United States. And now
John Burns, chief foreign correspondent what do we have? Sweden sending Interpol
for the New York Times, after interviewing on an international hunt for a man who ap-
Assange, stated: “He is profoundly of the parently upset two women, perhaps for no
conviction that the United States is a force more than sleeping with them both in the
for evil in the world, that it’s destructive same week.
of democracy.” 6 Can anyone who believes And while they’re at it, American pro-
that be entitled to a full measure of human gressives should also lose their quaint belief
rights on Devil’s Island? that the BBC is somehow a liberal broad-
The Wikileaks documents may not pro- caster. Americans are such suckers for Brit-
duce any world-changing revelations, but ish accents. The BBC’s Today presenter,

58 TheREADER | January 2011


ANTI EMPIRE REPORT

John Humphrys, asked Assange: “Are you a Listen to former president Richard Nixon: “The Jews are just
sexual predator?” Assange said the sugges- “The Jews are just a very aggressive and a very aggressive
tion was “ridiculous”, adding: “Of course abrasive and obnoxious personality. ... most and abrasive
not”. Humphrys then asked Assange how of our Jewish friends ... they are all basically and obnoxious
many woman he had slept with. 7 Would people who have a sense of inferiority and personality. ...
even Fox News have descended to that have got to compensate.” This is from a most of our Jewish
level? I wish Assange had been raised in tape of a conversation at the White House, friends ... they
the streets of Brooklyn, as I was. He would February 13, 1973, recently released. 9 These are all basically
then have known precisely how to reply to tapes, and there are a large number of them, people who have a
such a question: “You mean including your are the Wikileaks of an earlier age. sense of inferiority
mother?” Yet, as the prominent conservative Mi- and have got to
Another group of people who should chael Medved pointed out after the release compensate.”
learn a lesson from all this are the knee-re- of Nixon’s remarks: “Ironically, though, no
flex conspiracists. Several of them have al- American did more to rescue the Jewish
ready written me snide letters informing me people when it counted most: after the 1973
of my naiveté in not realizing that Israel is Egyptian-Syrian surprise attack destroyed
actually behind the release of the Wikileaks a third of Israel’s air force and killed the
documents; which is why, they inform me, American equivalent of 200,000 Israelis,
that nothing about Israel is mentioned. I Nixon overruled his own Pentagon and
had to inform them that I had already seen a ordered immediate re-supply. To this day,
few documents putting Israel in a bad light. Israelis feel gratitude for this decisiveness
I’ve since seen others, and Assange, in an that enabled the Jewish state to turn the
interview with Al Jazeera on December 23, tide of war.” 10 So, was Richard Nixon anti-
stated that only a meager number of files re- Semitic? And should his remarks be kept
lated to Israel had been published so far be- secret?
cause the publications in the West that were In another of his recent interviews, Ju-
given exclusive rights to publish the secret lian Assange was asked whether he thought
documents were reluctant to publish much that “a state has a right to have any secrets
sensitive information about Israel. (Imagine at all.” He conceded that there are circum-
the flak Germany’s Der Spiegel would get hit stances when institutions have such a need,
with.) “There are 3,700 files related to Israel “but that is not to say that all others must
and the source of 2,700 files is Israel,” said obey that need. The media has an obligation
Assange. “In the next six months we intend to the public to get out information that the
to publish more files.” 8 public needs to know.” 11
Naturally, several other individuals have I would add that the American people –
informed me that it’s the CIA that is actu- more than any other people – have a need
ally behind the document release. to know what their government is up to
around the world because their government
The right to secrecy engages in aggressive actions more than
Many of us are pretty tired of supporters of any other government, continuously bomb-
Israel labeling as “anti-Semitic” most any ing and sending young men and women to
criticism of Israeli policies, which is virtually kill and die. Americans need to know what
never an appropriate accusation. Consider their psychopathic leaders are really saying
the Webster Dictionary definition: “Anti- to each other and to foreign leaders about
Semite. One who discriminates against or is all this shedding of blood. Any piece of such
hostile to or prejudiced against Jews.” No- information might be used as a weapon to
tice that the state of Israel is not mentioned, prevent yet another Washington War.
or in any way implied. Michael Moore has recently written: “We
Here’s what real anti-Semitism looks like. were taken to war in Iraq on a lie. Hundreds

January 2011 | TheREADER 59


ANTI EMPIRE REPORT

The agents spent of thousands are now dead. Just imagine if the annual Rose Parade in Pasadena, Califor-
many hours the men who planned this war crime back nia. To help you cope with, hopefully even
going through in 2002 had had a Wikileaks to deal with. counter, the misinformation and the omis-
each shelf and They might not have been able to pull it off. sions that are going to swamp the media
drawer, carting The only reason they thought they could for the next few months, here is some basic
away dozens of get away with it was because they had a information about the great man’s splendid
boxes of personal guaranteed cloak of secrecy. That guaran- achievements, first in foreign policy:
belongings. tee has now been ripped from them, and I Nicaragua – For eight terribly long years
So what kind hope they are never able to operate in secret the people of Nicaragua were under attack
of privacy and again.” by Ronald Reagan’s proxy army, the Con-
secrecy should the And, dear comrades, let us not forget: tras. It was all-out war from Washington,
State Department Our glorious leaders spy on us all the time; aiming to destroy the progressive social and
be entitled to? no communication of ours, from phone economic programs of the Sandinista gov-
call to email, is secret from them; nothing ernment – burning down schools and medi-
in our bank accounts or our bedrooms is cal clinics, mining harbors, bombing and
guaranteed any kind of privacy if they wish strafing, raping and torturing. These Con-
to know about it. Recently, the FBI raided tras were the charming gentlemen Reagan
the midwest homes of a number of persons called “freedom fighters” and the “moral
active in solidarity work with Palestinians, equivalent of our founding fathers”.
Colombians, and others. The agents spent El Salvador – Salvador’s dissidents tried
many hours going through each shelf and to work within the system. But with US sup-
drawer, carting away dozens of boxes of per- port, the government made that impossible,
sonal belongings. So what kind of privacy using repeated electoral fraud and murder-
and secrecy should the State Department be ing hundreds of protestors and strikers.
entitled to? When the dissidents took to the gun and
civil war, the Carter administration and then
Preparing for the propaganda onslaught even more so, the Reagan administration,
February 6 will mark the centenary of the responded with unlimited money, military
birth of Ronald Reagan, president of the aid, and training in support of the govern-
United States from 1981 to 1989. The conser- ment and its death squads and torture, the
vatives have wasted no time in starting the latter with the help of CIA torture manu-
show. On New Year’s Day a 55-foot long, 26- als. US military and CIA personnel played
foot high float honoring Reagan was part of an active role on a continuous basis. The

READ THE BEST OF TOM ENGELHARDT


http://coldtype.net/tom.html

60 TheREADER | January 2011


ANTI EMPIRE REPORT

result was 75,000 civilian deaths; meaning- total about half the population. And many “We were told
ful social change thwarted; a handful of the thousands of anti-American Islamic funda- four years ago that
wealthy still owned the country; the poor mentalists, trained and armed by the US, on 17 million people
remained as ever; dissidents still had to fear the loose to terrorize the world, to this day. went to bed
right-wing death squads; there was to be no “To watch the courageous Afghan freedom hungry each night.
profound social change in El Salvador while fighters battle modern arsenals with simple Well, that was
Ronnie sat in the White House with Nancy. hand-held weapons is an inspiration to probably
Guatemala – In 1954, a CIA-organized coup those who love freedom,” declared Reagan. true. They were
overthrew the democratically-elected and “Their courage teaches us a great lesson – all on a diet”
progressive government of Jacobo Arbenz, that there are things in this world worth
initiating 40 years of military-government defending. To the Afghan people, I say on
death squads, torture, disappearances, mass behalf of all Americans that we admire your
executions, and unimaginable cruelty, total- heroism, your devotion to freedom, and
ing more than 200,000 victims – indisput- your relentless struggle against your op-
ably one of the most inhumane chapters of pressors.” 12
the 20th century. For eight of those years the The Cold War – As to Reagan’s alleged
Reagan administration played a major role. role in ending the Cold War ... pure fiction.
Perhaps the worst of the military dictators He prolonged it. Read the story in one of my
was General Efraín Ríos Montt, who car- books. 13
ried out a near-holocaust against the indi- Some other examples of the remarkable
ans and peasants, for which he was widely amorality of Ronald Wilson Reagan and the
condemned in the world. In December 1982, feel-good heartlessness of his administra-
Reagan went to visit the Guatemalan dicta- tion:
tor. At a press conference of the two men, Reagan, in his famous 1964 speech, “A
Ríos Montt was asked about the Guatema- Time for Choosing”, which lifted him to na-
lan policy of scorched earth. He replied “We tional political status: “We were told four
do not have a policy of scorched earth. We years ago that 17 million people went to bed
have a policy of scorched communists.” Af- hungry each night. Well, that was probably
ter the meeting, referring to the allegations true. They were all on a diet.”
of extensive human-rights abuses, Reagan “Undermining health, safety and en-
declared that Ríos Montt was getting “a bad vironmental regulation. Reagan decreed
deal” from the media. such rules must be subjected to regulatory
Grenada – Reagan invaded this tiny impact analysis – corporate-biased cost-
country in October 1983, an invasion totally benefit analyses, carried out by the Office
illegal and immoral, and surrounded by lies of Management and Budget. The result:
(such as “endangered” American medi- countless positive regulations discarded or
cal students). The invasion put into power revised based on pseudo-scientific conclu-
individuals more beholden to US foreign sions that the cost to corporations would be
policy objectives. greater than the public benefit.”
Afghanistan – After the Carter adminis- “Kick-starting the era of structural adjust-
tration provoked a Soviet invasion, Reagan ment. It was under Reagan administration
came to power to support the Islamic fun- influence that the International Monetary
damentalists in their war to eject the Sovi- Fund and World Bank began widely impos-
ets and the secular government, which hon- ing the policy package known as structural
ored women’s rights. In the end, the United adjustment – featuring deregulation, priva-
States and the fundamentalists “won”, tization, emphasis on exports, cuts in social
women’s rights and the rest of Afghani- spending – that has plunged country after
stan lost. More than a million dead, three country in the developing world into eco-
million disabled, five million refugees; in nomic destitution. The IMF chief at the time

January 2011 | TheREADER 61


ANTI EMPIRE REPORT

The “yellow rain”, was honest about what was to come, say- “According to the nostrums of Reagan
it turned out, ing in 1981 that, for low-income countries, Age America, the current Chinese system
was pollen-laden ‘adjustment is particularly costly in human – in equal measure capitalist and authori-
feces dropped by terms’. tarian – cannot actually exist. Capitalism
huge swarms of “Silence on the AIDS epidemic. Reagan spread democracy, we were told ad nauseam
honeybees flying didn’t mention AIDS publicly until 1987, by by a steady stream of conservative hacks,
far overhead. which point AIDS had killed 19,000 in the free-trade apologists, government officials
United States.” – Russell Mokhiber and Rob- and American companies doing business
ert Weissman 14 in China. Given enough Starbuckses and
“Reagan’s election changed the political McDonald’s, provided with sufficient con-
reality. His agenda was rolling back the wel- sumer choice, China would surely become a
fare state, and his budgets included a wide democracy.” – Harold Meyerson 16
range of cuts for social programs. He was Throughout the early and mid-1980s, the
also very strategic about the process. One Reagan administration declared that the
of his first targets was Legal Aid. This pro- Russians were spraying toxic chemicals over
gram, which provides legal services for low- Laos, Cambodia and Afghanistan – the so-
income people, was staffed largely by pro- called “yellow rain” – and had caused more
gressive lawyers, many of whom used it as a than ten thousand deaths by 1982 alone,
base to win precedent-setting legal disputes (including, in Afghanistan, 3,042 deaths at-
against the government. Reagan drastically tributed to 47 separate incidents between
cut back the program’s funding. He also ex- the summer of 1979 and the summer of
plicitly prohibited the agency from taking 1981, so precise was the information). Presi-
on class-action suits against the govern- dent Reagan himself denounced the Soviet
ment – law suits that had been used with Union thusly more than 15 times in docu-
considerable success to expand the rights of ments and speeches. The “yellow rain”, it
low- and moderate-income families. turned out, was pollen-laden feces dropped
“The Reagan administration also made by huge swarms of honeybees flying far
weakening the power of unions a top prior- overhead. 17
ity. The people he appointed to the National Reagan’s long-drawn-out statements re:
Labor Relations Board were qualitatively Contragate (the scandal involving the co-
more pro-management than appointees by vert sale of weapons to Iran to enable Rea-
prior Democratic or Republican presidents. ganites to continue financing the Contras in
This allowed companies to ignore workers’ the war against the Nicaraguan government
rights with impunity. Reagan also made after the US Congress cut off funding for the
the firing of strikers an acceptable business Contras) can be summarized as follows:
practice when he fired striking air traffic I didn’t know what was happening.
controllers in 1981. Many large corporations If I did know, I didn’t know enough.
quickly embraced the practice. ... The net ef- If I knew enough, I didn’t know it in time.
fect of these policies was that union mem- If I knew it in time, it wasn’t illegal.
bership plummeted, going from nearly 20 If it was illegal, the law didn’t apply to me.
percent of the private sector workforce in If the law applied to me, I didn’t know
1980 to just over 7 percent in 2006. “ – Dean what was happening. CT
Baker 15
Reaganomics: a tax policy based on a no- William Blum is the author of: Killing Hope:
tion of incentives which says that “the rich US Military and CIA Interventions Since World
aren’t working because they have too little War 2; Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s
money, while the poor aren’t working be- Only Superpower, West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold
cause they have too much.” – John Kenneth War Memoir, Freeing the World to Death:
Galbraith Essays on the American Empire

62 TheREADER | January 2011


ANTI EMPIRE REPORT

Notes 14, 2010; “Nixon: The Anti-Semitic Savior


1. Sunday Telegraph (Australia), December of Israel”
19, 2010 11. Al Jazeera, December 22 2010, Frost Over
2. Salon.com, December 15, 2010, “The in- the World: Julian Assange interview
humane conditions of Bradley Manning’s 12. March 21, 1983, in the White House
detention”. See also his attorney’s account 13. “Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Inter-
of Manning’s typical day; and Washington ventions Since World War II”, p.17-18. Also
Post, December 16, 2010 for the five countries listed above, see the
3. The Guardian (London), December 17, respective chapters in this book.
2010 14. June, 2004; Mokhiber is editor of Cor-
4. New York Times, December 19, 2010 porate Crime Reporter; Weissman, editor of
5. Washington Post, December 20, 2010 the Multinational Monitor, both in Wash-
6. Diane Rehm show, National Public Radio, ington, D.C.
Dec. 9, 2010 15. April, 2007; Baker is Co-Director of the
7. The Guardian (London), December 21, Center for Economic and Policy Research,
2010 Washington, DC
8. Information Clearing House, December 16. Washington Post columnist, June 3,
23 2010, “WikiLeaks to Release Israel Docu- 2009
ments in Six Months” 17. “Killing Hope”, p.349
9. Washington Post, December 12, 2010
10. From Medved’s radio show, December

January 2011 | TheREADER 63


WRITING WORTH
READING

ColdType
www.coldtype.net

You might also like